He made it halfway down the side of the building, the entire fire escape shaking with his weight, when it happened. With several popping sounds, the entire metal structure actually gave away from the side of the building. With a great creak of rending metal, like an ogre screaming in rage, the fire escape—multiple barred platforms connected by the ladder—arched rapidly down toward the street while Joe hung in midair, clutching onto the falling structure. It reached across and plunged into the building on the other side of the alley, shattering glass and spraying fragments of brick and mortar into the air. It was incredibly loud in the dark of night, like a bomb exploding. Joe fell from the wreckage, dropping several flights through the air, but he landed cleanly in the alley, on his feet. From there he scampered away quickly as the twisted metal structure snapped into two sections and collapsed to the pavement; a violent showering of metal, glass, and brick.

Joe looked back, and through the moonlight and the cloud of dust billowing in the air, he saw Eddie climbing down the side of the building. He came from his window on the 8th floor and moved rapidly, like a spider, an impossible movement for a human because he was actually upside down, leading with his head as he scurried downward, moving along the surface of brick and nothing else. It was terrifying, inhuman, and Joe saw no more of it as he darted through the dark alley.

He emerged onto another road that was empty at the early morning hour. Beneath the streetlights he ran as fast as he could, as of yet unsure where he was going. He hadn’t many options—after all, he carried nothing but the orb. Not even his wallet, keys, or his cell phone—in his haste he’d left it all behind. It didn’t matter though. Only the orb mattered. And he had that.

He cut through another alley, thinking he should weave a twisted path through the city, to perhaps elude his pursuer. He did this even though he knew it was naïve. Eddie would find him, wherever he went.

The alley was thick with rats, and they did not scurry out of his way as they normally would. Joe had always hated them, the dirty, diseased animals that lived and bred in filth, and normally he wouldn’t dare proceed down such a dark alley that was choking with them. But these were unusual times, Joe thought, wielding the orb in his hand. It lit up again, but this time with a piercing blue light. It pleased Joe, because the blue radiance emanating from the orb was different. It felt cleansing, and it enabled him to see everything in the alley well. The rats and the garbage cans cast giant black shadows on the pavement and the walls all around him. Their sick eyes glowed a reddish yellow, and they were big. Too big, he knew—it was clearly a part of whatever dastardly scenario was cast onto him. He could almost feel something feeding on his fears, messily devouring them and taking great delight in spinning them back at him.

Joe gritted his teeth and the orb grew brighter yet, and ultimately the sick things shirked away from the light. Joe grinned, feeling out of his mind, and he actually thought lucidly about old role playing games that featured a wizard, holding back the forces of darkness with just such a magical device.

“Fuck off,” Joe said to them. So much for abra cadabra, he thought.

Deep in the alley were a few crumpled mounds that vaguely resembled bodies. They were covered in dirty rags and blankets—surely homeless denizens that had nowhere else to go. They were another such aspect of the city that Joe feared. Joe was not entirely certain they were indeed there, cocooned within those rags, but he had to assume they were. The stench was thick, and his suspicions were confirmed with the glimpse of a dirty hand emerging from one such mound. It’s long nails were cracked and grime-ridden.

Joe moved ahead, holding the orb before him like it was his shield. The monster came at him so fast he barely had time to react. It emerged from one such mound, a man so dirty and sick, in his brief glimpse of him Joe thought he resembled a baboon more so than a man. But he moved with the speed of a seasoned athlete, something a real homeless person should not have been capable of. Joe sidestepped the attack but otherwise didn’t acknowledge it as he kept running. He knew to some extent this was like a haunted house at a carnival, and that he shouldn’t give into any of the scares.

The alley opened up to another city street, but Joe decided he was done running. He turned around instead, feeling a surprising sense of calm about him. He was on the edge of another world after all, so the normal rules didn’t apply.

The alley was a long one, and behind him, in the light of the orb, he saw a lot of trash and debris, but it was otherwise empty. The monsters had subsided, at least for the time being.

