He put a hand on her elbow, and she nearly flinched at his touch. His fingers, long and firm, pressed into her skin; not painfully, but forcefully, as if he were about to guide her to the water’s edge and shove her down into the shallows. She wondered, almost hysterically, if she should pull away, rebuke him. In the end, surprise and logic eclipsed anger and fear, and she stayed perfectly still, almost curious to see what would happen next.

“Anyway,” he said, dropping his hand, his voice cheerful once more, “you’ll find out all about the lake once you live here for a while. You’ll come to love it, just like we all do.” He turned and walked abruptly away, up the weathered grass and toward the parking lot. “Come on, Ellie,” he said loudly, not turning back, “afternoon’s a wastin’!”

She nodded, but found herself transfixed by the water. Yes, she could sense it now. How very deep it was.

As she stared, a moving cloud must have sprung free and drifted across the sky to blot the sun, for an enormous shadow passed along the water’s surface. She looked up but saw nothing that might have created such an effect. When she dropped her gaze once more to the lake, the shadow was gone.

She turned to go and noticed a small cluster of people seated a few hundred yards away at the top edge of the beach. She could have sworn they were all staring straight at her, their faces placid as the water, pale as foam.

Gooseflesh broke out on her arms and legs. She put her head down and walked quickly after Jimmy, doing her best not to run.

THE AFTERNOON SUN was waning, there were hints of red at the horizon, and Ellie was getting hungry. She’d never admit this, of course, not unless she wanted Jimmy to think her a cow.

The Chrysler cruised smoothly along the lakefront. Ellie caught blinks of blue where the trees thinned, then vanished altogether, the lake flashing into full view, exposing its naked splendor to all comers. She turned away, saw the road to downtown slip by on their left, but Jimmy never lifted his foot.

“Where now?” she said, trying to sound nonchalant but growing tired and irritated, which was unlike her. Something about the way the people at the lake had looked at her, something about the stillness of that massive body of water...

She sighed heavily, then caught herself, embarrassed for her own rudeness, even if it was only in her head.

But Jimmy just turned and smiled at her with those brilliant teeth and sparkling eyes. “We’re heading out of town a ways, then we’ll come back, hit main street and grab a bite to eat. Sound good?”

“Sure,” she said, watching the white dashes of the road slip beneath them like Morse code, snatched up by the powerful engine. S – O – S, she thought, for no good reason at all.

SHE SAW IT from the distance. Drab heaps of metal columned against the horizon, an expanse as disproportionate to her reality as the lake was. A large, surprisingly clean metal sign was strung up by heavy chain between two wooden posts the size of telephone poles. Jimmy slowed the car and turned to go beneath, stopped in the shadow of the creaking sign overhead.

“Riley’s?” she said, looking up to read the name printed in large yellow letters against a rust-red metal backdrop.

“Yup, this is one of our star attractions here at Sabbath,” Jimmy said, humor in his voice. “Folks come from miles around to visit old man Riley’s, check out the soaring vistas, explore the rugged terrain, search for buried treasures.”

She looked at him, gawping. His face stayed rigid for a moment, then he burst out laughing, and she with him. Ellie fought to compose herself, but Jimmy was busting more than one gut at her reaction.

“But it’s a junkyard!” she said, too loudly, her laughter spilling out among the words.

“Yeah, sure it is. But what a junkyard.”

She opened the door of the car and stepped out, looked at the seemingly endless acres of piled cars, ambiguous metal scraps, toilet seats and bicycles; at things so rusted up and run together it was nearly indistinguishable where one thing ended and another began. Good Lord, she thought, how does a small town accumulate so much garbage?

The flattened cars were stacked forty, fifty-feet high, the mountainous heaps of debris at least half that and twice as wide. A narrow dirt road twisted through the massive piles, like a path leading to a mystical land where everything was broken and rusted; an extinct civilization where only jagged ruins remained, massive paperweight reminders of a dead race.

“I’ve never seen so much crap in all my life,” she said, amused at her own vulgarity. “My god Jimmy, look how high it goes. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a whole city underneath all that stuff, hidden from human eyes. I bet the dumps in Chicago aren’t nearly as big.”

