by R. W. Ridley
“Can’t hold out,” Wes said. His head was down, but his eyes were looking straight at us. “I’ve got to eat!”
“We all do,” I snapped. “But we can’t.”
“Can’t ain’t an option,” Tyrone said. “We eat or we die.”
A hideous laughter came from the walls, a hardy cackling. The old man’s voice surrounded us. “And they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege.”
I stepped out from behind Lou. “Can’t is an option, Tyrone. He’s not going to win. This is…” I counted the days in my head. “This is the beginning of day eight. Give me until the end of day nine and this will be over. I promise you.”
“That ain’t a promise you can keep,” Wes said.
“Shut up,” Lou screamed. “We are family. Family believes in each other. Family is there for each other. I’m through with this whole thing. The old man cannot turn us against each other. Wes, back in your little room. Tyrone, second floor, now.”
They looked at Lou perplexed and then started to laugh.
“Upstairs, huh?” Tyrone smiled. He shrugged his shoulders and started to back out of the room, stopping at the doorway. “Just between us, I was getting used to having that Throwaway around. Took my mind off the hunger. It was nice having… her around again.”
“It wasn’t her,” I said.
“The real Valerie will always be with you, Tyrone,” Lou said placing her hand over her heart.
He nodded and disappeared into the hallway.
Wes had started his retreat back to his room. He stopped when he reached the end of the table and turned back to us. “Boy, I don’t feel like much of a man no more. Seems like I’m always letting kids fight my battles for me, and I ain’t doing much in return. You get us out of this one, and I promise you the next one is mine.”
Lou was about to say something, but I grabbed her arm. She was going to tell him that was all right. That he’d done enough. That he was an important part of our group. We wouldn’t be anywhere without him. All that was true, but he wouldn’t have believed any of it, not at that moment.
“Sure thing, Wes,” I said. “Next one’s yours.”
***
Lou, Throwaway Grace (formerly June), and I stood in the deep end of the empty pool. Ajax sat at the top of the ladder keeping a watchful eye over us.
I was panicked. We couldn’t waste another trip to the Land of the Dead. I wanted to talk to the dead boy, but I didn’t know how to get in contact with him, so I just talked to the thin air.
“Listen. You have to take us to the old man, in his time. We can’t afford to go anywhere else. I don’t know how this works, but please, take us to Fish.” I stepped forward and felt a faint coldness on my feet. The thought went in and out of my mind. I had more important things to worry about than my feet being cold. “Hey, little… dead… boy.”
“Little dead boy?” Lou asked with a tone that suggested she was disgusted with me. “You don’t know his name?”
“He doesn’t talk much. I never got his name. And I’m not so sure if you should be talking, by the way. He might not come if he knows you’re here. Your job is to make sure the old man doesn’t get June-Grace or whatever her name is while she and I wait for our ride to the Land of the Dead.” My ankles were cold now. “Is it getting cold in here?”
“Water,” Lou said.
“What?” I said turning to her. I was surprised to see her standing in ten inches of water. I looked down at my feet and was even more surprised to see that I was standing in water, too. “What the…” is all I managed to say before we were instantaneously immersed in water. There wasn’t even time to hold our breath. I wanted to cough but couldn’t. Lou, Grace, and I scrambled up towards the top. I’m not even sure why. We had no way of knowing if there was a top. But still we kicked and pushed our way up.
I got a glimpse of a figure floating a few feet away. The dead boy. It had to be. I peered through the darkness and saw his face. My cousin Anthony. I changed direction and swam towards him. Inches away, I reached out, grabbed his hand, and fought to find the surface of the water. Seconds passed and I finally broke through. I inhaled as much air as I could, coughing violently as I released it. Lou and Grace had also made it to the surface. They were gasping for air. I zipped around to look at my cousin Anthony only to find it wasn’t him at all. It was the dead boy.
“What happened? Where are we?” I heard Lou ask.
I looked around. “The pool, it filled up with water.”
She sloshed around in the water looking in every direction. “Where’s Ajax? And why are the lights suddenly working?”
“The Land of the Dead,” I said.
“What?”
“We’re in the pool in the Land of the Dead.” I turned to the dead boy. “This is when Fish worked here, isn’t it?”
He did what he always did. He didn’t answer.
“I don’t understand,” Lou said. “What am I doing here?”
***
We stood on the side of the pool dripping wet. I had almost forgotten why I hated the water so much, but finding myself underwater for however brief a time it was, reminded me of the horrible sensation of drowning that I had lived through when I was a kid. Now I was convinced that hate wasn’t a strong enough word for how I felt about the water.
“I died when I was a baby,” Lou said.
“What?”
“That has to be it. I died when I was a baby for like a minute or something and the doctors brought me back. That’s how I was able to cross over to the Land of the Dead. I died when I was a baby. My parents just never told me.”
“Must be it,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what Stevie had told me. She wasn’t what he said she was. She was real. As real as me and Wes and the others. She had to be. She was right. She died when she was a baby. Her parents just never told her because that’s not the kind of thing you tell someone. Why would you? Stevie was wrong.
