Picking Stones Chapter 28

"The Scene"

---

Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

---

The Scene

“What do you mean you don’t have the bikes?”

“It means I don’t have them, I—”

“I called yesterday. You said you had them, I gave you my credit card info to confirm the reservation. I even got the notification on my phone from when the charge went through.”

“You must have the wrong place.”

Steam was shooting out of my ears. The bike shop had no record of a reservation being made. He claims he never got a call, or a name, or a reservation. The owner had just rented the last two bikes the shop had to walk-ins ten minutes before we showed up.

“I can always set you up for a reservation for tomorrow.”

“So you can charge me twice? Hold on, let me show you.” I pulled out my phone and opened it to messages. I had set up my credit card to text me any time there was a transaction. It messaged me the day before when the charge went through.

I scanned the texts. The last message I had received from my credit card company was a charge at the bookstore. There was no charge made for the bike reservations. I opened the banking app and there was nothing there, either. I felt dizzy.

“Sir, I can make you a reservation for tomorrow, or call you when the bikes have been returned.” The man smiled politely at us as if he had done nothing wrong.

“Forget it. Let’s get out of here.” I pulled Ramona out of the shop and walked toward her car under the gray sky. A chill had entered town that morning.

“It’s not a big deal, Will. We can figure something else out,” she said. “I have an idea. There’s a nature center near the entrance of the park. No one’s ever there. It can just be the two of us on a nice long walk alone in the woods.” We got in the car; she let me drive. “Park here.”

I pulled into a spot next to a rotting wooden bathroom. A sign hung on the damp wood, showcasing the wildlife in the area. I spotted another heron among the animals on the poster. In another minute we were in the woods.

“It’s so much darker here,” she said.

We walked and held hands and looked to the sky. It was true. Most of the sun was blocked by dark clouds. The trail we were on was surrounded on both sides with dead white birch trees that reflected the cold day onto us. “The nature center is a little over three miles from here. Are you down to go all the way?” she asked. I nodded.

“Come on, Will. Pretend it’s our last day in the world together. Don’t you want to enjoy it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good. And I’m glad we ended up not getting the bikes.” Her fingers wove into mine. “This is much better.”

---

It had to have been an hour into the walk at that point. Had to. My mind kept bobbing in and out between reality and somewhere. My breathing was slow, far from me. Each breath sucked in gave me a rush. Buzzing bugs and chirping birds seemed to be singing in synchronicity with our footsteps.

Trees grew thicker and thicker and the trail seemed to be tapering tighter as we moved on. A sense of claustrophobia. I gazed off to the side and tried to look through the forest, but saw nothing past the dead trees jagging up and out of the ground. It was like a wall surrounding us, bending with the trail off to the left and taking us with it. We kept walking, hand in hand, for another few minutes. Then the backdrop of the forest came into sharp focus.

“Hey, look over there,” I said. The chirping and buzzing seemed to grow louder. Without thinking, I stopped, and so did everything else.

Off trail, almost invisible, were two white birches. The trees bent away from each other at the bottom and bent back together at their tops, almost as if they created a strange opening between them, just big enough for us to step through. On either side of the opening were the thick dead trees, but you couldn’t make out anything in the opening. Well, except for the feeling of it, almost like something was just begging us to go to the other side. I was drawn to it like a magnet, floating to the opening with fascination. I barely heard me calling to Ramona to follow. The buzzing and chirping was almost deafening then.

Then the opening in the trees was in front of me. The two bent trees were creating a picture-perfect window to the other side of the forest. I needed to go through it, I needed to see what was on the other side. “Come on.” I grabbed Ramona’s hand.

My left foot went first, then my right. I ducked my head and traveled through the opening, letting go of Ramona’s hand as a wave of elation sailed through my body when I materialized on the other side. “Oh wow.”

Energy surged inside my chest, a feeling that drew me deeper into that new part of the forest. Something was calling me, beckoning me. I wanted to go further, needed to. All of the trees on that side were alive and strong, evergreens stretching up to the shining sun.

“I think there’s something up ahead,” I said to her while I walked entranced. That feeling of elation, ecstasy. The ground began to dip. My eyes scanned ahead, and saw it, a roaring brook a hundred feet further, down in a little valley. White foam bubbled over the ripping blue water. “It’s beautiful!”

