He was there now. Eyelids flickering, breaths deep and even. Karen could be forgiven for thinking that the boy was in nothing more than a deep state of REM sleep.
“Kurt?” She placed a hand on his shoulder and gave a soft nudge. But there was no response. “Do you think he’s okay?”
*
Kurt’s mind raced with excitement. He couldn’t believe it, nor did he want to question it at all. The fear that had gripped him the last time he had entered the ink-land was all but gone, overridden by a burning energy and desire to explore. To search the underbelly of the world – the last place he had heard Amy’s voice. The place where people were as still as mannequins. The colours and the light all but gone. The shadows thick as treacle and deep, so deep, as if someone could fall into one, drop for an eternity, and never find the bottom.
He didn’t care how he got here, nor that he had no idea how to escape. There was one goal at the front of his mind.
Kurt lifted himself out of the frozen car where his sleeping body remained. The others were stuck in their positions. The lady cop driving the car. Karen looking idly out the window with tears iced on her cheeks. Steven curled up in the back seat beside him, clearly intent on joining Kurt in slumber.
The car moved infinitesimally slow. Kurt popped open the door and stepped out into the wooded road. Deep forests on either side, separated only by a long stretch of tarmac with painted lines. Even the light from the headlights was bizarre, looking like two bright cones of white stuck to the front of the car with glue.
Kurt didn’t speak. He didn’t waste time. Somewhere in this land, his sister was trapped. In pain. The words she had called to him echoed in his mind. ‘Please find me.’ At first, he thought he heard her calling again, maybe somewhere between the lines of trunks and branches to the left or right of the road. Until he realised it was his own inner recorder playing the tape on loop. He contemplated which way to run first, knowing that he only had a limited window of time in this place. His head felt as though it were filled with that cursed golden fog.
Which way? Just pick already.
He heard the sound of a lock click somewhere ahead. A door opened and shut. In a moment of instinct, he chased it, running up the road until the car disappeared behind him, listening to the quiet swill of the wind all around him, listening for the cries. And smelling, too. Like a bloodhound, sniffing for the sweet burnt smell.
After what seemed like a mile, something told him to take a sharp right. Kurt leaped over a ditch, his body feeling almost weightless, before landing on the soft muddy floor of the forest. He ran a few hundred metres, then slowed, wary that the darkness was growing thicker. He looked behind and could just make out the road as a pinprick in the distance. He felt a chill. The cold now piercing his clothes and stroking his bare skin.
Another few steps and the road had gone. The trees now all around him. Any indication of a path that he had followed disappeared from sight as the shadows cloaked him.
For the first time since he arrived, he felt a pang of fear.
“Amy?” The words sounded magnified, as though announced from a speaker box. They made him jump as they echoed and trailed into quiet. He heard the confidence wain in his voice. Doubts and niggles as he turned in a circle, looking for anything that might indicate where he was. A horrible thought came to him: What if I don’t wake up this time? What if I’m here forever?
“Amy!” he tried again. “Amy, please… please, where are you?”
The woods and the shadows closed in like lions around prey. The trees bowing over the top of him. The shadows almost kissing his feet. Kurt sank to the floor, folded over himself and boxed himself in, wrapping his arms around his knees, burying his face. The cold damp floor soaked into his jeans. The hissing wind caressed his face, breathing onto his neck.
“Amy…” he said weakly, unsurprised to find no response.
And now he sobbed. He cried into his legs, weeping like he did when he was a baby, deep and full of phlegm.
“Please,” he cried, “please.”
There came a noise.
Something just a little further ahead. He raised his head to see movement. Nothing more than my imagination, he told himself. Just a trick of the brain. I’ll never understand this place—
It moved again, just beyond his vision. Another minute passed. It came closer, revealing its figure, opening its eyes. The whites clear even in the dark. And then the teeth too as it smiled. Kurt was reminded of the Cheshire Cat from the Alice in Wonderland books his mother used to read to him as a boy. What next? A hookah-smoking caterpillar?
