would he discover beyond? Would he be able to get back if he didn't
like what he found?
He didn't have enough curiosity to take such a fateful step. He stood
at the brink, wondering--and gradually he began to feel that something
was coming.
Before he could decide what to do, that pure essence of darkness seemed
to pour out of the doorway, an ocean of night that sucked him down into
a dry but drowning sea.
When he regained consciousness, Eduardo was facedown in the dead and
matted grass, head turned to his left, gazing up the long meadow toward
the house.
Dawn had not yet come, but time had passed. The moon had set, and the
night was dull and bleak without its silvery enhancement.
He was initially confused, but his mind cleared. He remembered the
doorway.
He rolled onto his back, sat up, looked toward the woods. The
razor-thin coin of blackness was gone. The forest stood where it had
always stood, unchanged.
He crawled to where the doorway had been, stupidly wondering if it had
fallen over and was now flat on the ground, transformed from a doorway
into a bottomless well. But it was just gone.
Shaky and weak, wincing at a headache as intense as a hot wire through
his brain, he got laboriously to his feet. He swayed like a drunkard
sobering from a week-long binge.
He staggered to where he remembered putting down the video camera.
It wasn't there.
He searched in circles, steadily widening the pattern from the point
where the camcorder should have been, until he was certain that he was
venturing into areas where he had not gone earlier. He couldn't find
the camera.
The shotgun was missing as well. And the discarded Discman with its
headphones.
Reluctantly he returned to the house. He made a pot of strong
coffee.
Almost as bitter and black as espresso. With the first cup, he washed
down two aspirin.
He usually made a weak brew and limited himself to two or three cups.
Too much caffeine could cause prostate problems. This morning he
didn't care if his prostate swelled as big as a basketball. He needed
coffee.
He took off the holster, with the pistol still in it, and put it on the
kitchen table. He pulled out a chair and sat within easy reach of the
weapon.
He repeatedly examined his left hand, which he had thrust through the
doorway, as if he thought it might abruptly turn to dust. And why
not?
Was that any more fantastic than anything else that had happened?
At first light, he strapped on the holster and returned to the meadow
at the perimeter of the lower woods, where he conducted another search
for the camera, the shotgun, and the Discman.
