Some Quiet Place

by Kelsey Sutton

  They reach the tree line twenty minutes later. Without going out of the way to get clothes or food from the house, the woman bundles Rebecca into the ancient Cadillac and goes. She doesn’t look back, but when she senses Nightmare near, her pulse picks up speed again. He doesn’t appear. The only destination she has in mind is far, far away. They bump onto the highway and climb up to seventy miles an hour.

  They spend hours on the road. Five. Eleven. Nineteen. Twenty-

  six. They stop only for gas and bathroom breaks. Blearily the woman finds a half-full bottle of Gatorade and a bag of Doritos in the glove compartment. The car becomes hot and cramped, but neither really notices. Rebecca might as well be a corpse. She doesn’t move, speak, eat, or drink. She stares out the window at the passing scenery, not really seeing any of it. Rather than letting her worry consume her, the woman concentrates on the run. Getting as far away from the Element as fast as possible, so that he can no longer sense them.

  It’s somewhere in Wisconsin, at twilight, that she finally steps on the brake, frowning. “What’s going on?” she mutters.

  There’s a red pickup truck in the middle of the road, one door wide open, the headlights still illuminating the night. The driver isn’t behind the wheel; he’s kneeling next to something on the blacktop, his movements jerky and frantic. CPR. Rebecca and the woman watch, both realizing at some point that the figure lying there prone is a person. A little girl. Her yellow hair splays around her head, a bittersweet halo.

  After a few seconds the woman tears her gaze away from the tragedy, shifting gears to pull around them. “We need to keep moving,” she mutters. “He’s still—”

  “No, don’t.” It’s the first time Rebecca has spoken since they fled from her home. The woman pauses with her hand poised over the gearshift. The look in Rebecca’s eyes halts the question in her throat. Rebecca slowly turns from the chaos of the accident, staring at her companion with an expression of desperation. “I have an idea,” she whispers, so quietly that the woman has to strain to hear.

  The woman frowns. The truck driver is sobbing into his cell phone, hysteria thick in the air. “What do you—” She starts, then breaks off with an impatient hiss. “Rebecca, we don’t have time for this! If he gets too close, he’ll be able to sense you. Please, can’t you just—”

  “I have an idea,” Rebecca repeats, like some broken toy.

  The woman grits her teeth. “Fine. What’s your idea, Rebecca?”

  An odd smile curves the girl’s lips and she continues to stare at the crying driver, the too-silent child. Both of them can feel Death coming. Closer, closer. Nervous, the woman turns away. Rebecca watches. She doesn’t say a word as Death takes the little girl’s soul, but part of her wants to call the Element back, beg for his touch. Something keeps her silent. And then all that’s left is a shell, a half-delirious driver, and the endless possibilities.

  Wordlessly, Rebecca reaches out and touches the woman’s wrist.

  The woman looks at the body on the road and back at Rebecca. Understanding dawns; she realizes what her charge is suggesting. Her expression twists into a combination of instant revulsion and reluctant speculation. Rebecca just looks at her with a sort of flat pleading. Even with the unique blood running through her veins, she has smudges under her eyes that have never been there before. She looks white and too thin. The woman is tired, too. Tired from the running, tired of holding her form in one place for so long when it’s in her nature to go from place to place, summons to summons. If something doesn’t change, there won’t be an end to any of it.

  Three minutes tick by. Rebecca counts the seconds. In the distance, they can hear the wail of a siren. No more time to decide.

  The woman heaves a sigh, her shoulders slumping. She faces Rebecca. “Okay,” she says softly.

  Rebecca’s relief is so palpable it’s almost overwhelming. “Okay?” she echoes.

  “Okay.” The woman looks at the driver, steeling herself. He’s the first loose end to tie up. Then there’s the body to hide. She rolls up her sleeves and gets out of the car. She approaches the man, kneels in front of him, and says something softly. She rests her hands on his shoulders. His eyes glaze over and he nods. He stands. As he lumbers back to his vehicle, the woman turns her attention to the little body still lying in the middle of the road.

