Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  She nodded slowly, then shook her head. "He offered. I said no."

  Lucas seemed to squeeze his hand. "C'mon, girl, Keith has a point. If you think this is going to happen, isn't it better to have company? Safety in numbers, and all that?"

  Her gaze snapped back to Lucas again. "If I'm sure it's going to happen, if I believe it cannot be avoided," she said quietly, "then I don't want to sacrifice anyone else alongside me. That can happen. I don't get impulses about other people. So I can't predict what will happen to them."

  She said it so simply and calmly, despite her obvious anxiety, that the meaning didn’t dawn on him immediately.

  The bone girl took in his shocked silence and leaned forward the same way they had. She put her cup down on the end table, then put both her hands beside it as she continued to lean, as though she needed to share a secret, and said, "It's okay. I'll do what I can anyway. I'll stay inside at night when they're around. They don't come into occupied houses. If I have to go out, I'll do it during the day."

  Keith said, confused and weirdly hurt, "But you still think they'll get you."

  "Yes," the bone girl said. "I do."

  chapter four

  Once he got back to his dorm room, Keith phoned the horned boy, still a little weirded out by the thought of an ethereal deer Other with a cell phone. He had to admit it was some kind of bizarre prejudice on his part, though. Others were the sort of things you read about in horror stories, or fairy stories, or both. Imagining them as much a part of daily life as any other person was strange even for Keith.

  But sure enough, the horned boy picked up after the second ring with a cheery, "Hello!" and no introduction.

  "Hi," Keith said. "Um, this is Keith."

  "I'm glad you called," the horned boy said. There was a sort of languidness to his voice, a hint of laughter. "Just to talk?"

  "No, I mean," Keith said. "I thought I'd let you know how things went with your friend."

  "Ah." The flirtatiousness dropped out of the horned boy's voice immediately. There was a shuffling sound, as of shoving something around, and the horned boy said, "I'm listening."

  Keith summarized the visit, trying to keep himself from rambling, Lucas sitting on the bed across from the desk and nodding along to confirm his memory. "I'm worried," Keith finished finally. "It wasn't like we could make her let us stay, but…"

  "You did what you could," the horned boy said firmly. "I've been through the same thing with her, and I've known her much longer. Thank you for trying. If she won't accept help then there's only so much we can do. We can't just break in there and force her to keep our company. And did you get any information out of it that helped you?"

  Even with the horned boy saying it so clearly, Keith felt a heavy guilt sitting on his chest. "I don't know," he said. "It all seemed so personal to her, not about me. I don't know that my vision helped anything. She was still certain she was going to get captured. Not killed, not eaten, but captured."

  "Matches the bottle you saw."

  It matched, Keith thought, what the horned boy said about the bottle, anyway. He could be wrong. He’d been working entirely off a sketch based on a dream. Keith felt at a complete loss and it made every detail suspect. "Yeah," he said. And then, almost helplessly, as though he wanted someone to tell him she'd been wrong, "she also told me what Terrors were."

  For a moment, the only thing on the line was silence, and then the horned boy said, gently, "You didn't know?"

  "No—"

  "Your friend will be all right," the horned boy said quietly, tone reassuring. "I'm sure he will. Plenty of ghosts stick around a really long time and don't lose themselves, okay? Some only hang around until their people or things are gone, and then they move on. Him being here with you now doesn't mean he'll exist alone forever when you're gone. It's not like it's the only outcome."

  He was forcing himself not to look at Lucas so thoroughly that he almost jumped when Lucas got up and quietly passed through the door, giving them some privacy to discuss things. He wondered what his face was doing, what kind of message he'd given to Lucas, even though he hadn't said much at all on his side.

  "Keith?"

  "Sorry," he said, sick with guilt. "Uh, Lucas just stepped out. I might have upset him, I should go…"

  "Wait," the horned boy said. "Maybe he needs some time alone, too? This concerns him mightily."

  That hadn't occurred to Keith. Half-risen, he sank back into his desk chair again and leaned his face into one braced hand. "Yeah."

