Page 3 of Curse the Flame

I pause. Blowing? How are they blowing when the windows are closed?

And why hasn’t Johnny noticed me in the doorway yet? Yeah, he’s staring at the surprisingly clear glass of the mirror, locked on his reflection, but I’m there, too, yet I don’t think he can see me.

Johnny takes one hesitant step toward it, his hand outstretched.

I raise the Colt. I should just fire. Shoot him in the back like a man like him deserves. I can’t, though. He’s just another enemy, and one I’ll look in the eye before I take his life.

So I call out a warning: “Don’t.”

Did he hear me? He acts like he doesn’t. He certainly doesn’t stop, either, and my finger itches to pull the trigger after all.

And that’s when he presses his flat palm against the glass and… and…

“Holy fuck.” The words burst out of me as I race toward the mirror, Colt still in front of me.

I’m too late. I don’t know what kind of trick mirror that sucker is, but the moment Johnny touched the glass, it rippled and it opened, and as I watched, it sucked him in whole.

He’s gone.

Standing in front of it, my normally stoic expression suddenly wild, I use my free hand to rap my knuckles against the glass. There has to be a trick. There has to be a door or a window or a… I don’t know what, but where the hell did Johnny go?

I meant to knock against the glass, see if maybe it was hollow or something. Only, instead of knocking, my hand sinks straight through the mirror.

I yank my hand back, but that doesn’t do a damn thing to keep me from following right behind Johnny. Only it’s not a door. It’s not a window, either. But it’s gotta be a trick because I’m suddenly falling.

For one dizzy second, I can’t tell which way is up. Cold closes over me like I’ve fallen through the ice in the middle of winter, only there isn’t any water. Nothing wet. Nothing solid, either. Just pressure on every side and flashes of light behind my eyes while I continue to fall through all that nothingness. My fingers tighten around the Colt on instinct, which is probably the only reason I don’t lose it straight off when the mirror spits me out.

I hit the ground shoulder-first, my coat splaying around me as I flop to my back.

Pain shoots down my arm, sharp enough to make my hand open, and the Colt lands somewhere in the grass beside me. At least, I think it’s grass. For the first few seconds, I’m too busy trying to breathe to care. The air’s been knocked clean from my lungs, and every attempt to drag it back in feels like somebody has a boot planted in the middle of my chest.

“Son of a…”

Stubborn as ever, I suck in another breath and stare up at a sky that shouldn’t exist.

Holy shit. There are way too many stars here.

That’s the first thing I notice once my lungs start working again. They’re scattered across the darkness in thick, bright clusters, close enough that I almost feel like I could reach up and touch one. There aren’t any clouds. No glow from the city. No smoke from factory chimneys or apartment buildings. Nothing to dull them.

I haven’t seen a sky this clear since France, and even then, there was so much haze from the fighting.

Here, there’s only the glow of a moon, bigger and brighter than one I’ve ever seen.

Except it isn’t the moon I know. It’s too big, hanging low over the treetops like someone dropped it there. Trees… there are trees everywhere. Dark and tall, terrific and imposing… they surround me, with the shit ton of stars twinkling over my head.

Where the hell am I?

I sit up slowly, then look around.

The brownstone is gone. So is the mirror. There isn’t a wall behind me, a door, or even a footprint in the grass to explain how I got here. Just more trees stretching in every direction, and a single hazy patch that shrinks and disappears as I stare in confusion at it.

I shake my head. I don’t know where I am. Don’t know how I got here. But you know what I do know? That I came here to do a job.

“Johnny?”

My voice doesn’t echo as I call for him. No, it gets swallowed by a darkness that muffles. The quiet is stifling. It’s never quiet in Brooklyn, but here… I don’t hear a fucking thing.

Until I do.