Isobel scanned the surface of the door wildly, wondering who was behind it. She crept even closer and, turning her head to one side, listened hard, her ear hovering over the lacquered wood.
“Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste?” the man’s voice wailed. “Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!” the voice shrieked suddenly. “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”
Isobel sprang back from the doors in shock. Whoever they were, they had known she was there. They had heard her on the stairs, but how?
Shuddering, the doors knocked in their frames before suddenly flying apart with a deafening bang, thrown open by a gust of tempest wind that now surged against her.
The empty room within, reversed like the foyer and parlor had been, was one Isobel knew. Varen’s . . .
Except for the two solid black windows, everything else was just as she remembered.
One of the windows, the one through which she and Varen had once fled together, had been flung wide.
The driving wind howled through the casement in an unceasing drone, gusting through the room and past Isobel, moaning as it entered the hall behind her.
Looking up, she noticed a thin crack running vertically all the way across the ceiling and down the wall, separating the room into two and disappearing into the floor. As she stepped over the threshold, she glanced around to find herself alone, with no indication that anyone had been in the room a moment before. But then whose voices had she heard?
Varen’s neatly made bed sat against one wall beneath the chandelier with the electric candles. Their flame-shape bulbs sputtered, trying to stay lit. The nonworking gas fireplace still held Varen’s assortment of glass bottles and dried and dusty reddish-purple roses. In one corner, Isobel saw Varen’s small television and modest collection of video games.
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His books lined the shelves of his bookcase in perfect order.
The closet where she’d once been forced to hide stood open, its sliding door folded back to reveal the empty hanging bars.
As Isobel moved farther in, the plaster overhead began to crumble along the crack and fall like pebbles. She pressed forward, drawn to the open window, through which she could hear the crashing of nearby waves. She stopped in front of the open sash and peered out into the desolate expanse of the dreamworld.
There, in the distance, on the cliff’s ledge, stood a dark and solemn figure, his black hair windswept and wild.
She had waited so long to find him. . . .
Isobel pulled herself into the window frame. Straddling the ledge, she was about to climb out onto the top metal platform of the fire escape when a low feminine voice made her pause.
“You do surprise me. ”
Already knowing who she would find, Isobel dared not look.
“I do not as yet know how you passed through the boundary between our worlds,” the voice continued. “And I certainly did not expect you would come this far. But I am impressed by your resolve. ”
Reluctantly, Isobel glanced over her shoulder to the figure who stood in the doorway—Lilith.
Her face, again beautiful and covered by sheer veils, held a serene expression as she watched Isobel steadily with two large and unblinking eyes.
“Pity, though, to think that you came all this way and have endured so much for nothing,” she said. “Because I can promise that he will not go with you. ”
“You don’t know him. ”
“I do,” she said, “far better than you ever could. Well enough to know that he is at home here. ”
“This is not his home!” Isobel spat. “You are not his home. ”
“I think he would beg to differ. ”
“I know what you’ve done—or what you tried to do,” Isobel said. “The things you showed him about me . . . and what you must have been telling him all this time. You may think he believes you, but he doesn’t. ”
“Why tell him anything when he is perfectly capable of witnessing everything for himself?”
“I don’t care what you say,” Isobel snapped, and pulled herself through the window and onto the fire escape.
“When he sees me,” she went on, her voice steady with certainty, “when he sees that I came for him, that I kept my promise, he’ll know the truth. ”
“Go then,” Lilith said, the corners of her lips turning up in a mocking smile. “We both know I can’t stop you. ”
Isobel wasted no more words, and she did not look back again as she climbed down the fire escape. Reaching the last rung of the metal ladder, she dropped down to where the rocks flattened. All around stood the countless ruins of ancient stone structures, the sills of their hollow casement windows filled with ash.
Isobel swung around to face the cliffs. Even though she wanted to call out to him, she knew he wouldn’t be able to hear her over the din of the roaring waves or the hiss of the whipping winds.
With his back to her, Isobel could just make out the image of the white bird that blazed on the back of his long black coat.
As she approached the place where the rocks extended outward over the churning waters, the bluff tapering like a pointed finger, Isobel slowed.
Though he had not yet turned around, she thought she could sense that he knew someone was there, drawing closer. His shoulders seemed to grow more rigid. Hanging at his sides, his hands tensed, fingers twitching as though they wanted to become fists.
He didn’t know it was her, she thought. He only needed to see her, to look at her, to touch her and know she was real and really here, and then everything would be different.
“Varen!” she called.
Still, he did not look her way, and she began to wonder if this was just another trick, another twisting of her mind. Then she reminded herself that Pinfeathers was gone now, dead, if you could call it that, and there was no one left to assume Varen’s image in his stead.
Isobel ventured out carefully onto the overhang, her feet crunching over the craggy terrain that was growing ever narrower. She came to where he stood staring out across the ash-white waters, less than a foot from the cliff’s edge, stopping only when she reached his side.
