The Dark In-Between

by Elizabeth Hrib

  His voice is strange, lost to her in a way, and she doesn’t know what to say to get him back. It’s almost a relief to reach the tangled moss at the bottom of the debris mountain.

  Almost.

  Above them now the hospital looms, a relic of the human world that doesn’t belong here. As if in answer, the plant life is slowly consuming it.

  “It doesn’t look as bad from down here,” Red says.

  “Remember that when we’re going back up.” Casey steps into the grove of trees, noting how the earth softens beneath her feet, a kind of black tar oozing around her shoes with every step.

  Red pauses as his feet sink into the sludge and he immediately summons a pair of daggers, twisting them over his palms as if to ready himself. “I don’t like this place,” he says.

  “Welcome to the club.” Casey presses her hand to the bark of one of the trees as a warm breeze passes around her. The bark beneath her fingers softens and when she pulls her hand away, that part of the tree is completely black, almost charred. Yep, bad news.

  The farther they walk, the worse it gets. Fruit and flowers litter the ground, boiled and blackened, rotting flesh about to burst. It smells sweet and sour at once—life and death at odds.

  “It’s sick,” she says as soon as she realizes. “Like an infection.”

  Red drags the tip of his dagger through the sludge-filled moss. He rubs the sludge between his fingers, inspecting. “That’s exactly what this is. You still think Liddy is here?”

  Liddy … hang out somewhere like this? Not a chance, Casey thinks.

  “Didn’t think so,” Red says at the look on her face.

  “Wait,” Casey says suddenly. “Hear that?” She whips around, following the sound of muffled tears.

  “Casey, slow down,” Red warns, trudging after her.

  She doesn’t; she can’t. Not until she finds who the voice belongs to. She trips once. Then twice. Hands sinking beneath the moss. She wipes them on her pants as she stands. The voice is closer now. Close enough it ping-pongs between the trees.

  Casey twists in a slow circle. Then she stops.

  The tears belong to a girl; it’s not Liddy. That instant realization makes her entire body sag like a weight, but then something else takes over … something like relief.

  The girl is about her age, maybe, and gowned in hospital garb. The blue-speckled cloth drapes over her thin knees, and her hair hangs in scraggly strings around her face. Bruises dot the inside of her elbows and the backs of her hands, almost as dark as the circles that shadow her eyes, giving her a haunted kind of look.

  Casey offers a small wave as she approaches.

  The girl huddles near a tree, glancing past Casey to Red, her eyes trained on the blades in his hands.

  “It’s okay,” Casey calls. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpers, looking around, terrified. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” She sniffs, wiping her arm across her face.

  “Don’t be,” Casey says. “What’s your name?”

  “Melanie,” she answers before looking up at the towering remains of the hospital. “I … I don’t know what happened,” she sobs. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  A tightness spreads across Casey’s chest. She wonders if Liddy is sitting somewhere like this, head pressed into her hands, overcome with confusion and tears. She kneels down in front of the girl. “Melanie, have you seen anyone else here? It’s really important. A girl, maybe? With blond hair?”

  Melanie shakes her head. “It’s just me. I’ve been alone since … since…”

  “You don’t have to be scared,” Casey says again.

  “I can’t help it,” Melanie blubbers, tears clinging to her eyelashes. “It’s this place, I can’t get out.”

  Casey’s entire body stills as Melanie casts her eyes around, and it only takes a moment for her to realize that there’s something trapping her here. Beginning like a trickle of water along her spine, Casey’s senses wake, sharpening where they were dull and heightening where they had simply existed. She whips around, watching a pair of shadows crawl across the ground toward them.

  “Red!” she cries, pushing to her feet to warn him, but it’s too late. One of the shadows rises in a wave, crashing a tsunami of black sludge over him, pushing Red to his knees and choking the air from his lungs.

  She watches in horror as the other shadow moves, climbing up the tree bark before shooting out. An obsii reaches with its long stretch of limbs to wrap around Melanie’s ankle. Sobs bubble out of her, painful and afraid.

