Page 7 of The Otherworld

Ocean: gray, empty, unforgiving.

Sky: dark, angry, preparing to storm.

Fingers: freezing, stiff, wrapped around the yoke.

Heart: pounding, pounding, pounding.

I sweep my gaze over the waves below, searching desperately. The coming storm has made the whole world go dark. A mass of black clouds churns in the west, flashing with rods of white lightning.

“Come on, Adam, where the hell are you?” I rasp, scanning the swells below.

Finally, I see something:

A familiar de Havilland Beaver, half-submerged in the cold, black water.

My stomach plummets. I force myself to breathe. I need to land, but the seas are rough—getting worse by the minute. One wrong move and I could catch a wing or dig my floats, tip my plane, and get swallowed by the ocean.

It’s a risk I have to take.

Banking hard left, I start to descend—my heart lifting into my throat as I watch my altimeter spiral down, down, down. Within moments, my floats are skidding over the tops of the frothing waves. I slow to a stop about fifty feet away from the wreckage. Close enough.

Shoving open my door, I scramble down the ladder and dive into the next swell. I barely feel the cold, though the water must be fifty degrees. My lungs burn as I stroke through the waves, arm over arm, kicking hard against the current. Finally, I make it to the cockpit of the wrecked floatplane and claw my way through the torn-open door.

That’s when I see him slumped over the copilot’s seat. His face is submerged in the water, his arm twisted behind his back.

“Adam!” My voice tears out of my throat as I lunge forward to grab him.

His skin is as cold as ice. There’s a deep gash in his chest, wet with more than water.

I pull my hand back.

Blood.

I jolt awake, sweating and gasping for air, my bedroom spinning around me—

My bedroom.

I’m dreaming.

I was dreaming.

It was just a dream.

I’m still gasping, hyperventilating, shaking—

Breathe, Jack. It was just a dream.

I clutch my wet face, digging my fingertips into my hair. The bedsheets are stuck to my arms and chest. My stomach is doing somersaults, and all I can see in my mind is blood, Adam’s blood—

I look at my trembling hands.

It was just a dream.

But could it be true?

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe deeply for a few moments, trying to calm my racing heart. When I open my eyes again, my gaze lands on the other bed.

His bed.

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