The Travelers

CHAPTER ONE

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. It’s been said the same holds true for the Crossing Zone—a black hole devoid of all light, sound, and perhaps even air. Designed by the Originator to keep all the Worlds separate, once inside the Crossing Zone no scream, no cry for help, no plea for mercy can be heard.

Or so they say.

It is assumed that no one has ever successfully traversed through a Crossing Zone in order to enter a world not their own. If any have tried, it’s not known what happened to them. No matter the country, no matter the continent, every child grows up hearing terror-inducing stories about people who have disappeared without a trace; people who are doomed to wander in some horrifying impenetrable darkness for all eternity. The stories are told so if somehow someone does stumble upon a door leading into a Crossing Zone, they never, ever would dare walk through it. There aren’t many constants in life, but one that does exist is the spine-tingling dread every human feels at the thought of being inside a Crossing Zone. It doesn’t matter what your race, nationality, or financial situation is; it doesn’t matter if you’re super smart or have an IQ lower than your living room temperature in wintertime. Every person on the planet fears the Crossing Zone. Every single person.

Actually, it shouldn’t be said that no one has survived a Crossing Zone. Apparently, a small group exists that is made up of Beings from multiple Worlds; Beings who have the unique ability to cross through the Zones. Ostensibly this small group is tasked with maintaining order in and between the Worlds; thus, they alone can move through a Crossing Zone seamlessly and without fear.

Or so they say.

****

It’s my seventeenth birthday and I’m bored out of my mind. It’s barely noon and the temperature has already crossed the hundred-degree mark, so unless you happen to be a lizard, which I am not, it’s too hot to breathe much less do something. Flopping onto my stomach, I reach across my bed and turn the fan to high, which of course it’s already on. Grabbing the spray bottle of ice water, I squirt it into the blades hoping for a second or two of blissful relief.

Well, that was short lived, I think as I flip back over so I can stare at the ceiling and feel sorry for myself—something I have recently decided is sorely underrated.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

It’s my friend Jenna, someone who clearly has not fallen prey to the inertia I’m feeling. She’s standing in my bedroom doorway, hands on her hips.

“Why are you just lying there in your underwear on your birthday?”

I might have growled at her, I’m not sure.

“Come on, get up! We have places to go, people to see!”

“Too hot. How are you even moving?” I reach for the spray bottle and because I can’t reach the fan blades without flipping over, I settle for dousing myself.

“It’s only too hot if you let it be too hot,” Jenna says as she flashes me a disgustingly perky smile. “Besides, it’s a sauna in here. It’s better outside, I’m not kidding.” She moves to the bed to grab my arm. “Come on, Marley! I have plans for us today!”

“Oh my God, who crowned you the Pollyanna queen? I’m not doing anything, Jenna. Global warming has stolen all my happiness. My life is over until the temperature drops below sixty.” I yank my arm back. “Go away.”

“I will not. I’m going to stand here and annoy you until you swap out your underwear for your bathing suit. Trust me, it is not hot where we’re going!”

I admit, curiosity snuck its way through my heat-induced inertia. “What? You win the lottery and get us tickets to Alaska?”

Jenna raises her eyebrows and wiggles them, something that always makes me laugh. “Maybe. You’ll never know unless you get up!”

“Fine,” I sigh. “But only because you’re using up whatever little energy I have left by standing here arguing with me.” Begrudgingly, I get up.

“Is your mom working?” Jenna asks.

“Yep.”

“Mine too.” Jenna throws my bathing suit at me, which she has removed from the bottom drawer of my dresser. “Here. Wear these shorts over that. You don’t need anything else.”

“Really? What’s the temp in Alaska? Won’t I be too cold?” I laugh, adding, “Okay, I know you were only joking about that. So, where are we really going?”

“The quarry.”

I stop getting dressed. “We can’t go to the quarry. They closed it, remember? Nobody’s allowed out there. Something about swimming becoming too dangerous due to underwater rockslides.” I look at my bed, wondering if I should just plop back onto it with half my bathing suit on.

“All the more reason to go,” Jenna says, smiling. “This way, we won’t have to deal with half the town being out there!” She laughs and tells me to hurry up, adding, “I’ve already got everything we need packed and in the car, which my mother was gracious enough to have loaned me for the day.” She grabs a scrunchie off my dresser and sweeps her long dark hair into a high ponytail. “She thinks we’re going to a movie, where it’s air conditioned. I told her there’s a double feature and that we’ll be done in time to pick her up at 6:00.”

“When did you turn into such a liar?” I laugh as I finish getting ready. “You know you’re going to Hell for that.”

“Yeah, well… it’s not enough that we’ve been best friends since preschool, right? I need to make sure I’m by your side in the Ever After!”

Jenna gives me a playful slug on the shoulder. “By the way, happy birthday!”

“Thanks. And you do realize it’s possible we’re already in the Ever After. I mean, could Hell be any hotter than this? I don’t think so!”

Grinning, the two of us walk out of my room and head down the stairs.

****

On the way to the quarry, Jenna tells me that she’s discovered a new way to get in there.

