Текст книги "Rushed"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“One way or another…  Nice.”

“You wanted me to be truthful.”

“I did.”

Edgar lowered the Chrysler’s hood again and began walking between the isles of long-forgotten vehicles.  Eric walked with him.  “Straight ahead is the old driveway.  You can just make it out.  About half a mile ahead, it’ll clear out and you’ll find yourself on a dirt path.  Don’t even think about turning around.  Try to follow the road back to here and you’ll be lost forever in the other world.”

“One way road.  Got it.”  After all he’d seen he did not doubt this to be true for even a second.  “By the way, how far have I gone now?”

“You’re in the extreme northwest of Wisconsin now.”

That was a long way from where he started.

“By the time you get to the cathedral, you’ll be somewhere in northern Minnesota.  No one’s sure exactly where it is.  You technically can’t even get there from here.  The only way to reach the cathedral is to walk the entire length of the fissure, starting at Annette’s house.”

Annette’s house.  That was where the dream began…

Eric nodded.  If he’d been told he was in the Congo, he’d have little reason to doubt it.

“Like the others, I’ll be leaving you to go on alone.”

Eric turned and looked at the old man.  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Edgar looked back at him.  He did not wear any question on his expression.  He did not even pretend ignorance.  He only waited.

“You and the others.  You’re not just random, are you?  It’s no coincidence that you all lived and died in the fissure.  You have a connection to the cathedral.”

Edgar did not lie.  “We do.”

“Are you at least going to tell me what it is?”

Edgar considered it for a moment.  Eric didn’t think he would respond, that this information was simply not for him to have.  But he was about to be surprised.

“This thing you’re looking for, the thing that’s hidden inside the cathedral…we were the ones who put it there.  Nearly a hundred years ago.”

This caught Eric off guard.  “You put it there?”  He’d assumed that whatever was at the cathedral had simply always been there, or at the very least that it had been there for untold ages.  He never even considered the possibility that someone had walked this path before him.

“I had a dream just like yours once.  We all did.  Except there were six of us.  There was me and Taylor, Grant, Annette and Ethan.  We were the five who survived the trip.  And we all stayed here to make sure what we left there remained safe.  Only Ethan moved on when he died.  The rest of us are here still.”

“And you’re still not going to tell me what it is you put there, are you?”

“Can’t.  We never knew what it was.  We weren’t allowed to see it.  We all followed our dreams and we all ended up in the same Illinois hayfield, gathered around a curious little clay pot.  Each of us knew somehow that we weren’t allowed to open the lid and look inside.”

“So the six of you carried it north.  All the way to the cathedral.  And one of you died along the way.”

“Ben.”

“His name was Ben?”

Edgar nodded.

Eric started to ask what became of him, but he found he did not want to know.  Somehow, he felt that knowing what happened to Ben would only make the task ahead of him harder.

Edgar was staring at him now, studying him.  “How have you done in your dream?  Are you better today than you would have been?”

Eric remembered his mangled hand.  His head fuzzy with morphine, he never learned Edgar’s secrets in the dream.  He’d only learned the way forward and stumbled blindly on.  He recalled the three golems, the foggy man.  But he also recalled Father Billy.  Isabelle.  “I’m definitely better off today,” he replied.

“Good.  Our dreams were different, too.  Some things were better.  Some things were worse.  To this day, I’m not sure which was better.”

The two of them reached the edge of the salvage yard and stopped.  Eric could see where the old drive used to be by the gap in the trees, but the brush and branches had crowded it until it was barely recognizable.  If he wasn’t careful, he could easily wander off the path and get lost forever.

“Off you go,” Edgar said.  “Might as well get on with it.”

Eric nodded.  He considered asking if he should expect to run into more creatures between here and the cathedral, but decided he was better off not knowing.  As long as he remained aware of the possibilities, he was as prepared as he was ever going to get.  “Thank you,” he said, but as he turned, he found that Edgar had already turned away and was walking back toward the salvage yard.  Like the others, he did not disappear.  He simply walked away like a man still of flesh and blood.  He lifted a hand in a silent wave.

Finally, Eric understood his apparent fondness for the cars.  They were just like him:  long forgotten.

Pulling the phone from his pocket, he snapped a picture of the old man, just to see what would happen.  He examined the picture and then watched as Edgar strolled off between the vehicles.

Turning away and pushing into the brush that had overrun the driveway, Eric wondered if he, too, would eventually become one of these many forgotten things.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Eric had only walked about a hundred paces beyond the edge of the salvage yard when his cell phone rang again.  It was Paul.

