I stepped into the mirror and felt like I was submerged in icy cold water for a moment. Closing my eyes instinctively, I opened them again to find myself in another world.
The air was breathable and the temperature was similar to Earth, but that was where the similarities ended. The sky above was a rusty shade of red, the ground a pale purple color. This area of what was previously Hollow’s End was now a windswept desert wasteland. There were only a few buildings and sparse signs of civilization could be seen here and there in the distance.
But there WERE signs of civilization - which told me there were people here, or something like them.
The buildings in the distance were obscured partially by the constant sand blowing through the air, which stung my eyes. I got the impression of strange carnival-tent-shaped structures - their surfaces covered with spider web patterns.
Randy was up ahead, marching forward as if he knew where he was going. I ran to catch up with him, not wanting to yell.
“Hey man, where are we going? What’s the plan,” I asked, after I’d caught up to him. Then I realized who I was asking and it occurred to me just how deep in the shit I was. Back on Earth, I would never trust Randy’s sense of direction or leadership qualities. What made me think they would be any better in this dimension?
“I dunno where I’m going,” he said. “I was just trying to get far enough away from all of you to take a piss, but you keep fucking following me.”
For a second I almost granted him his privacy, but then thought better of it. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt, pulling him toward me. It helped that I stood at least a foot taller than him, but I could tell by his resistance that he had some sort of wiry strength hidden behind his bulky, ragged clothing.
“You have foregone all rights to privacy, Randy. That’s what happens when you repeatedly deceive me and disappear randomly for hours at a time. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?”
He didn’t seem to be listening at all. At least, that’s what I thought at first. But then he unzipped his pants and started pissing right in front of me, staring in my eyes the whole time like a territorial street dog, indicating he’d heard every word.
“There you go, buddy. Is this how you like it? You wanna see the show, sicky?”
The rest of our party looked embarrassed for me, but did not question my methods. None of us trusted Randy anymore. Especially me.
“Alright,” I said, once he was finished and had zipped up his pants most of the way once again. “The question is how are we gonna find the Butcher and Muriel-”
“And that other guy,” Jay interjected.
“And that other guy… How are we gonna find them in this place? We don’t have the slightest idea where to look.”
Randy said something behind me but I ignored him.
“I have a good nose. I could try to sniff them out. Does anyone have any personal items belonging to them?” Frank offered.
We all shook our heads.
Randy said something again, more urgently this time. I continued to ignore him.
“We have to travel on foot, so it would be a good idea to get moving as soon as possible. Who knows when the sun goes down in this world, and what things might come out after dark,” Jay said.
“WILL YOU PEOPLE FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!?” Randy screamed, sounding angry.
We all collectively shushed him, terrified as we saw lights coming on and movement outside the nearby structures.
“There’s a fucking blood trail right over here, you assholes! Now come on, let’s follow it! What are the chances people bleed red in this dimension too? Practically zero!”
I hurried after Randy, hoping he was right. Either way, it would be a good idea to get away from those structures and whoever lived there. They seemed to be keenly aware of our presence and I suspected they might come to investigate the noise. Frank and Jay were following us, looking nervous at the prospect of trusting Randy, and I couldn’t really blame them.
*
Eventually we found a building where the trail of blood seemed to end. It looked like an old barn, except the angles were warped and distorted and it was elevated on crooked stilts like a defunct beach house. The trail of blood led up a staircase where a tall door sat waiting for us.
I drew my gun from its holster and pulled back the hammer, getting ready to fire on whatever creature was waiting for us inside. Randy stepped to the side to allow anyone else but himself to go in first. Frank decided to do the honors and swung the door open wide. It slammed against the interior wall, making a loud noise that I wished had been quieter.
“We found your blood trail,” Frank announced, shaking the barn with each lumbering step he took. “We know you are here. We have come to help you. Do not be afraid.”
“There is no more surefire way to make somebody afraid than to tell them NOT to be afraid,” Randy said, making his way inside. “Let me try, you blue-dicked sasquatch fucker.”
He pushed his way past the giant monster and I thought he was going to be murdered, but instead Frank let him speak.
