That was to Stephen.
“You didn’t perform them. She did. She was the object. And she wound up here. Which tells us something. I mean, we don’t know much, do we? But even we might guess that she has the gift.”
“More than that,” Sadie said, “or she never would have made it. You’re the host of this party, Rory. Not us. We’re simply providing the venue.”
I felt something on my arm, something warm running down it toward my wrist. I pulled back the sleeve a bit and found that I was bleeding. It happened just like that—there was a cut in my arm, maybe three or four inches, nothing serious. But I had a bad relationship with things like this—slashes that came from nowhere. I became profoundly aware of the scar that ran along my abdomen. It had stopped hurting some time ago, but now I felt every inch of it. It was hot. It itched. I remembered feeling the cut going in that day on the bathroom floor. I reached for it, putting my arm against it. It wasn’t bleeding—it was fine. The only injury was my suddenly bleeding arm.
I’d been cut. I was remembering too. Jane had cut my arm.
I looked to Stephen. His wound had not reappeared. I was the only one. He saw the blood.
“It’s fine,” I said, yanking down the sleeve. But I was also now coming to the conclusion that maybe we needed to leave here. This was how I had left Jane’s house the last time—I had a sudden knowledge that something was wrong, and I knew to run. I wasn’t actually sure what they could do to us, but the feeling was overwhelming, pure instinct. This house was dangerous. This house would trap us forever.
“I think,” I said, “maybe . . .”
“Go.”
We tore down the stairs, me in front and Stephen behind. The stairs were now completely dark, and I kept stumbling and grabbing on to the rail for support. Again, this was far too much like meeting Newman when I’d gone down into the King William Street station, descending into the dark, Stephen just behind me. It was all happening again, just in a different place, somewhere—a funhouse mirror version of realities I’d already known.
When we passed the sitting room by the front door, I gave one final look inside, which was probably a mistake, because it made me pause. This time, the room was not empty. There were ten bodies strewn around.
“Oh, God,” I said.
There was a lot of long hair, and a lot of colorful clothes. A girl in a red shirtdress with vibrant orange circles, a boy in head-to-toe leaf green. There was a tiny girl covered in freckles in a bright purple minidress and striped purple tights. But what got me was their positions. All of them were contorted. Many were on the floor, facedown in the carpet. Some were slumping from the sofas. A few had grabbed others and were clinging in one last, desperate embrace—a tangle of death. One was by the door—a boy with shaggy black hair and faint traces of eye makeup. His head was to the side, his arm extended as if trying to swim across the floor to safety. Their skin was blue and purple and washed out. Everything about their bodies suggested agony and shock. There was a bitter, sick smell in the air.
Stephen caught up behind me and saw what I was looking at.
“Don’t,” he said. “Keep going.”
He gave me a bit of a push, and then we were outside, in a night with no moon, in a furiously falling snow.
24
WE RAN DOWN THE STEPS AND OUT OF HYSSOP CLOSE, into the neighborhood of no signs. We were at a crossroads, no indication of where to go next. The sky was rosy, giving us at least some light to navigate by, should we ever figure out where to go. The snow fell harder. This was like the whiteness that appeared behind my eyes when I terminated a ghost—this was the whiteness I’d seen when I’d reached out to Stephen on the hospital bed. I closed my eyes again and commanded myself to figure this shit out.
“What’s the Shadow Cabinet?” I said to Stephen.
He brushed snow from his face.
“This isn’t the time.”
“This is exactly the time. What is the Shadow Cabinet?”
“More important, what did they do to you? You said that Jane used a stronger stone. What did you mean?”
“She said there was a stone called the Oswulf Stone. We had to find it, and if we did, we could use that and me, and I could wake you up.”
“How?”
“I had to drink something,” I said. “They said they needed some of my blood. They said I had the blood of the stone. We found the Oswulf Stone. Freddie—”
“Freddie Sellars?”
“Yeah. She helped us.”
“How long was I gone?”
“About two days.”
“All of this happened in two days?”
“Thorpe said you vetted Freddie! He said you were going to bring her into the group!”
“I was,” he said, sounding angry. “She’s very smart. This isn’t about Freddie Sellars. Rory, what happened to the Oswulf Stone?”
“They took it,” I said. “They brought it to the house.”
He grabbed the back of his head in both hands and paced away from me.
“Stephen, talk to me,” I said. “Explain this.”
There was a black London cab behind him all of a sudden, parked, but clearly running, lights on. It was simply there where previously there had been nothing.
“There!” I said. “Behind you!”
We rushed to the cab. There was no one in the driver’s seat, so he got in it and I got in the seat next to him. He switched on the wipers to clear the snow from the windscreen.
“What is the Shadow Cabinet?” I asked again.
He shifted the car into gear and started to drive. He hit the gas pretty hard, considering the fact that it was snowing—except it was tapering off a lot, and every time we turned a corner, the sky and road were clearer.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Marble Arch,” he said. “If this has something to do with the Oswulf Stone, that’s where we have to go.”
