Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  “A selfless act enabled him to get on board,” Creesie murmured, still avoiding eye contact with Daniel. But I barely noticed, let alone cared why. This was incredible news! My head clearing a little, I flashed a huge smile at Daniel.

  Of course! His willingness to risk his soul for mine. A selfless act! That single act had given Daniel the ability to change Stations. Even so, had it not been for the six souls around us, Daniel would have surely spent all of eternity in that dismal, wretched place. And to think how I had doubted them!

  Unspent tears pooled in my eyes. “I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you.”

  “There there . . .” Mac said, pulling a freshly starched hanky from his pocket. As I blew my nose, he patted my head. “It’s nearly over now, doll.”

  The elevator, which had shot forward this time, screeched to a halt. Unlike the last time, my legs held me steady. I felt rejuvenated, or maybe just more in sync with my new form than I was before. I did notice that the elevator was still covered in gunk, though not as much as there had been earlier. And some part of me observed that the rows of figures carved in the massive doors looked a little less downtrodden. But something was distracting me. As I looked down, I saw that Daniel was holding my hand? Or . . .

  Was I holding his?

  It felt all wrong and all right. After all, hadn’t I loved him once? And hadn’t he been willing to risk his neck, his soul, to save me? I suspected some part of my logic had a flaw, but it was easily dismissed. We were together again! How could this be wrong?

  The elevator stopped. With our hands still entwined, Daniel took one step toward the massive doors and I moved effortlessly with him. Not consciously, but easily. Several pairs of hands grabbed me, preventing my escape.

  Boiling with irritation, I turned and snarled at them.

  In the sweetest tone imaginable, as though she feared my wrath, Creesie uttered, “I believe this is Daniel’s stop,” and I knew she meant that he should go alone.

  “Unfortunately,” Gus added, though I sniffed more than a hint of insincerity.

  I looked pleadingly at Daniel, distraught at the thought of leaving him. At least, it seemed so. I felt disoriented. In certain moments, my emotions seemed to belong only to me; in others, not so much. As I fretted, Daniel flashed me one of his classic smiles—the one that insisted he was part angel, part your-worst-nightmare, the one that made any girl from eight to eighty wobble slightly on their feet. He slipped an arm around my waist, his eyes locked on mine. His body, a surfer’s build, felt taut and familiar, but his sandy locks were longer than I remembered. As I lifted a hand to brush a curl from his face, he smiled bigger. That’s when I had the most intense longing for a thunderstorm—a crazy one.

  “It’s okay, love.” Daniel said easily, as if no time had passed and we were back in the ninth grade, and madly in love. “They’re right. This is my stop.” He glanced briefly at each of them. “Thank you.” He managed to sound polite but indifferent. Returning to me, he said, “And most especially, my love, might I thank you?”

  My stomach was churning. Storm clouds seemed to roil around me. Unable to tear my eyes from his, I stared at him in wonder. There was such an innocence about Daniel, a sensitivity that made me want to protect him. But, in this moment, protecting him was the last thing on my mind.

  His first kiss brushed the side of my mouth, but the very next one held the promise of that storm I had longed for. There passed a moment when I had the vaguest sensation that I wasn’t quite myself, but I didn’t seem to care enough to think this through. At some point, there were various sounds of disgust inside my head, followed by a frenzied tugging on my arms and legs. Only then did Daniel release me.

  “No worries, love. No distance could keep me from you now.” He blew me a kiss. I felt it land on my cheek. I was still fighting them, holding out my arms to him as he backed out of the elevator.

  16 Returning

  The instant Daniel passed through the doors the elevator sped forward again. As the stupor lifted from my head, I felt an unwavering sense of shame. I was also sick to my stomach, and at an absolute loss to explain my bad behavior. It wasn’t only what I had done, which was bad enough, but that I had felt so good doing it. What was Ethan going to say if, or rather when, he found out? What on earth had possessed me?

  “It wasn’t your fault, Hope. Your will wasn’t entirely your own. Those were, I’m sorry to say, the depraved.” Creesie was sounding more like herself, but I could tell from her expression that she wasn’t quite there. “If we’d arrived much later, I don’t . . .” There was a fading away of her sentence that found its way into my thoughts.

