Eleanor Read online

  But she hesitates.

  Her father’s words come back to her.

  I have a bad feeling about this.

  And Eleanor does, too.

  The sudden summer storm. The whales.

  It has been an unusual day.

  A bad feeling.

  “Ellie,” Gerry calls again. “Dear sweet Lord, come in! What’s wrong?”

  Eleanor pushes the worry away. She can practically smell Geraldine’s perfume, and suddenly the only thing in the world she wants is to feel that woman draw her in close for a big, strong hug.

  Gerry waves at her.

  Eleanor forgets to look both ways as she steps into the street, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no traffic. The sound of the rain on the asphalt becomes a sort of chant. Eleanor crosses the street and stops just outside the door.

  “Girl, you’re drenched,” Gerry says. She steps back into the office, but leans into the doorway, holding the glass door wide for Eleanor. Jack stands dripping in the lobby, watching Eleanor inquisitively.

  A bad, bad feeling.

  Eleanor fixes her eyes on Geraldine, then steps through the open door.

  And disappears.

  This time it will work.

  She presses herself against the gauzy membrane that separates the red-haired girl’s world from Mea’s own. That world is dark now. Colossal clouds swell over the little town, emptying themselves of rain. The storm casts a long shadow over the buildings and shops that dot the waterfront. The sea is almost black. Crews struggle to moor their boats, and those who were caught by the unexpected winds and rain fight the weather to bring their ships into the harbor. The rain thunders to the earth so loudly that Mea can almost hear it.

  But in her own darkness there is only silence.

  It is supposed to work like this:

  Mea will bring her world and the red-haired girl’s world together. The membrane will soften and part, and for the slightest of moments, the two worlds will be joined, and the girl with the red hair will be permitted to pass between them.

  The darkness has instructed Mea. Her instincts were correct: the membrane will only soften when it is firmly fastened to the other world, and the surest way to do that is to use physical doorways as an anchor. A doorway is intended for passage.

  The problem, the darkness has taught her, is that she did not seal that passage properly.

  The red-haired girl was slipping into the narrow gap between the two worlds.

  She was falling into a third world.

  A dream world.

  But Mea will not allow that to happen this time. This time the worlds will draw together and create a perfect seal, and the girl with the red hair will slip into the darkness with Mea. It will be the opposite of being born: rather than leaving behind darkness for light, the girl will leave the light, and enter the darkness. The darkness, with its river of memories and its boundless black, is full of everything. Of love, of life, of warmth. The darkness is not unlike a mother’s womb. Perhaps the girl with the red hair will be comforted by this.

  Mea will welcome the girl into the dark, and they will meet.

  The darkness prepares her.

  What is her name? the darkness asks.

  Mea is quiet for a very long time. She remembers the things that the darkness told her before—the truth of her beginning, the purpose of the darkness, the importance of the red-haired girl—and finally she says, Her name is Eleanor.

  Eleanor, the darkness agrees. Retrieve her.

  Mea navigates with the portal. It is not unlike pushing a taut wall made of gelatin. She feels it against her form. It is warm and soft. She guides it closer to Eleanor’s world. She can see Eleanor now. The girl is soaking wet. She steps off the sidewalk and into the street, water squishing in her white shoes. Mea moves more quickly, for Eleanor has almost reached the doorway to the office building.

  Mea slides the portal past Eleanor. It is only a window now, and so passing the girl feels almost as if Mea is a passenger in some great flying vehicle, swooping by. But then the door to the office building appears, and Mea pushes toward it.

  An older woman, much older than Eleanor, stands in the doorway. Mea does not worry about this. As the darkness had confided in her, only one person may pass through the portal. Only Eleanor is chosen.

  Mea nudges the portal into place, pinning the soft membrane to the four corners of the open glass door. She can feel it almost suck into place, and then it adheres with a powerful tension that even Mea cannot dislodge. She inspects the seal, and is satisfied. The two worlds are firmly joined by the membrane. All that remains is for Eleanor to pass through the doorway and into the darkness.

  Mea feels a tremble of anticipation swim through her being.

