The Portal in the Forest Compendium

By Matt Dymerski

Containing the six books of the Portal in the Forest series from award-winning author Matt Dymerski, this compendium follows the complete saga of the Crushing Fist and the struggle of the worlds of man to survive in an uncaring and brutal multiverse.

THE PORTAL IN THE FOREST
A rural Virginia neighborhood finds a portal to other realities that changes destinations each day. Unfortunately, all the worlds it reaches have suffered unique and terrible dooms. A determined stranger and a suburb of abandoned children might be able to save the world if they can just figure out the common link between the myriad destroyed Earths.

THE DESOLATE GUARDIANS
Heath, an off-hours network manager, discovers that his computers can connect to other Internets on other Earths. He becomes the only link between the scattered men and women still guarding the worlds of man, but what can a few lonely guardians do against the coming darkness?

THE MOON AFLAME
Poor Alek is a fool that refuses to gaze up at His glory and accept the Change. Alek and the Free heretics must be rooted out and obliterated. The way must be paved for the coming of the Dreamer On High--humanity will dance under the Moon aflame as salvation descends from the sky.

THE EMPTY EARTH
With disaster looming, our scattered few must work together. One such guardian is the reluctant author Noah Fulmer. After returning from a mission, he finds that the human race seems to have vanished. Is there something wrong with the world, with his mind--or with reality itself?

THE CRUSHING FIST
As the worlds of man begin to collapse, displaced billions flee coreward for aid. Conn, an ex-soldier, tries to piece together the link between a slaughter-filled mission five years before and the current doom bearing down on the Earths of the Empire. Between his former military squadmates and his new connections among the elite, he must uncover the truth of the Empire's mortal flaw.

OUR FINAL ACTS
There's nowhere left to run now. The Crushing Fist is bearing down on the Empire from every direction, cutting off any chance of escape. The First World has failed and been destroyed. The skies are beginning to leak compressed space and the ground is oozing magma from the enormous pressure on reality itself. The next few days hold the final acts of the human race. For whatever it's worth, we intend to make those acts count.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Dymerski
• Release date: Mar 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370891887

Matt Dymerski

I'm an author of horror. I write a wide range; everything from short story anthologies to full-length novels. As an avid horror fan myself, I specialize in finding new ways to disturb even the most jaded horror reader.

Book preview

The Portal in the Forest

Chapter 1

I'd instinctually noticed something wrong with the neighborhood for several days before my brooding focus lifted long enough for me to truly grow curious.

Standing and walking out from the porch where I'd been sitting, I approached three children that were huddled around some sort of object.

What do you have there?

Immediately, the children dropped their object of interest and bolted.

I scanned the street, but nobody else was around at this time of day. The object they'd dropped was a book - and that was the odd thing. I'd recently seen children walking around with half-hidden books, magazines, and even newspapers. That might have been normal in my day, but modern children were obsessed with their phones and video games. Why were they all walking around with artifacts of the written word?

A Tale of Two Cities… I dusted it off, flipped it over, scanned the front and back… opened it up, nothing inside… flipped to the first page…

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the age of wisdom…

I frowned. It was technically correct, but the phrases were out of order. Hey! Where did you get this?

The darting children rounded a distant corner without more than giggles and screams.

Patience. I had it, they didn't. I watched from the porch for the next several days, waiting for the right moment. It came without much fanfare: an older boy walked past with several of his friends in tow. None of them looked down the row of bushes in the yard that led to me; none of them were concerned by my presence.

I followed them nearly a block behind. They did look back at several points, confirming my suspicions about a neighborhood secret, but I casually evaded their worried scans. They turned into the old Dodson lot, now overgrown with heavy brush, and I followed them beyond into thicker Virginia woodlands that lay untouched past the edge of our suburb.

It sat right off the edge of an old trail, flanked by centennial trees. There was no weird device, no flaring energies, no fanfare at all - just an odd and highly irregular oval of blurred space. Beyond sat a suburban street lined by houses.

I actually wasn't too surprised. I'd had several days to think and guess, and what else could it have been but a portal to another dimension? Neighborhood kids weren't about to order books printed with strange malformations, but they would certainly trade around oddities from another universe. The boys ahead had disappeared into the vast breach, and I'd seen children acting oddly for weeks, so I assumed there was little threat from biological contamination. We'd have all been dead much sooner if there was any threat of that.

I hadn't seen any suspicious activity at night. Best to be back by nightfall. The kids might have found out something about the behavior of the portal, and they'd probably spent weeks poking at it before daring to go through. There was every chance it disappeared at night, or… maybe it changed destinations, stranding anyone on the other side. I hadn't heard of any missing children, so I guessed that they'd taken the appropriate precautions.

Peering beyond, I tried to notice anything out of the ordinary before crossing the threshold, but it looked like any other suburban town.

I stepped through, noting no unusual sensations. The bridge between dimensions seemed to be stable enough.

The moment I crossed, I realized that there was a problem: the portal back was a ten-foot-long jagged oval, and it was sitting in the middle of the street.

There was no commotion… no hub-bub… no one had noticed a portal to another universe hanging around and blocking traffic. That meant that this portal was new to this location, this suburb was newly built and empty or very old and abandoned, or… everyone here was already dead.

Straining my ears to listen to the absolute quiet, I gradually began leaning toward that most grim analysis.

The closest houses to the portal had broken windows. What time was it? A little past noon? The neighborhood kids had clearly begun systematically looting, but it was impossible to tell whether this was a new daily location, or whether the portal only went here.

And why had the portal been created at all? There seemed to be no significance on either end.

I heard the older kids smashing about in one of the nearby dwellings, so I chose a quick direction, and I soon came to houses that had not been broken into. Carefully eyeing the vector of the portal's backwards emanation, I came to a split-level house that was unremarkable… except that a hole had been carved out of one wall of a size that matched the expanding cone of the rift.

