Andrew looked up at Paul.
“What are we going to do?”
For a moment Paul had second thoughts. It didn’t show on his face; to Andrew he seemed to be either bored or deeply distracted.
“I want you to go into another one of the bedrooms and stay there until I come get you.”
Andrew noticed the roll of tape that Paul was holding.
“Now, Andrew.”
He didn’t move. Paul opened one of the doors and looked at Andrew expectantly. Andrew crept into room; Paul closed the door behind him.
He kneeled down, took the knife out of his pocket, and cut off a piece of tape about three inches long. He got back up and went into the room where Andrew had sent Shadow. Shadow was sitting on the bed. Quickly, but without making any sudden movements, Paul approached her, pressed the tape over her mouth, and touched the point of the knife to the side of her neck.
“You’re not fooling me,” he said. “You fooled the kid but not me. I know you’re in there somewhere.
“There’s something I need you to do for me.”
He realized that she wasn’t looking at him. He turned around. Andrew was standing in the doorway.
“Goddamn it…” Shadow tried to run but Paul shoved her hard against the wall and she crumpled onto the floor. He dragged Andrew out into the hallway.
“You need to calm down, Andrew…”
Andrew pulled one of his hands free and tried to wrench the other one loose. Paul struck him across the face with the back of his right hand.
Andrew climbed to his feet, absentmindedly brushing his fingers against the sore part of his jaw.
“I’m going to call the cops.”
“You can’t argue with me, Andrew. I’m sorry and I’m not going to hurt you again, but you can’t argue with me. This is it now, you and me. Everybody else is gone.”
Andrew ran for the stairs. Paul dropped the knife and grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms against his ribs. He swung him around towards one of the doorways and let go, sending him sliding into the bedroom.
He picked up the tape and the knife, went into the room, and pulled out the chair next to the writing desk. Andrew got up and ran for the door; Paul grabbed him and pushed him down into the chair.
He pulled loose a length of tape and wrapped it around Andrew’s arm, tying it to the armrest. He cut the rest of the roll free with the knife.
“It’d be a shame if I cut you by accident while we were wrestling.”
Andrew froze long enough for Paul to tie his other arm and gag him. Paul stepped away. He thought about saying that he was sorry but decided against it. He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Shadow was curled up in a ball underneath the window. The tape he’d gagged her with was lying on the ground.
“Doesn’t make any difference to me,” he said. “I don’t care what you have to say.”
Shadow peered out from between her knees. “I’m not going to hurt anybody. Even if you hurt Andrew, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re like a parrot,” Paul whispered. “It doesn’t mean anything. You’re not real.” He walked over to her and put his hand on her throat.
“What makes other people real and not me?”
Paul hesitated.
“You don’t know,” Shadow said. “If you don’t want to do this you could still just leave.”
He thought about it for a second. Then he tightened his grip around her neck.
CHAPTER 22
#
Christmas at Rose's. It sounded like a movie Paul didn't want to watch. He was thirteen years old, the oldest of six, at least momentarily. He got the sense from Rose that she was expecting him to be the first one to act out today, and so he behaved himself, just to show that he could. One of his little brothers was the first one to snap. He'd wanted the red fighting robot, he'd gotten the green fighting robot. His little sister got in on the action and Rose had to raise her voice. Or maybe she didn't have to; she didn't usually, she found other ways, but maybe today she was just tired.
One way or another, she'd yelled at people on Christmas morning. Paul knew she felt bad about that. It was a rare opportunity, something he could leverage later, even days later. He knew that she'd be thinking about this for at least that long. She tended to dwell on her mistakes for a long time. It was something Paul had resolved he would never do himself.
His Christmas gift had been a box set full of magic tricks. Simple things, cards and metal rings and plastic cups and four white marbles and one red one, and they were cheap, made in China. The cardboard box they came in had boxes of text from four different languages on it. Paul went into the backyard and climbed the ladder to the treehouse.
He could just see over the top of the fence and watched the cars go by on the other side. He wondered where they were going on Christmas day. He told himself a little story about each one that went past, and practiced slipping a silver plastic coin between the fingers of his left hand while he did it.
He imagined himself leaving home. Driving off into the sunset.
#
Andrew tried to get his wrists free. He threw his body to the side, tipping the chair over, and landed hard on his ribs and forearms. He was still trying to escape when he felt something brush up against his ankle.
He stopped moving. He could feel it squirming through his clothes. He closed his eyes and concentrated, hoping that something was listening to the words in his head.
Suddenly, all at once, his arms and legs came loose. He stood up and lifted his arms. The tape was cut neatly, like it’d been done with a scalpel. He tore the remaining strip off of his mouth and pointed at the door. It flew open.
Shadow’s face was turning red. Andrew pointed at Paul and made a fist. The familiar pulled his arms apart and lifted him up into the air.
Shadow ran into the hallway, gasping for air. Paul shook his head back and forth.
“Familiar,” he said. Nothing happened. “Familiar, let go of me.” Still nothing.
Andrew gently patted Shadow’s hair. He spoke into the room.
