Someone Like Me

by M. R. Carey

  She would have known what this place was even if Jinx hadn’t told her. There was no other place it could possibly be. And if Beth had brought her children here, it was for one reason only.

  I can’t go in, Jinx said again. Pleading. When I get close to that place I just freeze up and I can’t even move. Please, please help her! Save her!

  Then tell me how you do it, Liz demanded urgently. Quickly! How do I get inside her head?

  You’ve got to use words.

  You mean it’s like a magic spell? That’s ridiculous. I can’t—

  Her words. Wait until she’s talking, and slide in. Ride the breath, and the thought of it, all the way back to the place inside.

  She’ll see me coming.

  Not if you’re really slow, and really quiet.

  It was unfathomable and stupid at the same time. But then, Liz was talking to a cartoon fox about the best way to break into her own body. It made about as much sense as anything else would have done at this stage.

  Jinx was trembling all over. Even her outline was blurring. Liz gave it up. There was no time. She had to do something and she had to do it now, before it was too late.

  Focusing all her attention on the Perry Friendly, she began to move in that direction. Her kids were in there. She drifted across the parking lot, gathering speed, a weightless bubble of wrath and vengeance.

  A knife. A plastic dragon. A piece of cardboard.

  Fran tried to pick up a coherent idea as fear stampeded her thoughts, sent them running through her brain and away, out through her ears and her wide eyes and her flared nostrils.

  Which one was right? Which one would stop Beth from hurting her?

  The knife was a weapon. If she picked that, Beth might take it from her and use it. The dragon was a toy, so maybe that meant let’s play a game. The packet …

  The packet had a prescription label on it in the name of Elizabeth Kendall. Above that, in a neat Courier font, the word temazepam.

  Fran understood then, and she knew there were no wrong answers. Beth just needed Fran’s fingerprints on all these things. Preferably prints that had been made by her consciously picking the things up, and gripping them, rather than having them pressed into her hand after she was dead. When they autopsied you, they could probably tell that kind of thing. This was all going to be used as evidence of … something. Something really bad that included drugs and wounding and (oh God!) Molly. Fran clenched her fist and lowered her hand.

  “I’m not going to ask you again,” Beth said. “Choose one and pick it up. Otherwise I’m going to have to hurt you.”

  Fran was staring at the X-Acto knife. It seemed to get bigger and bigger as she looked at it. Her breath was trapped inside her so she felt she was getting bigger too, blowing up like a balloon that was ready to burst. She was going to die here. In the Perry Friendly, where she had always been meant to die. Where some of her had died already. There was nothing she could do to stop it.

  But she could resist it with everything she had.

  She picked up the X-Acto knife. Drawing back her arm, she threw it away across the room. She couldn’t throw it far because her right arm was only halfway free and didn’t have much travel, but outside the little circle of the storm light the darkness was absolute. Good luck finding that, she thought.

  “Okay,” Beth said. “That’s one. Let’s go for two. Which one am I thinking about now?” She seemed completely unfazed. But of course she had all the time in the world to find the knife again. Or she could just leave it where it lay. A police forensics team would find it later, like something out of CSI, and someone would say, “Let’s check this baby for prints.”

  Fran made a clenched fist again and tucked her hand in against her chest. For good measure she rolled over onto her stomach, trapping the hand underneath it. She would make this as hard for Beth as she possibly could.

  Beth got a good grip on Fran’s shoulder and her waist and tried to turn her back. Fran twisted and writhed, trying to squirm out of her grasp. They wrestled in silence for a few seconds, but it was obvious that Fran couldn’t win. Beth was much stronger than her. The fact that she was drawing this out, unfolding and turning her an inch at a time, didn’t mean Fran had a chance. All it meant was that Beth was trying not to hurt her.

  No. Not that. Trying not to damage her.

  Fran’s mind started to race. Beth had decided to kill Zac and Molly. There was no mistaking that. And she wanted Fran’s fingerprints on everything so it would look like Fran had done this. Done what, though? Coaxed Molly here with the toy. Got both her and Zac to eat sleeping pills. Used the knife to murder them. And finally killed herself. Nobody would believe that, would they?

  Maybe. Maybe they would. Freaky Fran had a mental illness. Her weirdness and isolation were a legend. And it was always the lonely, messed-up kids who had the starring role in every high school massacre. When lonely, messed-up kids turn up dead, you’ve got your explanation ready to hand.

  Her dad. Her dad would believe, and it would break his heart.

  She couldn’t get free. Couldn’t fight. The only thing she could think of to do was to throw in a few details that didn’t fit. Put some cracks in the story and hope someone saw through them.

  Twisting free from Beth’s grip, she threw herself down on the floor again as hard as she could. Her pinkie finger was held out straight in front of her and she let it take all of her weight.

  Agony shot through her and she screamed behind the gag.

  Beth saw what Fran was doing, but too late to intervene.

  With a muttered “Shit!” she threw the kid over on her back and knelt astride her, pinning her free hand to the floor with one knee. The broken finger stuck out almost at right angles to the rest. Fran’s chest heaved with huge panic breaths as the pain hit.