“How’s the standoff?”

“Over,” replied Paul.  “Stupid thing ran off as soon as it heard Kevin’s truck.”

“Anticlimactic.”

“No shit.  It would’ve been nice if it’d stuck around long enough to make it look like I wasn’t just imagining the damn thing.”

“You got pictures at least.”

“I did…  But pictures can be faked.  I would’ve rather had Kevin run the little freak over.  Then I’d have real proof.”

“Someone would’ve argued that it must be endangered.  Then there’d be hell to pay.”

“I guess.  But it bit me!  How do I know I don’t have rabies or something?”

“I don’t think it was rabid.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty certain.”

“Fine.  Can’t believe I wasted almost my whole day sweating in a stupid cabin.”

“Well I told you not to go.”

“I think we already covered that.”

“Just making sure I made my point.”

“You made your point.”

“Good.”

“What about you?  Where are you?”

“Northern Minnesota, somewhere, I think.”  Technically, he was most likely still in Northwestern Wisconsin, since he’d only just left Edgar behind.  But at any moment he could jump forward.

“Damn, you’re moving.”

“I know.”

“Do you know how much farther you have left to go?”

“I should be arriving at the cathedral soon…”

“Then what?”

“No idea.  I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.”

“You’re doing considerably better than I did.”

“Well, I was chosen for this.”

“Oh aren’t you special.”

“Apparently I am.”

“Right.”

Eric grinned.  “I’ll probably be something of a legend around here…  You’ll be the dumb brother who got chased by a mutant baby rhino.”

“Nice.”

“Over time it’ll probably evolve, like legends do.  I’ll be all buff and manly, spouting cool one-liners as I battle all the monsters with my bare hands.  Instead of a cabin, you’ll be hiding in a tree.  Crying.  It’ll make a great bedtime story.”

Paul chuckled.  “That sounds like just my luck.”

“I may start the tree rumor myself.”

“Shithead.”

Eric laughed.  It was a humorous thought.  He could almost imagine that all those epic heroes of literature were really only awkward people like him who stumbled along strange paths just like this one.

Paul laughed too.  It was hard not to.  It had been such an odd day for them both.  “I’m going to hang up and try to sleep a little.  I’m exhausted and I still have to drive my truck home.”

“Lucky.  I’m going to go find this probably terrifying cathedral and try not to die.”

Paul didn’t find this funny.  “Be careful,” he said.

“I intend to.”

“Let me know you’re okay.”

“I will.”

Eric said goodbye and hung up.  It was a relief knowing that Paul was no longer in the fissure.  It was one less thing for him to think about as he made his way through the trees toward his goal.

The cathedral.

He kept thinking of Father Billy and his prediction that he would “die screaming in the festering asshole of the almighty cathedral.”  It was funny how the most vulgar of descriptions were the ones you remembered most clearly.  And Father Billy had obviously possessed a talent for turning vulgarity into poignant honesty.

He claimed that no one who entered the cathedral would survive.  He said the gas station attendant told him that it would claim anyone who went looking for its secrets.  And the gas station attendant had admitted to saying as much.

Yet he was still urged onward, a lamb to slaughter.

Eric pushed on, ignoring the hot dread he felt growing deep in his belly.

The cell phone rang again.  It was Karen.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not dead so I can’t complain.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Sorry.”

“Hey, I did a search for Taylor Parlorn in some family tree databases and I got a hit in the same county as Gold Sunshine Resort.  It might be a relative.”

“Let me guess, the guy died in the sixties?”

“Um…  Yeah.  How did you know?”

“It wasn’t a relative.”

“I don’t understand.”

Eric told her about Edgar and the revelations that their conversation had spawned.

“Wait…  So you’re telling me these people were all ghosts?”

“I’m pretty certain of it.”

“That’s crazy.  You don’t even believe in ghosts.”

“I didn’t.  Now…  Well, things change.”

“Maybe they were lying to you.  Maybe it’s all a trick.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I took a picture of Edgar before I left.”

“Really…?”

“I’ll send it now.”

“Okay.”

Eric hung up and sent the picture to her.  A moment later, she called him again.

“That’s so weird.  Is that where he was standing?”

“It was.”  The picture showed clearly the salvage yard and the dozens of rusted vehicles.  But where Edgar had been walking away from him, there was nothing more than a faint blurring, as if the lens had been dirty.

