Coming home after a long day at school, a terrible hockey practice session, and a long, dark walk home in the cold bleak rain, Jeremy Wilkins shivered and dripped his way to his bedroom. After changing and drying off, he opened his bedroom closet to toss in his wet clothes and found a large black hole that hadn't been there that morning.

  Hole might be the wrong term. It was an upright five-foot-diameter pool of inky blackness replacing the dull gray wood paneling in the back of Jeremy's closet.

  In his ten years of life, Jeremy had seen nothing like it. For a moment, he wondered if his older brother was playing a joke on him. He couldn't imagine why. To play a joke on him, Andrew would have to acknowledge his younger brother's existence. Andrew was supposed to have given Jeremy a ride home from school that day, but Jeremy had known that wouldn't be happening.

  At present, Andrew was talking to friends in the next room, his voice cutting through the silence as the skunk smell of marijuana seeped from under his bedroom door into the hallway.

  The hole, an upright pool of black ink, blacker than his friend's high-priced flat-screen TV, or anything else Jeremy had ever seen, sat there looking scary and alien. Jeremy reached out to touch it, but then it occurred to him that might be a bad idea. He pulled his hand back quickly.

  Jeremy sat down at his wobbly, brown, particleboard desk and activated his old gray laptop, pushing aside speakers he didn't dare use because his brother would throw a fit if Jeremy played music, or did anything else that made noise. On the other end of his desk lay the forlorn pieces of his friend's drone he'd promised to fix, not because he knew anything about drone repair, but because it was his fault the drone was broken.

  Jeremy pulled up the group chat site.

  Jeremy, you know you're supposed to get the hockey puck into the opposing team's goal, right? One of his teammates had posted a half hour before.

  Shut up, Jeremy thought. It was just a practice game, and it wasn't his fault he had trouble lining up his shots when an opposing team member twice his size stood in the way.

  At the moment, defending his poor hockey performance was the last thing on his mind.

  There's this strange inky black hole in my closet about five feet across. Anyone know what it is?

  He clicked send.

  Nothing.

  His internet had crashed, and the Router was in his brother's room. So that wasn't happening.

  He reached for his cellphone to send a text message, but he had no cellphone service either.

  He was on his own.

  Not seeing what else to do, he picked up an old shoe with holes in it that his feet had long since outgrown. He pushed the shoe into the inky blackness, encountering no resistance, then pulled it out again. The shoe looked fine—in no worse shape than before. He threw the shoe into the hole, then left the room to check behind the closet.

  The wall behind his closet looked fine. He rapped the wall with his knuckles to be sure. Nothing happened. It even felt normal. The hole, or portal in his closet didn't appear to extend to the rest of the house. He returned to his room, wondering what to do next.

  The shoe flew out of the hole and smacked him on the head.

  Ow! What the heck?

  Getting an idea, Jeremy grabbed his cellphone and tied it to the end of his bathrobe belt, ensuring the knot was tight enough that the cellphone wouldn't fall out. He put the phone's camera on record and tossed his cellphone gently into the hole. He waited a minute—then pulled it back. Something about the way it dragged on its return made his skin crawl. He backed away from the hole, keeping his distance. When his belt came out of the portal, the cellphone was gone and a teddy bear had taken its place.

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  The knee high, generic brown teddy bear dropped to the floor. Its eyes glowed an angry red and its mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing razor-sharp, shark-like teeth. With a snarl, it charged Jeremy, its teddy bear arms and legs windmilling it forward.

  For a long second, Jeremy froze, seized by a feeling of unreality. This had to be happening to someone else. Someone trapped in one of those science fiction horror movies he didn't even like and he only watched so his friends wouldn't think he was chicken.

  Just before the teddy bear reached him, he cried out, stepping backward, trying to kick it away.

  Its teeth sank into his foot, going through his shoe, causing him to fall to the floor in front of his dresser. He kicked out at it desperately with his other foot, sending the bear flying back, to thunk into his bedroom wall next to the poster of his favorite music group, “The Hero's Journey.” The teddy bear dropped to the floor unharmed, and charged him again.

