Chapter 3
The next day was dark and stormy. Mr. Doble decided it would be nice to take a walk in the morning. After Mrs. Doble left for work Royden and his father went down to the beach a block away and walked on the boardwalk.
The clouds hung low and dark and a strong wind blew the trees and bushes all around. Royden wore a blue raincoat that was much too big for him. He kept pulling up the sleeves only to watch them creep back down.
“You look tired.” Mr. Doble said when they reached the boardwalk. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I slept fine.” Royden mumbled.
“Find anything exciting yet?” His father asked. “I guess it’s too early to tell.”
Royden really wanted to tell his dad everything that happened the night before but didn’t want to go back on the promise he made Bill.
“Not yet.”
“Give it time. Pretty soon you’ll get tired of all the excitement.”
They walked to the end of the boardwalk, turned around, and started back. Mr. Doble had his hands in his pockets and smiled at everyone he passed. Royden tried to do the same but found it difficult to look friendly for long periods of time.
“Have you met many of the people in the building yet?” Royden asked.
“I’ve met a few.”
“Have you noticed anything peculiar about any of them?”
“Peculiar?” Mr. Doble said. “No, not particularly.”
“Okay.”
Mr. Doble stopped and looked out at the ocean. The waves were a little bigger than they usually were. “I suppose old Goren and Farn are a little strange. Goren always pushes Farn around in that wheelchair. Well the other day I saw Farn pushing Goren. I guess that’s not so strange but I always assumed Farn couldn’t walk.”
“That is strange.” Royden agreed.
When they got back to their apartment Mr. Doble got ready for work and Royden went out to explore again. He often saw Mr. Goren and Mr. Farn down in the basement and now was his chance to see if there was anything weird about them. If Bill was talking about anyone in particular when he mentioned the neighbors being strange, he was probably talking about those two. Royden wondered if they were aliens as well.
Royden first went to the T.V. room. They weren’t there. Next he tried the laundry room. They weren’t there either. Royden was about to go back upstairs and try again later when the elevator door opened and out walked Goren pushing Farn in a wheelchair.
Royden greeted them and again they didn’t respond. Farn gave him a sinister frown and Goren opened his mouth wide in shock. They walked away before Royden could decipher the strange expressions.
Goren pushed Farn to the basement door and they went outside. Royden was wary of going outside without his parent’s permission but followed anyway.
Mr. Goren pushed Mr. Farn up to the curb. Royden waited for them to cross the street but they never did. They simply watched the cars go by. Surely they could think of more interesting things to fill their time than that.
Royden waited for several minutes but they wouldn’t move. He decided to give up. Maybe old Goren and Farn liked to be outside.
Back in the apartment Mr. Doble was ready for work. He had his apron on with the restaurant’s log on it.
“Now mom will be back sometime this afternoon. Probably around four. Try not to get in trouble while we’re gone, and don’t leave the building.” Mr. Doble said as he scurried around looking for his keys. “I’ll be back late tonight.”
Royden sat around for a while and watched T.V. It didn’t keep his interest very well. He really wanted to know what was so strange about his neighbors. When he tired of watching T.V. he went out to explore the building yet again, determined to find something exciting.
It was surprising to see how many people were still in the building in the middle of the day. People were found on all the floors just walking around. The tanned bald man who lived on the fifth floor was spotted multiple times. He looked to be walking around with no real destination, same as Royden.
The man from the elevator, Mr. Tezera, was out as well. He had his family with him this time. Royden made sure to meet them. There’s Mrs. Tezera, Jessa Tezera, who happened to be the same age as Royden, and little Taddy Tezera. They seemed like a nice enough family, though Royden thought it strange that they all wore black.
In the early afternoon Royden sat on the couch in the T.V. room and listened intently as two people played pool somewhere behind him. They didn’t say anything interesting the whole time. He assumed they lived there, nobody else was allowed in that room. Maybe Bill was wrong, or maybe he wasn’t really an alien. Or even worse, maybe he wasn’t even real and Royden dreamed the whole thing up. But it felt so real.
Confused and afraid he was losing his mind, Royden went to the elevator. Goren and Farn turned the corner right as the door opened. Royden stepped out of the way and let them in first. The door closed behind them. Goren looked at Royden strangely and then brought a piece of paper out of his pocket. He looked it over, glanced at the buttons, and selected the eleven.
