2|The Other Side of Nothing

“Alright, everything’s fine. Everything’s just fine. We totally didn’t get swallowed up by some all-consuming bubble just now! Nothing terrible or crazy has happened, and everything is just. Fine. Just…”

Lisa’s quiet muttering jolted Zoey from her daze. She blinked, looking down at her hands.

No blood.

That was the weirdest daydream ever. Like, ever ever.

“Lisa?” Zoey hopped off her stool, kneeling down beside her babysitter. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know!” Lisa blurted, running a hand through her hair. “Like, one second, we were in the stairwell, and then the next, boom. We’re in the garage again—where’s Caleb?”

She shot up, glancing for a moment down at Zoey’s hands before turning her attention to the garage door. “You stay here. I’m gonna check on the boys.”

“O…kay?” Zoey watched Lisa leave.

That was also very weird.

Actually, if Lisa remembered all that too, then did that mean that it actually happened?

Zoey climbed back onto her stool, idly kicking her legs in the air and watching them fall back down. They were in the garage not too long ago. She could remember that. And her hand was bleeding, too; Lisa yanked her away and she scraped herself on the edge of something when that happened.

Oh. Right. The weird bubble thingy.

Wait.

The weird bubble thingy.

“Lisa!” Zoey hopped off her seat again, rushing for the garage door. She had to tell Lisa before it was too late!

“Liiii-saaa!” she called again, dragging out the name. “Lisa! Are you okay?”

She threw the garage door open.

It was silent. No hum, no roar, no weird shaking in the floor.

She could hear Caleb talking to his other friends in the basement.

The sound of footsteps caught her attention. She slowly turned her head, bracing for the worst. Was the bubble gonna be there again? Would Lisa be trapped halfway in like she was not too long ago?

Nope.

“I don’t get it,” Lisa continued climbing the stairs. “I swear that the house was caving in. There was this big—”

“—Bubble,” Zoey cut in. “Big bubble of shadowy stuff, and it ate me up like a shadow monster.”

Lisa nodded. “Right. A big shadow monster bubble. You remember everything too, don’t you?”

“Mm-hm.”

“But then, Caleb doesn’t seem to remember anything, and neither do his friends. They looked at me like I was crazy when I told them how relieved I was to see them alive. And then…” She paused, her brows furrowing as she struggled to come up with the words. “…then… bubble… what…”

Lisa shook her head. “No, no. This is all wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Zoey hopped off her stool, kneeling down beside her babysitter. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know!” Lisa blurted, running a hand through her hair. She froze, blinking as she slowly lowered her hand. “We… we’ve been here before. Zoey, weren’t we—”

Zoey winced. A red gash formed across the back of her hand, already beginning to swell and bleed. Where’d that come from? She cringed through the pain, looking around for the source of the gash. A heavy weight suddenly caught her attention as she looked back down at the socket wrench now in her other hand. “Wait—”

“I swear, something weird is happening right now,” Lisa pulled a bandage from her pocket. “None of this makes sense. What do you remember?”

Zoey set the wrench on the table, holding out her injured hand for Lisa to apply the bandage. “Well, there was that black bubble thing, and then after that, I asked about ice cream, and then—wait no, I asked about ice cream first, right?”

Right?

“I think so,” Lisa stuck the bandage over Zoey’s gash. “I can’t remember very clearly either right now. It’s all so foggy to me. All I know is that something doesn’t feel right.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how to describe it. You know how sometimes you get that weird feeling in your stomach, where you just know that there’s something really, really wrong?”

Zoey inched a little closer on her stool… wait, wasn’t she on the floor just now?

Maybe not. Lisa didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s how it feels. Here” —Lisa shot up again— “follow me.” She raced to the door, Zoey following close behind. “If what I’m thinking is correct, Caleb should be in the baseme…”

Zoey pulled against her babysitter.

“…I already checked, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Still,” Lisa took another small step. “We should bring Caleb and his friends up here. It’s better for all of us to be together if something happens again.”

She opened the door.

Nothing was there.

Like, nothing nothing.

“Lisa…” Zoey began to tug again. That darkness behind the door was bad.

“They’re still down there,” the words drifted from Lisa. “Still… in there…”

“We have to go, Lisa,” Zoey guided her away, weaving between scattered parts and tables toward the driveway. “You said the driveway is where it’s safe.”

A sickening crunch caught both of their attentions as she took another step.

That wasn’t good, was it?

“Zoey, your—”

Foot.

Zoey stared in horror at the void just beneath them.

“Lisa?”

She felt Lisa’s hand tighten around her own.

“Yeah?”

“What’s down there?”

“I don’t know.”

The sunlight above them flickered as Lisa pulled Zoey closer. The ground and air crackled with an energy foreign to either of them as pieces of the ground began to collapse into the hole Zoey’s foot had created.

At least this time, she wasn’t caught in it.

…Like that was any less bad then whatever was happening now.

Thunk.

Everything went dark.

“Where did the sun go?” Zoey whispered, nestling closer against Lisa. A chill ran down her spine.

“I don’t know.”

The ground gave out beneath them.

---

Zoey gasped awake, her body shuddering with a heave as she frantically looked around.

It was dark. Like, really, really dark.

She felt a hand stroking her head.

“We’re not out of this yet,” Lisa’s shaky voice came from behind her. “I’m not sure where we are now, but it’s definitely not home.”

Obviously.

Zoey blindly leaned forward, crawling on her hands and knees. They were on solid ground at least, but this… she brushed her fingertips over the ground in front of her.

This wasn’t concrete anymore. Whatever this was, it was smooth. Like they were on a piece of glass.

She could feel Lisa’s hand around her ankle as she crawled. Probably this was the only way that they’d know where each other were.

“Caleb!” Lisa suddenly shouted from behind. “Caleb, you there?”

Silence. No hum, no weird growling grinding sound.

No Caleb.

There was, however, something in the distance.

“Lisa,” Zoey could feel her heart pounding her chest as she looked over her shoulder. “Lisa, do you see that?”

“Kinda. It’s that little bit of light, yeah?”

Zoey nodded, even though she knew Lisa wouldn’t see. “Yeah. Do you think we should go towards it?”

“I think so. It’s not like there’s anywhere else we could go.”

Zoey set off, slow step by slow step. Her hand still stung from the scrape she’d gotten earlier, but it hurt a little less now than before. Maybe it was something about how scared she was feeling?

All across her body now she could feel electric shudders. Almost like there was a cold breeze or something blowing past her. But slowly, the light began to grow closer with every movement. She could just barely see the outlines of her hands in front of her now, and Lisa even took her own hand off of her ankle.

It wasn’t very bright, but there was a bit of a shape beginning to form out of the light as they approached. It was a dim, almost shimmering yellow of sorts. Like a candle flickering through a window.

Zoey paused.

It was a candle flickering through a window.

She felt Lisa’s hand on her leg again. “I’m not sure if we should get any closer, Zoey. That’s not my house.”

Lisa began to pull her backwards.

“Wait!” Zoey tried to cling to the smooth ground the best she could. “That doesn’t mean we should go back!”

“I’m not” —Lisa grunted as the pulling grew stronger— “I’m not pulling you. Or, I… am I?”

She grunted again as the pull weakened. “Yeah, something’s pulling me.”

Zoey felt herself slip backwards a little. She grit her teeth, clawing now at the ground with her nails to no avail. Slowly, the two began to recede into the darkness, dragged by… whatever it was in there.

“Help!” Zoey cried out, scrambling now for something, anything that she could grip onto. Lisa joined in at some point as well, shouting out at the top of her lungs between wheezing breaths.

“Anyone?”

No one.