Peter followed Christian through, across the dusty attic floorboards, onto cold, bare earth and then out from under a low ledge of rock.
He rose and found himself in a clearing on the side of a hill, a natural amphitheater overgrown with pale grass. He turned in a complete circle, looking around. Boulders capped in moss had been scattered helter-skelter around the glade. It took a moment of study to recognize they had been deliberately positioned, creating a semicircle, like teeth in the lower jaw of some enormous antediluvian brute. A single dead-looking tree, deformed and hunched, cast wild branches out over the ruin. Ruin of what? Some place of cruel worship, perhaps. Or maybe just the equivalent of a scenic turnoff. Who could say? Not Peter Stockton.
His father’s hand fell onto his shoulder. The wind hissed through the blades of grass.
“Listen,” his father said, and Peter inclined his head. After a moment his eyes widened.
The grass whispered, “poison, poison, poison, poison.”
“It’s murder-weed,” his dad told him. “It says that whenever the wind blows and men are about.”
The sky above them was the dull color of a bloodstained bedsheet.
Peter looked back at the door as Mr. Fallows pulled his way out of one world and into the other. On this side the doorframe was made of rough stone and the door itself was built into the slope of the hill, which rose steeply away above that rock ledge. Charn crawled through last and closed the door behind him.
“Regard your watches,” Charn said. “I make it 5:40 A.M. By 5:40 P.M. we must be on our way back. If you open that door one minute after midnight, you will find naught but a slab of rock. Oh, and then you are in for it. In our world the door opens every three months. But three months there is nine months here. You must wait the term of a woman’s pregnancy before it will open again, on the summer solstice, June twenty-first. And in case you can’t do the math . . . yes. It has been thirty-seven years since I first opened the door in our world. But it has been one hundred and eleven years here.”
“A century of twilight,” Christian said, with a prickle of delight.
“A century of shadows,” Peter replied, in a tone of hushed awe.
Charn talked over them. “I speak from terrifying personal experience: You do not want to risk being caught here. I spent most of 1985 in this world, was hunted by fauns, betrayed by whurls, and forced to strike a vile bargain with a golem in the service of General Gorm the Obese. It was always twilight, nine months of shadows fighting shadows. If we are separated and you do not find your way back here, you will be left.”
God, he loved to talk, Peter thought. It seemed to Peter that Charn’s true calling was not hunting but lecturing.
They followed Charn down the meandering flight of rough stone steps. The branches of dead trees creaked and rustled, and ancient leaves blew around their ankles.
Once they all stopped at the sound of a great distant lowing.
“Ogre?” Peter’s father asked.
Charn nodded. The groan came again, a sound of aching despair. “Mating season,” Charn said, and chuckled indulgently.
Peter’s rifle thudded and banged against his back, and once the barrel caught on a branch. Mr. Fallows offered to carry it for him. His voice did not quite disguise an edge. For himself Peter was relieved to get it off his back. He felt he was already carrying too much. He hated hunting for the most part. There was too much waiting around, and his father wouldn’t let him bring his phone. Shooting things was fun, but often hours went by and nothiiiiiiing happened. He sent a mental prayer up to whatever barbaric gods ruled this world for a good quick piece of slaughter before he himself dropped dead, of boredom.
Christian Longs for Night
They went down and down. Christian heard the rushing of water in the distance and shivered with delight, as if he were already up to his waist in the frigid stream.
Charn led them off the steps and into the woods. A yard from the path, he touched a black silk ribbon hanging from a low branch. He nodded meaningfully and walked on into the poisoned forest. They followed a trail of the discreet ribbons for not quite half a mile and at last arrived upon the blind, set