I’m crying as I run. Not just crying, but snotting and whining like a hurt animal, each burning breath more of a wet sob that gets thinner and thinner the farther I go. I don’t understand what I just saw, what just happened to Ellie, but at the same time, I do. Not with my brain maybe, but some part of me, even at ten, understands that we had crossed the threshold into something other, something wrong, and now I had to find my way back across for my sake and for hers.

It seemed forever before the woods felt like normal woods again, though maybe I just didn’t notice at first. I was focused on keeping up speed and not curving off into a confused circle that would take me back to that strange garden and to the thing that had her. When I stepped out past the trees, I recognized the spot immediately. I was just down the road from a gas station Dad stopped at some times when he was surveying out this way. They could help me get our parents, get the police even.

So wiping my face and ignoring the burning stitch growing in my side, I stepped on the fog line and started back to running.

---

“You’re so slow.”

I could hear the good-natured laughter in Ellie’s voice when she said it, but it still burned a little. She was twelve to my ten, but I was starting to realize she wasn’t just my best friend, because I had a crush on her too. I’d have died if she knew, of course, so I never mentioned it or tried to let it show. Still, in the last few months I had found myself trying to act tougher about things, more grown up. And when she poked fun, which she rarely did, I noticed it a bit more than I had before.

This time, I just grunted in irritation. “You’re a giant. Your legs are twice as long.” This part was somewhat true—while she was no giant, she was half a foot taller than me and way faster at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. We’d been hiking through increasingly thick woods for half an hour, and not only was I getting tired, but some areas were so steep or choked with bushes that I just had trouble keeping up.

I half-expected another sarcastic comment, but instead she slowed down and put out her hand for me to grab as I reached a snarl of twisted branches that she’d easily vaulted over. Giving me a grin, she waggled her fingers. “That’s true. You’ll catch up though.” Returning her smile, I took the offered hand and made it past this latest barrier with an awkward hop. I barely stuck the landing, my feet sliding on wet leaves, and I glanced up at her with embarrassment before realizing she wasn’t looking at me any more.

She was looking at the garden.

Fifty yards away, surrounded by dark woods but somehow separate from them, was a thick wall of hedges punctuated by an open archway that contained a door of dull, red metal like an old penny. Not a solid door, but one made of crisscrosses and winding layers of…well, now I’d call it copper, though I don’t think that’s quite right either. And on one side of the door was a knob made not of metal but a smoky gray curling lever of wood, filigreed with symbols that felt slippery somehow, whether you were looking at them or trying to recall what they were later on. Below that lever was a small box that looked like a lock without a keyhole. I took all this in as we walked closer, my eyes drinking in every detail it could find and keep as my heart began to speed up. This is special, its beat said. This is magic.

I jumped when I heard a sharp whirring noise beyond the gateway that led into the garden. For some reason I didn’t look past the door to the source of the sound, but instead I looked at Ellie. Her eyes were already in the center of that place, watching the thing that was sitting up and staring at us through the red door. I expected her face to show the same uncertainty I was feeling, but she didn’t look uncertain at all, or even a little worried or afraid. She just looked terribly, terribly happy in a way that made me wonder if I’d ever really seen her look happy before that moment. I followed her gaze to find what had affected her so.

It was a mechanical man, at least at first glance. It had a metal torso with two arms of twisting wires and joints that twitched and shuddered in time with a cold ratcheting sound that came from somewhere deeper inside. It was sitting on a long stone bench with one leg on each side, and some part of my brain whispered that its legs weren’t right—the swirls of shifting metal were covered in thick grey moss that almost looked like matted fur, but I could still see that the knees bent backwards and terminated in sharp steel hooves.

I was still staring at those hooves when it turned and looked at us.

Its eyes were dark pits that would occasionally flicker with amber light, and like everything else about it, that orange flame kept time with some internal rhythm that would give it brief life every tick and tock. I sucked in a terrified breath even as it made a small hissing sound followed by a rapidly speeding up whir.

Come in, children.

I started stepping back, and that was my first mistake. I’d assumed Ellie was as freaked out as I was, but when I was out of the way, she immediately gripped the wooden knob of the door and pulled it open, stepping inside before I could even cry out. I had time to catch the door before it shut, but my fear made me hesitate, and instead I just called out to her from my spot a few feet back from the archway.

“Ellie! No! Get out of there!”

She turned to look at me, a strange smile on her face. “No, it’s okay. I remember this now. I remember this place from my dream. That’s why I knew we had to come here.”

It had been her idea to go hiking there, and she’d been insistent about the direction we went and the pace we kept, but I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Still, even if she had dreamed about this place, how did that make it better or safer? “It could be dangerous. We don’t know what…”

I will not harm you, children.

Ellie glanced at me again as though to say “see?” and then finished the distance to the bench where the creature sat waiting. Moving closer to the door, I looked around at the rest of the garden, afraid there might be more of those things lurking somewhere. It was a relatively small space—a fifty foot circle bounded by hedges and this singular door, and inside the circle, four benches at each of the cardinal directions surrounding an ancient-looking stone fountain that had long since gone dry. Moss and ivy competed for space on the fountain itself and the moldering bricks that flowed out from it, but other than that and the creature on the nearest bench, I saw no other signs of life. It was as my eyes went back to Ellie that I realized she was sitting down on the other end of the bench from the thing, straddling it like it was. I went to call to her again, tell her to come back, but the metal voice spun to life.

