I turned to see they had the truck’s rear doors open. I watched as people began to scatter.
My lungs were on fire as I ran back, needing to know. I stood helplessly next to a stadium full of survivors and stared in horror at the bulky packages, and the numbers on a small digital clock face.
I remembered his words. I knew how to lay a bomb, too.
Most of my mind closed off, except for one small, stubborn part, which stayed open long enough to echo the countdown on the display.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
No darkness anymore. Only light.
And then, gone.
A Word From Sara Foster
Jeez, short stories are tough! When I signed up to write this one, I had forgotten what tricky little labyrinths they can be, until I had spent a few weeks chasing after my original idea—a woman separated from her family by a bomb—trying to pin down exactly what was going on. It took a while for me to realize my first plan wouldn’t work: I was trying to cram a novel’s worth of action into a few thousand words. Finally, I focused in on the pivotal moment when Beatrice’s life changes, and I was off.
At the moment I’m in a personal reading crisis: I have a four-year-old and a four-month-old and often the only books I get close to have hippopotamuses going to school or green sheep getting up to mischief. But during the first half of the year, while my eldest was at kindergarten and my big round belly made the perfect book rest, I crammed in as much reading as I could. Among my chosen reads there were quite a few tagged with labels of dystopian, suspense, or thriller. How I love these novels that are paced and plotted like roller coasters, with characters who live in completely disparate worlds yet feel like close friends (or occasionally sworn enemies!).
I was pregnant with my eldest daughter when I signed my first book contract, so my professional writing career has developed in tandem with the joys and challenges of parenthood. Somehow, amid the chaos I have managed to publish three novels—Come Back to Me, Beneath the Shadows, and Shallow Breath—and I’m working on a fourth. It’s no surprise that I write what I love, so all my books are pace-driven suspense stories of personal dilemmas. However, while they have that in common, the stories themselves are very different. It’s great to be challenged and experiment with form and content to keep the writing fresh, and being part of this wonderful anthology has provided a brilliant platform for me to do just that. I’m very grateful to everyone involved in From the Indie Side.
You can find out more about me and my books at www.sarafoster.com.au or www.facebook.com/sarafosterwriter.
Chapter 1
Lila
The boat glides through black water, the oar hitting aluminum with a hollow sound. If anyone were to ask, I would say that I’m heading for a secret place, to an island located in the middle of a shallow river with no name. I would say that this is the kind of thing a curious girl will do—take a boat through the dark night of a Louisiana swamp. As I row, I recall a beautiful boy with pale skin and circles under his eyes who came into the café where I work and slipped me his business card. On the front was a picture of a swampy island, a clearing, and a campfire. On the back of the card was a map. Now, rumor has it that very few people are ever issued invites to the secret island, and those who are invited visit and never return. So why am I going?
This question I cannot answer, but here I am, dressed in unfamiliar clothes: skinny black jeans, a black T-shirt, black boots, and purple hair. A Goth Nancy Drew. I see lights and hear music before I hit land. And then the boat is sliding up the grassy bank to come to a jerking halt.
I step out and drag the craft from the water.
“You came.”
It’s the pale boy, the one who gave me the card, and he’s appeared out of nowhere, as if he’s been watching for me, waiting for me. I think about the handgun I keep in my boot, and the mace in my pocket. I’m not sure it will be enough to protect me. Maybe I need a cross. And holy water. And garlic. Ha ha.
He reaches out and takes my hand. “I’ll lead the way. It’s hard to see.”
That’s the truth. I don’t know how he can tell where we’re going, because I can’t see what’s underfoot, but I let him lead me toward the music and the lights.
This is a dream. I suddenly realize that this is a dream. Of course. It makes no sense that I’ve come here by myself. It makes no sense that I’ve come at all. And a gun. Where did I get a gun? So it has to be a dream. And since it’s a dream, I can let it unfold without question.
Yes. Now I remember. At the café. He handed me the business card. I held it, and I regarded the image. The island. And as I looked, the fire began to move. And when I turned the card to examine the map, I was suddenly in the boat, on the river with no name, heading toward the secret island.
Yes, a dream.
And now the pale boy is holding my hand, and I am following. Two girls have come to the island before me, and two girls have vanished. I think this is true. I think this really happened. Maybe this is a vision quest, a dream that will lead me to an answer. Maybe later I will tell the police what happened to the girls.
The pale boy hands me a drink.
“Is this blood?” I ask, lifting the glass and trying to examine the contents in the light falling from a house with tall windows.
He laughs. “It’s wine. Don’t tell me you believe all that vampire stuff.”
“Well…”
“If that’s what you think, why’d you come?”
I could hardy say I’d had no choice. I could hardly tell him this was a dream, because I would then be pointing out that he wasn’t real. “The business card,” I begin as way of explanation.
“Did you like that? It wasn’t easy for the clan to create a doorway card. It’s still in the beta stage, so I was surprised when I saw you coming across the river. I didn’t know if it would work. But you’re here. I’m glad.”
