Slowly, Walker stood up. He stepped toward her, gently pulling her arms away from her body. He held her balled-up fists in his hands. There was something desperate in his eyes.
“What about now?” He inched closer. Her knee brushed against his leg. “Do you see anything like that now?” The desperation in his eyes changed tone, becoming another sort of begging.
Right then, Keira couldn’t see anything but Walker. She shook her head slowly, the air around them so thick that she could barely move.
His hands slid around to the small of her back. She looked up at him, frozen.
Burning.
Both.
His lips were close enough that she could feel his breath against her mouth. Her eyes drifted nearly closed.
Just as her eyelashes tangled together, the park completely disappeared.
And that’s when she screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
WALKER LIFTED HIS FACE, but he didn’t let go of her.
Keira wriggled out of his arms, spinning around disbelievingly. The park was only a faint, ghostly outline. Around it—around her—an enormous, vaulted room had sprung up.
Beneath the arched beams of the ceiling were rows of benches, arranged in a circle around some sort of machine that was all claws and points—a jagged row of spikes pushed out of the floor, reaching for a barrel that had been suspended in midair. The barrel itself looked like it was made out of coal—it glowed darkly, pulling the light that rippled across its surface into itself, rather than throwing it back into the room. Gleaming teeth jutted out of the barrel at intervals, like a sort of horrible, mechanical grin. Keira shuddered.
“What the hell, Walker?” She didn’t bother to ask him if he was seeing the same thing. It was obvious he was.
Filmy strands of darkness, like blackened cobwebs, hung from the machine and draped across the benches, undisturbed by the wind that buffeted the park. Walker wrapped his arm around her and tugged her closer to the mechanical monstrosity, ducking under one of the black wisps.
“It’s a church,” he said quietly. “Or, it used to be, back when our kind still thought that praying would fix things. There was a handle they’d turn, trying to get this thing to make music. Like a—”
“Giant music box,” Keira finished, suddenly seeing the metal hulk in front of her differently. If the spikes in the floor had been even, and tall enough to reach the bumps on the spinning barrel, it would have looked a lot like the insides of the ballerina jewelry box she’d had when she was five.
“Exactly.”
Her knees weakened beneath her, and Keira lowered herself onto one of the benches. Only the bench didn’t stop her. She sank right through it, landing hard on the ground.
“Ow! Damn it!” She scrambled to her feet, brushing stray bits of mulch from the back of her jeans. “If I can see it, why can’t I sit on it?”
Walker shoved his hands into his pockets. “Because even though you can see Darkside—” He paused and shook his head, disbelief written across his face. “You’re not there. It’s like a mirage in the desert. Except this mirage is real. The world you grew up in isn’t the only one out there, Keira.”
Keira drove her hands through her hair, cupping her head like it was in danger of cracking. “That’s crazy. You know that sounds crazy, right? The two of us having a shared hallucination is more sane than that. How do you know it’s real?”
“When I told you I moved to Sherwin two years ago? I moved from there.” Walker gestured toward the church. “I mean, not this church specifically. From Darkside.”
Keira took a step back. “No.”
“Listen, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s not as bizarre as it sounds. There are scientists who’ve detected our world. They just can’t see it yet. Did you take physics?”
Keira nodded.
“Have you ever heard of dark matter?”
Keira shook her head, too stricken to answer.
“Damn. Okay, well, you know there are particles—protons and neutrons and stuff—that make up everything humans see?”
“Yeeees,” she said slowly, her memory reaching for the science lessons she hadn’t paid attention to.
“Well, just because that’s all humans can see doesn’t mean that those are the only particles out there.”
“The other ones are dark matter?” Keira guessed. Her face had gone numb, and she couldn’t tell if it was from shock or cold.
“Exactly.” Walker stepped toward her, closing the distance she’d created between them. “Darkside is even bigger than the human world. There’s more of it. Dark matter, Darkside is everywhere. It’s in everyone’s living room, moving through their hands while they work, coexisting at the bottom of the ocean. The particles aren’t built to interact. The worlds are meant to be completely invisible to each other.”
Keira tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. “So, why can I see it, then? Why can you?”