It had been a long time since he’d been in this room, but he remembered it perfectly: its look, its smell, the way sunlight seemed to die somewhere along the way from the windows to the dark wood walls. Even the books on the shelves were exactly as he remembered them—he recognized the titles.

The den windows had looked out onto the extensive gardens in the backyard, but the windows now looked out on nothing. Light came through them, clear bright light obviously generated by the sun, but it appeared to be either smoggy or foggy behind the glass and there was only white and only light and no detail of the world beyond could be made out.

He increased the speed of his step as he approached the back door. He reached for the knob, and it turned in his hand. It was unlocked.

He opened the door.

And stepped over the threshold to the Other Side.

It was not at all what he’d expected. There were no ghosts or animated corpses, no black sky or barren landscape, no skeletons or witches or drooling befanged demons. Instead, he was in a house structurally identical to the one he had just left, but with all of its insides scooped out. There were no rooms or staircases or hallways or interior walls, just a giant, single three-story room that took up the entire building. Its unadorned interior was a color that had no counterpart in the known universe, an entirely new hue that bore no relation to red, yellow, blue, black, white, or any of the colors of the spectrum. High above, clouds floated near the top of the three gables, the whitish wisps floating back and forth just beneath the ceiling, as if searching for a way out.

It was a compelling sight, beautiful in its way, but his attention was captured by a figure against the far wall: a bald woman, naked, sitting in a huge straw nest atop an egg the size of a medicine ball.

His mother.

Stormy stood rooted in place, staring, unable to move.

His mother waved at him, smiled broadly. “Stormy!”

There were tears in his eyes, and part of him wanted to run over to her and throw his arms around her and hug her so hard that she could never get away from him. But another part of him, a more rational part, was not sure that it would be such a good idea. The egg and the nest and the baldness threw him off, and while he had no doubt that this really was his mother, something kept him from wholeheartedly embracing her.

“Stormy!” she called again.

Was this what it would be like if the border was down? Conversing with the dead, maintaining a relationship with someone even after they passed away?

And was that so bad?