Elsewhere

Your grandparents own a formidable parcel of land.

You spent your childhood here. That’s fine. Kids usually spend time with their grandparents, though most keep to the house. You did not. You spent it in Elsewhere.

All good forests need a name. Here is no different. A bending, labyrinthian thing with as many uneasy corners as ominous clearings. This is no Hundred Acre Wood, as your cousin, Lissa, hoped, but you found it alluring, nonetheless. While Lissa thought it looked scary, you took a page out of Grandma’s book, smiling as you peered into the darkness. Elsewhere isn’t scary, it just has personality.

You were thirteen when Grandma took you from a dreamless sleep and, without a word, brought you to the beating heart, pumping blood to the shadowy arteries of Elsewhere’s crooked body. Black Lake. Grandma brought you here late on a starless night, long after Lissa and Aunt Viv fell asleep. Grandpa was awake, but you didn’t worry. He’s always awake, toiling in the basement.

You thought Black Lake was gorgeous the same way Morgan Sheedy in Mr. Donner’s class was, but different. A silent surface of dark water, still as if afraid to move, unwilling to lose nary a drop of itself to the edges containing it. Despite your fascination, you remained glued to Grandma’s side, a feeling you didn’t recognize crawling through your body like ants. Sinister, Grandma explained. She sounded disappointed when she talked, like you let her down in a way you didn’t understand. Dressed in gray board shorts and a white tank top, you forced yourself away from the safety of her side, edging yourself toward the water. Bravery is a family necessity, but doubly expected of anyone allowed to play in Elsewhere.

Standing by the water, you looked into the inky black, surprised there were no shallows. Or was the dark color playing tricks on you? Making you believe it was abyssal when, if you took a step, the water would rise hardly above your knee. Anxiety welled inside you as it often does, but you refused to back away. You looked at Grandma. Her mouth was a grim line. She looked older, the wrinkles on her face set deeper.

Just before you stepped in, she called you away, a harsh urgency lacing her words. You followed her back to the house burdened with heavy silence, went to bed without a hug, and stared at your ceiling till sunrise. Grandma talked about Black Lake once more. When she instructed you never to return to Elsewhere. After that, you became a stranger to your family. Grandpa never spoke, confining himself to his basement workshop for weeks at a time, and Grandma became tight-lipped and distant, redirecting her warmth to Lissa, much to Aunt Viv’s cat-like satisfaction.

My daughter… she would say in voice marinated with arrogance. My daughter.

How unfair.

You’re sixteen now.

Lissa disappeared last night.

Cops are taking statements, and you just smoked a blunt to make your shaky hands go steady. This is not a time for nerves, you know that. Like your visit to Black Lake, this is a time for courage.

You drive your beater of a Chevy past the iron gate and park sloppily behind an undercover squad car. Your supposed to go inside. You stop on the stairs, light another blunt, and walk the other way, towards Elsewhere.

Three years have passed since your last visit. Usually, you treat instructions like guidelines, but Grandma’s rule is different. You don’t know the consequences, but you know you don’t want to find them out either. The tree line greets you with indifference bordering on resentment, like a lover scorned or child abandoned, the way it appears to shoulder away from you. You hate this. You didn’t choose to leave. Grandma made you. That doesn’t matter right now because, whether or not Elsewhere hates you, Lissa is missing.

She was thirteen years old. Is, you remind yourself. Lissa is thirteen years old.

You were thirteen years old.

The thoughts put themselves together despite your resistance. No. No. No. You aren’t blaming anyone, especially Grandma, but the deeper you get, the worse you feel. A cold weight settles in the pit of your stomach. You take a hit off what remains of your blunt, savoring the smoke until you’re hacking. It frees itself from your lungs in a spasmic gray plume. In school last term, you took a psychology course and got a 102 percent because you cheated off Anya Martin. Of what little you remember, you’re sure there’s something about how easy it is to blame others during high-stress situations. Deflection or something like that. Grandma hurt you. It’s easy to conjure negative thoughts about her. But she wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all Lissa.

You hesitate in a clearing. The world here is dead. No flowers, no grass. Just silent, ash-like dirt so cold it chills you through your shoes. You feel trapped; the trees serving as bars for your cell. You’re not sure you even remember the way to Black Lake. After all, the path Grandma made was a mess. The memories are poor, surfacing in distorted clips. Elsewhere has no proper paths, only imagined ones. The trees stand firm against your pleading look, offering no validation or comfort in their conviction. They are seething. You contemplate returning to the safety of house, the squad car, the lights. Listening closely to the dead air, you convince yourself you’re hearing the steady thrum of Grandpa hammering away.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

The police want to talk to you, standard procedure and because tensions are so high Grandma might let the hostility simmer for tonight. Talk to you like the transgressions of the past can be so easily forgiven. It doesn’t matter, you just want to pretend everything is okay. You’re shaking. This makes you feel pathetic. Frantically searching your pockets, you find no weed. Fuck. You take a step back, not in retreat, you lie, but regroupment. To strategize. Grandma knows the way. Give your statement, of which you have incredibly little to say as you haven’t seen Lissa in over a month, and then the two of you will come back together. Yes, that will work.