  I winced.

  As if she were wiping away a disturbing thought, Creesie rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Sadly, it appears that many rumors we’ve heard are true. Such a waste. They’re far too clever for their own good . . .”

  “The depraved?” Rin sounded impressed. “Never in a million—”

  “Never in another million years,” Cat growled as the elevator whirred soundlessly along, her foul mood now aimed at Rin. I inched closer to Mac, but Rin looked unfazed.

  Music was returning now. Something by Air Supply? The sound system here was fabulous. Though the music was low, it sounded like the band was in the elevator with us.

  “One of my mother’s favorites,” Charlotte whispered in my ear, implying she was the reason it was playing. Like the jukebox at the Station, it ran on sheer thought. Though I was usually more of a rocker, the music matched my sappy mood. I ignored the fact that Charlotte had selected, “I’m All Out Of Love.”

  Something close to awe sparkled in Rin’s black velvet eyes. “Did you see the way the depraved manipulated Hope? One had her convinced that she was staring back into her own dead eyes, another that she was dancing with Ethan . . .” I heard her whistle under her breath. “And all the while they were busy stealing her soul!”

  “I hate to cut in on your pleasant retelling of my horror,” I snapped at Rin. “But how do you know what happened? I haven’t even thought about it myself.”

  “Creesie showed us while you were distracted by Daniel,” Charlotte answered in a quiet voice. “But only the necessary parts. So we wouldn’t worry,” she added in a rush.

  Absent his usual grin, I could see the worry on Mac’s face. “We were scared out of our skulls while it was happening! After I lost sight of you, I—I—” He balled his hand into a fist, shook it in the air. “Thank heaven, and Charlotte, of course, that you’re all right!”

  “Of course she’s all right!” Cat echoed. “You are all right, aren’t you, Hope?”

  Their concern was touching, but unnecessary. “I’m fine,” I said evenly, avoiding thinking too hard about what they had prevented from happening—an insignificant speck lost in a massive black hole. “Tell me more about these, um . . . depraved.”

  “We’ve heard enough stories about them—amoral individuals, liars, thieves, all sorts of corrupt and perverse beings—and those are the good ones!” Rin sounded too enthusiastic for my tastes. Mac attempted to silence her with an internal grumble, but it didn’t help. She was excited the way some people are when they pass a car wreck and pray they see a dead body. “Yep . . . all your standard and nonstandard varieties of evil inhabit that Station!”

  I attempted to let those words sink into my brain—powerful as they were—unable to discern how Daniel had gotten himself stuck there, how I had narrowly avoided getting my soul sucked away, and second-guessing what might have occurred if Charlotte hadn’t been able to find me. Would I have ceased to exist? No more Hope Valenti . . . ever? And what of Daniel? Would he have met a similar fate? He was, like me, still alive, after all. If anything had altered . . . if Charlotte hadn’t reversed time, if Daniel hadn’t risked his own eternity, if the six of them hadn’t been there . . . Would our souls still be intact? And they were, weren’t they—intact?

  “How did . . .” I tried to form a question, but several others jumped in front to take its
place. “I mean, what would have happened if . . .” They were both about Daniel. I was afraid to ask and desperate to know all in the same breath.

  “The depraved,” Gus went on, “have a reputation at our Station, a rather notorious one, I admit. Do you recall my unique bird-squeezing ability?”

  In a moment of levity, I arched an eyebrow. How could I forget?

  “Yes, of course . . .” He chuckled as he heard me. “Well, the depraved are far more capable than that.” His eyes darted to Creesie, who seemed to agree that Gus was on the right track. “They have the uncanny ability to materialize into anything—living or not.” I was taken aback as he sent me images of broken benches, bits of moldy plaster, ominous-looking smoke, a derelict man with the back of his head missing, and a bloody, identical version of myself at the scene of my accident.

