by Gregory Ashe
The engine roared so loud that the Impala was about to shake to pieces. Just one bump. Just one little bump of my wrist on the gear shift.
A numb, asinine part of my brain was still problem solving. I had lost Kyle’s trail at the hospital, but I could still try to find him. Becca had mentioned something about Kyle staying outside of town, buying supplies. There would be a trail. Everyone left a trail. I left a trail. Bloody footsteps from walking on a line of broken hearts. Fuck, that was maudlin or melodramatic or whatever the right word was. But it felt right.
I got my hand over the gear shift. The pebbled plastic was cool against my skin. How much pressure before it slid into drive? And then all that power would pour into the wheels, and the car would take off like I was trying to win a soapbox derby, and Christ, with my luck, I’d probably crack my nose on the wheel.
That dry little asshole voice at the back of my head was still trying to problem solve. He wanted to think about Austin. He wanted to think about Emmett.
Emmett looping his arm—
Emmett tending to Austin, tenderly setting two fingers to Austin’s neck and his ear against his mouth—
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I let the little asshole try to work on the situation with Hannah and Tyler. I could try to find Kyle’s trail. I could ask around. I could check the stores. I might even be able to get the sheriff to help me—ever since Belshazzar’s Feast, we’d avoided each other, but I think he’d listen if I told him what had happened to the kids.
My mouth still tasted like plaster, as though when the hospital had collapsed, the cloud of dust had rolled straight down my throat. I tried to work up some saliva. I popped open the Impala’s door, hung out my head, and spat. Nothing. The air smelled like mud and the exhaust from the Impala. The river was louder. Still nothing. My mouth was still open. Nothing. Dry as a bone.
I pulled myself back into the car, and I slammed the door, and the river went silent, and I stared out at the little white arrows of chop on the water, like they were marking out a landing strip for me, and my wrist bounced on the gear shift, and that little voice was still going. Time. The problem was time. Urho had the kids—or he would have them in the next few hours, whenever Kyle finally reached him. Did the kids need more time for their abilities to develop? Would they help Urho when he asked, or would they fight him? Would dragging Urho’s soul into the physical realm require hours or days, or would it be instantaneous?
I didn’t know the answer to any of that. But I’d felt the Lady’s touch. I knew the poisonous, fever-sick heat that it left. And I knew that nobody—not Kaden, not Jim, not Temple Mae—would tell me what had happened when they gained their abilities. When they were woken from the mortal sleep. I thought of the way Tyler had looked in that motel room, curled up to shield himself, broken. And Hannah, severed from her body, cut off from everyone she loved. How much worse could it get? I didn’t want to know the answer to that question. My gut said that it could still get a lot, lot worse.
Time. It would take time to find Kyle. It would take time for all of it: to convince the sheriff, to track him down, to face off with him. Time. And at the end of it, would things end up any different than they had today? Christ, Kaden had smashed him with a truck, and it hadn’t done anything. It had barely slowed him down.
Time.
My wrist bumped the gear shift. The Impala lurched into motion. The white flechettes pointed out a runway for me—an escape, a way out of this mess.
But instead, the gear shift settled on R, and the Impala shot backward. The tire spun, flicking out mud and weeds and the occasional chunk of gravel, and the sedan slewed hard to the right. Then the rear tire caught the highway’s shoulder, and the Impala skidded a few more feet back onto the pavement. I shifted again. East, the storm butted up against Cloud Peak. I put the clouds in my rearview mirror and headed for Sara’s.
At the back of my head, that black hole yawned. Time. I didn’t have time to track down Kyle. I didn’t have any guarantee that I’d be able to stop him if I did find him.
But I knew one way to get Urho’s attention that worked every time, and the saw blade spun silver moonlight through the darkness on my brain.
I put the pedal down and drove.
AT NIGHT, WITH THE lights out, Sara’s house no longer resembled the storybook cottage I had first mistaken it for. Part of that was that I was older. Only a few months older, sure, but sometimes age had more to do with road rash from the miles than from the actual miles themselves. Storybooks were full of stories, and stories were full of shit. A dark smile stole across my face. I might have been a fairy, but I wasn’t a fairytale hero. Today had proved that. If anything, I was more like one of those wilting, drooping, listlessly exhausted maidens waiting for a prince to come.
