“All right, Steve,” she said, “you seem harmless enough. Carry on. But stay out of the east wing, if you know what’s good for you.”
She turned, as if to depart, though she was standing in the corner.
“Wait,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Asha,” she called over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you.”
A dozen questions swirled in my mind, but I sensed that I’d only get a chance to ask one, and that one, the most important, rose to my lips. “Wait,” I called softly. “Are…are you real?”
“Ha! That’s a good one. Am
So obviously I was freaked out, but what could I do? Run home and tell my parents that I’d been chased off by a ghost? No thanks. Instead I turned on as many lights as I could and positioned myself on a couch in the center of one of the larger rooms, where nothing could sneak up on me, and played movies on my laptop to keep the silence at bay. Finally I passed out, from sheer exhaustion.
When I woke it was morning, and everything seemed more manageable. As I wandered the empty house, I was already half convinced that my encounter with Asha had just been something I’d dreamed during the night. Still, I avoided the east wing.
What I needed right then, I decided, was some sort of challenge to occupy my mind, and the padlocks on the green door seemed just the thing. I’d become increasingly intrigued by the door, because, as near as I could tell, it couldn’t possibly lead anywhere. The layout of the surrounding rooms was like a maze, but I was pretty sure I’d seen the far side of that wall, and there was nothing there but blank plaster.
I pulled up a chair before the door and sat down, wielding my tools. The work went quickly, the locks giving way one after another. I placed each one on the floor at my feet, then reached forward and pushed at the door, which swung aside.
A rush of humid air hit me, redolent with swamp smells of marsh grass and mud. Beyond the door lay a livid green sky above rolling hills dotted with forests and ponds. In a daze I rose to my feet and strode forward, my bare feet sinking into the surprisingly spongy earth. Another world, I thought, staring in wonder. It was actually there, actually real.
I glanced back over my shoulder. From this side, the green door was built into the wall of a small tower made of rough granite bricks. Through the door I could see back into the parlor of Cornelius’s mansion.
I wandered down the hill into the field below. There was a small lake there, its waters murky and brown, and below the surface I could just make out the wavering suggestion of glimmering lights. Then a balmy breeze blew by, and I heard voices on the air. Crouching in the underbrush, I peered through a screen of trees.
A line of black-robed men were making their way up the hill. There were twenty of them, and they wore hoods, and chanted, and some bore a palanquin upon which sat an ebony idol, some sort of frog-headed deity on a gnarled throne.
It was a distinctly sinister tableau, and I was in no hurry to join the parade. Now that my initial wonder was subsiding, I had second thoughts about the wisdom of wandering barefoot and alone through an unknown world.
I turned to beat a hasty retreat, and almost ran right into a strange woman who was crawling up the beach toward me. She was thin and bony, and had come from the water, which dotted her pale flesh, and her thin green hair was plastered back across her oddly elongated scalp. When she was just a few feet away, she cocked her head at me, staring up with bulbous eyes and smiling faintly, as if she were expecting a treat.
I backed away, and suddenly she grinned, the corners of her mouth stretching three times as wide as I would’ve thought possible. Her teeth were like a piranha’s.
Then she screamed, a banshee wail, a piercing shriek that went on and on.
I glanced behind me, through the trees. The black-robed men were turning my way now, and throwing back their hoods. Their faces were like hers, and from beneath their robes they drew short staffs topped with tridents.
I edged around the woman—her still screaming, still eager and staring—and sprinted back toward the tower and the green door.
I was out of breath and staggering by the time I was halfway up the hill, and then I stumbled on that strangely pliant ground and fell to my hands and knees, and the creatures swarmed about me, capering and gibbering, thrusting at me with their tridents. I threw my arms over my face and curled into a ball. How could I have been so stupid? Maybe Freud had been right about the death drive, that we all subconsciously seek our own destruction.
The weapons struck my shoulders, my back, my legs. It took a moment before I realized that the pain was minimal, as if they were children poking me with sticks. I was not bleeding, not harmed.
I opened one eye, and a fish-man roared into my face with his dagger-toothed mouth. Instinctively I lashed out, and when I struck his head it burst like an overinflated balloon, splattering me with gore. I dragged myself to my feet as the rest of the fish-men fled. I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I made it back to the tower, passed through the green door, and slammed it behind me. As I snapped the locks shut one by one, I swore that I would never, ever,
Asha stood there, frowning.
I screamed.
She seized me by the arm and growled, “Come with me.”
“W-where are we going?” I said, as she dragged me through the halls, but she didn’t answer.
I said, “There were creatures in there! They attacked me.”
“Well, what do you expect from a bunch of twos?” she muttered.
I had no idea what to make of that.
She escorted me into the west wing of the house, into a section I hadn’t really explored yet, and marched me into a large bedroom. Built into the corner was another of those strange doors, this one bright orange rather than bright green, and tilted to the right rather than the left, but otherwise identical to the other—right down to the four heavy padlocks.
“I need you to open this,” Asha said, as we crossed the room.
I wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea. I pointed weakly at the locks. “Uh, my tools are back—”
She reached out with her bare hands and ripped apart the locks as if they were made of cotton candy.
Then she turned to face me. “Open it,” she ordered. “Now.”
So what could I do? With a trembling hand I gave the door a small push, and it swung back with a creak, revealing yet another alien world—dry, rolling scrub plains beneath a dusty orange sky.
Asha beamed. “Excellent!”
Puzzled, I said, “Why couldn’t you just open it yourself?”
“Because I’m not an opener,” she said. “You are. Hard as that is to believe.” Opener? I thought.
She added quickly, “And now, Steve my boy, there’s something else I need you to do for me. I need you to go through this door and find me a weapon. A gun would be my first choice, of course, but any sort of weapon will do —a sword, an axe, anything like that.” She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a revolver, which she handed to me. “Or even just some bullets, if they’ll work with this.”
The gun felt amazingly heavy in my hand. I said, “Why do you need a weapon?”
She scowled. “Look, there’s no time to waste, okay? Just do it. Trust me on this, it’s important.”
Somehow, maybe because I was still high on adrenaline from my encounter with the fish-men, I found the guts to say, “No.”
“Kid,” she growled, fixing me with an intense glare, “you have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“Then tell me!” I said. “Tell me what’s going on! But I’m not going to go marching off and bring back a weapon just because you say so!”
For a moment Asha looked so frustrated that I thought she might tear me apart the way she had the locks.
Finally she sighed. “All right, fine. I’ll explain.” She snatched the gun from me and tossed it in her knapsack.
