Rushed (6 page)

He stood in the hallway for a moment, trying to piece together what had happened so far.  Even ignoring the dreams and the weird compulsion to drive out to this freaky backwoods, there was plenty to think about.  Was someone screwing with his head? 

That old woman…  Ethan’s wife.  She’d mentioned another man.  “
Him
.”  Could the vanishing figure he followed from the barn to this house have been the very same man who had frightened her yesterday?  He hadn’t seen anything like the invisible fog that she had described, but he’d only caught the two brief glimpses. 

He stepped into the bedroom and looked around.  The bed was stripped down to a stained mattress with broken down springs.  There was an old wardrobe against one wall.  The only other thing in the room was an old, tarnished mirror hanging on the wall opposite the doorway. 

He walked over to the mirror and gazed at himself. 

It was now that a thought occurred to him.  The whole time he was in the barn, everything he saw also emerged from the buried memory of his dream.  But here, inside this house, he had no such recollections.  In fact, he didn’t remember the tall, bearded man.  He recalled exiting the barn and walking out into the tall grass and bright sunshine and that was all.  The rest of the dream remained clouded in his memory. 

What did that mean? 

A horrible feeling began to creep into his gut again.  But this was different than what he felt as he entered the barn.  This was much worse, much more
urgent
. 

A thought occurred to him:  If this place wasn’t in his dream, then maybe he wasn’t supposed to be here. 

He turned away from the mirror and began to walk toward the door, eager to leave these empty rooms, even if it meant returning to that nightmare barn.  But as he passed in front of the wardrobe, the doors burst open and something shot out at him.  An awful, convulsing shape exploded outward, snarling viciously. 

Eric cried out and stumbled away from it, backing himself into the corner behind the bed.

Impossibly, the gnarled shape unfolded itself from the cramped confines of the wardrobe.  It was difficult to make out.  The thing was almost entirely black, seemingly enfolded in its own shadows, with bright red, glistening streaks undulating across its oily flesh.  Every time he thought he could almost discern its shape, it changed, warping and flexing and coiling itself. 

Something that looked like a hand with dozens of taloned fingers blossomed from the black and crimson mass and reached across the room for him. 

Fairly certain that Narnia was not where it intended to take him, Eric leapt onto the stained mattress and threw himself across the bed and onto the floor on the other side.  A blood-chilling roar shook the room as he scrambled back to his feet and bolted for the door. 

He saw something from the corner of his eye and barely managed to duck out of the way as a heavy mass passed over his head. 

Behind him, he heard the bed crash against the wall. 

Somehow making it to the door, he ran down the short hallway, past the bathroom and into the living room before daring to look back over his shoulder. 

Immediately, he wished he hadn’t.  A horrid mass of snaking black and blood-red flesh was boiling from the bedroom door, wicked claws tearing open the wallpaper and the carpet, decimating the plaster ceiling tiles.  In the very center of the mass, a horrid face snarled at him, its gaping mouth revealing countless gnashing teeth. 

Terrified out of his mind, Eric ran screaming through the screen door and onto the porch, where he found himself directly in the path of a charging bulldozer. 

Chapter Six

Coherent thought failing him, Eric reacted less on calculated strategy than on pure instinct and adrenaline.  Uttering a startled and, to his credit, a rather creative curse, he turned and leapt over the porch railing with the kind of grace he hadn’t demonstrated in at least ten years.  And then he sprawled face-first into the grass with
exactly
the kind of grace befitting him these days. 

Behind him, the wooden porch burst into splinters against the onslaught of the dozer’s blade. 

Even over the roar of the engine and the resounding crash of cold steel against breaking wood, Eric could hear the thing that came out of the wardrobe.  A terrible, rage-filled howl cut through the air and seemed to carve its way into his very soul. 

Then there was only the thrumming roar of the machine. 

Then even that sputtered into silence. 

“You okay?”

Eric sat up and turned around to see what the hell had just happened.  The first thing he saw was that it was not a bulldozer that had nearly flattened him as he fled the farmhouse after all, but rather an ordinary tractor with an impressive hydraulic blade mounted on its front.  The blade was now firmly pressed against the front door of the house, preventing the wardrobe monster from following him. 

He had no idea what was keeping it from lunging through one of the house’s windows instead.  It had been fully capable of throwing the bed across the room and tearing apart the hallway.  But the house seemed to have fallen utterly silent in the wake of the tractor’s unexpected assault. 

The next thing his racing mind took in was the old man climbing down from the tractor’s seat, the man who had likely just saved his life, but just as easily could have squashed him into jelly.  All the easier for the monster to chew. 

