“Take a closer look. It won’t leap out and grab you, but don’t get near the trees.”
Green walked forward and stood by the barrier.
His throat tightened.
He looked at the crossed pines and imagined an ambush predator on a sandy seabed, camouflaged by a million generations of evolution, resembling nothing but a jumble of volcanic rock with two faint eyes betraying a living symmetry.
He could just make out something there. Not a hole exactly, more of a filter or lens occupying the archway between the trees. The light was different beyond the two pines, tea stained, a quality of sepia tone.
“I think I can see it.”
It was such a minor distortion, but looking at it was like scraping the pad of his thumb perpendicularly along the edge of a razor, feeling its cutting potential poised and waiting for a change in direction, a shift from scrape to slice.
“Stand there and watch me, Mr. Green.”
Valentina stood at Green’s side, then paced a wide circle around the arch, heading for the far side of the trees. He watched her pass behind the first bent tree comprising the left-hand side of the archway. She did not emerge on the other side of the trunk. A moment later, she leaned around the right-hand tree and smiled.
He felt something that wasn’t quite a giggle dance through his chest, the butterfly-stomach sensation of standing at the edge of atall building. He’d thought madness was something that crept in and spread like mildew, not something you could hike to in a few hours.
Valentina ducked back behind the hole and was gone from view again.
“Join me on this side,” she said, a disembodied voice from beyond the hazy archway.
Green left the barricade and rounded the trees. From beside the arch, Valentina was perfectly visible, standing with her hands on her hips, watching Green with placid interest.
“Now stand where I stand,” Valentina said.
Green did.
She rounded the arch and stood behind the barricade. Green could see her just fine.
“Like a two-way mirror?”
“It’s more of a door than a mirror. Though, of course, it is fundamentally different from any doorway I know of. For example, if you were to walk through the arch to me from that side, nothing would happen.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
Valentina ignored the comment.
“Yet,” she continued, “if I passed through from this side, I would be…affected. It’s unidirectional.”
Green walked back around to stand next to his teacher.
“I don’t like being near this thing.”
“As I said, it will not leap out and grab you.”
“You mean because it hasn’t done that yet? I’m also the first person to see the horned wolf. And how many people did you say have seen that glowing deer?”
“Mr. Green, don’t spend your imagination inventing worst-case scenarios. We have plenty to do in our work with the dangers we can confirm with empirical data.”
He eyed the hole. It felt like a vicious dog on a very thin tether.
Something clicked and he recalled why “Hole in Nothing” had a familiar ring.
“Wait a minute. I think I saw a flyer about this place at the gas station.”
“That would be absurd.”