  Eleanor steps onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

  You have done well, the darkness says to Mea, and this confidence warms Mea from within.

  She watches as Eleanor steps onto the first stair below the door, then the next, then the next.

  She is coming, Mea thinks.

  Eleanor approaches the door.

  The older woman leans into the doorway to welcome Eleanor inside.

  For a brief moment, Eleanor and the woman occupy the doorway at the same moment, and Mea feels the darkness cry out around her. She is confused, but then she understands, and feels a bitter panic flood her core.

  The old woman’s presence in the doorway is a problem.

  The seal breaks.

  And Eleanor falls into the gap between the two worlds once again.

  Mea is horrified. She wants to reach through the membrane and grab Eleanor, but the girl is nothing but a plummeting beacon of light, falling farther and farther away from her own world, and from Mea’s, with every passing moment.

  Stop! Mea cries. She turns away from the membrane and faces the darkness. Stop her!

  All warmth drains from the blackness around her.

  She cannot be stopped, the darkness says. She has entered the dream world. The girl is beyond my reach.

  Send me after her, Mea pleads. Please.

  But the darkness will not do so.

  You must wait.

  How long?

  As long as it takes.

  Mea turns back to the membrane and peers into Eleanor’s world. The woman standing in the doorway has fainted dead away, and a boy is bent over her, shouting something, and a door opens and Eleanor’s father runs into the room, also shouting something.

  Eleanor’s father.

  Mea watches the man as he attends to the unconscious woman.

  You, she thinks. I know you.

  The darkness swims in and closes over the membrane, obscuring Eleanor’s world from Mea’s view.

  This is not yours to see, the darkness says.

  Mea lingers there anyway, the image of Eleanor’s father fresh in her own memory as the black river of time and history courses around her.

  I know that man, Mea says.

  I have a bad feeling about this.

  Eleanor steps into her father’s office, cheered by the warm rush of air that spills out to meet her, by Jack’s grin, by Gerry’s presence, soft and large and matronly. She has almost forgotten her concern—what concern? What bothered her so much about this, anyway?

  And then the space in the doorway quivers. Eleanor notices it at the last possible moment, as her inertia is carrying her across the threshold. The trembling air is accompanied by that strange crackling sensation, and her skin prickles, and then her foot meets the floor, and her other foot follows, and the transition is complete.

  Gerry stands before her still, and Eleanor looks past her to see that the office has gone dreamy behind her, hazy and dim, a faint orange glow emanating from some shadow or another. Jack isn’t there. Neither is Gerry’s sea barge of a desk. She cannot hear the rain any longer—cannot hear much of anything at all, which makes her surroundings feel even more alien and unfamiliar.

  “Gerry,” Eleanor says.

  Gerry doesn’t an
swer, and Eleanor becomes aware that Gerry hasn’t moved much in the last few seconds. When the older woman turns, Eleanor is startled to see that Geraldine Rydell has become younger. Eleanor’s mind chokes on this, and she stares at the older woman, perplexed. Gerry’s graying hair is dark red now, and the fold of her brow over her blue eyes has receded, and the hatch marks over her lip have smoothed. She is overweight, but less so. There is still enough Gerry there for a girl to lose herself in, and so Eleanor steps closer and opens her arms and says, “Gerry, what’s going on, I’m—”

  Eleanor passes right through Gerry.

  She has never felt anything so unpleasant in her life. Not the car accident, not the strained neck and broken collarbone she suffered in the spring. Eleanor feels a flame sprout in her belly and grow—quickly, as if it is trying to consume her from the inside out. It swells and spreads, and she feels the horrible burning sensation expand into her lungs and her heart and her legs and hands, and then the pit of it goes utterly, bitingly cold, and the cold seems to contract, and Eleanor feels as if every inch of her body is imploding in the direction of her stomach.

  And then she emerges on the other side of Gerry, and the feeling passes, immediately.

  Eleanor gasps loudly, and drops to her knees. It takes a moment for the shock of it to fade, for her to notice that she is not burning or freezing or in pain anymore.

