Chapter 1.2 Dead Ends and Doorways

Dead Ends and Doorways

 

"Of course I did.”

Jack turned sharply, but there was no clear source for the voice. It reverberated through the space as if it was woven into the fabric of the house itself.

Elias was already working, fingers pressed to the floor, trying to unravel the seams of the fold before it swallowed them whole.

Gabriel looked pale. “Can he see us?”

His laugh was a low, mocking thing. “Gabriel, is it? You should really be more careful about where you step. I could wipe you out of existence before you can get to your feet.”

Gabriel attempted to jerk his foot forward, but the floor held him in place like quicksand. 

Lena’s hands moved fast, shifting the air around him - drawing architectural reinforcements on the floorboards with the gypsum, in attempt to stabilize the space. But whatever he had built, it wasn’t weak.

“Did you come all this way just for me?” His voice coiled through the air. “I’m flattered.”

Jack exhaled sharply. “Cut the theatrics.”

A flicker.

For half a second, a humanoid figure manifested in a doorway leaning casually against the frame. His expression was mocking, a smirk playing on his lips.

“Your predictability amazes me, Jack,” the Editor murmured. “You always follow my breadcrumbs. And every time, you walk straight into a trap.”

Jack raised his gun, unsure of where to aim.

The Editor’s smirk widened. “Cute.”

Jack aimed and fired in one smooth motion. 

The bullet rang through the air for only a fraction of a second before it halted and fell to the ground. The Editor, already gone, his laughter trailing in the empty air.

The floor shuddered beneath them.

“We’re out of time,” Elias said sharply.

Lena finished her last reinforcement, and Elias drove his hands through the floor, twisting reality back into its proper form and freeing Gabriel.

The house groaned—collapsing inward, folding out of existence.

Jack grabbed Gabriel’s arm, hauling him forward as the floor buckled beneath them.

“GO NOW!”

Jack’s voice was more serious than any of his colleagues had ever heard before. He had every right to be, they were seconds away from collapsing into the pocket.

They tore through the unraveling space, forcing their way back into reality just as the entire structure blinked out of existence behind them.

Thrown from the force of the implosion, the group landed with a hard thud. Stable ground at last. They were in a wide-open field, green grasses up to their knees. A crest of gold broke the horizon, the sign of a new day. What felt like an hour, tops, had taken them from dusk to dawn.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Gabriel sank to his knees, catching his breath. Elias rubbed his temples, eyes shut tight.

Jack glanced at Lena, who shook her head. “That wasn’t a trap,” she said. “That was a message.”

Elias exhaled. “He’s not running anymore.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Jack interjected.

His team could contain whatever anomaly the overlay caused later. Right now, the Commission had practically ordered him home.

Keep her safe? Jack could only speculate about who she was. But then… had he been right all along? Is that what the Commission was telling him? He felt a strong pull, and as a Watcher, the presence of the pull meant someone needed him. If a Void breach happened… if the Void was reaching for someone, she was in trouble and she had no idea.

He cleared his throat. “Okay, we need to pull out of here now,” he announced, already backing toward the road. “Elias, mark this location for lockdown. We’ll have a containment crew sweep it later. Our priority just changed.”

Gabriel looked bewildered but relieved to quit this nightmare town. Elias and Lena exchanged glances but deferred to Jack’s seniority. The house behind them attempted to flicker back into existence. It was curling at the edges as the Editor’s illusion lost potency, blinking once more before yielding completely to reality. Jack felt the universe still holding its breath, taut and trembling.

“Does anyone have our location?” Jack asked, not looking forward to the answer. Elias held up his phone, meandering through the field, looking for service. He stopped, looked up into the sky, then down at the ground, “Looks like we’re about forty minutes northwest of Chicago.”

Jack’s furrowed brow swallowed his eyes completely. He looked annoyed, because he was. He pinched the bridge of his nose and put his chin to his chest, planning their next move. What they needed was a team from the Commission, but he knew they wouldn’t have the people to spare.

“Alright, folks, we have to get back to Erie. Fast.” Jack said. “If you need to pee, you need to do it now. We’re not stopping for anything, so don’t ask.”

As they hurried toward their vehicles, Jack silently vowed: I’ll be back for you, he thought in the direction of the vanished Editor. But first, he had a promise to keep, to protect the one person who might be the key to maintaining the Void once again.

 

----

 

Rowan Barclay was halfway to the Dead End when it hit her, a sharp, white-hot pain sliced through her palm. A jolt of electricity shot from her hand to her wrist, then up to her elbow, knocking her off balance. The sting sent her stumbling backward onto the pavement.

Her forearm caught her fall, scraping against the rough gravel just outside the alley that led into town. She sat up, sucking in a sharp breath, eyes darting down to her hands.

Shallow cuts. Tiny pebbles embedded in her skin. A pulse of heat radiating outward, like her bones had been struck with static. She brushed her forearms, her face tight with a grimace.

And then suddenly, a light, so bright that it collapsed the dark before fading. In its wake, a strange new phenomenon was developing.

Sparks hit the ground. A crack ripped through the air in front of her, its edges glowing like molten silver. The shape was being carved out in midair, less than twenty feet in front of her.

It grew quickly, edges crawling outward. Like someone put a cigarette out on paper, curling, being eaten away by the flame. The air around it snapped and hissed as if the world itself was rejecting the rupture. It began to take shape, long and rectangular. It was a doorway.

