MirrorWorld

While the pool emptied of screaming youth, Alford dove straight in. The water tore his sunglasses away, and the sudden crisp coolness stung his recently burnt skin like lit fireworks, but he didn’t give his discomfort a second thought as his body arced down through the water to the unconscious, maybe dead woman. He wrapped an arm around her chest, shoved off the bottom, and rose up to find a lifeguard reaching down. While Alford fought against creaking joints to lift himself over the pool’s edge, the lifeguard hoisted the woman onto the concrete and went to work, performing rapid CPR.

Exhausted by fear and effort, Alford gasped for breath while he stood over the lifeguard. People all around began snapping photos and tapping out messages on their phones. Then, hope blossomed. The woman breathed, deeply. Just once. With her final exhalation, she said, “The darkness came for us,” and then departed the world, lying in a puddle of water, ten feet away from the man lying in his own blood.

LONDON, ENGLAND

“What do you think?” Kelly Allenby said, striking a pose while wearing a gaudy, feathery cap. It barely held her wild salt-and-pepper hair down, and in the small shop’s elegant surroundings, it looked as ridiculous as she hoped it would. “Am I posh?”

“Fit for a royal wedding, you are,” her husband, Hugh, replied, failing miserably at matching his wife’s natural British accent.

She swatted his arm. “Bollocks, they won’t let me within a block of the palace. And, please, no more accent.”

“Is it really that bad?”

She placed the hat back on the mannequin’s head. “I just like your natural accent better.”

“That’s right,” Hugh said, reverting back to his natural Hebrew accent, exaggerating the rough h sound. “Hhhow do you like my Hhhebrew?” Hugh was born and raised by Jewish parents who immigrated to the United States. His Hebrew accent emerged when surrounded by family, but otherwise he had a bland American accent, which to an American meant he had no telltale accent at all.

“Hhhilarious,” she replied, patting his face. She glanced at the shopkeeper and saw he was far from enthused by their antics. When they’d entered the shop, he’d greeted them kindly, no doubt sensing a sale. But it quickly became clear they were simply amused by his wares. “Time to go.”

She took Hugh by the arm and dragged him to the door.

“But I still need to try on the hat,” he said.

“You need to buy me lunch.”

The bell above the door chimed as Hugh opened it and poured on his horrible British accent. “What’ll it be then, love? Jellied eels, cockles in vinegar, or some soggy tripe?”

Allenby laughed hard, but the sound of her voice was cut short. At once, the pair fell to their knees. A fear unlike anything Allenby had ever felt suddenly twisted inside her gut. Something was behind her!

Hugh took her hand. “Kel, what—”

His eyes suddenly went wide. She watched the hairs on his neck stand straight like the most disciplined beefeater. He felt it, too.

And then he felt it more.

With a scream of pure fright, Hugh spun around. He scrambled away from something unseen, but felt. He climbed to his feet, screaming, out of his mind, and then in a flash of unforgiving violence, he was removed from his body. He had run into the busy street, directly into the path of one of London’s hallmark double-decker buses. The swift-moving, seven-ton vehicle struck him hard and carried him from view.

While the bus’s brakes squealed and its occupants shouted, Allenby sprung to her feet, pursued by something unseen, her need to race to her husband’s aid replaced by the uncontrollable urge to run in another direction. As she scrambled forward, she failed to hear the shop bell ring behind her. Oblivious to the still-moving traffic in the lanes beyond the bus, Allenby charged ahead, destined to meet the same fate as her beloved.

Unlike Hugh, she never made it into the traffic. The shopkeeper had seen everything, alerted by a sudden and fleeting spike of fear. He didn’t react in time to save Hugh, but he tackled Allenby to the pavement, holding her in place for five minutes while she screamed in unhinged terror. And then, all at once, the strange mania wore off. She wept for her husband, but only for a moment. Clarity slammed into her with a gasp and she took out her phone, scrolling through her contacts with a shaking hand.

NORTHWOOD, NEW HAMPSHIRE

The creak of the staircase sounded like the high-pitched whir of a dentist’s drill, making Maya Shiloh cringe. It wasn’t because she feared the dentist or that the sound would wake her son, it was because the creak came from three steps above and behind her.

She spun around with a gasp. The stairs were empty.

She paused halfway down the old wooden steps as a shiver ran through her body. Her arms shook, the nervous energy working its way out through her fingers. She clenched her fists. Reined in control. She’d never been one to scare easily, but the dream that had woken her …