Outcasts

by Claire McFall

  “We can,” Susanna corrected.

  “No, we can’t.” He glared at her, daring her to contradict him a second time. She didn’t. “We need to just do it. Get it over with. If we don’t make it…” He shrugged.

  “If we don’t make it, you become one of them,” Susanna reminded him, nodding to where the wraiths could still be seen through one of the small windows.

  “And you,” Jack countered.

  “No.” Susanna shook her head. “I won’t. I’ll end up reassigned, sent to collect another soul. They can hurt me, but they can’t kill me. They can’t take me and turn me into one of them. But they can do that to you.”

  Jack gave another little shrug, as if trying to shake off her words. Deny them. Then he sniffed and shifted his jaw. Sat up a little straighter. The bravado he had slowly shed over the long days and nights he and Susanna had been together suddenly snapped back into place.

  “So what? If it happens it happens.”

  “Jack—”

  “At least you’ll be free.”

  Susanna blinked, certain she hadn’t heard those words.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ll be free,” Jack repeated. Susanna could feel the tension radiating from his body beside her. “If I make it, well… great. But if not, at least you’ll get out of here. Right?”

  Susanna didn’t know what to say. “I won’t be free,” she said slowly. “I’ll have to go back to being a ferryman, like I was before.”

  “But you’ll be out of here.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, “I’ll be out of here.” Out of this cage that was their sole point of safety in the hell of the true wasteland. Away from Jack and the guilt that had her insides twisting every time she looked at him.

  And then, every single time she saw a wraith, she’d wonder if it was Jack. If there was any spark of him left inside the creature that was trying to savage her and kill the new soul she was ferrying. She’d wonder if he was suffering, living an endless torment because of her. He’d probably enjoy the chance to get a little revenge, she thought wryly. The idea made her snort out a quiet puff of laughter.

  “What?” Jack asked, watching her with a quizzical tilt to his head, looking to share the humour.

  It was a good look on him. Made him look younger, friendlier. It softened the harsh, angry lines that so often hardened his face. Susanna couldn’t pinpoint when he’d started looking at her like that, but slowly, over the agonisingly long hours, days and weeks that they’d spent together, they’d found a way to coexist. To accept each other. To talk – properly talk – even laugh, and to find their own strange kind of rhythm. To become friends.

  That’s what she’d be losing if Jack was captured by the wraiths, pulled down and turned into one of them: a friend. But more than that, someone who looked at her and really saw her.

  “I was imagining you as a wraith,” she admitted. “You’d be able to get your own back for everything.”

  Jack grinned, though it really wasn’t all that funny, Susanna knew.

  “I’d stalk you all the way across the wasteland,” he promised. “Your own, personal wraith to dog your footsteps.”

  “Thanks,” Susanna told him dryly. “I appreciate that.”

  The small spark of amusement extinguished. They sat on the sofa in silence, watching the sky darken to a deep burgundy as the sun set and the night approached. The noise outside would intensify now. The wraiths would multiply until they were so thick they would bang and thump against the sides of the safe house, jostling and fighting with each other to get closer and closer still. Susanna didn’t understand the wraiths’ obsession with them – there were other safe houses in the wasteland to terrorise – but she supposed it might be a punishment from the Inquisitor. A way to remind them, nightly, what awaited them if they were foolish enough to make the journey.

  “You really want to do it?” Susanna asked as a particularly spine-tingling wail cut through the twilight. “You want to face…” she gestured to the window, “that?”

  It took Jack a long moment to answer. Finally, he sighed.

  “I don’t want to leave you…” he said quietly, “but I can’t stay here any longer. I just can’t.”

  “When?” Susanna asked.

  Another sigh, this one accompanied by a shrug. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?” she squeaked.

  “If not tomorrow, when?”

  She shot him a sideways look. “When did you get so sage?”

  Jack raised one side of his mouth in a wry half-smile, but didn’t answer. Outside, the hisses and snarls started to morph into a low, continuous rumble as more wraiths arrived.

