by Martin Kee
Well now I was strapped to a chair, and Lynn, well, Lynn was holding the gun, so to speak. I could feel her eyes on me, reading me. It felt wrong, incestuous. Knowing what I knew, and knowing that there was little chance of escape, I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time. I left that world and took Lynn with me. The shadows that people like Skyla and I see are more than just images. They are windows. Some of us can travel through them. The fabric of reality is thin.
Lynn believed that she really was doing the right thing there in that room, a sort of penance. Lynn was very earnest about it. That was back before my great escape. I was stuck in that chair, you see. I couldn’t get up and just run to a shadow and walk through it. The machine was humming and I knew I had seconds before it popped me. So I stepped out of my body… of course, it died.
All this time, Lynn was still arguing with me. I’m only trying to help you, she yelled. I pulled her with me into the shadows, but Lynn refused to leave her body. So I took that with me as well, between the cracks and atoms.
That was probably a mistake.
You see the spiritual mind is vast. We tap into the universe in ways that no corporeal brain can. Time is pliable here; a nanosecond can feel like a year if you want it to. You’ll learn how to do it—you have no idea what you are missing. But the physical brain can only process so much. When I pulled Lynn’s physical body into the void, I think I broke her a little. She screamed a lot. And when I say ‘a lot’ I mean that she never stopped screaming.
(Screams filled the chamber, echoing from walls and pillars.)
Seeing my mistake, I immediately created a tunnel and returned her. It took me what felt like a day; it was instantaneous to everyone else in the lab. She simply popped back into her room, scared, but alive. And changed. From what I understand—and what Orrin tells me—the staff at the lab found her to be slippery to their vision. She was there and not there.
I tried to visit her, help her escape. Each time I’d do it, we would pop a little further away, but she would always come back, like a dog returning to its owner.
(Two young women walked out of the woods. Something black and shimmering opened in the air and Rhia stepped back through.)
Much like this world, if you know a place—can visualize it—you can go there. So, I would visit Lynn and try to take her away. Each time we would walk a little further until she would slip away, returning to the lab where she felt safe. Over the course of time, we left a trail from Rhinewall, through Lassimir, and up to Bollingbrook. Many people are still scared of those patches of pseudo-reality. They are right to be. We left them unstable in our haste.
Eventually, Lynn became pregnant. I don’t know how. I wasn’t there at the conception. Part of me thinks an orderly might have taken advantage of her. Either way, she would never tell me or anyone else.
Our hops away from the lab had gotten as far away as Bollingbrook, or at least just outside the walls. She was about ready to burst and I had finally convinced her that the lab was no place to raise a daughter. For once she believed me.
I left her some tools, equipment we used in the lab, things that she could use to help herself with. There was a coin that a shaman I met here considered to be magical—it is just a chunk of inert soul that slips through the shadows in the way we do. They were really nothing more than gimmicks, but I guess she thought those were cursed, or evil. She never used them, but at least she had the common sense to throw them into an old box that used to contain Skyla’s toys.
(A woman with dark curly hair shoved a small box beneath her bed. A baby cried in the background.)
So here is where you come in, Melissa. Orrin warned me that The Reverend had returned, looking for them. When Orrin told me that they had been invited to Skyla’s house I created a rift, an escape route. I tried to bring both Skyla and her mother here for their own good, or to open a bridge somewhere in The Wilds where they could escape to. It was sloppy, but we were out of time. Unfortunately when you make a tear in the shadows, things can sometimes leak out. Lynn and Orrin did their best to try and lure them back.
(The scene shifted to the night Skyla’s home was destroyed. They watched as a massive creature leapt from the shadows and destroyed the house. It burst through a bedroom door, lumbering at Lynn, who dove into a shadow in the corner of the room.)
Lynn, in her questionable wisdom, had never told Skyla any of this. Lynn healed people like an illegal doctor, but never told Skyla. There was no way Skyla could have understood what was happening in her house that night.
