Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – GREY

The city was filled with utter silence and the snow. I poked my head out into the street and took a good look at everything around me.

No matter how I tried to rationalize my surroundings, it didn’t look like I was in Toronto anymore. The streets were narrow and paved with flat stones instead of asphalt. The buildings were short and old-fashioned, and almost all the windows were dark. Everything was wreathed in snow and ice.

I took a deep breath. I needed to find someone to tell me where I was and what was going on. Halfway down the street, there was a soft light coming from the second floor of one of the buildings. I couldn’t tell exactly what the building was—not quite residential enough to be a house, no signs or shop windows that might indicate a business—but it was the best shot I had so far.

Careful to move quietly, in case the first hell-snake I’d seen caught up to me, I crossed the street and climbed the steps that led to the front door. I shakily reached up and knocked.

No response. “Hello?” I called as loud as I dared, then hesitantly tried the doorknob.

It was open. I froze as the door swung open on noiseless hinges, revealing a dim interior. The only piece of furniture in the room was an oblong wooden counter along one wall.

“Is anyone in there?” I called, more softly. As my eyes adjusted, I could see there were stairs at the back of the building, leading up to the room with the light.

Keeping the door open in case I needed an escape, I slowly crept through the room and started up the stairs. The floorboards were soundless.

On the second floor, I was faced with another empty room. No wallpaper, no furniture. I looked around in dismay. In the middle of the room was my light source: a single glowing lightbulb hanging on a wire.

I backed down the stairs and then out of the building. Trying to suppress the building panic, I tried the building next door, but it was locked tight and wouldn’t budge. Same with the next one.

“Most of them are locked. Nobody lives here.”

I spun around in shock. There was someone standing behind me in the middle of the road. He was tall, Asian, with long black hair, wearing a white button-up with the sleeves rolled up despite the snow flurries. He looked to be in his early twenties: someone who, under any other circumstance, I would have passed on the street without a thought.

“Then why are you here?” I demanded. “And where the hell are we?”

He folded his arms and tilted his head, frowning. “How did you get here?” he asked instead of answering my questions.

I took a half-step back. He was a lot taller than me, but looked about as light as a beanpole, so I could probably take him if it came to a fight. Unless he had something to do with those monsters, in which case I was screwed. “I… I don’t know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Where were you before you came here?”

“Um... near the waterfront somewhere,” I said, not sure how much information I should be giving him. Despite my suspicions, though, I had been looking for other people.

“Toronto, then,” he said.

“Yeah. Toronto. I was walking home from work and took a wrong turn, I guess.” Not that that made any sense whatsoever. Took a wrong turn at Queen and ended up in hell-snake limbo, that’s all. “Look, are you going to answer my questions? Where the hell are we?”

After a moment he let out a sigh through his nose. “It’s… not really easy to explain. I’ll be honest, I’m not completely sure myself. I guess I’d describe this place as a kind of pocket dimension.”

“Okay,” I prompted. “And what does that mean?”

A shrieking cry rose in the distance and both of us jumped. It sounded far away, but…

“We need to get out of here,” said the guy, taking a few steps down the road. “Those snake-looking ones are sentries. They don’t call unless they’re on something’s trail.”

My heartbeat sped up again and I spent a second wondering if it was smart to follow this kid—at the same time, though, I’d rather take my chances with him than with the hell-snake. Even if this guy was bad news, I just couldn’t make myself walk away, alone again in this hellish world. I lengthened my steps to catch up.

“So you know about the monsters,” I said under my breath as we moved. He seemed to know where he was going, taking us on a left off the next road we hit.

“Yeah. They’re the only things that live here, aside from us,” he said. “By the way, I’m Joshua Huang.”

“Camilo,” I said reluctantly. He sure had a normal-sounding name for a weirdo hanging out in a pocket dimension.

Huang actually stuck out his hand to shake as we were speed walking. I hesitantly shook it. Time to start explaining things, maybe?

“Okay, Camilo. We should try to get some things straight,” he said. We cut into an alley. “I call this place the Grey City. When I said it was like a pocket dimension, I meant that it seems to be another world that’s connected to ours, but… smaller. Kind of a reflection of the real city.”

I glanced around at our icy surroundings. “It sure is grey, but I don’t see an upside-down CN Tower or anything.”

