by Kelly Creagh
Released, Isobel collapsed onto the gym floor in unison with the arm—and with the Noc, who hissed, bearing teeth at her until an ash-covered boot came down to crush his head.
“The creature that defended you,” she heard Reynolds say while she clasped at her chest, checking for the hole that wasn’t there. “He was not like the others. Do not make the mistake of assuming otherwise. ”
Reynolds’s dark form sank to crouch beside her. In one hand he grasped the hilt of a cutlass. His other clutched his shoulder, where ash tumbled through a tear in his shirt.
“They will attack you if they suspect you’re not a dream. You cannot fight them as you are now. ” As he spoke, his focus shifted to something straight ahead.
Isobel followed his stare, and her fear ratcheted higher.
A ragged, pitch-black hole marred the place where the gym doors and red exit sign should have been. Like the papery faces from last night’s dream, its edges peeled back, crumpling into the familiar form of ash. The floor, too, began to erode as if being eaten by invisible flame, its jagged perimeters creeping toward them.
Reynolds rose, and Isobel rose with him. Together they backtracked several steps.
Isobel glanced to where she’d left her body. It stood just a few feet away, the shining silver cord wavering between the two versions of herself with a luminous radiance she’d seen before—in the ethereal glow of Lilith’s veils.
Before Isobel could contemplate what that might mean, Reynolds spoke again.
“I have told you before that the ghouls of the woodlands are the darkest shards of the self. A visceral manifestation of the boy’s capacity for evil. That one of them defended you—perished for your sake—serves as my best evidence that his heart, at its core, remains pure toward you. Knowing that, will you put aside your mistrust and do as I tell you?”
“You want me to go in there,” Isobel said, nodding to the open crater, which had expanded to envelop part of the wall. It wasn’t a question.
Reynolds lowered his hand from his closing wound and stooped to reclaim his second sword, dropped during battle.
“The darkness within him is building,” he said. “His rage gathers. His self-hatred is fueled by what he believes he has done. You and I already know that he is unlike anyone else. He should not be able to traverse realms, but we have seen that he is capable of that and more. Through him, I believe she has found a means to fulfill her desire for destruction. Somehow, he has become the link. His wrath is eroding the veil. If he sees you, though, if he discovers that you are alive, that you still—”
“When you and I were here before,” Isobel said, cutting him off, “you told me Varen was lost. You said that there was no way to—”
“There is one way to sever the bond that holds him,” Reynolds said. “Edgar knew what it was. And though I doubted him before, I now believe my friend might have found his freedom had the Nocs not dragged his spirit back into the woodlands. ”
Isobel scowled at him.
“Care to share?” she asked, figuring that it would be beyond the point to question why he hadn’t bothered to relate this tidbit to her before now—why he hadn’t explained it instead, say, that one time he sent her into the woodlands to die.
“When it becomes an option, I will tell you. First, we must return the boy to this world. ”
“Pinfeathers showed me what you did,” Isobel said. “What happened to Poe. ”
“What you saw,” Reynolds said, his voice gaining strength, “was indeed accurate. A memory stolen and replayed for your protection. Yes, I ended Edgar’s life. But the task fell to me because of my ability to do it, not because I betrayed him. ”
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Isobel thought suddenly of Brad. After Varen’s Nocs had attacked him on the football field, they’d dragged his spirit into the dreamworld. There the creatures had tormented him in the same way Poe had been tortured by his own Nocs.
After Isobel had tried and failed to rescue Brad, Reynolds told her that Brad’s spirit was being held hostage by the Nocs. A “torturous link,” he’d called it, one severable only by death.
Poe hadn’t been calling for Reynolds to save him. He’d been begging for just the opposite.
“He wanted you to kill him,” Isobel murmured.
Reynolds made no reply, but the solemn expression on his sunken features provided confirmation enough.
