Hugo frowned as he came around the counter. “Wallace, you need to calm down, okay? Take a breath.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Wallace cried. “And if I’m dead, why are you telling me to breathe? That is impossible.”
“He’s got a point,” Mei said as she finished her second cup of tea.
For every step Hugo took toward him, Wallace took an answering step back. Nelson peered around the edge of the chair, a hand resting on the top of Apollo’s head. The dog’s tail thumped, keeping time like a silent metronome.
“Stay back,” he snarled at Hugo.
Hugo raised his hands placatingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t believe you. Don’t come near me. I’m leaving, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Oh no,” Mei breathed. She set down her teacup and stared at Wallace. “That’s definitely not a good idea. Wallace, you can’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” he shouted at her, and the light bulb in one of the sconces sizzled and snapped before the glass shattered. Wallace jerked his head toward it.
“Uh-oh,” Nelson whispered.
Wallace turned and ran.
CHAPTER
6
The first obstacle was the door.
He grabbed for the handle.
His hand passed right through it.
With a strangled yell, he jumped at the door. Through the door. He opened his eyes, finding himself on the porch of the tea shop. He looked down. All his bits and bobs still seemed to be attached, though the hook and cable were still there, the latter extending back into the tea shop. Something heavy moved thunderously toward the door, and he leapt from the porch, landing on the gravel. The stars stuttered in the sky above him, the trees more ominous than they’d been when he’d first arrived. They seemed to bend and sway as if beckoning him. He stumbled when he thought he saw movement off in the trees to his left, a great beast watching him, a crown of antlers atop its head, but it had to be a trick of the shadows because when he blinked, all he saw were branches.
He took off down the road, heading back the way he’d come earlier with Mei. If he got to the village, he could find someone to help him. He’d tell them about the crazy people in the tea shop in the middle of the woods.
The hook in his chest pulled sharply, the cable growing taut as it wrapped around his side. He almost fell to his knees. He managed to stay upright, flip-flops snapping against the bottoms of his feet. How on earth had he ever thought flip-flops were a good idea?
He glanced back over his shoulder toward the tea shop in time to see Mei and Hugo burst out onto the porch, shouting after him. Mei said, “Of all the stupid things” just as Hugo said, “Wallace, Wallace, you can’t, you don’t know what’s out there—” but Wallace doubled down, running as fast as he could.
He’d never been much of a runner, much less a jogger of any kind. He had a treadmill in his office, often walking long distances on it while on conference calls. He had time for little else, but at least it was something.
He was surprised, then, to find that his breath didn’t catch in his chest, that no stitch formed in his side. Even wearing flip-flops didn’t seem to slow him down much. The air was strangely stagnant, thick and oppressive, but he was running, running faster than he ever had in his life. He glanced down in shock at his own legs. They were almost a blur as his feet met the pavement of the road that led to the village. He laughed despite himself, a wild cackle that he’d never heard himself make before, sounding as if he were half out of his mind.
He looked back over his shoulder again.
Nothing there, no one chasing after him, no one shouting his name, only the empty, dark road that led to destinations unknown.
It should have made him feel better.
It didn’t.
He ran as fast as he could toward a gas station ahead, the sodium arc lights lit up like a beacon, moths fluttering around them. An old van sat parked next to one of the pumps, and he could see people moving around inside. He ran toward it, only stopping when he reached the automatic doors.
They didn’t open.
He jumped up and down in front of them, waving his arms.
Nothing.
He shouted, “Open the doors!”
The man behind the counter continued to look bored, tapping on his phone.
A woman toward the back of the store stood in front of a drink cooler, scratching her chin as she yawned.
He growled under his breath before reaching out to pry the doors open. His hands went right through them.
“Oh, right,” he said. “Dead. Goddammit.”
He walked through the doors.
The moment he entered, the fluorescent lights in the store above him flared and buzzed. The man behind the counter—a kid with enormous eyebrows and a face dotted with dozens of freckles—frowned as he looked up. He shrugged before going back to his phone.
Wallace smacked it out of his hands.
At least he tried to.
It didn’t work.
He also tried to grab the man by the face with the same amount of success. Wallace recoiled when his thumb went into the man’s eye. “This is so stupid,” he muttered. He turned toward the woman in the back, still staring at the coolers. He went to her without much hope. She didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him. Instead, she picked out a two-liter of Mountain Dew.
“That’s disgusting,” he told her. “You should feel ashamed. Do you even know what’s in that?”
But his opinion went unnoticed.
The automatic doors slid open, and Wallace ducked down when the clerk said, “Hey, Hugo. You’re out late.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Hugo said. “Thought I’d pick a few things up.”
Wallace tried to lean against a shelf of potato chips. He cursed when he fell back through them, blinking rapidly as he was inside the shelf. He jerked forward, ready to flee when the doors slid open again. He froze when the man behind the counter said, “Hey, Mei. Can’t sleep either?”
“You know how it is,” Mei said. “Boss man’s up, so that means I’m up too.”
The man could see her.
He could see her.
Which meant—
Wallace had no idea what that meant.
Before he could even begin to process this new information, a curious thing happened: bits of dust floated up around him.
He frowned at them, watching as they rose before his face, heading toward the ceiling. The motes of dust were oddly colored, almost flesh-like. He reached out to touch a rather large flake, but his hand froze when he saw where the dust was coming from.
His own arms.
His skin was flaking off, bit by bit, the top layer of derma floating up and away.
He yelped as he furiously brushed his arms.
“Got you,” Mei said, appearing beside him. And then, “Oh crap. Wallace, we have to get you—”
He leapt forward toward the coolers.
Through the coolers.
He yelled incoherently as he went through a row of soda, and then a wall of cement. He was outside again, on the side of the store. He ran his hands over his arms as his skin continued to flake. The hook in his chest twisted angrily, the cable running back into the wall he’d just rushed through. He ran around the back of the store. An empty field stretched behind it under a night sky that seemed infinite. On the other side was another neighborhood, the houses close together, some with lights on, others dark and foreboding. He took off toward them, still rubbing his arms frantically.