“It’s time,” he said. He spoke directly into the orb.

The blue radiance shined brighter still, and Joe watched calmly as he saw two gleaming streaks of light emerge from the azure surface of the orb. They twisted and snaked their way through the air, animated and alive. The ends of those streaks drew two smooth arcs before converging, forming a circle. The newly formed ring of light then detached from the orb altogether.

It hung there in midair, in perfect silence, a frame of flickering blue fire. Joe marveled at the shimmering radiance before him, and the doorway it signified. Clearly that’s what it was. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.

Hesitantly, he touched the doorframe with his free hand, the one not clutching the orb. Though it looked like blue fire, it did not burn. It wasn’t even warm. It was, however, impossibly rigid, like it didn’t relate to this world. He could guess that the most powerful motor that man could ever create, with a million horsepower, would not budge or alter the doorframe by even a centimeter. But it was intuitive how, when he touched the orb to it—it yielded instantly. He played with it and saw how he could use the orb to pull the frame into or away from its center, to either grow or shrink the doorway.

“It’ll be easier to settle this now, Joe.”

The voice was loud, coming from the mouth of the alley, where it adjoined to the street on the far side. Eddie stood there under the dim light of streetlamps. As Joe watched, Eddie began to creep into the alley, walking slowly toward him. But he felt the raw energy that simmered just under the surface, and he knew that Eddie was liable to burst into action at any moment.

“Eddie. You’re into something that’s really fucked up and I don’t like it,” Joe declared.

“So let’s go, then,” Eddie replied. “We settle this right here. Right now.”

He thought about the raw terror he saw from Jennifer, and, at times, from Chrissy as well. He wondered how many others there were. How many others were being terrified by this monster.

“You’re hurting people, Eddie.”

“Oh, boo fuckin’ hoo,” he replied. “Don’t try to act like you suddenly have principles, Joe.”

“Eddie… stay back. I mean it.”

But he kept approaching. When he finally did break into a run, Joe could see the desperation written on his face. Eddie could mask it with threats and insults, but his desperation was very real. It made Joe realize that Eddie feared him, because Joe was powerful, just like he was. As powerful as anyone else—if he wanted to be.

Joe threw a leg into the newly-created doorway and felt solid ground on the other side. He took one last look at Eddie, sprinting toward him with a snarl on his face and madness in his eyes, before ducking his head into the door, followed by the rest of his body. On the other side, Joe stood in a world bathed in glowing twilight, but it was not of concern at the moment as he brought the orb to the doorframe and thrust it inward rapidly. The portal relented like it was made of tissue paper, and it shrank instantly, first down to the circumference of a manhole, then to that of a basketball. Desperate, Joe actually punched at the shrinking doorway with the orb, and then watched how the circle became broken. The liquid streams of light retracted quickly back into the surface of the orb, where they vanished altogether, as though they’d never been. The doorway was no more, and all was quiet, save for Joe’s heavy breaths.

He looked around him and saw no one was there. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.

It was curious though, because it appeared he stood in the exact same alley from which he’d come from. But he quickly realized this was not the case.

It wasn’t nighttime, for one. The sky overhead was a brooding overcast, and the world was draped in a twilight so thick he could almost feel it weighing heavily on his skin.

He paced slowly toward the exit of the alley where he looked upon the D.C. city street. It was windswept and dead. There was no traffic, and there were no people about, either. Some cars were parked along the street, but they were ancient husks—rusted and broken, like they’d been left there years ago, and had been untouched ever since. The buildings alongside of him were ruined things, with most of their windows shattered, and those that weren’t were covered in the dust and grime of ages past.

As Joe gaped at the dead city, the wind gusted and cast a ghostly, haunting moan across the mouth of the alley. He swallowed, and his newfound confidence took an awful hit, as he asked himself what the hell had he gotten himself into.