“But that picture of Isabelle wasn’t like that.”

“Isabelle isn’t dead.  She’s…  Well…  Something else.”

“I guess so…”

“You don’t really believe it.”

“I do,” she argued.

“Not really.”

“I…  Well…  I don’t know.  It’s hard.  It’s all so…”

“Weird.  Yeah.  I got that.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s hard.  But I don’t not believe you.  I know you’re not lying to me.”

“Well that’s a start.”

“I just…”

“I know.  The alternatives aren’t very appealing.  Either I’m telling you the absolute truth and it’s going against everything you’ve ever believed possible, or it’s all a lie, in which case either I’m completely insane and making this all up as I go, or somebody’s totally screwing with my head.  Believe me, I’ve considered the possibilities.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“That’s good.”

“I just wish you were home already.”

“Me too.  But it looks like I’ve got one more stop to make.”

“The cathedral.”

“Yeah.  It’s up ahead somewhere.  And I’m sure I’ll be losing my connection soon.”

Looking around, he realized that the landscape was already changing.  The brush was thinning out, the grass beneath his feet quickly thinning to bare earth.  The trees were receding, the terrain growing rocky again.

“I’m going to have to go.  I doubt you’ll hear from me again before I get to the cathedral.”

“I’m scared,” she confessed, finally letting out the words that she’d been bottling up all day.

“I know.  Me too.  But there’s literally no way back.”  He glanced over his shoulder and realized that the brush he’d just pushed through was far less overgrown.  The path that lay behind him was not the same path he’d just walked.  Like Edgar told him, this was a one-way road.

“Please be careful,” Karen begged.  Her voice crackled.  The connection was nearly gone.

“I will.  I promise.  Now I’ve got to go.”

She said something else, but her voice was lost in static.  He did not dare try to back up to find the signal again.  Instead, he just said, “Bye Karen,” and hung up the phone.

Before him, an earthen path wound through the familiar rocky terrain of the fissure.  The trees thinned away until there were none standing before him and he was climbing a steep hill in a mostly barren landscape.

He remembered climbing this hill in his dream.  He was afraid.  His mind was cloudy.  His mangled hand throbbed ceaselessly.

He still couldn’t remember what waited beyond the crest of the hill, but there was a sick dread creeping up from the depths of his gut.

His cell phone rang.

That could only be Isabelle.

“The cathedral is just on the other side of that hill,” she warned him.  “You’re almost there.”

“Can you see everything I see?”

“Not see it, exactly.  I just know it’s there.  I can feel what you feel.  And right now you feel like you’re walking into the gates of hell.”

Eric had to admit that her ability to read his feelings was dead-accurate.  The gates of hell made a perfectly adequate description.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m with you.  And I’ll stay with you.  No matter what.”

Eric smiled.  “Thanks, Isabelle.  That does make it feel a little better.”

“I know,” she replied.  “I can tell.”

“In my dream, I was almost killed back in that canyon.”

“You were.  You lost most of your hand.”

“I did.  But in the dream, I arrived before the foggy man.  He wasn’t here.  I never had to run from his golems.  I didn’t get my shoulder torn up on the roof of Altrusk’s house.”

“That’s right.”

“I also never found you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t come two days ago.”

“Me too.”

Eric was halfway up the hill now.  Soon he would have his first look at the cathedral.  He hoped the sight alone wasn’t going to be enough to kill him, but after all he’d been through, he wouldn’t be a damned bit surprised.

“Listen,” Isabelle said.  “I know you’re scared, and I know you’re not sure you can do this, and you’re right to not feel confident.  This fissure…it’s really messed up.  The other world, the one that’s smashed up against ours, it’s a bad place.  It’s the worst kind of nightmare you can imagine.  And whatever you find in there, it’s probably going to be even worse.”

“You think so?”

“I do.  The fissure is concentrated there.  The two worlds are so smashed together that it pervades reality.  It takes the bad from that world and it magnifies it.”

“Sounds like a blast.”  Eric was breathing harder now.  He was growing tired.  This hill was steeper than it looked.

“And the foggy man will be there somewhere, too.  He’ll be waiting for you.  You need to be careful of him.”

“No kidding.”

“Seriously, Eric.  He’s bad news.”

Eric stopped walking.  “Did you figure something out about him?”

