Free Otherworld by Jared C. Wilson Page B

panel of experts’ inspection of the deceased cow were inconclusive.) Stepping into the barn, he almost hoped he’d find her surviving counterpart flat in the hay, maybe even with a little gray alien standing over her, smoking ray gun in hand. His little metallic shoulders would be hunched innocently. “No beef on Mars,” he would say. But the animal had managed to survive the bitter cold of the preceding night and any attempts on her life by otherworldly invaders.
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    A few miles away, Graham Lattimer arrived at the station, wearing his police blues under a windbreaker and khaki trench coat. He had received a scarf for Christmas two years prior, and he wore it for the first time. He wondered how it could be so cold and, given Houston’s humidity, not snow. He noticed the sky lacked for clouds. Then he wondered how the sun could shine so brightly on such a clear day and yet offer no warmth.
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    In the early hours of the morning, Dr. Leopold Sutzkever sat in his tiny office in Landon University and read the newspaper. He sipped hot cocoa from a #1 TEACHER coffee mug, a gift from a former student. On Saturdays, classes didn’t begin until 9:00 a.m., so the doors remained locked, and the only illumination in the hallways came from the emergency fluorescents in the hallway and the meager light cast by Leo’s cheap desk lamp. The building was relatively dark and completely silent. He separated the Local News section from the other pages and had begun to peruse the articles when he heard a crash down the hallway. It was not loud. It didn’t have to be. One could hear the mechanical whispering tick-tock of the clock on the wall outside. The crash was muffled and seemed to come from another room a ways down, not from the hallway itself. Leo was not the sort of man to let something so seemingly insignificant go without inspection. If someone was injured, he intended to help.
    He emerged from his office and had not taken more than two steps when a blinding fury of light escaped from under the closed office door belonging to Dr. Samuel Bering. Though emitted from a crack less than an inch in height between door and floor, it set the entire hallway ablaze for nearly three seconds. Leo’s eyes filled with a brilliant white that promptly dulled into black as his vision failed. He rubbed his eyes vigorously with his wiry aged-spotted hands, desperately attempting to restore sight. When it came, he found himself sitting on the floor, and he immediately stood and cautiously approached his colleague’s office. No hint of light appeared from within. He knocked.
    â€œDr. Bering?” he called. “Dr. Bering, are you in there?” No response. “Samuel, are you in there?”
    He checked the knob and found it unlocked. He slowly turned it and opened the door to reveal Bering’s office. He stepped into the darkness and looked around. No one. He flipped the switch on the wall, and the light revealed a vase on the floor at the base of the desk. It lay in a thousand broken pieces and pottery dust. He thought it strange detritus for such a short fall. But he couldn’t figure out how it would have fallen. There were no open windows for a strong wind to come through. And no one in his right mind would schedule the air conditioner to come on in the middle of winter, ruling out the possibility of a brisk breeze from the vent. Even stranger, there was nothing to explain the blinding light. At least nothing visible. And the room … yes! It was . Despite the cold without, the room within was easily twenty degrees colder. And it smelled musty, like a years-neglected attic.
    Sutzkever found the smell, the sensation, the whole not-as-it-seems environment eerily familiar. His thoughts now concerned Dr. Bering.
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    Mike Walsh awoke shortly before noon and was happy to escape the tyranny of sleep. He was a miserable fellow. Sleep for him had been hard to find, and when found, it presented a