The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  My palm rested on the door. The wood veneer was clammy under my skin. When it swung open, his nose would be right there, right at the perfect level for me to drive the bone right up into his brain.

  But the Chucks squeaked again, and his voice had wound even tighter, like a guitar string ready to snap. “You can’t just drop something like this, all right? You can’t just tell me this and expect me to act normal. I’ve been cool about everything, right? I mean, everything. I’ve been cool about you being gay. I mean, it’s not your fault. I think I kind of knew, anyway. I’ve been cool about you hooking up with that freak show.”

  The toe of my sneaker bumped up against the door. It wobbled another quarter-inch. My thoughts were as high and hard as the Wyoming wind, and it was hard to stay focused, but I was pretty sure—pretty goddamn sure—I could pitch Kaden through the window. The glass would be reinforced, but I was still pretty sure. I was going to try, at least, and see what happened.

  “I get it: there’s not a lot of guys here, ok? I mean, guys like you. But he’s crazy. You know that, right? I’ve tried really hard to be cool about this. I’ve tried really hard to ignore the fact that you’re making a—making a joke of yourself. I mean, the guys can’t even look at you half the time because you’re getting so weird. You’re always with him. Always. You won’t hang out. You just about bit my head off when I asked if you wanted to come over last weekend—”

  “You asked if I had cash to get pot and coke and whatever other shit you wanted.” It was the first time Austin had spoken in my hearing. His voice was raspy, an after-effect of being strangled by Krystal’s vines. “You didn’t want me to hang out. You wanted to get high. You just needed me to do it.”

  “Fuck you, man. He’s not a bad guy, ok? I get it. But he’s a freak show. Look at how fucked up our lives have gotten since he came here.”

  “You sold him out. Last year, when things got bad for you, you sold Vie out.”

  “I was saving my own skin, Austin. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I was—”

  “You could have gotten him killed. And he helped you. He saved you. He saved all of us.”

  “From a fucking nightmare we wouldn’t have been in if he hadn’t come here. You know what? You know how messed up he is? When we were down in that . . . in that fucking prison or whatever you call it, you know what he did? He kissed me. He straight up fucking kissed me. Ask him if you don’t believe me. That’s the kind of guy you’re going to throw everything away for? Jesus, Austin, you almost got killed yesterday. Just . . . just let it go, ok? Call it off. What you said, about me, about you and me, I never really thought about guys like that before, but if it makes you get this freak show out of your life, yeah, I’ll think about it, ok? I’m not promising, but I mean, I’ll think about—”

  The heel of my hand butted the door, and it swung open. They were a nice little picture. They were a perfect fucking tableau. Austin lay in bed, his preppy hair not quite so preppy, his cheeks flushed, his lips parted, the hospital johnny askew and revealing the friction burn around his neck. Kaden stood with his hands on the bed’s chrome rail, leaning toward Austin, his granola smile directed at the other boy. And all of the sudden, I remembered my first kiss with Austin, which had been in a hospital bed. It was like I was looking down a tunnel. Or falling down a mineshaft. There was this tiny square of light I could still see, and it framed Austin and Kaden perfectly—only somehow, at the same time, it was Austin and me. And everything else was that rushing blackness.

  “Hey man,” Kaden said, turning to face me and then sliding along the chrome rail away from me. “Hey, it’s so good to see you, we didn’t know—”

  “Vie. Oh my God, Vie.” Austin slid toward the edge of the bed. Something—an IV line, a lead attached to his chest, something—caught, and he swore and jerked. “Are you ok? Jesus, I was so worried.” He fumbled with more leads and wires and lines that they had him hooked up to. “Fuck,” he roared, yanking at them. “Kaden, get this shit off me. Oh, fuck it.” He surged toward the edge of the bed again, as though he intended to drag everything—the bed, the machinery, the wall if he had to—with him.

  Kaden caught the hospital johnny in a fist and hauled Austin back onto the bed. Then he planted a hand on Austin and shoved him down.

  I hadn’t even stepped into the room. I hadn’t even breathed, I didn’t think. I felt like if I breathed, that square of light at the end of the tunnel would flicker and go out. So I just watched them in that tiny frame.

