Twixt

by Sarah Diemer

  As if she might just disappear.

  *

  Everyone in the room is quiet, still, when we three enter. Abigail sits propped up on the edge of a couch, beady eyes staring toward the cold fireplace, flickering not with fire but with a collection of Wisp jars, glowing golden. The old woman breaks her gaze when Charlie walks up to her, folds her arms, and kneels down beside her.

  “It's nearly twelve. I’m going Fetching,” she says, voice low, running a hand through her pale hair.

  Abigail glances down at Charlie, then raises her eyes to observe Violet and me standing just behind her.

  “You should take someone with you tonight,” says Abigail, cocking her head in one quick turn. She watches the fireplace again, the orbs bobbing against the glass of the jars. Her voice is flat, devoid of spirit, as she says, “I got a bad feeling in my bones.”

  “Abigail.” Charlie spreads her hands, sighing. “I’m hampered by another person, not helped, and you know that. We’ve been through this a thousand times. I’m the fastest. That’s why I’m the Fetcher.”

  “Violet, go with Charlie,” says Abigail, ignoring Charlie's words, never removing her eyes from the jars.

  Violet shrinks back from the staring Sleepers, from Abigail, shaking her head so that it blurs. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she says, breathing in and out so quickly, her chest rises and falls in a too-fast rhythm. “They’ll catch me. They’ll—”

  “All right, all right, hush,” groans Abigail, rolling her eyes. “So help me, those new Sleepers out there are done for if Charlie’s ever Snatched. Not a one of you brave enough to go out and—”

  “I’ll go.”

  They turn and look at me, all of them, hollow eyes wide, and it’s then that I realize that the voice was mine, those two words—mine.

  My heart is beating so quickly, I feel it carving a tunnel beneath my ribs, but I don't back down, don't want to take back what I said. I nod, clench my hands. “I’ll go,” I repeat, eyes locking first with Abigail's, who scans me up and down, and then with Charlie's, who watches me, her brown gaze glittering in the half-dark. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, whether she wants me or not.

  “Well, well," Abigail murmurs. "Why not? We’ve all got to start somewhere. And it’ll put hair on your chest,” she smirks, pushing off from the couch and stretching overhead, yawning so hugely that I can see how many teeth are missing in her mouth.

  Abigail shuffles past the still-staring, wordless people, hooking a bony arm through mine and pulling me out of the room and down the hall. “Now, Charlie,” she says over her shoulder, as Charlie rises to follow us out, “you know the drill. If anything happens, you come back first. Leave the others. Leave this one behind if you must. What’s your name again, girl?”

  “Lottie.” I swallow, tasting the name, my half of the name Charlie and I share.

  I glance over my shoulder at Charlie, whose jaw is set, her mouth a thin line as she takes in a few deep breaths.

  We reach the front door, shut tight. Outside… Outside, I know, is the blackness, the night…

  And the Snatchers.

  The terror of last night rears up, and I cower reflexively. What am I doing? Why did I offer to do this? I barely survived the race through the woods, and now I’m willingly going back out into that blackness, with its shrieking and its claws?

  But if I’m honest, beneath the fear, there’s a thrill racing through me, just under my skin, untouchable, electric.

  We were fast last night. Together, Charlie and I—we were fast. Together we escaped the groping, screeching creatures. We could do it again, couldn’t we? I glance at Charlie, but she’s not looking at me. She's gazing back down the hall at Violet, who follows about ten steps behind us, hugging herself.

  “Vi, watch Florence, all right?” Charlie murmurs, taking her coat from the peg. Violet nods twice and then climbs the stairs, mounting them two at a time.

  With a sigh, Charlie fingers the other coats on the wall until she settles on a long black one. She takes it down, offers it to me, and that’s when she finally looks into my eyes. Her gaze is hesitant, but also hopeful. It warms me, and I take the coat from her, shrugging into it. It fits, won’t impede my running, I don't think.

  “Good luck!” cackles Abigail, patting me roughly on the back. Charlie puts her hand on the doorknob, turns back to me again.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she whispers, brown eyes sparking, and I nod, bite my lip, breathe in and out, curling my hands into fists.

