Someone Like Me

by M. R. Carey

  Which had been a time of blood and breaking and inexplicable terror. But birth was probably like that for everyone.

  She limped into her den on her last legs, exhausted, starting and snapping at nothing. She fell into the rank softness of the place, wrapped it around her and closed her eyes. She thought she would sleep. Sleep forever, maybe, so she never had to think or feel or talk to anyone ever again.

  Hey!

  The shock of a voice here, in this secret place, was electrifying. Jinx jumped up and turned around to face the threat, whatever it was, her hackles up and her fangs bared. She had forgotten her armor and her sword for the moment: she was all instinct.

  But it was just the almost-nothing. She sagged almost down to the ground and shook herself all over as though the movement could flick away the fear and the fury and the fight-readiness like drops of water.

  Go away, stupid thing, she snarled. Or I’ll eat you! You shouldn’t even be here.

  You brought me here! the almost-nothing said. And then you went and left me. I didn’t know if you were ever coming back.

  Jinx turned her back on the thing and lay down again. She folded her brush over herself like a blanket, which she thought was a pretty clear indication that she didn’t want to be bothered.

  The almost-nothing refused to take the hint. It kept on talking, talking, talking. Jinx stopped listening. The noise was an irritant but she could shut out the meaning, so it just became a sound like the whining of a mosquito. Not even that, really: just an imagining of what a sound would be like if she allowed it to be one.

  She had had to run away. Fran had begged her to stay, and she was still in the same building as Picota (Picota! Picota! Picota!) but Jinx had had no choice. The questions right then were the bigger danger. Sometimes you protected people with your teeth, or your sword. Sometimes you protected them by running away.

  From the things you couldn’t think of. The things you couldn’t say.

  Does she know you’re lobotomizing her? The almost-nothing asked.

  Jinx shuddered again, from her nose all the way down to her tail. You’d really better be quiet now, she rumbled. Her eyes were closed and her head was down tight against her chest.

  Those are her memories, right? Francine’s? You took them right out of her head and brought them here. Why? Are they your food or something? Do you eat other people’s—?

  Jinx reared up and turned and jumped, so quickly that the almost-nothing had no chance to back away. She bore it down, putting her full weight on it. And she gave it a bite, just to prove she could. It cried out in shock and pain.

  I should kill you just for saying that, Jinx snarled. As if I’d ever … As if I could … I took away the things that hurt her! I made her be happy again when she was sad or scared. I love her more than anyone and that’s why I’m always on guard. Always ready in case bad things happen. You, though: I’ll eat you in one bite if you don’t shut up!

  She was suddenly aware of how easy that would be. The almost-nothing had no way of fighting back or defending itself. It might be a monster, but it was a pathetic monster that had no real way of hurting anyone even if it wanted to.

  Jinx found a little space, even in the vastness of her self-pity and her concern for Fran, to be ashamed. She pushed the almost-nothing away, but she did so gently, trying not to harm it any more than she had.

  Just leave me alone, she said again.

  She curled around herself and lay down. The almost-nothing was quiet, but it wasn’t dead. The throb of its thoughts persisted. It even spoke from time to time, but very softly, most likely just to itself. After a while, it even became soothing. Jinx would have to kill the thing in the end anyway, because it knew where her den was. But she would do it as quickly and painlessly as she could.

  She sank into a sort of doze, thinking about happier times when she lay at the foot of Fran’s bed and listened to the rise and fall of her sweet breath, hour after hour after hour.

  She was so attuned to threat that she was slow to realize what was happening as the tentative cadences touched her ears and then the edges of her awareness, until finally she let herself acknowledge them for what they were.

  The almost-nothing was singing to her.

  Fran made it through the rest of the movie, but she had no idea what she was watching or listening to. Her dad’s plans to cheer her up and bring her out of herself had been shipwrecked on the hidden rocks of Zac’s evil mom.