  “Fuck,” she groans. A long thread of spittle swings from her lips. Her breath comes in a staccato beat. She can’t catch it, and tries to swallow huge lungfuls of air as quickly as she can.

  She stays on her knees for a long time, then plants one palm on the floor and pushes herself onto one foot, and then the other.

  Gerry is still standing behind her. If she has moved, Eleanor cannot tell. She steps wide around the woman—if this really is Gerry, really is a woman—and peers suspiciously at her.

  “Gerry,” Eleanor says.

  Geraldine doesn’t answer.

  “GERRY!” Eleanor shouts.

  Nothing.

  But Gerry moves a little, shifting her weight onto one foot, and beneath her the floorboards creak. Eleanor looks down and sees that the office floor is gone, replaced with old wood planks. Gerry is standing on a threadbare rug. There are walls to either side of her, and a door in front of her, and Eleanor realizes that this is a hallway. It’s a house.

  Gerry’s house.

  Gerry is leaning forward, hands pressed to the door. She’s risen up on her toes, and is trying to peer through the window at the top. Whatever she sees has her worried, because she says something and almost scares Eleanor to death.

  “Go away,” Gerry says in a hoarse voice, almost a whisper. “Go, go away.”

  Eleanor studies Gerry carefully. She’s never seen this expression on Gerry’s face before. The woman’s eyes are wide and unblinking. Her mouth is drawn narrow and thin, and her skin seems to drain of color before Eleanor’s eyes.

  “Gerry,” Eleanor says, waving one hand at the woman.

  But Gerry doesn’t see Eleanor, or hear her. She just stares outside, her eyes following—something.

  Eleanor steps back and looks around. To the right of the front door is a living area. There’s a loveseat, a recliner, a coffee table, all tidily arranged. A basket of magazines sits beside the recliner, and a television remote is the only object on the coffee table. The television itself is perched on a dark cabinet beside a fireplace. The room smells of potpourri.

  On the mantel of the fireplace are framed photographs. Joshua. Charles. A couple of photos of the boys with their mother. One of the boys standing below a brown sign with white print that reads Fort Smith, Arkansas. They’re wearing fatigues in that one, and their heads glow bare in the sun.

  Behind the loveseat is a window with the curtains drawn. Eleanor goes to it and tentatively touches the curtains, afraid she might feel that awful burning sensation again. But all she feels is light fabric on her fingertips, and she draws the curtain back. Through the window a small green lawn unfolds. A tall oak looms over the yard, and it must be fall, because the ground is blanketed in brown and orange leaves.

  Beyond the lawn, parked at the curb, is a sedan painted beige. The driver’s door is open, and a man is stepping out of the car. He wears an olive green dress uniform with a field of pins and medals on the breast, and he carries a dark hat beneath one arm. The passenger door opens, and a second man, dressed much the same but with fewer medals on his jacket, steps onto the sidewalk.

  “Go away,” Gerry breathes again, and Eleanor realizes what is happening.

  She had convinced herself that it would not happen again. That, whatever it was, it was some sort of delusion. Maybe she’d eaten something bad, and gotten sick, and her brain had turned feverish. Maybe she had wandered off.

  All the way to a farm? Into the mountains? her mind had insisted.

  But here it was, happening again. And this time she wasn’t lost in a cornfield in Iowa someplace, watching herself as a child. She wasn’t burying herself in mud in some faraway mountain range. This time she was in her friend Gerry’s house, six or seven years in the past, watching the worst moment of Gerry’s life play itself out in front of her.

  A bad, bad feeling.

  Eleanor feels a wave of nausea overwhelm her, and she wants to vomit, and opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Her belly and her throat burn as if stomach acid has worked its way up, but there is nothing there. Nothing happens at all.

  Outside, the two men have made their way up the walk to the front door.

  “Go away!” Gerry shouts, without opening the door.

  One of the men knocks firmly.

  Eleanor hears the front door open, and quickly goes into the hallway.

  “No,” Gerry says.

