Carol Gyzander
Bent over her task as far as her corset allowed, the tip of her tongue sticking out the left side of her mouth, Alison focused on aligning the new lenses perfectly in the brass goggles. No ordinary lenses, of course, but ones with a special coating she had worked on for months.
She prayed the unique lenses would help her find the location alluded to in her father’s journal that she’d finally discovered hidden in the basement laboratory after his passing. Not just wanted to—she needed to. Her future depended upon getting into the university, and that depended on her proving her father right. The University acted like his talk of parallel worlds was a crackpot theory, but it was the only thing she’d heard of that might explain The Mayhem.
She was determined to prove them wrong because they didn’t accept many women, although she was more qualified than half of the students there, thanks to what she had learned helping Father. He’d discovered his girl child had a natural aptitude for science and taught her at home from a young age since it wasn’t included in the curriculum for girls. She’d been helping him with his astronomical calculations about alternate realms of reality since her mother had passed ten years ago.
But even worse, time was running out. Unknown marauders invaded the area one night every five years during The Mayhem, wreaking havoc. Although the town put out guards and watchers armed to the teeth, no one had ever seen the attackers—they simply reported an odd sensation running down their spine or twisting in their stomach that faded by morning, and all that was left was to tally the damage. The University’s bias against admitting women put the whole community at risk by shutting her out.
Alison adjusted the calibration tool sitting before her on the workbench in the dim basement. A curl fell loose from the coiled hair piled atop her head; as she impatiently pushed it away with the back of her wrist, a few blonde hairs fell onto her well-worn navy gown. She grimaced as a squeak at the laboratory door interrupted her focus. “What is it?” she snapped.
Her twin brother, Edward, poked his head inside, one eyebrow cranked upward in question. Her exasperation faded. “Oh. It’s you. Okay, come on in.”
Edward carried a tray with sandwiches and two steaming cups of coffee. “I said, have you eaten today? I’m just home from the office.” He wore gray trousers and a white shirt, the sleeves pulled back by elastic garters to keep them ink-free as he wrote in the accounting ledgers.
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t worry about that! I’ve almost got these goggles ready.”
“Great. Then you have time to take a break and get some food in you. And I brought coffee…” He brought the tray closer so that the aroma tickled her nostrils.
“Oh, coffee. My friend and master.” She joined him at the small, cluttered side table where he placed the tray. A large, intricate planetary model dominated the room’s central work table, a clock bearing multiple dials ticking at its center. Star charts marked with scribbles and numbers covered the wall above the table. “I guess I could take a few minutes.”
As the pair dove into thick ham sandwiches on homemade bread, a black cat jumped onto the table to join them. It sat, twitching the tip of its tail in time with the ticking clock.
Alison absently pulled out a few bites of ham and put them in front of the cat, who nibbled daintily, then sat up and licked a paw, methodically wiping his whiskers.
“You’re just so obsessed with this, Alison,” Edward said around a mouthful. “I know you want to figure out Father’s machine, but I’m a bit worried about you. It’s taking over your life just as it did his after Mother died.”
About to take another bite, she paused, then sat back and stared at him. “You know it’s important. Just because you have a job, you can’t forget about me.”
He held up a finger until he swallowed. “Yes, but that job is all that’s keeping us from living on the street.”
Their family’s finances had been destroyed two cycles ago when attackers broke into their family’s mercantile upstairs, killing their mother and ransacking the store beyond recovery. People had shunned the location in favor of one across town that was not tainted by the mark of The Mayhem. Their father had lived for nearly another decade, constantly working in the lab on his theories about overlapping realms of physical dimension, until passing from what they assumed was overwork—or a broken heart.
“If I can solve the mystery of what his device predicts, I’m sure there will be something of value in it. And they’ll have to let me in on scholarship!” Her fist clenched around the sandwich. “The clock is ticking down to the next celestial alignment that Father talked about. His journal shows that these recurring alignments match the cycles of murders that killed Mother and are tied to a geographical location nearby. Maybe we can stop The Mayhem from repeating. It’s important!”
