"You've been sleeping a long time, friend."

  There was light when Chris opened his eyes - sound. A face looking down at him. A voice speaking to him, and something else. There were a few brief moments when he almost thought it might be over - that he was waking up someplace that might not be his home, but was still a part of his world. The world he had taken for granted for so long before waking to find it gone.

  As he looked past the face staring down at him he saw the darkness still lingering just beyond the light, and it was almost painful to let those first few moments of hope vanish. His children weren't waiting to meet him - the nightmare wasn't over.

  The man speaking to him seemed to be examining him as he spoke. "I have just one question for you, friend. Is there anything with you? Anything following you?" His eyes were piercing, and Chris found himself wishing he could escape the man's gaze. There was something unsettling about it.

  "Anything following me?" Chris realized he sounded as off-guard as he was. He needed to know where he was. A blanket had been laid over him, and he pushed it back and sat up slowly. Everything spun around him at first and he shook his head to clear the dizziness. The man crouching beside him watched him intently as he did so.

  "Anything at all - no matter how crazy or absurd you might think it is. I apologize. I know you've been resting for awhile and you're just waking up, but this is something I need to know. If there's something following you, I need for you to tell me. My name's Cal. I'm the leader chosen by these people." The man waved one hand in an arc around him without taking his eyes off of Chris. Chris followed the arc and had to take a few moments to digest what he was seeing.

  The surrounding light emanated from a large bonfire a few yards from him. The sound of crackling embers mixed with the sound of voices - dozens of people were gathered in a large grouping around the fire. Men, women, and children - seemingly of all ages - appeared to be completely unconcerned with his presence. Some sat talking in small huddles, others lay resting or sleeping on makeshift beds comprised of blankets and just about anything else soft enough to rest their heads on. The gathering appeared to include a diverse range of ethnicities. At one edge nearest the fire a man dressed in a weather-beaten robe and turban sat gesturing wildly with his hands as it seemed he was attempting to communicate something to a young man wearing a Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt. A Rolex-style watch adorned one wrist of the well-groomed young man, and Chris grunted dryly to himself.

  Might as well have left the watch at home, kid. Doubt you'll be needing to tell time much in this place, but only time will tell.

  A small group of four children were playing near the outskirts of the circle, and Chris counted at least five adults near them who seemed to be watching over them intently. They were near the edge of the light. Chris found himself scanning the darkness around the children nervously as he fought off the sudden urge to stand up and start yelling for them to get closer to the fire because there were wolves out there. Wolves and death and bodies rotting because it was too damned dark and nothing made sense out there. Nothing at all.

  Christ. Don't they realize what's out there? Who are these people? Am I really dead? Did I die in my sleep and somehow qualify for some strangely fucked up version of hell? Somehow not make the grade at the pearly gates?

  Chris turned to look at the man who had called himself Cal.

  "Where am I?"

  "You're among friends, but I need you to answer my question." Cal's eyes were boring into his own, and Chris realized there was likely more riding on his answer to the man's question than he might have believed.

  "Is anything following you?" Cal asked him again.

  Chris licked his lips. His head was spinning, and the questions he needed answers to were coming too fast. "No. There was a wolf who killed a woman I was with." He forced himself to meet Cal's gaze head-on. "I killed it."

  Cal was silent a moment before finally breaking his stare.

  "Only one wolf? I would imagine that wolves would travel in packs." He said. "Are you sure there weren't more?"

  "There was only one." There was no hesitation in Chris' answer, because something told him there couldn't be. "One wolf, and it's dead. I saw it rotting."

  "You're lucky." Cal said. "Not every man can kill a wolf in the dark, and no man can without at least a little luck on his side."

  Chris shook his head and turned back to watch the children. The bonfire was large enough to cast a circle of firelight at least a dozen yards in diameter, and the children were just beyond that circle. Their small forms danced between shadow and light.

  "I'm not lucky. I've been separated from my wife and my three kids." It appeared that the children were playing a game of some sort. There was a line of what looked like empty glass soda bottles arranged on the ground, and they were jumping between and over them in a type of pattern. "Where are all of these people from? Does anyone here know where we are?"

  A small, dry smile touched Cal's lips. "How long have you been here, friend?"

  "You mean here as in this place? The darkness?" Chris asked.

