The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Focus and you’ll find out,” Nicola said, her rare encouragement causing me to shift uncomfortably.

  Ignoring her, I closed my eyes again, and probed the sore spots inside me. It was easier now, like touching a newly healed scar. So as soon as I spotted the small “island” that was my power to imagine anything I wanted, I hopped onto it. I wrapped my desire for it—for any and every power lost to me—around it, and I squeezed with my will. Please, please, please.

  I begged for light.

  And I began to glow. The opaqueness dropped from the room like a tablecloth yanked by its edge. I saw the floor first, still uneven knotty pine, though the playing tables had been cleared entirely. The bar was visible if only because I could make out my outline in the mirrored back, but it was as if a child had used a special pen to color within the lines, covering over and erasing my features with a wash of dawning light.

  Trish’s voice was awed. “You look like that baby’s toy. The worm with the face that lights up in the dark.”

  A glowworm. She was right; I could see it through the mirror across from me. There was the same heat that’d once warmed my glyph, but without the symbol on my chest to keep it from spilling into the rest of my body. Weird. Now my whole body was softly alight from within.

  Oddly, I still spotted no one else. Maybe they were all just spirits. Ghosts, then? But ghosts were a form of energy, which was exactly what Midheaven ran on. Solange wouldn’t squander it. She wasn’t sentimental when it came to other people, their resources, their wishes. Their lives.

  I was squinting so hard at the darkness, trying to catch sight of a human somewhere nearby, that I nearly missed what I’d initially took to be a small pendant lamp. I did a double take when the lamp’s eyebrows shot up. Then it smiled.

  I yelped, and the warming light inside me snuffed like a taper between two wet fingers. I practically fell to my knees in the darkness as I realized what—and who—I’d been bumping into. Mutters rose around me as I fought gagging. I was embarrassed even as the bile rose in my chest, but I was also pregnant, shocked, and horrified by the small, shrunken expression.

  So as I continued to retch, Shen—my offended helpmate—muttered above me. “Well, fuck you very much too.”

  The desire to curl into the fetal position was near-overwhelming, but the greater desire, to stay alive, got me standing again. Still, a shudder rode my body like a nauseous wave, and I shook it off by doing as Shen had suggested, focusing on my loss . . . and more importantly, my ability to create that low-burning light. What I’d just seen—what I thought I’d just seen—made it more imperative to navigate this room than ever.

  My lone power was easier to access this time, and I imagined planting my footing soundly on that island of isolated power—my ability to create something from nothing. Mentally braced, I warmed that power with my will, and was surprised at how quickly I began to glow. It helped to settle me. This was an inborn ability, as natural as breathing. Maybe Shen was right; maybe it was because I was a Sagittarian, a fire sign. It made sense that light would be my first creation.

  And no wonder Solange wanted it. Harness this, and in time there’d be nothing she couldn’t create. But learn to use it, and it would be the same for me.

  So I used the glow from an outstretched limb to locate the bar, the aforementioned book of matches, and then lit the pagoda lanterns lining the wall left of the staircase. The room remained silent as I did this, though I could feel hard stares on my back, which made me fumble my strike and almost drop one lamp’s glass top. Only when they were all burning steadily did I pocket the remaining matches and turn.

  Dozens of shrunken heads hung from the rafters like macabre mini-piñatas. Bodiless, and each the size of a shriveled apple, they swayed in a sourceless breeze. My smile was long gone as I realized that every animate, miniaturized skull had priceless gems for eyes, and each shining pair was focused on me.

  “I’d clap,” said one of the heads centered in the room, which I belatedly recognized as Shen, “but I’d hate for you to get a big head.”

  Nobody laughed at that. I swallowed hard, and weaved nearer to him. As horrifying as it was to think of a human being trapped in that shriveled sphere, I couldn’t stop staring. I had simply never seen a shrunken head before.