He nodded and downed the last sip of coffee. “Yes, I understand that you need to figure it out. And I’ll help as much as I can now that it’s the weekend.” He placed the cup on one of the table’s few clear areas, at the edge between himself and the cat.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it—”
Before she could finish her words, the black cat stopped cleaning his whiskers and stared at the cup. His head tilted to one side, then the other, and one paw reached out. Tap, tap on the cup—then the cat knocked it off the table.
Edward jumped as the porcelain shattered into pieces on the floor. “Oh, Midnight—” At Alison’s stern look, he caught his breath momentarily, then went on. “My fault. I wasn’t thinking.”
He reached out and touched the cat on the nose. Grabbing a broom and dustpan, Edward swept up the broken pieces before the cat could jump down and cut his feet.
“There. Sorry, Alison.” He dumped the shards into the garbage bin and briskly sat down to finish his sandwich. “So, what is it that you’ve done here? Something new?”
“Thanks. Yes, my research in Father’s journal points to a location on that cliff over the river.” She patted a worn, leather-covered book. “I even found a sketch of a grand house in here and identified similar geographical features in the area… a tall rock pinnacle. I went as close as I could to view the location recently, and there is no sign whatsoever of any building or human occupation. You know where I mean?”
At his nod, she put down her sandwich crusts and rose, beckoning him to the work table. “There was nothing there as far as I could tell from a distance, but I had the most unusual feeling that something was watching me. Like something was there, but I couldn’t see it. When I came back to the lab, I thought to alter the chemical composition of these goggles I make so that they will tune out certain shades of light and focus on others.” She held up the goggles, now fitted with an array of green lenses fanned out on each side that could be rotated in and out before each eye in various combinations. “Want to try them on?”
He slipped the heavy goggles over his head, adjusting the brass buckle on the leather strap so that they fit snugly against his face. Looking around the room, he held his hands out in a defensive posture. “Kind of dark, but I can see. Um, what am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Well, let’s try this.” She flipped through the old journal’s scribbled pages until she found a hand-drawn sketch of a huge stone manor on a cliff next to a tall stone pillar. “Father must have drawn this on the site, so I assume it’s affected by whatever makes it disappear. What do you see?”
He peered intently at the image. “The whole thing has a sort of green glow… Oh, my goodness!” Edward leaned in. “I see… people? In the picture… and… and they’re moving!”
“Exactly what I hoped for.” She beamed as he pulled off the goggles. “So, will you join me to see it for real? I’ve been plotting the star charts, and Father’s device agrees. Tomorrow is one of the recurring alignments of Jupiter and Mars, like when people last disappeared.”
***
Steam trailed behind the pair the next afternoon as they dismounted from their small, rugged vehicles. After pushing them off the rutted track from the town, they donned their rucksacks filled with clothing and food.
Most locals would be locked inside for several days, expecting the unknown marauders to reappear, but that left nobody available to come over and care for the cat. Alison refused to leave Midnight home alone for what might be several days of exploration, although she worried about the rodents that might overrun the laboratory in their absence. She smiled wryly as she slipped on the pouch containing the black cat to hang in front, thinking of the “gifts” of dead mice Midnight often left at her doorstep and how she rewarded him with treats.
“I’m afraid this is as far as the steam bikes can make it. We’ll have to walk from here.” Edward pulled some branches over the vehicles, careful not to let them touch the hot part of the steam engines. “We actually got farther than I thought we would.”
Alison adjusted her skirt’s bustle so the pack fit comfortably. While she still wore a long, full skirt—her concession to public opinion, since no respectable woman would appear in trousers—she’d pinned it up in front, revealing her legs in a pair of striped, knit leggings. The net result offered her more freedom of movement.
Together, they continued up through the underbrush to the top of the cliff. Far beneath them flowed the river, the town on its banks visible in the distance. A tall rock pillar stood in the clearing—the geological feature Alison had identified from the old book.
