by David Owen
‘They see us,’ said Kat, hardly remembering they could probably hear her, too.
Safa’s eyes gleamed with panic, and she tried to hide her face with her hands, before turning to push away through the crowd.
‘Wait!’
As they ran for the exit, the colour drained from Safa’s skin as the fade reclaimed its territory. A sensation of lightness, her body becoming untethered from the world just like that first day, let Kat know the same was happening to her.
By the time they burst out into the night, she was more faded than ever before.
28
Hijack
Nobody could possibly know what he was doing, but as he walked with hands buried deep in his pockets, stolen keys gripped in his fist, Wesley already felt like a criminal.
Every step towards the dealership made it more difficult to turn back. Made what he had to do more real. What was waiting for him if he went home with nothing? Jordan sleeping on the couch, the promise of a new life where Wesley had no place. Doing this wouldn’t give him what he wanted, but it would give him something.
The streets were almost empty at this time of night, a few people noisily returning home from nights out. Paying him no attention at all. He reached the end of the road where he could turn towards Garden Hill, and shrank against some bushes as he thought he heard footsteps running past. Nobody there. His imagination trying to psyche him out and send him home. He turned the other way, only a few roads away from the dealership now.
More running footsteps, behind him this time. ‘Hey!’
Wesley whirled around, tensed to run, until he realised it was Jordan.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said when he caught up, leaning on his knees to try and catch his breath.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Wesley, trying to hold his voice level.
‘And Dave’s keys are a cure for insomnia, are they?’
His brother hadn’t been asleep after all. Wesley hissed through his teeth, irrationally angry, like he had been tricked. He spun away and started across the road, but Jordan followed close at his side.
‘Tell me what you’re doing.’
Head down, feet moving. He had to stay calm, couldn’t let his brother get to him like he always did. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because I think you’re doing something stupid.’
They hurried through a residential street lined with trees greyed by the cars parked now between them, petrified under LED street lights. On either side the houses were set close to the road, almost every window dark except where the phantom light of a TV flicked and shifted. Jordan didn’t keep pushing for answers, but Wesley knew he wasn’t going to leave it alone.
It was better this way, really. Jordan would be able to see first-hand how wrong he had always been about his little brother.
Another corner brought them close to the industrial estate, the dealership coming into view ahead.
‘What are we doing here?’ said Jordan.
A figure dressed in black lingered across the road from the dealership. The sight of him made Wesley slow, before compelling himself to keep going. ‘Not we,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to do this.’ Either Jordan had guessed, or he didn’t need to.
‘According to you this is exactly the kind of thing I should be doing.’
‘I don’t want you to do anything because of me.’
‘You don’t get to decide,’ said Wesley. ‘I have to do this. I have to.’
The waiting figure came across the road to meet them. It was Tru, hood pulled close around his face, his bulk only making him look more conspicuous in his black clothes.
‘Who’s this?’ he said, lifting his chin at Jordan.
‘My brother,’ said Wesley, making sure his voice didn’t shake. ‘He’s cool. You’re cool, aren’t you?’
Jordan held his eye for a long time – a challenge or a plea, he couldn’t tell – and then nodded.
They moved between the cars towards the dealership office.
They ran, away from the square and through the streets, Kat always a few paces behind. Through streets and past people stumbling drunkenly home or simply out for late-night walks, until she realised where they were heading.
The hill was a dark rise against the sky. Safa finally stopped at the gate – lock broken for as long as Kat could remember – leaning against the Garden Hill sign but not breathing hard at all. In the darkness she was almost invisible. Maybe there was little need to breathe any more, hardly any body left to demand oxygen.
‘You felt that,’ said Kat, the last of the kiss’s power idling inside her like a fallen petal.
Safa shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It brought us back. What if it means—?’
‘This isn’t Sleeping-fucking-Beauty!’ Safa pushed the sign, the metal wavering. ‘You don’t get it – we can only feel like that if we join with somebody else. If it had just been me . . . the sooner we join our permanent Cradles, the sooner we can have that all the time. That’s why I’m doing this.’
Kat touched her fingers to her lips. ‘It was my first kiss.’
Safa exhaled, closing her eyes in something close to surrender. ‘Mine too.’
The air was bitter in her lungs, but she wasn’t cold. Every person she had entered inside the club had taken their piece of her, and away from the street lights there was no way to know what was left.
‘Why are we here?’ she said.
‘I used to come here as a kid.’
Kat smiled. ‘Me too.’
Without another word, they set off up the path to the top of the hill.
It all seemed too easy. There was no window to break, no cameras or security system to disable. Wesley simply unlocked the door, and pulled his sleeves over his hands to push it open.
‘This is a shithole,’ said Tru.
Wesley swallowed a reflex defensive response, instead crossing to the lockbox. He found the right key and opened it up. ‘Too easy.’
He wouldn’t let his jangling nerves show, not with Jordan standing in the doorway. This whole thing had turned into a performance, and Wesley needed to stay in character.
