Eric had definitely met more helpful people in his life than Cordelia of the weird, yellow house. She hadn’t told him how he was supposed to fix whatever was happening here. She hadn’t even told him how he was supposed to get to the source of the anomaly, only that it was at the very bottom, behind the deepest veil. Or was it a skin? Something about a blister…?
If anything, he was more confused than ever.
He walked through the woods for a while, examining the old watch. What was the purpose of it? What was he supposed to do with it? More questions sweet Cordelia had neglected to answer for him.
But then again, he supposed it wasn’t a total waste. He knew now that the things he’d been experiencing had something to do with the anomaly’s many layers. It was more than just a triangle. It was more like a pyramid, with only a single surface showing. Its true mass lay hidden beneath and within. Specter Ten couldn’t possibly find solid evidence of the paranormal phenomenon taking place inside the triangle any more than a forensics scientist could find evidence to catch a murderer by standing outside the building in which the crime took place.
Only he seemed to be able to wander deeper into the anomaly. But why? What made him so different from them? Was it his past? His prior encounters with the weird? Or was there just something about him?
Of course, it wasn’t only him, he realized. Each and every one of the triangle’s victims had likely wandered inside the anomaly as well. That was why no trace of them had ever been found.
His cell phone chimed, alerting him to a new text message. He snatched it out of his pocket, hoping it was Isabelle again, and it began to ring before he could even glance at the screen.
“Thank God!” gasped Isabelle.
“What happened?” asked Eric. “Where were you?”
“I was right here! I haven’t moved from this spot. Where were you?”
“Where was I?”
“I lost you. One second you were talking to me and then you were just…not there anymore. I was worried sick!”
“You completely lost me?”
“A few times I caught a flicker of you, like you were hiding somewhere and I could almost see you. But I just couldn’t find you. You really scared me!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay… I’m… Sorry, I’m kind of catching up but… Who’s Cordelia?”
Because she could read his mind, Isabelle didn’t need him to recount everything that had happened to him. On ordinary days, days when he wasn’t being ambushed by ghosts or attacked by monsters, she typically tuned him out and gave him his privacy. Because it would be creepy if she was always lurking inside his mind. As a result, she was used to skimming enough details from his thoughts to catch up on his life when she tuned him back in. However, the finer details were harder to perceive, especially when those details were particularly weird. Eric described the strange, yellow house and recounted what the mysterious Cordelia had revealed to him.
“Well, that’s interesting,” she said when he was done.
“Fascinating,” agreed Eric. “Any of it make any sense to you?”
“A little. She’s right about there being different ways to cross between worlds. I’ve learned of a few since I’ve been trapped. But I’ve never heard of forcing one. That sounds really dangerous.”
“That’s what Cordelia said. She kept saying this area was broken.”
“That’s not good. Tearing open a hole between worlds is like tearing a hole in the hull of a space shuttle. Or a submarine. It kind of depends on which world is bigger. It’s…”
“Catastrophic?”
“Very.”
“You’re just full of useful information.”
“A lot of this sort of stuff I learned from Altrusk, himself, actually.” Isaac Altrusk was the man responsible for the abomination of a mansion that first trapped Isabelle in her bizarre state between worlds and outside of time almost forty years ago. The same mansion eventually drove him mad and transformed him into a monster that Isabelle now merely referred to as “Altrusk.” “I don’t know where he learned it. It sounds weird, but I kind of think the house told him.”
Having actually been inside that insane nightmare of a building, Eric found that he didn’t doubt that one bit. “So then, that monster that I saw rising from the lake… That’s the thing that’s forcing its way into our world through this anomaly, isn’t it?”
“Makes sense,” agreed Isabelle.
“That’s what Holly’s spell meant by ‘hell rising from the lake.’ If this thing breaks through, it’ll rip open a hole that’s going to destroy the world.”
“Not just this world,” corrected Isabelle. “This one and whatever world that thing’s coming from.”
Eric nodded. “One’s the submarine and the other’s the space shuttle.”
“Right.”
He wondered which one he was in and whether he’d have time to know the answer before he was wiped from the face of existence. The thought made him shudder.
“Unless, by some chance, both worlds are exactly the same size. And even then, I think we’d all be obliterated by the two worlds effectively slamming into each other.”
“Sounds about right. I guess.” Not that he had any clue whatsoever. “But if that’s all true, why don’t fissures destroy the world? I mean aren’t they cracks between worlds?”
“You would think so,” she agreed, “but a fissure is a special case. They run outward from a singularity, which isn’t a hole between two worlds, but instead a point where two worlds meet. The pressure is so intense that cracks form. Fissures. The way I understand it is that the pressure surrounding the singularity prevents the cracks from tearing all the way through. That’s how you end up with that gray zone inside the fissure. It’s sort of a cushion between the two worlds that protects them both. I guess it’s kind of like laminated glass.”
Eric supposed it was a little bit comforting to know that the world had at least some built-in safety features.
“What was that she gave you?”
He looked down at the object he was still holding in his hand. “A watch. She said it was what I went there for, even though I didn’t even know I was going there. I have no idea what I’m supposed to use it for.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I usually am. So what’re you going to do now?”
Eric glanced around. He had no idea where he was. This place didn’t look familiar. The light was different here. Was he still in the anomaly? Or was it just getting late? “I really don’t know. I mean, I can figure out north, south, east and west, but how the hell do I go ‘deeper?’”
“That’s a good question,” she agreed.
“And what if I lose you again. I mean, what happened back there? The only times I’ve ever known us to lose contact was when I was inside the cathedral, back at the fissure.”
“That wasn’t the only time we lost contact.”
Eric tried to remember.
“The same thing happened the day we met, before you arrived at the cathedral.”
He frowned. “It did?”
“It happened just before you entered that gas station.”
Now he remembered. “That’s right.” He recalled perfectly his strange encounters with the gas station attendant, but he’d forgotten about losing contact with Isabelle while he was at the station. She cut out just before he entered the place. He even recalled her mentioning just before he lost her that day that the place felt odd.
And now that he was thinking about it, hadn’t she told him that something felt strange just before he lost her today, too?
He paused, considering. Then he glanced back the way he’d come. He could no longer see the yellow house. And he had a feeling that if he went back, he wouldn’t be able to find it. “Do you…” He hesitated, distracted. “Do you think there’s a relation between those two places?”
“Weirder stuff’s happened.”
That was definitely true.
Eric stared into the woods for a moment, wondering.