  Jeremy pulled himself up, backing away until he bumped into his dresser. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the hockey stick he'd leaned against the dresser earlier and swung it at the charging teddy bear. The bear tried to dodge at the last second and failed. He sent it flying, slamming against the wall next to his bedroom door. Jeremy's dartboard clattered to the ground.

  His brother pounded the wall and shouted something about keeping the noise down.

  On Jeremy's second swing, the teddy bear bit into his hockey stick, sinking its teeth into it, holding on as Jeremy bashed the teddy bear against the floor, again and again. Until green goop came out of the teddy bear, the red glow left its eyes, and it stopped moving.

  It wasn't until he saw his blood mixed in with the green goop, that he realized the bear's razor-sharp teeth had gone well past his running shoe and deep into his foot.

  Jeremy was shaking so badly he could barely move. What was going on? What was that thing? And where was his cellphone?

  When he'd calmed down a little, he dropped his now broken hockey stick, rushed over to the closet, and slammed the door shut. No way was he leaving that open.

  Desperate, he used his nuclear option. He ran to his brother's room and pounded on the door.

  After a minute of pounding, Andrew flung open his door. “What?”

  Three other teenagers, Andrews friends, stared vacantly at Jeremy. Their bloodshot, dilated eyes made it clear they were as stoned as Andrew.

  “S-something in my room bit me,” Jeremy stuttered from shock, still shaking.

  Andrew glared at Jeremy and looked down at Jeremy's feet, noticing his torn-apart right shoe and his bleeding foot. “You hurt your foot. Wow. Do I look like Mom? Put a bandage on that thing and quit trailing blood everywhere.”

  “Hey, kid. You want a hit?” one of Andrew's friends held out a pipe. “You look like you could use it.”

  “Don't even joke about that, bro,” Andrew said. “We share with him, and Mom will send me to military school. She would have already if she could afford it. Can't stand that...” Andrew trailed off, grumbling darkly.

  Another time Jeremy might have taken issue with his brother's treatment of the woman working two jobs to keep a roof over their heads, but now wasn't the time.

  He limped to the bathroom. His foot began to hurt as the adrenaline wore off. He sat on the toilet, took off his shoe, and slowly peeled off his bloody sock. There was a ring of tooth marks behind his toes around his foot, with slashes the teeth had made when Jeremy had kicked the bear away.

  The first thing to do was clean off his foot and sterilize it. Since he knew nothing about what had bitten him, it would be best to take no chances. He stood up, sat on the edge of his bathtub, and ran water over his foot, watching his blood go down the drain. Then he pulled out the medical kit, covered the still bleeding bite marks with Betadine, and wrapped his foot in gauze. He wrapped the gauze in medical tape tight enough to make sure the gauze stayed put. Slipping his bare, but bandaged, foot back into his damaged, blood-stained shoe, he limped back to his brother.

  ***

  “A teddy bear attacked you?” Andrew said after he'd finished laughing. “Whoa, that's a good one. You sure you didn't trip over it?”

  “It wasn't a teddy bear. I said it looked like a teddy bear. It came out of this hole in my closet. Please, you need to check.” There was no way Jeremy was going back to his room by himself.

  Grumbling, Andrew reluctantly followed Jeremy to his room. “What teddy bear?”

  “It vanished.” Jeremy looked frantically for his attacker's body, but it was gone. So was the green ooze. There was nothing but his blood, a broken hockey stick, and a messy room to show what had happened.

  He pulled open the closet door. The closet light was still on from before, and the inky black pool was still there. “You see. It came out of that.”

  “Came out of what?” Andrew asked. “The closet? There's nothing there.”

  “That.” Jeremy entered the closet. “This hole, right here. See?” He pointed at the hole. How could Andrew not see it?

  Jeremy felt his brother's foot on his back as Andrew kicked as hard as he could, sending Jeremy flying forward, screaming as he went through the hole, falling into the unknown.