Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  So why would he stay? Why choose a ghost town to make your home in? And it wasn’t only a ghost town. It was a place that would eventually kill him as the toxins in the air slowly built up in his system.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  After it became clear that Cait had little intention of eating, Mom cleared away the food and finished the tidying Grandma had begun, so that when we were ready to leave the place fifteen minutes later, it was as clean as it had been in probably thirty years. Grandma led the way as we stepped out into the morning, ready to move on.

  The neighborhood was even spookier during the day than it had been at night, and immediately my skin began tingling with nerves. The crumbling houses, once the homes of countless citizens, now looked as though a bomb had gone off nearby. Walls were eroded after years of rain exposure. Roofs were collapsed in almost every case. The street was cracked and littered with potholes, and not a single blade of vegetation remained among the once-tended garden beds.

  The winter breeze ruffled my hair and sent chills running down my back. I headed straight for the car door, the temporary comfort of staying in the basement room forgotten. I was ready to leave.

  Mom brought Cait around to her side of the car. Cait whined, clearly still afraid of me. She shot me nervous looks through the window glass in between her protests. For a moment I kept my door cracked open, listening. But I quickly decided I didn’t want to hear any more, and I snapped it shut, muffling the sound of their argument.

  Finally, with the authority I knew only too well, Mom had had enough. She opened the side door and pointed an impatient finger at the seat beside me. Cait must have understood that she was out of options, because she went silent as soon as she realized I could hear her again, and obediently climbed in. She sat as far away from me as possible, staring out the window like a dog in a cage, desperate to be free.

  Mom and Grandma opened their doors and got in, and a minute later we were bumping along down the road on our way out of the destroyed neighborhood.

  I stared out the window, just like Cait did, at once trying to take in the devastation around me and trying to figure out how to reach her again. I had had my own fair share of horrifying dreams, most of which had come to me since I had first been pulled into the Fold. But I had never had a dream that frightened me of the people I surrounded myself with whom I knew to be good. Cait didn’t seem able to recognize, or even remember, that we had been buddies just hours ago. An unpleasant feeling of shame, undeserved and confusing, washed through me. And it was joined by anger at being so quickly tossed aside, labeled by this little kid as something evil, based on nothing more than a bad dream.

  I looked over to her. She had cracked her window a few inches, and stared out of the moving car with a determination I hadn’t seen in her face before. Had she decided, then? I was now someone she could never trust again? She glanced over at me, fear immediately returning to her face, and my anger faltered. She was still just a kid. I tried to smile.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to catch her eye. “What has your favorite food been since you got here?”

  She didn’t answer at first, but when she looked up at my question, her eyes stayed with mine this time.

  “My favorite so far has been the spaghetti,” I said. I puckered my lips, pretending to slurp up a long, saucy strand of the stuff.

  Her eyes flickered, and a hint of a smile flashed across her face.

  “Was your favorite the spaghetti, too?” I asked.

  The fear on her face seemed to retreat a notch, and she nodded.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” I said, looking up towards the front of the car. “Grandma makes a mean plate of spaghetti.”

  Mom and Grandma chuckled from the front seat.

  “How can spaghetti be mean?” Cait asked, her voice tiny. It was the first time she had spoken to me since the dream.

  Relief flooded through me. I smiled, glad that I hadn’t let my anger outweigh the obligation I had to her, to keep her safe. My own feelings could wait. As I well knew, sometimes the worst nightmares seemed an awful lot like reality.

  I turned back to her to explain as Mom turned the car back onto the highway, thundering down the road towards the place and man we hoped held our answers.

  Chapter 9

  Mom stopped the car before we made the final ascent to Denver. We all got out and stretched. Grandma fetched us each a drink from the water barrels, and Mom filled the tank with gasoline from the handheld cans. The wind was greater here, and not far above our heads the thick, brown smog that blanketed the plains of Colorado stretched out, all but blocking the mountain vistas in the distance. This would be our last fresh air until we got Dad and got out of here.

  My stomach dropped for what felt like the hundredth time today. This could be it, the day I saw him again. The day I might find out some answers to the growing list of questions I had. The day I looked, not for the first time, into Corentin eyes.

  Cait had calmed down considerably, though every once in a while I would still catch her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. It was almost as if she expected me to morph into a demon at any second, and now she was just keeping watch, ready to flee when the inevitable happened.

  I walked away down the road a little bit, kicking rocks that lined the pavement as I went. Another time, during what felt like another life, I would have been thrilled to be headed towards Denver. Not because of Denver, itself, but because it would mean I’d be so near to the mountains. Up there above the acid haze I had always felt certain I would be allowed to be a kid. A normal kid in a normal place, where the air was clean and the rain didn’t sear your skin. Instead of a sick kid in a polluted world, where everyone was focused on basic survival, not play.

