Without thinking, Truman lunged for the dais, but the shadow man’s palm caught him in the chest, shoving him backward.
Truman stumbled, then caught his balance, breathless. “What are you doing to him?”
“Only what he deserves, trust me. So you let me worry about him. You and I have our own issues to address.”
Truman shook his head, still staring across the church to where Obie lay motionless on the table. “Please, I don’t want to be here. This isn’t right!”
The man caught him by the wrist and held tight, speaking close to his face. “No, it isn’t right, but I’m stuck with you and you’re stuck with me.”
“What do you mean, stuck?”
“Stop flailing around and listen. First, I want you to stay away from that disgusting little fiend.”
“What?” Truman struggled to pull his hand away. “Are you talking about Daphne?”
The shadow man smiled and the pale shine of his teeth in the dim light made Truman shudder. “I’m here to save you.”
Truman swallowed hard but stopped struggling. “Save me from what?”
The man traced a finger down Truman’s forearm, and as he did, blood sprang up in a thin trail along his scars. “You have what few people in this world will ever get—a second chance. And now you want to throw it away because some wicked girl looks sideways at you? Well, I’m here to make sure you have a life lived right this time.”
Truman shook his head, staring past the shadow man to the figure on the table. Obie lay perfectly still, and every now and then, a few drops of blood pattered down onto the floor, running from the shallow cuts that covered his hands.
The shadow man leaned closer, so close that his nose was almost touching Truman’s. “Pay attention. We’re stuck with each other, and I suggest we both make the best of it.”
Without warning, he slapped Truman in the face.
Truman woke up in the dark and couldn’t breathe. Beside him, Daphne was making confused, anxious noises and he realized that their hands were clasped together, fingers intertwined. His cheek throbbed where the shadow man had hit him. The insides of his wrists felt raw.
“Where was it?” Daphne mumbled next to him. “Was it here, or were we there?”
He sat up, slipping his hand free from hers.
“It’s nothing,” he said, running his hands over his face and squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re talking in your sleep. Everything’s fine.” His voice sounded dry and husky though, and he was pretty much sure that nothing was fine at all.
Daphne pushed herself up on one elbow and reached for him, pulling him back down onto the mattress. “Don’t be scared,” she said in a vague, drowsy whisper. “I’m just going to breathe the bad stuff away. But just a little—just because it’s nice. I won’t hurt you.”
“What?” Truman said, trying to get his head clear.
He felt like he would never sleep again, but when she put her hand on his arm, he lay back, letting her roll against him and hold on. Wanting her to.
“You don’t have to be scared,” she said again and yawned.
She pressed herself against his back, draping an arm over his shoulders. Her breath on his neck was warm. Without thinking, he reached for her hand, gripping it against his chest. Her touch made him feel strangely calm. The cold wash of panic was lifting. He lay close to her and closed his eyes, and this time, sleep was deep and it was dreamless.
ASHER SELF-STORAGE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the morning, we take the train south, sitting with the row of windows to our backs.
I’m mindful of my mother’s warning that Dark Dreadful is loose somewhere, but it seems unlikely that she’d attack in the daytime. Still, it makes me nervous not to see what’s behind me and I turn around, kneeling on the seat to press my nose to the glass. Outside, the city whips by at a fantastic speed.
My memory of the night before is fragmented and I stare out at the passing scenery, thinking about dreams, about prophecies and visions. After Truman got into bed with me, I fell back asleep and, when I did, I dreamed of Obie. The recollection is just a disconnected jumble of pictures, but the harder I concentrate, the more clearly it comes back—the heavy wooden table, the candles and the church. Only the more I think about it, the more I have the nagging sense that it wasn’t my own dream. The scene felt fixed in place, like I was watching something on television. Even when I wanted to, I couldn’t turn my head. It was nothing like the dream of my mother on the roof.
Beside me, Truman is quieter than usual.
I slide back down into the seat, trying to think how to address the subject of a dream that isn’t mine. “Were you having nightmares last night?”
He laughs softly, shaking his head. His hair is uncombed, falling in his eyes and I don’t brush it away, even though I’d like to. “You have no idea.”
But last night, when I stood across from Lilith in the dream garden, she said that my inborn talent was the kind that could only manifest on Earth, and I think I do have an idea.
“This is going to seem strange,” I tell Truman.
“What doesn’t?”
“Last night, after you got in bed with me, I think I dreamed your dream.”
Truman laughs again, but his expression is skeptical. “Daphne, people don’t dream each other’s dreams.”
“I think I might. At least, I think I might dream yours. I saw you there, in a dark church, standing over my brother.”
For a moment, Truman says nothing. Then he turns to face me. “How did you know I dreamed about Obie?”
“I told you, I dreamed it too. I think we need to find that church.”
“What?” He sounds dazed. “What do you mean find it? It was a dream. Dreams aren’t the same as real life.”