  “All those were . . . were . . . ?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.” Gus wore a look of disgust. “The depraved can literally become anything, but fortunately, they don’t have that great of imaginations. In fact, they’re so unimaginative that they’ll steal the thoughts of whoever is near—unpeeling the layers of one’s soul until they’re able to extract that person’s greatest fear, or become their heart’s most burning desire.”

  “Oh!” I looked away, mortified. No wonder Ethan had appeared to me.

  “Stinking parasites,” Cat muttered under her breath.

  Gus hesitated, looking briefly to Creesie who inclined her head again. “Because of their deteriorated state, they don’t do much traveling, and believe me, that’s a good thing. In the living realm, they’re much more dangerous.”

  More dangerous? Surely Gus was exaggerating.

  “What do you mean?” I squeaked. “They’re pretty scary already, don’t you think?”

  Creesie broke in pleasantly, “Hold tight, everyone. I believe this is our stop.”

  The elevator slammed to a halt. Glancing around, I saw that the walls were pristine again, the carved figures fully upright and joyful. And the air smelled delicious—like sweet things baking. I’d been so preoccupied with Gus that I hadn’t paid attention to much else. I saw that everyone had changed back into their casual clothing, appearing nearly unaffected by our trip. Everyone except for Charlotte. Her copper-colored mane was sticking up in odd places, and her eyes seemed out of focus. In a word, she looked shell-shocked. Either she hadn’t been fully aware of what awaited us at that other Station, or it was just now hitting her where we had been. I had to agree; it was a lot for a person to take in—even a dead one.

  Lagging behind in the elevator, I waited an extra two seconds as Charlotte pulled herself together. As she closed her eyes, I watched her frazzled hair smooth, her clothing morph into a golden-green ensemble that nearly duplicated Ethan’s eyes—which really made me miss him and feel terrible all over again—and finally, I watched her expression slip into something more happy and Charlotte-like.

  They were waiting for us in the sunny room just outside the elevator. The yellow glow shining down from the top of the endless ceiling was warm on my face.

  “All right, let’s get this over with,” Cat heaved with resignation. “I could tell you the actual story of the first cat that curiosity killed, but I’m certain that wouldn’t stop you. It certainly didn’t stop the cat!” Beside her, Mac chuckled under his breath, trying to fake it as a cough. “Whatever you wish to know regarding our recent travels, you should speak now—or forever, as they say, hold your peace. We’ll not be carrying any of this nonsense back into the Station. Lord knows, there’s enough gossip without adding all this to it!”

  Mac (now over his laughing/coughing fit) said in a helpful tone, “Since she has so many questions, dear Cat, shouldn’t we make ourselves comfortable?”

  But I hadn’t said a word. I’d not even allowed myself to think of questions, or so I had thought. Free rein? Open forum? This was too much to ask!

  Creesie, Cat, and Mac arranged themselves shoulder-width apart in a straight line and then bent in unison at the knees as though about to take a seat. I thought they had all drifted into senility; after all, who knew how old they really were? But, as their thighs bent at ninety-degree angle, a couch appeared beneath them, preventing them from falling to the floor.

  A second, cushy, floral couch faced theirs, both of them situated in front of a wide, sunny window that looked into a flower-filled yard. A blond-colored coffee table squatted between the sofas. We were in someone’s living room. Pictures of family filled the walls—three young girls, and their mother and father. I easily recognized one of the faces.

  “I’ve missed this place,” Creesie said as she nestled into the cushions. “Lived here for nearly sixty years with my husband, Joseph. It’s not fancy, but it’s home.”

  “I’ll get drinks,” Cat said, still sounding a little huffy. “The rest of you should find seats.” As she stomped off, a kitchen materialized adjacent to the cozy living room. Floral wallpaper, a sink with a small window above it, and the front of a refrigerator were all that was visible through the doorway. At Cat’s urging, Rin, Gus, and I collapsed on the opposite couch as Charlotte sank onto a flowered ottoman.

  “Joseph used to tease that he wouldn’t bother with flowers at my funeral,” Creesie said, alluding to the décor. “By the time I died, he thought I’d be sick of them. Oh, but he was so wrong!” She laughed happily. “How could I tire of such lovely little faces?”