I sip the wine and watch him over the edge of my glass. “Did I have any choice?” I wonder aloud.
“It’s like hypnosis,” he says. “You can’t be made to do anything you don’t want to do. Which is why I’m extra surprised to see you. It means you wanted to come. You wanted to see me.” He smiles, and it doesn’t bother me that the mouth behind his teeth looks black. Maybe it’s just the light. And it doesn’t bother me that his skin is cold and as smooth as marble. And it doesn’t bother me that he smells of moss and mildew and damp earth. I rather like it. And I like the softness of his voice, and I like the shimmer of his blond hair, the long length of his legs, the fragile strength of his arms.
I drink the wine. Even though I know it’s more than wine, I drink it. Because I know it will open another door, and that door will take me to a deeper understanding of the pale boy. I fall through a dark hole, and in that hole our lives intertwine. We marry, we have sex, we have children born under a black moon. The pale boy knows me and I know him, and twenty years unfold in one glass, a road that unrolls in front of me and rolls up behind me as I walk, every experience ephemeral and fleeting.
An intrusive sound seeps in. A ring that indicates an order is up. And suddenly I’m standing in the coffee shop behind the cash register, and the pale boy is on the other side of the counter, and I’m holding the business card as if he’s just given it to me seconds ago. I look at the card. Just a photo of a campfire. I turn it over. Just a crude map.
“For the jar,” he says.
I look at him blankly.
He nods toward the fishbowl of business cards.
“Oh.” I drop it inside.
“How often do you have a drawing?” he asks. And I recall the way his skin felt under my fingertips, and the way his hair smelled as it fell against my face.
“Every Monday,” I say.
He smiles, and his smile is intimate. As if he knows me. “Good. I’ll have a new card next week.”
Chapter 2
Gabriel
I will never get old. I will never die
. These are the things I know. Before the clan created the secret island, we had to worry about being killed by our own kind and by the true humans, but now that we have our secret world, we are finally safe.
But love.
What about love?
I will always be a sixteen-year-old boy. And yes, most people, when asked what part of their life they would like to relive, or what age they would like to be if only they could go back—they say sixteen. Most people say sixteen.
At sixteen, there is so much promise. At sixteen, we are on the precipice of our lives. We don’t know what those lives will hold, but excitement thrums in our veins. For the unknown. For the magic of the future. And like the true humans, we want to meet someone special.
We on the secret island don’t consider ourselves vampires. The V word isn’t allowed here. Vampires are simply immortals who went rogue. Psychopaths. Sociopaths.
Immortals eat food, for God’s sake. (Although I have to confess, food on the island is about as tasty as sawdust.) This is the tragedy of our existence. We fall in love, but we never age. We don’t have children. We don’t watch those children grow. We don’t grow old with someone. These are life experiences that we cannot have.
And so the clan set out to change this. Sinclair, the genius behind our secret island, came up with a formula. It involves matter and antimatter and black holes and time shifts and gates and maybe a bit of magic. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if he just hypnotizes me and makes me think he’s created the place where I can live a normal life. Where I can grow old and have children.
But I don’t care.
Because in that place—whether it’s real or whether it’s something Sinclair has planted in my head—it seems real. It seems real times a hundred. And in that place of magic created by Sinclair… in that place, my love lives and breathes…and works in a coffee shop.
And like a man with an illness, like a man with an addiction, I count the moments and breaths until I can go back there again. Until I can see her again.
Of course there’s always the worry, the terrible fear that it won’t work this time. That the gate won’t open. That I won’t be able to cross into her world. Or worse, that I will go through the gate and I will walk down a street that seems too perfect, and she won’t be there. She won’t be where she was when I last visited.
I’m the beta tester.
In that place created by Sinclair, I live life in what seems like real time. And right now, I plan to court the most beautiful girl. And it’s not just her beauty. It’s not just her dark hair and her blue eyes and her pale skin. Those things are important. I won’t lie. But it’s her heart. And her humor. Her kindness. She makes me laugh. And when I laugh in her world, the sound almost scares me. When I laugh in that real place, I can feel the air escape my lungs, and I can feel the blood rush through my veins.
Oh, and when I touch her…
Oh, my God. When I touch her. Just a brush when she hands me my drink.
How can I describe this?
I think at first you must understand that life on the island is muted. Because of the layer of protection that surrounds us, muffles us. And not only externally, but internally too. We are smothered in an invisible blanket. We are the hollow sound of a barking dog on a humid night. We are the hollow sound of a far-off train coming from another realm. When I touch the wooden banister in my house, my fingertips feel numb. And when I lift a glass of wine to my lips (yes, I drink wine!), it tastes like diluted grape juice.
Sinclair promises to eventually address these problems.
“I must focus on keeping our island stable,” he tells me. “These taste and tactile issues aren’t important.”
But I know it bothers him. I know it frustrates him.
But the gateway world… It’s almost as if everything I haven’t felt during my island existence is suddenly poured into the gateway world. Life, emotions, smells… They’re all amplified.
