“I may start the tree rumor myself.”

“Shithead.”

Eric laughed.  It was a humorous thought.  He could almost imagine that all those epic heroes of literature were really only awkward people like him who stumbled along strange paths just like this one.

Paul laughed too.  It was hard not to.  It had been such an odd day for them both.  “I’m going to hang up and try to sleep a little.  I’m exhausted and I still have to drive my truck home.”

“Lucky.  I’m going to go find this probably terrifying cathedral and try not to die.”

Paul didn’t find this funny.  “Be careful,” he said.

“I intend to.”

“Let me know you’re okay.”

“I will.”

Eric said goodbye and hung up.  It was a relief knowing that Paul was no longer in the fissure.  It was one less thing for him to think about as he made his way through the trees toward his goal.

The cathedral.

He kept thinking of Father Billy and his prediction that he would “die screaming in the festering asshole of the almighty cathedral.”  It was funny how the most vulgar of descriptions were the ones you remembered most clearly.  And Father Billy had obviously possessed a talent for turning vulgarity into poignant honesty.

He claimed that no one who entered the cathedral would survive.  He said the gas station attendant told him that it would claim anyone who went looking for its secrets.  And the gas station attendant had admitted to saying as much.

Yet he was still urged onward, a lamb to slaughter.

Eric pushed on, ignoring the hot dread he felt growing deep in his belly.

The cell phone rang again.  It was Karen.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not dead so I can’t complain.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Sorry.”

“Hey, I did a search for Taylor Parlorn in some family tree databases and I got a hit in the same county as Gold Sunshine Resort.  It might be a relative.”

“Let me guess, the guy died in the sixties?”

“Um…  Yeah.  How did you know?”

“It wasn’t a relative.”

“I don’t understand.”

Eric told her about Edgar and the revelations that their conversation had spawned.

“Wait…  So you’re telling me these people were all ghosts?”

“I’m pretty certain of it.”

“That’s crazy.  You don’t even believe in ghosts.”

“I didn’t.  Now…  Well, things change.”

“Maybe they were lying to you.  Maybe it’s all a trick.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I took a picture of Edgar before I left.”

“Really…?”

“I’ll send it now.”

“Okay.”

Eric hung up and sent the picture to her.  A moment later, she called him again.

“That’s so weird.  Is that where he was standing?”

“It was.”  The picture showed clearly the salvage yard and the dozens of rusted vehicles.  But where Edgar had been walking away from him, there was nothing more than a faint blurring, as if the lens had been dirty.

“But that picture of Isabelle wasn’t like that.”

“Isabelle isn’t dead.  She’s…  Well…  Something else.”

“I guess so…”

“You don’t really believe it.”

“I do,” she argued.

“Not really.”

“I…  Well…  I don’t know.  It’s hard.  It’s all so…”

“Weird.  Yeah.  I got that.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s hard.  But I don’t not believe you.  I know you’re not lying to me.”

“Well that’s a start.”

“I just…”

“I know.  The alternatives aren’t very appealing.  Either I’m telling you the absolute truth and it’s going against everything you’ve ever believed possible, or it’s all a lie, in which case either I’m completely insane and making this all up as I go, or somebody’s totally screwing with my head.  Believe me, I’ve considered the possibilities.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“That’s good.”

“I just wish you were home already.”

“Me too.  But it looks like I’ve got one more stop to make.”

“The cathedral.”

“Yeah.  It’s up ahead somewhere.  And I’m sure I’ll be losing my connection soon.”

Looking around, he realized that the landscape was already changing.  The brush was thinning out, the grass beneath his feet quickly thinning to bare earth.  The trees were receding, the terrain growing rocky again.

“I’m going to have to go.  I doubt you’ll hear from me again before I get to the cathedral.”

“I’m scared,” she confessed, finally letting out the words that she’d been bottling up all day.

“I know.  Me too.  But there’s literally no way back.”  He glanced over his shoulder and realized that the brush he’d just pushed through was far less overgrown.  The path that lay behind him was not the same path he’d just walked.  Like Edgar told him, this was a one-way road.

“Please be careful,” Karen begged.  Her voice crackled.  The connection was nearly gone.

“I will.  I promise.  Now I’ve got to go.”

She said something else, but her voice was lost in static.  He did not dare try to back up to find the signal again.  Instead, he just said, “Bye Karen,” and hung up the phone.

Before him, an earthen path wound through the familiar rocky terrain of the fissure.  The trees thinned away until there were none standing before him and he was climbing a steep hill in a mostly barren landscape.

He remembered climbing this hill in his dream.  He was afraid.  His mind was cloudy.  His mangled hand throbbed ceaselessly.

He still couldn’t remember what waited beyond the crest of the hill, but there was a sick dread creeping up from the depths of his gut.

His cell phone rang.

That could only be Isabelle.

“The cathedral is just on the other side of that hill,” she warned him.  “You’re almost there.”

“Can you see everything I see?”

“Not see it, exactly.  I just know it’s there.  I can feel what you feel.  And right now you feel like you’re walking into the gates of hell.”

Eric had to admit that her ability to read his feelings was dead-accurate.  The gates of hell made a perfectly adequate description.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m with you.  And I’ll stay with you.  No matter what.”

Eric smiled.  “Thanks, Isabelle.  That does make it feel a little better.”

“I know,” she replied.  “I can tell.”

“In my dream, I was almost killed back in that canyon.”

“You were.  You lost most of your hand.”

“I did.  But in the dream, I arrived before the foggy man.  He wasn’t here.  I never had to run from his golems.  I didn’t get my shoulder torn up on the roof of Altrusk’s house.”

“That’s right.”

“I also never found you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t come two days ago.”

“Me too.”

Eric was halfway up the hill now.  Soon he would have his first look at the cathedral.  He hoped the sight alone wasn’t going to be enough to kill him, but after all he’d been through, he wouldn’t be a damned bit surprised.

“Listen,” Isabelle said.  “I know you’re scared, and I know you’re not sure you can do this, and you’re right to not feel confident.  This fissure…it’s really messed up.  The other world, the one that’s smashed up against ours, it’s a bad place.  It’s the worst kind of nightmare you can imagine.  And whatever you find in there, it’s probably going to be even worse.”

“You think so?”

“I do.  The fissure is concentrated there.  The two worlds are so smashed together that it pervades reality.  It takes the bad from that world and it magnifies it.”

“Sounds like a blast.”  Eric was breathing harder now.  He was growing tired.  This hill was steeper than it looked.

“And the foggy man will be there somewhere, too.  He’ll be waiting for you.  You need to be careful of him.”

“No kidding.”

“Seriously, Eric.  He’s bad news.”

Eric stopped walking.  “Did you figure something out about him?”

“No.  Not exactly.  I felt something back at the factory.  Something disturbing.  It took a while for me to figure out what it was.  But now I think I get it.  It’s not him I was feeling.  He’s not what you have to fear.  He’s no devil.  But the people he works for…  I can’t really explain it, but there’s something terribly wrong about them.  And he’s afraid of them.  He’s going to be desperate not to fail them.”