by Donna Hosie
Elinor huffs. “Medusa is missing and moments away from being snatched by Skin-Walkers and all ye can think about is yer big ol’ stomach?”
“Your point, my princess?”
“I’ll stay here,” I say. “Leave your axe with me, Alfarin, and you two see if you can get us some food from somewhere.” Elinor is now scowling at me. “Elinor, don’t look at us like that. We have to eat. Our brains work better when they’re fed, and I haven’t eaten anything but a few strawberries since we got back from 1666.”
She starts walking away. I can hear her muttering under her breath about boys having one-track minds.
“How will we pay?” asks Alfarin seriously.
I shrug. “Our money is useless here because it’s future currency, and I’m not even sure they had credit cards back in the 1960s. You’ll just have to improvise.”
“How?”
“You’re in Hell for a reason, Alfarin—steal something! And hurry up. Our Medusa arrives in just over seven minutes.”
My attention turns back to Medusa’s former home. I can hear raised voices coming from inside, but the conversation is followed by the echoing laughter of a crowd. I think it may be a television turned up really loud.
The screen door suddenly flies open, but it isn’t Medusa who steps onto the wooden porch and down the front steps. It’s a man.
He isn’t as tall as me, but then again, few guys are. He has long, sun-streaked blond hair and sideburns all the way down to his chin. He looks as if he could be in his late thirties, but he dresses as if he wishes he were younger. For a few moments, I wonder if he’s Medusa’s brother, but he looks nothing like her, and as far as I know, Medusa was an only child like me—well, before M.J. 2.0, anyway.
The guy slaps his hands together and heads toward the open hood of the Dodge Polara.
And right away, with a sudden surge of hatred, I realize who he is.
This is Medusa’s stepfather.
Alfarin’s axe is lying by my feet. My first raging thought is to charge at the mechanic and slice his head off. My hands are reaching for the handle when the screen door clatters open again and another figure comes running out of the house. The guy immediately looks up, and the figure freezes in her tracks.
It’s Medusa.
Only, right away I know it isn’t my Medusa. It’s the living Melissa from this time. She looks the same: mad corkscrew hair, skinny little arms and legs dressed in denim shorts, and a peach-colored top that ties around the back of her neck.
But something is missing.
The living Melissa looks back at the house and runs down the path. She opens the gate and makes to sprint across the road, but the mechanic, her stepfather, slams down the hood and catches her, holding her tightly by the wrist. She doesn’t see me standing opposite, peering out from behind a bush like a child, debating whether to run across to the car and punch his teeth in.
Shadows of the living and inanimate are stretched along the road as the sun sets lower in the sky. I can hear Medusa pleading with her stepfather. I reach down and pick up Alfarin’s axe.
A woman calls from the house.
“Melissa . . .”
It’s the reason I need to stay where I am. This isn’t Medusa—my Medusa. That girl is Melissa Pallister, and she doesn’t know it yet, but her life will end in one week, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1967. I can’t change this because it isn’t mine to change. I need to wait for Medusa to appear; she’ll know what to do.
But I don’t let go of the axe.
I think back to that first night in New York. Medusa awoke from yet another nightmare and told us for the first time how she died.
I only regret that I didn’t take him with me.
What does he do to her? Has it already happened? Where is Medusa? Why this moment in time?
The voice calls again. It quivers, as if worried. The living Melissa breaks free from her stepfather’s grasp and runs back into the house. He turns, kicks his car, and wipes his top lip with the back of his hand. Then he leans in through an open window and reappears seconds later with a bottle, which he swigs from before going back into the house, stumbling over the steps in his haste.
Alfarin and Elinor reappear; both are looking flushed and sheepish. Elinor dips in behind the bush and gesticulates to the house; she has a glass bottle of milk in one hand and a loaf of white bread in the other.
“We were watching from back there,” she says quietly.
“Not ours?” whispers Alfarin.
