Whatever that thing was.
“I’m calm,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
I took another deep breath.
“Just empty your mind,” she said. “Just think of nothing.”
I closed my eyes for a second, but the more nothing I tried to think of, the more stuff entered my mind. Images popped up, dozens of them. Snippets of the last couple of days and worries I had for the future. Not just worries about these local families, but the family I’d hoped to start building with Bridget. I thought about finding her wrinkled up sugar daddy hiding under her bed. What was I even thinking? She would’ve been a terrible parent, and my mom would’ve hated her. Dad was only nice to her because she was pretty. I could imagine her forgetting to pick the kids up from school because she was busy getting her nails done. I could also imagine her calling them an Uber instead of picking them up. It was easy to imagine because it had happened to me once after coming home from a business trip.
The more I tried to empty my mind, the more it filled up with meaningless crap.
“Your brain is all over the place, Agent Hawthorne,” said Sylvia. “Stop trying so hard. Don’t think about anything. Don’t do anything. Just be.”
“Just be . . . ” I repeated, feeling hopelessly lost. “Okay . . . ”
“Just . . . be . . . ”
That’s when Lafayette chose to crawl into my lap and wedge his body against my thighs as I sat on the floor. The tip of his tail curled slowly to one side, and then the other. Was this a test? Had Sylvia sent him over here to keep my brain focused on one thing? Because right now, I only had one thought in my head.
Don’t piss off the cat.
I rested my hands on my knees and sat as still as I could. I wasn’t going to move. I wasn’t going to push him away. I wasn’t going to pet him.
Don’t do anything . . . I thought. Just be . . .
And with that, my mind floated away on a cloud of nothingness, and all that existed were the sensations of my body and the breath that ebbed and flowed from my lungs. There were no more thoughts or worries, no time. Just blankness, and with it came a sense of serenity.
“Very good,” said Sylvia. “You’re a fast learner.”
Elena smiled again at me, and for some reason, her smile didn’t just reach my eyes. It reached into my soul, my heart, right into that sense of being Sylvia talked about.
Despite the darkness and the musty smell of the cats, that smile filled me with a fresh sunbeam of white light. And right then, with the three of us sitting together, I felt as though we were connected. I even felt connected to the damned cat in my lap, along with all the others around us. It felt like being linked by an invisible string that ran through Sylvia.
“We’re ready,” she said, and finally stopped scribbling. “Let’s begin.”
For a second, she sat in silence with perfect stillness. I could barely see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. The only flicker of movement on her face seemed to be coming from the candlelight. She reminded me of the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s. For a brief moment, I thought maybe she’d died, and I thought about leaning over to check for a pulse. But before I could move, she shifted abruptly and blurted out, “I’m going now.”
“Going where?”
“Into the other side. I’m leaving this dimension.”
I looked to Elena and saw her lean back against a chair, gently stroking a fluffy orange cat as it purred. There was no trace of worry on her face. It was the same look my mom had in her eyes when she used to watch Oprah.
“What do you see?” Elena asked Sylvia. “Can you see Elphame? Can you see any of the fae kingdoms?”
“Not yet. It’s very dark. There’s a lot of . . . noise. Not noise that comes from sound but . . . interference. Like static, as though someone’s blocking the channel.”
The way she spoke made me think of basic, rudimentary technical mishaps, not entering magical kingdoms in other dimensions.
“Yes, static,” she confirmed. “There’s a lot of it. I’ve experienced it before and it’s very difficult to overcome. It’s . . . a defense.”
“What kind of defense?” I asked.
“Someone has put all this interference here so people can’t see; so they can’t get in.”
“It’s a psychic defense,” explained Elena.
“Yes, that’s exactly it,” nodded Sylvia. “Whoever put it up knew there would be people seeking answers about the kingdom. This is meant to stop them.”
She flinched as though she’d been hit, then held a hand to her chest as though she’d been afflicted with a terrible pain.
“It hurts,” she cried, leaning forward. “All this noise, it’s hurting me terribly.”
I didn’t understand what she was going through, but I could see the pain on her face. Whatever she was experiencing was very real. So real that it made her pale cheeks turn dark pink and made her eyes water. She wrinkled up her face as she dug her nails into the front of her nightgown and fell forward so her face was almost touching her knees.
“Sylvia, do I need to call an ambulance?”
“This is more than a defense,” she said, ignoring me. “It’s an attack. They’re trying to push people out of the kingdom. Trying to force out those who can see their darkness for what it really is.”
“Just stop this, okay?” I begged, laying my hand on her back. I could feel how hot and agitated she’d become as sweat poured through the thin fabric of her nightgown. “Sylvia, I’m worried about you.”
But she just shook me off and said, “I don’t ever stop. I never turn back! I’ve done this before and I’ve experienced worse.”
Lafayette was still sitting in my lap, unfazed by what was going on. Even Elena appeared relatively fine with what she was witnessing. Seeing the worry on my face, she reached over and pushed my hand off Sylvia.
“It’s okay,” she assured me. “Someone as experienced as her knows what they’re doing. She’s prepared for this.”
