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  He nodded. Although his mother had never explained it quite like this, it made sense. This would always be his main 'scene' the one he could cross to without really thinking about. The one he used as a quick escape from his father.

  'Mum is in her Primer, her safe place,’ she continued. 'For now she's OK, but she doesn't think that will last. She needs your help.’

  'What's wrong? Is she stuck over here?'

  'No, not really,’ she said, but Dave didn’t think Katy was telling him everything. ‘She's hiding here. Has been for about a week. She…….’ she trailed off here, searching for the words. ‘She really needs your help Davey.’

  'I don't get it Kate. Why can't she just cross back? What's she hiding from?’

  'Something has been in the house - in dad - for years. Since about the time I. You know. Bought it.’ The phrase seemed odd coming from someone so young. 'Something evil. Something that wanted to hurt you and mum. Something that lived off hurting you and mum. You see it was never dad, he was never like that. But this thing inside him........’ She paused, anger clearly visible on her face.

  Dave sat next to her on the pebbles and put his arm around her shoulders. He thought she might have been just like a ghost and his arm would pass right through her, but she felt real and she relaxed when he held her.

  'She's strong you know.’ She spoke low and serious now; her original spark replaced by a determined streak he never knew she had; perhaps one she never knew she had. 'She’s known this thing has been inside dad for years and all this time she’s used this place to keep it at bay. She showed you what you needed to survive. What you needed to escape, and then when you left home, she faced this thing all on her own. Can you imagine that Davey? All those years living with this thing. Keeping it trapped in that house. Keeping it away from the rest of the world.’

  Truth was he couldn't imagine it at all. Such a thing seemed too much for one person to deal with all by their self. Different emotions came rushing in at the same time. Anger, guilt and sorrow in equal measures. There was an age before either of them spoke.

  'Why is she trapped over here Kate? Why now?’

  'I don't know Davey, that's the truth. Like I said, I'm just the messenger here. Something has changed and for some reason she can't - or won't - cross back. All I really know is that she needs you Davey............before it's too late.’

  They both sat huddled together on the beach without speaking for five minutes. The fire was beginning to die, but the heat coming from it was still comforting in the cool early morning air. A couple of gulls - probably the same two from the previous evening - were squabbling at the carcass in the distance and every now and then the logs on the fire popped; other than that, all was silent. Even the waves seemed still.

  'You do know that I can't cross back either,’ he said.

  Katy nodded. 'That was mums idea. She needs you this side - you're no good to her back there.’

  'She's stopping me cross back?’

  'Yup..........I told you she was strong. Not just in keeping this thing at bay, but in controlling this world. What she showed me - and you - was just a taster. Now, I don't know if we could ever control this place like she can, but honestly we are real amateurs compared to mum.’

  'But how is stopping me crossing back gonna help? Surely it would be easier to just go straight to her.......what do you call it.......her Primer.’

  Katy just shrugged. 'Davey, I've no idea. She needs you here and for some reason she feels that crossing back is too risky or something. Look, I really don't know. I get that you've probably got like a million questions, but time is short and we've gotta get going. We've got a bit of a walk ahead of us.’

  'Walk? Can't we just flip to where she is?’

  'If it was just me Davey, then yeah I could just flip to her as you put it - one of the perks of being dead I suppose.’ The sarcasm stung him, probably more than it was meant. 'But you're not dead Davey, and you've gotta walk.’

  'What about these?’ Dave pointed down at his bare feet. 'Not exactly hiking material.’ He thought back to the evening before and the trouble he had just navigating a simple shingle beach.

  'Mum's covered everything,’ she said. She reached into the rucksack and brought out a pair of brown shoes. On closer inspection they were a kind of roughly sewn moccasin. They were a spot on match with his crazy outfit, but not the sort of thing Dave would ever wear. He tried them on and they were a perfect fit.

  'Not exactly hiking shoes I know,’ Katy continued. 'But I think they're all this place would allow. Nothing comes easy right?’

  Katy stood up and poured water on the fire sending out a plume of steam and smoke in all directions. She rinsed the plates in the sea and packed everything in the rucksack. The blankets she rolled up and attached to the bottom of the bag.

  'Do we really need all this stuff?' he said. 'It seems a bit over the top.’

  'I don't, not really, but you will. You thought you were cold last night, but to coin a phrase "you ain't seen nothin' yet."' She laughed to herself and flung the bag across her shoulder.

  'Let me take it,’ he said. 'It looks massive on you.’

  'It's Ok,’ she said. 'I wouldn't want to wear you out. You're not exactly in tip top condition.’ She glanced down at his belly. 'You'll be no good to mum if I bring back a complete wreck!'

  'Charming,’ he said. They both laughed and the tension between them was gone.

  Chapter 13

  They set off along the beach towards the squid carcass. The slugs had really gone to town as there was very little meat left.

  'I thought that thing would drown me,’ Dave said.

  'Mum really didn't tell you about water? I can't believe that.’

  'She never said anything. Why? What’s so bad?'