  He was tough as bark, his Chinese features obliterated, his skin unnaturally darkened to a muddy brown. I didn’t know what caused the coloring but I did know that shrinking a head required a scalping—including a careful harvesting of the whole head and face. Shen’s skull had obviously been discarded, the loose skin carefully reshaped around something smaller than a man’s fist. His mouth was flattened as if burned by a steaming iron, then stitched so that strings, rather than teeth, were visible between his lips when he spoke. The tissue left over from his destroyed neck would have been hanging loose except that it was puckered and black. Cauterized. I shuddered. “What happened?”

  “What always happens,” Shen said wearily, rolling eyes of green jade. The motion caused his head to twirl on its string. His hair was singed in back, allowing me to catch sight of the stitches puckering his neck and skull, and I swallowed hard. As he rotated back again, the jade found me first. “Solange had a tantrum.”

  “And chopped off your heads?” She shrank the heads of everyone in Midheaven? Then hung them from strings in the gambling hall? I swallowed hard. While they were still alive?

  “She took soul energy, yes . . . but also didn’t want us to see.” The thread in his lips pulled unnaturally, causing his words to escape strangely, and me to think of the voice-overs in Japanese movies.

  “See what?”

  “Her.”

  “Shit,” I said softly, the single word infused with apology. I was the reason they were all disembodied, eyeless, with strings threading their mouths and sutures in their heads. That’s why she hadn’t shown herself in the air room when I’d crossed over astrally, why she’d spoken to me through the women instead. But how could I have known that blowing smoke in her face would have such a disastrous effect. All I’d been trying to do was stop her from hurting Hunter.

  “How are you . . .” I stumbled.

  “Speaking?”

  “Alive.”

  “We’re not. Only conscious. The spent soul energy is in the gems. That animates us. Eyes are window to soul, right?”

  I rubbed my own temples. So Solange had dismantled her planetarium. She had long fastened the gems made from these people’s souls to the roof of her false sky, planning for the day when the constellations were complete, and she’d be all-powerful. My soul was to be the finishing touch. “And the elemental rooms?”

  “Gone,” Diana volunteered bitterly. “Everything she created in Midheaven, everything that required soul energy, has been destroyed. Look around. The entire world is tattered at the edges.”

  Just like Solange, I thought, catching sight of the room’s corners dropping into an abyss even light couldn’t touch. She really was vain—and I’d really hurt her—if she’d annihilated an entire world just to use the power to pretty herself back up.

  Nicola joined Diana on the bitterness train . . . though with a face like a large raisin and gold topaz eyes, I didn’t blame her. “She made sure nothing more exists than what you, Joanna Archer, need in order to get to her.”

  “So why the hell did she give me back the most valuable of my own powers?” I muttered. And one with the power to create anything she desired? Couldn’t she create a new face for herself? Did she have to destroy everyone else just to accomplish the same thing?

  “She knew you’d be back,” Trish said, her voice holding a resigned sigh. Her eyes were sapphires, the same cornflower blue she’d sported in life, though her audacious voluptuousness was only a memory.

  “She also didn’t know how to use it.”

  “Shut up, Shen!”

  “I’m sick of you saying that!” Shen yelled, and the little head jerked forward, beginning a swinging motion that turned into a full-blown
pendulum.

  Trish’s brows tightened so low over her shriveled face she looked like a prune. “What are you doing?”

  “You don’t rule this world no more, and I’m tired of your shit!” And he launched himself at her, the strings in his mouth opening just wide enough for him to latch on to a knotted length of her lank hair.

  “Get off me, you rotted walnut! Get him off!”

  “Everyone quiet. Do you want her down here?”

  I certainly didn’t. I reached forward and disentangled the strings. “Let her go.”

  Shen released Trish with a growl.

  “Did he mess up my curls?” Trish blew upward, sapphire eyes rolling. “Did he?”

  “I said quiet!” Diana snapped before turning to me. “Can you leave now?”

  I wished. “Not yet. What about the new one. Carlos?”

  If she’d had shoulders, Diana would have shrugged. “Just another rogue, nothing special. He’ll be down here soon enough.”

  “But if all of our soul energy isn’t enough to fuel her needs,” Nicola said, cauterized lips lifting into a snarl, “one more rogue won’t make a difference.”

