The man continued to approach very rapidly. Only a few feet away, he seemed to recognize her and she saw how his eyes burned with a wild ferocity.
Then she saw the rock in his hand.
She watched in horror as he brought the rock over his head.
It didn’t take her long to figure out what he intended to do.
Instinctively, she threw her arms up in front of her.
Turned away.
Slid in the grass.
Tried to scramble.
Her legs were too tired.
Too rubbery.
Her whole body already felt beaten.
The heavy rock came down on her left shoulder, driving her to the ground.
Spikes of pain tore through her already tortured body. Her face was in the wet grass. She could smell it deep in her nostrils. She heard her breath rasp in her ears, the rain trickle underground and the fevered grunting of the madman above her.
The man fell upon her and slammed the rock down again, this time onto her lower back.
His madness had made him impossibly strong.
And Elise was so tired.
So very tired.
She knew the man meant to kill her and, as her mind entered some sort of pain fugue, she thought it was unfortunate she had to die because she was quite possibly the only one who knew the Sorrow King’s secrets.
Faced with death, the answer came to her.
She needed only to get back to the Obscura.
She wanted to tell the madman that his fate was death.
Death and sorrow.
He could kill her but it wouldn’t be long before he was met with his own death.
She could save him. She knew. She could save them all. If she could just get back to the Obscura.
Elise closed her eyes, knowing there wasn’t any arguing with fate, knowing she would die if it was death that was intended.
Thirty-one
Vortex
Connor saw the girl stumbling toward him across the windy park. At first, he didn’t think much of it. She could have just been one of the battered. One of the victims of this ultraviolence that wreaked its havoc on the town. She certainly looked injured and maybe bleeding from the head a little. From this distance, he would have never recognized her as the cute redhead who he had seen waiting for the bus.
He planned on simply moving past her, on his way to the water tower. On his way to the girl or the Sorrow King, whatever evil lived there. But this girl seemed to angle herself toward him and he planned on shoving her out of the way if that was necessary until he noticed her hair was red. And there was something on her forehead.
It wasn’t an injury as he had at first thought. It was her name, written in blood.
“Elise,” Connor said under his breath.
That was when he raised the rock and bashed her with it.
Something overcame him. Some urge to destroy this frail girl who was now beneath him. As he brought the rock down again and again, he just kept hearing a voice in his head telling him that if he killed her then all the other deaths would stop. And he knew that, if caught, he might go to jail for a very long time. Might even get the death penalty. But he didn’t care. What did he have to live for anyway?
Nothing. That was the answer. He was old enough to know happiness was going to elude him for the rest of his life. He would have probably taken care of himself if Steven hadn’t come along. For a while he had seen he could give Steven joy and that made him kind of happy. But something, the suicide virus or whatever the fuck it was, had come along and taken Steven from him and now he had nothing.
Nothing except this violent red purpose beneath him.
He wanted to cave her skull in with the rock. That’s what he was going for but each time he brought it down she squirmed just enough so the rock hit some other, less vital part of her body.
Then something distracted him.
A group of people had gathered around the scene. Any hopes he had of getting away unnoticed were now completely gone.
Something else swept through him.
What the fuck was he doing?
He couldn’t kill anybody.
My God, he thought. I don’t even know who this is.
The rock tumbled from his hand and he collapsed back onto his ass, the wet grass soaking through his already soaked jeans. He looked at the faces surrounding him, expecting to find accusation. He had become a piss-smelling crazy man.
What he saw was even more curious.
They weren’t looking at him at all.
They all stared toward the tower.
He turned to look with them.
What were they looking at?
The sight was breathtaking.
Without realizing it, he lifted the girl’s head in his hands and turned it toward the tower.
All of those small funnel clouds that had been swirling over people’s houses before had moved toward the tower, where they combined. Now it was like the tower itself had become a tornado. Or maybe the center of a tornado since the swirling cloud completely enveloped it. And, if it was a tornado, it was completely immobile, spinning there in the same spot like a perfectly balanced top.
He’s in there, Connor thought. The Jackthief. The Sorrow King. Whatever the fuck he calls himself. He’s in that thing. Right now.
Connor stood up, broken mentally and physically, like so many of those surrounding him, and charged toward the swirling cloud.
His already shaky grasp of reality was completely shattered as he hit the wall of the cloud.
Inside the tornado (was it a tornado?), a horrible high-pitched screeching greeted him. At the center of the cloud stood the water tower. The wind pulled at it. He heard it creaking. Heard the screams of the bolts as they were ripped from it. Sheets of jagged metal loosed themselves, swirling dangerously around him.
Continuing to walk to the middle of it, he thought he saw faces in the wall of the tornado—swirling faces, twirling around him—some of them familiar.
These are the faces of the dead, he thought.
The Sorrow King.