Stop. This is the trees speaking to you. A breeze cuts through your hoodie, a pallbearer for the dying autumn. It’s only October, but Elsewhere gets colder faster than anywhere else, rigor mortis setting in long before the rest of the world. The frostbitten fingers of a lost Everest explorer. We will guide you.

You imagine this. Elsewhere is magical in idea, not reality. Magic isn’t real. Elves and fae and ghouls are not waiting for you in the trees. Magic is not threaded on the breeze. Yet here you are, taking the first step of a journey you’re not positive you should be on. Lissa is missing. You’re going to find her. Believing that makes this step easier. It’s good to be proud of yourself.

The moon is full, but the forest is pitch. The darkness is suffocating in its absoluteness, pressing against your chest as you move farther and farther from safety. Elsewhere never scared you, despite how it tried. You won’t let it scare you now. Will you? That’s a question to leave unanswered for now.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Grandpa doesn’t let people in his workshop. You have no idea what he does down there. You asked Grandma once. Her eyes went far away, her mouth opening, but nothing coming out. Secret things, she said after several uncomfortable minutes. Special things little ones needn’t worry about.

You don’t come from a religious home. Or you do. All you know is that God, in their popular form, has never been a presence acknowledged by your family. You’ve never spent Sunday in a pew and, though you told Jake Mercer you’re baptized when he invited you to his youth group, you were lying. But were you? You were.

Grandma says dreams are sometimes a future we missed out on. In your dreams, you feel yourself drowned in unforgiving water, judged by the way it chokes your lungs. Deeper, deeper you sink, a trail of precious oxygen bubbles your breadcrumbs to the surface. Further and still impossibly further you go, dragged by an unseen force, the water searching all your nooks and crannies. It pulls out your secrets like teeth. Often, you wake drenched in cold sweat. It is sweat. Isn’t it?

The darkness, the breeze, or maybe Elsewhere itself is forcing you to comfort this. You aren’t one to think about your dreams, dissecting the meanings like a body starfished on an operating table. You are the person who dreams, wakes, and goes for your morning latte. You think again about the water, about mud. About Black Lake.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Your family isn’t religious. They are reverent.

You’ve never known to what.

Hidden in the brush, something rustles. Your skeleton attempts to free itself from its fleshy confines to escape this new threat. There’s something alongside you that wishes you harm. It took Lissa, hurt her, and is coming to hurt you next. These are things you think. The world returns to silence long before you can force yourself into a curated calm. The calm you imagine Grandma has as well. Grandpa is working and Aunt Viv is no doubt a mess. That means Grandma has to be calm.

You are too. You don’t believe this.

There is a hole in the ground. You don’t notice until your foot catches and sends you face planting into the mud. A very unheroic moment. Fear propels you back to your feet, the temporary blindness galvanizing your senses against potential danger. Before the change happened, when Lissa was ten, she told you about the monsters.

Foul creatures, she called them. This sticks out because it’s a weird thing for a ten-year-old to say. Her face was wrong too, vacant when she said it like Grandma talking about Grandpa’s work. None of the descriptions made sense but, you suppose monsters shouldn’t make sense. Pillars of whirling smoke, conglomerations of green flesh slugging itself through the underbrush, and Mister Angry Teeth. She never elaborated on him.

M-i-s-t-e-r.

A-n-g-r-y.

T-e-e-t-h.

No description, yet you conjure the image perfectly. A solid, tall man in a charcoal suit and overcoat. A wide-brimmed hat is tipped to obscure their eyes, but his mouth is on full display, too-large teeth like brown stalactites emerging from the darkness. He is the embodiment of what you felt looking into the depths of Black Lake. He is sinister.

With pain radiating from your freshly sprained ankle, you push on, daunted but not defeated. Visions of sugar plum faeries dance in the minds of children on Christmas, but not you. Not now. Your visions are ravenous, bloodthirsty things. Creatures born from evil that feed on malice like meat. As a kid, Elsewhere welcomed you. Kept you safe. These things understood coming for you was a death sentence.

That was then. This is now.

Elsewhere resents you. Just like Grandma.

You wish you didn’t finish that sentence, but it’s too late. All the fear, stress, and anger brewing behind your eyes has become a viscous stew spilling over your thoughts, tainting each with violence. Lissa is missing? Excellent. You knew she wasn’t good enough. Grandma never should have picked her, trading you out like a broken toy. You hope she stays missing. Then they’ll bring you back in the fold.

