any change within the circle of exceptional darkness: a lesser
blackness, shadows within the gloom, a spark, a hint of movement,
anything that might signal the approach of ... a traveler. He stopped
three feet from the brink of that eye-baffling tenebrity, leaning
forward slightly, as wonder-struck as a man in a fairy tale gazing into
a magical mirror, the biggest damned magical mirror the Brothers Grimm
ever imagined, one that offered no reflections--enchanted or
otherwise-but that gave him a hair-raising glimpse of eternity.
Holding the shotgun in one hand, he reached down and picked up a stone
as large as a lemon. He tossed it gently at the portal. He more than
half expected the stone to bounce off the blackness with a hard
metallic tonk, for it was still easier to believe he was looking at an
object rather than peering into infinity. But it crossed the vertical
plane of the doorway and vanished without a sound.
He edged closer.
Experimentally, he pushed the barrel of the Remington shotgun across
the threshold. It didn't fade into the gloom. Instead, the blackness
so totally claimed the forward part of the weapon that it appeared as
if someone had run a high-speed saw through the barrel and the forearm
slide handle, neatly truncating them.
He pulled back on the Remington, and the forward part of the gun
reappeared.
It seemed to be intact.
He touched the steel barrel and the checkered wood grip on the slide.
Everything felt as it should feel.
Taking a deep breath, not sure whether he was brave or insane, he
raised one trembling hand, as if signaling 'hello' to someone, and
eased it forward, feeling for the transition point between this world
and . . . whatever lay beyond the doorway. A tingle against his palm
and the pads of his fingers. A coolness. It felt almost as if his
hand rested on a pool of water but too lightly to break the surface
tension.
He hesitated.
'You're seventy years old,' he grumbled. 'What've you got to lose?'
Swallowing hard, he pushed his hand through the portal, and it
disappeared in the same manner as the shotgun. He encountered no
resistance, and his wrist terminated in a neat stump.
'Jesus,' he said softly.
He made a fist, opened and closed it, but he couldn't tell if his hand
responded on the other side of the barrier. All feeling ended at the
point at which that hellish blackness cut across his wrist.
When he withdrew his hand from the doorway, it was as unchanged as the
shotgun had been. He opened his fist, closed it, opened it.
Everything worked as it should, and he had full feeling again.
Eduardo looked around at the deep and peaceful May night. The forest
flanking the impossible circle of darkness. Meadow sloping upward,
palely frosted by the glow of the quarter moon. The house at the
higher end of the meadow. Some windows dark and others filled with
light. Mountain peaks in the west, caps of snow phosphorescent against
the post-midnight sky.
