I finally understood what that mask meant.
When he turned to me, he pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “These are for you. I found them when I was going through some old trunks in the attic, while you were gone. I want you to have them with you.”
I took the envelope and opened it. Inside, I found two snapshots. One was from when I was little. I recognized myself at about five years old. I was seated at a picnic table covered with a checkered cloth and plates of food.
Abram was there, looking so much younger and happier.
My mom was there too, standing by the table with a plate in one hand. She was alert and smiling, having looked up for the photo as if someone had just called her name.
I stared at it for a long time, the memory of that day coming back in bits and pieces.
The other photo was even older, taken long before I was born. It showed a handsome man in a suit—Abram Rose. He had his arm around a woman who was seven or eight months pregnant.
Abram pointed to the woman. “That’s your grandmother, Moira Rose.”
I’d never seen a picture of her. Her features were so familiar, not unlike Mom’s, but not quite the same either. She was beautiful with strawberry blonde hair that curled close to her head. She wore a purple dress whose hem rippled on a secret breeze. My eyes lifted back to her face, and my heart skipped a beat. It was Doc Bella. There was no mistaking the steadiness of her gaze and the non-committal smile.
Abram said, “She died during childbirth with your mother.”
I opened my mouth to tell him it wasn’t so but changed my mind. It wasn’t my place to reveal Bella’s secret to him, not there, not then. It was too much. I hugged him extra hard. His pain was the same as my pain, and it always had been. I just hadn’t realized it. I whispered next to his ear, “Thank you, Grandpa.”
♦
When I was a little girl, Grandpa used to take me down to the public pool in the summer. It was always filled with screaming boys and girls. The smell of coconut and chlorine could make me woozy with happiness.
The older kids would climb the long ladder to the high dive, ease out to the edge, then jump off. The crowd’s cacophony was punctuated by their regular kersplooshes.
The first time I climbed that ladder, the height shocked me. I stood there, clinging to the steel railing at the back of the board, knocked-kneed and terrified. I was in the clouds, above the din.
The people below looked small, their heads bobbing in the water, petals on a puddle. The distance between me and the water seemed unbridgeable.
I lost my nerve and had to back down the ladder to the cruel jeers of the other children.
I never did climb back up, but I never forgot how it felt to stand at the edge, looking out into the open air with no promise that there would be anything but pain—and maybe even death—to catch me.
That’s why I’d worked so hard for security, stability—tedium. I’d wanted my feet firmly planted on the ground, so I kept every day the same, more or less. Tick tock. The clock had ruled my world. I’d paced myself to the beat of the metronome that droned in my subconscious day after day, night after night.
When you spend your life at the edge of a precipice, you remain ever-vigilant for those unexpected gusts of wind or ground tremors. I knew the day would eventually come when I’d lose my footing and fall—or fly away.
As I stood at the airport window, looking out at the plane parked there, I remembered the high dive, the expanse of emptiness between me and the crystal waters, and the fear that had overtaken me as I realized how far up I had climbed.
I had arrived again at the top of the ladder, and I looked out at empty air. Who knew if there would be anything to catch me?
Then, Jake was at my elbow. “Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?” His eyes crinkled with friendship.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“They’re boarding the plane. Shall we?”
“Yeah.”
Walking down the gangplank to the plane, I stepped out onto the diving board, exposed on all sides.
I found my seat, and Mom sat next to me, while Corona and Jake settled in across the aisle.
The diving board felt unstable. It moved beneath me. I wondered if I could back down the ladder again, or was it too late.
The plane pulled away from the building and taxied down the runway.
I dug in my purse for the straight pin I’d put there.
The plane accelerated, and Corona said, “There’s a terabyte of adventure comin’ our way! Let the download begin!”
My hands shook. The diving board rattled.
I felt the moment when it sprang, and I was launched upward and outward.
The plane left the ground.
I waited for the explosions or the heart attack, straight pin poised to prick me back to life. I waited to fall, but I didn’t.
Eventually, I opened my eyes, and there we were, soaring across the sky, climbing into the atmosphere. I looked out the window and saw clouds below us. The moon was a huge sliver in the sky, antique white and gray against a backdrop of twinkling mysteries.
Who said there was no magic in the world?
Not long ago, people would have called me crazy if I’d told them that, one day, man would fly tens of thousands of feet above the ground. I’d have been laughed out of the village back then, maybe even locked up in an institution or stoned to death, and yet there I was.
Flying.
I dropped the pin to the floor and watched the moon slowly slide over the edge of the world.
THE END FOR NOW
♦♦♦
Appendix
Bella Rosenblum placed the crystal bowl on the oak slab with care. She poured hot water into it from a thermos, pleased when the steam rose into the cold night air. All around her, the sounds of the forest hushed as if in anticipation of what her scrying would reveal.
With a whispered incantation, Bella infused her magick into the steam and water, asserting her will with words of focus and the names of the people whose minds she wanted to enter—whose eyes she wanted to see through.