Far below, the waves leaped at the rocks, hungrily licking at the flat face of the cliff.
When and where had she witnessed this moment before?
The wind surged stronger still, growing more and more agitated, the gales lashing at them, lifting Isobel’s hair in a maddening dance.
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She peered up at him, and as she did, his gaze at last turned to meet hers. His eyes, red rimmed and sunken, bore into her.
She would have given anything for the blackness within them to slip away. But it was a stranger who stood before her now, one who seemed to regard her as a stranger too.
She wanted to touch him, to throw her arms around him—but something held her back. Maybe it was the fear that her arms would pass right through him, that she would have come all this way only to find a ghost after all.
As though he’d been able to read her thoughts, he slowly angled toward her. He raised his hands and held his palms out to her.
Isobel lifted her own hands to mirror his.
He pressed their palms together, his fingers folding down to lace through hers.
She felt a rush of warmth course through her, a relief as pure and sweet as spring rain.
He was real. This was real. She had found him. She could touch him. She could feel him. Finally they were together. Finally, finally, they could forget this wasted world and go home.
“I knew it wasn’t true,” she whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t stop believing. ”
He drew her close.
Leaning into him, she felt him press his lips to her forehead in a kiss. As he spoke, the cool metal of his lip ring grazed her skin, ca
using a shudder to ripple through her.
“You . . . ”
His voice, low and breathy, reverberated through her, down to the thin soles of her slippers.
“You think you’re different,” he said.
She felt his hands tighten around hers, gripping hard, too hard.
A streak of violet lightning split the sky, striking close behind them.
The house, Isobel thought. It had been struck. She could hear it cracking apart. She looked for only a brief moment, long enough to watch it split open.
“But you’re not,” Varen said, calling her attention back to him.
Isobel winced, her own hands surrendering under the suddenly crushing pressure of his hold.
A face she did not recognize stared down at her, one twisted with anger—with hate.
“You,” he scarcely more than breathed, “are just like every. Body. Else. ”
He moved so fast. Before she could register his words or the fact that she had once spoken them to him herself, he jerked her to one side.
Isobel felt her feet part from the rocks.
Weightlessness took hold of her as she swung out and over the ledge of the cliff.
As he let her go.
The wind whistled its high and lonely song in her ears.
She fell away into the oblivion of the storm until she could no longer see the cliff—could no longer see him.
Only the slip of the pink ribbon as it unraveled from her wrist, floating up and away from her and out of sight forever.
35
The Sleeper
She saw him sitting alone in the far corner of the small and darkened room.
Slumped in one of the many greenish-blue upholstered chairs, dressed in sweatpants and one of his rumpled school uniform shirts, her little brother sat with his head propped against the wall. He clutched the skull headphones she had given him for Christmas between limp hands, and the tiny LCD screen of his iPod glowed in one slack fist. His shaggy and slightly greasy hair hung like a lampshade over his closed eyelids.
At first sight of him, an inexplicable gush of relief flooded through her.
Isobel started toward him but stopped the instant she realized she didn’t know where she was. Or how she’d gotten here. Wherever here happened to be.
The room itself was nondescript, with plain industrial carpeting. Generic landscape paintings hung on smooth turquoise walls. A soda machine hummed in one corner. Next to it, a refrigerator stood beside a long countertop, its surface clear and clean except for a large coffeemaker, a bowl of assorted sugar packets, and two stacks of Styrofoam cups.
Isobel frowned, still unable to piece together enough clues to name her surroundings.
Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, she glanced behind her. Through a narrow doorway, she saw a simple hall bathed in the glow of bright fluorescent lights, the white linoleum floors shining. The swishing sound of movement grew louder, and a man in blue scrubs passed by at a brisk walk, a clipboard tucked under one arm.
His uniform made her realize that this must be a hospital.
But why would she and her brother be in a hospital waiting room?
Confused and suddenly afraid, Isobel crossed to where Danny sat.
“Danny?”
He did not stir.
With the way he was sitting, his neck crooked awkwardly to one side, she didn’t think he could really be asleep. But as she drew closer, she saw that his breathing came in slow and even intervals, his chest expanding and falling in a steady rhythm. Standing this close, she could also see the faint purple half-moons underlining his eyes—tired eyes that darted back and forth beneath their lids.
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She knew that their rapid movement meant that he had to be . . . dreaming?
Isobel stopped and scanned her surroundings again, her alarm growing twofold.
Because she now knew that Danny wasn’t the one who was dreaming. She was.
She had to be. It was the only explanation.
All the elements were there. Or rather, she corrected herself, not there.
Not knowing where she was or where she’d come from. Having no recollection of the previous moment, no where or how that she could connect to—only the faint remembrance that something like this had happened to her once before. Forever ago, it seemed. And yet she could not recall that moment either.
Isobel dug deep in her memory, excavating for an image or a word, for anything at all. But nothing surfaced.