And that hurt. I fumbled with the lights, flashing the brights once before I managed to get them off, because the hurt ran from my chest down my arm. That’s what heart attacks felt like, and that made some kind of shitty sense because my heart was in a million pieces. The truth was, a prince had come along. Austin was a prince. Austin was just about perfect. But the thing nobody tells you about storybooks, the thing nobody tells you about the lies inside, is that nobody can save you. You can’t even save yourself.
Dead leaves from last autumn scurried in the window; my sneakers trapped a few and chomped them, and they didn’t have that crisp autumn snap anymore. They were wet and soggy and half-rotten. They turned into a black paste on the steps. The porch swing creaked at me, and I thought of Austin curled up next to me on it, and the way he looked with nothing but the light from inside the house painting his face—the rest of the world gone to black, just that warm, yellow light sculpting the hollows of his eyes and cheek and jaw.
Inside, more darkness. The smell of lavender and vanilla spiderwebbed the air, sticking to my skin as I walked deeper into the silence. When the old floors creaked, I froze, and silence settled in again. Just me. Alone. I had waited for Sara to go to work, and now she wouldn’t be back until after close. Just me here. Just me. Alone.
I could have turned on the lights. No one lived close enough to see the lights. No one was going to drive by and wonder why the house was glowing. But the darkness felt better. Every nerve was raw, and the darkness smothered the worst of the flare-ups. I navigated the maze of furniture.
The kitchen smelled like fish and citrus; Sara was back at her diet again. Good for her. I thought briefly of what might happen. She might find me, and the thought opened a trapdoor in my gut. I felt sick. I felt dizzy. And then all those feelings tumbled through the trapdoor, and I didn’t feel anything anymore. It made me think of the other side, of that night—the night before? Christ, was it really only the night before?—when I had come apart, when I had entered the other side fully, completely, and when I had felt nothing. No aches, no bruises, no pains. No black hole gnawing at the back of my head. I hadn’t felt anything for the first time I could remember, and it had been wonderful.
Tonight. Tonight, I’d make it across again. Tonight, I’d light a signal fire so bright that Urho couldn’t ignore it. He’d come because he was curious. He’d come the way he always came—to taunt me, to bait me, to chase me in my dreams, but most importantly, to satisfy his curiosity. And when he came, I’d come apart and step into the other side fully, and I’d destroy him.
Through the kitchen window, I had a glimpse of the rangegrass rolling out to the horizon, studded with silver where sage broke through the tumbleweeds. It was all dark, of course—just an impression of the long stalks dipping in the wind, glimmers like fallen stars where traces of ambient light glowed along the sage. Something hurtled out of the darkness, slamming into the fence and snapping the wires tight, just as it had the evening before. This time, though, I stared out at the darkness, unmoved. Nothing could startle me tonight. Nothing could frighten me. Nothing could reach me.
Up the basement stairs floated the smells of rust and sweat and the poured cement flo
or. I waded down into the smells. The rust and the sweat, those were Austin. Whatever I felt, whatever I should have felt, dropped right through that trapdoor in my gut. At the bottom of the steps, I found the ancient switch and flicked it; the two Edison bulbs sprang to light. For the rest of my plan, I wanted light.
Nothing had changed in the basement: the plastic tubs lining one wall, the rolled-up rugs slumped in the corner, the grit that scraped underfoot, the cool, humid air whispering against my skin. Austin’s weight bench took up a lot of space, and again I felt that rush of emotion that dropped through that pit in my gut. And there, between a stack of broken-down cardboard boxes and a rolling tool chest, stood the table saw.
Light winked off the blade at me, and I took a staggering step toward it. And then another. A shrill voice at the back of my head demanded why, why, why, and it sounded a little bit like Austin and a little like Becca and a little like Sara and even a little like Ginny, but it didn’t sound like me, and that freaked me out in a way that wouldn’t fit down the trapdoor, in a way that got jammed sideways, and then the freak-out filled me up like a clogged sink.
