by Sarah Porter
I feel a cold blast brushing over me. For half an instant it’s as if I owned my skin again. As if I was running up a street in chill shadow, my face floating on scrolls of wind. Have we gone out somewhere?
Then I’m completely gone, into the darkness. I can’t guess for how long.
Once I smell upturned earth. Once I think my hands might be buried in dank soil. I almost panic, but then the dark comes back and soothes me.
* * *
Hot petals tumble down—or no, I’m in the shower, suds sheeting down my arms. A crimson fluid spirals toward the drain and my hand instinctively jerks to my throat. But I’m not hurt, or anyway not seriously. My calf is stinging and I look to see deep parallel scratches running down my shin, and I have no idea how they got there. Four thin ridges of dried blood. But they’re just scratches. Dash would never let anything bad happen to me, not truly.
It’s a long time, though, before I feel calm enough to turn off the water, and then I sit wrapped in a towel on my bed with my clothes heaped at my feet. Oh, so Dashiell must have undressed me, but if we’re sharing the same body how can he avoid it? The darkness that squeezed me before is still close. I can feel how it’s shrunk to limn the inside of my skin, rustling when I move: an internal shadow, barely caged. My clock says it’s after eleven, but the house is submerged in such deep silence that I’m almost positive no one else is home.
When I finally get pajamas on and wander to the kitchen I see Dashiell’s cake. I remember dropping the bowl of frosting when I was fighting with Everett, but now the layers are stacked together and the frosting is perfectly swirled over them. Twenty-three candles bristle from one side, their wicks blackened; he must have used every stubby burned-down birthday candle he could find, clumps of them in different colors. A big piece is missing, and a frosting-streaked plate and fork are in the sink with the mixing bowls.
I know what made him flip out: it was Everett, and how harsh he was with both of us. Dashiell might act like he doesn’t care sometimes, but he’s actually way too sensitive to cope with someone he loves being so cruel to him. I know Dash finished making the cake and then started eating it as a kind of message. “Dash?” I whisper. “Are you okay now?”
He doesn’t answer me, not exactly, but I can tell that he isn’t feeling much better. Grief still reverberates from shore to shore: endless ripples on a black river.
EVERETT
So yeah, that would be someone following me. That would be someone not even trying to hide it, really. Big, flat, flapping footsteps have stayed ten feet back around the last three turns, and I guess it proves Dashiell’s point about how I shouldn’t be wandering around out here, and that pisses me off more than anything. Who’s this asshole making it seem like Dash is right? The air is damp and sludgy, with a hard wind smacking the hell out of everything so that everybody walks with their heads squashed down between their shoulders. Not a lot of people are out, even though I’ve turned on to 7th Avenue so that I’ll be able to duck into a restaurant if I have to.
But even on 7th Avenue the stores don’t go on forever, or not the stores that stay open late anyway, and I’m starting to edge up on the blocks where darkness eats at the houses and only crumbs come through in the lit-up spots. It doesn’t seem like a great idea to keep going and I stop and stare in a toy store’s window, just in case I’m wrong and whoever it is behind me totally coincidentally has been following my exact route. A little model carousel goes around and around, purple horses bobbing, and twinkly lights beaming everywhere. I try to let go of myself and just be what I’m seeing: one tiny horse galloping slowly above meadows of plastic crap. Maybe that person tracking me—who’s actually standing like three feet to my left, now, and who is obviously big enough to beat in my face without even breaking a sweat—will get bored and move on. I’m trying not to look but his eyes are glued to my reflection. Bulky guy. Older, hairy. Looks like ass, not to pull punches or anything. Some kind of sick rash. Awesome.
“Um, hello Everett! I hope you’re having a pleasant evening. We all hope so.”
The voice comes from pretty high up but I still look down, because it seems like this dude must have a kid with him and I just didn’t notice her. But no, there’s no little girl next to him, so apparently that horrible chirping voice is his. It should make me collapse on the sidewalk from sheer creep-out, but at this point I’m so angry—at everything being weird, and diseased, and distorted, at death needing a serious tune-up and ghosts crawling like roaches through my guts—that I barely care.
