Through the Gap

Part Four - The Door

1

To nobody's surprise, Angela took the lead, armed with her now-signature axe and a torch. She liked taking charge, and I admired her for it. It was odd enough that she had let me plan the relocation and deal with the details of the web-shop. Getting involved was always important to him, no matter the task. She was a doer, the very best kind.

John was second, contrary to all logic, with his gun and a head-mounted flashlight we fished out of a box upstairs. The battery wasn't exactly new; the brightness was certainly lower than what we'd hoped for, but it did the job. I closed the ranks with my trusty old poker. Since the one I took from the other living room was lost to the creature, I had to take another one. It was the same object from my version of our home. Even the thought itself gave me a weird tingling feeling. It was unsettling to know I was wielding the exact replica of it. Every atom, every molecule. The same. It made me feel like I was being electrocuted just by holding it.

We had already removed the barricade from the laundry room and started making our way through the forest of junk in the garage. The door on the other end was left ajar, so we approached it with care. We ended up doing the same thing as we had done with the other police officer. John stood next to it with his back to the wall, and I opened it in one swift motion. He turned inside with his gun pointed forward and took a sweep with his head-mounted light. He said "clear" in a very thick accent, like in Hollywood movies. Just as his colleague used to. It might have been protocol.

We stepped into the library, which was completely dark now. All the candles burned to the stem. Since I couldn't take a flashlight, I tried to make out what I saw in the light of my companions' lamps. The room was all but destroyed. The ornaments and knickknacks on the table were scattered, as if there had been a fight here earlier. This must have been done by the creature pursuing us. Books were thrown from the shelves, one bookshelf was leaning onto the large table, and most of the chairs lay broken on the floor.

Somehow the damage seemed to be overkill. It looked like the thing was angry.

We made our way through the rubble and ended up carefully trying to open the door leading to the office, since the other one was blocked by an overturned bookshelf.

The office space looked unchanged. Angela decided to take some time to look around, crouching to inspect the bloodstains on the floor where the body used to be. She took a tiny object from the ground and brought it to me to see.

"Look. It might be some kind of bullet casing but it looks super special." She said, staring at the object in her palm.

"You know me, I don't know the first thing about guns," I said, "But it does look like that. There. This is where the bullet or jacket or whatever they are called might have been." I picked it up and turned it around. It was as big as my thumb, with strange blue lines going down its outer walls.

"There are a few more here." She said, pointing at the center of the room.

"I'm sure there are." I said, not even looking. I approached John, who was absentmindedly staring at something in front of him. As I went closer, I saw it was a calendar on a desk. It showed April 2011. He looked up at me with bewildered eyes. I couldn't do anything but touch his shoulder and nod. He stared at my face for a while and then turned around, heading for the other door behind us.

"What's the matter?" Angela asked when we passed her.

"I think he just found out that he is not in whatever year he is from anymore. It sounds strange but I think this room is—Well, it's from 2011."