He laughed, and she could feel him watching her. But she kept her eyes on the towers. A wonderland of shit, she thought, keeping that vulgarity to herself.

“You know, there’s a story...” he started, then stopped. “Well, it’s gonna sound crazy.”

“Tell me,” she said, not knowing – not really – whether she wanted to hear the story or not.

“It’s kind of an urban legend,” he said, “that there’s a car down there, way deep in the yard, sitting all by itself. An old Ford or something. It’s rusted right through, big holes in the roof, in the hood. It’s got wheels but no tires, and it’s missing a door, and all the glass is broken out. But what’s really weird is the car’s color – as it first was, I mean. They say it’s painted a bottomless, empty black. Dark as outer space.” He paused, as if reflecting. “The kids like to say the car was built in Hell. Crazy, right?”

“Geez,” she said, scanning the piles of cars.

“What’s really scary about this car,” he continued, “even though it’s junked and old and useless… well, it’s said that anyone who dares sit inside of it...”

She looked at him, eyes wide. “What?”

His soft smile was amused, but his eyes had that hard look again. The look of ice so frozen it could never be thawed. He stepped behind her, lay his long fingers over her shoulders.

“They never come out,” he whispered into her ear as she looked on at the broken towers of metal, the vast field of a used past. “A few kids have disappeared over the years,” he said. “More than a few, actually. And lots of us hear rumors about dares and stupid stuff like that, stories about how kids like to go into Riley’s to hunt for that car, dare each other to sit inside and see, see if anything happens. And something must have happened, right? Something pretty terrible. Because those kids, the ones that went looking for that old rusty Ford, the ones who found it, who sat inside… they never came back. Not ever.”

Ellie noticed the reddening sun peek at her through the columns of junked autos and suddenly wanted to cry. An ache had settled into her guts like a cancer. She didn’t know why, maybe it was the thought of those kids who had disappeared. Or maybe it was just hitting her, full-force, that this was her home now, and these were the highlights. The day was almost gone, and what had they made of it? A creepy lake and a haunted junkyard. She wondered if she’d ever be happy again.

“Say, I have an idea,” he said, breaking her train of dark thoughts.

“Jimmy…”

“Let’s give it a try.”

She spun to look at him, saw his wide grin, his flickering eyes, his sculpted hair coming loose. A greasy strand hung over his face like a scythe.

“Try what?”

“To find it!” he said, grabbing one of her hands so tightly she winced. “We can try and find the car together. See, I think it’s a portal, you know?” he said excitedly, his words pouring out of him in a rush. “Like a doorway, between this world and another. Only, you can only go one-way, or maybe not, but maybe when you come back... when you come back it’s another time. The future, maybe… or the past! We’d leave and maybe never come back. Not ever. Can you imagine, Ellie?”

Ellie could imagine, and more than ever she wanted this day to end. She pulled her hand away, not as forcefully as she might have, but enough to wipe the smile from his face. “Jimmy, you’re scaring me.”

She turned away from him, looked down at her shoes. What a mess, she thought.

“Come on, Ellie, I was just joking,” he said to her bowed head, and she thought he sounded sincere enough. She felt hands rest lightly on her hips and pushed down the rising thrill of his familiarity. He turned her to face him. “It’s just a dumb story, okay? I was only fooling around.”

She nodded, but said nothing, couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Tell you what?” he said brightly, “Let’s get out of here. We’ll head back to town, get some food, then I’ll take you home so you can get your room set up before bedtime, okay?”

She was hungry now, and getting very tired. “I guess,” she said.

“Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “Then come on, there’s one more thing I want to show you.”

She followed, somewhat petulantly, but was glad to go. She twisted her head for one last look at the junkyard, squinted at a dark shape hunched atop a stack of faraway cars. She imagined wings wider than the car it rested upon unfurl from its core and spread against the backdrop of hazy red sun before the dense shadow dropped away, disappeared into the eroded world beyond.

How strange are the shadows here, she thought, then settled into the warm seats of the convertible, reminded of the fabled old Ford that made children vanish, a doorway to other worlds.