  “Vie. Jesus, Kaden, what the hell is wrong with you? Get off me. Get the fuck off me. Vie, will you come over here? Are you ok? What—where did you go? What—Kaden, get the fuck off, I told you. Kaden!”

  Kaden was smiling. Not his usual granola-and-sunshine smile. Just a hard sickle cutting his mouth. He knew I’d heard. Or he guessed that I had.

  I nodded. It felt like my head might roll off my shoulders, and that little square of vision at the end of all that rushing blackness tilted and threatened to slide off into nothing. Then everything steadied, and I left.

  “Vie! Kaden, I’m going to fucking kill you. Vie! Wait up!”

  That black wind was eating up more and more of the world, and the spot of linoleum and chrome and tan at the end grew smaller and smaller. I wasn’t breathing, but that was ok. I didn’t need to breathe. There was so much air flowing past me, sucked into the darkness by that black hole at the back of my head. I didn’t need to breathe. Fireworks detonated, huge and brilliantly white, in the collapsing tunnel of my vision. My shoulder caught someone—a nurse, a patient care tech, maybe the Surgeon General for all I knew—and I half-spun, regained my footing, and plunged through the next door.

  I had the vague impression of shelves, a dingy yellow bulb, and cracked ceiling tiles. My foot clipped a stepstool, and it clanged against the shelves. Perfect. This was perfect.

  I dropped onto the stool and swung my backpack between my knees. Someone was panting—it was a silly sound, and it made me want to laugh because it sounded so silly. I didn’t need to breathe. I hadn’t breathed in minutes. Those fireworks went off like neutron bombs at the back of my eyes, but I didn’t need to breathe. Maybe nobody needed to breathe. Maybe it was just a big conspiracy. And that did make me laugh, but then I was dizzy, and I was lying against the shelves, and I couldn’t sit up.

  I grappled with the steel racking, and with one hand, I groped for the bag between my legs. I knew how I could feel better. The world was disintegrating, splitting at the atomic level, ripped apart by that black hole inside my head. But I knew how to bring it all together again. I knew how I could take all those things that pulled away from me, all those things that spun away in a cyclone, and have control over them: for a little while, anyway.

  The zipper stuttered in my fingers, caught, and held. I swore and tore at it. It stuttered another quarter-inch and caught again. Fast, this time.

  That dog-panting was getting louder. I wanted to laugh again. Geez. Geez, somebody was getting desperate. My fingers ripped at the narrow opening in the zipper, trying to force it wider, then just trying to worm inside. My nails caught the cardboard box of razor blades and tipped it into a half-turn. I snagged it and wriggled it free through the broken zipper.

  As I fumbled open the box, that dog-pant got louder, and my hand jerked, spilling half the blades across the floor.

  “Damn it.”

  But that wasn’t my voice.

  I leaned forward, kneeling in the dust bunnies, scraping my hands over the floor to find one of the blades. It was just so damn dark. Even with those fireworks going off, it was pitch black in here.

  A hand closed over my arm. “Vie, you need to calm down. Take a breath. Take a real breath for me, ok?” Becca. That was Becca.

  That was just so stupid. It was so fucking dumb I couldn’t believe it. How could she not understand that I didn’t need to breathe—that nobody needed to breathe? I remembered Austin telling me about all his breathing techniques. I reme
mbered him telling me about controlling his breathing to avoid a panic attack. And I wanted to laugh. Why hadn’t anybody ever told him that the problem isn’t controlling your breathing—it’s just plain old breathing? Panic is a fire, and fires need oxygen, and if you cut off the oxygen, poof, no more fire.

  “Get out of here, Becca.”

  “Vie, Vie, hey, look at me.”

  Silver eyeshadow swam into the narrowing tunnel of my vision. The last two stars in the whole universe.

  “You don’t have to do this. We can talk about this. I’ve been reading, doing a lot of reading, and I think I’ve got some good strategies. There are ways to cope. You don’t have to do this, all right? Can you just take a breath for me, though? It all starts with taking a breath.”

