The In-Between

by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

  At least he wasn’t in this terrifying free fall alone.

  14

  Cooper sat on the edge of his bed, motionless, and watched blood seep around the edges of his Band-Aid onto his pajama pants. His bedside clock told him it was 9:30 p.m., but he had no idea how long he’d been sitting there.

  Unidentified victims of tragedy, all wearing the same crest. A house that morphed before his eyes. A girl who connected it all. He had been scared as he ran back across his alley, wondering how Elena’s picture-perfect home could shift and change as it had. But to hear his mother talk—to see her utter cluelessness about that house—“frightened and confused” had graduated to “terrified and paralyzed.”

  Who was Elena, if that was even her real name? Why was she here, perched on her swing staring at him and his sister? If he’d been able to move at all, Cooper would have laughed at the fact that Jess had thought they should warn Elena about the symbol she was wearing. That concern had disappeared as quickly as her holographic ceiling fan. Now he wondered if he needed to warn the world about her.

  Why couldn’t his mother see the house? The fence? The green grass? And at the same time, why could he and Jess?

  That was when his sister came running into his room, her hastily donned pajama bottoms twisting awkwardly around her waist and her sleep shirt on backward. “Cooper,” she whispered, “what the heck is going on?”

  He shook his head, bringing on a wave of dizziness. “I don’t know.” Jess was freaked out, and he hadn’t even told her what he’d seen inside the house.

  “I just asked Mom about Elena when she was checking my sugar.” Jess shook her head side to side, trembling. “She’s never seen anyone in that yard, Coop! She had no idea what I was talking about—she says there isn’t even a swing over there. She kept asking me what game we were both playing.”

  Cooper just closed his eyes and felt the world spin around him. For three months, Elena had been a permanent fixture behind their house, swinging and staring. Cooper had even talked to her. She was impossible to miss.

  Unless.

  Unless she was as invisible to their mother as the yellow paint and chimney smoke.

  Cooper clutched the side of his bed with his good hand. “Jess, what color is Elena’s house?”

  “It’s yellow!” she said. “It used to be brown, but Elena’s family repainted it.”

  “And they fixed the whole place up, right? New windows, porch, fence? Renovated the inside, rebuilt the roof? Everything?”

  “Yes!”

  “Jess,” Cooper said slowly, “have you ever seen her parents or anyone else over there?”

  Jess shook her head.

  Cooper stood and paced, his hands on his head. He stared up at the ceiling, as if the answers were printed on it. He had to tell his sister what he’d seen inside. He motioned for her to sit on his bed and said, “There’s more.”

  He told her every detail he could recall: the dirt and grime, the collapsed floors, furniture that vanished and reappeared, the stone-cold fireplace, the changing smells. He explained how he had cut his finger on a piece of glass that wasn’t broken, at least not from one side.

  Jess listened without saying a word. She grew paler with each seemingly impossible detail. When Cooper was done, he walked over to where his wadded-up pants lay on the floor and fished the letter out of the back pocket. “And I found this.” He unfolded the pages and sat beside his sister.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a letter that was in the trash, next to Elena’s jacket. I think it’s from her to her mom.”

  “You stole it?”

  Cooper couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Jess, I wasn’t really thinking about whether I was invading someone’s privacy when I was over there in the Twilight Zone.”

  Jess bobbed her head.

  It took a moment to figure out the order of the pages, then Cooper read the letter aloud.

  “Dearest Mother,

  “It’s odd writing to you, knowing you’ll likely never read this, but I find comfort in at least pretending. I can no longer let these thoughts exist in my own mind, alone, without relief.”

  “What does that mean, ‘likely never read this’?” Jess interrupted.

  “Maybe her mom abandoned her? Or she’s dead?”

  “Well, if she’s dead, there’s nothing likely about it.”

  “Can I please just keep reading?”

  Jess nodded.