“It’s perfect! It’s toward the back side where nobody ever goes, so there’s no way anyone could possibly see us in there. There’s a great little swimming hole where we can blissfully float inside the icy water.” She glances at me as she changes lanes. “Okay, maybe not icy, but definitely brisk. Plus, as I was checking all this out for us, I found a rock cave where I swear it’s thirty degrees cooler. Maybe more.”

“If it’s so great how come we’ve never known about it?” Jenna and I, along with about fifty of our not so close friends, have been going to the quarry every summer since we were old enough to swim.

“Because they’ve never opened that part of the quarry for swimming. It took me a while to figure this out, believe me. But, holy smokes, Marley, it’s perfect; I’m not kidding!”

“Sweet.” I put my face in front of the air conditioning vent. “I don’t think your air conditioner is working very well.”

Snorting, Jenna assures me it’s working just fine. “You know, you really do need to move to Alaska. You are not made for Arizona weather.” She pulls into a small grove of cottonwood trees and turns off the engine. “Good thing we’re here.”

Looking around, I ask, “Here where?” I don’t see anything except trees.

“Here, our first step toward Paradise.” She pulls two daypacks from the trunk. “Here you go. Snacks, icy water, and towels. Everything we need, including your favorite birthday cupcake!” She hands me a pack. “Onward!” she commands with a smile.

How Jenna ever found this is beyond me. As we move between the cottonwoods, we come upon an almost invisible trail that leads us to the backside of the quarry. The only problem is, I can’t see any way to get to the water. It’s just rocks in front of us and I’m already sweating buckets and pretty sure heat stroke is a mere second away.

“Uh… Jenna?”

“It looks more daunting than it is. I swear.” Jenna faces the rocks and places her fingers in miniscule finger holds that look ready-made for Lilliputians.

“I don’t think so!”

“Just follow me, Marley. Really, it’s only hard in this beginning part. After two feet of this we hit a ledge and from there we can step down all the way to the water.”

Well, the treacherous part didn’t last for only two feet; it was more like twenty. My heart had ratcheted up to about a million beats a minute and I was pretty sure if heat stroke didn’t take me, a heart attack would. But Jenna was right; once we got past this first hurdle, the rest was relatively doable.

I didn’t even want to think about how we’d do this again on the way back.

****

“It’s a good thing you didn’t describe that to me when you said there was a back way into the quarry,” I said, trying to steady my breathing. “I don’t even want to know how you discovered this.”

“But you’re happy, right?” Jenna flashed me her trademark smile. The one that could probably light up a dark night on the Yukon. “Admit it. It’s cooler down here, even before we go in the water!”

She’s right about that. It’s definitely cooler. Looking around, I can’t get over how quiet and beautiful it is. I’ve never been to this part of the quarry, and even if I had been, it’s a whole different feeling being here alone. Usually there are at least a hundred people out here every day during the summer.

“It is pretty awesome,” I tell her. “A definite find, for sure.” It amazes me how Jenna always manages to do things like this—to find the unknown and do the un-doable. It’s one of her most admirable traits.

“Happy Birthday, Marley.” Jenna waves her hand from side to side. “This is half your present.” She gets up to walk to the lowest of the nearby rock ledges. “Now, let’s get WET!” she yells before diving into the water.

I’m right behind her.

The two of us swim and float for several glorious minutes. It’s hard to believe an hour earlier I had no energy to move because right now I feel like I could swim out here forever.

“Come on! I want to show you the cave I found.” Jenna smiles before turning to swim away. We’re both strong swimmers and I have no trouble keeping up with her as we weave in and around rock walls.

After maybe fifteen minutes of straight swimming, Jenna grabs onto a ledge. “Okay, this is the only dicey part,” she says. “This will be the coolest thing you’ve ever experienced, Marley. Just trust me on this, okay?”

“Trust you be…cause?”

“Because we have to dive pretty far down and it’s a little scary at first because you think you’re going to run out of air. But you won’t because once we get there, it’s like a real cave. Not a water cave. I mean, there’s air down there. I don’t know how, but there is. So, you just need to hold your breath until we hit the air.”

“How far is pretty far down?” I feel my heartrate speed up again. An adrenalin junkie I am not.

“Far enough that you’re probably going to have two seconds of panic. But that’s all, Marley. Seriously, there’s a point where you think, ‘Oh my God, I have to breathe!’ and there’s a brief moment of near total panic. And then the cave is there, I swear.”

I stare at Jenna in disbelief. “Are you insane? You did this by yourself, with nobody here in case you got into trouble? You did this not knowing what was down there?”

“Well, it’s your birthday present. And believe me, it’s a good one!” Letting go of the ledge, she dog-paddles as she says, “Take a very deep breath and go where I go. It’s all good!” Inhaling deeply, Jenna glances my way one more time before diving under water.

I follow.

****

I gasp for breath as I stand in a cave with water covering only my feet. My knees are shaking.

“Holy shit, Jenna. I didn’t think I’d make that. Oh my God.”