Huang rolled his eyes. “Not a literal reflection, obviously. As far as I can tell, the Grey City borrows elements from the real world and uses them in different ways.”

“You apparently know your way around,” I said, not attempting to keep the suspicion from my voice. “Exactly how long have you been here? How did you get in?”

“I got here the same way as you.” He looked ahead and picked up the pace, which I doggedly matched. “There’s no real entrance to this place. It calls you in, wherever you happen to be in the real city.”

That did sound like my situation, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around everything he was saying just yet. As we exited the alley and came onto a main road, another shriek carried over the buildings and streets. Still faint, but… closer.

Huang slowed and pinned me with a look. “Okay. I’m going to take you to the one place the demons can’t enter.”

“Seriously, how long have you been here?” I asked, then finally voiced the vital question: “How do we get back home?”

“I’ll answer all your questions once we get to the Sanctuary,” Huang insisted, bouncing on his feet. “You do not want to meet those snakes again.”

“Okay, but…” I stopped. “How did you know I met the snakes?”

He threw up his hands. “You said you saw a monster! It’s not rocket science. We have to get going now before they find us. And I’m telling you I know someplace they can’t go.”

In his defence, it wasn’t that hard of a choice—horrible twelve-foot snake monster, or annoying six-foot know-it-all. I scowled. “Let’s go, then.”

This time we hurried without speaking and Huang took us on a nonsensical route through the city streets, even seeming to double back in some places. I couldn’t imagine how we could be making any progress, but after some time, we entered a new area of the city.

The streets were paved with round cobblestones, broken at even intervals by wide square islands where trees were planted. The trees were weird-looking: it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the snow and frost on them that made them white, but the bark and leaves were completely colourless. Similar white vines climbed up the buildings.

We heard the cry once more at about the same distance. Huang stopped and pointed at a building up ahead, which sat connected to the other buildings of the city, but standing above them.

It looked like a Gothic church with tall spires, but done on a budget, plain-looking shingles filling in the roof. Two heavy double doors stood out front, made of dark wood. The archway over them had been carved with branches and berries, mingling with the white vines all over it.

“There it is,” he said. “Sanctuary.”

I cautiously moved forward until I stood just a few steps in front of the wooden door. The place had an almost… peaceful aura about it. It reminded me of my childhood church. I reached out and took a door handle.

“Go, go, open it!” Huang yelled. I half turned to see that something had emerged from a nearby alleyway, white eyes gleaming. I didn’t get a good look at this one, but it had strange limbs that bent and grasped the earth like folded bat’s wings, its elbows up above its head and a terrifying array of claws splayed on the ground.

I didn’t need to be told twice. The door swung outward. Huang ran for it, the monster right on his tail. It made no noise at all but moved fast as anything, looming up behind him in an ungainly sprint.

Huang shot past me and I slammed the door shut behind us. I put my shoulder to it and prepared for that thing to crash into the door—but there was nothing. Not even a whisper of noise on the other side.

“Thanks,” Huang gasped, struggling for breath with his hands on his knees.

“So there’s more of them out there,” I said, out of breath myself. “How many? What are they? Why do they want to kill us?”

Huang shook his head. “I’m sorry… those are questions I can’t answer. I don’t know.”

“This is insane,” I groaned as the evening’s events started to sink in. I rested my head against the door.

“I felt the same way for a while,” Huang admitted. “I thought it was crazy that I was the only one who could get into this dimension. But you’re here, now. You’re another human who entered the Grey City.” He hesitated; I glanced back at him. “If you were one of them, you wouldn’t have been able to come in here.”

“Back up—you thought I was one of them?” I demanded.

“I’ve never seen another living person in this place,” he said earnestly. “I’ve been entering and leaving the Grey City for six months now. It’s always been just the demons and me. I couldn’t be sure.”

I was starting to form a new picture of this guy in my mind, maybe a tiny kernel of respect. “You’ve been here alone for six months?” I shot a glance at him.

He nodded, looking aside. “Travelling in and out, yes.”

I took a breath and shoved away all my panicked thoughts, all my confusion and doubts—I needed to focus on one thing. “How do we go home?”