“No.  Not exactly.  I felt something back at the factory.  Something disturbing.  It took a while for me to figure out what it was.  But now I think I get it.  It’s not him I was feeling.  He’s not what you have to fear.  He’s no devil.  But the people he works for…  I can’t really explain it, but there’s something terribly wrong about them.  And he’s afraid of them.  He’s going to be desperate not to fail them.”

Moving forward again, Eric said.  “Is he already in the cathedral?”

“I don’t know for sure.  But I am sure he’s nearby.  You need to be very careful.”

“Believe me, I intend to be.”

“Good.”

“But can I really hope to beat something as bad as that?”

“There’s always hope.  And I’ve realized something since I got away from Altrusk.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve realized there’s a thread of order in the universe, a thread that connects us all, and one that’s way too intricate to be there by accident.  We’re not alone.  And I really don’t think you’re here just to die.”

“I sure hope not.”

“Do more than just hope, Eric.  Believe.  I need you to look back on all that’s happened today.  Every detail.  You have to realize that there’s more to all this than a bunch of creepy ghosts and a wonky dream.  There’s a reason you’re here today and not two days ago.  I’m part of that reason.  That cat was part of that reason.  The foggy man is also part of that reason.  I think it’s the same reason you’re the person who had the dream and not some Olympic athlete or super-genius.”

“Thanks, Isabelle.  You’re right.  I have to believe I’m not just here to die.”

“Don’t forget it.  Not even if it all seems lost.”

“I won’t.  I promise.”

“Good.”

Eric approached the top of the hill.  He felt so tired.  It was as if he’d just hauled himself up the side of an enormous mountain.

“You helped me escape from Altrusk, Eric.”

“It was you who helped me escape.”

“But I’d still be there if I hadn’t met you.  You saved me.  And I can never repay you for that.  I…”  She trailed off, the words lost before they crossed her lips.

“I know.  And I promise you, I won’t go down without giving everything I have.”

“You’d better not.”

“I swear.”

“Good.”

Eric reached the crest of the hill and surveyed the land before him.

“You’ve seen it…”

“It’s…”

“Apocalyptically terrifying.”

That was about as perfectly as he could have ever described it.  Before him lay what looked like a lifeless crater at least four miles across.  At the very center was the cathedral.  He’d expected some kind of grand architecture, towering spires, a gothic monolith, perhaps.  Instead, it was nothing more than an enormous hole in the ground.

“This is where I let you go,” said Isabelle.  “Don’t forget what I said.”

Eric was staring into the black abyss at the center of the barren crater with his mouth agape.  Now, at Isabelle’s words, he drew himself up.  She was right.  He didn’t come all this way to die.  “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

He took a deep breath.

“Bye,” said Isabelle.

And then Eric stood all alone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Eric made his way down the slope of the crater.  No plants grew here.  The earth lay crushed beneath his feet, the soil barren.  It was no explosion that formed this crater, nor any falling celestial object.  The earth had not been forced into this shape in an instant, but instead over billions of years.  The weight of two worlds pushed down on him, literally driving him against the ground so that every step was a labor.  Even the air here felt heavy.

Inside that hole at the crater’s center was the point where the two worlds met.  A singularity, the denizens of the fissure had called it.  This was what happened where worlds collided.  He could actually feel the pressure against his skin.

No creatures roamed the crater and Eric did not blame them for keeping their distance.  It was uncomfortable here.  His ears felt as if they were about to pop.  He couldn’t quite catch his breath.

There was also no sign of the foggy man.  Not since he came across the carcass of the floppy-eared cat had he seen any evidence of the mysterious figure shrouded in nothingness.  He hadn’t left any more traps.

It didn’t make sense.  The foggy man had almost a full-day’s head-start.  He clearly had nothing to fear from the creatures in the fissure.  Why, then, had he not simply come straight here to the cathedral?  Why go to all the trouble of leaving those golems?  Why reveal himself the way he did at the church?  And why go to all the trouble of ambushing him at the factory, only to toss him back out onto the path?

What was his plan?

Feeling as if he suddenly weighed as much as a full-grown horse, Eric made his way slowly across the rocky floor of the crater to the stadium-sized hole at its center.  Even as he approached the rim of that mysterious abyss, he expected something more.  Surely a structure of some sort stood waiting for him inside the hole.  Or perhaps he would find that the hole itself was a cathedral, with an ornate stairwell winding downward among marble columns and gorgeous glass lamps.  But as he peered over the edge, he found nothing but shadows and gloom.

