“Left some books! Won’t be long!” Katie called into the quiet house as she blew past the front door, up the stairs and into her room. Once inside, she emptied an old make-up bag and filled it with the things she thought she might need. To make it look convincing, she added a couple of books to her bag and left the corners poking out. Probably nobody would notice but just in case. Then she hoisted it up to her back, wondering how books and notepads could be this heavy, and went back downstairs. She knew the adults were at home even though she couldn’t hear them – the house just had that easy feel of life.
“Hi guys. You’re not…” and then her voice trailed off, sliding into a hush it seemed wrong to break. Lainy was sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of paper shaking in her hands; her eyes red rimmed from crying and stands of blond hair sticking out of her eternal braid. She wanted to go to the older girl, try to comfort her in some way. Whatever had caused this scene was unimportant. She even took a step forward to do this when she stopped, noticing another dark shape out of the corner of her. Adam – tall, tanned, bursting with muscle and always ready with a friendly smile, sarcastic shots that never failed to make everyone smile with him. Not today. Today, Adam was tall and muscled still, but he was also pale and frozen, shock written into every line of his face. Neither of them had noticed her standing there watching them, she didn’t think. They did not move, except for the single tear that rolled down Lainy’s face. She wiped it away angrily.
It took a long minute for them to see her hovering, unsure of what to say or do. After all, these were Adam and Lainy. They were supposed to be the grown-ups, the caretakers – not the ones who had problems. “Katie,” Lainy breathed. “Have you been there long?”
“Long enough.”
“Come sit down. We need to have a word.”
“Uh-huh. I need to talk to you too.”
“Ad, shut the door will you?”
“There’s no-one here to overlisten. Over hear, I meant. Then I wanted to say listen.”
“It just feels more private.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes,” said both girls together.
He walked over to the kitchen door and closed it with a click. He was moving like a robot, legs stiff and heavy. It was the awkward movement of somebody who had more stuff on his mind. “I’ll make tea,” he said hollowly. But they all refused the offer and pulled him into the third chair at the table.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Lainy whispered. She slid an arm around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “We’ll get through this. We always do.” She plucked a few tissues from the box in front of them and scrubbed at her face. Adam took a shaky breath in and his face cracked, tumbling crazily into a smile that was a shadow of what it had been. The closeness of the one he loved was enough to feed his fears but it also gave him the courage to put them aside and concentrate on the little girl at his side. Being with Lainy was comfortable – not always the easiest thing in the world – and right. He took another breath and prepared to speak into glittering eyes and a stony face. Had Katie looked like that before?
“I know about Northwood. You know I know and I know you know,” Katie blurted out before she lost her nerve.
“We couldn’t tell you. We wanted to. But we can’t break the rules.”
“Rules. So many cans and can’ts. Dos and don’ts.”
“But there are ways to handle this.”
Katie raced back to the conversation she had eavesdropped on through her phone. “By getting up there people to strip the knowledge out of my head. I heard.”
“Sweetie, you shouldn’t know about these things until you’re at least eighteen.”
“And if we had our way, you wouldn’t ever have to know about them.”
“I never asked for any of this,” Katie spat. It had been a shock when she started to learn the secrets the town held. “And I don’t want it!” She closed her eyes, trying to quiet all the worries that were battering at her still. This could all go incredibly badly. But she had to try. “Can you take me to them?”
What if they took her memories before she even had a chance to do what she needed to do? What if hurt? What if they only took her memories and not this darkness? What if they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do what she wanted? What if they took offense to her for some reason? What if they decided she wasn’t worthy of their assistance? What if what if what if… And none of them filled Katie with positive thoughts.
“Do you know what it will mean?”
“I can live the next few years in peace. Not wondering which of my friends still has a heartbeat. Not looking over my shoulder to see if something bad is chasing me. Not having all these damn questions inside me trying to squash my brains out. Yes, I know exactly what it means.”
“It also means you can’t have Jack. You won’t even remember him.”
“I told him I loved him and he left the same day. I don’t want him.”