“Right. Do I know you?”
“You don’t need to know me. I’m a friend of the family! That’s what they told me to say.” I’m looking at him this time, checking to make sure that that voice is really coming out of his ugly face. Yup. Ah, so I guess this must be the guy Elena was talking about, the one she saw talking to Dashiell?
The one who wanted him to trade Ruby. “You know my brother, you mean. That doesn’t make you anyone’s friend.”
“I don’t want to be Dashiell’s friend anymore!” he squeals; getting excited makes him seem even more like a little girl. His hands fly up to shoulder height and do this baby-bird spazz. I might be not quite as worried now about him beating me up. “He isn’t very polite. He says nasty things to me and he gets angry for no reason! I don’t care if I do—things he wouldn’t like. As long as he can’t catch me after.”
It’s not like I think anything good about this person, but I still can’t help grinning at that. A hard, twisted grin, all gritted teeth, like I could bite through someone’s neck for kicks.
“I’m not his biggest fan, either.”
“That’s what they thought? They thought maybe you’re getting mad at him? And so maybe you would—let them help you?”
“That’s really a lot of theys,” I say. I have kind of a queasy feeling that I might have met them before, too.
“There are a lot,” he agrees. Nervously, which isn’t super encouraging. “And they have a lot of cats.”
I laugh, and I sound just like Dash all over again. Maybe when he clears out of me he leaves a thick slime of him-ness behind, sticking all over my heart and entrails, and I’ll never be completely purged of him. “Are you another ghost, then?” Not a lot of other options, now that I think of it.
“I don’t like that word. It’s very rude to call somebody names like that. I’m Mabel.”
Okay. I guess it’s not just that he sounds like a girl, then. “And they told you to talk to me about how intensely they want to help me out? What are you getting out of it?”
Mabel’s eyes slide sideways. “Um, they were mad at me for running away? So they promised not to be mad anymore. If I would talk to you. Because they just have cats right now, so they can’t talk to anybody up here?”
Right; Elena said she heard them babbling about cats, but that’s not all she told me. “Yeah? And what about Ruby?”
It’s hard to describe the look on Mabel’s face: almost like his, or her, eyes are staring straight into the middle of her brain. Bullets of concentration shooting right for the hippocampus. It goes on for a while. We haven’t moved away from the toy shop window, and the lights from that miniature merry-go-round spark in Mabel’s big glassy eyes.
“They say they can’t help Ruby,” Mabel finally reports. “Not yet. Because they’re missing something important? It got lost? They can help you but Ruby is just too bad.”
That wasn’t what I meant, but it still makes me curious. “What kind of help are we talking about?”
Mabel’s head swings to stare at me and her big bearded jaw drops in surprise. “Push him out! And shut the door on him, bang! Don’t you want that? No more Dashiell in you? Out, out, out!”
Until right now I was just kind of playing along for the hell of it. That, and to figure out more about what the deal is. But this is the one thing Mabel could have said to yank my attention into one big tight bundle—because why, yes, I do want that.
“Why would they care what I want? I
t’s got nothing to do with them.” My mouth has gone dry. Eagerness has a taste, it turns out. Sour and crinkly, like aluminum.
Mabel’s listening again. She could be trying to wad up her crusty ears and stuff them into her head, to hear what’s going on in there. “Highly displeased? They say I should say that Dashiell stole something from them. Something valuable. And that he cheated them out of their rights. They say to tell you that they are highly displeased with him, and that closing you up would be a suitable punishment? It will teach him that his disrespect won’t be tolerated. Those are the words they are telling me to say.”
He stole something is right, with my hands doing the swiping. What happened to that weird object he stuffed in my pocket? My brain’s been so overloaded that I haven’t thought about it since that night at Paige’s apartment, but I know I’ve worn the same jeans again and it definitely wasn’t in there anymore.
“A whole lot of people have tried to teach Dash that. Hasn’t worked yet.”
