The Berry Pickers- Part 1

I woke up to three pairs of eyes.

I jerked awake, reached for the light.

The three girls were standing there next to my bed like kids on Christmas morning. Each one held an old fashioned basket full of berries. Two were blonde, the little one was a strawberry brunette. The oldest wore a pink bow in her hair, with a dark blue apron and a pink dress. The middle one had a white sunhat on, with a white apron and a red dress. And the littlest one had her reddish-brown hair in pigtails, with a blue apron and a light blue dress.

“Will you help us?” asked the oldest. She looked like she was about 13.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Paige,” said the oldest. “This is Esther, and this is Willa.”

The three of them curtsied simultaneously.

I slapped myself, hoping I’d wake up.

“Why’d he hit himself?” Willa, the little one, asked. She looked about 6.

“He thinks he’s dreaming,” said Esther, the middle child in the sunhat. Her voice had that snotty edge to it that girls get when they’re approaching their teenage years and beginning to suspect they know everything. She looked about 10 or 11.

“Where have I seen you before?” I asked them.

“Is he going to take us to the Citadel?” Willa asked Paige.

“Shh,” said Esther.

“We need your help,” said Paige. “You’re the latest gatekeeper. We need you to help us get home.”

“We went out picking berries, but we got lost,” said Esther.

“And it’s nearly dark, and Albur is hunting us,” said Paige.

“Albur’s after us,” whispered Willa.

“Who’s Albur?”

“He’s a devilfish, but he’s learned to walk,” said Esther. “Before that he stayed in the lake.”

“We have to get to the Citadel,” said Paige. “That’s where our mother and father are.”

“Are you a knight?” Willa asked me.

“No,” I said. I slapped myself again.

“You’re not dreaming,” said Esther in her snotty middle child voice.

“But you have a sword,” said Willa, pointing to the sword next to my bed.

“It’s not a real sword.”

“It looks real to me.”

“It’s not.”

Let me back up.

The reason I think I’m dreaming is because I know exactly who these three girls are. They’re depicted in a painting I bought from an antique shop the other week. It’s hanging on the living room wall above my TV.

That same day, I found a nifty imitation European-style sword complete with leather sheath and strap. All said the purchase cost me a total of 188 dollars. Total nerdgasm of a purchase, but whatever, judge me.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said, more to myself than to the girls.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Paige said. “This must be very confusing. But I’m afraid this is a dire situation.”

“Dire situation,” whispered Willa.

“Shh,” Esther hissed at Willa again.

“For the longest time, we had the same gatekeeper — “

“But then they were gone,” said Esther, cutting Paige off.

The three bowed their heads.

“And then the next day when we were out picking berries, we came back but the gate was gone,” said Paige. “We knew we had to keep quiet. We tried to get home without the gate. But then Albur found us. And we’ve been running from him. And we ran for a long time. But we kept our berries. We saw the gate was back. And so we went through it. And now we’re here.”

“There’s the Citadel!” screeched Willa. She pointed to another painting over my bed.

“Willa, SHHHH!” Esther hissed again, this time putting her finger in front of her lips and leaning into Willa’s face.

“But it’s the Citadel,” Willa hissed back.

“Fine, Albur can just eat you up then!”

Willa stuck her tongue out at Esther.

“You have to help us get to that stone tower there,” said Paige, ignoring her sisters.

She pointed to the painting over my bed.

It showed a lake in a deep forest. Across the lake was this strange castle-looking thing. The painting isn’t that detailed, it looks kind of like a Monet, but anyone can tell that it’s a medieval landscape with a castle across a lake. I got that painting a long time ago. My family’s had it since I was a kid.

“That’s the Citadel,” she said. “That’s where we live.”

“Ok,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

I ran out to the living room.

The fucking painting was empty. Just empty fields and the berry bush that the girls are working on when the painting’s normal.

“Fuck,” I said.

I turned and the three of them were behind me in a row like ducklings.

“Ok,” I said. “Let’s go look at the Citadel now.”

We walked into my room again, the three of them following me in a row.

The painting in my room hadn’t changed, thank God.

“Okay,” I said. “So can you just walk into the painting then? Like you walked through your painting into my apartment?”

“No,” said Paige. “There’s no gate in this one. We have to go back through where we came and find our way from there.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What does fucking mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “How far is the Citadel from where you came in?”

“Far.”

“Are you sure?”

“Your home is where the gate leads,” said Paige, and now there was a trace of impatience to her voice, like I was supposed to have been aware of all this. “That makes you the gatekeeper, and that means you have to guide us home.”

“But I don’t even know where — “

I stopped.

“Wait,” I said. “You know where you’re going?”

“Of course. It’s only a morning’s walk from the gate.”

“I thought you said you got lost.”

“We did,” said Paige. “But then we found the gate again. Which is how we found you. And now we need a guide home. Otherwise Albur’s likely to catch us.”

“So that’s it, I just have to walk you home for a couple hours and then that’s it?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s get this over with,” I said.