She began frantically scouring the walls for a clock, something to prove her theory, and it did not take her long to spot one mounted on the far wall.
She stared hard at it, waiting for it to change its mind about the time or start spinning and, in so doing, give itself away.
The hands of the clock didn’t budge, though. Just like one of Danny’s video games, they seemed to hold time in pause.
But she knew she had to be asleep. There could be no other explanation for the weirdness she felt. For the gaping hole in her memory.
Only when Isobel saw the minute hand slide forward a fraction of an inch did she give up her scrutiny and look back down at her brother.
If this wasn’t a dream, then what the hell was it?
“Danny,” she whispered.
He didn’t wake.
“Danny!”
When her voice rose, she heard the sound of a static pop and a fizzle directly overhead.
Her attention snapped to the TV suspended above them by a black metal armature. It flickered. Then, once the interference cleared, the screen returned to normal, casting a wan glow over the room.
A man behind a desk, dressed in a suit and tie, grinned in front of the camera. His thick eyebrows rose to his hairline as he spoke. Beside him, a blond woman with neatly molded, almost plasticized hair seemed to be practicing the art of listening, her head tilted in his direction, a polite smile in place, her hands folded in front of her.
“—news for all you Ravens fans out there,” Isobel heard him say, catching the tail end of his sentence. “Though Baltimore put up a good fight in last night’s game, the Ravens took a fierce beating from hard-hitting rivals the Pittsburgh Steelers, losing out on a chance to play in this year’s Super Bowl. ”
The woman broke from her stiff Newscaster Barbie pose and turned to address the camera. “That’s right, Rick. This morning it seems as if the whole city is smarting from last night’s grim hour of defeat. Joining us now from the stadium is Steve Crenshaw. Steve?”
Isobel scowled at the television as the camera shot switched to a street view.
“Baltimore?” she whispered to herself.
A tingling dread crept over her as the jabber of the television faded once more into background noise. A split second later, she could feel something rising through the shallow pool of her recent memory, a dark and terrible secret, one that held in it the answer to why they were there.
Isobel wheeled on her brother and reached out to jostle him.
“Danny! Wake u—”
Her hands swept cleanly through him, and she jerked back.
Her brother stirred, though he did not wake, his face scrunching before smoothing out again.
Astral, she thought. She was projecting outside her body—which meant that she wasn’t dreaming after all. This was all real, the room and the brightly lit hall and Danny and the TV.
Someone new entered the room. A woman, dressed all in blue, like the man Isobel had seen in the hall.
“Danny?” she called out to Isobel’s brother.
He opened his eyes with a start and focused on the woman, who moved quickly toward them.
The nurse’s young face, already strained with concern, tightened as she opened her mouth to speak again. She drew nearer, passing straight through Isobel without even blinking.
“Danny, you need to come with me right now, okay???
?
“Why?” Danny asked, his voice raspy from sleep. “What’s happening? Did the cops find the guy who brought my sister here?”
Isobel glanced back at the nurse, anxious for her answer. It was now clear that the reason they were there revolved around Isobel. Someone had brought her here. Which could only mean . . .
“Listen,” the nurse said, “you need to come with me right now. Your parents need you with them. ”
“What is it?” Danny demanded, and stood, letting the headphones and iPod drop out of his lap and onto the floor. “What’s wrong? What’s happening with my sister?”
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“They’re taking her to the ICU. Your mom and dad are wait—”
Danny’s face crumpled. “No, they’re not taking her there!” he shouted. “She was fine. I just saw her and she was fine!”
“Danny—”
The nurse reached for him, but he jerked his arm away and skittered around her, running past Isobel and through the open doorway.
Hurrying after, the nurse continued to call out to him.
Isobel began to follow but stopped suddenly when a glimmer of light erupted in the space right in front of her, like the glint of a shining object. It drew her attention downward. There, extending outward from her center, she saw it—the silver cord. It wavered, fluttering in and out of existence, as though struggling to remain intact.
When it glimmered into sight again, visible for longer than an instant, Isobel reached out and touched her fingertips to the ethereal strand. Suddenly, in a whir of movement and a haze of images, she was somewhere else—another room in the hospital. One filled with doctors and harried nurses, all of them wearing clean blue medical masks.
They stood gathered around a long table. Whoever was lying on the cold metal surface, Isobel could see only her bare feet, which poked out from the huddle of medical personnel.
“Clear!” she heard someone shout, followed by a harsh slamming sound.
The light inside the room grew instantly brighter around her. Intense enough to smudge away the walls and the cabinets and the swinging doors that flapped like shutters in the wind as nurses came and went. Clean and white, blindingly bright, it erased everything but those two limp feet, the table, and those who stood closest to it.
Already knowing what she would find—who she would find—in the center of their frenzy, Isobel slowly rounded the table. All the while, the nurses and doctors remained oblivious to her dual presence, taking turns applying instruments, their frantic movements reminding her of swarming ants.