  “I know,” I say. "But I choose to."

  Charlie walks through the door.

  Chapter Three: Faster

  The air is cold as ice water, drowning and sucking at our breath as we pause on the porch, as Charlie jams her hands into her pockets, scanning the dark street spread before Mad House. My eyes skim over the wall that crouches around Abeo City, the wall Charlie and I moved through when we evaded the Snatchers last night.

  “The Sleepers always appear at crossroads at midnight," Charlie tells me, her shoulder brushing against mine. "First one's over there, to the left.” She juts her chin toward the place where two roads join, and draws a sawed rope from her pocket. She ties the rope around her waist tightly, bringing her buttonless coat closed. “We wait here until I think I see something at the corner, and even if I don’t think I see something, we’ll run out there and see what we can find."

  I nod, my throat too tight to speak.

  Charlie watches me in the darkness and exhales through her nose. "We run all the way there, and we grab any Sleepers that appear, and whether they appear or not, we run all the way back. You don’t stop running. Okay?” She leans nearer to me, and I swallow, nod.

  She steps forward, putting her fingers upon my arm. “You don’t have to come, Lottie. Abigail always tries to bully someone into…" She rakes a hand through her hair. "I don't know why you volunteered to come."

  “To help you,” I breathe, trying to keep my teeth from chattering—from the cold or from fear, I can’t tell. “You’ve been kind to me, and…” I trail off, mouth dry, bowing my head. Despite the dark, the fear, the promise of Snatchers, my face flushes, warmed by Charlie's nearness. Whenever I’m near her, even now, things feel less bleak. Less dangerous. And, perhaps, a little more lovely.

  I blush, glancing past her, looking over the railing and toward the street.

  “Well," she says, her voice husky and low, "what I said back there, about hampering… I didn't mean it. You won’t hamper me. I know that.”

  She’s watching me with shining eyes, and when they lock with my own eyes, my heart skips a beat.

  She seems…different when she looks at me. Am I imagining it? Do I just want her to look at me differently than she looks at everyone else?

  Maybe I do.

  I know I do.

  I swallow, turning that awareness over and over in my heart.

  I’m daring monsters for her, aren’t I? But if I fall, if I get Snatched, if the monsters fly me away to… Wherever. Just away. Then what? Then I'll never see Charlie again.

  I wring my palms, breathing in and out, putting forth my best impression of calmness, confidence. Really, I'm just trying to avoid hyperventilating.

  “Are you ready?” Charlie asks, crossing to the end of the porch, her toes edging out over the first step. “We’ve got to be fast, okay, Lottie?”

  “Yeah.” My voice is a gravelly whisper, dry and breaking apart. I steel myself, moving to stand beside Charlie on the edge of the night.

  After one heartbeat, two, she reaches across the space between us, takes my hand in hers. It’s a balm, her sudden warmth against my cold fingers, how she curls and threads her own fingers, smoothly, through mine.

  “Charlie…” I gasp out, but she’s already off the porch, already down the steps, and my hand is cold again because she’s gone. I gulp down air, and I leap off the porch, hitting the ground running, following her.

  I feel everything: my beating heart becau
se she took my hand; my wonder if it meant what I hoped it might mean; and the slow creeping fear that seems to run beneath the ground like lightning, beneath my boots, following me no matter where I step. I run into the night, behind Charlie, catching up to Charlie, the two of us bolting quicksilver-fast down the street, avoiding the ruts and rubble as if we’ve done this a thousand times together, as if our feet know the steps by heart.

  Suddenly, my feeling is replaced by reflex: breathing in and out, the movement of my arms at my sides, my boots thumping against the ground. All I am is quickness, is motion, as Charlie and I draw nearer to the crossroads.

  I hear a scream behind us, a sound that pierces the night. The downdraft of wind—from wings, black wings wide enough to smother Charlie and me both in one bone-and-feather embrace—causes me to falter, to nearly trip, but I catch myself, even though the sky is tearing apart, even though monsters fall from above in a rain of black, screaming hail.

  “C’mon,” says Charlie, putting on a burst of speed, and I surge forward alongside her, transforming my fear into stumbling action.

