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  “I said that this place is the ventilation for your world. The energy that resides here has to transfer somehow. It needs vents to do so.”

  “Vents,” I repeated. “Like doorways? Like that roller coaster back there that looks like it hasn’t moved in fifty years?”

  “Something like that, yes. But doorway is a terrible word for the vents. Doorways imply that they should be traveled through,” Ellius said. His eyes looked black. “Sometimes people can become vents. There are various people that have become famous, and infamous, in your world because they are a host to this world or its counterpart. You would know them as mass murderers and saints.”

  I shook my head. “So you’re saying the people who do wrong or right on Earth are only conduits for another dimension?”

  “No, there are many people who are inherently good, just as there are some who are evil, but there are a select few who become something more. Sometimes an act so vile occurs in your world that a semblance of it is born here—not the same, mind you, but something like it. Do not be surprised if you see something familiar here.

  “But most of the time the vents are not people but obscure places that move constantly so people and animals will not stumble into this realm. The storm above your house was a vent of sorts, but in this case ...” Ellius paused, and for the first time since I met him he looked unnerved. “It became a doorway.”

  My throat felt constricted. “A doorway for what?”

  Ellius leaned forward, his voice nearly a whisper. “It has no name because it needs no name, and to name it would be blasphemy. It has been here since the creation of the world, growing, adapting, and changing with time. It is the utmost evil that calls this place home, and even the vilest creatures that live here fear it and pay it homage. It thrives on suffering and pain, and it knows no mercy.” Ellius spit into the fire, and I saw Fellow draw in on himself, shrinking into nearly half his normal size.

  “It’s what took them, isn’t it?” I asked. Ellius gazed through the flames and nodded. “I saw it that night, I saw its face.” Tears brimmed on the edges of my eyes. The horror set before me was mind numbing in its disconnect with the reality I knew. Something from another world had taken my family. Its alien fingers found them in the darkness and pulled them here, screaming and terrified and wondering why I hadn’t saved them.

  A sob escaped me. I pressed a palm to my forehead and shuddered with the hopelessness that rolled through me. Fellow’s hand rested on my shoulder again, a dragonfly’s alighting touch, reassuring somehow.

  I raised my face, felt the fire warm the tears on my cheeks. “Are they all right?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ellius said. “We believe they are still alive.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because everything is still here.

  I sniffed and pushed the tears away with the heel of my hand. “What do you mean?”

  “It is one thing if a person wanders into this place. Have you heard of the Lost Colony of Roanoke?”

  I frowned. “The settlers that disappeared in North Carolina?”

  Ellius nodded and pointed to his right, over a stand of trees. “Their bones lay in a field a mile from here.”

  “Jesus, what happened to them?”

  “They were driven here through a vent by an attack of some sort in your world. They ended up being devoured by something far worse.” I swallowed, my gorge rising once again. “To take a person or animal from Earth by force is forbidden, and until this point I thought it to be impossible, but somehow it has found a way,” Ellius continued. “I was notified of your family’s presence here from several sources that are loyal to me. When I realized what had happened, I took Fellow with me to find you. The lasting power of the vent led us right to you, and your name was on my lips as soon as we set foot on Earth. No doubt your family being here will upset the balance, and I think that is exactly what it wants. Chaos and destruction of everything, not just this world but every world, including Earth.”

  I blinked, my mind finally working again. “But if it’s forbidden to take someone from Earth, how did you both bring me here?”

  Ellius offered the smallest of smiles. “You came here of your own free will, Michael. We only had to show you the way. Besides, you are the only one that can bring your family home. A person either has to wander back out of a vent or must be led out by blood.”

  I sighed. “This is a lot to absorb.” I stopped mid-sentence and looked at Fellow beside me, and then across at Ellius, a strange feeling drawing over me like a cold sheet. “How is it that you both are human and have survived here?” I asked. Ellius grimaced and Fellow shrank away.