“I don’t remember ever seeing a stream on this side of the park,” she called.

I had reached as far as I could, the brook was below me, almost a ninety degree drop down through thick tree roots to reach it. It was so far down, but I could almost feel the cold water on my tongue. I needed to get down there, I needed to start climbing. Ramona was behind, still making her way to me. “Hold on, Will,” she said.

I stood there on the edge, right before the drop, calmly. Images of me climbing down to get to the water. Climbing, falling, submerging, drowning. That’s when I realized the sounds of the birds and the bugs had ceased when I crossed through the opening between the trees. Then I realized I couldn’t hear the water running below me, either.

A rush of wind suddenly infiltrated my ear canal with the intensity of a thousand jet engines taking off. Then nothing. Everything else that surrounded me was muted as if turned off by a remote. Ramona was talking but no words were coming out.

Then sound came again. It poured through my ear and filled it to the brim before sealing tightly with a loud pop. I jumped, astonished. Hands twitched; neck twitched. Any moisture on me turned dry.

A feeling of dread, that same feeling of dread that had hit me so many times. But this time the dread was of a magnitude worse than any I could have ever imagined. It sucked every ounce of happiness straight out of my body. Once the sound in my ear popped, I began to feel it in my toes, then my legs, back, and finally head. Wailing wailing—something, someone, was screaming.

I turned to Ramona and saw her grab for me. Her face expressed concern. She was reaching for something on my right leg. Far down below, the stream begged me to come closer, but I couldn’t. Something happened, something changed. It boiled down from deep in my belly and erupted like a tea kettle once it reached my mouth.

A blood curdling scream, so fierce it shook the needles off the trees. It had come from my own mouth. Because at that moment the sharpest, most explosive pain I had ever felt shot through my right leg. I shouted in agony. The world around me seemed to collapse. Ramona hopelessly tried to help.

Sticking through my pants, stuck on the middle of my shin, was a huge hornet that embedded its stinger deep into my leg. I screamed again, this time ripping at my pants, flinging the hornet off me and sending it flying far away in a fit, without a buzz trailing its flight path.

I was blinded in that moment, delusional from the sudden shock to my body both mentally and physically. Without thinking I darted away from that stream I so desperately had wanted to explore and made a bull rush through the trees until I finally made it back onto the trail.

---

Around me were the dead white birches and the trail we had been walking on. There was even a wooden sign pointing toward the nature center we had been headed to. Beside me was the same beautiful girl who’d always been there. But something changed. We were somewhere different.

Venom from the hornet bite was coursing through my leg. I felt dizzy.

“Ramona,” I gasped, my teeth gritted. “Something very bad is happening.”

“What do you mean? Will, you’re gonna be fine. Let’s just take a few minutes here.”

Panic and fear rocked me. Something happened to the two of us. Something bad. Really bad. We were in a place very different than the place our bodies and souls had been just a few minutes before. We were somewhere else. Somewhere bad.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her close to me. I took a few steps and hobbled to the side of the trail. The card in my pocket buzzed, I could feel its power taking control now. Were we in Nim’s world?

The world was sinking, I felt the terror, the dread all around us.

“We’re somewhere different. You feel it, right? Tell me you feel that something is off.”

It was true. It was like a vacuum under the earth, sucking our bodies deeper and deeper into the brown dirt. Sucking the souls right out of our bodies to trap them in a dark and evil hellish void forever.

“Ramona, you understand something is off, don’t you? Please tell me you feel it. Something isn’t right. When you saw that stream, you said you didn’t remember seeing one in this part of the park before.”

“Maybe I was wrong. I’m not an expert; I’ve only been to Acadia three times in my life.”

“Check the map on your phone.”

“I left my phone in the car,” she said. I had left mine, too.

“Will, of course something is wrong. You got stung by that thing. Those bites hurt. It’s gonna be fine. Just try and calm down.” She looked at me and looked away. Was I scaring her?

Something I had seen in the cryptozoology museum popped into my head. There was a small section, near that ancient book they had on display. “Maybe we’re in a parallel universe,” I muttered.

“Huh?”

