KH: The Other Side, The Other Story
By Ethan Goodrum
Chapter 1: The Lucky Rabbit
Claire sighed.
She had gotten the dog's ball stuck on the roof again, and he was impatiently barking at her to get it down.
"I told you, I can't get it down," she scolded at the golden retriever. "Not without a ladder, anyway—and you and I both know Dad would never let me use one of those alone."
Too bad both he and Ethan, her older brother, were away attending a horror author's book signing. Something she had wanted to go to, but been unable to because her father had never allowed her to read the novel the author would be discussing—though she may have been the most avid horror fan in the family. Why of all people had Ethan gone, anyway? He was the total opposite, not even daring to watch the films that she, a full four years younger them, rushed to every time they entered theaters.
And Rex was still barking.
"Would you shut up?" Claire demanded. "I can't get the ball, not without a ladder, and the only other way is—"
But no. Claire cut herself off—that was off limits as well. The ladder was child's play compared to the trouble she would be in if her parents, much less her brother (who was the only one in the family who seemed to be able to understand it in the first place, though not why it existed) found out she had done that. That was off-limits, strictly—and she would be beyond dead if they ever found out that she had done it.
If they ever found out.
Why should they, anyway?
Claire looked right and left.
There was nobody around, not a soul in sight.
She glanced back up at the ball, then down to Rex again, still impatiently barking at her to retrieve it for him—even though the word retrieve was a part of his species' name, not hers.
Oh, well, Claire thought. What my parents don't know won't hurt 'em.
Claire squinted her eyes, narrowing her focus on the ball lodged in the gutter at the base of the roof. She concentrated, hard, and the ball began to wobble slightly. Not from a passing breeze, mind you—for the air was unusually flat for the late October that usually brought winds bursting across the landscape surrounding Claire's home.
No, the ball was moving because of something else.
Something else entirely.
The wobbling continued, accelerating and growing more violent in its movements. Soon, the ball began to sink lower into the gutter, as if some unseen force was pushing it down, wedging the rubber sphere into the thin metal.
But Claire knew better.
She knew it wasn't being pushed, but pulled.
And in a matter of seconds, the ball had disappeared from sight.
In a second more, it was in her hand, having dropped out of a bluish portal—a seam in the fabric of space and time that Claire, of all people, had somehow figured out long ago how to open. With a blink, she closed the hole, and the space where it had once been looked as if nothing had ever been there at all.
Little did Claire know the same would soon happen to her.
For the seam hadn't closed entirely. A single small, dark, curved protrusion stuck out at such an angle that Claire had been unable to notice it.
Instead, she walked away from the spot with a satisfied smile on her face and threw the ball back to Rex, who chased after it happily. But as Claire's back was turned, the claw pushed farther into this world, widening the seam Claire thought she had closed.
Soon the black blade was joined by a full set of equally dark claws, and beyond that came an arm. After Claire had thrown Rex's ball to him the fourth time, the whole body pushed out—a small rabbit, though unlike any that anyone had seen outside of a cartoon.
This one looked out of place in this hard, physical world—his limbs seemed almost fluid, lacking any joints. His skin was jet black, and showed no signs even of fur. The rabbit's face, however, was starkly in contrast to the rest of his visage in its ghostly pallor.
This being had never actually spoken before, though he knew that other beings did. However, that made his first words no less of an alien experience for him—though he did enjoy every second of it.
"Hello, my dear," the black rabbit said.
With a whirl, Claire found herself face to snout with the cartoon creature. What would have been a scream of surprise became a muffled Mmmughmf! as his hands clapped over her face, though there would have been nobody to hear her wail anyhow. Nor anyone to watch the oddity that was the rabbit drag her, screaming silently, through the portal she had inadvertently left open, and into another world.