I scrambled in my pocket, pulled out the bullet, and placed it on top of the silver box, pressing them against one another with my thumbs.
From the depths of Palmer’s house came a sound, a concussion of air and energy just like the sound my burning house had made when it had imploded into my basement behind me.
“What are you d—” I heard Marcus say as I closed my eyes, and wished real hard, and the world went black.
33
A COUCH IN THE WOODS
I woke up with something digging into my side.
My back and butt were cold and damp, and I wondered how my bed had gotten wet.
I opened my eyes and saw stars, real stars, spread out above me like the universe had just been rendered in high definition. It was beautiful, but I had no idea why I was sleeping outside on the wet ground next to a couch.
Someone stirred near me, moaning, and withdrew their foot from my ribs.
I sat up slowly and looked around.
I was in the middle of the woods somewhere. Wet leaves were sticking to the back of my head, and I brushed them away. It must have rained while I slept. Except, my topside was completely dry. Next to me was a tacky couch, covered in dark lumpy shapes. One of the shapes moved and moaned again. People. A whole pile of them. On a couch in the woods.
In front of me, branches rustled and parted, and a dark shape came out of the trees.
“You’re awake,” Marcus said, the relief on his face clearly visible by the glow of my ghost hand.
“What—” I started to ask, but it all came crashing back then. The plan to rescue Emma. The discovery that Marcus wasn’t Marcus. The showdown in the hospital room under Mike Palmer’s house. The giant minus meter in the ceiling and the run for our lives. And finally, my crazy idea to combine the power of the bullet with Dr. Julian’s box to get us out of there. Well, apparently it had worked. I still had my ghost hand, and we weren’t dead. At least Marcus and I weren’t. “Are they okay?” I asked, glancing toward the couch.
“They’re fine,” Marcus said.
I still thought of him as Marcus. I couldn’t help it.
“Everyone’s still breathing anyway,” he clarified. He had a pile of blankets in his arms, and he was wearing a sweatshirt and jacket. He looked warm. I, on the other hand, was beginning to shiver.
“Where are we?” I asked, my teeth chattering a little.
“Just outside of camp. You have pretty good aim.”
“Everyone made it?”
“Even the couch,” he said, unfurling one of the blankets and wrapping it around my shoulders. He tossed the others over the forms on the couch, then came and sat down next to me. “How’d you do it?” he asked, his warm shoulder brushing mine.
“I used the—” I looked down at my hands. They were empty. I glanced around on the wet ground, searching for it.
“Looking for this?” Marcus asked, holding the smooth silver cube up in front of my face. He shook it and something rattled inside, metal clanking against metal.
I took it from him and shook it myself. “It’s inside,” I said, turning the cube this way and that, looking for an indent or crack, searching for any indication that the thing had an opening. There was nothing. It looked exactly like it had before—an impenetrable, solid, metal cube. Except the bullet was inside of it now, rattling when I shook it.
“What’s in there?” Marcus asked.
“The bullet.”
“Jason’s bullet?” he asked, sounding alarmed. “Then don’t shake it,” he snatched the cube from my hands. “That’s live ammo in there.”
“You shook it first,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, because I didn’t know what was in it. How’d it get in there?” he asked, looking for an opening like I just had. When he didn’t find one either, he handed the cube back to me, the question still in his eyes.
“I used them in combination,” I said. “The bullet and this. To wish us all out of there. I guess somehow they fused together.”
“How’d you even know to do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “It just came to me.”
“Well, good job. You saved us,” he said, admiration in his eyes and his voice, but with undertones of something else too. You saved us when I couldn’t. Is that what he was thinking?
“It never would have worked, you know?” I said.
“What?”
“Trading yourself in for Emma. He didn’t just want you, or an energy source. He wants all of us.”
“I know,” he said, staring down at his hands, “but I had to try. I couldn’t lose—” his voice broke off. He reached over and took my ghost hand, weighing it in his bigger, darker palm.
“I’m not her,” I said, gently pulling my hand away.
“Where the fuck are we?” a voice groaned, and Jason stood up from behind the couch.
I slipped the cube into my front sweatshirt pocket as Marcus turned and said, “We’re back at camp.”
Jason stumbled around the end of the sofa and sat on the arm, his gun still clutched in his hand.
“Back at camp? How the—Aw, man. She disappeared us,” he said, looking at me accusingly. “Why’d you go and do that?”
“Um, so we wouldn’t die,” I said.
“We weren’t gonna die,” Jason grumbled. “Not right away, anyway. I would have had time before we kicked it to blow that asshole’s head off.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to die quickly, or slowly,” I said. “Sorry if that ruined your killing spree.”
“Fuck yeah, it ruined my killing spree,” Jason leaned over me, his eyes glinting in the dark. “But I’m sure I can make up for it when that doctor comes for us with an army of CAMFers at his back.”
“Jason, his brain was fried,” Marcus said, standing up, trying to reason with him. “He’s not coming for us.”
“If not him, then some other CAMFer. They’re just gonna keep coming until we give them a reason not to,” Jason said, pushing past Marcus and marching toward the woods.