As we sped along, London unrolled around us, but it wasn’t the real London. It was like a series of pictures of London, often repeated, that someone shuffled in front of me. I didn’t know if we could go to Marble Arch—if we could drive anywhere at all. For all I knew, we were driving down the same street over and over.
Something popped into my peripheral vision, and I looked in the side-view mirror to see the yellow car following along behind us. It seemed to be driving at a leisurely pace, but it kept up with us the entire time. Stephen saw it too and went faster.
There was a break in the view in front of us—a park. Stephen drove right into it. Why not? I guessed. There was no one to stop us. He drove down some wide gravel walkways, through open expanses of green, around a lake of some kind.
The snow stopped as we passed through some trees. It was day again, bright and sunny. The trees were green. Then there were a lot of trees, more and more, until we reached a point where the car simply couldn’t pass. Stephen started working the gears quickly. When it became clear we weren’t going to avoid the trees, he pulled the handbrake and turned the wheel hard. We went into a wide curve of a skid, narrowly missing a direct impact. The cab’s engine sputtered and stopped.
“Are you all right?” he asked me. He was breathing fast and swallowing hard, his hands gripping the wheel.
I was shaking all over. No more car accidents for Stephen.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.
“I didn’t have much choice,” he said. “They came from nowhere. I’m not even sure where we are now. I think we go on foot from here.”
We got out of the car. Something smelled familiar to me, something I definitely hadn’t smelled in England. It was floral, herbal. We walked through the tree covering, the light dripping through, spotting us with dots of sun and shade. I don’t know what tipped me off first—it may have been something as simple as how the ground sloped and dipped. The slight incline. Th
e hole I knew to avoid. And just as I realized it, we walked out of the opening and into my backyard.
My house, well, the back of it. The sliding doors were open. I could hear a radio on inside. NPR. One of my parents was at home. Bucky, our neighbor’s dog, was barking. The hammock I’d gotten for my fourteenth birthday slumped invitingly on the back patio.
“What is this?” Stephen said.
“It’s home,” I replied.
The sun rained down on us. I’d missed the sun so much. This abrupt change slowed us both. Sid and Sadie weren’t right behind us anymore.
“This is where you’re from,” Stephen said.
“Yep.”
“It’s hot,” he said.
“I told you it was.”
I approached the house, and he followed, and we both stopped on the patio. I reached out and felt the nylon of the hammock and then stretched it out to make somewhere to sit—such a familiar gesture. My feet came an inch off the ground when I sat like this, and when I rocked, the soles of my feet would brush the cement at regular intervals. I’d done this a hundred, maybe a thousand times? So much of my life had been spent in this hammock. Homework. Talking to friends. Working on my computer. Reading and sleeping. Planning for my trip to England. That’s what I had been doing in it last. I sat here, my computer on my lap, rocking back and forth slowly, watching English TV shows and reading about how the school worked. I’d felt so ready, like I had some idea what it would really be like. I remembered explaining it all to my friends.
It was laughable now, really.
Stephen stretched out the netting to make a seat for himself. He was taller, so his feet stayed on the ground, plus his added weight sank us. We stopped rocking.
“I can’t really imagine growing up somewhere this warm all the time,” he said. “I think it explains something.”
“What’s that?”
“I think you get a certain kind of personality when you live somewhere where it rains all the time. Here, it seems like you might be more optimistic. I think it explains you.”
“You think I’m optimistic?”
“I think you’re almost pathologically so.” He didn’t smile, but there was a smile in the way he said it.
As we had settled to a stop, everything seemed to settle around us. When it gets this hot on a Louisiana summer day, nothing moves. There’s a total stillness. Even the bugs go quiet.
“Should we go inside?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I guess we could.”
The house looked shady and inviting. There was no feeling quite like coming in from the bright sun into the cool of the house, stretching out on the sofa or the bed, taking a nap. I got up and slid open the screen door. It hiccupped and bowed a bit because it always popped out of the track and had to be knocked back in.
“This really is my house,” I said.
Though the radio was on, I couldn’t hear anyone. I called to my parents, but no one replied. I walked from room to room. Our house is one of those McMansiony places, big and hollow feeling, but in a pleasant way, with high ceilings and lots of ceiling fans. Stephen looked up a lot as he went around, which is why I noticed this.
“It’s not what I expected,” he said.
“What did you expect?”
“Some kind of Gothic place,” he said. “Given your stories.”
“We’re the normals around here, I guess,” I said.
We got to the steps, and I went up, still looking for anyone who might be at home. With every room we went to, I became very conscious that Stephen was in my house now, something I had never envisioned happening. And while there wasn’t anything to particularly reveal me—it wasn’t like my underwear was stapled to the walls or something—it was all information. It was all truth.
I stopped by my bedroom door. This was the only one that was closed. If this was my subconscious talking, it was kind of a dick.
“Hello?” I called.
No reply from inside. I cracked the door open just a bit. I opened it farther, and then all the way. The blinds were drawn, and a gentle sun came through.