Would you like to play a game?

I could only see Ellie’s face in profile now, but it was enough to see that something was wrong. Had to be wrong. How could she get so close to that thing and not be scared? Instead she looked happy and excited, nodding and saying yes as soon as the creature finished speaking.

Excellent. It reached to its chest and pulled out something round. A large coin. With a kind of twitching flourish, it showed the coin to Ellie and then to me, twirling it with inhuman dexterity to show us both sides. On one side was a thin woman’s face smiling in the glow of rays of sunshine. On the other was the same woman, staring with hatred up at the moon. It struck me later that even with its attempts to show off the coin, I should have been too far away to see it clearly, but I had, whether with my eyes or something it put in my head…I saw it clearly and it sent a chill up my spine.

“Ellie, don’t d…”

Just a staring contest. We will stare until one gives up or the coin falls. With that, it put the coin between them and set it to spinning on the bench even as its amber eyes found Ellie’s and began to flare brighter. Looking back to her, I saw her eyes were locked in as well.

The contest had begun.

I thought about calling out again or going into the garden myself, but I was afraid of what might happen if I interrupted the game or distracted her. What if she lost? What would happen then? So I watched through the door, on the verge of tears, as the coin danced in a small twirling circle and my best friend and the monster held each other’s gaze.

I don’t know how much time passed before I realized it was going on too long. The coin was still spinning with no signs of slowing down, and Ellie was no longer smiling, her face becoming pale and drawn as she continued to look into the creature’s eyes without blinking. And when she spoke, her voice was trembling and afraid.

“I…I can’t stop. I can’t look away. Or close my eyes. Is…is the coin still going?”

I glanced down and then back up to her. “Yeah. It’s still spinning like it won’t ever stop.” I gripped the bars of the door harder. “Can’t you just get up and come back here?” I felt like I already knew the answer, but I had to ask.

“No. I can’t do anything but look into it. I don’t want to…I don’t want to look into it any more.” I saw a thin line of tears sliding down her cheek now, and it stirred enough momentary anger and courage in me that I grabbed the knob and tried to turn it. It didn’t move at all.

“It…the door, it’s locked now. I can’t get it to open!” I glared at the monster. “Open this door, you bastard!”

Another whir and then, I cannot. It can only be opened from the outside one way. From the inside, one way.

“Okay, how do I open it then?”

To open it from the outside, one must only truly want to come inside. You do not, so it will not.

Ellie was shaking a little now. “Please…help me….”

Swallowing, I gave the knob another weak twist before letting my hand fall. I couldn’t quite make myself look at Ellie now, so I just stared at the broken bricks between me and her. “I’ll go get your folks. Get somebody that can help. I’ll be back, I promise.” I meant every bit of it, but it didn’t make me feel like less of a coward. And when I started to run, I wonder how much I was running toward help and how much I was just running away from what I was leaving behind.

---

I reached the gas station, and after a couple of minutes of hysterical yelling from me, the lady behind the counter got enough to call our parents and the sheriff. I told them all that Ellie had gotten stuck in a place deep in the woods, and I went with our families and the deputies to try and show them where. It shouldn’t have been that hard—we’d explored parts of those woods before, and while we’d never gone in so deep, I remembered the way clear enough. But every time I thought we were nearing the garden, there would just be more trees or small clearings with nothing there. We stayed out there until it got dark, me getting more and more frustrated and upset as I tried to lead them to Ellie.

Eventually my mother took me home. People searched those woods for another week. They brought in dogs and a helicopter, but nothing helped. I was talked to several more times, and eventually I broke down and told them about the garden and the thing inside, even though I knew they’d think I was lying or crazy. And they did. First they were angry, then they were sad. I think there was even a time where people wondered if I’d hurt Ellie somehow. But there was no proof of that, so by the end of that summer, I was being home schooled between therapy sessions while Ellie’s parents went back into the woods every weekend to search for their little girl.

We moved away that next spring. By then I’d learned to say I’d just lost track of Ellie in the woods and that all the rest was just me being a scared and traumatized kid. I didn’t believe that at first, but in time I did, if only because it was so much easier. And over the years, I’ve gone from thinking about her every day to every week or two to hardly at all.

And then last week, I dreamed of the garden.

I don’t know if it was the same dream Ellie had, and I didn’t remember the details of it when I woke up, but that didn’t stop me from sensing the change. A door had opened somewhere inside me, and all the memories of it I’d tried to forget and deny had come crawling back out. I spent the next few minutes crying quietly next to my sleeping girlfriend before getting up to book a flight back to where I left my childhood behind.

The town looked different and alien as I traveled through it, and the gas station was now a restaurant that seemed to have been closed for some time. Parking at the edge of its lot, I walked back up the road to where I’d come running out of the woods that day. Sucking in a deep breath, I headed back inside.

