Greywalker - Kat Richardson [35]
When I felt empty and balanced on that point, I turned my concentration to the feeling of falling through the thick, stinking air, the Seattle mist dissolving from my face, giving way to the Grey. I opened my eyes and looked straight ahead, searching for the overlap of worlds.
It looked like a curtain of clouds and mist—literally gray, the intersection of the ordinary with the extraordinary rippled with an energy glitter that sparkled like fat raindrops falling in fog.
I closed my eyes again and pushed the sensation away. It resisted at first and I started to pant; then I calmed down and tried again. The vertigo, the smell, and the chill receded. I opened my eyes to my plain old living room.
I picked up the phone. “It worked.”
“Wonderful! Now again. But this time, go in.”
“No!”
“It won’t harm you. It’s you who must be controlling it, not the other way about. Just open the door, step in, then turn round and step out. Then push it away and we’re done. You’ll be feeling much better for it. I’m sure of it.”
I wasn’t. But I tried. I sat up, relaxed, mindful, feeling for the barrier. I floated and felt warm. I opened my eyes and it was there again. I rose and walked toward it, stroking my right hand over the small warmth in my left. The interface got thinner as I moved forward, becoming insubstantial as smoke. I stepped through into the living fog of the Grey.
It surged and pressed on me. My stomach pitched and twisted like spaghetti around a twirling fork. I breathed deep and held on tight. Chaos gave an angry chuckle.
I looked at my hands and the Grey writhed around me. I was holding on to the ferret. She must have crawled into my lap again. I cursed. The ground? the floor? bucked, and I looked around, on the edge of panic. No sign of the big ugly this time, nor of the strange human/not human creature that had spoken to me before. This time, I was alone in the restless mirror-steam mist.
“Slow and easy,” I muttered and took a couple of steadying breaths, which did little to steady me. I was queasy with trepidation as well as from the whiff of rot. “OK. OK, little fuzzy, let’s get out of here.”
I turned around, looking for the edge of the curtain, but couldn’t detect it. I couldn’t see my living room from here at all, yet I knew here was there, too. I was tired, frightened, and I just wanted out. I was losing concentration, panting. Unthinking, I squeezed the ferret and she screeched, chittering and wriggling.
I felt a breeze, a rippling of the Grey around me. I thought I could see the Grey edge. Close, and very thin. I started for it, then felt a dread cold sweep me, like a wind coming up on the Sound with a noise of storms: cold with an old chill that cuts like glass. I twisted around trying to escape the wind. The edge of the Grey fluttered an arm’s length away. Chaos chittered again and dove into my shirt. The weight of something dark and furious was massing behind me.
I lunged forward, thrashing for the edge. The roiling black beast roared, struck me in the back and shook me. Chaos screamed. I yelled and leapt as hard as I could. Something rigid and cold scraped across my flesh as I dove away . . . and then I was tumbling onto the living room rug. Exhausted tears streamed down my face as I reached for the ferret, rolling onto my back. Chaos struggled out of my shirt and bolted for her cage. I looked back, ready to grab on to whatever might pursue me. There was nothing to see, nothing to smell. Just the living room like it always was and me lying on the floor, panting.
I rolled slowly to my knees and knelt. My chest ached.
Mara was shouting my name on the phone, a tiny tinny voice of terror. I snatched the phone and yelled into it, “Goddamn it! Something tried to eat me in there! I couldn’t get out! It was going to eat me!”
“Harper! Harper. Harper. It’s all right, you’re out. You’re out