Down World by Rebecca Phelps (best new books to read .txt) 📕

there was a lake down a path behind the hotel, and that somewhere down there was a portal. I looked up at Brady. “Come with me.”

We snuck out of our room, glad that Sage and John didn’t seem to be anywhere around, and then tiptoed downstairs, through the lobby, and into that run-down courtyard with the broken lawn furniture. I looked around, having the craziest déjà vu of my life. Images of the hotel, the smell of the burned coffee, the way the light danced into Sage and John’s apartment—I felt like I was remembering it from a million years ago. The trees and vegetation were completely overgrown behind the building, but somehow it seemed that if I could pull away a couple of branches . . .

I climbed over some weeds and parted the very tall cattails blocking my path, my feet getting muddy in the swamp-like water. Brady followed behind me, not speaking. A few steps more revealed that there was indeed a path winding its way down into the woods. I stared at it in disbelief.

“How did you know?” Brady asked.

“Brady, I think I’ve been here before.” I turned and looked over his head at the top of the hotel, poking up above the high branches. At the highest windows, I could make out the billowy white curtains of Sage and John’s apartment. I thought of the red painted bathroom, the little coffee table by the window. The apartment of my dreams.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t remember,” I insisted. “It was so long ago. But I know I’ve been here. I’ve been in that apartment. And down this path . . .” I turned to look down the windy pathway, which widened and firmed up a bit as it went along. “There’s a lake.”

We walked in step with each other, side by side. It took about fifteen minutes to make our way down the gentle slope of the hillside, winding ever deeper into the darkening woods. I knew making our way back would be difficult, as it would be completely black by then. But I didn’t want to wait until morning.

We reached the lake as the sun was setting behind it in a brilliant puddle of orange and red. An evening breeze was picking up, offering some relief from the sticky heat of summer, and even though I was sure we’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes, I didn’t care. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight, oddly familiar. I turned to my left, looking for the boathouse that I was sure I would find. But it wasn’t there.

“Look for a boathouse,” I instructed Brady, and we both scanned the horizon in different directions.

“There.” Brady pointed to our right.

We walked the couple hundred feet down the shore of the lake to the little hut, discovering that its one little door was padlocked shut.

“If only we knew how to pick locks,” I said.

“I do,” Brady responded, reaching for a stone near our feet. He picked it up and pushed me behind him a bit. Before I could protest, he hurled the stone through the window, and the glass smashed with a resounding echo.

“Are you crazy?”

“Did you want to go ask your old friends at the hotel for a key?”

Brady cleared the remaining glass shards with his shoe, then knelt down and cupped his hands to boost me up.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?”

He smiled and shrugged. “I never said I was a saint.”

“Oh, I already figured that out,” I said, stepping up into his hand and climbing gently through the windowpane, landing with a thud on the other side. I turned to help him climb through after me.

It was a tiny little hut, full of bait cans and fishing tackle. And against one wall was what appeared to be a metal scaffold covered with a large white tarp.

I took a deep breath. Brady seemed to sense my apprehension, and he stepped forward, pulling the tarp down over the frame so it landed near our feet. Underneath, there were three stacked fishing boats. There didn’t seem to be anything odd about it.

I stood and shook my head. We were missing something. I looked up and down, searching the tiny one-room structure. I crouched down and looked under the scaffolding frame, but there was nothing but a concrete floor below it.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Brady. “I could have sworn.”

“Do you remember anything else from when you were little?”

“I don’t know.” I searched my brain, trying to elicit memories that had been buried for so long. “There were other people. Adults. And I was with my mother.” I walked over to the broken window and stood, staring out at the melting sunset beyond the tranquil water.

Brady came and stood beside me. “It’s pretty, anyway.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. The water was growing dark as the sun sank lower. And it looked at once so familiar and so new. My mind was racing in circles, and I couldn’t seem to nail it down. But then a thought occurred to me.

“What did Sage say?” I asked. “You drop a stone into a lake . . . an infinite lake . . .”

“Yeah?”

“They were swimming,” I remembered, my head swirling with images. My mother by my side. She was in a white bathing suit. She was worried. And she said something, something that had stuck with me over the years, but I could never place where I had heard it. “They won’t come out.”

“Who won’t?”

“That’s what my mother said. She said, ‘They won’t come out.’ They were swimming in the lake.”

That seemed to be all the information Brady needed. The next thing I knew, he was leaping out of the window. He ran over to the lake and peered into the darkening waters. “Come on!”

I watched as he kicked off his shoes and took off his T-shirt.

“Are you serious?”

“You want to know, don’t you?” he shouted, already making his way into the water.

I had to find a trash can to turn over