Just then we both jumped and embraced each other. Two hikers walked past us on the trail. In the air you could hear the wails of some far-off evil, dragging the energy further and further down. The hikers, a boy and girl, smiled at us with faces that melted into empty spaces. They were gone.

The two of us waited with breaths held for a few minutes, until the stench of the hikers had finally left the air. We walked to a bend in the trail and I sat on a log off to the side of the trail to massage my sore leg. A feeling of darkness sucked the air out of our lungs as a group of four girls in bright tie die shirts walked past us with plastic smiles.

“Ramona, you can’t lie to me right now. Tell me you feel it too.”

“What is it?” She looked to me, begging for an answer, fear in her eyes too.

“Maybe it is a parallel universe. They had an exhibit about it in that museum in the city. A parallel universe—or worse.”

I looked up. The sky was the same blue sky and the clouds were the same white clouds. Unless the clouds were purple. I focused on them for a couple of minutes to see whether my eyes were playing tricks on me. I couldn’t tell.

“This is crazy, Will. We just got spooked by something, that’s all.”

The card in my pocket began pulsating. I ripped it out and stared at it, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened. The game was still on.

“It’s this thing, Ramona. Nim. He’s still after me. He brought us to this place.”

“And what place is that?”

I couldn’t answer that question, but my gut told me I was right. I was surrounded by things that looked like people and plants and trees and the sky and the dirt and they all looked the same. But it didn’t feel the same. Because it wasn’t. The feeling of dread, evil, depression, sinking, heaviness, despair, and terror that surrounded us told me I was right. Unless I was finally coming to terms with my own insanity.

“Let’s retrace our steps,” I said. “I want to find that stream again. Maybe if we get back to it I’ll feel better.”

“Why would that make you feel better?

“I don’t know, but something is telling me to get back to that stream. Like it’s calling to me. I need to get back there.” We started back. We walked for two minutes. Three. Five. Ten. Fifteen. The hairs on the back of my neck stood taller and taller with each passing minute. An inaudible siren was ringing through my mind.

I held my head in my hands.

“We were there five minutes ago,” Ramona said. “We barely walked away from it. How can we not find it? It was so close. It was right here.” There wasn’t a stream, or that down sloping grade, or anything. Just trees. We had walked backwards further than we walked forward since seeing it.

“Maybe it never existed,” I said.

“That’s crazy.”

“So is not being able to find it after we were just there,” I said. She didn’t answer.

“What the hell!” she shrieked in frustration. I wanted to give up, I could feel the light floating away from me. “Do we just go back to the car?”

“No,” I said. “That’s just what he wants us to do. Let’s just keep going to the nature center. Wasn’t that the plan this whole time?”

“Before you got stung by a hornet and started telling me we’re in a parallel universe.”

“Whatever, sorry. I’ll drop it. I feel better. Let’s go.”

---

We kept walking. My hand clutched Ramona’s. Whenever people passed us on the trail we would feel that awful dread. A wooden sign told us we were twenty minutes from the nature center. I didn’t want to see it anymore, but I had to feign strength for her. The only thing I wanted was to reach the water of the stream we had seen. I was desperate for it.

The wall of trees on either side of the trail got tighter and tighter. Up ahead, we could see it changing. A few minutes later we were met by a boardwalk, stretching for what seemed like forever. It was built over a bog, standing a foot over the green water with overgrown grass poking out on either side. “This was my favorite part of the trail,” she said with a pale smile.

Muddy shoes scraped over the gray wood. According to a sign the bog stretched a little over a mile. Once you started on the boardwalk, there was only the way you came or the way you were going. The green water looked so cool, refreshing almost. I looked for my reflection in it but was met with none. “Maybe reflections don’t exist in this universe,” I whispered.

Dead and decaying trees sprouted out from the bog and reached out to the dead sky. There was no buzzing of bugs and seemingly no end to the boardwalk. Haunted. The card, Nim, was burning my leg worse than the hornet sting.

Immerse Yourself, read a sign along the path. Fine, I thought. Eyes closed. Balance lost. Where was the end? Only darkness ahead. All that existed was the need to find that stream.

A bird flew past. Bugs swarmed over the green water. Wood planks bent beneath the weight of our worlds as we walked. None of those things had any sound. In another world, our world, that place would have been beautiful.

