Brad Ferguson: The World Next Door (A Short Story)

None of this is anything we know about, none of it. I read the ULTIMATUM story. It said the presence of missile-carrying Soviet nuclear subs off the Atlantic coast had caused the worst breach in relations between the superpowers since the Cuban missile crisis, which almost caused a war back in ’62.

Almost. My dear sweet Jesus. Almost, it said.

Doc says he thinks he knows what happened. The world next door, Elvis called it, and Doc says he was right.

Doc thinks the next-door world was the one we’d be living in if there hadn’t been a war about Cuba. He says it’s a real place, or it was. Now Doc thinks it’s gone, because the dreams stopped; Doc no longer thinks the dreams were mass hysteria or any of the other things he called them.

He says the next-door world must have had an even worse war than we did, because of those weapons in the paper. He thinks everybody died, and maybe the impending death of a whole, entire planet is enough to open a door wide enough so that dreams, and even a kid, start coming through. Maybe we were on the receiving end because we’re a nearly dead world… not quite dead, and maybe we’ll pull through, despite everything. But that other world, with those fearsome weapons, must be gone, just like the dreams it sent us.

We don’t know who shot John David Wright, but Doc figures it was Jess himself, startled when the kid came out of nowhere without hailing Jess first.

We could probably prove it, if it’s true, but that would only get Jess hanged, and we need him and his farm. Besides, Jess was decent enough to report the body and make sure we’d bury it with proper respect. The poor kid is dead, and we can’t bring him back. Let it lay.

We all got together and ate as much as we’d put aside for the feast — it turned out to be a fairly good year. All in all, it was a pretty nice Thanksgiving… except the kid’s watch won’t show any numbers anymore, and I can’t make the thing work. I guess the battery or whatever must be dead. That was the best goddamn watch I ever had, even counting the old days. It’s a shame it gave out so soon.