Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  He doodled three question marks next to the shape.

  At the break an hour and a half in, he rose to stretch his legs, and Lucas leaned over the table, eyeing his notes. "Confused by your own drawing?"

  "By the meaning of it, anyway," Keith muttered under his breath. Telepathy wasn't among the talents that had woken up during his near-death experience. About 90% of the time, he was glad for that; it was bad enough knowing what the people around him—classmates, teachers, and, worst of all, family—thought of him without knowing what they thought of him.

  The last 10% of the time, he regretted the inconvenience. For the first little bit, while his therapist was bouncing him between medications and talking to him about PTSD triggers, he'd tried to avoid talking to Lucas in public entirely.

  But by now, he'd long since just come to terms with the fact that he'd forever be a social pariah who talked to himself constantly. Sure enough, he was drawing an uncomfortable look from Jonas, who had been sitting three seats down.

  "Ya lost me," Lucas said.

  Keith headed for the door, opening it and holding it just long enough to let Lucas slip through it first, then starting down the hallway at a stride. "The tool," he said under his breath. "From my dream."

  "It was a bottle?" Lucas asked incredulously.

  He found a vending machine down a relatively-empty side corridor, and pulled some change out of his pocket. He'd skipped breakfast, so some cheesy snacks could last him until lunch. "Yeah. A bottle with the end sharpened. The Terror stabbed the poor guy."

  "Weird," Lucas said, wrinkling his nose. "Why a bottle? Terrors don't use tools at all, but…"

  "Maybe they wanted the blood for something?" Or eye juice, Keith didn't say, trying not to think too hard about what he'd been forced to see. No longer sure he was hungry, but even less sure he'd make it to lunch otherwise, he punched in C-2 and watched as the bag of cheese puffs started to push forward, then jammed. "Seriously?!"

  "Your doodle kind of made it look like it was a decorative bottle," Lucas pointed out. Then, "You could try giving the machine a zap."

  Keith considered it. Electrical manipulation was always so finicky, and especially difficult when he was distracted. "Not sure I want to risk frying the circuitry. Anyway, so what's that supposed to mean—decorative blood?"

  A student, starting to pass them, sped up. Keith made a face at her back.

  "I think the Terrors care even less about decorating than they do about tool use," he finished. "Help me out with this thing, bro?"

  "Hey, Halloween is coming up. If they were going to decorate at all with the blood of their victims, it'd be now," Lucas said. He reached into the glass front of the machine, making a face—Keith knew Lucas never liked passing through things if he could avoid it—and gave the snack bag a tap, sending it off the hook it was caught on and down to the slot at the bottom. "But I just meant a clue to where it might be from. It looks like it could be an antique perfume bottle. Those're fancy like that. My sister used to collect them—mostly from garage sales, mind. Antique stores price them like, stupidly high. Besides, they're all run by weird old white dudes."

  Keith, who had only ever met Lucas's sister at the funeral and didn't really want to think about that, zoned in on the other part of the statement. "Yeah, but what can I even do with that information? Go to Antique Row and ask each store's weird old white dude if a giant shadowy amorphous blob purchased a bottle from them for an absurdly large sum of money?"

  Lucas started laughing. "Alright, alright…"

  Smiling a little to himself at the sound, Keith picked up his snack bag. "Terrors can't illusion themselves human like most of the Others can. Even if we found out where they got the bottle from in the first place, it's not like we could use the info to track the Terror down. There wouldn't be receipts or credit card info or store memberships…"

  "Not that we should, anyway," Lucas agreed. "The further away we stay from Terrors, the better."

  "Right," Keith said. He pulled the bag open and stuffed a handful of cheezies into his mouth. Breakfast of champions. "We should stay out of it."

  "But, I mean, is your vision going to let you?" Lucas asked. "Usually you see things for a reason, right? Even if you don't know what that reason is."

  Keith had been trying to avoid thinking about that part too. He made a face. "I don't know. I'm going to try to stay out of it. It'd be pretty crazy to go to Antique Row just to try to gather more information from a dream, right?"