“But you did! I knew you would. You haven’t been on a swim team for ten years without developing a super powerful set of lungs!”

“That was the longest two seconds of my life.” I’d glare at her, but it’s so dark she’d miss it. “That was more like two minutes, Jenna!”

“It just felt that way.” There’s a slight echo to her words. “Did you know Tom Cruise held his breath underwater for six minutes in Rogue Nation and Kate Winslet held hers for longer than that in Avatar 2? Like, for over seven minutes!”

“Seriously?”

“For real.”

“Well, I’d die. I barely held it for as long as we did.” My breathing seems to be settling back into some semblance of normal. “I’ll say this for you; you sure did find us a way to beat the heat! It’s awesome in here!” I turn my head to look around, but of course can’t see a thing. “It’s dark, but blissfully cool.”

“This will help.” Suddenly a beam of light illuminates everything around me as Jenna holds out her hand. “Here you go. One for you, one for me.”

“What the hell? How’d you bring headlamps?”

“I thought for sure you saw them. I had them in the waterproof pouch I use for my phone. It was hanging around my neck.”

“Wow. I somehow missed that. Seriously? It was hanging around your neck?”

“Yep. Of course, I did have it hanging down my back most of the time you were looking.” Jenna laughed. “Just so I could surprise you.”

“Well, that you did. Well done, Jenna!” I glance around me, seeing nothing beyond rock walls. “I have to admit, it feels a lot better having light down here.” A second later I ask, “So, where to now? Where does this go?”

“I have no idea. This is as far as I’ve gone. I admit, I got a little spooked down here by myself. Especially because I didn’t have a headlamp.” Jenna waved her hand in front of her. “Might as well head that way and see what we find!”

“You think it’s safe? Maybe we should just hang out here. This is good.”

“But there is better!” Jenna says, smiling and looking only slightly weird in the glow of her headlamp. “Hey, you only turn seventeen once, right?” She starts walking while keeping one hand on the rock wall. “We’ll go slow and if it seems dicey, we’ll just turn back.”

“Deal.” I say this but I only half mean it. I really would be fine staying put.

Jenna keeps the lead as we move forward. Nothing jumps out at us, no snakes swim by our feet, no rogue water bears emerge from any corners. All of which is fine with me. As I said, an adrenaline junkie I’m not.

Suddenly we stumble into what seems like a dead end. Except it isn’t. Because, shockingly, there’s a door in front of us. A door I could swear was not there the second before.

“What the—” I look at Jenna, my light blinding her. “Sorry. Just… what… what is a door doing here? How can there be a door in a rock wall? One I swear wasn’t here a minute ago. I mean, it wasn’t… was it?”

“Uhm… I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Jenna took a deep breath. “Seriously creepy.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” I cover part of my light so as not to blind Jenna as I turn to face her again. “So, uhm… I’m good with my birthday present ending here, okay? I say, let’s go back.”

“No argument from me. This is giving me a weird feeling. A really bad kind of weird feeling.”

Just as we start to turn around, a terrifying sound engulfs us. It seems to come from every direction at once, sounding like thousands of giant birds flapping their wings. Instinctively, both Jenna and I dive to the ground and cover our ears, but the sound only seems to get louder.

“Go!” Jenna screams. “Go, go, go!!!” She pushes on the rock-wall door, and as soon as it opens, she flies straight through it. I’m right on her heels.

Instantly, the door closes and when I look, in the single second before my headlamp goes out, I see… nothing. No door. No outline of a door. Nothing.

Absolutely…

Nothing.

****

“Jenna?” My voice comes out as barely a whisper. “Jenna?” Panic begins to consume me. If I thought the cave was dark, it was because I didn’t know what darkness is. I frantically reach around for Jenna, but I feel nothing, can see nothing as I’m flooded with adrenalin and a whooshing sound in my ears. “Jenna?” I try again, but her name catches in my throat as a suffocating sense of panic overtakes me. This blackness… it’s unyielding. I hold my shaking hand two inches in front of my eyes, but I can’t see it.

“Here, Marley. I’m here.” Jenna’s voice comes from somewhere, but I can’t tell where that somewhere is. “I can’t find you….” Her words trail off.

Terror like I’ve never known surges through me as I try to shout but can only squeak out her name one more time. “Jenna… I’m here. I need to find you.”

“Marley?” The fear in Jenna’s voice is so palpable I feel like I could pluck it out of the black air and hold it in my palm. I’m having trouble breathing and it feels like I am suffocating.

“Jenna… I can’t… breathe. I… can’t…breathe.”

The silence is disorienting. The sense of infinite blackness is disorienting. And both are wrapping themselves around me and suffocating me with cloak of fear like I’ve never, ever known.

How could that door just disappear?

Where are we? What is this? I wonder as my breath hitches and my heart thumps wildly against my chest. Except, even as I think these questions, I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“Jenna…” I whisper, barely able to hear myself as the word drops off into a pool of nothingness.

“Jenna? Are we… are we in a Crossing Zone?”

CHAPTER TWO