by Kelly Creagh
She coughed and fumbled through the dank and enclosed space.
Throwing her arms out, she found a narrow set of walls on which to brace herself. She turned, but her toe caught on something hard and she faltered, collapsing onto an ascending stretch of stone steps. Pushing herself up on trembling arms, she peered toward the top of the stairs.
Light peeked through the clearing haze of dust. Several feet above, she saw an open doorway.
Squinting, Isobel could detect a curtain of green vines hanging over the archway in a spilling cascade. Flowers dotted the vines, their heavy heads lolling sleepily amid waxy green foliage.
With a gasp, she pulled herself onto her feet. She mounted the ash-coated stairs and rushed to the doorway. Parting the vines with one hand, she passed through the archway and into a circular room. Countless crimson buds climbed the iron-gate perimeters, their interlacing boughs and vines thick enough to form a living wall between the interior of the room and whatever lay without.
The vines and flowers commandeered the domed ceiling as well, though Isobel thought she could detect the mesh of black tree limbs and the hint of violet light through one of the thinner sections.
Gazing upward, Isobel thought there must be thousands of the flowers, maybe even hundreds of thousands—every single bud the same deep bloodred hue. In addition to the climbing roses, long-stemmed roses grew along the base of the trellised wall, their blooms blending in with all the others.
Their overpowering fragrance, like the smell from a shattered bottle of perfume, filled her nostrils with every breath, making her light-headed.
A carpet of ruby petals covered the circular marble floor, while several open archways lined the curved wall, all of them leading out into what appeared to be rose-lined tunnels.
Though Isobel saw no sign of the fountain, she knew she was in the garden from her dream—the place where Varen had told her he would be waiting.
At last, she’d made it.
She took a step toward the center of the room, her sight set on one of the open archways. But then she stopped, distracted by a staticky voice that came from behind.
“Now, there’s a surprise,” the voice said.
Isobel’s momentary elation withered in an instant, replaced by a crawling fear that caused her heart to leap into her throat.
“I didn’t expect to see you here. Gone and locked out my old friend, did you?” the acidic voice asked. “And here I’ve been waiting so long to find him. Ever since he broke my . . . well, everything. ”
Isobel turned slowly.
He sat on the ground next to the doorway through which she’d entered, looking just like he had the night she’d discovered him in the blue marble crypt. The only difference now, though, was that he was no longer in pieces.
Grinning at her, showing a mouth full of spiked teeth the color of blue quartz, the Noc shifted to stand, his gangly frame rising to tower over her.
She watched in horror as he laid one indigo-clawed hand across his bare chest, right over a sprawling patch of porcelain skin that, unlike the rest of his body, appeared void of intricate carvings. Instead, it displayed a crackled jigsaw pattern of broken bits reconstructed.
“But, as you can see,” Scrimshaw hissed through his saw-toothed smile, “it’s true what they say. Time heals all wounds. ”
30
Double Time
“So tell me what I am to do now,” he said, tilting his head at her with a quick twitchlike movement. The Noc blinked, his enormous black eyes closing tightly, then reopening even wider than before.
Isobel staggered back from him. Her mouth fell open, and though she tried to speak, no words came. Her throat was too tight, constricted with sudden terror.
He took a step toward her and then another, his black boots crushing velvet petals.
“Maybe,” he said, “since our masked companion won’t be joining me after all . . . you would like to play instead. ”
“St-stay away,” Isobel stammered. She risked a glance to her left, searching for the nearest archway, her closest escape. When she looked back, though, she jumped to find him standing right in front of her.
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Before she could utter so much as a yelp of surprise, a single indigo claw shot out like the knife of a switchblade, the tip catching her beneath her chin.
“The name of the game was going to be vengeance,” Scrimshaw said, lifting her face to his. From this close, Isobel could detect the mesh of thin, interconnected hairline fractures that covered his features, like the crackled glaze of a china teacup. “And maybe it still could be,” he went on in a contemplative whisper. “After all, you were there. As a matter of fact, as I recall, you were the entire reason it happened to begin with, weren’t you?”