  I smiled at her. Mom had loved flowers the same way. She often told me that they spoke to her. I was never brave enough to ask her what they said. I wished I had.

  “Looks like there’s water and sun-tea in here,” Cat called, her head muffled by the refrigerator door. “Any preferences?”

  She must have been eavesdropping on our thoughts because I heard the sound of ice clinking, cabinets banging, and before any of us could reply, Cat hustled in with two trays. One held seven iced teas, the other an assortment of sweets.

  “This is delightful, Cat,” Creesie took a nibble off a small cake and set her glass on a side table. “Coasters, please, everyone.”

  I drank a huge gulp of my sugary tea, nearly downing it all in one swallow. It calmed and energized me. Holding the ice-cold glass between my knees, I avoided the whole coaster issue, and wondered with a growing impatience if they were ever going to get around to my countless questions.

  Creesie took another nibble off her cake, then dipped her head my way. With a snort, she said, “Go ahead, my dear. Ask away. Believe it or not, I can actually hear them rattling around in your head.”

  Cat tossed in, “Youth really is wasted on the young.”

  Statements like that always threw me for a loop, especially when everyone around me looked my age or younger. But given that I hadn’t any idea what that meant—and this was true far too often—I simply ignored it, and Cat as well.

  I pressed ahead. “Gus said they were more dangerous in the living realm than here at the Station. Why is that?”

  “You’re referring to the depraved?” Creesie mumbled, distracted by her cake.

  I nodded sharply. Who else? A band of marauding Santa Clauses?

  This tickled Creesie. As if I couldn’t hear her, she mumbled to Mac, “She’s a bit of a comedian, isn’t she?”

  “Told you so,” Mac chuckled, nudging Cat. Cat looked nearly as annoyed as I did, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she didn’t think I was quite so funny.

  I cleared my throat. “Could we focus, please? I’ll be dead by the time you answer me.” I hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but Cat made a terrible face.

  “Sorry, my dear. I suppose the fact that you’re here safe and sound has left me a tad giddy.” Creesie placed her cake on a small end table and gave me her full attention. “Getting back to your question, I suppose you could say the depraved aren’t the sort you would ever want to come across in a dark alley . . .”

  “Or even a well-lit one for that matter.” Mac chuckled. As Cat glared at him, the sound died in his throat
. I felt a variety of emotions around me—all but one in agreement with Mac. Rin was still in car-accident awe.

  “In the living realm, they’re especially frightening because . . .” Creesie wavered. “Oh, I don’t know how to explain it without showing you, but they do seem to get a jolt of depraved enjoyment from leaping into living things and temporarily taking over their bodies.”

  I nearly picked my jaw off the floor. Just the thought it made my skin crawl. “And why would they do that?”

  Creesie picked up her cake again. “I suppose it makes them feel alive.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense.” My living mind struggled to make the connection. “None of you even act like you’re dead.” Then I wondered, “Do the dead feel dead?”

  Rin looked offended. “I certainly don’t.”

  Then a soft voice said, “I suppose it depends on who you ask, Hope.”

  Creesie nodded. “Yes, Charlotte, that’s true. But if we’re speaking of dark beings, it would be safe to assume they haven’t felt alive for a very long time . . . possibly even when they were living. It’s difficult to explain to someone who has lived a full and happy life, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

  “Show me how they do it,” I told Creesie. “I want to get the full effect.”

  The cake Cat was eating flew out of her hand. She looked like she wanted to turn me over her knee and spank me. In my mind, I heard assorted shrieks and grumblings.

  “Why are you guys so literal about everything?” I frowned. “I meant show me in my head! Do you think I’m a total loser?”

  With a smirk I realized that Cat might think so. But not about this subject. She had to know that the mere idea of anything controlling me sounded like a waking nightmare. I could barely tolerate my parents telling me what to do—let alone a dark being invading my soul. And when it came to experiencing another person’s emotions? Forget it. Just passing through the living was traumatic enough. How overwhelming must it feel to stay inside of one for any length of time? How could any being—evil or otherwise—possibly enjoy that?