Chapter 1 - Strange
Grandfather’s mansion sprawled out along the rolling green hills of freshly landscaped countryside. Its sharply steep roofs reminded me of the angular coverings of chapels. Massive paneled windows reflected the mid-afternoon sun, gleaming like gems on the bricked face of the massive architecture. It was an older style estate built in the 1800s, but it had a fresh, carefully kept and cleaned look, seeming more like a photograph out of a book than anything that had to weather the ages. An iron-rod fence with spear-like tips lined the property from the road, but it hardly deterred from the majestic view. Maybe it was the direction of the sunlight gleaming on the windows, but I half-expected to hear the Hallelujah chorus sung by a choir of angels in the heavens as we approached.I caught myself gaping in my reflection on the car window, and I clapped my mouth shut with slight humiliation. Mom taught me better than that. Still, I hadn’t seen many houses this big in my relatively short 16-year lifespan, and I’d forgotten myself for one glorious moment.
Next to me, in the driver’s seat, was my mother, Elise Milianas, a trim brunette heading into her late 40s. Not that anyone could ever tell – her pretty green eyes (which I was proud to have inherited) were always alive with youth and energy, and she hadn’t a strand of grey hair. Right now, however, she was looking up through the windshield at the mansion with an expression of idle interest.
“I haven’t been here since I was your age,” she told me. A nostalgic smile spread across her face, and she sat back to watch the electric sensory gate slowly sway open to our arrival. She guided our rather unreliable Escort up the long, winding driveway that gleamed of fresh, dark asphalt. I stared out the window, taking in all the flowers and professional garden work along the drive. The winding, black ribbon opened into a massive circular area with a fountain of marble angels in the center. Clear, cool water spewed from their vases into the pool, glittering brightly in the sun.
The car sputtered and coughed to a halt in the circular drive, and seemed more to die when my mom turned off the ignition than simply shut off. Neither of us paid any attention, as this was quite common for our vehicle. I nearly tripped over myself on my way out of the car, because I was so busy looking at the fountain. I glanced down only long enough to realign my feet, and then followed my mom. We walked up the perfectly manicured and landscaped pathway to the double French doors, which were decorated with stained mosaic glass and clean, golden handles, and mom tried the lock. She wasn’t surprised to find it secure and began to fish in her denim pockets for a key. “This used to be the summer home. It’s not nearly as big as the primary residence.”
At that, I shoved my hands in my own jean pockets and felt my awe slide into an oblivion of annoyance. “Mm. Too bad your dad was a stingy asshole.”
Instead of responding in anger or defense, my mom just laughed and agreed. Her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. “But, you ready for the surprise? This place is now ours.”
I gaped at her and I was sure the whites of my eyes were showing. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Elise chuckled, fishing up some change and lint from her pockets. “It really is ours. But, try not to use so much language.”
“Sorry.”
“I swear, the things they teach you at school,” she muttered, her smile losing none of its amusement.
I laughed at that. “Like you had nothing to do with it.”
“Not I,” she agreed, as both of us grinned.
She dug into her back pocket, said, “Ah-ha!” and produced one long key that looked about a hundred years old. The copper was tarnished with an ugly, greenish color that reminded me of mold. My expression reflected my disgust.
“Ew.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” argued Elise, shoving the key into the lock. I half expected it to break because it looked so old, but it held and we heard the familiar “click” as the door was unlocked. I anxiously waited, anticipating more of the same spectacular view inside as I had seen from the outside. Elise wrapped a hand around the long handle, pressed the button above it to release the catch, and pushed the door in.
Inside, the foyer looked like it’d been abandoned for years. Cobwebs were strewn along corners and curves, interconnecting pieces of furniture draped in grimy plastic sheets. The wind let in from my mother’s entering swept through the entryway. Leaves and debris rolled in the updraft. I knew there was beautiful marble flooring beneath the layer of grime, but its gleam was gone. A strong odor of must and mildew slammed our sense of smell, and mom and I whirled and covered our mouths in unison. We tore outside to the entryway to get some fresh air.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and glowered at the beautiful front yard.
“Bastard,” I growled, and then realized my mom said it in the very same moment. I jerked my head to see her looking back at me with some astonishment, which was interrupted with an amused smile twitching at her mouth. She shook her head in dismay. “I guess neither of us is surprised.”
“Why didn’t he hire anyone to take care of the inside if he was getting the outside done?” Elise placed her hands on her hips, her half-smile fading into a look of irritation. “He would view it as money wasted, especially since he probably hadn’t seen the place in the last 12 years of his life. But, being a man who always wanted to look good, he made sure to keep the yard immaculate.”
“Tch,” I scoffed, feeling my hands clench around the material of my pockets.
My mom smirked sardonically at me. “He’d better be glad he’s already dead, or I’d kill him for this.”
The idea made me feel a little better, and a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “I’d help,” I muttered.
We both looked up at the house in silence for several moments. I realized my perception on it already shifted. Maybe it was the fact that sun had lowered a little and the light was no longer gleaming on the glass, but it seemed a little darker now, colder. I wasn’t nearly as impressed as I was when I first saw it. But, we were here, it was ours, and we had a job to do.