  “I hoped you wouldn’t ask that question until later, but there’s no choice now,” Ellius said. He stood and moved forward until he almost touched the licking tongues of flame. He looked like a man lit from within. His eyes held mine for a few seconds, and then he looked away to the gray sky above us—and changed.

  His skin roughened and became darker. The white hair clinging to his scalp fell away and points began to rise beneath the age spots like fingers trying to escape. His eyes deepened in color, from light brown to deep chestnut. The ridges I’d felt on his hand earlier became exactly what my mind had suggested—bark. Tips of branches broke through his scalp and grew several inches before stopping. The rough texture, similar to an oak’s skin, flowed over him until he was completely covered. Pieces of moss grew on the fringes of his skull and draped down his back.

  “My God,” I said, not sure if I should be terrified or in awe. I felt a little bit of both tugging at me.

  Ellius looked at me, judging my reaction. When he seemed sure I wouldn’t run screaming into the nearby woods, he sat. “As you can see, I am of the forest. It is my family, and I know every tree that has ever stood. I am bound to the woods.” He shifted his eyes to my right and nodded at Fellow.

  I rotated on the log and watched as the quiet man stood and pulled off the hat and sunglasses he wore. Beneath them I saw that Fellow’s skin was not only pale but deformed. His skull was knobby and encrusted with scabrous lesions. His eyes were light orange, and either reflected the fire perfectly or glowed of their own accord. He pulled off his gloves and I saw why his touch had felt strange through the leather. His fingers and hands were composed of ropy vines and intertwining gray stalks. He flexed their knotted joints and turned them this way and that for me to see. When I looked down I noticed he’d also removed his shoes, exposing two knurled hunks of wood with articulating claws on all sides.

  “I am Fellow, born of the speaking trees and soil. I am glad to reveal my true self to you. In disguise I felt like a lie.” With a small bow he sat back beside me, his posture more relaxed than I’d seen it.

  “You understand that we had to disguise our natures prior to this? We couldn’t risk frightening you,” Ellius said.

  I laughed as my eyes shifted between them. “So what now? You guys call something out of the woods and let it eat me? Is that it? You said yourself that this place is evil and you’re both from here.” I could feel hysteria growing in my chest, the kind of panic that rejects steadiness or reason.

  “There is balance everywhere, Michael, and this place is no exception. Yes, there is mostly evil here, I won’t deny that, but there is also good. There are some here who will help you because they have chosen to be kind and peaceful, and they have been hunted because of it,” Ellius said.

  “You just need me to get my family out since you can’t do it yourself, to save your precious world, is that right?” The panic I felt shifted to anger. Anger at the two beings before me, anger at what had taken my family, anger at myself for being weak and unable to help them.

  “Yes, I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to save my world, but you would be saving your own also,” Ellius said.

  Fellow touched my shoulder again, a few burs and thorns poking through the cotton of my shirt. “I want you to find them,” he said, the sincerity in his voice speaking more than the wo
rds.

  I nodded finally, dropping my chin to my chest, and I felt like crying again. “I’m sorry, I’m just lost without them,” I whispered. They said nothing, and only the fire replied while it forced its way deeper into a log. “Where are they?” I asked after a while.

  Ellius looked into the sky, the top of his head reminding me of our maple tree back at home in the winter. “It lives a long distance away, in a place it’s made inhospitable to most things native to this land. You must journey there and bring them back if you can. If you can’t ...” He let the sentence trail off into the breeze.

  “Which direction?” I said, standing from the log.

  “You can’t go now, you’re exhausted and you need rest. We will sleep and begin later.”

  “Bullshit, my family’s out there and I need to find them, now!” I said, stepping around the fire.

  “You’d die before you crossed that field,” Ellius said, gesturing to the open plain I observed earlier.

  “He’s right, Michael,” Fellow said, his timid eyes still glowing.

