Chapter 5
TRAPPED TEENS
Wind pushes against my window. The scent of pizza wafts up the stairs and into my bedroom.
Dad has heated up the leftovers I brought home from the Ember Oven and is eating them for dinner.
I sit at my desk, my Chromebook glowing in the dark as I scour the internet for answers, like someone out there might actually know how to break into an alternate dimension and rescue a classmate who may or may not be dead.
Amidst a slew of fictional results, most of them about the Avengers and the Multiverse, there are real, scientific hits involving things like quantum mechanics, cosmic inflation, string theory, and trans-dimensionality.
The kind of stuff that’s right up Twig’s alley. My brain, however, ties into a knot.
“A separate plane of existence with its own physical laws,” I read aloud, peering at the screen.
Like the ability to combust into ash and still, somehow, survive?
Ever since Halloween night, I’ve been distracting myself from the memory of Lainey and Ivy dragged through the rift.
Healthy coping mechanism or not, I’ve been doing my best to actively repress the images.
Call me crazy, but I don’t want to relive what I assumed was the sudden and tragic death of my classmates.
Now it seems I didn’t witness their death at all, but something else entirely.
So, I let myself do what I’ve not allowed myself to do all week.
I revisit the night.
Seraphina, summoning that terrifying squid.
It’s tentacle lashing through the rift. Grabbing Ivy and pulling her through.
Her eyes locking with mine. Her body distorting.
Her scream warbling. A violent convulsion and then, her entire body erupting in fire, bursting into ash.
Lainey was the same. An explosion of ghostly flame, and then…
nothing but that powdery residue. Fine particles floating in the air.
Rafe, on the other hand, disappeared bit by bit, the same way my mother did in my 8-year-old dream.
I close my eyes and replay the details in chronological order.
Seraphina, destroyed. The curse, broken.
The night air against my face. A sky full of stars.
The normal sky. And then—only then—did Rafe fade away.
But did he really fade at all, or did I simply stop seeing him because he stayed behind in that alternate dimension?
Frustrated, I return to the internet. This time, I get more specific, searching for phrases like alternate dimensions in Foggy Hollow, alternate dimensions in Randolph county, Foggy Hollow squid, spontaneous human combustion, cryptids with lavender fur, and glowing seeds that produce visions.
I learn about Blue Dogs, which are linked to the chupacabra, and firefly petunias, which are genetically engineered plants, and spiritual seeds that are completely metaphorical.
Ultimately, Google gets me nowhere. So I grab a pen and a notebook and start listing everything I know about this other world.
1. There are doorways called rifts
2. Jude and I can see them. Twig cannot. Neither can Lainey, Mr. Calloway, Mayor Ridley, or Denis Tulane.
3. It’s a physical place that I can step into.
4. It responds to emotions.
That’s how Rafe opened the doorway—using a ballroom full of volatile emotions and Seraphina’s ruby amulet.
5. It mirrors our world with the same general layout, like the estate and the cemetery, but it’s dark and frightening with scary creatures.
And slightly cute ones, too, like a lavender, furry gremlin.
I tap my pen against the notebook and stare at the seed on my desk. Did it give me that vision of my mother, or did I simply have a vision when I touched it?
I pick it up and squeeze the seed in my palm.
When nothing happens, I exhale wearily and peer down at my notes.
Then I add one more.
6. My mother went inside this dimension thirty years ago with Simon Vandenberg.
I open the bottom drawer of my desk, move aside the shoebox and a tattered copy of Where the Wild Things Are, and pull out Simon’s journal.
I turn to the entry marked March twelfth—the first time he and my mom saw a rift.
They were in the hedge maze when the air tore open and they stepped through.
They saw his sister, Lily. But she didn’t see them.
I flip the pages, more travails into the strange.
Simon talks of shadows and monsters and finally, in his very last entry, he mentions something following them.
The next day, Simon’s love for my mother would trigger a centuries-old curse and he and his family would disappear. Vanish off the face of the planet.
I tap the pen some more—thinking, thinking, thinking. If Lainey and Ivy didn’t die, where did they go? What are the physical laws of this dimension? How did Lainey get out, and if she really was with Rafe, where is he?
The questions circle like birds of prey.
Until finally, one of them lands.
Season two, second episode.
The trapped teens!
I snatch my phone and text Twig.
The trapped teens in 1998. Almost certainly regular teens, right? What are the chances they both had angelic bloodlines?
Almost immediately, my screen shows a scrolling ellipse.
I don’t have data to work with, but assuming humans mostly don’t descend from angels, my best guess is basically zero.
My thumbs type fast and furiously.
And yet, they traveled into this dimension. They stayed for two days. They came out alive.
I imagine the text landing on Twig’s screen.
I imagine him staring at it in his bedroom as he weighs the implications.
Lainey and Ivy aren’t the only pure-blooded humans to have traveled through a rift.
Back in 1998, a pair of local teenagers did, too.
For two days they went missing. And then they came out alive.
We’ve been operating under the assumption that humans with no angelic ancestry die in this other realm.
Violently so. But we forgot all about the trapped teens.
We interviewed the guy—Dylan Mercer, a forty-three year old bartender living in Pittsburg—last year, long before Jude Vandenberg moved to town, long before we had any experience with alternate dimensions.
The interview had been anti-climactic. Dylan claimed the whole thing was a bad trip.
But what about the girl—Megan Carlisle? She had remained elusive, declining our request for an interview.
I shoot Twig another text.
Think Megan would talk to me off the record?
His reply comes quickly.
I see no harm in trying.
He sends me her email address.
I open up my account and compose my request, trying not to sound too desperate.
Hi Megan,
My name is Selah Whitlock. About a year ago, my friend Spencer Calloway emailed you about the experience you had at the Vandenberg estate back in 1998.
It was for our podcast, Accounts of the Uncanny.
I’m reaching out because I have some personal questions about what happened to you back then.
I think something similar might have happened to me, and I’d really appreciate hearing your perspective if you’re open to talking about it.
I promise this isn’t for the podcast. It can be completely off the record. Whatever makes you most comfortable.
Thanks so much,
Selah
I read it three times over, add in my phone number, and hit send.
Some unrealistic, hopeful part of me stares at my inbox, wondering if she’s reading it right now.
I look at my phone, like maybe it’ll ring.
I twist my lips to the side and drum my fingers against the notebook, where I’ve hastily scrawled my notes.
Then I reach inside the bottom drawer of my desk and remove the shoebox.
I lift the lid and thumb through the contents inside—all of them, mementos of my mother.
When I reach the sour cream container, I pull it out.
Mom was always planting seeds inside these things, setting them in windowsills, letting the plants grow.
Maybe it’s time I try some growing of my own.
With a thrill of excitement, I grab the seed and the container, race down the stairs, shove my bare feet into a pair of Dad’s loafers, and don’t bother with a coat.
“Hey, kiddo,” Dad says from his recliner. “Where are you off to?”
“I’ll be right back,” I call over my shoulder, shutting the door behind me.
I clomp around the carriage house to the shed.
The inside smells like oil and damp earth.
Tools line the walls—shovels, rakes, coils of rope.
Basically, everything a groundskeeper might need.
I walk past gas cans, a weed trimmer, and find a bag of potting soil inside a rusted wheelbarrow.
I scoop the sour cream container full, push the seed into the soil, and make my way back inside, where I will give it some water and wait to see what happens next.