“It will makes things easier though,” Adam chipped in with the slightest echo of… longing in his voice. It was so subtle though, that it may well have not been there at all. “This would be just another town to you.”
“They’ll definitely take it all? They’re powerful enough to take everything?”
“Sweetie, of course they can. They watch all the young ones here. They do anything they need to do to protect the children.”
Why didn’t they protect me when I needed them my first week here? Where were they all those time I’ve been in danger?
“We’ll take you tonight. I’ll make arrangements.”
“What does it look like?”
Lainy took her thick bottom lip in her teeth and chewed at it. She had only seen the place once, and that had been a semi-conscious blur as they deemed her too important to leave Earth and dumped her soul back into her bloody body at the side of the road. There had been manic laughter, the glare of high beams in the rearview mirror, the screech of brakes… and then there had been a dark few seconds filled with sounds and shadows. And then she was shivering on the tarmac watching a car burn just feet away – the car with her father in, flesh sizzling and eyes popping their way down to hell.
“Lainy?”
But Adam waved a hand to quiet her. “She saw the place once. The day she died.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Lainy seemed to wake from her thoughts all at once. “All I remember is a long silver bridge. You had to be careful because there was water underneath it. Enough water to drown in. And beneath the water was impossible fire. Across the bridge are arches. Voices echo. Things twinkle and they balance. They are the creation and the keepers.”
Somewhere along the way, that speech had turned into less of Lainy’s memories and more of a monologue learned by rote.
“I’d like to go there.”
“It’s not meant for the living.”
“But you just said you could take me.”
“There are agents in your world. They are weakened by humanity but they can erase your knowledge. And yet there is still some danger.”
Adam had been sitting statue-still and watching this whole exchange with a bewildered look. Now, he found himself reaching for Katie’s hand, finding it already halfway to his. Together, they bent towards Lainy, straining to catch words that were barely a whisper. “You may forget. Yet you may still learn. And there is no certainty.”
“Trouble? Uncertainty? You must have my birth certificate because those are my middle names.”
“We cannot promise it will be painless.”
“You erase my memories, I won’t remember it.”
“Very well. We shall consider that your consent.”
The far-away looked fell away from Lainy. “Something just happened to me. I was saying things and I didn’t even think of the words. Some-one just put them in my head and then I had to say them.”
“You’re okay,
love?” Adam asked. He untangled his hand and stroked hair away from her face.
“I should be asking you that,” she replied, still distracted and a bit dazed. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.”
Blushing lightly, Katie turned away, suddenly feeling like an intruder but unwilling to leave. “So, uh, tonight?”
“Tonight.” But it was too long to wait. “For now… college. Shift.”
Katie huffed a sigh out, one that she didn’t really feel – she was finally going to be rid of everything that was hurting her. Soon, it would all be over. She made sure they both noticed her glowering at them for a minute then slunk off to the door.
This had to look convincing.
More convincing than she felt at any rate.
Inside, doubt pulsed slowly but strongly. Her head was working at such speed; puzzling over the human agent and whether she knew him or her. Or it. Lainy had only spoken about an agent on Earth, not that they were necessarily a person – the agent may be an animal, a building, a god-damn tree! And who said it even had to be in Northwood? It might be in a different town, a different county, entirely. She was a mess of confusion and didn’t notice her feet nearing the edge of the pavement and over-balancing on the kerb. Her weak ankle buckled beneath her. Fucking OW! The hard gravel road rushed up to smack her in the face and, purely on thoughtless instinct, she threw both arms out in front of her. There was a sickening/satisfying crack as the bone snapped. The pain of the break bucked the agony exploding in her sprained ankle. Then her body crunched down onto the rarely-used road. How can I fall this hard? How fast was I going? Gravel bit through her jeans and scraped her shins and knees raw, abraded her hands and then Katie toppled breathless to the ground. The rush of blood brought a dizzying array of colours that hurt to look at. But she closed her eyes and let the colours batter her into unconsciousness, picturing a silver bridge and dreading getting too close to it.