  “Light the fire?” Jack asked. He didn’t wait to see if Susanna would answer, instead rising and moving to the nearest window. They repeated their nightly routine: Susanna dropped to the fireplace and used her ferryman powers – which thankfully she hadn’t lost – to create a blaze among the small pile of wood stacked there, while Jack closed the curtains against the wraiths so that at least they wouldn’t see them, shifting in shadowy flickers outside. Tasks complete, they returned to the sofa and, as they did every night, Jack lay down along the back of the cushions and Susanna crawled to lie in her usual place in front of him. He folded his arms around her and they closed their eyes.

  It had been horrendously awkward, the first few times they’d done this, but there was nowhere else to lie down, except for the cold flagstone floor. At first they’d spent night after night tense and unmoving, rigidly trying not to touch each other, until Jack had eventually had enough and put his arms around Susanna with a gruff, “I won’t bite, you know.” It had dissolved any remaining self-conciousness they still felt around each other, and they’d slept this way ever since. Not that they needed to sleep – Jack was dead and Susanna was a ferryman – but it was a way to mark the days. To keep the routine of day and night.

  Now, she couldn’t relax without it. She was the ferryman, but having Jack hold her made her feel somehow safer, stronger.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  When the fire burned down and the room darkened, it was a way for them to grasp a facsimile of privacy, of time alone, as they both pretended the other was asleep.

  And somehow, in a perverse twist of fate, or cruel punishment from the Inquisitor, since she’d returned to the wasteland, Susanna dreamed. She didn’t know what else to call it. She wasn’t asleep, but memories would grab at her, demand her attention in the dark, and she’d be helpless to look away until whatever remembrance that had her in its maw released her back into the relative sanctuary of the safe house.

  “You want to talk?” Jack asked, his voice low in her ear.

  Susanna shook her head, knowing he’d feel the movement even if he couldn’t see her silhouette shifting in the firelight.

  “It won’t help,” she told him.

  He squeezed her in sympathy. There was no way to hide the dreams from Jack, not when they often left her trembling or sobbing. Or both.

  “Maybe you won’t have one tonight,” he offered.

  “Maybe.” She knew she would, though. With their earlier conversation and Jack’s decision ringing in her ears, and the wraiths outside singing her to sleep with their nightmare lullaby, she knew she’d dream. It was just a question of which memory would be the one to rip her from Jack’s arms and thrust her into the path of pain and fear.

  Blowing out a breath through tense lips, she tried to relax her body as she closed her eyes.

  The wind was howling, fighting with the wraiths to fill Susanna’s ears. She felt dizzy, disoriented.

  But she knew exactly where she was. And when.

  She should, she’d been here so many times before in her ‘dreams’. It was the moment the Inqusitor had sent them back. Back to the living hell of the wasteland.

  Jack hollered his opening line. “What is this?” It was still hard to hear him over the whooshing, whirling and screaming, but she knew the words by now. She
knew them by heart.

  “The wasteland,” Susanna shouted back.

  “Why doesn’t it look like it did before?”

  Susanna wished she could stop it, stop the dream now. Just as she’d wished a hundred times before. It never worked.

  But the real wasteland waited for her, burning her eyes with a thousand different shades of red. Heat prickled, and sand whipped up by the wind scraped against her skin, a million tiny stings. Rocks burst from the ground in ragged peaks.

  It created a maze of shadows. Countless places for wraiths to lurk, waiting to ambush them.

  That, at least, was one small mercy. Susanna had memorised where each of them lingered by now. Knew when to expect the attack. Unfortunately, she still had no way to prevent it – the memory would unfold as it always did.

  Susanna stared at Jack, guilt bubbling in her stomach. The path the Inquisitor had set before them was impossible; there was no way they could cross the wasteland like this.

  It was a death sentence.

  “Jack,” Susanna said, turning to the soul she’d led too far from his path. The words were already on her tongue, ready to spring forth as they always did, but she’d never meant them more. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “What do we do?” he yelled.

