by Chad Huskins
Isn’t that a kind of other plane? The mind itself? he reasoned, wondering if she was currently feeling around inside his head. If she was, she understood that Spencer had a mind to kill her, for sure and for certain, if only to shut the doorway she was close to opening. But he couldn’t. Not only was this incorporeal version of her invulnerable to a bullet, but it would seem that the substantial version of her could evaporate when threatened.
How do you kill a phantom?
Had she read that thought in his mind? He was usually aware when she was rooting around inside him, but there was no guarantee that she couldn’t change the game. She had changed it a great deal so far, hadn’t she? Spencer glared at her. Can you hear me? Can you hear these thoughts? Kaley Dupré only continued looking up at him, with those eyes full to bursting again.
“Get the kid,” he said. “I’ll do a quick search of the SUVs, see if there’s anything useful in ’em. Go to the shed, get in the Subaru, wait for me.”
The girl did as she was told, waving for the boy, who timidly followed, and Spencer went right away to Zakhar’s bedroom closet. Earlier, while scouring the place for serviceable lock picks, he’d seen some clothes he thought would fit him. The burns on the lower part of his legs didn’t require immediate attention, but it still hurt when he removed his pants. From Zakhar’s wardrobe, he selected a blue shirt, a slim insulated black jacket, some Wrangler jeans and a pair of black boots. In the bathroom, he washed the dust and charcoal from his face and hands, then changed into his new clothes.
After this, he set about putting the finishing touches on their getaway. Slashed the tires of both vehicles, because one of the Russian thugs had run off earlier, when Kaley had passed through the porch and freaked them all out, and he might return. Two less vehicles for his enemies were two less vehicles capable of searching for him. He did take the mounted GPS computer off the dashboard of one of the vehicles, as well as a combat shotgun—Nice one, too, he thought, giving it an appraisal. It was a Benelli M4 semi-automatic 12-gauge, with a nice black case, complete with thirty shells.
Spencer lugged his new tools over to the Subaru, and tossed them into the back. He was about to get in the driver’s side when he had a thought. What do you think, Spence ol’ boy? Send them another message? He smiled, took one of the half-full cans of “petrol,” and walked back into the house.
The fire was still going in the hearth. Spencer doused the floor with gasoline and made a trail to the walls, to the furniture and the bearskin rug on the floor, and then tore one of the curtains down. One end he tossed in the fireplace, the other trailing out to the bearskin rug.
He went out to the Subaru and got into the driver’s seat. The boy was in the back seat, and, curiously enough, so was the apparition girl. Spencer found this interesting because she wasn’t passing through the seat. He wondered how it all worked: her powers, the space she occupied in reality, all of it.
He turned around and looked the boy over once again, and saw that he had his blue bag clutched in his hands, the same one they had found him with in the basement. “What the hell is that, anyway?” Spencer snatched it from the boy’s clutches, unzipped it, and rummaged through it. He found a blood-glucose meter, some test strips for the meter, a few syringes and insulin pens. “Aw, shit. He’s a fucking diabetic!” He flung the bag at the kid hatefully, hitting him in the head.
“So what?” Kaley implored. “It doesn’t change anyth—”
“It changes a lot. Can’t have a kid drawin’ attention. If he bottoms out or goes into a seizure, I’ll kick his ass outta this car an’ leave him by the fuckin’ road.”
Kaley opened her mouth and closed it several times. Finally, she said, “He won’t go into a seizure. He has all his stuff here.” She looked at him and smiled. “Right, sweetie?” The boy didn’t answer.
Spencer just snorted and cranked the car. They finally got underway. Once the lodge and the lake were adequately affixed in the rearview mirror, Spencer said, “Has he said anything yet?” He spoke with the unlit Sobranie still between his lips.
Kaley looked over at the boy, who was sitting sulkily and fearfully in his seat, staring at his feet, hardly blinking. Then she looked at Spencer, and said, a little hesitantly, “Not yet.”
