by Simon Holt
“But like I said, it never seemed to be something horrible,” Reggie pointed out. “I don’t know why it would be a ‘gift’ that I can’t see it.”
“If it’s in a fearscape, it’s probably horrible, Reggie. But as you said, maybe she’s just nuts. I’m afraid we’ll have to try again another time.”
16
The next several days were routine, as the calendar ticked down toward Sorry Night. Quinn would leave in the mornings for school and return in the evenings, sometimes with Aaron, often bearing leftovers from dinner and other food he pilfered from the main kitchen. Mrs. Waters, the mother of four boys, thought nothing of this.
Reggie’s desire to talk to Macie again was foiled, however. The old woman’s body had gone through such abuse at the hands of the Vours that she was in danger of total organ shutdown. After a week she had lost consciousness, and Machen had been forced to call in a favor with a discreet physician friend and hospitalize her. They hid her under a false name in an intensive care unit in a hospice, where Machen visited her every few days, posing as her grandson. But so far she had remained in the coma, and it was too dangerous for Reggie to try to visit, not that it would have done any good.
In Macie’s absence, Reggie turned to the ripped-out journal pages she had found in Macie’s file. They were disjointed and sometimes even seemed to be told from different points of view, as if Macie had had various personalities surface and take hold of the pen. It wasn’t a far-fetched possibility.
I have to swim forward. I have to keep swimming, but the water turns to blood, and it’s filled with parts. Human parts. Legs and arms and hands and feet and ears and noses and fingers and toes. I have to push through them, but they start grabbing at me. And they pull me under, and my arms are so tired, and my legs can’t kick anymore. Their flesh is so rotted it falls off the bone, and then the bones stab me, tearing off my own skin so I’m a skeleton swimming through….
And everywhere I look there is black, except for the eyes, the red and yellow eyes that are always staring at me, even when I close my own eyes. They burn me, they burn into my heart! I can feel the fire burning me from the inside out, until I am just charred and black… a roasted pig….
The words swam together before her eyes, a jumble of loops and ink blots. Reggie could picture the visions all too well, even though they weren’t her own—they appeared in her head and rolled over her consciousness. The dark, the smoke, the bodies, the insects, the fire—she’d seen versions of all these things in the different fearscapes. They were so real….
Reggie stopped looking in mirrors, because like as not, when she did, she saw the vision of herself staring back with empty, smoky eyes and black-pocked skin. The immersion in Macie’s journals seemed to prompt hallucinations of her own, flashbacks to the fearscapes she’d already visited, like the ones that had begun in Home.
Cold air seemed to be the best defense against these figments, but Reggie dared not go outside during the day. Ice compresses on her temples and the back of her neck had to suffice to clear away the nightmarish cobwebs that clogged her thoughts. She also tried to focus on pleasant sights, like the views from the barn windows. To the north were apple orchards and rolling fields, one of which still had a scarecrow up on a post, though the crops were long dead. She’d also look at the main house for long stretches of time, watching Mrs. Waters come and go throughout the day. Quinn’s mother was a holiday-decorations person, and as Christmas neared, swaths of green garlands and holly wreaths bedecked the house. Reggie started to feel a bit like a girl from a fairy tale, locked in a tower and forced to watch the goings-on in the world from afar, never to participate in them. She wasn’t counting on any Prince Charming to come and rescue her, however.
Soon, she found herself listening for the crunch of gravel in the late afternoons that signaled Quinn’s arrival home from school. The arrangement had been awkward at first, them sleeping in the same house, though in separate rooms, but soon enough they fell into a comfortable routine. As lonely as Reggie was during the days, she was glad to have company at night. And, of course, Aaron would come by when he could.
As she read more, what didn’t make sense to Reggie was why Unger had torn out and kept these particular pages. It seemed probable that whatever assignment the Tracer Sims had had, it had concerned Dr. Unger, and Sims had gotten his hands on the journal and sent it to Eben. But she still didn’t understand why Unger would have ripped out certain passages for safekeeping.