“Leave him like that for an hour then come find me.”
He left the room and took Shadow with him.
“Andrew?”
The front door of the house slammed shut.
“ANDREW! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU’RE DOING! YOU DON’T HAVE ANYWHERE TO GO!”
#
An hour later, Paul fell to the ground.
“Familiar…” he said, and reached around him, but the creature was gone.
He got up.
“Fuck it,” he whispered. He went to the room at the end of the hall. The black book was still sitting on the floor. He picked it up, tucked it under his arm, and went downstairs.
The car he’d driven to the house was gone, but Rose’s truck was still in the garage. He started the engine and left; the roads hadn’t been plowed yet. He drove carefully.
Downtown there were stores open, but no one was outside, no tourists. Someone had put up a fence around the glass spire by the bridge. Paul kneeled down outside the fence and opened the book.
#
Andrew was driving. The car drifted back and forth; he had to stop every so often to keep from sliding off the road. A sound filled the air, like a foghorn but with a higher pitch, and something erupted off in the distance, from the ground up into the sky. Black spots began to emanate from the source of the noise, casting everything below them in darkness. Sometimes they would settle in one place and stay there, other times they would keep moving.
He stopped the car. Shadow had her hands in her lap and was looking through the windshield with a blank expression, like she was watching a bad movie she didn’t have the energy to turn off.
He hadn’t taken a pill. Whatever this was, everyone could see it, somebody else could take care of it. All he had to do was turn around.
He kept driving. He came to an intersection and made
a right. The road curved gently, taking him closer to the source of the event. He saw a couple of people in their front lawns looking up at the sky, and hoped that they would be too distracted to wonder if he was old enough to be driving.
There was a crunching sound behind them. An enormous chunk of pavement had been torn from the ground; Andrew saw it in his rear view mirror, floating like a balloon. There was another crunch and it got smaller. A third crunch and it disappeared.
He turned on the radio.
“…but the most important thing we have to tell you right now is to stay indoors until the coast is clear, do not go outside for any reason…”
They left the neighborhood and turned onto one of the main streets, toward downtown. They drove past a flower shop. The front window of the shop shattered and something started shrieking with inhuman volume. Shadow screamed. Andrew turned the wheel as hard as he could, and the van went skidding to the far side of the road.
Andrew looked back at Shadow. The sound was gone but she was still crying, looking back and forth out the windows.
“…and that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you need to get to safety…”
#
Three times, Paul felt himself approaching the edge, the spot where the fire would finally come loose and just burn, just consume everything. Each time he pushed; the first two times the world stopped, went black, and came back again, a little colder than it had been before. The third time nothing happened at all. He couldn’t do it, he wasn’t strong enough. He collapsed onto the sidewalk and tried to remember where he was and what was going on.
He thought about getting up but wasn’t sure how to do it. He heard a voice behind him.
“It’s a shame you had to do it during the day, I’d have loved to get a good look at the portal before it closed.”
It was Jeremiah. He tried to remember who that was.
“At least Anna got out clean. She was always smarter than we were.”
He felt the gun barrel touch the back of his neck.
“See you on the other side, friend.”
#
The snowplows had cleared the highway, and the driving was easier than Andrew expected. Traffic was going in the opposite direction; he had the road to himself.
An exit ramp dropped him off on a side road, flanked by trees on both sides. The gate to Thomas’s ranch appeared on his left. There was a black speaker with a white button on the side of it, attached to one of the brick pillars supporting the gate.
Andrew parked the car, got out, and pressed the button.
“Are you there?”
There was no answer.
“I need to talk to you.”
Still nothing. He looked back at the car. Shadow was hugging herself and swaying gently back and forth. She wasn’t crying anymore but her eyes were still red.
He pressed the button again.
“You’ve got a deal. Let me in.”
The gate swung open.
#
When Josh woke up, there was no light coming from the sky, no light anywhere. For a moment he thought he was dead. He tried to move. He was covered with a blanket of thick wet snow, and he was pretty sure that his leg was broken.
He reached around with his hands, and realized that he was resting on a small pile of bodies.
He felt a heartbeat underneath him that wasn’t his. It grew faint and vanished almost as soon as he noticed it.
He was tired and cold. He wanted to go to sleep.
He had an idea. The vial that was supposed to bring his brother back to life was still in his pocket. He took it out and squeezed the tip as hard as he could. It broke. He cut the tips of his fingers on the glass; the pain helped him stay awake. The fluid inside the vial spilled out onto the pile underneath him. The heartbeat returned, tentatively. A large piece of glass from the vial was resting on his stomach. He grabbed it, lifted it up into the air, and stabbed at the soft mass underneath him, over and over again. The edge of the glass dug into his palm and he felt the blood drip down past his wrists. The glass broke apart after only a few thrusts. There was blood on his hands. The heartbeat stopped.
Slowly, he curled into a ball, leaving his broken leg outstretched. He pulled off his shoes and one of his socks, slid what was left of the glass between his little toe and the one next to it, and pulled hard. His foot was so numb that he didn’t think it would hurt. It hurt like crazy.
