Free Terror Incognita by Jeffrey Thomas Page A

was.
    It appeared to be a great globe of dark metal or glass, buried in the cement floor of the cellar but for its upper surface. Or was that all there was of it, a huge concave object? Whether sphere or hemisphere, the scratching came from its inner surface.
    Granted, it was gloomy in the basement, but at first the glass seemed truly opaque, if not absolutely black. But as she studied it, the surface seemed to gradually lighten. Until she was certain that it was indeed growing lighter. A murky gray. At last, somehow, miraculously, almost entirely transparent. It was gloomy within the glass, also...gloomy under the cellar floor, which the glass seemed to peer into like a monstrous lens. But she could discern light in that gloom...a flickering light bleeding in from the distance. The reddish glow of a nearby fire.
    And there were two other lights, closer at hand. They floated nearer, like luminous fish at the bottom of the sea, rising to investigate her. The twin smudges of light moved in unison...and were of a soft pink color.
    Before Judith could back away—before she could scream – the face pressed up against the interior of the glass. Huge nails raked against the inside of the lens. The thing’s jaws gnashed vertically, so that its fangs ground across the glass as well. And the eyes of the Gug glared hungrily out at her.
    “No!” Judith heard Robert shout behind her. “Don’t let it see you! Don’t let it see you!” He was suddenly pushing her out of the way, throwing himself across the lens as if to blot it out, pulling down the dreaming eyelid of the dark tarp and pinning it again with bricks.
    Judith fell back against the wall, gasping for air as when she had been jolted from her nightmare. When Robert whirled to face her, they stared at each other in horror and despair.
    “Robert,” Judith began to sob, “what is it? What are they? What’s down there?”
    “It’s the Dreamlands, Jude. It’s why you shouldn’t have come. It’s what you shouldn’t have seen, and what my family has been chosen to guard against since my grandfather’s father built this house around the Dream Lens.”
    “I don’t understand!”
    He continued on as if in a trance, as if a terrible numbing calm had fallen over him. “The Dreamlands are on another plane, Jude. But Sesqua is a special place. The veils are very thin here. Extremely thin in a spot like this. It should not have been seen. Especially not by an outsider. Now you know why I can never leave again, and why I can’t have you here...even if I wanted.”
    The scratching continued, frantic, desperate, hungry. Judith shook, hugging herself, eyes fixed on the shroud of the tarpaulin. The mound was like a belly pregnant with a monster anxious to be born. Who knew how many monstrosities, waiting to be born into this world?
    “I’m afraid now that it saw you, and you saw into its world,” Robert went on, “that...that things will be bad. The two worlds mustn’t see into each other. It starts a door to open. My father looked too long in the lens, once...” He let the story trail off. “But it’s too late, now. You didn’t know; it isn’t your fault. It’s...too late to change anything now.”
    *     *     *
    Robert had to support Judith as he walked her back up the stairs, and down the hall back to her bed. He sat on its edge as he covered her. As he rose, she looked up at him imploringly, her large eyes like those of a frightened child, and lay a hand lightly on his arm.
    “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”
    He sat beside her again, and held her hand. Held it until mercifully dreamless sleep clouded her stunned mind. Continued holding it. Long minutes after she was asleep, at last he whispered back, “I won’t.”
    *     *     *
    Was it a nightmare?
    Robert was at the bedroom window, his body tense as a deer’s...or a cougar’s, ready to spring on the deer. He was staring out into the night, and Judith heard him whisper,