Air. That freak-out filled me up, and I couldn’t get any air, and the freak-out just got higher and higher like water in my lungs. Air. Breathe. That’s what Austin said. Just breathe. But breathing only made it worse. Breathe. That’s what his shrink told him. Breathe. I took another step; the movement was lumbering, as though I were walking at the bottom of the ocean. Breathe. I tented my hands over my mouth the way I’d seen Austin a dozen times. Breathe. That’s what his shrink told him.
Only, what if breathing didn’t make it better? What if the freak-out was like fire, and everybody knew fires needed oxygen? What if breathing just fanned the freak-out, blew it out bigger? Fire. What if you could feel like you were drowning and your brain was on fire all at the same time?
I got to the saw. It was old; the plastic casing had warped, and through a chink at the bottom, rust spilled out. The cord that ran to the outlet was old and thick and braided. But the blade still looked sharp. The teeth grinned back at me. It was the same silver as the trace glow of sage on the high plains.
But I didn’t like that it was grinning. I didn’t like the smug little sparkle. Those were crazy thoughts, absolutely bonkers thoughts, but they went through my brain like rounds from a .45. My hand found the switch on the warped casing. My thumb traced the angle of red plastic. Why?
Why was I doing this? Because it would bring Urho? Because I thought if I was hurt bad enough, the way I’d been hurt at Emmett’s house—if I were about to die, the way I’d been at Emmett’s—I could come apart and step into the other side?
It was more than that. This was like every time I lost control. This was like every time I dug out the box of razor blades or fumbled the striker on a Bic. The way my hands were shaking. The way that black hole chewed through my thoughts. Whatever else I told myself, this was just cutting again—on a new level, sure, but still just cutting. And why the fuck was I always cutting?
That’s why I heard Austin’s voice. That’s why it sounded like Becca, like Sara, like Ginny, like everyone but me. They wanted an answer. I could have told them a lot of things. I could have told them I was doing this because a shitty, silken whisper rippled the surface of my subconscious and told me I deserved it. I could have told them I was doing this because of the candles on a birthday cake, because of the vacuum cord, because of the iron, because of the cigarettes with crumbling red tips. I could have told them I was doing this because it put me in control of me. Because it was my body, and I could do something to it that nobody could undo.
My thumb found the top edge of the power switch. I didn’t press, not yet, but I let my nail rest along the crack in the casing. I could have told them all of those things, and it probably would have sounded good with my heels up on a tufted couch, with Austin’s nice shrink scribbling on a pad—or whatever a shrink did when they were supposed to be listening. I could have gone on and on about all the reasons that I cut—the reasons I liked, and the reasons I didn’t. But it would have been a lie. Because the real reason I cut, the reason that drove me into a bathroom stall when Austin wouldn’t look at me anymore, that reason I didn’t know. It breathed hot breaths on the back of my neck, sure. But I didn’t know its face. I couldn’t name it. I couldn’t even draw its silhouette. And that scared me because you can’t stop a thing you can’t name. You can’t kill a thing you can’t see.
Nobody can save you. You can’t even save yourself.
The switch clicked. The saw groaned to life, and then its groan became a whistle, and then its whistle became a high droning, like I’d stuck my head next to a hornet’s nest. Yes. Exactly like that. Exactly like a hornets’ nest because all of the sudden my body was stinging and tingling and prickling all over, and my breath corkscrewed in and out of my throat, and I locked both hands on the saw base to keep from running away. The blade was as pure and bright and white as I had seen it in my head. It would go through me like I was mist. If I wanted to—if I could hold on long enough—I could take myself apart piece by piece. And Sara will find you, that shitty little whisper said. All she’s done for you, and you’ll let her be the one who finds you, and you know what that’ll do to her.
Nobody can save you.
