The Gate: Part 1 of the Hinterlands Series

by Charlotte Grey

arm muscles bulged against his flannel shirt.

  No answer. She tapped him on the shoulder, but he continued stacking his boxes.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Shannon swallowed the lump in her throat, took a deep breath, and reminded herself to remain calm. “It's just a dream. We just need to figure out how to get out of it. Okay. Big meeting tomorrow. Just think about your meeting. No big deal.”

  Leaving the store, Shannon headed back onto the town square. Maybe some of the townspeople could help her out.

  She approached the woman with laundry first.

  “Hey, any chance you could help me out here?”

  No answer. The woman continued folding her laundry as though Shannon had never spoken. She considered for a moment that perhaps the woman couldn't hear, so she waved her hand in front of her. Still nothing.

  Backing away, Shannon made her way cautiously to the man with the wheelbarrow. He was still circling the square, and didn't seem to have any direction in mind.

  She walked alongside him. “Can you hear me?”

  He kept at his pace, eyes fixed ahead.

  Shannon thought of an idea with potentially dire consequences. What if the town just didn't like outsiders, and they were collectively ignoring her?

  “Sorry for this!” Shannon shoved him hard in the shoulder.

  The man stumbled to the right, and he lost his grip on the left handle. Barely missing a beat, he caught himself and continued circling the square as though nothing had happened.

  An uneasy shiver crept up her spine, and Shannon backed away from the man. She decided to turn her attention to the three children jumping rope. They swung a single cord, and upon examination, she noticed it was a long rope that one might climb in gym class. Up close, the children appeared younger than she'd first thought. The girls who swung the rope were probably eight or nine – identical twins with the same green coat, black knee-high socks, and brown shoes. Their strawberry blonde hair was tied up in the same, muted pink bow.

  The boy was even younger – five or six, maybe – and a head shorter than the girls. He was East Asian – Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, if Shannon had to guess, and wore a navy blue school uniform with a white collar.

  Sliding in next to the jumping boy and trying her best not to trip herself up, she attempted to make conversation. “Hey, guys. The adults can't seem to hear me, so it's all up to you.”

  They continued to skip rope, but collectively ignored her. They didn't seem to notice anything, not even themselves. And they were the only people in town who – in some way or another – interacted. Usually children sang short songs to keep in rhythm, but even in silence they stayed in perfect sync. The girls moved the rope at the same pace, and the boy never tripped.

  “You're good, kid,” she said to the boy. “I was never –”

  Shannon tripped over the cord, and it caught between her ankles. The girls kept swinging the rope as though it weren't trapped between her shins. It flailed back and forth, but the boy continued to skip, completely unaware that he wasn't jumping over anything.

  Scrambling away from the children and across the town square, Shannon ran her hands through her hair and gripped it tightly, taking in rapid, shallow breaths. Everything about this place was wrong, and she was trapped with no hope of escape.

  “It's a dream,” she paced back and forth. “It's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream!”

  The corset constricted her lungs and dug into her ribs. Shannon tore at it, trying in vain to loosen the binding.

  “CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?” she screamed, and her voice echoed through the silent town. “CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?”

  Collapsing onto an old, wooden bench, Shannon folded her head to her knees and took in labored breaths. It was too much. Why wasn't she waking up? Her nightmares never lasted this long, and they certainly never felt so real. Dreams rarely had this much detail, but this – she could look down at the ground and count the pebbles. She could see the hem of her dress and the unevenness of her fingernails and the creases on her hands.

  Shannon let the panic wash over her. What if it wasn't a dream? What if she she was really trapped in this town with no hope of escape? Was this an elaborate prank some desperate, new reality show was pulling? That didn't explain why the colors were so off. And they wouldn't have managed to find kids who could keep a straight face for so long. No. If this weren't a dream, then something was incredibly wrong.

  “HELLO?”

  A voice called from across the square, and Shannon perked up. A man stood near the the odds and ends shop, and when he saw her, he started running quickly down the square.

  “Hello?” Shannon answered.

