by Kelly Creagh
If it was more proof that he needed . . .
Grasping his collar with both hands, Isobel rose onto her tiptoes. She tugged him down to meet her halfway and, pressing her lips to his, delivered the softest of kisses—a shadow of the one they had shared in this exact spot on Halloween night.
Varen tensed. He gripped her upper arms, as though bracing himself for the worst.
He did not return the kiss. But, Isobel noted, he did not try to pull away, either. And as he allowed the connection to linger . . . and linger, the cold loop of that silver ring searing her lips, Isobel decided to count it a win.
Only when the metal warmed to match her own temperature did Isobel lower herself onto her heels again, ending her kiss.
As difficult as it was for her to relinquish her hold on him, she let her hands fall to her sides.
For a long time, Varen only stared at her in that unreadable way that always left her feeling scorched from the inside out. She wanted so badly to whisper her own I told you so, but she held her silence, letting her persisting presence speak for her.
Memories make better weapons than words, Pinfeathers had said, and Isobel hoped that, for both her and Varen’s sakes, the Noc’s final scrap of wisdom would prove as true as his warnings.
Lifting his hand at last, Varen grazed hesitant fingertips along her jawline, his touch tentative and unsure, as if he were testing the realness of a polished window to see if the glass could truly be there. Or if it was all just air.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured, and Isobel remembered that he’d uttered these same words before, in that forever-ago moment.
Was he still testing her? Waiting for her to repeat old lines and reveal herself as yet another hallucination, another nightmare waiting to self-destruct and eradicate the remaining fragments of his sanity?
“You’re right,” Isobel replied, resting a hand on his sleeve. “I shouldn’t. But that’s why I am here. Because . . . neither should you. ”
He frowned, pain flickering across his face.
“It can’t really be you,” he said. “I know it can’t. ”
“Why not?” Isobel asked, offering him a rueful smile. “I mean, don’t you think it’s at all romantic, the idea that love could conquer death?”
Alarm flashed in Varen’s eyes. He snatched his hand away as if she’d burned him.
When he began to back away from her, Isobel knew she’d struck a chord. The chord?
Of course Varen would recognize the question; he’d once posed the same one to her. On that night she’d stayed late to help him clean up after Brad and the crew had trashed the ice cream parlor where he’d worked.
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And maybe it was the fact that Isobel had returned Varen’s own words to him, instead of repeating something he’d heard her say in the past. Or maybe the combination of all her efforts had finally compounded, cornering his convictions. Whatever the reason, Isobel could tell that Varen’s room for denial had at last been obliterated.
He knew she wasn’t a dream.
But as Varen’s eyes widened, his shock morphing into terror, her burgeoning sense of relief quickly drained away.
As he continued his retreat, the singer’s muddled crooning died out. The light from the stage flickered, creating a strobe effect. The phantom goths began to move, heads turning in Varen’s direction. Slanted slits appeared on every cheek, oozing blood.
“That’s not possible,” Varen mumbled, shaking his head. “You are not possible. ”
Isobel frowned, confused by his reaction. She reached for him, but as she did, another girl’s arm shot out from the crowd, snatching Varen by the sleeve. He wheeled away, jerking free, but another hand latched onto his arm.
When he looked to the girl who clutched his sleeve, instantly the figment became the bleeding and bedraggled Black Dress Isobel.
“It’s time to go,” Isobel heard the dark double say. “Come with us,” echoed an identical voice as another duplicate stepped to his side.
Isobel started forward, but the surrounding goths shifted to block her path. She shoved against them, but they refused to budge. Varen’s thoughts were taking over again, building in power to overthrow her own.
But this time Varen had lost the control he’d exhibited before.
“Varen!” Isobel shouted, trying to insert herself between the barricades of bodies that separated them.
“Don’t worry, Izo,” came a male voice, one Isobel had not heard for a long while, but one she knew well all the same. “I got this. ”
Another arm appeared, reaching out from the blanket of shadows behind Varen. Its heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and the connection sent a ripple through the scene Isobel had created, causing it all to rupture.
The goths and the doubles and the stage and the walls all dissipated to vapor. The dance floor became pavement.
A nighttime blackness took the place of flashing lights, pierced only by the single streetlamp that sprouted from the leaf-strewn parking lot.
Even in the darkness, though, Isobel could discern whose hand was tightening its grip on Varen’s coat.
Dressed in his letter jacket, his frame once more hulking and rigid—strong, unlike the last time she’d seen him—Brad Borgan, Isobel’s ex, made quick work of tossing Varen backward into the side of the Cougar that materialized just as Varen collided with it.
Slam!
“No!” Isobel screeched.
Varen collapsed onto hands and knees. Behind him, the words YOU’RE DEAD FREAK now blazed in reverse on the Cougar’s driver’s-side door.
Isobel broke forward in a run, but she wasn’t fast enough to stop Brad from sending a sharp kick into Varen’s side.
“Stop!” she yelled, but the faster she charged, the farther the scene withdrew, the pavement elongating in front of her.
A pair of walls rose on either side of the road as it became a familiar stretch of hallway.