Royden thought that strange but realized that it wasn’t terribly odd for a couple of old men to forget what floor they lived on.
“I live on eleven as well.” Royden lied. He wasn’t going to miss this chance to follow them at least up to their apartment.
The two men looked awkwardly around the small space. They took in the experience of riding in an elevator as if they had never done it. When it started moving they flinched and smiled at each other.
When it stopped on the eleventh floor Goren pushed Farn out, getting stuck on the gap between the elevator and the hall. Royden helped push the wheels into the hall. He then watched silently as the two old men studied the paper again. They looked around, finally going up to one of the apartments and disappearing inside. They left the door slightly a jar.
Without making a sound and without feeling the proper shame someone should feel when sneaking up to the home of two confused old men, Royden leaned close enough to the open door to hear what was happening inside.
A peculiar noise hit his ears that can only be described as a whoosh. From what tiny bit of interior Royden could see came a barrage of light reflected on the white wall. A loud zipper sound came next and then the closing of a door. And then silence.
Royden waited for a while but no other sounds came up. He knocked on the door. No response. He pushed the door open a little and peered inside. The apartment was completely empty. No furniture, no Goren and Farn. It was a loft, and Royden could see the whole of the one room from the doorway.
He crept inside. “Mr. Goren, Mr. Farn.” He called.
No answer.
There was no bathroom in this apartment and only one closet. Royden snuck up to the closet door getting more scared the closer he got. There was definitely something strange about old Goren and Farn, and whatever that may be was surely in that closet.
Royden held his breath and opened the door.
The first thing he saw was the wheelchair. The piece of paper Goren had was on it. Royden picked it up. It was full of odd markings. The only ones he could read were: 1, 11, 1103. He put the paper down and felt the walls. There had to be a hidden doorway or something. Two people couldn’t just disappear that fast from the eleventh floor. A shelf hung on the back wall. Clothes lay folded neatly on the shelf.
Royden picked up what he thought was a shirt. As he pulled it off the shelf it unfolded down to the floor. Pants were attached to the shirt. And then he saw shoes and then something even more disturbing. He dropped the clothes and launched himself from the closet. The clothes landed in a pile on the floor.
Royden made quick little glances over to it and when he felt it was safe, took a longer look. On top of the pile of pants and shirt rested a face. It was flat and its eyes were empty and mouth wide in a look of shock. It was the deflated face of Mr. Farn. These were
n’t just the clothes of Farn, but the entire body, flattened out.
Royden got up quickly and ran to the door, down the hall, and into the stairwell before stopping to catch his breath. Whatever just happened was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He started down the stairs back to the fifth floor but stopped himself. This was the excitement he longed for. Sure it was scary and gross, but it was indeed exciting.
He climbed back up the stairs with some effort (his feet and legs wanted very much to continue down) and entered the hallway to the eleventh floor shaking and sweaty.
The door still stood open. He peeked inside. The body of Mr. Farn lay where he dropped it. Royden took a deep breath and entered the room again. He tried not to look at the floor and instead looked back in the closet.
Near the wheelchair he saw two things on the floor. He grabbed them up and took them into the main room. They were two black pieces of metal, one curving to the right and one to the left. He put them over by the window and looked them over. There were no buttons or switches. Royden placed them so that they faced each other and something extraordinary happened.
They started to make the whoosh noise he heard before. Bright lights erupted all around. Royden covered his eyes and squinted at the lights. A rectangle of light in the shape of a door flickered between the two pieces of metal. They looked to be projecting it between them.
The boy studied it for a minute and then stuck his finger into it. His finger disappeared. Amazed, he stuck his whole arm in. It too disappeared. Without any thought to safety he jumped in the light doorway.
Somehow the light had taken him outside. But it wasn’t any outside where he had been before. The sky was a dark orange and the clouds a nasty green. He stood on a platform raised slightly off of a black and sparkly ground. Buildings of strange shapes and odd sizes stood in the distance. Interesting looking people walked all around. Some were blue and some were purple and some were even glowing with white light.
Royden punched himself in the arm to make sure he wasn’t sleeping.