A strong breeze at my back, I approached the repeatedly swaying front door. If it wasn’t already closed by the wind - yes, the wood near the knob had been ruptured by someone who had been very desperate to either escape or get inside. I stepped across the threshold… only to crunch across glass. After clearing several corners in the living room and kitchen beyond, I backed into a safe area and looked up. As I'd guessed, every light bulb that I could see had been purposely broken.

What the hell had happened in this house?

I know you wrote it down, I said to the still and silent darkness. You always do.

As if in response to my cynicism, the darkness offered up a book sitting quietly among shards of broken glass. Carefully picking it up and cleaning it off, I flipped through half of it, skipping past random illustrations and musings to find the most recent writings.

---

48

65

47

185 101 84 very slight change between

99

48 Jeffers

62

47

~45 seconds?

Moves no sooner than 45 seconds ✔

first appeared at 2 am? 1 am but slow

hide, break all light sources done

wait

write down everything

[tear drop stain]-omething is outside our house. We're sitting now. Nothing more can be done. All we can do now is wait.

We first noticed it somewhere around 1 AM in the morning. David came over right about that time, and he says he saw something weird with one of the neighbor's houses, but he didn't know what to make of it. Ryan and I were here housesitting, but did not notice anything strange until 2 AM. It began with an eerie sense of unease. We were in the basement watching a show on a laptop, playing cards?

David felt it too, and thought he heard something. We went to the windows. It was a very dark night. Clouds covered the moon. The back yard was lit only by two floodlights from the property across the way, and very thick fog rolled across the long expanses of grass and bushes. We saw a few lit panes in the house directly opposite ours, and, through other windows, we saw a few lights on in a neighbor's house. Something seemed off about the shared back yards - something horribly and innately wrong - but it was impossible to say what.

We went around the house closing and locking every window and turning on every light. For a while, it made us feel safe. We clung low, peering out between the blinds, each of us trying to figure out why the back yards terrified us so.

I had the strangest idea, before it even happened, that there was something wrong with the lights outside. I watched the two flood lights far off and to the left, and then I watched the lit window directly opposite us that seemed to be weirdly bulging and changing shape as I stared. Was it just a trick of the light? The crossbar seemed to be moving up and up and up until… there was no way I was imagining it…

We knew for sure when our neighbor two houses down came out to let out his dog. We heard it barking, and we rushed to the side windows, watching from total darkness. Ryan slid the window open just enough to shout go inside! It's not safe!, even though we didn't know for sure…

A third floodlight came on abruptly three houses down; an angled and bright light that usually lit up many of our backyards. The back porch light our unaware neighbor had turned on…. suddenly went dark. A strangled cry rang out, the dog squealed in horrible pain, and we slammed our window shut in terror.

There was something out there.

Ryan suggested that it was some large and fast-moving creature that had been lurking between us and the third floodlight.

David peered out the window, offering no ideas.

I sat in a corner, trying not to hyperventilate. We'd been afraid, definitely, but there'd been no proof until… until…

There! David whispered. It moved again!

We practically planted our faces against the glass. Our hapless neighbor's porch light was back on, and… the middle floodlight across the way was out. Darkness dominated the space between our backyards.

What's it shaped like? Ryan asked, confused.

David just shook his head as he peered intently at the night.

To block out that high-set floodlight, the thing out there either had to be very tall, or… very close…

Gasping, I pulled them both down just as the windows began to rattle.

We hid in the corner beneath the windows, not daring to move until the rattling stopped.

Eventually, David peeked.

As he did so, screams rang out from the house opposite ours. We peeked, too, and we saw that the weirdly morphing window had gone dark. All the other lights outside were on at full strength.

It's… jumping from light to light… David breathed, looking rather sick. We watched intently as his guess proved true: one light came on, another went out, and our neighbors within that light screamed in pain and terror… and went silent.

Turn off all the lights, I whispered, my heart pounding. We have to break all our lights.

David stayed at the window and brought out his cellphone to call the police. Ryan and I hurried through the house, smashing light bulbs with shaking hands.

I'm so sorry, Ryan said quietly as we met up back in the kitchen, now cloaked in darkness. I just wanted to hang out with you, and then… this…

I touched his arm. It's crazy, I know, but it's not your fault. There's stories, always stories…

I remember our words, because… screams came from the basement, and we rushed through the house -

Pitch black radiated from a rectangle on the floor, darker even than the non-light of the basement at night. I realized our mistake at the same moment that I saw half of David lying in silhouette on the floor: with all our other lights broken, the entity had jumped to the glow of his cellphone. An expanding rectangular cone of utter darkness lined the space from the phone on the floor to the ceiling.

Ryan and I froze, not daring to move. What was this thing? Could it see? Could it think? Was it aware of us at all?

Time wore on, and every muscle in my still body began to burn to its limit. If we made no sound, if we made no move, would we survive?

As I felt myself about to break, light flashed by our windows.

Police! someone shouted. If there's anybody back here, identify yourselves and step out!

A few moments later, the void was gone from our basement, and bloodcurdling screams echoed outside. A loud gunshot followed.

Ryan and I plugged up all the windows with blankets and pillows as best we could, then huddled in the basement.

I thought to peer out with just my eye exposed and watch the thing leap from light to light in search of more victims. Forty-five seconds. It never jumps sooner than forty-five seconds since the last. It barely missed Mr. Jeffers, our neighbor, who I can see hiding in the basement next to ours. If it could have jumped sooner and gotten him, it would have…

It revels in the play of light and dark outside. That is its strength: it needs light, but, without darkness, it has no place to hide.

We just have to get to morning, and everything will be alright…

The half of David that was outside the cone of blackness… is starting to smell…

5 AM

6 AM

Almost sunrise

come on

No… no, it couldn't

I can see the sky lightening, but… it couldn't…

It couldn't jump to the Sun, could it?

oh God

We're going to try to get it to jump to a cellphone again, then trap it in the laundry room - no windows, no escape

I'm so sorry

---

Sorry for what? I would never know. I dropped the journal, as the rest of it was blank.

