Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

“Out!” The creature lunged at her, one clawed paw reaching for her. Hallie stumbled on a rock, and the creature might have had her then, except Maker suddenly reappeared, snapping wildly, throwing off its aim. The creature roared and swung blindly, connecting hard with Maker, who was thrown sideways, collapsed in a heap, and was still.

  “Goddamnit!” Hallie threw herself forward—better to attack than die against a wall. The creature turned, threw its paw up, and hit her a glancing blow even as she was ducking away. She hit the ground, and the creature was on top of her before she could even draw a breath. Its claws curved around her left arm, effectively pinning her to the ground. It lowered its heavy head, jaws slavering. Hallie’s lips drew back in an involuntary snarl.

  She jammed her knife into the crease between the creature’s front leg and its chest. It roared and shook, like shaking off a flea, tossing Hallie sideways and slicing her arm as she slipped out of its hold.

  She scrambled to her feet. Almost stumbled, her arm feeling like a thin electric wire had been injected straight into her veins; the pain sang through her bones. Maker still lay unmoving, ten feet away against the uphill slope. Unconscious or dead, Hallie couldn’t tell. The creature crouched in front of her. So big and it didn’t even look like it was bleeding where she’d jabbed it.

  Steel. Sacrament. Dead man’s blood. Did it work in here too? Iron did.

  And at this point, she had nothing to lose.

  She swiped the knife across her arm where the beast’s talons had slashed her, then launched herself while the creature was still gathering itself for a final lunge.

  She yelled, “Jesus Christ, die!”

  And stabbed it. More wildly than skillfully. The knife met soft resistance. Hallie shoved hard as the beast slammed into her. She hit the ground, braced for the impact of the beast—pop—it was gone.

  27

  Hallie’s heart thumped against her chest, her breath rapid and shallow. The creature had been solid muscle and hot breath, stinking of old bones and wet fur, capable of crushing her or ripping her head off. And now it was gone.

  She rose stiffly, scoped the surrounding landscape for more creatures. It was cold enough now that she expected to see her breath, but she couldn’t. A loud crack, and one of the largest trees in the forest below toppled over followed by the pop, pop, pop of smaller trees breaking under its weight. Blood dripped from the cut on Hallie’s arm. She wiped the knife on her shirt, stuck it back in its belt sheath, picked up her shotgun, and crossed the small space to where Maker lay.

  It was breathing.

  She returned to the rocks, picked up her backpack, and returned. The sun reappeared and the temperature rose and it was suddenly hot, like stepping out of a walk-in freezer into a heated room. She settled both Maker and herself inside the few inches of shade tight up against the rock wall. Then she sat cross-legged with her back to the slope, facing the direction the creatures had come, her shotgun in the crook of her elbow. She took one of the water bottles she’d brought, some gauze, and bandages.

  The beast had torn a three-inch gash in her arm with its claw, but it was a clean slice and the bleeding had pretty much stopped. It still hurt like shorting electric wires, but Hallie could handle that if she had to—which right now she did. She sluiced the gash clean with water, took out an antibacterial wipe, and dried the area as best she could with some of the bandaging material she’d brought. Then she bandaged it with clean gauze, wrapped it, and taped it secure.

  By the time she’d finished, Maker was blinking awake again.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Maker growled.

  “Do you need a drink of water or something?”

  Maker climbed to its feet, shook itself like shedding water, then sat down and began to lick its right paw. Like nothing had happened.

  Okay, Hallie thought. “What the hell were those things?”

  Maker stopped licking. “Unmakers,” it said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Unmakers. They unmake.”

  “Unmake what?”

  “Dogs, demons, reapers. The unliving. Unmakers make you gone.”

  “Like, for good?”

  “Forever,” Maker agreed. “Unmade.”

  Hallie eased herself back to her feet, her back pressed against the rock. “Boyd?” she asked. “Will they be after Boyd?”

  Maker sniffed. “He’s living.”

  “So, they’re after me.”

  “Abomination.”