A man, at least he thought it was a man, people looked different there, noticed him and ran up the raised platform. The man started speaking in a language Royden had never heard and kept pointing back to the light doorway. Royden tried to talk to him but could tell they didn’t speak the same languages.
The man took Royden’s arm and dragged him away. The boy struggled against being led anywhere but the man was much too strong. He took Royden into one of the odd looking buildings and set him down on a stool and left him.
A few minutes later someone else came in. This man’s skin was orange, the same as the sky. He smiled innocently and sat on another stool in the little room.
“Hello there.” He said.
Royden was surprised that he spoke English. “Hello, um, where are we? I have a feeling I’m not where I just was.”
The man smiled. “My name is Goren Farn.”
“I’m Royden.”
“It’s wonderful to meet you Royden. I think there has been some sort of misunderstanding along the way. You have mistakenly walked into a big budget movie set. A big name director is in town and is filming in your apartment building.” He clapped his hands together. “So that’s it. Nothing strange or out of the ordinary. I think it’s important that you go back through that very normal door and don’t come back in.”
Royden waited until Goren finished and shook his head. “I know about Bill.”
“Who’s Bill.”
“Oh, you don’t know—never mind. I know the Discovery Apartments are strange. I met an alien last night. Now what is this place really?”
Goren looked perplexed. “So you are one of the Discoverers then?”
“The what?”
The orange skinned man shook his head and smiled. “Never mind. You must be a normal human.”
“Well yeah, but like I said I know that strange things happen there. I met an alien and found a body suit just a minute ago. What is all this? Are you an alien too? Are we on a different planet?”
Goren sighed and shrugged. “I suppose I’ll tell you. It’s not every day we get visitors and for some reason I find you strangely trustworthy.”
Royden puffed himself up. “Thank you. My mom says the same thing.”
“Good to know. Anyhow, you have ventured into a different dimension. This is your planet, only different in probably every way. I am Goren Farn and I study dimension portals. I created one that took us to your dimension and now I run a tour company where I dress up tourists in human suits named after myself. To be honest no normal human has ever found out about this until now.”
Royden thought this was the greatest thing he ever heard of. “That’s awesome! An inter-dimensional tourist destination. My building of all places. That’s cool.”
“Yes, very cool.” Goren said dryly. “Now I have to remind you that you cannot tell anyone about this, alright?”
“I know, I won’t. It’s a bummer though because—like—I really want to tell someone. How about a friend sometime? Just one?”
“Not even one.” Goren said, pointing a long and thin finger. “One always leads to two and that leads to a thousand.”
Royden nodded sadly. “So how do you know English?”
“I studied up on the people who lived through the portal. Now I think it’s time for you to go now.”
“But wait, can’t I get the tourist treatment here. It’s not fair that you all get to come to my world but I can’t look at yours.”
“That’s the way it is. People where you are from aren’t trustworthy yet. There’s actually a school that tries to strengthen bonds between dimensions, maybe one day it will succeed. But for now we have to keep this a secret and the less you know the better.”
Royden sulked down in his stool. “Alright, I guess. Hey! Do you know why my apartment building has so many strange people in it?”
“It’s a hub for people who aren’t known or aren’t welcome in your society. It’s the only place in your world where people and creatures of all types can exist in harmony, again, for now. Hopefully that will all change one day.”
“Hmm.” Royden scrunched up his face in thought. “I wonder why they let us live there then.”
“They need regular people to be seen coming and going from the building so it doesn’t attract attention. Your family looks to fit the bill.”
Royden wasn’t sure if that was meant to be offensive or not so he decided it wasn’t. “Well thank you very much Mr. Goren, or I guess Mr. Farn. I suppose I’ll be leaving now.”
Goren got up and led Royden out of the building and back over to the portal. “I wouldn’t go snooping around to find out about your neighbors.” He advised. “Some of them might not be so willing to give up their secrets.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Royden stepped into the portal, waved back at Goren and took in one final glance at that dimension, and went through the portal.
He stood in the empty apartment with the body suit still on the ground near the closet. He shivered and started for the door. A weird humming came from behind him. The two pieces of metal that formed the portal rose off the floor and floated into the closet, the door closed behind them. Royden nodded in admiration for unknown technological advances and left the apartment.