Moving further into the house, wary of unwarranted darkness, I quietly descended the steps into the basement. All the high and narrow windows within sat plugged by pillows and blankets, except for one.

Half of a rotting corpse lay decaying in one corner. Covering my mouth and nose with my shirt, I moved further in.

There it was: a single door, shut, with no other means of access. That must have been the laundry room.

I opened the door carefully, even though I knew the entity was already gone. A single rotting hand lay within, holding a dead cellphone. Grey cinder blocks formed the walls - a small beam of light filtered through a crack in the foundation. That was how the thing had escaped.

Ah, you never really had a chance…

I took a towel from the dryer and threw it over the remaining hand, the best burial these people would ever get.

I left the house without another word, and proceeded back toward the rift. Had the darkness entity somehow bored through the wall and opened the portal? Perhaps that was how it had arrived here in the first place… but if it had come to our world, it'd only entered straight into a cloud-covered forest at night, found itself without a light source, and evaporated on the spot. A miscalculation in the most ironic degree…

Or so I assumed, since neighborhood children were playing with the rift instead of being annihilated.

Or, perhaps, the rift on this side had gone somewhere else at the time. It was impossible to say, at least until tomorrow.

I didn't normally entertain such grim thoughts, but I couldn't help but wonder, as I stepped back into my own universe, what it must have been like for the people on this world to look up and see their Sun turning black… only to find themselves disintegrating a moment later. Friends, family, neighbors, all screaming in terror and confusion…

And the rest of the world, slowly rotating into a lethal sunrise with nothing but silence to warn them…

Curious. I thought I'd dropped this journal back at the house… shrugging, I tucked it under one arm and began walking home, my thoughts bitter and brooding. Hopefully, tomorrow, the portal will go somewhere new… and I'll have something to occupy my time.

***

Chapter 2

After carefully applying my thumb to the red glass surface to leave several natural smudges, I carefully pressed the panel into the metal frame I'd devised. Once the transparent crimson rectangle was firmly in place, I tapped the center.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

That one did it: the glass cracked right up the middle, offsetting each half by a barely perceptible degree. It was a very slight malformation, but that was the point. I attached the framed glass to a metal rod and positioned it just so… measuring the placement of the nearby mirror and camera, I made sure everything was in place.

I stepped out of the room and closed the door behind me. The string attached to the door pulled the covering away, revealing my object of study only once I'd left the room.

A lanky and bespectacled boy of about thirteen stood in the next room, clearly surprised to see me. What are you doing here?

"What are you doing here?" I asked back, glancing around at the empty and dust-filled chambers of the abandoned house I'd slipped into.

Is this your house? he asked.

Absolutely not. That wouldn't be safe at all. I moved to a single rickety table I'd salvaged as a place to put my laptop and reader device. I gave the system one more run-through before I turned on the camera in the next room.

He stepped a little closer, looking at my laptop screen from afar. What's that?

It's a journal I found in another universe, I replied, carefully directing the makeshift page-turner I'd created. But I suspect it's a cognitive hazard. I dropped it, but then still had it with me later. I even brought it back here to our world… very stupid move.

You're weird. After a small nervous laugh, he took one step closer. Why's it red like that?

Don't read it directly, I warned him. The book is in the next room. I've reflected its image off of a mirror, through a smudged and offset spectrum filter, into a camera, which sends the image to this computer upside down… remember, it's backwards, too, because of the mirror, so what we see here has many obfuscations and errors to protect our minds. Finally, I built a custom OCR program to translate the malformed text to this device.

Eyes wide, he came fully forward and touched the rather battered device directly. What's it do?

It's a Braille reader.

He laughed for real this time. That's an awful lot to read some book, right?

You can never be too safe. I suggest you tell the other kids in the neighborhood about this technique, given their habit of stealing things from other universes.

He took a step back. I don't really talk to the other kids much…

But you've been through that portal in the woods?

Yeah…

Can you tell me anything about it? I asked, running my hands along the Braille reader as I did so.

Christ.

menace butler outvoice snubbiest pigsticker unallayed nephrectomising reappropriation nefarious peninsularism commence psychedelia osmeteria guthrie

Even through all the safeguards, errors, and translation into Braille - which was normally the holy grail of hazard filters - the book was insane gibberish. I'd first seen it as a journal filled with diary-like musings and random doodles… it was only pure luck that I hadn't read anything but the last entry. That account had made sense of the empty world I'd visited, and its apocalypse by hungry darkness entity. Had that part of the book been fake, too? What, then, had killed everyone?

But I'd seen the half-disintegrated corpses. That much, at least, had to have been true. Had the unknown girl who'd written those things somehow added to the end of the book without realizing what it was? Or had it acquired cognitohazardous properties after she was already dead?

"The portal was just there one day, the boy explained. I was walking and ran into a bunch of younger and older kids throwing things into it. Guys dared each other, sure, but nobody was that stupid. We threw stuff into it, even made a big rope and let a stray dog run around in there. It seemed safe after a while. Only thing, though. It goes somewhere new every morning. We don't know what would happen if we were still inside at night."

So, it was as I'd suspected.

Holding a box, my eyes closed, I crept into the next room and closed the cardboard flaps around the book. I only opened my eyes once it was safely sealed within.

Is it safe now? the boy asked.

As safe as it can be, with barebones tools, I told him, heading for the front door with the box under my arm. Well, are you coming along?

He was, apparently. He followed maybe ten or twenty feet behind me as I headed through the old Dodson lot and back into the old-growth forests beyond the last row of suburban houses. The Blue Ridge Mountains towered on the horizon as I crested the abrupt hill just shy of the portal. For a moment, I could see above the treescape, and I scanned the distance out of habit - but noticed nothing anomalous.

