“I don’t think it—” Rutger began to say, but he was quickly silenced by shushes from the others in the room. Chagrined, the little man seemed to roll up into a tighter ball.
Master George held up a hand, palm out. “I believe something else is happening.”
There was a light rumbling in the distance, like the growl of thunder in an approaching storm. Paul and the others looked at each other with wide eyes. He wondered if they were as spooked as he was. He had a shivering chill going up and down his spine, as if someone had just said they’d seen a ghost walking down the hall and they were all now waiting for it to appear at the doorway.
The rumbling grew louder, and then the room began to shake. Just a slight tremor at first, barely noticeable. Paul put his hands on the carpet and felt a vibration that shot right up his bones. It strengthened until there wasn’t any doubt that something unusual was happening—the windows to the balcony rattled, and the picture of Muffintops that hung over the fireplace suddenly fell off its nail, crashing onto the floor. The glass in the frame broke.
Master George let out a little cry of surprise and struggled to his feet. Mothball helped him up as her long bones straightened out to stand up as well. Paul got up, he and Sofia leaning on each other for support. The shaking had escalated to an all-out earthquake, the floor jumping up and down as the walls seemed to bow in and out. There was almost something unnatural about it, as if the room was bending and stretching in impossible ways. He looked at the balcony, where the glass in the windows appeared to have had melted into a liquid, bubbling inward then back out again toward the canyon.
An uneasy feeling replaced the immediate panic from the quake. If this was the good Karma Paul had hoped for, then he wanted to go back in time and throw that box in the river.
The room swayed side to side, up and down, with no sign of stopping. The small group of Realitants had so far stood together in a daze, balancing, maybe hoping it would end. The distant sound of thunder had been replaced with something more sinister: a long, shrill whine like the high-pitched whistle of an old steam train. But intermixed with that were more disturbing noises that cut in and out—moans and groans and screams that weren’t quite human.
Paul was beginning to feel dizzy and queasy, and not just from the jolting movement. He was sick that maybe he’d talked George into doing something terrible.
As if on cue, their leader finally took charge.
“Keep hold of each other!” he shouted over the increasing noise. “I don’t think—rather I hope this isn’t related to the Karma box. I’m quite sure of it. I believe we are experiencing a disturbance like the ones that have been happening since the incident with the Blade of Shattered Hope. I want to look outside, see what’s going on. But we mustn’t separate! Does everyone understand?”
The scene was absurd. The whole room was shaking and bending and warping in impossible ways, and the Realitants looked like old daredevils trying to balance on a high tightrope. But they all nodded their assent and held hands with each other: Mothball, Rutger, Sally, Sato, Sofia, and Paul, all in a row. Mothball held on to George as he started making his way to the balcony.
As they stumbled toward the sliding glass door, everything intensified. The walls bubbled in and out more deeply, the sight of it so disorienting that Paul was starting to wonder if maybe they’d been drugged or something. The floor bounced and rippled, making it impossible to walk a straight line. If they hadn’t been holding hands, each one of them would’ve been sprawled across the carpet. And the noises, awful and disturbing, were also increasing in pitch and volume. It was like a soundtrack for a haunted house, moans and groans and squeals.
George reached the door and paused. With the glass bending and warping, it seemed impossible that it could slide open. But he reached out anyway, grabbed the handle, and pushed all of his weight onto it. The door opened easily, sliding all the way to the left—even as it continued to ripple in crazy ways.
The old man turned and shouted back at them over the terrible chorus of sounds. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this! Something is wrong with Reality!”
“Ya think?” Paul murmured, but he was pretty sure no one heard him. What had they done? What had pushing that button done to Reality? It couldn’t be a coincidence.