by J. A. Pitts
“Hey, big girl?” I said.
She may not have a tongue, but I knew she could hear. Her language skills were decent. I squatted down between her and Bub and signed hello. She turned away, not acknowledging the greeting.
“Hi,” Bub said, grinning at me. Of course, he grinned most of the time, it came with having a head full of teeth. Like a carnivorous Muppet.
“Hello, Bub. How are you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been better. We’ve missed you.”
Jai Li pushed him and scooted down. I almost grinned. Obviously that was a secret that he’d betrayed.
“Me, too,” I said. “All this stuff about Katie had me out of it for a while.”
“We’re scared, too,” Bub said, putting one clawed hand onto Jai Li’s shoulder.
Jai Li shot him a glance that would’ve made milk go bad.
“Except Jai Li. She’s not scared. She’s angry.”
“I figured as much,” I said, reaching over to brush the hair out of her face. “And I’ve been a bad person to ignore her for so long.”
“Grownups do that sometimes,” Bub said with a sigh. “Even when they love you, they abandon you when they go crazy.”
I reached up and hugged the little guy. “I’m sorry,” I said, cupping his cheek. “You’re right. I’ve been a real jerk.”
He shrugged, but the tension went out of him. I glanced over to see Jai Li watching me, her eyes full of tears.
“You want a hug?” I asked, turning to her.
She didn’t move, but Bub nudged her. “Come on,” he said. “You know you want to.”
She gave him one final look of betrayal and scrambled from the table and ran back toward the new barn.
I sighed and stood, thinking to follow her.
“Wait,” Bub said, placing a hand on my arm. “Let me talk to her. She’s not as mature as me.”
I nodded and he tore off after her, his little spindly legs a blur as he tried to catch up with her. As he rounded the side of the barn, I heard a wail of anguish.
Not a sound that made me comfortable, so I ran after them. At the last minute, I paused. I could hear Bub talking to her, hear her sobbing.
“You’ll be okay,” he was saying. “Sometimes the moms do stupid things, but they always love us.”
I walked away, head down, letting the pain of his words settle into my heart. I had two kids. How had I abandoned him here to ghost amongst the others. He needed a home as much as Jai Li did.
The picnic table was strewn with colorful pictures. I sorted through them, amazed as always at the girl’s talent, but heart broken by the scenes I saw. Had I really yelled at her? Was that why Edith and Mary had finally pushed me? There were scenes of me lost in the dreamscape: one of the three-headed bear that made me shiver, a dark cave with something pulsing green at the end, an entity who did nothing but consume and spit out the bones.
No princesses and unicorns for my girl. Nope. Nothing but the finest nightmares for my girl.
I turned at the sound of them coming back. They walked hand in hand, but I could tell that Jai Li was not ready to forgive me yet. Hell, I didn’t blame her. What were we putting her through?
She wouldn’t approach the table, just stood near the edge looking at her feet.
“Come on,” Bub said. “Get it over with.”
“No,” I said, standing. “I’ve been pretty bad to Jai Li, and she has every right to be angry with me.”
Both she and Bub looked at each other, their eyes wide.
“I should be grounded or something. Time-out maybe?”
Jai Li got very serious then, took a step back and signed something to Bub.
“She’s not teasing,” he said, nodding. “I can tell when she’s lying. She means it.”
Huh. He could tell when I was lying. Had I lied to him before? How many times and for what reasons? “Man, we grownups get lost in our own little worlds, don’t we?”
I sat back down, hanging my hands between my knees. Was I doing to them what ma and da had done to me? Was all the controlling behavior because they were afraid of other things. Jesus. I hadn’t been exactly selfish or anything, kids needed their parents and needed to have their freedoms as well. It was a wonky balancing act that apparently I totally sucked at.
“I’m sorry, Jai Li. You don’t deserve how I’ve treated you. I’m just so scared for Katie that I lost sight of what I should be doing.” I stood, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I’m gonna go into the house and talk to Deidre and Jimmy.”