Mabel gives me a coy smile that makes the hair around her lips stick out in spikes. “Um, they say they feel confident in their ability to do a better job instructing him. And they think you’d appreciate that?”
Okay. They know way too much about me, considering that the only time we met I was running like hell and not stopping to have long conversations about my feelings. I know I’m not subtle or anything, but there is still something really wrong going on here. I should tell Mabel and her invisible friends to go play in traffic. That’s obvious.
Except that they’re my only chance to maybe own my brain and body for real again. Dash is out for right now, but I’m not kidding myself that it’s going to stay this way. He’ll give me enough of a break to calm down, but I already know he’ll come slinking back when he thinks it’s appropriate, and for the rest of my life that will keep happening. I’ll be myself and not myself, and I won’t be able to rely on really basic assumptions, like that my thoughts actually belong to me.
“Okay, I’m convinced. That sounds great. Go ahead and tell me how to shut Dash out. If there’s really a way to do that.”
They say it won’t work for Ruby because something got lost—but if I’m in charge of my own brain again then maybe I could try to find whatever went missing? Because it suddenly hits me: I’ve been so sticky and confused with Dashiell-ness that I’ve barely known what I was doing, and maybe it’s the same for her and I’m in the wrong for not realizing that sooner. Like, she might not be entirely responsible for her actions, and I should cut her some slack? So if there’s any way I can help her, I still have to do it.
“It’s not something we can tell you, they say. But we can show you in person,” Mabel says, and she’s looking twitchy again. Every fidget on that big, coarse face is practically jangling a warning bell at me: bad idea, Everett; ding-dong, bad, bad idea. If I could think of any alternative I’d totally pay attention. But what do you do, when the only people who can help you are monsters? You make a deal.
“Show me in person? Where?”
Mabel’s face goes slack with relief, which is possibly the only thing more repulsive than seeing her tense and spastic. She doesn’t wait to hear what they have to say this time.
“Like you don’t know where!”
Right. I guess I do know. I also know that Dashiell said those not-perfect-gentlemen-things might try to stop me from ever waking up again, if they caught me there. Keep me as a kind of hostage. Maybe that’s their whole plan. Or maybe it’s Dashiell’s plan, to make sure I’m so freaked out that I’ll never let them give me any information. They know I’d do anything for you and Miss Slippers. Yeah, really, Dash? Would you go all Special Forces and try to rescue me, if I needed you?
“I’ll think about it.”
That’s not what she wanted to hear. Her eyes bug and her huge scabby paws do that horrible flutter again. “But—this is special. We don’t just help people normally! And if you make him wait he’ll get angry and change his mind!”
Them has compacted down into him now, I notice. “Who’s going to get angry, Mabel? Want to explain who you’re talking about?”
“Aloysius.” She says it in this dread-stricken whisper, so maybe she doesn’t think he’s an awesome gentleman any more than Dash does.
“Aloysius? He’s the one who’s been doing all the blabbing in there?”
“You should try to have nicer manners, Everett Bohnacker. Aloysius is in charge. And he knows you helped Dashiell steal from him. So you have to behave now. Do what you’re told and no more talking back!”
Ah. A dead-guy authority figure. No wonder he and Dashiell can’t stand each other. “I said I’ll think about it. I’ve had enough of dead people telling me what to do. Okay?” God, though, how I wish I could talk to Dash about this. Ask his advice. The awful thing is that, if Dash wasn’t my enemy, I’m pretty sure he’d know how to handle these people, or not-so-much-people. But I can’t exactly ask him to explain the best way to betray him.
Mabel’s attention has rolled into her head again. “Oh! He says okay.”
“What?”
“He says, ‘Tell young master Bohnacker to mull matters at his leisure. Not the slightest pressure. He isn’t the one who owes respect here. Yet.’ That’s what he says. But Aloysius is never nice like that! He—”
There’s a kind of wheeze-gag way down in her throat that shuts her up. Suddenly I feel the size of the night again, like it’s gobbling up way more of the world than it has any right to. And way more of me, too. Above the streetlights it’s a gulping, sucking thing, and 7th Avenue really seems to go on forever now—but whichever direction I go, I’ll end up in the same hole. All I can think is that I need to get away from Mabel, now, even if I have to dig my way out through the darkness.