The thing stepped forward, its body slowly assembling from shadows and smoke. It was a child, of sorts.
“What’s the matter, boy?”
His voice was young, like Kurt’s. Soft, untouched by puberty. He looked simian in a way. His skin was all black. Not just black but charcoaled. There were light cracks in his skin, and he billowed plumes of white clouds as he spoke. Kurt thought of the final smouldering dregs of barbeque coals.
“Who… who are you?” Kurt said, wiping his eyes.
“Me? Go by a few names, I do. Brother. Sister. Dickweed. Friend. Son. Cousin. Chump. Student. Idiot. Master…” he paused a second, then his eyes blazed. “Lazarus. That’s the one that you folk like to call me – Lazarus.”
“Lazarus?” Kurt lifted himself now, climbing to his feet. The name… the words the bomber had muttered at the reenactment centre. Kurt saw the eyes brimming with confidence, the finger pushing the trigger on the bomb. “It’s you… you’re the one that made the fog? You’re the one who turned those people feral. I’m here because of you. It’s all because of you…”
“Dear boy, I have no idea what you could possibly mean.” Lazarus tilted his head to the side as if studying Kurt. “Not all of us are as lucky as you visitors. We can’t all dip our toes in and out of the pond if our feet get wet and chilly. This place is my home, I have no place else to go. Is it my fault if I help those who get stuck find their way out of this place?” To Kurt’s surprise, the boy began to cry. Watery droplets collected in the corners of his eyes before steaming and evaporating into the air.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”
“Can I at least know your name, boy?” Lazarus sniffled.
“Why do you call me a boy? You look the same age as me.”
“Sensitive fellow, aren’t we? We’re all children here… in the Deadspace.”
“The Deadspace?”
“Sure. Where else would the dead go but a place like this?” As if to illustrate his point, there came a scream in the distance, followed by a childish chuckle.
Dead? Kurt thought. “But I’m not dead.”
“Oh,” Lazarus said, smiling at Kurt like he was some curiosity. “I know. It’s easy to tell a visitor from a mile away. I could practically smell your living flesh. It’s like an anchor for your spirit.”
The boy wiped his eyes. Kurt shivered. The idea of other visitors – other people like Kurt – made him think of Amy. She was here somewhere, he was sure. He’d heard her. More than that though, he could feel it. He observed Lazarus who seemed to wait patiently for Kurt to speak. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something about Lazarus’ demeanour that reassured Kurt. If the smouldering boy lived in the… what did he call it? The Deadspace… then perhaps he may know how to find her.
“I’m looking for my sister, Amy. Have you seen her?”
Lazarus thought for a moment. “Amy? Is she dead?”
“No! At least… I don’t think so.”
“Ah, I see. Another visitor? There’s been a lot of you recently. Others too… people trapped halfway. One foot in the grave. One foot in Hell. Blinking like a movie screen”
Kurt stared blankly at the boy.
“Amy?” the boy asked. “What does she look like?”
Kurt began to explain. He found it difficult to describe her, finding his memories of her hazy and fuzzy. Lazarus nodded, placed his hand on Kurt’s shoulder
, watching Kurt with keen eyes. But then an odd thing happened. Kurt had reached mid-sentence, describing some of the clothes that Amy wore on a regular basis – or at least had worn the last time they had been close – when the boy turned and began walking away. Kurt trailed off, watching the smoking outline of Lazarus as he disappeared again into the dark.
Panic struck. Kurt bounced to his feet and ran where he had disappeared, calling after him.
It was dark once more. Everywhere. Kurt continued to run, feeling the bumpy, uneven terrain beneath his feet, terrified that at any moment he’d run straight into a—
Thwack!
Kurt collided against something solid and flat. He fell to the floor and rubbed his face, surprised that he couldn’t feel the blood from his nose. Maybe there’d be a bump on his head, though. Who knew? The Deadspace didn’t seem to yield to the rules of reality.
