“There’s monsters in my closet,” Hugo said, from under his pillow. “They go in but they never come out.”

“What kind?” Faron asked. Maybe it was an act to put off bedtime, but he understood–his childhood basement had seethed with imagined horrors waiting to snatch him in the dark. 

“Mostly giant bugs, or things with no faces.”

“Why don’t I take a look, check for trespassers?” 

“No, don’t go in there!” Hugo sat up, and clung to him. “You won’t come back!” 

“Then we’ll do it together.” 

Faron shuffled across the creaky attic floor with his son wrapped around his neck, dodging cardboard boxes. Inside the long, narrow closet a row of jackets and shirts cast a centipede shadow beneath the bare bulb. It had the sour smell of old cedar and mothballs, and a few desiccated bugs littered the corners, their legs bent in fours and sevens.

“See? Nothing but shadows. New houses are always a bit strange at first.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Hugo whispered, and ran back to the safety of his bed, the bottoms of his footed pajamas white flags of surrender.

***

The next day, Faron was making lunch when heard a noise upstairs.

“Hugo! You home early from school?”

 When there was no reply, he went to the attic, taking the narrow stairs two at a time. On the floor of the small bedroom lay Hugo’s yellow raincoat. The door to the closet was ajar, and a light blazed from within. Faron smiled. 

He whipped open the door and winced, his hand blocking the glare. The plaster wall behind the clothing rod was gone, replaced by a veil of light. A small figure moved in the distance, submerged in brilliance. A faraway cry filtered into the closet.

“Hugo!” he shouted, and leapt into the white abyss.

The light resolved into a room made of glittering grey stones. It was dim, and had the wet, petrichor smell of a cave.

Faron blinked away the haze, his chest heaving. The air itched his throat, and his body felt untethered, almost weightless. When his eyes adjusted, he was looking at a pink blob. It sat behind a low table the size of a footstool. There was no sign of Hugo.

“Welcome to Nonthong Station,” it said. “Do you need assistance?”

“I was just there and now I’m…” Faron reached behind him with a shaking hand, but the portal rebounded his touch with an electric snap. “Have you seen a boy? He looks like me, only smaller.”

“Just the usual traffic, and certainly no bipeds.” The blob didn’t have eyes, but Faron could feel its gaze. “The portals are OFNB–only forward, never back. Where are you from?”

“Uhh…Ottawa.”

“Uhyatohwa? Never heard of it. Do you know your system designation?”

“System? What do you mean?”

A field of lights appeared under his nose, and the blob gestured at the display, spinning the twinkling haze around the room. A dull red star came into focus, circled by four unfamiliar planets.

“We’re here, 720u813. What’s your primary star?”

“It’s just…the Sun,” Faron whispered, and leaned against the cold stone wall, willing his grip on reality to return. He answered question after question, until the blob bubbled with triumph.

“Ah, you’re from Thurba 5M3IIY, in the Wild Dirt Monkey Constellation!” A rosy tentacle traced a path through the galaxies. “Your time shift doesn’t match ours, but the guide doesn’t say how. Let’s see…using the fastest route, accounting for gravity and inertia, the estimated length of your trip would be—” the pink blob paused, and spoke softly. “Longer and harder than your biology could sustain by a factor of a thousand, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t understand. There has to be a way back.”

The portal behind them disgorged a bright red creature, and Faron edged away from the giant, centipede-like alien.

“Hey, Kress,” the centipede called to the blob. One of its eye stalks swiveled to examine Faron. “Gross, a meatbag! Where’d it come from?”

“Poor thing wandered in from a Stochastic. It’s from the other side of the cluster.”

“Is it housetrained? Better get it outside before it makes a mess.” 

 As the two conversed, Faron wandered through the open door. A fine mist filled the strange golden prairie surrounding the portal station, which looked like a stone windmill without sails. He sat against the exterior and stared at his numb hands. The giant sun lingered over the horizon, casting the mist into an eerie amber fog.

***

The pink stationmaster took pity on Faron and brought him home after work, through a village built of the same glittering grey stones.

“Sorry about them–no one’s seen a human in hundreds of years,” Kress explained, when blobs inflated and hissed as they passed. Even Kress’s children disappeared into the shadows when they arrived at the small stone hut, but it wasn’t long before they resumed careening around like demented water balloons. 

“What about other portals, like the one I came through?” Faron asked after they ate a dinner of soup that made his eyes water and nose burn. 

“The Stochastics?” Kress asked. “They only work properly half the time, unlike true portals. Only fools or criminals use them, since you can’t control where they’ll go.”

“It’s a risk I’ll have to take, if it’ll get me home.” 

Kress studied a display while the baby blobs congealed into a contented mass on Faron’s lap, their warmth making him long for his own son halfway across the universe. 

“At best, this will take you two or three orbital periods. At worst–” Kress sighed. “You could be wandering forever. Half of the stops are in civilized systems, but the other half are deadly. I’ve marked their locations in red. You can see that color, yes?”

Faron looked at the map on the screen between them. In the dark display glowed coals of hope, the known Stochastics that might lead him home.

***

Day 97

Three months of travel, now. So far, each system’s been like Nonthong–small cities and harmless blob people. Kress gave me this map that doubles as a journal, and an organic particle transmuter so I won’t starve or die of thirst. The goop it makes, though…ugh. It smells like socks, and tastes like glue. Bottoms up.

Day 401

Home tomorrow! After all the misjumps and lost time, I’m finally at the last portal. It’s been over a year, and twice as many jumps as days. I’m so tired, but I can’t wait to see my family again. 

Day 833

No water. There’s no water anywhere, no light but this tablet, and no stars. I shouldn’t have traded the transmuter, but there was no other way to get to Ixtli. Maybe I’m underground? The map won’t coordinate.

Day 1005

I’ve circled back to Chiron V. If I time it right, it’ll send me to Aurux, and I’ll be on track. I’m not sure, but I think the gravity of Chiron’s moons change where the Stochastics go. I need rest after the nightmare jungles of Urdurth, but if I don’t make the pass now, I’ll lose my window. Twenty-first time’s the charm.

Day 1006

Twenty-second, then.

***

A month later, Faron arrived at the edge of the Milky Way, on a barren red planet. It was the closest he’d been to home since he’d stumbled through the closet, but there was no joy in the accomplishment. Three years of jumping star systems had made him a keener judge of which Stochastics were likely to work, but there was alway the risk he’d get stuck somewhere inescapable, prisoner of a distant sun.

Even if he did make it through, would Hugo know him? Would anyone? He barely recognized himself in the reflection of his map-screen, a pale, withered creature with sunken eyes. The portal glowed through the night, a doorway into the stars.

He closed his eyes and thought of home: a tall white house on a green hill, surrounded by black-limbed trees budded for spring. He stepped forward, the familiar dysphoria pulling at his belly. A barrier crowded his vision, and the jagged shapes resolved into a closet rail half-full of small clothes.

Faron looked around, his heart thawing in his chest. The attic room was exactly the same, and nothing had been moved–not even the lemon yellow rain jacket on the floor. Had the bedroom become a memorial, a crime scene? He heard a familiar sound and staggered to the window.

Outside, a school bus pulled up to the curb. A small boy with dark hair bounded out of the accordion doors, dragging his backpack after him in the grass. Faron watched through the rippled glass, his body shaking and his throat tight. It couldn’t be another dream. It was too real.

He tapped on the window. 

“Hey, Dad!” Hugo yelled, waving up at him. “Don’t tell Mum, but I lost my jacket again!”

Faron ran down the stairs three at a time.