No. Through a magnificent feat of will, you push the thoughts away, clenching your fists so hard your fingernails bring blood from the meat of your palms. You will find Lissa. Grandma’s too old, Grandpa’s too busy, and Aunt Viv doesn’t understand. Mom might, but she’s gone. That leaves you. You’re going to find her because you’re the only person who can.

How long you’ve been walking is unclear. It doesn’t matter. Finally, you break through to a clearing where the moon washes the land in pale white light. Under your feet, jagged rocks attempt to puncture your shoes and before you is the dark water of Black Lake, fog wafting around its perimeter like a halo. This makes no practical sense, but feels right. Elsewhere is a place of feeling, not truth. As a child, you spent hours in its embrace and never saw the same place twice.

Elsewhere is magic. Not the way you understand, but one all its own. Grandma said it’s important to respect Elsewhere, treat it like a friend. Talk to it, sing to it, remind it you care, and it will do the same. Caretakers. Was that what she said? Stewards, maybe? No, no, it was caretakers.

Drowning. Cold. Darkness. Mud. Fog.

Individually, these things mean nothing to you. Together, the rushing memory brings you to your knees. The sharp rocks stab your knees, but you ignore it. When did you get this close to the water? Lissa. Who’s Lissa? Right, you’re looking for her. Do you remember why? Why? Hmm.

In your mind, you hear screaming. Is it you? Is it Lissa? The trees are working against you. The monsters are closing in. You know they are. Watching, waiting, ready. Killing you has been a long time in the making, your life becoming forfeit from a deal made long before you were a thought in Mom’s head. Before Grandma took over the land and Grandpa resigned himself to the basement.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Before tonight, you never noticed how Grandpa’s hammering spreads across the property like church bells. But you don’t actually know anything about church bells. His hammering is laced with sorrow and dread, each strike a warning. A command. Stay away.

Lissa is thirteen. You know Grandma brought her here. You’re certain. Your family doesn’t answer to God when they serve at Elsewhere’s feet. You look at the dark water, accepting the irregular beat of its heart as your own. Faces move in the fog. They laugh at you. You are so easily fooled.

Clang.

Thirteen is not an unlucky number in your family. Grandma keeps thirteen books on her shelf, thirteen plates in her cabinet, and owns thirteen dresses. Aunt Viv paints for thirteen hours, sings the same thirteen notes, and takes thirteen drinks from her dinner glass. Mom had thirteen jobs, thirteen tattoos, and whispered how she loves you thirteen times a day. You smoked thirteen blunts today. Lissa has been missing for thirteen hours.

Never return.

Three years you managed to follow Grandma’s instructions. But you never forgot the pain in her stare, the disappointment scrawled on her face. In hindsight, you feel what she felt, occupying the space you did so long ago. It was a test. You failed.

Lissa is missing because she did what you could not.

She passed.

When Mom went away, Grandma said it was a good thing. She never meant for you to hear that, and, at the time, it made no sense. Edging closer to the water, knees bloody from the rocks, you realize why Mom went away. Why Grandma ignored you. Why Aunt Viv looked so relieved the next day.

My daughter…

You never asked about Mom. You remember her as confident and smart. You remember how tired she looked that last day, the dark circles under her eyes. There were bruises too, but you can’t recall from what. You now know she left without leaving. A trade.

Look across the water. You’ll see them.

Lissa wears a green patchwork dress, and her hair is tied back with a white bow. She doesn’t look at you, but you see her frown. Holding her hand is someone in a charcoal suit, a wide-brimmed hat tipped over their eyes, and brown teeth like stalactites the only visible part of their face. Mister Angry Teeth.

Elsewhere is particular about who it lets inside.

Black Lake rejected you. Or you rejected it.

Either way, you never should have returned. Elsewhere won’t protect you. Lissa is missing, but she will return. Haven’t you ever wondered why you only know half your family? Aunt Viv’s husband left, Mom left, and Dad may as well have never existed. Your family is confined to a single estate, a single stretch of land, and you never once wondered why.

Grandma isn’t mad. She’s scared, all this time trying to protect you. But you’ve always been too stubborn to listen. As long as you stayed away, you could live, but now you are on the wrong side of a deal you know nothing about.

Elsewhere has character. This is true. That doesn’t mean it isn’t scary as well.

You thought you’re the hero. That you would save Lissa from the horrors of Elsewhere. Never did you consider the possibility that the horrors run deeper than an unlit forest and misshapen trees. Mister Angry Teeth steps on the water, Lissa following behind. The air smells like sulfur and ash as the fog descends around you.

You hear screaming.

You’re dead before you realize it’s you.