Even though there was no one there, it felt unnatural to step inside. It felt a bit dangerous. I tentatively put my foot forward, feeling the cushion of the carpet. My room was kind of big. This is because I’m an only child, and these McMansions only do big. Compared to my English room, it was hilariously huge. It was embarrassing—a waste of space. But it was mine, so deliciously familiar. For example, it was a mess. The bed was unmade, the comforter half on the floor, like it was drunk. There was a pile of cables for devices next to my bed, like a weird little nest for electronic animals. There were about six mugs on my nightstand, a pile of half-read books by the side of the bed. I had folded my clothes, at least some of them, and dropped them in piles on the floor. Stephen seemed very interested in the inflatable alligator I had suspended above the bed, its neck draped in beads. This gave me time to have a quick look around for underwear.
I found I was disappointed that I hadn’t left any around. How was this the one time I hadn’t left a bra out?
Was I trying to make out with Stephen again? Here? Is that what was happening? My brain said, “This is not the time,” but the stirring feeling somewhere else said, “There has never been a better time, because who even knows what counts here?”
Suddenly, nothing felt urgent. I sat on the edge of the bed and pretended to be deep in thought. If I looked like I was thinking, Stephen would want to think too, and he would sit with me. We’d made out on a bed before. It could happen again. We had just done it in the diner, technically, but that was very different. My mind had been on something else, and his mind kind of wasn’t there at all. That was a necessity.
But he was still looking around, taking it all in, frame by frame.
“This is more what I expected,” he said.
I mmmm-ed like I was still thinking.
“Do you think we should go?”
“I’m thinking,” I said. After a moment, and I guess seeing that I was not getting up, he moved a bit closer. I don’t think he knew what to do, so I said, “Sit down.”
And he did. The moment I said it. Very professionally.
“So why are we here?” I asked, stretching myself out a bit and leaning back toward the pillows. I hated myself for doing this even as I cheered myself on. And he noticed too, because he was looking at me—all of me, and then he looked away quickly and pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at my lamp.
“It could be a number of reasons,” he said.
Everything was very heady. I really didn’t care about getting out right now. All I could think about was the way Stephen was sitting there, the outline of his shoulders against the white of the blinds. His shoulders were broad and strong.
“Rory,” he said, “I don’t think . . .”
“We kissed the other night,” I said.
“I know we did.”
He couldn’t meet my eye.
“Do you regret it or something?” I said.
“I . . .” He shook his head and looked very confused. “I think that—”
“Stop thinking and tell me. Do you regret it? Because I don’t. I really wanted to.”
So much furrowed brow. I sat up in alarm. Maybe Stephen had never liked me at all. Maybe this was all something in my head that had gone very wrong. Maybe it was the head wound that had made him do it.
“No,” he said, still not looking at me. “I wanted to. Very much so. For a while. I—”
“So do it again,” I said. I didn’t like how urgent I sounded. I got closer, and he got very still. Then he stood up.
“Something’s not right,” he said. “Something about this place isn’t right.”
There was no way I was leaving this bed. I hadn’t lost him yet. He wanted to—I was sure of it. He was scared. Something was preyi
ng on his mind. I was never leaving this bed, or home. Everything could be perfect here. Me and Stephen.
He went to the window and adjusted the blinds, and the sun came streaming in. I had to put up my hand and shield my eyes. Stephen was talking, but for some reason, the fact that it was so bright made it impossible to hear him.
“Stephen?” I said. I started to come out of my haze. I still wished we had kissed, but I didn’t feel as dopey. There was so much sun by the window that I couldn’t see him at all.
“Stephen?” I called. “Stephen!”
It was all just light blindness. Home—it throbbed. It was taking me over. I couldn’t stay here. Stephen couldn’t be here with me. These things didn’t go together. I heard him calling for me, and his voice sounded like he was at the other end of a long, empty hallway, not in a small, quiet room. I pulled myself from my bed and stumbled out into the hallway and down the stairs, the sunspots crowding my eyes. I continued calling for him as I made my half-blind way down to the living room. The screen doors were wide-open, but the view outside was blurry—like an out-of-focus picture of a yard. I went out anyway and found myself in a very different day from the hot and sunny one. The sky was restored to a slate gray, and the house was gone. The air was cool, and we stood in a London park, with Marble Arch maybe a hundred feet away. Stephen was a few yards away.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, pointing at the spot where the house had been.
“I’m not sure that can actually be known,” he said. “It seems to be a place that presents to us things that are familiar, things that compel us to stay. It gets inside of us. I suppose it knows what we want.”
If that was the case, Stephen had just seen all too clearly what was inside of me. I turned away in embarrassment and looked at the expanse of park that had reappeared all around. The only difference this time was that the park had been denuded of trees, making the gentle roll of the green lawns clearly visible. There was nothing beyond the park—no London to see. It was just green field. Sid and Sadie’s car was nowhere in sight.
The Shadow Cabinet Page 23