I woke up today to my wife shouting my name. Apparently my nose had begun bleeding in the night and my pillow was soaked through with it. It was all very upsetting and very messy. She wanted to drive to the doctor’s office in the morning, citing my previous maladies (all of which occurred so long ago that I couldn’t remember them), but I managed to talk her down.

My nose did not bleed again. But I thought I would talk to Dan about it, so I walked next door.

Dan does not live in the house anymore. And he does not sleep in the shed. He sleeps in a tent on his patio, and he gets food from the convenience mart. He never goes into the kitchen. I asked him why once, and he said it was because the voices behind the doors were calling to him more and more now, and it was becoming harder to ignore them. Sometimes he badly wants to open the doors.

Once I found him I told him about what had happened that morning. His eyes grew wide when I was done, and he said, “But you’re never close to the machine, are you? At least, not often. You’re too far away. The bleeds only happen when you spend too much time near the thin parts.”

I asked him what he meant by that.

“The thin parts,” he said again, frustrated. “Parts of the world that the machine is wearing thin. If you spend too much time near them it starts to wear you thin, too. Your body starts to decay at an advanced rate. I’m only as healthy as I look because I spend four hours a day in the park, at minimum. As a breather, I guess.”

I said that was smart. Then I asked if maybe the machine’s effects were growing.

“I haven’t seen it make any doors much farther than my own yard,” he said. “None that would last.” Then he looked at me queerly. “You haven’t seen any, have you?”

“No,” I said, but he saw I was troubled and asked what was wrong.

I told him about the dream I had. When I came to the part with the door he choked in surprise and said, “But you didn’t go through it, did you?”

“Well, it was only a dream. It wasn’t real.”

“That’s how it seems! That’s how it always seems! It feels unreal, as though everything around you is drawn on thin paper! You didn’t go in, did you?”

I quietly told him that I had. I began to feel very cold.

Dan put his face in his hands in dismay. “God, did you bring anything back? Did anything come back with you?”

“I don’t really recall,” I said. “It was like a dream, remember? I walked through what felt like my house, again and again, and then through… Through other places. Places not like here at all. But I got home, didn’t I? I came back.”

“And nothing came through?”

“No, not to my knowledge. When I stepped back in the door was gone.”

He exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that. You don’t know how lucky you are to have found your way home.”

“Why?”

He took another breath. “Listen – I’ve… I’ve figured out what the doors open on. They lead to alternates, Robert. Alternate versions of our, well, of our world, of our reality. Places that could have been, but weren’t. That’s what the machine was pulling the damn apples from, it couldn’t find an apple nearby so it took one from the alternates. The apple was physically in the same place, so to speak, but from an alternate world. They’re similar to our worlds, sometimes, but they’re fundamentally different. The differences can be very slight. Say, a ship that sank here doesn’t sink in one alternate. Or they could even be smaller than that, so the world seems almost the same. But they can be very great, as well. Something elemental in physics itself could be different, say, so that stars didn’t form the way they do here at all. Or time itself could function in a way we can’t even understand. Do you see?”

“There were mountains of light,” I said softly. “Mountains with red hearts.”

“Yes,” said Dan hastily. “You mustn’t go through again. I went through myself, and… and I brought back someone from one of the other worlds. Nothing dangerous, just some mad woman. Some great fat Iowan cow who claimed to be my wife. I… I took care of her, though. But it showed me how dangerous the doors can be.”

I began to tremble when I heard that. Then I slowly asked Dan if the woman had red hair.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she did. Why?”

I thought for a while, and then said it sounded like that was his wife. He’d introduced me to her not more than a few weeks ago.

He stared at me. “No. No, my wife has blonde hair. And she’s tall. I don’t know where Sandra is, she may have gone through one of the doors herself, but…”

I told him I’d never heard of Sandra. That was not his wife, as far as I was aware.

“But… But this is my house!” he shouted. “This is my sky! My yard! And my damn machine! This is mine!”

I didn’t know what he meant or what to say to that. I just sat there silently.

Dan seemed very upset by what I’d told him. He began asking me questions, all of which seemed random. He asked me what my name was and what house was mine. Then he asked me what I called the compass directions. Was it North, East, South, West? I said it was. He asked me how old I was, and how many weeks were in a year. Then he asked me about constellations and the name of my state and my country. I answered them as best I could but it only seemed to upset him more. He nearly began weeping, and then started softly saying to himself that he was not supposed to be here, not at all.

Then he grew very suspicious and asked if I had seen any more of him. Of what, I asked? Of him, or people that looked like him, at least. I said I hadn’t, and he said, “But how would you know? How would you know if it was actually me, and not someone else who looked like me and thought he was me?”

I didn’t know what to say to that at all.

Eventually he gathered himself and said, “Listen, Robert. I’m going… I’m going to figure a way to fix this. To stop the machine so the damn doors stop appearing, or maybe I can lock them forever, I’m not sure. But don’t go in them, never again. You’re lucky enough to have found your way home. I’ll take care of everything, though. I’ll take care of everything.”

Then he asked me to leave, saying he had work to do, and I did so.

I wasn’t sure what to do when I got home. I’m still considering calling the police about Dan’s wife. But I’m worried they’ll come and open up all the doors.