  Rebecca waits where she is, holding her knees in an effort to make herself small. It’s the only way to keep calm when there’s a moment to think. She watches the clock on the dashboard to distract herself. Six minutes … seven … ten …

  “Rebecca.” The woman returns. She stands by the passenger window, gripping the car door with white knuckles. The power has already taken a toll on her; her countenance is gray and lined. Rebecca nods, unbuckling the seat belt, and follows the woman off the road, into the ditch.

  Rebecca waits until they’re facing each other to say, “I want you to make a block so none of the Emotions can touch me.”

  The woman hesitates. A crow swoops overhead. “First, I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that, and second, won’t it make the humans suspicious? It’ll complicate—”

  “Just try it, okay?”

  Pursing her lips, her companion nods. “You will forget everything,” she agrees. She holds out her hand, preparing for the biggest illusion of all. “Too bad you won’t be there on the other side to restore me,” she adds. There’s a note of uncertainty in her voice. Not the case with Rebecca. She stands there, waiting, thrumming for the moment when she’ll open her eyes and not remember a thing, not feel a thing. This constant shooting pain in her chest will be gone, the memory of blood on her hands, gone. Landon … Landon … No. Rebecca won’t think about it. Her insides twist and her fists clench at her sides. “Do it,” she breathes, eyes burning with a manic need.

  But the woman can’t leave it at that. “I’ll give you ten years. The Element will be off your trail by then.”

  “Fifteen,” Rebecca counters, need coiling like a snake within her.

  The ambulance is almost there. Time for arguing is over. “Fine,” the woman replies shortly. Then, “I’m not going to say goodbye.” She closes her eyes. The man is sitting in his truck now, still blinking in dazed confusion, and the body is gone, hidden forever. Too late to go back now, and Nightmare will still be looking. This really is the best solution, the woman tells herself. She takes a breath, then twitches as her power flows toward Rebecca James.

  The girl screams as it latches onto her. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! She drops to her knees. It’s like a fire licking over every inch of her skin. She tries to dig her fingers into the tar and her nails tear away, bleed. A vein bulges from the woman’s forehead as she concentrates, and there’s pity in her eyes. But the woman keeps her hand over the writhing girl. Feature by feature, piece by piece, the things that make Rebecca are wiped away. Brown curls turn to straight blond tresses. Long slender fingers shorten to a chubby child’s. Elegant legs become knobby knees. The woman focuses on the block, now that the illusion is complete. Nothingness. She says it over and over again in her head. Nothing. Rebecca feels nothing.

  And then it’s done.

  Spent, the woman sags against a tree. She struggles for breath. The ambulance is coming over the hill now, lights flashing. Before they can spot her and her car, she leaves the girl in the ditch, hating herself, hating Rebecca for asking her to do it. But she comforts herself by saying that it was the smartest thing to do. A necessity.

  She’s driving away when it happens. When it begins. She doesn’t see it. But she feels it, feels the knowledge sealing itself inside her, not to be spoken of for fifteen years.

  Elizabeth Caldwell opens her eyes.

  “Elizabeth,” peeps in my ear. “Wake up, wake up! Please, please!”

  My eyes flutter open. The illusion trembles, so close to being broken.

  Moss has given me strength again. I can feel it whizzing through my muscles, brightness illuminating me from the inside. I see movement out of the corner o
f my eye, remember the Element, where I am. Nightmare dives at me, the knife I’d dropped catching the light in his hand. Reacting swiftly, I roll off the table, and the blade clatters behind me.

  I scramble toward the door on all fours, panting, scraping my knees and the palms of my hands. Nightmare shoves the table out of his path—it lands against another wall and shatters a hole through it—and dives for me again. I don’t move fast enough, and his hand encircles my ankle. I scream and he laughs, yanking me back toward him. I jerk my leg, startling him, but the knife buries itself deep in my calf. I scream again, and the sound pierces the air so sharply that Moss covers her ears. Nightmare groans at the sound, wincing as he leans away. That’s when I see it. The smaller knife from earlier, the one he’d used to stab my hand, abandoned in the corner. Just inches away from my fingers.

  It’s quick. It’s so quick that it seems surreal. I grab and raise the small knife, then shove it into the Element’s left eye without thinking.

