by Adam Dark
Yeah, that wasn’t necessary at all.
“So, yes, you can summon demons and probably other spirits that aren’t nearly as cruel. And you can hear the spirits wanting help with their final acts. And you can get them out of here.”
“So how do I get you out?” That was really all Ben wanted to know. Right now, he didn’t care about the rest.
“Well…” Ian kind of shrank away from him, like Ben had when he knew he had to confess some mistake to his parents but also knew he’d probably get grounded for telling the truth. “The body I had is stuck with the Guardian. No hope for getting it back. I don’t really want it anyway, with the whole…” He circled a hand in front of his eyes and mouth. “And I can’t just move on by resolving unfinished business. I’m not technically dead.”
“So…”
Ian bounced a little where he sat, actually looking nervous for the first time during their strange meeting. “So I need a new body.”
Ben blinked at him. “I came here to help you, Ian. I’ll do almost anything I can. But I’m not just gonna give you my body and let you walk around as me for the rest of my life.”
“No,” Ian said quickly. “No, I know that. You don’t have to give it to me. Just… share it.”
“For how long?”
“Uh… as long as you’re in it, too.”
“Are you serious?” Ben’s voice shot up to its highest pitch, but he didn’t even care.
Ian nodded. “Completely.”
As if the house had a few objections to this heinous suggestion, a thunderous groan reverberated around them and sent the chandelier swaying violently.
“That’s our cue to hurry up, I think,” Ian muttered, glancing about the room.
“Wait a minute.” Ben’s mind reeled with the suddenness of this decision he now had to make—and quickly, apparently, without any time to think it over or consider what it would mean. “For the rest of my life?”
“Yeah, Ben.” Ian swung his fist back and forth like he was dancing a jig. “You and me. Hanging out until you die. Let’s hope it’s from natural causes.” His eyes darted from the other side of the living room to the warped staircase to the hallway on the second floor.
“I can’t … I don’t know if I can do that.”
A bestial roar echoed from everywhere, and the floor of this green-tinged house buckled and sank down in the middle. Ian got to his feet, and Ben followed suit. “Did I mention that agreeing to this is probably the only way you and Peter and April are going to get out of this alive?”
“Nope.” He couldn’t believe this. “Nope. I’m pretty sure you forgot that part.”
“I know how to banish the Guardian.” Ian was yelling now above the groaning and cracking coming up from the center of the house. “At least long enough to get us all the hell out of here.” Ben stumbled and braced himself against the wall when the floor shook so violently beneath his feet, he thought it might give him brain damage. “So what do you say, Ben? Are you tired of running yet?”
Everything rocked and crumbled around them, and Ben met the brown-eyed gaze of the boy he’d called his friend so many years ago. Ian looked entirely confident—at least, he hoped that was what he saw behind the boy’s wide eyes. “Okay, fine!”
“All right.” Ian grinned. “Just let me drive for a minute when we get back out.”
“What?”
With a loud, metallic snap, the chandelier broke from its hanging chain in the ceiling and plummeted toward them. Ian clapped his hands together, and the spirit realm blinked out of existence.
21
When he was launched back into the real world and time apparently started again, Ben didn’t have the strength to stand. He felt himself falling down and down, farther and farther away from what had been and still was happening in front of him. But he never hit the floor—never hit his head or blacked out or lost any sense of himself. He was there but not there, tucked safely away in the back of his mind from where he could watch everything.
The black, coiling mass loosed itself from the unnaturally gaping mouth of the eyeless Ian, trapped forever in this house that was a portal between two very different dimensions. The young boy’s body quivered then stilled into a yielding rigidity, and the tendrils of what Ben could only guess were their eternal pain and suffering pulled themselves up and up, endlessly slithering from the body of its apparent host.
