Walter suddenly became aware of a strange chill seeping into his lower body. When he looked down, he saw that he’d sunk nearly to his nipples into the glossy hardwood floor. Alarmed, he stood up and found that he wasn’t trapped, as if in cement or quicksand. The surface had simply become liquid beneath him—a thin, water-like liquid, approximately knee-deep now that he was standing. He reached down to scoop up some of the liquid floor with his cupped palms.
“Remarkable,” he said, allowing the floor to trickle out between his fingers. “Belly, do you see this, too?”
He turned to his friend and was stunned to realize that Bell was gone.
So was Nina.
Walter was all alone in a huge, empty room with no windows. The room was so enormous that its distant walls were hazy and indistinct. There was no furniture. No detail. Just miles and miles of this strange liquid floor.
Walter had never thought that solitary confinement sounded like particularly bad punishment. He enjoyed his own company, had plenty of mental games he liked to play, and a wide variety of intriguing theories to contemplate. In fact, the idea of being locked in a small room seemed kind of comforting. Almost womblike in a strange way.
As a child, Walter had always sought out small hiding places as temporary refuges from bullies.
But this vast empty room was the loneliest, most awful place he had ever been. Its dimensions were soul-crushing, making him feel as small and irrelevant as an ant in the middle of a salt flat. An ant without a colony, banished to die alone.
His mind immediately seized on this metaphor and when he looked down at his wet hands he saw that they had taken on the elongated, dual clawed form of an ant’s bristly pretarsus. It should have been terrifying, but the very spook-show scariness of this newest twist had an opposite, pacifying effect on Walter.
It’s not real.
The image of his creepy ant-hands was nothing more than a standard, slightly silly hallucination. A day-glo carnival, haunted house kind of fear, rather than the all too real fear of loss and loneliness evoked by the huge empty room.
Ant hands, he could handle. Pun intended.
Walter was a scientist. A veteran user of consciousness expanding substances of all sorts. He wasn’t about to let himself be distracted by irrelevant mental trickery. He needed to focus.
And just like that, the huge room was gone, and Walter found himself standing up to his knees in Reiden Lake.
Only it was more like a soundstage dressed to look like Reiden Lake. The trees looked flat, like they’d been painted onto the walls in a harsh, stylized manner meant to read well on black and white film. The reeds and brush around the edge of the water seemed monochromatic and papery, and there were only three different groupings, repeated over and over all along the shore.
The red Coleman lantern was there, too—the one they had been using the night of their first encounter with the Zodiac Killer. But instead of a flame, it was just a lick of flapping orange-and-yellow fabric. The water around his legs was the only thing that seemed real.
But what was still really bothering him was the fact that Bell and Nina were nowhere to be seen.
“Belly?” he called. “Belly, are you here?”
Nothing. No reply. He was still alone.
This seemed wrong somehow. It seemed impossible that their first use of that particular blend had evoked such a power empathic connection, and yet this time, Walter was off on his own disconnected trip, unable to even see his friend. Could they have gotten the mixture wrong somehow? Could one of the ingredients have been tainted, or of questionable quality?
It was an annoying and frustrating setback, but there was nothing Walter could do but ride it out, record every aspect in detail, and then go back to the lab and try again.
That’s when the gate started to open.
At first, it just looked like the kind of subtle bubbling under the paint that might be seen when there was water leaking behind a wall, only it was the air itself that was bubbling and peeling away. Rather than being directly in front of Walter, the way it had been that first night, the budding gate was slightly to the left and lower down, tilted at a tipsy angle. As it started to split and gape open, Walter took an involuntary step back, green lake water sloshing around his shins.
Where the hell is Nina?
Nina and her gun were supposed to be watching over Walter and Belly, waiting for the appearance of the gate and any new, potentially dangerous visitors that might come through. But she wasn’t there, leaving the unarmed Walter alone and unprotected.
Then it occurred to him that it was possible Nina could hear him, even if he couldn’t hear or see her.
“Nina,” he said. “Nina, I hope that you can hear me. I’m going to do my best to verbalize what I’m experiencing.”
He paused for a moment, wishing desperately for a reply, even though he was sure he wouldn’t get one. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t.
“Alright,” he continued, determined to articulate as much information as possible. “I seem to be inside a kind of artificial environment. Almost like a... a simulacrum of Reiden Lake.”
When he said the word simulacrum, the lake, trees and sky around him suddenly fluttered, like a painted curtain rustled by a passing breeze. He ignored the disturbing ripple and tried to focus on the gateway.
“The gateway has opened,” he said, “but it seems smaller. Crooked, almost unstable. If I were to try and pass through it, I would have to do so on my hands and knees.”
That’s when he was struck with a notion so compelling, he felt physically staggered by it. A notion so simple and obvious that he couldn’t believe it had never occurred to him until that moment.
What if he did just that? What if he went through the gate?
Of course, it was a terrible idea. He could almost see the raised eyebrow on Bell’s disapproving face at the very thought of it. After all, they had absolutely no idea what lay on the other side. Would the atmosphere be breathable? Would there even be an atmosphere at all, or would he find himself in some purely theoretical dimension? One of pure thought and energy, where mundane functions of the human body—such as breathing—would be rendered meaningless and irrelevant.
But, could he truly call himself a scientist if he were to pass up such a unique opportunity? What about all the potential knowledge that might be gained on the other side?
What about the danger? What if, in passing through, he was transformed into a radioactive monster like the Zodiac Killer?
Walter stared, mesmerized and silent, at the glistening gate. He was locked in a profound inner war with himself. He knew he would be crazy to take that kind of risk, but he’d also be crazy not to.
He reached a hand slowly toward the gate.
Gracile, reaching tendrils started forming around the edges as the gate pulsed, widening, then narrowing, then widening again. It would be a tight fit, and Walter would need to time himself precisely to push through when the gate was at its widest.
He took a sloshing step closer, fingers less than in inch from the undulating opening.
That’s when he heard a terrified scream.
He jerked his fingers back—convinced that the gate itself had screamed—and stood, unmoving and silent, for several heartbeats, waiting for something to happen. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the water against his legs.
Then a thud, followed by the sound of breaking glass. As if reacting to the sound, the gate shrank and curled in on itself like a salted slug, and then it was gone.
Another scream, this one even more drawn out and intense. Walter spun toward the sound...
...and found himself standing in the middle of Nina’s bedroom. Disoriented and swirling with vertigo, he sat straight down on the suddenly normal, solid wood floor, pushing a shaking hand through his hair and struggling to pull himself together.