I wonder if this is what it feels like to be born. Maybe you’re in this world, this safe, warm, quiet world, and then suddenly you aren’t. Suddenly air is moving across your body, and you can hear your heart beating, and you can feel the blood circulating.
Her hair.
Her hair smells so good.
Like oranges and vanilla.
Right now I’m standing in the coffee shop where she works. And she’s watching me as if she knows me. And she does know me. I’ve been coming here for a while, but last week I gave her the first gateway card Sinclair made. That card brought her to me, to the secret island. But now I hand her the new card. One that Sinclair tells me will be even better.
One that is supposed to firmly embed me in her world.
This has not been tested.
I am the first.
“I don’t know if it will work,” Sinclair told me when he handed the card to me. Unlike the last one, which contained an image of our island, this one has the coffee shop on one side, and a map of the town on the other.
“Don’t step outside the city limits,” Sinclair warned me. “I have no idea what will happen if you do that.”
But the truth is, he doesn’t know what will happen if I don’t step outside the city limits either.
I’m his beta tester. I’ve volunteered.
“You might not make it back.” That’s another thing Sinclair told me. “Or you might come back at some unfortunate time. Or you might come back half-formed. Or you might come back with no memory of the girl in the café. Or you might come back with a fried brain.”
But when a man, a boy, a teenager, wants to experience love… real love… he is willing to risk everything. Because isn’t that what love is all about?
So now I’m holding the card, my arm extended, waiting for her to take it.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
And when those words reach my ears, I hear a melody. I look around to see if anybody else heard it. People are hunched over laptops, people are staring at their iPhones.
Her voice is like a song. I want to tell her that, but I don’t.
You’re shaking.
I know I should respond to her observation, but I can’t think of any explanation, any kind of reply. I’m shaking because I want her to take the card. Everything hinges upon her taking the card.
I swallow and kind of wave it a little.
The espresso machine is roaring, and I smell more than her hair. I smell her skin and the cotton of her T-shirt. Beyond that, the scent of dark coffee, of hazelnuts, and maybe even a chocolate-chip cookie.
I’ve eaten cookies here. They taste wonderful.
She takes the card. Oh, God. She takes the card.
The roar of the espresso machine becomes a roar in my head. The room shifts under my feet, and my insides feel as if they are being sucked through my skin. I imagine my heart outside my body, and I think I mumble something about wearing my heart on my sleeve.
And then I hear this wong, wong, wong inside my head, and the room spins and turns black. I grab for the counter. But instead, my hand brushes the hand of the girl. Sparks shoot between us, reminding me that we are all made of stars. The human and the not-so-human. This girl named Lila. And me.
The human lets out a gasp of alarm. I’ve shocked her. I’ll bet Sinclair doesn’t know about that. I will have to tell him that he might want to tweak some things.
And then I hit the floor. And hit my head.
Out cold.
Chapter 3
Lila
The pale boy is back.
Not only back, but he’s just passed out on the floor of the coffee shop.
I didn’t think he could get any paler, but apparently he can. His brows are bold and black against his white skin. And his lips. They’re blue. Is he just passed out? I hope he isn’t dead. I’m afraid to touch him because of the shock he gave me, but maybe if I touch him again… Maybe it would be like a defibrillator.
Someone jostles me from behind. “I’m a doctor.”
Another person. �
��I’m a nurse.”
I get out of the way. As the doctor and nurse bend over the boy, he begins to stir. His eyelids flutter, and the blue tinge leaves his lips, but his skin is still deathly pale.
“What’s your name, son?” the doctor asks. “Do you know your name?”
“I’m not sure…” The boy frowns. “Gabriel. It’s Gabriel.”
I just know him as the pale boy.
“Where are you from?” the doctor asks. I remember these as typical questions taught in CPR class.
“The secret island,” the boy answers. Of this he seems sure.
“Secret Island?” the nurse asks.
I don’t know why, but I interrupt. “He’s an exchange student.”
“An exchange student from Secret Island?” This from the nurse again, who doesn’t seem convinced of anything.
I struggle to produce an answer, with no idea why I’m making things up. “It’s an island off the coast of… of…”
“Iceland?” The boy’s input is a question and a statement.
“That explains his pallor,” someone in the crowd says.
“And his weird hair,” a kid chimes in.
“And weird clothes.” Another kid.
His clothes are a little strange. Kind of casual Victorian. And his hair… not so strange, but long, and as pale as his face. Not something you see in the average teenager.
I think about the card he gave me last time he was in the café. I took the card home with me. I don’t know why. Now he’s here again. And he’s looking at me with the most wonderful eyes. Brown, but not a boring brown. So brown they’re almost black.
He reaches up to me, and I reach back, unafraid.
Chapter 4
Gabriel
As I lie on the floor staring up at the girl, I recall Sinclair’s instructions. “Physical contact,” he’d told me.
From the Indie Side Page 14