“Unfortunately, we have no control over it,” Huang explained. “You leave the same way you come in. The Grey City decides when to send you back; you take a turn and you’re suddenly home.”

“So, I can open this door and go back right now?” I demanded.

He held up a hand. “Or, you can open that door and say hello to the thing that was just chasing us. There’s no way to know. We need to give it time to move on, just in case.”

I let out a breath. “Okay, okay. We’ll do that then.”

“And… you can let go of the door, man. It can’t get inside.”

It felt stupid to let go, knowing there was something that dangerous on the other side, but I made myself release my weight from the door and take a step back. Sure enough, nothing burst inside.

I took in our surroundings for the first time. We were in a wide entry hall, carpeted in plush red. Stained glass windows decorated by abstract shapes lined the hallway and a soft, golden light shone through them as if it were a sunny morning outside.

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I shook my head. Gradually I began to sit down, leaning my back against the door. The carpet was as soft as it looked.

Huang fidgeted from where he stood halfway down the hall. “Let’s go further inside.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m going to wait right here until we can reasonably assume that hellspawn is gone, then I’m going to open the door and find my way back home.”

Huang sighed and took a seat on the carpet himself. “Have you been listening to what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter. We leave when the City wants us to leave.”

“Hopefully that’s soon,” I said, still determined to stay on course. “There has to be some kind of pattern. Is there a particular place it usually lets you out?”

Huang was inspecting the wall. “No, not on this side. You end up back in Toronto wherever it was you left, but on this side the location doesn’t matter.”

“Have you tried writing down the places you leave from?” I demanded, trying to make eye contact. “Mapping the place? Finding out if there’s some kind of trigger that lets you leave?”

“Whatever you’re going to suggest, I’ve tried before,” Huang muttered.

“You sure? If you haven’t found a way out in six months, maybe you should be taking suggestions.” I was no genius, but there had to be some way to make sense of what was happening—if we made a map of the Grey City, that would be a starting point.

“There is no way out,” he insisted, glaring at me. “Not in the way you’re thinking. You’ll find out I’m right soon enough.”

 “Okay, okay,” I agreed to placate him. I put my ear to the door and tried to listen to the other side, though I should have figured I wouldn’t hear anything.

“So. Uh. Joshua,” I said after a minute of deeply awkward silence. “What do you, like… do? In real life, when you’re not being hunted by demons.”

“I’m a student. Psychology,” he told me. I’d expected him to give me a weird look at the sudden change of subject but he just looked kind of tired. I mean, what else was there to do when you were trapped in a dangerous dimension with a stranger? “How about you?”

“Nothing interesting,” I replied. “I work in a factory down by the waterfront.”

“I see,” he said, then paused. “Any family in the city?”

“Nope. Well, my cousin’s my roommate, but we don’t really hang out that often.”

“That’s good,” he said, and I gave him a look.

“Uh… why do you say that?”

“This whole thing can get hard to manage if you were living with a family,” he explained. “It’s not like people will believe you when you talk about this sort of thing.”

Shit. I’d been focused on getting out of here as soon as possible, but this was a recurring thing for him. If Huang had been going in and out for six months, the chances weren’t great that I’d get a free pass to leave forever. I pushed that thought away.

“Think it’s gone by now?” I asked, poking a thumb at the door.

“Maybe.”

“You’re the expert,” I frowned. “Do they usually camp out there and wait for you to come back out?”

Again, he avoided eye contact. By this point I was pretty convinced he was who he said he was, but it didn’t seem like he was telling me the whole story, either. “It can be hard to tell.”

“Ooh-kay.” I got to my feet. “If I try peeking outside… will it be able to force the door open?”

“Don’t think so,” Huang said helpfully. I scowled and steeled myself for a struggle, then opened the door a crack.

It opened into darkness, highly contrasted against the warm yellow light inside. I could hear the wind whistling and listened as hard as I could for the scuff of claws on pavement, but didn’t catch anything.

Huang sighed. “You’re really going to go back out there.”

“Yeah,” I said defensively. “Help me or not, I need to get back home. I can’t hide in this church forever.”

Huang reluctantly got to his feet. “Fine, I’ll watch your back.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised at how grateful I felt. It really wasn’t a small thing to decide to go back out there. “You… you must be used to running from these things by now.”