“I really hope this works.” Alison pulled two pairs of the special goggles from her waist pouch, gave him one, then slipped hers on, scanning the cliff area. “Oh my…” Her breath caught. A huge dark shape filled one side of the clearing with emerald light shimmering behind it.
“This way!” She took off at a trot, securely holding the cat’s pouch to her chest, and Edward bolted to catch up.
They followed the green glow inland a hundred feet from the cliff’s edge. She stopped, frowning, then adjusted the goggles, fingering a tab that slid a second lens into place in front of the first. “Aha!” She bumped into Edward as she took a step backward. “I see it! It’s really there!”
“What do you see? What is it? I see nothing.” Edward held her shoulders from behind as she stood pointing before them.
She reached back and adjusted the lenses of his goggles.
He looked around—and froze. “I see it. I see it! Father was right.”
They walked together toward the massive stone edifice, their feet crunching on gravel that became a driveway. The faint aroma of ozone filled Alison’s nostrils.
The pair paused at the surrounding wall, where everything seemed to shimmer and shift before their eyes. Edward took a deep breath and opened the gate, taking her hand as they stepped into the shimmer.
The cat let out a low, warbling growl, and Alison’s skin tingled. All the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck seemed to stand up at once. A quick shiver and the pair passed through the glimmering wall and went up onto the wide stone steps before the front door.
“Everything seems perfectly fine here… I’m guessing we don’t even need the goggles now that we crossed that shimmer.” Alison confirmed her assertion by lifting her goggles off her head. “Yes! Should we go in? Perhaps better to knock on the door first. What if someone’s home?”
He snorted and removed his own goggles, stuffing them in his jacket pocket. “How could someone be home when this place isn’t really here?”
Alison reached up to the large ornate brass doorknocker on the wide double doors and gave three sharp raps.
Nothing happened.
She repeated the knock, and they waited several minutes, then tried the door when it became clear there would be no answer. It opened with a low creak, and they entered a huge entry foyer lined with mahogany paneling. Their footfalls echoed on the stone floor.
Before them rose a wide elegant staircase, split at the top to join a grand hallway that formed an overhanging balcony. At the base, closed doors built into the paneling on either side likely led to servant areas or other rooms.
An archway on the left showed a huge dining room, its ornately carved table surrounded by a dozen beautiful chairs that strangely had five legs, an additional one set at the back as if needing to support a great weight. Heavy closed shutters covered all the windows beneath voluminous draperies.
To the right of the entryway, double doors opened into a huge, comfortable-looking living room dominated by a stone fireplace and a pair of mahogany-framed sofas upholstered in blue velvet. Candleholders on each end table and on the walls bore partially burned candles, their asymmetrical alignment making them difficult to look at for long for some reason. The windows on the outside wall flanking the fireplace were tightly shuttered, like in the dining room. An assortment of strange stone blocks of different geometric shapes on the stunning carved mantelpiece flanked a brass clock shaped like a cat, pulling her into the room.
“These are familiar, Edward! I saw some of them sketched in Father’s journal.” She ran her finger along the mantle before each one, exclaiming as she recognized several shapes from the old tome, then paused to rub her fingers together. “How utterly strange that there’s no dust. And there’s wood laid out in the fireplace, ready to be lit. Those logs are huge, though… can you imagine carrying them?”
Edward peered over her shoulder at the mantle. “Well, I have no idea what these shapes represent. That clock is at least recognizable as a cat sitting upright, although I’ve never seen one like it with a clockface set in its belly. Strange that the fur on its forehead seems to be all tousled between the eyes.”
He studied the brass statue, then leaned in to listen. “I’ll be damned. It’s ticking.” He pulled out his pocketwatch and compared the timepieces. “And it’s set to the current time. Somebody’s been winding it.”
A book-lined library off the back of the living room called enticingly to Alison. Late afternoon sunshine played across the library’s plush carpet from the glass doors set in a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that opened onto a central courtyard. “Oh, I look forward to diving into those books!”