  I’ll never forget his cry. Half-man, half-beast, so frightening that my heart twists inside of me. He recoils, his back slamming into the wall closest to us. Dirt showers down on our heads. The blow doesn’t kill him instantly, as I’d hoped it would, so while he’s weakened and distracted, I yank the other knife out of my leg. Ignoring the shooting pain, I reach forward again, my hands slick with blood, and slit Nightmare’s throat.

  He stares at me for an eternity. He touches the cut, and when he pulls his hand away he looks at the vibrant, scarlet blood on his fingers as if he can’t believe it. Then he falls. Doesn’t get back up again.

  Once I’m certain he’s dead, I join him in darkness. For once there are no dreams. Just the peace of surrendering to oblivion.

  Twenty-Three

  I wake up on the ground. Above, the trees hover, shielding me from the bright glow of the moon like a protective mother. Nighttime. There’s only a portion of the sky visible, but somehow the fact that the stars have come out is comforting. A cool breeze stirs my sweat-drenched hair.

  Remaining on my back, I look around. I’m in some kind of clearing, in woods I don’t recognize. It takes me a moment, but when I do remember everything that’s just happened, I wish I hadn’t. Landon, knives, Moss, Rebecca, the illusion, the woman who saved me, Nightmare—it all comes back. But the shack is nowhere to be seen. The Element is gone, dead, and I’m alone.

  The same instant I realize this, I also comprehend that the pain is gone. All my cuts, bruises, the bullet holes in my back, the stab wounds in my calf and hand—they’re healed.

  Is this because of the woman I’d been calling Rebecca? Because of Moss? Or just … me?

  Now that I’ve thought of her, she actually appears, crouching beside me. For the first time, she isn’t hidden in layers of clothing. I recognize her face from the memory, and her hair as well—long and straight, the color of leaves after Summer has left. She’s dressed simply, in jeans and a long-sleeved green shirt. On her feet she’s wearing stylish, heeled boots. There are lines on her face that indicates she’s not as young as I’d originally assumed, though her eyes are bright and sharp.

  I lean up on my elbows, my lips trembling as I relive the whole ordeal. The woman brushes my hair off my shoulder, a tender, unusual gesture for her. We sit there like that, quiet. I should know her. Our pasts are intertwined. She saved my life. But even having possession of the truth doesn’t make me feel connected to any of it.

  “Looks like he found me after all,” I finally murmur. Because of Nightmare, I’ve been alone for thirteen years, empty and surrounded by a web of lies.

  She hops to her feet. “I’m sorry you went through all this,” she says abruptly. And I know she means it. She never intended for any of this to happen. For a few more minutes, we stay there in comfortable silence, sharing the overwhelming knowledge that it’s over. It’s all over. There are more questions I’d like to ask her, of course, so many more. For now, though, I let us simply exist.

  Then the woman ruins the moment by saying, “But I can’t believe that none of it broke the fucking illusion. You still look like Elizabeth, and I still can’t talk about anything.”

  Sighing, I think of the day Landon died. The pain of remembering isn’t quite as strong now as it was in the shack; the illusion is attempting to realign, to hold on. I find myself falling back to my old ways, thinking of the facts. And they’re simple: I am Rebecca. Landon was my brother … my twin. Fear loved me. I lived in that house by the ocean. I am something more than mortal. And to run from Nightmare—to deal with my twin’s death—I asked this woman to do the impossible: make me human.

  The thought of my family urges me to ask one question. “So you can’t tell me where Rebecca’s—” I stop, correct myself. “Where my mother is? She wasn’t killed; I know that much.” Moss appears on my shoulder, humming, and I touch her cheek. She giggles.

  The woman—I still don’t know what Emotion or Element she is—just shakes her head.

  I purse my lips, wishing I didn’t have to accept this. And I still don’t even know what I am. Later, something says inside my head. Later. I settle back on my elbows, deliberately emptying my mind. “So what now?” I murmur.

  Still standing, my companion looks up at the sky, and I follow her gaze. The stars stare back down at us—cold, timeless rocks. They make me think of Fear, and a pang of longing consumes me.

  After a moment, she just shrugs. “Now, you live.”