  "Yeah," Lucas said, grinning at him. "Crazy."

  chapter two

  Keith felt pretty stupid catching the bus downtown to go to Antique Row after class, but he did need to get lunch somewhere, and he was already sick of cafeteria food. As always, he let Lucas take the window seat—he guessed that people usually probably thought he was pretty rude for blocking off an 'unused' seat, but otherwise Lucas would get sat on or have to stand in the aisle with people walking through him all the time.

  It was easier to just pretend to be rude, to pop in headphones and act as if he didn't notice the dirty looks or people asking him to move over, while Lucas leaned his cold side comfortably against him, one knee drawn up as he looked out the window.

  Keith always suspected that Lucas liked it largely because of his own inability to head anywhere on his own. Keith never had liked to go out too much himself, and it got much worse after his abilities woke up. He'd spent a lot of time just staying at home whenever he could.

  The first time he'd gone out and saw an Other walking around and pretending to be human, he'd almost lost it completely. He remembered wheeling around and running until his chest ached with the lack of breath, until his vision blurred and legs ached and he couldn’t run any further. And all the time, Lucas was keeping pace behind him, the ghost he was desperately pretending wasn’t there, trying to ask Keith if he’d seen it too, what was that thing, he’d never seen anything like that while he was alive.

  These days, he might not talk with Others or anything, but he accepted that those creatures were probably doing their best to get by like anyone else. When he forced his vision as much out of the second sight as he could get it, he saw them pretending to be human, going to movies and the store and everything normal people did. Still, he never got used to seeing them around, and it was easier to stay inside. Finding a place to hole up in just felt better, and he'd built up a habit of keeping to himself.

  But doing so trapped Lucas inside as well.

  Maybe next summer I'll go on a trip, he thought, a bit guiltily.

  Their stop came soon enough, and he touched the back of Lucas's cold hand with his free one as he reached up to pull the bell cord. Lucas startled, having zoned out, and faced him with a bright smile, turning his own hand over to hold Keith's briefly in an acknowledging squeeze of cold pressure.

  Keith got up and headed to the exit, tugging Lucas along with him as best he could with the insubstantiality of his form. He didn’t drop Lucas's hand until they were outside again so he could take his headphones out of his ears. "Lunch first," he told Lucas. "And then I'll look around, just in case. I still really don't think I'll find anything, though."

  "It's a nice way to spend the afternoon anyway, right?" Lucas said, stuffing hands into his pockets and grinning at him.

  "Could be worse," Keith agreed with an aggravated sigh, heading into a Phở shop and holding the door for Lucas.

  Could be better too, but he didn't say that—antique shops weren't exactly a fun place for him to visit. His ability to pick imagery off objects was unreliable if he tried to use it, but happened unbidden easily enough. Anything that had picked up strong energy could trigger it. Places like museums or historical sites or, yeah, antique shops, held onto memories like nothing else.

  It gave him the creeps.

  But lunch was over soon enough and there was no putting it off, not with the way Lucas was humming to himself and looking out the window with excitement. Like a kid on a field trip.

  Even so,
it was hard not to want to just get back on the bus and leave. The only times he'd ever tangled with Terrors before was unwilling, brief, and involved a lot of running. He wasn't eager to get himself involved with anything that could make them act as differently as he'd seen in the dream.

  Having information was better than nothing, he reminded himself. If the vision meant he was going to be involved, ignoring it wouldn't help keep him out of it.

  "All right," he said finally. "Let's go window-shopping."

  ***

  The first few antique shops were as far from helpful as it was possible to come: one specialized in stamps and coins, and another in silverware and china. Keith pretty much poked his head in, looked around, and hurriedly backed out.

  The next, two blocks further, was listed as an Antique Mall, even though it was only three large rooms, and they spent considerably longer in there. It was crowded even with that much space, the massive number of shelves covered in antique jewelry, books, figurines, and more.