Several children, ranging from young to upper teens, sat around the portal. They all froze as I approached, clearly fearing that their secret had finally been discovered by the adults, but I ignored their apprehension. What do we have today?

The oldest boy, probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, stood slowly. It's a bad one. Instinctively responding to my implicit authority, he waited.

I peered through the vast oval rift.

This time, the portal had opened into an area too small to contain it. Before me, I saw three spaces: a gloom-filled and empty restaurant, a rain-filled alley filled with strewn trash, and the back section of some sort of office - also dark and empty. The sky, visible only above the alley in the middle portion, sat opaque and stormy. The entire scene was eerily quiet, and I realized that sound did not travel back through the rift. What's so bad about this one?

Wait for it.

I did wait. A moment later, lightning flickered quietly, revealing the terrible secret of this new world. I see. I looked down at the box under my arm. This thing needed to go before it had a chance to do… whatever it was capable of. I began running through scenarios in my head, judging the likelihood of an active threat this long after every human on that planet had died horribly.

Grimly, I stepped through the rift.

I looked back and saw the forest and the assorted kids. Their images ran hazy from the rain pouring down the front of the portal. It wasn't lost on me: matter and energy native to this world seemed to have a passive inability to cross to ours.

Staying close to the alley wall to dodge the worst of the rain, I stepped gingerly over the places the lightning had shown me to avoid. I paused once I reached the street, and peered both directions for a few moments.

Another flash of lightning struck, this time followed by tremendous thunder that shook my very bones. Under this second round of flashing, I saw them again: corpses, strewn all about the alley and street. Huddled masses had fled this direction and been cut down without mercy. Tragic enough, certainly, but odd for another reason… their rotting remains were invisible when not under direct illumination.

I crept into the restaurant with a pounding heart. An ancient and decayed smell filled the humid gloom. I moved through an empty dining area and searched through several cabinets in the back until I found a flashlight. Knocking and turning it until it finally came on, I shined the light around.

Under the beam of my flashlight, almost every seat in the empty dining area held a corpse, either hunched or yawning depending on the direction it had fallen. I had only managed to avoid touching them by sheer luck. Little twisting blackened strings of fungus and rot were all that remained on their plates, a fitting feast for the dead.

Almost every position had been served a plate of delicacies now long past identifiable. I chose a chair that had not been served and carefully placed my box down. The box had grown warm the moment I'd entered this world, and I was curious.

Scooting the cardboard aside, I laid the book out on the table and flipped it open from the back to avoid any hazardous contents in the front. I sought only the last entry, which I knew from experience to be reasonably safe to read. I'd had a suspicion that its contents would be different here… and I was right.

---

I was on a date at my favorite restaurant. I was even having a good time. I… don't know what happened… she and I ran into Jen. Now, she'd never liked Jen, but she put on a good face for the conversation. If I hadn't been so oblivious, I would have guessed she didn't really want to change our plans and go to that stupid party with Jen.

I've never really liked parties. Not really. I always get self-conscious, and my brain gets all tired trying to keep up with all the things I keep imagining other people are thinking or saying or expecting. Pretty soon, I always just want to go home. I can't go home, though, because I need a good excuse to leave… a believable one, so that people won't secretly judge me.

I got my excuse, I guess, when Jen died.

I wasn't sure what happened. Nobody was sure. She was always a party girl - had she overdosed? She was bleeding pretty profusely from the nose, and she'd fallen and gotten terrible slashes up her back… but she'd been locked in the bathroom, and nobody had found her until it was too late.

My date insisted we leave when the commotion started, and I agreed wholeheartedly. On the way out, I heard a very odd cry: "She's gone - her body's gone!" - but I wasn't sure what to make of it.

On the walk home, I apologized profusely, but she just seemed scared. Two blocks down, we saw a group of people huddled around another body.

It was then that I felt something chill and sharp move by me - but I turned, and saw nothing. I had the inexplicable sense that I was very close to something large and menacing, but the night-darkened street seemed normal, save for the worried people calling emergency services.

Another few blocks down, my date and I stood under a streetlight and waited for the bus.

We decided to keep moving when a homeless man on the other side of the road seemed to fall rather roughly. Blood splattered up as if he'd… but it didn't make sense… why were all these people having terrible accidents?

Just after we kept walking, I looked back, and - for a split second - I thought I saw something moving toward us. It was a mere blink against the streetlight we'd just abandoned, and it was gone almost immediately, but I quietly insisted we walk a little faster.

Four police cars surged past us, lights afire and sirens blazing. In the rotating red and blue, I thought I could make out a weird blur behind us on the sidewalk, but my eyes just couldn't make sense of it.

---

I looked up from the book. The boy I'd talked to earlier had followed me. You shouldn't be here.

"You're here," he replied, standing by the door and peering out into the storm.

I shrugged. As long as he didn't come further in, he wouldn't risk running into the rotting bodies dotting the restaurant. How far behind me had he been? Did he know about them?

I looked down to find that the story had skipped part of the narrative. There was a small gap where I'd stopped reading, and no text in between. Odd… but, then again, this wasn't just a book, and these weren't just written words…

---

She slammed the door behind us just as something bashed angrily on the other side. She couldn't help but scream hysterically. What the hell is going on?

I had no answer for her.

I helped her force the door shut, and I locked it with a relieved sigh. I have no idea, but we can hole up here until… until the police do something. The door to my apartment was solid and sturdy, containing a heavy sheet of metal as a form of security most campus houses shared. I had no windows on the first floor; instead, stairs went straight up to my apartment on the second floor. Never was I more thankful for my cramped brick-and-metal entryway.

Dashing upstairs and closing and locking the door to the stairwell, we took refuge in my bedroom and turned on my small television.

Static. There was only static.

