Rushed by Brian Harmon Page A

toward the farmhouse several times, his mouth moving with words he couldn’t find.  Then he pressed his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes.  “What…?  What was that thing?  Exactly?”
    “Not sure what you call it,” said the old man.  “Just something he left behind when he came through here.”
    “‘He?’”
    “The other guy.  Scary as all kinds of hell.”
    “Looks like he’s half-hidden in fog, but there isn’t any fog?”
    “That’s him.  At least Annette gave you something .  He passed through here yesterday afternoon.  Left you that little surprise.”  He gestured toward the barn and added, “Left that , too.”
    Eric turned and saw a man walking toward them from the barn.  It was the same man he saw before, the one he followed into the house.  Tall, broad-shouldered, young, with a full beard.  Before he could even begin to wonder how he had made his way back from the house to the barn, the man faded away before his eyes and was gone. 
    He blinked hard, as if that might correct the strangeness of what he had seen.
    “Over there,” said the old man, gesturing toward the house now. 
    When he turned, he saw the man again, this time walking through the dozer blade as if it wasn’t there and the porch were still under his feet rather than folded into a gnarled pile of splinters in the tall grass. 
    “Can’t hurt you.  Not directly, anyway.  It’s residual.  Repeats itself over and over again, several times every hour, ever since he came through here.  You’ll have to watch out for those.” 
    “Clearly.”  Again, Eric’s eyes drifted to the farm house.
    “It can’t get out,” the old man assured him.  “It’s lost you.  Unless you go back inside and stir it up again, it’s done with you.  By the way, name’s Grant.  Grant Stolyen.” 
    “Eric Fortrell.”
    “Eric.  Good to meet you.  Sorry it’s not the best of circumstances.”
    “Yeah.  About that…”
    “You want to know what the hell is going on?”
    “I do, actually.  I mean…  Everything was fine until three nights ago.  Then I wake up from a dream I can’t even remember and every waking thought is ‘I have to go!  Now!’” 
    Grant nodded.  “Three nights ago.  So you ignored it?”
    “ Tried to.”
    “That’s why you’re so late then.”
    “Late?”
    “You should’ve been here two days ago.”
    Eric recalled that Annette told him basically the same thing.  “Late for what?  What is all this?”
    “Sorry, but I can’t explain all of it.  Don’t actually understand all of it myself, to be honest.  But I can try my best.  You’ve probably noticed the cold spots by now.”
    He nodded.  “And the stunted corn in the field.  Light seems funny there, too.  What is that?  Some kind of pollution?”
    “Nothing so simple.” 
    “And all those mutant animals in your barn.  I’ll be honest, I was starting to imagine I’d find a crashed UFO or something.”
    “Again, nothing so simple, I’m afraid.” 
    “Right.  Why would it be that simple?” 
    “And it’s not actually my barn.  I’m the neighbor.  I just keep an eye on things, but I don’t go in the barn no more.  Creepy bunch of bastards in there, ain’t they?  Give me the creeps.  I kind of figured they’d die if I didn’t take care of them, but apparently they don’t need cared for.” 
    “Nobody feeds them?”
    “Not that I know of.  Weird, huh?”
    “Very.” 
    “Anyway, I was talking about the cold spots.  Those’re the places where you’re inside the fissure.”
    “Fissure?”
    “Yeah.  Like a crack between worlds.”
    “Worlds?  What, like a wormhole?”  Again, he thought of aliens and extra-terrestrial spacecraft. 
    “No.  You’re thinking of planets.  I said worlds .  Dimensions , if you prefer.”
    “Like parallel realities?”
    “Sort of.  Yeah.  There’s our world, the one we know, and then there’s this other one.  Scary-ass place, apparently.  I