He looked at the boy through the rearview mirror. “Better find that voice o’ yers again, kid. I got some questions.” It was getting dark, so Spencer flipped on the headlights. In the rearview mirror, he saw the first flames licking out of the lodge’s windows. He smiled, and flipped the windshield wipers on. Message sent.
The heat was welcome. His fingers had gone numb without him really being aware. A screen on the main console showed the temperature: -23° C. That’s about, what, minus ten Fahrenheit? Too damn cold was what it was.
Five minutes of bobbing and sliding on the barely visible path, and finally they came to Chivelli Ulitsa. Two miles or so ahead, Spencer had abandoned his rental car to begin his hike.
The road was slush and ice, but the chains were finding adequate traction. There weren’t many cars out this way, especially now that it was dark and the storm was getting more serious, but Spencer made sure to look at the drivers of what few cars did pass, to try and discern their faces. Any one of them might be reinforcements headed for Zakhar’s lodge.
They passed the rental car on the side of the road, a Camry. Spencer thought about pulling over to switch vehicles, but two things stopped him. First, he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the cabin as possible and without delay. Second, the Forester moved a lot better in this weather, especially with its chains.
Ten minutes or so of driving in silence. There was no movement from anyone inside the car during that time, except when Spencer slowed down to let a deer leap across the road ahead of him. That happened a lot out here. He leaned forward, and, out of curiosity, he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Kaley had done the same, sliding forward smoothly before catching herself.
“So, how does it work?” he said, finally lighting the cigarette using the dead man’s lighter.
Kaley looked up at him. “How does what work?”
“Well,” he said, taking a toke and feeling the sweet, sexy nicotine trickling into his lungs. “I’ve seen you pass through things, but now you’re just sittin’ there, not passin’ through the seat or the door.” He took another toke. “How does it work?”
“I don’t know. When I’m like this…things are…kind of, like, slippery, but they have substance. But they all have the same substance—wood floors feel the same as snow, and walls feel the same as people. Solid and slippery. I can pass through them if I push hard enough, though, or if I fall too fast.”
He took another toke, left the cigarette in his mouth while he drove with one hand and fiddled with the radio with his other. “So,” he said around the cigarette, “ya do have weight in that form, but it really only affects you in your world. When you passed through me, all I felt was cold, but I didn’t feel any kind o’ push.” He found a station playing American music. It was “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell. He chuckled. “Isn’t it weird when a song’s been in yer head all day, then ya turn on the radio an’ there it is, the first song playin’?” Kaley looked at him, and appeared to be troubled by what he said.
Spencer thought he spotted movement in the woods to his right. He looked out the passenger side window, saw a few snatches of gray and black in the fading daylight. Here and there, he saw pairs of yellowish embers bouncing up and down in the forest, then fading. The wolf pack. Probably the same one that had smelled blood at Zakhar’s lodge. Spencer had heard that there was a super pack wondering around Siberia, some people put the pack’s numbers at more than four hundred. Some of them had started encroaching on city streets, hunting alleys and outlying neighborhoods, the same as they would the forest.
He blew out a cloud of smoke, checked the driver of a passing van as it swished by. An old lady, not likely a threat. Still, he watched the van for a while until it disappeared in his rea
rview mirror. “So, this world you occupy, what’s it like?”
“World?”
“You said you’re here, but you’re also back at school. Tell me more about that.”
“I don’t know how to explain it. I’m here, but I’m also there.”
“What are you doin’ right now over there?”
Kaley looked out the window, at another car sloshing by. “I’m leaving my locker. I just switched out some of my books. I’m talking to myself, but since I’m in a crowd nobody notices. I guess they just figure I’m either singing something to myself or I’m just weird.”
“Tell me what you see.”
The girl went silent, and for a moment Spencer thought she might not answer. Finally, though, she said, “There’s this kid, I think his name’s Andy, he’s showing two of his friends some girl’s underwear…I think I heard him say he stole it from her gym bag, or something. There’s a poster showing, like, a tornado funnel attacking some mustache-faced guy in a hat—the tornado is our mascot, we’re the Cartersville Purple Hurricanes. But that’s stupid, hurricanes don’t have funnels.”