Just like what happened in the lab, this was a disaster. Lynn didn’t understand what was happening and neither did Skyla. I had no time to explain. I could only use Orrin to try and distract the shadows until the rift closed on its own. Lynn is here now, with me, recovering.
Now, I know that seems strange when I say it, but you have to understand that what they would have done to her was worse—much, much worse.
I think you, Melissa, understand that now.
*
The vast, serpentine hall reappeared around them, and Rhia was silent. After a long, pregnant pause, Melissa spoke.
“So Skyla’s mother is dead?” Melissa asked.
“Not anymore dead than you are,” said Rhia. “That is, until the machine finds this place.”
“Can it?”
“If it looks hard enough. If Skyla leads it here.”
“Can’t we just break it?” she said. “Send her a message, tell her what plug to pull?”
“I can’t get to her,” Orrin said. “There are no safe shadows in that lab, not to mention the guards. A raven hopping through their hallways wouldn’t exactly go unnoticed.”
“The machine doesn’t work like that,” said Rhia. “It will run as long as it can feed. It responds to her just as it did for me. It is using her as a way to focus on its prey. Without Skyla it will eventually run out of food and sleep.”
“You make it sound as though it were alive,” said Dale.
Rhia said nothing.
“What happens if it overeats?” Melissa said. “What if instead of stopping it from eating, it eats anything it wants, like a mosquito? What if it gorges itself?”
“The idea is to keep it from destroying souls,” said Rhia. “Not encourage it.”
“But that’s what the machine wants,” Melissa said. “It wants to eat. It wouldn’t stop anyone from letting it do more of what it wants. One time I ate so much candy I puked. What happens if it pukes?”
Orrin cocked his head, then lifted from Rhia’s shoulder and vanished up into the ceiling, turning black as coal as he flew. A cloud of dust motes caught in the shaft of light as he disappeared. The only sound was the flapping of his wings.
“How does he do that?” asked Dale.
“Do what?” said Rhia.
Dale pointed to the opening in the sky. “He goes between the world of the living and the dead. That doesn’t seem unique to you?”
“He’s the raven,” said Rhia, as if it were obvious.
“But how can he do it and we can’t?”
“Dale,” she said, looking less like a goddess and more like the teenager she was when she died. “He can do that because he is the raven.”
“I know he’s a raven—”
Rhia pressed a finger to his lips. “You didn’t hear me,” she said. “He’s The Raven.”
All folklore is rooted in facts, even when distorted and filtered through the generations using a form of communication as inefficient as language. For most people, the idea of The Raven, who stole the sun and gave it to humans, or the ravens that told Odin the secrets of the gods, means nothing. To the few people who traded with the indigenous peoples who passed through Lassimir, it rang a bell.
Dale’s eyes grew wide.
Rhia smiled.
Chapter 38
They took her rucksack along with her coin. After her little stunt, Ostermann had been furious. Stintwell stood over Skyla, holding the goggles. At least she was getting these ba
ck.
“Do you know what these are?” Stintwell asked.
Skyla shrugged. “They make my head hurt,” she said. “Sometimes I get sick.”
Stintwell sat next to her. “That’s because they haven’t been calibrated for you.”
“What does that mean?” Skyla said, her eyes shifting between the Tinkeress and the goggles.
“It means that in order for them to do what they are supposed to do, they have to be set a certain way. Like this.”
The woman adjusted the ring around one of the lenses with a series of clicks. She picked up her clipboard, looked at it, and then made one last adjustment to the lens.
“There,” she said. “That should do it.”
Skyla reached for the goggles, but Stintwell pulled them back. “Skyla,” she said, her tone serious. “These can only be used during tests. Do you understand that?”
“Why?” asked Skyla, pouting.
A horrified look passed over the woman’s face. “Because they can be very dangerous if you don’t use them correctly.”
“I used them before and nobody got hurt.”
“You were lucky,” Laura said.
“Will they help me to see the shadows better?”