  I swallowed hard, and Diana’s ruby eyes dropped. Her mouth pursed tight in envy as they slid over my neck. “And Hunter?”

  “Ah, her obsession, her pet,” she replied, cold gaze regaining mine.

  And her lure. I could almost hear her think it.

  “We don’t know,” she went on, the strings pulling at her lips strangely. “She’s kept him upstairs. Back in the fire room.”

  So I started for the staircase.

  “You’re a fool for returning,” Nicola snarled as I passed, and I paused, still not liking her, but pitying her all the same. The last time I’d seen her she’d reminded me of an Asian Audrey Hepburn, with spectacular eyes and sharp, porcelain features. Now there was nothing left of a real human being, much less the severe, stunning woman I’d left behind.

  “There’s no question that there’s something unique about you,” she said, shriveled nostrils flaring. “If I had the power to create anything, as you supposedly do, I’d create a life of comfort and abundance. Yet you choose to return to a world where you’re hunted, sure to die, and for the basest of desires, a man.” She scoffed, the strings in her gnarled lips yanking at their corners. “Well, now instead of living with him in your world, you get to die with him in hers. How romantic.”

  I leaned close to Nicola’s face, mindful of her ability to bite. “This estrogen farm isn’t a world. It’s an overreaction.”

  “You’ve still got no chance against its goddess.” Nicola shook her head, causing her string to sway, but that golden topaz gaze stayed pinned on me. “You’re already dead, and you don’t even know it.”

  “Yeah?” I said, straightening, brows raised. “Well, my head’s not the one hanging from a fucking string.”

  And, admirably resisting the urge to give her skull a flick, I turned and headed up the stairs.

  14

  Moving as stealthily as I could up the staircase’s center, I held tight to my soul blade, more anxious than ever. The room below me had once been filled with full-sized human beings bartering bits of their souls just for survival. Now the men so desperate to survive had no hope of ever doing more than that. Even the other women, in a woman’s world, hadn’t escaped Solange’s crazed ambition.

  However, my more immediate concern was what she’d done with the two-thirds of my soul she already possessed. Two gems. Enough for eyes, I thought, unable to withhold a shudder, even though those had been deformed, unusable for her sky. Yet as imperfect as they were, I still recall Hunter saying she could control me with them. And she’d once placed one of them in her mouth, blowing through her teeth to send her breath, and will, to scour my lungs. So could she also shrink-wrap my head around a sliver of consciousness before hanging me from the ceiling?

  I swallowed hard . . . but kept walking. Solange might manage to kill me—or make me wish for death—but if I didn’t hurry, she’d definitely do so to Carlos and Hunter.

  The hallway leading to the fire room—Solange’s room—was both too short and too long. I was at the door before I knew it, and a quick glance in the opposite direction confirmed that the entrances to the other elemental rooms—water, air, and earth—had been blotted out. The landing opposite me dropped off into smudged nothingness, like a television screen gone blank, and I wondered what would happen if I approached that absolute darkness. Would stepping into something that had been erased from existence do the same to me?

  Whatever the answer, it was clear Nicola was right. Solange had left just enough of Midheaven intact to allow me an avenue back. The upside was that I knew what to expect beyond this door. First was a viewing room with windows overlooking tunnel entrances to a good half-dozen entries worldwide. A girl had to be kept entertained when ruling her own underworld, after all.

  But more importantly, located directly above the dim viewing room was the planetarium Shen had mentioned, and even though Solange had dismantled her soul-encrusted recreation of the night sky, I knew that’s where those things I considered precious, Hunter and Carlos, would be. So before I was scared off completely by the thought of my consciousness being ripped from my body and shoved into a shell, I readied my blade and threw open the fire room door.

  The place had been stripped of its supernatural wallpaper. All the viewing windows were gone, though it wasn’t a complete void. Nestled like a nest egg in the middle was an object as jarring for its contents as for what the rest of the room lacked. And despite her reported aversion to being seen, Solange had left one candle burning.

  After all, I thought, sucking in my breath as I inched forward and caught sight of the egg in this particular nest, she still had work to do.