That is, until a little over a week later, when Aaron and Quinn arrived home from school fraught with nerves.
“You were right,” Aaron announced as he withdrew a pile of papers from his backpack and spread them out on the table. “Macie has everything to do with this.”
Reggie stared at the papers. They appeared very similar to the ones Machen had shown her, the ones that most likely proved she was some kind of hybrid creature.
“I’ve seen these already, Aaron.”
“You’ve seen these.” Aaron pointed at the top row of papers. “These are your results.” Then he gestured to the bottom row. “These are Macie’s.”
“Macie’s?”
“Dating back years, but they’re the same tests. And they show extremely similar results.”
“How do you mean?”
“Macie’s DNA mutated in much the same way yours is doing.”
“Okay, first, can we not use the word mutate?” said Reggie. “And second, you’re telling me that Macie and I have the same DNA?”
“Not exactly. It’s still different in the way your DNA and my DNA are different, but some of the same chromosomes that are now active in your system are also active in hers.”
Aaron looked at her expectantly. The pieces were beginning to click in her mind. The same tests, the same results. The same experiences.
“She went into fearscapes,” Reggie breathed. “Like me, she went into fearscapes and helped people.”
Aaron nodded.
“She had your power, Reggie. That’s why Unger wanted her. That was the power Sims was talking about in his letter to Eben. The power of the fearscape.”
“And it’s why Unger kept those specific journal passages,” Reggie said. “They’re not visions that she had—they’re fearscapes! She wrote down the fearscapes that she visited.”
“But there’s something else,” Quinn said, nudging Aaron.
“What? What else?” Reggie asked.
Aaron bit his lip.
“Your results are similar, as I said, but only up to a certain point. For a while—years ago—there was a period of dramatic alteration in her code, but then it plateaued. Her genes stopped mutat—er, changing—and yours… haven’t.”
Reggie felt the cold swarming over her again. The sensation that her body was betraying her, morphing into something that she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t control.
“We were both experiments for Unger,” she said, looking at the ground. “But what you’re saying is that maybe I am the more successful result.”
“That’s… one possible interpretation,” Aaron said.
“But what that could also mean is that, locked in her head somewhere, Macie knows what Unger’s end game is.” Quinn put a hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “Maybe that’s why he wanted to keep her locked away—because she knows something.”
“But we can’t get it from her,” Aaron said shortly.
They were all silent for a minute.
“Macie cracked under the pressure,” Reggie said at last. “That’s what happened. Her mind couldn’t take all the horrors, and it finally went bonkers. She lasted longer than some of those other poor souls that the Vours have experimented on, but in the end the result was the same: Her mind split.”
“What are you thinking, Reg?” Aaron asked.
“I have the ability to go into people’s consciousnesses now. Not just their fearscapes—like Vours, I can burrow into their heads and poke around their thoughts. Maybe Macie still has some sanity in there som
ewhere, tucked away, buried deep down. If I can get at it, communicate with her that way, maybe she can give us the answers we need.”
“Reg, that’s brilliant!” Aaron exclaimed. “It’s a long shot but certainly possible. With her in a coma, it might even be easier, since the crazy part of her is silenced. I’ll call Machen—we’re going to the hospital as soon as possible.”
Hopefully it’s soon enough, Reggie thought. It was already December sixteenth, and they had less than a week before a new wave of Vours would descend upon the world, and who knew if Reggie, in her current state, was supposed to be a part of it?
Reggie woke in the night to a bloodcurdling scream. For a moment, glancing around the dark, she thought she was in a fearscape, but as her eyes adjusted, she saw the green numbers on the bedside clock and realized she was still in Quinn’s guesthouse. The clock showed 3:17. She blinked; all was silent—had she dreamed the scream? But then it came again, an animalistic shriek from the other side of the house. Quinn.