“Great. Nice meeting you. I’m leaving.”
Mabel isn’t talking yet but she gives this panicky jerk and grabs for me. Fingers drag at my jacket and I jump away just in time. I’m too scared to turn my back on her so I do this ridiculous hobbling hop-step backward until I’m out of range if she lunges for me.
“Everett!” She spits it out, and all at once I get how completely pitiful she is, kind of slurping at the air like she can pull me back that way. I mean, is she actually a little kid, stuck on her own in that blob of a body? Shouldn’t she have parents taking care of her? “Can’t I come with you?”
Ugh. I’m sorry for her, but not that sorry. “No, actually. I want to be alone.”
“Then do something for me? Tell Ruby I like her? A lot. I don’t care how silly she is. Tell her I want to be good friends.”
That won’t be happening. Mabel’s looking more and more like the huge, sluggish tongue of whatever is trying to swallow me. All I want are the rules back; I don’t mean anything fancy, just dead-is-dead and I-am-me. If something grabs me, it should be made out of molecules. Laws of physics. Standard shit.
“Ruby doesn’t want friends. She just wants Dashiell. Sorry if that bums you out, but it’s the truth.”
Mabel looks at me like I just killed her puppy. But she really shouldn’t take it so personally.
Ruby doesn’t even want me anymore. Maybe she doesn’t want herself, either.
MABEL
Wait right here, Aloysius said. Wait here where there’s gray and no skin and nothing to touch, and never any food, and no warmth or sleep or blankets. There’s air like paste, and there’s the river, and even when we talk to each other we do it without sound. Wait right here, and the boy will be along in good time. Put on your prettiest appearance for him when he arrives, there’s a pet. Because almost nobody here can look like anything but horrors, but I can hint littlegirl, sweetdollgirl at living people, and most of the time that’s what they see: pretty thing, curly hair, even though none of it is there. Aloysius knows that’s special about me, I hint so much better than he can. I can make them see me almost like I used to be.
So I wait in the gray, and it isn’t even dust, and I’m not even a twist of yarn here. I can fe
el Old Body far away, so scared and empty that he keeps glass after glass of stinking spirits dumping down his face. He’s sitting on the dirty bed in his room: a cold, ugly room with a sink on the wall, where he eats greasy food out of bags. Don’t you miss me? I want to say, but I’m too far away for him to hear me. He can hear me only when I’m whispering right there in his head, and even then he gets confused. Don’t you miss your Mabel, who makes you forget half your life?
If I go back to him the body will be so sick and spinning that I won’t be able to lift it out of bed, but I’d rather be sick inside him than gray here, with no face or eyes or moving blood. But Aloysius said stay, and if I trip away into Old Body even for a few little moments and miss the boy when he comes then Aloysius will be angry all over again, and then he’ll never do what he promised. And I need him to help me. Because Old Body is getting crazier every day, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep him.
I don’t like being here. It isn’t good for me to be away from him. I know he’s standing up and staring in the mirror over the sink, whining to himself, tra-la-la. The evil, he calls me, because he’s so stupid. The evil is out for now, but it will come back, I know it will come back. It scares me when he thinks that way. It scares me, what he might do, when I have to stay here with the dead people and then maybe Old Body will do something bad too fast for me to stop him.
I’ll be nicer, I tell him, even though he doesn’t hear. I’ll be nicer to you from now on, and comb your hair, and you’ll wake up in your soft warm bed every morning and not out on the wet ground anymore. Don’t do anything silly! He’s leaving his room now, number 218, and walking down the hallway with his arm smearing on the wall. I don’t like it at all, and I almost jump back into him, but Aloysius has too many spies and if I leave here even for one second they might tell him.