  Cal nodded. "Nightscape." He said. "I've heard many names - maybe hundreds. Everything from the Abyss to Shadow World. People call it what they will, and one name's as good as another. The name that I've come to favor is Nightscape, although I would find it difficult to explain why. It’s one of the oldest English names."

  "Nightscape." Chris said it as if testing its weight on his tongue. "I'm not sure how long I've been here exactly. I'm guessing at least a few days. It's almost impossible to tell because it's so damned dark, but it has to have been at least a few days by now. You? How long have you been here? What in the hell is Nightscape? Where are we?"

  Cal shrugged. "I'm not sure." He answered the barrage of questions simply, almost off-handedly.

  Chris noticed the man was fidgeting with a small piece of what appeared to be jagged white bone - turning it over and running his finger across its edge absently.

  "The night that I was taken," Cal said as he watched the bonfire's flames without truly seeing them, "the Yankees played the first game of their first playoff series. Runner's on first, second, and third. Second batter up, and he drilled it - knocked it out of the park on his first swing. I can remember every detail of that game until the 7th inning, but the strange thing is I cannot remember falling asleep. Never saw who won that game, but I've been told since that they lost. Not the same thing as actually seeing it. Know what I mean, friend?"

  Chris followed the man's gaze to the fire. "I know what you mean - always better to see if for yourself." He paused, realizing just how little interest he actually had in the apparent small talk. "You said 'taken'. You think we've been taken? By who? And why? And why so damned many of us?"

  Cal's jaw tightened, and there were a few moments before he said anything. "One of the good things about asking questions that you can't find answers to," he said, "is that, with time, you begin to forget why the questions mattered so much to begin with. Perhaps you realize that there's no use in asking a question that has no answer."

  Questions that have no answers. Christ. The man sounds as if he's given up. Has everyone here given up? A bunch of people suddenly taken from their homes and thrown into the world's most insane darkroom, so they build a bonfire and decide to stop asking questions?

  Chris examined the large pile of flaming wood, his eyes catching on a small rocking chair near the top of the fire that hadn't yet been reduced to ashes, and the obvious question suddenly hit him.

  "Where did all of this firewood come from?" He asked.

  Cal stood from his crouch and placed the piece of bone into the pocket of the jeans he wore.

  "They've been bringing it in from a mirage very near here for about six or seven hours now. Once we have enough gathered for a few days we'll be moving on." He said.

  "A mirage near here?" Chris asked, dumbfounded. "How can you gather anything from a mirage?"

  Cal didn't answer. He was staring off into the distance as if listening for something.

  "I believe your friend is returning." He said.

  It was less than a few minutes before Chris was able to hear the sound as well, and he recognized it almost instantly. It was the sound of large, hard-soled boots pounding the ground as they neared the makeshift camp. Chris broke into a grin despite himself as he watched the kid who had called himself Danny emerge from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp. He was holding a small coffee table in one hand, and a bag in the other. Chris found himself marveling again at the sheer size of the kid. He wore cowhide boots and a large machete hung from the belt at his waist.

  Danny tossed the table towards the center of the bonfire as if it was weightless, then scanned the camp until his eyes came to rest on the children playing at its edge. He smiled when he saw them look up to greet him, and Chris watched the children break from their game to meet the behemoth of a kid as he approached, some jumping up and down in their excitement. Danny set the bag down and picked up two of the children, one in each arm. The grin on Danny’s face couldn't have grown any larger as he talked to them, at one point setting them down and reaching into his bag to pull out a small item that sparkled faintly as it caught the firelight. Danny held it up and handed it slowly to a girl who looked to be about four or five. The girl looked as if she had been handed the moon, and the expression on her face appeared to be all Danny had been hoping for. He helped her tie the small piece of jewelry around her neck, and sat watching her as she danced around showing it to her friends until Cal called to him.

  "Danny. I've got something for you." Cal didn't need to yell. He spoke with enough force for the words to carry easily across the camp.

  Danny pulled himself from the children reluctantly and crossed to meet Cal. His eyes found Chris and his grin somehow managed to grow even wider, threatening to split his face in two.

  "Didn't think you'd ever wake up, man. Nice to see you're alive after all."

Chris grunted and struggled to stand. "I owe you. That's a lot of dead weight to carry. I'd like to be able to say I would've done the same, but I can't say that I would've been able to."

  Danny shook his head. "You don't owe me." He turned to Cal. "It should only be a few more hours before the house is stripped. There haven't been any problems so far – it’s abandoned, but they've been doing what you said. No one's going upstairs. You said you have something for me?"

