He fell silent for several long moments, his lips twisting and compressing and pouting. “I really fucked up,” he said at last, his voice thin and strained. “Oh, god.” He let his head fall back against the wall of the car with a heavy thunk. “I want to make things different. Like, get it together. I keep trying, but it’s so fucking hard, and it’s like...like the world just wants to keep smacking you back down, right? Makes me so tired. ‘Cause at first I thought, I’ll do it for her. Fix myself and prove I was for real this time so she’d take me back. But she won’t. She’s done with me. Still.” He was quiet again, for longer this time. I watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed several times. “I just think, if I get settled, get cleaned up, start being serious about my art, maybe I can, I don’t know. Pay her back for believing there was something good in me when I was being a little shit about everything. That’s dumb,” he added hastily, like he was trying to beat me to it.
I shook my head. “It’s not.”
He shrugged, and then shifted and winced against the chronic aches in his joints. “I guess.”
And like that, we ran out of conversation. It happens. I thought about saying something just to say something, then decided to let it be. I settled my head on my pack and let my thoughts drift.
Beside me, Charlie stared out over the landscape. Now and then I heard him sniff, and I noticed he kept his face turned away from me. I let him have his space, as much as that was possible when we were less than a yard apart. After a long while, I noticed out of my peripheral vision that he’d pulled out his water bottle again. He put his hand up near his mouth, quick and stealthy, and then took a long drink.
Shit. I sighed. Oh, Charlie. Being poor and having no good options to manage his pain had gotten him where he was. Seemed like he still had a ways to go on his journey to recovery. I didn’t have it in me to judge him anymore.
Soon I found myself fighting sleepiness, snapping awake every time I dozed. When Charlie started talking again, at first I was glad. It was something to keep me awake. But as I forced myself to pay attention, I realized he was rambling, not making a whole lot of sense, and alternating between talking loudly to no one and mumbling to himself.
Great. The pills were kicking in. It was a pretty safe bet that he’d be high as a kite for the rest of the ride. So much for any more conversation.
I let myself close my heavy eyelids. Charlie was halfheartedly ranting about some bar that had closed and how the cocksucking rats were to blame. I couldn’t tell if the rats were landlords, bankers, yuppies, or for that matter actual rats, so I just let it become white noise. Gods, I wanted sleep.
I drifted off, and my whole body jerked to wake me as I sank into a deep sleep. My butt slid across the bumpy metal a few inches, and with the swaying of the train I had a moment of panic that only faded when I had hold of my pack and the wall of the car and I knew I wasn’t in danger. I gulped a shuddery breath of relief.
And then I saw Charlie, not next to me as I’d expected, but across from me. It took a moment to sink in that he’d gotten up and stepped from our platform to the narrow lip of the next car behind us. Now he was trying to scale the car, but the narrow metal rungs welded to the end of the car only went a little more than halfway. You could get to the top of the car from there, if you were a really good climber. And sober. And if the car was still.
I grabbed the railing and pulled myself to my feet, my pack throwing off my balance. “Charlie, no!” I shouted at him, hoping he could hear me over the wind. “Come back here, that’s not safe!”
He clung to the car, his feet planted on the rungs, and looked back at me with a goofy, addled grin. “Gonna ride up top!” it sounded like he yelled, and he was pointing at the flat roof of the car, where train-hoppers sometimes rode for thrills. He beckoned to me. “Come on!”
“No! Get back here--be careful!” I yelled, hanging onto the railing with one hand and holding my other hand out to him. Goddammit, the stupid kid.
He looked confused for a moment, staring at my hand. Then he looked up to the top of the car, reached up with one hand to anchor himself, and put one foot on one of the ridges in the car, testing for a good spot before he began to lift himself. His other foot left the rung and pressed against the side of the car as his head and shoulders cleared the roof. I held my breath and clenched the railing, the wind whipping my ponytail into my eyes. He was close to the top, damn if he wasn’t. All he had to do was pitch his weight forward and scoot on his belly until he was all the way up there.