  'It's just full of some really nasty stuff. This is a real world. We're guests here. Sure, we can change it and shape it to do pretty much anything. But this whole place is alive.....watch it!' Katy grabbed him as he almost tripped on a bloody piece of tentacle.

  She shook her head. 'When did you get so flipping clumsy! Ok, so you've seen the slugs, they are quite docile really and they pretty much stay in those barren parts between each world. Mainly harmless, but you want to be finding a good hiding place after dark. Then there's the Squids. In any world with water - especially sea water - you'll find them, again you'll be very unlucky to get caught during the day, but it's best to avoid the water’s edge at night. But I suppose you know that!'

  'Oh.....the girls on form today,’ he said.

  'You got that right little brother, or I suppose that's big brother now.’

  'Don't push it.’ He gave her a gentle punch on the arm, and again they both laughed. Weird as it was to be walking along this strange beach with his dead sister, it was good to see her again and he was amazed at how quickly he fell back into the kid brother role.

  'There's also lots of nasty hidden stuff,’ she continued. 'Stuff you can't really see until it can quite literally bite you in the ass.’

  'Like what?'

  'It depends on the type of world you're in I suppose. Hot places can have massive mosquitos - and you really don't want a bite from them. There's spiders; snakes; some really fat wasps. All of them loads bigger and more dangerous than back home. You've gotta be so careful when you create somewhere, because this place really doesn't want you in here.’

  'But I never saw anything like that when I came here before, just empty worlds.’

  'Then you were very lucky Davey. Stay over here for more than a couple of hours and those things will come find you. It's almost like you've polluted their air or something and they want rid of you.’

  He thought back to when he was younger and the hours spent in this world. His mother had warned him not to stay too long, really stressed the importance of this and like a good boy he had done as asked. An hour or two here and there and then crossing back. Never long enough to attract the attention of any indigenous creatures he supposed. He
was unnerved by how little he actually knew about the place.

  'How long are we going to be over here?' He asked, very aware of how long he had been here already.

  'That's the problem,’ Katy said. 'To get to mum, we need to cross a lot of different places. With the best will in the world we're gonna be lucky to get there in less than two days.’

  Dave stopped and stared at her, looking for any sign that she was pulling his leg. The seriousness in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She wasn't.

  They neared the end of the beach where a large group of slugs were sleeping off their midnight feast. He counted about twenty sprawled out on the barren ground which was a mixture of hard packed earth and loose gravel. The sea from his beach had ended abruptly against this grey earth which stretched out in front of them as far as the horizon.

  'Are we going to cross that?’ he said.

  'Only about half way, then we take a detour,’ Katy responded.

  'From the slug zone? I thought they just joined two different places together.’

  'Have you ever crossed these places before?' She asked.

  'A couple of times I had a look, but never crossed. The slug things kind of freaked me out.’

  'Yeah, you always were a bit of a wuss with bugs.’ She teased. 'Come on, these are the really cool places.’

  She skipped between a pair of slugs and headed straight into the bleak landscape. He glanced at the creatures to see if they were going to stir, saw that they were all still sleeping soundly and followed her.

  After about ten minutes he was thankful he had only visited these barren zones a couple of times. Firstly it was cold, really cold. There wasn't any wind to speak of but the air just seemed to go right through him and pretty soon his teeth were chattering madly.

  Secondly, it was just plain eerie. The slugs kept to the far edges of their zones and after a few minutes walking they and the beach had disappeared behind them. After this they didn't see another thing just the barren ground dotted with rocks.

  Thirdly, the place just seemed to swallow sound. He should have heard the echo of each footstep as they crunched on the gravel but the sound just seemed to die as it was made. He longed to hear a squawk of a gull, but none ever came.

  Lastly, and most distressing, the whole place just felt wrong. He didn't feel in danger, but it just didn't feel right. It could have been the relentless grey sky or the empty unchanging landscape, or it could simply be just a depressing world compared to the relative normality of the beach. Either way, he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

  Katy stopped a few times, supposedly to get her bearings which seemed odd to Dave in such a formless place. Each few hundred yards felt exactly like the last. They didn't speak much; the place seemed to have sucked all the good humour out if them. They just kept trudging head down through the emptiness.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Katy stopped to take another one of her seemingly pointless bearings. She was just about to move off again when she spotted something in the distance to their right.

  'There it is!' She exclaimed.

  Dave swivelled and squinted to try to see where she was looking.

  'There's what? I don't see anything............holy shit! What the hell is that?'

  About two miles away to their right sticking out of the ground was an enormous expanse of rock. It wasn't a hill with a steady gradient, it was a jagged cliff jutting into the sky. He couldn't see the top as low cloud cover obscured it from view. But he guessed it was in the region of two hundred feet high. It reminded Dave of the sheer inland cliff faces explorers used to climb in the old Tarzan films he used to watch with his mother, only this cliff wasn't covered in vines and vegetation, it was as barren as the surrounding landscape it was protruding from.

  Katy gave a laugh. 'That, my little brother, is our way out of here.’ She gave him a playful wink and started off in the direction of the cliff.

  Dave paused for a few seconds and then started after her.