  Cal nodded. "I want you to take our new companion, Chris, to see the mirage. I don't think he's been here long enough to know what one is. He can help the men finish." He looked at Chris. "That is if you think you're ready. I know you've been sleeping awhile, but I don't think it was as much physical exhaustion. I've seen it before - something in your mind didn't want to wake up."

  "I feel fine. Maybe a little wobbly in the legs, but that'll wear off. I'd like to see what you're talking about. The mirage I mean." Chris’s expression reflected his puzzlement. “You called it a mirage?”

  “I believe you will find quickly that, not only is the definition of such words different here, but the reality of them is as well.” Cal answered with another shrug. "Just stick with Danny. If I had to choose one man to travel alone with, it would be him." Cal said.

  Danny appeared to beam at the compliment.

  "We can go ahead and get started now if you want." He said to Chris. "It'll take us close to an hour to get there, I guess. Maybe less if we walk quickly."

  Frustrated with the almost bizarre answers he had been receiving, Chris decided to put the remainder of his questions on hold for the time being. Cal was staring off into the distance once again, and Chris found his own unease only worsened with the realization that the man appeared to almost never blink.

  "I would recommend you get there as quickly as you will." Cal said finally - his eyes still fastened vacantly on something unseen in the darkness. "I think they're going to need you, Danny. Very soon."

  "Then we might even run a little." Danny grinned at Chris. "What do you think? Think you can keep up with me this time?"

  Chris attempted to bounce from foot to foot as lightly as he could, mimicking boxing technique he hadn't attempted since his college days. The attempt was only semi-successful as he had to steady himself on Danny's arm when a momentary pang of dizziness cost him his balance.

  "I'm not getting any younger, and you wouldn't catch me assuming I could keep up with you again, but I think I'm up for a little running."

  Danny laughed. "Nice moves, then, for an old man." He walked over and picked up a large piece of wood from a stack near the fire and reached one end into the flames until it lit. It was a table leg with one end wrapped in flammable material, and it served effectively as a torch. Danny handed it to Chris.

  "Let me know if you need me to carry the torch, or if you need to rest. We'll walk fast, but I think this time it would be a good idea for us to stay side-by-side." The massive youth said before turning.

  Chris followed Danny as he began to make his way back through the camp. Dozens of faces looked up from where they sat or lay to follow the pair as they passed. Dozens of sets of eyes met Chris's in the firelight - women, children, an old man as he paused his efforts to light a cigarette stub from a small pile of burning cloth long enough to nod to them. The young man in Tommy Hilfiger half-saluted them, and Chris realized that one of the kid's legs had been reduced to a stump somehow - the end wrapped tightly in rags.

  The children seemed to especially love Danny, many reaching out to tug lightly on his hands or pant legs as he passed them. Chris did his best not to see his own children's faces when he looked at them; tried to ignore the gnawing at the back of his mind that the thought of his children – his family - produced. A young woman called to him suddenly as he stepped around her. There were two young ones sleeping on a single blanket beside where she knelt.

  "Hey!" Her sudden yell startled the children from their sleep. Chris turned to face her - surprise that she was calling to him quickly replaced with confusion at the look he saw in the woman's eyes. She was staring at him so intently her eyes actually bulged visibly from their sockets. The youngest of the two children beside her began to cry as they woke, but the woman didn't seem to notice.

  "You bring my husband back." She said fiercely. She spat when she spoke, and Chris found himself taking a step back from her.

  "You promise to bring my husband back. Bring him back with you." The look in her eyes changed, then. The ferocity with which she had made the demand disappeared, and her voice dropped to a near whisper. "Please." Her voice quavered as it rose in pitch. She was rocking slowly on her knees. "You don't understand. I know you don't know me and you don't understand. I need him. Please just bring him back when you find him. He might be hurt, but he just needs someone to bring him back."

  Chris found himself returning her stare - found himself looking into her eyes and understanding the pleading and the desperation he saw there better than he wanted to be able to. He didn't know her. He didn't know her husband, didn't know who the children were who sat crying beside her. He didn't know why he was there, or why this stranger was making such a desperate plea to him, but at that moment he would've done anything to grant it to her. And so he found the words coming before he even understood that he wanted to say them.

  "We'll bring him back. If we find him we'll bring him back. You have my word. I think you're probably right - he's only hurt. If I find him I'll bring him back to you."