Our cellphones didn't work, either, and the Internet was out…

It was then we really started to think we were screwed.

Deciding to turn off the lights so as to avoid drawing attention to our location, we sat and peered out the windows into the night.

Clouds covered the moon. Trees swayed in chilly autumn winds. Nothing living seemed to move…

There! she whispered, pointing down the street.

I saw nothing.

It was under the streetlight for just a second… she said, trembling as she clung to my arm.

I had to confess, despite the terrible things happening, part of me was still happy… Wait, I saw something under a streetlight, too. And when the cops passed, and the lights -

The lights. Something had brushed past me in the dark, and something had pounded on our door just as we'd gotten inside… but I had no porch light.

Intently, I stared at the closest streetlight until it happened.

Something horrible and twisted shambled past, visible only under the strongest part of the streetlight's glow. It was gone almost as soon as I realized I was really seeing something.

Do you smell that? my date asked, almost at the same time that I realized we'd made a terrible mistake in turning off all the lights.

In the very dim orange glow from the streetlights outside, I noticed a dark stain on the carpet near my roommate's bed. What if one of those things had already gotten inside here before we'd arrived? I jumped up and flipped all the lights on, illuminating each room in the apartment with a heart-freezing moment of terror.

The last light, the one in the kitchen, finally revealed it. It'd been on the other side of the apartment from us, and we'd stayed quiet, but… now it knew we were there. It came for me with a demonic and wholly inhuman grin.

I shouted, ran for the front door, and pulled my date through as she came to meet me. I knew what these things were, now, and I knew we were doomed… but I still managed to grab the emergency flashlight from the front staircase.

We burst forth from the heavy door, shoving the creature there aside, and I hesitated only long enough to shine my flashlight at it and get a good look.

I'd guessed right.

We took off running into the night, but screams were already ringing out from multiple nearby streets. We could seek shelter, seek food, seek safety, but… from the horrors I'd seen, I knew there was nowhere to hide.

That, and it wasn't cloudy at all. From out here, we could better see the reflected glow from the city's lights. There was no Moon, not because of clouds, but because something massive was blocking out the entire sky. The dim twinkles I'd mistaken for stars were in fact the city's own light reflected from some sort of massive structure arching over us from horizon to horizon. Not a ship, not a building… it seemed more like… a leg…

But none of that mattered, after what I already knew. I didn't have the heart to tell my date as we picked a basement to huddle in, but we'd seen the creature pursuing us before.

It had followed us from the party.

It was - or had been - Jen.

Twisted, bloody, and visible only in direct light… but it was her, no doubt, without any trace of humanity left within.

---

I looked up as the implications of that statement sank in. Hey kid, I whispered, as quietly as I could. What's your name?

Thomas… he whispered back, emulating me out of worry. What's up?

We really have to go, and… you can't make a sound…

Why?

I stood slowly, shaking my head. I couldn't tell him that we were sitting in a room full of invisible corpses that were anything but dead. Ever so slowly, I stepped between the tables, heading for the front door.

Creaks echoed around me as unseen joints began snapping, cracking, and… moving.

Although I could see he was terrified, Thomas knew better than to make any noise. I listened carefully to the movement around me: were they simply reacting, or were they certain of my presence? I took one quiet step at a time until I saw chairs beginning to move back as their unseen occupants stood.

I broke into a run, and I pointed toward the door. Thomas wasted no time in rushing out and into the rain, but he almost immediately tripped on invisible rotted piles of flesh. Picking him up, I waited, heart threatening to thump out of my chest, until the next flash of lightning revealed a path forward.

He saw the bodies strewn about - he saw that they were starting to move and awaken - but I grabbed his mouth and kept him from screaming. Now that he knew, I used my flashlight, shining it hurriedly around us to - shit!

The beam shined across a moving circle of decayed flesh; hundreds of unseen corpses approached through the streets, like ghosts in the rain. I shined the flashlight ahead, illuminating our path, and we splashed through heavy puddles and leapt over clawing rotten hands.

Pushing down the alleyway as the rain intensified, we ran back through the portal at full speed.

Pausing in the safety of the forest to catch my breath, I turned and looked back.

The alley sat clear and empty… until a flash of lightning illuminated an endless legion of living corpses, all standing still and gazing at us. They made no move to enter the rift, but that didn't make me feel any better. Beyond them, up in the sky… I'd made the same mistake as the doomed man and his date. Those weren't clouds - just the reflection of other parts of the sky on vast metal, impossibly high chrome, and it began moving as we watched…

The children all around screamed and flinched as a silent but tremendous impact on the other side threw mountains of rubble across the portal. Moments later, it was buried, and showed only onto the impenetrable blackness of layers of rock and dirt. We, however, remained perfectly safe. Only the other side of the portal had been buried, and I was certain it would simply open on a new destination the next day without interruption.

Are you alright? the oldest boy asked me.

That was so cool! the other kids exclaimed, gathering around Thomas. What did you see over there?

Enjoying the attention, he began smiling and telling them exactly what had happened. There was no need for embellishment.

I'm fine, I told my lone listener, shaking water out of my hair. I looked down as I did so. Goddamnit…

Without realizing it, I'd brought the book back again. Had it been in my hand through the whole escape?

I set my jaw. I'd try again tomorrow.

***

Chapter 3

I crested the last hill and immediately noticed excited energy among the neighborhood kids crowded around the portal.

We got a good one today?

The children parted, and my unofficial second-in-command stepped forward - the eighteen-year-old boy who often corralled the others. Looks like it.

Peering beyond him, I found a rather surprising sight.

Each day for the last week, the random destinations had been non-starters. One world had been completely on fire - from the closest flaming ground to the distant smoldering mountains - and there'd been no sign of abatement.

