by Donna Hosie
“Angela,” implores Owen. “Please explain.”
“I don’t mean to be nasty,” says Angela crossly, “but not one of you has given the end of this mission any real thought, have you? Owen and Jeanne, the two of you can only see the fight to get the Dreamcatcher back. Mitchell and Alfarin can’t see past their next meal, and Medusa, I think you’re truly awesome, I really do, but you have to deal with that awful Unspeakable, as well as the Skin-Walkers. . . .”
“What about me?” asks Johnny.
“Johnny, sweetie, you’re so out of your depth here I can’t understand for the death of me why you were even asked to come along,” replies Angela. “The fact is, only Elinor and I have picked up on something that you all seem to have forgotten.”
“Which is what?” I ask, not bothering to hide how pissed off I am at Angela for doing something so serious behind my back. If there was one angel I thought I might be able to trust, it was her. But she’s just another Patty Lloyd: pretty, flirty and dumb as shit.
“Medusa, what happens to the Dreamcatcher once we have him back?” replies Angela. “Say we’re successful, and the Skin-Walkers take that disgusting monster back into the circles of Hell. What then? The Dreamcatcher is a little boy. He’ll need someone to care for him, because he can’t be taken back Down There, and I don’t think he’ll be safe if we take him with us.”
“B-but . . .” stammers Owen.
“But nothing, Owen. We all exist in the Afterlife. The Dreamcatcher won’t be safe. Heaven and Down There won’t be safe if he’s as dangerous as we think. He’ll need supporting, and nurturing. He needs normal. A dead kind of normal.”
Angela’s mother smiles at me, and at that moment I understand exactly what they’ve done, and more importantly, why.
And it breaks me.
I’ve been able to manipulate the fear and rage in our two teams, albeit for the greater good. I’ve even fooled myself into thinking we can change time and stop the need for a child Dreamcatcher at all, but Angela’s right, I hadn’t really given a second thought to what we would actually do with that little boy once we had him. It’s not as if we could take him back to his living parents; he’s dead. And he’s too young to be left to fend for himself.
It came so naturally to Elinor and Angela. So why not me? What’s wrong with me? Am I really that hard?
“Medusa?” asks Owen. “What are they talking about?”
“The Dreamcatcher, Owen,” I whisper. “Didn’t you hear a word she said? While I’ve been plotting, and you’ve all been training to control your immolation, Elinor and Angela were the only ones who gave any thought to what we do with the little boy once we’ve rescued him.”
“Which is what?”
“I will care for him,” replies Angela’s mom. “I can’t have my Angela back, but I can do the next-best thing and protect that little boy.”
“But you’re dead!” yells Mitchell. “And sorry, Angela, but how did your mom and granny die and get to stay on earth in the first place? The last time I checked, the HalfWay House didn’t have an exit.”
“You must be Mitchell,” replies Angela’s mom. “Process of elimination, because that handsome young man next to you is surely Prince Alfarin?” She checks with Elinor that she got it right, and Elinor nods.
“Alfarin, son of Hlif, son of Dobin” replies Alfarin, going down on bended knee. “It is an honor to meet the lady mother of such a graceful, beautiful angel. From this day forth, my axe—”
“Shut up, Alfarin,” echoes a chorus of voices, mine included.
“I could use an axe like that to cut down firewood in the winter, Alfarin,” says Angela’s mom. “I’m afraid I tend to rot the wooden handles of mine a little too often.”
“Sorry, but you didn’t answer Mitchell’s question,” I say, interrupting what is clearly about to become a two-way rapture about weapons. “Dead people go to Hell, or Up There. I’ve never heard of dead people being allowed to exist back in the land of the living.”
“That’s because it isn’t allowed, Medusa,” replies Angela’s mom. “There are a few of us, here in secret. It’s a nomadic existence, for we would draw too much attention to ourselves eventually if we stayed in any one place for too long. You must be aware of the traces you are all leaving back in the land of the living already.”
Like flowers turning to gray ash. I nod.