‘You want something inconspicuous?’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Tru, but through the security glass he had spotted the silver BMW. ‘You got the keys for that?’
Wesley hesitated. ‘It’s not very subtle.’
‘Yeah, but I bet it’s fast.’ Tru turned from the window, greed in his eyes. He leaned into the lockbox and snatched the BMW key with his gloved hand. ‘You never know, we might need a quick getaway.’
‘All right, whatever,’ said Wesley, slamming the lock-box shut. He would do whatever it took.
Back outside, the alarm blipped as the doors whirred open. After that morning’s sale the BMW had clear access to the road. Tru purred admiringly as he sank into the plush driver’s seat. The engine started gently, belying its ferocity. Letting him take any of the cars was a betrayal, but letting him take this one was an insult.
Tru shut the door, slid down the electronic window and waved for Wesley to come closer. ‘You can’t tell anybody about this.’
‘I won’t.’
‘No, I mean you can’t. Anybody finds out about this – about any of this – you’re just as guilty as me. You understand?’
One threat replaced with another. He wanted to ask if he would see them again. If the door was still open for him. Maybe he would never step through it, but to know it remained an option would still be a huge relief.
‘Yeah, I understand,’ he said.
The revving engine was impossibly loud, tearing open the night as it reverberated across the industrial estate. Tru grinned, a child with a new toy, guiding the BMW out onto the road and away. Wesley thought of Kat as he watched it go.
At the top of the hill they found the remnants of a bonfire, not more than a few days old, blackened earth ringed off by charred beer cans. Kat took in a view she hadn’t seen since
childhood. It was hardly spectacular: street lights tracing out the suburban sprawl that encircled the town centre, lights flashing on the cranes putting up blocks of flats nobody local would ever afford. This place had made her, but in the coming years it would likely change beyond recognition.
They sat a few feet back from where the bonfire had burned, both lifting their hands as if they could still feel its warmth.
‘Are you scared?’ asked Kat.
‘Terrified.’
‘You’re good at hiding it.’
‘That first time you inhabited someone, I thought that was it – you were gone for good and I was left here by myself.’ Safa chuckled coldly. She reached for the locket around her neck and twisted it, the doll opening into top and bottom. Another smaller doll, the same but painted in different colours, nested inside. ‘I’ve been selling you so hard on the fade so I don’t have to do it alone. If I can convince you, I can convince myself.’
The second doll opened too, revealing a miniature third inside. Safa fumbled to close them up, as if her fingers were numb, and then stood the dolls in a row in front of her.
Kat lifted her hands to let the lights of the town shine through them. ‘I don’t want to experience everything second-hand for the rest of my life,’ she said. ‘I am so fucking confused about all of this, but whether I love you, have a stupid crush on you, or I’m just so confused by actually having a friend that I’ve mistaken infatuation for something more, I know that kiss was real. I know the connection we have – me and you – is real.’
‘My dude, you’re such a romantic.’
‘You should stay here with me.’
Safa tilted her head towards her. ‘What if neither of us gets to stay?’
‘I’m going to save Tinker tomorrow,’ said Kat. ‘I think it’ll bring me back.’ What would it take to keep Safa here with her?
When the other girl took her hand it felt porous, as if their grips would pass through each other if they squeezed too hard. ‘Let’s just have tonight,’ said Safa.
They sat together, close enough to be overlapping, until the sun began to rise.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Jordan.
Wesley had to do it. For Kat. For himself.
‘I bet you didn’t believe I would.’
‘I hoped you wouldn’t,’ he said, walking quickly back towards the office.
Wesley followed. ‘What do you mean?’
The office door was still open, and Jordan set about wiping the door handle with his sleeves, before heading inside and doing the same to the lockbox. Finally, he turned to face his brother.
‘You want to know the real reason Dad didn’t want to see you?’
It felt like the ground was crumbling beneath Wesley’s feet, and he took hold of the doorframe, immediately undoing Jordan’s work. ‘You said it was because he was ashamed.’
‘That wasn’t true,’ he said. ‘Well, not exactly.’
‘So why?’
‘You were too good for him, and he knew it. You always stuck with Mum and tried to make things better. He saw what he was taking from you, and he didn’t want to do it any more. He wasn’t ashamed of you. He was ashamed of himself.’ Jordan reached past him to wipe the doorframe clean again, an excuse not to meet his eye. ‘He told me he didn’t want to mess you up, like he did to me.’
Wesley shook his head, sure that this had to be the lie. Nobody had ever thought he was good. ‘You were his favourite.’
‘Maybe that’s true, little bro. But only because being around me didn’t make him feel bad about himself.’
It was resentment, then, that had made Jordan act the way he did towards his brother. Had he always seen the way things were when Wesley hadn’t? Everything that had brought him to this moment, right here, fell apart into a mosaic of pieces impossible to order. Jordan really did want to come home, to belong to something just as much as Wesley did. The future they had been offered only hours before could have worked.
