Trouble on the Water

The evening was clear and warm, the kind of summer evening that made the heat of the day feel almost worth enduring. The sun had begun its slow drop toward the horizon, and the air over the Columbia River was finally cooling. The river itself lay smooth and still, broken only by the occasional splash of a fish taking something off the surface. Frogs called from the weeds along the bank, their quick notes mixing with the deeper, slower throats of bullfrogs hidden somewhere in the cattails.

A man stood in the bow of a small skiff, rod in hand, pitching his lure into the weeds for bass. He was average height, about five foot eleven, and a bit overweight, but there was a steadiness in the way he moved that hinted at the raw athleticism he'd carried in younger years. His balance was sure. His hands were calm. He worked the trolling motor with one foot and guided the boat down the bank, dropping his lure beside pockets in the cattails and letting it fall where a largemouth might be waiting.

His brown skin had been darkened by hours on the water into a deep, red-hued tan. Sweat had dried at the edge of his fishing shirt. He squinted against the light, gave the rod tip a small twitch, and felt the lure drag through weeds. Then something tugged back. It was small at first, just a change in pressure, a living weight on the other end of the line. He jerked the rod up and set the hook.

The water exploded.

Weeds tore loose as the fish thrashed, and the rod bent hard under its weight. He hauled back, cranked the reel, and tried to pull the fish clear of the reeds before it could wrap him up and break free. It was a big one. Maybe the biggest he'd hooked all season. Maybe the biggest he'd ever hooked.

"Come on," he grunted, leaning into the rod. "Stay hooked. Just stay hooked."

The fish surged again, ripping a line through the surface weeds. He reached down with one hand and grabbed the net leaning against the gunnel, lifting the rod high to bring the fish up. A beautiful largemouth rolled near the boat, green and silver in the fading light, its mouth wide, its body thick. It thrashed twice more. He slid the net under it and lifted with a sigh of relief and a rough little grunt of triumph.

"That's what I'm talking about!"

He smiled wide as he worked the lure free from the bass's mouth. He had just turned to grab the hand scale he kept in the boat when a strange tingle ran up his spine and stayed there. At first he thought it was a chill, but the evening was still warm. Then he heard it: an almost imperceptible rumble in his ears, like a train passing miles away, except lower. Deeper. Almost below hearing.

He was trying to clamp the scale onto the fish's mouth when the riverbank flashed. A line of light appeared in the air beside the boat and lengthened vertically, a bright seam splitting open where nothing should have been. The seam widened into an opaque, ragged gash hanging above the mud and weeds, as if the air itself had been cut and something on the other side was pressing through.

Without thinking, he dropped the bass back into the water. The fish vanished with a splash. He barely noticed.

The gash pulsed with soft blue light. Its edges trembled, then slowly firmed, smoothing from a torn wound into something almost circular. The surface inside it looked solid and liquid at the same time, like a wall of colored glass with water moving behind it. He eased the boat around, trying to see the other side, but no matter what angle he took, the strange blue wall seemed to face him directly. His mouth went dry.

He lifted the front hatch beneath the bow and pulled out the shotgun he kept stored there. It was nothing fancy, a Mariner-style Remington 870 he had bought after another fisherman had threatened him on the water. The man had pulled a gun over some imagined claim to a fishing spot, and Ash had driven away with his hands shaking and his anger burning cold. After that, he'd decided he would keep something in the boat at all times, just in case another crazy bastard who thought he owned the river actually did more than threaten.

He brought the skiff up onto the bank as far as he could, grabbed the shotgun, and stepped out into the mud. The portal hummed in front of him. Ash pulled out his phone and took a picture, then another. The screen showed the impossible thing clearly enough that his stomach tightened. He switched to video and aimed it at the blue circle.

"Hey, guys," he said, his voice quieter than he expected. "I don't know what the heck is going on here, but I was just fishing, and this crazy portal thing opened up right next to me."

He shifted, trying to get both his face and the portal in frame. "I swear this isn't a prank or AI or anything. Something crazy is happening out here. I'm just going to check it out a little bit."

He sent the video and pictures to his family just in case he didn't get another chance. Then he propped the phone on the boat's console, aimed it toward the portal, and hit record again. For a few seconds, he just stood there with the shotgun in one hand and the river behind him, listening to that low vibration crawl through his teeth.

Then he picked up a rock and threw it. The rock passed through the blue surface as if nothing were there. It landed in the weeds on the far side with a small, ordinary thud.

Ash stared, then frowned. He grabbed a larger rock and threw it harder. It cut through the glowing circle without slowing and bounced across the mud behind it, just like it would have if the portal had been nothing more than a trick of light. That made no sense, but it also made the thing seem less solid. Less like a wall. More like some kind of visual anomaly hanging in the air.

The portal kept pulsing.

"Hmmm, what the heck..." he muttered, though his voice held more curiosity than fear.

He moved closer. Every part of him knew this was stupid, but fascination pulled at him, urging him forward. He might be the only person on Earth seeing this. When he posted it online, people would lose their minds. Millions of views, easy. News stations. Scientists. Everyone would want to know what he'd found.

He raised the shotgun and very gently poked the barrel into the plane of the portal's face. A strange vibration ran through the metal, up his hands, and into his wrists. Nothing else happened. He swallowed, shifted his grip, and reached out with his free hand. Just a touch. Just enough to feel what it was.

His fingertip met the blue surface.

The world yanked him forward.

Ash had no time to shout. No time to drop the shotgun. The riverbank vanished, the evening light snapped away, and he stumbled into darkness. His boots hit damp stone. He caught himself against a rough wall, heart hammering, shotgun still clutched in both hands.