  “Wake up. We’re almost there.”

  The woman’s profile swims into view. It’s still night, so the moon’s shadows hide her features, but I recognize the slope of her lip, the lines of her chin and jaw. I blink up at her, my cheek resting on a cracked leather seat. Is this one of the dreams?

  When the woman hisses impatiently and reaches over to smack my cheek, I know it’s no illusion. The hours before drift back: we’re in her car, on our way back to Edson. We’d been over eighty miles away, she told me.

  I sit up in the passenger seat and my body protests. “Almost where?” I ask. A road sign flashes by, bright green: 10th Avenue. “This isn’t where I live … what’s wrong?” I’ve suddenly noticed how fast she’s going; the speedometer is inching past seventy. As if we have somewhere we need to be. As if there’s not much time. But isn’t the danger, everything we’ve been running from, gone? The answer occurs to me before she has a chance to answer. Fear.

  “Where is he?” I ask next. There’s no panic or worry, just a need to get to him. The windows are rolled down, and the air is curiously warm now, the stillness disrupted by gunshots rather than the moans of the lonely wind. Hunting season. I wonder if Winter knows the threat is gone, that the way is safe for her.

  This leads me to thoughts of Nightmare, and I go rigid, clenching my jaw so hard it hurts.

  The woman still doesn’t answer. She stares out at the expanse of black sky. Remembering that she’d once said Fear was too injured to take far, I’d guess that we’re heading toward the outskirts of town. For once, I don’t pepper her with endless questions.

  I’ve never been on these back roads, and the headlights sweep past foreign trees and unknown houses. It isn’t until we pass an old windmill that I know where we are. The Halversons’ place. It’s a farm that’s been abandoned for years. Presumably a huge family used to live there and they all died from some sort of plague. Kids come out here on Halloween and dare each other to go inside for five minutes. It’s a rickety house with gray paint, a drooping wrap-around porch, and falling shutters.

  The woman shifts into park and kills the engine. Still silent, she swings out of the car. I follow. The grass is long and uncut all the way up to the front door, and the hinges moan as she pulls it open. Inside, the air is musty and thick with dust. This was probably the only place she could bring Fear without being noticed. Tense, I follow her through a grimy kitchen and an empty, moonlit living room. There’s a single table in the dining room, and as soon as we round the corner I draw up short.

  There … there l
ies the Emotion who’s taunted and tormented and loved me almost my entire life. Both my lives. The white moonlight slants down on him, making him glow, his flawlessness more pronounced. Even now, he’s beautiful. But his eyes, usually so sharp and vibrant, are closed. His chest is barely rising and falling, and his skin glistens with sweat. I’ve never seen Fear sweat before. My own breathing grows uneven.

  “He’s dying,” I observe quietly, and it’s as if his wound is mine, because my stomach feels like a knife has been thrust into it. He tried to save me. This happened to him because of his unhealthy obsession with me. Stop saying that, my mental voice snaps. It wasn’t obsession. And now I have to admit that the voice is right—it was something so much more. And I should have done more to discourage him. I knew what happened to those around me. Even without the knowledge I have now, I knew.

  I drown in a battle of detachment. And it’s while I’m standing there staring down at him that it occurs to me: this is Fear’s consequence for interfering the day Tim attacked me in the barn.

  “You’re going to help him,” the woman says matter-of-factly, interrupting my thoughts.

  I look at her, trembling. “What can I possibly—”

  She tries to snatch my hand and I jerk back, a reflex. She rolls her eyes, letting out an annoyed breath. “I just need you to touch him,” she growls. “Put your damn palm on his forehead and keep it there until I tell you otherwise. Think you can do that?”

  I do it without an instant more of protest. He’s freezing to the touch, even colder than usual. We wait, and it’s hard to keep still. Ten seconds. Twenty. Nothing happens. I don’t know what I expected, but something inside of me sinks. Fear is slipping away. No. No. This can’t happen. He isn’t mine anymore, and I’ve pushed him away for so long, and he loves someone that doesn’t exist, but all of that is so insignificant now. My grip tightens so much that if he were conscious, it would hurt. I close my eyes and strive to cope with the knot inside me.