Kurt stood, reached out to what he had hit, and felt the rectangular shape of something familiar. He ran his hand along the flat front surface and felt the cold metallic touch of a handle.
A door? In the middle of the woods? Not pressed against a wall or a building like you’d expect to see but stood alone. Kurt’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness, just enough to make it out. His heart thumped. He remembered it. He’d seen it the last time he was in the Deadspace.
It was the door to the diner. The same circular window with the single metal handle. The same wood pattern with the exact same brown knots. It might’ve been a bright red in the real world, but the Deadspace painted it a harsh grey. Kurt placed his hand on the handle unsure if the door was trembling, or if it was himself. He heard a rush of smoke and saw Lazarus now, standing off to the side, barely visible amongst the black. His white teeth on show, smiling wide.
“This is for you,” Lazarus said. “We all bring something to the Deadspace… and this is yours, the door to your Amy.”
Kurt pressed his hand to the cold damp wood and peered inside the window. The blackness had gone now, replaced with a dim, flickering yellow light. He looked around the side of the door to where the forest continued. The light vanished.
“Is she in here?” Kurt said, a swell of energy building in him. “Is my sister in there?”
Lazarus didn’t say anything. He simply stood to the side and watched.
And then the crying. The ruinous sound of tears muffled by the door. Kurt’s heart leapt. It was obvious to him now, all he had to do was open the door. Thank you, Lazarus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. He pressed his hands to the cold metal and pushed, waiting for the give of the door, but it stayed firm. He rammed his shoulder against it but it didn’t even shake in its non-existent hinges. Kurt looked at Lazarus, confused, then back to the door. The crying had calmed to a heavy breathing. Kurt looked in the window again, desperately searching for any sign of his sister. Only seeing the dim yellow light and a silhouette… shuddering, crying. Was that her?
Kurt banged on the window. “Amy!” he sobbed into the tarry-black window. “Amy! Can you hear me?”
“Kurt!”
A reply, in his sister’s voice.
“Is that you?
He screamed “yes,” over and over until the silhouette stopped its sobbing and looked up and around.
“I hear you,” she cried. “I hear you, I do. I think I know what it means… I think it means you died.”
And then the sound that made him hammer hard on the door. A scream.
Kurt turned to Lazarus, ready to beg and ask for help. To ask him to open the damn door and let him see his sister. But when he looked, Lazarus was gone. He went to pound his fist against the door again, but then felt the burning, searing pain in his head. His heart.
Kurt doubled over. He felt it then, the draw of the other world pulling him back, but he wasn’t quite ready. He tried to hold on. He hadn’t had his fill of this dream just yet. He needed to see his sister. He needed to see her before he was pulled out. He needed to see her face, her eyes. He strained and pulled, rooting himself in the Deadspace as much as he could.
“Don’t leave,” Kurt suddenly heard Lazarus whisper from somewhere beside him. “We can find her, I promise. Me and you. We can be a team. We can do this.”
But the world continued to slip. Kurt was hopeless to stop it. The Deadspace faded, swamped in a warm golden glow as the forest, the car, the door, Lazarus all disappeared and Kurt felt himself writhing and thrashing in the warm softness of what felt like a bed.
23
There was a girl. A good few hundred miles or so from Kurt. She was older and wiser in some ways but mostly not at all. Dumb in the way that only sixteen-year-olds can be.
The girl wiped the tears from her eyes and breathed deeply, sucking the air through her snotty nose so hard she coughed.
Downstairs were the parents (not her real parents) whispering sweet concerns to one another about the girl they’d taken in. Their daughter. Supposedly. The bonding between parents and their adopted child is a process, so they say. But for David and Gina Hayes they never realised just how tough a process it would be.
And how much more difficult was it about to get? This little orphan girl, already weighed down by a handful of issues – loss, grief, separation, anxiety, was about to find one more for good luck. Her life had just handbrake turned, 180’d, flipped, just ten minutes ago. Ten minutes? Is that all? To the girl, it already feels like a lifetime. In such a short space of time she’d gone from smiles and butterflies and thoughts of what she might wear the next day, whether or not Bo (red hair, letterman jacket) really did smile at her, and whether or not she was going to actually sit down and read chapters 13-through-17 of the Lord of the Flies for English Lit the next day.