  Casey stumbles back as Red lets out a frustrated roar, watching the other obsii crawl over his back, forcing him into the moss turned quicksand. He forces his head above the surface, and for a moment Casey sees only pain. Not fear, just pain.

  She lunges for his dagger, a sliver of steel and silver trapped in the sludge. She wraps her hand around the hilt and swings. The strength of her lunge sends her sprawling toward Red, cutting into the obsii.

  The blow frees Red, and he pushes up on his hands with a growl, shucking sludge and moss from his shoulders.

  Casey turns back toward Melanie and throws her entire body weight at the second obsii, slicing into shadow. Black goop splatters across her face and in her hair.

  She lets out a triumphant cry as the shadows scatter, and then Red is there, pulling Melanie to her feet.

  “This way,” Casey says, heading for the hospital. They have to get out of the trees.

  Melanie cowers under the shade of the debris mountain, digging her heels in. “No,” she whispers. “I don’t want to go back there.”

  Casey looks from her to the building above. This is where Melanie spent the last days of her life. Of course she doesn’t want to be there.

  “Can you trust me?” she says to Melanie. “I know you don’t know me, but I can help you. I promise. But we have to go back up there.”

  Melanie staggers, containing her tears, but nods.

  Together, she and Red help Melanie climb the makeshift staircase, holding her steady when stone and brick and metal shift beneath her.

  Once inside the narrow white hallway, Casey moves ahead, pressing her ear against the closed doorways, searching for the one with the voices.

  Finally, she slows, her hands warm against a door, her heart skipping, not in fear, but in recognition.

  “Is this the one?” Red asks.

  “Yes,” Casey says with certainty as a bubbly laugh spills from beneath the door. She looks over with a smile, realizing too late that she’s the only one who has heard it. “This is it,” she tells Melanie with confidence.

  “I just … I just go inside?” Melanie flattens her hand against the door, sliding it down toward the knob. Slowly the bruises begin to fade from her skin, the shadows disappearing from her eyes, the delicate marks of past pains becoming nonexistent.

  Casey’s words catch in her throat at the sight. She clears it. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “And you … you don’t get to come?”

  “Not this time,” Casey says. She gestures toward the door. “Go on.”

  Melanie does, pushing inside, and Casey turns away as a light steals her sight, blinding her with an intensity that makes her bones shake. The door closes with a soft puff, and she jumps when Red places his hand on her shoulder.

  “She’s gone,” he says. “We can go.”

  Casey spares one more glance down the hall, wondering how close she was to Liddy this time. With a nod, he leads her back to the door that holds their exit.

  She relishes the pressure that pulls her back to the physical plane and the feel of firm ground beneath her for a split second before she tumbles to her knees. Red carves the sealing mark into the floor. On her hands and knees, Casey watches the glow fade and notes the black sludge caked under her fingernails.

  She heads to the bathroom, turning on the taps with her elbows. Hot water spills over her hands and she rinses the muck away, furiously scr
ubbing the dirt from beneath her nails, all while watching the black water rush down the drain

  When she looks up from the sink and into the mirror, Red fills the doorway behind her. His hair is loose around his face, his clothes mismatched and too short in places because they’re Evan’s, black splotches staining his skin. Even now, as he stands there, he looks like some sort of fairy creature; some impossibly beautiful and knowing being that’s appeared right when her life is in shambles. The sight of him only makes it harder to process. If there were really beings like Red to offer protection, why did terrible things have to happen?

  “You’re upset,” he says.

  Hands now clean, she splashes water on her face. “I’m fine.”

  “Why are you upset?”

  She grips the edge of the sink. Untangling the thoughts in her head seems almost impossible. “I just … Every time we miss her, it feels like it’s by an inch or a second. Like we’ve passed each other without knowing, and it reminds me of that night.”

  Red steps into the bathroom, closer to her, his hand moving but never quite reaching her shoulder.

