It was all happening to another person. This figure far below Katie, pushing its body to the very limits – it was someone else. And yet it was her, unmistakeably her at the same time. Sea green eyes, hair the colour of sand, boy’s clothes, the smooth leather glimmering in the sun. Jack.
Jack was running like his life depended on it.
Desert stretched on further than the eye could see and only the occasional scattering of rocks broke up the barren landscape. Not that any of them were big enough to lean against to rest for a minute – just a minute – or use as shelter from the relentless sun. So he didn’t stop, didn’t dare pause even to breathe unless that… that shadow thing caught him. His muscles were heavy with lactic acid, pleading with him to take on more oxygen before they, and possibly a major organ or two, failed. But he couldn’t stop to give himself what he needed. If he stood still now and let it get him the last century and a half would have been for nothing. And that – maybe Lady Katie’s dog with a bone attitude had started to rub off on him – would just be nuts. What was the point in fighting for your life if you were just going to give it all up when the going got rough? He grinned and thought of her voice, edged with slight anger and exasperation, telling him he better not leave her forever. And then he recalled how badly he’d wanted to do something more than hold her hand and watch as she cried her heart out over one thing or another. He couldn’t bear being the cause of any more of those tears, couldn’t stand not being there to kiss them all away.
So he would run. Until his legs crumbled beneath him Jack would run, and after that he would crawl. Until his skin began to peel and flake under the sun Jack would eat up the acres, and after that he would ignore his bones becoming ash. Until his lungs collapsed and his heart stopped beating Jack would push himself further, and after that he would die thinking of her.
He risked a glance behind him and saw nothing but endless miles of cracked desert. Miles of burnished brown soil. The colour of dead blood. It wasn’t a pleasant image he created for himself but it had the desired effect. There was no sign of the Shadow on the horizon. It didn’t mean it wasn’t there though… somewhere. It hid. It was a tricksy little thing, it was. The Shadow was – if you stood in one place for too long, it snuck up on you. It was faster than thoughts and could cover miles in the Dead World before its prey could blink.
But the darkness in the still air. The heavy, hundred degree heat. The sky that needed no cloud to feel evil and ominous. They all but proved that something horrible was lurking here, just waiting for Jack to make a mistake to rush in and take its prize. He spent a precious few seconds breathing as fast and deep as he could, trying to infuse his blood with as much oxygen as possible to keep his body co-operating for the next stage. Then he calmed himself enough that he would feel the dark shadow creeping closer over the desert.
There it was.
Katie slammed her eyes open and shuddered. Holy crap! That’s new. Since when had she been able to feel what other people felt? Dreaming about other people – that was not so weird but being able to see everything they were doing, experience everything they were? It tipped the insane scale to section me now.
Eager to forget this new experience, she imagined her phone into a pocket (she’d figure out how to dial it later if she needed it) and walked towards the door. It had been left open just enough for her to squeeze through and she passed Leo’s open door a few steps further down the landing. A quick peek. Sneaking a look at a person when you knew they couldn’t see you had this irresistible kind of pull to it. And there was certainly enough still to learn about the young man. But he was not doing anything interesting – just playing a silent computer game with a tight, fierce look on his face. Every so often, he would flinch away from something on the screen of his computer and Katie turned to walk on. Then she remembered something and backtracked. Leo had been facing her so she should have seen the reflection of a video game on his face. And there hadn’t been one. She entered his room, all at once comforted and a bit freaked out by the posters of dragons breathing fire and naked women with impossible breasts kneeling before a dark totem. Some of these pictures, she recalled, he drew himself. This kind of twisted fantasy art… it just didn’t fit with the religion he was so defensive of.
She stood right in front of him, beside the monitor, and hoped for a bizarre second when his dark gaze flicked away from the screen that he somehow knew she was there. And then his fingers went back to working the buttons on his game controller.
Without ever meaning to, Katie dropped into his thoughts.
Jesus Christ, God, anyone who’s out there.
Keep her safe okay? I know we can’t have her back. I know you have something else planned for her and that I was never a part of it but I didn’t hurt her. And if I did, I didn’t mean to.
I thought… after my mom… it was what you wanted. If I could put this distance between myself and everyone else. The kid I used to be. You know, I stopped being young and stupid and I locked him away, I made myself grow up. If I stopped wanting impossible things then I’d never again be responsible when they didn’t happen.
Katie raised her hands to her ears as though it would keep the words from drifting into her mind. She felt acutely uncomfortable listening to this private prayer. It was too tempting not to listen to a little bit more.