Isobel jerked her head away from him. “I—don’t know what you’re talking about. ”
He retracted the claw, frowning at her. “Oh, come now. It’s no fun if you don’t know why I’m gutting you when I’m gutting you. Think!” he said, and used the same claw to tap her temple.
Isobel smacked his hand away and took another retreating step.
Annoyance flittered over the Noc’s face, but then his expression changed, morphing into a look of coy amusement.
“No need to be so short-tempered,” he said, flexing spidery fingers. “I could offer you a hint if you like. ”
Isobel didn’t answer. Instead she focused on the closest archway, one to her right. But just as she mustered the courage to make a break for it, Scrimshaw sidestepped to block her path.
“The park,” he said, grinning again. “You’ll remember our little jaunt through the park, I’m sure. ”
Isobel spun and dashed for the archway directly behind her.
It was no good, though. A black fog swept ahead of her, and Scrimshaw reemerged from the murk, his angular form filling the door frame, the sudden rush of movement sending down a flurry of petals between them.
Opening his arms wide, Scrimshaw pressed his hands to either side of the frame, his palms smashing the heads of several flowers. He crooked one leg and crossed it over the other, smiling down at her expectantly, clearly enjoying the one-sided game he’d enlisted her in.
“That’s where it happened,” he said. “Right when I almost had you. Right behind the place where you live. ” He pressed the tips of his claws to his lips in a gesture that seemed to say oops. “Pardon me,” he corrected. “Lived. Don’t you remember?”
Suddenly it dawned on Isobel that, just like the previous time they’d spoken in the blue crypt, he was referring to the night the Nocs had entered into the real world and chased her through the park behind her house. Reynolds had been there as well, and apparently, at least according to Scrimshaw, he had been the one responsible for the damage the Noc had sustained.
Isobel did remember. She remembered hearing a crash just as soon as she’d reached her front yard.
But for all she knew, the story Scrimshaw was telling her could be fabricated. What was to say he hadn’t been waiting outside the tomb door for Reynolds to return because they had been in league with each other? Was this just one more trick meant to confuse her? She didn’t know. But something she did know, she reminded herself, was that even if the Nocs could touch her, they held no power to harm her.
Steeling herself, Isobel ducked under one of the Noc’s outstretched arms. As she made her way down the curving tunnel, she forced herself to walk, refusing to let her fear show by running.
She heard him laugh. The sound, like the raspy chuckle of an animatronic fun-house clown, sent spikes of cold dread through her midsection. She knew it meant he wasn’t going to let her pass him by this easily.
“You know,” she heard him call after her, though she didn’t dare stop or look back, “I hear they also say that you can’t be in more than one place at a time. But as one who speaks from experience, I find that particular saying to be
less true. ”
As soon as she reached a fork in the tunnels, Isobel again felt a rush of air skim by her, this time tousling her hair. She brushed the loosened strands from her face as the darkness accumulated in the tunnel archway to her immediate left. Scrimshaw re-formed once more, tapping his chin in thought with one tapered claw.
“I myself ended up in at least seventy-eight that night,” he said. “But I’m not quite so broken up over you anymore. In fact, I’ve just now come to the conclusion that we would all do so much better without you. Tell me, how many pieces would you like to be? While I can’t promise I’ll be exact, I’ll try to keep your request in mind. ”
“You can’t hurt me,” Isobel said, meeting his black gaze.
“Hurt you?” He recoiled in mock horror and folded his hands together, his claws clicking loudly as they interlaced. “No, no,” he whispered. “You’ve got it all wrong, dear child. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to kill you. And that I can do. ”
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Again, fighting against the nearly overpowering instinct to run, Isobel instead gave him her back, if only to prove that she knew he was bluffing, and veered into the tunnel on her right.
