“Let’s see if we can keep you on the path from now on, okay?”

Eric took a step back, surprised.  “What?  Oh.  No.  No way.  I’m done with this nonsense.  I mean…what the hell?  I was just attacked by a goddamn…”  He thrust his finger toward the farmhouse several times, his mouth moving with words he couldn’t find.  Then he pressed his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes.  “What…?  What was that thing?  Exactly?”

“Not sure what you call it,” said the old man.  “Just something he left behind when he came through here.”

“‘He?’”

“The other guy.  Scary as all kinds of hell.”

“Looks like he’s half-hidden in fog, but there isn’t any fog?”

“That’s him.  At least Annette gave you something.  He passed through here yesterday afternoon.  Left you that little surprise.”  He gestured toward the barn and added, “Left that, too.”

Eric turned and saw a man walking toward them from the barn.  It was the same man he saw before, the one he followed into the house.  Tall, broad-shouldered, young, with a full beard.  Before he could even begin to wonder how he had made his way back from the house to the barn, the man faded away before his eyes and was gone.

He blinked hard, as if that might correct the strangeness of what he had seen.

“Over there,” said the old man, gesturing toward the house now.

When he turned, he saw the man again, this time walking through the dozer blade as if it wasn’t there and the porch were still under his feet rather than folded into a gnarled pile of splinters in the tall grass.

“Can’t hurt you.  Not directly, anyway.  It’s residual.  Repeats itself over and over again, several times every hour, ever since he came through here.  You’ll have to watch out for those.”

“Clearly.”  Again, Eric’s eyes drifted to the farm house.

“It can’t get out,” the old man assured him.  “It’s lost you.  Unless you go back inside and stir it up again, it’s done with you.  By the way, name’s Grant.  Grant Stolyen.”

“Eric Fortrell.”

“Eric.  Good to meet you.  Sorry it’s not the best of circumstances.”

“Yeah.  About that…”

“You want to know what the hell is going on?”

“I do, actually.  I mean…  Everything was fine until three nights ago.  Then I wake up from a dream I can’t even remember and every waking thought is ‘I have to go!  Now!’”

Grant nodded.  “Three nights ago.  So you ignored it?”

“Tried to.”

“That’s why you’re so late then.”

“Late?”

“You should’ve been here two days ago.”

Eric recalled that Annette told him basically the same thing.  “Late for what?  What is all this?”

“Sorry, but I can’t explain all of it.  Don’t actually understand all of it myself, to be honest.  But I can try my best.  You’ve probably noticed the cold spots by now.”

He nodded.  “And the stunted corn in the field.  Light seems funny there, too.  What is that?  Some kind of pollution?”

“Nothing so simple.”

“And all those mutant animals in your barn.  I’ll be honest, I was starting to imagine I’d find a crashed UFO or something.”

“Again, nothing so simple, I’m afraid.”

“Right.  Why would it be that simple?”

“And it’s not actually my barn.  I’m the neighbor.  I just keep an eye on things, but I don’t go in the barn no more.  Creepy bunch of bastards in there, ain’t they?  Give me the creeps.  I kind of figured they’d die if I didn’t take care of them, but apparently they don’t need cared for.”

“Nobody feeds them?”

“Not that I know of.  Weird, huh?”

“Very.”

“Anyway, I was talking about the cold spots.  Those’re the places where you’re inside the fissure.”

“Fissure?”

“Yeah.  Like a crack between worlds.”

“Worlds?  What, like a wormhole?”  Again, he thought of aliens and extra-terrestrial spacecraft.

“No.  You’re thinking of planets.  I said worlds.  Dimensions, if you prefer.”

“Like parallel realities?”

“Sort of.  Yeah.  There’s our world, the one we know, and then there’s this other one.  Scary-ass place, apparently.  I think it’s where those things in the barn came from.”

Eric stared at him, trying to wrap his head around the very idea of this simple-talking old man explaining rents between alternate realities to him.

“Don’t think I don’t know how it sounds.”

“Sounds crazy.”

“Yeah.  But you’ve already seen it for yourself, haven’t you?”

“I guess I have.”

“When you cross into the cold spots, into the fissure, you’re actually in some kind of gray zone between the two worlds.  It’s like a border realm.  Things can move back and forth there.  You’ll see some scary things there, let me warn you.  And if you go too far into those areas, you could find yourself all the way out in the other world.  And that’s not somewhere you ever want to be.”

Eric nodded.  It sounded like good advice.

“You’ll want to stick to the path or you’ll never get where you’re going.”

“And where exactly is it I’m supposed to be going?”

“To the cathedral.”

The cathedral.  That’s what Annette said, too.

“That’s where the singularity is.”

“The singularity?”

“The exact point where the two worlds meet.  The rest of this stuff is just what bleeds through the crack that runs out from that point.”

“And if I find this cathedral?  Then what?  What am I supposed to do there?”

“Hell if I know.  I’m just here to keep the path open for you.”

“And if I refuse to do it?  If I just turn around and walk back home?”

Grant looked surprised, as if he’d never once considered the possibility that anyone wouldn’t want to do these things.  “Then he’d win.”

“The foggy guy.”

“Yeah.  Him.  Course, he might win anyway, with you running so late.”

“And what happens if he wins?”

“I couldn’t tell you.  But I’m sure it’d be bad.”  And the look on his face suggested that he did, indeed believe it would be quite bad.

“Right.”  Eric took his cell phone from his pocket and checked to see if he had a signal yet.  He didn’t.

“That’ll come back a little farther up the path.”

“I haven’t decided to do this.  I don’t know how much of this nonsense I even believe.”

Grant shrugged.  “You believed enough to come here in the first place.”

“I believed I was having a stupid recurring nightmare that was making me feel crazy.”

“But it wasn’t just a nightmare, was it?  You’ve already found that much out without my help.”

That was true, but he still had no intention of taking on another wardrobe monster.

“Besides, the barn doesn’t always work so good going the other way.  It might not spit you back out in Annette’s field.”

“I had no intention of going back in there with those things.”  But as Eric turned, he realized that the cornfield was gone.  The area behind the barn was now densely wooded.  In fact, now that he was looking, he realized that the barn from which he’d emerged was not the same one he’d entered.  This barn was much smaller and not nearly as old and rundown.  “Wait…”

Grant laughed.  “Weird, right?”

“Where’s the other barn?”

“Annette’s place is about fifty miles southeast of here.”

“Fifty miles?”

“Give or take.”

“But…  My car…”

“It’ll be fine.”

Eric stared at the barn, trying to wrap his head around the idea of having traveled fifty miles by merely walking through a barn.

Two barns?

“But I meant what I said.  I really wouldn’t recommend trying to go back through the way you came.  I’m not sure where people end up, but sometimes they never come back.  They might even end up in that other world.  If so, I don’t envy them.”

“So you’re saying I can’t actually go back?”

Grant stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and glanced away.  “Well, you can.  Technically speaking.  I mean…  You could call for a ride.  I could show you the way to the highway.  You just can’t walk back the way you came.”