Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6)(31)

“Saw what?” Conner asked.

“The best way I can describe it is a window into another world,” Rusty said. “For a brief second I saw a huge forest of evergreen trees and a bright starry sky. It looked like something out of a storybook—couldn’t have been more different from the hustle of New York City. Then the window disappeared as fast as it had appeared.”

Conner and Bree exchanged a grave look. Without any solid proof, they knew exactly what Rusty had witnessed—the bridge between worlds was starting to form.

“I went to the police station and filed a report about what I saw, but none of the officers believed me. A copy of the report was sent to the castle’s property manager and they fired me. They thought I had caused all the damages myself and was making up a ridiculous story to cover it up. Word about my police report spread all over town, and no one wanted to hire me after that.”

“That’s terrible!” Bree said. “Did the window ever appear again?”

“I didn’t see it again, but others have seen it appear all over the city,” Rusty said.

“But who? And where?” Conner asked.

“You can ask them yourself,” Rusty said. “Follow me.”

They continued down the Calvin Coolidge Express line. Flickering lights came into view ahead, and soon they discovered a vast underground campsite that was home to dozens and dozens of homeless people. The tunnel was full of tents, sleeping bags, and furniture made from cardboard and newspapers. The homeless people were spread out through the camp in groups; some kept warm standing over blazing trash cans, some played musical instruments, and some watched a man teaching a family of rats to fetch.

Rusty escorted Conner and his friends to a group who sat in the corner of the camp. The group included an older man in a blue suit, a woman in a fur coat, another woman in a Yankees baseball hat, and a third woman wearing a T-shirt that said READ BANNED BOOKS and tinfoil wrapped around her head. They were gathered around a radio listening to a patchy broadcast.

“There you are, Bagasarian!” the man said. “We heard there was an evacuation in Midtown. We were worried you got swept away.”

“Conner and company, allow me to introduce you to my underground family,” Rusty said. “This is Jerry Oswald, Annette Crabtree, Judy Harlow, and Roxie Goldberg.”

“I hope you aren’t from the papers!” Judy said, and hid her face behind the collar of her fur coat. “If I get included in another one of those savage Where Are They Now editorials, I’ll just die!”

“For the hundredth time, Judy, you aren’t famous!” Annette said.

“How dare you!” Judy said. “I was on Broadway!”

“It was Off-Broadway, and it was in the eighties,” Roxie reminded her. “No one’s looking for you now.”

“They’re not reporters, they’re just trying to get inside the public library,” Rusty explained. “But since we’re passing through, they want to hear your stories about seeing you know what.”

Rusty’s friends were as mortified as if he had just disclosed a nasty secret. They looked around the tunnel to make sure no one else had heard him.

“Why do you always have to bring that up?” Jerry asked.

“They’ll only mock us like the rest of the world,” Judy said.

“Haven’t we been through enough already?” Annette asked.

Rusty’s friends got to their feet and tried to walk away, but Conner and Bree blocked them from going too far.

“We’re not here to insult you,” Conner said. “We just want to know what you saw and where you saw it. Please, it might help us answer a lot of questions.”

“And it’s not like you have anything to lose,” Red added.

Despite the rude comment from his friend, the homeless people sensed the sincerity in Conner’s voice. They looked at one another and shrugged.

“I used to be a maid at the Plaza Hotel,” Annette said. “Late one night, I went into the Presidential Suite for the turndown service. As I was making up the bed, the room began shaking. All the furniture was knocked to the floor and the guests’ belongings rolled everywhere. The next thing I knew, a forest appeared out of thin air. It hovered in the sitting room for a few minutes and then vanished. The guests returned shortly after; they saw all their belongings scattered around the floor and accused me of stealing their things. They reported me to the hotel manager and I was fired. Nobody wanted to hire a maid with a history of theft, so now I live down here.”

“I was on the verge of a comeback when I saw the forest,” Judy said. “I had just been cast as Nurse Number Seven on the soap opera The Cute and the Complacent. Anyway, I was sitting in my dressing room at Rockefeller Center—that’s where they film the show—when it was hit with a terrible tremor. The forest appeared over my vanity and I screamed for help. By the time a producer came to check on me, it was gone. They thought I was crazy and had my character written out of the script. I’ve become the laughingstock of the Screen Actors Guild and haven’t been hired since.”

“I was a teller at National Bank on Forty-Fourth Street,” Jerry said. “I was working late one night and went into the vault to store a deposit. Suddenly, the vault started to rattle. It was so powerful it knocked all the deposit boxes open and money spilled onto the floor. The commotion set off the alarm and police arrived within the hour. Had they showed up just a moment sooner, they would have seen the forest for themselves. My boss fired me for carelessness and I couldn’t find another job. I told my wife what had happened, but she didn’t believe me and threw me out of the house.”