Ben felt his mouth open, but he hadn’t done it himself. Then he heard his own voice, strong and steady against the crackling air churning through the house and the ear-splitting shrieks of the demon Ebra’s laughter. Words he did not know in a language he’d never heard before and could not hope to ever understand flowed from his own lips. Their very purpose was darkness itself—power and compulsion and a demand for obedience. He felt both Peter and April stepping away from him, but he couldn’t even turn his head to meet their gazes or to tell them everything was okay. It was, wasn’t it? He’d gotten Ian out, sort of, and now they actually had a chance.
The black, viscous sludge drawing itself out of the kneeling boy’s mouth paused in its building undulation. Then Constantine looked away from his newest pet to glare at Ben, all traces of a kindly old host now completely vanished. “That is not allowed,” he seethed.
Ben’s arms lifted to his sides on their own, but he’d gathered himself enough by now to realize this was Ian—driving him. His voice rose again in ferocity and volume, the words spilling faster and faster. The black thing twitched, shuddered violently, then sucked itself all the way back down into the eyeless Ian’s throat with enough force to send the boy toppling over and sliding across the wood floors.
This seemed like it was going pretty well. For how weak he was and how weird it felt to have his old friend using his body, he thought he had a little bit of hope building inside him. Maybe they actually would get out of this alive.
Then all his optimism ran away screaming.
Constantine took one halting step forward before his head snapped impossibly sideways over his shoulder, as if two unseen hands had grabbed him and cracked him open like a man-shaped crab leg. The side of his broken neck bulged, larger and larger, until the point of an ebony blade sliced through muscle and vein, sinew and flesh, like a penknife splitting a seam. From inside the man’s body, the rest of the monstrous thing emerged. Constantine’s arms dangled at impossible angles; the bones had to be broken, and yet, there were no bones at all. The man’s face was pared away like the skin of a rotting apple, and even still, the thing inside this used-up shell still grew. Blood and teeth and sinew splattered the wood floors.
Through it all, Ben’s mouth kept moving, not because he endured the sight to keep going but because Ian now pretty much had complete control of his body. And the kid didn’t even flinch when the Guardian’s fleshly costume slithered to the floor with a wet smack, revealing the awful thing without form or shape that writhed and bellowed and nearly swallowed all hope and light and breath out of this godforsaken house.
Nope. Time to go. Ben wanted his body back.
He fought Ian for it, not knowing how but lunging forward to wrest control away from the kid who claimed to have spent thirty thousand years in the spirit realm. Ben didn’t care. His body lurched sideways, and he only half-managed to catch himself from falling. Ian caught the rest of him, pushing back against Ben’s terror and all-consuming need to get out of here.
“Stop it!” Ben hadn’t said a thing, but it was his voice screaming above the trembling, roaring power of the Guardian now wholly unleashed.
Let me go! he screamed back. Ian, we can’t kill this thing.
A few more words of the ancient incantation in no human tongue on Earth burst from Ben’s mouth, but he lurched against his own consciousness again, trying to get back behind the wheel, as it were. He’d never been this overwhelmed with terror—had never wanted to run so badly in his entire life, including that night eleven years ago. Because now he knew exactly what would happen if the Guardian got a hold of him�
�the same thing that had happened to Ian.
But the spirit of his twelve-year-old friend was way stronger and definitely more composed. Ben fell to his knees, scrambling wildly to regain control, and Ian used Ben’s voice to shout, “Throw the crystal!”
The Guardian’s raging, towering evil reached toward them. Greed and hunger and fury stretched across the entire house. Then Ben saw but didn’t see April stepping forward from where she’d stood nearly immobile beside Peter. He saw but didn’t see her bend down, wrap her fingers around the crystal, and lift it from its place on the leather messenger bag. He did actually see the demon Ebra vanish from the living room, his vicious crowing once more cut short. And he saw the high, remarkably accurate arc of the white stone, launched from April’s grasp, as it hurtled toward the Guardian, spinning end over end.