And Wesley might have ruined it.
Jordan turned away from him, and reared back to kick the lockbox. The buckling metal was enough to shock Wesley back to the moment.
‘We have to make this look like a break-in,’ said Jordan. He kicked the lockbox twice more, opening enough of a gap that someone could realistically reach inside for the keys. They left the office, shutting the door behind them.
‘Find a brick.’
Wesley found one in the mess of hubcaps and weeds that grew around the base of the office and handed it to his brother.
‘Stand back.’
The edge of the brick easily broke the glass, shattering it onto the office floor to leave a jagged hole above the handle.
‘Hopefully he’ll think they managed to unlock it. I think that’s the best we can do.’
Wesley nodded, numb and ashamed. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ said Jordan, squeezing his shoulder.
He could hardly meet his brother’s eye. ‘What if it’s not?’
Jordan let out a long breath and gripped his shoulder a little harder. ‘I’ll think of something.’
29
Piss Off, Ghost
The walk home felt longer than usual, weighed down by the silence between them and the threat of the fast-approaching morning. Wesley was too busy going over the words that made a mockery of his memories, forced him to piece the last few years of himself back into a new picture that didn’t make sense.
A maintenance train rumbled over the bridge as they reached the flats, startling pigeons out of a lineside tree.
‘You never see milk floats any more,’ said Jordan, apropos of nothing.
They stopped at the main entrance, Jordan’s beat-up red car parked lopsidedly against the kerb.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ said Wesley, blocking the door.
‘I’m not that thick. This isn’t one of those better to come clean situations. We’ll put his keys back and there’s no way they’ll think it was you.’
Tonight had changed something between them. The facts of their history hadn’t altered – it would never be as easy as that – but Wesley was able to read it all differently now. It felt as if they could both lay a grudge to rest. Maybe they could learn to be part of the same future.
They went inside, quietly up the concrete steps and along the parade of doorways. At their door, Jordan stopped him as he inserted the key.
‘The car,’ he said. ‘What was it for?’
Their relationship may have changed, but the truth would only make it harder to move forward from here. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
It was the only way to save Kat. The only way to save himself.
Inside, they returned the keys to Dave’s jacket, before Jordan retired to the sofa. Everybody else was still asleep, snores from the next room and groggy murmurings from his little sister. Wesley joined them almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Kat approached home, determined to get a few hours sleep before turning supernatural vigilante.
‘That would be a good TV show,’ she muttered to herself as she walked up the path to her front door.
The keys passed through her hand when she tried to grab them. She tried again, but there was only the slightest resistance, like a needle puncturing skin, before the metal fell through her palm and jangled against the path. Nor could she retrieve them or grab the door handle.
‘No, come on,’ she said.
She threw herself at the door, expecting to phase straight through, but she somehow lacked the necessary weight and seemed to flatten against it, like a vampire without an invite.
The sky was being diluted with the pale light of morning. Kat held up her arms to it. The night’s exertions had spread her too thin. Like butter over too much bread, she thought. It wasn’t a lack of substance that plagued her now. It was a lack of plain existence.
Kat hurried away from the house. There was no way she could save Tinker in this state. Even if she was successful piggybacking to
wherever TrumourPixel took her, she would have no way of cutting her bonds or fighting them off to escape. She would be just as helpless.
If only she could warn somebody, call the police or even leave a message for Tinker. If only somebody would hear. The anger churning inside her, the impotent rage, wasn’t enough to bring back her physical form. It only made her feel more helpless.
The plan had to change. It should never have been left to her, and now it couldn’t be.
Morning arrived in earnest as she made her way to Wesley’s block of flats. With every step she expected to sink into the pavement, fall away into the Earth, and for the last of her pixels to be burned away to nothing.
She crossed the car park towards the front entrance, and as she did it clicked open. An older boy emerged, letting out a shivering breath in the cold. Kat hurried through the door behind him.
The boy fumbled in his pocket for some keys as he approached an old red car. As he found them, he seemed to think better of it and strode away towards the road instead.
Kat took the stairs up and found Wesley’s front door. Nobody would be coming out for hours yet, so she settled on the concrete floor with her back flattened against the wall, only registering the idea of the cold but not its bite.
30
Dawn of the Final Day
Angry voices rattled Wesley awake, the kind of strained whisper that’s supposed to be quiet but only carries more venom. He rolled over, sleep still dragging at the edges of his mind, and saw Evie sitting up in bed with the covers over her head.
‘It’s okay, Eves,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure it would be. He put his bare feet on the floor, crossed to poke his head into the hallway.
‘I should call the police!’ Dave’s voice from the front room, his footsteps pacing across the floor.
‘Please don’t,’ answered Mum. She sounded defeated.
There should have been more time before the missing car was discovered. Not that it would have made any difference. Wesley took a moment to find the courage to move. To go and find out if they had discovered the truth.