Quickly making his way to the office, with Harry in the lead Dimitri began running situations through his head, a desperate attempt to figure out what the hell was going on. From what he’d pieced together the kid wasn’t injured since Harry had just shook his head when Dimitri offered to grab his first aid kit. No, there was something else going on here. Entering the study Dimitri was prepared to find the worst.
He was not, however, prepared to see the Door.
He was stunned, from the vile ebony body, to the arcane symbols covering the corroded frame it was clear he recognised this… thing. Dear God, even the Earth-Counter was just as he’d imagined it, built into the door header, displaying ‘00’ on its crusted eggshell cards.
It was open… to a blank wall
‘Listen, I… I just turned around and James went through a-a-and, now he’s GONE!’ Harry stammered out, his babbelling almost incomprehensible.
Taking in a deep breath Dimitri thought about what would be the most useful action in this moment. Finally, he asked his question.
‘Did you touch any of the switches?’
‘I-I mean, maybe I might have. But! How was I meant to know what this thing-’
‘The Crossway’ Dimitri cut him off, ‘it’s called the Crossway’
Harry didn’t like that.
Slowly calming down, Harry’s head gradually pivoted to stare at Dimitri, glaring suspiciously at his cousin, all pleasantries gone.
‘What do you mean it’s called the ‘Crossway’?’. With an enraged tension in his words Harry looked as if he was prepared to boil over’. ‘You… You knew this thing was here, didn't you!? Why the fuck didn’t you say anything you PIECE OF SHIT!? Now James is gone and unless you get him this will be on your conscience!’.
Although Harry had never snapped at him like this, Dimitri was used to this kind of language from other members of the family. He knew that they wouldn't listen to reason until they had finished their rant. So he waited patiently through the flow of verbal abuse from Harry until the man eventually tired himself out.
Noticing his cousin had finally stopped speaking, all red in the face and shaking, Dimitri made to reply.
‘Firstly, if I knew this thing was here’ he began ‘I would have never have let the kid in, much less left him in your care’.
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mea-’
Secondly,’ Dimitri continued, cutting Harry off, ‘I only know about this thing from what uncle Argyle used to say about it in his stories, you should remember them.
Taking a moment to think back to his childhood Harry realised that he did in fact also know what this thing was, whenever the old fart had spoken about his journeys and the strange, magical places he visited he always mentioned the Crossway. A special gift he had received that allowed him to travel to nearly a hundred kingdoms in nearly a hundred worlds.
It had been a long time since Harry had thought of that.
Seeing understanding crawling onto Harry’s face, Dimitri continued to speak: ‘Now then, if we’re going to bring the kid back through we need to figure out how this thing works. Are there any books in here you saw talking about the Crossway?’
Still stunned by the revelation that any of this was real, Harry stammered something incomprehensible before stumbling over himself as Dimitri quickly pushed past the man towards the desk and began flipping through journals. Watching Dimitri do this, Harry let out a breathy ‘fuck’ before quickly moving over to the bookshelf.
Fifteen minutes passed before the pair found what they were looking for, a massive tome, appearing much older than anything else in the collection and stuffed behind the row of books on the bottommost shelf. Although the title was nothing more than two rows of straight lines, Harry knew it was the right one when the bars began to shift before his eyes into an English title; ‘The Crossway: A Beginners Guide’.
Too stressed to be amazed, he Quickly passed the book over to his cousin, Dimiri’s eyes widened as the lines re-moulded themselves before him to read ‘An Explorer’s Guide To The Crossway’.
Flipping through the book Dimitri quickly found the table of contents and sorted through to the controls, to his dismay however this section appeared to be the largest by far, well over four-hundred pages of separate titles with seemingly no organisation to speak of.
Looking over his shoulder, Harry began to read the first section; ‘Selection Controls’and after rapidly skimming over the page, he quickly turned back to the door and began to fiddle with the switches.
Dimitri, clearly unnerved by this, moved towards Harry.
‘Harry wait, what the hell are you doing? We can’t mess with this thing until we figure out how to get James back’.
‘Ninety-nine combinations’ Harry replied, continuing to fuck with the eldrich machine.
‘What?’
‘The book say’s there’s ninety-nine combinations, these switches here adjust the numbers by one, five, ten, and twenty-five respectively’.