She just watched me, her face a mask of wonder and tears.
“You deserve better. If you want to live somewhere else, I’ll do what I can to help you have a better life. But if you want to live with me and Katie, I promise to try harder.”
She nodded once and didn’t move otherwise.
I brushed the top of Bub’s head with my hand and shrugged. “I’ll be in the house. Julie’s in there as well. When you make up your mind, let me know.”
Of course, it was a shitty move. Putting all that pressure on the girl, but I couldn’t dictate to her. She’d had a hard enough life so far. Maybe I was bad news, and she needed someone who could care for her better. Someone like Edith, Mary, and Julie. They’d take care of her. I’d leave Circle Q, head back down to the apartment in Kent, and let them raise her.
No matter the outcome, I thought maybe I had a slightly better insight to my life growing up, and a deep abiding hatred of being a fucking grownup.
This all just sucked.
Twenty-three
Julie headed back to Circle Q and I stayed out at Black Briar for a couple of days, nursing my relationship with Jai Li and Bub, while just regaining my strength.
Jimmy had Katie’s old room converted to a hospital room. He had a full hospital bed brought in, as well as all the equipment needed to monitor someone in a coma. The hospital was not pleased but couldn’t really refuse him. He had staff who could watch her around the clock and hired several nurses to come in throughout the week. He also had Melanie to help coordinate all the care. She was just as safe and cared for there as she would’ve been in a long-term care facility.
After a couple of days, Jai Li began coming around me again. I was working in the smithy there, spending time with Bub, just making swords and trying different techniques. I sparred with Trisha and her crew and really pushed my body every day. I needed to feel fitter. The time in the dreamscape had taken something out of me, but the days at Black Briar were helping me rebuild it.
In the end, it was Jai Li who really accelerated the healing. Once she decided she could forgive me, I started feeling much better. I didn’t shirk my duties, either. I let her pick my punishment and spent another three days helping the Black Briar crew dismantle the old barn. Bub wasn’t going to be living there anymore. I was going to build him a place at the smithy, and then, when we got our own place, he was going to come live with us.
He was very excited by the whole prospect but insisted he had to stay near the forge. Jai Li assured him we’d have a forge at our new place. She even drew him a picture of the house she wanted with the fence and the roses. Only now, it had a smithy in the back with a house for Bub. It was all cute and healing.
By the time they had Katie settled into the house, we were a family again. But Jai Li insisted that Circle Q was our current home and we had to go back there. They missed us, she assured me.
We settled into a solid rhythm out at Circle Q. I started back to working with Julie, letting the hard labor of shoeing and mucking stalls beat my body down, so I could sleep long and deep at night. I was open with everyone, explaining how I was dreaming about searching for Katie. Jai Li knew how serious it was and approved, even if the others thought it was silly and dangerous.
One afternoon, after a long day of shoeing horses, Julie and I stopped out at the County Line for a beer before going home.
“I know you and Jai Li have made up,” she said, toying with her glass. “But I’ve been asking around,
and I think you’re playing a dangerous game.”
I patted her arm and smiled. “I won’t lie to you, Julie. It scares the hell out of me, and I don’t go into that place every night, but when I do, I know she’s out there. You don’t know what it’s like. I can sense her, you know. It’s dangerous, and frankly scares the bejesus out of me, but what else can I do?”
Julie got her boss face on immediately. “This is that sideways place, right? The place between the mirrors where the eaters live?”
I could tell she was worried. I wondered who she’d been talking with.
“And Jai Li keeps drawing you in danger,” she said. “Have you seen the pictures? Giant glass spiders and hate-filled spirits hunting you through dark tunnels.”
I shivered. That pretty much described the way the latest trip had ended up. I’d barely escaped again. Just the thought of that last encounter gave me a shiver. I had been so close to losing it. I took a deep breath, pulled on my best suit of bravado and smiled.