  “You taught me a love for the written word, and how important it is to capture history and commit events to the page, yes? You once wondered aloud, “If something is forgotten by all, did it ever really happen? Or was it no more than a dream?” It’s a good question.

  “I’m starting to wonder if any of this really occurred. I don’t understand the how, the why, or the to what end, but these events did happen, no? All of them? I need them to exist, to be real and true, so I can feel like there’s a purpose to it all.

  “It’s clear now that every quest scars me, weakens me.”

  “Quest—?” Jess started to interrupt again, but Cooper held up a hand and continued.

  “This is all coming to an end soon. I can’t take much more. So, Mother, I hope that somehow, some way, you, Father, or anyone, will read these pages and know I was here.

  “Please. I need someone to know I was here.

  “There must be a worldly order to all these events, but seeing as how time has no straight lines here, I will start with the quest that is foremost in my memory. Spring of 1911, New York City.

  “Wait.” Cooper stopped. “1911?” He flipped to the last page, to check for a signature, but he found none. “So this must have been written by someone else, like . . . Elena’s great-grandma or something.”

  But Jess shook her head, eyes wide. “Not if Elena’s a ghost.”

  “But . . . there’s no such thing as ghosts,” Cooper began, but there was hardly any conviction in it.

  “Cooper, you’ve walked through a house that changed before your eyes, you’ve seen a girl who’s invisible to Mom, and you’re actually going to sit there and tell me there’s no such thing as ghosts?”

  Up until today, he’d known that to be true. Now? He tried to find some other explanation, but there wasn’t one.

  “And look at this.” Jess grabbed the letter. “This paper isn’t even old. It looks like the notebook paper we bought last week at Target.”

  She was right. Other than the creases from being crumpled up, it was crisp and white, not some yellowed artifact from decades ago.

  Jess found the spot in the letter where they’d stopped, and she started reading aloud.

  “The miserable rain woke me, as it always does, in the In-Between.”

  She paused. “The In-Between?”

  Cooper rolled his hand in the air for her to keep going.

  “Even now I still find it startling to be awakened wet and freezing, with a building looming over me. I moved as fast as I could as the rain fell in impatient sheets, pushing me toward the house. The instant the door latched behind me, the familiar wave of transformation passed from my head to my toes.

  “A quick self-inventory showed scuffed black boots and a faded pink plaid dress cinched at the waist. A thin sweater covered my lean and sinewy arms, and my hands were rough. The life I had entered wasn’t an easy one. Of course, the gold-stitched Vigilantes shield shone from over my heart.”

  Jess gave her brother a look, daring him to try to explain this. He said nothing.

  “With my chin up, I walked through the building and out the front door. I found myself on the front steps of a five-story brownstone overlooking a sidewalk. A seemingly impossible number of people, all wispy and ghostlike, bustled around, and horses clip-clopped past on cobblestones.

  “I wandered the city, searching, but at sundown I gave up and returned to the house to rest, and this became my pattern over the next many weeks. After wandering what felt like every neighborhood, bridge, and street for a month, I starte
d to wonder if I’d been delivered to the wrong place.

  “Then, finally, on a Saturday afternoon, I found it: a stone-and-glass building rising ten stories, the words TRIANGLE WAIST COMPANY and HARRIS BROS MEN’S CLOTHING painted on the outside wall.

  “I darted between carriages, crossing to the opposite sidewalk, and ducked inside. A man sat perched on a stool in the foyer, his arms crossed. Though his body was still somewhat translucent, he was solid enough to confirm I was in the right place.

  “He would be a victim.”

  The siblings looked grimly at each other, then back to the page.

  “I spoke to him in Italian-accented English and told him that I was reporting to work for Mr. Harris. He shook his head in disgust before hoisting himself from the stool and leading me to a doorway on the opposite side of the lobby. He assured me that my tardiness had likely cost me my job.

  “How little he knew.

