I’ve realized something. Midterms are like… in a week. I’ve been putting some things off until after exams, telling myself I’ll deal with it when I’m more prepared and not so stressed out. Things like going home to visit my family. Telling Steven (aka, Chicken Tenders) I’m not interested in dating him. And of course, rescuing sweater girl.
(if you’re new, start here, and if you’re totally lost, this might help)
The last one seemed like a reasonable thing to procrastinate on, at least. I had no plan. No information on my foe. All I had was a rumor about the steam tunnels and a candle that was more a liability than an asset. However, as I was contemplating how awful it would be to fail all my midterms and return home in shame after losing my scholarship one morning over breakfast, I came to another realization. The kind of realization that feels like you’ve just taken a baseball bat to the gut. It leaves you winded.
If I didn’t rescue sweater girl before midterms, she’d be the one failing all her classes.
I don’t want to be the person responsible for completely ruining her life. So now I had a deadline for that on top of all my other due dates.
My only lead was the steam tunnels. The first time I went into them was a bust, on account of the steam monster, but the second time had been uneventful. I had a theory that moving in a group made it safe, but seeing all those Rain Chasers pile out of the tunnel just ahead of the hostile steam kind of ruined that idea. However, I still didn’t want to go at this alone. If we did find a door that opened to another reality, then I needed someone to hold it open. I didn’t exactly trust a mere doorstop.
It’d be fine, I told myself. They didn’t have to enter the dimension. They just had to stand there. Should be safe.
Yeah, hahah, we all see that as the rationalization it is, right?
I considered asking Cassie for help, but she panicked at the sight of a ghost that was there to help us. Some people just aren’t cut out for dealing with these sorts of situations. Not that I’m implying that I’m better at handling life-or-death scenarios than her. I tend to freeze and it takes a push to get me moving again. It’s not a good reaction.
One person that freezes and one person that panics does not make a good inhuman entity response team, imo.
I needed someone calmer. More collected. Briefly I considered Steven, but I think it’s less that he’s got it all together and more that he’s kind of oblivious. It’s all been bad feelings and weird noises for him and sure, it’s got him a bit spooked, but he hasn’t come face-to-face with anything substantial yet. There’s no way to know how he’ll react. He could be worse than myself or Cassie.
The Rain Chasers aren’t an option yet either. The contingent that are super into this stuff seem too… excitable… and the ones that are more level-headed are also the ones I saw sneaking out of the steam tunnels. I don’t want to involve myself more deeply with them until I know what they’re up to. If they’ve got their own agenda down there, well, I just don’t want to muddy the waters. Deal with one inhuman problem at a time, you know?
The only person left on my very short list of friends was Grayson. He hadn’t been tested against anything serious yet, but out of everyone I know he’s also the most easy-going. I mentioned that he’s been helping with that project I had for a class and like even when I was panicking because it was due in only a few days and I wasn’t sure I’d addressed all the requirements, he was calm and talked me through how it wouldn’t be as bad as I imagined, even if my worst-case scenario came true and I failed. (I didn’t fail, I actually got an A)
I know that’s just schoolwork, but still. I had a good feeling about him. So when we met up for our bi-weekly lunch (we have classes that let out at the same time on Tuesday and Thursday) I asked if he remembered the whole ‘looking for an alternate reality’ incident. He laughed and said of course he did. Then I told him about the fingernail. The one that I’d found ripped off inside the dryer, like someone had been dragged unwillingly through it and was desperately clawing for freedom. His smile vanished, replaced by a troubled look.
“The Rain Chasers haven’t said anything about a lady that does your laundry,” he said slowly. “I haven’t seen any mention of it in the entire time I’ve been lurking in their channel.”
“Could be they don’t know,” I countered. “If nothing happens to you other than you get your laundry folded, would you assume she was something inhuman? And if she takes the people that dishonors her work… then there’s no one left to tell the story.”
He looked unconvinced. It seemed his willingness to entertain the stories around campus only stretched so far.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Make one attempt with me to find the laundry lady’s domain. Just one. They say the steam tunnels sometimes take you places other than what you expect.”
“That’s it?” he said, surprised. “Just a walk through the steam tunnels? Sure.”
I was surprised by how easily he agreed.
“We’re not supposed to go down there.”
“Well, yeah.” He shrugged dismissively. “But I have yet to hear of someone getting in trouble for it. Campus police aren’t terribly with it around here, if you haven’t noticed.”
“I have,” I replied fervently.
It was decided. We’d go together. That evening. Sweater girl needed time to study for midterms if I was going to save both her life and her grades, Grayson gently pointed out. I think he noticed my initial panic when he suggested we go so soon. See? Good choice. Way calmer about all of this than I am.
Of course that might have just been because he still thought the laundry lady was merely some quirky local folklore I’d stumbled upon. Or that I was prone to letting my imagination get carried away. Something along those lines.