  A brief pause on the other side. "You like him a lot," the horned boy said warmly, almost teasing.

  "I owe him my life," Keith mumbled into the receiver, agitated. He'd never talked about this, never had anyone to talk to about it. He and Lucas never talked about it directly, nobody could see Lucas except Others, and he'd avoided talking to Others until now. He was starting to wonder why he'd done that. Fear, but… what else?

  Just a desire to not change further, to become even more weird and morose and freakish. He forced himself to continue now he'd started. "He was a complete stranger. Died to save me."

  The horned boy let out a breath. "That's a deep bond," he said, almost shocked.

  "We've… we've been together since then. The accident woke my powers, and he's been haunting me since he died, so he was there through all that. We're best friends, and…"

  He couldn't quite finish that because he didn't have words to put to it. Lucas was everything. A constant companion, sure, but it was in a way that neither of them had a choice about. He'd resented it at first, back when he felt guilty all the time, but it had eventually become something that brought them closer. Shared captivity.

  Lucas knew everything about him—how Keith felt, how he thought—and he felt like he knew everything about Lucas, too. "… and we just. We're always together."

  "That's a deep bond too," the horned boy agreed. "It's okay to be scared."

  Keith felt his throat closing, his eyes welling up. "But if he's here because of me, he could become that. I don't want to be scared, but I am," he managed, and knew, to his embarrassment, that the horned boy could hear his restrained tears in his voice.

  "You don't have reason to be," the horned boy soothed. "It could happen to him because he's a ghost, but it might not. It probably won't. Lots of things can happen to humans, too, at the end of their lives, you know? You don't live in fear of it, though. You can't."

  He swallowed. Tried to think positively. It was something he wasn't good at. "Maybe you're right…"

  "Of course I'm right," the horned boy said, his voice light. "Don't worry, don't worry. Listen to the voice of experience."

  Keith snorted. "I don't even know you," he pointed out, a bit wobbly.

  "Have to start somewhere," the horned boy said, clearly smiling.

  "I guess," Keith sighed. He pulled himself together. "Thanks. I know that's a lot of… something… to deal with having dumped on you all at once from a near-stranger. Especially while worrying about a friend of your own."

  A laugh at that, light and careful. "It's fine. I like receiving somethings from near-strangers." That flirtatiousness was back in his voice. "It's a good time."

  Keith was suddenly very, very aware of the sudden rare privacy of his dorm room with Lucas hanging out in the hall instead of in here with him. "You really like flirting, huh."

  "Life isn't something I want to waste on unpleasurable things," the horned boy said, his tone strangely reassuring. "I've had my share of it and I'm done. So If I see someone I want to flirt with, I flirt. If I see someone I don't want to, I don't. So, I mean, you really don't need to react like I'm undiscriminating by hitting on you. I'm exactly as discriminatory as I mean to be."

  Put that way, it was a little flattering. Keith smiled weakly. "I'm really not much to flirt with," he said. "I'm literally just sitting in my room like a sad lump right now."

  "Yeah," the horned boy said gleefully. "But what would you be doing if I were there right now?" />
  Despite himself, choked laughter rose in his throat. "Hey now—"

  "Mmhmm."

  It would be easy enough to reciprocate to that, all joking aside. There was a warmth in his chest and face, a stirring of anticipation in his stomach—and lower. He didn't get privacy often, and he didn't get privacy with someone who was obviously up for phone sex, well, ever. It would be nice to seize this change, to take the opportunity for what it was.

  But…

  But Lucas could come back in at any time, since it definitely hadn't been anything flirtatious he'd walked out on. But he didn't know this guy, and even if that didn't matter as much as he thought it should, it still made his anxiety spike. But Lucas had been anxious and unsure about his interactions with the horned boy already, alternating between encouraging Keith to enjoy himself and playing cautious, sticking himself between them, ready to protect Keith against the Otherworld, or something like that.

  But he had every reason not to.

