"Not for good," Wolfgang admitted, his newly recovered senses dull and throbbing from their ordeal, he struggled to decide what to do next. Riding this train all the way out was a death trap. Once Johnny regained his strength, he would be back. Luckily, as weakened as he was, that would take time. A recording announced an unintelligible stop. "We've got to throw him off track. Let's get off here and change trains. It will take time for him to check them all."
Marie sat up, her face flushed, her glamour waning, though she was still beautiful. "You should change clothes," Marie said. "Lose your jacket. I'll change my look, too."
"We should stay underground," he told her, "until we get as far out as we can. We can go back to the train station, and get on another train and take it to the outskirts of town. Then we can find Pilgrim and make for the Hindernis."
Chapter 5
PAINTED A LOUD, SCHOOL BUS yellow and marbled overall with graffiti, the train that carried them out to the edge of town screeched and raced with surprising smoothness except for the pause at every stop and the reminder to "mind the gap between platform and train." Wolfgang found himself touched by this show of courtesy, and while he wondered sometimes about the graffiti, he was impressed with how thoughtful it seemed to alert people about the dangers when traveling by subway. It made him long even more for the human world, a world which he had never seen but only read about in the books his father had in his library, books brought back from the human world by monsters and which his father himself had collected over time. The train crossed over the Spree and stopped at the next station where they got off and marched carefully down the steps to the street, Wolfgang favoring his wounded knee and Marie careful not to leave him too far behind. They met up with Pilgrim just past Falckenstein street and he carried them them beyond the watching eyes of the graffiti until the buildings gave way to green trees and shaded roads.
Wolfgang had never been any farther than this. A thick mist rolled in from the river, the air cool and organic, the nearby lake making its presence known by scent if nothing else. An iron fence kept them from wandering further, but it was not so high that Pilgrim couldn't jump it. Wolfgang hadn’t remembered the No Man's Land being so obvious, but it made sense for it to be gated off, or to at least have some kind of warning posted for those who didn't want to enter, never to return.
"What I don't understand is how will we know when we get to the Hindernis," he said, pulling his hood all the way down. "This map just shows what my father found there, but not how to get there."
"You'll get there, if it wants you," Pilgrim answered, his ears flicking at the unseen.
Marie nodded. "You won't find it. It will find you."
It was aware. That also made sense, considering that, on some level, the city was also aware. It had to be in order to respond to the magic of the portals and the denizens. There is no magic in a dead land. He drew out the knife that his father had given him. It gleamed with an otherworldly light in the orange of the setting sun. "It will be dark soon," he said, sheathing it and adjusting it so it could easily be drawn. "I hope we can find the door before then. Pilgrim, the fence?"
Stepping back to give himself enough room, Pilgrim launched himself at the gate and flew over it easily. Wolfgang had seen him leap like that before, and it was like he could really fly, so long had he hung suspended by nothing, gliding through the air. "Which way?" Marie asked when they landed. Wolfgang pointed off into the distance, and Pilgrim followed his hand. As the trees began to change from green and brown to black, and the mist thickened as if to hide any path, white figures stood out ahead, light enough to be clearly seen but at the same time dull, as if made of bone. Wolfgang paused for a moment. "What do you think that is?" he whispered. Marie shrugged, not daring to speak. Literally disappearing into the mist after dismounting, Marie most likely went ahead to investigate while Wolfgang slipped off of Pilgrim and stepped forward toward the gleaming. As he got closer, he realized the white things up ahead were a pair, but that they did not move as he had first thought--that had been purely a trick of the fog. Not too long after, Marie reappeared beside him, scaring him to death. "We might want to go back," she said.
"Why?" he asked when he found his breath. He was almost to them now himself and curiosity was getting the better of him. "What are they?"
"Just statues, but--"
"Statues?" he repeated as if disbelieving. He didn't doubt her. But if she thought that knowledge would make him somehow less curious, she was sadly mistaken. It did the opposite. "Why wouldn't I want to check out some statues? Maybe they're important, or interesting."
"Oh," Marie said in a hushed, breathy voice. "They're interesting all right."
Wolfgang saw what she meant. From this distance, he could clearly make out that one was a man, bent over, his insides trailing out onto the misty ground, his face locked in a scream. But not just any face, he realized the closer he got.
It was a statue of him.
The second statue was equally gruesome. It was a woman with her eyes gouged out, one eye in each hand as if she had ripped them out herself. It was Marie. It had been difficult to tell because of the way the face was contorted in pain. Wolfgang got up the nerve to touch his statue, and was surprised to feel that it crumbled away as if made from some soft material, like salt, or ash. "Is this a warning," he asked Marie, "or a premonition?"
Marie shook her head. "I was only in the No Man's Land once before, Wolfgang, and that sure wasn't because I wanted to be. And I never saw anything like this."
"Well," he said, "They're just statues, right?"
Marie shrugged again. "You mean, what's the point? Why would someone make statues of us instead of just attacking us?"
"I meant that they're harmless, but when you put it that way... Someone did have to make these, didn't they?" Wolfgang did not like what that implied.