“Who’s the mustache-faced guy?”
“He’s the mascot for the Cassville Colonels. I guess they’re, like, supposed to be our school rivals or whatever. I haven’t been going here long.”
Spencer took another toke. “What else can you see?”
“Others,” she said. “Shapes and…I dunno, like, things moving in the Deep. There’s this flowing water all around me. It’s everywhere, even inside this car. It’s leaking down from the roof and spilling on the floor, but it’s also climbing up the walls and pooling on the ceiling in places. It’s murky water. It’s like a…a…a thin film of something. But it’s not so thin anymore.”
Spencer listened intently, nodding. He took another toke. “What else can you see?”
“Something’s swimming in the water. Moving like eels. They…” She swallowed. “Oh…God…they killed Mrs. Cartwright…” Her lips started trembling.
Spencer took another toke. Another car swished by on the lonely road; it was a Mazda Miata, black, with a young man in the driver’s seat and a dark-haired woman in the passenger’s side. “What else can you see?” he said, relentless.
“Formless things, kind of like what took Mrs. Cartwright, I think. I don’t know. I’ve…I’ve kind of forgotten whatever it was that took her. It’s like it…” She trailed off, then came back. “It has no form. No shape like we’re used to. It…um…folded in on itself…and I think that’s what I’m seeing. And what I’m hearing. Like…a fight?” she said, looking the question at Spencer in the rearview. “They’re all working together to get out, but they’re also fighting to see who the alpha is. But I already know who it is.”
Spencer took another toke. “Who is it?”
“It’s the big one, the Prisoner. He wants out. He was put there…by…I dunno, just someone else.” Kaley closed her eyes, shook her head as if trying to shake away a fog or a bothersome hangover. “He’s been there for a long, long time. Spencer…it’s all he’s ever wanted.”
Spencer took another toke. “What is?”
“To get out,” she said. “He’s, um…like…not from there. He’s from somewhere else, but he was tossed into this bad place, into the Deep…and he’s learned how to navigate it. He’s used the Others, formed several revolutions against the Gatekeepers, always learning from his mistakes and getting stronger. He’s devoured the ones he’s fought, and it’s made him stronger.”
Spencer took another toke. He was wondering how much of this was in her mind, and how much of it was actually real. He was also wondering if it mattered. Whatever had happened seven months ago in that house on Avery Street, it had been real enough. Whether it was a door that had opened between planes, or it was a door opened into the mind of a frightened, powerful little girl who unleashed her notion of Hell upon the world, made little difference. What mattered was this: Can she control it long enough to keep the Prisoner, and these Others, in their cells?
Spencer took another toke, and exhaled thoughtfully. He was almost finished with the Sobranie. Another car went swishing by. He only got a quick look at it; it looked like a Lada Priora, one of the Russian sedans, a dark-green or dark-blue one. The headlights coming his way had obscured it, but he got a brief glimpse of the driver. Older fellow, blonde hair, with a chiseled brow, black gloves and an overcoat. Might have been looking at Spencer directly as he drove by, or might not have been.
The windshield wipers were working hard, just not hard enough. An eternity of snowflakes came racing towards the headlights, and to Spencer it looked like how the stars raced by the starship Enterprise whenever they hit maximum warp speed on the show. “That it?” he said. “That’s all you see an’ hear?”
“Isn’t that enough?” she mumbled, and looked over at the boy with concern.
Spencer took a second to search for any kind of ashtray, found none, rolled the window down just enough to toss his cig out, and then lit another one. A large truck was coming their way, an eighteen-wheeler that slashed by, throwing a quick wash of water over the whole SUV. The Subaru slid and hydroplaned for a moment. Spencer put the Sobranie between his lips and used both hands to correct, then finished his toke. “This Prisoner, what’s he like?”
