“Oh, God,” I said, and it came out a moan. “This isn’t right, it isn’t possible.”
I so wanted it to be an optical illusion, but I could feel the air flow, so I knew I wasn’t just seeing things.
“Mom,” Bess said, “we can’t both be in the same nightmare, can we? I mean, this stuff doesn’t happen in real—”
“I’m going in,” I said, but Bess pulled me back as I started to crawl forward.
“Are you crazy? With your back?”
“I can’t leave her in there!”
“She wants to be in there.”
“She says she wants to be by herself but I’ve got to know if she’s all right.”
“What if your back goes out?”
“It won’t go out.”
“But you know what happens when it does. You’ll be stuck.”
I knew she was right, but…
“That’s Ellie in there, Bess. Your little sister. My little girl. I can’t just let her disappear into God knows where!”
She did her patented eye roll. “All right, I’ll go in, okay?”
I could tell she was afraid—who wouldn’t be?—but she’d never admit it. She might aspire to a bohemian life but she’d grown up with that Midwestern hold-my-beer approach to challenges.
With her penlight pointed ahead of her, Bess crawled through the arch on her elbows and knees and disappeared into the tunnel. I crouched at the opening and watched her slowly dwindling silhouette. I estimated she was about fifty feet away when she stopped.
Faintly I heard Ellie’s voice say, “Hello, Bess,” followed by Bess’s scream. And then Bess was frantically crawling backward on her hands and knees, making terrified, high-pitched mewling noises as her shoes scrabbled toward me.
I ducked to the side as she emerged, feet and butt first, almost knocking me over. But she didn’t stop. She kept up the panicked backward crawl, kept making those terrified noises as she reverse-scuttled across the room until she ran out of floor. It might have been comical were it not for the look of abject horror twisting her face. With her back pressed against the wall, she slid upright, slipped and fell, then regained her feet and stumbled-ran from the bedroom.
I hurried after her and found her at the apartment’s front door, her back pressed against it, blinking, cringing, shuddering as she reached for me with a trembling hand.
“M-m-mom!” she panted in a breathless voice. “You’ve got to get out of here!”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“You can’t stay here! You can crash in my dorm! Lena won’t mind!”
“That’s crazy talk. I’m not going anywhere while Ellie—”
“That’s not Ellie in there!”
Bess had just voiced my greatest suspicion, my worst fear. I felt my knees soften, ready to give way, but I forced them straight and locked them. I wouldn’t, couldn’t acknowledge it.
“Don’t be silly. I—”
“I am not being silly! You can’t stay here!”
“I can and I will and I don’t want to hear any more of this. Now come into the kitchen and I’ll make you—”
She grabbed the door handle. “No. No way. I can’t force you to leave, but me, I’m outa here. You know where my dorm is. You can come any time.”
“Bess, please. Get hold of yourself.”
She opened the door and slipped through, then turned and looked at me through the narrowing opening.
“You don’t get it, Mom. You said she went in there to be by herself. You got it wrong.” A sob escaped her. “She went in there to be herself.”
And then she slammed the door.
I stood there, gaping in shock. Bess…Too-Cool-for-School Bess, the unflappable Boho who took everything in stride…I’d never seen her like this, never imagined she could be like this. So terrified…
What had she seen?
My mind reeling, I wandered back to Ellie’s bedroom where I stared at the darkness within that low arch. I knew I’d have to go in there.
FRANKIE
P. Frank Winslow leaned back from his laptop and rubbed his eyes. This self-publishing shit was a lot more involved than he’d thought.
But then, he hadn’t really been thinking when he’d threatened to publish Dark Apocalypse on his own. He’d been pissed and wanted to shove their lawsuit threats back in their faces. Like he was going to let some glorified Elk’s club dictate what he could write about. Were they kidding?
Last night, a corner of his mind had seen himself uploading the Word doc, clicking a PUBLISH button, and voila!—Dark Apocalypse would go on sale under his Phillip F. Winter pseudonym. He hadn’t considered the small matter of a cover.
So he’d spent much of the morning searching for an appropriate piece of art and then working it through a cover creator. Those wasted hours were wreaking havoc with his Daily Duty.
He stared at the result on his screen and hated it. He couldn’t imagine buying a book with a cover like that, so why should he think anyone else would? Was he actually going to have to pay someone good money to create a cover for him? Frankie hated that even more.
Take a break. That was it: Get up, stroll around a bit, then come back with fresh ideas.
Trouble was, his fourth-floor one-bedroom walkup didn’t afford much strolling space. The front room doubled as living room and office, furnished with his laptop on the desk, a couch, and a TV. And bookshelves, of course, mostly stocked with copies of his titles.
He made a circuit of the room, then stepped into his little eat-in kitchen and put some water on to boil. A cup of tea would be good about now. From the kitchen he wandered to the sparsely furnished bedroom but stopped inside the door as a breeze wafted against his face.
Where was that coming from? He kept his windows closed pretty much all year round. He checked them now—yep, both locked up tight. But still that faint breeze. It seemed to be coming from the rear corner, behind the