She slipped the rucksack off onto an ottoman by the living room sofas in preparation for checking the shelves, but her brother stopped her with a touch on the forearm.
“Yes, fascinating, but I’ll never get you away from those bookshelves.” Edward drew her back into the foyer and called up the stairs. “Hello! Is anyone here?”
No reply. They shrugged and started up the steps to where the upstairs hallway formed a U-shape, open to the foyer below, with presumably bedroom doors lining the two side wings. A cursory examination showed the floor unoccupied and shutters covering all the windows facing outward.
Alison led her brother into one of the interior bedrooms, gesturing through the window at the gravel-lined courtyard below. “Look, more of the same shapes.” Several large stone obelisks and squat geometrical forms stood in the large space formed by three sides of the U-shaped mansion and bounded at the far end by a tall stone wall. More large stones balanced, irregularly spaced, across the wall’s top, and the geographical marker of the stone pillar rose behind it.
“What do you think caused the dents?” Large depressions in the gravel gave her pause, and she frowned.
Edward shrugged. “No clue, but they seem to run in a line from those giant stones at one end to the wall and then all around.”
“Let’s see if we can get out there.”
They met no one as they returned to the ground level, and Edward followed Alison into the living room past where she had left her rucksack. It lay toppled onto the floor, no ottoman in sight. She blinked at it a moment, then shook her head and chalked her faulty memory up to excitement. The siblings continued into the library and then outside through the glass doors.
Alison let the cat out of the pouch, stroking his head as she placed him on the ground in the enclosed courtyard, but Midnight froze, sniffing and moving his head from side to side. After a pause, the feline skulked across the pea gravel, belly flattened to the ground, and dove underneath a stone bench.
They could not coax him out, so they sat on the bench and shared some food for supper. Alison dropped bites on the ground near her feet, and eventually, Midnight snuck out and gobbled them down. The cat made a slow revolution of the courtyard, pausing in various places. He thoroughly sniffed one area of disturbed gravel along the wall, ending with his mouth slightly open and eyes almost crossed. Next, the cat turned and let loose a stream of urine against the wall.
“He’s claiming it as his spot!” Alison said. “I’ve seen him do that after someone left the door open and another cat came into the store.”
The cat uttered a warbling, deep-throated moan. As Alison approached him slowly, the hairs on her arms stood on end again. The idea that she was not supposed to be there reverberated in her head, and her vision grew more distorted the closer she got to the wall. Dizzy and slightly disoriented, it took her a moment before she could scoop up the cat, rubbing his ears as she retreated to the bench—where her head cleared.
After resting, they decided to continue their explorations of the house. Midnight refused to go inside, hissing and struggling when she tried to carry him into the library, so they resolved to leave the cat in the courtyard.
Further exploration revealed no inhabitants, although the entire manor seemed ready for someone’s arrival at any moment. Fresh flowers filled urns on the dining room table. The bedding in the bedrooms all felt clean and smooth, but some nagging feeling bothered Alison until she bent to sniff the sheets. Nothing had an aroma—not the clean sheets, the flowers, or the cheese on the huge butcher block kitchen table. She lit a candle as darkness fell, and the matches gave off no sulfuric smell or smoky odor.
Edward lingered near the door in each room they entered, apparently feeling less interest in exploring than his sister. “So, have you seen enough? I’d like to get going before it gets fully dark.”
She gaped at him. “But… but we just found it! There’s so much I need to learn here. People who could cross the planes of existence must have wonderful information to share. And maybe they can help us decipher The Mayhem.”
“We can always come back tomorrow.” He crossed his arms and squared his shoulders, an unfortunate reminder of one of their father’s gestures when he set his mind to something.
She wasn’t about to give in after all her research finally paid off. “What if it disappears while we’re gone? I can’t wait another five years. And besides, it’s almost dark, and The Mayhem must have started already. We can’t ride around out there at night.”
That convinced him to stay. Unwilling to be separated or make themselves overly at home in the strange house, the siblings headed back to the main level to bed down in the living room. She prowled around the foyer while Edward lit some candles on the end tables.
