Chapter 2: The Gate | The Lock

Lena sat still, stunned. But when the gravity of what she'd just seen finally registered, she sprang into action. A man had just tumbled off the pedestrian bridge onto the street below. She had to get help — if he wasn't already dead.

She flew out the door and peered over the edge of the bridge, scanning for any sign of the broken body that surely lay below. But it was dark and she couldn't make anything out. Her breath came out in ragged gasps. She knew that if he'd survived the fall, it was imperative that she find him quickly — every second that went by reduced the chances that he could be saved.

She had to look for him down there, on the street, and the quickest way down was a staircase at the end of the bridge. She sped down the deserted walkway, then dashed down the steps, taking them two or three at a time.

She ran down the street to where the man had fallen, but there was no sign of him. But that was impossible. He had to be here — she'd seen him fall from the bridge with her own eyes. She looked up, orienting herself to make sure she was standing in the right spot. There was the sign for her cafe, just barely peeking over the top of the chain link fence. She was in the right place, but he wasn't here.

Was it possible he'd survived the fall and skulked off into the night? She looked around for signs of blood, because there was no way he'd fallen from such a height and not been injured. But there was nothing.

Was she going crazy? Was it possible there had never been a man at all — that she had imagined the whole thing?

No. It was late, but it wasn't that late. She wasn't sleep deprived — yet. And she wasn't on drugs. She'd seen what she had seen.

She made her way back up the stairs, but there was no urgency to her movement like there'd been as she'd flown down them. She replayed the scene in her mind: The man, standing at the side of the bridge, lost in thought, then suddenly careening into the air through a hole in the fence ...

The hole. In her panic, Lena had forgotten all about the opening in the fence. The man had pushed the fence and it had swung open like a gate. But that made no sense. The whole point of the fence was to keep people from falling or jumping off. There was no point in building a gate into it — a gate that didn't go anywhere.

As she approached the spot where the man had stood, she slowed, studying the fence. There was no hole. No gate. Nothing to indicate the event she'd witnessed had happened at all.

She bent down and leaned forward, studying it closer. There had to be something.

And then she spotted it: A slight, almost imperceptible break in the fence. It looked like the gate had swung outward, then been pushed back into place — but it had been pushed back just a bit too far, making it clear to careful eyes that there was an opening.

"I'm not crazy," she whispered to herself. But that realization frightened her even more. It meant the man really had tumbled through the gate ... and he had really disappeared out of thin air.

Lena raised a shaking hand toward the fence, hesitantly, as if she feared it would shock her. When her hand and the fence connected, she pushed, and the gate swung out into the open air. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centering herself. She did the balloon exercise again, this time filling it up with her fear and anxiety before releasing it into the void.

She opened her eyes. She took one last breath for good measure, then thrust her head through the hole in the fence.