Chapter 4
The heavy oak trapdoor slammed shut from the inside with a resounding thud, cutting off Jonah’s laughter and plunging the back room into sudden, suffocating darkness. Caleb lunged forward, grabbing the iron ring and hauling upward with all his strength, but it wouldn't budge. Something massive and unyielding had been bolted across the underside of the wood.
“Jonah!” Caleb roared, slamming his shoulder against the floorboards. The old timber groaned, but the latch held firm.
He spun around in the dim light, his chest heaving as he cursed under his breath. The two little girls were standing just outside the threshold of the back room, framed by the pale sunlight pouring in through the front windows. They hadn't moved an inch, watching him with an unnerving, patient stillness that made his skin crawl.
Caleb holstered his revolver and stalked out of the back room, his boots pounding against the saloon floor. He stopped a few feet away from the sisters, towering over them in the dusty haze.
“What did he mean by that?” Caleb demanded, his voice sharp and demanding. “What are you two doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
The older sister tilted her head, her tangled brown hair falling across her dirt-smudged cheek. She didn't look scared; if anything, she looked profoundly disappointed in him, like a schoolteacher dealing with a particularly slow student.
“We told you,” she said evenly. “We don't got none. And now you don't neither.”
Before Caleb could press her further, a sharp, metallic click echoed from beneath the floorboards—the unmistakable sound of a heavy padlock sliding into place. A second later, a low, mechanical grinding noise vibrated through the foundation of the entire building. The walls of the Lucky Star Saloon shuddered, and a cascade of dried mud and plaster rained down from the ceiling.
Panic, sharp and cold, pierced Caleb’s ribs. He rushed to the front windows and tried to push them open, but they were nailed shut from the outside. He drew his revolver again and fired two quick shots into the thick glass. The bullets shattered the panes, but when he peered outside, the desert landscape had fundamentally changed.
The dusty street where he had been kneeling just minutes ago was gone. In its place was a vast, endless expanse of pitch-black water stretching out to a nonexistent horizon under a bruised, starless sky. The saloon was now floating, isolated on a rotting wooden dock that seemed to drift upon an underground sea.
Caleb spun back toward the entrance, his gun raised, but the front doors were gone, replaced by a solid wall of ancient, damp pine boards.
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The two little girls were still standing there in the center of the room, completely dry despite the impossible ocean surrounding them. The younger sister reached out and gently touched her sister’s shoulder, holding up a second piece of bread—one that hadn't been there before.
“It’s your turn to hold the watch,” the older girl whispered, her voice echoing in the enclosed space as the floor beneath Caleb’s boots began to sink into the dark water.