  But now the time for play was over. Those dreams I had had of romping through the wilderness, playing games with sticks and rocks, pretending to have magic, had been replaced by the real thing. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to play again.

  I was starting to feel like this whole plan was unraveling, even though the journey had just begun. Cait’s behavior had unnerved me, and seeing the destruction of the towns we passed by made me squirm with unease. So much had happened here, so much had changed for the humans of Earth in so little a time. I wondered why the Corentin hadn’t wrecked the planets in the Triaden like he had done to Earth. But then, maybe he didn’t have such fine control over everything that happened. Maybe his intentions were all that mattered, bringing out the different evils that each place had within them already.

  Mom called from down the road, and I turned to rejoin them. The three of them sat ready in the car, the motor running. Someone had produced strips of cloth, like bandanas but made from whatever Grandma had lying around. Mom and Grandma had theirs tied around their mouths and noses, staring determinedly at the road ahead. In the backseat, Cait was already trying to remove hers, pulling it down disobediently so that her nose was free.

  I slid into my seat and took the cloth from Mom’s hand dangling over the backseat.

  “Will this really help?” I asked. I stared at it, and then at Cait. Like her, I didn’t want to put this old stinky rag over my face, and when I did, it reminded me of the claustrophobic feeling of having an oxygen mask strapped to my head in the hospital.

  “The less of this crud you get in your lungs, the better,” Grandma said. It was her turn in the driver’s seat, and as soon as she was satisfied that the cloth was secured around my face, she hit the gas and the car sped forward with a lurch. My stomach lurched along with it as we sped towards my father.

  I looked over at Cait, but her eyes were back on the road again. As the car bumped along the road, she quietly sang a tune I hadn’t heard before.

  “The child of Elyso looks at me

  The child of Elyso sees my dreams

  Through wind and rain and swirling hail

  The child of Elyso finds the trail

  The child of Elyso knows the dark

  She maps the night and fol
lows spark

  Her eyes see past the cloud of day

  The child of Elyso knows the way”

  “What is that song?” I asked, intrigued. I had long found the songs and stories of the Triaden both fascinating and useful. They were usually filled with small details about the past that were often left out of normal speech.

  “Just a song my Ma used to sing to me,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the horizon. “It’s about me.”

  I smiled.

  “A song about a magical child was written just for you, eh?” I asked.

  She glanced at me, noting the smirk on my face as I teased her. She did not return the smile.

  “You’ll see,” she said, turning back to the window view again.

  It seemed our moment of connection was over. I looked out my window, too. As the car slowly ascended, the mountains became clearer, a range of vibrant green peaks muddied by the acid veil, but still spectacular. Even through the haze, they were beautiful, the green of the trees cutting off in an abrupt line at the spot where the rains became polluted. No clouds threatened the sky today, though. Any baby greens trying to push their way up from the earth would be spared for at least another day until more rain collected far above.

  We were all silent for nearly the whole ride, Cait eventually falling asleep with her forehead resting on the window. Her cloth had slid down, exposing her upper lip. I thought about straightening it for her, but after the last time she had woken up, I didn’t want to risk it.

  I leaned my own head against the glass, watched the landscape slip away as the car sped up the incline.

  A couple hours. That was all it took. The giant buildings of Denver loomed on the horizon, rising up like the mountains behind them. Only the mountains weren’t crumbling. The road widened until it was five lanes in either direction, an unusual sight without a single other vehicle to share it with. We didn’t stop, didn’t dare take any extra time at this elevation to see what remained of the once thriving place.

  The city was like no place I had ever seen. Everywhere, the signs of technology were present. In the buildings. In the streets. In the vestiges of billboards the peeked out at us from nearly every corner.

  But it was just as dead as the other places we had been. Huge swaths of graffiti were painted on walls and pillars. Some warned people to get out of town while they still had a chance. Others, once vibrant with the colors in the artists’ visions, were like one last cry, documenting history onto the tall structures to remain for all time. Glass littered the streets, blown out by the weather or movements of the Earth, or maybe by the frustrated citizens as they left their homes for safer elevations.

  I rolled down the window and stuck my head partway out, gazing at the buildings as we passed them by one by one, like giant trees stretching towards the sky above. The pollution was visible in the air five feet in front of our faces, tiny particles of floating exhaust, collected over centuries, now come to rest in this sick, brown layer that killed everything in its path. And it seemed endless. No matter how much the rain came, it was never enough to bring the layer down. I tightened the cloth over my face and turned to find Cait, now wide awake, doing the same.

  “What are they?” she called as we passed by the towers, once so grand and magnificent.

  “They’re like really big houses,” Grandma answered from the front. I was impressed. She seemed to be catching onto the fact that certain things, so familiar to the rest of us, were unusual, and even frightening, for Cait.

  “Where are the people?” she asked.

  “They left a long time ago,” Grandma said. “Close up your windows, kids. It can’t be good for you.”