  He was laid out like a sacrifice, clothed as I’d last seen him in a white guayabera and loose black slacks, though bound to a wooden cart I recalled from my sole previous visit to this room. In keeping with Midheaven’s Wild West theme, it was a replica of an old mining cart, though the inside of this one was swathed in black silk. But, I thought, stepping closer, I didn’t think it was because Solange was overly concerned with Carlos’s comfort.

  His limbs were cornered and bound, the thick rope causing red welts where he’d strained against them. The pulleys used to raise the cart into the planetarium above were made of the same material, though those were lax. I was careful not to touch anything as I stole a glance at the hole carved into the ceiling’s center. Total darkness loomed beyond the entry’s gaping mouth—neither Solange nor her beloved soul stars anywhere in sight. No Hunter, either.

  She was either asleep up there, or tucked behind the door that stood somewhere on Carlos’s opposite side. Unless she’d decimated that too. It was too dark to see and there was no time to investigate now. It was clear from Carlos’s coloring that I needed to move fast. I leaned over him, thankful he wasn’t a shrunken head, hoping he was merely asleep.

  “Carlos?”

  His eyelids flipped open like he’d been waiting. Yet only one dark eye expressed hard disbelief. The other glittered. I covered my face with my free hand, shaking so hard I nearly dropped my blade. The skin around Carlos’s mouth pulled into a marionette’s facsimile of a smile . . . and threads pulled at his lips as he spoke. “I knew you’d come.”

  But too late. Solange had begun. “My God, what has she done?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, and though he didn’t cry out from the pain, the effort caused tears to stream from his eyes. The socket cradling the gem—an iridescent stone with spectacular warmth—dripped red with blood. I settled him with a hand on his shoulder. “Shh. Don’t speak. Let me work.”

  Thank God for the soul blade. In a world fueled by chi, using the damned thing was as effective as jamming a knife into a socket. It cut through Carlos’s thick bindings like they were liquid, the murdered souls inside writhing so greatly in response to the action that the blade actually wavered in my hand. I tightene
d my grip so it wouldn’t nick Carlos, and moved to his leg. I needed to be careful. Cutting him with the soul blade, and in the world where it’d been created, would be like rubbing poison into an open wound.

  Meanwhile, my mind raced. She kept them alive while she shrunk their heads? While she pulled their faces from their skulls and replaced their eyes with gems? My stomach roiled and I clenched my teeth. I put a hand on my belly as if to calm the fetus inside, but removed it just as quickly, unwilling to allow the thought of this horror coming anywhere near the baby nestled safely inside.

  I instantly forgave Nicola, Diana, and all the other talking heads their bitter anger. But why the hell had Solange kept them alive at all? It obviously wasn’t for the company. Would taking all their lives simultaneously provide some sort of final thrust of energy, like the last booster on a rocket ship? And for what? To regain the beauty my quirley had destroyed? Could anyone really be that vain?

  The wondering cost me. There was a metallic click, then a whir, and the ropes lying slack against the cart’s sides drew taut. Carlos’s bloodstained eye went wide with horror as the cart began its slow ascent. Panicked, I nearly reached for its rough-hewn side, realizing just in time that the motion would alert Solange—above—to my presence. So I raced to its other side as it rose past my breastbone and sliced again, striking through the cord restraining Carlos’s left leg.

  But I was too slow. Within the space of two steps the cart had risen to shoulder height, leaving Carlos’s left arm, and final restraint, out of reach. I couldn’t just let him go. Not knowing what awaited him above. And no fucking way was I leaving without Hunter now.

  Not this time.

  Slipping my blade into my waistband, I leaped for the cart’s crossbar, now two feet over my head, letting it lift me into the air. Within moments the blackness of Solange’s planetarium engulfed me, and I too was just a dark blur rising.

  It was only after the cart came to a jarring halt that I realized Solange couldn’t be there. The hole in the ceiling was only large enough for the one cart—and Carlos took up the entirety of that—while the planetarium was as smooth and curved as the inside of a glass bowl.