  That agenda was ongoing, though. After the movie Gil took her to one of the many pizzerias around Bakery Square—she didn’t even register which one it was—and plied her with medicinal chit-chat.

  “So the one with the shield is Star-Lord? Why do they call him that?”

  “They don’t, Dad. They call him Captain America.”

  “Then which one is Star-Lord?”

  Fran tried her best to play along, and succeeded well enough to keep the game going all through dinner. The only respite was when the Steelers game came up on the restaurant’s massive widescreen TV and her dad’s attention wandered.

  That was when Zac’s first text came through. The first of many, as it turned out.

  SHE SAID SHE SAW YOU. WHAT HAPPENED???

  Fran almost didn’t reply. She really didn’t feel up to going there just yet. But she had promised Zac answers and then spent the whole weekend hiding from him.

  NOTHING HAPPENED, she messaged him back. WE JUST TALKED.

  She waited, knowing he wouldn’t leave it at that. She didn’t have to wait long. The next text dropped almost immediately.

  SHE’S IN A WEIRD MOOD. SHE CRIED.

  Wow, Fran thought. That was about the last thing she could imagine Beth doing. What would possibly make her cry? She just texted a question mark.

  “Oh, good job!” Gil exclaimed, still watching the TV. The chime of another message sounded at the same time.

  SHE SAID SHE’S SORRY. SHE’LL BE DIFFERENT FROM NOW ON.

  Fran thought long and hard about that one. There were so many possible answers. In the end she settled for three words. They seemed like the best she could do.

  DON’T TRUST HER.

  “I hope that’s not some boy,” Gil said. “You’ve got to be careful when you’re on the rebound, Frog.”

  He had no way of knowing how many raw nerves he was touching with that one stupid joke. Fran smiled weakly, but she didn’t attempt a laugh: in the mood she was in right then it might have come out sounding like hysteria. She put the phone away and didn’t look at it throughout the rest of the meal.

  In the car on the way home, though, she stole another glance. Just the one. Zac had messaged her three times, the texts about ten minutes apart. First, the bald WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Then FRAN WHAT DO U MEAN? And finally WHY SHOULDN’T I TRUST HER? COME ON EXPLAIN.

  But she couldn’t. Not right then. And maybe never. Beth’s threat came back into her mind along with a sudden, physical chill of fear, as though someone had dropped her heart and her lungs into an ice bucket. I will kill you, dismantle you and stow you.

  “What’s with this traffic?” Gil muttered. “I’ll try Washington.”

  And if your dad comes looking …

  “On a Sunday, for Pete’s sake. Where’s everybody going?”

  If your dad …

  “Okay, that guy is blocking a hydrant. I hope he gets a ticket.”

  I’ll do the same to him.

  Panic welled up inside her. She turned off the phone, on the third attempt because her hands were shaking. She couldn’t tell how much of the fear she was feeling was for herself, and how much was for her dad. She imagined Beth walking up to him, smiling at him, and then … no. Nothing, nothing, nothing! She wrenched her mind away from terrible, formless thoughts.

  The evening went by in a daze. She played cards with her dad, first gin rummy and then cribbage. Her mind was all over the place and she lost the best part of a million dollars even though she was pretty sure her dad was trying to let her win. In the end he gave up t
he unequal struggle.

  “Do you want to call it a night?” he asked.

  “I think I do,” Fran said. “Sorry, Dad. I’m all wiped out.”

  “But today was good, right?”

  “It was great.” She gave him a weak smile. “You’re the best, Daddo.” She kissed him on the cheek. “The very best. Always.” She wished she could be happy for his sake, after he had worked so hard.

  And—now it was too late—she wished she could be honest. But to tell him the truth now would mean exposing him to Beth. He wouldn’t stand a chance against her. He was too good, and too gentle.

  Fran went up to her room. She hadn’t lied about being tired. She felt as though she had been walking around all day with a boulder on her back. She lay down and closed her eyes.