“I feel better. Don’t you?” she asked. I smiled at her to give hope and saw there wasn’t truth behind her words. I was dying to get back to that stream.

“Stop.” Fear gripped me, I was frozen in place.

Without warning, a figure had come into my line of sight. It was a man with his back turned to us. He had tan skin, short black hair and wore shorts and a long-sleeved gray shirt. The man stood up to his calves in water, ten feet off the boardwalk. The green water lay still around him, as if he wasn’t even there. He was standing completely straight; not even his lungs were moving. He was staring intently at a dead tree in front of him.

All the feelings of fear and pain and doubt I had felt for the past few weeks seemed to exist in him, and shot at me. I couldn’t move. There was danger ahead.

“We can’t go near that guy, Ramona.” Peter’s story of the mogwai entered my head. My time was up.

I looked into her eyes and saw tears and past the tears, fear. It was the same fear I had. The sheer evil emanating from this man was present all around us. I was horrified.

“Come on, Will. We need to go past him.” I felt a tug on my hand.

“No. Please. We can’t.”

Maybe five minutes, maybe ten. The three of us stood. He never moved, never took his eyes off the tree before him. But he knew we were there; I could feel it.

“Come on.”

She grabbed my hand and pulled. We walked forward. The closer we got to him, the stronger that sense of fear became. The man, the being, just stood in the green water, and shot vibrations of the worst fears imaginable at our minds. It was evil incarnate.

It never moved, just standing rigid, possessed. Eyes locked on the tree in front of him. Frozen. We walked until we were next to him. Ramona was on my left and he was on my right, off ten feet into the bog. Sweat coated my face. What force in the air made us stop?

Slowly, slowly, his head began to turn. The lips were seen first, like a hairline crack that slowly turned into a thin and ugly grin. I looked up to its eyes and felt the life completely drain out of my body. There was no light in them. Where eyes would have been was just dark black holes, sucking the light from all around them. They were soulless, with nothing inside. Unmistakable.

Ahead of me was the end of my existence. For a split second I was attracted to the darkness, enthralled by it, and saw the thin menacing grin crack further and further apart. I would never tell my parents I loved them again, or ever see that place I had been from the before and after. I would just be there, in the darkness. I’d be inside those eyes with the darkness, suffering, agony, and oblivion.

My body was petrified. The man stood there, his body still facing the tree with his head bent to us. He never blinked. The winds of agony were yelling at me to run and I didn’t listen. Slowly, effortlessly, he turned his head and faced the tree again.

Ramona and I jumped back when his right arm swung like an ax and embedded its fingers deep into the tree. I noticed the fingers were grotesquely long, out of proportion with the rest of the body. Its smile grew wider. With another swipe, he ripped off a piece of the tree like it was paper. The wood was long, razor sharp, and thicker than the barrel of a baseball bat. Slowly, slowly, his face met mine again, trapping my eyes in its nothing.

It stared at me and lifted the spear in its hand. We ducked at the deafening sound of the spear whacking the tree. He never looked away from me, and hit the tree with the spear five more times, each whack harder than the last. Pine needles fell around us like snowfall. The thing stood there, with its dead eyes and cracked smile saying without speaking, ‘your move.’

“We gotta get out of here,” Ramona said. I turned to her and saw terror in her own eyes. I grabbed her hand and started back again toward the nature center.

As soon as I moved, the thing’s body turned to meet the rest of its head and started stepping through the bog to get to the boardwalk. The green water soaked the gray planks when it climbed onto the boardwalk. He was ten feet behind us, still with his crooked smile and clutching the spear in his hand.

“Will,” she said. “I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

The faster we walked, the faster he followed, never getting closer than the ten feet that separated us. I stopped in my tracks. To my surprise, so did the evil behind me. Those eyes carried that suffocating blackness that had haunted me for years.

“Look, up ahead the trail forks.”

We had made it to the end of the boardwalk, dry trail was up ahead. We practically leaped off the planks, but there was no cause for celebration. The trail offered two paths forward, left or right. Each path had a sign that read nature center. Was it a test? Choose your own adventure.

