Feelers Pt. 7

At first I thought the world was coming back into focus again. I could still feel Grant’s hand clenching mine tightly, and the earth seemed to firm up against my feet. I swayed a bit and I felt Grant stagger and then steady back up. I blinked, and then I blinked again. It didn’t do much good. A dull, dead mist seemed to blur into whiteness whatever I tried to look at. I turned to look at Grant and felt a flood of relief. His features were still solid and full of the color of life. I tried to smile at him, and he tried to smile back at me.

“Okay. That was wicked,” I said, and dropped his hand to brush back the hair from my face. Somehow my pony tail holder had come loose. I looked around. If I kept Grant in my field of vision, I didn’t feel as disoriented as I did at first. The white mist was like a fog, but didn’t move or swirl. It wasn’t especially thicker or thinner in any direction. It was more like a world of nothing that was out of focus.

Grant was groping around, waving his arms.

“What are you doing?” I asked, afraid for his mental state.

“I just thought if the box that brought us here was somehow still here, it could help us get back from wherever it is that we are!”

That sounded reasonable, so we spent the next twenty minutes sliding around, waving our arms like windmills until we gave it up. Once, we got separated enough that it seemed he was sliding out of focus, and I panicked, calling him back. Finally we gave up and just stood there, peering into the fuzz and thinking. I felt a shiver.

“I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I see some sorts of shapes around me.”

“Yeah, I see something too,” Grant replied. “I think my eyes are getting used to this. It’s almost like I can see the shapes of walls, and moving things, and other objects.”

“You’re right! It’s like people. In fact it’s like people on a sidewalk, but they’re just like dim shadows.

“Andie,” Grant slowly said. “Can you see? It’s just like the corridor at school.”

And then I felt truly scared for the first time. I could even recognize some of the shadowy people that passed in front of, behind, and through me. I waved my hand, and it passed through a dim, shadowy wall object. “Are we ghosts?” I whispered.

For some time after that, we wandered around, recognizing the familiarity of the school, but being somewhere else, somewhere we didn’t know. There didn’t seem to be any substance to our surroundings, but it was real enough, as I felt when I tripped over my undone shoelace and fell on one knee to the ground. It was hard, and I winced at the bruise. Once in a while, I’d see some other shapes, shapes that didn’t match up to anything familiar. In fact, they didn’t look like anything on Earth.

“It’s almost like different scenes going on at once here, and we’re the only ones who can see that,” I said.

“How long have we been here?” Grant suddenly asked.

I looked at my wristwatch. It had stopped at noon. I put my ear to it. There was no ticking.

“I can’t tell,” I said. “A couple hours?”

“We’ve got to figure out what to do next. We can’t just wander around forever! Think!”

I sat down cross-legged, putting my backpack on my lap and my chin in my hands.

“Well, for one thing,” I said, “It’s obvious that this machine was used before, so there has to be some point to it.”

“Unless Mr. Devious made it but was waiting for some guinea pigs to try it out on!”

I frowned. “I’m going to assume this isn’t the first time someone’s gone through. So either they made it back, or they didn’t. If they did, then we can too. If they didn’t, well, we’ll just keep trying!” That was the best I could come up with at the moment. “So, it seems like we are at some strange crossroads, maybe like a meeting place of worlds.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been reading too much science fiction?” Grant asked, sarcastically.

I ignored that. “It’s the only explanation I can think of right now. Unless you have a better one, then keep your mouth shut!” I felt irritated and sulky. Grant crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, saying, “Just give me time, and I’m sure I will!”

And then I heard something off in the distance. It was faint, but distinct. Since everything was dead-quiet around us, the sound was very obvious. It was a scurrying, a pattering, and a snuffling. We both tensed. I made sure the zips were closed on my backpack and hefted it in front of me. It was not much but was the only weapon we had. There was nowhere to run and hide, so we just waited for it, whatever it was.

And then, out of the gloomy whiteness, it appeared and was upon Grant before I could even scream.