  The place had an uncomfortable atmosphere, stuffy and full of old memories, darkness lingering around the shelves as if half the items, despite their human origin, were itching to creep slowly into the Otherworld with the weight of their energy. Keith kept his hands firmly in his pockets as he looked things over; the heaviness of the items felt as though they wanted to drag everything around them into the past. But even with that sensation, he wasn't picking up any lingering feelings of Terror.

  Not that what he was able to pick up was always reliable, he reminded himself.

  "Uh, hey," he said, waving over at the old man watching him dubiously from behind the counter. Weird old white dude, Lucas mouthed at him. Keith tried to keep his gaze on the antiquer. "Weird… uh, weird question, but I'm looking for something for, uh, for my sister. Do you have any old perfume bottles?"

  "I think there's a few near the back." The old man leaned on the counter, looking a bit mollified but still cranky. "Back left, over there. Don't see a lot of teens in here."

  "I'm not a—" No point, really. If the old dude thought he was casing the place or whatever, he'd think it no matter what protest Keith made. He glanced that way, then back again. "Thanks, I'll check them out. I'm worried about getting something that she's already picked up for herself… You haven't sold any recently, have you? So I can avoid getting the same one."

  The old man's brows drew down. "Not recently. You probably don't need to worry about that, young man. This is an antique shop. The chances of there being two the same—"

  Of course not. "Yeah," Keith said hurriedly. "Sorry."

  He went back to take a look at the perfume bottles, but they were all unremarkable things to his sixth sense, and none gave off any indication of any possible reason that a Terror might want them. At most, they held onto weird sensations, anxiety, longing, the wish of previous owners to be desirable.

  He browsed briefly, then came back around to where Lucas was crouched and looking seriously at an old doll.

  "I wonder who owned this," Lucas said. It was porcelain, with its moveable eyelids broken so one hung down halfway over one eye, and its hair looked, and felt, as if it could have once been real human hair. "Old dolls are so unnerving."

  "You think they're unnerving?" Keith mumbled under his breath, shooting Lucas a disbelieving look. "Something always feels really weird about them."

  Lucas reached out and touched the broken eyelid, trying to roll it up. It resisted his insubstantial touch and Keith couldn't help but shudder at the sight. "Maybe it's the way we humanize them," Lucas said softly. "When Shaunee was young, she had a bunch, and even when she was a teenager she'd refer to them by name. You think this one had a name?"

  "I sure hope not," Keith muttered. "Come on, dude." He raised his voice again, catching the old man watching him under heavy brows. "Thanks anyway, but the bottles didn't look like they're her style."

  The old man shrugged a shoulder. If anything, he seemed less convinced by Keith's excuse than before. "The place across the street has more glassware," he said slowly.

  "Oh yeah?" Keith asked hopefully. He wondered if the man were trying to direct his apparent unruly teenage desires to steal toward a competitor.

  The old man waved a hand vaguely in a direction further up the street. "Across the street and about half a block up. It's a bit tucked away, but if you hit the lights you've got too far." He pursed his lips as if he were tasting something sour. "The owner's an odd duck, but he knows his business despite… everything. He can answer your questions, I'm sure."

  Keith dug up an awkward smile. "Thanks! I'll check it out."

  He headed back outside and took a breath of the fresh air before turning to look at Lucas. Lucas's eyes were gone again and Keith shivered a little in the autumn chill. "Lucas…?"

  "Oh… sorry, I was just thinking." Lucas's face turned toward Keith again, sad and longing. "How does a doll like that end up for sale? Was she loved by some lil' girl somewhere, and kept until that girl got old and died, or was she tossed out when that girl grew up? What kind of person did her owner make her into? You think anyone still thinks of her fondly?"

  Keith swallowed a lump in his throat. "I don't know. I didn't get anything from just looking at her," he said, and then corrected himself, "it. It's just a doll, though, you know. It's not… actually a person, even if it looks like one. But I can go back and touch it if it's important to you, see if I can learn its story—?"