The train lurched.
He swung backward as if his left foot and hand were hinges. I caught only a glimpse of his face as his right hand sliced through empty air; I saw the silly vacuous grin before his face melted into an open howl of doom. And then he dropped like a stone, his hand sliding down the car but unable to grab anything to save himself.
I heard his agonized scream. It was like nothing I’d ever heard and it wrenched my gut. I raced to the left edge of my platform and leaned over the railing, screaming back. I saw flashes of him rolling, tumbling. I saw blood. I saw the breathing, undulating grass swallow him as he grew small and far away.
I shouted for help. I ran back and forth across the platform, looking along the length of the train to see whether I could spot any crew people, not caring anymore if they arrested me. There was no one. I looked around; I had no idea where we were. I had no phone to call anyone. I had no way to get off the train or even get to a different car. For a moment I simply floundered, and then I thought to look at my watch. We’d been riding for a couple of hours already, but there was a long way to go.
Whenever we stopped, I could tell someone roughly what time it happened. Maybe they could calculate where the train had been and search for him, if they bothered to put in the time. But if he was still alive now, he might not be by the time I could send help for him. My heart jackhammered. Oh, gods. Oh, Charlie. No, no, no, no, no.
I paced back and forth along the railing countless more times, feeling like a caged animal, helpless, restless. I kept trying to think of something I could do. Finally I sank back down against the wall of the car. I was shaking all over and my mouth was pasty. I remembered Charlie telling me to drink enough water and I burst into tears.
I realized I was clutching the key that hung around my neck. I struggled to pull myself together. I had no place to set my metronome and no way to know if this would even work, but in my brain was a fragment of some half-remembered thing I’d heard somewhere, and it was the only thing I could think of to try, and my instinct was shouting at me to do it. I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. It was an effort. I kept at it, tried to bring all my focus to a tiny point between my eyes and shut everything else out. I couldn’t relax. I opened my eyes and looked around for a way to make myself feel safer while in that liminal state.
Scooting around, I put my back against the railing, took off my pack, and extended and then unbuckled the straps. I used them to strap myself against the bars. It wasn’t ideal, but I felt better about not flying off the platform or losing my pack while I was out. It was easier now to get myself to that place of relaxed focus that I needed so much.
I felt the shift happening.
There was now a door in front of me that led into the car. I used my key to unlock it and then I pushed hard until it opened. The car I stepped into was a boxcar now, not a hopper. The sliding door on the side was open and I could see a strange silvery light coming through it.
I went to the doorway and saw that the train seemed to have paused in the middle of nowhere--or rather, everything around looked like it was paused. There was no motion. The landscape looked the same as it had for the last couple of hours, but it was like the color had leached out of everything, everything dull gray and silvery gleaming wherever the pale cold light hit.
Jumping down out of the car, I began to run alongside the tracks, headed toward the back of t
he train. I left it behind me and kept running. The farther I went, I realized, the more that normal motion and time seemed to return to the world--trees swayed, grasses rippled. But there was no sound, and everything still looked colorless and watery. The atmosphere around me felt electric, like a storm was coming.
Charlie was sitting up at the edge of the tracks when I spotted him. I stumbled, weak with relief. I called out to him, and my voice sounded strange and thin, almost like an echo. “Charlie!”
He looked at me, his heavy expressive brows pinched together, his dark eyes jet black and confused. “I don’t know what to do right now,” he said, and his voice also sounded hollow.
I came up beside him and stopped short. He was sitting beside his own crumpled body. The head that lay on the ground was turned to one side, the lids lowered but not closed, the mouth slightly open. His arm looked broken, at a weird angle. And the lower half of his left leg had been sheared off. Feeling sick, I looked over at the tracks and saw a mangled lump of denim-wrapped gray meat, gleaming dark iron gray where there was blood.
The Charlie who was sitting and looking at his own ruined body held a long silver cord in one hand. I saw that it ran from his navel to his body’s. The rope was frayed and unraveling, but still intact. I felt like I was drowning.
