by King, R. L.
“You’d be…taking Lissy somewhere?” Marilee asked, her voice quavering. Stone didn’t miss the fact that, as frightened as she was for Lissy, she herself clearly had no intention of participating in his experiments. He and the others had been interacting with the Forgotten long enough now that sometimes he forgot that at the bottom of things they were a group of homeless people who all had various mental issues. They weren’t saints, any more than he and Jason and Verity were, and sometimes fear was stronger than protective instincts.
“Yes and no,” Stone said, troubled. “We’d have to go to the location of the—travel point—and if one of you went with us, we’d have to conceal that location from you. We aren’t actually going to use it to travel anywhere, though. It’s difficult to explain, but we won’t be leaving the area.”
He looked at Lissy again and sighed. “But Lissy, I don’t think you should be the one. If none of the rest of you want to do it, that’s fine. I can work out my experiments some other way.”
“Why?” Lissy asked, wide-eyed and childlike. “Sounds fun.”
“I don’t think it will be fun, Lissy,” Marilee said, squeezing her shoulders again. “It sounds like it might be scary.”
“It probably will be scary,” Stone confirmed. “It’s scary for Verity, and if my ideas are correct, it will be for you too, Lissy.”
“Yeah,” Verity added gently. “I don’t think you should do it either, Lis.”
Lissy giggled. “I’m not scared. I like scary things.”
Lamar, who hadn’t spoken yet, faced Stone. “How dangerous is this likely to be? What are the risks?”
Stone sighed. “There’s no way to know for sure, because I don’t know how she’ll react. If I’m wrong, she’ll experience nothing at all, beyond possibly a vague unease. If I’m correct—”
“She might freak out,” Verity said soberly. “That’s what I do. I scream and pretty much get incoherent.”
“This is safe?” Marilee asked.
“Dr. Stone can keep us safe,” Verity said. “I trust him.”
“I can’t make any guarantees,” Stone said. “It’s the nature of this—travel method—that sometimes the unexpected happens.”
Lamar looked down at his sandwich. “I don’t know. We owe you all so much, but—”
“But you’re frightened,” Stone said gently. “I understand. You’ve been through so much more than we have in your lives. You don’t want to add more potential danger. I understand that, and you’re quite right.”
“I want to go!” Lissy said with surprising vehemence. She looked like an overtired small child about to erupt into a tantrum. “I want to help Magic Man!”
“I’m goin’ out for another smoke,” Hector said abruptly. He got up and stumped out of the room.
“I’ve never seen her this—determined,” Marilee said, surprised. She looked at Lamar. “Should we—?”
Lissy pulled herself loose from Marilee’s encircling arm, got up, and plopped down next to Stone. “We go now?”
Chapter Eleven
“I don’t like this,” Stone told Jason two hours later.
They sat in the front of the van, talking quietly, while Verity, in the back with Lissy, listened to the girl’s cheerful chatter about nothing and everything.
“Not too late to turn back,” Jason said under his breath.
They had spent the last two hours catching up with the Forgotten, lingering over their sandwiches and discussing topics both mundane and not-so-mundane. Stone insisted on waiting for two reasons: first, he hoped Lissy would forget all about her desire to help with the experiment, and second, he didn’t want to proceed until the restaurant was closed. Even going in through the back door would be risky if there were customers in the parking lot.
Unfortunately Lissy had chosen this time to exhibit a degree of focus none of them had ever seen before. She sat next to Stone, regularly favoring him with her spacey gaze and goofy smile. Every few minutes she would ask, “We go soon, right?”
“I think she’s got a crush on you, Al,” Jason muttered in the mage’s ear at one point, grinning. Stone had not returned the grin. He didn’t think any of this was at all amusing.
Now, he sat behind the wheel of the van in the parking lot of A Passage to India, staring down at his hands.
“Hey,” Jason said, still speaking quietly. “It isn’t too late, you know. But it’ll probably be fine, right?”