“Well, I’m here, whatever the reason. What’s the plan?”
“If I’m right, this is the time Fish worked as a painter for the mansion. We need to find the old man.”
“How?” Lou asked.
The dead boy started to walk away.
“We follow him,” I said.
He took us through a maze of hallways and rooms. The house was alive with activity. We didn’t see anyone, but we heard what sounded like an army of people working just ahead of us.
“What do we tell people we’re doing here?” Lou asked.
“They can’t see us,” I said. “We’re like ghosts.”
“We’re the ghosts?”
I laughed. “I know. It sounds weird…”
“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice called out from behind us.
I stiffened. It was impossible. She couldn’t be talking to us. Grace. Of course. She could see Grace.
We slowly turned and saw a woman dressed in a floor-length black dress and a white bonnet. She was looking straight at us.
“Are you talking to us?” I asked just to be sure the rules hadn’t changed and she could see Lou and me.
No reply.
She couldn’t see us.
“Miss,” the woman said. “Can I help you?”
Lou looked bewildered. “I thought they couldn’t see us.”
I was about to say something when the woman spoke first.
“Pardon me?”
Grace, hidden behind Lou, poked her head out.
“Hello, dear one,” the woman said waving at Grace. “She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”
Lou still didn’t respond to the woman.
“Are you two lost? Why are you dressed so oddly?”
“She can see you, Lou.” And I knew why. She really was a Never-was.
“How?”
“Miss?”
“No time to figure that out,” I said. “You better say something to her or she’s going to have you kicked out.”
“What do I say?”
The woman looke
d around. “Are you talking to me?”
“Me?” Lou asked. “No… yes…”
“Are your parents guests at the house, miss?”
“My parents?”
“Lou,” I said. “Get it together.”
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled.
“Tell her…” I said, trying to think of a lie to get her out of this situation. I remembered the papers from the closet. “Tell her that Mr. Bashir sent you.”
“Mr. Bashir sent me,” Lou said.
The woman considered this new piece of information and then nodded. “He’s sent you for lunch, hasn’t he?”
“Ahhh…” was all Lou could manage to say.
“The grown-ups and their fancy inedible meals. I don’t blame you. We’ve got the good stuff down here. Ham, cheese, macaroni, bread, and jam. You’re welcome to join us in the staff dining room.”
Lou looked at me for guidance.
“I suppose we should go,” I said.
“Thank you,” Lou said. “We’d like that.”
The woman guided us through the hall, past what looked like a walk-in freezer and then through the kitchen. I entered the dining room ahead of the others. Four male staff members sat at the table enjoying sandwiches and milk. Their hands were speckled with dry white paint. A fifth person stood at the back of the room with his back to us. He was slumped over, picking through a pile of apples in a large bowl. I didn’t need him to turnaround to know it was him. I could tell by the way he moved.
“I’m back,” I said knowing that the other staff members couldn’t hear me.
He half turned with a creepy smile on his face. “So you are,” he said.
The other painters looked at each other, but quickly got back to their food. Clearly they were used to Fish’s weird behavior. Seeing him talk to thin air was nothing new to them.
“I brought friends,” I said.
He craned his neck a little more and saw Lou in the doorway. His smile grew a little bit bigger and then Throwaway Grace stepped past Lou. His smile faded quickly. “What…”
As if Grace knew the old man was tortured by her presence, she approached the old man and said, “Hello, Mr. Howard.”
A painter at the table looked up from his meal and said, “Howard? Thought your name was Fish?”
Fish looked at the man with pure terror in his eyes. “You heard her?”
The painter flashed a half-toothed grin. “You’re a nutty one, Fish. Bashir must have been half in the bag when he hired you.”
“Bashir is as stupid as that mongoloid kid of his,” the youngest of the painters said with a mouth full of ham sandwich.
“Here now,” the woman who had shown us the way to the dining room said, “None of that talk. Mr. Bashir hears you talking like that he’ll run you off the property with a pistol.”
Fish had not taken his eyes off Grace.
I laughed. “This is where we make you pay.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong!” Fish yelled.
The other painters looked startled by the obvious panic in his voice. One of them even went for the carving knife sticking out of the ham.
“Paint fumes have gotten to you, old man,” the young painter said.
I chuckled. “This is just the beginning. The others are coming.”
“No!” The old man grabbed the bowl of apples and flung it at me. It passed through me and struck the wall. Apples flew everywhere. He bolted out the back entrance to the dining room. I followed close behind. I heard the woman pleading with Lou and Grace to steer clear of Fish, but they emerged from the dining room shortly after.
Fish crashed through another door, and I could see the light from outdoors pour in. I let Lou and Grace catch up and we all exited the same door.
“What do we do?” Lou asked.
“He doesn’t have the package with him,” I said. “We’ve got to hope he leads us to it.”
“What then? He’s not just going to hand it to us.”