The essence of this beast that protected the portal to the spirit realm wasn’t entirely solid; that was obvious just by looking at it. Ben expected the crystal to pass right through it and bounce against the stairs on the other side. That was exactly what didn’t happen.
The cloudy gemstone disappeared within the Guardian’s obscene, roiling mass, and then the monstrous thing stopped, like steam solidifying into ice mid-air before it plummeted to the ground. The blackness didn’t fall, but it did shrink. A furious growl built of a thousand screaming voices shook the walls, so piercing, Ben wondered if it would make his ears start bleeding. Like a billowing mushroom cloud being sucked backward into an impossible vacuum, the Guardian’s form slithered back into itself until nothing remained but the crystal, spinning in the air all on its own. Then it did fall and bounced a few times on the hardwood floor before lying entirely still in the sudden silence, its cloudy white coloration now the deep, disgusting greenish-black of dried seaweed. Ben didn’t think he could look at sushi rolls the same way ever again.
A bark of surprised, relieved laughter burst out of Peter’s mouth. April stood there rubbing her shoulder; Ben hoped she hadn’t hurt herself too badly with that flawless throw. What was he thinking? If that was the least of any of their injuries, this was a perfect win.
“We can throw a party later,” Ian said with Ben’s voice. He placed one of Ben’s hands on April’s back and the other on Peter’s, then nudged them toward the front door.
April spun around, slipping out from beneath Ben’s hand, and grabbed his face with both of hers. She kissed him fiercely, but she wasn’t kissing Ben. Not really. He felt it and didn’t feel it, screaming silently that this was so, so wrong.
When she pulled away, Ian seemed to have frozen behind the controls of Ben’s body. A second later, he blinked and shook his head, and the hurt, confused frown flashing across April’s brow made Ben want to die. “We have to go,” Ian said with Ben’s voice, then hurried their friends back into the entryway of the house, through the front door, and down the porch steps.
Now, Ben didn’t have anything left in him to try to force Ian away so he could slip back into his own skin. He felt himself fading, only a little because of the shock of seeing April kissing Ian with his own lips—that was so frickin’ weird—but mostly because he just couldn’t hold on anymore. Whatever last burst of energy he’d had when he tried to run from the Guardian was almost entirely gone.
“Almost done,” Ian said aloud, then stepped back a few feet before April and Peter did the same.
Through a thickening haze, Ben felt Ian clap their hands together, mutter something else in that inhuman language, then shove their palms at the decaying, dilapidated house that once was an orphanage for troubled boys and had always been the Guardian’s domain. A bright green spark flashed from their hands, and emerald flames shot into being all over the porch, the cracked window frames, the rotting roof.
Peter staggered another few steps backward. “What the—”
More tongues of green fire flared up just inside the open door, and the windows on the first, second, and third floors shattered all at once, sending broken glass raining down all around them. Almost just as quickly, the fire shed its green hues of the spirit realm to reveal nothing more than the natural yellow and orange glow of real flames, which licked with intense, flaring hunger at the old, dry house. Gray smoke rose from the crackling, burning wood, but it was only smoke.
“Okay,” Ian said.
Ben felt his friend withdrawing into the recesses of his body, back inside the now small, hidden space Ian had carved for himself inside Ben’s mind. His physical senses flared back to life as Ben reemerged, once again the sole captain of this ship he’d like to think was his; now he wasn’t so sure. Either way, without Ian there to hold him up, Ben couldn’t. The blazing fire in front of him hurt his eyes way too much, which then rolled back in his head before he collapsed on the dirt drive of 101 Wry Road.
22
The world just wouldn’t stop spinning. Ben tried to pull himself back into his body, but he couldn’t figure out how.