  Susanna turned to the safe house. That first time, hunting around the wraiths, she’d been so grateful when she spotted it. There must have been some mercy left in the Inquisitor after all, because it sat there, not a hundred metres from where they cowered, terrifyingly exposed in the empty wasteland. Its door was already open, as if waiting for them.

  “Jack!” Susanna pointed with one trembling finger. “Look!”

  She turned her head to smile at him, to share the tiny pinprick of hope that was lighting up inside her, and, as she’d known it would, the moment of inattention cost her. A wraith landed on her arm, claws curling round it, like a hawk returning to its master’s glove. Only Susanna’s arm was bare, and rather than the sleek, beautiful lines of a bird of prey, the wraith was a swirling, writhing mass of darkness, one that began to immediately rake and tear at her flesh as soon as it landed, razor-sharp teeth bared.

  “Help! Get it off!” She twisted and thrashed, struggling to present her side to Jack, to give him an opportunity to grab the thing. Then she did… and yet still Jack didn’t move. Didn’t help her. Glancing at him for a fraction of a second, her entreaty forming again on her lips, she saw it. Indecision.

  Should he help her or not? Should he let the wraith just have her?

  Look what she’d done to him. She deserved it.

  The thoughts flickered across Jack’s face, as easy to read as if he’d spoken them aloud. Horror had long since stopped dropping like a stone in Susanna’s stomach. She didn’t have time to plead with him – not that there would be any point; that wasn’t how the memory unfolded. Another wraith took advantage of her distraction and tangled itself in her hair, wrenching her neck and scoring gashes across her scalp. Pain shot across her skull, making her cry out.

  Pain blazed across her thigh as a wraith scythed past her before circling for another pass. Susanna closed her eyes, ignoring, just for a moment, the wraith attacking her head and the other, attached like a limpet to her arm. You won’t die, she reminded herself. They can’t kill you. Pain is only pain.

  Then something much bigger shoved her off balance and she almost fell to the floor. Flinging her eyes open, she saw Jack, a grim, angry set to his face, wrapping strong fingers around her free arm.

  “I can’t touch them,” he hollered at her, his voice almost disappearing under the hissing and screeching creatures. “We need to run.”

  She couldn’t run, not with two attached to her and others trying to take out her legs, but with Jack hauling her along, doggedly ignoring the wraiths that were dive-bombing him, she had no choice. He half-dragged, half-carried her step by step, metre by metre, until the safe house rose up before them: a single-storey stone sanctuary. Their oasis in the desert.

  Buoyed by Jack’s help, Susanna managed to galvanise herself to tear free of the two wraiths, leaving deep, bloody furrows in her flesh, before they fell in the door.

  Quiet. Blessed stillness and quiet as they lay panting on the cool hardness of the flagstone floor. Susanna stared at the doorway a heartbeat longer, assuring herself that, as always, the wraiths couldn’t break through the barrier, before dropping her head back, closing her eyes and letting herself sob. Just a little.

  Just for a moment.

  She felt shifting by her side as Jack detangled himself from her and sat up.

  “You’re bleeding,” he commented.

  She was. She could feel the tear on her thigh, and her lower right arm burned and throbbed like it’d been chewed on by a bulldog, which she supposed wasn’t far from the truth. The wounds on her scalp weren’t bad, she knew, but head wounds always bled more.

  “I know,” she sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll heal. We made it here, that’s what’s important.” Susanna forced her eyes open, blinking away a smear of blood trickling down from her hairline. She ignored it, focussing on Jack, sitting over her almost protectively. “Thank you,” she rasped, her mouth dry from fear and the arid air of the true wasteland. “Thank you for helping me.”

  Jack didn’t react to her gratitude. Instead, he looked away. Shrugged. The wraiths flocked round the still open doorway caught and held his attention. “What are we going to do now?”

  Susanna stared at the wraiths, too. There were at least a hundred of them out there. Each one ready to tear her apart, to drag Jack below the surface and make him one of them.