Stone shrugged. “Probably will. I expect she’ll have a reaction similar to Verity’s if the Forgotten thing is the problem, but Verity recovers quickly. She should too. I hope.” He sighed and his expression hardened. “If we’re doing this, though, let’s get on with it. I’ll feel better when it’s over, and Lissy’s back with her people.”
Lissy looked up when she heard her name. They had tied a colorful piece of fabric over her eyes so she wouldn’t see where they were taking her, and she had spent most of the trip giggling about playing ‘hide and seek.’ “I help now?”
“Soon, Lissy,” Verity told her. She helped the girl out of the van and closed the door, and together the three of them took her into the restaurant through the back way, to which Stone still had a key. By this time the parking lot was deserted, but Stone used his disregarding spell just to be safe.
They took her downstairs, still blindfolded, with Stone on one side and Jason on the other to make sure she didn’t trip. “Smells good,” she said, sniffing with exaggerated enjoyment. “Better than sandwiches.”
“We’ll bring you some later,” Verity promised.
When they reached the portal room and closed the door, Lissy clearly had the idea that something was about to happen. “Pretty,” she said, reaching up to pull off the blindfold.
Jason moved to stop her, but Stone shook his head. “She doesn’t know where she is now,” he said. “We’ll put it back on before we go back.”
As soon as she’d pulled the fabric away, Lissy simply stood and stared, her eyes huge. She looked like a little girl staring at the world’s most beautiful holiday light show. Her mouth opened in an O of amazed delight.
Verity grinned. “Pretty, huh?”
“Christmas,” she breathed. “It’s like Christmas. So pretty.” She reached out to touch it, but Stone put a hand on her arm.
“Not yet, Lissy,” he told her gently. “Just look for now, don’t touch.” He glanced at Jason. “Make sure she doesn’t try to go in. I need to set up a few things, and then put up the block on her so she’s not getting the full force of it if she’s susceptible.”
Jason nodded, and he and Verity watched Lissy as she stood there with her eyes wide and her mouth still open, staring with wonder into the portal’s shifting patterns of light and color.
“All right.” Stone’s quiet voice interrupted their reverie after a couple of minutes. “I’m as ready as I’m going to get. Verity, you’ll have to stay here, of course.”
She nodded. “Yeah—if Lissy freaks out, you aren’t gonna want to deal with both of us at once.”
“We should only be in there a couple of minutes. I shouldn’t need to get the kind of readings I got on you—the mere fact that she has the reaction, or doesn’t, should be enough. So if we’re not back in five minutes tops—” He paused. “Well, you can’t very well come in after us, can you? So let’s just hope everything goes well, shall we?”
Verity patted Lissy’s arm. “Just trust Dr. Stone,” she told her. “It might be scary, but he won’t let you get hurt. Just stay close to him, do what he says, and it’ll be fine.”
Lissy smiled her vague smile and snuggled up to the mage. “Pretty place...I help magic man!”
Stone was all business now. “Jason, I’ll be busy getting a few readings and holding the shield, so you’ll have to deal with Lissy. Hold on to her, and whatever you do, don’t let her get away from us. I’m hoping that even if she d
oes react, it’ll be like Verity does and she’ll just stay in one place, but I don’t want to take chances.”
Jason nodded and took hold of Lissy’s arm. “Ready to go, Lissy?”
She nodded several times, like a little girl. “Prettier inside!”
None of them corrected her. “All right,” Stone said, his voice tight. He put one hand on Jason, then gestured and the glowing shield formed around them. He gripped Lissy’s arm with his other hand. “On three, then, just like before. One...two...three.”
They stepped through.
Later on, neither Stone nor Jason would be able to reconstruct exactly what happened next. It was all so fast and sudden that they barely had time to react, let alone process it.
The moment they crossed the shifting barrier, Lissy began to scream just like Verity had—but that was where the similarity ended.