  “You stupid little bitch!” Beth snarled. She raised her hand to smack Fran across the face, but had enough will power to fight the impulse and lower it again. There was no point in making a bad situation worse.

  And it hadn’t been stupid at all. Actually Beth couldn’t help but admire the quality of the kid’s lateral thinking. A broken finger was an anomaly. It spoke of coercion rather than suicide.

  So now, instead of planting evidence, Beth would be forced to erase it. Fortunately she’d planned for that contingency too.

  She stood up, planting one foot on Fran’s chest so she still couldn’t move, and reached into the bag. There it was. A half-gallon can of Sunoco 260, unopened. She unscrewed the can’s cap and flicked it over her shoulder. She was aware that the girl on the floor could see the can, and probably smell the gasoline inside it. She didn’t mind that much at all. If you went fishing for trouble, you got to bring home your whole catch.

  “Yeah, you see what you did?” she asked. “Didn’t have to be this bad if you just did as you were told.” She poured about half the gasoline out on the floor around the girl and on the girl herself. The rest she kept so she could Molotov it and set the fire going when she was done.

  She recapped the can and set it down.

  Fran just stared at her, her dark eyes impossibly wide. Her chest was still working hard. Was she suffocating rather than just gagging on the stench of the gas? Some people had trouble breathing through their noses. Molly would be dead inside of a minute if anyone gagged her.

  That thought derailed Beth for a moment. Her mind flooded with memories of the real Molly, and hot tears blurred out the world for a moment or two. “I’ll kill you first,” she muttered, turning away. She meant it as a reassurance. I’ll make it quick and clean, as close to painless as I can manage, and only burn you afterward.

  She stopped talking. There had been a strange reverb on her words just then, as though someone else was repeating them a little out of synch. She was all done with words in any case. Done with finessing the evidence too. Let it fall where it would. If the whole place burned to the ground, nobody would be able to prove a damn thing after.

  But first things first.<
br />
  In the absence of a knife, she had to use her hands. She fastened them around Fran’s neck, thumbs together just under her chin, and squeezed.

  Wait until she’s talking and slide in, Jinx had said. But when Liz arrived, Beth wasn’t talking at all. Nobody was.

  She had lost too much time. There had been the driveway, and then the courtyard, and all the screaming urgency in her mind didn’t speed up her leisurely drifting by the smallest fraction.

  And then there were the rooms. She had forgotten to ask where exactly in the sprawling ruin Beth was to be found, and going back would waste more time than she had. So she made a complete circuit, traveling at the same remorseless amble through one room after another until she found herself in the furthest corner.

  In room 22.

  She slid through the wall without slowing and realized as soon as she saw the glow from the storm lantern that she was in the right place. By its light she saw her children, sprawled motionless on the ground. And Beth beside them, kneeling over a third prone figure.

  It was Fran Watts. And Beth was strangling her.

  Her mind was screaming at her to check on Zac and Molly, but if she stopped to do that Fran would certainly die. Liz came up behind Beth, unnoticed. The woman didn’t even turn. Her mind was on the task, her head hunched down between her shoulders, panting with effort as her locked hands pressed down hard on Fran’s throat. Fran’s eyes were bulging out. Her face was red, deepening to purple.

  And there were no words. There was no entry point Liz could use.

  Or maybe there was. Jinx had said to ride the breath and the thought. She had one out of two.

  She placed herself beside Beth’s lips. She folded herself smaller and smaller as she had when Jinx carried her in her mouth. She waited for an in-breath. It had to be on the in-breath so Beth didn’t feel herself invaded: so she felt only the natural flow of air.

  And not what it carried.

  Liz was plucked out of light into darkness.

  In darkness she unfolded, all at once, and launched herself upward with all the force she could dredge together; all her fears and outrage; the fury that had been building in her as she went from empty room to empty room.

  She used her memory of following Jinx from the real world into the nowhere of the den. And muscle memory too, although muscles weren’t her destination now. This was her home, her flesh. Nobody knew it like she did, not even the monster who had stolen it.

  She broke free into a pallid radiance of no earthly color. She carried Beth with her, sending her spinning a long way away across the dimensionless void. The effort left her hanging helpless, drained of all strength by that convulsive push, but she was rewarded by the look of utter consternation and disbelief on Beth’s face as she sailed away end over end.

  (She had a face! They both had faces! Here, in the cathedral of her body’s nerves, they were mirrors of each other as they had been before.)

  Surprise, Liz managed to say.

  One moment Fran was dying. Her throat slammed shut, all the oxygen piling up outside and nothing inside but a throbbing black stain that spilled out from the corners of her eyes to swallow up her brain.

  Then Beth slumped forward as though someone had bashed her on the back of the head. All the strength went out of her hands and Fran was able to breathe again.

  She pushed herself backward, sucking in air through her nose in an endless rush even though she was probably poisoning herself with gasoline fumes. Beth was having some kind of seizure. She was down on her hands and knees, her body wracked by tremors. Whatever was happening, it meant Fran had a chance.

  But only if she got herself free. She pulled at the duct tape that bound her left hand to her side. There were too many thicknesses, and her hands were drenched in Sunoco so everything was slippery. She couldn’t find the end of the tape, and even if she did it would take ages to unwind it. The tape around her ankles was even thicker.