“Hey guys, we’re here to rescue you. It’s Randy, Jay, Frank, and that new sheriff guy. I forget his name, but he’s cool. Listen, I know you’re probably injured and scared, but we know how to get back home and close the portals to the other dimension. Just come out and let us help you.”
It was the most intelligent and eloquently simple speech I’d ever heard Randy make, and of course was also entirely imaginary and never happened. Instead of that, Randy began to speak nonsensically and made several rambling metaphors involving alligators and the importance of allowing zebra mussels to be allowed across international borders on the hulls of large ships.
“Is that really you, Randy?” an old woman’s voice called out from the shadows. “Butcher’s hurt. He’s not doing too good.”
“Muriel!” Randy, Jay, and Frank shouted in unison.
They ran over and I followed after them. Clearly Frank and the Butcher had a history as well, since he was leaning over and trying to check on the giant man. At least, I think he was a man. The Butcher looked like a vaguely humanoid monster made up of several different people who had been sewn crudely together using a variety of different strings of dubious quality. He was still clutching a huge meat cleaver in his hand which I assumed was his weapon of choice. But he was breathing weakly in and out and his eyes were mostly closed. There was a bloodied pile of rags covering what I assumed was a grievous injury to his midsection.
“Can you carry him?” Muriel asked Frank. “I couldn’t just leave him here. And he can’t walk.”
“I will try,” Frank said. “But he is a big motherfucker.”
He bent over to pick up the huge man and Jay ran over to help. I stood with my back to them, surveying the exits and holding my gun up, ready to fire. I was getting a bad feeling about all of this. It was a little too easy.
“This will NOT be easy. Let’s go,” Frank grunted, carrying the Butcher on his shoulders with Jay following behind, carrying his feet, or at least attempting to.
Randy was helping Muriel and I realized that she was injured too. I went back to help him and they shooed me away, telling me to keep my gun up and ready to fire.
“There are creatures in this world. They look like giant insects. Mean and cruel, only looking to cause pain and suffering. They mostly come out at night, though,” Muriel told us.
“Mostly,” the Butcher wheezed, his eyes half-closed.
“Well, that’s a relief. It’s daytime, I think. Or, maybe dusk?”
“But there are others here too. They come out during the night and the day. They look like us. Like people, but…”
I thought of the woman in the bathroom mirror. The first thing I’d seen from the other world. She had opened her mouth and spiders had poured out. The memory of it was horrifying and I hated to think about it.
“I’ve seen them,” I said. “Once, in a reflection back in our dimension. I think we should try to avoid them at all costs. They’re probably a lot smarter than us when it comes to this interdimensional travel business.”
“What makes you think that?” Jay asked.
“Just a hunch. Maybe they’re the ones who sent that dismembered monkey paw over to us in the first place. It might have been their way to get us to open a doorway that they couldn’t open for themselves. Haven’t you guys seen Fringe? Or Community?”
They shook their collective heads. I groaned inwardly.
We left the barn to stand on the stoop just outside the front door. When we got out there, I looked to see there were people waiting for us just outside.
Not people, though. Not quite.
They had the upper bodies of humans but their lower halves looked like giant spiders. That’s probably the best way I could describe them, but it wasn’t quite right either.
I let out a gasp as I realized they looked just like us. Twins of each one of us. The Butcher, Frank, Jay, Randy, Muriel, me, and, oh yeah, also John, that other guy I keep forgetting about. He was there too, he just didn’t say much. He might have been in shock.
“Who the hell are you fuckers?” Randy asked, patting down his pockets for his flask.
“We are you,” said Spider-Butcher, holding a large meat cleaver in one hand. “But we are wiser, faster, stronger. You do not deserve your world with its unlimited resources. You squander and waste all that you have been given. That is why we made you open the door to our world. To allow us to follow you through. All we need is for you to go back and we can go with you. And we will bring with us an army.”
“Why are you telling us all this?” Jay asked. “You sound like a really cliche villain right now. What’s your motivation?”
“POWER! And knowing our plan makes no difference to us. You can try to fight us or you can try to escape - either way, we win. There is a third option, though.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“You could join us. You could give up this pitiful resistance and submit to our superior intelligence and cool spider bodies. Admit defeat, and become our escorts back to your world. We would show you mercy if you were to do that. We might even allow you to live.”