"Unless the land did it by itself," Pilgrim offered.
Wolfgang thought for a moment and adjusted his glasses before replying. "If something intelligent made these, then it wants us to be scared. It finds that more fun than attacking us outright."
Marie stared at her statue as if she expected it to come alive at any moment. "Something that feeds off of fear. Something that grows stronger from it. A demon," she whispered finally. Marie was right to be scared. At least Wolfgang had a soul, something the demon might want, something it might bargain for. But monsters were largely useless to demons, except as slaves. Or food. Or amusement. Or all three at the same time.
"Question: Why isn't there one of you, Pilgrim?" Wolfgang asked, looking up at him.
"Dunno, Chief." The horse shook his mane. "You'll have to ask whoever made them."
After a pause, Wolfgang cleared his throat. "Let's go."
"Home?" Marie asked with a weak smile. The answer obvious, she didn't even wait to hear it but instead pushed forward, cutting a trail through the mist as through slimy water.
The sun set ever deeper, the darkness growing ever longer as shadows spread out all around like pools of oil in a sea of mist, and still they found nothing. No portals, no attackers--nothing. Just trees and more trees, sky, and fog. Wolfgang looked at his watch: It was an old watch that his father had given him, a watch from that other world, just like everything in Doors was. While perhaps the elder fae had the intellect and desire to create from time to time, the fae as a whole were not creators. They did not have the mind for it. They made nothing, just consumed. Everything in Doors had been brought from somewhere else. Even--and especially--the people. Tapping at the watch, its little gold hands unmoving beneath the scratched glass, Wolfgang realized that it must have stopped when they'd jumped the gate. He listened to the time piece: Dead. As he listened, he became aware of a low humming or buzzing, almost like a huge beehive in the distance, that he hadn't noticed before. Only in trying to hear the watch did he realize that he had been trying to hear over the hum. As he struggled to pinpoint the sound, something else became clearer to him: He wasn't hearing bees. He hear
d voices. "This entire place is disorienting," he said. "In fact, I think we're just going in circles."
Marie turned her gaze to the surrounding fog that did its utmost to close in on them. Figures of white rose and fell as the mist clustered and broke apart, becoming more like clouds and less like a mist as time went on. "I wouldn't be surprised if that were true," she said. "The Hindernis surrounds the city."
"Seriously?" Wolfgang asked. He took a step or two closer to Marie, careful not to trip on the slick, leaf-littered and stone-ridden forest floor that he could only hear and feel but not see. "I thought only No Man's Land surrounded the town, and that beyond that, there was something. No idea what, but something. Like the Hindernis and other places." Wolfgang had tried to find out more about the No Man's Land before, but it wasn't like the fae to keep notes or write things down. At least, not in a way accessible to humans.
"Oh, no. That's why no one ever leaves the town this way. Ever. Only through the doors." She gazed off into the fog, her hair and clothes now shades of gray in the dim light that was fast fleeing. "They're rings, spreading from the town. It's Doors, No Man's Land, Hindernis. So now you see why the doors are so very important."
Wolfgang looked up. Fast turning purple as if bruised, the sky, their only source of light, was still visible in spite of the fog. "Above, too?" Wolfgang asked. "And below?"
"Below, I don't know. You'd have to ask an earth fae. Or a water fae, I guess. But the sky...I've talked to Johnny, and he's seen...things." She didn't need to explain. Wolfgang took that to mean the same kind of things they were finding here. Wolfgang imagined Johnny finding a cloud copy of himself with the head missing. It was a strangely fascinating thought.
Johnny wouldn't follow them out here. No one in their right mind would. Johnny was just as likely to be destroyed himself here as destroy them. There were no gods here to give him his power, no elder fae. If anything, the No Man's Land was a place the gods made to exile. Who would cultivate a place designed to be neglected, a place where their exiles decayed? If there was a Hell, this was it, as far removed as possible from the love of anything that could even remotely be considered holy.
"Can you hear the voices too?"
Marie's slender lips thinned even more. "So you can hear them? I didn't think you could."
Wolfgang nodded. "What are they saying?"
Her eyes widened. "You don't recognize them? They're our voices, Wolfgang." This trip was turning out to be harder on Marie than on him. Even as stoic as she was, it was hard for her to keep the stress from showing. This place was designed to destroy the fae even more than the humans. Perhaps the creator figured that the humans were so fragile that they wouldn't last one second here and designed it to take out something tougher.
"On second thought," he said, "don't tell me what they're saying. It's better if I don't know."
Marie turned around in the dimness as if looking for an escape from the wood or from the voices. She took a few steps in one direction and Wolfgang followed, not wanting to lose sight of her. Pilgrim stayed close behind. If they got split up now, they would never find each other again. Out of the corner of his eye a figure stepped toward them. Wolfgang spun back around, to see who or what it was. A little troll of a man whose head was just high enough to stand above the mist approached them. His head floated over the mist eerily as if he had no body, a balloon for a skull. He had a long nose and a pleading look, a haggard garden gnome on the loose. His tired eyes were yellow even in the weak light. "Have you any bread?" he asked pitifully. "There's nothing to eat out here. Nothing! And I've been lost for so long."