Instead of incoherent shrieks, Lissy’s screams were intelligible—and in a completely different tone than her usual dreamy, spacey voice. She sounded as they imagined she might sound if she were sane—and terrified beyond all possible reason. “Oh my God! Oh my god! They’re all around! Ohgodohgodohgod—”
“What’s all around?” Stone demanded. “Lissy—” The creatures had only just begun to materialize now; they were still some distance away from the shield.
“They’re all around us!” she shrieked. “Oh, God, it’s the EVIL! Everywhere—EVERYWHERE—”
And then, completely surprising Jason, who still had his hand clamped on her arm, she screamed something incoherent, ripped free of his grasp, and darted off—away from the portal entrance.
“NO!” Jason yelled, lunging forward to grab her before she left the shield. “Lissy, no!”
“Lissy!” Stone’s eyes were wild, his face strained with the effort of maintaining the shield as Jason’s concentration faltered—and with it the power conduit. “Jason!” he barked. “Power!” and he too leaped toward Lissy, the shield bubble moving with him and Jason.
The creatures ignored the two of them now. Lissy, running headlong forward into the gray tunnel and screaming as if her heart were being ripped from her, attracted them like a bucket of chum in a crowd of hungry sharks.
Stone gathered energy and flung a massive lightning bolt into the group of creatures, scattering them, but only for a few seconds. They moved back in, circling the screaming girl.
“Lissy!” Stone cried. “Run this way! Run toward us!”
She was beyond hearing, or caring. Likely she was beyond any sort of human understanding anymore. One creature broke free of the group, flaring red against the unrelenting gray of the Overworld, and leaped at her, tearing a chunk from her arm. Blood sprayed in all directions, and her scream pitched higher.
“No!” Stone yelled, moving forward again. He clamped his hand on Jason’s shoulder and focused everything he had on Lissy, grabbing her with telekinetic force and dragging her writhing, struggling body back toward the bubble.
There were too many of the creatures, though. Some, sensing the chance that their meal might be snatched from them, redirected their attention to Stone and Jason. Stone struggled to keep the shield up and drag Lissy back through the roiling crowd, but even with Jason providing power, his strength was failing.
Jason, horrified and unable to do anything but focus on the power, saw all of this. Stone was barely standing, his hands shaking as he directed them at Lissy—but she wasn’t getting any closer. Her screams grew quieter now as the creatures surrounded her. There was blood everywhere. The creatures were pulling her apart. “Al!” he screamed into the mage’s ear. “We have to go back!”
“NO!” Stone yelled back. “I’m not leaving her!” He sobbed with effort and frustration.
One of the creatures slammed into the shield and it flared bright. Jason grabbed Stone’s arm. “Al, the shield’s going down! You can’t help her! Nobody can help her now! If we stay here, we’re dead, too!” He hated himself for saying it—every bit of him screamed for him to fling himself out there, grab Lissy, and drag her back to safety, but even as he was desperate to do it, he knew it wasn’t possible. Killing themselves wouldn’t save her.
“I won’t leave her here!”
Jason backpedaled, dragging Stone toward the portal exit. He could almost feel it glowing and pulsing behind them. “Al, damn it, go!”
Lissy screamed again, a long, drawn-out sound of agony as the creatures moved in for the kill. They attacked what was left of her body with such ferocity that droplets of blood and gory gobbets flew out and hit the creatures trying to take down the shield several feet away.
And then her screams died abruptly into silence.
Stone, nearly incoherent himself now, fought Jason with a madman’s strength as he tried to drag him back to the portal. Realizing he was no longer dealing with someone he could reason with, and seeing the healthy pink of the shield flare bright red in several places, Jason simply reacted with brute force.
He picked up Stone just like Stone had done to Verity earlier, threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and dived toward the portal exit. The creatures snapped at his heels; their hatred and frustration followed him as the shield dropped and he disappeared back through the portal.
Chapter Twelve
“Al…?”
No answer.
“Al, we have to go.”
No answer.