“But how?” asks Mitchell. “Everyone who dies is processed at the HalfWay House. I’ve seen babies ripped from mothers’ arms. I’ve heard the screams as new devils are dragged into Hell. . . .”
Mitchell’s voice fades away in my head and is replaced by a faint ghostly echo of a young mother screaming to keep her baby. . . . I’ve heard those screams, too, in my nightmares. It’s not just my own cries that haunt me.
“Oh, Mitchell!” exclaims Angela’s mother. “Human beings are so conditioned and accustomed to doing what they are told that even in death, they follow each other like sheep. When you arrived at the HalfWay House, what was the first thing you all did?”
“But with esteem and respect, Angela’s lady mother,” asks Alfarin, “what does that have to do with how you stayed here?”
“What did you all do when you arrived at the HalfWay House?” repeats Mrs. Jackson patiently.
“I went where everyone else was going,” replies Johnny. “When I died, the HalfWay House was a grand palace, like Versailles, they said. I thought they would look after me.”
“It wasn’t like that when I died,” replies Mitchell. “It was the same glass-fronted building it is now. I went inside because some dude was about to kick my ass. Everyone kept asking me how I died, and I was looking for a way out. But before I knew it, my photograph was being taken and I was told I was going to Hell. I just thought they were insulting me. I didn’t have time to process that I was dead.”
“And you, Prince Alfarin?” asks Angela’s mother.
“I went searching for Valhalla,” says Alfarin proudly, puffing out his enormous chest. “They told me it was in Hell, so there I went to be reunited with my brethren. I ran into the mouth of Hell before the Grim Reaper had finished speaking, and I have never regretted my haste.”
“What about you, Medusa?”
But suddenly I don’t remember.
“M?”
I don’t remember.
“Medusa, are you all right?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
Owen coughs, but not because he needs to. He does it to get my attention, and he is successful.
“Why can’t I remember?”
“Ye were probably traumatized, M,” says Elinor, slipping her arm around my shoulders. “Death isn’t easy, unless ye are Alfarin.”
But it has nothing to do with trauma. I’m dead because I fell from the Golden Gate Bridge on December 2, 1967. I know the Grim Reapers got my name wrong and marked me down as a suicide, but I can’t remember arriving at the HalfWay House.
I remember slipping. The horrible lurch in my stomach. I can still taste the fear, and when I sleep, I can still feel the wind whipping my skin. The cold rush. I couldn’t breathe.
Then darkness and a split second of the most intense pain I have ever experienced. My brain, exploding into fragments within my skull.
And what then?
I can’t remember being told I was going to Hell. All I can recall is seeing a cadaverous hand writing the word Medusa on a sheet of paper. I can’t remember that first time waking up in an overcrowded dorm. I know I worked in the law office, and I remember the interview for the trainee patisserie chef position.
Paris, and fountains, and strawberries on my tongue. More ghostly images start to blur into one flickering gray mass in my shattered brain. I’m being haunted by a past I’m not even sure I own.
I’m going crazy. How can a person forget being told they’re dead?
“I followed,” says Owen softly. “I followed men onto the field, and I followed them into the HalfWay House. I just followed.”
Mrs. Jackson takes my hand. It’s neither hot nor cold. It’s just pressure on my skin. A ghostly imprint.
“Well, I didn’t follow. And neither did my mother before me,” she says. “Angela has probably told you that cancer has an unfortunate habit of attacking the women in our family. Because of that, I had time to plan and time to think. I’ve never been much of a follower, you see, Owen. Always striking out on my own, that was me. I thought if I lived my life differently, perhaps the cancer would leave me alone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t discriminate. My mother—Angela’s granny—found me again, just before it was my time. Because she was family, I could see her, but I was in so much pain, I thought I was hallucinating. She told me not to follow. Then I appeared to Angela just before her time to tell her the same thing, but she decided on her own path.”
“So you aren’t dead?”