And that’s when she’d opened the front door, waved goodbye to Chey and planned to meet up the next morning, to walk together to Fallon Park High School.
“I’ll bring the milk duds,” Chey had beamed at her with a haughty chuckle.
“Great, more pounds for my ass.” the girl replied.
They both laughed but then the girl went and walked down that damned perfect driveway, didn’t she? She’d walked past that neat and tidy shrubbery and walked to the freshly painted white door with the frosted nautical window, hadn’t she? And she’d opened it, right?
She’d stepped inside and walked over to David and Gina Hayes. Yes, yes, she did. So who could she blame when she saw their faces washed with concern other than herself?
“You better sit down,” David had said. Big businessman David with his suit and tie and shiny bald forehead.
And the girl was worried about what? Being caught smoking? She didn’t smoke. Playing hookey? Not done that yet either.
No way. She’d been a perfect student and a perfect child, since moving into David and Gina’s house and look, it still looked like she was about to get it in the neck. What now? She thought. Time to go back to the orphanage?
“What did I do?!” the girl cried out.
“Woah, nothing, don’t worry.” The two of them kept their solemn faces as they calmed her down and worked her down to the living room sofa. Told her about the news of a terrorist attack.
“The news guy said it wasn’t a terrorist but a madman who kills people is a terrorist to me and I don’t see two ways about it.”
“David,” Gina said, pulling him back to focus.
“Sorry. The point isn’t who but where.”
And that was when the gears began to grind in her mind and all she could feel was the bile in her throat and the sweat on her head. She ran upstairs then, crying out her little brother’s name, calling him over and over via the Skype application on her phone but all she got in reply was – USER OFFLINE.
She sobbed into her hands and felt the guilt wash over her in giant icy waves, each one freezing her soul a little more. She knew it wasn’t true. She knew, somewhere, deep inside that her brother was alive. Until, for a second she heard his voice.
Maybe.
She put the phone down, sniffled some more
into her hands, and followed the voice to the ensuite bathroom, found it there in the mirror.
Here the girl wiped her eyes and strained to see the face in the reflection. A reflection that wasn’t her own.
“Amy!” the reflection screamed. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” she cried. “I hear you, I do. I think I know what it means… I think it means you died.”
But then the sweet and soft alabaster skin of the reflection burned and charred to black as it reached through the mirror into her world, and as she fell and slammed the back of her head, hard, onto the toilet bowl and the blood spilled out from the fresh wound she thought, she just might be dying. And the world turned to black and the shadows grew thick and wet.
I think I am dying, Amy thought. I think maybe I’m dying.
24
Kurt sprang to life, taking a deep breath in and sitting up. He looked around wildly, blinded by the sunlight that streamed through the thin netting of the drapes. He raised an arm to block the light. He looked around, confused, and, for a moment, terrified. Feeling as though he’d surfaced from a deep dive, starved for air.
“He lives!” Karen jested, placing a hand on Kurt’s leg.
Kurt felt his forehead damp with sweat. He tried to focus on Karen, at first seeing just her blurred outline. She slowly came into focus as his breathing calmed. “Where are we?”
She had a soft smile on her face. Though Kurt noted that it didn’t seem genuine. More like the smile someone gives when they’re hiding something that they’d rather not speak about. The kind of smile that Amy had given Kurt the day she had tried to be strong and tell him the news of their parents.
“Safe… That’s the main thing, Kurt.”
Kurt saw then that they were in a neat room. The type of room that Linda might have once called a ‘catalogue room’. It was a fair size. On the walls were hung a series of gentle paintings of blurred colours and shapes. There was a nightstand lined with an assortment of trinkets, and a large furry rug in the centre of the floor.
Lazarus: Enter the Deadspace Page 14