  My fingers closed over a blade. The knot of tension between my shoulders slackened. Reading. Coping. Strategies. Breathing. What a fucking bitch. What a fucking stupid bitch. Breathing didn’t mean anything with a black hole at the back of your head. Nothing meant anything except—

  Except that huge, beautiful spin of the saw, the blade shining like water, like starlight, like the moon. I felt a sudden, visceral tug. I didn’t have to settle for this. I didn’t have to cut with a cheap blade in a shitty storeroom. I could trot on down to the Impala, drive back to Sara’s, and start up the saw. I could really get things under control then. I could put everything in order. I could take myself apart, piece by piece, and then put things back where they were supposed to be.

  “Give me that. You’re not going to . . . You’re not going to do that, not while I can help. Vie, lots of abused children do this, lots of abused kids end up harming themselves, hey, no, I—”

  I turned my back on her. “Get out.”

  “Please, I just want to—”

  “What the fuck don’t you understand? Just get out. Get the fuck out.”

  “Vie—”

  “Go!”

  I rolled my shoulders, letting my coat fall, and hiked up the sweater. I’d been using my legs lately. That was better; fewer people saw my legs. But this dumb bitch was going to get in my way again if I didn’t hurry, so I just shoved my jeans down a few inches and found the cleft that ran below my abdominals and toward my crotch. It was well defined, a furrow that marked tight musculature and the absence of body fat. Austin had run his tongue down that cleft. It took the blade like water, and red followed. Red like Austin’s tongue.

  Everything contracted. The rushing darkness slowed. I started gasping for air, shaking, and the blade rattled out of my hand. Sagging, I steadied myself against the shelves. A prickling awareness returned in my fingers and toes as I felt myself coming back together, back in control, back whole, the way I was supposed to feel. The black hole at the back of my head had quieted. It was like throwing open a window or a door onto a perfect evening, fresh air blowing through an old room, and everything took on the clarity of moonlight. I wondered why I’d felt so fucked up a few moments before.

  Soles scraped the linoleum, and I looked up. Becca was slinking out the door, her head down as she left.

  I shifted, rising, and my sneaker caught the spray of blades, and they slid across the floor to strike the cabinets, and they chimed. I staggered. It wasn’t just exhaustion, though. It was something inside my head. It wasn’t the black hole chewing me up again, though. This was different. This was a kind of pressure building steadily behind my eyes. A stroke. I was having a stroke.

  The voice in my head had that same singsong elocution I had heard before. It was the voice of the War Chief. And it wasn’t even speaking to me, not really. It was like he stood behind me, speaking to someone else, and I just lucked into overhearing.

  They are at the hospital. Go quickly.

  And then, like someone spinning the tuner on a radio, Hannah’s voice warbled in and out of static: Vie—and then the long, powerful rush of my blood blotting out everything—can you please, please come get me? I’m scared!

  HANNAH'S PLEA HUNG in my ears. I threw open my inner sight, and the thickly textured reality of the other side wove itself across my field of vision. I listened. I waited. One heartbeat. Come on, Hannah. Two heartbeats. Come on, God damn it. Three heartbeats. Nothing. I plunged out into the hallway.

  And I crashed into Austin. He was holding the hospital johnny shut behind him with one hand, and he was patting Becca’s shoulder with the other. She was sobbing. A pair of older nurses—one with hair set in huge curls that had probably been set in 1977, the other with hair shorter than Austin’s—were moving toward us with the grim resolve of executioners. I knew I was first up on the chopping block.

  “Vie, what the hell is wrong with you?” Austin said in that raspy voice. A stranger’s voice. He squeezed Becca’s shoulder and then took a step toward me. “What did you say to her?”

  I skirted him, and he grabbed my coat and hauled me back a step. As he did, my coat and sweater rode up, exposing the lowered waistband of my jeans and the top of the bloody furrow running toward my crotch.

  Austin swore, blocking me into a corner with his body. The hospital gown looked pretty damn good on him. You couldn’t hide those shoulders under a johnny. You couldn’t hide the trim taper of his waist. You couldn’t hide—

  He blushed a little when he chucked my chin. “Up here. Hey. What’s going on?”

  “Move.”

  “I’m not going to move. I’m going to talk to you because we need to talk. I’ve been worried sick about you. You ran off, Vie. Jesus, do you know what that did to me? Hey. And now you’re cutting?”