  He swallowed, the urge slowly curdling in his stomach. "I should go," he said, and heard the reluctance in his voice even as guilt slid his thumb toward the hang-up button.

  "If you'd like," the horned boy said, just as lightly as his flirtations had been, "keep me up to date on how things go? If it's during business hours, just text, so I can grab it when I'm not busy—but of course you can call anyway if something important's going on."

  "Okay. I mean, if you're sure."

  "I'm involved already, aren't I?" the horned boy pointed out, strangely dry.

  Keith thought that over. It was hard to answer directly, not when he couldn't even explain how involved he himself was. But maybe it was enough to know that the horned boy viewed himself as involved, the same way Keith viewed himself as involved.

  "I guess so," he admitted.

  "So keep me in the loop," the horned boy said. "It's too late for me to go out tonight with the Terrors active lately, so I'll see if I can do anything about my friend tomorrow. I'll let you know how things go." Then, lightly, "I'd like to keep touch with you, cutie."

  "Good night," Keith said, and hung up, then sat there blushing and holding his phone in both hands while he waited for Lucas to come back in.

  Lucas did, only a minute or two later. Keith supposed that even if Lucas hadn't heard the details of what they were talking about, he could probably hear the murmur of Keith's voice, and waited until he was sure it had ceased before reentering. Their eyes met as Lucas passed through the door and waited hesitantly by it.

  Keith resolved to absolutely not talk about it—either the ghost stuff or the flirting. Instead, he managed a smile. "He, uh," he began, stammering, and cleared his throat. "He did his best to absolve us of responsibility."

  "Oh yeah?" Lucas came back over, sitting at the end of Keith's bed. It didn't dip under his weight; it never did. "Like, 'you did your best', sort of thing?"

  He'd tried to mimic the horned boy's faint lilt. Keith managed a chuckle and wished he weren't so pale. He showed his blushes way too easily. "Yeah," he said. "Pretty much. He said that it's impossible to force someone to take help, and said he'd check in on her tomorrow. That we should keep in touch but basically, try not to worry too much."

  "Sounds like as good advice as we're going to get," Lucas said. "I mean, it's a known problem for you."

  "Hey," Keith protested without heat.

  Lucas shrugged. "You've got good reasons," he said, and Keith thought in horror that they were going to talk about it, but then Lucas glanced away. "So let's distract ourselves tonight. You wanna keep reading?"

  Keith slowly let out a breath. "Yeah," he said. "Sure you want more nerd books?"

  "Hey, I love your nerd books," Lucas said, grinning a little, even if he still wasn't looking quite at Keith. "And it's not like I ever got around to reading Lord of the Rings on my own."

  Keith cleared his throat and reached for the book where he'd left it by the bed. Lucas wasn't able to read on his own very easily—he could turn pages by himself if he focused, but it was hard to keep them from turning back, and he ended up tiring himself out if he tried reading anything long.

  This had been their best solution: Keith reading aloud, while Lucas listened.

  Putting the book against his bent knees, Keith tucked a pillow up on the wall for a backrest and leaned back against it. He patted the bed beside him, smiling a little as Lucas crawled up to sit with him.

  Beside him, Lucas was a cold patch of air, something for Keith to ground himself to as he spoke, letting the words take him away from the here and now.

  ***

  Despite his attempts, he lay awake a long time that night. He pretended to sleep, eyes closed, half to try to will himself to drift off, and half to avoid questions from Lucas, but anxiety and guilt swam back in once he had finally stopped reading.

  But despite his concerns, that night, he didn't dream of anything in particular and had nothing, on awakening, to report to Lucas. No visions, nothing to reveal how things would go. No spoilers, as Lucas put it.

  Classes that day were boring, and he intended to take the long trip back down to see the bone girl, but halfway to the bus stop, a text from the horned boy came, telling Keith that he was visiting her and planning to stay there until just before it got dark, and that no changes had happened there (and also asking what Keith was wearing).