“Interact with no one,” he said. “If you encounter the boy, do not engage. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“He won’t believe you’re real. No one will as long as you assume the role of a dream. You cannot bring him back yet. That we must do together, when we are better prepared. For now, you need only sift through his darkness. Find the light in him that has been extinguished. Go now. More Nocs will come looking for the others, and they will find the rift. I can only fight off so many, and only for so long. ”
“What happens if I get stuck? What if the same thing that happened to Edgar happens to me?”
“Your world cannot afford your death,” Reynolds replied. His eyes flitted to the silver cord, and back to her. “So see that it doesn’t happen. ”
Isobel swallowed, deciding not to ask if that meant what she thought it did. This was Reynolds, after all. King of do-what-you-gotta-do. He was telling her, in his usual charming way, that if push came to shove, he’d do her the same kind of favor as he had his ol’ pal Poe.
And who said chivalry was dead?
“Got it,” Isobel said, and, resolving not to get caught on the other side, she turned toward the black gap.
As she stepped forward, moving through the static membrane of darkness that separated the gym from the dreamworld, Isobel thought that—for now—she could suspend her distrust of Reynolds. She could believe that he needed her enough not to lie about this.
About Varen.
Of course, one way or another, she knew she would soon find out.
10
Cobwebs of the Mind
The Woodlands of Weir stretched before her, the purple backdrop beyond glowing with a new and fiercer intensity, as if the horizon had been set ablaze with violet fire.
Glancing behind, Isobel found the black chasm open at her back, a flat screen of nothingness.
Dreaming, she told herself as she looked ahead again. Real or not, this was still officially a dream.
With that thought, Isobel fixed her mind on Varen and, spurring herself onward, made her way farther into the forest.
Prison-bar trees slid by on either side of her while ahead, their ranks seemed to march on into infinity. But as Isobel continued to hold Varen in the forefront of her mind, the scenery slowly began to shift, black trees peeling away from her path to form two lines.
Though Isobel no longer had her butterfly watch to act as a guiding compass, she hoped that this time, all she would need was the strength of her intent.
And her thoughts, it would seem, had triggered the woodlands to yield to her. To unveil the path that would lead her to what she sought. Who.
At least, she hoped that was the case as charred trunks paled to gray, becoming pillars, the soft, ash-covered ground beneath her feet going solid.
Deeper shadows encroached on her from above as, overhead, skeletal branches bowed inward. Limbs locking like twining tentacles, they formed a dense canopy that then melded into the crisscrossing arches of a vaulted ceiling—like that of a Gothic cathedral. Or, Isobel thought, remembering Varen’s mirrored hall, a palace . . .
Tall walls filtered into view, their contours trickling down to erase the woodlands and the rift before fading from sight behind shadows thick as ink. Low purple light poured through the netted panes of sparsely stationed stained-glass windows—the only sources of illumination within the corridor where Isobel now stood.
The scent of incense, familiar and luring, drew her attention to the far end of the hall, where tendrils of white smoke swirled up from the cent
er of a carved dais. On either side of the marble altar, a pair of identical stone angels stood guard, hands wrapping the hilts of massive, downward-aimed swords.
Curious, Isobel started toward them.
Tap, tap, tap. The echo of her steps ricocheted from wall to wall, giving her the eerie sense of being followed.
She stopped, turning sharply, but there was no one there. Nothing.
Silence resettled, and swallowing the fear that at any second something would discover her, Isobel recalled Reynolds’s words of reassurance. Even in the open like this, he’d said she would still be hidden. Just one dream—one ghost—among many.
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Something stirred in the darkness to her right. Her head jerked in that direction, and out from between a pair of pillars stepped a black-cloaked figure.
“There she is again,” the figure said, his face hidden in the shadows of his hood.
“The boy,” answered another rasping voice from the gloom, and Isobel’s gaze flitted to a second hooded form as it emerged. “He must be near. ”
“This one sees us,” the first figure said.
“So it would seem,” answered the second as he removed his hood, the dim light casting his hollow face in sharp lines of lavender and black. His eyes, deep-set and onyx, like Reynolds’s—like Varen’s—watched Isobel with guarded interest.