“Oh, I’m certainly dead, Mitchell. Indeed, I am deader than any of you. The traits of human existence that you are allowed to keep in your immortal domains do not work on me. I do not sleep, I do not eat. I feel no pain, which at first was a blessing, but I feel no empathy, either. I am a true ghost haunting the landscape of the earth. Others can see you, and you are all surrounded by a thin nimbus of light. The living see me and I am white vapor. The living would not fear you, even if they thought you were different. But they fear me and those like me.”
“But you’re holding my hand,” I whisper. “You can’t hold my hand if you’re vapor. And you do have empathy in your soul, because you want to look after the Dreamcatcher.”
“I’m holding your hand, Medusa, because that is what I know I should do, not because I want to. And I’m corporeal to all of you, choking devils included, because we are all dead.”
“So you don’t actually want to look after that little boy?” I ask. “Then why would we give him to you?”
“What choice do you have?” replies Mrs. Jackson. “The ghosts upon the earth are aware of the tradition of The Devil’s Dreamcatcher. We see and hear what happens to those who have served their usefulness. They are returned here, and the destructive force of their little bodies is used to terrible effect by The Devil and his servants, the Reapers. Earthquakes, hurricanes . . . they are the remnants of each Dreamcatcher—”
“My brother is next on the list,” interrupts Mitchell. I tense up, waiting for his body to immolate, but although I can smell burning, Mitchell doesn’t burst into flames. I think he realizes that what he has to say is too important now.
“Your brother?”
“Septimus—he’s the top servant in Hell—he told me my little brother is next on the list. Septimus wants the Dreamcatcher taken back to Hell, and if we do that, then M.J.—my brother—will probably be too old to be picked when the time comes again. But Medusa has a better plan. We’re going to stop The Devil from ever needing a child Dreamcatcher.”
“How?” asks Mrs. Jackson, her eyes widening.
“I think we’d all like to know that,” says Owen.
“I have a plan,” I reply. “That’s all you need to know for now.”
And I do. But I can’t tell the others. They’ll only try to stop me. Even Mitchell, with everything he has at stake. The Devil’s dreams can’t be worse than my nightmares, and I’ve been existing with those for a long, long time.
Which is why, when we get back to Hell, I’m going to offer myself to The Devil as his next Dreamcatcher.
21. An Existing Paradox
Mrs. Jackson offers us the use of her home while we’re training; she says we can stay as long as we like. This isn’t a field trip, though, so we remain where we are.
Mitchell and Alfarin continue to work on their immolation. Alfarin is proving to be an absolute natural, although it takes another three attempts before he can turn himself on and off at will. It appears Elinor’s death is his trigger, but she’s also his trigger to stop. All she has to do is call out to him and his flames vanish in an instant.
Mitchell is still struggling, though. His immolation isn’t as intense as Alfarin’s—who explodes like a bomb—but it takes Mitchell longer to get it under control. As a result, he burns for a lingering period, and his form takes longer to recover. Mitchell’s clearly in a world of pain, but he doesn’t complain once. His bravery astounds me. Mitchell isn’t an in-your-face warrior like Alfarin, but I don’t think he appreciates how much we—I—admire him.
Jeanne is already an expert at flying, and as she continues to teach Owen, it becomes clear that she knows how to control the air around her. She does this so well that she can hover just above the ground, with a faint nimbus of stars surrounding her. The Maid of Orléans looks so beautiful and serene, and precisely the image of what people who are living think angels should look like. I’m sure of it now: she’s definitely done this before, but when I finally dare to mention her immolation she refuses to talk about it.
Owen’s transformation gets him from A to B—eventually—but he has little control. Jeanne gives him a target: a snow-covered ridge on one of the mountain peaks, but he overshoots it by miles. He’s starting to get frustrated, and I notice that when he hovers, his movements affect the pinecones and needles on the ground. They whizz around his army boots, as if caught in a funnel of wind. The effect of flying is also changing Owen’s appearance. After every flight, his skin is paler, so much so that by the time we call it a day, his face looks like white marble.