“Yes, but this wasn’t like other dreams. It felt . . . solid. And there was a man there, and a warm, dusty smell, and furniture. I think it’s a real place—out in the world somewhere. Now we just have to find it.” The prospect of having a mission is relieving. It’s attainable, and despite the danger and the difficulty, I can’t help smiling. This is the first indication we’ve had of Obie’s whereabouts, and I wouldn’t have been able to see it without Truman.
Truman doesn’t smile back. “Look, I need you to understand something,” he says, and he sounds tense and worn-out. “Every night, I dream crazy, horrific things, and then I wake up and I do my best to convince myself they’re not real, because if they’re real, that’s a whole lot worse than just having some messed-up switch inside my head. I dreamed your brother was on a table, tied up and bleeding. And you’re telling me that if it’s true, that would be a good thing?”
“Yes,” I say, even though good is not precisely the right word. “It would mean he’s out there somewhere. It means we know he isn’t dead, and if he isn’t dead, then we can get him back.”
Truman stares down at me in disbelief. “How?”
“I don’t know yet, but there has to be a way. Maybe Obie’s key can help us.”
“Daphne,” Truman says. “It’s a key. The world isn’t full of clues, it’s just full of stuff.”
I don’t answer, just stare out the window, thinking about the church and what the key might lead us to. I know it’s something important.
I know I’m right.
The storage facility is on a frontage road, with warehouses lining both sides of the street. There’s a chain-link fence and a gate. A man is sitting in a small booth beside it, wearing blue coveralls and reading a magazine.
When we walk up to his window, he sets the magazine down, looking deeply disinterested. “Help you kids?”
I hold out the brass key. “We would like to see the storage unit, please.”
For a moment, he just looks at me like he’s waiting for something. Then he raises his eyebrows and holds out his hand. “Do you have your access card?”
“No,” I say, still offering the key but he doesn’t take it.
Truman steps in front of me.
“Look, our mom just asked us to pick up some stuff. I know it’s against the policy, but come on. It’s not a big deal.”
At first, I’m confused by his self-assured tone. We are so patently unrelated. When the man compares our faces, I can see him debating. Doubting. Then Truman smiles at him—really smiles, wide and honest. Even though I know it’s a just a way of getting the man to trust him, the smile makes something flutter in my chest.
“You have to be careful,” he says under his breath, once we’re past the booth. “You have to stop telling everybody the truth all the time.”
We walk through corridors made by rows and rows of small garages. They all have aluminum sliding doors at the front, with joints in them like armor, like the sections of a snake’s belly. At number 206, we stop.
“How does it work?” I ask, looking at the door. It’s blank and wide and windowless.
Truman takes the key from me and crouches down, gesturing to an unobtrusive lock at the bottom. When he tries the key, it turns with a squeal. He straightens again and the door clatters up, revealing a dark concrete shed behind it. “Like that.”
The shed is small, but overflowing with things. There are cardboard boxes everywhere. An acoustic guitar is propped against one wall, strings snapped and curling up its neck. Everything looks lonely and unused. Desolate. As we step inside, the dust puffs up in clouds at our feet.
I pull back the flaps of one of the boxes to reveal a cracked snow globe, a copy of Grey’s Anatomy. Clothes. Cotton dresses and strappy shoes, combs and barrettes covered in glossy enamel flowers. The shoes and dresses must belong to Obie’s girlfriend, then. Elizabeth, the woman he left Pandemonium to be with.
Truman is standing back in the opening, looking skeptical. “This is it? We came all the way out here when we could have just found a garage sale?”
“This is all from the apartment. It’s all the stuff that should have been there.”
The guitar, the books on medicine and botany, the black-and-gray-striped pullover sweater. These are Obie’s things. This is what’s left of my brother’s new life, wadded up and piled in the corners of a tiny cement room.
I pick up one of the barrettes, turning it over in my hand. It’s pretty, but cheap. Compared to the workmanship at home, it’s unwearable, all rough edges and uneven, incompetent solder. Some of the stones will fall out. It will look broken and temporary and used. The woman who owned it will throw it away, move on to something else. I set it down again and wonder where she is now.
Then, from the back of the storage unit, I hear a noise, low and almost stealthy. Something in the shadows is rustling, something that is not us. I pick my way forward, dust rising around my boots with each step. Dust and dust, a cardboard box in the shadows, its folding flaps crumpled, hanging open. The rustling is coming out of its dark, gaping mouth.
“Rats,” says Truman behind me. “Probably a nest. Be careful,” he says and then I know that he doesn’t believe in the rats, but in something bigger or worse. He catches at my sleeve as I step closer. The feeling is unexpected, and then my arm pulls out of his grasp.
In front of me, the box rustles softly, trembling in the dim light. I kneel on the floor, peeling back the flaps to look inside.
A baby is sitting at the bottom of it.
Just a baby, blinking up at me with eyes like aluminum. Its face is a fat, pale moon, framed by the deep black of its hair. It reaches for me with tiny hands. Its fingernails are the cool polished silver of chrome.
It’s a demon.
“Oh my God,” Truman whispers into the box. He’s crouched on the floor beside me, staring down like he’s waiting for a bomb to go off.
“Not God,” the baby whispers in a weird, creaking voice, dusty like the room. “I’m Raymie.”