  She spins to face him. “You know, one second we were in the boat and the next the water. And somewhere between then and the next morning she was dead.”

  Red looks torn, not broken or sympathetic, but like he can’t bring himself to tell her otherwise. Like he’s stood in her place before, lost it all, and had nothing good to offer. No condolences. No soft promises. Just exacting truths.

  Casey hugs herself like it might hold in the emotion. “I helped that girl today because when I saw her, I thought it was Liddy at first. I couldn’t shake the thought that it would be me letting her go all over again. It’s all I can think about … that night … leaving her behind.”

  Red swallows hard. She can see the veins in his neck bulge with the effort. “Casey, I—”

  “Why can’t I remember what came after?” When Liddy’s hand slipped … no, not slipped … When Casey had let her go because the current was too strong … What happened next? Why had she been lost and Casey saved?

  “You went through something very traumatic.”

  “Stop,” she says, already annoyed with his words.

  If she could have held on longer or tighter, would Liddy still be alive?

  “It’s true.”

  “Don’t say the same things as every other person, Red. You’re not the same as any other person.”

  “I don’t have the answers you want, Casey. Sometimes we lose the people we love.” His voice turns soft, his words almost a whisper. “And you can give up everything for them. But they are still lost to you. Not even angels hold a monopoly over life and death.”

  TEN

  CASEY’S AWOKEN THE next morning by incessant knocking on her door. She rolls out of bed and narrowly misses putting her foot down on Red’s head by toppling into a kind of unbalanced triangle above him with one foot stuck straight up in the air.

  He opens his eyes and stares at her. She watches his brows go up, then down, then draw together, creating one long line of confusion.

  “Stay very quiet,” she whispers—not unlike the first time she’d snuck him into the house. She pads across the room and opens her door just enough to squeeze out. Karen’s standing in the hall, so close Casey almost smacks into her before she can utter good morning.

  “Oh, you are here!” Karen says. “Good.” She’s dressed in scrubs, but her feet are bare and her hair is already hanging loose around her shoulders, something that only happens after a shift. “I’ve been calling you all morning.”

  “You have?” Casey says, pulling the door closed. “I … I thought you were working this morning?”

  “I worked nights so I’d be around today. It’s the open house. Remember?”

  “Open house?”

  “Yes. That thing called high school that I force you to attend. You know, pick up your senior schedule, talk college applications, meet with your guidance counselor.”

  Casey resists the urge to whack her palm against her forehead. She hasn’t exactly been keeping track of the calendar. “Yeah, yes.” She snaps her fingers. “Right. I’m just getting dressed now.”

  “Hey, bestie!” Evan calls, appearing at Karen’s shoulder. He wears the widest smile she’s ever seen. It stretches his face until she’s unsure of whether it’s gotten stuck. “It’s open house day! That thing we do in the middle of summer because we have nothing better to do.”

  Casey gives him a look. An are you okay? kind of look.

  Karen glances between them. “You two get stranger every day.”

  When she walks away, Casey yanks Evan into the room with her and closes the door. Red’s still sitting on the floor, hunched over in some kind of stretch.

  Evan breezes by them both. “No call! No text! Even a letter by carrier pigeon would have been acceptable,” he proclaims dramatically, his tone completely different now that Karen’s gone. He flops down on Liddy’s favorite purple beanbag chair in the corner of the room, arms crossed. His entire face puckers into a grumpy wrinkle. “I fell asleep with my eyes open staring at my phone. I swear my home screen is burned into my corneas.”

  “Good morning,” Red says to him, rubbing a hand over his face.

  Evan reaches beneath him to free a stuffed heart-shaped pillow they won with Liddy at Shore Fest last year and chucks it hard at Red.

  Red tilts his head just an inch and the pillow sails by him.

  “Good morning my a—”

  “Anyway,” Casey says loudly.

