by Andrew Smith
The room at the end of the hallway, upstairs, where he and Davey’s sister, Hannah, would meet, hidden in the absolute quiet of night.
I was Seth Mansfield.
I remember the small window in Davey’s room where he slept alongside his adoptive brother, his curiosity about the great wooden hoops Ma used for stretching fabric; how they’d been stacked neatly against the wall opposite the stove in the downstairs of the house.
I thought about this when we were on the train.
Me and Quinn.
The thought was maybe a second, perhaps shorter.
A flash of light.
I remembered the wagon they rode in the day Russ and those other men took Seth and Pa out into the woods, away from Pope Valley. How the day seemed to crystallize in frozen brilliance as they tightened the rope around the boy’s neck.
I was Seth.
And I remember one time, how he and Davey started a fire atop a hill of red ants. They’d used dry grass wound together in tight yellow broom whisks, bound with strings of willow bark. And when they set fire to the brooms, Seth watched, almost hypnotized by how the orange embers would come alive, brighten, breathe, migrate up and down along the strands of grass like they were living things, and they were alive, because they could jump across the fibrils of grass, from string to string, skipping from one to another every time Davey would turn the whisk in his hand and blow.
Quinn squeezed my hand.
I couldn’t feel anything anymore, but I knew he was holding tight to my bloody hand.
And I thought, this is what it’s like to be the fire, to skip across the strings.
* * *
The train was going so fast.
Jack slumped against Quinn’s chest.
I said, “It doesn’t work this way, Quinn.”
And that was all.
* * *
Outside, in the tunnel, there is a light.
This is the arrow.
Jack is the arrow.
The light begins in the car ahead of me. It passes back like an electrified drape of blazing dust, or the train, the arrow, Jack, passes through it.
I can’t tell, and it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes, standing still is moving forward.
We are drifting through a membrane, and Seth vanishes. It’s Davey turning the wad of grass over in his hand, blowing to fan the flame.
Watch as it skips.
Instantly, through the first wall of light, Quinn disappears.
For a moment, I feel the lingering stickiness where his hand clasped the drying gum of blood. And the bleeding has stopped, but the train moves forward, silently, now, rocking, trembling.
Sunlight and color flood through the windows.
I can feel warmth.
On the other side of the glass there is a brilliant blue sky and endless undulations like the surface of a calm sea: the waving stalks of an infinite field, ablaze in green. Black stilt-poles pike up from the field, jabbing into the sky.
Crosses.
Scarecrow frames.
But these are no scarecrows.
The first is Conner.
Nickie, Ben, and Griffin follow.
Another wave of light.
Another wall.
The door ahead of me opens and a man stumbles awkwardly, drunk legs from the motion of the noiseless train, arms swimming through the air to counter the ricochet pulse of the swaying path he’s on. He comes directly toward me, his eyes pinned with such intensity to some point beyond me that I want to turn and see, but I can’t take my eyes from him.
Avery Scott.
The cop.
He stops directly in front of me.
He says, “You’re dirty. You’re a dirty fucking kid.”
Light washes down the aisle, and it pushes him forward like he’s been caught in an unexpected shorebreak.
He falls toward my feet and vanishes.
Everyone here is a ghost.
We are moving through trees. I can smell Pope Valley in the morning, in summer.
I hold my hand up. Open, close. The wound has healed, but there is still the pink gash, the jagged scar from the edge of the broken lens. I take a deep breath. I am alive again, and I am here, jumping somewhere between a burning strand and one about to catch fire with me.
When I turn back, Uncle Teddy is lying on the floor at my feet, exactly in the spot where Quinn had thrown down Ander’s bloody shirt. The preacher’s eyes are open; his chin hangs slack. But he is not breathing.
There is a hole in his side. His blood pools in the lined grooves of the rubber mat I’m standing on. Beside him, on the floor, are the glasses. They flash and wink.
Burning.
“Don’t look, Jack.”
Seth is standing at the front of the car.
“So, you’re going to talk to me now?”
He’s scared. It’s a younger Seth. The boy, standing barefoot, scrawny in his worn dungarees, shirtless. He holds the wooden horse with both hands in front of his waist.
Seth shakes his head. “This may be our last chance, Jack.”
Outside, the trees open up and I can see the sky.
It grows lighter in the train.
He pleads again, “Don’t look, Jack.”
But he’s not talking about the glasses.
And I see the two figures hanging outside.
Then it’s as if everything—the bar I’m holding on to, the seats, the train itself—all fold inside a grainy fog to vanish beneath a battering barrage of exploding lights.
Everything disappears.
And it is dark and silent, everything.
When I see, it is a line.
Somewhere away from me, a distance that could be immeasurable or a matter of inches, there is a line, frozen, exact.
I am lying on my back and I see a line of light, the color of an old man’s teeth—not yellow, not white.
Not-here.
There is searing pain in my leg. I move my hands in the dark, track them across the surface beneath me, over my body, everywhere, staring at the line of light.
Where are your clothes?
I can’t move my foot.
