The world was very quiet.
That was her first thought. She swayed on her feet and reveled in the silence. It was so marvelous that she didn’t care when her knees began to give way.
Hands gripped both her arms and kept her upright.
And then the world came back, with a snap and a hiss, like turning on a television. Everything returned—sight, sound, even the sensation of saliva building up in the back of her throat.
“Don’t you dare be sick on me,” said a voice, and Dee managed to look up. The one holding her upright was James Lancer. His face was drawn with nerves. “Come on, now. Good—swallow it back down.”
Dee swallowed bile she hadn’t known was there.
“Oh, come on,” said Cal. He was standing beside them, hands out as if ready to catch her. “It’s not like she’d ruin your clothes, Lancer.”
“It’s more the smell I’m worried about,” said James. “Who knows what it’ll attract.”
Dee opened her mouth. She felt oddly numb, like the time she’d been on narcotics after getting a tooth pulled. The world wasn’t quite there—or maybe she wasn’t quite there. “I’m all right.”
James loosened his grip on her arms, but he didn’t let go.
Dee took a moment to glance around. She half wanted to see if it was true—to see if the demon had truly taken her heart. She didn’t feel any different; there was no gaping hole in her chest and she could still breathe. If anything, she felt lighter.
Cal spoke again. “She’ll have to be the doorman. If she can barely stand up, there’s no way she’s walking into a void.”
“That’s fine,” said James. “It’d be a shame to let the parka go to waste. Hey, Prep School Girl”—she could almost hear the capital letters in James’s voice—“what’s your name?”
Dee swallowed again. “Dee,” she said, still trying to fight through the dizziness.
“All right, Dee,” said Cal. “You’re going to be the doorman. All you need to do is climb that ladder and push yourself halfway into the void. And then you don’t move, understand? You’ll stabilize the entrance, keep it open when the void implodes.”
“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.
Dee rolled over, eyes drawn to the ceiling, where she caught sight of the smudge. It trembled, turned in on itself, like the last of bathwater being drained away.
“What was that?” said Dee.
“What was what?” James rubbed at his chin and his fingers came away bloody. He grimaced and reached down with his clean hand, offering it to Dee. She hesitated, then let him pull her upright.
She looked around the room, but it was empty.
No demon.
“That,” said Dee. “In there—it’s not like our world. And what was that thing—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said James.
Dee breathed hard. Now that the numbness was entirely gone, fear twisted her insides. “But what about—”
Cal shook his head and she fell silent. “Don’t ask now,” he said, but he said it gently. “It’s too new. No answer we can give you will satisfy. Wait a week, then ask us.”
Dee was shaking, and it took her a moment to steady herself. “What—what am I supposed to do now? Where’s the demon?”
James ran a hand through his hair. Sand fell through his fingers, scattered along the fabric of his parka. He shook himself before looking at Dee again. His face was more composed than hers. “Go home,” he said. “Things will look more normal after you’ve gotten a night’s sleep.”
She gaped at him. It felt as though her life had begun anew here in this basement, and she was unsure of how to move forward. Leaving, stepping into the world without a heart—how did a person do that?
James’s expression softened. “Look, I get it. You’re panicking right now.” He edged closer, until she had no choice but to look him in the eye. He made a motion as if to touch her arm, but then his hand fell away. “A demon just ripped your heart out. By all rules of the universe, you should be dead. I should be dead. But you know what we’re going to do in the meantime?”
“What?”
“Live,” he said.
He reached down and took her hand. Gently, he pried her fingers open and placed something soft in her palm, closed her fingers around it. “Keep this on you at all times,” he said quietly. “Don’t lose it.” He gave her hand one last squeeze, then he was straightening his parka, turning to stride through the basement doors. Cal nodded to her, smiling encouragingly, then he left, too. Dee found herself alone; she shifted and found the concrete floor slick with grains of sand.
Her gaze fell on the object in her palm.
She didn’t realize what it was—not at first. It was a lump of bloodred yarn. There was a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it, but that wasn’t what had caught her attention. Her fingers stroked one soft edge. She’d seen this before, tangled around the demon’s fingers. Now she saw exactly what he’d been working on.
Resting in her palm was a knitted heart.
And that’s when she finally realized why the world was so quiet.
There was no pulse in her ears.