  We reach the crossroads, our feet skidding over the broken stone of the street, because there, in the center of the junction, lays a girl. She's still upon the rubble, unnaturally still, thin arms straight against her sides, eyes closed as if she's sleeping.

  I stare at her, fingers trembling at my mouth, thinking, This is how Sleepers arrive. This is how the Fetchers find them. Not in the woods, beside the stream… Not bleeding beneath an angry red sky.

  Moving fast, Charlie falls to her knees beside the girl, begins to shake her shoulders in her gentle, yet urgent, way.

  Swallowing, knees shaking, I dare a glance behind us. There is a darker shadow against the sky, bearing down, and for a moment, I watch it in wonder: the wings widespread and brilliant against the duller black sky. But it’s the white bones, white as warm breath against ice, that shatter the brittle lull in my terror.

  Claws extend toward us, sharp beak open as the Snatcher dives down.

  Charlie picks up the girl—who won't move, won't open her eyes—with a grunt, and hisses at me, "Run." We turn, the two of us, racing back to Mad House. I gulp down air, cough as the coolness of it fills my throat. Despite the extra weight of the girl in her arms, Charlie's right beside me, her hip grazing mine as we run.

  We’re running toward the Snatcher.

  There’s this tiny slice of time, a slowed-down moment, where I'm certain it’s going to grab us, sink down and rake its claws against our backs, enfold us in its wings. It's going to Snatch us. The Snatcher seems certain of this conclusion, too, because it folds its wings behind its bony body, diving toward us fast, too fast, like a stone flung from the sky.

  But then Charlie and I, together, in the same heartbeat, arch ahead, step faster, arrows aiming for the same target, my breath burning through me like fire, and the Snatcher dives and misses us, and we’re racing through the night as the monster hits the ground with a crunch and a scream, rolling end over end before hunching its shoulders and righting itself. Over my shoulder, my panting loud in my ears, I see the Snatcher crouched upon the ground, a heap of feathers and bones. It watches us for only a moment before it pushes off, heaves its body up into the air, unhinging its jaw and crying out.

  It’s angry.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” huffs Charlie, and we run together, so close to Mad House I can make out the folds in the curtains past the broken windows. But I hear another cry, then, and I skid, startled, because the girl’s woken up in Charlie’s arms, and she's screaming, yelling, beating at Charlie's chest, kicking her legs up and down, begging to be let go, even as she stares at the beast above, bearing down on us again.

  “No, no, please—we have to get inside, we’ll be safe inside, it can’t get to us inside,” says Charlie, the words spilling out of her mouth in a thin, trembling string. She's panicked; she’s not watching her feet, and there’s a rut—

  "Charlie!"

  Charlie and the girl go down, tumbling until they settle, groaning. Without a thought—there's no time for thinking—I drop to my knees beside Charlie, help her up, her face white, pained, eyes wide as she stares past me, at the Snatcher flying toward us.

  “Please…” Charlie grits her teeth, standing, limping, offering a hand to the girl who crawls backwards, whose eyes focus on nothing but the Snatcher angling down, down, almost near enough to pet, to kiss…

  It lunges at the girl, sweeping past us, one of its wings knocking against Charlie's head and my shoulder, sending us both in a twisted heap to the ground. We scramble to rise, but we're not fast enough, because then it spreads its great wings and pumps upward as the girl, Snatcher claws wrapped around her belly, reaches out her hands to us now, screaming the scream of a horror beyond description. I feel dizzy from the might of her terror; it becomes my terror, too. But Charlie surges upward, leaps into the air, almost seems to, for a moment, fly. And when she extends her arm, her hand, the girl's fingertips touch hers—a graze of skin…and then a grappling of thin air.

  Charlie falls down to earth, because she is wingless, after all, and the Snatcher rises with the girl into the dark.

  They rise and rise. I watch them draw away from us until the girl’s scream is cut off, as if a blade sliced the sound from her throat.

  The Snatcher and the girl are gone.

  More wingbeats, more white-and-black monsters with widespread wings, claws bared, beaks unhinged as they scream toward us, veering down. Charlie grabs my hand, yanking me from the ground, dragging me along until my feet find their balance, catch up, and we run the last few steps up to the porch, tumbling together straight through the door.