I shake my head. I don’t take the bread or milk from Elinor, or the cookies that Alfarin has stuffed into his pockets. It looks as though they’ve raided a 1967 fridge.
“Any sign of our M yet?”
“Who do you think that man is?” asks Alfarin thickly. Cookie crumbs spray into his blond stubble as he speaks.
“Her stepfather,” I reply.
“Why are ye holding Alfarin’s axe?”
“I was looking after it,” I mumble.
Alfarin takes it from me. “Whatever that man has done, we cannot take his life with intent, Mitchell,” he says solemnly. “If there is one thing I have learned on this journey, it is the honor of living that we take for granted. I fear now that some of my clan, those we believed had been taken by Up There, have become victims of the Skin-Walkers. Too many killed in cold blood, for enjoyment, for the thrill. I will not allow that fate to befall you, my friend.”
There’s a sudden change in the air: a quick blast of intense heat.
“What are you doing here?” gasps a voice I feared I would start to forget.
I turn around and my hand connects with burning-hot skin. My Medusa is standing right next to us. Instinctively, I fling my arms around her and crush her tightly. Alfarin and Elinor join in the group hug. And now I know why the living Melissa didn’t appear real to me when I first saw her, because what I have clasped against my chest is pure soul and nothing else. In the same way I recognized those angels in the cemetery, I know a devil when I see one.
“Why did you leave us—leave me?” I growl into the mass of curls that is invading my mouth and nostrils.
“How did you get here before me?” she replies in a muffled voice that’s smothered by my T-shirt. “I left you just seconds ago.”
“A lot has happened since then—we can time-travel, remember? So we went back to Hell and Elinor stole your devil resources file. Did you seriously think we wouldn’t follow you?”
“You’ve let him corrupt you, El.”
“She’s been worried sick the Skin-Walkers were going to get you. We all were.”
I can feel Medusa’s hot little body trembling under my grip. I hate her and love her at the same time.
“The Skin-Walkers were there, in the fire, as I traveled. They were snapping and screaming at me. I could see every soul the Skin-Walkers have taken, begging in the flames. They were reaching for me, touching me; they wouldn’t let me go.”
“If you kill your stepfather, the Skin-Walkers will take you,” says Alfarin gravely, releasing us all from his grasp.
Medusa gasps. “I was never going to kill him; I just wanted to frighten him.”
And now I pull away from Medusa. I can hear her voice crying in the background, and yet her mouth in front of me isn’t moving—this is weird and confusing.
“Why did you leave us?”
“Because I guessed the Skin-Walkers were after me and I wanted to get them away from you . . . and . . . and because I need to protect my mom,” replies Medusa, and for the first time, her eyes take in the house she hasn’t seen in forty years. “Mom goes to pieces after I die, and he takes everything from her—her money, her dignity, everything. He gets worse, Mitchell. Rory does horrible things, sick things, to girls even younger than me. And people blame her—for not stopping him sooner.”
“He abused ye?” whispers Elinor, asking the question neither Alfarin nor I want to ask.
Medusa nods and says softly, “He hurt me, El.”
It’s a good
thing Alfarin has taken that axe back, because right now I’m prepared to risk the wrath of the Skin-Walkers. But judging by the look of boiling hatred on Alfarin’s face, so is he.
“Yer mother was not to blame for what happened, M.”
“That doesn’t stop people, though,” she replies. “People go after her, El. Some of the moms and dads of the other girls he hurt. They burn the house down.”
“But how do you know this?” I ask.
“Because I’ve seen her future, Mitchell. I looked into the Viciseometer back in Hell. You weren’t the only one who was stealing it out of the safe, you know.”
“Ye have been watching yer mom?”
“I don’t understand how you got the Viciseometer, Medusa,” I say. “How did you get into the safe?”
“You wrote the combination down on a piece of paper to memorize, Mitchell. I saw the numbers and put them into my cell phone because I thought they belonged to another girl’s cell phone. I was going to crank-call—but they never connected anywhere. Then I overheard you and Septimus talking about the safe combination and I put two and two together. The second Septimus mentioned the Viciseometer, I knew that was where he would put it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me?”
