Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

Pel gestured to Raven and Valadrakul. “After you,” he said.

Valadrakul bowed and stepped through; Raven hesitated.

“You’ll come?” he asked. “You’ll come, and see my homeland? You’ll lend your advice? I value your opinion, friend Pel.”

Pel grimaced. “What opinion?” he said. “I’m just going to take a quick look and come right back.”

Raven frowned, then quickly recovered his composure. “As you wish,” he said.

He stepped through, leaving Pel alone in the basement.

Pel took a deep breath, gathered his nerve, and walked up to the wall. He put out his hand.

As Amy had said, he felt nothing but cool air as his fingers vanished into the wall. He closed his eyes, unable to bring himself to advance with them open, and then took another step.

Coldness swept over him; a shiver ran through his body, starting at the shoulder and sliding down through his spine and into his knees. His eyes snapped open.

For a moment he saw nothing but darkness, felt nothing but the chill, and terror began to grow, weedlike, somewhere in the base of his skull.

Then the door opened, and wan sunlight spilled in, illuminating the inside of the hut.

He was in a hut, a small one, with no light, no windows-only the door. It seemed quite solid, quite real-and it was definitely no part of his basement. It smelled of wood and earth.

Pel let his breath out, and it puffed into visibility in the cold air. Nancy was outside, she and Rachel were standing there, facing away, but Nancy was looking back nervously, watching for Pel.

Raven was in the hut, holding the door open.

The others were all there, scattered about outside; he could hear their voices, and he glimpsed them through the doorway. Pel stepped forward.

The movement felt oddly wrong; the air seemed preternaturally thick, as if he were wading through a foot of water. He looked down, but there was no water, only the hard-packed dirt floor beneath his feet.

The smell of black loam, sawn wood, and pine sap, carried on the sharp, cold air, reached him and swept images of long-ago winter mornings into his mind, mornings when he had gone walking in the woods, or watched his father cut a point on a Christmas tree before fitting it into the inverted cone of the green steel holder. He turned his head to see where the smell came from, and for the first time really noticed the shed around him, and its contents.

On either side, logs were stacked neatly, almost to the low, slanting rafters. Behind him stood a simple wall of rough-hewn planks, with no door nor other opening visible, and he realized he had stepped through it.

He thrust out a hand; it vanished into the wall, up to the wrist, as if the planks were not there.

Reassured that the portal was still there, that he could return home whenever he wanted, he turned his attention elsewhere.

He was one of three people in the woodshed; Raven was another, but the third he did not recognize. He could not see her clearly in the gloom, but she was just below medium height-no more than five foot four, he was sure-with long, dark hair and wearing heavy robes. She was not thin, he was sure of that, but he thought part of her bulk came from her thick garments. One oversized sleeve caught the light from the door, where he could get a good, clear look at it; it was dull red, and appeared to be wool.

“Hi,” he said, giving her a little wave with one hand, and smiling in her general direction. “I’m Pel Brown.”

“I am Elani,” she said, speaking with an odd, musical accent, completely unlike Raven’s nasal twang.

“Shall we have a look at my world, friend Pel?” Raven asked, with a gesture at the door.

Pel nodded. He turned away from Elani, and together the two men stepped out of the woodshed into the world.

Behind them, Elani began mumbling something Pel could not make out.

* * * *

It hadn’t been any forty-eight hours, but Carrie had no intention of sticking to silly limitation like that when it came to her own lost cousin. She settled on her bed and reached out with her mind, reached in that inexplicable direction that led around the corners of reality into the “Earth” universe. She shaped her thoughts to fit Prossie’s familiar patterns, and searched down through the nameless irreality for Prossie’s thoughts.

She couldn’t find them.

Prossie wasn’t in that jail any more.

Carrie could sense a sort of after-image that she knew was the general vicinity of the jail, perceptible because she had seen it through Prossie’s thoughts earlier-but it was dead and empty. No telepath was there, not even one of the pitiful “psychics” of Earth, like that Ray Aldridge or that little girl, Angela. There were guards, and prisoners, but they were all Earth people, all telepathically dead; she could barely sense that they existed, and certainly couldn’t communicate with them, in either direction.

Prossie wasn’t there.

Well, that was good, wasn’t it? She’d been released, then.

Or killed. Maybe Prossie had been wrong about the Earth people and their soft-hearted rules. Carrie began searching, casting a telepathic net farther afield, wider and thinner, hoping for some touch.

For a moment she thought she felt Prossie’s presence, but before she could home in on it, it was gone. She pushed on, minute after minute. Sweat began to sheen her forehead; her hands and jaw trembled.

Prossie wasn’t there.

She found Carleton Miletti and passed him by; she found Oram Blaisdell, and Angela Thompson, and Ray Aldridge.

She didn’t find Prossie.

Miletti and Blaisdell and Aldridge didn’t notice the contact, but little Angela sat up in bed and shouted, “Mr. Nobody!”

“Hush,” Carrie told her. “Hush!”

“What is it, Mr. Nobody? Is something wrong?”

“Not really, Angie. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You didn’t bother me. Whatcha doing?”

Carrie sighed. “I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Proserpine Thorpe.”

“I’ll go ask my mommy!”

Before Carrie could protest, Angie was out of bed and scampering down the stairs, shouting, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Margaret met her at the bottom step, relieved to see that Angie was intact-no visible blood, nothing torn, no broken toys or furniture in sight. “What is it, Angie?” she asked, kneeling so that she could meet her daughter face to face.

“It’s Mr. Nobody,” Angie explained. “He’s lookin’ for someone.”

Carrie winced slightly. Why was Angie always so certain the voice in her head was a man?

Margaret Thompson sighed. “Is that all?”

Somewhat cowed, Angie said, “That’s all.”

“I thought Mr. Nobody was gone,” Margaret said.

“He was. He came back.”

Angie’s mother considered that.

She didn’t really understand Mr. Nobody. She had never had an invisible playmate as a child; she’d heard about them, read about them in the parenting books, but the whole idea didn’t really make much sense to her. And Angie was so utterly certain that Mr. Nobody was real. Her conversations with him didn’t seem like anything a three-year-old should be able to invent.

Angie had never claimed to see Mr. Nobody, or to know where he was; she only heard him. That didn’t fit what the books described for imaginary companions.

Was it possible that someone really was communicating with Angie somehow?

“All right, then, who’s Mr. Nobody looking for?” she asked.

For the first time Angie hesitated. Then she said, “Basurpathork.”

“Who?” Margaret blinked. She had been expecting a more recognizable name than that.

“Someone named Basurpathork.”

Margaret sighed again. A name like that settled it; Angie was just making it up. “I don’t know any Ba… Pa… anyone by that name. Now, you go back to bed and tell Mr. Nobody to let you sleep, and in the morning I’ll ask around.”