Even Father Billy’s dilapidated old church was more of a cathedral than this.  How did the word “cathedral” ever even come to mind with this place?  To Eric, it seemed like the exact opposite of a cathedral.  It was as if he were gazing into one of the deepest and darkest pits of hell.

Several sets of wooden steps led down to a walkway that circled the rim of the hole and gave access to two questionable-looking staircases that descended along the inner walls on opposite sides.

Eric walked carefully down the steps, half-expecting to fall under the burden of the crater’s strange gravity.  He crept gingerly to the aging railing and peered down into the darkness below.

It was like a bottomless pit.  Even with the sun still shining overhead, the light only reached into the hole a short distance.  The rest was utter blackness.

There was such a wrongness about this place that Eric had to steel himself against the urge to turn and run away.  Surely whatever madness the dream would plunge him into would not be nearly as bad as whatever awaited him down there.

That heaviness was even stronger here.  He could feel it crushing down on him as he peered down, threatening to push him into the abyss.

He had no idea where he was going to find the courage for this.

“Frightful, isn’t it?”

Eric jumped and turned.  There, standing at the railing only a few feet away, peering down into the same blackness, was the foggy man.

But he wasn’t foggy now.

He was just a man.

Eric was certain there was no one here when he approached.  There was literally nowhere to hide.

“You.”

“Me,” the stranger admitted.  Without his mysterious shroud of invisible fog, there wasn’t much about him that was even remotely frightening.  He wasn’t very big.  In fact, he was rather scrawny in his dark jeans and black tee shirt.  And he was barely more than a child, at most only twenty-one, with tousled black hair falling over a round and youthful face.

He turned away from Eric and strolled along the railing, still staring down into the darkness below them.  “Fascinating.  I’ve been to a lot of strange places, but this is definitely the most intense.  Can you feel it?”

Eric remained silent.  He didn’t have to ask what he was talking about.  He could feel it.  There was a strange energy about this place.  It was more than just the heaviness.  He couldn’t quite describe it.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”

Still, Eric did not reply.  But he did agree.  This place was terrifying.

The young stranger stopped walking and placed both hands on the rail.  “What could be down there?”

That was the question of the day, wasn’t it?  What was hidden at the bottom of this hole?  What could possibly be worth all this trouble?  Eric wondered that himself.  He also wondered if the answer was remotely worth the very likely mortal cost of finding out.

“There’s more than one fissure leading away from here, you know.  Another one stretches out over Lake Superior.  Another into Canada.  At least two run west from here.  There are other singularities, too, each with its own fissures snaking off it.  There are places like this all over the world.  But only this fissure is so well-defined that you can use it to travel all the way to its singularity.”

Now he turned to Eric, his intense eyes fixed on him.  “Why is that?”

Sensing that his time for remaining quiet was over, Eric replied, “I wouldn’t know.”

The no-longer-foggy man stared at him with those piercing blue eyes, studying him, considering.

Eric stared back.  He wasn’t sure what this mysterious person wanted him to say, but he had no intention of playing along.  This was, after all, the man who left three monsters to kill him and then clubbed him over the head and threw him out a loading dock door.  He would have liked to walk over there and knock the stupid kid on his pompous ass…but of course that brought him back to those three monsters.  Punching anyone who could do such a thing simply seemed like a very dumb idea.

Finally, the young stranger turned and looked down into the darkness below them again, as if deciding that Eric really didn’t have an answer for him.  “I’ve never come across anything like this place before.  It’s wrong.  It scares me.”

“It’s a scary place,” Eric reasoned.

“I know about scary places.  I’ve been to a lot of them.  Just a few months ago I was in Mexico.  There are these caves there…”  He trailed off and stared down into that darkness for a moment, his eyes distant, distracted, haunted.  Then he blinked it away and smiled at him.  “Four men went insane and ate their own hands.”

Eric couldn’t make himself hide his revulsion.  He didn’t know what was worse, the idea of men devouring their own hands or the fact that this psychopath could relate such a thing with a smile on his face.

But perhaps the smile was nothing more than a mask.  Perhaps that haunted look that had passed over his eyes a moment before had revealed some shred of his humanity.

He hoped so, at least.

“But this…”  The man gazed down into the darkness again.  “This feels so wrong…  No matter where I am, the wrongness of this place doesn’t go away.”

Eric had no idea what this meant, but he didn’t bother saying so.

“My tricks don’t work here.  Why?”

Eric actually glanced around, expecting to find someone else here with them.  But they were alone.  The question was obviously for him.  “What?”

