There was much talk. So much. Voices coming from every angle of the world, every corner of the universe. Far too much to focus on everything being said, and yet their words were decipherable. Stranger things Jack had never heard. The whisperings didn't quite use language. They were deeper than human communication was. They used more advanced methods of speaking, if it could really be called that, and what they had to say somehow struck chords in the very core of Jack.

He hardly realized he was himself, in those moments. Wasn't aware of his physical body, or the world he knew and the people in it. He knew only the whisperings, and it seemed, to him, as if he'd been listening to them for eternity without really hearing them—but now . . . now it was different . . .

Then something else entered his realm of consciousness. A sensation coming from near his head.

He remembered he had a head. And a body. And it was all, at present, pressed against a mattress and a pillow. His bed. He was in his bed, in his room, in his house.

Jack's eyes blinked open, taking in the daylight that poured through his bedroom window. His room was all in order, just as it had last looked when he'd been in it. He was vaguely aware, however, that time had passed. This morning was not the morning following the night he'd last been here. In this world, there was time. Where he'd gone, there was no time. And here, time had passed. How long had it been since he'd laid in his bed like this? He wasn't sure. The room was orderly, suggesting it hadn't been too long at all.

Jack's mind raced, chased by the words from worlds beyond his own that he now heard. Words from between the layers of the very air itself. How much he understood, now! He felt as if some piece in the puzzle of himself had been put into place. He'd grown immensely since last seeing this room, last lying in this bed with his dream-glossed eyes opening onto a morning of light.

He'd spent days contemplating that shadow since he'd first touched it, first allowed his hand to pass through the overlapping curtains of shade and felt the coolness of its insides. At first, he hadn't been entirely sure what to do with the new experience. As the time passed, though, he'd become more bold with it, eventually, in the early morning hours of May first, walking directly into it—into that strange gateway—and leaving everything he knew behind in his bedroom. What had been there, inside that shadow (or outside everything all other humans believed was real), was not something he could entirely explain. Not a place, not a state of mind, and yet wholly consuming. He couldn't even recall all of what it was like, because there, he hadn't been himself, and here, back in such a concrete world, he was back inside a body with a brain and nerves and bones. He was too physical to really interpret where he had been. All he knew was that it had explained more to him of this reality than he'd ever known, and that resulted in a strange contentment, which now softened him through and through.

The dampness against his head came into his mind, again. He'd been so calm and satisfied staring out into his bedroom, lying perfectly still, thinking about what all he'd encountered. But now, this feeling came back, and he wondered what it was.

Sitting up slowly, Jack looked down at his white pillow to see a splotch of bright red that had seeped into the fabric. Disconcerted though not startled, he touched his fingers to his left ear and withdrew his hand. Blood. It must have come from his ear. Though he wasn't upset or shocked, he was pensive. Why would his ear be bleeding?

A noise came from somewhere in the house. A cabinet opening in the bathroom across the landing. The sink starting up. And it was then, with the introduction of some common household sounds, that Jack noticed the ear he'd bled from didn't catch them. Only his right ear actually heard the noises being made; his left ear was deaf to them. Or, at least, too preoccupied with the whisperings he suddenly realized were only there, in that left ear.

His mind immediately moved to Miss Collins. She'd gone blind in one eye, hadn't she? And hadn't she told Jack that the "blind" eye saw much more than her seeing eye ever could? This was what appeared to have happened to him. His right ear was fine, but he'd gone "deaf" in his left, even though it was actually hearing more than any other human being's ears could. It was unreal, and yet it seemed the most sensible thing in the world. So much was clear, all of a sudden, though Jack wasn't surprised by that fact in the least. He felt more content than he'd ever felt in his life. His world was strange, but he was free to cherish it, now.

The door suddenly opened. Jack turned to see his mother step into the room. At first, she didn't notice him. Just walked slowly in, dust rag in hand, as if ready to clean the empty space her son had left behind. She even sprayed Jack's desktop and began to swipe away at it, when, all of a sudden, her hand slowed, she paused, her head moved around until her face was to the boy on the bed.

A moment passed. Silent yet full of sound, for Jack. Full of whispers. He knew his mother hardly believed her senses. Knew he'd been gone longer than he realized. Knew, too, that the woman felt almost afraid of him. But he wasn't disconcerted. Felt no fear. Felt only an immense calm.

A smile crept across the boy's face.

His mother suddenly put her fist against her mouth, pressed her knuckles to her teeth, cried out. Wrung her hands. "You're real, aren't you? You're my Jack?"

And he nodded his head, gently.

She stepped toward him, almost cautiously, expecting him to vanish before she reached him. But he did not, just sat on the bed and waited for her, and when she reached him, her arms enclosed his slender form. She was startled to feel how cold his body was, how sharp his shoulder blades poked out from his back. Then, holding him at arm's length while she crouched on the floor, looking up at her boy, Mrs. Kemper patiently, calmly asked, "When did you last eat, Jack?"

To which he responded, "I can't remember."

She nodded and was about to help him off the bed when she caught sight of the blood-dark stickiness matting the hair around his left ear. Glanced down and saw the bright red on his pillow. Her expression turned.

"I'm ok, mother," Jack hurried to assure her. He held her hand away from his ear, where she'd been about to put it. "Really, I know it doesn't look that way, but I'm fine right now. Can we just go downstairs?"

Clearly unsettled, Mrs. Kemper nevertheless acquiesced. She was too relieved to have her son again to frustrate him with questions. Those moments for talking would come, likely as soon as she got him some food and he warmed up.

Sliding from his place on the mattress, Jack allowed his mother to take his hand and lead him away from his bed, from the red spot on his pillow. As he moved to the door, he caught sight of the cat shadow, resting under the corner of his desk, as if it was waiting for him to return. Whether it was a comprehending creature in and of itself or merely a portal into the realness most human beings never knew, Jack was uncertain. His conclusions about what he saw and heard and felt were still full of holes, but now, somehow, some way, he knew a contentment that he hadn't known before. He understood that whatever his world was made up of, it was more real than what everyone else knew, not less real or imagined, as he'd so often been fearful of. All the questions the doctor had asked, all the teachers in his past who had recommended he be put on medication for his daydreams, all the others who'd laughed at and teased him—none of it mattered, because he knew, now, that he was right, and they, while not particularly wrong, possessed the sort of ignorance most people did: they could not see more than the physical world around them. They could not know that the reality they believed real was covering up billions of darknesses and lights and imbalances and ever-shifting layers. He, of course, knew they were there, although he couldn't comprehend what all these things being masked really were.

Perhaps, Jack realized as he descended the stairs, no human brain could ever actually comprehend.