We met in the lobby of my dorm. My idea was to travel from my dorm to her’s through the steam tunnels. There’s significance in every action we take when dealing with the unnatural and I hoped that the symbolism of transitioning from safety (my dorm, where I fulfilled the unspoken contract with the laundry lady) to danger (her dorm, where she unwittingly broke the rules) would be enough to trigger a doorway. I relayed all of this to Grayson as we entered the tunnels. I went first, as the corridor was too narrow to walk side by side.
“Is this something you learned somewhere?” he asked curiously.
“Yeah, sort of. My hometown has a lot of stories about it, much like this campus.”
“Did you like it there?”
His question made me pause. I expected some comment about what an odd place to grow up or some other commentary, as that’s what I’ve gotten from everywhere else. Grayson’s question was far more personal.
“I… don’t know,” I finally said. “It felt a lot safer than what I’m doing now - and I mean all of this, classes and degrees, not just the steam tunnels. But it also felt like I wasn’t able to make my own decisions. Like everything was planned out for me. I’d finish highschool and then marry my sweetheart and that’d be it. Nothing else on the list. No other plans. Like I’d stop moving forward before I was even out of my twenties.”
I was talking fast. I was saying way more than I wanted to. Apparently I vomit my emotions all over the place when I’m nervous.
“You mentioned that your last relationship ended badly,” he ventured.
“It did.” I clenched my jaw. “I’d rather not talk about that.”
“That’s fine. We can drop this. Turn left at this fork.”
He had my copy of the map that Steven found and was navigating. Steven had gotten the map from the library records, since a lot of you were wondering where that came from. It’s dated, so some of the newer buildings might not be on there, but it has the majority of the tunnels on it.
We made it to our exit without incident. I hesitated, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.
“I don’t have a plan,” I said nervously. “I don’t know what’s out there or what’s going to happen.”
“Kind of like leaving your hometown?” he suggested. “And that wasn’t so bad, was it? See. You’ve already done this once. You can do it again.”
That’s right. I’ve done scary things before. And maybe this is completely different from deciding to go to college, but in principle it was the same. I wouldn’t know if I was capable until I was in the middle of it.
The world will never wait until we’re ready. It keeps going and we have to try to keep up.
I opened the door.
Before me was a staircase leading down. Not up.
Down.
There was a thick mist covering the area as far as the eye could see. Like it went on forever. Perhaps it did. The stairs descended only a few steps before the mist swallowed it up. I thought of the gray world, but there was color here, even though the stairs were made of concrete and there was no blue sky overhead. It was more that this place had a sense of color. It felt whole in that regard.
“Okay, wait here and hold the door open for me,” I said nervously. “I’ll go check it out.”
Grayson was peering over my shoulder, his eyes narrowed. I had to wonder what was going through his head at that moment. Up until this point it felt like he was humoring me, but now he was seeing something that shouldn’t exist. That does something to people. It’s hard to know how they’ll react.
“Sure,” he replied quietly. “I won’t leave you.”
A calm, firm assurance. I felt some of my anxiety bleed away. If nothing else, my escape route was assured. I took a step onto the stairs. The air around me felt cold, thick with moisture. I’d been expecting warmth, on account of this being the realm of a lady that does laundry, after all, but maybe this was like… laundry hell. Some belief systems have a cold hell, after all. And if warm laundry is divine, then perhaps cold laundry is its opposite.
I don’t know. I was trying to keep my brain busy with something other than formulating how this could all go horribly, horribly wrong as I descended. The mist swirled around me and I tried to ignore it, as my subconscious was determined to find shapes in it and I thought that once I started getting spooked at every little thing I’d turn and run and then I’d never find sweater girl. I focused on the steps in front of me instead. One at a time. I’d pause on each one and wait for the mist to clear before taking another step.
My caution was warranted. For when the mist cleared, I found that I was standing on the last step, and there was nothing but open air beyond.
I stood there, teetering on that last step, frozen in place by the sheer horror of finding myself mere inches from a fatal drop. All around me, the mist receded, forming a placid cloud cover just above my head. The narrow stairway hung suspended in midair and beneath me was an ocean of water. Blue-gray, still, glistening dully from the diffuse light that blanketed the expanse.
The traveling river? Was this where it came from? Was this where the rain came from?
My heart pounded in my chest and my mouth was dry. Wherever I was, it hopefully wasn’t where sweater girl had gone. And if it was… there was nothing I could do for her now. It was hard to get a sense of scale because there were no landmarks to use for perspective, but my gut told me that the water was far, far beneath me.
I needed to back up. Did I turn around, one careful step at a time? Or was that inviting a misstep? Should I walk backwards up the stairs to buy myself some space? Now that the mist was no longer pressing on all sides, I could see just how narrow the stairs were. No handrails. And I’d walked down all of them, thinking myself careful just because I waited for the fog to clear before taking another step.