“Home again, home again,” I sang as I walked into the house, just ahead of Julie. Jai Li came tearing down the hall and was about to throw herself into my arms, but stopped herself. She held her nose and shook her head, signing for shower.
I bowed. “You are so right,” I said, grinning. “Mucked out a few stalls today to help out Mr. Peters.”
“He’s a nice man,” Mary said, coming out of the kitchen with a dishrag in her hands. “But you go take a shower, then come into the kitchen to help your girl with her work, while Julie showers.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and walked back into the kitchen.
“I guess we know who’s boss,” I said, quietly.
Jai Li snickered.
After a quick shower, I sat beside Jai Li at the kitchen tables and worked through a math workbook with her. As we were home schooling her for the summer, there was no real break. Also no real class times. We studied as we could.
When Edith came in carrying a bag full of groceries, Julie and I hustled out to the truck to bring in the rest. When I got in, Jai Li and Edith had their heads together plotting.
Jai Li nodded, signing something I didn’t catch, and Edith nodded.
“She wants me to show you the pictures she’s been saving,” Edith said, standing. “The girl’s like a machine when she’s on, just creating one picture after another, colors and shadows …” she waved the thought away. “Let me show you.”
I sat at the table and pulled Jai Li into my lap. She snuggled against me, the top of her head under my chin. I loved the way she felt in my arms, the way she smelled.
I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was worrying that I was becoming obsessed with this dream fugue thing again. The nights were getting rougher, which told me that either I was getting closer to finding Katie, or whoever was hunting us was getting closer to me.
I had to remember that Jai Li needed me, even more now that Katie was lost to us for the moment. Only for the moment, damn it. My throat clenched, and I squeezed Jai Li tighter, making her yelp in surprise.
“Sorry,” I said, lessening my death grip. “I just missed you so much.”
She cooed and ran her small hand over the side of my face. Her smile was a miracle, a moment of sunshine in a gray day. I turned my head and kissed her hand. She laughed. Guess it tickled.
When Edith came back in the room, she had Julie with her. They sat across from us and Mary came around to sit at the head of the table—her spot.
Jai Li held only my arm, one hand to her mouth as Edith laid each picture on the table in front of me.
There were so many. The world of sideways was immediate, the crystalline landscape, the shadows, and especially the eaters. Most were rendered in black and white, which fit the worlds I visited in my sleep.
She drew page after page of the eaters, from the smallest, about the size of her thumbnail, all the way to one that was nearly as big as Nidhogg in her full dragon form. And Jai Li had seen Nidhogg, so I knew there was no exaggeration in the scale.
This last one was not made of smoke or crystal, but meat and pain. I didn’t know how I knew that, but it was pretty clear in the pictures. Jai Li could capture emotion as well as form. It was a little terrifying.
Several pictures showed me jumping over lakes of fire, sliding down dunes made of broken promises, and delving through caves of forgotten dreams.
I touched each picture, getting the flash of their true meaning, understanding the world this child saw when I delved into the sideways.
I squeezed her hand and looked down at her. “Are you sure you’re only six?” I asked. She shrugged and hid her face against my chest as Edith brought forth the final batch of pictures.
They were odd portraits. Some were us as a family: Katie, Jai Li, Bub, and me, usually with horses in the picture somewhere. She did have her first and true love there.
But in every one there were our shadows. Mine was nearly always a boring smudge of gray, while Jai Li’s had no shadow. For some reason that made me sad.
Katie’s picture was the clearest. Her shadow was dark, darker than mine. As every picture was laid out on the table Katie began to fade and her shadow grew more distinct.
“We’re losing her,” I said, touching the papers carefully. “She’s fading.”
Jai Li nodded, but pulled my hands back, holding them in hers.
Safe, she signed, pointing between me and her.
“Yes, you and me, we are safe.”
She tapped Katie’s last picture and shivered, signing danger.
I nodded, not saying anything else.