Muriel scoffed.
“Don’t believe a word they say,” she whispered. “Their spider bodies aren’t that cool. And they’re liars. They think we’re lower than cockroaches. I’ve encountered this bunch before.”
I got the feeling they were the ones who had injured the Butcher.
“You guys are awful generous,” Randy said, unscrewing the cap from a bottle of liquor he’d found somewhere.
“How can you drink at a time like this?” I whispered to him as he took a swig.
He winked at me and pulled two more items from his other pocket. A lighter and a strip of cloth.
After stuffing the wick into the bottle, he set it alight and hurled it at the crowd of spider-people. They scattered in all directions but not quite fast enough, as the liquid fire exploded and landed on a few of them, including Spider-Butcher.
He let out a screeching howl that split my eardrums.
At least the numbers were a bit more even now, I thought to myself.
I began to take well-aimed shots at them with my pistol as they scattered and began to shoot webbing from their buttholes, lifting off into the sky with anal grappling hooks. A second later they had disappeared from sight, but I knew they would still be close by. They were just hiding so I couldn’t shoot at them.
“Sweet, I guess they don’t have guns in this dimension,” Randy said, pulling out his own pistol. “They might have other stuff, though. Y’know, flamethrowers and whatnot. We should probably run.”
We hustled down the stairs and began to run as fast as we could back towards the location of the portal.
Terrified, I took a look back to check if we were being followed. I caught fleeting glimpses of things in the shadows. Large, fast-moving forms that leapt across huge gaps and kept pace with us.
The darkness was deepening all around, making it difficult to see. I realized the sun was setting or had already set in this world, and it would be night very soon. Muriel had warned us not to be out after dark - since there were creatures that slept during the day and hunted at night. I had almost been killed by one of those monsters previously and I didn’t want to run into one of them again. The only thing that had saved me was an equally terrifying monster named “Swampy” who I probably now owed a favor.
“Swampy can’t save us this time,” Jay yelled, clearly having the same thought.
I could hear the creatures waking up and calling out to each other in the encroaching darkness. They let out high, chittering cries that made my skin crawl.
“Oh fuck, what the hell is that thing?” Muriel said suddenly, coming to a sliding halt.
I looked up to see something we’d mistaken for a nearby mountain was moving. Enormous tentacles began to whip and snap on its sides, and a huge eye blinked sleepily open in the center of it all.
The effect was utterly terrifying - like waking up and realizing you fell asleep on a dragon’s doorstep.
That one monstrous eye turned to look directly at us, the pupil narrowing and constricting as it focused on us. And then the creature began to move, walking on its tentacles like an octopus on the ocean floor. With each step it took toward us the ground shook and heaved, sending us off balance as we tried to run.
“The door! It’s our only chance!” Jay yelled, pointing up ahead where a tall dark rectangle was waiting.
We were only about ten yards away from the doorway when a figure appeared suddenly, blocking our path.
“You’re not getting away THAT easily,” Spider-Randy hissed, his voice menacing and cruel as an animated supervillain. “We haven’t even gotten to sample any of your blood yet.”
Person-Randy shot Spider-Randy in the face and black blood spurted out, sizzling as it hit the ground as if composed of acid.
“You guys need to make up your mind about a few things,” Randy said, firing again as the creature crawled away, mortally wounded. “Are you spiders or are you mosquitoes? Spiders don’t drink blood. At least, I’m pretty sure they don’t.”
Muriel stood by the portal, ushering in Jay first and then John and then Randy. But Randy stopped at the last second, pushing her in first. She yelled a curse word at him as she fell through, back into our world.
“You next, man,” my deputy said to Frank, still carrying the Butcher on his broad blue shoulders.
“Not so fast,” another spider-person said from nearby, shooting a stream of butt-webbing which blocked the exit.
It turned out to be Spider-me.
The creature with my face descended from above and landed softly on the ground in front of us. It stood taller than any of us, even Frank, and was at least twelve feet, perched on thin, angular legs that came to sharp points at the bottom. It danced back and forth, moving with agile grace and a speed that scared the hell out of me.