“Where are you going?” Marcus called after him.
“To kill him,” Jason said over his shoulder.
“It’s a two hour walk,” Marcus pointed out.
Jason stopped in his tracks, turned, and came walking back toward us. “Good point,” he said when he got to Marcus. “I’ll take my wheeler.”
“Yeah, about that,” Marcus said. “It seems to be missing.”
“Then I’ll take yours,” Jason snapped, not even stopping in his stride.
“Jason!” Marcus said, steel in his voice.
Jason stopped, turned, and stared a challenge at him. “You promised me this,” he said.
They stood, glaring at each other, hackles up like two dogs ready to fight, Jason with a gun in his hand.
I clutched the cube in my pocket, the hard corners digging into my palm.
“All right,” Marcus said finally, nodding. “Just be careful.”
A moment later, an ATV’s engine roared out of the silent night and faded into the distance.
And everyone on the couch started waking up.
* * *
“I’m so sorry,” Emma said as she helped me put bandages on my fingers. “I messed up everything.” We were sitting on Mike Palmer’s couch, which Marcus and Yale had carried back to camp. On the other end sat Nose, his shredded mask discarded, with Passion trying to patch up his face. She was even doing a pretty good job of not staring at his PSS. In fact, she and Emma had been amazingly calm and coherent for two girls who had recently been kidnapped and drugged.
“Em, it’s not your fault. And we all got out safe.” The cuts on my fingers and arms didn’t look that bad. In fact, they looked like they’d been healing for days. I glanced to the side, catching a glimpse of Passion’s pale wrist in the moonlight. The gashes I’d seen earlier were already healed over and fading to pink.
“Wait,” I said, grabbing Emma’s arm and turning it over. I couldn’t find the needle mark from her IV. How long had
we been asleep in the woods?
“What?” asked Emma, looking down at her arm.
“What time is it?” I asked her.
“Nine thirty-seven,” Marcus said, glancing down at his watch as he and Yale handed blankets and warm clothing to Emma and Passion.
Nine thirty-seven? We’d gone into Palmer’s house around six. Had it really taken less than three and half hours for all that to happen?
I looked up at Marcus. He was still staring at his watch.
“I need to go check something,” he said, looking up and catching my eye just before he turned and disappeared into the dark.
“Help them,” I ordered Emma, pushing her toward Nose and Passion. “I’ll be right back.” Something was up, and Marcus was not going to keep me out of it this time.
I followed him into the woods, the ground squishing under my feet. It had been dry and clear in town, but it must have rained pretty heavily out here while we were gone. Marcus was heading toward a tree in a small clearing I knew all too well. He was going to check on Palmer.
“Hey, wait up,” I called after him.
He stopped and turned, his face hidden in shadows.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, coming alongside him.
“You still have Emma’s phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Look at it.”
I reached in my pocket, pulled the phone out, and turned it on. The screen lit up revealing thirty-two messages from Emma’s mom. I’d always known Mrs. Campbell was a worrier but—I stared down at the dates on the messages. I scrolled up, then back down. Then I flicked back to the menu screen. “There’s something wrong with this phone,” I said, looking up at Marcus. “It says these messages are from the last three days. It says today is Friday, September 30th. But that’s not right. It should be Tuesday the 27th.”
“My watch says the same thing. And so does my phone,” he said, holding it up.
“Maybe getting bulleted messed them up.”
“Maybe,” Marcus said, turning and resuming his walk toward the tree.
I followed reluctantly. I didn’t want to see Palmer. Didn’t want to remember what I’d done to him. What if he was dead? Or in a coma, like Dr. Julian.
Marcus rounded the last bend in the path and stopped.
I came up behind him, my ghost hand spilling light on an empty tree, ropes coiled in a tousled pile near its trunk. The hydration pack we’d hung to give Palmer water was gone.
“Well, that explains where Jason’s wheeler went,” Marcus said, stepping forward.
I stood, my mouth hanging open. I’d seen how thoroughly they’d tied up Palmer. How in the world had he gotten out of that?
“He rubbed the rope against the tree,” Marcus said, as if reading my mind. “Rubbed it clean through,” he held up a frayed end of the thick rope. “See here,” he said, pointing to a place where the bark on the tree had been worn smooth down to the wood.
“How could he do that in only a couple of hours?”
“He couldn’t,” Marcus said. “It would have taken days.”
“But—I don’t get it,” I said, staring at him.
“I don’t think our phones and watches got messed up,” Marcus said, staring back. “I think it’s been three days since you bulleted us out of Palmer’s house.”
“What are you talking about? The transfer is instantaneous. We proved that with Palmer, and my dad’s painting, and the Frisbees.”
“Yeah, but that was without the cube.”
“Oh shit!” I said, looking down at Emma’s phone again. The dates and the messages. The healed wounds and Mike Palmer’s escape. The rain that was everywhere but on us. None of it made sense. None of it matched the time-line of events we’d experienced. Even if we’d been unconscious in the woods all that time, it had rained. We should have been wet too. Unless we hadn’t been there at all. “What the fuck happened?” I asked, looking up at Marcus.