Dimitri went to interrupt him, but James put a finger out to shut him up.
‘And these two here’ he muttered, moving his hand towards a different set of symbols, ‘act as a reset and a confirmation switch respectively’ Harry continued, switching the second switch and bringing the counter to life, its cards flipping through to display ‘99’. ‘We just need to work our way down through the combinations until we find James’.
Tearing the door open, Harry found himself faced with a beach. That's when it really hit him;
This was real, this was magic.
It had been years since he had distanced himself from his uncle and the old fart’s childish adventure stories, yet now it was all coming back to him; the wonder, the intrigue. For a moment he found the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
Then he remembered James, and the fantasy crashed and burned.
The reality was that his brother was missing, and aside from his hermit of a cousin who seemed all too cautious to be of any use no one was coming to help them. But that was fine, he knew what he was doing.
Realising that trying to stop Harry would be a futile and possibly risky endeavour, Dimitri simply began to flip through the tome, skimming titles for anything that might speed up their progress in a safer manner.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
And so it was that as Dimitri read, Harry toyed with the controls, ninety-nine was a beach, Harry called out, no response. Eighty-two was a Jungle, Harry called out, no response. Seventy-four was a savanna, Harry called out, no response. Sixty-five was under a moonless night, Harry called out…
A response.
---
Skimming the page headings in search of a way to safely bring back James, Dimitri heard trouble before he saw it, or rather didn’t hear it.
Harry had stopped flipping combinations.
Reassuring himself that the worst may not have come to pass, he turned around to face his cousin only to see the man standing like a statue, facing into the darkness of what he assumed to be Earth sixty-five.
‘If you see something dangerous,’ Dimitri softly began, ‘then close the door’.
Harry nodded, never taking his eyes off of whatever was in the distance as he slowly reached for the edge of the door, sweat pooling along his brow.
Then something began to sprint along the sand, Dimitri could hear that much with his cousin covering the doorway.
Immediately chickening out Harry grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut before falling over himself bolting out of the room. Or he at least tried to. You see, although he succeeded in getting the hell out of there his attempt to close the door failed miserably with the black slab simply bouncing back open. But that wasn’t Harry’s problem anymore, he was long gone.
Seeing his cousin's mistake Dimitri cursed under his breath and bolted towards the door, actually putting some force behind his shoulder to slam it shut. Unfortunately whatever was on the other side made it to the entry before it could be properly closed. An ancient mechanical hand tipped in claws shoved itself through the doorway, biting into the floorboards. Thinking fast Dimitri pulled a knife from his satchel and frantically looked for somewhere to stab the damn thing. Seeing a leather patch over the back of the hand he hoped desperately that this was covering something soft as he jabbed the knife in.
Luckily he was right, something on the other side howled in pain as a dark purplish ichor began to pool and spurt from the wound up his own hand before dripping to the floor. Almost immediately it retracted back behind the door and quickly Dimitri slammed it shut, frantically reaching for the controls and switching the Crossway to zero-zero. Now somewhat sure of his safety he shakily reached out for the desk chair and fell into it, exhausted beyond measure. After a long moment of regathering his thoughts he finally came to the real question; should he go back to reading in hopes of finding wherever James had gone on his own, or should he go out and drag Harry back inside to help him first?
Finally, after a moment more to rest and a moment more to deliberate, he made up his mind.
---
Harry was in his car, scared, confused, and in desperate need of a cigarette. When he had driven up this godforsaken mountain earlier that day he had hoped to find a shed full of valuable old nick-knacks and the like, not… whatever the fuck that thing was.
He remembered the way it looked at him from beyond the doorway, skinny, hunched, and pale, yet still a fair bit taller than himself. The stare took out all his reason, made him want to go to it, as bizarre as that sounded. Yet when that strange man-thing began to run on all fours the trance shattered and he knew he had to get away.
Luckily he had thought fast as he got out of there, managing to save Dimitri by hitting the door closed on his way out, something he felt his cousin would need to thank him for later. But still, even knowing that the door was closed and there was no way the man-thing could get to him he trembled at the idea of heading back inside.
But then again, there was no way he could leave his brother to die. After all, that’s not something good people do.
And Harry knew he was a good person.
