“Aaron had dirty blonde hair that curled around his face in a messy sort of way. No matter what he did to fix it, his mop always looked like he had done the opposite. His eyes barely peeked out under his shag of hair and his nose was way too big for his face…”

  “My nose is not too big,” Aaron snarked as he tried to reach up and feel his nose. His hands were stuck mostly in the mud he was sinking in and he couldn’t reach his face. He was supposed to be explaining what was going on but had gotten sidetracked and now his sister was journalling.

  “Why are you even writing this down? I thought you wanted me to tell you what’s going on,” he tried to get back on track.

  “I want to remember everything so I’m writing it down,” Zella scribbled something in her notebook. It couldn’t possibly be the words they were speaking right now. “And snarked is not a word.”

  “I don’t even have dirty blonde hair, it’s dark brown.”

  Zella scratched out something in her notebook and started writing over it again. “Very blonde. So blonde it hurts your eyes. I’m talking like dumb blonde joke blonde.”

  “Hey, that is insensitive and politically incorrect. You are a very insensitive hair hater.”

  “What do you care? You’re not really blonde. I just want to remember you as dumb years from now when I look back on this and wonder why you kept secrets from me right before I let you sink to the bottom of the mud pit,” Zella scribbled furiously.

  “Are you mad at me? Stupid question. I am chin-deep in a muddy clay pit and it doesn’t look like you’re going to help me out. OK, don’t write this down.” Aaron closed his eyes for a second to try to remember but then he decided that was not a good idea. He might sink in the mud without seeing himself sink in the mud. Maybe that was a good idea.

  “Ok, it’s kind of a long story. So, it kind of all has to do with Dad‘s disappearance a couple of weeks ago,” Aaron was surprised that he had summed it up so succinctly but it was, after all, a pretty short story. Zella slammed her notebook down and jumped to her feet.

  “I knew it had to do with Dad. You told me I had nothing to worry about. Dad was just on a vacation business trip. By the way, that’s an oxymoron. A business trip is never a vacation, it’s business. Now get out of that mud pit. You’ve got some explaining to do,” she dropped back to her knees and reached out to pull her brother out of the mud.

  “OK,” Aaron grabbed his sister's hands. She had a surprisingly strong grip.

  He slid out of the mud like a stick out of a melting popsicle. The mud caked on his body and it took him a few minutes to realize that he had slipped out of the mud without his pants. He let out a little girl scream and tried to cover his boxer shorts.

  “Are there any more monsters?” Zella asked.

  “Um, probably? I would assume so? Actually, I didn’t know there were going to be any monsters but now that we’ve seen one, well, it just makes sense? Should that be a question?”

  “None of this makes any sense. Now just tell me what you do know. Let’s make our way back home. We both need showers. You more than anyone. You talk while you walk.”

  “So, normally I could do that just fine but you do realize that our home was smashed by the monster? And I’m not wearing any pants and the monster got my shirt,” Aaron pointed out.

  “Only the front half of the house is smashed. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, so I know that part is still good.”

  “And the pants?”

  “You never wear pants.”

  “In the house! I always almost some of the time remember to wear pants outside of the house,” Aaron said.

  “Deal with it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They walked in silence for all of two steps. Aaron was just trying to get his thoughts together but Zella wanted answers so that’s what she said without even separating her teeth. “Answers!” Aaron got the idea pretty quickly.

  “Well, it all kind of started a couple of weeks ago. Dad finally figured out something that he has been looking for all his life, or all of our life, or somebody's life.”

  “So, it didn’t really start a couple of weeks ago,” Zella interrupted.

  “Are you gonna let me tell the story?” He asked.

  “Are you gonna tell the whole story?” She asked.

  “Probably not."

  “Then I’ll probably keep interrupting.”

  “I guess that’s fair,” Aaron shrugged. They were almost home anyway. He just needed to stall a little bit until he could take a shower and do some creative thinking.

  “So, what did he find?"

  “I don’t know."

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know."

  “What……do….you…..know?” Zella made sure to state each word slowly and articulate her anger.

  “Dad thought he found a way to get to Mom,” Aaron said. Zella stopped in her tracks. Then she thought better of it and jumped over to grab her brother’s hair and stop him in his tracks. She held his muddy face up close to hers. She glared straight through his eyes and into his soul.

  “Our mother died when I was a baby,” She reminded him with what was now a question.

  “So, that may or may not now be as true as it may have once or ever been. Look, I don’t know much more about this than you do except just that a couple of weeks ago Dad said he may have found a way to get Mom back. Then he disappeared and a few weeks later monsters appeared.”

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  “Monsters? There’s been more than one?”

  “Yeah, I squished one earlier out in the garage,” Aaron explained.

  “That was a cockroach.”

  “Yeah, I know. Hideous terrible monster. Much worse than the one that got my shirt.”

  “Cockroaches are not monsters,” Zella slapped her brother on the back and started walking back to the house again. She was glad that he was starting to joke again. Then she realized that he probably wasn’t.

  “None of this makes any sense. Why does Dad think Mom is alive and where are the monsters coming from?” Zella called to see if Aaron was following her.

  “I have a theory and it’s really just a guess from some of the notebooks I’ve found in Dad’s room since he disappeared,” Aaron stopped walking for a moment and contemplated whether he should even ask the next question. He never quite made up his mind on that but went ahead anyway, “Do you think there are other worlds?”

  “Yeah, of course. Like planets in other galaxies and maybe the moons of Jupiter?” Zella laughed.

  “No, that’s so sci-fi. That’s your thing. I’m talking like a whole other realm with different worlds altogether.”

  “Like another universe? Multiverse?”

  “Quit making my fantasy into science fiction.”

  “Sorry, too easy. So you think Dad found a portal to another world or something?”

