Page 32 of Changeling
“Well we’re not going to figure anything out with just window shopping.” Nathan took a step inside the room, and Jim and Sasha were right behind him. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as they looked around the room.
“Well, this is exciting,” Nathan said. “Room number two?”
They went to the next room and, again, Sasha checked above its door first. This door had the same inscription except instead of saying ‘one’ it said ‘two’ as if the rooms were counting up.
They entered the second room together again and came up with the same plentiful bounty of absolutely nothing.
“Keep checking this one,” Nathan said, heading for the doorway. “I’m moving on to number three. If this keeps up, it’ll take us way too long one at a time.”
“Be careful,” Sasha called after him.
Nathan nodded as he left. Before entering the third room, he used his flashlight to check above the door again, just to be sure. It said what he expected, the same thing as the others but with the number ‘three’.
Nathan stepped over the threshold...and was suddenly no longer standing in a plain white room. The very walls shifted and changed around him into some other place. It was darker, but Nathan couldn’t help feeling that he recognized the décor of this new room, like maybe he had been in it before.
“Guys!” Nathan called, looking around the room carefully to take stock of everything. This room was larger than the white room could hold, filled with furniture but all old and ratty like no one lived here. There was a rumpled set of blankets on the floor. Nathan still couldn’t shake the feeling that it looked familiar.
Turning back toward the door, Nathan called again. "Sasha! Jim!"
“Nathan!”
Nathan had expected a replying call but not that one. It came frombehindhim, and Nathan knew that Sasha and Jim would have to come through the door. He turned around, looking back into the dark room that shouldn’t exist, and gaped.
"Jim?"
"Youcould be the one to clean up once in a while, you know," this new figure of Jim said, starting to fold up the rumpled sheets.
"Yeah, yeah," came a grumbled reply, asanotherNathan entered from a doorway that hadn't existed a moment ago. "I'm coming, okay?" He started to help Jim fold up the sheets, neither of them seeming to notice the real Nathan watching them.
Nathan remembered now why the room looked so familiar. Enid, Oklahoma. He and Jim had squatted in an abandoned house after escaping a run-in with Gabriel.
“Nathan?”
Nathan turned back to the door. He was only a couple feet from it and he could see Jim and Sasha standing just outside the room. They were looking into the changed scenery at theotherNathan and Jim with stunned expressions.
Nathan felt immediate relief. “You see them too?”
“It’s us,” Jim said.
“What’s going on? How did you trigger this?” Sasha asked as he and Jim stepped over the threshold.
As soon as their feet touched the floor, the scene disappeared, returning the room to empty, stale white.
Jim grabbed Sasha’s arm and glanced between the incubus and Nathan. “Hang on.”
Pulling Sasha along with him, Jim slowly started to back out of the room. The second they were in the hallway again the scene returned, right where it had left off with the other Nathan and Jim packing up their things. The real Jim then stepped inside alone and the scene remained.
“Just as I thought."
Nathan looked back frustratingly at his brother. “Would you mind sharing with the rest of the class?”
“Come here,” Jim said, gesturing Nathan toward him.
Nathan followed Jim out of the room, not at all surprised when the scene faded behind him. Jim gestured Sasha to go into the room alone, and when Sasha stepped over the threshold, the room changed into something completely different.
It was night. A hotel room, by the looks of things. A second Sasha wasn’t immediately visible, but a bouncing brunette on the bed certainly was. Nathan couldn’t help smirking.
“Oh yeah,” Sasha said with a tilt of his head, watching the way the very naked girl was moving languidly on top of his very naked other self, “I remember her. This was...three years ago.Three.”