But she had to get close. Had to get on her hands and knees and edge her way to the brink. Her eyes were shut tight. It would terrify her to look down. She looked down. In front of her was a gleaming silver bridge with no handrails at the side. Nothing to grab on to if somebody should fall when crossing. It was no more than eighteen inches across, maybe a foot. Not the thinnest beam she had ever tottered across, but her previous attempts at the four inch balance beam in the gym had been roughly one foot in the air and surrounded by crash mats. Not so high that vertigo was within easy reach. A mile or more below was rippling water with an impossible fire glowing golden beneath it. It was breath-takingly beautiful. She glanced back at the bridge, unable to see beyond this bridge that stretched on forever.
No, it doesn’t. Look. It vanishes just there – vanishes into silver shadow and mist.
Her eyes dragged back to the flowing river below. It looked so calm and peaceful. She could watch it all day if she had the time. Katie thought about the disappearing silver path, knew she had to cross – something she wanted lay across it – and then leaned back until she was sitting back on her heels to- a spike of flame jumped from the canyon, so close, so searingly hot, that Katie felt her hair blow back from her face and her cheeks darken. This flame had a face. No face she recognised or could name but one that put a twisting knot deep in her stomach. As it rose further and further above her, it leaned down and screamed at her. A scream that contained eons of fury and wells of hate. It was an eternity of displacement and confusion. A wail of profound grief, sadness; a pit of emotion. It scared Katie to her feet. She needed to get back – away from this heat and…
Go with the thing. Let it take me under and twist me and turn me to its’ will. It will never hurt me. There will be forever…
She was rising and staring into the heart of the fire, moving to step forward, when something invisible but packing the weight of a medicine ball threw her to one side.
NOOOO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?
Over the edge
Falling
Falling fast
And into nothing.
Katie flung her left arm up and let her fingers find the sharp edge of the bridge. She didn’t want to fall into these fiery depths below the water. How would I breathe? The metal was surprisingly cool. She had been expecting it to be much too hot to keep a hold of for more than second or two – ironically, a science class just last week had taught her that silver was a massively heat-conductive metal – but she didn’t think that was any ordinary blaze. Her fingers were cramping up already and the silver was getting slick with her own sweat. Left handed, Katie couldn’t hang for long. That only left…
The face in the fire roared again. It was getting higher and higher. It was reaching for the white clouds above. It couldn’t be allowed to get there. Ignoring every voice in her head that told her to let it get there. It’ll be better all round if you leave it alone.
“Alone to do what?”
Why, all those things we always wanted, Katie. To pour destruction on anyone who ever hurt us. And to strike down the rest before they get the chance.
“No. we can’t. I never wanted that.”
You never wanted to be raped. You never wanted to be scared of your childhood home. You never wanted your friends to die. You never wanted to fight for your own life. You never wanted this.
“You’re right.” She briefly wondered who she was arguing with, decided it didn’t matter. Winning mattered. “I never wanted any of this. But I’ve got it. And I’m damn well going to keep it.”
The face in the fire shrieked again and shrank a few feet. And then Katie realised – she was talking down the flame. Arguing a sizzling heat and a body of moving flame. And she was winning.
You don’t want to be free? I can give you immunity to all disease. You could be rich beyond your dreams. I think you should reconsider.
“What do you have that I could possibly want?”
I could show you things. Take you to new places. I could find the man who hurt you in the spring. Those ones who made you cry in the summer. The ones who abandoned you this autumn. We could make them fall like the leaves in winter.
Something about it appealed to her. The prospect of revenge… “Tempting…” she whispered, low enough that she didn’t have to listen to it herself.
The flame jetted up again.
“But no.”
It sank again, low enough that Katie could see directly into a face obscured by licks of golden flame and burnished by temperatures in three figures.
“You think I could…this isn’t fair! What you’re offering isn’t justice. It’s not getting even. It’s revenge. And that’s nothing I want to be a part of.”
No?
Katie bit her lip and dug her fingernails into the hard metal. It didn’t help her grip any. Her hand was slipping – fingers sliding ever closer to the edge and it was impossible to peel them up and fumble for a dry patch to hang from. Even one microgram less pressure would send her hurtling down where she could burn or drown or die from the pure gravitational pull of the fall. With murderous effort, Katie hauled her right arm up and above her head and flung it over the solver bridge, gasping out a scream she didn’t have the breath to turn into sound.