He was a tall, slender man, with hard, sun-beaten skin wearing dark, oversized glasses and a blue and white cap.  “When I saw you go in there, I thought you were done for.”

“Guess I almost was.”  He recalled looking back down the hallway and seeing that awful face clawing after him.  He also recalled, now that the gripping panic had subsided and he was thinking back on it without the mortal fear of his imminent and violent death, that the screams he was spouting at that moment weren’t exactly the manliest of cries.

Well, at least he hadn’t wet himself.  That would have to do, he supposed. 

“Didn’t Annette warn you about leaving the path?”

“Annette?”

The old man cocked his head, lifted his hat and ran a hand through his thick, gray hair.  “No.  I suppose she didn’t.” 

Eric’s eyes drifted back to the ruined porch.  What was keeping that thing inside?  He couldn’t think of a single reason why a thing like that wouldn’t still be tearing after him, yet the old man didn’t seem remotely concerned about standing this close to the house. 

“I guess she’s still going on about Ethan.”

Ethan?  Ethan was the old woman’s husband, he recalled.  Now he understood. 
She
was Annette. 

“She never accepted it.  He’s been gone a while now.”

At this, Eric turned and met the old man’s eyes.  Ethan was dead?  Suddenly, he remembered the way she kept staring at the shirts as she hung them up, that profoundly sad look in her eyes.  She talked about her father, and made it sound like she was worried that she might lose Ethan the same way.  She even said something about giving him a red ribbon for good luck.  But Ethan was already dead and gone.  That was perhaps the saddest thing he had heard in a long time. 

“Let’s see if we can keep you on the path from now on, okay?”

Eric took a step back, surprised.  “What?  Oh.  No.  No way.  I’m done with this nonsense.  I mean…what the
hell
?  I was just attacked by a goddamn…”  He thrust his finger toward the farmhouse several times, his mouth moving with words he couldn’t find.  Then he pressed his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes.  “What…?  What was that thing?  Exactly?”

“Not sure what you call it,” said the old man.  “Just something
he
left behind when he came through here.”

“‘He?’”

“The other guy.  Scary as all kinds of hell.”

“Looks like he’s half-hidden in fog, but there isn’t any fog?”

“That’s him.  At least Annette gave you
something
.  He passed through here yesterday afternoon.  Left you that little surprise.”  He gestured toward the barn and added, “Left
that
, too.”

Eric turned and saw a man walking toward them from the barn.  It was the same man he saw before, the one he followed into the house.  Tall, broad-shouldered, young, with a full beard.  Before he could even begin to wonder how he had made his way back from the house to the barn, the man faded away before his eyes and was gone. 

He blinked hard, as if that might correct the strangeness of what he had seen.

“Over there,” said the old man, gesturing toward the house now. 

When he turned, he saw the man again, this time walking through the dozer blade as if it wasn’t there and the porch were still under his feet rather than folded into a gnarled pile of splinters in the tall grass. 

“Can’t hurt you.  Not directly, anyway.  It’s residual.  Repeats itself over and over again, several times every hour, ever since
he
came through here.  You’ll have to watch out for those.” 

“Clearly.”  Again, Eric’s eyes drifted to the farm house.

“It can’t get out,” the old man assured him.  “It’s lost you.  Unless you go back inside and stir it up again, it’s done with you.  By the way, name’s Grant.  Grant Stolyen.” 

“Eric Fortrell.”

“Eric.  Good to meet you.  Sorry it’s not the best of circumstances.”

“Yeah.  About that…”

“You want to know what the hell is going on?”

“I do, actually.  I mean…  Everything was fine until three nights ago.  Then I wake up from a dream I can’t even remember and every waking thought is ‘I have to go!  Now!’” 

Grant nodded.  “Three nights ago.  So you ignored it?”

“
Tried
to.”

“That’s why you’re so late then.”

“Late?”

“You should’ve been here two days ago.”

Eric recalled that Annette told him basically the same thing.  “Late for what?  What is all this?”

“Sorry, but I can’t explain all of it.  Don’t actually understand all of it myself, to be honest.  But I can try my best.  You’ve probably noticed the cold spots by now.”

He nodded.  “And the stunted corn in the field.  Light seems funny there, too.  What is that?  Some kind of pollution?”

“Nothing so simple.” 

“And all those mutant animals in your barn.  I’ll be honest, I was starting to imagine I’d find a crashed UFO or something.”

“Again, nothing so simple, I’m afraid.” 

“Right.  Why would it be that simple?” 

“And it’s not actually my barn.  I’m the neighbor.  I just keep an eye on things, but I don’t go in the barn no more.  Creepy bunch of bastards in there, ain’t they?  Give me the creeps.  I kind of figured they’d die if I didn’t take care of them, but apparently they don’t need cared for.” 