Reggie leaped out of bed and almost fell down the loft ladder in her haste. She sprinted across the room—the screams were definitely coming from Quinn’s room. She scaled the ladder and burst into the bedroom, switching on the light as she ran to the bed.
“Quinn!” she shouted.
He lay rolling on the bed, his sheets tangled about his body, his face drenched with sweat. His eyes were screwed closed, and Reggie saw his eyeballs roving madly back and forth behind his eyelids.
“Quinn!” she yelled again, grasping his shoulders and trying to hold him steady. But the nightmare had him, and he did not wake. He continued to thrash about, too violently for Reggie to control. She jumped on the bed and straddled him, using all her weight to try to pin him, shouting at him all the while. “Wake up, Quinn! It’s a dream. Wake up! ”
She saw a half-drunk glass of water on the bedside table and snatched it up, then dumped it on Quinn’s head. His eyes flew open, wild with terror. She was sitting on top of him, her hands on either shoulder, staring down at him.
It all happened in an instant. The world washed away in a wave of swampy, wet blackness. Reggie stood alone, surrounded by ink-colored vapors that undulated with a soft, sickening squish. The clouds that swirled slowly around her coated her bare skin with a heavy and cold film. It took her a moment to realize that she provided the only source of light in this place. Her flesh emanated a dull glow that lit the immediate grayness around her.
By now Reggie had gotten used to passing into otherworldly realms, but this place was quite unlike either fearscape or subconscious. It was just… empty, murky space.
“Who are you? ” asked a hollow voice from the miasma.
“I’m Reggie,” she called out. The sound of her own voice was like flat soda, syrupy and heavy. “What is this place? Where am I?”
“It is the void.”
“The void?” Reggie moved in the direction where she thought the voice was coming from. The glow of her body brought a small shard of light to even thicker clouds of black. Something began to solidify in the dark.
At first it was a distorted oval, stretching and pulling in all directions like oily taffy in front of her. Two slits opened in the top portion, another at the bottom, taking the crude shape of a face. Slowly the vapors pulled into greater detail—eyes, nose, mouth, ears—and Reggie recognized the face of Quinn as a young child. He was the same age as she remembered from her harrowing journey into his fearscape, a boy no more than eight years old.
“Gone…”
Reggie stepped toward the face and pushed a finger into the swirling cloud. It quivered like not-yet-cooled pudding and started to fall apart into dozens of floating globules.
Other shapes drew together from the vapors around her: a large bear; a medicine ball with tortured faces; another little boy, with his intestines spilling out of his body. The images could only maintain themselves for a few seconds before ripping apart like wet tissue and returning to the gloom.
“They’re like memories….” Reggie murmured. “Memories of the fearscape…”
As she walked through the dark clouds, the glow from her skin lighting her way like some freakish candle, Reggie saw what she could only conclude were walls of some sort. There were aspects of this place that had become completely solid, marked periodically by horrific but frozen images. She ran her fingers across them. Cold and forgotten.
“They’re like scars, aren’t they?” she said, and it struck her. Reggie knew exactly where she was. The contact with Quinn during the struggle had transported her unexpectedly into his mind, and she had projected herself into the lost space that was once occupied by his fearscape.
Fearscapes took up physical space in the mind, but Reggie had never given much thought to what happened to that space after a fearscape was destroyed. She had assumed the space ceased to exist as well, but this was like an empty apartment. The fearscape had moved out, leaving a shabby shell of a home behind. This was psychic scar tissue, like a scarscape.
Suddenly Reggie couldn’t breathe, and she felt herself yanked away. The mists disappeared, and she was back in Quinn’s room, sprawled across his bed. He was on top of her, and his fingers encircled her throat, pressing into her, squeezing the life out of her.
She batted frantically at his hands as her vision filled with black spots.
“Quinn!” she choked out. “It’s… me. It’s… Reggie. Stop…”
It was only seconds, but to Reggie it felt like eons. Then the pressure around her neck eased, and the weight lifted off her. She lay there for a minute, coughing, trying to regain her breath. Vaguely she heard someone saying her name.