It’s shocking to hear her speak. In the city of Pandemonium, I’ve seen a lot of things, but never this.
I don’t remember growing up, or how I came to exist. My memory doesn’t stretch that far back. All I know is that demons are born from chaos. They’re born from rage or blood or fire, or ruined holy water. They’re born from eggs. They come into the world as wisps of smoke or in grotesque forms that splinter off and multiply. There are all kinds of origins, all different ways to be born, but the only story I’ve ever heard that talked about an actual baby is the story of my brother.
In the cardboard box, this baby is looking up at me patiently. When she raises her arms, I reach to pick her up.
Beside me, Truman is crouching forward like he doesn’t know whether or not to run. “Wait.” He acts like he’ll grab my sleeve, but then doesn’t. He doesn’t tell me what I’m waiting for.
I lift the baby from the box. She’s wrapped in a piece of dingy cotton, thick with dust. She feels cool and heavy.
“Who are you?” she asks me, mouth full of sharp gray teeth. When she shows them, Truman gasps.
“Daphne,” I tell her, holding her against me, touching her hair. My hand comes away covered in cobwebs and I understand that this is why my brother had to leave. He made his choice when he learned he’d be a father.
Raymie puts three fingers in her mouth and sucks. Underneath the piece of cotton, she’s wrapped in black plastic. There are holes for her arms and thick gray tape at her neck to hold the top shut.
I stand up, holding her to my chest. “I’m taking you out of here,” I say. “We need to clean you up and then get you some food.”
As we retreat toward the door though, Raymie begins to squirm, the plastic crinkling against me as she moves.
“No,” she says in her thin, creaking voice. “No, don’t leave my bed behind.”
“Get the box, please,” I tell Truman.
He starts to speak and I think he’ll object, but he reaches down and lifts the box by one flap. He opens out the bottom, folds the box flat and then folds it in half again without looking at me or the baby.
Once we’re out in the road though, he turns to me. His eyes are helpless and a little shell-shocked. “What are we going to do now?”
“Do? I don’t understand what you mean.”
“What are we going to do? How are we going to take care of her? She’s a baby.” He measures the space of Raymie with his hands. “I don’t know anything about babies and I don’t think you do either. She needs clothes.”
“She’s already dressed.”
“Daphne, she’s wearing a garbage bag.”
The baby is so dirty that she leaves smears down the inside of my forearms and all over the front of my blouse. She keeps sucking her fingers, which are gray with dust.
At the Arlington Hotel, I run water into the bathtub and mix in soap. When I ask Truman to cut Raymie out of her garbage bag, he gives me a doubtful look.
I use the thief’s knife to slit the gray tape at her neck. The plastic falls away in layers and I dunk her in the tub. Her face goes under the water for an instant and then pops up again just as fast. She is blinking rapidly as the water streams away from her eyes.
“Jesus, be careful,” Truman says. “You’re going to drown her.”
But Raymie is sitting up now, unconcerned. “What’s this?” she asks, patting at the water, at the bubbles, the steam.
“This is a bath. It’s water and soap. Do you like it?”
She nods, clapping the soap between her hands in white fluffs and watching the bubbles burst. On her face is an expression of deep concentration.
“Maybe Raymie should have some other babies to play with?” I ask Truman. “We could find some people who have babies.”
Truman starts to speak, then stops again like he’s trying to decide how to phrase something. “Raymie has a mouthful of metal teeth and a better vocabulary than most of my friends. She does not want to play with other babies and even if she did, other babies don’t want to play with her.”
“This is difficult. I don’t really know how to treat babies.”
“Neither do I,” he says, giving me a long look. “So it’s a good thing Raymie is basicall
y not a real baby.”
“I’m not a baby?” Raymie asks, catching a cluster of bubbles and trying to eat it.
“No, you are,” I tell her. “You’re just a different kind. Special.”
She looks at me with suds dripping from her chin. Then she nods. “Special,” she repeats, like the idea pleases her.
Her hair is bristling crazily around her face and she’s pale and grimy, but solid. The dust on her skin makes her look abandoned—discarded, even—but she doesn’t look starved.
“Raymie,” I say, wiping her face clean with a washcloth. “Do you know how to count? Like one, two, three, four?”
Truman is watching us like we’ve both gone crazy, but Raymie nods. “I can count like in the song. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, and four for a boy.”
“Do you know how long were you in the shed, then? How many days?”
Raymie shakes her head. “It was dark all the time, like one long night.”
“Christmas,” says Truman suddenly, and we both look at him. “Were the Christmas lights still up when you went into the shed?”
“No,” she says, with grim conviction. “The lights had already gone.”
Truman nods. “Okay, what about hearts?”
Raymie glances at me and scowls. “A heart is a muscle,” she tells me. “It has four chambers—two atria and two ventricles. It pumps oxygenated and deoxygenated blood.” And this, I can’t disagree with.
But Truman shakes his head and holds up his hands, joining them together with his thumbs pointing down and his fingers curved to make the shape of a candy box. “Like this,” he says.