Good Boy

Chapter 1

The Leash

The rain had worked on Portland for three days without rest.

It shone on East Burnside, overflowed the gutters, and pasted red maple leaves to the paths of Laurelhurst Park. By seven on Thursday evening, the duck pond had swallowed its banks. Water stood among the roots of the Douglas firs. Each gust shook loose another cold shower from the branches.

Claire had not wanted to walk Rue. She had wanted to lock the apartment door, put her phone facedown, and let the electric company leave another voicemail. Rue had watched her from beside the rain boots, the red nylon leash hanging from his mouth. He had held it there until she laughed.

It was the first sound in two days that had not embarrassed her.

"Fine," she had told him. "Ten minutes. You win."

Rue always won by waiting.

Now he trotted at the end of the leash, black-and-white coat slicked flat, nose sorting secrets from the wet ground. The black patch over his left eye made him look as if he were winking at every bad decision Claire had ever made. She had adopted him from a shelter outside Eugene when he was six months old. Almost three years later, he still hated the vacuum, stole socks from the hamper, and refused to enter any room where a balloon touched the ceiling.

He was afraid of thunder. Tonight, he ignored it.

Claire stopped near the old wooden bench on the south side of the pond. Her left ankle ached from an old sprain, and rain had found the gap between her hood and collar. She reached for the leash clip.

"Go on, good boy. One lap before we freeze."

Rue did not move.

His ears stood forward. Not toward the pond or the path. Toward the bench.

"What?"

Beneath the bench, water ran uphill.

It gathered from the mud in thin silver strings and slid toward a dry patch no wider than a dinner plate. The streams vanished at its edge. Claire stared until her eyes began trying to correct what they saw.

Rue stepped closer. The leash tightened between them.

"Leave it."

He lowered his head and sniffed the dry ground. Then he looked back at her.

Thunder rolled over the park. Rue did not flinch.

Claire pulled once on the leash. "Home."

The dry patch opened.

There was no collapse. No breaking earth. The mud folded inward along a straight vertical line, like a door turning on a hinge hidden beneath the world. For one impossible second, Claire saw a hallway standing upright under the bench. Its ceiling ran away from her feet. A row of brass apartment numbers glimmered in weak amber light.

Rue lunged.

The leash burned across Claire's palm. Her boot slipped from the path, and pain snapped through her ankle. She fell toward the pond, caught one glimpse of black water rushing up to meet her, and struck carpet instead.

The impact drove the air from her lungs.

She lay facedown on a runner patterned with brown diamonds. It smelled of wet wool, boiled cabbage, and the sweet rot of plaster after a flood. Rain ticked against her hood, though no rain fell inside the corridor.

Claire rolled over.

The hallway stretched in both directions beneath a ceiling the color of old teeth. Apartment doors lined the walls, each painted a different faded shade of green. Brass numbers began at 212 and climbed toward the left. Toward the right, they also climbed.

213. 214. 215.

She twisted around.

213. 214. 215.

"No."

The word traveled farther than the corridor seemed to go. A dozen distant Claires whispered it back.

She reached for her phone. The screen woke beneath a spiderweb of rainwater. No Service had replaced the carrier name, but the emergency-call button still glowed.

Claire dialed 911.

The call connected before she touched the final digit.

For two seconds, there was no sound. Then a woman inhaled close to the receiver.

"Nine-one-one. What room did you lose?"

Claire's throat tightened. "I'm in some kind of apartment building. I fell through the ground at Laurelhurst Park. My ankle might be sprained. I need police and an ambulance."

"What room did you lose?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Paper rustled on the other end. The operator spoke more quietly. "The Interior does not take people first. It takes rooms. Which room is missing?"

Claire looked at the green doors. "Please trace my phone."

"We did."

"Where am I?"

The operator read Claire's home address.

"That's where I live."

"No one lives there."

The line clicked dead.

Claire called again. Her own voicemail answered.

"Hi, you've reached Claire. Leave a message."

The greeting was followed by a second voice, faint beneath hers.

What room did you lose?

She shoved the phone into her pocket.

Door 214 stood open behind Rue. Claire had not seen it move. A chain stretched across the gap from inside, exactly like the one on her apartment door.

"Hello?"

No answer came.

She approached far enough to look through. A living room waited beyond the chain. Water marks climbed the walls to shoulder height. A television showed gray static. Family photographs covered a bookcase, but every picture had been cut around the people, leaving human-shaped holes.

On the floor sat a pair of dry hiking boots identical to Claire's.

The right boot had a dark stain around the ankle.

Rue placed himself between Claire and the door.

"Those aren't mine."