“I’ll distract him while and you and Grace grab it and take off.”
“We can’t separate,” she said.
“We have to,” I said. “Make your way back to the pool.”
We followed Fish to a small row of stables. A half dozen horses wandered around a fenced-in area not far off. He walked as quickly as he could to a ladder leaned up against the side of one of the stables. A small wall of paint cans stood to the right of the ladder. He made his way around the cans and bent down out of sight. When he reappeared, he had the package in his hand.
“Hey,” I barked. “It’s over, Fish. Grace is just the first one. The others are coming.”
“Shut up!” He backed away. “I sent them to heaven. They couldn’t have gone without me.”
Throwaway Grace approached him without prompting from Lou or me.
“What is she doing?” Lou whispered.
“I don’t know, but it’s freaking the old man out, so I say we let her go with it.”
“We appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Mr. Howard.”
Fish’s entire body was shaking. “I loved you all,” he said.
“We know.” Grace smiled. “That’s why we’re throwing you a party.”
His expression changed from panic to relief in an instant. “A party?”
“Yes, sir,” Grace said. “There’s cake and punch.” Approaching him, she reached out and took his free hand. “And plenty of sweet, sweet meat.”
“A party for me? You’re all such wonderful children.”
“We’ve new tools for you,” she said covering her mouth. “Oh, I’ve ruined the surprise. Now you know what your present is.”
Fish laughed a sick and hardy laugh. “I won’t tell.”
“Thank you, Mr. Howard.” She looked at us and smiled. “I promised everyone that you wouldn’t bring your old tools with you.”
The panic started to creep back into his face. “I can’t leave my tools.”
“But we’ve gotten you new ones. It will ruin everyone’s fun if you bring the old tools. You don’t want to ruin everyone’s fun, do you, Mr. Howard?”
He thought it over. His eyes darted back and forth from the package of tools to Grace’s face. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”
Grace squeezed his hand. “You can leave the package here. You won’t need it anymore.”
The old man hesitated, bent down, and carefully laid the package on the grass.
“Everyone will be so pleased. Remember, you have to be surprised when you open your present,” Grace said, leading the old man toward the woods that surrounded the stables.
“I will.”
Lou started for them, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t move until they’re out of sight.”
“We can’t let her just go off with him,” she said.
“Just hold on,” I said.
“But…”
I squeezed her arm. “This is the way it has to be.”
She stopped resisting me and we both watched as Grace and the old man vanished into the woods. Once there were no signs of them, we ran to the package.
“That was insanely brilliant,” I said. “I can’t believe she did that. Did you talk to her?”
“No,” Lou said. “I certainly wouldn’t have told her to go off into the woods with the sadistic cannibal.”
“Well, it worked.”
“Just one thing,” Lou said.
“What?”
“How do we get it back to our world without Grace? We need a Throwaway to bring it back.”
Or a Never-was, I said to myself. “I may have been wrong about that,” I said. “I think I’m the only one who can’t be seen or interact with this world.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lou said.
“Look where we are,” I said. “Does any of this make sense? The staff in the mansion saw you but not me.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean…” she bent down and reached for the package. Part of me wanted her hand to pass right through it. She was real. S
he had to be. Just as I convinced myself that she wasn’t a Never-was, I saw her hand land gently, but solidly, on top of the canvas wrapped package. She screeched. “You were right. It must just be you.”
I nodded. “Must be.”
She picked up the package, and we heard a scream from the woods. “C’mon,” she said running for the trees.
“No!”
“What?” she asked.
“We can’t,” I said.
“But that was Grace.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“That was Grace,” she repeated in a tone that suggested that she could not be talked out of believing it.
“Listen,” I said. “We have to get that package back to our world. That’s the only thing that matters. If we leave the Land of the Dead without it, it’s over.”
“But…”
“Nothing else matters.”
She looked at me with fire in her eyes. “I’m not leaving her.”
I groaned. I was mad, but not at her. I was mad at me for being so willing to leave Grace behind. “I’ll go after her. You get back to the pool.”
She thought about arguing, but she knew deep down that I was right. The package mattered more than Grace. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “You better make it back.”
I nodded and sent her on her way.
Entering the woods, it was easy to spot Fish and Grace’s path. They had stomped their way through some pretty thick bush, breaking off limbs and leaving footprints along the way.
I reached a clearing and spotted something lying in the tall thick grass. The closer I go to it the more I realized that it wasn’t just something. It was Grace. I picked up my pace and scanned the area for the old man as I ran. He was nowhere to be seen.
Kneeling down beside Grace, I saw her eyes flutter. She was alive, alive as a Throwaway could be. “Grace, are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. She just smiled.
“Did he hurt you?”
She nodded.
“Where did he go?”
“He’s gone to get his tools.”
Her eyes started to close. “I’m taking you back.”
She pushed herself away from me. “You have to find Lou before he does.”
“I can’t just leave you.”
“I’ll be okay.” Her smile got bigger.