“Because we all have secrets, Mitchell. I used the Viciseometer again in the bathroom of the Plaza after I had that nightmare. Just seeing how her life is ruined by what he does in the future . . . She did nothing wrong, but she gets blamed anyway. It was breaking my heart. I want to change her life, not my death. I owe it to her.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Medusa. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
“But you don’t understand the guilt I’ve been carrying, Mitchell. She lives on thinking I killed myself, but I only wanted to scare her into believing me about the abuse. That’s what haunts me in my sleep. I feel myself slipping . . . falling . . .”
Medusa breaks off. I try to hug her but she pushes me away.
“We only want to help ye,” sniffles Elinor. She’s trying really hard not to cry, and seeing her so upset just makes me angrier.
“Please try to understand,” begs Medusa. “I thought if I came back now, like this—dead—then maybe I could scare him into stopping before he hurts those other girls. But I had to come back to a time when I’m still living, since I need to appear to my mom, too. I need to warn her, I need to make her listen to me, and I can’t do that after my death because I don’t want to frighten her or make her think she’s going crazy. I can’t change Rory if I live, but I think I stand a chance of stopping him and saving my mom now that I’m dead.”
Medusa pulls me farther behind the bush. Tiny thorns scratch the bare skin of my arms, leaving faint white lines. She’s trembling and sweating as the effects of lone time travel catch up with her.
“Are you all okay?” she groans.
“Do you care?”
I think Medusa’s sharp intake of air is real, as is the hurt look on her face, but I don’t trust her, and I hate myself for thinking it. I don’t want to be an asshole to Medusa. She’s everything to me. But she left us—she left me. I promised her I wouldn’t do that to her for any reason. Why couldn’t she have just trusted us to help her, to protect her?
“I was trying to save you from the Skin-Walkers, Mitchell. I was willing to spend an eternity here alone to keep you all safe.”
“Well, congratulations, because you failed miserably. We are now in more trouble than you know. Septimus came after us with a Viciseometer he stole from Up There. We traveled back to Hell; Elinor stole your records and we saw mine, which were put in your drawer. I’ve discovered that my mother has remarried and had another baby to replace me, and I saw my death but couldn’t stop it because if I live, everything else changes.”
I pause in my angry rant because Osmosis of the Dead has fully caught up with Medusa and she is throwing up into the bush. And now I feel sick with guilt, because even though Medusa should never have left us, I know she really was just trying to protect us. It’s what I had planned to do at the beginning of all this. Go on alone to protect my best friends. And what Medusa was facing was way worse than what I went through. For years she’s kept her life and death secret. The fact that she has now shared everything with us means she does trust us completely. She trusts me.
Elinor makes no sound as she leaves Alfarin’s side and walks to Medusa.
“What is yer plan, M?”
“I want to see my mom first,” replies Medusa. Her eyes are watering. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “After that, I’ll confront him.”
“Then I’ll go with ye.”
Elinor places an arm around Medusa’s waist and supports her as they cross the road to Medusa’s former house. The sun is lingering on the horizon as if Up There is watching what happens next. I swear I can hear angels laughing in the wind.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” mumbles Alfarin, scratching at his face.
“Me too.”
I look around the park we landed in. A rusty-looking swing squeaks, even though the chains are still. Garbage is strewn across the dying grass. Alfarin and I stare at the house. My eyes hurt with the effort as I try to glimpse anything through the grimy windows.
And then a wolf howls in the distance.
“It’s just a dog,” I say quickly, but Alfarin and I are already running across the street.
Another, longer howl follows us into the house. The screen door is pulled off its rusting hinges as Alfarin tugs it open with one violent yank. Whatever animal is making that noise, it sounds as if it’s in pain. A caustic, rotten smell washes over me and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Oh, crap, not now, not here.
