Truthfully, I had no idea what to do or how to do it. I remember how Pippa explained how it worked for her, how she had to concentrate and imagine the air bending before she could physically step through, but perhaps that wasn’t the same for everyone.
I stared blankly at the toilet for a few moments until it began to feel like a smelly tomb, then closed my eyes and decided to try from inside myself. At first I called for Pippa, asking for her in my head over and over again, willing for her help, for her to appear. Then, when nothing happened, I moved onto Dex, asking the same. I pleaded with all my heart and soul.
Just like the many times I had tried since his disappearance, I heard and felt nothing. Sweat had formed on my skin and stuck my t-shirt to my back. The washroom was growing hotter and my head was starting to hurt.
But I wouldn’t give up.
I took in a deep breath through my mouth and tried to steady my heart, which was thumping hard from exertion and nerves and the mounting feeling of helplessness. Maybe I just had to imagine it, create it, concentrate my thoughts like I did when I was trying to project onto people.
I stared at a blank spot right in front of the door, using the sight as a means to visualize and focus. I imagined the air started to shimmer, like a mirage inside of the bathroom, but though I could see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t actually see it happen.
I kept at it, sweat pouring down my arms, my face growing hot, trying so, so hard to make this happen. I had almost given up when it happened. As it was, I looked away from the area I was concentrating on for just a moment, enough time to see a small bug crawling up the wall, when the area around the door, just in my peripheral, started to move. I looked back at it quickly and it was still again.
Rubbing my lips together, I tried to both concentrate on the area and look away from it at the same time. I focused but let the focus blur.
And when I did just that, the air started to warp and shift. I slowly brought that into focus and now I could see it clearly. There was a hazy shimmer in the air, like I was looking at the washroom door through clear, moving water.
Cautiously, I raised my hand and put it through the air. Once it passed into the shimmer, my arm turned a de-saturated shade of grey and was instantly chilled. My skin started prickling, all the hairs standing straight up like I was being electrocuted. Every part of my body was telling me to withdraw my arm, to take it back, to stay in this world, this dimension, this universe where the living belonged.
Every instinct told me to not cross over.
But Dex may be on the other side. Answers could hang from trees, ripe for the picking.
Sometimes your instincts were wrong. Your body wants you to survive but sometimes there are more important things than just surviving.
I took in a deep breath and stepped in through the shimmer.
My body instantly froze from intense chill and my limbs grew stiff and rigid as waves of electricity coursed through my body and the pressure inside my head built to a boiling point.
I shut my eyes hard and cried out, not sure where my screams would end up.
I walked another step and suddenly the world was sucked away from me, violently removed, like it was being vacuumed.
I was no longer in the washroom.
I was no longer in this world.
CHAPTER FIVE
Perry
When I opened my eyes on the other side, I was in Bryant Park. But there were no people about. There was no sound. There was no real smell, except for a stale, musty odor, like the inside of an old, upholstered car on a hot day. Except it was no longer hot, like the hazy sun above Manhattan. It was cold enough to make my breath turn to cloud and my lungs to burn with each breath.
That was to say, of course, that I was even breathing air.
I turned around, wondering if I could find my way back to the other side. The air shimmered right behind me, though it looked like it was growing more faint by the moment. I could barely see the toilet on the other side and I wondered how long I had before Ada or Maximus or some New Yorker who really had to piss, would start banging on it. I couldn’t remember if time stood still while you were in the Veil or if it went on as usual. I couldn’t remember if there were any rules.
Fear pricked at the back of my neck but I straightened my shoulders, refusing it. I couldn’t start panicking now at what I had done. I had to follow through. I would whatever it took in order to find him or Pippa.
But where the f**k did I even start? This world was grey and devoid of life. Where were the lost souls, the reluctant dead? Hell, I’d even welcome the giant woodbugs and earthworms that I had seen once before.
Maybe no one knows you’re here, I thought quickly to myself. Maybe that’s a very good thing.
I made a mental note to keep quiet and stop wishing. I began to walk across the park and to the street, past the bench that Ada and Maximus would be sitting on the other side of things. I wondered if they could sense me, hovering behind their existence. Part of me wanted to stay there, feeling safe and tethered to them but the other, more desperate part, needed to go on.
I walked up and down the streets, keeping quiet and sticking to the walls of buildings, hiding in the shadows that formed despite there being no sun in the sky, just this grimy dead light that hanged above you.
For blocks there was nothing. The chill in the air lessened its hold on me, but my footfalls still had only a whisper of sound. I felt like I was walking inside a miniature city kept inside a jar, with only a few holes poked at the top.
I don’t know where I was going, my feet were not being consciously moved, but considering I had no other ideas, I just went with it and walked and walked.
Finally, I saw something.
Or, should I say, it saw me.
There was a grandiose building –a bank I think – with a row of wide, dusty steps leading up to stately-looking pillars, Grecian-style. At the top of the steps was a man, pacing back and forth.
At least I thought it was a man. As I came closer, my pace slowing, I could see some things were off about him. He moved with jerks, like a marionette puppet and his pants seemed too thin, too flexible, like he didn’t actually have any legs under there at all.
He also had no eyes and no nose – just black, crusted over cavities that I imagined would be bright red in another world.
I swallowed my revulsion. Then he turned his bald head toward me and I knew he saw me. Revulsion turned to fear.
Who are you? he asked quietly in my head. To my surprise, there was a note of fear in his voice too. I know you’re there.