That was who it was. He was sure of that now. The Jackthief had been a thing of fiction. The Sorrow King was real. And its reality was like nothing he had ever seen before.
The Sorrow King was somewhere in here. Connor felt him. It was the worst feeling he had ever experienced in his life. It was powerful and overwhelming. It pressed down on him, blackening his insides. He didn’t know what kind of result he had hoped for, charging into the tornado, but he suddenly knew it wouldn’t be the result he wanted.
The sense of purpose that had infused and energized him moments before was gone.
He felt flat. Deflated.
Ready for death to swallow him whole.
What did he honestly think he was going to do? Save Steven? He wanted to laugh with the absurdity of that thought. There wouldn’t be any saving Steven. How could he have even thought a stupid thought like that?
Steven was dead.
Steven had been dead for days.
Steven was not coming back.
That left Connor with nothing.
And, left with nothing, the Sorrow King came to him.
The remaining infrastructure of the water tower broke apart, adding itself into the swirling vortex of the tornado.
Now, looking at him, Connor saw that the Jackthief was the Sorrow King. He was exactly as he had pictured him in that story. How he had pictured him without actually putting that description on paper.
He was huge. Twice as tall as Connor. His lank black hair hung down to his shoulders that would have been narrow save for the overall scale. His face was like a lump of yellowed melted wax, two black and runny holes for eyes, a gaping mouth with the ability to spout a whole dictionary of lies and promises. His clothes were black, clinging to his nebulous form. His form could have been powerful or it could have been bones. Connor couldn’t tell.
“Ah, my creator,” the thing said.
“I want Steven�
�
“You can’t have him. He’s mine now.”
“No he’s not. He’s mine. He’s always been mine.”
“I’ve always been yours too. You created me before you created him. I guess you could say you really caused all this madness. Killed all those little kids. You’re a sicko, Connor Wrigley.”
“That doesn’t happen. You can’t write something and then have it exist.”
“It’s not quite that simple. I’ve always existed, you just decided to tell people about me. Only you. Only you, Connor.”
“Then if I created you, I can destroy you.”
“Destroy me? Like you destroyed Steven?”
“I didn’t destroy Steven . . .” Connor felt so helpless. He didn’t know what to do. He ran toward the Sorrow King but did not find purchase. He charged through him, nearly running into the lethally swirling wall of the tornado. A wall that was slowly closing in.
Quickly, he whirled around to face the Sorrow King.
“You can’t kill me,” Connor said.
“Really?” the Sorrow King asked, mocking. “Why is that? The person you created could certainly kill you. I did a fine job of killing your son.”
“I know that I didn’t create you and I know what you are. I know how you continue to kill and kill.”
“And how is that?”
“You take people’s fear and you turn it on them. Tell me what Steven saw before he died? I bet it wasn’t you. I bet it was something he was afraid of.”
“You want to know what he saw?”
“Yes.”
“He saw a pile of come on Elise Devon’s stomach. Does that sound like someone he would have been afraid of? You nearly stoned her to death. Tell me, was she . . . scary?”
“He saw her because he knew.”
“What did he know?”
“He knew you were going through her. You were going through her to do whatever it was you needed to do because you couldn’t do it yourself. All those other people that died saw her in some form or the other, didn’t they? It was you, acting through her, waiting until you had enough power to do what you’re doing now, turning people against each other.”
“I would expect my creator to know my motives. Good work.”
“I am not your creator. All those people you wanted to kill. They’re all outside now. Staring at this. Do you know why?” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and backed up from the Sorrow King.
“I’d love to know why.” His black eyes were expressionless.
“Because you failed.”
“I did not fail.”
The Sorrow King reached down and grabbed Connor around the neck. He was not the wisp of a person Connor had charged through only moments before. He felt very real and very strong, his nearly armlike fingers on Connor’s throat.
“I did not fail,” he repeated, throwing Connor onto the ground.
He thought he heard his ankle snap. He twisted back around, pulling himself up on his knees and staring up at the Sorrow King.
“You can’t kill me because I have nothing to fear. You have nothing left to take from me.”
The Sorrow King bent very close to him.
Connor could smell the reek of death coming from his mouth. The sour scent of sorrow.
“Oh, you fear. Everyone has a fear. And if you say you fear nothing then the only thing you fear is your mind. That’s what suicide really is, isn’t it—when the mind turns on its owner?”
Connor took another charge at the Sorrow King but the Sorrow King lifted him up, once again by the throat, and things changed again.
Thirty-two
Blank House
Somehow, Elise managed to stand up.
She had already felt pretty battered before the man’s attack. She would have considered it senseless had she not seen the boys on the playground, attacking one another. This was just another virus like the suicide virus. People were infected. That was why the man had attacked her. He was infected.