“Elinor, Elinor!” yells Alfarin.
I shout for Medusa, but all I can hear is the gushing of water filling an upstairs bath and more audience laughter from a black-and-white television flickering in a small room to my left. The volume has been turned up really high, and I get a feeling of dread that it’s meant to block out the sounds of something else—something happening upstairs. I can hear creaking floorboards and then a muffled thump. Crooked pictures of farm animals line the wall by the stairs. They shift even more as the vibration shudders down like an aftershock. I notice a cream-colored rotary-dial telephone on a stool by the banister. The cord has been ripped out of the wall.
No one can call for help from this house.
The Viciseometer is in my hand, although I can’t remember reaching into my pocket for it. I attempt to move the red needle around the numbers on the red face, but my movements are too jerky and I can’t fix time properly. We shouldn’t have come here. The shadows of the dead have followed us and are howling with laughter at our stupidity.
Alfarin and I crash into the kitchen and come to a skidding halt on the sticky linoleum floor. A woman is aiming a handgun directly at us. It vibrates violently in her shaking hand.
“Mom!” begs Medusa; she and Elinor are standing on the other side of a scratched Formica table. “Mom, please put the gun down.” But as Medusa takes a step toward the woman she called Mom, the gun is pointed at her.
Elinor screams and puts herself in front of Medusa; her long, pale hands are raised in surrender. Alfarin makes a movement toward the girls, but then the gun is pointed at him.
“Mom, it’s me,” pleads Medusa, but instead of listening, the woman cocks the trigger with her thumb.
“You aren’t my daughter.”
Another wolf howls, and this time, it is joined by another.
They’re just dogs, I keep telling myself. Just a couple of mangy old mutts that have been left outside.
“We mean you no harm, woman,” says Alfarin, stepping forward. His hands are raised exactly like Elinor’s. “We are here to see the man called Rory. We will deliver a message and then we will leave.”
“Mommy.”
Medusa has gone to pieces. Seeing her mother again after all this time has driven thoughts of confronting
her stepfather out of her head. She just wants her mom.
I have no idea what to do. We’re already dead, so we can’t be killed again, but I have no wish to see what kind of damage a bullet can cause to a dead face.
I lean in toward Alfarin and whisper, “Can you get the gun if I get the girls out?”
Alfarin grunts, and I take that as a yes.
Then I hear heavy, pounding footsteps on the stairs in the hall. Someone is coming down.
“You can’t see your living version!” I yell at my Medusa. “We have to leave now.”
“Mom!” cries Medusa as Alfarin creeps forward. “You have to get away from Rory. He’ll destroy you. He’ll destroy other girls. He’s evil, Mom.”
Then the stepfather is standing in the doorway to the kitchen. For a moment he looks confused; he glances upstairs, and then he looks at the dead soul that is sobbing in his kitchen. He swears.
“Now, Alfarin!” I yell, and Alfarin throws himself on top of Medusa’s mom. The gun is knocked from her hand and it slides across the floor and stops by the stepfather’s feet.
“Out now!” I shout to the girls, pushing them through a single-paned glass door that leads into an untidy back garden. Spare car parts are strewn across the long grass. The howling surrounds us in the evening air as everything in this horrible world starts turning against us.
“What about Alfarin?” screams Elinor, trying to get back into the house. “We can’t leave him in there.”
Then a gunshot shatters time.
29. Can’t Remember
“Alfarin!” screams Elinor.
“Mom!” screams Medusa.
Both girls make to run back into the house, but I have both of them by the waist. They’re pulling away from me like a couple of puppies on leashes, and the heels of my sneakers are dragging in the dry, dusty earth. There’s screaming coming from the kitchen, but I don’t know whether it’s the living Melissa or her mom. I wait to hear Alfarin’s booming voice, but there is nothing.
Medusa’s weight is easing slightly, but she’s still struggling. Elinor goes completely limp as Alfarin finally crashes through the back door and into her arms.