“You still just don’t get it,” Spider-Muriel said, lowering herself from the heights above us on a silky butt-strand. “It doesn’t matter what you do. We win. We always win. We have seen this play out in many different universes, in many different ways. But it always ends up the same. We win, you lose. It is the way it was always meant to be. No matter how many dimensions we find, they all fall to our power. Yours will be no different.”
Randy fumbled in his pocket for something as the ground continued to shake even more violently beneath our feet. The huge tentacle monster was getting closer, blocking out the sky with its mountainous ass.
More spider-people were blocking the exit now, and I realized our hopes of getting out of this dimension were dwindling rapidly. We were running out of options.
“How many bullets do you have left?” I asked Randy, checking my own gun and seeing I only had a couple rounds left. “Four,” he said. “You?”
“Two.”
He shook his head.
“Not enough.”
“I will tear out their hearts with my bare teeth,” Frank said, dropping the Butcher to the ground where he landed in a heap. “I always wanted more hearts.”
Randy made a noise, indicating that he should wait.
“Hang on, there, blue-balls. I think I’ve got an idea.”
Before I could stop him, Randy was holding up the monkey paw in his free hand. Only one wish was left, one finger still raised, and he held it up for all of the spider-folks to see.
“This is what I think of your plans,” he said, waving the monkey’s middle finger at them. “I got one wish left and I’m gonna fuck up all your shit with it.”
He threw his loaded gun at me and I caught it. My heart skipped a beat after realizing it had one in the chamber, but thankfully I didn’t shoot myself with it. That would have been embarrassing.
After that, Randy immediately began running in the direction of the giant tentacle monster which now stood taller than the Burj Khalifa and blocked all visible light.
“Come and get it, bitches!”
Randy was running surprisingly fast for a drunk person, and only fell down twice, as he escaped from the crowd of us and several of the spider-people chased after him. Spider Muriel nearly snatched him up as he fell down the second time, but he sprung to his feet again like a hurdle jumper and was off a moment later, running again.
More giant spider creatures were moving in from the shadows nearby and I saw they were the kind that were ALL spider - the huge ones that had chased us in our world.
“We need to go,” I said to Frank, grabbing his furry blue arm.
He picked up the Butcher, casting a weary look over his shoulder at Randy, running off into the distance where a mountain-sized monster was waiting and where spider people were chasing him.
“He will die if we leave him,” Frank muttered, sounding hesitant.
“And we’ll die if we don’t,” I said back, struggling to get the words out. I felt like a traitor. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s sacrificing himself for us.”
The Butcher let out a wet cough, spraying blood from his nose and mouth.
Frank let out a deep sigh and put the huge man back on his shoulder again. The two of us looked back over our shoulders at Randy and saw him waving at us with the monkey paw, yelling at us to run.
It looked like he was giving us the finger, but I knew he meant well.
“Let’s go,” I said, tugging on Frank’s arm again. “We need to go now!”
The creatures were closing in. I could see their red glowing eyes getting larger as they drew closer.
Frank threw the Butcher into the open doorway and then ducked under the webbing to go inside. I followed after him.
I was most of the way through the portal when something grabbed my foot. It began to pull, HARD.
For a second it felt as if my leg would be torn clean off as I stood halfway in and halfway out of our world. Sharp talons dug into my flesh and I began to scream and rake my fingers across the sidewalk as I was dragged back into the doorway. My fingernails chipped and left white marks on the concrete, one of them breaking off entirely as blood wept from the ends of them. I dug in my heel and howled for someone to help me.
A second later, Frank was there, grabbing my wrist and trying to pull me back into our world. But as strong as he was, the thing in the other dimension was stronger.
And then Jay and John and Muriel were there too. They pulled and pulled on my arm until I felt like it would tear free from my shoulder. It popped and dislocated and I screamed. And then they pulled some more.
No matter how hard they tried, I was still being dragged into the portal by one leg. My other one was free, but not for much longer. Pretty soon it would be forced into the doorway as well and I would be dragged through the rest of the way.
“Stand back!” a deep, baritone voice commanded, and they parted like the Red Sea for the Butcher and his cleaver.
He was wheezing and coughing up blood, dragging himself along the ground.
