Threshold

by King, R. L.

  “Where—is her body?” Lamar asked. “You didn’t leave it—”

  Stone looked like he was trying hard not to break down. “There…is no body, Lamar.”

  “Then how can you be sure—?”

  “We saw it happen,” Stone said. He met Lamar’s gaze. “We…saw. There was no—no way anyone could have—”

  “You let something kill her?” Hector demanded, his voice loud and accusing. “You were supposed to take care of her. That’s why we let her go with you. She trusted you to protect her!”

  “Hector—” Marilee began.

  “Shut up!” he ordered. “This is Lissy, Marilee. Our Lissy. He didn’t know her like we did. He didn’t care. Look at him—always with his experiments and his studies—he don’t give a fuck about any of us normal people, except what he can con us into doing so he can get more power. I know his type. He can’t fool me. He’s all about power, that one is.”

  “Now just a—” Verity started to protest, indignant.

  Stone put a hand on her arm. “Don’t, Verity,” he murmured. “I deserve that.”

  “Fuck yeah you do!” Hector’s face clouded over with rage. Before anyone could stop him, he lunged forward and lashed out with a meaty fist, catching Stone full in the chin. The mage, who hadn’t even raised a hand to defend himself, went over backward, crashed into the wall with a sickening thud, and slid to the floor.

  “Hector, no!” Lamar and Marilee moved in on either side of him and each grabbed one of his arms, while Jason stepped between him and Stone before he could wade in for another shot.

  “Calm down,” Jason said. “That isn’t gonna help anybody, Hector.”

  Verity ran over to where Stone had fallen, then glared at Hector. “You knocked him out!”

  “Good!” Hector yelled, still struggling in his friends’ grips. “I hope I killed the bastard!”

  “Hector! You don’t mean that!” Marilee was shocked.

  “I don’t care if he means it or not,” Jason growled. “But you take one more step toward Al, man, and I’ll lay you out so hard you won’t wake up until next week. Got it? Now sit the fuck down, or go smoke a joint or whatever you gotta do to calm down, okay?”

  Hector, apparently catching something in Jason’s eyes that he didn’t like, backed down. Muttering something under his breath, he shook himself free of Lamar and Marilee and stomped out of the room. Meanwhile, Benny looked on silently from the far side, and Frank continued drawing on his tablet as if unaware anything was happening at all.

  As soon as Hector was gone, it was as if all the air went out of Jason. His shoulders slumped and his posture sagged. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to get like that. He has a right to be upset—”

  “We’re all upset,” Marilee said, tears running down her wrinkled cheeks. She moved over and helped Verity lay Stone out flat, shoving a pile of blankets under his head. Blood ran down from the corner of his mouth where Hector’s punch had driven his cheek into his teeth; she dabbed at it with the corner of a handkerchief.

  “Can you fix him up?” Jason asked Lamar. “Hector popped him pretty hard into that wall. He could have a concussion.” He felt guilty because he hadn’t anticipated Hector’s plan and intercepted it. He was feeling guilty for a lot of things tonight.

  Lamar nodded and silently moved over next to Stone. His Forgotten ability—healing—was a rare one, and highly valuable to his group and their allies.

  The others, meanwhile, sat back down in their circle of sleeping bags and pillows. Jason and Verity joined them once they determined that Stone was in good hands.

  “Is there anything you can tell us?” Marilee asked, wiping her eyes with a napkin she’d pulled out of one of her bags.

  Jason sighed. “Not a lot. The thing Al wanted to try—none of us had any way to know Lissy would react like she did. He took every precaution he could think of. Believe me, he was as worried about her getting hurt as you were. More so, since he was responsible for her. But when we—started the experiment—she didn’t just freak out and stand still like Verity did. She—” He spread his hands. “I was holding tight to her to make damn sure she didn’t get away, but—she ripped her arm out of my grip and took off, screaming something about the Evil. I don’t know where she got strength like that, but I couldn’t hold her.”

  “The Evil?” Lamar headed back now; apparently whatever healing he’d done on Stone hadn’t been complicated. “You said whatever you were doing didn’t have anything to do with the Evil.”

  “It didn’t,” Jason said. “She yelled something about the Evil being everywhere—but there weren’t any Evil around. There couldn’t have been, where we were.”

  Verity looked serious. “Believe me, Jason, if she felt anything like I did, she wasn’t thinking straight at all. It really does feel like your brain’s being pulled apart. It was probably just the first thing that came to her mind, since she was so sensitive to the Evil.”

  Marilee stared down at her hands in her lap. “I knew she shouldn’t go—but she wanted to help so much, and she was hardly ever that together...”

  “Al tried to go after her,” Jason said. He scrubbed at his face with his hands, shoving stray strands of hair out of his eyes. “He tried—even though it would have been suicide. I grabbed him and pulled him back. Believe me, if I’d thought there was any chance—” His voice broke and he fell silent.

  Marilee patted his hand. “I know, dear. I know.”

  They all sat there in silence for a long time, each one staring at his or her hands, no one meeting anyone else’s eyes. Hector did not return. After about ten minutes, the sound of Stone stirring to consciousness broke the silence.

