Benno was awakened an hour after he fell asleep by the crash of his door slamming open.

“You fool!” Edda roared, slapping the table aside as she rushed up to his bed. She arched over him, hampered by the trailer’s low ceiling, her wild blue hair flaring like a wraith. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”

Benno gathered the sheets up to his chin. The Shining still played on the TV atop the dresser—the scene where Jack makes out with the dead woman from the bathtub—and Benno pawed at the remote on the bedside table until the screen went dark.

“Are you stupid?” Edda seethed, her breath reeking of booze, her armor a nondescript wash of linoleum. “Do you not have the mental fortitude to recognize deceit?”

Benno propped himself up on his elbow. “You know I’ve been wondering,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Why I need to sleep. I don’t have to eat, I don’t have to drink water, I don’t even have to breathe. But sleep… Sleep I need. There are a few things like that, that I don’t understand. Like my fingernails. They grow. And my beard.” He touched his jaw, where a dusting of stubble had already formed. “And this…” He held out his hand and peered at it as it trembled minutely.

Edda’s furious orange eyes searched his face. “Is this amusing to you? You’ve undone a century of diplomacy and goodwill between me and the Everson Family. Further, you’ve created a dangerous enemy—a savage enemy—where before there was a powerful ally. Not to mention you’ve eradicated any hope you might have of entering the Gardens inside the timeframe we discussed after this moronic—”

“Tell me about Annabel,” Benno said.

Edda’s nostrils flared and her green lips curled back away from her teeth. “Who told—” she started, then closed her eyes and exhaled. “You think I’ve been withholding this from you for some reason?”

“Well if you don’t want to talk about Annabel, then maybe we can talk about Horus.”

A moment passed during which Edda did not react, did not blink, did not breathe. Then she withdrew from Benno’s bed and knelt on the linoleum floor, her knee depressing the flimsy material with a wheeze. “Annabel was—I suppose by a certain perspective—your predecessor. But there were notable differences between you two, the primary being that she was not touched by…” Her eyes flickered to Benno, then away. “For one, she aged normally. She was also not—despite what I assume Rose may have told you—truly impervious to physical harm. She had an unusually fast rate of regeneration—something to do with a genetic mutation—and rapid enough that to an untrained eye she might appear impervious. For all intents and purposes, she occupied the same role you have inherited. Taking fire off the crew, infiltrating environments too dangerous for the rest of us. But the Gardens was different… I knew, deep down I think, that she would not survive passage through the rhizome. There were too many variables. But it was before I’d found you, and I had to act on the staggeringly rare opportunity of having located the Gardens at all… It was a mistake. She was killed when we tried to send her in. And unlike you, she was not… interested in dying. She wanted to live. It remains one of my deepest regrets…” Edda gazed off into a corner of the trailer. “It took so many years to find the Gardens. I promised myself I would be ready when I did, that I would not waste anymore time…” She drew a pink fingernail along her cheek, and her lips moved until a whisper issued forth. “…Sul sleeps in the gray wastes…”

Benno watched her through a stretch of silence.

She turned to him, as if remembering he was there. “There is no diminishing how severely you’ve erred. But I see no point in continuing to reprimand you. From here we can only look forward.”

“So what now?” Benno asked. “Is the Everson Family coming after us? Are we getting ready to fight?”

Edda sighed. “They now know for certain who and what you are,” she said. “If we are found, they will kill us and they will make your life an unparalleled misery, and everything I’ve worked for will be ruined.”

Benno drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Should I put on pants?”

Edda reached over, her long arm extending the entire width of the trailer, and lifted the blinds. Beyond the scuffed glass was complete, unwavering darkness.

Benno frowned at his dark face reflected in the window. “Where are we?”

“At the moment, inside what is called the Lacuna. The fabric between Realms.”

“And we’re safe here?”