Finally steeling himself, Harry got out of the car and cautiously made his way back through the Shed and into the office, only to find Dimitri still at the table with claw marks and a trail of purple oil pointing to the Crossway machine beside him.
Ah, perhaps he didn’t save Dimitri, hopefully there were no hard feelings.
Calmly yet quickly flipping through the tome, Dimitri buzzed through the headings in search of… something. Hearing his cousin enter, he began to speak, although his eyes and focus never left his work.
‘Ah, you’re back’ disdain dripping in his tone. ‘I think I'm close to figuring out how to find which Earth the kid’s on. I just need to find the right switch combination to undo your past couple of missteps which should be listed… here.’ Dimitri finished, pulling up the book for Harry to see.
Looking down at the pages as the text formed itself Harry read the heading, which titled the page as ‘complex controls’. After flipping through more pages Dimitri finally found what he was looking for: ‘Crossway History’. It was at that moment that Harry realised the error of his ways.
They only needed to push one button.
---
Carefully flipping the switch once, Dimitri watched as the Earth-Counter switched from ‘00’ to ‘65’. Quickly hitting it again with the memories of the claw-creature he saw it move to ‘66’, again and it reliably changed to ‘67’, then ‘68’, ‘69’, and so forth, and so forth until he finally reached the first number of the day.
‘01’.
Beginning to speak up in defence of his idea of going from the ninety-nine down, Harry quickly realised that Dimitri couldn’t give a rat’s ass as he was too busy leaving the room.
‘Hey now’ Harry began, panic in his eyes ‘you’re not leaving me to grab him alone are you? I mean that’s kind of a dick move’.
Not bothering to either stop or turn around Dimitri simply shouted out that he was grabbing some supplies. Sure enough when he came back the man had a massive hiking backpack over his shoulders, coloured in the same bright orange of the Jeep.
Noticing Harry’s bemused expression Dimitri elaborated on his choices.
‘We don’t know where the kid is, or how long we’ll be over there looking for him if he’s moved. Better to be safe than sorry’.
‘I suppose, but even so it’s not like we’ll actually be going through the door, I mean we’re just grabbing James and shutting the damn thing.
Groaning at how his cousin seemingly ignored every word out of his mouth, Dimitri paused for a moment to think back to what his cousin said, or at least the important bit.
‘Huh, so his names James, good to know’
‘Yes, that’s his name! My God the boy’s been around for fourteen years and you didn’t even know his name? What a great family you are’.
‘...Anyways, like I said before he’s probably not stayed put’ Dimitri commented, patting his pack while biting his tongue at his cousin's earlier comment. ‘So this pack should have anything we need in most situations. Like Uncle Argyle used to say, “preparation makes perfection”. Smiling softly to himself Dimitri remembered his Uncle in that moment, until Harry ruined it once again.
‘It’s Argyle’s fault this is happening to begin with! If the old fart hadn’t left this thing here then none of this would have happened!’.
Once more Dimitri decided to ignore his cousin, moving around him to the door and grabbing the handle. Eyes widening at this Harry began to splutter out words once more, warning about perhaps not being prepared enough to open it yet.
And so the door was opened, and their fates sealed.
---
Addendum on: The Creature
The Crossway had been opened, the bloody, stinging stab wound in her hand proved as much.
Slinking back to her home she wondered what this could mean. After all, the men she had seen through were clearly not working for Navigator Argyle. Even if she hadn’t gotten the best look at the hatted one by his desk before her prey broke its trance she could easily tell that they lacked magic in any regard, thus they could not be his kin.
But, that mattered little, for finally after decades of waiting, decades of starving, a glimmer of hope lay in her exposed heart. If Argyle was not protecting his Crossway, then surely it could only be a matter of time until another would open it, no?
Now almost home she looked down the black sand dunes towards the building below, a colossal construction of warped steel and cement, all culminating in a single massive smokestack hellbent on releasing its vaporous ichor into the sky, deepening the perpetual night
This was the Last of the Great Factories of Earth, or at least this Earth
Baring her fangs into an approximation of a smile she wondered if perhaps freedom was on its way, if someday soon she might once more be able to seek out companionship beyond her lonely Earth of those like her. Delicately reaching two claws through the iron ringed hole in her chest she tenderly pinched her heart, feeling her own magic coursing through it as she made a wish; a wish for liberation, to hunt, to kill, and to consume.