If I stopped wanting things, wanting people, then it wouldn’t hurt when I couldn’t have them. But now I get it. I don’t like it but I get it. People get hurt whether I’m there or not.
So just… whatever happens now, where-ever she goes – make sure she gets there okay.
It was over.
She stood there for a moment, and a final thought floated to her – a breath of regret.
I should have tried harder.
“Leo. You have to forgive yourself,” she whispered. Maybe in some unconscious part of his brain maybe he could hear or understand her. “If you don’t do it, how do you expect God to?” In just a handful of sentences, she had a whole new appreciation for his religion. Not that organised faith made much sense to her still, but for Leo, Christianity wasn’t just a curtain to hide behind or something to pick a fight over. It was something he had turned to in order to find his place in the world and he clearly had a deeply personal relationship with the Almighty.
And as long as he had something to believe in he’d b okay.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I can do that.”
Was he...?
No, he couldn’t be hearing her.
Katie did an embarrassing little song and dance routine and watched his face closely. No sign that he realised anything odd was going on. In fact, his face seemed even harder set than before. There was something heart breaking about knowing there was no way she could remedy the situation. So Katie did the only thing she could think of. If talking to him was out of the question then the least she could do was take the pain away. She kissed him. Just a gentle brush of her lips on his, so light neither of them really knew it was happening but Leo shivered. Goosebumps popped up on his arms and Katie noticed a smear of blood soaking through the right sleeve of his white t-shirt. Leo rubbed his other hand over it and bit his lower lip as if it still stung. Perhaps it did – Katie could no longer feel any of her own wounds. The realisation both thrilled and worried her.
For half a breath, she stood between Leo and the screen, not knowing if she could cast a shadow and then decided she needed to go walk this stress off.
That was how she came to be wandering the darkening streets. There was the burnt out carcass of the tattoo shop – a gutted skeleton of beams and chunks of brick. A psychic called Mademoiselle Romani had given her a reading in a back room and less than 24 hours later, she was dead and the place was being brought to the ground leaving Katie with bad memories, a certainty the fire had been an attempt on her own life, and a new pet goldfish. Further along the row of dilapidated businesses was th
e garage where her friend Marcie had been half hidden under a rust coloured Mustang. Katie reached the sign which named the street as PENNITON ROW and turned back. Familiar landmarks crowded her. The corner shop where she had first really gotten to know Jaye, the community centre where Adam taught self defence, the primary school where Freddie spent his days waiting for the weekend to go out with his mother and Aunt Katie. Returning to the residential areas, she noted the old houses that resembled her own, and how they suddenly had a completely different aura to the newer builds. Then into the more northern part of town where most of the academy buildings were based. The student medical centre which housed her dead body, the sports stadium with professionally laid track and competition standard equipment. Not quite Olympic, or even European Championship standard but by far the best athletics arena Katie had ever seen. She turned into it, grateful that it was late enough to be practically deserted but early enough to still be open. Breaking and entering certainly wouldn’t get her into heaven. Not if she really was being judged.
“Ugh, I need to be drunk before we start this shit,” she muttered, deciding being dead rendered the legal drinking age redundant.
The stadium was one of the few places she felt absolutely at peace – where Katie felt like she could drop every wall and shield she had erected to stop the world hurting her and simply run. A few laps now would probably do her good. Clear the cobwebs.
How many times had she been attacked here? Too many times to count really. The physical attacks had all come in nightmares and daydreams. But emotional assaults – learning her boyfriend was nothing more than stolen energy and tangible echoes, hearing Dina had tried to slash her wrists, running herself into a coma of exhaustion – yes, all of that had been frighteningly real. Recent memories ganged up on her, all trying to be the most horrific, all jostling to the front of her mind. But there was one memory that beat them all. An attack she had been suffering the effects of for months.
The bruises had lasted a few weeks. The bleeding had stopped by the morning. The deep ache had faded with time. Putting almost two hundred miles between her and the park back in Worth had helped. Leaving all that horror behind her this August hadn’t made the hurt go away though. It was easy to say the word rape. It was easy to accept that it had happened to her. Because Katie wasn’t the same girl who had suffered through it.
Katie stopped running and automatically imagined up a towel to wipe her face. Then realisation struck home hard. The beige towel was unnecessary because she didn’t have any sweat to wipe off. Furiously swallowing down the soul-cracking sob that stuck in her throat, she scrunched the towel up and slung it around her neck, reeling in the fresh, fluffy material, glad that she could still feel something. Even if it was mostly her mind tricking her. Imagining things into her hands was already second nature. All it required was thinking about something physical and bingo – there it was. Walking back through the grounds, a voice called her name. Lost in her new ability, it took Katie a second or two to realise they were calling her name.