Peering into the darkness of the dining room, her stomach roiled as the furniture seemed to shimmer and morph through various shapes. She grabbed the doorway to steady herself. When she stared directly at it, she found the table as she remembered from their arrival. But had the chairs always had three legs like that? She hastened to rejoin her brother.
Midnight again refused to come indoors, so Alison left some food and a bowl of water for him in the courtyard.
She sat on one of the sofas, swinging her legs up and covering them with a lap blanket. “What do you think of this place?” She punched a velvet pillow to make it more comfortable behind her back on the burgundy horsehair cushions, trying not to think about how it hadn’t seemed to be there when they arrived.
Edward paused so long before he answered that she almost asked him again.
“Well, it’s definitely strange. The place gives me the creeps, and I swear it’s either playing with my memory or else it keeps changing. Weren’t these cushions blue? It’s like the house is here… but yet it’s not… if you know what I mean?”
“Yes! And nobody has ever reported seeing this place, yet it should be in clear view from the town or the river below. Even I didn’t see it when I scouted out the area.”
“So, why is it here now? Where does it come from?” He pulled a crocheted lap blanket over himself on the sofa across from hers.
“As for where it comes from… I have a theory that it’s from another world like ours, perhaps another dimension.” She sat back on the sofa. “And as for why now, remember what I said about the astronomical congruency? Father’s machine indicates the realms will align around 3 a.m., and everything should fall into place. This place seems to be becoming more defined as the dimensions overlap.”
“Huh. Weird.” He yawned and blew out the candles. “Good thing we’re here, then… I guess. Thanks for taking first watch. Wake me up at two...” His voice trailed off as he almost instantly fell asleep.
It took Alison longer to relax, just as it always had when they were children. In the darkness of her single candle, every little sound in the house caught her attention. The walls creaked and groaned as if rubbing against each other. A crunching in the gravel outside the library made her sit up and call out to Midnight, but when he didn’t answer, she figured he was just prowling around and lay back on the sofa.
Soon, Alison’s heart beat in time with the ticking clock on the mantlepiece, lulling her to sleep despite the excitement of their new find.
***
The sound of galloping footsteps overhead, followed by a vague sense of movement, woke her. Moonlight spilled in from the courtyard. She looked over the edge of where she slept and gasped at the great distance to the floor. Everything around her now appeared immense, and the cat clock loomed on the mantle far overhead. As she moved, several cubes where the end tables had been started radiating light; a molten lava-like blob in the fireplace pulsated heat.
“Edward! Wake up!”
He startled awake opposite her, which now seemed terribly far away. “Wha… what’s up?” He sat up on his stone slab.
She checked her watch: 2:45 a.m. “I think we’ve almost reached the congruency! But look at this place. It’s not a manor house at all.”
A cacophony of yowls and growls poured in from the courtyard.
“Midnight!” Alison swung her legs over her slab’s edge and dropped several feet to the floor. “He must be in danger!”
The siblings pulled their shoes on and dashed to the multi-paned glass doors of the library.
“What the hell! The building is… growing?” Edward had to reach up to unhook the door handle, and they burst into the courtyard—only to stop short in surprise. The end wall towered overhead a great distance away, now tall enough to obscure the geographical marker of the stone pillar. As shadowy shapes flashed back and forth before them, Midnight streaked across the open area and jumped into Alison’s arms.
Screams echoed in the distance from the direction of town.
Alison hardly noticed, however, given the spectacle before her. Giant cats taller than Edward chased one another around the courtyard in the darkness, pouncing, tackling, and wrestling each other to the ground. Alison and Edward flinched when a monstrous cat, threading its way across the top of the wall, paused and knocked one of the huge stone objects onto the ground. The massive shape sprayed pea gravel—now as large as their heads—into the air when it landed with a reverberating crash.
“Look at the size of those cats!” Alison grabbed her brother’s arm.
Suddenly, another cat leapt onto the wall from the far side, carrying something in its mouth. It lightly jumped down and carried its burden to the glass doors near where they cowered, then stepped into the light and deposited it on the threshold.