♦
"Colin Aubrey"
Colin felt the hag’s frustration like a hum along his spine. Her scream, the rip of rending reality that accompanied her attacks, had woken him on more than one occasion. He'd never had the nerve to investigate it.
The hag had come looking for him. It wanted him gone from its world, and if it couldn’t get to him, then it would go after anyone else whose discordance attracted it. That meant hunting other patients, people with gifts or curses.
Lately, the hag’s attention had turned to Viviane. Maybe it knew that killing her would weaken him. Maybe it was just spiteful.
Colin was remembering his attempt to leave and draw the hag away. How it had failed. He was trying to find another way to keep Viviane safe without confronting the hag directly. I can't just fly away, he thought. If I do, Bella will make sure I never see Viviane again, so long as I live. She can and would do that. I know. Or she might just leave me to deal with all this on my own. Fuck. I won't survive without her.
But that cunt of a hag…
The hag was on the move. Colin felt it shifting at the base of his neck, as if he had a connection to it. He sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was after 9:30 p.m., and the men’s wing had gone quiet. The distant sound of the television in the rec room told Colin that the orderlies were distracted. He got up and crept from his room, driven by a sense of urgency. He saw no other choice but to confront it.
He palmed the secret keycard given to him so he could flee on a moment's notice if he had to. With it, he could move through the Center's passageways, and his instincts directed him to the back stairwell. As he opened the door, he thought, I know you're here. He didn't know what he was going to do if he came face to face with it.
The floor was cold on his bare feet, and a chill raised goose bumps on his arms. The stairwell was more emergency exit than anything else. It was undecorated c
oncrete block. Colin went all the way down to the basement, pausing from time to time to listen. It wasn’t long before he heard one of the doors open above, then footsteps.
Whoever it was stopped for a moment. In the pause, Colin heard a shuffling sound, soft like a whisper, but it echoed in the stairwell above.
Then a woman called out, “Hello?”
It was Viviane. Colin recognized her voice. No, Viv, no. Go back. He listened harder and stayed as still as he could.
Viviane descended a couple more steps, and her shadow appeared on the wall above Colin, stretching long. She stopped again. Her shadow stopped too, but other shadows didn’t.
They kept moving.
Colin’s scalp crawled.
Viviane said, “Who’s there? Look, I don’t care who you are or what you’re smoking, but you’re scaring me, so just say something.”
Colin said nothing. He was listening and watching for the hag. He could feel her close, the vibrations in his bones so intense he felt they might liquefy. His legs went weak. Go away, Viv. Leave!
The shadows were expanding, moving like a storm front across the wall.
Colin had to get Viviane out of there.
♦
"Malum Mara"
The stink of magick lingered in the hag's nose. She licked it off her fingers, putting almost her entire hand in her mouth to suck off the residue. Hovering, shivering in a clean corner, she let the sounds of simple humanity wash over her. She could hear them for a dozen yards all around, their voices blending into a babbling brook of white noise that soothed her.
She paused in her licking to watch the choreographed movements of the doctors, nurses, visitors, and patients—and the predictability with which they performed their functions. They were matter without magick, and their presence eased her pain and appeased her hunger—for the moment.
She thought of her target and its protector, the mated pair. So close she had come to destroying them, to purging them from her world—her world—the world she existed to consume. Instead, she'd toyed with them and found that play could be exhilarating.
Impure with magick, the pathogen had writhed beneath her, and she'd felt the acceleration of her core being, had known hunger unavoidable, and had willed it to lie still. It would've been neutralized and absorbed if it hadn’t been for the protector.
The hunt stirred in her legs and excitation spread with crackling energy through her torso and out her extremities. She gave her palm one final lick, then lifted her nose into the air. She couldn’t immediately expurgate that protected pathogen, but there were others, others who didn’t have anyone watching over them.
With a hum of gratitude and anticipation, she thought of the infected one who had guided her there to the watering hole where she'd found so much delight. Eventually, she'd go back for that one too, she would, and then she'd be free to absorb the pathogen and its protector. For the moment, however, she contented herself with taking advantage of the convergence.
She melted through matter, swimming in Reality, at one with it as the shark is at one with the sea. She crossed space and followed the edge of actuality, never once slipping over the boundary into the forbidden fields, until at last, she arrived back at her nesting place.
She couldn't ignore the vibrations of her prey. They were gathered in this place in large numbers, a herd of them. Slowly, she would pick them off, one by one. And though her most recent attack had failed, she would soon succeed with one of the unprotected, and she’d feed.
Harmonic fluctuations summoned her, and she didn’t have to think. Instinct took over. She kept to the high points, up near the ceilings where she wouldn’t encounter any resistance. Slipping along gray veins, she made her way to the den of a vibrating female.
It sat there as if it belonged, pretending to be human, and that enraged her. It did not belong. She would not let it remain. She slid up alongside it and had it in her embrace before it knew what was happening. She enfolded it and touched it in its warmest places, her hands and body soaking up its will, its passion, and its consciousness. She drained it of those things, until nothing remained. Finally, she took its breath.