Jeanne’s light-brown skin is unchanged, and I add that to the list of questions I know she’ll never answer.
I think we’ll be ready after one more day of training. Our moment in time, right now, is January 1, 2015, but when the time comes to confront the Unspeakable, I think we’ll have to be back to the date we left Hell. We just can’t run the risk that another child will be chosen to be the Dreamcatcher in the time that has elapsed. We haven’t slept since we left Septimus’s office in such a rush, and although we’ve been to moments in time in San Francisco, Washington, the UK, and now New Zealand, I think in true terms, we’ve only been gone from Hell for a day or two at the most.
One more day, and this could be over for the others.
And then everything will be over for me.
When it’s time to call it a day, Angela wants to go back with her mom. But when the rest of us elect to stay on the shores of Lake Pukaki, she reluctantly decides to stay as well. Owen takes Mrs. Jackson home and reappears a minute later. He says he won’t let Angela do it because he’s still mad at her for using the Viciseometer to involve her mom in the first place. Secretly I think he’s angry at himself. I think Owen’s scared he’s losing his humanity because he never thought of the Dreamcatcher’s future, either. For a while I was mad at myself for this, too, but I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’ve decided my true humanity disappeared the second my fingers slipped from the bridge. I’m an echo of my living self. And I have to wonder, if I stopped the behaviors that the Highers left us devils with—like the desire to eat and sleep and breathe—would it make any difference at all?
In the back of my mind, I hear my conscience telling me that I’m only saying these things to harden myself up for the battles to come. Taking back the Dreamcatcher is only part of the war. The real horror comes after.
And I’m scared.
Night falls, and the eight of us make camp beneath a canopy of towering pine trees. We light a fire, but we keep it small because we don’t want to be seen. My body is telling me I should sleep, but I’m fighting the sensation and winning. I’ve never seen a night sky like this, and I want to remember it. Millions and millions of stars gaze down at us, like glitter sprinkled over a black blanket. There is a huge cluster directly above, which Mitchell says is the Milky Way. He starts pointing out constellations and the different swirling galaxies that make up the universe.
“Are ye making these names up, Mitchell?” asks Elinor as Mitchell maps out the sky with his index finger. “Because that is the strangest bull I’ve ever seen. It has only two legs and no head, for one thing.
”
“No, I’m not making it up,” Mitchell replies indignantly. “And I’m telling you, that constellation is called Taurus. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little. My mom and dad used to buy me space books. They said those were the only things I would read.”
“Tell us about Orion the Hunter again, Mitchell,” says Alfarin. “To be placed in the stars is a great honor. I would like to hunt bulls and giant crabs. Tell me, do the heavens also have winged beasts and monsters from the deep? My brethren and I would wage war against them all, and it would be bloody and savage and glorious.”
“I think that cluster, the one near that red star, should be named after you, Alfarin,” says Angela. Johnny is lying across her legs, and she’s absentmindedly twirling his red hair through her fingers. “It looks like there’s an axe right in the center of it.”
“That red star is Mars, which is actually the nearest planet to ours,” says Mitchell. “And Alfarin deserves to have a whole galaxy named after him.”
“My friend, that is the nicest thing you have ever said about me,” replies Alfarin, and even in the moonlight I can see he is a little misty-eyed. “You, too, shall be immortalized in the stars. I name those three stars in a row after you, as they remind me of the sticklike form you possess. Indeed, I shall find stars for all of Team DEVIL.”
“Do you call yourselves that because you’re devils, or does it actually stand for something?” asks Angela.
“Dead but not Evil Vanguard In Life,” replies Elinor. “Mitchell thought of it.”
“Only smart thing I did the last time,” mutters Mitchell.
“What about Team ANGEL?” asks Alfarin. “It is not as majestic as our glorious name, but I am interested to hear what name you gave yourselves as you prepared for battle. Wars have been won and lost on the fear of a name alone.”
“We weren’t preparing for a battle, Alfarin,” replies Owen. “But we did name ourselves before we left Up There.”