When he was close enough, he lifted the blade and brought it down on my hamstring.
Blood erupted like a geyser, spraying everyone nearby with crimson fluid. I felt them digging their fingers in tighter, to keep a grip on my leg through the gore.
One more clean swing of the blade was all it took, and the bone split, separating my leg into two pieces.
The creatures in the other dimension would get to feast on the part I’d lost. But that was okay. MOST of me was on this side of the doorway, and that was what mattered.
That got me back to thinking about Randy again, and I felt a pang of deep, unfathomable sadness wash over me. And just as it felt as if things couldn’t get any more depressing, the doorway disappeared. And with it, any chance of getting my deputy back was gone.
*
Unlike most towns, Hollow’s End doesn’t have a hospital or a pharmacy. They have a Barber who can sew up a knife wound or cut your hair, and an apothecary who is also a tailor.
“Small towns are like that. People carry two or three different jobs and titles - and sometimes those jobs seem to directly contradict with one another,” Jay explained to me. “The dentist here runs a candy shop, and the local drug-dealer drives an ambulance on weekends. We’ve got a mortician who moonlights as a Yoga teacher and mailmen who steal UPS packages. Everyone needs a side-hustle in this economy.”
It turns out Muriel was also the 911 operator and dispatcher, as well as answering the phone for her delivery company. And Jay is a certified accountant.
Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked again. The painkillers do that to me.
The point is, they got me and the Butcher to the guy who was able to patch us up. And he did a helluva job.
I’m not entirely sure how, but I seem to have a fully functional, working leg once again - even if it doesn’t exactly match my skin color and the stitching is a bit crooked. I’m not one to complain. The whole thing only took about an hour.
After that, I got to finish keeping my promise.
We let John out in front of his house and he said his thanks once again, closing the car door and waving goodbye to us. I felt a bit bad I hadn’t gotten to know him better.
His wife came running out and they embraced in the driveway. Then she ran over to me to give me a heart-felt hug.
“Thank you,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Thank you for bringing him back safely.”
“You’re more than welcome,” I told her. “That’s what Sheriffs do. We serve and protect.”
She took a look around in the car, then her eyes widened.
“Randy. Did he? Is he?…”
I cast my eyes downward and shook my head.
“Randy was a good deputy. He sacrificed himself so that we could…” I broke off and heard myself let out a ragged sob. “So that we could escape.”
“He saved us,” Muriel agreed.
“He was a good man. In the end,” Jay said softly, lowering his head.
It was silent for a few moments before the woman spoke again.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Us too.”
It looked like something occurred to her suddenly.
“Did you fix it? Whatever was wrong with the town? It feels different. Like something changed.”
“We did. Randy did. He must have closed off the portals to that other dimension. People won’t be going missing anymore. At least, not any more than usual.”
“Tourists,” Muriel said in agreement. “They never learn.”
“Okay, sure. But let’s pretend I don’t know about that. Plausible deniability,” I told her.
We spoke with the couple for a moment longer before I made an excuse to leave. I was tired. Not to mention, talking about Randy was making me sad, and I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
Muriel and Jay dropped me off at my car and I drove it back to the Police Station. The new leg worked pretty well, but it would take some getting used to. I nearly rear ended two different cars and almost ran a red light trying to work the pedals, feeling every loose thread which connected my leg together.
Despite everything that had happened, I supposed it was for the best. We had closed the dimensional rifts. We had stopped the invasion of monsters from another dimension. And we had eliminated the weird plague that was spreading around town.
Sure, we’d lost a good man. But sometimes these things get messy and…
As I pushed open the door to the bullpen, I was not entirely surprised to see Randy in his cell, sipping something from my “#1 Sheriff” coffee mug. He had his feet up on the bars of the cage and was reclining on a chair that looked ready to tip over.
I felt a single tear run down my cheek, but it was the only one, as my deputy’s words made my blood immediately turn cold.
“Check it out, boss,” he said, holding up a fresh monkey paw with four raised fingers. “There must be a million of these things in that other world!”
He tossed me my own personal severed monkey hand.
I held it up in the air and stared at it in numb, terrified shock.
And then he used his own monkey paw to give mine a very gentle high five.