“Yes. But we cannot stay here for long. The Gemstoke’s engine is not designed for this kind of prolonged exertion. Hermann and I are searching for a new Realm to house our operations… I should be returning to him now. I came here only to admonish you.” She stood, stooping, her shoulders wedged against the ceiling. “You should remain here and do nothing until you’ve heard otherwise. And before you decide to traipse off on another romp, be aware that I have disabled the Gemstoke’s while we’re in the Lacuna. To save power. You will end up suspended out there in the nothingness with no recourse and no chance at rescue. Indefinitely. For you, in particular, I imagine, that would be an unfortunate fate.” She turned and stalked out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.

Benno sat for a moment, blinking out at the hallway’s genital-looking floral wallpaper. An unfortunate fate. What would she know about that? He stood and closed the door, then righted the table and collected the plant, whose soil had scattered on the linoleum. He did his best to restore it, patting the soil around its base and massaging one bent leaf back into an approximation of its original shape.

“You’re lucky,” he said, admiring its sightless, thoughtless leaves. There was a small bud forming at the point of a stem. A blue bud. A baby flower.

He went to the bathroom to fetch it a cup of water.

#

He went back to sleep.

He dreamed about the white wooden door at the end of the dark corridor in the basement of the Everson Family’s mansion. He dreamed he heard laughter beyond it, deep and boisterous. It didn’t sound the way laughter was supposed to sound, but yet sounded more like how laughter was supposed to sound than any laughter he’d ever heard. Then again it might have been weeping. It might also have been hail drumming on a roof.

A shadow slunk along, silent, at Benno’s feet, two orange eyes watching.

Then the laughter stopped, or the weeping, or the hail, and the brass knob turned. The shadow hissed and fled. The door whined open on its rusty hinges. Benno could not move, could not look away. A shape appeared in the doorway, and then pushed out into the dingy light. Benno recognized the face—a face interred in his mind—but forgot, immediately upon waking, that he had seen it at all.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his temples. He did not have a headache. He hadn’t had a headache in seven years.

He asked Gemma for a whiskey, and sipped it as he got dressed. There was something different about his room. For a full minute he couldn’t determine what it was, until, all at once, it dawned on him: The light. The light was different.

He went to the window and raised the blinds. Sunlight poured in, and he tented his eyes with a hand at the same moment he took a sip of whiskey, and as his brain processed the view his tongue pressed reflexively to the roof of his mouth, and a bit of whiskey dribbled down his chin.

A blue, shimmering sea. Water dappled with golden sunlight. A white sand beach in the foreground onto which crystal-blue waves lapped gently. In the distance, less than a mile out to sea, an island sprouted with palm trees. The sky was rich blue, speckled with dazzling white clouds basking in the sun high overhead.

Though he couldn’t feel the air through the window, Benno could sense it: warm, sweet, clean, as pristine as any tropics he could visit in his own Realm. A perfect paradise, unmarred in its faultless beauty in every imaginable way except for one.

The Coil beat in the sky, its raw musculature pulsing once a second, raining its endless torrent of blood down into the tranquil blue sea.

He was beginning to recognize a vein running through his life: Where beauty went, a marring of ugliness was sure to follow. As a child, he’d had a cat, a handsome cat named… well, come to think of it, the cat’s name had been Horus, named by Benno’s mother. Regardless, the cat was handsome and agile with a beautiful beige coat and a long, shapely tail. The only problem with Horus was that his left eye was deformed, a bulging mess of puckered, prolapsed flesh. It was so ugly that it was all anyone saw when they looked at him, despite his indisputable beauty in every other way.

The Coil bled into the sparkling sea.

YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED OUTSIDE, Gemma announced.

Benno lowered the blinds. Who had taught Gemma how to speak? Presumably Edda, which explained the pompous formality. Your presence is requested…

Benno tilted his head. Outside? It never occurred to him he could exit the Inn. Though in its previous Realm he wasn’t sure he would have wanted to.

But here?

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He tossed his empty whiskey glass away and hurried into the hall.