  “Yeah, don’t call me that,” she said. Then, “So, they’ll be back?” From their current vantage, she could see a good half mile across the open prairie below, see the entrance to the woods on the up side of the plains. Nothing moved.

  Maker stretched first one back leg and then the other. He sat. “They are not unmade,” it agreed.

  “How long?”

  If a dog could shrug, Maker shrugged. “Sometime,” it finally said.

  All right, then. Time to move.

  “So it is you.”

  Hallie turned quick, raised the shotgun, then stopped. Because—of course. Perfect.

  Crouched on a small outcropping maybe six feet or so above her was Lily, Boyd’s dead wife.

  She looked like her ghost, except not gray and wearing different clothes—short hair bleached blond with dark layers underneath, pale skin, dark eyes, wearing a shirt the color of old parchment, faded blue jeans, and Doc Martens. Her bangs were long enough to hang in her eyes, and she brushed them aside at the same time as she jumped down from her perch. Hallie didn’t know what Lily’d looked like when she was seventeen. But she didn’t look any older than that now.

  “Lily,” Hallie said.

  “Yeah,” Lily said. “I’ve been sort of waiting for you.”

  “Do you—?” Hallie lowered the shotgun a fraction, though she also took a step back and turned. “Is this where you—” She started to say “live,” realized that was exactly the wrong word, and changed it. “—where you are?”

  “There’s not really a ‘here,’” Lily said. “There’s just ‘not there.’ Not in the world.”

  “That doesn’t actually make sense,” Hallie said.

  “It doesn’t make sense to you,” Lily said.

  Okay. It wasn’t as if Hallie needed it to make sense. She just needed to get through it, find Boyd, and get out. “Are you here to help?” she asked.

  “I want to see him,” Lily said, which wasn’t an answer.

  “Boyd?” Hallie asked. “Do you know where he is?” I’m talking to a dead person, she thought.

  “I know he’s here,” Lily said. “But it’s—”

  “Should go,” Maker said.

  Hallie scanned the surroundings. “Are they back?”

  “Better if we’re moving,” Maker said.

  Yeah.

  “Where is he?” she asked Lily.

  “If I could find him myself, I wouldn’t be standing here, would I?”

  Jesus.

  Earlier, Maker had said that she could use something of Boyd’s to find him. Hallie dug Boyd’s journal out of her backpack. The latest entry began with the date and time—3:21 A.M. His handwriting was so neat, it looked machined.

  Components: Steel. Fire. Evening/Morning.

  Setting: Unfamiliar. Unfinished high-rise. Unidentified city. High steel. Fire. Hot blue flame.

  Symbols and/or principals: Bones. Death. Hallie. Lily. Dog (unknown). Monsters (several). Car engine (rusted). Ghosts (army).

  No one goes down without a fight. Everything burns.

  Repeat: 4. Time frame: 3 weeks.

  Great. That was clear. She held up the notebook. “This is important, right?” she said to Maker. “This helps us get there?”

  Maker didn’t say anything. “Do you have a problem?” Hallie finally said.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” it said.

  Lily bared her teeth at him. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “I have a purpose,” Maker said.

/>   “So do I.”

  “Enough,” Hallie said. “How does this work?”

  “You attract him. He attracts you.”

  “Like a magnet?” She reslung the backpack, settled the shotgun more firmly, and held the journal out toward Maker, like maybe he would take it from her and show her how it worked. It grew cold suddenly, in her hand. She drew it back. The cold lessened. She took two steps away from the rocks behind her. The journal got colder again. She turned around and faced the rocks and it got warm.

  “It looks like we go over the top,” she said.

  “Can I see that?” Lily asked.

  Hallie didn’t want to let her. It seemed private, personal, which it was, but it was Boyd’s private and personal notebook, and she’d already taken it and opened it and read it. “It’s Boyd’s,” she said.

  “I know it’s his,” Lily said. “I want to see it.”

  Hallie stuck it back in the back pocket of her jeans. “You should ask Boyd,” she said.