In comparison to the town itself, the woods seemed very familiar and unchanged. I’d told myself a hundred times that this was all pointless if it had all happened. I hadn’t been able to find my way back as a kid, and I wouldn’t be able to now.

But as soon as I started going deeper in, I knew that wasn’t true. I recognized several landmarks, but more than that, I just knew which way was the right way, whether from memory, the dream, or some magnetic pull from something in the heart of that place. Heart thudding in my chest, I went faster and faster, and before noon I’d stepped over a stand of bushes and turned to see the hedge wall a few feet away.

The air seemed to go out of me then, and each breath was a thin wisp I had to fight for as I forced myself forward to where I expected the arch and the door to be. It was there, of course, and beyond it, I saw…

Oh my God.

It was Ellie. Her hair was long and streaked with white, but her face and body were that of a twenty-eight year old woman—still two years older than me. Her clothes had long-since rotted away, and bits of ivy and moss draped across her in some places, but her skin was otherwise unblemished except for her face, which had a worn, darker crease in the flesh from the corner of her eye down to the edge of her jaw. Her eyes were still locked forward, bound to the twitching amber gaze of the thing that sat across from her.

Ellie was so still that for a moment I wondered if she was even alive. How could she be, having stayed in this place for all this time? How was any of this possible?

But then I saw her chest stir slightly with a small, ragged breath and I let out a sob as I cried out to her.

“Ellie? Oh, I’m so sorry, Ellie. Are you…”

Hello, young man. Good to see you again.

Shuddering, I forced myself to look at the thing. “Please. Please let her go.”

I cannot. Only you can.

I reached for the wooden knob, and this time it turned easily. Swinging the door open, I started to step inside when something stopped me. I looked back at Ellie. “Can you move now? I’ve got the door open. Can you make it to me?”

Ellie’s face twitched slightly, and though she didn’t move her eyes, I could feel her focused on me. Throat jumping, she tried to make a noise, maybe say something, but all that came was a small hoarse whisper I couldn’t make out.

That will not work, young man. The door can only be opened one way from the outside. It can only be opened one way from the inside. And those that enter or exit must abide those same rules.

Frowning, I tried to understand what it was saying. Being careful with my wording, I spoke to the thing. “So I can open the door because I wanted to enter and I can enter so long as I want to enter. Is that what you mean?”

A rasping whir and then: Correct.

“Okay. Um. So now that the door is open, can’t I just get her and carry her back out?”

Incorrect. The door can only be opened one way from the inside and only one that opens it that way may leave.

I wanted to scream I was frustrated and terrified, but I forced myself to stay as calm as I could. I needed to understand if I was going to help her get out. “So for Ellie to leave, she has to be the one to open the door from the inside?”

Correct.

“But how the fuck is she going to do that? She can’t stop looking at you or even move. How do you open the door from the inside?”

It’s coin-operated.

My stomach turned to ice as I looked down at the inside of the door. On that side, the metal box beneath the handle held a large slot like you might find on a machine that accepted coins. I looked back at them.

And the coin that spun endlessly in-between.

“Can she take the coin? Stop it and take it? Use it in the door?”

She cannot. Nor can I. Only another can stop it. Take it. Give it to her. Give it to me. Or take it for themselves. Each coin has a singular purpose and a singular use.

I felt my hand trembling on the door. “So if I go in and stop the coin and give it to her, she would be free? She would be able to open the door and leave?”

Correct.

“But…what would happen to me? Would I be trapped in there without a coin to get out?”

A longer whir and then: I would produce another coin for another spin. Another contest. This time it would be with you.

“So I would be stuck in there unless someone else came and stopped the new coin. Gave it to me and took my place.”

Correct.

“Or I’d have to stare at you until I die of old age?”

There was a tinkle of chimes from somewhere in its metal bones that reminded me of laughter.

Oh no. I have many games. I would find us another. A louder jangle of notes and then. You should come in and shut the door. See what I can show you.

I was already stepping back as my eyes found Ellie again. The dark track in her cheek was glistening with fresh tears and she tried to say something again, but her lips would only spasm as a desperate, wordless hiss escaped. I didn’t have any words left either. Just terror and guilt and more than a little relief as I shut the door to the garden again for the last time.

Despite my fear, I did hold onto that door for a few moments. I tried to summon the strength to tell her I was sorry. To lie to her and promise I’d come back. But the apology would be for me and she deserved better than my lies. In the end, I couldn’t even look up at her. I just pushed against the door to make sure it was secure before backing away a few feet and turning to run.

I didn’t stop running until I was back in my car. Didn’t stop shaking until I was boarding the flight back home. And when my girlfriend asked how my trip had gone, I lied and told her everything had been fine.

I’ll lie to myself too. Tell myself I dreamed all this, or if I can’t swallow that, that I went for a hike in the woods where I once lost a childhood friend, and while I was out there, I let my imagination run wild. That may sound weak or cowardly, but I don’t care. You can’t judge me.

I’ve seen the real world. The world behind the world. And trust me, if you ever see it, you don’t look it in the eye.

Because it can swallow you whole.