“Well, I’m not prepared for this. What if something happens to her? She looks like she’s having a heart attack.”
“She’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Sylvia’s stronger than you think.”
I was doubtful but felt like an amateur among experts. With no idea what to do, I sat back and gave Sylvia room.
Part of me still hoped none of this was real, that Sylvia was just a lonely, eccentric old woman playing the part of a psychic. Trying to be the skeptic I was raised and trained to be, I attempted to mentally detach myself from whatever Sylvia was experiencing. Instead, I tried to view it all as though I was simply examining a piece of evidence.
She was still clutching her chest and gritting her teeth from the pain as sweat poured down from her face. But the weirdest thing of all was the cats’ behavior. The ones that were previously purring were now violently thrashing their tails from side to side. Their pupils dilated as if they were homing in on prey, and the hair along their backs was sticking up. I didn’t know what they could see, but whatever it was angered them to the point of bringing out their claws which they scratched against the wooden floor.
“Where are you?” Elena asked Sylvia. “Are you still in the static?”
“I’m almost out of it. Good lord, it’s thick! Like walking through electrified molasses. It still hurts to high heaven. Feels like these grains of electricity are attacking every cell in my body. But I can get through it.”
She gritted her teeth one last time and held her breath as the beads of sweat on her brow trickled down her temples.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” she grunted. “I haven’t felt a defense as strong as this since . . . since . . . Since I entered . . . ”
She paused for a second and I leaned forward to hear her better.
“Since you entered where, Sylvia?”
Her jaw was clenched so tight it looked like the muscles of her cheekbones were ready to pop. Drops of sweat continued to roll down her face. Even though
she was wearing a mask, I could tell that her eyes were squeezed shut. The veins in her forehead pushed themselves to the surface of her paper-thin skin.
“Since I entered . . . .” she gasped. “Since I entered Hell.”
Hell . . . Did she really just say that?
I looked for a sign that I’d heard her wrong, but the terror in her voice and the pain that ran rampant through her body was obvious.
“Hell?” Elena repeated. “You’ve been there?”
I nearly fell over.
Here was my partner, asking this poor old woman about visiting Hell like she’d taken a rare trip to Antarctica.
She clutched her chest tight one last time as though the very word itself had sent her into a tailspin of agony. Then she let go of her nightgown, sucked in a deep gasp, and fell limp across the carpet.
“Sylvia!”
Elena and I rushed to her pale, sweat-covered body. She looked up through her thin, silvery wisps of hair, and rubbed her eyes after pulling the sleep mask from her face.
“Don’t worry about me,” she croaked, her voice sounding haggard yet relieved. “I’m safe now. I’ve reached the other side.”
17
Elena
“We need to end this now,” Logan said as he coaxed Sylvia up to a seated position. “Enough is enough. Someone’s going to get hurt.”
But as I noted the fear on his own face, I guessed it wasn’t just for Sylvia’s sake that he wanted to bring the session to an end. Whether he’d ever admit it or not, he was genuinely freaked out.
“I can keep going,” Sylvia argued, gently pushing Logan away from her. “I can handle this. We have to keep going.”
“But Sylvia, I’m worried about your safety,” he said.
“We have to go on,” she insisted. “It doesn’t hurt anymore now that I’m on the other side of the static. Might as well take a look around now that we’re here. Think of all those poor babies missin’ their mamas. I gotta at least try.”
And with that, she patted her hands down the sides of her arms as though she was dusting herself off, crossed her legs, and once again reached for her blindfold.
“Can we get on with it, then?”
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” asked Logan.
“She said she was,” I reminded him. “Sylvia wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
“What if she has a heart attack for fuck’s sake?”
Sylvia pulled down a corner of her blindfold and stared at him.
“I can hear you, Agent Hawthorne. Stop acting like I don’t know my own mind. I said I can do this and I’m doing it. Now let’s take our positions, shall we?”
Resuming our previous triangle formation, with the cats still forming a circle around us, we prepared ourselves to continue.
“I’m really not sure about this,” whispered Hawthorne.
“Shhh!” Sylvia hissed at him. “Elena? Hand me my pen, will you, honey?”
I picked it up and slid it into her arthritic hands. I half expected her to jab Logan with it, but she held it above a fresh sheet of paper instead.
“What are you seeing?”
“I see lots of grey. Like a mist.”
“What else?”
Her forehead wrinkled up over the top of her blindfold as she frowned.
“Figures,” she said. “Small figures. Like people crossed with ants. Maybe they’re sprites.”
Hawthorne turned and shot me a quizzical look.
“Sprites are like goblins,” I explained.
“But these aren’t like the regular ones I’ve seen,” elaborated Sylvia with a flick of her pen across the page. “They’re darker with bigger eyes. They’re more like a shadow. Oh! Their arms! Christ, their arms and legs are bent all over tarnation like they’re made of wood.”
Her arms began moving rapidly as though she couldn’t stop it, drawing so fast the ink from her leaky pen smudged across the paper. She scribbled at lightning speed as though her arm had been possessed by a laser jet printer.