Brad grabbed Varen again and, hauling him to his feet, swung him straight into a row of blue lockers. Varen’s head bounced on the metal.
With the echo of the sharp bang, everything shifted yet again.
The walls smoothed, turning mauve as the ceiling dropped, pitching up in the middle. The fist fastened around Varen’s collar changed too, swelling in size, its sleeve cuff bleeding gray.
A slatted door materialized to block Isobel’s view and her path. She skidded to a halt in front of it as, simultaneously, walls lifted on either side to seal her into the dark and narrow space of Varen’s closet.
“You’re never going to wake up!” boomed Varen’s father.
Isobel shoved against the door, but it only rattled in its tracks.
She shouted to Varen that none of it was real. But a low hum like a roll of thunder rose to nullify her voice.
Helpless, Isobel could only stand and watch as a horrible scene she had witnessed once before began to replay itself.
31
Reversion
“Look’t this waste—your goddamned life. ”
The muffled roar continued, underscoring the deep voice as it resounded through the attic.
Isobel recognized the words. Mr. Nethers had spoken them the night he’d stormed up to Varen’s bedroom—the night before everything had spiraled out of control. But now the phrases were jumbled.
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Did that mean Varen was reliving this moment as he remembered it? Or was this all just a series of snapshots? A flipbook of old wounds reopened, each with a single pinpoint stab?
Isobel shoved her fingers between the wooden slats, trying to snap them, but they refused to even bend. Through the gaps, though, she saw Mr. Nethers fling Varen away, his face splotched deep red in a furious scowl.
“What did you do?” Varen’s father demanded, his voice slurring.
Varen retreated from the figure. When his back met with the wall, the room tipped, slanti
ng downward on his end.
Teetering, Isobel threw her arms out to brace herself. She tried again to call out to Varen, if only to remind him she was close. But no sound could penetrate the pervading rumble.
None but that damning voice.
“What did you do, you screwup?” Mr. Nethers railed, even as his face began to loosen, drooping, stretching like taffy.
The figure took one stilted step toward Varen, and the movement sent several flesh-colored globs to slap the floor and those polished black shoes.
The thing that had been Mr. Nethers snapped its melting fingers once, then again before pointing to the falling drips.
“Wherts thrs merss?” it blubbered.
The rumble thundered louder now, building into a deafening roar.
“Yer judst lik yer fadther,” the figure bellowed.
Varen covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. He opened his mouth in a noiseless scream.
The windows shattered.
Glass flew inward—then halted to float in midair.
Other objects in the room began to rise and hover with the glinting constellation of shards. Isobel’s hamsa necklace rose too, the charm lifting to float in front of her.
The blending of worlds. Not again. Not now.
Isobel snatched the amulet. Clutching it tight, she rammed one shoulder against the slatted door. When it didn’t give, she tried again. One final attempt sent the door flying back with a crack.
She spilled out of the closet and landed hard on the floor. Sudden stillness boomed, almost as deafening as the rumble.
As she pushed herself onto hands and knees, Isobel saw white chalk writing beneath her. She read the words that had been scrawled over every inch of the wooden boards—the walls and ceiling, too.
In backward letters, the phrase YOU’RE DEAD FREAK repeated itself a thousand times.
Though the attic retained its downward slant, the room had again become the cramped and cluttered space in which she’d discovered Scrimshaw under the sheet, the windup doll in the corner. The same place she’d endured the deathwatches . . .
“Varen?” she said, her whisper loud as a scream in the uneasy quiet.
No answer.
Isobel climbed to her feet. She didn’t see him anywhere.
Managing the sloping terrain with bent knees, she groped past the tables and draped chairs that, despite the floor’s incline, hadn’t budged.
She stopped when something crunched underfoot.
Amid the sooty shards of the oil lamp Scrimshaw had smashed lay the white wire birdcage, its little door open, skeleton keys strewn about like scattered bones.
Nearby, one of the keys speared the undone heart-shaped padlock, its decorative handle turning on its own, around and around, like the key affixed to the doll’s spine.
The doll . . .
Isobel whipped her head in the direction of the window. Next to the fallen dressing screen, the antique chair sat in the same spot as before, though its occupant—the life-size figurine bearing Madeline’s likeness—had vanished.
Through the open window, black cliffs cut a jagged line through the red horizon.
Isobel spun to face the fireplace. She scanned the room but saw no sign of the empty suit—nor any other trace of Varen’s father. Only the towers of boxes, the dust-covered bric-a-brac, and, sitting in the corner where she’d found the reassembled Nocs, his head bowed, hands still plastered over his ears—Varen.
Quickly Isobel sidled between the violet armchair and the desk.
Half sidestepping, half sliding, she maneuvered down the slope, then dropped to her knees beside him.
As she did, a distant pounding rose from outside the door, growing louder. And louder. Varen lowered his hands and looked up, a sheen of sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. His eyes, sunken and bloodshot, darted to the scratch-marred door.
A quiver ran through him as the echoed banging focused into the heavy stomp of climbing footsteps.
“Ignore it,” Isobel urged, clasping his face between her hands. “Pretend it’s not real. That’s what you told me . . . remember?”