  Over his shoulder, I watched the 1977-curls nurse lead Becca away, but Becca kept casting glances at us.

  “You won’t even look at me? Is that where we’re at? What happened? Did I do something?”

  My eyes shot to his, and he stopped. He swallowed. The color got a little higher in his cheeks.

  “Move. I’m not going to ask you again.”

  “You heard that. What I was talking about with Kaden, you heard that.”

  “Fine, you won’t move, I’ll move you.”

  I didn’t want to hurt him. Whatever else had changed in the last few minutes, I still loved him. That was the bitch about love. The real stuff, it grew like a fucking weed. You couldn’t just rip it out. It was in there, roots all the way down in my soul, and Austin was going to run off and fuck Kaden silly, and they’d be in love for a million years and have a million babies, and I’d still love Austin, and that’s the kind of fucking weed love is, that’s how deep it ran. In me, anyway. So I didn’t want to hurt him. But I did want him out of my way.

  I scanned the hallway: two framed sketches of stargazer lilies; a nurses’ station with a phone the size of a concrete block, its cord hanging to the floor; an abandoned gurney stripped of its sheets; a row of doors; the nurse with hair shorter than Austin watching us; and one of those curved mirrors at the far end of the hall, showing a splash of movement. Guys in blue uniforms. Security.

  Emmett flashed into my head, the night he had tried to teach me something about my abilities. He had used my best emotions against me. And he’d warned me that Urho and the Lady would try to do the same.

  I blinked and let tears flood my eyes. It was dangerously easy. Then, hiking up my sweater and the layered tees underneath, I splayed my fingers along the cut. “Aus, I don’t know what’s going on with me. I think I cut too deep. Something—it won’t stop—”

  “Hey,” Austin shouted. “Hey, we need somebody over here right now, we need—” He glanced over his shoulder, looking for a nurse.

  And I sucker punched him. Right in the solar plexus. I heard the air come out like a bad whoopee cushion, and he folded. I caught him, walked him backward until we reached the nurse’s station, and ripped the floor-length cord out of the big, blocky phone. Then I tied his arms to the chair.

  “You fucking piece of shit,” he said, and his face was shiny now, tears lacquering the high red. “Vie, what the fuck is going on? Baby, I wa
nt to help you, I’m trying to—”

  “You’re going to get yourself out of that pretty fast. When you do, you need to run. Get the hell out of here. Get everyone out of here. Pull the fire alarm if you have to.”

  “Young man,” the nurse with the short hair grabbed my arm. “You sit down. Right now. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do—”

  I half-spun, let her follow me, and then charged into her when she was off balance. She went backward. Her feet came up, surprisingly little feet in blue Nikes, and she landed hard with a breathy, “Oh!” I charged past her.

  The security guys were already at the stairs. They weren’t much to look at: no guns, just blue uniforms and walkie-talkies. They weren’t even big. One of them, a lanky guy with elephant ears, I’d seen before at the basketball games cheering on his brother. But Timmy Stepp was a shit small forward because he flinched every time another guy came at him. And I was going to guess his big brother flinched too.

  I wasn’t willing to risk using my abilities on them. For one, I was going to need all the juice I had if it came to a real showdown. For two, if Urho had sent Kyle and Leo, I didn’t want people incapacitated with terror or guilt while the building came down around them. Or exploded. Or whatever the hell those guys might do. So I settled for getting these two out of my way just long enough. And that meant doing it physically. And I was looking forward to that because I was feeling the powerful urge to hit something. Preferably, if I could track him down, Kaden.

  “Stop right there,” the guard, the one I didn’t know, shouted.

  “Get on the ground,” Timmy Stepp’s brother yelled.

  I kept walking.

  “Visual confirmation,” the one I didn’t know was saying into his walkie.

  “Get on the ground right now,” Timmy Stepp’s brother yelled. His voice had skipped an octave. I let out a smile; he was definitely a flincher.

  When I reached the abandoned gurney, I thrust my hands into my pockets.

  “Show us your hands,” the one I didn’t know was screaming. “Show us your goddamn hands.”