  The woman nodded before breaking eye contact. She looked away and began to sob. The small girl crying beside her was reaching to her, but the woman still seemed almost unable to see or hear the child. Chris felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Danny's face etched with concern. Danny's eyes shifted briefly to the woman, and he spoke beneath his breath.

  "We need to go. She'll be ok."

  Chris only nodded. As they broke the camp's edge and the darkness flooded in around them, Danny pointed to a group of small points of orange-hued light in the distance.

  "We can make it in less than an hour if we move a little fast." He said.

  A fast walk became a mild jog, and Chris found himself enjoying the brisk pace.

  It felt good to be running towards something.

                      

  Ahmed Faiz had hit the jackpot. He knew it as soon as he spotted the door at the end of the kitchen he stood in - knew it because he was good at knowing those types of things. He shone his flashlight beam around the room briefly, checking to make sure all of the cabinets were empty. Every cabinet door in the kitchen stood ajar - the room had nearly been completely stripped save a row of drawers near the sink. Faiz knew it was his job to finish stripping the drawers, but he was in no hurry to begin emptying them now that he had found the heavy door snuggled in a corner near the refrigerator. He approached it almost gleefully. The door's knob was locked, and Faiz guessed this was why no one had bothered to find out what lay on its opposite side already. He heard a sound in the darkness behind him and kicked himself mentally for jumping at the noise. He was far from alone in the house, and he knew it to be his friend, Sanchez, even before he heard the voice that accompanied the footsteps.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Think you can finish the kitchen? All that's left is a few drawers, I think." Sanchez said loudly from somewhere near the entrance to the kitchen. "I'm going to help Ben and Cory with the den. They've got a few tables to move, and a piano to take apart." Faiz understood very little of it - he spoke almost no English, but had known Sanchez long enough to know the man didn't expect him to do more than acknowledge the fact he had gotten some vague idea of what he was saying, and so he yelled a fast response in Arabic as a reply and turned back to the task at hand. Faiz thought Sanchez, or "Mr. Sanchez" -- no one seemed to know the man's last name -- to be more than a little strange. He nevertheless did his best to take advantage of every chance he received to impress him, because Sanchez had slowly become something of a hero to him. Sanchez had saved his life twice.

  Faiz fumbled with a small pouch at his waist until he found the paperclip he prized as one of his most valuable possessions. Even in the dark, it took him only a few seconds to pick the door's lock, and the knob twisted silently. Faiz swung the door open and shown his light through the doorway. His excitement grew as he saw that his first guess had been right - the door led to a pantry. Sanchez would be pleased. Faiz's beam revealed a wooden staircase that led down into the darkness, but it wasn't strong enough to reach the base of the steps. He stepped through the doorway and descended the stairway slowly, moving his light in slow arcs around him as the pantry came into his view. He was able to see that one wall opposite the stairs was lined with shelves - shelves stacked with canned foods and boxes of stored items.

Faiz marveled at his luck. He had found the day's greatest treasure on his own. There was enough food on the shelves to provide a true feast for his companions, and there was no telling what manner of goodies he would find in the boxes. As he came to the last steps he was able to see the floor of the pantry, and it too was strewn with boxes, crates, and plastic bags bulging at the seems. The pantry was apparently too large for his light to illuminate to the walls on his right or left, but he hoped that they, too, would be lined with more shelves. He stepped from the last wooden step to the concrete floor of the pantry and paused long enough to open a plastic lawn bag. It was full of clothes that were only large enough to fit a very small child, but the cloth itself was priceless as flammable material.

  Faiz was unable to wipe the grin from his face. He set his flashlight down atop one of the cardboard boxes and opened bag after bag - finding clothes, toys, old books, and piles of strange decorations the likes of which Faiz had never seen. Green and gold garland, wreathes, and a large doll with a white beard and mustache and red cap were of little interest too him. He tossed these aside as he rummaged, keeping a mental inventory of the things he thought to be of most worth to report to Sanchez and the others. He paused as his ears picked up a low click. Faiz had bested enough locks and opened enough doors to recognize the sound of one closing and a latch clicking into place. The thought that perhaps the door to the pantry had creaked shut on its own seemed explanation enough for the sound, and so after a few moments of listening he went back to his work. He spotted a particularly large box and began to rip the tape that held it shut.