  “He opened a wooden door to reveal a cage no bigger than a coat closet and stepped in, almost filling the space. I despise elevators, especially ones that require me to press against rude men, but when I asked after a stairway, he explained that the stairs stayed locked during work hours so people like me didn’t rob Mr. Harris blind.

  “With a lurch and a high-pitched hum, we rose skyward. I tried to move away from where his damp body pressed against my side, but there was nowhere to go. I counted the floors with each passing doorway and tried to keep my mind on why I was there.

  “We came to a stop at a floor marked with a hand-painted 9. The man opened the door and waited impatiently. I forced the words “Thank you” and hopped off into the narrow hallway.

  “A mechanical droning filled the air as I walked toward the lone doorway at the end of the hall, finally rounding the entry to a massive room. It spanned the entire length and width of the building and was filled with row upon row of tables. Countless women and girls sat, heads down, at hundreds of whirring sewing machines. Fabric waited in piles in the middle of the tables, and spools of thread a foot tall spun beside each one of them, feeding the hungry machines. Each seamstress’s long hair was swept into a bun to keep it from being pulled into the spinning cogs as surely as the thread itself.

  “The lone person standing in the room was a man who marched up and down the rows, one hand on his hip, the other moving an amber-tipped cigar to and from his pinched mouth. The air in the room began to crackle, though no one could hear it but me. I squared my shoulders and tried to stay calm, but I failed.

  “I hate dying by fire. It’s second only to drowning (of course). It took an eternity for the echo of those unbearable flames to leave my skin. Thankfully, however, the pain always fades. Eventually.”

  Jess lowered the final page slowly, horror on her face.

  “Hate dying by fire?” Cooper repeated in a shaky voice. Every hair on his body stood on end, as if an unseen lightning strike had filled the air with an electric charge.

  “Second only to drowning?” Jess read again. Cooper gently took the letter from her, then scanned the pages. It was ominous at best and absolutely terrifying at worst.

  When Cooper finally rested the sheets in his lap, Jess whispered, “So Elena’s saying she died in this fire in 1911 and is still around to swing on her swing, talk to you, and write this letter. Was she in the train crash in 1928, and Sampoong in 1994 too? ‘Every quest scars me.’ Maybe it’s Elena who’s died every time.” She gulped. “And it . . . it kinda sounds like she’s the cause.”

  “But how could a child make a whole building collapse? And what about the kid they found in the train wreck?”

  “What about him?”

  “He was a boy.”

  “So?”

  “Elena’s a girl, if you haven’t noticed.”

  Jess shook her head. “Cooper! If someone can write a letter after their own death, I don’t think coming back to life as someone else is out of the question.”

  Cooper’s mind kept trying to find any explanation aside from the impossible. “We don’t even know that Elena wrote this.”

  “Does it matter?” Jess practically yelled.

  “I don’t know,” he offered weakly. He felt like he didn’t know anything.

  Jess folded her hands gingerly in her lap and inhaled a long, slow breath before calmly saying, “Cooper, whether this was written by Elena or someone else, whether she is a ghost or not, whether she has died over and over again or I’m totally wrong—we know that Elena is the one with that crest on her chest. And that symbol appears in every horrible accident we’ve found. They are all connected to her.”

  That much was undeniably true.

  15

  Jess stood up and walked over to Cooper’s desk. “We’ve gotta read more about it.”

  Cooper’s mind spun like a toy released with a rip cord. “About what?”

  “The fire,” she answered as she grabbed the iPad and returned to the bed. “What was the name of that building again?”

  Cooper scanned the letter. “Here it is. The Triangle Waist Company.”

  Jess typed the name into the search bar and hit enter, resulting in pages upon pages of links. History.com, Wikipedia, and the Smithsonian all had extensive information on the fire, each proclaiming it the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City. Black-and-white photos appeared as well; one showed a huge room filled with nothing but rubble and ash; others showed details both Cooper and Jess had to look away from.

  “Skip the images,” Cooper said. “Click on that.”

  It was a New York Chronicle article, dated March 26, 1911.

