MirrorWorld

The bow and arrow clip onto the back of my ride, a jet-black ATV, the perfect vehicle for navigating the woods of New Hampshire.

“I’d offer you the helmet,” Allenby says, holding a matching black helmet in her hands. “But we both know you won’t take it.”

When my hand grips the key already in the ignition, Allenby puts her hand on my arm.

“Last advice from my aunt?” I ask.

A glimmer of sadness makes a brief appearance but is chased away by hardened eyes. “From your doctor. The … changes your body is undergoing. It will let you do more than see them. Much more. If that happens, the pain you felt before, when you were just seeing them—”

“Got it,” I say. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

She smiles. “Like the mother of all bitches.”

“It’s rewriting my DNA or something like that, right?”

“Something like that, yeah, targeting your senses.”

I nod slowly. “I’ve heard them.”

“Good,” she says. “Just remember that you’re in control. You can turn it on. You can turn it off. Just like they can.”

There’s a hint at something in what she’s told me. Something I don’t like. But I can’t figure it out, don’t really have time, and there is a more pressing question on my mind. “You said the Dread world was like another frequency. Separate from ours.”

She nods.

“So how was that creature, that bull, able to be intangible to me yet in contact with the stairs and walls?”

“There is a third frequency that is neither A nor B, but also both, where parts of each physical reality overlap. Inanimate, nonliving matter vibrates at a slightly different frequency than actively animate, living, moving matter. This zone of overlapping frequencies includes some natural elements such as older trees and man-made elements like roads and structures, with the older, sturdier variety being more common. In contrast, a human body, even when standing still, is always in motion. Muscles, lungs, heart. We are in perpetual motion. Our frequency, like those of most living things, remains rooted fully in A with no overlap. This allows the Dread to interact with the inanimate, physical elements of A—like the staircase—while avoiding contact with the animate life that resides here—such as you. It’s a physical place with elements of both notes, but lacking the distinct life of each.”

“B-flat,” I offer.

“Exactly. What we do know is that to make real physical contact, you and the Dread have to be in the same frequency. You might be able to see and hear between A and B, but to interact physically, you can’t just be sensing other frequencies, you need to move fully between the frequencies.”

“Out of A and into B. And maybe B flat.”

“In theory. Good enough?”

“For now,” I say, “And Allenby … If I don’t make it back, I’m glad we’re family.”

Her smile is the most genuine I can remember seeing. “Arsehole,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes. She shoos me with her hands. “Go.”

I start the ATV, give Allenby a last, quick nod, and tear off across the nearly empty parking lot toward the woods where I last saw the bull. Upon reaching the grass, I slow to a stop. The green lawn is neatly trimmed and greener than any grass has a right to be. But there is no sign of the bull, either in the grass or the dark woods beyond.

See what’s not there, I think to myself, willing my vision to shift.

And it does. Painfully. I grind my teeth as an imaginary Jack the Ripper stabs my eyeballs.

My vision flickers between worlds: one bright and colorful, the other shades of black striped in green and cloaked by a purple sky. It’s like night vision, I think, still recognizable as the world but in strange shades of color. Is this the Dread’s B world? Or is it B flat?

Muscles behind my eyes twitch, each snap sending a fresh pulse of pain into my nervous system. But I can see both worlds now—the tree line has changed, a mix of recognizable trees, now leafless and large; sagging black trunks, held back by a fence; and the paved, inanimate parking lot—and the trail of glowing green blood left by the wounded bull. The bright plasma against the bleak background shines like reflective road markers, spaced every five feet, when the bull put weight on the wounded limb.

I’m about to gun the engine when a sound like whispering rises up around me. It’s from nowhere, and everywhere, ambient like the wind. As I try to ignore the rising din, a smell tickles my nose.