And I realize the light I see is the narrow space beneath a shut door.
The room is hot, dank, and smells of my own sweat, sterile plastic, and cigarette smoke.
I am tied down to a bed.
I know this place.
“Seth,” I whisper. “Seth.”
Click.
A television goes on in the other room.
I watch the light.
Everything is everywhere.
Freddie’s house.
I see the shadow moving like a bead of oil trapped in the light of the gap beneath the door. But something is wrong. Not-Freddie’s house. I am sick, cold, completely naked on this stinking mattress. I try sitting up, but it hurts. Everything hurts.
“Seth!” I whisper.
The bead of shadow stops. He stands just outside the door.
It cracks open, and I am blind in the flood of light behind the man standing there.
He has a cigarette in his hand.
And Freddie says, “I think we should go for a drive. Would you like to get some breakfast? You hungry, kid?”
I try to speak, but my throat is dry.
“Kid? You awake?”
“I … I’m awake.”
I stay flat, motionless, make myself small, my eyes lower, fixing steady on the paleness of my chest beneath the invading light.
It is how we do things here. No looking at his face. He doesn’t like it, and he has water.
I want water.
So I ask him, like he wants me to, “Will you please take me for a drive? Will you take me outside? Please?”
When he pushes open the door, it’s like being unearthed after centuries. The light pours over my anemic skin and I pull my chest toward my knees, jam my hands over my crotch, an instinct to grab myself and cover, and the tightening of my muscles hurts, burns like the light that
blinds me.
It’s like being on the train again.
Like waking up in the Under.
Being born.
And all I can see is the burning yellow light; nothing else.
It is so hot.
When I open my eyes, I am staring along the ground, at the white Marbury ash, lying at the foot of a rock in the desert.
And someone is yelling, “A rider! Henry! There’s a rider!”
Part Five
THE ARROW
twenty-nine
The passenger arrives.
* * *
How long this time?
I stretched out, flat on my belly in the ash. My fingers were wedged beneath the pack, and I could feel the glasses in my sweaty grasp. Somehow, I’d gotten my hand covered in the cut-out pocket again. Of course, as always, I had no idea what I’d been doing or how I ended up where I was. I pressed onto my hands and knees, keeping my forehead down, resting it against the dirt.
My stomach knotted and retched.
It hurt bad.
Coming back never hurt like this.
I was afraid I’d missed something; that there were important things I needed to see, but had left behind.
It was sick—I knew it—but I honestly wanted to be back there in Freddie’s room. I was certain there was an answer for Jack somewhere in that house; that I belonged there. Maybe I knew it anyway, and I wasn’t ever going home again.
I coughed and spit, vaguely sensing the absence of the other boys, the Odds.
Sometimes you just know when you’re all alone. It was a feeling Jack knew well.
When I finally raised my head so I could see where I was, I realized that Henry was gone, too.
“Do you need me to get help?”
A finger tapped my shoulder. I didn’t know there was anyone else there, so I flinched, jerking around to see who stood behind me.
The English kid, Ethan, the bed wetter, hovered over me, straight and rail thin, like the topless trunk of a palm tree tufted in stringy amber hair.
I rubbed my head. “I’m sick or something.”
Then I turned. I could see where all the other boys had gathered above us, crouching on the rim of the rocks. Henry was up there with them. I thought about the last time I saw him, when he was fighting with Quinn on the platform in the Underground. I couldn’t help but wonder which Henry would show up here in Marbury with me. With the boys.
Ethan said, “Perhaps I can get you some of Frankie’s water.”
He looked honestly concerned. He shifted, and started to move back toward Frankie’s distillery.
“No,” I said. “Don’t do that, Ethan. I’ll be okay.”
He stopped, and I glanced at the rim again and swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking to me, anyway.”
Ethan shrugged dismissively, irritated. “All right, then. Suit yourself. I just thought you needed help or something. Henry Hewitt told me to stay here and look after you. Now I’ve seen you. You’re alive. I guess there’s nothing more to look after.”
He started heading up to the ridgeline to join the other Odds.
Ethan said, “They’ve spotted a rider out there. Alone. Hewitt thinks it’s a fucking Ranger. I believe some of the boys are debating if we should go kill it, whatever he is.”
He kept walking away from me.
I knew the kid from somewhere.
Somewhere that wasn’t here.
“Hey, wait a second. I…”
I tried to stand up, and nearly fell face-first into the boulder I’d been hiding under. It was like my head drained itself empty when I moved. I nearly blacked out.
And I dropped the glasses into the ash between my knees.
Ethan turned around and saw them.
“What’s that?”
He saw something in them.
I tried not to look, tried brushing them away with my uncoordinated fingers. But Jack’s brain hadn’t connected yet, and I saw it, too. Couldn’t help it.
“Don’t look at that,” I said. I finally managed to swipe the glasses back under the rock. But even then, Ethan stood there, hypnotized and staring slackjawed at the pulsing vibrations of light that came from inside the crevice.
“Let me see that again,” he said.
