The Portal in the Forest Read Free Page A

peered through the vast oval rift.
    This time, the portal had opened into an area
too small to contain it. Before me, I saw three spaces: a
gloom-filled and empty restaurant, a rain-filled alley filled with
strewn trash, and the back section of some sort of office - also
dark and empty. The sky, visible only above the alley in the middle
portion, sat opaque and stormy. The entire scene was eerily quiet,
and I realized that sound did not travel back through the rift.
"What's so bad about this one?"
    "Wait for it."
    I did wait. A moment later, lightning
flickered quietly, revealing the terrible secret of this new world.
"I see." I looked down at the box under my arm. This thing needed
to go before it had a chance to do… whatever it was capable of. I
began running through scenarios in my head, judging the likelihood
of an active threat this long after every human on that planet had
died horribly.
    Grimly, I stepped through the rift.
    I looked back and saw the forest and the
assorted kids. Their images ran hazy from the rain pouring down the
front of the portal. It wasn't lost on me: matter and energy native
to this world seemed to have a passive inability to cross to
ours.
    Staying close to the alley wall to dodge the
worst of the rain, I stepped gingerly over the places the lightning
had shown me to avoid. I paused once I reached the street, and
peered both directions for a few moments.
    Another flash of lightning struck, this time
followed by tremendous thunder that shook my very bones. Under this
second round of flashing, I saw them again: corpses, strewn all
about the alley and street. Huddled masses had fled this direction
and been cut down without mercy. Tragic enough, certainly, but odd
for another reason… their rotting remains were invisible when not
under direct illumination.
    I crept into the restaurant with a pounding
heart. An ancient and decayed smell filled the humid gloom. I moved
through an empty dining area and searched through several cabinets
in the back until I found a flashlight. Knocking and turning it
until it finally came on, I shined the light around.
    Under the beam of my flashlight, almost every
seat in the empty dining area held a corpse, either hunched or
yawning depending on the direction it had fallen. I had only
managed to avoid touching them by sheer luck. Little twisting
blackened strings of fungus and rot were all that remained on their
plates, a fitting feast for the dead.
    Almost every position had been served a plate
of delicacies now long past identifiable. I chose a chair that had
not been served and carefully placed my box down. The box had grown
warm the moment I'd entered this world, and I was curious.
    Scooting the cardboard aside, I laid the book
out on the table and flipped it open from the back to avoid any
hazardous contents in the front. I sought only the last entry,
which I knew from experience to be reasonably safe to read. I'd had
a suspicion that its contents would be different here… and I was
right.
     
    ***
     
    I was on a date at my favorite restaurant. I
was even having a good time. I… don't know what happened… she and I
ran into Jen. Now, she'd never liked Jen, but she put on a good
face for the conversation. If I hadn't been so oblivious, I would
have guessed she didn't really want to change our plans and go to
that stupid party with Jen.
    I've never really liked parties. Not really . I always get self-conscious, and my brain gets all
tired trying to keep up with all the things I keep imagining other
people are thinking or saying or expecting. Pretty soon, I always
just want to go home. I can't go home, though, because I need a
good excuse to leave… a believable one, so that people won't
secretly judge me.
    I got my excuse, I guess, when Jen died.
    I wasn't sure what happened. Nobody was sure.
She was always a party girl - had she overdosed? She was bleeding
pretty profusely from the nose, and she'd fallen and gotten
terrible slashes up her back… but she'd