MirrorWorld

It’s so vast that I take a step back and slip on the SUV’s windshield. I tumble back with a shout, landing on the hood and rolling to the concrete. When I open my eyes, I’m under the bleak water of the mirror world. For a moment, I panic, but then remember that I’m only seeing this world. I haven’t fully entered it yet. I shift my vision back to the real world and stare at the blue sky above.

Blair and Cobb appear above me, their concerned looks blocking out the sky.

“What happened?” Blair asks.

“It’s not at the cemetery,” I say, and point back the way we came. “It’s behind us.”

They both turn around.

“The park?” Cobb asks.

Maya and I spent two full days exploring the park and its variety of tourist-friendly locals. Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, the thirteen-hundred-acre City Park is a massive collection of park greens, willow and oak trees, two stadiums, botanical gardens, an art museum, Storyland for the kids, a lake, several golf courses, and more, all featuring New Orleans’s telltale old-world style mixed with hints of bayou. In the mirror dimension, it’s populated by one single structure.

The colony.

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The structure is massive, resembling a half-sized black and gray version of Australia’s Ayers Rock — Uluru to the natives — an 1,100-foot-tall, six-mile-circumference sandstone formation. While Uluru rises from the flat plains of the bush, the colony is partially concealed by the tree-laden swamp, but it still manages to tower above it all. While looking at the closer, smaller colonies, I’d missed the one looming over them all, so big that it could be mistaken for landscape. I hadn’t seen it before because the cemeteries and smaller colonies kept my eyes on the right side of the road.

Several of the large six-winged centipede Dread lazily circle the perimeter above the colony. A few mothmen, just distant specks, flit about, entering and leaving the colony via one of many tunnels hewn in the outer wall. The base of the structure is hidden from me by the vast swampy jungle that is the mirror world.

I slip my vision back into the real world. Instead of the colony, I see a straight road leading to the New Orleans Museum of Art, which, with its Roman-style columns, looks like it would be more at home in Washington, D.C. Three colorful banners hang behind the columns like an afterthought, added when someone realized the parliamentesque style of the exterior didn’t scream, “art.” Beyond the museum is the park: endless trees with hints of buildings hidden within. I shiver at the idea that all the people using this park, to play with their children, watch a game, or experience a little culture, are surrounded by Dread, unknowingly moving through the heart of a colony. Of course, this also explains the many reports of hauntings within the park, and probably accounts for the prevalence of black magic, voodoo, and New Orleans’s dark history.

“Are you okay?” Cobb asks, helping me to my feet.

I take stock of my body, paying attention to aches and pains, and find … nothing. “I’m … fine.”

He shakes his head, unbelieving. “Don’t be macho.” He reaches for my head, pulls me down to inspect the fresh stitches. “What the … this was a good gash, right?”

I never saw it, but remember the tree branch cracking against the top of my head. “Allenby stitched it?”

“But there’s no wound,” he says. “There’s just a line of stitches. Lift your shirt.”

I comply and am surprised when Cobb flinches away from me. “Holy shit.”

I don’t look. I can’t. “I’m still changing, right? Becoming like them?”

He shakes his head. “You look … normal. Better than normal.” He motions for me to look, and I do. My body is healed. No cuts. No scrapes. No scabs. And the vast amount of bruising covering my torso is gone. I might not look like a Dread, but this kind of healing must come from them. And now that I’m thinking about it, I feel stronger and more energized than I can remember feeling ever before.

“So, I guess that’s good news,” he says, then changes topics, perhaps sensing my discomfort. “What did you see?”

“You don’t want to know.” I head for the back of the SUV, pop the back door, and open my gear bag.

Before I can dig inside, Blair steps up next to me, holding out a smartphone. “Still nothing on the local tracking app, but—”

The phone chimes. We all flinch.

“It’s got a signal,” Blair says, as I take the device.

A map of New Orleans centered on my location is displayed on the phone. A blue dot reveals my position just before the bridge. Using my thumb to move the map, I scroll upward. A red dot appears, dead center in the park, on the north end of Scout Island, surrounded by Couturie Forest, the only swath of forested bayou to be found in the city. On the plus side, she’s not far. Not so much on the plus side, it’s going to be a slog reaching her, in either dimension. Despite the good news of locating Maya, something confuses me. “This is more than a half mile away.”