Too late, Isobel recalled Reynolds’s warning not to interact. Figuring that staring probably counted as “interacting,” she turned her head slowly back toward the altar.
“That scar,” whispered the first figure. “There on her face. Did she have that before?”
Resisting the urge to touch her cheek—or to start running—Isobel began to move again. Keeping her stride even, as unhurried as she could, she pretended not to see the pair anymore.
“Only ever in the black dress,” the second figure whispered, “and always bleeding. This one . . . she’s new. ”
An involuntary wince touched Isobel’s face. She smoothed her expression again, hoping the men had not noticed. Though she didn’t know who the two were, she suspected they could be figments of a dream. From whose mind they might have sprung, though, she had no way of knowing.
Perhaps they were characters from one of Poe’s stories. More residue left by the poet’s time here.
Then again, maybe not, if they had the cognizance to assume she was a dream.
As the altar with its angelic sentries loomed nearer, Isobel wondered if, like Reynolds, the cloaked duo could be Lost Souls. Lilith had mentioned that there were others. . . .
“Where is she going?” one of the men whispered.
“Where she always goes,” the other hissed. “To him. ”
Though Isobel softened her steps to better hear them, she didn’t dare slow down and risk revealing that she wasn’t the mirage they believed her to be. Instead she walked on, straining to make sense of the susurrant sibilants that, like the smoke rising from the altar, dissipated into the cavernous ceiling.
Then the voices stopped. Pausing when she reached the steps that led to the altar, Isobel waited for the conversation to restart. When she heard nothing, though, she had to fight the urge to turn and make sure the two men were still where she’d left them, tucked in the recess of shadows—and not standing in the aisle just behind her. Or worse, gone altogether. Off to report what they had seen.
She cast a flickering glance between the two stone angels to see if they might open their eyes, raise their swords against her. As she stared into their serene faces, though, something about their appearance struck her as strange. How each held an uncanny resemblance . . . to her.
Disquietude swept over Isobel, causing her skin to buzz, and she wondered if the statues’ echoing features might support Reynolds’s claim that Varen saw her everywhere—in everything.
She mounted the steps, and as she passed between the stone guardians, the sensation of being watched intensified. As if the number of eyes upon her had grown by two more pairs.
Though she could no longer see the angels, Isobel could sense them awakening—feel them turning their heads in unison to chisel stony glares into her back. If she dared to turn and look, then the two dreamworld figures would know instantly that she wasn’t like them. Their mouths would fall open, they’d start screaming, and their siren cries would shatter the windows. The Nocs would come pouring through from the woodlands. Then they’d have her. They’d have her. They’d never let her go and—
Stumbling up the last step, Isobel stopped herself from slamming into the altar by grasping its cold edge. She clamped down hard and forbade her imagination to progress any further toward chaos.
As real as the stone felt beneath her fingers, as detailed as the world around her appeared, she had to remember that it was all still malleable, changeable. She could take control if she needed. Whisk herself to some other place or even wake up back in the gym, back in her body. But if she started to alter things now, to interfere with this palace facade that had to have come from Varen’s own imagination, she would also give herself away.
Forgetting the angels, Isobel swept her thoughts clean, replacing her fears with her original purpose. Her only purpose. Find Varen.
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She peered down into a rectangular pit in the center of the altar from which the white wisps of smoke arose. Several feet below, at the bottom of a narrow brick channel, a collection of glass bottles sat around a dish of burning incense cones. A slant of dim, smoke-diluted light shone into the recess through a squat archway at the very bottom.
A fireplace, Isobel thought with a scowl, realizing she was looking down the flue of a truncated chimney. And the assortment of the dried flowers in those familiar colored bottles told her whose.
Climbing onto the altar, Isobel lowered herself feetfirst into the tight space. Her sneakers knocked into the incense dish as she landed, spilling its embers and sending several bottles toppling.
Isobel slumped to squeeze out of the casket-size space and, dropping onto her hands and knees, she crawled after the largest bottle as it barreled out onto the wooden floor with a thunderlike roll.