I grabbed clothes and changed out of my pajamas in the bathroom. I looked in the mirror, splashed freezing water on my face, played with the light switch, read my shampoo bottle, and slapped myself a few more times for good measure.

“Here,” I said when I got back into the room, holding out my hands. “I’ll carry your baskets for you. It’ll go faster.”

“NOOOOOO!” Willa screamed in her piercing 6-year-old voice, jerking her basket away from me and hugging it tightly.

“SHHHHH,” Esther and I both hissed at her. The last thing I needed was my neighbors hearing a child scream, “NOOOOO!”

“We have to keep our berries with us,” said Paige calmly. “We can’t lose them or set them down.”

“Ok, fine,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

I can’t think of the last time I interacted with a kid. I probably was a kid. There’s an unspoken law among adults that says grown men don’t talk to or even look too long at kids that aren’t directly related to them.

I only bring this up because a chubby 32-year-old Asian guy with three little white girls in tow is going to arouse suspicion anywhere I go. Even though I don’t have any plans to have people over and my neighbors leave me alone, I felt like there would be a stern knocking at my door any moment and I’d have some explaining to do.

I was just about to head into the living room to figure out how to get into the painting when there was a weird groaning from the living room.

“Albur,” whispered Paige, saucer-eyed. “He found us.”

Willa and Esther went ghost-white and clammed up, clutching their baskets.

“Who’s Albur again?”

“We have to get to the Citadel,” whispered Willa, on the verge of tears. “We have to get back to Wixom. We have to get back to Jeantean and Lady Kit.”

“Willa, you have to be quiet,” said Esther, in a quieter, gentler voice I wouldn’t have expected her capable of five minutes ago.

“I don’t like it here,” said Willa, eyes welling up. “This place smells like pee-pee. I want to go home.”

“It’s okay, Willa,” said Paige. “We have to be brave. The knight is going to protect us. Isn’t he?”

She looked at me with an expression conveying a desperate hope that she was right.

“What’s your name anyway?” Esther asked me.

“Eric,” I said.

“Well met, Sir Eric,” said the three of them with reverence. I’d never heard my name spoken with such weight before. If I hadn’t been so freaked out, I would’ve appreciated it more.

That groaning noise came from the living room again. It sounded like wood creaking, an old house settling. I’d never heard my apartment make it before. Maybe it was the fridge.

“Are you sure that’s Albur?” I asked Paige. “That sounds like a person leaning on a table or something.”

“I’m certain,” said Paige.

They’re freaking me out, but I’m still not convinced I’m not asleep, so I decide to go investigate.

“Take your sword,” said Paige, grabbing my arm and pointing to the toy sword.

“It’s just a toy,” I said. “And it’s probably just the fridge making that noise.”

The groaning sounded again. It didn’t sound like the fridge.

“Take it,” whispered Paige.

Esther and Willa were sitting on my bed clutching each other now.

Paige unsheathed the sword and handed it to me.

I went out to the living room, brandishing the sword with its blunt edges and feeling fucking ridiculous.

I rounded the corner, saw what was in the painting now and practically shit myself.

The thing looked like a slimy mass of brain matter, a great glob of slime with grey lifeless eyes like scoops of jell-o the color of rainclouds, and its mouth was huge and gaping and full of fucking needle-like snake teeth. It filled the whole painting, and it was bulging out of the frame, 3d movie style. It was trying to get through.

It lurched against the frame again. The painting groaned. The wall groaned, too.

A giant egg-white tongue slid out of the thing’s mouth and flopped around like an eel, trying to find something to suck up. It knocked my TV and PS3 over.

“Holy fuck!” I screamed, just as scared as the girls.

“Hit him with the sword!” yelled Willa from the bedroom.

I saw with horror that the groaning noise wasn’t the creature. It was the frame of the painting taking its weight. If the painting hadn’t groaned, the thing would’ve squelched itself into the apartment and snuck up on us.

I did the only thing I could think to do.

I got the fuck out of there. Turned tail and ran.

The girls followed me.

The thing was almost through the painting now, lunging at us like a walrus. It made no noise except that squelching. The dead wide open fish eyes stared at us, mouth gaping and slapping shut, the giant tongue lolling out.

A blowfish, I thought. That’s what it looks like. A fucking blobfish. With teeth.

“I’m not a knight,” I yelled once we were safely out in the parking lot. “I’m not even European! I’m fucking third generation Chinese! All I want is to go back to sleep so I can go to work tomorrow!”

“We can’t go through the gate again,” said Esther. “We’re trapped here! We’re trapped in the sideworld.”

Willa started to cry and so did Esther. Paige comforted them.

I paced back and forth under the streetlight with all its moths and mosquitos buzzing around it. It was a hot August night and I was already sweating. Fortunately, no one was out here and therefore we hadn’t been seen yet.

I thought of something.

“We have to go back to the store where I got the painting,” I said. “That’s it.”

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to be continued…