  Jason and Verity both jumped up and went over to him. “Al?” Jason called. “You okay?”

  Stone opened his eyes and looked up at the two of them. He looked confused for a moment, reaching up to rub his jaw. “Someone—hit me.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “Hector laid you out pretty good.”

  “But—it doesn’t hurt.” He rose to a seated position and looked over at the Forgotten in their circle. Marilee and Lamar watched him.

  “Lamar fixed you up,” Verity told him. “You all right?”

  Stone thought about that for a moment and then lowered his eyes, shaking his head. “No. I am not all right. I am about as far from all right as it’s possible to be, frankly. But my jaw and my head don’t hurt, if that’s what you’re asking.” Slowly he got to his feet and went over to the seated Forgotten. He regarded them for a long moment in silence.

  “I—don’t even know what to say to you,” he said softly. “You trusted me to keep your friend safe, and I—wasn’t worthy of your trust. I don’t know how I can even ask you to forgive me. I don’t even know if I should. I’d understand completely if you told me to get the hell out of your sight and that you never wanted to see me again.”

  Lamar’s face was full of sadness and compassion. “Dr. Stone—you didn’t mean for what happened to happen, did you? You had no way to know it would go the way it did?”

  Stone shook his head. “Of course not. But that’s no excuse. I should have been paying more attention—should have been more careful—”

  Benny muttered something that nobody could hear. Marilee shushed him. “Jason told us how you tried to go after her, to save her from—whatever it was.”

  “It wasn’t good enough. I should never have taken her in there in the first place. I shouldn’t have let her talk me into—”

  Verity swiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “What about me? If it hadn’t been for me and my stupid problem, you wouldn’t even have tried it.”

  “Listen, all of you,” Lamar said, and his soft voice was stern. “It sounds like you did everything you could. There’s no way to take it back now—it’s happened, it’s over, and we have to go on. The world’s a
dangerous place these days. Any one of us could die tomorrow. But blaming yourselves—or each other—” He looked around at his fellow Forgotten. “—won’t bring Lissy back.” The doctor he used to be many years ago was evident in his tone. “We’ll cry, and we’ll mourn our friend, maybe we’ll even be angry for a while—and we’ll go on.” He looked down. “There isn’t much else we can do.”

  Stone sighed. “That’s a fine speech, Lamar. I’m grateful that you’re so forgiving. Perhaps someday I will be as well.” He looked around at them all, then dropped his gaze, turned, and started for the door without another word.

  After a moment, Jason and Verity followed him. Verity paused, ran back, and threw her arms around Marilee. The old lady hugged her back, and then she broke free and ran out the door after Jason.

  None of them said a word on the trip back. When they reached Stone’s townhouse, Verity ventured, “Do you—want us to stay?”

  Stone shook his head. “No. You go on home. I’ll—see you tomorrow.”

  Jason motioned for Verity to wait for him in the car. When he and Stone were alone, he eyed the mage critically. “Al, are you gonna be okay? You’re not planning anything—”

  “Anything?” Stone’s tone held a harsh little laugh. “Beyond possibly getting devastatingly drunk and passing out in a stupor so I don’t have to think about this for a while? No.”

  Jason had actually been contemplating the same thing himself, but he sighed. “You know that doesn’t work, right?”

  “That’s why I said ‘possibly,’” the mage said in his lifeless monotone. “Go home, Jason. Verity needs you right now. I don’t.”

  Jason nodded. He turned and headed toward the car. After a few steps he stopped and turned back. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

  “Good night, Jason.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Jason and Verity arrived back at Stone’s place late the following morning, they expected to find him passed out on the couch or the floor. Instead, he answered the door on the first knock. He looked like he hadn’t slept, but there was no hint of alcohol on him.

  “Decided not to?” Jason asked, as Verity gave her brother a confused look.

  Stone shrugged. “Didn’t think I deserved to forget about it.”

  Jason had considered the same thing Stone had, but his reasons for not following through were much less philosophical: he’d gotten home and almost immediately fallen asleep, which in retrospect had probably been a bad idea, given the dreams he’d had. He didn’t look any better than Stone did. The only reason Verity seemed more awake than the two of them was that she normally did her goth-style makeup to look like she had hollow eyes, so there wasn’t much difference between that and the real thing.

  Jason threw himself down on the couch. “So now what?”

  Stone didn’t answer. He wandered the room, his restless gaze moving from one random object to the next.

  “Poor Lissy...” Verity sat down next to Jason and stared at her hands. “Do you think they’ll have some kind of—memorial or something? Should we go if they do? Would they even want us to go?”

  “I wonder if Hector ever came back,” Jason said. He knew he was just making small talk—they all were. But he couldn’t get his mind to focus on anything long enough to examine it. “He was pretty pissed at us last night.”

  “At me,” Stone corrected. “And he was justified.”

  “No he wasn’t,” Verity said. “I mean, he was justified to be upset, but you didn’t tell Lissy to do what she did. You told her not to, and she insisted she wanted to help. He heard that.”

  “I don’t think you should take it personally, Al,” Jason said. “I get the impression Hector’s always kind of had—anger management issues.”