Kaley shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But she did know. Spencer knew it, and he was never wrong about people, especially not about this one. By blocking his thoughts leaking into hers, Kaley had managed to block her thoughts from leaking into his, but she couldn’t keep everything from leaking through, much like, he suspected, she couldn’t quite keep this “Prisoner” and his other world from dabbling into her realm. “Come on,” Spencer said, taking another toke. “Talk to me.”
Kaley said, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“I got a kid in the back seat that I don’t mind murdering, or leaving him on the side o’ the road to freeze to death, and at the moment he’s not saying a damn thing to me about At-ta Biral, which makes me think he’s already pretty useless.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you go gettin’ useless on me, too, little girl.”
She looked away from him, out the window. Her breath fogged it for a few seconds, and she just stared at the darkening woods all around them. Finally, she said, “He’s…big.”
“How big?”
“I don’t know. I just saw part of him when he…he, um…he killed Mrs. Cartwright.”
Spencer paused midway through his toke. “Whattaya mean, ‘when he killed Mrs. Cartwright?’ Who the fuck is Mrs. Cartwright?”
“My math teacher.”
Spencer raised an eyebrow. “He killed her?” Kaley nodded without looking at him. “You saw this?” Another nod, this one more shameful. The apparition girl wiped the apparition tear from her apparition eyes. Spencer put on the brakes, slowed the Forester down until he finally came to a halt in the middle of the empty road, and turned around in his seat to look directly at Kaley. This got her attention. “How did he kill her?”
She swallowed. “He…h-he came through the floor. Through the water on the floor.”
“He came through? Into our world? Into your school?”
“Into the bathroom, yeah. I was alone in there, and I guess Mrs. Cartwright just wanted to check on me. She came in and…” She closed her eyes against whatever horrific memory tormented her.
Spencer didn’t care for any of that. “What did you see? Describe exactly what you saw.”
“I can’t remember,” she sobbed. The boy now slowly turned to look at her. Something had piqued his interest. Weakness recognizing weakness, Spencer thought. The stupid looks of empathetic people always bothered him, and sometimes made him a little nauseous. “It was so…it was all over so fast and…there was this large black thing coming out of the floor, like a squid but with tentacles that didn’t make sense…it…it, like, it…it ate itself, or folded in on itself, then vomited itself back up. It was…it was like looking at som
ething impossible.” She shook her head, wiped her tears, and sniffled. “I don’t know how else to say it.”
Spencer looked at her a beat longer, then turned around in his seat and took another toke. He exhaled slowly, pondering, all while watching another car go by, this one a white Mini crawling along at less than ten miles an hour. An elderly man was at the wheel. In the back seat were two children. Not far behind the Mini was a truck, and behind that another truck. The road was getting more populated. The city of Chelyabinsk was just up ahead, he could see the tops of buildings started to crest over the treetops. “Get that kid talkin’,” he said, putting the Subaru back into drive and getting underway again. “At-ta Biral! You understand? Eight Cats. What’s up? Ya know where we can find ’em?”
Kaley gave him a fiery look, and for a moment Spencer thought she was going to admonish him again for trying to push the boy. If she did, he might just put a hole in the kid’s head right then and there. He was in that kind of mood. She’d already delayed him and nearly gotten him killed, all just to lug this brat along.
Perhaps the little girl sensed this charged animosity, because she finally turned to the boy and said, “What’s your name, sweetie?” No answer. “Where do you come from? Where’s your family?” More silence. Spencer blew out a line of smoke and looked at the boy squarely through the rearview mirror. The boy happened to look up, locked eyes with Spencer for just a moment.
“Peter,” the boy mumbled. “My name’s Peter.”
For a moment, the three of them went silent.
Kaley smiled at him encouragingly. “Where are you from, Peter?”
He licked his lips. “Y-Yorkshire.”
“Yorkshire,” Spencer said. “That’s like, what, Northern England or some shit, right?” The boy nodded, and looked out his window. “How’d you end up out here?” No answer. “Talk to me, boy, or else you’ll wish I’d left you in that basement.”