Black wisps shot past her a third time. He solidified again, closer than before, his grin growing wide enough to deepen the zigzag crack that ran up one side of his skull.
No longer able to ignore the urge to retreat, Isobel backpedaled toward the tunnel passageway he’d occupied the moment before. At the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to turn around and start running, either, hypnotized by the dark resolve burning within his eyes.
“I’m not afraid to fight you,” she snapped.
He gave her an appraising once-over, raising a clawed hand to hover above her head as though making a note of her height. “While the attempt to do so would certainly be an appropriate if uninformed response given your circumstances”—he lowered his hand, lifting a single claw—“you seem to be missing one vital element in the whole situation. It’s something you need to understand, I think, before we can get started. And that is that I”—he pointed at himself—“as you might have guessed, am not like the others. I’m what you’d call special. A one-of-a-kind specimen, a Ming vase amid pale imposters. ” He laughed at that, throwing his head back before refocusing on her. “The very last of my ilk, in fact,” he went on. “Unique in that I bear no connection whatsoever to the outsider who has found himself trapped here, that boy who I know you came all this way to reclaim. The one whose adoration shields you from all the others. Blah, blah, blah. ”
Isobel’s eyes widened as he spoke, her mind returning to the vision in the hospital room and the moment when Scrimshaw had appeared at Poe’s bedside, whispering to him in hissing tones. Instantly she felt her blood congeal in her veins as the truth invaded her consciousness. Her legs stiffened beneath her while her lungs ceased to take in air.
Scrimshaw wasn’t one of Varen’s Nocs. He couldn’t be and he never had been.
He was Poe’s.
Eyeing her closely, taking one step toward her for every two she took to get away, he seemed to have been monitoring her expression, waiting for the moment of realization to wash over her. And Isobel knew right away that her face must have betrayed her sudden understanding, that her mounting terror must have become apparent, because all at once, he stopped his advance.
His smile deepened into the voracious grin of a piranha.
Bringing his hands to his face, he crisscrossed claws in front of his open eyes as though to cover them. He watched her, unblinking, through the cagelike barrier.
“One,” he said. “Two. ”
Isobel bolted, taking the path directly behind her, the walls of roses whizzing past.
“Threeeeee. ”
Met with a dead end, Isobel skittered to a halt. “No!” she shrieked.
“Fouuuur,” she heard Scrimshaw drawl. “Some more numbers. Aaaand—nine-ten!” he shouted, cackling.
Isobel whipped around, only to find the passageway now empty, two foot-shaped depressions imprinted in the snowlike ash in the place where the Noc had stood a moment before.
Panic rose within her as she hurried back down the long vine-covered corridor, over the footprints, choosing her next direction at random, no longer certain from which way she’d come.
The roses seemed to watch her like thousands of spectators as she passed, their delicate heads bobbing in her wake. There was no sign of him around the next corner, or even the next. As Isobel took one passageway after another, she couldn’t help but feel that she was winding her way deeper and deeper into the garden’s maze and into Scrimshaw’s snare.
The soles of her boots slapped the marble floor, the sound muffled only slightly by the thin coating of petals and ash that carpeted each passageway.
Isobel whirled to stare at her tracks, wondering if she should try to cover them or just keep running. She knew the Nocs were too fast for her to outrun. If Scrimshaw had wanted her dead right away, he’d have killed her already. He was looking for a chase, for the hunt before the kill. And as long as she panicked, she would be giving him just that. She had to get a grip. She had to think her way around him—invent her own rules.
Know when you are dreaming, she thought.
Isobel dug one hand into the pocket of her jacket. She brought out the butterfly watch and flicked open the wings. The black hands spun around one another, wheeling faster and faster. She willed them to slow, and to her astonishment, they did. Just like she’d been able to close the stone door of the tomb, the hands of the watch responded to her thoughts.
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“Show me the way to the fountain,” she whispered aloud.