  Stone dropped into an armchair. “On top of everything else,” he said without looking at them, “there wasn’t even any point to what we did. Even given the relatively trivial reason we were performing the experiment, I didn’t get any further in figuring out the problem than I was before.”

  Verity looked up, her eyes shiny again. “I don’t even want to use those stupid portals! Lissy died trying to help us figure out something we didn’t even need to know. I was being selfish.”

  “V, don’t do that,” Jason ordered. “But Al—you did get something, didn’t you? I mean, Lissy freaked out just like V did. So doesn’t that mean your guess was right? That it is related to being Forgotten?”

  Stone shrugged. “Possibly. It’s another data point. But she didn’t react like Verity.”

  “What do you mean?” Jason tried to remember the exact sequence of events that occurred inside the portal, but his brain stubbornly refused to serve them up. All he could remember was screaming and Lissy running off and the blood—so much blood.

  “I don’t know how much you noticed—I know it’s hard to put things together after the fact, given how horribly awry everything went, but…Lissy didn’t just stand there and scream like Verity did. She ran. And she was lucid. Didn’t you hear? She didn’t even sound like herself.”

  Jason thought about that, trying to remember. “You’re right,” he said at last. “She sounded like a—a different person, almost. Not dippy. Not confused. But she kept saying something about the Evil. What was that about?”

  Stone shook his head. “I don’t know. She said something like—” he paused, replaying the events in his mind. “Like, ‘they’re all around. They’re everywhere.’”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, though,” Verity said. “How could the Evil be in the Overworld?”

  “I don’t know,” Stone said again. “Verity, can you remember anything about your experience? Did you sense the Evil?”

  She sighed. “I don’t even remember. Aside from the feeling that my brain was being pulled out through every hole in my head, I don’t think I noticed much. It was just…pain.”

  Jason was thinking. “Al—is there any chance that…the Evil somehow followed us into the Overworld?”

  “I don’t see how,” Stone said. “How could they have done? There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and obviously none of us were possessed. Even if somehow there were free-floating Evil around, Lissy was extraordinarily sensitive to their presence. And not only was she not reacting, she was acting more lucid than usual. Even Marilee commented on it.”

  “Yeah...you’re right,” he said. “Just grasping at straws here.” He leaned forward, dropping his forehead down into his hands with a loud sigh. “It almost seems like that’s where they’re coming from in the first place. But that doesn’t make any sense. Didn’t you say the portals have been around for a long time?”

  Stone nodded. “Decades. Mages first discovered how to build them back in my grandfather’s day.”

  “Yeah. The Evil’s only been here—that we know of, anyway—for the last few years,” Verity said. “It doesn’t make sense that they’d stay quiet that long.”

  “True,” Jason said. “But it still seems weird to me, the whole thing about the Overworld and having to stay calm when you travel so you don’t attract whatever those things are, and the Evil feed on negative emotion. I still can’t help wondering if they’re related somehow.”

  Stone nodded. “The thought’s crossed my mind more than once that the two could be connected, especially given that the Evil thrives on emotion the same way the Overworld’s residents do, but—” He spread his hands. “—it just doesn’t make sense. Perhaps they’re some sort of related entity. That would be difficult to prove, but it could explain why Lissy reacted as she did.”

  Jason shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. It was just a crazy thought about the Evil. I mean, how could they be related to the Overworld, when the portals have been around as long as they have? The only way I can think of would be if normally they’re stuck in there, but something happened five years ago that—I dunno—somehow let them get out? But surely someb
ody would have noticed…”

  He stopped, because Stone had suddenly flung himself out of his chair and stood bolt upright, an odd and rather crazed look in his eyes. “Al?”

  “Bloody...hell,” the mage whispered.

  “What?” Verity demanded.

  “Al? What’s going on?” Jason got up too, staring at him. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  He looked startled, as if he had just realized they were in the room with him. “I have to go,” he said abruptly. “I’ll be back later today.”

  “What the hell—?” Jason started, but Stone had already swept out of the room.

  “Uh—” Verity said, confused, looking at the doorway through which the mage had disappeared. “What just happened?”

  “I have no idea.” He sighed. “Well, Al always did like his reveals. I guess we’ll find out when he gets back. Meantime, I have to get to work soon. You want to come along and help out, or stay here and practice levitating frogs?”

  Stone didn’t show up again until almost five o’clock. He came in through the front door of the restaurant, carrying a briefcase and looking preoccupied. “When do you get off work?” he asked Jason, who was in the middle of ringing up a takeout order for a woman with two small children in tow. His tone held a strange urgency.

  “Sec,” Jason said. He finished what he was doing and then waved Stone off toward the back. “Al, what’s going on? Where have you been? You just take off without a word and—”

  “We have a lot to discuss,” Stone interrupted. “When are you done here? And where’s Verity?”

  “Uh—back at your place, I think. Working on her—homework.”

  “All right, then. Meet me there as soon as you can.” And once again, he turned around and left without another word.

  It took Jason almost two hours to finish up at the restaurant and fight his way through traffic to Palo Alto. It wasn’t Stone who answered the door this time, but Verity. She looked impatient. “Where have you been, Jason?” she demanded.