Now that I saw how precarious my position was, I realized how much danger I’d been in. One slip and that would be it.
Somehow I had to get back up that stairway.
As I stood there frozen in indecision, my gaze fell on something in the distance. A dark spot. A circle where the color of the water changed.
It was getting closer. Or perhaps the stairway was what was moving. My head spun with disorientation. Like the world around me was moving and I was the only thing standing still.
The circle grew close enough that details started to resolve. Not a creature. Nothing alive. It was a hole in the world.
A perfectly round hole, large enough that it could swallow entire cities. There was a faint line of white at the edge where the water poured in. I was so far above it that I couldn’t even see the ripples, just the thin rim of whitecaps and then the water pouring in, so smooth it might as well have been from a faucet.
What would happen when it reached me? When it was directly below me, frozen as I was on the stairway?
That horrifying thought spurred me into action. I turned on the step, moving my feet only an inch at a time, shuffling myself around so that I was facing the opposite direction. Trembling, I lowered myself to my hands and knees. Then I crawled up the first step. The second. Now that I could touch the stairs, I realized they were damp with condensation. I could have slipped so easily on my way down. What was I thinking, coming down here like this? I’d figured I was descending into a - a room or something more normal. Something with boundaries. Not this endless ocean and that devouring hole in the middle of the world.
I could hear the roar of the waterfall. Like static in the background. So far away and yet growing louder by the second. Coming for me. I climbed faster. Up, into the mist, but even with those blinders obstructing my view of the fall waiting for me, I could not stop shaking. I climbed on all fours all the way up until I saw a doorway framed in the gray sky and Grayson was there, holding out a hand to me. One foot was on the stairs, the other was firmly planted in the tunnel anchoring us to the campus. I stretched my hand up to him. Our palms touched and his fingers curled around mine.
“C’mon,” he said, pulling me forward. “Just a few more steps.”
He pulled me out and into the warmth of the steam tunnels. My legs trembled and I stood there, catching my breath while Grayson peered past me at the stairs.
“That… wasn’t what you’re looking for, is it?” Grayson asked.
I straightened and reached out to take the edge of the door from him.
“Nope,” I replied, and I slammed the door shut.
We waited in the tunnel until I stopped shaking. I slid down along the brick wall to sit on the ground. My shirt was soaked with condensation and sweat and Grayson’s hair was plastered to his forehead, but he didn’t complain. I didn’t speak and neither did he. I was trying to push the memory of that hole in the world out of my mind, back to some dark corner where I wouldn’t have to look at it again. And Grayson was trying to reconcile what he’d just witnessed to his understanding of the world around him, I suppose.
“Okay,” I finally said, letting out a deep sigh. “Let’s open the door again.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I laughed and while I meant for it to be a casual gesture to dismiss my fears, it came out thin and on the edge of hysterical. But I opened the door. Perhaps the adrenaline still in my blood made me reckless. I threw it open, heart pounding, ready to face whatever lay beyond it.
It opened to the dorm basement. I stood there in disbelief. I was ready - I was expecting - I hadn’t gone through that tortuous climb for nothing, had I?
“Oh,” Grayson said from behind me. “Guess we made it to my dorm after all.”
And I just started crying. Ugly, uncontrollable sobbing. Crying that made my whole body shake.
“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “I’m such a disaster.”
“Or,” he suggested brightly, “you waited long enough for the adrenaline to crash. C’mon, let’s go upstairs to the lounge and I’ll bring you some hot tea.”
Having an ugly cry in the middle of a dorm lounge is super awkward, for the record, but I’m sure it’s seen its share of crying drunk college students already. Also the only person in there decided it was a good time to be elsewhere and we were left alone after that.
“Ashley,” he said gently, after I’d gone through a full box of tissues and was starting to calm down. “I can see this is important to you… but if she’s been taken by this thing, then how do you even know she’s still alive?”
I told him about the candle. I didn’t tell him who gave it to me. Baby steps. I wasn’t sure if he was ready for ‘btw the literal devil is hanging around campus’ yet. I fibbed and said an entity I didn’t recognize gave it to me, both as a gift and as a curse. His gaze lit up when I finished and his hand was clenched on the table, his knuckles white.
“You said everything has significance, right?” he said slowly. “The candle… could it be a key?”
Of course. I’d been trying not to even think about the candle because of how dangerous it was to sweater girl, but that also meant I’d omitted to take it into consideration.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll bring the candle with us.”
No. Not quite. My mind was racing through everything I’ve learned throughout my childhood. Symbols and patterns. A candle as the key, sure, but there was more to the equation. There were other pieces. Something to get you in, something to defeat the monster within, and then something to get you out.
The rule of the three. There are many significant numbers, but the rule of three was the one most commonly found in my region.
The candle. The fingernail.
And one last thing.
I needed to get my hands on the sweater that started all of this. [x]