A couple, about our age, stood at the fork, contemplating which way to go. They were the first two beings that hadn’t radiated that darkness since I had gotten stung. When we stopped, so did he. There he remained, still on the boardwalk, ten feet behind.

“Any idea which way to go?” the girl asked in a pleasant voice. Her boyfriend elbowed her when he got a look at what had to have been two ghostly pale people followed by a psycho with a stick.

“Nope,” I said. “But we can follow you.” Safety in numbers, right?

The being who stalked us stood there with no comment, motionless with stake in hand. No word or breath. Eyes black and sucking the life out of anything that dared go near. I held back the urge to scream.

The couple looked at us. Then the man. Then the two paths. Then the man.

“Maybe we go this way?” The girl said, only to her boyfriend.

He didn’t respond, keeping his eyes on the being behind me. I felt like I was going to collapse and shuffled off to the side of the trail.

“Come on, Mark. Let’s go this way.” Reluctantly, they turned into the path on the left.

My urge to jump behind them and follow was halted. I felt the card buzz in my pocket, fiercer than ever. Somehow, something inside of me, like someone whispering in my ear, told me not to follow them. Just wait.

The evil stood there in silence, waiting for us to follow the prey. We didn’t bite.

It convulsed, taking one step forward. Two. We watched its inhuman jerking walk head down into the path on the left. The two of us stood there for a few minutes watching him as he walked slowly, so slowly, until he was finally out of sight.

I hugged Ramona and let out a sigh of relief. We could feel the evil presence had vanished. “Come on, before it’s too late.” We hurried to the right path and after a little while finally made it to the nature center.

---

The museum was interesting. Getting lost in the history of the park helped make the whole thing seem like a bad dream. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I kept an eye out for the couple we had seen at the fork, but never saw them again, even though they were heading to the same place as us.

Ramona’s face told me she was still scared, even though she showed a smile. “Ready to go back to the car?” Back through the bog, back through the forest.

We went the same way we came, choosing the same path in the fork before quickly speeding over the boardwalk. I tried to see where the green bog water stained the planks where the man had gotten on, but the boardwalk was completely dry, sparkling like new. No traces of green. Before long we escaped the bog again with our lives. A thought scorched my mind.

“Look, it’s the log I had sat on when we stopped before,” I said. We need to go find that stream. I won’t be happy until we get back there.” For some reason my mind told me that finding the stream would make it all go away. Maybe I was grasping at straws. Who knew if it would be right? She didn’t argue with me; I guess she felt it, too.

“Pay attention. The stream should be right around here somewhere.”

Parallel universes. Alternate realities. Another dimension. Heaven. Hell. Where were we? All I wanted to do was go back home, to Queens. I wanted to be in my old bed in my parent’s house. To be back to normal.

No. I wanted to find that stream. My heart was pumping. It had been twenty minutes since we saw the log. “What is going on?!” Ramona cried out. “It was so close. How is this possible?”

“Maybe it never existed.”

“No no. I saw it too. We can’t both be crazy.”

Yes we can, I thought. The world was spinning again.

“It’s Nim. This whole thing. I know it. We’re playing a game, Ramona. I’m sorry you got involved,” I said.

“We’re not playing a game, Will! The card is not doing any of this!”

“How else can you explain what’s happening right now?”

She was up ahead. Two taps on my shoulder. I jumped around, but no one was behind me. I scanned left and right, through the trees. Just a feeling, a hunch.

I plunged through the thick trees, she followed.

“Listen!” I shouted. “Do you hear it?” I started running, running toward the roaring water. The ground started sloping, the sound of the stream was coming to life. How had we perceived the walk so different before?

Once again my feet met the edge of the woods. Below me was a hundred foot drop down to the shallow water below. My mouth began to water, I needed to get down there. It was so close.

“Alright, Will. Are you happy? Let’s go back to the car now.” Ramona pulled at my hand as she met me on the edge.

“We can’t go now. We’re nearly there,” I said.

To my left stood a man and a woman. Both of them were were tan with jet black hair. They both held a stroller in front of them. Below the couple, sitting in the dirt, and right up against the edge of the cliff were two babies, maybe a year old. The couple stood still, staring at us with big smiles spread across their faces.

“Hey there,” said the man. His knuckles were white as he clutched the stroller. The babies ignored everyone, making noises as they played with each other.