  Eyes fixed straight ahead, he bolted toward her. As he drew closer, she could see that he wore black pants and a white button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was thin but muscular, with a head full of thick, brown hair and a few days worth of stubble.

  When he was halfway across the square, the man approached her more cautiously. He moved nervously, constantly looking behind himself and glancing in all directions.

  Approaching Shannon carefully, he stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “You can hear me?” his accent sounded English, but after so few words, she wasn't sure.

  “Yes!” she breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally someone in this town can see me! I thought I was dreaming, but –”

  “You can hear me?”

  “Yes, I can hear you!” she repeated.

  The man ran his hands through his hair, and tears gathered in his bright blue eyes. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.”

  “What's going on? Why are you the only person who's been able to acknowledge me?”

  He shook his head. “It's a miracle. A change. I've been alone with these... phantoms... for so long.”

  Shannon furrowed her brow. “Wait... Exactly how long have you been here?”

  The man shrugged. “That's a question for the ages. Twenty years? Thirty? For three years I kept track of the days, but it nearly drove me mad. I'm sorry; I'm just... I can't believe you can hear me!”

  “How did you get here?” she asked, trying to keep him calm.

  “Slipped into feverish dreams,” he said casually. “Awoke in the middle of the woods and followed the path here.”

  “So you went through that gate, too.”

  He nodded. “Probably the biggest mistake I could have made.”

  “I wish I'd known that coming into this,” she grumbled.

  “You latched it behind you; didn't you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you're trapped here with the rest of us.”

  “Should I have gone the other way?”

  “I haven't a clue where the other way leads,” he admitted. “I chose the same way you did long ago.”

  “Same with everyone else here, I'm guessing,” she sighed loudly.

  He frowned. “Them? No, not at all. They never had to wander in. They just... appear within the town limits now and again, at least as far as I can tell. They go into their homes in the evening, and sometimes a new one appears in the morning. I've always figured that was the difference between them and me. Them and us. Honestly, I can't even be certain they're real people.”

  “So... is this a prolonged dream that we're both stuck in, or something?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, come off it. You know what this is.”

  “I really don't.”

  “You're in denial. It'll pass.”

  “I'm not sure –”

  He took a seat next to her. “All right. Let's talk about it and figure it out. What happened? Illness? Accident? Childbirth?”

  “You're insane.”

  “Fine. I'll share first. Phthisis got me.”

  She looked at him confusedly. “What the hell is phthisis?”

  “Phthisis... consumption... coughing up blood... fever? Do any of those ring a bell?
”

  Shannon stared at him, wide-eyed. “You have tuberculosis?”

  “Had. Past-tense,” he said. “Bit hard to be ill in death.”

  She stood up and turned away from him. “No. No. You're not dead, because I'm not dead. You're probably not even real. This is just my brain compensating for my meeting with ELT tomorrow.

  “You're dead whether you want to accept it or not,” he said bluntly. “You're not waking up from this because there's nothing to wake up from. I'm – I'm sorry.”

  “That's impossible. Why would this be my afterlife? It's not in any religion I've ever heard of.”

  “You're presuming there's a religion that had it exactly right,” he said. “Think about it. What's the last thing you remember?”

  “I went to bed. But I'm young and healthy; I wouldn't've died. That doesn't make any sense.”

  “Did you have any dreams?”

  “I dreamed that I got ready for the day and started driving into work. I... I think I was going through an intersection and... and this truck... Oh, God. Oh my God.”

  She sunk back into the park bench and rested her head on her hands. “My sister, Bridget. I was supposed to call her to let her know how my meeting went. I was supposed to have lunch with Angie... and now they're probably getting calls that I'm – what about my parents? We were supposed to go to Boston in a few weeks!”

  The man took a seat next to Shannon. He moved to place a hand on her shoulder, but drew back at the last moment. “They'll grieve; it's true. But I'm sure they'll go on to live long, fulfilling lives. You have to keep telling yourself that every day.”

  “Right,” she tried to take a deep breath through the corset, still unaccustomed to the