The Hearts We Sold(16)

“You’ll be our living doorstop,” said James helpfully.

“Thought that thing wasn’t supposed to open,” said Dee. She blinked at the smudge.

“When we collapse it, the mouth will be the first thing to go,” said Cal. “If there’s a person in the entrance, it’ll ensure we can both get out. All you have to do is stand there, all right?”

Dee thought about it. Moving sounded like an epically bad idea at the moment, but she waved James’s hands away and tried to stand on her own. She’d manage. She’d managed through worse.

“Good girl,” said Cal. “You’ll go through first.”

Dee took a halting step and then another. She reached for the ladder, grateful to have something to steady herself with. She took a few seconds and just breathed. The numbness was beginning to recede, leaving pinpricks of sensation. It felt like the times her leg had gone to sleep and she’d tried to shake off the discomfort.

She put one foot on the ladder and stepped up. She’d never been afraid of heights, but in her current state, a little wariness was only sensible. She took each rung slowly, pausing to test her balance. Finally, she reached the top of the ladder, just beneath the smudge. Closer up, she saw what it really was—a small circle about four feet across, misting in and out of existence.

Dee pressed her palms to the ladder’s metal surface and pushed herself upward, into the smudge of unreality.

And the world ripped apart.

Wind tore at her hair; it was flung into her eyes and mouth and she blinked instinctively, trying to push it away with her arm.

She looked to her left and saw dust swirling in the wind. The ground crumbled beneath her left hand, and she thought it was sand until she saw the flecks of black and gray. It was crumbling pavement, almost exactly the same type as in the basement floor. Shadows rose around her like walls—in the same layout as the basement below.

It was the same world, a reflection of it, distorted by time and wind and some otherness that she couldn’t place.

A mirror world, she thought. She couldn’t be sure how far it went on.

Dee glanced down. Her feet were still on the ladder, in the real world, while her torso was wedged in this place.

Our living doorstop, James had said.

Something moved beneath her. Dee looked down and saw Cal struggling up the ladder, carrying something heavy on his back. She tried to give him room, but there was only so much space on the ladder. Cal eased past her, his foot barely avoiding her hand, and fully emerged into that other place.

He gave her a small smile and extended a hand downward. James grasped it and Cal pulled him up. They sat on the edge for a moment, the wind pulling at their hair and clothes. They nodded at each other, and Cal swung the heavy bag from his shoulder. James took one strap and Cal the other.

They struggled against the wind—James’s parka protected him against grains of pavement. Cal looked like he was having a harder time; he had one arm up, as if to ward off the wind.

Then the two of them vanished behind one of the shadow walls.

Dee remained there, half in and half out of reality. The tiny grains of cement stung her eyes and she squinted through the haze.

This all felt new. She couldn’t have said why, but something about it reminded her of the smell of freshly laid concrete, of buildings with nothing more than a skeleton of metal, of the first rumble of thunder in a storm. It was new, a thing still forming. This dust, this wind, it wasn’t tearing the world down… it was building it up.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed. It could have been five or ten minutes. The world continued to move around her with dizzying speed. The shadow walls were solidifying, and even the ground felt stronger beneath her palm. She wondered what would happen if this place became whole.

A noise made her turn. It rang out, even louder than the wind. A shout.

Fear cut through the rest of her numbness. Dee’s fingers dug into the ground and she turned, trying to find the source of the noise. It was difficult to pirouette while still balanced atop the ladder, but she managed to twist far enough to see a figure race out of the shadows.

James and Cal were sprinting toward her. Cal barreled through one of the shadow walls, and it shattered like thin glass. Pieces of solid, glittering black hit the ground. He was grinning as he ran, an exuberant triumph in his face.

Something behind him moved. It shifted out from behind one of the shadows, one long limb extending as if in question. Not an arm or a hand—it wasn’t anything mammalian. It reminded Dee of things she saw in tanks at the Newport Aquarium—boneless and devastatingly quick. Something that looked terribly like claws extended from the tip.

She stared hard, unable to look away, suddenly caught by the realization that if that thing moved, she wouldn’t be able to escape. Not until James and Cal had passed through the entrance.

That’s when she truly understood: She stood in a door. And where there was a door, there was something to venture through it.

Cal arrived first. He lunged through the mouth of the void and fell to the ground.

When James reached Dee, he never slowed down. He grabbed her arm and lurched through the barrier. She felt a jerk, a sharp snap of release as if some cord had been broken, and she began to fall. The ladder buckled beneath them and she found herself in midair.

Cal broke their fall. She wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but he landed on hands and knees and she slammed into his back. His arms gave out and there was one last moment of freefall before everything calmed. The wind was gone and in its place was that odd quiet. Her skin was raw and she felt grains of sand under her shirt. James was beside her, panting, and one of the fuzzy threads of James’s parka was in her mouth, and her knee was probably digging into Cal’s thigh, but Dee didn’t move. Wasn’t sure she could move. The moment she moved, she’d have to accept what she’d just seen. James let out a huff of breath, pushing himself to his knees. Cal wheezed, the air driven out of him.