“Evenin’ Miss Katie!”
She turned toward the voice. “Roy? You can see me?” Another few moments before it all clicked. “Of course you can. You’re a Shade now.”
The elderly man with mad scientist white hair stood up and squinted at her. “But you’re not. Something went wrong.”
“Long story. When did you come back?” Katie had been at the hospital last Saturday when Roy had been rushed in after suffering a massive heart attack. She had comforted his wife as she lost herself to the first waves of grief. She had helped clear his office of a few things when nobody had banked on Roy coming back. Without being too harsh about it Roy was old. It was more than likely that his best years were behind him and that he would simply be sent to the End Place. Or the Dead World. Katie shivered again. The End Place was for those who died too young; not for men like Roy, who had lived a long and hopefully happy life. It had been just a few days but it had seemed so long since his death that returning to the mortal world had seemed impossible and his wife, Bernice, hadn’t given up. She hadn’t been so bold as to voice her wishes, and had begun to mourn as anyone would mourn a late husband, but nor had she really broken down and begged for one more day together. It just hadn’t happened like that. And now, looking at the WELCOME BACK cards pinned to his little cork board, Katie could see why his return had taken so long. He took care of the students on campus and they cared about him back. Dozens of printed flaps of cardboard and scribbled pieces of paper proved that. So what if Roy was getting on a bit? There was not a single one who could take his place.
“You went done got yourself killed. Now you’re…” he shrugged.
“More flash fiction than novel.” Katie rested her folded arms on his window sill. “You must be glad to be back?”
His smile faltered for a heartbeat. “Sure am. I thought I were a goner, Miss Katie. Never see all your smiling faces again.”
“Roy.” It came out croaky and Katie wondered if Jaye was right. Getting used to speaking normally was going to take some getting used to. Psychic speaking’s so much easier.
But it feels like cheatin’, Miss Katie. We’re in the mortal world. S’only polite to play by their rules.
“You’re hiding something, Roy. I can tell things about you that other people miss. And you’re not telling me everything.”
“How can you tell?”
It was her turn to shrug. It was a good way of lying – she really didn’t have any knowledge other people lacked, just the ‘give a crap’ attitude to pursue problems… usually. But now she had him. By not denying it, Roy had as good as confirmed something was amiss. “You wanted to stay dead, is that it? You didn’t want to come back.” The thought was somehow shocking but not surprising. Roy had worked his life out and then he’d just been mercilessly dragged back to carry on.
“That’s the opposite. I couldn’t bear thinking of my poor Bernice left here all alone. If she had to live her final years without me…well, I reckons it’d kill her quicker.”
“So, why the sad face?”
“Guess I were scared. Haven’t been home.”
“In case she doesn’t want you now?” Suck it up, soldier. She gave Sergeant Voice a swift kick in the shins to shut it up. This was neither the time nor the place for the tact of a man on sodium pentothal. God, Roy, if you’d seen her face that weekend, you’d be round there like a bullet. She wants to spend those last years at your side. She wants to know you’re back and that she can stop worrying she’s lost you forever.
“Mayhap I’ll go home tonight. You’re a sweet girl.” He leaned over to smooth her hair down, frowning when he touched her. Even if there is something wrong.
Shades can touch me but I feel weird, I know. I’m not solid, you know, I’m… energy? That sounded about right. And you can only touch me because you are too. And it simultaneously sounded so far out that Katie couldn’t believe she’d even thought it.
Not really what I meant. Something else.
Else? Her eyes held the question but Roy thought they held the answer as well. Pointing, he said, “I can see it. Where you come from. It’s gonna pull you right back. You can’t stay here.”
“I’ll….” Katie took a deep breath, her head already spinning. Visions were slamming into her brain. Could ghosts faint?
“You’ll go home. It’s getting late. It’s not safe for a pretty girl like you round here after dark.” Katie opened her mouth to protest. “Now, now, I still worry about you like my granddaughter. Can get hurt or not, you should be inside.”
“Staring at the same four walls was driving me crackers.”
“You need to go home, Miss Katie. And I needs to lock up.”
The pair said their goodbyes and parted company.
Thinking about home brought her back to the old house on Newton Street. Lainy, Adam, Dina, Jaye, Leo – they were her family of c
hoice. Where-ever they were was where her home was.