It wasn’t going to be a cut. I’d known that driving here. It wasn’t going to be like one of those nice, long, shallow lacerations I gave myself. I’d known that, I’d known it right under the point of my ribcage like a bruise. It wasn’t going to be like those shiny little scars the Bic left. This was more than that. The black hole yawned wider. The edges of my thoughts were fuzzy. This was it. This was the door that only swung one way. This was the door that I could open when every other door shut. This was the door out. And Austin, that shitty little voice said, and Austin, what about Austin? He came out for you. He loves you. One little fight, but you know better because you know he loves you, and you know what’ll happen to him if you do this.
I shook off that swarm of hornets.
Nobody can save you.
And then that shitty little voice was quiet, and I knew what I was doing, and the universe knew what I was doing, and I could face the truth with a kind of sleepy awareness that had eluded me up until this moment. I knew. I knew. And I could do it because I didn’t have anything. Not anymore. I had crossed a bridge, and it had burned behind me, and it wasn’t determination or resolution or courage or anything else that carried me toward the end. Everything just flowed forward from this point. It was—I smiled, and my eyes were stinging, sending the saw out of focus into an ugly gray blur—it was like a river, and now everything had come full circle. Yes. It was like a river, and all I had to do was let it carry me.
And just like that, I lay my right arm across the saw’s tabletop. The brachial artery. I knew it would hurt, but I’d been hurting for a long time. I leaned forward and let my weight carry my arm toward the spinning blade.
I hit a wall.
A millimeter—less than a millimeter-from the whirring blade, my arm stopped. An invisible barrier held me back from the grinning teeth. I grunted, shoving my arm forward again. Again, the barrier held. It was like ramming my arm against a brick wall. I tried again, and this time, I hit my funny bone, and the tingle ran up into my eyes, and they watered so bad that the saw doubled and tripled.
And that flow, that sense of the river carrying me forward, dissolved. The clarity, the sense of purpose, the decision—they washed away like sand in a strong rain. My stomach flopped. My stomach gurgled. I swore and rammed my arm again and again, against that fucking barrier.
My body, like a traitor, began to react to brushing up against death. Adrenaline swamped me, prickling in my throat, stinging under my arms, making my thoughts sharp and fast and flurried. And then I knew. I knew, and I was so angry that my anger actually steadied me, and I managed not to throw up or pass out or just drop from exhaustion. Carried by that anger, I spun toward the stairs.
<
br /> “Get out here. Right now. Right fucking now.”
Emmett came down the last three stairs with the same easy grace as always, and nothing visible betrayed his nervousness: no hunched shoulders, no arms folded across his chest, no fiddling with his hands. From ten yards away, anybody else could have blinked and mistaken him for a guy coming down a runway. Anybody else but me.
“Didn’t anyone teach you it’s rude to stare?”
I was staring, but it wasn’t because I was horrified by the scars. The wounds that covered half his face were strangely normal, in fact. As though they’d always been there, but I’d only noticed them now. And there was something true about that: Emmett had always been two people. He had been the smoking hot icon of perfection, too hot to touch, too hot for anything but a passing glance or you might burn out your retinas. But that had been on the surface. Underneath, the whole time I’d known him, had been a boy with scars. The boy who was so cut up and broken and hurting inside that he was an ass to everyone, that he hurt himself more because he didn’t know how to stop hurting. Now both boys were visible, superimposed. When I’d been a kid, my mom had kept around a red plastic View-Master, and she’d had a bunch of the cardboard reels showing mostly tourist destinations: the sights of Rome, Paris, London. Looking through the View-Master had always made me dizzy; my eyes had struggled to coordinate the stereoscopic images. Looking at the two halves of Emmett’s face twisted my gut in the same way.
I pushed the feeling aside and said, “Get that thing out of my way.”
“So you can saw off your arm?”
“What the fuck do you care? Get it out of my way now, Emmett.”
“As soon as you started bleeding, you’d know you’d made a mistake. And you’d freak out. And you’d get blood everywhere. And they’d probably spend like fifteen hours trying to reattach your arm, and you’d be lucky if you ever got enough strength back to finger your little boyfriend.”