We'd spent another whole day staring in horror out across a vast ocean of what seemed to be thick blood. The smooth and endless crimson surface had been interrupted only by a few massive bone-like protrusions, and a sunless sky of carved ivory presided over the inexplicable sight. Weird ripples had moved in that blood ocean, as if hidden creatures lived beneath. The portal had never shown anywhere but alternate Earths as far as anyone had seen… I'd warned the kids not to think too much about how our Earth had become like that ungodly place. That way laid madness.

It had definitely been a relief to find the portal showing onto an open green pasture the next day, and we'd almost gone in - but my second noticed it at the last moment: an eerie lack of parallax. The green pasture was an illusion, almost like a perfect television screen displayed across the rift, and what truly lay beyond was impossible to know. Such a deception hinted at far worse intentions through that particular portal than in most worlds. Most worlds didn't seem to know or care about us.

Every Earth we'd glimpsed in the last week had been anathema to human life in some way or another. Every world had been dead or dying. I'd figured that this was all somehow related to the otherworldly book I was trying to get rid of, and its inexplicable penchant for detailing the final stories of the doomed, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't know if it controlled the portal, or whether it was merely connected to it somehow, but the children reported that the destinations were definitely getting worse. The first few weeks they'd observed it, there'd been nothing but pleasant forests, open plains, and innocuous oceans.

But today's sight changed our data set. Today, the portal opened on a busy street in a city that looked much like New York. We watched people drive past in recognizable cars and trucks. Many passersby were on foot, hurrying with very human impatience.

It didn't occur to me until I'd already stepped through - nobody on the other side had given the portal any heed.

Suddenly surrounded by the hustle, movement, and engine rhythms of a busy city street, I turned and looked back. Yep, there it sat: a ten-foot-wide jagged oval in space showing a forested path and a crowd of children watching from the other side. None of the suited busy-bodies on the sidewalk gave even the slightest glance at the portal.

Or at me, for that matter. They bumped against me and pushed past in an ongoing series of collisions. None so much as flinched. None apologized. They weren't completely unaware of me - they just didn't care.

Given that we'd not yet seen a world where any human being was still alive, I had the distinct concern that these people were nothing more than marionettes. If they were dead… if they were just emulating life… then that meant, in the middle of a busy big city street, I was actually completely alone. I'd seen many things in my life, and almost nothing truly got to me anymore, but I'd never been able to handle p-zombies. Something about that kind of soulless fate just struck me as existentially horrifying in a basic and gripping way.

Forget this.

Placing the book down on the sidewalk, I darted back through the portal.

What happened? the kids asked. What's wrong?

I looked down. The book was in my hand again. Damnit. I watched their expressions. Did I put this book down on the sidewalk?

No, they reported in unison.

So, the book doesn't teleport back to my possession, I realized aloud. It's a mental diversion. A trick of perception and memory.

Steeling myself, I went back into the portal a second time, and shoved the book into the large purse of a passing businesswoman.

I pressed myself up against the wall of a building, waited a few seconds, and then closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, analyzed my own thoughts, then looked down… yep, the book was still in my hand. Son of a bitch.

The damn thing was intent on preventing any simple method of getting rid of it. I studied the passing oblivious people, and I soon began walking along with the flow. Could there be some device, creature, or power here that might help? Experience told me that, when facing a threat beyond human capability, the best bet was to find an even worse threat and pit them against one another; between the balance of two terrors sat a sliver of hope. It was the same principle as the nuclear standoff between superpowers during the Cold War - the future of the human race had been predicated on the careful opposition of conflicting armageddons far more often than most people would care to know.

A haggard female voice interrupted my growing panic. Don't move!

I'd long ago learned to instantly follow any desperately shouted warnings. Freezing in place, I waited as the shouter continued making noise and approaching me from behind. She might have been coming to attack me, sure, but true human desperation was hard to fake. Not like that.

Oh God! she said again, grabbing the end of my jacket and pulling me directly backward. I thought there was nobody left…

Can I move now? I asked her. What's the danger?

Yeah, yeah, just don't go that way, she said quickly. How've you made it this long?

Looking ahead surreptitiously as I slowly turned to face her, I saw nothing ahead on the street except a few office entrances, a coffee shop, and a sandwich place with a bright red light out front that shone down on passersby. What unseen threat lay ahead that needed such warning? The stream of business men and women seemed to face no threat.

I froze. For a moment, a shadow passed over my soul.

The girl before me was as haggard as she'd sounded. Dressed in a tattered suit that had once been grey and clean, but which now bore dirt and rips in visible testament to homelessness, she seemed every bit the sole survivor I'd instantly envisioned upon hearing her desperate voice. Her wild shock of dirt-smeared hair hadn't been cleaned or combed in some time. Christ, Christ almighty, I prayed, but I thought… I thought I'd never see another person again…

Wary, I kept my eyes on her. Are these not people?

Underneath a furrowed brow, she narrowed her gaze. "Do they seem like people to you?"

I said nothing.

They're all in there, still, she stated after a moment. I stabbed one or two out of frustration a few years back. They come out of it just as they die. They're all thinking the same thing in there.

In there?

In their heads. She looked around with compassion and fear. They're screaming. All of them.

So, another apocalypse… this world wasn't safe and normal after all.

While I hesitated, she looked to her right. "The hell is that?"

Silently, but quickly, I ran a cold-hearted evaluation of this unknown girl and her situation. The consideration was thus: how likely was it that a species-ending threat would remain active and wary long after it'd dominated the planet? No matter how fantastical, extradimensional, or incomprehensible a threat, one rule of logic had to remain. Time was a resource, motivation was a resource, and the combination had to be right for a threat to remain dangerous. If almost all humans were dead or controlled, there was no longer any point in maintaining active surveillance or traps. I'd already recently blundered through two such worlds where living humans had not been expected. I'd even read a book for several minutes in a room filled with invisible animated corpses - and gotten away with it. They'd been completely caught off guard.