  “No, not ‘anyway,’” Evan says. “You don’t get to disappear on me and then not let me know that you got back okay. I spent half the night wondering whether I was going to have to lie to Karen about what happened to you while she plasters your face on milk cartons and billboards and bathroom stalls at the airport.”

  “We don’t have an airport.”

  “You know what I mean!” Evan shouts as he points a finger at her.

  “All right,” Casey says waving both hands in a calm yourself motion. “I’m sorry. It was a lot yesterday and I fell asleep.”

  “Obviously,” he snaps, then rubs his hands over his knees trying to soothe himself. “So, what’s up with the Liddy situation?”

  “No developments,” Casey says. “She’s still lost. The link between us is still open. And now we have to go spend the afternoon pretending we care about which college we’re applying to next year.”

  “So we’re going to school?” Red says.

  “I’m going with Karen,” Casey says, standing in front of the mirror tacked to the wall beside her closet. She turns to Evan. “I need you to bring Red just in case.”

  “Why doesn’t he just do that”—he waves his hand around—“veily thing and we all ride together?”

  “I don’t want to lie to Karen any more than I have to,” Casey tells the mirror.

  “Fine,” Evan says, glaring at Red. “But I’m not getting you breakfast, so don’t even ask.”

  Casey pulls her hair to the top of her head and twists a hair tie around it, catching the loose strands with a few bobby pins. Wearing yesterday’s now-rumpled T-shirt and shorts is giving her a convincing bohemian summer look. The kind that says not trying too hard. Though in her case, she’s not trying at all.

  Clearly Evan’s not quite over his earlier feelings. Annoyance threads through everything he says—and doesn’t say—as he pouts at her from the beanbag chair.

  She sticks her tongue out, trying to get him to smile. She knows she should cut him some slack; if the roles were reversed, she’d be going out of her mind trying to figure out how to maintain a friendship—a more than friendship—that, as far as he’s concerned, is quickly becoming a second-rate priority in the face of this angelic mission. That’s not what she means to happen.

  She sighs when Evan doesn’t take the bait. Every part of her wishes she could go back to the day of the accident, to a time before. When Limbo was just a fantasy in books she’d read and Re
d was just a stained-glass portrait in old church windows. When they still had Liddy.

  “I’m going to get Karen,” she says before she can dwell on it too much. “Give us five minutes before you leave.”

  She doesn’t wait for a response, just slips through the door, pulling it closed.

  It swings open again before she reaches the stairwell.

  “We’re okay, right?” Evan’s head sticks out between the door and the frame, a floating ball of boyish apology.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  Something in his features softens. “You’ll get her next time,” he says.

  Before she can let her emotions run away, she hurries down the stairs, meeting Karen in the front hall.

  “Ready?” she asks, impossibly chipper for someone post twelve-hour night shift.

  “You bet,” Casey says. She throws her hand up halfheartedly and cheers, “School.”

  Karen chuckles, tossing her arm around Casey’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze.

  They get black-tea-and-blueberry lemonades on the way there and a breakfast sandwich that drips grease onto her jean shorts. Casey wonders if Evan’s earlier threat about no breakfast is actually going to fly with Red. Now that she thinks about it, she wonders what level of awkwardness they’ll achieve between them during the ride to school. Part of her is sorry she’s going to miss it.

  Karen clears her throat suddenly and Casey lifts her head, thumb jammed in her mouth. She licks the last of the cheese and egg and drops her hand to her lap.

  “I just wanted to say,” Karen begins, “that if you’re not ready to see everyone yet, then we can go back home. I realize I didn’t really give you the option this morning.”

  “You didn’t exactly wrestle me into the car,” Casey points out. “That was an independent decision.”

  “I’ve missed you lately. I don’t know why it feels like we haven’t seen much of each other. I swear I tried to take some more time off this summer.”

  “We see each other plenty,” Casey tries to assure her. She wonders if this is the remnants of Red’s veil wearing off, leaving Karen slightly confused.

  “What I was getting at before, was that if you’re feeling uncomfortable—”