Let go. Become the oblivion. Take what you want, what you need, and never have to pay.
And wouldn’t that just solve everything?
Her brown coat was riding up her back. Something caught on the dangling belt, slid out of her back pocket and started a slow flutter down. Katie caught half a glimpse of it before it floated out of sight. Tarot card. A figure sitting on a rock, a sword in one hand, the scales of justice in the other. And then it was gone ,turned over to show a purple swirled back as it floated into the depths of the fire, melting it’s own dark path right through it. The face howled. One final shriek, filled with uter despair. Still screaming, the fire shrank to a candle flame and then it was ashes. Smouldering embers that were s
oon swallowed by the sea. The heat lingered for a few moments and then the sea seemed to suck that away too.
That still left the problem of her dangling from the bridge like a person-shaped pendulum. She gritted her teeth and moved her left hand to a drier patch where her finger could catch some traction. Not much but even a few seconds grip was better than nothing. She used that precious time to take her right hand away, shake out the cramp and ten fling it back over her head, glad and unquestioning when on of the straps caught on some tiny irregularity in the smooth surface. She put her trust in the precarious catch for an eternity. Now level with the silver walkway, it was thin, barely half a centimetre thick. How did it hold the weight of people walking back and forth? Why didn’t it warp and bend in the heat? It felt like her arm was going to pop out of its’ socket. Her wrist was completely numb – a blessing, surely. She folded her other arm onto the silver bridge and tried to claw her way up. It was hard work and more than once Katie thought she was going to slip off and tumble over and over to her doom.
A quick/slow, painful/painless doom. A life she shouldn’t want. A life she wouldn’t have.
Breathless, red-faced, sweating, Katie pulled herself up and crawled a few shaking feet to the wall of mist. Sensation was creeping back onto her body. Exhausted, trembling, Katie stopped just before the silver strip vanished into a wall of fog. Heaven or hell might be behind it. Neither prospect surprised her. She twisted onto her back – the part of her that hurt the least – and unzipped her coat, shrugging out of it and using it like a blanket as she lay back. Just a breather.
A few deep breaths of cool air, tangy with fresh water spray, and Katie was ready to go again. If she let herself stay any longer, sleep would overwhelm her. Forward. Kate no longer trusted herself her own legs – not with the way this bridge seemed to have narrowed as it progressed. She crawled to the mist and touched a hand to it. It felt like nothing but air. Her hand pushed forward through the curtain and still came back clean and untouched. That was unexpected. This was meant to be a place of death and power. Surely there should be some guards or protection here. But nothing hummed in the air. It felt empty… hollow. It was neither. Before she lost the nerve, Katie wobbled to her feet and stepped into the wall of mist.
“Hello?” she said, voice hardly more than a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello?”
“Open your eyes. See what we can show you.” The words came from everywhere and nowhere. They echoed through the still air, commanding yet gentle. “See what we do.”
Katie shook her head. She was keeping them tight shut thank you very much. Naturally she was curious as to what might be in front of her if she looked- curious as a baby near a plug socket – but curiosity wouldn’t kill this cat. Imagining the things was bad enough. In her mind, Katie saw arches made of human bones, more bridges between them of stretched skin and ropes of blood vessels and hair. Tiny creatures scrabbled for balance. They created this world from the spent bodies of Shades. As long as their body parts remained here, one Shade would have another day on Earth.
“You won’t show me anything I want to see.”
“How will you know if you cannot look?”
“I’m scared.”
“There is little to be scared of. Our trickeries and follies pose no threat to you. Once lost, a life cannot be endangered.”
Her eyes flew open a moment before she remembered not to look. “I’m still alive!”
“This must be a lie. The living may not enter this holy place. The dead are often shocked out of the knowledge. It will return. What you have lost, it will return.”