  There was a narrow path up and around the rocks, so Hallie struck out along that rather than dropping back down to the plains. It widened out in a few short yards. Maker trotted ahead of them, like it was just a dog, like this was just a walk. Lily moved up beside Hallie. Woods stretched out below and to their right nearly to the horizon. A stark rock face to their left. Clouds covered the sun again, a thin cover so the air felt dry and cold, miserable but not unbearable.

  “Boyd says you saved him,” Hallie said to Lily. “That you died for him.”

  Lily turned and walked backwards, as if she wasn’t worried about walking right off the edge. “The world fades after you die, you know,” she said. “It’s not that you forget, which would be simpler. It becomes less important. Like someone dropped a curtain on your memories.”

  Laddie had said that too. That the dead didn’t remember things.

  “So, I don’t know,” Lily said. “That’s what I’m saying. It’s not,” she added, “that I don’t remember dying, because I do. I remember the moment at least, the specific moment. It’s not like I’m going to describe it to you or anything, but I do remember it. But other things? I remember Boyd. I remember he was … he was nice to me, you know. I think I loved him. But that doesn’t matter so much here either.”

  “Is this—?” Hallie paused, figuring out what she wanted to say. The path was curving to their left and sloping down, rock rising to Hallie’s right almost matching the wall on her left, so they were in a narrow canyon. The razor-sharp edges of stone left by old rockfalls or the idea of them protruded from the narrow walls so that they had to turn sideways in places and edge their way through. The light faded so that they seemed to be walking in twilight. Water, or something Hallie didn’t want to investigate too closely dripped down the rock face.

  Just as Hallie thought she couldn’t stand it anymore—too close and tight and the air heavy with the smell of something she didn’t even dare try to identify, the canyon widened out and they stepped out onto a steep gravelly slope edging downward onto open ground.

  “Is this where the dead go?” she asked Lily. She didn’t want to ask about heaven or hell or which this was, but—

  “Because of the ghost.” Maker spoke up from the other side of Lily though it had been almost completely silent since Lily appeared.

  “What?” Hallie asked.

  “The ghost,” Maker said. “It holds her here.” It trotted up between Hallie and Lily, though it kept its head cocked toward Lily, as though it expected her to try something sneaky at any moment.

  “Is that why there aren’t any people?”

  “What?” Both Maker and Lily said it at the same time.

  “People,” Hallie said. “Shouldn’t there be people here? Where is everyone?”

  The dog and the girl stopped walking and looked at her. “It’s full of people,” Lily said. “There are people everywhere.”

  Hallie stood on the sloping path and looked. “Really?” she said. “Because I don’t see anything.” And Hallie was used to seeing things, to seeing more than other people did.

  “Everywhere,” Lily said firmly. “They’re all kind of caught up in their own stuff. Because we can kind of still see the world. And we kind of want to be back there.”

  “You want to be back there?” Hallie asked.

  Lily looked at her squarely. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Well, yeah.

  “Is everyone here?” Hallie asked. Was Dell here? Was her mother?

  “They move on.” Maker looked pointedly at Lily. “Mostly.”

  Hallie reached back to shift the backpack higher on her shoulder.

  Maker’s ears pricked forward. “What is that?” it asked.

  “What?” Hallie searched the surrounding landscape. Rock behind them, and in front, shallow sloping grasslands punctuated by stands of trees and cut through by paths both narrow and wider out to the farther horizons.

  “That.” Maker touched her arm with its nose.

  Hallie had to look because even though it still stung, like a burn, she’d forgotten about being injured. She shrugged. “That thing,” she said. “It caught me with a claw. It’s not a big deal. It hardly even bled.”

  Maker took three quick breaths. “It’s a big deal. Big deal. You have to leave. Leave now.”

  “What? Why? I’m not leaving until I find Boyd.”

  “Unmade. You will be unmade,” Maker said.

  “I feel fine,” Hallie said. Which wasn’t completely true, but close enough.