“What do you want to do?” I asked, because I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked from me to his body. “Not hurt anymore,” he said at last.
I felt an awful weight of responsibility and I didn’t know what to do with it. The Charlie on the ground had a thread of life left, the slightest rise and fall of his chest. I knew, somehow, that I could help him die. That if I severed that cord for him, he’d be gone. Could I help him figure out where to go? I couldn’t imagine helping someone die, but if I didn’t, would I just be leaving him to suffer longer and die alone?
There was the sound of wings beating the air. Above us, a vulture circled. It spiraled down and settled onto the railroad ties, its eyes fixed on Charlie. It was huge, even when it tucked its wings, and its eyes were cold and shining. I ran at it, shouting and waving my arms, trying to shoo it off. Dread rose like bile in my throat. It opened its wings and hissed at me, and I skidded to a halt.
As I struggled to decide what to do, a fierce wind blasted the landscape. Charlie looked up at the source of it, but I was blown backward off my feet. I scrambled up to my knees and saw a hole open in the air on the other side of him, as if we were on a stage and someone had sliced through the painted backdrop flats. A figure stepped through the hole and I had that drowning, dreadful feeling again.
The demon recognized me, too.
“Well.” The voice came up from within the void that should have been a face, deep and sonorous and rumbling like distant thunder. Silvery orbs rolled in that darkness, looking me over. There was a glint of light that flickered and vanished; he had smiled. “What an unexpected surprise.” He wore dark, crisp clothing, the collar of the jacket high and stiff, the shoes black and shining.
“Get out of here,” I said, stronger than I felt. I wanted to stand but I was wobbly and shaking. “You can’t have him.”
Another rumble, amused.
I looked at the cord in Charlie’s hand. “No,” I said.
“Yes.” It resounded in the blackness.
Charlie bowed his head and began to cry.
The demon held up his black-gloved right hand and began to pull off the glove. It slid away like old reptile skin, and beneath its edge was raw redness, glistening wet with bone showing through it. I staggered to my feet, reaching to pull the cord out of his reach.
He ignored me. He laid his hand, all weeping sores and pulsing sinew, on Charlie’s body right over his heart. Steam hissed. The hand sank into Charlie’s flesh. The Charlie who sat beside me gasped and choked as a wet gray handprint formed on his chest. He dropped the cord and reached for me, clawing the air with desperation in his eyes.
I lunged for the cord again, sensing somehow that if I ripped it free, I could at least stop whatever was happening. The demon moved with easy grace, snatching the cord one-handed before I could reach it and looping it over Charlie’s wrists, yanking it taut. He pulled the raw hand free from Charlie’s chest, fingers closed over something.
Charlie’s body convulsed once with a horrible noise and went slack. Charlie’s spirit beside me howled. The demon nodded once, satisfied, pocketed what he’d taken. The cord broke from Charlie’s corpse, leaving only a ragged end. The demon used it as a lead, pulling Charlie to his feet and dragging him behind as he strolled back to the rip. The vulture lifted off and followed, circling them. The demon stopped with one leg through the rip and looked back at me. “See you soon.”
“No!” I shouted, reaching for Charlie, but the demon pulled him through and the rip sealed with a suction of air that made me stumble and fall again.
Now it was just me and poor Charlie’s mangled corpse, alone in this silver-gray silence. I saw the remnant of the cord that ran to his navel. It disintegrated and crumbled, and the dust blew away into the thick tangle of grasses.
I knelt beside him for--I don’t know how long. There was nothing I could do, but I didn’t want him to be alone. The silence was oppressive. And then it was like the world heaved, and I felt a dull pain in the back of my head as I fell onto my left side. The gray landscape swirled around me and funneled away, and I had a sense of swift movement. Darkness filled my sight.