  But the panic was right there where she had left it. It surged up again from the bottom of her mind, stronger than ever, and she sat up in a hurry. Something terrible was happening or was going to happen. She felt it, like a pointy splinter of certainty in the general squishy mess of her thoughts.

  There wasn’t anywhere she could go, or anything she could do, to get away from that feeling. In the end, with bleak resignation, she turned her phone back on.

  She found what she expected to find. Lots more texts from Zac, each a little shoutier and crazier than the one before. He had gone right on messaging her through the evening, hoping that the thirtieth text might succeed where the twenty-ninth had failed.

  The last message didn’t have any words. It was just a jpeg. Full of misgivings, Fran opened it.

  The photo showed a small, bare room. Seven words had been scrawled in black marker pen on a white wall pocked with blooms of mildew. IM GONNA WAIT HERE TIL YOU COME. The open door of the room was just visible on the left-hand side of the picture. The room was dark. When Zac took the photo, he had had to use his phone’s flashlight, which was barely up to the job. The flash had also picked up the number on the door, reflecting off the dull metal so the two digits shone with white witch-light.

  22.

  Of course.

  “Thank you, Zachary,” she muttered. “Thank you so much.” Obviously he lost a few marks for repeating the same dumb stunt he’d pulled on her last time. But on the other hand, he got extra credit for choosing the Perry Friendly rather than the railway platform. He knew she wasn’t going to leave him to spend the night all alone in that place. Classy, very. It was like holding a gun to your own head and saying, “Hand over your money or the kid gets it.”

  With a heavy heart Fran got up and put on her outdoor clothes. Her watch said it was still pretty early, only just after nine o’clock. Even so, she was sure her dad wouldn’t be happy with her going out alone, especially since she couldn’t tell him where she was going. She was left with the choice of whether to lie to him (again) or just sneak out without him seeing.

  “Jinx,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Jinx, are you there?”

  There was no answer. Fran hadn’t really been expecting one.

  She went down the stairs slowly and carefully, holding her boots in her hand. As she stole past the door of the den the sound of the TV came through the half-open door: not a football game but a news broadcast or maybe a documentary. “Of all nature’s wonders,” a cultured male voice was saying, “few are more majestic than—”

  Fran went out through the back door, pulling it closed behind her about a millimeter at a time until the lock clicked. Then she sat on the step to put her boots on. It was butt-numbingly cold, but she needed to be careful not to make a sound. The window of the den was only three feet to her left.

  She had to pass under that window to get to the side passage. She did it in a low crouch, her legs bent almost double and her head tucked in under her shoulders. The blinds were down, but their neighbor’s security light shone right into the yard and she might accidentally cast a shadow as she moved.

  That thought brought Bruno Picota into her mind very much against her will. She tried to push the thought away, but it stayed with her as she rounded the back and side of the house, crossed the front lawn—again very carefully and quietly—and finally stepped out onto the street. It was completely empty, which she found reassuring and unnerving in about equal measure.

  She walked quickly, coat zipped up all the way and head down. Picota’s gray, sagging face hung in front of her eyes. He had talked about a place where things got squishy. It sticks to you if you’re a certain kind of person, he said. Had he meant the Perry Friendly? Yeah, of course he had. Where else could it have been? You were there too, but I was there for longer.

  And now she was going back there. At night. Even though Beth had warned her what would happen if she didn’t stay out of her business. Fran was amazed at her own stupidity. It didn’t feel like courage. At best, it was a reluctance to leave Zac hanging after promising to share what she found out. He had set her on this road in the first place: he deserved to know where it had led even if he didn’t believe her. Even if he hated her for what she was about to tell him.

  There was still some traffic on Washington as she crossed the bridge. Fran stayed in the center of the walkway, feeling too visible and too vulnerable in the light of the streetlamps, so she didn’t even see the cars on the highway below her; she just heard them pass, the boom-hiss of their tires on the asphalt sounding like the tide going out on a distant beach.