  Lucas seemed to look down at his own hands. "Nah. It's okay."

  "Come on…" Keith reached out a hand hesitantly, pressed his hand into the coldness of Lucas's shoulder and nudged him with his energy. "You okay, man?"

  A flutter, something shifting in Lucas's face, and then he was just blinking away his mood, finding a smile somewhere to give Keith as his face cleared up. "I'm fine, fam. Sorry to be a downer."

  "You couldn't be a downer if you tried," Keith said, forcing a smile in return. "Me, however—you know what I caught someone calling me in the dorm?"

  "Yeah, actually."

  "You do?" Keith made a face.

  "Morose Marose, right?" Lucas seemed to brighten more, grinning at him. "You didn't luck out with that last name."

  The face he was making felt like it was getting considerably worse. He tried to dial it back. "I don't try to be morose. I just…"

  "You look like some sort of tragic Victorian poet. I bet I could have found a photograph of you back there," Lucas said, and sort of thumped a fist generally in the direction of Keith's arm. "With your floppy black hair and your deep-set black eyes and your pale skin. Like a young Byron."

  Despite himself, he felt a little flattered. "I usually get Edgar Allen Poe."

  "I think we can both just hope you don't age into Poe," Lucas said, laughing, and gestured up the street. "So, this other shop?"

  Making sure that Lucas was alright was more important than the shop, but everything seemed back to normal now. Keith shrugged his shoulders awkwardly and gestured. "All right. Come on, then."

  They crossed the street together, and continued on up the road. Keith was already prepared to have to double back or spend some time searching, based on how the old man had described it as a bit hard to find.

  He wasn't expecting the sudden throb in his forehead, and to see with his sixth sense an arrow on the sidewalk, pointing left towards a small door inset into a building at the end of what looked at first glance to be a narrow alley.

  Keith had stopped so abruptly that Lucas would have run into him if he were able to. As it was, Lucas had to step back to keep from pushing into his body. "Keith? What—huh. You're seeing that?"

  "Yeah," Keith said. He blinked a few times, rubbing his eyes, then looked at the door again. "It's not in this world, but it's overlaid on it. Deliberately, I'd guess."

  "Well, that's unnerving," Lucas said, but seemed kind of excited. "Going to follow it?"

  "It's not like it's laid out for us," Keith said, mostly to cover how unnerved he did indeed feel. "It's pro
bably got stuff for Others in there. Others are the ones who'd see that normally, right, not humans? Which… I mean…" He felt his heart sink. "Which would probably make it the best shop to check." He drew a deep breath, then opened the antique shop door before he could second-guess himself, the bell jingling overhead.

  The person working the shop was, in fact, an odd duck. He was a young man in his early twenties, probably no older than Keith himself, with hair so pale that it looked white and eyes so blue they looked silver, and skin almost translucently pale to match. Keith would have found him a strange choice to work in an antique shop without the Otherworldly energy surrounding him in a haze.

  The clerk looked up as they entered with a nearly-manic welcoming grin. "Afternoon, gentlemen."

  "Ah," Lucas said, shocked.

  His own heart was skipping a beat, both at the sight of what he was sure was an Other and at the immediate acknowledgment that Lucas was with him. That had never happened before. Keith blinked rapidly to clear away the haze and see him with his Sight instead.

  The illusion around the clerk peeled away, and delicate white antlers bloomed from his head, arching and forking more like branches than an actual deer's antlers. The silver of his irises widened until they took up almost his entire eye, the already fine angles of his face growing finer. He was beautiful, ethereal—would look more at home in a darkened forest than here surrounded by ticking clocks and old books.

  Keith's spike of involuntary, stupid hope, fell. Someone recognizing Lucas meant for sure that Lucas was real, like Keith thought he was, but then, if he was imagining whoever this was, hallucinating in some way—no. He stopped himself. That was no way to think about things. Ghosts were real. Others were real. It was just that most people couldn't see them.