The air smelled of wet rock, old dirt, and something sour he couldn't place. For a moment he could see almost nothing. Then a faint light began to gather around him, barely there, as if the darkness itself had thinned just enough to let his eyes work. He was in a tunnel. The ceiling was low and uneven. Moisture glistened on the walls. The floor beneath him was mostly smooth, but gravel shifted under his boots when he moved.

He spun around, searching for the way back. At first he saw nothing. Panic rose hard in his chest. Then he spotted it: the portal, or what was left of it, hanging behind him like a muted gray stain in the air. It was no longer blue. No longer bright. It looked dead compared to the thing on the riverbank.

He reached for it. Pain lanced through him the instant he tried to push back. It wasn't like touching something hot or sharp. It went deeper, through his nerves and bones, a warning his body understood before his mind could. Trying to force his way through would be a very bad idea. Ash pulled his hand back, breathing hard.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay. Find another way out."

He turned to face the tunnel. There was only one direction that seemed to lead anywhere, so he started walking, shotgun ready. The faint light around him moved with him, just enough to keep the black from swallowing everything. After a short distance, the passage forked. He paused, listened, and heard only dripping water and his own breathing.

He went left.

The floor sloped slightly downward. The walls and ceiling looked rough-hewn in places, natural in others, as if someone had started carving a mine and then given up halfway through. Against one wall, a cluster of faintly glowing crystals jutted from the stone. They looked a little like quartz, except the light inside them pulsed slowly, too regular to be reflected light.

Ash stared at them for a moment. Then he turned the shotgun around and struck the cluster with the butt. The crack echoed down the tunnel. A decent-sized piece broke loose. He picked it up, felt a faint chill against his palm, and put it in his pocket before moving on.

He had just leaned in to inspect the rest of the crystal growth when voices drifted through the tunnel. Low. Guttural. Wet at the edges. Ash went still. It wasn't any language he knew.

A flickering light appeared around the bend ahead. Firelight. A torch, maybe. He took a few steps toward it, then stopped himself before he rounded the corner fully. Some old primal instinct, buried under years of normal life, woke up and told him these were not friendly people. He pressed himself close to the wall and tried to stay out of sight.

The torch came around the bend, and three creatures followed it.

Ash's mind rejected them for half a second. They were too small to be men and too wrong to be children. Ugly, hunched things with dirty skin, sharp noses, and wide mouths full of crooked teeth. Goblins. That was the only word his brain could find, ridiculous as it sounded. They carried primitive but deadly-looking spears. One had a machete hanging from its belt.

For a heartbeat, they didn't see him. Then one of them turned its head. Ash's light-colored fishing shirt, made to reflect the sun, might as well have been a signal flag in the dark tunnel. The goblins stopped cold. Their mouths stretched into eager grins.

Then they charged.

Ash didn't hesitate. He had served a full enlistment in the Marine Corps infantry when he was young, and the old reflexes came back faster than thought. He shouldered the shotgun and fired at the closest creature, sending a load of 00 buckshot straight into its torso. The blast filled the tunnel.

He was already shifting toward the second target when he realized the first one was still coming. It staggered, chest torn open, but it didn't fall.

"What the hell?!" he shouted, fighting down panic.

He swung back and fired again, this time at its head. The goblin's skull snapped backward under the impact, and it finally crumpled to the ground. The second was close behind it. The third came on its heels. Ash aimed for the second one's head and fired. It dropped in one shot, but the third was already on him.

He barely got the shotgun down in time to block the machete. Metal rang against metal. The force of the blow shocked him. The creature was stronger than it looked. Stronger than it had any right to be. Ash shoved back, using his reach and weight to keep it off him. Those were his only advantages. He was already breathing hard, already aware of every pound he'd put on since his younger days.

The goblin snarled and hacked again. He drove forward in a sudden burst, knocking it back a few steps, then dove to the side. Gravel tore under his shoes. He racked the shotgun and brought the barrel around. The little monster was almost on him again. Ash pulled the trigger with the barrel nearly resting against its chest.

The blast threw the creature backward. Blood and entrails sprayed out behind it. Somehow, impossibly, it tried to rise again, one clawed hand scraping against the stone, before it finally collapsed and went still.

Ash stayed on the ground, panting. The tunnel rang in the aftermath of the shots. Smoke drifted from the barrel. His hands shook around the shotgun. He stared at the bodies. They had been small. Dirty. Primitive. He should have been able to put them down easily. Instead, one had taken buckshot to the chest and kept coming. Another had nearly gotten inside his guard with a machete.

"No," he breathed. "No, no, no." He shook his head. None of this should be possible. Where was he? What the hell was going on!

He forced himself to move and sat up. With clumsy fingers, he pulled shells from the carrier on the shotgun stock emptying it and fed them into the magazine tube. One. Two. Three. Four. He listened between each movement, waiting for more voices, more feet, more torches. Nothing came. He did a quick mental check, five shells in the tube and one in the chamber. He wished he'd grabbed the box of shells still in the boat but how could he have possibly known he'd be sucked into some kind of dungeon and be forced to fight for his life?

When the shotgun was loaded, he pushed himself up to his feet and approached the bodies. They were already coming apart. The goblins disintegrated in front of him, their flesh turning to dark smoke that curled upward and faded into the tunnel air. When the last of each body vanished he saw not everything had disappeared.

Where each creature had fallen sat a small purple-black crystal, each about the size of his pinky finger. They didn't quite glow but gleamed in a way that almost seemed as if they produced their own light. The machete still lay on the ground dropped from the goblin he'd blasted at point blank. One of the spears had survived as well as a worn belt with a pouch on it. Everything else was gone. Not a drop of blood or patch of hair remained of the little monsters.

Ash stared at the objects, then down the tunnel beyond them. He was not on the river anymore, and whatever this place was, it was not empty. He would need everything he could get to survive. He bent over and started collecting the items left behind.