Sometimes, he opened his eyes to see only the pulsing green glow of what had to be the spirit realm, and he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t know if he ever wanted to see that place again, despite the fact that the different dimension meant for eternal spirits and those of the dead had not actually been the most dangerous place—at least, not while he’d been there. But that particularly nauseating green hue only served as a constant reminder of the things he’d seen, what Ian had revealed to him, and the knowledge he now had about how things worked. It wasn’t complete, and it obviously wasn’t anything close to what Ian had discovered himself after so much time spent in the spirit realm, but it was more than Ben had ever imagined. And it was enough to make him want to avoid it for as long as possible. When this happened, he forced his eyes closed again and let the darkness of unconsciousness carry him away for a little longer.
Then came the moments when his eyes fluttered, feeling heavy and so very dry, and the world around him was white, stark, and sterile. More than once, he saw Peter sitting next to him, reading or scribbling furiously at something in a notebook. Ben wanted to at least say hello, but he couldn’t speak.
He saw April too, but he only had flashes of her face. The first time, she’d stood by his feet, which had seemed odd until he realized he must have been lying on a bed somewhere. Blurred forms had moved around him with an urgent busyness, the sound of so much movement muted and syrupy. Hers had been the only face he’d managed to make out, but it was horror-stricken. Both hands had clamped over her mouth—either in a fervent refusal to accept what was happening or a silent plea for the outcome to be different than what it appeared. This broke his heart. He’d tried to ask her why she looked so afraid—they’d all gotten out of the house, hadn’t they?—but he still couldn’t move his mouth; he couldn’t even force a sound up through his own throat.
The second flash of April there with him had been even odder, which seemed impossible until he saw what he thought he saw. April stood by his feet again, but this time, Ben’s mother stood there with her. The women were talking to each other, April explaining something with pale, animated hands while his mother focused entirely on the younger woman’s blue eyes. Ben had thought he’d seen tears glistening on both their cheeks, but he hadn’t been able to hear their conversation or stay awake long enough to try.
Eventually, between waking in the green world and the white, he figured that his body had made it to a hospital room. Of course, he couldn’t help but wonder why he was there. Beyond everything always spinning and his eyes unable to stay open for very long, mixed with the fact that he hadn’t yet been able to speak or move, he didn’t remember anything truly traumatic happening after they’d left that demonic portal-house and Ian had finished what he’d said he’d do. Well, not physically traumatic, anyway. He supposed the things he’d just listed were enough cause for concern, but he remained strangely calm about the whole thing. All that mattered was that he was alive—he thought—that April and Peter had made it out with him, and that he’d managed to get Ian out of the eternal prison in which
the Guardian had locked him away.
When he opened his eyes once to see the twelve-year-old boy with shaggy blond hair and kind brown eyes smiling down at him from beside the bed, though, Ben wasn’t so sure he had it right at all. Ian couldn’t be there in the hospital with him; Ian was a spirit, neither dead nor alive, condemned to existing as an immaterial version of himself. Ben had agreed to let his friend share his body, for crying out loud. So if he’d seen the boy standing over him in the hospital, where was he really?
* * *
The next time Ben’s eyes opened, they burned almost unbearably. That was new. Every slow breath seared his raw throat, and his hands itched a hundred times worse than that summer he’d jumped out of the river and sprawled out in the sun on a patch of poison ivy. A thousand times worse.
With a grunt, Ben tried to lift his arms, but they were just as heavy as the rest of him. He lay there for a few more minutes, staring up at the speckled gray ceiling panels he hadn’t noticed before, then tried again. This time, his right arm worked just enough for him to slide it up onto his stomach. He did the same with the other arm, only to find he couldn’t feel his fingers. That itch was driving him insane.
He still had his fingers, right? He tested it, feeling them twitch a little next to each other, but he couldn’t move them much more than that. When he tried to scratch his hands again, they only came together with a muffled thunk, and that was it.
That couldn’t be it. Fingers didn’t make that sound.
Ben managed somehow to lift his head off the pillow—which he realized was remarkably soft only after he wasn’t on it anymore—and found himself staring at the two white lumps resting on his chest. He still had his hands, all right. They were just wrapped tightly and covered in what he thought were casts. What was this?