The rending was music to her ears, the scratch of nails on stone, the scream of sudden death. It was the tearing that allowed the healing, and by removing the foreign object, she created a vacuum. It was the vacuum that screeched in protest, like metal being crushed. The vacuum could not stay, would not stay; and until it was filled, until the warm, sweet flesh of space and time rushed in to fill it, Reality screamed.
♦
"Nathanatos"
The son of Rebus and Ríoghain sat in the backseat of the limousine, cool air blowing out the vent at him. He let his chin drop forward, and the thick shock of his bangs slid down to veil his eyes. He didn’t bother to push them back.
The news had been a mixed blessing. The police had called earlier that day to tell Nathan they found Colin’s body. Under any other circumstances, it would have devastated Nathan, but since he was already furious with Colin, he couldn’t find it in himself—not yet—to grieve. If anything, he was angrier.
The tinted windows kept the interior dark, and Nathan preferred it that way. The sunlight, his brother’s domain, hurt his eyes and raised his temperature uncomfortably. It wouldn’t be long before the sun had set, and meanwhile, he waited and listened to the industrial music coming out of the speakers. He had it turned up so loud he could hear the windows rattle with each bass beat. The music enveloped him and gave him the illusion that he was alone, instead of encased in a metal box amidst a hundred thousand Realists, all of whom, he thought, had as much imagination as a rock.
Now I can go home, he thought. But I need to take proof back with me or Father will send me right back, probably with a few new scars for good measure. Lovely. I'll be glad when this is all over. Nathan hated the duties imposed on him by his station and by his birth. He hated the politics.
Nathan studied his driver, Pest, wishing he himself could be such a simple man with such simple needs. The chauffeur was seated behind the wheel, his tablet in front of him. He scrolled without shame through a series of pictures of aroused women in leather—draped, wrapped, and shackled in chains. Nathan had had to trust Pest, and much to his relief, Pest had proven reliable—perhaps because of his simplicity.
A glint of gold hit the rear window, casting a dancing light inside. Nathan watched it with derision and cool patience. It foreshadowed a time for action. Nathan reached over and turned off the music. He opened the communication channel with the front seat and said, “I go in five minutes.”
Pest lifted his head and turned an ear toward the barrier, but he didn’t look back. In profile, his face was a high desert landscape of mesas and rock outcroppings. He nodded once.
The other thing Nathan liked about Pest was that he rarely spoke.
Nathan smoothed his eyebrows and straightened his sleeves. He suspected it would be an easy in-and-out, and if successful, he’d be done in this noisy, stinky, filthy world for awhile, maybe forever.
I'm not amused, Brother, he thought, observing the humans outside the car as if they were fish in an aquarium. You just had to go and die, didn't you. That's infuriating on so many levels. I could've stayed home in the luscious—and well-missed—arms of Coriander. But no, you had to go and run away. And of course, Father chose me to chase after his rebel son.
What's worse, now that you're dead, it'll be my fault. Father will take all his frustration out on me. Oh, and now I'll be forced to sit the throne and be royal asshole when Father dies. I've spent my entire life avoiding the sycophancy and subterfuge of Gehenna politics. But once again, you've left me holding a bag full of turds and the maggots that live in them. I rue the day Father impregnated my mother. I wish I'd never been born.
On cue, Pest got out of the car and came back to open Nathan’s door for him. Nathan stepped out into twilight and took a deep breath of asphalt and exhaust. Across the parking lot, the Peoria County morgue was soaking up s
hadows, its windows blackened and deepening.
“Wait here,” Nathan told Pest. He didn’t look back or wait for acknowledgement. He knew Pest would obey. He strode across the lot to the building.
A woman at the front desk looked up and said, “Hello. Can I help you?”
Nathan stopped, attention trapped by the lobby’s two-story mural of riverboats, industry, and farmland. He tore his gaze away from the appalling image and said, “I imagine so. I’m here to identify my brother’s body. I'm Nathan Aubrey.”
The woman's interest in him doubled. She directed him to a bank of chairs, and from where he waited, he heard the woman say into the phone, "We have a family member here for an identification. Number 6593-3667. It's the brother. Name's Nathan Aubrey. No, Aubrey. That's A.U. B as in boy. R.E.Y." She paused, listening, then said, "Yes. He's on his way down with John."
An escort came out of the back, checked a blue folder, and then called his name.
Nathan followed and focused on not thinking. A general disdain filled him for the people and the colon of a hallway down which they traveled. The escort's right shoe squeaked with every step on the linoleum floor, and Nathan fell into a rhythm with it.
They passed through a section of hall ripe with the scent of rotting flesh, shit, and chemistry. A Normal would never have noticed. Nathan sucked his cheeks in, tugged a handkerchief from his pocket, and pressed the silk to his nose. He stared at the back of the escort's head, with its just-been-fucked tangle and bland roots; he could feel the scowl on his face where the muscles tensed and pulled down the sides of his mouth. He had to remind himself to blink.
Stalking the Moon Page 27