In response, all three hands, joining in one line, aimed themselves at the twelve and, like the needle of a compass, pointed her forward.
She began to run again. As she did, she pictured in her mind that in the next tunnel and the next one after that, there would be no ash to record her steps.
Turning the corner, Isobel suddenly found herself in another circular room identical to the first. But now, the rose-covered corridors leading out of this clearing appeared to have been swept clean of ash. Isobel checked her watch again. She saw the hands split apart. They rotated in opposite directions and joined together again, aligning at the number nine. Left!
Isobel made the turn. She hastened toward the end of the covered hall, through the opening, and into the largest clearing yet. And here, in the center of the room, stood the very thing she sought—the fountain.
High above the brass statue’s head and arcing veil, a blanket of roses twined with the decorative domed ceiling, their vines braided with the scrolling wrought-iron bars. A breeze entered through the gaps between flowers and metal, sending a cascade of petals raining down.
Everything was just as it had been in her dream. Everything except for one detail.
“Varen?” she shouted.
There was no response. He wasn’t here. There was no one here. Nothing.
Isobel bit her lip, cursing herself in her mind, knowing that by yelling, she’d given herself away.
Checking the watch, she found that the hands had gone back to spinning.
“Take me to Varen!” She shook the silver charm and checked it again. This time, when the hands stopped, they pointed her in three separate directions. What did that mean? Was the watch telling her that any way would take her to him, or that no way would?
Why wasn’t he here like he said he’d be?
“I told you you’d come,” said a nearby voice, one Isobel knew well. “You said you would. ”
She lowered the watch.
With careful steps, she moved closer to the silent fountain. Rounding the ornate grillwork gate, she discovered Pinfeathers sitting against its base, occupying the exact same space he had the morning she’d gone to Varen’s neighborhood, his head hung, held betwe
en his clawed hands.
“Pin—?”
“You shouldn’t have, though,” he said, and looked up, his face twisted with anger. “Even if we knew you would, you shouldn’t have. ” He got up and began moving toward her. “Why,” he growled, “when we will only show you we are not worth it? Why, when we have no other choice but to prove to you we’re not worth it?”
Isobel swallowed and began to back away from him.
She didn’t know what he was saying, what any of it meant, or where it was coming from, but the rage contorting his broken face made it clear that, like Scrimshaw, she was dealing with something that wanted to rip her to shreds. And even if Pinfeathers couldn’t do it himself, she knew by the look in his eye that he would settle for watching.
She sprinted toward one of the doorways, trying to think of some way to control this, some way to change what was happening to her, knowing Pinfeathers would be on her in a second’s time.
Ahead of her, Scrimshaw turned the corner, filling the frame of the archway she’d almost taken. Isobel stuttered to a halt, dropping the watch, which hit the floor and became lost in the ash with a muffled clank. She looked behind her and saw that Pinfeathers had already started toward her at a fast walk, his crimson claws bared, his furious gaze trained on her.
She looked to Scrimshaw, whose smile broadened at the turn of events.
Isobel tossed her head from side to side, glancing between the two of them, out of options for escape.
Then Scrimshaw launched himself at her, claws raised, jaw unhinging as he unleashed a shrill screech.
She broke away in a dash, already knowing it could only end in her death. Any moment now, someone’s hands would catch her by the throat. Pinfeathers would seize her and Scrimshaw would rake through her with his claws, spattering the roses with her blood.
Reynolds had been right. She would die here.
As she reached one of the archways that would lead her back into the maze, she heard a fierce yell, followed by a crashing sound. Loud and unexpected, it made her stop even though her body urged her to keep running. The noise, like a porcelain bowl smashing, sounded just like the splintering of a Noc.
Isobel whipped around to find Pinfeathers standing erect in the center of the domed room while Scrimshaw, half-shattered, missing one arm and half of his torso, knelt several yards off, surrounded by the scattered pieces of his broken body.