Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

“You have to understand,” Sage continued, “the train portal is different. Because the crossover is so violent, the moment so fleeting . . . That portal is unstable. It doesn’t just take you to another plane, it takes you to all the planes. It doesn’t blur the lines, it whirls them around. It’s constantly in motion. Do you know about the balance between the dimensions?”

“Yes,” I nodded, remembering how Brady had explained it to me.

“Small imbalances cause small disruptions. But an imbalance in the train portal . . .”

Sage turned to John, almost as though she couldn’t bring herself to say whatever was next.

John put down his tools and sighed. He looked at Brady, not at me.

“The brother—Robbie, is it?” John asked. Something about his voice seemed disingenuous, and I got the feeling he knew exactly what my brother’s name was.

Brady nodded.

“He can’t stay in there. He’s the reason it’s all falling apart now, the reason the cracks are showing. He’s probably the reason that brick wall appeared over the door. He’s been in there a few years, right? So it’s becoming noticeable.”

“Okay,” Brady said. “But you said you didn’t know how to find anyone down there, and besides, the portal that actually worked is bricked up, so what do you want to do?”

“I said I didn’t know how to find Piper, because when you go in through a regular portal, you could end up anywhere, on any plane. There’s no way of knowing where to look. But the train portal . . .”

John seemed to lose his train of thought, and I was losing patience. I turned to Sage. “Please help us,” I implored. “Sage, what do we do?”

“Your brother has to come out,” Sage said, and something about her tone reminded me of doctors on TV shows telling the family that someone has died on the operating table.

“You just said there’s no way,” Brady said with a sigh, exasperated. “Make up your minds.”

“There’s no way . . . ,” John began. His eyes shifted to me for a moment, and then back to Brady. “There’s no way to take him out alive.”

The room turned quiet, and his words echoed against the wooden floor.

“Someone will need to go into the train portal,” John explained, “find him, and push him back out.” He paused, still eyeing Brady. “You understand what I’m saying, son?”

I could hear a loud hissing sound, a buzzing in my ears, and it took me a moment to realize it was my own breathing. My head was spinning. And I felt nothing but relief as Brady put his arm around my waist and practically carried me out of that room, slamming the door behind us.

We were almost down the stairs to the lobby when Sage caught up with us.

“Wait,” she implored. “Don’t go yet. Please wait.”

I could feel my breath still straining to regulate, my body gulping down short bursts of air, as though my lungs couldn’t decide if they were too full or too empty.

“She needs to lie down,” I heard Sage say. “I’ve made up a couple rooms.” The words seemed to be drifting to me through a wind tunnel. The lights went all dark and I realized I was passing out.

CHAPTER 12

I woke up in a strange place and felt a moment of panic, just as I had in the hostel that morning, before remembering where I was.

The sky outside the window was starting to dim, and with the long summer days, I figured that must have made it around 8 p.m. Somewhere in the distance, children were running and squealing. Grasshoppers were singing in chorus. I sat up slowly and took in a painting across from the bed. In it, an old man and a young girl were rowing in a small boat across a sea. The man was looking down at the girl lovingly, but she, straining to pull the enormous oar in front of her, looked directly out of the painting, as though imploring the viewer for help.

I was still staring transfixed into her small eyes, feeling trapped in my place, when I heard Brady’s warm voice nearby.

“Hello, sleepyhead,” he said. He was sitting in a chair by the window, his figure obscured in shadow, with only the glow from his cell phone illuminating his face.

“Hi,” I said. “What happened?”

“You passed out.”

I let out a snort. “You’re kidding.” I sat up a bit and realized I wasn’t wearing my shoes. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“It’s just so damsel-in-distress of me.”

He laughed. “It was a lot to take in. I was feeling a little lightheaded myself.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We get out of here,” he answered. “They didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

“Are you kidding? They told us everything! About the planes and that whole atom-bomb thing.”

“They don’t know how to find Piper, and they don’t know how to get Robbie out alive.”

“Because there is no way.”

“As far as they know. Think about it, Marina. These guys created this mess twenty years ago, right? Then they sneak out of town to some random hotel where they can hide out for the rest of their lives. Why? Because they don’t know how to control the thing that they found. They don’t really understand it, any more than we do. So why should we believe them when they say there’s no way to take him out? They could be wrong.”

I nodded, wanting desperately to believe that Brady’s logic made sense, that this wasn’t just wishful thinking. “Okay.”

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Brady said.

“What’s that?”

“Piper never came back to town. She would have called me. But that woman Sage said she went into DW.”

“Right.”

“How? When? Is there another portal we don’t know about?”

“She probably went in down by the lake,” I said, opening up my suitcase, which someone had left at the foot of the bed.

“What?”

I stopped in my tracks. I had no idea why I had said that, but I suddenly knew beyond a doubt that