Jason and Verity, their eyes haunted, Verity’s red-rimmed from crying, stood over Stone, who sat unmoving against the wall of the portal room.
Half an hour had passed since Jason had dragged himself and Stone through the portal barely ahead of the bloodthirsty creatures on the other side. They’d fallen in a heap at a shocked Verity’s feet.
“What happened?” she had demanded. “Where’s Lissy?” Then she saw the blood splatters. “My God, what happened? Are you hurt? Where’s Lissy?”
Jason disentangled himself from Stone, who remained as he had fallen on the floor, conscious but unmoving. “V—” he began. “We—”
“Are you hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Lissy—?”
“She’s dead,” Stone said in a lifeless monotone. Then he brought his arms up and buried his face in them and didn’t speak any more.
That left it to Jason to explain to his sister what had happened. He did so in halting steps, in a voice that was almost as lifeless as Stone’s. She listened with growing shock, and when he finished tears sprang to her eyes and she threw her arms around him in a hard hug. “How—?” she finally got out. “How did she—”
“It was my fault,” Stone muttered, dragging himself up to sit against the wall, then dropping his head back into his clasped arms. “She trusted me, and I let those things have her—let them tear her apart—”
“Al—”
“I don’t want to talk, Jason. Just—go. Please.”
Of course they wouldn’t leave him alone in that state, so they remained, pacing around the room and trying to come to terms with the enormity of what had just occurred. They had come down here with a sweet young girl who only wanted to please them—a damaged girl who nonetheless trusted them to mean her no harm—and they had led her to the most horrific death imaginable.
Jason’s mind nearly shut down when it tried to recall the events in the portal; he remembered the screaming, the blood, the fact that Lissy had yelled something about the Evil—but none of the specifics. He didn’t want to remember them. All he wanted to do was get out of here. He never wanted to look at that portal again.
Verity moved over and sat down next to Stone. She put her hand on his arm. “Dr. Stone? We—we can’t stay here. We have to go.”
It appeared he wasn’t going to speak, but after a moment he raised his head a little. His face was dead pale, his eyes shrouded in dark circles. “You’re right...” he mumbled. “We—must tell the other
s. I owe them that...” He hauled himself to his feet. “Come on, then. Let’s go.” Without looking at either of them, he left the room.
Jason glanced at Verity and sighed, shaking his head. He knew just how Stone felt: after all, it had been he who had let Lissy break free of his grasp, even after Stone had told him not to let go no matter what. He suspected that once they got home, neither he nor Stone would be worth a damn for the next several days.
They reached the van. Jason headed for the driver’s side, but Stone waved him away and got in himself. The radio blared to life with some cheerful tune when he turned the key, and he nearly ripped the knob off in his haste to shut it up. They drove in silence back to the building in Mountain View.
Despite the lateness of the hour, flickering lights shone inside the section of building where the Forgotten group had set up their camp. All of them except Frank the Scribbler looked up as Stone, Jason, and Verity appeared in the doorway.
“How did it—” Marilee began, but then she caught sight of their faces. “Oh, my God...” She struggled to her feet far faster than her ample frame normally moved.
The others got up too, and hurried over to where the three still stood framed in the doorway, not entering the room. “What happened?” Lamar asked, frowning, looking past them as he obviously tried to spot Lissy.
“Where’s Lissy?” Hector demanded.
“Oh, no,” Marilee said, eyes wide. “Did something go wrong? Did you—get caught doing whatever you were doing? Is Lissy hurt? Did she get arrested?”
Stone bowed his head. “She’s…she’s dead, Marilee.” His voice was barely audible.
She stared at him, as did the others. “D-dead?” she whispered.
“How?” Lamar moved in closer. “What happened?”
The Forgotten swarmed around them and hustled them inside. “Please,” Marilee begged, “Tell us what happened. Are you—are you sure—?”
Jason nodded without looking at them. “We’re sure.” His voice was rough as he struggled not to let it crack.