The noise of the train was sudden and overwhelming. I struggled upright. I must have slumped over in my trance and bumped my head on the railing. My limbs felt heavy and clumsy, and my head was light and dizzy. I managed to get myself untangled from the straps of my pack and moved back against the wall of the car. I was starving and I had the shakes. I let myself have a couple fingers full of peanut butter and some water, because I was so parched I could barely swallow my food. It didn’t do a lot, but it helped ground me.
After that, I curled up against my pack and pressed my face against it, letting fat hot tears trickle through my eyelids and into the waterproof canvas. I was exhausted, hungry, aching, drained, horrified. But I was alive. I’d known people who had met tragic, unnecessary ends, but I had never seen any of them die. Charlie hadn’t wanted to go. The memory of him crying haunted me. I should have told him to live, or helped him move on before the demon got there. The look of despair as the demon hauled him off...
That could have been me. It very nearly was, more than once; those shadows had fallen across my aching soul for years. I’d had no more understanding of what it meant to be bound to a death demon then than I did now. But I’d somehow escaped it, when I fled the island back to life, somehow with my Beloved’s help. Shouldn’t I have been able to save Charlie from it too? I was supposed to stop the demon, wasn’t I? No-- we were supposed to stop him. Me and Charlie, and maybe others.
I still didn’t know how, and now I was alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
I waited in the coffee shop in Penn Station at a table out of the line of sight of the counter staff. I hoped they wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t ordered anything. It wasn’t too crowded, so I didn’t feel too bad about taking up their space. I mean, I’d have bought something if it wasn’t going to cost half the money I had left in the world.
My ride wasn’t due for a while yet, but I’d gone in there early so I’d have someplace quiet and cool to sit while I waited. I was afraid they wouldn’t show up at all. Or, a more likely fear, that something had changed and they had no way to reach me. I hunched down in my seat, my hands clasped in my lap, feeling anxious and self-conscious. My hair was a giant snarl from the wind on the train, and I was worried that I smelled bad.
Part of me wanted to just skip this whole thing. I could just disappear here in Baltimore, find a place to crash for the night and figure everything out from there. But the bigger part still wanted to go to MetamorphosUS. I wanted four day
s of not having to find shelter or constantly guard my stuff. I wanted to play and to try to forget the sight of Charlie and the feeling that I’d failed him. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe I was just supposed to meet other people who’d had strange dreams--maybe this was where we would all come together. Maybe the whole stopping-the-demon part would come after that. I felt a glimmer of hope. What if it meant that I could follow these weird marching orders, but still have the soul-replenishing weekend I needed so much right now?
Charlie should have had that chance too. I rubbed my eyes to scrub out the sight of him tumbling, the rip in space as the demon had come through. Dammit. I’d gotten myself pulled together enough to put on a normal face, but right now if even one person looked at me with scorn or disgust, I’d just shatter.
Everyone else in the place, however, was absorbed in their smartphones. I looked so out of place, sitting there doing nothing. I pulled out my journal, just to look busy. A few minutes later, the guy at the table next to me got up and left without clearing his trash. I made a face at his entitled bullshit, but when I glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention, I reached over and snagged his coffee cup and set it in front of me. I was disappointed that it was empty. Maybe that’s gross, but I wasn’t going to waste perfectly good coffee if there had been any left. Anyway, it made me feel less conspicuous to have a pretend drink.
I was re-reading my notes from my meditation on the train, when I sensed someone approaching. “Mari?” The woman looked like she might be around my age, maybe a little closer to forty. She had thick red hair that brushed her shoulders and sported a streak of pale gold starting above her right temple. She wore paint-spattered black BDU’s and a faded red tank top with sparkly red combat boots. The tank top showed off a canvas of colorful tattoos, and she had a tiny yin-yang stud in one nostril. Where her hair was tucked behind her ear, I could see a line of piercings ending in a tribal-style plug coiling through her earlobe. She was pretty, but the thing that struck me was that she radiated calm and sweetness, and she had a big unrestrained smile like we’d been friends for years. Her dark eyes were gentle and kind.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 5