  “Sci-fi words! Can we just call it a doorway to another dimension? No, now you’ve got me talking sci-fi. Ok, how about this? Let’s call it the gates of hell. That sounds supernatural not sci-fi.” Aaron said.

  “That sounds crazy and idiotic.”

  “Oh, well, that’s what Dad called it.”

  “Oh, I guess that doesn’t sound so crazy when you put it that way,” Zella agreed.

  They were back at what was left of their two-story ranch house. The entire wall of the front side of the house was lying in rubble on the floor in the kitchen and living room. The roof was sagging on the side of the house and looked like it was about to fall in. The rest of the house looked fine but both kids figured it probably wouldn’t hold up for very long. Aaron called a shower first and sprinted in for it.

  Zella sat down at the only un-smashed chair by the kitchen table. She thought about trying to make herself a cup of coffee but she was only thirteen and didn’t like coffee. Besides that, the coffee maker had been smashed. Making coffee just seemed like something Dad would do in the middle of a tragedy.

  Nothing made sense anymore. Dad had always told them that Mom had gone to another place. Zella figured that one out pretty well by the time she was three or four years old. She’d always been a smart kid and a little abnormally athletically gifted. She usually beat her brother in any physical competition even though he was a top athlete as well.

  She went back to the chair and tried to think about everything she just found out. What bothered her the most was that it didn’t upset her all that much. They never really talked about any of it very much but somehow deep down, Zella had always known that her mother was alive somewhere.

  Aaron came sneaking back into the kitchen distracting her from her thoughts. He slid along the kitchen wall toward the sink acting like no one could see him. Zella watched him out of the corner of her eye until he ducked down and made his way past the sink up behind her chair.

  “I see you,” she said without even looking at him.

  “No, you can’t. I am wearing camouflage pants. No one can see me. I’m invisible.”

  “You have a neon yellow shirt.“

  “OK, so you can see my upper body. But you can’t tell what I’m doing down here,” Aaron said.

  “Stop shaking your butt at me.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you’re my brother and you’re wearing camouflage pants.” Zella hated those pants. Aaron didn’t have any camouflage pants.

  "Look, I’m just trying to cheer you up,” Aaron came up and looked at one of the chairs that only had three legs left. He shrugged and sat down anyway. It didn’t hold and he jumped back to stand. He leaned one hand on the table but that only had three legs as well and it tipped over. He gave up folded his hands across his chest and tried to look relaxed.

  “We need to talk about what we’re going to do,” Zella looked up to face her brother.

  “I agree. There was no hot water so I had to take a cold shower. My guess is that the water heater was smashed. I guess I could heat some water on the stove and you could throw it on yourself but I think the stove was on that wall that got smashed.”

  “That is not what I’m talking about.”

  “I have no idea what could be more pressing,” Aaron said. He heard a growl and looked around for another monster. The growl came again and he looked down at his stomach. “Then again,” he started.

  “I want to see those notebooks of Dad’s.“

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.“ Aaron twiddled his fingers and looked off toward the left.

  “Why?” Zella asked.

  “Well, you wouldn’t understand them, too much scientific jargon.”

  “I know more science than Dad did. What are you not telling me?“

  “On almost every page in the journal, it says something about you,“ Aaron looked up and over toward the right. Neither direction that he looked seemed to be helping. He couldn’t remember which one made it look like he was not lying. Then he looked back toward the ceiling. When Zella still didn’t say anything, he felt awkward and went on.

  “It says stuff like ‘don’t tell Zella’ and ‘Zella is the key’.“

  “On every page?”

  “Well, not every page.” Aaron shrugged and scrunched up his face a little. “It doesn’t say that on the blank pages at the end.”

  “Every page?” Zella jumped to her feet. She wasn’t angry at Aaron. Now she was mad at her father. He had been the one hiding stuff from her. She looked closer at her brother. He was only two years older than her. He probably didn’t really know anything more than what he had found out in the past few weeks.

  “You’re all I’ve got Zella. I don’t know what Dad wanted to hide from you but you know if I knew, I couldn’t hide anything from you anyway. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  “I was talking about emotionally but now that we’ve got that secret out in the open, OK, your biceps might be slightly larger.”

  “You cried during the Lego movie.”

  “The old guy lost his eyes at the beginning.” Aaron smiled for just a second but then his countenance fell. “Zella, the notebooks are gone. I don’t know if the monster attack was a distraction so someone could get in here and take a notebook or if someone just took advantage of that situation.”

  “Seems like there would’ve been an easier way to distract us."

  “That’s what I like to think but you never know. Anyway, I wouldn’t even know who would want to take those notebooks. Dad never even talked about anyone knowing about anything like this. Dad never talked about any of it but apparently, that’s been his whole life’s goal.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He became a theoretical physicist after he met Mom or, I guess after he lost Mom. Definitely one or the other.”

  “All to get her back,” Zella smiled at the hint of romance in that. “Well, I guess we’re stuck. We have no way of tracking or pursuing.“

  “I wouldn’t say that,“ Aaron tapped his head. “Don’t forget, I’ve got a photographic memory.”

  “You couldn’t remember three lines in a play you were in during high school.”

  “I said photographic, not wordographic. Dad drew some pictures and diagrams in his notebook. I remember those.”

  “So, do you have an idea where we need to start?”

  “We follow the monsters. There was a weird picture of something that looked like that monster at the location Dad had marked with a star near the end.”

  “What makes you think there are going to be more monsters?” Zella asked.

  A beast much like the one they had just fought only slightly more like a dragon popped out from behind the mountains on the horizon and it started running toward them. Another head popped out from behind its back and then another.

  “I don’t know, just a hunch I guess.”

  “I’m gonna need a new broomstick.”

  “Oh, I should get a new kitchen knife while we’re still in half of the kitchen.”