  He showed Lucas the text, scrolled up a little to hide the last bubble, and if Lucas noticed the bar wasn't at the bottom, he didn't comment. He just said, "Cool. I mean, ultimately, he's her friend, not us. He's in a better position to get her the help she needs."

  "Yeah," Keith said. They'd stopped halfway through a currently-unoccupied park, and instead of continuing, he veered off to the swing set and took a seat. Lucas sat in the swings next to him, so Keith started it swinging—Lucas could probably move it on his own, if he tried, but this way, all he had to do was hold on, laughing, as Keith kicked his own swing back and forth, holding the chain of the swing next to his as best he could.

  The wind picking up made it easier. It was threatening to become a storm, but not raining yet, just blowing enough to push them from behind. It was invigorating, freeing, the cool air and the fresh scent of wet leaves finally blowing away his anxiety.

  They only stopped when a family—the husband pushing a stroller, the wife with a kindergartener on her hip—hesitated, looking at Keith weirdly, unwilling to bring their child into the park with some college kid playing in it on his own. He ceded them the right and headed back to campus, arriving just as the first raindrops started to fall.

  The day was so dull and quiet that by the time Keith went to bed, he'd almost convinced himself the whole thing had been a big fuss over a normal nightmare.

  But that next night, a vision came again.

  ***

  It's her, the bone girl, baggy clothes floating around her, body pressing out from her skin, spurs tearing at the air. She struggles with the door, trying to get it closed—but it's jammed, the pressure of the wind pushing it open into the house against her wishes.

  She feels like a fool having gone out at all, but she'd been out of food, hadn't realized until he was already gone. A quick trip to the corner store would be safe, she'd decided. Five minutes, no more. The bag in her hand, crackers and a can of tuna, whips back and forth in the wind.

  Struggling, she takes hold of the door again, digs the spurs on her heels into the carpet, and pushes.

  This time, it isn't the wind that's resisting and she knows it.

  She'll be safe if she can get the door closed. She bends her hands, flexing, and swipes at the half-tangible mass out there with a sharp spur.

  Something hot sprays, but the Terror makes no sound. She hasn't hurt it enough for that.

  Despite that, the door loosens a little and she grabs it eagerly, shoves. If she can get it closed, it will be shut out there and she will be shut in here and she will be safe, because it will not come inside—

  The door shuts and she leans her
weight against it, throwing the bolt, dragging the chain across with fumbling fingers. Her breath comes ragged, dragged out of her lungs in gusts that feel as strong inside her as the autumn wind outside.

  She thinks, Maybe I have defied my fate.

  Lightning crashes. The power flickers and goes out. Not now, not now—but there's no helping it. What's gone is gone.

  Light will hold the Terrors at bay for sure. Darkness will not. But at least she's inside. They don't come inside.

  A rapping sound, a knocking along the wall of her apartment. She half-turns just as the window next to the driveway shatters. Rain and wind come pouring in.

  The Terror comes pouring in as well. Its bulk presses and forces its way through, grasping and reaching, finding the wall and dragging along it as it shoves itself through fully. The bone girl doesn't scream. No point in attracting the neighbors and risking them as well. The window breaking has already been too much of a risk for that.

  As fast as she can, she runs to the kitchenette, finds a knife in the sink, and brandishes it. Better, safer, than fighting it with her own body. It approaches. She watches it over the half-wall of the kitchenette and tries to decide whether she should stand and fight here or dart around to the wider space of the living room.

  It rounds the wall and charges her.

  She braces her feet, digging them into the linoleum—she already isn't getting her deposit back, so who cares about claw marks? The thought is absurd enough that she sobs a laugh, bracing one arm with her other, and letting the Terror's momentum carry it onto her knife.

  They can be injured, and can even be killed. They've taken on enough materiality for that. It lets out a ghastly sound this time, half a wail, and she shudders at the sound but forces the knife deeper, tries to find its core.

  She fails at that. It grabs her by the arm and snaps it hard to the side. A crack and sudden agony, and she bites back a scream herself.