  A brief rush of wind was his only warning that it was coming. The wind came from above him, but before he had even begun to look up a weight fell onto him and toppled him forward. A hand grabbed Faiz's left wrist before he had hit the ground, and his fall was temporarily stalled as his arm was snatched backward with an extreme amount of force. He had time to yell at the sudden pain -- his arm was behind him at an impossible angle for only a few seconds -- and then he was falling again. It was only after he had hit the floor -- only after he had made the fast mental decision to get back to his feet as quickly as he could -- that Faiz realized his arm had been ripped from its socket. His attempt at using an arm that he no longer possessed to push himself from the ground failed before it had begun, and Faiz attempted to scream. The scream was cut short as an arm wrapped under his head and a large hand clamped over his mouth. The weight atop him was crushing. Faiz struggled momentarily, but his efforts were weakened as the pain from his arm suddenly overwhelmed him. His jaw clamped shut as he strained vainly against his assailant, severing the end of his own tongue. Faiz didn't notice. Blood ran down his neck as pairs of fanged teeth sunk into the flesh of his neck. One of his legs was free, and it flailed wildly for no more than a minute or so. Then Ahmed Faizer was still.

  The flashlight fell from where he had set it and rolled across the concrete floor until it came to rest. The last thing that Faiz saw in the illumination as the life bled from him was the side of a cardboard box marked "Christmas Junk" and, beside that, the smiling face of a pot-bellied doll in a red suit and cap with a strange twinkle in its eye.

                      

  They had seen the pair's light coming from afar, and so they went out to meet the approaching duo. Three men met Danny and Chris before they reached the largest of the lights in their view - the light Danny said was a smaller bonfire built near the mirage. Two carried torches, the third a flashlight he had switched off. Danny greeted them and introduced the largest of them as Sanchez. He was a stocky giant of a man, surprisingly larger even than Danny. Chris shook his hand and guessed him to be nearly seven feet tall.

  "Glad to meet you." Sanchez said through a thick Spanish accent before turning and pointing to his two companions in turn. "This is Cory."

  The older of the two - Chris placed him in his fifties or sixties - nodded wordlessly.

  "And this," Sanchez continued, ”is John."

  The third man smiled and tapped his flashlight to his forehead with a nod.

  Sanchez turned to Danny. "We've got about half a wagon to finish loading up, and we'll be making a trip back. This place is a gold mine. It's going to take us awhile longer to finish stripping it."

  Danny nodded. "Cal sent me back as soon as I got to camp. He wanted me to show Chris what a mirage is."

  Sanchez looked to Chris. "You're new to this world?" Chris wasn't sure exactly what he saw in the man's eyes, but it could have been something akin to pity at that moment.

  Chris gave a short, nervous laugh at the question. "Everyone seems to think I'm new here, but every minute I've been here has been a minute too long. I don't know what 'new' is. How long have you all been here? There are at least a couple hundred questions I'd ask each of you if given the chance. I don't know where we are, or why we're here. All I know is I was taken from my family, and if there's a way to get back home I want to find it as quickly as I can."

  There was an almost uncomfortable silence. Sanchez finally spoke.

  "Believe me, friend, none of us wants to be here. Each of us would gladly risk death a thousand times over to escape. As for how long we've been here, I'm not sure about everyone, but I know for me it's a mercy that I can forget."

  How long have they been here? The questions were more screamed inside Chris's head than thought. How can there be so many who think escape from wherever the hell we are isn't at least worth talking about? How can they just accept that they've been taken from their homes and thrown here?

  Cory spoke. "We're gonna need to get somethin' on that fire pretty quick. I can see it dimmin' a little." He was looking back towards the source of light that Danny had been pointing to. Chris thought Cory was right – the light's brightness had lessened.

  Sanchez turned to Danny. "We should get moving. There are about three rooms left to clear and load up before we can make a trip back to camp. I think Cal will be pleased with what we've found. I haven't seen a mirage this detailed in a long time - no room is incomplete. There's something to strip from every one. I only wish Cal hadn't thought it necessary to instruct us not to go upstairs. There has to be much that we will be leaving behind because we can't."

  "Cal wouldn't have told us to stay downstairs if he didn't have some kind of damned good reason." Danny said. "I'd like to see what we could find up there, too, but there's no way I'm going to if Cal says we shouldn't."

  "I can't guarantee that no one will try." Sanchez said.