  The two Army men stand on Gerry’s doorstep, hats beneath their arms, resigned expressions on their faces. The younger man says, “Ma’am, are you Mrs.—”

  “Don’t you tell me that!” Gerry cries, and she reaches for the door to swing it closed, but she misses, and Eleanor puts a hand to her mouth as she watches Gerry almost fall over. The poor woman doubles over, and Eleanor can hear Gerry gasping for air like a fish, except no air comes back out. Eleanor reaches for the woman, then remembers the fire and the ice, and, ashamed, pulls her hand back. Then Gerry bellows a teeth-rattling wail that sounds as if it comes from the soles of her feet, and her knees buckle, and she stumbles forward. Both men immediately drop their hats and go for Gerry’s arms, and scoop her up between them.

  Eleanor feels hot tears trace down her cheeks. She wipes them away with the heel of her palm.

  The Army men help Gerry past Eleanor—Eleanor steps back quickly to avoid them—and take her to the loveseat in the living room.

  “Mrs. Rydell,” the young man says. “Mrs. Rydell, can you hear me?”

  Eleanor doesn’t want to watch this. Gerry is slack in their arms, and they place her on the loveseat as if positioning a cloth doll. The older man reaches into his pocket and comes out with a small white packet, and deftly cracks it open beneath Gerry’s nose. He waves it about, and Gerry’s eyes begin to flutter, and Eleanor turns away.

  She feels as if she is being visited by the ghosts of Christmas.

  Something catches her ear, then—voices, distant and small—and she turns around, but there is nobody there. She walks past the open front door. A few leaves have blown in and snagged on the rug. The room opposite the living room is a dining room, with a small circular table in the center. It is draped with rose-colored lace, decorated with a vase of clean, bright lilies.

  Eleanor passes the dining room by, listening for the voices. She follows them down the hallway, passing closed doors along the way, and she opens each one to peek inside. She finds closets and bedrooms and the kitchen and a bathroom, and then she comes to the last door. It is at the end of the hallway, down three steps.

  The voices are louder now, but they’re muffled by something. White noise. A rushing sound. She presses her ear to the do
or, but can’t make out the voices clearly. The rushing noise is very loud and unnatural.

  Behind her she can hear the faint sounds of Gerry waking up, and she does not want to hear the words that Gerry will say, or the words the Army men will say. So she opens the door at the bottom of the stairs, and a hurricane rushes in.

  The wind is fierce and angry, and it tears the hallway to pieces behind her. Eleanor claps her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t diminish the howling current. She turns away from it, and she sees the house coming apart. The walls flex and bend and then fold and crumple and collapse as if the entire house were made from balsa wood and papier-mâché. Framed pictures fly off the wall and collide in the air. Glass flies everywhere, embedding itself in the tumbling walls. The wood planks in the floor separate from each other and become weightless.

  Eleanor’s hair rests straight and smooth on her shoulders, but she doesn’t notice.

  She is afraid for Gerry and the two Army men, so she turns and steps through the door. It slams behind her.

  Her first thought is that she is in Gerry’s garage, and the big door is open, because the room is flooded with pale light. It’s so bright that it makes her eyes hurt.

  The wind swirls around her, loud as a banshee.

  Her eyes adjust and she is dumbstruck.

  The room is not a garage at all, but the cargo hold of an aircraft, and the scene is chaotic. There are large green crates strapped down, and beyond them, the floor is covered with hundreds of little rollers. The crates are all marked U.S. Army. As she looks, one of the crates breaks free of its straps, and skids down the carpet of rollers, sliding into a row of jump seats that are mounted to the walls. This has happened before—many of the seats have already snapped free. In the few that still hang on, Eleanor sees terrified soldiers, plastic masks over their faces.

  At the far end of the cargo hold is nothing but blue sky and white clouds. The door is open, and the stiff cold winds at thirty thousand feet chew at the inside of the plane. The door looks broken—one end lists to the side, and she sees that the giant hydraulic strut that controls the door is twisted. The other strut still holds, but she can hear it whining in the wind, a terrible, shrill mechanical cry that can only mean something very bad is about to happen.