  I trembled like a plucked guitar string. I needed to move, to run, to hurt something. I wanted to tear a hole in the earth, in the universe. I let out a short yell and kicked a rotted stump, sending pieces of peth flying in all directions. My chest heaved and I stared into the twilight, looking for something to guide me, but to where I didn’t know. I turned and looked back at the fire. Neither Ellius nor Fellow had moved. I walked back and sat down beside the fire once again.

  “When can we leave?” I asked.

  “Very soon, very soon,” Ellius said. “We’re actually waiting on one more. He’s—”

  The words were cut off by a resounding belch that echoed back and forth in the hollow behind us. There was the snapping of branches and a few curses in a gravelly voice from the edge of the trees, and then a wide figure emerged.

  “God-awful fuckery in there,” it said in a baritone voice that strangely held the drawling tones of an Australian accent.

  “And here he is now,” Ellius said, closing his eyes as the figure approached behind him.

  It stepped into the light of the fire, and I could see that the newcomer was manlike, a flat slab of a head sitting atop two hulking shoulders any NFL lineman would have been jealous of. He wore a tattered cloth vest and a threadbare pair of canvas pants. Both might have been black once, but were now a muddy brown. A thick chest bulged beneath the vest and two legs the width of the log I sat on supported his massive frame. I studied his face in the dancing light and saw that his skin was a dark gray, like that of the stones around the fire. His lower jaw jutted forward, and I was immediately reminded of the cartoon The Iron Giant. I’m pretty sure my son would’ve made the same comparison.

  “The fuck are you lookin’ at?” he said when he noticed my eyes upon his face.

  “Nothing,” I said, glancing at Ellius.

  “Michael, may I introduce you to Kotis, he’ll be accompanying you on the journey.”

  “Hello,” I said. Kotis just stared at me with glinting onyx eyes.

  A form swooped out of the forest and flapped an enormous set of wings before landing lightly on Kotis’s shoulder. It was an owl, but an owl like I’d never seen before. Its shape and feathers were familiar, but its eyes were wide set and narrowed as though it was squinting. Its beak, instead of a short hook, was long and curved like a scimitar.

  “Fellow, didn’t see you there, thought you was part of the log,” Kotis said, a crooked grin tilting his heavy jaw to one side. Fellow blinked and then smiled. Kotis turned his head and whispered something to the bird, which tucked its beak beneath a wing and seemed to go to sleep.

  “Well, now that we’re properly met, let’s retire for the night and get an early start,” Ellius said.

  “That’s something else I wanted to ask you,” I said as everyone stood. “I’ve been here for over three hours and the sun hasn’t set.” I motioned to the orb that still hung just behind the tree line, its feeble light never letting the day turn to complete dusk. “How long are the days here?”

  “The sun never sets here,” Ellius said. “It rotates on the horizon around us. Time passes differently in our world. Here, it is always evening and never night.”

  I shook my head, glancing at our surroundings. “So it’s forever fall.”

  Ellius nodded and turned away.

  The thought of the sun never setting and seasons never changing was a bit too much for my mind to absorb, and as soon as I lay on the ground beside the fire, my arm tucked beneath my head, I was asleep.

  Chapter 5

  The Field of Lies

  I awoke to the same gray of an October afternoon. The fire was still going, or rekindled since I couldn’t see any of the others around me. I rolled onto my back and studied the churning clouds overhead. It was like looking at the muddy bottom of a river, constantly moving and swirling, making near recognizable shapes before absorbing them again into the gray mass.