Finding himself enthralled, Hawthorne leaned in closer to see the result of her manic drawing. At first, neither of us could make out what we were seeing. It looked like nothing more than chicken scratch, a mess of tangled inky scribbles and cobwebs trailing across the paper. But then the figures started to take shape. They were tiny at first, and then there were dozens of them. They resembled spiders more than people. That was until she started drawing the eyes. In nothing but a few strokes of her pen she’d illustrated a gaze so full of malice that it sent a jolt of evil into the pit of my stomach.
“They’re looking at me like this,” she said, her voice breaking as though she was close to tears. “They can see me plain as day. Dear lord.”
Logan’s mouth was one flat line of nervous trepidation. If this was his reaction when he was seeing just a drawing of sprites, I couldn’t imagine what he would feel if he saw them in real life.
“What are they doing?” I asked Sylvia.
“Just watching.”
“Are they moving towards you?”
“No, I’m moving towards them. They’re letting me walk through the grayness, but they’re watching every move I make. Oh . . . this is so much worse than aliens!”
“Do they know why you’re there?”
“They don’t know anything,” she said, gaining comfort from this observation. “They’re simple creatures with hardly the sense that god gave a mule.”
“Why are they there?” Logan asked.
Sylvia frowned again as though she was in pain, then shook her head ever so slightly like she was trying to shake out a disturbing thought.
“They’re telling me they’re here to watch. That’s all they do. They watch everything.”
“Everything down there?”
“Well . . . sounds like they watch everything up on the surface world too? They’re like . . . I don’t know . . . CCTV. They can force themselves between the cracks in the dimensions. They watch from the shadows of the world so their leader can learn as much as possible.”
“Who’s their leader?”
Sylvia shook her head again, struggling to understand what she was hearing on the other side.
“I don’t . . . I don’t . . . I can’t quite make it out. The Silver . . . ” She frowned and tilted one ear down towards the floor. “The Silver Lady? The Silver Queen? The one with the big black eyes.”
Logan’s eyes darted over to mine, and if it weren’t for the warmth of the candlelight, I’d have guessed he turned a few shades paler.
“Is she down there now?” I was desperate to know.
But Sylvia couldn’t answer because once again her arm was possessed and she was scribbling wildly. Endless lines of ink traveling across the page until a form emerged through the spaghetti strings of her drawing.
The first thing I saw was the long hair, then the enormous eyes followed, staring out at me from the page. Even though it was a sketch on a notebook, I felt like they could see me just like they had when I was a little girl, fleeing from her in the forest. It was the first time I’d seen Solana since that awful day. She felt as real on that paper as she’d felt in real life.
“Sylvia? Tell me, is she there?”
She said nothing, just gritted her teeth together and continued to scrawl. The outline of Solana’s long, flowing dress began to take shape.
“Sylvia? Sylvia! If she’s there, you have to run!”
When she didn’t answer again, I grew desperate. I grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her towards me.
“Sylvia! Get out of there!”
She struggled against my grasp, thrashing in my arms.
“Elena, let her go!” Logan yelled.
But I couldn’t. I had to know how close she was. I had to know if Solana was in reach.
“Listen to me Sylvia, you have to tell me if she’s there.”
With one hand still grabbing her left shoulder, I raised my other to her blindfold and gently peeled back the edge to look into her eyes.
The only thing I could see were the whites of her eyeballs as her eyes turned themselves back inside her head. She began to shake violently, her already stiff fingers twisting into unnatural shapes.
“Let her go!” Logan shouted, trying to pull her away from me, but I ignored him.
“Sylvia! Can you hear me?” I yelled.
“Agent Rivera! She’s having a goddamn seizure!” Logan screamed at me. “Get her on her side, now!”
“She’s not having a seizure! She’s seeing things. She’s seeing Solana!”
The two of us struggled against each other. Logan desperate to lay her down. Me dying to know more of her vision.
“Hawthorne, don’t you fucking touch her!”
“Put her in the fucking recovery position now, Rivera! She needs medical attention!”
“No, she doesn’t!”
“Goddammit Elena, listen to me right—”
His words were interrupted by a noise so loud it sent us both reeling back into the corners of the room with the cats sprinting in opposite directions. Even though my hands were pressed against my ears, it sounded like a train rattling through the house. The very walls were threatening to cave in. The air surrounding us roared like an airplane landing before promptly crashing into a fireball. It sounded like the descent into hell.
And that awful sound was coming from Sylvia’s mouth.
Her face was now nothing but a black hole from which the caustic sound emanated, filling the room at such force and volume I was sure my eardrums were about to burst. It was so loud and ferocious that it blew red hot wind around the sides of my face. Windows shattered as loose papers and cat toys flew around the room.
I felt a strong hand curl around my wrist. I opened my eyes to see Logan’s terrified face in front of mine.
“Elena! Run!”
The cats brave enough to stick around or too blind and deaf to care were now hissing and screaming with their claws out, ready to attack whatever force had possessed their owner. Logan’s grip on my arm tightened as he pulled me away from the center of the circle.
Wiretaps & Whiskers (The Faerie Files Book 1) Page 16