There was no smile this time when the stranger turned his eyes on him.  He glared.  “I can’t shift here.  Why can’t I shift here?”

“Why would I know that?”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not playing games,” Eric replied calmly.  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.  I don’t even know what you mean by ‘shift.’”

For a moment, the young man continued to glare at him silently.  He seemed to be trying to decide if he was being lied to, but Eric had no idea why this person would think he had any answers for him.

“Who do you work for?”

Eric stared back at him.  “What?”

“Answer me.”

“Creek Bend High School.”

This seemed to catch him off guard.  “What?”

“I’m an English teacher.”

“I told you not to play games with me.”

“And I told you I’m not playing games.  Just who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.  FBI maybe.”

“FBI…?  Really?”

“Maybe.”

Eric chuckled.  “Right.  I’d make a great FBI agent, wouldn’t I?  Stumbling around here like an idiot, nearly getting myself killed.  Repeatedly.  Cursing at that ape-thing that was throwing rocks at me back at the lake.  That was very professional.  Even better, I should join the CIA.  Become a secret agent.”

The foggy man, still missing his fogginess, considered him for another moment.

Eric considered him back.  Did this guy actually think he was some kind of government agent?  It seemed ridiculous that anyone could mistake someone like him for something so grand.

“You weren’t carrying a gun at the factory,” the stranger recalled.  “Or a badge.”

“I don’t sound like a very responsible federal agent.  And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about you hitting me over the head back there, why don’t we?”

“I want to know who you are.”

Apparently, Foggy didn’t care to discuss that matter at the moment.

“I’d rather talk about who you are.”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t have any answers,” growled Eric, beginning to lose his patience.

The young man stared at him, apparently still trying to decide if he was playing dumb or legitimately stupid.

“How do you do it, anyway?  How do you make the golems?”

Again, the stranger lowered his face and stared down into the darkness.  Eric didn’t think he would answer, but like so many other times today, he was wrong.  “I don’t know, honestly.  I just can.  I find a container.  A box, a closet, the trunk of a car, anything.  And then I…  I just…funnel some part of myself into it.”

“A part of yourself?”

“It’s difficult to explain.  It’s like a kind of energy deep inside me.”  He glanced up from the empty abyss beneath them and met Eric’s eyes as he said, “I’m not sure…but I think it might be my soul.”

“Your soul…?”

“I’m not sure,” he said again, as if afraid that the man he’d three times tried to kill might think he was bugshit crazy for saying such a thing.

Now it was Eric’s turn to gaze down into the darkness and ponder.  His soul?  Really?  He could hardly deny the possibility that a man could utilize his own soul to make monsters, certainly not when he’d already been attacked by three such beasts in only a few short hours.  But there was something profoundly unsettling about using one’s own soul to create such foul abominations.

The man went on:  “I funnel that energy out and into something…incredible.  And I make it live.  That’s a grossly simplified description, but it’s as good as I can explain it.  They don’t make words for what I do.  Not in any language.”

Eric had no doubt.  “And the fog?”

“Fog?”

“That half-disappearing thing…  Where you look like you’re standing in an invisible fog.”

“Huh.  Never heard it described like that before.”

“So how do you do it?”

“I shift back and forth through physical space.”

“How does that work, exactly?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“You have to grasp the concept that there are things beyond our world.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem for me today.”

The foggy man shrugged and said, “Reality is layered.  It’s a spectrum.  The world exists across most of this spectrum, but most life on earth only exists within a small portion of it.  Humans, in particular, only exist within a narrow band of it.  I can slide along that spectrum, out of that narrow band, effectively disappearing from this world altogether.  Or I can shift to the very edge of that band and only partially fade away, if I choose.  You wouldn’t think only partially leaving this plane of existence would be useful, but it turns out it scares the shit out of people.”

“It is exceptionally frightening to see.”

The man grinned.  He seemed quite proud of himself.

“So then, can you move between these two worlds without using the fissure?”

“No.  The two worlds here are completely separate.  All the worlds in all the fissures are.  They each have their own spectrums.  I can shift along the spectrum in any world, but I can’t just jump between worlds.  That’s pure science fiction.”

“Right.  What was I thinking?”

Again, he gazed down into the abyss.  “But it doesn’t matter in this place.  Nothing works here.  And I don’t know why.”

“Neither do I.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want.  I don’t know why you can’t work your voodoo here.  I could guess it’s because the singularity screws everything up.”