“You saved us,” he said.
“But where have we been?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it.
* * *
Everyone else took the news of the three lost days much better than I had.
Back at camp, Marcus let Yale build a small fire, and we all huddled around it in camp chairs and on the couch. None of us were tired, and I guess Marcus figured the warmth and morale were worth the risk.
“So, we’ve been somewhere for three days,” Marcus said, after briefly explaining to Passion and Emma about the list, and the CAMFers, and Dr. Fineman. Thankfully, he’d managed to be vague about what my ghost hand had done, and to whom, though I could see Passion looking at me, a million unanswered questions in her eyes.
“What do you mean somewhere?” Emma asked.
“We don’t know,” Marcus answered. “In limbo, I guess.”
“You mean outside of this world?” Nose asked, leaning forward.
“Or outside this time,” Yale added.
“Oh come on!” Emma protested.
“If you fly from the US to New Zealand,” Yale argued, “you cross the International Date Line and lose an entire day. And when you fly back you gain one. Distance and speed and time are all connected. It isn’t completely crazy, given our unusual mode of travel, to believe we lost three days.”
“Three days,” Passion said. “Just like Jesus. That’s SRT—Standard Resurrection Time.”
“Nah, we weren’t dead.” Nose said, “So it wasn’t resurrection. It had to be time travel. And we discovered it. We’re the world’s first fucking time travelers.”
Emma didn’t really believe any of it until we let her listen to all the phone messages. Of course, she immediately wanted to call her mom, but Marcus said no. “We have to come up with a solid cover story for you first,” he explained. “But even before that, we have to find out if it’s safe for you back in town. The CAMFers may still be there, and they know you can identify them. We’ll see what Jason says when he gets back. He should be able to tell us something about what’s happened since we left.”
Holy shit! I’d completely forgotten about Jason. When he’d stormed out of camp to go kill Dr. Julian, we’d still had no idea we’d lost three days.
“Yeah, but I have to go back home,” Emma said, looking around the group for support.
No one said anything.
“I have to go back,” Emma said, desperation in her eyes.
“Well, I’m not going back,” Passion said. “My parents handed me over to that psycho.” She looked down at her wrists, now covered by the long sleeves of one of Yale’s sweatshirts. “They could never handle—what I do—or what I am. I’ll never be their good little Christian daughter.” She looked up, embarrassment shining in her eyes. “I mean, I’d like to come with you guys, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it is,” Nose blurted, the bandages making his face look all bulgy and weird, like a new mask. “I mean, right?” he said, deferring to Marcus, but with a hopeful look. Someone liked Passion.
“Yeah,” Marcus agreed, looking at me. “I don’t see a problem with that.” Did he think I didn’t want Passion along? Or was he just trying to prove he was willing to help someone even if they didn’t have PSS?
“Hey,” Emma said, “You guys are cool and everything. And I admire what you’re doing. You saved Liv, and you saved me, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I have to go home.”
“I understand,” Marcus said. “But it’s not safe, and I just don’t see how you’re going to explain being gone this long. I doubt anyone would believe you about the CAMFers, and outing them puts you in more danger than you’re already in. Obviously, you can’t tell your parents about us, or Olivia, or the time thing. So, where does that leave us?”
“She could tell them about me,” I said. “She could say she found me hiding out, and she camped with me a few days, trying to convince me to come home.”
“It would never work,” Marcus said to me, and then turned his attention
back to Emma. “If they think you’ve been with Olivia, they’ll ask questions. There will be some kind of investigation, and you’ll be smack in the middle of it. They’ll want to know why she didn’t come back with you and where she went. You’d have to lie to your parents, Olivia’s mom, and the police, and you’d have to maintain that lie indefinitely,” he paused, his eyes slipping back to me. Was he thinking about his own carefully constructed tower of lies? “Do you really think you could do that?” he asked, looking back at Emma.
“If I have to,” she said. “If it’s the only way to keep Olivia safe and get my life back. Yeah, I could do it.”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?” I said, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer. “You did it.”
No one said anything. They just stared from me to Marcus, waiting.
“You lied about everything,” I went on. “You lied to me. You lied to the guys. You even lied about who you are. At least she won’t have to do that.”
“We all have aliases in this camp,” he said, calmly. “How was calling me Marcus any different than calling him Nose, or him Yale? Those aren’t their real names.”
“Really?” I laughed bitterly. “You don’t know how that’s different? I’ll tell you how it’s different. They don’t have aliases. They have nicknames.”
“Same thing,” Marcus said dismissively.
“No, it really isn’t,” I was so angry at him, I didn’t care who knew. It didn’t matter that poor Passion and Emma were there, squirming on the couch. As for Nose and Yale, they were next on my shit list anyway, after what they’d done. After what they’d let Jason do. But ultimately, even that tied back to Marcus and his tendency to mistrust everyone. I’d held it all in while we’d struggled for our lives because I’d had to. But now we were safe, and Marcus had a lot to answer for.
Ghost Hand Page 24