“Stay here until dinner and think about your behavior!”

And Aunt Maggie slammed the junk room door, leaving Mike in the dark. He sobbed and sulked. He wasn’t afraid of the dark (or the spiders that might lurk in it), but being grounded in such a dreary place for so long seemed too harsh. And for what? He was just curious what would happen if he opened Aunt Maggie’s makeup case while she was in the shower. So what if some powder and lipsticks ended on the floor?

He sighed and groped his way forward. He’d explored the junk room before and knew that there was an old mattress behind the boxes of worn clothes. If he was stuck here, at least he could lie down comfortably.

He was about to sit down when a soft, thin voice said behind him: “Booo!”

“Eeeek!” he jumped up, his heart racing.

The voice giggled. It sounded girlish. Girls! Of course, it’s a typical girl’s dirty joke!

“It wasn’t scary at all!” he grumbled angrily.

But he was curious. Who could sneak into their junk room and wait for him here? He quickly remembered all the girls in the neighborhood, and none of them seemed to be so daring and cheeky. And the voice did not sound familiar either.

“But I scared you, I scared!” the girl laughed again. Right, nothing familiar.

“Who are you?”

“Cralla.”

“You’re kidding! There are no such names!”

“Of course there are, silly!” She chuckled. “Just not in this place.”

He ignored the “silly” part. This girlish teasing was far beneath him. But his curiosity grew.

“Not in this place? Where are you from, then?”

“Bersbert, Nordania!”

“You’re making things up! There is no such place!”

Mike got angry. At eight, he knew geography well enough. He wasn’t going to listen to these silly girlish puns!

“Actually, there is,” Cralla said more solemnly. “Just ... not here. I’ll explain. And what is your name?”

He sulked a bit more, but gave in.

“Mike. Um ... Stillwater, Oklahoma.”

“Nothing rings a bell.”

He felt movement. Cralla, whoever she was, sat down on the mattress by his side. He fished a flashlight from his pocket.

“I want to see you!”

“No, silly, wait, it’s no...”

Click.

Her voice was cut off in an instant when the light came on. And there was no one at his side. But ... there was a depression on the mattress ... he felt it ... still warm.

“Hey, where are you?”

He got up and looked around the room. Nobody.

“What the hell...”

He sat down. Then, on a whim, he turned off the light.

“ ... like that! We can only be together here when it’s dark!”

Ouch.

She bopped him in the side. Her little fist hurt. But ... yes, now Mike felt someone next to him on the mattress. Cralla ... whatever her real name was ... was sitting right next to him!

“How can that be...” he started, turning his head frantically.

He couldn’t see anything in the dark, so he reached out cautiously ... and felt a warm body under the cloth. Cralla giggled.

“Yep, I’m here, totally real! Just ... there are some rules.”

“Like what?” Mike asked, moving cautiously closer. He would never let a girl know how frightened he was! She didn’t protest or push him away. In fact ... in fact, it even felt like Cralla was moving a little closer to him as well. He could feel the warmth of her side.

“First of all, don’t turn on the light,” she replied calmly, as if nothing had happened. “And do not open the door. We exist separately when the lights are on. So ... if you have friends here when it gets light ... they will disappear when someone turns on the light and come back when it gets dark again.

“Second,” she added. “It only happens in small, confined spaces. Utility rooms, closets, boxes, such like that. Sometimes under blankets, if they are big and thick enough to cut off the light completely.”

“Why?”

He felt her shrug.

“I don’t know. I don’t make the rules, they just are.”

“So are you ... um ... some ghost people?”

She laughed.

“No, silly! We are normal people in a normal world, just like you. Just ... in another world.”

He remembered a sci-fi series he had seen.

“A parallel one?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

He felt Cralla’s hand crawl restlessly over his back and side. Mike blushed intensely - he didn’t really remember much about touching between boys and girls, except for what he saw in movies and on TV. He had not yet done that kind of thing.

He decided to take a chance. Carefully he put his hand on Cralla’s side. Yes ... she was real! A thin shirt, soft skin, ribs, waist ... belly.

“I’ve never met anyone in the dark before.”

“There are not many of us who can do that. And you probably have not stayed in small dark places long enough for someone to stumble upon you.”

“Yes ... Maybe ... So do you have some kind of travel gear? Or are you some kind of witch?”

She laughed and rubbed her forehead against his shoulder. The touch made him feel strangely warm.

“Nothing like that. It just ... happens. But you have to be initiated for such journeys.”

“Initiated?” His mind raced. He imagined priests initiating people into some secret society with secret ceremonies ... something like that? “Does that mean rites and oaths?”

Cralla laughed again. Mike liked the sound of it: so sweet, clear, mischievous.

“Nah! Simple initiation, actually.”

She put her small hand over the palm that was caressing her belly. Mike shivered. She leaned closer.

“We just have to kiss. Well, kiss deep and long. But that’s all. It’s kind of transmitted that way.”

“Oh ... Um ... okay.”

He was surprised by her frankness - but not disgusted or frightened. After all, he saw girls kissing, and he saw it in movies! It should be natural, right?

“All right! Let’s try it!”

