Janis could make out concrete.
She reached toward it with her hands. She couldn’t pick up anything in this state, she’d discovered, but she did possess a penetrating sense of touch. It was how she’d found the plastic egg in the ferns.
Her hands encountered a solid slab.
Janis plied deeper into the cement. The slab went down inches, then feet. It was not meant as a foundation for the shed, she realized, but as a ceiling for whatever lay below. She withdrew her hands and hovered in thought. She’d learned about fallout shelters in school, how some families built them or had them installed in the early years of the Cold War, before it became generally known that an all-out nuclear war would reduce them to well-stocked tombs. Janis had never seen one. She just assumed they weren’t around anymore, not in 1984, or if they were, that they had been converted into things like storage basements, wine cellars…
(torture chambers) .
If it was a shelter, there would need to be an entrance, and she hadn’t felt one. Unless…
When Janis moved nearer the kindling pile, roaches skittered into the darkest eaves and burrowed beneath the sacking. Could they see her? She glanced toward the door. No gaps around the frame, no space where the two doors met, where whatever light she might be casting would flicker out.
Calm down, Janis. You’re safe. Incorporeal, remember?
Squinting, she reached through the sticks and rotten sacking. Cockroaches scurried around her hands. She was about to draw her hands back when they encountered something metallic in the cement. She felt along its edges. It was smooth and shaped like a manhole cover.
A lid.
The realization that there was a hidden room underground fell over her like ice water. In her mind’s eye, she saw her bedroom and for a moment she wished herself back there, back to the life of a teenager on the eve of starting high school.
Back to normalcy.
Instead, she began to press herself through the kindling and against the metal lid. She had come this far. But like when she’d tried to pass through the bushes bordering her lawn, her progress was barred. The obstruction felt different, though—not like charge repelling like charge but an electrical barrier, fiery and unyielding. She redoubled her concentration.
The field gave a little.
The wooden door to the shed began to rattle. She hadn’t heard his footsteps patter down the steps of the deck or cut through the grass, but she could hear the scraping sound of a key inside the lock.
She fell against the back wall of the shed, her mental commands colliding into one another: Pass though the wall, Janis! Pass through the wall! C’mon, Janis! Concentrate, damn it!
But the skin of the shed’s wall held this time. There was no pop…
Other than the bolt’s release.
A red terror blotted over Janis’s senses like a swarm of cockroaches, flapping their oily wings, spilling down her back, cocooning her arms and legs. It was like those first out-of-body experiences when she couldn’t move. Now the same horrible thoughts assailed her:
What if I can’t return? What if I’m trapped on the other side of that barrier, trapped inside this shed?
The door swung open, and Mr. Leonard’s face loomed from the night like an executioner’s. Janis shrieked, the sensation tearing from her throat like a ball of nails.
WHOOOOSH.
She jerked upright in her bed, heart thundering, cotton T-shirt warm and soaked through. But it wasn’t sweat she felt. It was urine. For the first time since she was five years old, Janis had wet herself.
* * *
Janis grimaced as she gazed at the rotating plastic egg. She remembered the fear and shame of stripping her shirt and sheets the night before, tiptoeing the length of the house to the laundry room, starting the Kenmore, taking a quick, furtive shower, spreading a dry cover across her bed, lying there without sleeping, later moving her sheets to the dryer then back to her bedroom, and at last drifting
She reached toward it with her hands. She couldn’t pick up anything in this state, she’d discovered, but she did possess a penetrating sense of touch. It was how she’d found the plastic egg in the ferns.
Her hands encountered a solid slab.
Janis plied deeper into the cement. The slab went down inches, then feet. It was not meant as a foundation for the shed, she realized, but as a ceiling for whatever lay below. She withdrew her hands and hovered in thought. She’d learned about fallout shelters in school, how some families built them or had them installed in the early years of the Cold War, before it became generally known that an all-out nuclear war would reduce them to well-stocked tombs. Janis had never seen one. She just assumed they weren’t around anymore, not in 1984, or if they were, that they had been converted into things like storage basements, wine cellars…
(torture chambers) .
If it was a shelter, there would need to be an entrance, and she hadn’t felt one. Unless…
When Janis moved nearer the kindling pile, roaches skittered into the darkest eaves and burrowed beneath the sacking. Could they see her? She glanced toward the door. No gaps around the frame, no space where the two doors met, where whatever light she might be casting would flicker out.
Calm down, Janis. You’re safe. Incorporeal, remember?
Squinting, she reached through the sticks and rotten sacking. Cockroaches scurried around her hands. She was about to draw her hands back when they encountered something metallic in the cement. She felt along its edges. It was smooth and shaped like a manhole cover.
A lid.
The realization that there was a hidden room underground fell over her like ice water. In her mind’s eye, she saw her bedroom and for a moment she wished herself back there, back to the life of a teenager on the eve of starting high school.
Back to normalcy.
Instead, she began to press herself through the kindling and against the metal lid. She had come this far. But like when she’d tried to pass through the bushes bordering her lawn, her progress was barred. The obstruction felt different, though—not like charge repelling like charge but an electrical barrier, fiery and unyielding. She redoubled her concentration.
The field gave a little.
The wooden door to the shed began to rattle. She hadn’t heard his footsteps patter down the steps of the deck or cut through the grass, but she could hear the scraping sound of a key inside the lock.
She fell against the back wall of the shed, her mental commands colliding into one another: Pass though the wall, Janis! Pass through the wall! C’mon, Janis! Concentrate, damn it!
But the skin of the shed’s wall held this time. There was no pop…
Other than the bolt’s release.
A red terror blotted over Janis’s senses like a swarm of cockroaches, flapping their oily wings, spilling down her back, cocooning her arms and legs. It was like those first out-of-body experiences when she couldn’t move. Now the same horrible thoughts assailed her:
What if I can’t return? What if I’m trapped on the other side of that barrier, trapped inside this shed?
The door swung open, and Mr. Leonard’s face loomed from the night like an executioner’s. Janis shrieked, the sensation tearing from her throat like a ball of nails.
WHOOOOSH.
She jerked upright in her bed, heart thundering, cotton T-shirt warm and soaked through. But it wasn’t sweat she felt. It was urine. For the first time since she was five years old, Janis had wet herself.
* * *
Janis grimaced as she gazed at the rotating plastic egg. She remembered the fear and shame of stripping her shirt and sheets the night before, tiptoeing the length of the house to the laundry room, starting the Kenmore, taking a quick, furtive shower, spreading a dry cover across her bed, lying there without sleeping, later moving her sheets to the dryer then back to her bedroom, and at last drifting
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