“Reggie, oh my God, oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
The words repeated over and over again. Reggie opened her eyes. The spots were gone. She felt her throat—it was sore, but her breathing was evening out.
Quinn was kneeling next to her, but when she sat up, he scrambled back to the other edge of the bed.
“Oh my God, Reggie, I am so sorry. What can I do? I’m so sorry.”
His brain seemed to be on a loop, rerunning the same words and phrases, not sure what to do next. He was soaking wet, both from the water Reggie had poured on him and his own sweat. Water dripped from his hair, over his cheeks and neck, and onto his bare chest. He was wearing only flannel pajama pants, and his body was racked with shivers—Reggie wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the horror at what he’d almost done.
“It’s okay, Quinn,” Reggie said calmly. She was surprised when her voice came out like a croak, but she persisted. “It’s fine. It’s not your fault.”
“I almost killed you,” Quinn whispered, wide-eyed. He looked at his hands as if they were sentient objects that had betrayed him. “I can’t believe I… Are you all right? Should we go to the hospital?”
“No, of course not.” Reggie sounded more confident than she felt, but it wasn’t like they could stroll into the emergency room anyway. Besides, she needed to tell him where she had been. “Quinn, listen to me. I think I went inside your head.”
Quinn was silent for a moment.
“I think you did, too. I think I felt you in there and something in me… freaked.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”
“Reggie, don’t apologize. I’m not the one who almost got choked to death. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I think I just need some water.”
They headed down to the kitchen, Quinn helping Reggie down the ladder as much as he dared without touching her too much. He filled a glass with water and handed it to her; she drank eagerly, and the coolness felt good going down her throat. She noticed that Quinn was still half-naked and looking like a drowned rat. He caught her staring at him and absently grabbed a dish towel, drying off his face and slicking his hair back.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia,” she said.
“I’m not so concerned about that right now,” he replied. “We have to call Aaron. You need to go some
place else. It isn’t safe here… with me.”
Reggie scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I’m safe here. It was an accident, Quinn. I just won’t go skipping around in your brain anymore without your permission. Lesson learned.”
“How can you joke about this? I could have killed you.”
Reggie didn’t have a good answer for this. It wasn’t funny, of course. Quinn was experiencing aftereffects of the Vours, much like Henry had: visions and nightmares that were more powerful than the average person’s, that caused reactions more unpredictable and dangerous.
“But you didn’t kill me, Quinn. Because you’re not a killer.”
“How can you be sure? I’ve been having the nightmares for a while, and they’re getting worse. Tonight I was in my fearscape again, but it was mixed with things that I think were real. You were there. I was… God, I was trying to kill you.”
The horrible irony sat in the air between them. He was right—she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t damaged now, somehow. She suddenly felt the need to do something with her hands, any kind of busy work that would exempt her from the guilty stare Quinn turned on her.
“I think I could use some tea. You?”
She grabbed the kettle off the stove, filled it with water, and turned it to high heat. The flame from the burner was welcome warmth in the cool kitchen.
“I think I could use something stronger,” Quinn murmured, but he retrieved two mugs from the cabinet.
“Look,” said Reggie, opening a tin of Earl Grey. “You were a Vour then. Trust me, there were a couple times when I almost killed you, too.”
“But I’m not a Vour now!” Quinn slammed the mugs down on the counter. “It’s like parts of my mind and body are working against me. Doing things I can’t control. Seeing things that shouldn’t be real, but they are; they happened. Is that what you saw when you were in my brain just then?”
Reggie turned back to him. He looked defeated, yet wild at the same time.
“No. I think I went to the place where the fearscape used to be. It’s empty now, but… scarred.” She stepped toward him and held out her forearm, pointing at the black marks etched across her skin. “We’ll always have these, inside and out. It’s sick, and twisted, and it isn’t something anyone should have to deal with. Maybe neither of us has an answer how to do it yet, but we will. We will. You’re not alone here, Quinn.”