  She looked around frantically for the X-Acto knife. It had seemed like such a great idea to throw it away. Now she wished fervently she had played Beth’s game by Beth’s rules and put it back where she’d found it, in the light.

  But she knew roughly where she had thrown it. She snaked her way across the floor, away from Beth, into the darkness. Pushing with her bound feet, scooping and shoveling with her hand, she slithered along what she thought was the right line. Every foot or so, she stopped to sweep her hand around in a circle, hoping it would connect with the knife.

  When it finally did, her hand was moving too fast and she swatted it further away into the shadows. She heard it hit something with a hollow clunk and come to rest. Fran yelled in frustration, the sound completely smothered by the gag.

  She risked a look over her shoulder. Beth was still on her knees but the trembling had stopped. She was eerily still now, her hair hanging over her face like a curtain so Fran couldn’t see or guess what was going on there.

  But then, very slowly, she raised her head. The face that gazed across the room at Fran had eyes that were just hollows full of darkness, but the mouth curved upward in a line, widening gradually into a crescent-moon grin.

  Surprise, Liz said.

  Beth’s body twisted and turned, orienting itself to the same plane as Liz’s, the same imaginary vertical.

  What, that you’re hanging around like a bad smell? Beth intoned, her lips not moving. I’d be surprised if you did anything else. You look like shit, girl. Give me a second, though, and you’ll look like nothing at all.

  She advanced on Liz, gliding without effort, a galleon whose sails were filled with her own invincible will.

  But Liz had a plan and she had been working on it from the moment she entered this weird arena. She had learned a lot when she was trapped in Jinx’s den. In the real world, she had drifted through doors and walls as though they weren’t there, but Jinx had made her solid enough to touch just by wanting it. Deciding it. It was Jinx’s space, and Jinx made the rules.

  And this is my space, Liz thought furiously. It was mine before it was hers. I’m solid. Like steel, like concrete, like a wrecking ball. I weigh as much as the fucking moon, and when I hit her it will be like the moon falling out of the sky.

  Beth bore down on her, arms spread wide and teeth bared.

  Liz swung.

  And connected.

  It wasn’t like the moon falling out of the sky. It was more like a bag of warm oatmeal hitting a kitchen counter. The impact was muted and softened, way too soft to hurt.

  But it took Beth in the stomach and it stopped her charge. And the follow-up, to the point of her chin, made her reel back in shock.

  Liz pressed her advantage, throwing wild punches as she advanced—much faster here than she had been back in the real world. A fierce charge was the only strategy she could think of. Maybe if she built up enough momentum she could force Beth right out of her body and take over again.

  And at first it seemed to be working. Beth was driven back, slowly but perceptibly, each punch making her yield an inch or two. She wasn’t retreating from Liz: it was just the force of each blow pushing her backward, like hammer blows driving in a nail.

  But then she stopped. She took Liz’s punches on her face, her shoulders, her chest and her stomach, turning her head a little to the side but otherwise just enduring. Assimilating. Thinking it through.

  Her fist clenched and her arm drew back. Liz had no thought to spare for defending herself: she was still pinning her hopes on the barrage.

  Beth’s punch sank into her midriff more deeply than Liz would have thought was possible. She opened her mouth to gasp, but in a place where there was no air to breathe that wasn’t an option. She folded in around the pain, throwing up her hands to ward off any further attacks.

  Beth lowered her head and butted her. This time, the interpenetration was deeper, and indisputably real. For a second, or part of a second, their foreheads occupied the same space.

  Liz’s entire body exploded with agony so intense tha
t her nerves shut down for a second or two. When sensation came back, she was drifting backward in the line of the attack, her head and neck dipping backward as her legs curled up toward a fetal crouch. She forced them down again, tried to right herself.

  Beth must have felt some of that pain too, but she recovered more quickly. Just as Liz struggled back to the vertical she advanced again, this time not even bothering to make a fist as she glided in to the attack. She just threw out her open hand, punching it through the center of Liz’s chest.

  It was like being set on fire from the inside out. The pain made any kind of thought or strategy impossible. Liz tried to withdraw, but her movements were slow and clumsy. Beth followed hard, alternating right hand and left, going first for Liz’s head and then her torso so Liz’s clumsy defense was always out of the line of the attack.

  But this must be hurting her too, surely. Liz flailed blindly with both arms, in a windmilling motion. She connected with … something. Something tenuous and barely there, gone as soon as she touched it. But she sensed that she had done some damage.

  A second later, the impossible pain blossomed inside her again, filling her to the brim in an instant, freezing her on the spot again. Beth had stepped right through her.

  You didn’t think this through, did you? Beth asked her. No weapons here. Nothing but what we are. And I’m better than you. I always was.

  She reached out with both hands and brought them together inside Liz’s head. This time, at least, the pain had an end point. Unfortunately, so did Liz.

  Jinx couldn’t see or hear anything of what was going on in the rear courtyard of the Perry Friendly, but she could smell it. The same sense that let her track people by their thoughts was wide awake now to the boil of fierce emotions coming from inside the darkened building.