  She stepped off the bridge at the Homewood end and walked on into darkness. Most of the streetlights here were broken. The tidal roar was hushed. She felt as though she was going underwater.

  Everything was different at night, but she remembered the way. She was walking quickly now, partly because she thought she was less likely to be accosted if she looked as though she was going somewhere, but mostly as a way of fighting the strong urge she felt to turn around and run away.

  The motel’s driveway loomed ahead of her. The wrought iron, hectic with rust like an embarrassing infection; the lightbox with its empty promises. Fran walked right in. She crossed the parking lot, picking her way with care in case she tripped on the concrete dividers in the dark. The arch that led through to the courtyard was right in front of her now: a deeper darkness beyond, and a silence that seemed to swallow every sound.

  “Jinx?” she whispered again. Just in case because you never knew. Because there had never been a time before this when she called on Jinx and Jinx forsook her. And because she really, really didn’t want to step through that arch on her own.

  But Jinx didn’t answer and didn’t appear. Fran could have shouted out to Zac, but she found she didn’t want to. Suppose someone else was out there too, closer than him? Suppose the Perry Friendly at night had residents who didn’t show themselves in the daylight?

  This was no good at all. She couldn’t come all this way and then let her own imagination defeat her. She made herself step forward, through the arch and into the rear courtyard.

  There was a paved path that led off to her left in a long curve all the way to the other end of the courtyard where room 22 was. But taking the path would mean walking in front of each room in turn, past each blind window and bolted door. Fran couldn’t make herself do that even though the going would be easier and safer. She waded out into the weeds instead, once more feeling her way a step at a time. She tried not to make any noise, but the weeds swished and rustled as she moved and occasionally a thicker stem broke with a wet click under her foot. Nobody could accuse her of stealth.

  The door of room 22 was open but there was no light inside. Fran felt a twinge of doubt. Had Zac led her here as some kind of cruel joke, bailing as soon as he’d sent the message so she would arrive and find the whole place deserted? No, she didn’t believe that. He’d only ever been cruel to her once, and that was in the heat of a bad moment. He wouldn’t trick her in such a nasty, sadistic way. He wasn’t like that.

  So she screwed up her courage and headed right for that open door. But she stopped a few feet short of it. The darkness and the silence felt like a
barrier she was pushing against, and she couldn’t make herself go any further.

  “Zac?” she whispered.

  A light went on inside the room, and then off again at once. It was a vivid, blue-white rectangle: the light from a phone’s screen as someone checked for messages or maybe just looked to see what time it was.

  Weak and almost sick with relief, Fran stepped forward. “Next time I’m gonna choose the venue, goon,” she said. “I had about three heart attacks getting here.”

  “Next time?” said a voice out of the dark. “Oh, sweetheart, I hate to be first with the bad news.”

  It wasn’t Zac’s voice. It was Beth’s.

  Fran jumped like a startled fawn. But when she came down she didn’t waste any time trying to figure out how this could be happening. She knew in that instant that this was a trap and she’d walked right into it. She turned and ran. All she needed to do was get out into the middle of the weeds and duck down. Beth couldn’t see in the dark any better than she could.

  The taser hit her right between the shoulder blades. The world lit up like a million fireworks, the colors all blending into a pure white light that was made of nothing but pain.

  It wasn’t much of a leap, really.

  A child’s memories. A fox that looked more like a child’s drawing than a real animal. A fox that had childlike features and a sweet soprano voice with a child’s lisp to it.

  Liz sang “Morningtown” first. She had used it as a lullaby on Zac and Molly both, and the fox seemed overwhelmingly tired. Then she just went for whatever felt right. “You Are the Everything,” “Danny Boy,” “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Songs about love, and about longing.

  She wished she had a hand to touch the little animal’s head and neck. It was lying on its side, all curled up, its belly half-exposed. A real animal lying like that would be inviting a human touch, a human scratch or stroke or caress. Liz tried to make the words do it instead.