We walked and we walked, and then we walked some more. At one point Grant pulled my backpack off my shoulders and shrugged it onto his own, and I was too tired to protest. We stumble through the mist, through flickering ghost children playing on transparent playground equipment, through a herd of oblivious spectral dairy cows, and through moving creatures that I didn't know existed on Earth. More than once, we heard snuffling noises, low growls, and we froze, holding our breaths until it was muffled silence again. We grew thirsty, sipping tiny sips on my lone water bottle. I forget how many times we passed the Payday wrapper lying on the ground where we had left it.
"I can't understand it!" I cried. "I know I've read that it happens, that people who are lost walk in circles, but I could swear we are walking in a straight line!"
"There's nothing to judge it against," Grant wearily said, plopping down for another rest. "No sun, no moon, no mountains, no nothing. We have no idea what we are doing."
"Well what do YOU expect us to do?" I sniped in a whiny tone. I felt close to tears and was trying to do what I could to not feel sorry for myself and start blubbering.
"It's not MY job to come up with the answer!" Grant snapped. He put his head down in his hands. We both sat there for awhile, miserable. After a little while, I started to worry that Grant might be weepy, losing it. That was a scary thought. I wanted him to be strong, in case I wasn't. I wasn't sure what to do. His breathing sounded strange, sighing-like. I felt a tender surge. Poor Grant! Nothing had prepared either of us for this adventure gone wrong. He was feeling the despair and trying to hide it from me so I wouldn't be scared. I reached out a gently hand to his shoulder. He didn't move. I brushed back his bangs from the side of his forehead. His eyes were shut. He was sleeping.
My gentle caress turned a little rough.
"Wake up!" I shook his shoulder. "Don't be sleeping now! We've got to do something to get out of here!"
He started, looked wildly around and then rubbed his face.
"Gah! I hoped it was a bad dream."
"No, and we've got to think. As my grandpa always said, think smarter, not harder. Though he actually always said, 'Work smarter, not harder,' but it's the same thing. We need to try to figure this out, if we can."
"There's no box here to climb in and go back. At least that we've seen."
"Right," I said. "But I bet Mr. Devius has been here before. I'm sure he didn't have the box for long without trying it out."
"So either he knew the way it all works, or he did the same thing as us, stumble around until he figured out how to get back," Grant said.
While we were talking, I noticed a bit of brown fluff stuck to a spot of dried blood on the arm of Grant's tee shirt. I pulled it off and began idly playing with it, stoking it and blowing on it, watching the pale tips of the hairs flutter with my breath. It had come from the creature that had attacked Grant, and thought it still creeped me out to look at it, it also fascinated me.
"I might want to bring that back with me as a souvenir," Grant joked. I was glad to hear him talk about it in a lighthearted way, even if he might be covering up a little, it still made me feel better.
"Let me see it," he said. I pulled a few hairs loose and, laughing, blew it across to him with a puff of my breath. But in the next second, we watched in amazement as the hairs floated in place for awhile and then began drifting off behind me, lighter than a feather, and carried on some invisible, indiscernible current.
Like bloodhounds, we leaped up and began to follow it through the fog, staying close behind each flutter of the hairs, afraid we would lose it completely if we let it get further away than a foot or so. I don't know just what we expected to discover, but this was the first new and different thing that had happened since we had been attacked by the owner of those hairs.
"As long as they are not being pulled back to whence they came," Grant nervously whispered. I'd had the same little thought.
"If we hear breathing or snuffling, we'll stop still, and stop breathing until we can slip away," I whispered back.
The hairs flitted and flicked, they tumbled and dipped, and then rose again, keeping about four feet off the ground. Finally they coasted to a stop and then began to sink. It was then I noticed that the mist was not dead still right underneath the slowly falling hairs. It was swirling, ever so slowly, but definitely, like a slow motion whirlpool about as big as a kitchen sink. We watched in amazement as they disappeared into the mist at the very center. We both dropped to the ground and began scooping up the mist, looking for the lost hairs.
"They're gone!" I whispered, still a little nervous about the strange animal that might be near.
"Did they get sucked down?"Grant said, scooping up the fog off the ground and watching for the hairs as it ran through his fingers. "If so, then down to where?" He began probing the ground.
"It feels funny here. Sort of mushy. Sort of like rubber sand that I can't get ahold of." Grant stood up and stomped his foot, hard, right in the middle of the almost invisible whirlpool. Suddenly a look of horror flashed across his face!
"My leg!" he yelped. "It's falling; it's getting sucked in!" I grabbed his arm, the one with the wound, but at that point, I didn't care, and I hoped he didn't, too much. I pulled, but now his other foot had gotten stuck, and he was sinking, like in a bog of quicksand!
"Andieeee!" he wailed as the mist covered his head and then he was gone.
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