But then he had stopped, stood up, and gone running toward what used to be the water tower.
And the air had changed just slightly. People were not fighting anymore.
Once she had regained an upright position, Elise was afraid one of the onlookers would try and stop her. It seemed like most of the town, bruised and battered, looking like a herd of zombies, stood around her.
But they weren’t paying any attention to her. Their eyes were trained on the swirling maelstrom the water tower had become. This was probably as close to a miracle as many of them would ever see, she thought. Maybe she was just jaded. Having lived her entire life with the presence of the Obscura, she realized she was surrounded by the miraculous whenever she wanted it. Although part of her wanted to stay and watch what everyone else was watching, another part of her knew she had to make it to the Obscura.
She didn’t stop to think about that. She couldn’t stop to think about that. There wasn’t enough time. She knew the Sorrow King was part of that whirling cloud behind her. It didn’t cross her mind to think it might also be imprisoning him and, by her going to the Obscura, she was providing him with a way out, was doing exactly what he had wanted her to do.
No. She didn’t stop to think about any of that. The only thing she knew was that she had to make it to the Obscura. She had to make it home. She didn’t think any thoughts beyond that.
Her head felt woozy. She couldn’t move either of her arms. She was sure her right arm was broken and maybe her left collarbone. As she walked, she thought she could hear her bones grate inside her body.
Never mind, she told herself. The Obscura would heal her. The Obscura healed all wounds. Once again, she was the junky, questing after the dripping needle, waiting for it to wrap her in its comfort.
Her pace was slow but as quick as she could manage.
She pushed through the ring of onlookers, no one paying attention to the battered young girl who just might hold each of their fates in her hands, or her mind.
The last thing Connor remembered before seeing the blank house was the Sorrow King holding him in its powerful grasp. His neck felt like straw in its strong hands and Connor muttered continuously through his constricted windpipes, “You can’t kill me. You can’t kill me. You can’t kill me.”
The more his consciousness waned, the more he thought he might actually be able to save Steven. And while there was that old part of his mind that steadfastly held to the idea that saving the dead was ridiculous, there was that new part of him that scorned rationality. That part said, “Look where rationality has got you so far.”
That was the part he decided to listen to.
Then he was walking up the sidewalk in front of his house. At least, he thought it was the sidewalk in front of his house. He couldn’t really be sure because there was a very thick, very clean looking blanket of fog surrounding him.
He couldn’t even really be sure if the structure to his right was his house. It was more of an empty outline. Once on the sidewalk in front of the house, he turned to his right and looked at the blank house.
The only way it resembled his house was in its shape. Otherwise, it was completely white. White with black windows. Looking at those, he didn’t even think of windows. He thought if he were to go up to them and put his face to the glass, he would look into some kind of abyss rather than the inside of his home. That thought scared him. It scared him because he knew he was going to go inside that house and he hoped it was not the abyss that waited for him.
He didn’t really know what he could expect to find inside. He didn’t even really know where he was. All events that had happened previously had been erased from his memory. They had become shadows. He sensed them more than knew them. He knew his name was Connor Wrigley. He had felt like he almost knew who he was but he couldn’t have said what it was that had caused him to be that person.
He only knew he had to enter the house and knew he had to hurry. He was in a hurry to do something. He didn’t know exactly what. He only knew that if h
e didn’t do this thing then something very bad was going to happen. And the bad thing was not going to happen only to him, it was going to happen to a lot of other people as well.
Soul loss, were the words that crossed his mind. He didn’t know exactly what they meant but it sounded like one of the worst things in the world. To lose the soul.
Could that really happen?
He supposed he was about to find out.
Standing in front of the door, he looked at the outside of the strange blank house. Not only was it void of any color, it was void of texture. He was tempted to reach out and touch it and thought if he did he wouldn’t feel anything at all. It wouldn’t be like touching air, which is probably what most people thought touching nothing would feel like. No, to touch the air was only to not think about touching anything. If he were to stroke his fingertips against the surface of this strange house then he knew he would feel a very tangible sense of nothing. And that thought terrified him.
But he had to touch the doorknob. He would have to turn the doorknob to get in the house.
He stopped thinking about the nothing of it all. He thought about doorknobs which was something he didn’t think he had ever really thought about before. Even though he could not imagine one specific doorknob there was still something buried in the working part of his memory that remembered what doorknobs felt like. That remembered when you turn a doorknob, you open a door onto something, not a void.
He turned the knob and walked into the house.
Yes. It was familiar. But it wasn’t familiar. There was more white. More nothing. No walls, no carpet, only that weird textureless white.
He continued walking through the house. He had the distinct feeling he was in a family room although there were not any walls or devices to describe this as a family room. He continued walking and, yes, now he stood in a kitchen. It had the feeling of a kitchen. It was where the kitchen should be.
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