Rowan’s breath caught. Peering through the doorway, she saw nothing but complete emptiness that stretched beyond the threshold, deep, black, endless.

It wasn’t just darkness, but the subtraction of reality. A place where light had never been and sound didn’t echo.

She stepped forward, gravel crunching beneath her feet. Her pulse felt like a hammer pounding against her temples. The sound felt too loud, like it might draw something out of the black.

The town should’ve been busy on a Friday night like this. It was a warm fall evening. Good bar weather, not something many people in Bridgewey would pass up. But the streets were strangely empty. It made Rowan uncomfortable. No cars. No music. Not even the buzz of overhead wires.

“Hello?” Her voice barely carried past her own ears, as if the air had thickened into wet wool.

A flicker. The streetlight above her blinked once. Then again.

She was afraid of turning her back to the doorway, but she spun slowly on one foot to see if she was still alone. Her fingers trembled. Her mouth was dry.

Behind her—crunch.

Temporarily pushing the doorway from her mind, Rowan spun around. Her chest ached from the breath that had frozen inside it.

The street ahead remained still. The benches empty. The air unmoving.

Another flicker—and suddenly, beneath the streetlamp, a figure.

Impossibly tall. Limbs too long. No discernible features.

Its face, if there was one, was drowned in static. The shape shimmered, like a half-remembered nightmare crawling through fog.

Rowan’s stomach dropped.

The figure took a step forward. Something about its movement made her feel sick. There was no gait, no cadence to it as it moved forward. It was closing distance without motion. As if the space itself were folding inward to meet it.

And for the briefest second—something about it felt familiar. Not comfort, but recognition.

A jolt of electricity shot through her again, this time sharper. Cruel. Like a hand snapping against her spine.

She blinked hard—and the figure was gone.

Then there was silence.

The void still pulsed behind her. The edges of the doorway shimmered like a fever dream.

A whisper slithered across the back of her neck—no sound, just the sensation of breath. A word she couldn’t understand, spoken directly into her blood.

She tossed her head, heart racing, gasping as though breaking the surface of deep water. The gravel dug into her palms. Her mouth tasted of metal.

But when she stood, the doorway was still there and something was standing just on the other side.

A shadow slowly shifted on the other side, like tar rolling down glass. Rowan’s heart slammed erratically, each pulse a hollow drumbeat in her chest. The outline stretched and twisted. There was an awful grace in its contorted limbs. It leaned forward, pressing against the threshold, the surface bending outward as if it were pushing against a thin membrane. The edges crackled louder, sparks dropping like hot rain.

She stepped back instinctively, but her feet felt locked to the ground, muscles unresponsive. She tried to scream, tried to make any noise at all, but her throat seized shut, trapping the sound behind her clenched teeth.

With a sickening lurch, the figure forced a limb through the veil, its skin gleamed slick and black, rippling like oil across dark water. Long fingers curled, each one jointed twice more than natural, reaching toward Rowan as if beckoning.

Then came the smell. A sharp, acrid stench like burned hair and copper filled her nostrils until she gagged. Her vision blurred at the edges, darkness seeping inward.

“No,” she gasped, finally forcing sound from her throat. “STOP!”

The figure paused, fingers curling mid-air, hovering in a hideous question. Rowan stared into the space where its face should’ve been, the static shifting like a thousand grains of silver sand, impossibly deep and empty. Her mind recoiled, rejecting the sight.

A memory rushed at her, violent and unsolicited. The warmth of her father's hand, his laughter ringing clear on a summer afternoon, the sound of shoes squeaking on a basketball court, were now tainted, twisted, dissolving into static and white noise. Her breath hitched, fresh pain multiplying in her chest. Her memories flickered through her mind, corrupted and broken, crumbling like burned paper.

With a sudden, devastating clarity, she knew that whatever this thing was, it was responsible. It was stealing her memories with the intention of consuming them, leaving nothing but fractured echoes. It wanted to feed on her loss.

Rage surged up from beneath her fear, scorching and primal. “You. Can’t. Have. Them,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

The creature tilted its head, observing her curiously, mockingly.

With great effort, Rowan forced herself to move, pulling back step by step, trembling. The air around her seemed to grow dense, resisting her movement, as thick and as heavy as wet concrete.

“Go back,” she whispered harshly, forcing authority into her voice, even as her legs shook beneath her. “Go back! Go back to wherever you came from.”

The figure drew back slightly, hesitating at her words. “NOW!” she screamed in the most forceful voice she could muster. She heard her words as if she were out of her body, observing the whole scene.

The crack around the doorway pulsed violently, sparks showering down, searing small pinpricks into Rowan’s skin. The figure pressed forward again, suddenly urgent, its arm extending, reaching greedily.

Desperation took hold. Rowan lunged forward, grabbing a fallen branch at the edge of the pavement. She swung it wildly, feeling the branch shatter against the boundary with a deafening snap.

The figure withdrew instantly, as if repelled, its arm slipping back behind the threshold with a liquid hiss. The doorway began to shrink, edges crumbling rapidly inward, collapsing into a pinpoint of searing white light.

Then silence.

Rowan collapsed onto her knees, the rough gravel scraping against her already-raw skin. Tears stung her eyes, her breath ragged and painful.

She sat there, trembling, the empty street around her feeling suddenly too wide, too exposed. She knew she’d seen something she wasn’t meant to see. It had seen her too.

And now that she was back in Bridgewey, it knew exactly where to find her.