  Maker cocked its head sideways. He looked like a cartoon dog, almost human and yet clearly not. “Unmakers touch the unliving,” it said.

  “Which I am not,” Hallie said. She wasn’t dead, right? So she didn’t count.

  “When you’re in here,” Maker said.

  “When I’m in here, what? I’m dead?” Because that would be truly creepy.

  “When you’re in here, you are one of us. Out there, you’re not.”

  “So, I have to leave or I’ll die?”

  “Unmade.”

  “Worse than die?”

  “Worse than anything.”

  Hallie looked at her arm, which still looked fine to her. “How soon?” she asked Maker.

  “Half an outside day.”

  All right, then. Twelve hours. Hallie could do that. Find Boyd. Get them out. Not be unmade. Easy. Right? She looked at the sky. Couldn’t tell anything from that. The sun wasn’t even visible. And anyway, it wasn’t actually the sun. She had a watch but it had stopped keeping time when she came through the door. But okay. It would be okay.

  A hot strong wind blew across their path, sending small bits of gravel running down the slope and whipping a miniature dust devil that danced down the remaining slope, then died. Lily had gone ahead as Hallie talked to Maker. She was maybe twenty yards down the slope, waiting for them. “What about Lily?” Hallie asked. “Can she be unmade?”

  Maker shrugged. “Death rules here. Mostly,” it said. “He would not allow it.”

  “Death wouldn’t? Why?”

  “She is Death’s daughter.”

  Hallie stopped. She stared at Maker. “What?”

  Lily had bent down to tie her shoe, and Hallie was momentarily distracted by the question of where shoes came from in hell. Or clothes. Or—

  “What do you mean, she’s Death’s daughter?”

  Maker looked at her like she’d said something stupid. Like, Catch up.

  “That’s what this is about,” it said.

  “This? What, this? Hollowell?”

  “If you marry Death’s daughter, you live forever.”

  “Really?” Then, “Really? So why is she dead?”

  “Because she died.”

  Hallie looked at Maker. “Well, okay.” Was she being dense? She didn’t think so.

  “You live forever,” it said. “But you can die.”

  “You don’t die from old age.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t get ill.” Because
hadn’t Hollowell had cancer? “But people can kill you.”

  “Or you can kill yourself.”

  “Wait, Hollowell must have known this, right? That’s why he wanted either Lily when she was alive or Beth now. How did he know? Who knows something like that?”

  Maker gave her a look that clearly said, How would I know? But then it said, “Death knows.”

  “Why would Death tell Hollowell?” She looked at Lily up the path. Would he have told Lily’s mother? Or would she have discovered it somehow? Because what had Beth said? That Hollowell had come to their house with old journals, that there were conversations that had stopped when she and Lily came into the room. So maybe?

  “Will Boyd live forever?” she asked. Was that why he looked so young?

  Maker looked at her. She wished she could tell what it was thinking. And why it was telling her this now. “No,” it said.

  “Jesus.”

  28

  Past the canyon and down the slope, the grass was short and green, and though it wasn’t particularly warm, Hallie could feel sweat against her chest underneath the backpack straps.

  Half a field length in front of them was one of the stands of trees, gathered at what looked like a small creek. No people, no matter what Lily and Maker claimed. Among a host of disconcerting things, it was unsettling to have gone from the person who saw things no one else did to the person who didn’t see anything, even the things everyone else saw.

  “We’re close,” Maker said.

  “Close to what?”

  It looked at her like it meant to roll its eyes, but instead it turned away and trotted down the gentle slope.

  “No, seriously,” Hallie said. She hated this place even more than she’d expected to, particularly hated this, which looked like … anyplace, like it was safe. Hallie jogged to catch up, but though the land looked smooth and gentle, it was rough underfoot, holes appearing where there didn’t seem to be any, jagged ends of old vegetation, and she stumbled hard twice before she caught up with Maker. “Seriously,” she repeated. “What’s going on here?”

  “This is his,” Maker said.