His hollowed eyes cut to hers. “Tell me,” he muttered, “how did that work out?”
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The pounding ceased. The knob rattled, the door clattering in its frame.
Quiet buzzed again then, so that the soft scrape of metal on metal—the key rotating in its padlock—filled the room.
Then it, too, stopped.
Isobel heard Varen draw a breath. Felt him tense. A beat passed.
Wham!
Something enormous struck the door—hard enough to cause the wood to crack.
Isobel stood. Positioning herself in front of Varen, she opened her arms to shield him as he had shielded her the night of the Grim Facade, when he’d pulled her into the warehouse’s cramped office. When whispering shadows had danced under the door.
Wham!
“Go away!” she screeched.
A third bang sent the door flinging wide.
But . . . there was nothing. No one.
Isobel glanced back to Varen, who stared past her, his gaze fixed on the empty door frame as if the horror he’d been expecting might still emerge from its dark perimeter.
“There’s nothing,” she whispered, returning to his side. “It’s over. Please. We need to go. I can take us, but we have to—”
“You were never supposed to see,” he muttered in a monotone, his eyes glazing over as they remained on the doorway.
Isobel clamped her mouth shut. Though she assumed he meant the original encounter with his father, the flesh-and-blood version of this incident, a part of her wondered if he could simply mean everything. All his inner terrors that had been exposed to her. All his darkest thoughts revealed. His secret fears brought to life.
His deepest desires personified . . .
“You ruined everything,” Varen said. “You know that, don’t you? I was going to fade out. Disappear. I wanted this. . . . ”
Keeping quiet, Isobel glanced down at her hands knotted in her lap.
“Then our names got called together,” Varen continued, “and from that point on, we were both doomed. Because being with you made me start to want something else—to buy into the hope that I could actually have it. You. I couldn’t seem to get you out of my head. And by then, that was a dangerous place to be. ”
Isobel shifted toward him. “Here I am,” she said. “I’m here. Aren’t I? Aren’t you?”
Rolling his head against the wall to look at her, he sent her the barest of smiles. But it did not reach his eyes.
“Why are you here?” he said. “You have to know I can’t go with you. ”
Isobel’s heart contracted, pain squeezing her gut. Now that she’d finally found him, now that she’d broken through, he was only confirming her greatest new fear. His voice seemed so certain, too. So resigned. And yet . . .
“You can’t?” she pressed. “Or won’t. ”
“Wherever you came from,” he said, his focus returning to that open door, “you should go back. Before she comes. ”
Though his words confused her, they angered her even more. Isobel clenched her fists, imagining the door slamming shut. When it fell closed with a slam, she knew Varen would not try to fight her anymore, to block the dreams she imposed over his.
“You know where I came from,” she said. “And I know about the bond. But I also know that there has to be a way to break it. And if you believe I’m me . . . that, despite everything, I came here to find you . . . then you also have to believe that we can break it. We’ll make a way. Together. Do you hear me?”
Isobel’s frown deepened when he said nothing. But she’d come too far to allow him to persuade her this was hopeless. That he was hopeless.
Concentrating, Isobel pictured the room righting itself. She felt the floor seesaw back into place, leveling out beneath
them.
Next, she evaporated the layers of dust. The sheets tore themselves free like magicians’ cloths and then vanished, taking the furniture with them. The writing on the walls faded out, and the boxes evaporated.
Taking care to restore Varen’s bedroom to the way she remembered it, she filled in as many details as she could recall.
Varen’s black-and-white Vincent Price poster unrolled on one wall. His narrow single bed emerged from another, sliding them both forward on the small throw rug that materialized beneath them.
Books flipped from the floor onto his shelves, while the collection of toppled bottles righted themselves in the fireplace. Isobel imagined their study materials laid out around them.
Last of all, as she unfolded her legs in front of her, she conjured Varen’s copy of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. The book appeared between her hands—open—its pages blank as she tried to recall the poem Varen had been reading to her before his father had torn into the room, interrupting the one moment that might have changed everything.
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She thought the blankness of the pages might be okay, though. Her purpose was not to re-create the moment precisely—only to remind Varen that it had transpired. Or rather, to remind them both of what had almost transpired.
“This is when it happened,” Isobel said. “Right in the middle of your reading to me. ”
Varen didn’t move. But knowing that he was listening, she pressed on.
“I know you think I’m talking about when everything fell apart—when it all went wrong. But I’m not. . . . ”
She scooted nearer to him, settling again when her shoulder met with his.
“I’m talking about the moment . . . when I fell in love. With you. Officially. ”
She saw his hand resting on his knee—the one bearing his onyx, V-stamped class ring—twitch.
“When you were reading, I was listening to you, but at the same time . . . not. I heard your voice. Felt it. But the thing is, you had my hand, like this. ”
Isobel gathered Varen’s hand in hers, pressing it between her palms as he’d done. The hard corners of his ring pressed cold and sharp into her palm.
“And I remember being so torn,” she continued. “Split between never wanting you to stop reading and wishing you’d shut up and kiss me. ” Isobel allowed herself a small laugh. “I think it must have been on your mind too. ”
He didn’t speak, but he turned his head toward her again.