#

Gemma led him through the Inn to a simple glass door at the end of a hallway. Through it, the beach and the sparkling sea beckoned. Benno grasped the handle, kicking off his shoes, prepared to run forth through the sand.

But he paused. The door handle was aluminum, like a million other door handles, and yet, unlike a million other door handles, this one had a dimple in the aluminum just beneath where Benno’s index finger rested. It had nearly perfectly matching dimensions to the pad of his finger. A strange sensation ran down the length of his back, not a shiver as much as a weight, something wanting to settle in him. But it passed, replaced by the perfectly reasonable acceptance that dents and dimples appeared in aluminum door handles with some expected regularity, and Benno decided a whiskey on the sand would be fitting. Or maybe…

“How about a piña colada?”

Gemma manifested him one in the shell of a pineapple, with orange slices and a swirly straw and, he discovered as he sipped it, a generous dose of rum. He pushed open the door—half expecting it to chime—and walked out onto the sand, satisfied to find the air was exactly as warm and salty sweet as he’d imagined.

His feet scrrrched on the warm sand. It had been so many years since he’d walked barefoot on a beach. The last time was with his family in Montauk the year before the accident. With one hand he cradled his piña colada, and with the other traced the warm breeze in his fingers, willing it to take the shape of a smaller hand, to pull him excitedly to the water, to dance in his ears in a small, perfect voice.

He ignored the Coil pulsing overhead and gazed out at the glittering horizon. Something leapt from the water—a dolphin perhaps, or some kind of fish—too far away to get a clear look. It was sizable, and powerful, its wet gray skin glinting in the sun. The tide lapped in, the cool water kissing his toes. Then there was a BANG! and the wild, leaping creature burst into an arc of blood before its lifeless body splashed sloppily back into the water.

Piña colada dripped down Benno’s fingers.

“Hey!” someone called from down the beach.

Benno turned. There were folding chairs and beach towels and a pair of rainbow umbrellas staked in the ground. Edda lounged on a chair, her usual mirror-armor reduced to a mirror-bathing suit, and a pair of large, mirror sunglasses, all of which flared in the sunlight. In the shade of her chair, Recipient the cat napped, glancing up briefly and blinking slowly at Benno, his orange eyes muted, before yawning mightily and burying his face in his arms.

Dante reclined on a towel wearing a speedo and glistening with a coat of tanning oil. Isaac and Helen, both on their knees clawing fans of sand behind them, appeared engaged in a race to see who could dig the deepest hole the fastest,. Herman sat in his wheelchair in the shade of an umbrella, his pant legs rolled up to reveal paper-white ankles, reading a book. D’doak Michol was back, standing stock-still behind Edda, staring blankly out at the sea or, perhaps, the Coil bleeding above the horizon.

And then there was Rose. She sat on the wet sand wearing sunglasses, with a blunt dangling from her lips, and an enormous rifle with a long scope trained out at the water.

“I nailed that fucker,” she said, cocking the rifle, which spat a long casing onto the sand.

“How many’s that?” Dante asked on his back, his eyes closed.

“Twelve.” Rose peered through the scope. “Here comes lucky number thirteen…”

Edda gestured to Benno. “Join us,” she said, placing a cigarette in her lips.

Benno shuffled toward them. He could have just as easily turned and walked away to find his own isolated corner of the beach. He could drink, maybe take a nap. He was under no obligation to socialize. He looked back over his shoulder, where the beach stretched as far as he could see, hemmed inland by a dense tropical jungle. He glanced at the Inn—and blenched.

He’d been so distracted by the beach that he hadn’t even thought to check and see what the Hillstul Inn looked like from the outside.

A door. Just a door, standing on the beach. There was nothing behind it, no building, no structure, no Inn. Just a door with a brass nob and a simple keyhole.

A wooden door. A white wooden door.

“Is that…” Benno started, though as he did he realized the door was not exactly white, but off-gray. And it was not necessarily wooden, but could just as easily have been some kind of polymer or metal. And the knob was not brass, but rather ochre, and there was no keyhole at all.

