His father called again around eight P.M. 

The Game of Thrones theme pulled him from his doze on the couch of the basement-level family room, and he reached across the coffee table for his phone, muscles stiff and eyes squinted against the glare of the ceiling light.

He had forgotten about the phone call from earlier.

"Hello?" he said, his voice laced with grogginess. Hopefully his father didn't mind about him not calling back – honestly, he almost hoped his father assumed it was payback on Atlas' part, since he ignored all of Atlas' texts from the previous three days.

"Hey, Atlas, how are you?"

Something about hearing his father's voice right then was comforting. Atlas let himself sink into the plush cushions, propping his feet up on the end pillow, and he let himself get carried away with their small talk.

Thankfully, his father hadn't seemed to mind. Honestly, his father was too nice to have minded in the first place.

They had to have talked for at least two hours. The next time Atlas glanced at the clock, it was nearly ten P.M. and his stomach was complaining about the skipped meal.

Grandma Georgie was doing better today, his father told him. Her surgery was successfully done the week prior, and she was healing well from it despite her underlying health issues having interfered some.

Although he wasn't close to her, it felt like a weight was taken off of him. Something was going right back home: a rare situation.

When he finally got off of the phone with his father, he felt loads better. His body was lighter and when he sat up, pushing the throw blanket off of himself, he was able to stand up and make his way toward the kitchen upstairs.

He should probably eat something to give him the strength to handle whatever happened tomorrow.

The rental house was a gorgeous one. The porcelain, Cascais tiled floors looked antique and their ornate nature contrasted well with the rich wooden furniture. It certainly wasn't a style he would want in his dream house, but it was still nice to look at.

Ashe was still awake, sitting at a barstool in front of the hole-in-the-wall of the kitchen. She sat writing in her journal and the sound of pen scratching on paper filtered through the high vaulted ceilings, only heard once one got close.

It seemed the others had already gone to bed. Actually, he was rather surprised to see her there. She seemed like one who would rather lock herself away in a bedroom. Maybe being forced to share a room with one of the other scientists took that security away, though. Thankfully, Atlas had the basement couch to himself, and didn't have to worry about a roommate.

"Hey, Ashe," he greeted. She glanced up at him as he made his way around the island and dug through the fridge.

"There's some leftovers," she said. She pointed with her pen toward a glass baking dish draped with a hand towel beside the bread box. "Levi made it."

"Oh, thanks."

She hummed, placing the pen down on the counter and waiting in silence for him to leave. Atlas helped himself to a plate of the pasta – briefly wondering why no one put it in the fridge when it had cheese on it and why they left the garlic bread on top to get soggy with condensation – and leaned against the large farm sink.

He got the notion that she wanted him to be on his way, but a question plagued him.

"Did you hear anything?" he asked.

"What?"

"When you touched the..." What was a good word to call it, he wondered? It seemed he didn't need to name it before he saw her nodding her head. "What was it?"

Ashe lowered her head, placing both hands in her lap. "I heard my parents fighting," she said quietly. "Like they used to when I was a kid."

"I'm sorry." He glanced down at his cold pasta and bread, suddenly feeling awkward. Maybe that wasn't the best question to ask over dinner.

She shrugged. "They made up."

"That's good."

Cautiously, he took another bite. He wasn't sure which one of them dropped the conversation first, but they lapsed into silence. The house was eerily quiet, and all he could hear was his chewing, which only made him feel more self-conscious and rude.

"Um." Ashe peeked up at him. "What did you hear?"

He quickly swallowed. Although he had asked first, he wasn't prepared to answer it himself. He glanced at her. Since when did she continue a conversation? "I—" He turned and grabbed a glass for water, trying to keep the memory from painting into his mind once more. "I heard my mom laughing," he said. "She passed away when I was a teenager."

With his back to her, he filled up his glass and took a sip. He winced. Even after three weeks, he hadn't gotten used to the hard, metallic northern water.

He took four quick gulps before his mouth seemed to only get drier and he dumped the rest down the drain. He missed Asheville. He hated the cold. He hated the water. He hated his job, and what it made him go through that morning.

"I wonder what it was," she whispered, "and why it would do that to us."

He nodded. "Me too."

After they lapsed into silence once more, Atlas decided to take his food downstairs after digging through the fridge for a juice box. He was done thinking about it for the night.

~

Atlas woke up at 9 A.M. to a text from Leia. It was a photo. He glanced at it.

Last night

If only you'd been here! ;)

The picture was of her, Jonathan, and some of his other friends around the bonfire cooking s'mores. If his mouth wasn't bone dry from a mix of exhaustion and dehydration, he would've craved one. On the wooden bench behind them, he saw his favorite Highland Brewing mocha stout.

He could've used one of those last night.

Still, he texted her back, a small smile tugging on his lips.

You're rubbing it in on purpose!

Atlas sat up from the couch, his back aching from whatever position he ended up sleeping in last night. There seemed to be even more snow on the ground this morning. He pulled the glass doors open, a chilling draft rushing into the family room, cutting straight through his PJ pants.

If anything woke him up, that did. He rushed to close the doors. What had compelled him to do that?

He went about his morning routine. Usually he tried to get up around seven to get ready, and usually someone upstairs would have woken him by stomping along the tiles from room to room, but this morning was late and awfully quiet.

When he went upstairs, he found Aronne drinking coffee on the dining table, reading something off of his tablet.

"'Morning."

"Oh, good morning, Atlas." Aronne took one last swing of his coffee. "How are you?"

"I'm fine. Do you have any left?" he asked. He poured himself a cup when Aronne said to help himself. "Are we not heading over today?"