Only…
Only her real home was the house she had grown up in, the people she had spent 16 years getting to know and love, where she had started to become the person she was now. Which was quite a good person, in all honesty. If she could just see her blood kin one more time… Jaye had told her how important it was to make memories of her family less than a fortnight into her stay in Northwood, or she might start to forget them. Katie had not really taken her seriously, although she hadn’t exactly laughed the idea off. Now it came like a blow from a claw hammer that her mother, father and sister hadn’t been her first thought on waking. It didn’t seem plausible to not want your family to be the first to know of her hospitalisation – well, my body technically is still in the hospital.
Before she went around the house to find an open window to sneak through, Katie stood at the front door. There were yellow lights burning deep in the house. Jaye and Leo were arguing loud enough to be heard down the street but God only knew what had started it all this time; Adam and Dina were crouched on the floor of the front room and talking over a hand of poker; Lainy didn’t seem to be around so she was most likely at work. It was just so normal. Like any other Tuesday night in her chaotic old house. And she wanted to be a part of it desperately. She wanted to be sitting in the middle of an argument, looking at Adam’s cards over his shoulder to help Dina and trying to study. She’d been getting used to her student lifestyle and finally being an adult. And then it all went away. Was all stolen away, she corrected herself. Every second she spent watching her adoptive family through the window was another moment she wasn’t getting back. But only other Shades had, so far, been able to see her. What was the point-
Katie blinked as a shadow faded in behind her. She gasped and tried to turn to see if there was anything at her back, but her feet suddenly felt leaden. Even the flexible muscles in her neck were as rigid as steel wire. It was as though the shadowed figure was keeping her locked in position. Like it didn’t want her to see. Not that there would be anything there if she did look around. Instead, Katie stared straight ahead and let the black form shake into a human kind of shape, reflected to the side and just behind her. “What do you want from me?”
There was no answer. The night was deepening with every second but, no matter how dark the sky got, this thing would be darker.
“You can’t hurt me,” she told it, willing herself to believe it. “There’s nothing you can do to me.”
So why are you scared of me? The smooth voice slipped into her mind like melted chocolate. There was something about the voice. Something commanding and demanding and somehow young, like a child used to getting his own way. But it was her own voice. Katie knew that, knew she was projecting her own fears because hearing them made them easier to deal with.
“Because people with no faces scare me,” she admitted. “I start to wonder if they’re hiding something from me. And what. And why.” Why was she pouring out her deepest thoughts to this boy of shadows and secrets?
And if it is dangerous. And yet, I have said that I am no danger to you. Kathleen.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I’m not worried about me. It’s them.” Katie stared at the house, trying to lose herself in the sense of life that emanated through the walls. “I won’t let you hurt them,” she ground out. None of her friends were going to be in danger. Not because of me.
Shadow Boy stretched out thick black hands and, just as he reached out to touch her, Katie, instead of shrinking away from him, saw her reflection lifting her arms to meet his and taking hold of those crawling fingers. What had she expected? Well, it might have been anything, but it certainly hadn’t been nothing. And this was on the low end of nothing too. No writhing black tendril of death and evil; no last of light to show he was one of the good guys; nothing. She frowned, finding that she couldn’t - don’t want to – let go. Something would come if she held on long enough. She was sure of it. Tears burned behind her eyes as she looked at the life she had turned away from, the friends who were just carrying on because they hadn’t known her all that long anyway. She thought of a family, one daughter less than yesterday, 200 miles away, probably still oblivious to that fact. They had to be told. Who would do it? Maybe Katie should go herself. And, however heart-breaking it was, the tears just wouldn’t come. They burned acid in her throat – grief turned into poison. And, she knew, there was no time to be sad. There were things to do and places to go. People to see. Then… then, she could rest.
The shadow was close enough that she could feel an eerie warmth against her back. It felt alien and comfortable all at once. Katie closed her eyes and let touch take over. The thin bones of a child, the tight grasp that seemed frightened to let go, the weight that was a hand resting in hers and not holding it. Behind her eyelids, a blurry face was hovering at the edges of her mind, so ethereal it broke apart and vanished when she grabbed for it. A burst of white noise busted into her efforts, chasing off anything that might have drifted back, and the gentle pressure was suddenly gone from her hands. No more breath on her neck or darkness so close to her that it seemed inviting. So inviting that there was no question that it could only be trouble. And yet, she felt somehow empty and wanting inside.
Katie opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in the window. She thought of everything she had left and wondered, again, why. It was insanity. It was-
You.
The word Shadow Boy had whispered this time floated to the surface. It had been buried under the white noise – a secret word that somebody else might steal if it was not hidden.
Soon.
You.
What did they mean? No idea, but Katie had an idea where she might get some answers.
Chapter four