  She didn’t have an answer.

  * * *

  “Susanna!” Jack’s voice was low but urgent in her ear. “Susanna!” He gave her a little shake and Susanna jerked, lifting her head and gazing blearily about her.

  “What?” she asked stupidly. “What’s happening?”

  It was pitch-black, the fire having burned out completely. Whatever light might have filtered in from the night sky outside was being blocked by the mob of wraiths who were, as always, doing their best to torment them through the long hours of darkness.

  “You were shaking,” Jack told her, concern in his voice. “Were you having another nightmare?”

  “I told you,” she responded automatically, “I don’t sleep.”

  Jack snorted quietly, his arms still strong around her, providing much-needed support. “Call it what you like,” he said. “You were dreaming.”

  Susanna couldn’t dispute that, not with the echoes of the wounds she’d sustained that day still tingling, phantom-like, on her flesh.

  “Was it a bad one?” he murmured.

  “It was… it was when we first arrived.” She didn’t need to say any more than that. She knew the memories of those first terrifying moments, dumped unceremoniously into the true wasteland, must be even more vivid in Jack’s mind. Susanna, at least, had had some idea of where they were, what was happening.

  Jack was silent for a long moment.

  “You haven’t dreamed about that for a while.”

  No, she hadn’t. At first that memory had consumed her every night – all the more terrifying because she hadn’t understood why it was happening. She was a ferryman; she didn’t sleep, and she didn’t dream. Now, she just accepted that the memories were going to come for her – though that didn’t make it any easier. But Jack was right, it had been a while since their first, petrifying moments in the wasteland had revisited her.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

  Jack interrupted her thoughts. “About tomorrow…”

  “Yeah?” Susanna replied.

  “Well, you know this place better than I do. What’s it gonna be like?”

  Susanna drew in deeply through her nose and exhaled slowly.

  “I don’t travel the real wasteland,” she told him honestly. “None of us ferrymen do. We collect a soul and guide them across their individual wastel
and, then we’re taken immediately on to the next.”

  “So you’ve no idea?” he ground out, the hard edge in his voice showing his frustration. They’d come a long way together, the two of them, forging a friendship in slow, painful steps, but Jack had never been able stop himself falling back on his final defence when things weren’t going his way. Scowl, shout, throw things. Get angry and cold. Sometimes cruel.

  Susanna knew exactly why he did it – he was scared, and frustrated – but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

  “No,” she said patiently. “I’ve got a bit of an idea. I’ve always been able to see the real wasteland. At any time, I could drop the veil and see it, but I’ve never done it anywhere except from a safe house – it was too dangerous.”

  Jack grunted, a dissatisfied sound, so she went on.

  “I imagine it’s like travelling the wasteland at night. Normally, the wraiths avoid the sunlight. They stick to very deep shadows, so their opportunities to attack during the day are limited – unless a soul gives in to despair so badly that the weather rolls in enough to create an atmosphere so thick and sunless that they can break free.”

  Jack considered that quietly. Shifting position on the sofa to release a cramp in her back, Susanna felt how tense he was lying behind her. He was scared, she knew, but trying to hide it. He needn’t bother – she was too.

  “Have you ever travelled the wasteland at night, then?” he asked at last.

  “Lots of times.”

  “And…?” he prodded.

  “It’s… well, it’s bad.” There was no point in lying to him. “Unless we’re really, really near a safe house, the soul has pretty much no chance. There are just too many wraiths. You can’t fight them at all, and I can’t fight them all at once.” She thought for a moment. “When I was ferrying Michael—”

  “Michael?”

  “He was a soul,” she explained, “before you. Anyway, when I was ferrying him, I noticed something strange about the wraiths.”

  “Go on.” Jack nudged her shoulder to urge her on.

  “They… well, it’s crazy, but it seemed like they were working together. Acting as a team, or a pack, to bring me down. Normally they just attack randomly, individually. But with Michael I almost got the impression that they’d thought about how best to go