begin. Parson walks on a bit before looking back. Again he is reduced to a shadow, indistinct among the pines.
“Are you coming?”
“They said not to go into the woods. And I’m more inclined to listen to them after the crazy shit you just told me.”
“They did say so,” he says. “But remember that I am one of this they. Now I say otherwise. Come.”
He walks on. “Shit,” Mona says. She grabs the rifle, slings it over her back, and stuffs the pistol into the back of her shorts. Then she hotfoots it to catch up to him, and has to listen for his limping step (for he is still unsteady on his feet) to find him.
The trees overhead shred the moonlight into pieces and cast them at their feet. Mona has been here so long she almost doesn’t notice its color—for the moonlight, as always, is pink. The mesa blooms just above them like a vast fungus, lit salmon-pink by the moon; though just above it, in a spindly stretch of clouds, blue lightning plays like otters in a stream. She cannot stop looking around, trying to spy any movement or watching eyes. Will Parson’s kin look as he and Mrs. Benjamin looked on the other side? Will she even be able to see them at all? Will they be invisible?
“You appear worried,” says Parson.
“How can you tell?” asks Mona, because under the trees it’s pitch-black.
He does not answer.
“Mr. Parson… can you see in the dark?” asks Mona.
“Light,” says Parson, “is mere radiation. There are other ways of seeing.”
She chooses not to follow this line of discussion. “Should I be worried?”
“I am not sure. Were you an ordinary citizen of Wink—a person born and bred here, I mean—I would say yes, definitely. There is a reason they do not go into the wilderness. It is not theirs.”
“Is it yours?”
“Not precisely,” says Parson. “Let us say it is a home to the less adaptable members of my family.”
“And you don’t think I should be worried about that?” asks Mona. “Because I’m already kind of worried about that.”
“Hm,” he says, thinking. “No. You are different. I have always believed so. But I am not sure how yet.”
“That’s not comforting at all,” says Mona.
“I did not really intend it to be,” he says. Then he stops, and listens.
Mona immediately swivels and brings the rifle to her shoulder. She eyes the trees, looking for a swell of darkness among the tattered moonlight, or the gleam of a rifle barrel parting the branches.
“There is no one there,” says Parson. “We are just on the… verge of something. Come along.” He stumps ahead, parts a tangle of pine branches with the blade of his hand, and walks into a copse of trees. Mona follows, saying, “If you could let me know why you’re stopping ahead of time, it might keep me from popping off a rou—”
As the branches release her she immediately notices the air is different. It’s electrical, with that familiar scent of too many copiers running at once. But it is also terribly cold and clammy, and it stinks of stagnation and rot.
As she puzzles over this, she realizes she is now in a place very different from where she was before.
The starlight has turned a dull, jaundiced amber that seeps through the cloudy sky. They stand in an immense, muddy trench, with twisted, cancerous-looking trees clutching the embankment. Sickly white fruit the size of cantaloupes hangs from their branches. The fruit is faintly luminous, like a predator from the ocean deeps.
“Do I want to ask where we are?” she says.
Parson shrugs. “Somewhere else.” He continues strolling along as if this otherworldly place is no stranger than your average municipal park.
She gazes up. The sky is thick with mist, but she thinks she can see pink stars peeping through in places.
She runs to catch up. “Are we… on the other side? Because if so, I notice I’m not… well. Almost dying, or whatever it was.”
“Correct. We are not quite there, but we are not quite here,” says Parson. “Some places are in-between places. Many of them, in fact. Wink itself is riddled with places inside of places inside of places. It extends to many different places, like a continent submerged under many different seas.”
“Then time isn’t the only thing broken here,” says Mona. “Or I guess I should say bruised.”
“Possibly. Wink is filled with weak spots, where one world—one plane of reality—becomes indistinguishable from another. The town proper is mostly safe. It is—or was—maintained