I looked back down at Elise to see her watching me. As our eyes met, a silent agreement was made, and we headed forward into the darkened doorway.
With most of the initial stench aired out, we could make it as far in as the center of the massive, circular foyer. I eyed the grime-encrusted double staircase ascending to the second floor, into darker shadow. I couldn’t see much from my vantage point. Even though the windows were sparkling clean on the outside, inside they were caked with at least a decade of dirt and dust that blocked the light as effectively as great, heavy curtains.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, I turned to my mother. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe with a mining expedition and some archeologists we could get the place sellable – or at least excavated. But, what are we going to do by ourselves?”
“I’m not sure,” Elise admitted, indulging in a wry smile at my commentary. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, clearly trying to calm herself and think. Her eyes scanned the near vicinity and the furniture occupying it with careful deliberation. Rather than having some miraculous brainstorm, she let out an exasperated sigh much like my earlier one. “Oh, screw this. Let’s go get something to eat.”
I smirked. “Sounds like a plan.”
As we turned and headed out the front door again, my foot caught on something on the floor. I felt it give beneath my feet and I stumbled into my mother. She nearly fell herself from the sudden weight, but she managed to catch me and steady both of us while a clatter of wood served as background noise.
“What was that?” she asked in shock. I wasn’t known to be the terribly clumsy type, and tripping twice in one day was really uncommon.
“I dunno,” I responded, glancing down. A few feet in front of me, a small, curved box decorated in gold trim gleamed in the sunlight, toppled and broken open. I walked forward, a wave of guilt washing over me, along with the confusion, and I bent to pick it up. There was another glitter of gold nearby, and so I picked up that piece, too.
“I’m sorry, mom,” I apologized as I turned to show her. “I swear I didn’t see this a second ago.”
Instead of chiding me, Elise was staring at me with a confused frown. “That’s because it wasn’t there.” She glanced around, trying to figure an explanation, and saw a table right next to the doorway wrapped in plastic. “It probably fell from that table.”
Before I could mention that we didn’t hear it fall, she extended her hands as a silent request to take what was in my hands. I placed them in her palms, feeling more than a little creeped out, and that’s when the world quite literally spun and blurred around us. It was like someone performed one of those swipe transitions in the movies. Next thing I knew, we were standing somewhere else. We weren’t even inside anymore. In fact, we were out in the middle of a street. I barely had time to notice before a jellybean-shaped vehicle was bearing down on me. I didn’t even have to time open my mouth to scream. Mom yanked me away by the arm, and the thing missed me by inches.
Adrenaline pumping, we hopped a perfectly normal curb to stand on a perfectly normal sidewalk. Mom was asking in a near panic if I was okay, but I could barely hear her and absently responded. If I kept my eyes peeled to the ground, I wouldn’t think the world was so different. But I didn’t. I was watching that car. My mind noted with detached interest that it had no wheels and was hovering two feet off the ground. The car had stopped on a dime, no sound or disturbance coming from it, and the door swung open (which I vaguely noted lifted up rather than out) much more quickly than it seemed to be designed to do. It bounced on its hinges as the driver got out, already twisting around to see whom he nearly left as a bloody streak on the pavement. He stared mutely at me, clearly as stunned as I felt, while I stared just as dumbly back. Eventually, unable to believe what I was seeing, I raised a hand to point at him.
“Mom, he has blue skin and pointed ears.”
I could believe the silver hair with red streaks, as that was something I saw from the more unique folk of the city, but the skin and the ears were too much. They looked so real.
I heard my mom breathing quietly behind me before she said shakily, “It’s not polite to point.”
My hand dropped. “Sorry.” I shook myself, as if trying to awaken from a dream, and whirled on my mother. “What happened? What was that blur just now?”
If Elise heard me, she didn’t let me know. She moved past me and I watched the driver’s eyes flit to her quickly. She opened her mouth and, with a quick inhale of breath, began to speak words I couldn’t understand. Only her tone revealed to me she was asking a question. I stared at the back of her body, my jaw going slack. I’d never heard her speak anything other than English. The thought was dizzying, and I nearly swayed on my feet from the shock overload.
The driver reeled as Elise spoke, and he didn’t move or say anything for several long moments. I began to think he didn’t understand her, until he started trying to will himself to speak. He stammered a bit, but I could tell words were coming out. His answer was short, and when he finished, his eyes were back on me.
Elise nodded, an indication she understood him. When she turned to me, her expression dumbfounded. “I don’t believe this.”
“Neither do I,” I managed to croak.
“...No.”
Her tone startled me. It was firm, final. She shook her head slowly, as if in disbelief, but even that seemed to become more vigorous as she made a decision.