  Danny only shrugged. "If they're stupid enough to ignore Cal, then I wish 'em luck."

  Sanchez nodded his approval, and, at his lead, the small group began walking. They didn't have to walk far before it became clear that the light Danny and Chris had been using as a beacon was in fact a fire that was fast dwindling. As they approached it Chris was able to make out something else about a dozen yards from it, and this was where he followed the other four men. It was a large flatbed trailer loaded down with piles of wood, boxes, and a wide assortment of other items. Straps had been tied to the end of the trailer where the car hitch was located. Danny and Sanchez began pulling wood from the wagon to hand to the others, and Chris helped as they re-built the dying fire quickly and the flame's illumination grew. Once that task had been completed Danny approached Chris as he stood eyeing the wagon's contents in the light of his torch. There were recognizable parts from a variety of furniture types - chairs, the bottom frame of a sofa, pillows that looked as if they had been ripped from a loveseat, bookshelves, and even a partly dismantled retro entertainment center. Stacked in between the gaps of the larger pieces were smaller household items ranging from electric lamps to boxes of silverware.

  "I guess you're probably wondering where all this is comin' from?" Danny asked him.

  Chris nodded as he reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a paperback novel titled "Day of the Vampires".

  "I walked for a long time and didn't find anything." He said. "I mean I walked for maybe a full day or two without finding anything other than the ground under my feet in this place."

  "Mirages are few and far between, I'll say that." Danny replied. " 'specially ones as big and detailed as this one we've found here. You can go weeks at a time without findin' the first thing. But follow me and I'll show you what we found about two cycles ago."

  Chris frowned. "Cycles?"

  Danny nodded. "It confused me a little, too, when I first got here. There aren't any "days" here, really, an' so everyone goes by "cycles". It's pretty much sleeping cycles is what they told me. Like when you go to sleep and wake up and then get tired and lay down to go to sleep again - that's a cycle."

  Chris found himself asking the next question almost beneath his breath. "How long have you been here, Danny? It seems like no one wants to talk about that, as if it's taboo to discuss."

  Danny looked embarrassed. "I'm not sure what 'taboo' means. Mom always told me I should use the dictionary more for words like that, and now I can't. You mean like when you ask someone how long they've been here and they don't want to say?"

  "Yeah, exactly." Chris replied. "I asked Cal back at the camp how long he had been here and he didn't answer me, and when I asked those three," he motioned towards the other three men who stood near the fire talking, "they didn't seem to want to answer, either."

  "No one wants to talk about that much here. I don't know why. I've been here about thirty or forty cycles, I guess. Somewhere around there, I think. My cycles are long, though, because I don't sleep very often." Danny said.

  Chris took a moment to absorb his answer.

  A month in this place? Christ. Chris thought. How long have some of these people been stuck here? What kind of reason could anyone possibly have for throwing people into this place? Can you be eaten by wolves and collect trailers' worth of firewood and household junk in hell?

  Danny reached into one corner of the trailer and pulled from it two pre-fashioned torches. Choosing the larger of the two, he walked to the fire, lit it, and motioned for Chris to follow him.

  "Everyone else is in the house?" Danny asked Sanchez.

  "Yeah. They're all working on getting the rest of the shit gathered up and taken apart, then they'll be loading it up. Me, Cory, and John will be getting back to work in a minute. 'Bout time we had a quick break. We've been working our asses off since we got here."

  Chris followed Danny as he began walking into the darkness once again. Before they had moved much distance Chris noticed a slight pinkish glow ahead of them that seemed to be hovering higher than any light he had seen before, and he pointed it out to Danny.

  Danny grunted. "Wish I could tell you what that is. Have to admit I'm curious as hell, but Cal told us to stay away from it." He said. "Actually, he told us to stay away from the whole damned second floor."

  "Second floor of what?" Chris had barely asked the question before he realized that his answer was materializing in front of him.

  It was only a dim outline at first - so large Chris didn't realize he was seeing it until he allowed himself to take in a larger area of darkness - but as they continued walking the outline became something more, its details slowly brought into visibility by torchlight. Chris could hardly believe what he was seeing. He raised his torch as high as he could and paused.

