Dust tried to choke them, but they held it in. The smell of mortar took their noise while particles of plaster turned to a soft clay once again in their mouths.

“How did you get in there…” the voice said.

“Teach…” Giselle started to say, but Barry reached out and grabbed his sister.

They could see very little. The only light was a purple and brown glow from below.

He pulled his sister back, with all his effort half on the ground, teary-eye he shook his head.

Giselle gulped, shedding a tear herself, one for the times passed. She missed them or feared she would forget; She did not know which.

“Teacher, is something wrong?” A woman’s voice spoke.

One that made both Barry’s and Giselle’s eyes pop. It was a voice they knew too well.

Then sounds filled the building beyond the wall.

“No, no, I think I am just hearing things come. Let’s finish everything up before the rest of the class gets here. It’s a reunion celebration, not a preparation party.” The Doctor said, his voice calm but distant as it always was.

They listened beyond the wall to the chattered, clapping and cheering, inside jokes they knew and understood well.

It sent chills down their spine.

The sound of celebration stopped with a loud bang, a person falling, and the shout of another.

“Teacher. What’s wrong!” the voices called from beyond the door.

“Quick, someone. He has no pulse, his heart has stopped. Someone get my little brother here. He can help.” The woman said, weeping, pushing her tongue down her throat.

A silence returned, eerie and old as a space, an utter silence that made the other sense jump. A reminder to wake up, a reminder of existence.

Giselle looked back, the dust in the air gathering on the liquid spilling from his eyes, nose, and mouth.

She nodded to Barry and then nodded down the stairs. They could see little of the steps beyond the edge of the purple glow.

The two slid forward, Barry stared at his hands, already missing his dog but too scared to speak of it.

Each step was a risk in the dark, a path down to a place they could not know or see.

They reached a plateau, a larger step, they could see its reamed edge in gray, the rest was dark; they leaned toward the center to see each other. It only got brighter the lower they went.

“What was it?” Barry said.

“What…”

“That, you know, that up there, what we heard, I thought I heard… I mean the reunion we were going to have a few days ago… Before the news.”

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“that’s not possible!” Giselle said. Her hands found the young man’s collar in the dark. She pulled him tight, calming herself while scaring her young brother.

“Sis, sis, stop…”

She let go sliding back, watching her brother trying to pull her head from the cloud that it was stuck in.

Barry crouched, holding his head, almost in tears. “We left Grifter. I have to go back, sis.” He said.

“No, just wait. It will be morning in just a few hours. Let’s see if we can find a place to sleep. I don’t know what it is, but there is some type of light below. Perhaps the Doctor was working on a new type of gas… A purple gas. Just like Blue Gas.” Giselle said.

Her demeanor changed quickly. She walked over to her brother before he stood.

He was not one to think. She had to think for him; What use would he be if the Teacher collapsed?

But he was not as foolish as his sister thought. He was at least observant; How long have you called him ‘The Doctor’ since he died?

They nodded their heads to each other, each having a little shake in the legs as they leaned on each other. Going down a few steps.

“Sis, how many steps do you think are here? We’ve been going for a few minutes now,” Barry said.

It was longer than that; just a few minutes ago he started counting.

What was stranger was the closer they got to the light, the further from the source they seemed.

“It’s just… Your imagination.”

IT was getting bright, a tiny bit after around ninety steps they could see a little more. That was the number of steps before each larger corner step that prompted their turn.

Have we been turning left or right this whole time? Barry felt like something was off, they changed direction yet were walking the same way.

“Is there such a thing? Direction, I mean. Truly?”

Barry turned his head and looked around. His exaggerated movements easily caught his sister’s attention.

“What are you doing?” She said.

“I thought I heard something, unless it was you, did I say that out loud?” He said.

Giselle half-wanted to ignore him, her hand rubbing her face, while others found his shoulder.

“Perhaps we should take a break, I doubt we will run into anything like that again. It was probably just our imagination making it worse. Just because we saw something strange does not mean it exists.” She said.

“Don’t they?”

Barry watched his sister flinch, she heard a voice as well.

Her smile remained, and it calmed Barry as she was hoping it would.

We had this conversation before, in the teacher’s class, his first lesson. How long ago was that, before I learned about steam power, before Blue-Gas was in every house and apartment? Giselle kept her thoughts to herself.

“Wait, before we stop there is something up there, isn’t there” Barry said, his finger stretching an oddly painted panel on the wall.

It was just the right color to stand out under the small amount of purple light.

Barry walked forward first from his sister’s hand; It was she who followed for the first time.

“Stop, you don’t know what…” she said.

Her words found her tongue to be a fence, stuck when she got a closer look.

It was a red door in the lights, and if her memory served her right, what was on the other side of the door was the room they left.

Giselle turned and looked up only to see a spiraling dark, but she had no doubt.

It was the door they passed from the other side, but far from where they started.

Barry stopped his steps and pointed out another, a door identical to the one before.

The same door on different walls.

“Where could they lead—we are this far down, this is deeper than most of the old mines just outside of town,” Barry said, exposing he used to sneak out.

“Sis, come on.”

Barry reached up and pulled her down, perhaps he had eyes but he was not one for thinking. He may have been smart and had learned from the best, but he was not the brightest.

“Why would something like this be in his family home?” Giselle said, the words slipped from her, “What even is this Doctor…”

As her lips moved and her body sighed, she missed Barry’s actions for such a reason he was quick to grab the door.

It opened with a creak.

“You…”

But there was nothing more to say and nothing to see.

It was day beyond the door, bright light through windows of the Dining room of the Fletch family house. Long owned by the only child and son of the parents who passed in an airship accident.

They could see on the table not far from the door in that dining room they ran from, a newspaper they once owned; six years ago, that is.

It had a headline: “A Young Genius Changes Transportation Forever in Memory of His Parents.” and below the headline a picture of a young man in his mid-twenty, yet to have his famous facial hair.

Barry dropped everything he was doing, running up the stairs.

“Stop it, Barry, something is not right.”

“That is why I am checking…” He said, running ahead.

He opened the door they were just at.

As it swung open, the situation was something different. A shaved man with a silver tie and combed hair dropped the mug that was at his lips.

“Who are you!?” He said, shocked beyond belief.

“Ack!” he stood quick trying to get the coffee off his pants.

“Dr. Fletch?” Barry asked. He had to know he looked like the man he knew with a shave and a different style.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are but I am no Dr, even if my name is Fletch. Mom, Dad, is this some kind of prank because I spent the night?”

Giselle ran up hearing the voice, as she stepped into the door’s frame, the Doctor stepped out.

“What do you mean? Why are you shouting?” A woman said. Giselle and Barry had seen pictures of the doctor’s parents multiple times and there she was in the flesh, though she had long passed; The mother of Arthur Fletch.

Arthur stepped out beyond the basement door as Barry stepped back. It was Giselle who looked a little longer.

The paper on the table was different from the other they just looked at, although the date was the same.

Its headline: “Another mine collapses, and ship burns while falling, infrastructure continues to fail while the people get hungry.”

“That paper…” Giselle said.

Then Arthur blocked her view. “What of it? It’s old, but I’m a reporter. Now tell me what is this.”

As the Doctor, or the man who shared his body, stepped out, he was shocked to find the basement different from the one he knew.

The door slammed, “Woah! What is this…” he said, pointing.

His outstretched hand and finger being reduced to dust, the rest of his flesh followed.

There falling, the dust before them, was a reporter named Arthur Fletch.