“No!” Elise snapped, angry now. She opened her hands, staring down at the little wooden box and its pieces that were still in her hand. Her palms were flat, facing upward, and I saw now the golden trinket I put in her other hand was a ring. I didn’t get much of a look at its details before she closed her hand around it and raised her fist as if to throw it to the ground. But her eyes moved to her other hand, with the broken jewelry box, and she seemed to consider it for the first time. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she did chuck it to the ground, causing everyone around her to jump at the sound. The wooden box shattered as if smashed by a mallet, its pieces skittering in all directions.
I gaped incredulously. Mom didn’t have that great of a throwing arm.
Elise then turned and scanned the crowd in a hunted way, panic and near hysteria gleaming coldly in her eyes.
“Mom,” I choked out, trying to force myself to talk over the lump in my throat. I hoped my voice would bring her back as I reached toward her to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Mom, it’s oka—“
She caught my hand before her head snapped around to me, her lips curling into snarl. The speed of her reflexes made me jump back.
The world blurred around us again for a mere second, and then we were back in the open doorway of the musty, neglected summer home of my grandfather. I glanced around, stunned, but mom’s behavior forced me to focus on her. I watched her unravel in a way I’d never seen, her anger exploding out like a volcanic eruption.
“All those years!” she growled, releasing my hand with a firm shove away. She began to stalk in tight circles amid the darkened foyer like a hungry tiger in a cage. “All those fucking years!”
“Of what?!” I demanded shrilly, unnerved.
“Therapy! Psychologists! Medications! The ultimatum from my father,” she paused and did her best impression yet of my grandfather, almost matching the depth of his voice, “‘If you don’t stop talking about that other world and get it together, I’m committing you to the nearest ward!’ And I believed him! I believed I made the whole damn thing up because no one believed me! And here I am!”
“Where, mom?” I retorted, gesturing sharply around us. “Where do you think we are?”
She didn’t speak anymore, though she heaved sharp, enraged breaths as she stared hard at me. She didn’t even seem like she heard me.
I tried again. “Look around you.”
My mom did, her head swiveling in jerky movements. A frustrated growl rumbled from her throat. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah it does,” I argued, desperately searching for a logical explanation. “It was just...a hallucination! That’s all.”
Her face split into a crazy grin and she started to laugh. It was a creepy, dark laugh that began in the back of her throat and rose into a cackle.
“A hallucination you also saw?” she retorted when she reached some semblance of calm.
I didn’t have an answer for that, and I began to feel irritated at her erratic behavior. “Whatever it was, mom, it was weird.” I crossed my arms. “But still, I didn’t think you were the type to freak out. I thought that was dad’s job.”
I’d expected the remark to calm her down, remind her who had been the more collected of the two. Instead, I got a reaction I didn’t see coming – she laughed softly, and then dangerously. She began to stalk around me in circles now, keeping that insane smile on her face.
“Dad? Your father was a weak man, afraid of the perfectly normal and mundane life. He didn’t spend months and months in another world. He didn’t get thrown into a war he barely knew anything of. He didn’t have monsters trying to kill him!”
Now she looked positively feral and she came around to my front to jab an index finger toward my face. “He didn’t get knocked back to earth where, if he tried to tell the story he barely survived, he lost all respect and credibility and had his sanity scrutinized for years! He didn’t have nightmares. He didn’t have pills shoved down his throat. He didn’t have constant surveillance over his life and behavior!”
That knife of a finger then turned to point at her chest. “I went through hell over a place that wasn’t supposed to exist!”
It was almost comical the way I was bent backward to keep what little personal space and dignity I had from her forward emphasis. I didn’t know what to say, or what to think. I had no idea mom had that kind of rage in her, something I managed to mumble out. Her face softened at that and she straightened up, allowing me breathing room again. I eased into an upright position, relieved.
“I didn’t know I had it in me either,” she agreed quietly, darkly. “I thought I was through with this place. I thought I left it behind... forgot it.”
I couldn’t tell now if she was talking about her father and his home or about the strange little world that had just flickered in and out of our view. Right now, I didn’t care. My arms still stubbornly crossed, I regained my earlier sternness. “Either way, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
Her eyes rolled up to me before she lifted her head to face me. She was calm now, stoic. “There’s nothing to explain.”
My eyes moved down to her clenched fist that still held the ring. She followed my gaze, lifting her hand and unrolling her fingers to reveal it. Even in the deep shadow of the foyer, with daylight seeping in from the open doorway, the ring gleamed of pure, unblemished gold. Tiny details engraved in the mineral formed an Arabic-looking pattern that was so precise I wondered what tools could have possibly produced it. Two ropes of gold wound and crossed around five large gems, as though they were part of the braided whole. The two on the left side looked to be sapphire and emerald. The middle stone was an amethyst cut so that its inside looked lit from within. The right two stones were a fiery red ruby and a topaz.
“I’d say there’s a lot to explain.”
“Tch.”
Throwing the ring down, she turned on her heel and stormed out into the sunny front yard. My eyes snapped between the ring and the door, forced with a decision I only had seconds to make. I finally reached down and plucked the ring from the dirty floor and shoved it into my jeans pocket. If she didn’t want it, I certainly wasn’t going to let something so pretty go to waste.