The bottle clinked as it collided with a pair of polished men’s dress shoes, dumping its sprig of flowers. With a jolt of sudden terror, Isobel looked up.
Dark-gray and neatly creased slacks accompanied the matching jacket of an empty, immobile business suit. Where there should have been a man’s head, there was only the hollow circle of a starched white collar. A red tie laced an invisible throat, while silver links gleamed from stiff, white, hand-free cuffs.
Moving only when she was certain the suit would not, Isobel pushed to her feet.
As she’d suspected, she was in a reversed version of Varen’s bedroom. But the jam-packed interior no longer resembled the open and orderly space as she knew it.
Varen’s posters, books, DVDs, and bed were all gone.
Dusty boxes and cloth-draped furniture cluttered the room instead, while drab and milky light struggled to filter through the shuttered windows. Piled high, stacks of books wrapped in cobwebs obscured the legs of a plush velvet violet armchair that Isobel was sure she’d seen somewhere before. Not here in Varen’s attic bedroom, but . . . where? She couldn’t recall.
On a table nearby was an empty birdcage, its white wires eaten by rust, its door held closed by a red, heart-shaped padlock. Lining the circular bed of the cage, yellowing scraps of sheet music peeked through a mixture of mismatched skeleton keys.
An old-fashioned oil lamp, its glass casing cracked and sooty, sat next to the birdcage.
Isobel went to the table and, touching the base of the lamp, imagined it lit. In response, a tall flame sprang forth from the dried wick, sending a flush of warm amber light dancing up the peeling walls. Along with several flittering moths, the shadows fled to the four corners of the room, the farthest of which held another sheeted form—this one human in shape—its white covering
untouched by the dust, as if the secret concealed beneath was the attic’s most recent.
Forgetting the ghostly suit, Isobel hurried to the form, winding her way between towers of boxes, past a covered desk and a toppled chandelier.
She fell to her knees beside the figure, which lay slumped against the wall, its covered head lolled to one side, the sole of a single black boot poking out from beneath the sheet.
Isobel took one edge of the pristine fabric, but before she could tear the cover free, she caught sight of line-crackled fingers tipped by blue claws, long and curved.
The figure beneath the cloth. It wasn’t Varen, as she’d feared, but Scrimshaw.
Poe’s last remaining Noc.
Releasing the cloth, she fumbled to stand, hands leaping to cover her mouth, feet forcing her into a retreat. She stumbled, her heel knocking into something solid—a bowl. Ashes filled the shallow dish, which, for an instant, tottered and rattled before settling again.
Embedded in the soot, like bits of broken shell in sand, jutted a collection of mismatched porcelain shards. On the largest, Isobel saw an etching of a woman, her lash-fringed eyes open, but only just.
Silence pulsed once more, and Isobel held her breath, her attention locked not on the immobile form beneath the sheet, but on that portrait she recognized as Virginia. Poe’s wife.
The shard had once occupied the place just over the heart Scrimshaw did not possess. And the last time Isobel had seen it, it had still been intact, though much of the rest of the Noc had been reduced to fragments.
Pinfeathers had battled and destroyed Scrimshaw in the rose garden while trying to protect Isobel, sustaining enough damage to splinter himself apart as well. But now someone had painstakingly pieced the blue Noc back together.
Isobel’s gaze returned to Scrimshaw’s clawed hand and she wondered why.
For what purpose? And was it possible the shard etched with Virginia’s image was being held in reserve, the final puzzle piece that would restore the reconstructed monster to life?
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Isobel didn’t know. But she didn’t want to find out, either.
If Scrimshaw awoke to see . . . if he discovered that she wasn’t just a dream . . .
Fighting her rising panic, Isobel searched for an exit. She spotted the narrow door, its surface marred with ominous scratches, and began to wind her way toward it, navigating in backward steps in order to keep the Noc in her sights—the tips of those indigo claws that were still poking out from the corner of cloth she’d dared to lift.