The Shadow Gate

Chapter 3

She chose to make her words sound like an observation instead of a question, even though hundreds of them flew around in her mind like popped helium balloons."That's what I said. A cemetery where the dead are buried." The white haired, bright-eyed man tilted his head and stared at her as if she was daft.Madeline assessed her predicament. She was trapped behind a wrought iron fence, in a garden that was really a graveyard. A strange man who spoke in riddles was the only being she could see. The tombs contained the dead, and on Eclipse Island, Madeline's home, no one ever died, so there were no cemeteries.Was she even on Eclipse Island anymore?"Excuse me?" she asked primly, wringing the canvas straps of her bag again. "What's your name?"The man frowned and paused, as if no one had ever asked him this question."O'Day."He didn't extend his hand, or ask Madeline's name, so she continued. "You said I was in Lafayette Cemetery. Where is that ... exactly?"O'Day, who was still leaning on a tomb, pushed off with one shoulder and took a few steps toward her. The closer he got, the darker his eyes became. "That's a hard question to answer."Madeline stepped back and bumped into a gravestone, grabbing at it for balance. The moss on its surface wasn't soft and springy like the moss at home, but dry and dusty, like the buried bones in the tombs that surrounded her."Could you try to explain?" she asked."Well ... physically, it's bordered by a city, full of mystery and magic, music and menace." As O'Day moved closer to her, a scant ray of sunshine threw a long shadow behind him. "But, magically, it's somewhere else altogether."Magic wasn't a foreign concept to Madeline, but until now, menace had been nothing but a vocabulary word."Are we in a parallel universe?"He shook his head, slowly. "Have you ever heard of a Shadow Gate?"The second he said the word "shadow," his disappeared, even though he stood in the sun."No," Madeline said, scanning the ground."A Shadow Gate stands between two things, just like any other gate.""Does it stand between the worlds of the living and the dead?" She forgot the disappearing shadow and stared at the tombs. If they opened and people came out, would they be ghosts, with a see-through corporeal form, or would they be nothing more than skeletons?O'Day cleared his throat and waited for Madeline to turn her attention back to him. "No. The black wrought iron gate where you entered the cemetery isn't the Shadow Gate. The whole graveyard is – it's a passageway to the city on the other side.""That's great. But I don't care. I don't want to go to a city. Or stay here. The only place I want to go is home." Under the circumstances, Madeline's manners had disappeared."You don't even know what lies on the other side," O'Day chided. "Have you no curiosity?"Too much, Madeline thought. That's what had landed her here. "I just want to go home.""That's what you think right now. I've seen this attitude before, even if it was long ago. You'll be back." He dug around in his coat pocket. "And you'll need this."Madeline gazed at his offering. It was a polished rock in hues of brown, green, purple and peach. It boasted circles and waves, and would fit perfectly in the palm of her hand."A rock? What good is a rock going to do me?""It'll lead you to the entrance of the Shadow Gate, and you'll need it to get through. Today it happened to be an actual gate, but it won't be again. It's never the same twice. Next time it could be a hole in the ground, or a bathroom door.""I don't want your rock." She moved to the side when he held it out to her. "Keep it. I'll just throw it in the ocean."O'Day went very still. "There are things you should know about the other world. Differences between it and your island."Madeline crossed her arms over her chest. "You have fifteen seconds.""The other world is plottable on a map. The town doesn't shut down after dark – as a matter of fact, it never stops. It's not safe and it's not predictable. However." O'Day held up one finger. "You'll find answers there that you'll never find on Eclipse Island. Maybe even about your parents."Madeline stared at the rock. Then she stared at O'Day. How had he known?The sun was going down, quickly now, and the shadows behind the tombs seemed to sway in the wind. The chill cut through Madeline's skirt, and she wished she'd put a sweater in her bag. She was exhausted, hungry, and desperate. Taking the stone was the fastest way out of here. Anyway, it was just a dumb rock. She didn't have to keep it.Madeline held her hand out to O'Day. He stared at her as he dropped the stone into her palm.Her fingers closed around it. It was warm from O'Day's grasp. "What now?""Turn around," O'Day's voice said, fading.When she did, the gate she'd come through appeared in front of her, including the red, yellow, and blue lights that had drawn her attention to the latch in the first place. She could even see the smiling, benevolent statue of the woman.Madeline reached for the latch, and it opened as easily as if it had just been oiled. She squeezed her eyes closed, stepped through, and listened for it to click shut behind her.When it did, she opened her eyes.The sun was in the same place in the sky as it had been when she first walked through the gate.