“Hey Benno, wanna swim?” Dante called, propping himself up on his elbows so a runnel of sweat meandered down his hairless chest.

Benno eyed the door. His shock diluted into surprise, which hardened into confusion, which melted into the same incredulous acceptance with which he’d taken everything else he’d encountered for the last three days.

“Even I must admit this Realm is quite pleasant,” Edda said to no one in particular. “Despite that it is already inhabited.”

BANG!

“Thirteen.” Rose ashed her blunt as a cloud of red whipped away over the surface of the ocean.

“Time!” Helen shouted, scooping a final handful of sand into the air and sitting back hard in front of her hole, panting.

“Dang,” Isaac said, equally out of breath. “We were nuh-nuh-neck and neck.”

“You gave it your best, kid.” Helen offered Isaac an exhausted high-five. “But nobody out-digs me. I’m the hole-digging master.”

“Checks out,” Rose mumbled, peering through her scope.

Helen stood, wobbling briefly on the pitted sand. “You got something to say?”

Rose looked up. “I didn’t say anything, you backwoods bitch.”

Helen stomped up to Rose and kicked a pall of sand in her face.

Rose jumped up, wiping at her face with one hand and leaning on the rifle—taller than her by a solid foot—like a staff. “You know what?” she said, spitting her blunt onto the beach.

“What?” Helen stood over Rose.

“Girls…” Edda said, insouciant, basking in the sun with one arm draped over her eyes.

Rose sneered up at Helen. Helen glared down at Rose. The rifle teetered, its muzzle passing near Helen’s jawline.

Helen outspread her arms. “What?!”

BANG!

The muzzle flashed. Helen dropped to the sand.

Dante sat bolt upright. Hermann’s book fell from his hands. Isaac scrambled backwards. Edda swung her legs off the chair, kicking Recipient, who squawked, irritated, and padded deeper into the shade of the chair. Benno clutched his piña colada. D’doak stared out at the water.

“Rose!” Edda stood, yanking her sunglasses off her face.

“She’s fine,” Rose rolled her eyes.

Helen peeked up, her hands flitting around her ear. There was no blood. Her head was intact. “You…” she breathed, her eyes wild. “You…”

Edda pulled a towel from the air and wiped her shoulders. “That was too close, Rose.”

Rose shrugged.

Helen shook as she attempted to stand.

Isaac hurried over to help her up. “You alrrr-rrr…okay?”

“I’m gonna…” Helen said. “I’m gonna fucking…”

“Both of you, come with me.” Edda said. “The three of us are going to hash out this foolish feud once and for all.”

“She tried to kill me.” Helen’s lips trembled with disbelief. “The little slut tried to shoot me in the head.”

“If I was trying, your fat head would be gone.”

Helen lunged.

Isaac wrapped his arms around her chest and lifted her.

“Let me go!” she screamed, flailing and kicking, her hands clawing the air. “Let me go!”

Rose snickered.

Edda sighed and shook her head.

“There’s something here…” Hermann said.

“I’m gonna rip her to pieces!” Helen screeched.

“You’re gonna have a fucking stroke.” Rose knelt to pick up her blunt.

Edda closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose.

“There’s something here.” Hermann repeated, louder.

Helen thrashed against Isaac’s unyielding hold, her heels smashing his shins and knees. “She’s dead! That little shit is dead!”

Dante glanced up at Benno. “This is normal,” he said.

Benno nodded.

“Girls…” Edda said again, too quiet.

“Edda!” Hermann barked.

Helen stopped flailing. Rose turned around. Edda looked up from her hand.

Hermann sat in his wheelchair, one hand pattering nervously on the armrest, looking at the crew with a grave expression. “There’s something h—”

A shadow fell over Hermann. Or at least that’s how it appeared in the moment before Hermann’s body split in half—from the crown of his head to the pit of his lap—and peeled apart with a spraying chaos of blood until each half dangled over its respective armrest.

Silence stifled the beach. Even the wind and waves seemed to hold, suspended, awaiting what came next.