But this girl represented a Catch-22. She was alive, therefore traps and surveillance might remain. If she was a trap, though, that meant that there were probably no free humans, and no need for traps.

It's a portal to another universe, I told her, gently holding her back as she eagerly moved toward it. I decided to only tell half of the truth. It'll kill you if you try to cross without me.

She seemed on the verge of tears as she gauged my unreadable expression. Please…

Quickly help me understand this world, and leave behind this book if I can, I told her, hefting the tome. Then we'll go.

She pulled me into a nearby alley that I found to be disturbingly like the one I'd run through in the rain the week before. It's - she began, but she opened and closed her mouth in frustration without making any further sounds. It won't let me talk about it.

I nodded slowly. It was never quite that easy, was it? I lifted the book. This will tell me, then. I'm pretty sure it recounts, somehow, the final tales of those who've died nearby.

She watched with wide eyes as I began reading aloud. The tale of this unknown person might shed some light on the situation.

---

I remember the day the first one came out. People were lined up around the block to be the first to get it. It was just like any phone or tablet craze, except bigger. Who wouldn't want to erase the monotony of work from life?

I was never one for the latest trends. I decided to wait, and maybe save up some money for it.

You could tell the coworkers that were using it. They had slight half-smiles on their faces as they labeled, folded, typed, swept, and mopped. Any simple menial task became a time for lazy daydreaming as the iWorker took over basic motor functions. All you had to do was program it for the task by performing it yourself a couple times, and then, you could tune out, listen to a book on tape, or even sleep while your limbs worked.

It was a bit off-putting in a way I couldn't quite explain. Coworkers using the iWorker were zoned out or asleep, and the work floor got awful quiet awful fast. It was my job to direct the flow of boxes from our shipping warehouse, but I couldn't keep up with my unaware coworkers who worked on and on without getting tired, without smoke breaks, and without pauses for conversation or mental focus.

My gym, too, got weirdly quiet. People programmed their iWorkers for workouts, even they weren't supposed to, and happily got in the best shape of their lives without even being mentally present for the effort. Of course, a spate of people up and died who'd set theirs too ambitiously, but… it was their own fault, or so the television said. The next iWorker would hook a little deeper and automatically sense when the body was being pushed too far.

I'd just save up for that one, I decided. I didn't want to die on the job because some idiot device didn't know not to carry boxes for eighteen hours straight without rest.

The third generation came out before I even got halfway to my savings goal. This one integrated wirelessly with our relatively new driverless cars, and so you could fit your car into your routines. There were people automating the whole drive to work and their entire shift while they slept, so they could wake up and have the evening and entire night to actually live.

Now that tempted me. I could have sold some stuff to join in on the trend. I wanted to sleep through work and have sixteen hours a day to hang out! Sounded damn pleasing, it did.

It was so pleasing, in fact, that it really started going global. They made 'em cheaper, and smaller, and less invasive to your neck and nerves. I would have gotten one then, but I hurt my back at work, and the medical bill wiped me out and put me in so much debt I still couldn't afford it. Worse, I'd damaged my spine, so there was a chance I'd never be able to use one, at least not any of the current models.

It was about then that the shifts started getting longer. Sixteen hours a day was quite a lot to hang out and party and relax, so people started signing on for longer shifts. More money, more leisure, right?

When I came back from medical leave, I lasted maybe two hours before my boss came around with that kind of shit-sorry look. I knew immediately. Everyone else in the warehouse was iWorking, moving around all silently with half-smiles on their faces, and they were all working sixteen-hour shifts. Here I was with a hurt back, moving slowly, working inefficiently, and I wanted the same pay as these diligent types?

I told him he could screw right off, even though I regretted my rudeness instantly. Still, I was out of a job, and I would soon have nowhere to go.

I spent the next few months at a shelter, along with many other injured types in my situation. The divide between those who could iWork and those who couldn't was huge - we were useless for modern jobs anymore. Those daydreaming types could work almost all day long without a word of complaint, and for lower and lower wages. What did you need money for when you were working almost all day long? What did you care what you got paid when you weren't even mentally present for the work? You just woke up for a few hours each night once you got home, watched a few TV shows, then clicked out again.

Repeat.

I'd been homeless for maybe a year when we heard the news: they'd invented an iWorker that anybody could use, regardless of injury. A lot of us saw that as salvation come to town.

By then, I hated the whole concept. Passion, that was me. Passion. I was the one standing on the corner shouting at sleepwalkers about their idiocies and inadequacies and iniquities.

Nobody heard.

Well, their ears heard, but there was nobody at the wheel.

Funny thing, though, this new model. It worked through the eyes. It was just light. You'd walk by one of these nodes on the street, or in a hallway, or at home, and it would program you the way you wanted. Visually stimulated neurons or some such science bullshit.

Well there's the thing. All the previous models needed to be recharged eventually. They were devices, just like a phone or a tablet, and they couldn't just go forever. These could. Suddenly, you've got these religious types advocating going on autonomous mode full-time - that's what they called it, then, because a bunch of other brands had come out by then, not just iWorker.

It was virtuous, they claimed, to work twenty-four hours a day. If you weren't present for the work, you avoided suffering, and if you were working, you were contributing. It's free contribution, you see? Perfect virtue. A world without suffering, but with endless productivity.

One by one, our little homeless community dwindled. I'd run into Jeff, or Sarah, or Jorge, or Yuya, and they'd suddenly turned into clean-cut model workers. They didn't recognize me. Of course not. They were asleep.

At some point, watching these light-programmers getting installed all over, it occurred to me: the companies that produced these things were all full of labor using the devices. Everyone at these goddamn hypno-crafters was asleep, walking around in bodies that were endlessly toiling away putting up more light-programmers, marketing light-programmers, building better light-programmers… it was a thing in itself. The thing would just keep going and going, and maybe it had been that way since the start, and we'd all just bought into it like fools.

