It didn’t make sense. The foggy man had almost a full-day’s head-start. He clearly had nothing to fear from the creatures in the fissure. Why, then, had he not simply come straight here to the cathedral? Why go to all the trouble of leaving those golems? Why reveal himself the way he did at the church? And why go to all the trouble of ambushing him at the factory, only to toss him back out onto the path?
What was his plan?
Feeling as if he suddenly weighed as much as a full-grown horse, Eric made his way slowly across the rocky floor of the crater to the stadium-sized hole at its center. Even as he approached the rim of that mysterious abyss, he expected something more. Surely a structure of some sort stood waiting for him inside the hole. Or perhaps he would find that the hole itself was a cathedral, with an ornate stairwell winding downward among marble columns and gorgeous glass lamps. But as he peered over the edge, he found nothing but shadows and gloom.
Even Father Billy’s dilapidated old church was more of a cathedral than this. How did the word “cathedral” ever even come to mind with this place? To Eric, it seemed like the exact opposite of a cathedral. It was as if he were gazing into one of the deepest and darkest pits of hell.
Several sets of wooden steps led down to a walkway that circled the rim of the hole and gave access to two questionable-looking staircases that descended along the inner walls on opposite sides.
Eric walked carefully down the steps, half-expecting to fall under the burden of the crater’s strange gravity. He crept gingerly to the aging railing and peered down into the darkness below.
It was like a bottomless pit. Even with the sun still shining overhead, the light only reached into the hole a short distance. The rest was utter blackness.
There was such a wrongness about this place that Eric had to steel himself against the urge to turn and run away. Surely whatever madness the dream would plunge him into would not be nearly as bad as whatever awaited him down there.
That heaviness was even stronger here. He could feel it crushing down on him as he peered down, threatening to push him into the abyss.
He had no idea where he was going to find the courage for this.
“Frightful, isn’t it?”
Eric jumped and turned. There, standing at the railing only a few feet away, peering down into the same blackness, was the foggy man.
But he wasn’t foggy now.
He was just a man.
Eric was certain there was no one here when he approached. There was literally nowhere to hide.
“You.”
“Me,” the stranger admitted. Without his mysterious shroud of invisible fog, there wasn’t much about him that was even remotely frightening. He wasn’t very big. In fact, he was rather scrawny in his dark jeans and black tee shirt. And he was barely more than a child, at most only twenty-one, with tousled black hair falling over a round and youthful face.
He turned away from Eric and strolled along the railing, still staring down into the darkness below them. “Fascinating. I’ve been to a lot of strange places, but this is definitely the most intense. Can you feel it?”
Eric remained silent. He didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. He could feel it. There was a strange energy about this place. It was more than just the heaviness. He couldn’t quite describe it.
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”
Still, Eric did not reply. But he did agree. This place was terrifying.
The young stranger stopped walking and placed both hands on the rail. “What could be down there?”
That was the question of the day, wasn’t it? What was hidden at the bottom of this hole? What could possibly be worth all this trouble? Eric wondered that himself. He also wondered if the answer was remotely worth the very likely mortal cost of finding out.
“There’s more than one fissure leading away from here, you know. Another one stretches out over Lake Superior. Another into Canada. At least two run west from here. There are other singularities, too, each with its own fissures snaking off it. There are places like this all over the world. But only this fissure is so well-defined that you can use it to travel all the way to its singularity.”
Now he turned to Eric, his intense eyes fixed on him. “Why is that?”
Sensing that his time for remaining quiet was over, Eric replied, “I wouldn’t know.”
The no-longer-foggy man stared at him with those piercing blue eyes, studying him, considering.
Eric stared back. He wasn’t sure what this mysterious person wanted him to say, but he had no intention of playing along. This was, after all, the man who left three monsters to kill him and then clubbed him over the head and threw him out a loading dock door. He would have liked to walk over there and knock the stupid kid on his pompous ass…but of course that brought him back to those three monsters. Punching anyone who could do such a thing simply seemed like a very dumb idea.
Finally, the young stranger turned and looked down into the darkness below them again, as if deciding that Eric really didn’t have an answer for him. “I’ve never come across anything like this place before. It’s wrong. It scares me.”
“It’s a scary place,” Eric reasoned.
“I know about scary places. I’ve been to a lot of them. Just a few months ago I was in Mexico. There are these caves there…” He trailed off and stared down into that darkness for a moment, his eyes distant, distracted, haunted. Then he blinked it away and smiled at him. “Four men went insane and ate their own hands.”
Eric couldn’t make himself hide his revulsion. He didn’t know what was worse, the idea of men devouring their own hands or the fact that this psychopath could relate such a thing with a smile on his face.
But perhaps the smile was nothing more than a mask. Perhaps that haunted look that had passed over his eyes a moment before had revealed some shred of his humanity.
He hoped so, at least.
“But this…” The man gazed down into the darkness again. “This feels so wrong… No matter where I am, the wrongness of this place doesn’t go away.”
Eric had no idea what this meant, but he didn’t bother saying so.
“My tricks don’t work here. Why?”
Eric actually glanced around, expecting to find someone else here with them. But they were alone. The question was obviously for him. “What?”
There was no smile this time when the stranger turned his eyes on him. He glared. “I can’t shift here. Why can’t I shift here?”
“Why would I know that?”
“Don’t play games with me.”
“I’m not playing games,” Eric replied calmly. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what you mean by ‘shift.’”
For a moment, the young man continued to glare at him silently. He seemed to be trying to decide if he was being lied to, but Eric had no idea why this person would think he had any answers for him.
“Who do you work for?”
Eric stared back at him. “What?”
“Answer me.”
“Creek Bend High School.”
This seemed to catch him off guard. “What?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“I told you not to play games with me.”
“And I told you I’m not playing games. Just who do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. FBI maybe.”
“FBI…? Really?”
“Maybe.”
Eric chuckled. “Right. I’d make a great FBI agent, wouldn’t I? Stumbling around here like an idiot, nearly getting myself killed. Repeatedly. Cursing at that ape-thing that was throwing rocks at me back at the lake. That was very professional. Even better, I should join the CIA. Become a secret agent.”
The foggy man, still missing his fogginess, considered him for another moment.