The Door

Chapter Nine

A blast of cold air stung my lungs and sight while brilliant, white midday sunlight blinded me. I raised my arm in front of my eyes, certain it had to be car headlights and I was about to be hit.

Silence surrounded me and coldness was everywhere. I blinked away my tears to see the frozen tundra before me and dropped my arm to my side. My breath rose in tiny puffs of clouds towards a sky closer to the color of tanzanite than blue. The ground beneath my sandals was cold enough for the chill to reach the soles of my feet.

This wasn't the desert. I stood on a plain with low hills covered in pristine, periwinkle-hued snow and edged in the distance by trees of a hue more blue than the green I was accustomed to. I was shivering from cold or shock or perhaps both, staring at the foreign world around me without understanding what the hell had happened.

The world starts at the end of the driveway, one of the cheerful cowboys had said.

It was so still, so quiet. Too cold to be peaceful, too different to be real.

The snort from some kind of animal came from behind me, and I turned, expecting to see the burning house and the Arizona desert.

Both were gone. A hill was directly behind me and something far worse quickly racing towards me. The creatures fast approaching were out of Jurassic World. Men rode atop them like horses, yet the beasts were unmistakably dinosaurs. One man rode a triceratops the size of an elephant while two others sat atop truck-sized dinosaurs with long tails and the fourth man rode a giant lizard. The smallest of the mounts, the lizard was low enough to the ground for its belly to scrape the snow. All four beasts wore harness contraptions over their heads. The men atop them were Komandi – and they looked pissed.

I've finally lost it.

Running had gotten me wherever this was. Would it get me back as well? Because I wasn't about to wait for the unfriendly riders or risk their terrifying dinosaurs trying to eat me.

I sprinted. Snow crunched beneath my sandals. The air burned my throat as I sucked in quick breaths, and I had the urge to breakdown where I was and sob until someone took me home.

Something tripped me, jarring me out of my thoughts once more, and I slammed onto my knees and face planted. It took me a few seconds to recover my senses. I sat up and started to rise only for my sandal to snag on something. Twisting to see if I'd hit a branch or something, I froze in horror.

The wormlike creature biting my sandal strap was the size of a can of soda and five times longer. It was pulling me with strength I didn't expect it to have in the direction of several more of the worms.

In fact, the ground was covered with them. What I thought was snow and ice was worms, and they were starting to wriggle and shift beneath me.

With a strangled cry, I scrambled up only to realize the creatures had a hold of more than my sandals. My braid was clutched by two, my shirt by three more and one was nipping unsuccessfully at my leggings.

I panicked and kicked at those near my feet then struggled to be free.

A shadow passed over me. Something smashed into the one holding my sandal and someone wrenched me off the ground, smashing a flat club against the worms to free me. He held me tightly against his warm body, smelling of espresso and bonfire, and I watched the worms nearest us scurry and roll away. They shied away from his boots, as if there was something about them that didn't taste good.

"Did they bite you?" came the low, urgent question.

I struggled to catch my breath, uncertain if I was mid-psychosis or if something even worse had happened. "N...no," I panted.