  As they drew nearer to the cliff, Dave realized he had been very conservative with his initial estimate of its height. The top was still hidden in the clouds but at a push he would say it was nearer to four hundred feet high, maybe five. It wasn't quite as uniform in shape as he had first thought either. It was craggy and scarred and he could see sections all along its face where large chunks had fallen away leaving dirty piles scattered at its base. Essentially though it was a giant rectangle of rock probably half a mile long, plonked in the middle of nowhere.

  'How is that our way out?’ he said.

  'See there.’ Katy pointed to a dull area on the cliff face about two storeys up. 'That's how we get in.’

  At first Dave couldn't make out anything. All he saw was a dark shadow of rock, but as they approached the foot of the cliff he could quite clearly see a cave entrance. Leading down from the cave to where they now stood was a craggy natural looking staircase.

  He followed Katy up the stairs and into the cave. Warm, moist air touched his face along with an ancient mouldy smell. The ground just inside the cave entrance was also damp.

  'Careful as you go in,’ Katy said. 'The floor can be quite slippy and there isn't much light.’

  This turned out to be quite the understatement as the cave was pitch black. Dave had to feel his way along the damp walls. Katy on the other hand seemed to have no trouble and very quickly had pulled ahead.

  'Wait up,’ Dave said. 'I can't see a bloody thing.’

  'You're such an old man, you really are. Grab hold of the rucksack and don't slip. It does get a bit lighter when we reach the inner stairs.’

  They walked this way for about five minutes down a slight incline that at one point took a sharp left. Dave glanced behind him but any light coming from the cave entrance had long since been extinguished. The ground levelled out and Katy stopped. Dave, feeling more and more out of his depth and still blind as a bat, walked straight into her.

  'Watch it big boy,’ she teased. 'Do you want to get us both killed?’ She chuckled at the irony of this and took half a step forward.

  'Ok, we've gotta be careful with this next bit. Have a look.’

  Dave squeezed next to her in the tunnel and stared past her into the darkness, what he saw in front of them simply took his breath away.

  Chapter 14

  They stood at the mouth of the cave looking out over a perfectly circular abyss that stretched above and below them. The gap was maybe sixty feet across and was sprinkled with hundreds and hundreds of tiny points of piercing blue light that did indeed cast a soft glow over the whole scene. Below and above them the chasm disappeared into complete darkness, but for about ten feet in either direction the light illuminated just enough of the walls for Dave to make out another craggy and decidedly slippery looking walkway which obviously made up the inner stairs Katy had spoken about. The stairs spiralled round and round and down and down into the darkness and looking up, Dave saw they did the same in that direction too.

  'We going up or down?' He said.

  'Down I'm afraid. I've only done this a couple of times in either direction, but down is definitely tricksier. A lot easier to lose your footing. So take care.’

  He peered over the edge at the way they were to go and could see a sheen on the surface of the steps.

  'What’s down there?' He asked, motioning towards the darkness.

  'No idea,’ she said. 'It literally goes on and on in both directions, god knows where it ends up.’

  'What is this place Kate? Where is it going to take us?’

  'It's going to take us to another world - well another layer I suppose. You see this whole place is like some giant 3D game of Connect 4. You've got the different places we can all dream up; forests and beaches and deserts. You name it, it’s here. Between all those are the empty places like we're in now. They're not all exactly the same, but pretty much; big flat areas of nothing with these stairs slam dunked in the middle.’

  'And it takes us to another
world below us?'

  'Yup. And above.'

  'But how many layers, how many different worlds can there possibly be?’

  Katy shrugged in the darkness. 'Who knows Davey? I tend not to think about it too much. It kinda freaks me out.’ She let out a laugh that seemed as empty as the void they were looking over and started down the stairs.

  It was like some freakish fairground ghost ride and it took them forever. The stairs certainly were slippery and a couple of times he came very close to losing his footing. Thankfully there was a railing of sorts built into the rock that followed the path of the stairs and Dave hugged this tightly as they descended deeper. In places some of the stairs had crumbled away but the glow from the lights made the gaps easy to spot and navigate. On closer inspection the lights seemed to be some kind of luminescent crystal that glowed a bright pale blue. As they walked he touched a number of them and he felt an odd buzzing warmness being emitted.

  Katy again seemed to have no problem navigating the steps and again on a number of occasions pulled ahead of him. Dave began to believe that this wasn't quite by accident. If it was true that his mother had been stuck over here for some time and had sent the image of his dead sister along to guide him, then it would make sense that she would firstly have absolutely no trouble over the tricky terrain and secondly she would do her utmost to hurry him along. He was a slightly overweight middle aged man used to a comfortable office and door to door pitching. It was blatantly obvious that he was going to struggle and she could little afford being held up by his lack of fitness.

  Katy came to a stop on a 'landing' with a long dark cave disappearing off beside them.

  'Is this our stop?' He puffed. Even though it was all downhill, the humid air made it hard to breathe. That was his excuse anyway.

  'No, next one sorry,’ Katy said. 'We've gotta go two down and then we've got quite a trek ahead of us. I want to get out of here and then maybe stop for the night. Depends how late in the day it is............and how you're doing old timer.’