  Charlie leans against the wall, still clutching my hand, her knuckles white, her face whiter as she slumps down, down, thunking against the floor. I kneel beside her, and she presses her other hand to her eyes, breathing in and out too quickly, panting.

  Abigail comes down the corridor with a jar of Wisps, carrying it in front of her like something sacred. She takes a single look at us, sniffing, nose up.

  “I take it that things went well,” she says dryly. Charlie stares up at her, her mouth twisting, but Abigail raises a finger. “At least this new one didn’t get Snatched. Count your blessings, girl."

  Charlie doesn’t speak. She closes her eyes, presses her forehead to her drawn-up knees, breathes out.

  She still has not let go of my hand.

  *

  Another day in Abeo City. Another day in Twixt. I watch the light edge my curtains, and I leave the room this morning of my own accord.

  I walk down the stairs, hand trailing lightly along the banister, letting my feet sink into the deep carpet.

  Below, in what I’m beginning to think of as the Great Room, several of the Sleepers have gathered. One of the older gentlemen glances up, twitching his mustache into a semblance of a smile when he sees me. “New girl!” he calls, crooking his cane in my direction. “Good morning! Charlie and Violet went outside to catch some more Wisps. These ones have been looking a mite poorly,” he says, tapping one of the glass jars with his cane. “They’ll be out front. Told me to let you know.”

  “Thank you.” I return the smile, and traveling the hallway to the front door, I concentrate a little, though I couldn’t really say what it is I’m concentrating on, only concentrating, and then my hand is through the wood, and so am I, standing on the porch. It feels natural to me, somehow, to pass through doors and walls as if they were made of air.

  I inhale a deep, chilly breath.

  From the street, I hear laughter.

  “To the right! To the right! Oh, Vi…”

  “You’re the one who let it slip right out of the open jar!”

  More laughter.

  Charlie and Violet are scrabbling over the rubble pile down the street from Mad House. They both hold jars, pressing down on the lids with their flat palms, and inside the jars glow yellow orbs, bouncing against the glass. Wisps. There's one Wisp in Charlie’s jar,
two in Violet’s.

  I cross the street, standing at the foot of the pile, peering up.

  “Don’t move!” Charlie calls out, sliding down. She runs past me and dives a little, and then she holds up her jar triumphantly, lid replaced. Two Wisps now float within the glass container.

  Above the broken stones and bricks and rusty metal and dust and dirt, the Wisps dance, glowing softly in the daylight, but glowing all the same. The worry lines that normally mar Violet’s face are gone, replaced by smiling mouth and eyes. She looks so different when she smiles, as if all of her fears have gone. She’s running now after a Wisp that zips and darts—unlike the rest of the orbs, turning lazy circles, light and slow.

  “You wanna try?” Charlie asks, grinning, holding out her jar to me. I shake my head but tap the glass gently; the Wisps swarm to my side, bumping up against the jar, as if to get a good look at me.

  “Another!” Violet shrieks, clutching her jar tightly. She slides down the pile, skidding stones, and screws on the jar's lid. “I think that’s enough, Charlie. Do you think so?”

  “We’ll see what Abigail says.” Charlie groans, casting her eyes skyward. “You know how she is. There's no pleasing her. Don’t say anything about going to visit Edgar later on, because she’ll ask us to go out and catch more Wisps, just to sabotage us.”

  “We’re visiting Edgar?” Violet's blue eyes shine, and Charlie glances at her, her mouth turned up at one corner.

  “Thought you’d like that,” she says, raking her fingers through her hair, grinning at me knowingly.

  Violet flicks her eyes to the ground, but she’s smiling, too, and her cheeks are pink.

  “It’s just…the Need Shop,” she says, after a long moment, and Charlie sighs. The three of us walk back together toward Mad House, Charlie's arm brushing against mine.

  “It’s all right, Vi. We don’t take Nox. That’s the only rule in Mad House. Abigail can’t—”

  “Abigail can’t what?” Perched on the edge of the porch, Abigail peers down at us with narrowed eyes. “Are you planning an insurrection, Charlie, my girl?”