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“What?” the man says.

The bartender keeps polishing a glass. “It’s too much. A multicar pileup, yes. Feral dogs, yes. An old man dragged off, yes. All that can have a logical explanation. But heading in one direction and arriving from the opposite one? What are you trying to tell us? That we’re caught in a portal from another world? A little snow globe that we can’t escape?” The bartender’s lips twitch. “One apparently inhabited by monsters.”

The man spins on us. “You think I’m lying?”

Caleb gives a derisive snort. “Duh.”

“You can see the problem, sir,” Noemi cuts in, her tone diplomatic. “You were angry about the car crash. You blamed us even after we explained. You were upset that no one would ride to the next town for you. Now you come back with a wild story about going in circles and being attacked by a monster? It sounds as if you’re making fun of us.”

The man’s face mottles red, and he rises, as Caleb pulls Noemi back.

“It sounds,” Caleb says, “like you’re getting some kind of petty revenge. We told what you consider a wild story, and so you’re one-upping us.”

“And my leg? Did I cut that open, too?”

Henry glances my way. We both know something’s happening out there.

“Looks like a dog bite to me,” Caleb says. “One of those stray dogs bit you, and that’s why you had to come back. And now you’re having some fun by spinning a wild story and then you’ll mock us when we believe it.”

“You don’t believe it?” The man jabs a finger at the door. “Go on out there. See for yourself.”

“Go for a walk along an empty road with feral dogs in the forest?”

“Can we stop this?” I say. “I don’t actually care if this guy’s trying to prank us. The last thing we need is to fight until someone marches out there and gets hurt. We just need to wait for morning and—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the man snarls. “You don’t get it. This asshole”—he jabs his finger at the bartender—“is making jokes about snow globes, but that’s what this is. Some kind of box, and we’re all trapped in it. Like a—a—a pocket universe.”

The bartender laughs. “Saw that on Star Trek, did you?”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s the sad part.”

When the man steps toward the bar, Henry gets in front of him.

The bartender continues, musing aloud, “I wonder how that works. Is my deed for this place still valid in another reality? What are the business prospects in a pocket universe? Limited, I’d think, if it’s as small as he says. A six-person customer base is never paying for these renovations.”

“Could you not, please?” I ask.

He meets my eyes, and in them, I see a flash of comprehension, as if he can see my thoughts and know that I’m not buying these stories anymore. That I understand something very wrong is happening here, something unnatural.

I brace, expecting confusion, concern, some sign that he thinks I’ve lost my mind. But he only smiles wide, as if delighted, and then he nods … and the bar crumbles around me.

TWENTY-THREE

I dive to the floor, hands over my head, shouting for the others to take cover as the building collapses. Nothing happens, though. I see the building collapse, but it’s utterly silent, falling in on itself without making a sound.

I lift my head to see everyone frozen in place. Caleb and Noemi stand beside the table, hand in hand, Noemi’s mouth open, as if stopped in mid-sentence. The newcomer on his feet, glaring toward the bar. Henry has one foot raised, as if he’d been stepping over to quietly ask the bartender to stop mocking the new guy.

And the bartender? He’s the only one moving, still polishing that glass, gaze on his work.

I look around me as my heart pounds, my brain screaming that I’m hallucinating again.

I’m lying on my stomach in the remains of the bar. It’s as if time has fast-forwarded fifty years. The building is a ruin, half the roof missing, the rest of it sagging. All the windows are empty holes. The chairs and tables lie broken, piles of rotting wood.

The smell hits. The stench of rot and must and small dead things.

My gaze lifts to one wall. The inside of the bar had been cozy and tongue-in-cheek, like a hipster version of an old country dive bar. There’s no “hipster” here. Definitely no “cozy.”