He pulled up his shirt and drew an X in blood by sliding his palm across his chest. He closed his eyes and held his breath.
A minute later, his eyelids felt warm, and at first he thought the sun had come out again, but when he tried to open his eyes nothing happened. He couldn’t breathe or move; the only thing he could feel was an increasing warmth surrounding him in every direction.
There was light, fire, and he returned to the world. His leg was fine. He was still cold but he could feel warm blood moving through his body. Most of the snow around him had evaporated; the sun was out again. He climbed back to the surface.
He went into the house. The dining room table was set with food and covered with a fine red mist. It looked like an installation in a museum.
He went upstairs. He found a bedroom with a dresser filled with clothes his size. They smelled like dust but they were intact and didn’t look too bad. He took the clothes into the bathroom, took a shower, washed off his glasses and changed. He left what he’d been wearing on the bathroom floor.
It wasn’t until he walked out the front door that he remembered he still didn’t have any shoes. He hadn’t seen any inside. He went into the garage and saw an old pair of sneakers sitting on the counter next to a pegboard filled with gardening stuff.
He was putting them on when he heard a woman’s voice.
“Paul, there you are…”
He turned around. There was an old woman in a floral print dress staring at him.
“…I was wondering where you’d gone to…”
She walked up to the pegboard and looked over her tools, as though she was trying to remember something. If she was still aware of Josh’s presence, she didn’t show it.
He left the garage and walked towards the road.
#
There was a steady stream of cars leaving town. It wasn’t hard to get a ride, all he had to do was stick out his thumb. If anyone asked him what had happened, he just told them that he’d been separated from his family.
Everyone was listening to the radio. Apparently things were getting bad. Josh didn’t pay very close attention.
By the time he got to Illinois, rides were getting harder to come by. He waited with his thumb out for an hour. A car pulled over and he got in. The driver was an old man with red curly hair and a beard. He was wearing a brown sweater, and wouldn’t have seemed out of place on public television. The station wagon he was driving was an ancient piece of shit; the back seat was covered with fast food wrappers.
They pulled back onto the road. Some time went by before the driver said anything.
“You’re young.”
Josh didn’t answer.
“Hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. Are you looking to get let off any time soon?”
Josh shook his head limply and looked out the window.
He tried to find a place to rest his hand, and noticed that the side door handle had been removed, so that there was no way to open it except from the outside.
“Pull over,” Josh said. “I want to get out.”
The driver ignored him and turned on the radio. A talk show came on, but the volume was set so low Josh couldn’t hear what they were saying. The man’s hand traveled from the radio dial down towards Josh’s knee.
Josh reached past him and tried to grab the wheel of the car. The driver pushed him away. An exit ramp was coming up on the right; the driver followed off the highway and pulled into a vacant lot.
He had an orange box cutter in his left hand, he held the blade close to Josh’s th
roat.
“Stay still…”
He put his hand on Josh’s thigh and petted it gently, like a dog.
Josh closed his eyes. Then, as quickly as he could, he leaned over and twisted his body, cutting his throat on the razor.
The world around him vanished, then exploded. When he opened his eyes again, the car was burning. He scrambled into the back seat and opened the door, tripped and fell on the gravel as he jumped out of the car. He could hear the man in the car screaming behind him; he ran until he couldn’t hear it anymore, all the way back to the highway.
#
Paul agreed to the deal as soon as Thomas told him what it was, but Thomas still turned him away the first time. And the second time, and the third time. It had been a week now. Thomas sat at his desk and looked at the black and white image from his security camera at his front gate. Paul was standing there, waiting, with a full duffel bag at his feet.
Thomas could talk to him through the speaker, if he wanted to. But he didn't have anything to say he hadn't said already. He could press the button and buzz Paul through the gate. Or he could not do that.
He put the tip of his finger on the button, just to see what it felt like.
#
Josh stuck out his thumb and waited. It was nearly morning, the sun was rising. A car pulled over.
“Where are you heading?” the driver asked him.
“Chicago,” Josh answered.
Hello everybody, this is Brendan. Thanks for reading the first part of “White Rabbit Society”. Part Two will be coming out in January of 2017, and picks up the story five years after Andrew and Shadow are forced to knock on Thomas’ door. It’ll feature another cover by Wesley Wong, who did the cover for this book and whose amazing talent you should go check out at http:// www.weswongwithyou.com.
In the meantime, if you liked WRS I hope you’ll consider checking out some of my other work. I work in a few different genres and I’m trying new things all the time, but if you’re just getting acquainted with me my short story collections Scarce Resources and Beasts are great places to start. I’m also just starting a series of other-world fantasy novellas called The Orphan Fleet and have a just-barely- science-fiction novel set in a maximum security prison for teenage girls called Millersville. You can find out about all that stuff (and read/listen to some of my other stories) at my website http://www.brendandetzner.com, and be the first to hear about all my new projects by signing up for my mailing list at http:// eepurl.com/bvtxm5.
White Rabbit Society Part One Page 20