His stare did not shift.

Inside the room, the television static cleared. Live footage of the corridor appeared. Claire saw herself standing at the chained door. She saw Rue beside her.

At the far end of the televised hallway, a gray figure stepped out of a mirror.

Claire turned.

The real corridor was empty.

On the screen, the figure began walking toward her.

Rue snapped his teeth at the gap. The door slammed hard enough to shake dust from the frame.

The red leash crossed her legs. Its clasp remained attached to Rue's collar, but Rue stood ten feet away, facing a framed mirror between two doors.

"Rue. Come."

His reflection was absent.

Claire crawled to her knees. Her ankle gave a hard pulse. "Rue, come here."

The mirror held the corridor. It held Claire, pale and soaked, one hand braced on the carpet. Where Rue should have appeared, there was a tall blur the gray of breath on glass.

The blur leaned closer from the other side.

Claire stopped breathing.

It had no face. Not yet. A shallow hollow pressed outward where a forehead belonged. Beneath it, two darker pits worked at becoming eyes. Its shoulders narrowed and widened as though testing proportions.

Rue showed his teeth to the mirror.

The thing copied him with a mouth placed too high.

"Rue."

The dog backed toward her without turning. A vibration moved through the leash, too steady for a growl.

The fluorescent tube overhead clicked off.

In the darkness, something tapped the glass.

Once.

Twice.

On the third tap, the sound came from behind Claire.

Rue seized the cuff of her jeans and pulled. Claire staggered upright, swallowed a cry as her ankle folded, and followed him. The mirror scraped against the wall behind them. Glass hinges squealed.

They ran past doors numbered 216, 216, 216. Each stood open an inch. Warm domestic smells leaked from the gaps. Coffee. Baby powder. Cigarette smoke. Her mother's lavender hand cream.

Claire slowed.

"Mom?"

From the nearest apartment came the soft clink of a spoon against ceramic.

Her mother had made tea at night during the last month, when sleep came in pieces and pain had narrowed her world to a recliner by the window. Claire remembered the blue mug with the chipped rim. She remembered sitting beside her, pretending the hospital had not used the word terminal.

The apartment door opened another inch.

"Claire-bear?" her mother called.

Rue barked once.

The sound struck the corridor like a slap. The apartment went silent.

Claire gripped the leash with both hands. "That wasn't her."

Rue pulled her onward.

The ceiling lowered as they ran. Water stains crawled across it ahead of them, branching into the shapes of rooms. A kitchen appeared in the plaster. A narrow bedroom. A bathroom with a claw-foot tub. The floor plan looked familiar.

Claire knew it before she wanted to.

Her mother's house had been demolished six weeks after the sale.

At the end of the corridor stood its front door.

The white paint was blistered beside the knob. Three pencil marks on the frame recorded Claire's height at ages eight, nine, and eleven. The brass mail slot hung crooked where she had kicked it during a tantrum and lied about it afterward.

Rue walked straight past the door and stopped at a blank wall.

Behind them, hinges began opening in sequence.

Not the apartment doors. The mirrors.

Glass feet touched carpet. Slow steps followed.

Rue pressed his nose to the wall. Nothing marked the spot. No crack, no outline, no change in paint. He looked at Claire, then at her right hand.

Her keys were still clenched there. Apartment key. Car key. Mailbox key. A small brass key to her mother's front door, though the house no longer existed.

Rue touched the brass key with his nose.

"No."

He touched it again.

The footsteps drew nearer. In each open mirror, the gray figure had gained something new. Hair from one reflection. Hands from another. Claire's mouth from the glass nearest them.

Rue pawed the blank wall.

Claire understood without knowing how.

"This opens it?"

Rue stared at the key.

She had kept it eight months, long after the locksmith, the estate sale, and the demolition crew had stripped away every reason. It had rested against her other keys like a tiny useless bone.

Her mother's voice came from the figure behind her.

"Claire-bear. You forgot me."

Claire shoved the brass key against the wall.

The paint softened around it. Her fingers sank to the knuckles into cold plaster. Something on the other side accepted the key with a small metallic click.

A seam appeared from ceiling to floor.

Rue drove his shoulder into it. The wall swung inward onto darkness.

Claire followed, dragging her injured foot. A wet hand brushed the back of her hood as she crossed. She screamed and threw her weight forward.

The hidden door slammed behind them.

For a moment she heard only her own breathing and Rue's claws on concrete.

Then a voice spoke through the sealed wall. It had her mother's tone, Claire's mouth, and the patient cadence of something studying both.

"Good boy," it said.

Rue's ears flattened.

The brass key was gone from Claire's ring.