When Ryan and Bradley stepped out of the portal, they were certainly somewhere, but not sure of where.
It looked like Dr. Parker's laboratory, but it looked empty. All the equipment was still there, but Dr. Parker was nowhere to be seen. The boys ran out of the room to the main waiting area, but the clerk was gone, too. When the boys got outside, they finally saw some humans, but none of the people that they knew in their own universe...as least, none that were still alive.
That's right. This universe was completely populated by the people who had died in NormVerse. Their styles of clothing were the first sign of this, and well as their dialects and vernacular--for those of you who didn't understand this, the way they were talking. Ryan and Bradley were amazed to find all these people, and then wondered about their own houses. They were cousins and lived right next door, and perhaps their houses here were filled with their dead relatives! Sure enough, when the boys had run back to Ryan's house, there were their families. Their great-grandfather Stephen was the first to greet them, with a little surprise. Indeed, many were talking about how the boys were here while they were still alive. After explaining how they got here--and a bunch of answers to questions about their living families--the two boys asked their relatives about this place.
"Well, whenever a person dies, they come to live here," said Aunt Tracy. "And we have preferred to live here in the places were we have known or grown up, which is why you two have found us here in your homes."
"Once in a while, we are able to go briefly into your world," said the boys' cousin Margaret. "That's how we haunt a place, or how you feel us with you."
"We are also able to travel long-distance much easier here," added Uncle Henry. "All we have to do is concentrate on where we want to go, and we are taken there. After all, we are basically ghosts here."
"But what about them?" asked a concerned Great Aunt Victoria. "They aren't dead, not that they SHOULD die."
"We all do eventually, Vicky," replied her older brother Edward. "But perhaps they will have these abilities here."
"As long as they get back home," said the boys' adult cousin Nicholas. He had recently passed away with his wife and five children in a horrible accident.
"Are you able to go home?" asked Nicholas' wife, Alexandra.
"Well, there is a portal back home in the doc's lab," Ryan replied, "but he said that he would like us to spend two weeks here for research."
"Maybe he's going to open the portal again in that time," Bradley added. "Or maybe we just go back to the lab and start the portal up again. No one is there."
"That could be because the lab was built by this doc, and no one else has reason to be haunting it," Stephen wondered. "But promise me that you will go home boys."
"We promise," they replied.
The boys then went out into the backyard, wondering what to do now. Ryan suggested a little sightseeing to see whether or not they could travel as ghosts here. Willing to give it a try, Bradley let Ryan have first pick for their first destination. After concentrating on one specific location, the boys rose from the ground and flew off.