“Nobody feeds them?”

“Not that I know of.  Weird, huh?”

“Very.” 

“Anyway, I was talking about the cold spots.  Those’re the places where you’re inside the fissure.”

“Fissure?”

“Yeah.  Like a
crack
between worlds.”

“Worlds?  What, like a wormhole?”  Again, he thought of aliens and extra-terrestrial spacecraft. 

“No.  You’re thinking of planets.  I said
worlds
. 
Dimensions
, if you prefer.”

“Like parallel realities?”

“Sort of.  Yeah.  There’s our world, the one we know, and then there’s this other one.  Scary-ass place, apparently.  I think it’s where those things in the barn came from.” 

Eric stared at him, trying to wrap his head around the very idea of this simple-talking old man explaining rents between alternate realities to him. 

“Don’t think I don’t know how it sounds.” 

“Sounds crazy.”

“Yeah.  But you’ve already seen it for yourself, haven’t you?”

“I guess I have.”

“When you cross into the cold spots, into the fissure, you’re actually in some kind of gray zone between the two worlds.  It’s like a border realm.  Things can move back and forth there.  You’ll see some scary things there, let me warn you.  And if you go too far into those areas, you could find yourself all the way out in the other world.  And that’s not somewhere you ever want to be.”

Eric nodded.  It sounded like good advice. 

“You’ll want to stick to the path or you’ll never get where you’re going.”

“And where exactly is it I’m supposed to be going?”

“To the cathedral.”

The cathedral.  That’s what Annette said, too.

“That’s where the singularity is.”

“The singularity?” 

“The exact point where the two worlds meet.  The rest of this stuff is just what bleeds through the crack that runs out from that point.”

“And if I find this cathedral?  Then what?  What am I supposed to do there?”

“Hell if I know.  I’m just here to keep the path open for you.” 

“And if I refuse to do it?  If I just turn around and walk back home?”

Grant looked surprised, as if he’d never once considered the possibility that anyone wouldn’t want to do these things.  “Then
he’d
win.” 

“The foggy guy.”

“Yeah.  Him.  Course, he might win anyway, with you running so late.”

“And what happens if he wins?”

“I couldn’t tell you.  But I’m sure it’d be bad.”  And the look on his face suggested that he did, indeed believe it would be quite bad. 

“Right.”  Eric took his cell phone from his pocket and checked to see if he had a signal yet.  He didn’t. 

“That’ll come back a little farther up the path.”

“I haven’t decided to do this.  I don’t know how much of this nonsense I even believe.”

Grant shrugged.  “You believed enough to come here in the first place.”

“I
believed
I was having a stupid recurring nightmare that was making me feel crazy.”

“But it wasn’t just a nightmare, was it?  You’ve already found that much out without my help.” 

That was true, but he still had no intention of taking on another wardrobe monster. 

“Besides, the barn doesn’t always work so good going the other way.  It might not spit you back out in Annette’s field.”

“I had no intention of going back in there with those things.”  But as Eric turned, he realized that the cornfield was gone.  The area behind the barn was now densely wooded.  In fact, now that he was looking, he realized that the barn from which he’d emerged was not the same one he’d entered.  This barn was much smaller and not nearly as old and rundown.  “Wait…” 

Grant laughed.  “
Weird
, right?”

“Where’s the other barn?”

“Annette’s place is about fifty miles southeast of here.”

“Fifty miles?”

“Give or take.” 

“But…  My car…”

“It’ll be fine.” 

Eric stared at the barn, trying to wrap his head around the idea of having traveled fifty miles by merely walking through a barn. 

Two barns?

“But I meant what I said.  I really wouldn’t recommend trying to go back through the way you came.  I’m not sure where people end up, but sometimes they never come back.  They might even end up in that other world.  If so, I don’t envy them.”

“So you’re saying I can’t actually go back?”

Grant stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and glanced away.  “Well, you
can
.  Technically speaking.  I mean…  You could call for a ride.  I could show you the way to the highway.  You just can’t walk back the way you came.”

“And if that’s what I chose to do, you’d let me?”

Grant sighed.  “I can’t make you go.  Only you can make that decision.  But you need to understand that this is important.  Without you…
he
wins.” 

Again with the “he wins” stuff. 

“And what?” Eric pressed.  “The world ends?  We’re plunged into eternal darkness?  The Packers start a hundred-year losing streak?  What?  I mean, who
is
this guy?  You guys are talking about him like he’s the devil or something.”

“I don’t know who he is.  I don’t know what he wants.  But he’s
bad
.  And he’s trying to get to the cathedral
right now
.”