Cralla giggled softly, then moved her lips to his face and kissed him. Oh ... how soft ... tender ... sweet ... Mike tried to catch her lips with his mouth and soon their tongues were dancing together. They kissed deep and long, as agreed ... Mike had no idea how long, but when they parted, they were both breathing heavily, trembling, flushed.

“Oh ... I never ... I didn’t think...” Mike caught his breath. “Is it enough? Am I initiated now?”

“I dunno. Let’s do it a few more times to be sure.”

And they did. Again and again, until Aunt Maggie called him in for dinner, opened the door - and Mike was alone again. But ... there was the warm indentation on the mattress next to him, and he still felt her taste on his lips, and ... he sniffed ... his arms and his shirt smelled of her perfume.

In a week, Mike had explored all the places in the house that were suitable for the dark journeys. In addition to the junk room, there were two large old closets with plenty of room under the hanging coats. He could probably use the bathroom as well, but he never had a chance to hide there long enough in the dark.

Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tim were puzzled by their nephew’s sudden love of confined spaces, but he demonstratively went there with a thick book and a flashlight, and they decided that a desire to read in a private, hidden place couldn’t hurt.

There must have been some other rule, but every place seemed to be coupled with some fixed other-worldly location. There was always only Cralla in the junk room, and she was never anywhere else. The closets brought him Ngeele - a seven year old girl from Incanice, she was also a dark traveler - and Borp, a boy of the same age as him, from Albora. Borp was just hiding in his closet, bitter about everyone, and he really freaked out when someone moved and chuckled next to him.

When Borp calmed down a bit, Mike told him about the dark journeys, and he agreed to be initiated. The boys hugged and kissed reluctantly. They could not pinpoint the reason, but it felt somehow awkward and not as exciting as kissing girls. They decided that they probably just did not like kissing with the boys. But the initiation still worked.

Aside from kissing the girls, Mike spent a lot of time chatting with all three of his new friends. They were telling each other about their worlds, and Mike could not tell if they were telling the truth or just making out. It all sounded so strange! Cralla told him about huge moving land crawlers, almost whole villages on wheels. Ngeele mentioned air balloons towed by flying manta rays. Borp, on his part, talked about underground cities carved out of rock ... but Mike managed to notice that all three of them talked mostly about their parents, home, school, everyday life ... the same things he was talking about! And they weren’t that different.

It was fun in itself to figure out what else they could do together in the dark. They played games, for example. Mike suggested Mankala - you could really play it with your eyes closed - and Jenga, which was particularly exciting because they had to feel the unstable tower by touch without toppling it. Ngeele brought Mitonda, where the field was a fine 3D wire mesh and the pieces were rings of different shapes to hang on hooks. Cralla brought Texx, a card game, the cards had distinctive embossed patterns, but Mike could not understand the rules ... although he enjoyed lying next to Cralla while trying to figure them out.

They brought candy, chips, drinks, and other things, and they treated each other. The tastes were sometimes quite striking and not always pleasant. Mike, for example, could not stand the fish-smelly chips that Ngeele adored; Borp did not understand cola; and licorice ... absolutely no one liked licorice, including Mike himself. But as it turned out, all otherworldly food disappeared from their stomachs under the light, leaving only smells and tastes.

“Of course,” Cralla shrugged. “That’s the rule. We cannot bring through anything material.”

They tried to synchronize their clocks, but it proved impossible. First of all, their clocks were all different. And second, time seemed to run erratically when they came out of darkness. So the only way to meet someone was to hide in the dark, wait patiently, and hope.

It was probably for the best, otherwise Mike could have been stuck in the dark explorations forever. As it was, he still spent quite a few hours with his old Earth friends. He told them everything, and not everyone believed him, but some (mostly girls eager to start kissing) agreed to be initiated, and, one by one, in a few months the whole neighborhood was hiding in dark places.

Mike often wondered if the adults knew about the dark journeys, but since none of them ever mentioned it, he decided that they did not.

Strangely enough, on their dark journeys they never found anyone who was too old, or too young, or too rude, or too stupid. Perhaps that was also the rule, and it worked out perfectly for all of them. The dark friends grew up with the local friends. Sometimes someone would move out with their parents, breaking the dark bond forever. They longed, sometimes mourned lost friends, but that’s life; and in time, another person would appear in the vacant place.

And so it was that at the age of fourteen, when Mike moved back in with his aunt and uncle from his parents, he lost Cralla. Mike cried for several days - he really loved her ... not just as a friend or girlfriend (although she was that), but because she was always happy, funny and positive. Borp and Ngeele tried to cheer him up, as did his local neighbors. It did not help much, but with time Mike’s grief dulled.

And one day, as he was sitting in the junk room all gloomy, he happened to meet Dordette from Llatappagos. She was a year older than him, and taller, and sounded scared. With a touch of annoyance - she was not Cralla! - he nevertheless tried to start a conversation, to learn something about her and to calm her down.

She turned out to be quite a nice and open person, and this was her first dark journey, and her body wasn’t quite human. As they examined each other by touch, Mike ran his hand over Dordette’s unbelievably soft and abundant hair, to discover to his amazement that it continued to grow at her neck, down her entire spine, and ended in a beautiful ponytail at, well, where ponies have their tails.