“Okay,” she breathed, not understanding but willing to go along with the lies just to get out of here. The space around her was white and silver and palest grey. She was floating in unmoving air and there were indeed arches in the distance. They glinted in the light. She felt herself move towards them as she tried to get a good look at them, hypnotic as they were. Katie tore her gaze from the beautiful structures and concentrated on letting her eyes haze. Safe now. To go to those arches, to pass beneath them, was to never come back.
“You should have waited. This is no place for the fragility of mortals. We break them so quickly.”
“I don’t break easily.”
“No. You have survived your journey here.”
“Who am I talking to? I can’t see anyone. It’s freaking me out. Where are you?”
“We are in the air. Everywhere you look we are there. Everywhere you go, we will follow you.”
Well, that was comforting… in the slasher guy from Scream kind of way. “Everywhere?” She bent down to the coat that rested by her feet, pooled as if on a floor… but there was no ground. One deep pocket held the small padded make-up bag she had put the sheriff’s badge in to keep the pin from sticking in her. Bleeding in this place seemed like the eighth deadly sin. There was power in here – it was all around her, constant and hushed like silent running on a plane. It hadn’t been able to permeate the wall of mist which acted as a sort of barrier between the mortal realm and this higher, far superior plane. If they had the power to wipe her brain of everything she had learned since coming to Northwood, then they had the power to do anything.. “I came to ask a favour.”
There was a moment of absolute silence in which Katie thought she might have been dismissed without a word. The relief, then, when the voice came back! “We have chosen well. You are known to us, Katie Cartwright. You have proved yourself worthy.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what I want?”
“No. It is done.”
There was a cold stinging thing at her legs and hands. Groggily, Katie squinted her eyes open, letting a fraction more light in every second once she was sure it was not going to sharpen up and stab her through her pupils. She sucked in a breath that wanted to be a moan as the stinging thing swiped at her again.
“Sorry,” a singsong voice said. “Has to be done though.”
Katie looked straight above her at the white ceiling. A nurse in blue scrubs was standing over her with a bowl of acid smelling water on a wheeled trolley and some cotton wool pads.
“Looks like there may be some glass in here too. Oh no, I think it was just the light.” The nurse chattered away about nothing in particular but Katie found herself straining to catch every last word. The weird thing about careless chatter was that it was sometimes the most important kind. “You look like you’ve been in the wars.”
“Ow! Never could stand this. Didn’t matter if I was covered in blood or had a papercut, I always ran away when Mom got the TCP.”
“I remember using it on my kids too. They thought I was punishing them for falling over.”
“You were though, weren’t you?”
“Well, a little sadism works wonders.”
“This doesn’t hurt as much.”
“It’s the same stuff. Antiseptic gets better with age. Not like vintage wine and stuff. I mean, leave this in the bottle for a decade, come to use it and your leg’ll probably fall off.”
“I get the point,” Katie assured her, trying to make her breaths as slow and deep as possible. Bright sparks were dancing in the room. Sparks where other patients had sat and stood. They were too confusing – it was too much to deal with right now. “The older you are, the less likely you are to be scared by a bottle of TCP.”
“More or less.” The nurse dropped one last cotton wool ball onto the bloody pile on the trolley and peeled off her latex gloves. “All finished. I’m afraid I can’t dress them just yet but I’ll be right back with the gauze. Delivery today. Meantime, get some rest. Dr de Rossa’s orders. Seems you’re a favourite.” She smiled and put an extra pillow behind her head before wheeling her squeaky trolley out of the room.
Katie didn’t need to turn her head to know there was somebody else in the room. He was sitting in a chair in the corner and had eyes that sucked Katie into them a
nd left her trapped in them, spinning and floating. “I knew you’d come for me. You don’t trust me.”
“Yes, I do. More than anyone. More than anything.”
“Kiss me then.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I guess not.” She meant it more than anything; needed the comfort and the strength; needed to be wanted one last time. Her eyes were drooping. The world was getting further and further away. One more breath. In through the nose, see it as a ball of wind inflating the lungs…
“So… what should I do now?”
“Save me.” Then darkness crashed down.
Chapter thirteen
Now what the hell do I do?
Chapter fourteen