“Yes they will,” Laura said. “And they will also help us to measure the shadows.”
“Measure them?”
“That’s right.”
She got up and led Skyla down the hallway. As they passed the two old doors with the ornate handles—the rooms that once had Lynn’s and Rhia’s names nailed to them—Skyla felt her finger throb again. She looked up at Laura.
“It’s not dangerous, you know,” Skyla said. “It’s just a doorway.”
“Of course it is,” Stintwell said, completely missing the point. “Maybe one day after this demonstration is over, we’ll have someone clean up the broken glass and make it safe for you.”
“What glass?”
Laura looked at her. “Your finger…”
Skyla looked at her hand. She had a smaller bandage, now that the wound had scabbed over. She looked back up at the woman. “This is from the girl-shaped doorway.”
Stintwell gave her a blank stare. “You slammed it in the door?”
“No,” Skyla said staring at the doors. “The doorway in the room. I had my finger in it, but then the guards killed all the shadows and it closed.” She shrugged. “At least nothing got out this time.”
The girl looked up at her and smiled. Laura returned a nervous one and placed a hand on Skyla’s shoulder, turning her away from the doors. A group of men were filing into a nearby room. They all wore lab coats and fancy church robes.
“Who are all those men?”
“They’re here to see how well you do in your tests.”
Skyla didn’t recognize any of them, except for one. He was an older man, wearing a white on white suit. He was so camouflaged he almost disappeared against the walls, a disembodied grinning head. Skyla shrieked and froze. The Reverend Lyle Summers stopped and turned. He grinned at her.
“No!” Skyla screamed. “No, no, no, no!” She slipped backwards, almost falling over, scrambling and clawing to get away from the smiling man in white.
Lyle began walking towards them, his shadow long and menacing along the walls, even against the bright light. Smoke billowed from his nose and mouth like a dragon.
“Skyla!” Laura said, grabbing her, steadying her. “It’s all right. It’s okay. You’ve never met the Reverend Lyle Summers.”
Skyla was crying now, tears of horror streaking down her face. Laura held her fast, staring into her eyes, shaking her gently by the shoulders.
“It’s him,” the girl sobbed. “The man who… who…”
She couldn’t even speak. Lyle approached her in slow motion, a walking nightmare, the man who killed and burned and bled anyone who got in his way. His shadow told so many tales of cruelty and grief it was like a kaleidoscope in a haunted funhouse.
He reached them and stopped, taking a leisurely drag on his cigarette. He regarded Skyla with impossibly blue eyes. He looked at the Tinkeress.
“Hello, Laura,” he said.
“Reverend,” Laura said with a slight bow. “I’m sorry for the trouble.” She held Skyla in a vice now.
“Oh, no trouble at all,” he said, taking another puff on the cigarette. He kneeled down. “And this must be Skyla. I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you.”
His smile was too perfect, an aged fashion model cast in leather. Skyla could only stare at him.
“I guess you and I have gotten off to a bit of a bad start,” he said. “Your mother and I were very close, Skyla. If you had given me a single moment to explain instead of leading me all over hell’s half acre, I could’ve probably told you that.”
Lyle smiled and so did his shadow. A vortex chorus of faces peered out from around the edges of his head. “We’re all looking forward to your demonstration today. I hear you’re as good as your aunt.”
“Y-you can’t see wh-what I see,” she said. “But I know what you are.”
“You know what?” he said, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Your Aunt Rhia said that exact same thing to me once.” He smiled again, and Skyla felt her skin crawl.
“She’s been through a lot,” Laura interjected. “I’m sorry if—”
“No!” Skyla yelled. Ostermann’s head peered around the hall, glaring. “He’s not what you all think he is! He’s awful.”
“Skyla!” Laura snapped. “That’s enough. The Reverend Summers owns this facility.” She looked at The Reverend, apologetically. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”
“Oh, I understand, believe me,” Lyle said. “It’s been a harrowing couple of months for everyone. It looks like you even hurt yourself.” He eyed her truncated finger. “I hurt myself once too.”