I panicked. There was an excited energy coming from the kids on the ridge. I scanned above us, could see Ben and Griffin kneeling beside Henry.
The kid was frozen in place.
He said, “Jack.”
It was the first time any of these Odds used my name.
And Ethan pleaded, “Let me see that once more.”
“It’s nothing.”
I upended the pack, spilled everything out between my feet. As I twisted the ratty sock around in my hand, I said to him, “Ethan? Do you know where we are?”
He took two slow steps toward me, moving like he was hypnotized, falling, disconnected from his body.
“Ethan?”
The kid went down onto his knees. His face was blank, as though he’d fainted. Then he blinked, shook his head, and sat back in the ash across from me, bracing himself upright with his stick arms locked behind him.
I stuffed everything into the pack, zipping it shut, protecting the glasses again, even if it was too late for that shit. The kid spit and coughed. It sounded like he was throwing up, but I didn’t want to look at him.
I threaded my arms through the pack’s straps. A gray slick of puke spread out in the dirt next to where Ethan sat. He didn’t blink. He just sat there, watching me like I was some kind of monster.
I was.
“Where is that place?”
“It’s nothing. It isn’t real. You weren’t supposed to see that.” I lied, scared. “It could kill you.”
It made me sick to think what could happen if Ethan started talking about what he’d seen to the other Odds. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that kind of kid, I thought.
I kneeled down beside him in the ash. Griffin was up on the ridge, scrambling down a craggy fissure like a crab on the rock face.
Ethan wiped a forearm across his wet mouth. He looked scared, confused. “But I know you.”
“Please don’t say anything.” More boys started following Griffin down from the ridge. “It’s something bad. And I have to make it stop.”
“But we were there. You were there, too. You had to have seen it. We were there, together, all morning. Hours.”
“No,” I said. “It was a second, Ethan. That’s why you have to understand. Please don’t say anything to the others. Let me explain.”
I needed to talk to the kid. He saw something that I didn’t, and now he knew me. But it was too late. Griffin and the boys were already in earshot, coming through the pack of horses, watching us, curious about Jack and the other outcast.
But I had to know what Ethan saw; where we were.
“Please let me talk to you later, Ethan.”
He looked straight at me.
I thought I could trust him.
There’s a certain allegiance kids who aren’t wanted naturally feel toward one another.
“I want to know about it, Jack.”
And, whispering, I said, “I will tell you.”
* * *
Griffin jogged across the flat of our encampment.
He was out of breath when he got to me.
Five other Odds followed him down to where Ethan and I sat in the crusty ash. Alex and his friends were in the group, naturally, always eager for an opportunity to pick on Ethan away from the majority of the others.
“I think you need to come up there and see before he gets too far away,” Griffin said.
“Before who gets away?” I looked up at the ridge. Henry was there, standing beside Frankie and Ben.
Griffin put his hand out and pulled me up to my feet.
“The rider. Ben saw him, too. We think it’s Conner.”
Then I realized that for the whole time Henry and I sat there with the glasses, while we du
cked into another not-world that was falling apart worse than anything I’d seen, the boys on the ridge had been shouting about a rider in the desert. And I was too selfishly involved in what I wanted, what I was doing, looking for home, and now worried about having to deal with what that skinny English kid saw, to even consider for a moment that this was it, what it was always supposed to be—that Conner would come this way, too, as he had promised.
It had to be him.
I took a deep breath, still feeling weak, wondering if I could make it up to the top of the ridge. I hurried toward the gap in the rocks the other boys had been using as their ladder.
And before I’d gotten ten feet away, Griffin grabbed my wrist and pulled me around.
He said, “They’re fucking with that kid.”
When I turned back, Fee was sitting on top of Ethan’s chest, pinning the scrawny boy down, and giggling moronically while his tattooed brother worked at stealing the kid’s shoes.
Stronger Odds always stole whatever they wanted from kids like Ethan.
Fee gurgled joyfully, “Sack his fucking face! Sack his fucking face!”
And the white-haired thug, Alex, squatted above Ethan’s head, fumbling at unbuttoning his fly.
“Hey!”
When I screamed, the three assholes didn’t even glance over at me.
That was enough. My hand went to my knife. I pulled it out and ran back to where the kids were fucking with Ethan.
He wasn’t even trying to fight them, and that pissed me off even more. Rum had both the kid’s shoes off and sat in the dirt, preparing to try them on. Fee laughed so hard it sounded like he was having a seizure, and Alex had just gotten his balls out of his pants when I grabbed him by the hair and jerked him back.
Before Alex knew what was happening, I laid him out flat on his back in the salty ash. Fee’s expression turned serious when he saw the knife I held. I stepped the toe of my boot on Alex’s hand that he had wrapped around his balls, and pressed the blade of my knife firmly beneath his nose.
Griffin knew there was a fight on. I caught a flashing view from the corner of my eye of him throwing a roundhouse kick directly into Fee’s jaw.
I opened a small cut across the bottom of Alex’s nose, still twisting his hair in my grasp. More Odds scrambled down from above to watch the fight. But it was over before much of anything else could happen.