  There at the center of nothing stood a two-story Victorian-style home. The pinkish glow Chris had been able to see from much farther out appeared to emanate from a curtained window on the structure’s second floor. The scene was complete to the smallest detail, including neatly trimmed shrubbery and planted flowers around the house's base. Large, glass-paned windows stretched the length of the lower floor that was visible to him, while the second floor boasted elongated eaves and flowered latticework. Chris was able to see seven windows from where he stood, but the torchlight only illuminated a partial portion of the outside of the house. Danny had approached the steps that led up to the home's front deck. He looked back over his shoulder.

  "What do you think?" He asked. "Pretty impressive, ain't it?"

  Chris realized he had frozen in his tracks. "What is it?"

  Danny grinned amusedly. "Pretty much exactly what it looks like, I guess." He said. "One damned big house in the middle of fuckin' nowhere."

  A flash of light from one of the house's lower windows surprised Chris, and he jumped back a few feet with a quick bark.

  "Jesus Christ. There's something in there. I saw a light move inside."

  Danny held up a hand as if to calm him. "Relax, man. It's just the guys at work in there. Most of 'em have torches, but a few have flashlights and the like. Should be close to a dozen men in there. It's a big house, so it's taking awhile to get it stripped. There's another trailer like the one we had back by the fire pulled up near one of the back doors, and they're loading it up." He made his way to the front door and opened it.

  "Coming?" He asked.

  Chris attempted to get a grip on his nerves as he reached the front steps. He eyed - with a sense of complete surrealism - the line where the smooth, glass-like ground that he had walked for days turned suddenly to soil a few yards from the house's outside wall. Danny stepped through the door ahead of him, and he followed. The sound of voices became audible as soon as he had passed into the home's foyer. The manner in which Danny made his way through the rooms as if he knew them made it obvious he had been in the house before. Chris followed him as he passed through a den that looked as if it had been hit by a burglary crew. Everything in the room had been toppled or turned over, and it appeared that almost anything that could be used had been taken. Broken china littered the plush carpeting. Potted plants had been overturned and trampled. Chris paused and squatted down to take a closer look at a large fern that lay with its roots visible through soil and the crushed remains of a painted vase. The idea that something had lived and grown in a darkened and likely abandoned house in a world inimical to plant life both fascinated and dumbfounded him.

  "If you want to look on your own for awhile, that's cool." Danny spoke to him from across the room, a hint of impatience in his voice. "I need to finish helping the guys get that trailer loaded and see what all's left to be done so I can give Cal some idea how many more trips to camp this is gonna take us."

  "My bad." Chris replied. "I'm not meaning to hold you up -- just can't believe what I'm seeing. I don't understand what I'm seeing here. How can there just be a place like this sitting abandoned in the dark like this? How can those plants be growing outside? How in the hell can any of this make any kind of sense?"

  "If I knew, I'd tell you, man." Danny shook his head. "I swear to God none of it makes any damned sense to me, either. I don't think anyone here understands where these come from, they just find them and take them for what they are. Most people that I've come across call ‘em mirages. Don't know how they got here, and most don't seem to really care. Nothing makes the right kind of sense in this place. Sometimes I really believe I'm dead, and maybe this is something between hell and home. But I really ain't sure, 'cause if I was dead, would I still be trying so hard to stay alive?"

  Even in the flickering torchlight Chris could make out the confusion on the kid's face. He felt a kind of guilt that he was forcing him to rethink questions he had probably already laid to rest.

  "But anyway, I'm gonna get to work. You can look on your own - if you find anything you want, you can keep it. That saying 'finders keepers' is pretty much the law. Just holler if you need anything." Danny said.

  "Got it." Chris replied, and found himself alone in the room a few moments later. It seemed that the darkness had closed in around him more tightly somehow, and he almost found that he wanted to run after the footsteps that faded slowly from his hearing. There was an eeriness about the den, with its windows that were meant to provide a view of the outside world but instead revealed only more blackness, and it's crushed and scattered contents. There was no dinner table left standing at its center, no chairs or china cabinet. Chris stood and made his way around the room, examining what little was left. He found few items of interest until he reached the farthest wall. A strange chill ran through him as he brought his torch in closer to illuminate an arrangement of family pictures that had been hung there. Smiling faces stared back at him. A father sat with a toddler in his lap and his arm around a slightly older girl of about six or seven. The toddler was grinning nearly as largely as he, her hands together as if clapping. Chris studied the pictures one by one until he came finally to a portrait that included the family as a whole. Aging parents smiling proudly with their two daughters and significantly taller son. Chris smiled back for a second or two, but it was extremely short-lived. Whatever happiness was reflected in the pictures couldn't reach far in the world he was faced with. He left the pictures there untouched and unmoved.