  HORRIFIC FACTORY FIRE KILLS OVER 100

  A devastating inferno consumed floors eight, nine, and ten of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory yesterday, killing 146 young men and women. Though lasting only thirty minutes, it is one of the deadliest fires in New York City history.

  Owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck had required their staff of mostly immigrant girls, aged fourteen to twenty-three years, to work this Saturday given a backlog of orders. Many of the victims were the main source of support of their families.

  Though the building itself is certified as fireproof, the room, tightly packed with fabric and sewing machines, proved to be a tinderbox. It is not yet known what sparked the blaze.

  Last year, the building had been reported to the Buildings Department as unsafe, due to the insufficiency of its exits. No changes, however, had been made as a result. Only one of the building’s four elevators was in service at the time of the fire, and the stairways were locked.

  Giovanni Marino, the father of one of the victims, had to be removed by police when Mr. Harris arrived on the scene. He hurled insults and profanities at the businessman, threatening physical violence to him and his family.

  Beatrice Moretti, the last person known to leave work before the inferno began, reported no knowledge of how the blaze started, stating all was well when she left.

  Scores of men and women sought their relatives, but identifying so many individual victims proved impossible. Fifty-six unfortunates will be buried in a group grave.

  Cooper let out a long breath while Jess scrolled farther down the article. Again, pictures of the victims were included, and though Cooper had initially turned away, he now knew what they had to do.

  “Jess, zoom in.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed at the photos, and when Jess hesitated, he took the iPad himself. He centered one of the pictures of the girls and pinched out, making the image as large as possible. At first he did not find what he was looking for, but after linking to picture after heartbreaking picture, he found it.

  There, on the twisted sweater of a small victim in a plaid dress, was the unmistakable stitching of the bird crest.

  Cooper felt like a hot-air balloon whose earthly tethers were snapping one by one, listing wildly to one side. Jess was the only rope keeping him from detaching completely. The crest was no school symbol. Elena’s outfit was no normal uniform.

 
Vigilantes Unum was a mark of death.

  “Something awful is going to happen, isn’t it?” Jess said, in a whisper so low he could barely make out the words. “Something terrible is coming, here in Chicago, and people are going to die.”

  What could he say? How could Cooper deny his sister’s grim conclusion? They’d found the crest in the rubble of three disasters.

  “Coop,” Jess said. “I’m scared.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “Me too, Jess. Me too.” He pulled her even tighter as she sniffed and her breathing became ragged. Cooper’s own eyes burned and welled, but he was not going to cry. He had already done that once this week, and that was once too many. “It’s okay, Jess. I don’t get what’s going on, but it’s gonna be okay.”

  He smoothed the back of her hair, feeling the ripples and bumps of her curls against his palm. It had been a long time since he’d comforted his sister. He used to do it all the time, when Jess’s diabetes was new to all of them and she cried with every pop-click of her finger sticks. He had been the one to hold her hand and tell her, “It’s okay,” when she got her insulin shots. They would count down from five and then shout “Ouch!” together, seeing who could yell the loudest to distract her from the pain. But that was before Cooper got sick of the whole routine.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that Jess was probably pretty sick of the whole diabetes routine too. But unlike Cooper, she couldn’t decide when she did and didn’t want to deal with it. She was stuck.

  He laughed slightly at the double meaning of “stuck” in his sister’s case.

  “What’s funny?” Jess choked out.

  “Nothing,” he said quietly.

  Jess’s breathing calmed over the next few minutes, though not before she left an ample amount of snot on Cooper’s pajama shirt. She finally pulled away and wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand.

  “What I don’t understand is Elena’s role in all of this,” Jess said. “I mean, is she like . . . evil?”

  Cooper snorted. “Well, I don’t think she’s good.”

  “Right. But here’s the thing—if these articles tell us anything, it’s that she’s going to end up dead too. If something bad is coming, she’s going to be a victim.”