Free Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) by Jennifer Paetsch Page B

concentration which he so desperately needed to keep. His heart raced and he felt out of control, his body no longer listening to him, and a crushing panic portended his death, or that who he was was dying. If this kept up, this panic, he thought, he might die. His heart might fail, or he might pass out and then die. He needed to force his body to calm down. Even though it wasn't listening to him anymore, he had to try to make it listen. "This is not real," he told himself. "You're not dying. You can do this. You'll be fine."
    And then it was over. The sick feeling faded as quickly as it came. Had he won? Was the evil little man gone? He wasn't sure, but at least the pain was gone and he had the feeling that he could continue with his journey, at least until it became too dark to see.
    Marie stared at him, her eyes full of the concern she seemed to have only for him. "You okay?" she asked. Pilgrim's long head hung behind her, her worry mirrored in his eyes.
    He took a deep breath. The mist around him lay like still water, as calm as he felt. As the seconds passed and he studied the forest around him, he wondered if it had happened at all, or if he had dreamed it. Even his leg felt better, as if its wound had healed. He looked down at his pant leg. It wasn't even torn.
    "Is this all a dream?" he thought to himself, unsure. "Maybe I'm really still in bed. Maybe I never even got up this morning." It was a good theory. This No Man's Land was like a part of his own mind, able to be bent to his will. He doubted the real No Man's Land would be anything like this. So then the question became, if he in fact really was still sleeping, how to wake up?
    Then a thought came to him, one that had been unspoken but in the back of his mind, lurking, since he'd left Doors: Your father was hoping you would die here. That's why he let you go.
    Wolfgang was startled by the ugliness of it. He didn't believe it, either. Not really. That doesn't make sense, he told himself. Why would he want me dead?
    He knows something you don't.
    That made Wolfgang smirk. He knows a great many things I don't, he thought. That doesn't make him want me dead. But after thinking more about it, he drew the conclusion that he might know something about Wolfgang's future--or his past--that Wolfgang could not know. After all, he'd been alive longer than Wolfgang. He had been leading a whole other life before his son was born, a life that Wolfgang would never know the whole truth about.
    More lights began to form in the forest. He wondered if it was a good idea to encourage Vogelfang to glow. Light might draw things to them. As if reading his thoughts, Marie whispered, "What do we do when it gets dark? If this place is like Doors, we have only about an hour of light left."
    Wolfgang didn't know. He had planned on having made it to the other world by now. Doors wasn't that large--it could be crossed in a couple of hours easily by car--and he had assumed that the No Man's Land wouldn't be much larger. He hadn't planned on them being in a sort of Limbo with no real way to control where you went or stayed or for how long, and he began to feel badly that he was asking so much of his friends. "We'll go on until we can't anymore. If we have to stay the night, I guess that's what we'll do. How will you get back?"
    "If we actually make it to the Hindernis and you find a door to the human world, we'll go through it with you, of course, then take a door back."
    "And if I don't make it?"
    Marie's pause made him think that she was weighing out a number of replies before choosing one. "Then it won't matter to you what we do," she said. They walked on for awhile in silence.
    She's getting you lost, came an unwelcome thought.
    Why would she do that? he asked himself silently.
    Maybe she is tired of your weakness. Maybe you betrayed her by wanting to leave. But if you die here, you can never leave. Wolfgang felt the blood drain from his face. Was that true? Would his soul become trapped