Street by street, this city got quiet. I imagine they're all like that. Nobody talking, nobody interacting, nobody living - they're all just working. You got to work twenty-four hours a day to survive on a dollar an hour… and you can't work twenty-four hours a day without being on the Autonomous Mode.

I learned to avoid the lights. I don't want that shit in my brain. I steal whatever I need, because nobody cares. Nobody's watching. There are no police anymore, because there's no crime anymore. Other than me, that is. The whole world's running around with more hustle and bustle than ever before, but the whole world's asleep and deader than I've ever seen.

Two years. Three? It didn’t snow last winter… global warming? I can't be sure what day it is anymore. They don't run on clocks and such anymore. All their Autonomous shit is wireless now. They sit near computers that don't even have monitors and just type on keyboards without even seeing.

Another year after that… wandering around in a zombie city… I must have lost it for a bit.

I saw one die.

He came out of it just toward the end. All he could do was scream. He just screamed, and screamed, and screamed, at the top of his lungs…

But it was what he was screaming that terrified me so: thank you.

He was screaming thank you.

I saw another one die. Soul-chilling shit. They're all in there, still, and they can't stop anymore. I don't even know when that happened, exactly.

But the system, see, it'd gotten self… perpetuating, that's the word. The cycle I'd recognized had been true, and growing stronger. And it didn't like people like me lurking around its edges, stealing things, stabbing people, and mucking up efficiency.

They grabbed me maybe a week after the second stabbing. Forced me into one of those bright red programmer lights on the street. By then it wasn't a choice anymore, and it could just straight tell you what to do in the name of efficiency.

I've been wandering the streets ever since. I've got a job I do twenty-four hours a day now. I do what I'm good at; what I did before. I'm just me, I'm just homeless, and I find other loose minds like my own and NO!

It didn't work. Not entirely. The old spinal injury kept me half-immune, and they don't know I know. I'm a horrible liar half the time, and a free mind the other half. Never listen to anything I say. My thoughts aren't my own. I sense it out there, a gigantic mind behind the control, with a plan beyond insidious and evil, and I can use its eloquent words sometimes. But that's not true, and the sad thing is, it's just humans who did this to ourselves. Efficiency, efficiency…

I wandered the streets for five years like that, so alone, so alone… so alone… I met someone who seemed free on the street today, and I was free for just a little bit, and I shouted -

---

I looked up at her.

Her jaw trembled, and her eyes ran misty.

This wasn't the tale of someone dead at all. I listened to the noises of the busy city street outside our alley, and, for the first time, I noted the complete lack of human voices. There was only the sound of machines and walking… a rhythm I now found to be completely lifeless and hollow. I stared at her for a long moment, unsure what to do. Can I trust you?

She tilted her head down a few degrees, screwed up her face, and let a few tears run free. No.

So it's probably not a good idea if I let you come with me.

She clenched her fists, and I saw a single drop of blood eke out from her excessive grip. I'd try to build one, she gasped. Eventually. The plans are… in my head… it wants me to…

There was nothing else I could say… unless… You can still help me, I said quietly, noting her intense strain to hold onto her own will. I need a first generation iWorker device. The absolute most basic, no mind control, no networking.

She nodded, eager to be helpful in any way possible to any entity that was not the it that controlled everyone else. She ran to a nearby dumpster and pulled at a rusty panel. Here, here … She pulled out several circular devices and picked at them until the least damaged remained. You stick it behind your ear, right here, and just… do… and it'll pick up on it.

Thank you, I told her, studying the device. If this thing could control a body without the mind interfering, perhaps it could help us leave the perception-altering book in another universe. I pocketed it, and then faced her. Never make promises, I knew. Never make promises. I couldn't tell her she would be alright. I'm sorry…

Blood poured from her clenched fists as she squeezed her long nails harder and harder into her palms, momentarily clearing her thoughts. It's alright. I'm glad there are still free people.

I nodded, and then departed.

Come back, she called, just as I rounded the corner. I was lying. There's nothing weird about the lights at all.

Goddamnit.

You still have the book? my second asked as I stepped back into the forest. Damn.

Watch your language, I told him. I drew the iWorker out of my pocket and brought it up for the kids to see. I couldn't leave the book, but - this just might be our ticket. I looked back and saw the homeless girl lurking at the other side of the portal, watching us with a neutral half-smile. I wished that I'd had the courage to kill her and free her from her invisible prison. If it had been anyone else, maybe...

Thomas, the younger boy who'd once followed me into another world, was also present. He was old enough to pick up on my momentarily visible sadness. Who's that girl?

I turned away, unable to watch her any longer. Nobody…

***

Chapter 4

It began when I found the neighborhood children still hanging around the portal on Thanksgiving. Apparently, no, they didn't have any place to be. Their parents were all working. The parents of every single child were holding down two or three jobs each.

It was small wonder the kids had such free reign over the suburb and Virginia backwoods, and why nobody else had found out about the portal. There simply weren't any adults around to watch or warn.

And, apparently, I filled that void. Repeated questions had led to the best answers I could give, and then to proposed preventative measures, and then… to more.

I crested Dead Man's Hill, so called by the local children for its cliffside rise. One wrong move meant a nasty fall into one of the large ravines that so plagued the foothills. For the last several days, while waiting for another habitable destination in the portal, I'd been using it to show the kids that horror and risk were real factors in life, and that the fear they brought meant paralysis and death for the uninitiated. Come on! I shouted, waiting at the top.

In the lead, as usual, was my eighteen-year-old second. He ran up the steep and leaf-slippery incline with a dramatically red face, releasing torrents of sweat with each movement. We've already run three miles, he huffed. They're not going to be up for this.

I watched exhausted kids of various ages appearing behind him on the trail, and then I checked my watch. Today's hypothetical gas creature moves at four miles an hour and doesn't get exhausted, I reminded him. "Everyone who doesn't reach the top here in the next