“How?!” Edda screamed. Her bathing suit fractalized and elongated across the length of her body, her horned mask and jutting phallus materializing and her enormous sword pixellating from her hand. She whipped around and looked up.

From the deep blue reaches of the sky, a shape appeared. Dark and colossal, it loomed through the upper atmosphere, its grinding teeth and lumbering wheels stained with a sheen of dark blood. A profound stench of iron filled the air.

Before anyone could react, a flash of black whipped from the gut of the monstrous gears, and Helen exploded into a pillar of red and a thuck of organs spattered on the sand and blood rained across Benno’s face.

Isaac screamed.

“Take me to Barcelona take me to Barcelona take me to Barcelona,” Dante stammered into his Gemstoke, cowering behind his beach chair.

“They’ve scrambled the boundary!” Edda spun, her blue hair panicking. “Run!”

Another black flash, a cable or a tendril, Benno discerned, unable to bring himself to move—the pineapple of his piña colada a spongey mess in his fist—lashed down. This one struck Dante as he tried to clamber to his feet, blowing his back to shards and sending his tattered body rolling across the beach and into the shallows.

Another struck Isaac, who knelt, frozen, beside what was left of Helen. It crushed his head down into the cavity of his chest. Blood geysered from the pulpy remnants of his torso.

“Fuck you!” shouted a little girl Benno had never seen before. She fired a long rifle—BANG!—twice—BANG!—at the gears in the sky before dropping it and trying to run. A tendril whipped—a bolt of black lightning—and severed her legs from her waist. Her bottom half thudded onto the sand, while her top half spiraled through the air spewing a prodigious arc of bright red blood, and landed like a sack in Benno’s arms.

Edda, sprinting up the beach in the direction of the Inn’s lonely door, slid to a halt as another black flash whipped down. She drew her sword back, her feet planted deep in the sand, and swung to meet it. Her timing was impeccable, as the blade collided heartily with the tendril. But the timing was all she had, and the tendril passed through the sword like an axe through glass, and through Edda’s armor with the same ease, and her arm fulminated at the shoulder in a plume of red.

D’doak gazed out at the water as if nothing at all was happening.

A dark shape stirred to Benno's left: Recipient leaping toward him, his orange eyes boring, his wide paws outstretched. Benno flinched back—seeing himself flinch in the glass triangle on the cat’s collar—as the cat landed first on his shoulder, then scrabbled down the length of his body and cowered between his legs.

Edda teetered, clutching the pulverized stump of her arm. Through her fingers, clumps of wriggling red worms spewed. She pivoted, galloping back toward where Benno still stood holding the bloodless top half of a little girl whose eyes—older than her face—tumbled, uncomprehending, up at him and the sky beyond.

A tendril stabbed through Edda’s back and into the sand, impaling her in place. Her legs rocked forward as she caught on the black line. It pulsed, coated in the same sheen of dark blood as the titanic, gnashing gears.

More red worms bled from Edda’s cracked carapace and squirmed down the length of the tendril. Her mask had shattered, exposing one wide, trembling eye, which searched the beach, finding Benno’s briefly before darting toward the water.

Above the horizon, the Coil beat at its steady rate.

“D’doak…” Edda rasped, ringlets of worms slavering over the mask’s fractured edges. “Hide Benno…”

Benno looked up from the half of a girl dying in his arms at the red beach, his vision bleary and his chest cold.

“Benno…”

Benno’s eyes found Edda.

“Find my brother…” Her tongue quavered against the crest of her teeth. “Find Onus…”

Benno’s mouth opened, silence breathing forth. His eyes darted, meeting D’doak Michol, as still as a boulder, the waves lapping at their bare feet. Benno blinked, and in that instant D’doak’s neck had turned sharply, their pared, bloated eyes reflecting nothing, and the beach turned on four sides, panels twisting suddenly around, their backs a scuffed black, and enclosed Benno in a darkness that felt to sleep like dying felt to being dead.