It turned to face them, revealing not a typical feline face—but a weird mashup of features dominated by a huge, fanged mouth and a third eye on its forehead between the other two. It spun and growled as another creature approached from behind, swatting the encroacher in the face, apparently for getting too close to the gift it left on the doorstep, then chased the intruder away across the courtyard. Their forms flowed and morphed as they moved, changing from feline to ameboid to a multi-legged creature that made her head hurt to watch.
Alison’s spine tingled, and her vision blurred. She shook her head, unable to look at them anymore. Edward pulled her toward the library door, stumbling to a stop as the… cat’s tribute became clear. The limp body of one of the town’s policemen lay on the threshold, bleeding from slash marks across his neck and staring at them with blank eyes.
“Oh, my God. This is what happens to people during The Mayhem. We have to get out of here!” Alison clutched Midnight to her chest, and together, she and her brother approached and then stepped carefully over the poor man’s body, muttering words of sorrow and apology as they passed through the huge doorway.
As they moved, the monstrous creatures turned and focused upon them, then bounded and flowed across the space with an undulating, shrieking howl that pierced Alison to her soul. She froze in horror as Midnight yowled in response. The creatures stopped and fixed the siblings with an unblinking stare. The courtyard around her faded as the lead entity’s three eyes expanded, drawing her mind into a swirling, revolving chaos of glowing green light and viscous fluid that absorbed her essence until she couldn’t even remember her name. How could she have ever hoped to understand this place? Stars and planets floated beside her as she merged with the alternate realm.
Midnight’s claws dug into her arm, breaking her trance. She spun with a gasp and pushed Edward through the opening. Once inside the library, it took both of them to slide the metal door shut with a reverberating clang and keep the indescribable creatures outside.
They headed directly for the entry foyer but found the journey took longer than expected. The living room stretched out before them, now many times larger than before. The sofas, now stone slabs on crossbars, stood so tall that they could walk underneath them. They paused momentarily before the carving on the mantlepiece, now a huge, fanged stone entity morphing in shape around the clock in its belly it ticked to 3 a.m. The tousled fur over the eyes formed a third opening that radiated cold light from the vastness of space, illuminating the entire area with a pale green radiance. The siblings held up their hands to block it from sight and turned toward the door.
As they crossed the space where they had just spent the night, the ceiling creaked and stretched irregularly overhead, forming an asymmetrical arched surface pocked with random craters of oozing green goo that dripped down in strings.
A huge blob landed on Edward’s hand, glowing and spreading up his arm. The bone went soft, and the arm lost shape, dangling helplessly by his side. They dodged the rest of the shimmering, dripping slime and approached the front door, panting from exertion, just as it started to creak open.
Edward stopped short. “Oh no, Alison…” He shoved his sister behind him with his good arm.
Her spine tingled, and her heart lurched in her chest. “Oh my God! We’ve been so focused on those creatures and the building being larger. But they must just be the pets. Now the owners are home, and just think of how huge they will be!”
As she spoke, a smaller one of the creatures burst through the library door with a clanging crash and undulated toward them like a rocket. It grabbed Edward by the head, shaking his whole body side to side so that Alison heard the immediate crack of his spine. She froze, unable to move or even comprehend what was happening in this strange place.
The front door swung fully open. Tripod legs supported a tall shimmering figure whose glowing head rose so far above them that it seemed tiny in comparison—or perhaps it actually was.
The creature laid Edward’s body at the shimmering entity’s feet just as it had placed the policeman’s body in the courtyard. What might be the head bent down toward her brother with a gruff exclamation she couldn’t interpret. Three brilliant green eyes stared out of an otherwise smooth, featureless face.
The scene so stunned her that she couldn’t make a sound.
A second creature burst in from the courtyard—the one that had mesmerized her outside. Its three eyes locked her in place from across the cavern. She trembled in fear as it stalked relentlessly toward her. Alison finally screamed as its maw gaped open and descended over her head.