Finally, the last three pictures were different. These weren’t about any of us, nor of the typical denizens of the Sideways. These showed a shadow—a wraith, like one of the hungry spirits that had been trapped in the house out in Chumstick. It was the ghost with the bowler hat. The one that promised to watch me suffer. He was drawn in such a way that if you turned the picture ninety degrees, it looked like the focus was on him, and Katie, Jai Li, and I were the shadows.
He stood there, as I’d seen him that dark night. He had a bowler hat in one hand and a dripping axe in the other. A skeletal frame peeked out from beneath his shoulder-to-ankle trench coat.
He’d been just inside the dome Qindra had erected over the house, a shield to keep him and his ilk contained. As I traced his outline with my finger I could hear his voice in my head.
When you die, I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting to play.
The last picture was of him and Katie, superimposed over one another in one frame, then another where Katie lay on the floor of her school and her shadow and the Bowler Hat Man’s were both flying away as the book obviously exploded.
Her spirit was blasted out of her body, as I’d suspected. But was this proof she hadn’t been inside there alone?
I covered my face with my hands, leaning back. “Burn those, please.” I said, my voice muffled behind my hands.
“Dark portents,” Edith said, gathering the stack of papers.
Where did Stuart find Katie after the Solstice battle? Was it within the boundaries of the dome? The dome had blown by that point. And the spirits had been siphoned into the rituals of the blood cult. But had this one eluded them? Had he somehow marked Katie?
I excused myself quickly and ran down the hallway. I made it into the bathroom just before the bile rose in me and I spewed the beer Julie and I had drunk an hour earlier.
Was that who hunted us? Had he latched onto Katie somehow to withstand the necromancer’s summons? Had that mass killer been inside Katie when we’d made love? Was he looking out of her eyes, hidden in the darkness, feeding on her nightmares and fears?
I had to call Qindra. Hell, maybe I needed to call an exorcist.
Twenty-four
Qindra didn’t answer her cell phone, and when I called the house, Zi Xui, the head of Nidhogg’s servants, assured me she would take a message and see that Qindra got it. She said that Qindra had gone that morning and was n
ot expected back for a few days.
I thanked her and hung up, looking down at my cell phone. What the hell was I supposed to do? Maybe the wraith had been destroyed when the diary had gone off like a magical nuke. Or, maybe he was just in the sideways, following me around when I was looking for Katie. That seemed more likely, now that the initial shock had subsided. Jai Li drew vivid pictures, but I was the one drawing the conclusions.
With the shock, and my extended absences, we decided to stay at Circle Q, do a little bonding and see if we could get some answers out of Jai Li without totally freaking out the child. I found it bizarre to be relying on her abilities, but she saw things we didn’t, or saw them in ways we hadn’t thought to consider.
It was almost as if she was an antenna into the psychotic and crazy that had sideswiped our lives in the last year. Of course, she was part of all that, having been a servant of Nidhogg her whole short life.
We had a quiet evening of knitting, games, and stories … lots and lots of stories. She especially wanted to hear silly things like The Three Pigs, The Three Bears, and Humpty-Dumpty. She thought they were high art. She’d begun to read on her own, as well. I think she just liked hearing me read. And it was something she hadn’t experienced frequently in her time with Nidhogg.
Of course it reminded me of the homey night I’d had with Katie, Melanie, and Dena the week before Katie’s collapse. It made things a little more manic, a little on edge. Not sure Jai Li noticed, but I think the others did. We called it an early evening and I trundled Jai Li to bed. Maybe I needed some sleep to help clear my head. Something without being hunted.
Jai Li must have been a good shield. I didn’t have any memorable dreams and felt better rested than I had since before the collapse. After a hearty breakfast of steel cut oats and fresh fruit (I thought we could’ve used some actual meat) we went for a horseback ride out to the wooded trails that backed up to Circle Q.
We all went, five women on horseback, riding out with a picnic lunch, more books, and a Frisbee. We were in no hurry and I really enjoyed the ride. It was peaceful. We rode for a couple of hours, had a nice lunch in the bright sunshine on of a wooded clearing, and threw the Frisbee around for a while.