  I’d dreamed something in the night, or what passed for a dream. I had been young, playing with my childhood dog, a bruising German shepherd named Gunner. We were roaming my parents’ property near a small river that dried up each fall and flooded each spring. In the dream the river had been a curving bone of mud and cracked earth. Darkness was falling, just on the edge of becoming black, and I felt the pull of the house beckoning me to come inside, into the light and warmth that waited for me. But Gunner and I were exploring, and there was just one more bend that I wanted to see that night. We rounded it and I felt a cold breeze spring up where there had been none before. Gunner began to growl, his hackles rising, making his considerable size look even bigger. There was something at the border of the streambed, something shimmery like heat rising off a highway in the summer, and I felt my stomach tighten. I took a step toward it and stopped, thinking I saw something move. I heard Gunner’s growls increase, and there was another sound beneath it. Someone was calling for help, a child’s voice, Jack’s voice. I turned to tell Gunner to be quiet, but he wasn’t there anymore. I realized the growling was coming from the space in front of me and there were eyes there in the darkness, long and slanted and full of burning hatred.

  That’s when I awoke, and for a few seconds I thought I was still there, on the bank of the stream, and I’d somehow fallen onto my back. I closed my eyes, letting the weight of my family’s absence settle into me. The air squeezed out of my lungs with the pressure, and I thought it might crush me into dust.

  “Michael,” Ellius said. I looked up at the grainy, bark-laden features of his face. “It’s time to go.”

  I stood and dusted my clothes off, shivered. Ellius stepped closer, holding out the same bowl I’d drank from the night before. “Drink this, it will help keep you warm since I have no clothes to offer you here.”

  I drank the contents, immediately feeling the effects of the mixture. Heat spread from my center to the ends of my limbs, making me feel like I was wearing fleece on every inch of my body.

  “For hell’s sake, is he up yet? We need to move,” Kotis said as he walked into the clearing.

  “I’m up,” I replied.

  “It’s about fucking time, it’s near midmorning and they’ll be out soon enough,” Kotis said. He stepped over a log and put a giant, bare foot directly in the licking flames of the fire. Hissing erupted from beneath his sole, and he stared at me without moving, the beginning of a challenging smile on his blocky face.

  “Who’ll be out soon enough?” I asked, trying not to show my discomfort at the method he used to extinguish fires.

  He stared at me for a moment, lips pulled back from a set of very straight, gray teeth. “You’ll see soon enough,” he said, and stomped away.

  I turned to Ellius, who shook his head and shrugged. “I make no apologies for him, he is the way he is and nothing will change him. Give him time, he’s merely angered at the fact that I’ve asked him to go with you.”

  “Why did you ask him?”

  “Because you nee
d protection that I cannot provide and he is one of the few in this world that I trust.”

  Fellow stepped from the bank of trees to my right, and I greeted him with a tip of my head. He walked toward us and stopped a short distance away, wringing his ropy hands.

  “As far as I can see, the way is clear ahead,” Fellow said.

  “Good, we’ll leave immediately,” Ellius replied. Fellow struck out in the direction of the field, his misshapen head turning in every direction, as if expecting an attack. “Fellow will be your guide. His timidity is outweighed by his sense of direction and compassion.” I nodded and breathed deeply. “Can you carry on, Michael?”

  “There’s nothing in this place that could stop me,” I said, and headed toward the clearing where Kotis and Fellow waited.

  We walked into the dusky light of the morning, which was the same as the night before except now the ever-present clouds covered the sun, masking it with their gray bodies. The field we walked in was large, larger than I’d first thought. It stretched away to the left, and for all I could tell, it might have gone on forever. To our right the line of trees continued, and I studied them as we walked. Shadows grew only a few feet inside the forest and nestled themselves in every available space. Dead reeds slouched forward at the edge of the woods, and a brown bramble covered with thorns completed what looked to be an impenetrable mass. The air was crisp, but the mixture Ellius gave me did its work and I was comfortable in just my T-shirt and jeans.

  Fellow led the group, his thin, gangling legs pulling him forward in a strange gait. His head still swiveled on his neck, but his direction was clear and he did not deviate from it. Kotis was next, his hunched shoulders and massive back swaying to and fro as he walked, the owl-like creature on his shoulder continuing to sleep despite the movement. Ellius was behind me and followed at an easy pace, glancing every so often to the forest, as if he were listening to a conversation only he could hear.