  We did as we were told, bringing our heads back inside the car and watching the rest of the city from within the frames of our window panes.

  But Denver was gone in a flash as we sped by, and soon we were rocketing through the suburbs on the other side, mountain-bound.

  After a while, I found I didn’t want to look out the window any longer. Cait must have felt the same, because I found her slumped in her seat, staring blankly towards the interior of the car. I felt like I understood her, even though we didn’t speak. I didn’t want to see any more rows of homes decimated by decades of rain and decay any more than she did.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, we were slowing down. My head felt light and dizzy as I stared around, trying to get my bearings.

  “I don’t feel…right,” I said to no one in particular.

  “It’s the haze,” Mom said, her voice sort of croaky. She and Grandma had switched while I slept, and now she sat hunched over the steering wheel, rubbing her eyes every few seconds. “There’s a reason people left this place.”

  I stared out the window and found that we were now on the doorstep of the mountains. What had looked majestic and grand from afar was now enormous and oppressive as I stared up at the peaks above, now clearly visible despite the fog.

  It didn’t take Mom long to find the turn; she had been here not long ago, and I guess she remembered the way. She pulled the car off the road onto a gravel drive, the tires crunching and bumping as we made our way down it towards the base of the mountain. Finally, she stopped, and for a moment I was confused as to why.

  But then I saw it. Hidden between a swath of dead timber, a small hunter’s cabin stood stubbornly erect. The metal roof nailed to the top was what had saved it all these years, I guessed, though the rest of the place was a wreck.

  She turned to Grandma.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  Grandma? What about me?

  My stomach was doing flips as I crawled out onto the rocky ground. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one affected by the haze. Every one of us had to lean against the side of the car as our swimming brains got used to standing again. Mom was the first to get her balance back, and she stumbled towards the house. Part of me wanted to call to her, to demand that she stop and let me go first, somehow thinking that my experience with Jade while she was possessed somehow qualified me above the others to deal with whatever waited on the other side of that door.

  But the truth was, I had never been so terrified in my life. Not when facing Jade. Not when facing the Coyle. Inside that tiny house could be my worst nightmare. Or even more frightening, what if he was waiting for me, sane after all this time?

  Mom staggered up to the door and rapped on the wood.

  “Jack!” she called. “Jack, open the door!”

  I looked around, wondering how he could survive in a place like this. Why he would want to.

  Finally, when it became clear nobody was going to answer, Mom pushed open the door.

  “Jack we’re coming in,” she called.

  But she may as well have been talking to herself. As we all took the first steps into the tiny space, the truth became apparent.

  He wasn’t there waiting to kill me. Or waiting to guard his gold against me. Or even talk to me.

  He wasn’t there at all.

  The cabin was empty.

  Chapter 10

  “What do we do now?” I asked, hoping that someone other than me had some sort of idea.

  Mom leaned against the small table, clearly exhausted. All of us were having trouble breathing.

  “Ha!” Grandma said. “Look at this!”

  She walked over to the kitchen sink and flicked a switch on the wall. A whirring sound came out of a machine that was mounted into the one small window the tiny cabin had. Grandma shuffled Cait inside and shut the door behind her. Then she removed her bandana and stood in front of the machine, breathing deeply.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “An air purifier,” she said. “I remember when these things first came out, back when people were hoping the haze would eventually come down. Here, come over.” She gestured at us to join her, and soon all four of us stood with our faces pressed up against it like little kids in front of an air conditioner on a hot summer day. Immediately, my swimming brain started to
settle as I breathed in the untainted oxygen.

  Eventually, we all settled back into the room. A single chair sat before the tiny dining table, and a loveseat provided seating for the rest of us. None of us seemed eager to get moving again, back outside where just breathing was painful. Finally, it was Mom who broke the silence.

  “There’s a village up the road,” she said. “I think we should go there next, see if they know anything. I don’t think it’s too far. Jack mentioned buying supplies up there once. Maybe they know where he is.”

  “You mean, people really do still live in this?” I gestured out the window to the haze beyond.

  “I think it’s above it,” she said. “It’s a steep incline from here.”

  She began fumbling with her bandana again and tied it back over her face.

  “You ready?” she asked. “I’d just as soon get out of this.”

  As much as I dreaded walking back out into the haze, the wonderful feeling of having pure oxygen coursing through my lungs again had invigorated me. I looked down at Cait as I tied my own bandana back on.

  “You ready to go?” I asked. “It won’t be long.”

  Cait looked miserable. It seemed every moment she spent in this strange world, her situation became more difficult. I saw her lower lip begin to stick out, and before it could start to tremble I knelt down before her.

  “Soon, real soon, we’ll be above the haze. Everything will be clean up there. The air. The rain. We’ll get to take a nice break, okay?”

  For the first time since her nightmare, her eyes locked onto mine. She tucked her lip back under again and nodded.