  Chris stepped from the den into a hallway, and could hear the voices that had been muffled before much more clearly. Footsteps and the occasional thumps and thuds associated with moving objects through the house echoed emptily. It seemed wrong that the home was being looted - seemed almost like a desecration of sorts. The house's very existence defied every kind of logic, and so to Chris it seemed that it deserved the right to stand in peace - undisturbed. He turned and followed the hallway towards the quieter sections of the house, and found himself passing a number of rooms before the hall opened up into what appeared to be the home's living room. A current of cool air enveloped him as he stepped into the room, and he looked up to find it was being produced from an air vent in the ceiling. Chris held his hand up to it.

  Why wouldn't the air conditioning be working perfectly? Chris thought. Were you going to assume that just because there probably isn't a single power line running to the place that the temperature control wouldn't be up to the task? Welcome to Mirage World, ol' boy, where the sun never shines and the electric bill is always free.

  As with the den, there was little left in the room. A large television lay face down on the floor, and a plush recliner sat facing it from one corner of the room. As Chris's light reached the corner he stopped. The recliner wasn't empty. A clothed skeleton lay in the chair with its feet kicked up and a paperback book in its lap -- its skull turned to one side due to what appeared to be a broken neck. Chris approached it slowly, the rest of his surroundings forgotten. The bones wore a simple sun dress and a pair of light leather sandals resting loosely around their feet.

  Someone lived here. Chris thought as he examined the fully decayed corpse with awed disbelief. She actually sat in this chair and relaxed with a book to read in front of a TV set. But how? How did she get here? Did she see the same darkness when she looked out any of the windows in this place that I see? Did she ask the same questions?

  He reached into the chair and carefully removed the book from where it lay rested beneath the bony fingers of one hand. It was an Anne Rice novel, it's pages folded at the corners in several places. He thumbed the pages absently as he brought his torch in close enough to see the break in the skeleton's neck more clearly. It looked as if it had been broken with no small amount of force . Two vertebrae were all but completely crushed beneath the skull.

  If my kids could only see me now. Chris thought. In a dark house with a torch in my hand standing over a skeleton in a sundress. It's the stuff those stories around the campfires are made of -- the stories that aren't nearly as scary as they would be if we ever thought there was any chance in hell that they could really happen. It's not the same when you're inside the story, ol' boy, is it? It's not just a shitload of fear that you have to deal with, it's constantly wondering if you've lost your mind altogether. It's an insane battle to cope with things that shouldn't be possible in any version of a sane world, because it's a goddamned campfire story, and you shouldn't be in it. By all rights you shouldn't be anywhere near it. Whenever your reality decides to suddenly stop making sense, apparently it goes all out. What was that your mother used to say? When it rains it pours? It's pouring, and I'll be damned if you were even given the option of bringing so much as an umbrella.

  Chris set the book back in the chair. The skeleton had no eyes, but the dark sockets sunken into its skull seemed to be watching him as he did so. He backed away from the chair slowly -- almost as if afraid that if he made enough sound he might wake the bones -- and finally turned from them.

  We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

  The rest of the room had been nearly completely stripped - the television and recliner were all that had been left. Chris passed through a set of French doors and found himself standing once again in the large foyer at the home's entrance. Doorways branched off in half a dozen directions beneath the room's high domed ceiling, but Chris's eyes were drawn to the staircase opposite the front door. He walked around to its base and peered up into the darkness. A slight pinkish glow was visible from somewhere near the top of the stairs -- the same glow he had been able to see from outside the house.

  Only this time it was within his reach, and he suddenly found he had an unreasonably strong urge to climb the stairs and find out what was at its source.

  A good reporter always goes where the answers are -- isn't that the motto? I might not be in Kansas anymore and there might not be an article to write ever again, but I'll be damned if I don't still want to find the answers. He thought. Getting way too old for this, though. Why did Cal tell them all to stay downstairs? Why am I the only one who wants to know what's up there badly enough to consider this? Curiosity killed the cat, so who's up for finding out if it can kill an old man approaching the point where he has nothing left to lose?

  Chris eyed the portion of the staircase he was able to see for what might have been minutes before making up his mind.

  He took the first step, and the light emanating from somewhere above the stairs drew him on.