Skyla only glared at the man, her lips pursed. Lyle smirked and removed his jacket, handing it to Stintwell. He rolled up his sleeve, all the way to the shoulder. A gash ran across his upper arm just below the shoulder.
“I know a few things about demons, Skyla.” His eyes were cold fire as he said it.
Skyla watched as black ink seeped from his shoulder into the air between them. It was as if the man was a walking balloon filled with nothing but smoke. She stared at the scar, knowing full well nobody else could see it.
“How…” was all she could squeeze out.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said, rolling his sleeve down. “Maybe if the demonstration goes well, we can talk about it over a nice cup of tea.”
Skyla fought back a shudder. It was no use. Nobody could see what she saw in the man, except maybe her mother and Rhia. Were they this scared of him? Could they see how vile he was, what he had done to people? What he made people do to each other?
“I’m not doing the demonstration,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You can’t make me.”
“Skyla—” Laura began again, but Lyle held up a hand. He knelt down again until he was eye level with her. He reached out and took her by the shoulders. Skyla muffled a scream as he pulled her close to him, his shadow licking at her arms. She grimaced.
“I know where your mother is,” he whispered in her ear. “And if you don’t do this for me, I guarantee that you will never see her or your aunt ever again. That’s a promise.”
He pulled back, looking into her huge, terrified eyes. With a slow grace, he stood and took his jacket from Laura, putting it back on.
“Now,” he said. “I look forward to seeing your work.” He gave a curt nod and returned to the room packed with Tinkerers and clergy. Skyla stood frozen as the man floated down the hallway and out of sight. Laura took her hand, ignoring how sweaty it was. Skyla did her best to crush it in her grip.
They turned a corner and stepped into a huge circular room. The walls and ceiling were covered in white tile. A metal chair sat the center of the floor. Ostermann approached her from a side room where the men were gathered.
“Have a
seat,” he said as she eased herself into the chair. “Are you ready for your big test today, Skyla?”
She shrugged. Reading her silence as acceptance, Ostermann’s smile broadened. “Good,” he said, giving a friendly wave to the men waiting in the observation room.
Stintwell handed him the goggles. She wished Skyla luck and left the room, still angry.
He handed the soft leather cap to her. “I know you know how to wear these. Go ahead.”
She put them on without engaging the lenses. They felt warm and soft and familiar. For the first time since Skyla arrived at the lab, the lights dimmed. She thought she could hear a faint ticking sound from one of the walls.
A panel in front of her slid away, revealing a man. He was young, maybe as old as some of the younger soldiers she had seen. He sat in a chair, unrestrained. His clothes were dirty and torn, his hair disheveled. He looked around his brightly lit room with bored curiosity.
“Now, you remember the tests?” Ostermann said into her ear. “You remember the way you stared at the illusions? I want you to do that with him now.”
“Just stare at him?”
“But with the goggles on. Do you think you can do that?”
Of course she could do that. She could always do that. They had just never asked. Skyla nodded, thinking of the cold threat from Summers. Do it for Mom and Rhia, she thought. Mom and Rhia, Mom and Rhia, Mom and Rhia.
“What I want you to do is find out what this man did wrong,” said Ostermann, standing away from her. “Go ahead and begin whenever you’re ready.”
The lenses came down and clicked into place. The world went dark.
She had expected something more interesting than what she actually saw. Compared to some of the monstrous demons she had seen in the past, this man was almost unremarkable, with one exception: he had killed someone.
But it wasn’t that simple. He had been chased—he and his wife. They were being pursued through the forest, heavy black boots stomping after them, branches whipping at his face. He yelled for her to keep going as he ducked behind a tree. The soldier’s footsteps grew louder as he crouched in the shadows.
He sprung from the tree, the small dagger in his hand, slipping it between the black plates of armor as the soldier behind the helmet grunted.