"Go away," Wolfgang warned him, and drew Vogelfang to flash in what little light was left. It glowed white hot in his hand after a moment. The little man began to speak but the sudden light interrupted him. Even that did little to stave off the darkness. "I know what you are!" Wolfgang shouted. "The only thing you want from me is blood." Wolfgang didn't know exactly what he was, but if he was not human and not welcome in Doors, then he was incredibly dangerous.
"No," the little man said. "No, it's the truth. This place is a maze. You'll get lost here, too, you'll see. Lost forever."
Wolfgang didn't want to take his eyes off the little man, but an unexpected worry about his silent friends broke his concentration like a stone thrown as a distraction. He turned to look at them, and the little man, yellowed eyes gleaming, made his move.
"Sweetbread will do," he muttered, and then cackled. The forest echoed his laughter as if they were in a cave. Springing up as easily upon Wolfgang's back as a jockey mounts a horse, the little man somehow slipped upon and then into Wolfgang's body. Marie rushed to Wolfgang's side and gripped him tightly, one shoulder in each hand. She shook him hard, maybe thinking she could shake the little man loose. Wolfgang felt her and the No Man's Land somehow moving further and further away from his consciousness. His head began to ache as if someone was inside trying to pull it apart. He could see Marie, but it was as if he was looking at her through a tunnel. His arms and legs began to grow numb. He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt for the iron talisman. Stroking his finger across its surface, he called to mind the symbol upon it that had been worn away with time and friction and his own sweat and flesh. "You can't force me out of my own head," Wolfgang told whatever it was inside of him. "Better minds than you have tried."
His face felt wet, his mouth and chin warm and sticky. He weakly brushed a hand against the wetness and looked down to see that hand with darkness smeared across it: His nose had begun to bleed. Blacking out for the moment, Wolfgang came to and caught himself just as his legs began to give way. He could hear Marie and the buzzing voices but it all blended together into a cacophony that only served to ruin his concentration which he so desperately needed to keep. His heart raced and he felt out of control, his body no longer listening to him, and a crushing panic portended his death, or that who he was was dying. If this kept up, this panic, he thought, he might die. His heart might fail, or he might pass out and then die. He needed to force his body to calm down. Even though it wasn't listening to him anymore, he had to try to make it listen. "This is not real," he told himself. "You're not dying. You can do this. You'll be fine."
And then it was over. The sick feeling faded as quickly as it came. Had he won? Was the evil little man gone? He wasn't sure, but at least the pain was gone and he had the feeling that he could continue with his journey, at least until it became too dark to see.
Marie stared at him, her eyes full of the concern she seemed to have only for him. "You okay?" she asked. Pilgrim's long head hung behind her, her worry mirrored in his eyes.
He took a deep breath. The mist around him lay like still water, as calm as he felt. As the seconds passed and he studied the forest around him, he wondered if it had happened at all, or if he had dreamed it. Even his leg felt better, as if its wound had healed. He looked down at his pant leg. It wasn't even torn.
"Is this all a dream?" he thought to himself, unsure. "Maybe I'm really still in bed. Maybe I never even got up this morning." It was a good theory. This No Man's Land was like a part of his own mind, able to be bent to his will. He doubted the real No Man's Land would be anything like this. So then the question became, if he in fact really was still sleeping, how to wake up?
Then a thought came to him, one that had been unspoken but in the back of his mind, lurking, since he'd left Doors: Your father was hoping you would die here. That's why he let you go.
Wolfgang was startled by the ugliness of it. He didn't believe it, either. Not really. That doesn't make sense, he told himself. Why would he want me dead?
He knows something you don't.
That made Wolfgang smirk. He knows a great many things I don't, he thought. That doesn't make him want me dead. But after thinking more about it, he drew the conclusion that he might know something about Wolfgang's future--or his past--that Wolfgang could not know. After all, he'd been alive longer than Wolfgang. He had been leading a whole other life before his so
n was born, a life that Wolfgang would never know the whole truth about.
More lights began to form in the forest. He wondered if it was a good idea to encourage Vogelfang to glow. Light might draw things to them. As if reading his thoughts, Marie whispered, "What do we do when it gets dark? If this place is like Doors, we have only about an hour of light left."
Wolfgang didn't know. He had planned on having made it to the other world by now. Doors wasn't that large--it could be crossed in a couple of hours easily by car--and he had assumed that the No Man's Land wouldn't be much larger. He hadn't planned on them being in a sort of Limbo with no real way to control where you went or stayed or for how long, and he began to feel badly that he was asking so much of his friends. "We'll go on until we can't anymore. If we have to stay the night, I guess that's what we'll do. How will you get back?"
"If we actually make it to the Hindernis and you find a door to the human world, we'll go through it with you, of course, then take a door back."
"And if I don't make it?"
Marie's pause made him think that she was weighing out a number of replies before choosing one. "Then it won't matter to you what we do," she said. They walked on for awhile in silence.
Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) Page 6