“Pretty amazing that this is here, right?” the woman said. She motioned to the stream beneath us with her neck as her body stood straight.

Ramona and I took a couple of steps closer to them. I was dying to get down to that water. That feeling again—relief, ecstasy. All should have been well. But there was something off. I looked at Ramona who matched my glance. She felt it too. It still wasn’t right.

“You need to get down there and check it out. It’s the coolest thing we’ve ever seen,” the woman said. Her smile was ear to ear. I couldn’t bear to look into her eyes.

“You absolutely need to get down there to see it for yourself. It’s really fantastic,” the man said. He was beaming.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Right, Will? I want to go home.” Ramona held my hand, stopping me from getting any closer to them.

“I need to get down there,” I whispered. I was absolutely dying for it.

“Will, I really want to leave.”

“Oh you can’t leave. You should go down there,” they said in unison. “You need to. It’s really something.”

“Just for a second,” I said. “Please.” I tugged at her arm. The toes of my shoes were almost over the edge of the cliff.

“Fine. Just for a second.”

We peered over the edge. The babies played in the dirt, soundlessly.

“Come here,” the man motioned. “This spot is much easier to get down from, come right here,” the woman said.

I stepped closer to them, feeling Ramona’s hand let go of mine. The last thing I saw was their grotesque smiles before the crying started.

Screaming. Wailing. The crying coming from the mouths of the babies was unlike anything I’d ever heard in my life. It seemed to crawl beneath my skin and rip into my tissue like needles. Ramona’s and my hands shot up to protect our ears from the piercing cries.

Wails of deep and vivid pain. Torture and agony was shaking the world around us. I took another step forward, closer to them. I needed to get to the water; I needed to go under. The wails were sending knives into my eardrums. The cries were impenetrable, surrounding us on all sides.

“Oh come on, children. You don’t want to ruin the man’s experience. He needs to see it for himself,” the man’s voice cut in over the cries. “Don’t mind them. Just come closer.” The image of the babies and their parents was turning into a kaleidoscope. The evil vacuum had returned to suck our lives away.

“I need to get to the water. It’ll make everything alright.” I screamed over the wails.

“There is no way we can go there, Will. We need to get away from these people.”

“Not until I get under the water,” I said.

“It’s true,” the woman said.

“Shouldn’t you be quieting your kids?” Ramona screamed at her. Neither parent responded.

My breaths were slow and controlled. For a moment, everything muted. I looked over at Ramona and saw true terror on her face. But I didn’t care, I just wanted to jump. Jump, jump all the way down into nothing.

A shock in my leg, the card buzzing so maniacally I woke from my daze. The deafening cries were back, bursting my eardrums. The noise was so vicious my knees started to give out. I turned to her, “Run!”

In a second Ramona was darting back toward the woods we had just come from, back toward the bog and the being who had stalked us. There was no escape. We would be trapped there.

The couple screamed at their children. “Look, you made the nice people leave. We can’t ever have a good time!”

The card buzzed again, sending a jolt of pain so fierce, I cramped and stopped. That’s when I saw it—off to the right, in the opposite direction Ramona was running. The two bent white birches, with the opening between them. The perfect arch that had led us to there in the first place.

“Ramona!” I screamed.

She couldn’t hear me.

“Ramona!”

This was it. I didn’t need to get to the stream, I needed to get back through that opening, back through the portal to home, to our reality. There wasn’t much time, the walls of the wails were closing in on us. I needed her, but I couldn’t help her. She was disappearing up ahead into a fog. I screamed her name, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the chaos. I couldn’t leave her, but she disappeared.

“Ow!” Pain seared through the woods. I heard it in the distance and ran toward it, shouting her name, hoping to find her. I couldn’t leave her, I needed to find her, I crashed into something.

It was her, falling into my arms. “Something bit me,” she muttered.

“Follow me.”

There it was. The opening. Just up ahead, almost glowing through the darkness closing in on us. The cries were louder and louder, but it didn’t matter anymore. As the last rays of light began to fade out from the opening in the trees, I ran to it, grabbed her hand, and jumped through the portal.

---

Thank you for reading. If you’re enjoying this book and would like to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also buy me a coffee.

---

---