Jason

To his surprise and great relief, Jason was alive. He couldn’t see anything and he felt like someone had squeezed him through a toothpaste tube, but he was alive. He shivered as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where was he, and why was he soaking wet? He looked down. Apparently he was up to his knees in water. Where was Naomi? There she was, still down on her hands and knees in the water, breathing heavily. She didn’t look good. None of this looked good.

Jason tried to take it all in. Two men in strange clothing were staring at him. A lamppost cast bluish light on a stone bench. Further out, the shadows of treetops swayed in the wind. And behind him was the false door from the museum, as if he’d just come through it somehow, to—to wherever this place was. His brain tried and failed to make his surroundings into a coherent picture. It was all wrong—all wrong.

“Where are we? What is this place? What did you do? What the hell did you do?” Jason asked.

Naomi pulled herself up by gripping the ledge that surrounded the pool and mumbled something, but she didn’t even open her eyes.

“You have to take us back!” Jason cried. The taller of the two men—he looked like a vampire, tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and that long black coat over a blood-red tunic—was walking towards them. Jason’s heart was doing its best to beat through his ribcage, but he would not cower in fear.

“Who are you? Did you bring us here? Where is ‘here’? Damn it, there’s something wrong with her—did you do something to her? Who are you?”

The vampire paused and rubbed his temples. “Perhaps you would prefer to continue this conversation outside the fountain?” He extended a hand, as if to help Jason climb out.

“Perhaps you’d like to have your face smashed in,” Jason replied, mimicking his tone. Only—the vampire wasn’t speaking English. Whatever those sounds coming out of his mouth were, they definitely were not English words. So how did Jason understand what he was saying?

Naomi was saying something too, in a small, weak voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—oh no. I’m going to . . .”

And then she retched. Right into the pool where Jason was standing. He leaped over the ledge and continued running a few steps further before he stopped. Where was he going? He needed to go home, not run off into the darkness.

The other man—shorter, darker-skinned, with curly hair and a beard and not at all vampire-like—was helping Naomi to get out of the pool. She slumped down to sit doubled over on the ledge, dripping and shivering. The bearded man draped a towel over her shoulders.

“I don’t suppose you grabbed two—ah. Wonderful. You should have been the Tresuan,” said the vampire. He took another towel off the bench and held it out towards Jason.

Jason stared. He didn’t know what that word meant, didn’t even remember what a towel was for. He wasn’t in Chicago anymore. He probably wasn’t even on Earth anymore.

“Very well. If you’d prefer to stand there dripping, suit yourself.”

Jason snatched the towel from his hand and strode back towards Naomi. “What did you do?” he asked her one last time.

Naomi whimpered, curling up around herself. “I . . . don’t . . .”

“Naomi!” Jason grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet, then shouted in her face. “Snap out of it! We need to get out of—”

“Stop that,” the vampire ordered.

Jason whirled to face him, letting go of Naomi. “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Without his support, Naomi crumpled. The man with a beard caught her and helped her over to the bench. Jason followed.

“What’s wrong with her? She was fine just a minute ago!”

The man gave Naomi a quick examination. “She’s in vitricial depletion. Second stage, at least,” he said.

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“What are you talking about?” Jason understood most of what he said, except the word “vitricial”—that didn’t mean anything.

“We should go,” said the vampire, pacing about the plaza with his black cloak billowing behind him.

The man with a beard nodded. “Right. We should take her to the hospital—”

“No!” The vampire spun, speaking quickly. “We can’t take her to the hospital. There’s nothing they can do for her there that we can’t give her at home. The fewer people who know she’s—who know they’re here, the better. I’ll explain when we get home, Kelsam.”

Well, that sounded awfully fishy.

“Explain now,” Jason said, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

The vampire sighed. “Yes, I agree that we each have a great deal of explaining to do to each other, but this is neither the time nor the place. Your friend is exhausted and needs a place to rest, and the best place to do so is in my home.”

“Who are you?” Jason asked.

“My name is Esar Semfrey, and this is my husband, Kelsam. You have my word that neither one of us means any harm to you, or your friend. Now come along.”

“But—I didn’t—she’s not my friend! And I’m not following you anywhere—I’m not going anywhere unless it’s back home!”

“We can’t talk here.” The vampire—Esar Semfrey, which was a pretty good vampire name—glared down at Jason, speaking through clenched teeth.

Jason glared back up at him, summoning all his determination just to hold his ground. “I’m. Not. Going.”

Esar looked up at the sky with a groan and then paced away, hand to his forehead. “I am doing my best to be patient with you, ah—what is your name?”

“Jason,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I am trying to be patient with you, Jason, so I ask that you afford me the same courtesy. This girl, who is not your friend, is suffering from vitricial depletion, and she will not be able to take you back home until she recovers.”

“I don’t understand.” Jason’s bravado was fading away, leaving him with nothing but terror. Did he really have no choice but to go with these guys?

“Am I going to die?” Naomi said it softly, but her voice carried through the silence.

“Of course not. You’re going to be fine. You just need some rest. Everybody’s got to deplete themselves at least once in their life, right? Idiots like me have to do it three times before they learn their lesson,” the man with the beard—Kelsam—said. He sounded . . . friendly. Soothing, even. But could Jason trust him?

“I think we ought to go with them, Jason,” Naomi said, her voice hoarse and strained.

“If I help you, can you walk?” Kelsam asked her.

“I think—” That came out more like a croak, and she put her hand to her throat and nodded, instead. Kelsam helped her up, and Esar still had his eyes fixed on Jason.

“Fine. I’ll go with you. Since it looks like I don’t have any other choice!”

“Ah. So you are capable of reason after all.”

“Esar,” Kelsam said.

“We will talk at home,” Esar said. “Let’s go.”

Something big took flight out of one of the nearby trees, and Jason jumped. In the darkness, all he got was an impression of flapping wings, but he was pretty sure it had been a bird, not a bat, or . . . some kind of monster. Who knew what sorts of things lurked in the shadows here in this cold, dark place?

Why was it so dark and cold, anyway? It had been a sunny, humid morning in June when he’d arrived at the Field Museum a few hours ago, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and the text on the lock screen confirmed what he remembered.

11:22 AM. No Service.

Why did those words look so sinister? Did he expect to find cell service in this godforsaken place? Jason wished he could convince himself that this was all just a dream, but he knew—knew that this was all real. Terrible things didn’t go away just because you wished hard enough. When things were too good to be true, that was when you were probably dreaming.

Esar led them into the forest, where twilight deepened into gloom. Their progress was agonizingly slow as Naomi took small, shuffling steps that left streaks through the mulch. Pathetic. The same girl who’d run up to meet him and his grandmother that morning—the same girl he’d struggled to keep up with as they explored the museum—could barely walk at all.

Grandma had lectured on and on as they drove down from Milwaukee early that morning, which somehow felt like it happened a million years ago. He’d tuned her out, but now Jason wished he’d listened to her advice. “You can’t be too careful about people you meet on the internet. That girl you’ve been chatting with all the time might not be who she seems. Might not even be a girl, you know.”

Sure, Naomi looked like a teenage girl, nice and normal enough to put his grandmother at ease. But she definitely wasn’t what she seemed, and she scared him even more than the man who reminded him of a vampire.

You were right, Grandma. You really can’t be too careful about people you meet on the internet. They may seem nice and normal at first, but then they start touching museum exhibits and dragging you along with them into other worlds.