He just shrugged. I took a breath and opened the door.

It wasn’t the street we’d entered from. I stuck my head out a little further, mystified. The paving stones were gone and the ground looked to be made of packed, grey dirt. The buildings were less crammed together, standing apart with some space in between.

I stepped outside and Huang followed, also looking around.

“What the hell?” he asked quietly.

I swivelled to face him. “Is this new to you?”

He spun in a slow circle and quietly said, “…I have no idea where we are.”

We were emerging from the same church-looking building we’d entered, but it was now in a different location. To our right, the road continued into a more open space, the buildings becoming smaller and more sporadic.

I pointed. “That way looks like it might be an exit.”

Huang was fidgeting nervously with his hands. “You could be right.”

“Let’s go then. We’ve figured out it’s not great to stay in one place for long,” I prompted him, starting off. After a moment he caught up, still scanning our surroundings.

We hadn’t been walking for more than a few minutes when an awful noise rung out not far away—a strange, hoarse call, almost like a crow. Huang stiffened.

“That sounded like it was behind us,” I said, picking up the pace.

“I’ve never heard that one before,” Huang hissed under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear. “I don’t understand. Why is it suddenly changing?”

“Does it matter now?” I exclaimed. “…Should we go back to the church? Wait it out?”

The cry came again, much closer. A shadow appeared between us and the Sanctuary. “Forget it—just move!” Huang snapped.

 “Before, there was… another creature, that saved me,” I gasped as we took off. “Some shiny gargoyle thing. Maybe not all of them want to kill us?”

Huang shot me an urgent look that told me I was being stupid.

As the street opened up in front of us, I felt my panic rise. We were facing a wide, dark body of water. The swirling snow and fog made it impossible to see how wide, but there was no visible way across. Whatever was chasing us had us cornered.

“We’ll go this way!” Huang shouted, taking a right along the side of the lake. I took two steps and felt something heavy hit me in the back. The brutal force behind it sent me tumbling, landing shoulder-first and skidding far across the dirt.

I heard Huang swear. I struggled to get my bearings and my breath, pure adrenaline getting me to my knees. I looked up in time to see something the size of a truck rush at me.

It was covered in black plates of armour, loping on six grasping talons. Its bright white eyes were focused on me from it sharp, beaky face. I scrambled back and tried to get to my feet.

Suddenly Huang was in front of me, facing the thing dead on. “Run!” he snapped at me, and then he exploded into light.

In the second I was blinded, I found my feet, chose a direction and started running. The monster screamed. I looked back to see that it was fighting something nearly its size.

The shining dragon.

I looked for Huang and in a few moments realized the impossible—Huang was the shining dragon. My brain had needed a few seconds to make sense of what I’d just seen, and as his form had burst into light I’d watched those sharp-feathered wings unfurl from him. What was he?

The demon was doing its best to push past dragon-Huang. Huang was having none of it, rearing up on his back legs to grapple the monster back. The demon’s beak snapped a few times at Huang’s neck, but he pushed it away, then slammed his shoulder into it.

I wasn’t about to waste time watching the fight. I ran full-tilt along the shore of the lake, my footsteps thudding first on dirt and then on the wooden dock that ringed the water.

Something… shifted again, deep inside me. The texture and shape of the world awoke all around me, and from the water… something called to me. It was like a gentle, clear bell-tone that resonated with a sense other than hearing. Without words, it suggested that to save myself, I would need to go to it.

I vehemently ignored it and took the next street I saw, away from the water and away from the monsters fighting near its shore. Away from the calling aura until its voice dwindled and vanished from my senses.

I kept running until I couldn’t hear the sounds of the fight anymore. The buildings closed in around me again, the street turning back to pavement under my feet. I took a left and—

Stumbled to a halt as the cold suddenly hit me like a wall. The whole time I’d been running around the Grey City, I hadn’t felt cold despite the snow and ice. Now it hit like a train. I hissed, pulling my sweater around me as I looked up.

I was back.

Back in the real world. I could tell instantly. There was something in the light, the multi-coloured cacophony of the city that shone through even when masked behind the snowstorm. I looked behind me and saw only another Toronto alleyway, trash scattered around and graffiti scrawled on the walls.

Trembling, aching, and freezing cold, I started home.

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