"We most certainly are going to the site today. I decided to go around eleven or noon. We're all tired and not all of us are in the most focused mood this morning, so some extra dozing will be good for the team."

Atlas took a sip. Aronne always made his coffee so weak it may as well have just been water, and then he would flood it with flavored creamer. For someone who liked theirs robust and black, it tasted pretty terrible. But he wasn't going to complain. "We all appreciate it," he said.

"That's what I thought."

He sighed and took another drink. "Do you think we caused that?" he asked.

"I'm thinking it's pretty obvious we did, but I guess we'll know for sure once we check it all out this afternoon." Aronne lowered his tablet to the table. "What was it that had you and Ashe so spooked yesterday?"

"Oh, um—" he swallowed quickly— "I can show you when we get there maybe."

"Alright, make sure you do that. Let's do that right when we get there to make sure it gets done."

"Yeah."

~

The morning went by quickly to Atlas. He found himself once more standing before the deep crevice that crossed the distance of their work site.

It actually warmed up that day, to Atlas' surprise, being the warmest it had been since they arrived at 43 degrees. Perhaps the cold front was gone now. The snow was melting, thank God, and he almost felt like taking his coat off whenever the sun peeked out.

He never thought that he'd get used to the cold, but here he was, thinking 43 degrees was t-shirt weather.

"This will sound crazy," he warned as he led the project manager to the end of the crevice. They climbed down in the same way Ashe had the day before, Atlas donning his smartphone flashlight as it seemed to get darker down there. "The rock at the end looked like it was dripping oil, and when we touched it... I don't know. It feels like Stranger Things. You watched it?"

"So you're the Joyce Byers of 202X?"

He laughed. "Yeah, I guess so. Hopefully I don't look as crazy."

Aronne huffed. If Atlas looked behind him, he'd see him grinning in amusement.

"I heard my mother when I touched it," he said as nonchalantly as he could.

"That's what you said."

He hummed in affirmation. "Yeah. I don't know if I touched Heaven or Hell, but whatever it was, it felt like she was there. I could smell her, hear her, everything."

"You probably just took a whiff of some weird fume released by the earthquake and hallucinated."

This time he did look over his shoulder, giving his manager a flat stare. "Really?"

Aronne laughed at that. "I mean."

"Jerk," Atlas grumbled, a smile still on his face.

"You know, I had a huge crush on Winona Ryder when I was a teenager." Aronne sighed dramatically. "I watched every movie she was in. Oh, a boy can dream."

Atlas chuckled. "Who didn't?"

Atlas stopped when he reached the dead end. It was there again, the glistening oil slick. Even though it was darker down there, it still acted like a sun shone directly on it. The colors didn't move with Atlas' flashlight as he pointed it in various locations around the surface.

Even Aronne stopped talking, regarding it with an intrigue that sat just at the edge of calm.

He pressed his back against one of the stone walls. "So," he said, not really sure what to say about it. After him and Ashe had touched it the day before, it vanished. He didn't know why, or how, but it was there again. Just the sight of it left the scent of sandalwood lingering through the space like an old memory. "Still think I'm hallucinating?"

Something about speaking into the space felt weird, like he was talking at a funeral, like it wasn't quite welcome. Just like before, it was like his words left him in an unwilling whisper, like his lungs couldn't take in enough air to project them anymore.

Water dripped from above, and the air only seemed to get warmer the longer they stood there.

"Well, I guess the only way to find out is if I touch that..." he gestured to it "...stuff. What compelled you to feel it?"

Atlas said nothing, watching Aronne squeeze by him and place his fingers upon the oil slick with a slight wince on his face. It vanished when he touched it, his expression falling slightly as his fingertips disappeared within it, like the stone wasn't even there.

He didn't know what compelled his manager to continue walking, his body vanishing within it.

No, that wasn't true. He did know. He felt it before, until Aronne had snapped him out of it by calling out from the top of the crevice.

When he tried to stop him, his motivation felt muddled. Once he reached his arm out to stop him, he wasn't really sure why he did, and then he touched it, and he heard her, and the scent of sandalwood exploded through the crevice, clogging every thought and pore in his body until somehow, he stepped in too, and the oil slick closed up behind them.

~

It took long minutes before Atlas' senses regained enough to acknowledge what happened. He stood there, muscles tingling in the strange warmth wrapping around him, his mind numb, his boots gently indenting the floor beneath him.

When he finally had the sense to rub his sweating fingers down his face and blink his eyes, he realized two things:

One, he wasn't in Alaska anymore.

And two– no, scratch that. His mind froze on that first thought.

Where was he?

He carefully lowered his hands.

It was like he had stepped into a 1920s surrealist painting. You know, those surreal, oil canvases portraying time melting and elephants with mellophones for heads.

There was skin beneath his feet and endless strips of old movie film above his head.

Aronne's shadow cast long out in front of both of them, curving down the shape of a cheek spanning what looked like miles before it slopped up into a nose that almost reminded him of the mountain ridges he grew up in. There was a forest to their left — the eyelashes — surrounding a lake, what Atlas could only assume was supposed to be an eye. But it looked dark, empty, void of anything.

The skin beneath his feet pulsed like he could feel heartbeats through the soles of his boots. Each constricted breath pulled in a heavy humidity so thick with the smoke of sandalwood incense that he could see it.

Atlas glanced behind him, expecting, begging for a towering rock face with vibrant, rainbow-like colors to be behind him. But the oil slick they walked through was gone.

They stood in the middle of nowhere.

They stood atop of a face.

___________________________________________________

Hmm. I wonder what's going on?

We're about to dive head-first into the paranormal insanity now~! ♥