by G X Todd
Lacey tried to push past the bodies in her way, but it was like trying to push past stone pillars. Shouts rose and accusations were thrown around, Dumont’s booming roar overriding them all, but Lacey wasn’t listening; she dropped to her hands and scurried past legs and feet, moving quickly. Reaching Alex, she batted at Dumont’s hand, clawed at it, punched him in the thigh, screaming at him to let go. The choking sound Alex was making was awful, but what was worse was when she stopped making the noise altogether.
Lacey closed her teeth on Dumont’s hand and bit. Hard.
The man yelled. His hand sprung open. Alex dropped to the floor.
Dumont backhanded Lacey and she fell backwards, landing on her butt, catching herself on both hands. She tasted blood but pushed herself up and went to Alex, her shaking hands scrabbling at the woman’s neck, struggling to loosen the too-tight leather band biting into her throat.
The prong in the buckle! Move the prong!
Lacey heard and dug the metal prong out of the leather, and the belt loosened. She ripped it off Alex’s neck and threw it aside.
Alex didn’t draw breath.
‘No no no no,’ Lacey moaned.
She slapped her.
The woman’s head rolled to one side.
‘Alex!’ she screamed, and slapped her harder, palm stinging painfully off her cheek.
Alex jerked and sucked in a huge breath, her eyes snapping open. She lurched upwards, instinctively fighting Lacey off, but Lacey grabbed hold of her hands and said her name over and over again until the tension left the woman’s body and recognition entered her eyes. Then they widened. Alex tried to say something, but already it was too late. Hands grabbed Lacey from behind, and for the second time she was dragged, kicking and howling, away from her friend. The door slammed shut between them, Alex lost behind it, and a scream erupted from Lacey’s throat that stripped her insides bare. And when it died away nothing was left but air and bones and hopelessness.
CHAPTER 5
They locked her in a freezer.
Thankfully, there was no power, so it wasn’t cold. Someone had peeled away the insulation rubber from around the door, so a thin strip of light came through. Not enough to illuminate the room by much, or help Lacey’s dark-adjusted eyes; she could barely make out the empty metal shelves and a few dangling hooks hanging from the ceiling. (The shelves she investigated mostly through touch.)
She had spent some time banging her fists against the door, yelling to be let out and shouting for Alex. Distant calls answered her, but none came from her friend, and neither she nor they could understand what the other was yelling. Her throat began to hurt after twenty minutes so she stopped. She went around the room again, but there was nothing of any use. All the hooks seemed well attached to the eyelets bolted to the ceiling, and she wasn’t tall enough to try to work the housings free.
Eventually, she sat down, legs crossed in a lotus position, and just stared at the box of light shining around the doorframe. She tongued at the cut on the inside of her lip. It had stopped bleeding, but the jagged soreness of it was comforting somehow. She carried on until the taste of copper filled her mouth.
Occasionally, she would see the shadowy impressions of feet walk past at floor level, the light in the freezer room dimming for an instant, and she would call out, but she got no response.
‘So. Your plan worked out great.’ She said it with a mean sarcasm she was unwilling to temper. She saw no reason not to speak out loud to the voice any more. She didn’t give a flying hoot if people thought she was crazy.
Its presence, an unfurling jasmine blossom, bloomed in the back corner of her head. You’re both still alive, aren’t you?
‘For the time being, maybe. I don’t even know where they took her.’ She didn’t need to explain who she meant.
She’s not far.
Lacey took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
Further away than those other people you were yelling at.
Lacey closed her mouth and was quiet for a while. She shifted a little, her butt starting to ache from sitting on the hard floor for so long. Finally, she asked, ‘How did you know all that stuff? From before? How do you know where Alex is?’
Maybe it’s you who knows it.
‘I don’t know it. How could I know it? I’m not any kind of mind reader.’
You don’t know what you are. Just like I don’t know what I am. We don’t know how your brain works, how it’s wired, how it can be used. How am I here, for example, talking to you?
‘How should I know?’ she muttered. ‘For all I know, I’m just imagining all this, just like Grammy imagined stuff. Now she’s passed it on to me and it’s my turn to suffer.’
You’re not imagining me. You’ll come to see that in time.
‘Prove it.’
There are lots of things that are unprovable, Lacey. Even things you think of as defined and finite. Maybe time itself doesn’t run like you think it does, like a piece of string from one point to the next, with past and present and future all marked along it. Maybe time is space, surrounding us like air. Maybe we can know what will happen or might happen as well as what is happening and what has just passed. I’m beginning to think it’s all something that can be learned.
Lacey pressed her fingers to her temples, these ideas new and very big, the space inside her head feeling way too small to fit them all in. She wasn’t sure she liked this ‘we’ business it kept talking about, either.
Everything is fluid. Nothing is guaranteed. We’re in constant flux. The only thing we do know is that we know nothing.
‘But you knew that Doc person would come up the stairs.’
It was one possibility, yes.
‘And you knew what to say to him.’
I thought it might get a reaction, yes.
‘But that’s like predicting the future.’
No, it’s just being observant.
‘Observant? That still doesn’t explain how you knew those things.’
You want a clear explanation?
‘Yes.’
OK. It was magic.
‘God, you’re such a shit.’
It giggled, or at least that’s what it felt like to her, like froth bubbling up and bursting in a succession of tiny, gleeful pops. It was a weird sensation.
The catch on the freezer door disengaged, and the heavy door swung open. A glare of light hit her in the face and Lacey turned her head aside, lifting a hand to block it out.
‘Can you lower that?’ she asked, squinting.
The flashlight’s beam lowered, and Lacey blinked past the black spots in her vision to find Posy standing in the opening. He set a stool down and sat on it. He didn’t speak but looked down at his feet and shuffled nervously. To Lacey, he appeared shy. She hadn’t forgotten the slap he’d given her around the back of the head, though.
‘What do you want?’ she said, not attempting to be nice.
He cleared his throat, then made that strange, low, humming sound. ‘Hmm . . . these yours?’
For the first time, she noticed he carried something else. When he held them up, she recognised a handful of paperbacks.
‘No. Where did you get them?’
‘Your pack.’
Lacey shook her head, her eyes going back to the books. ‘Not mine, no.’ She knew whose they were. The Boy Scout had found the books he was looking for. She wanted to scoot across the floor and snatch them out of Posy’s hand, hunker covetously over them and page through each one, greedily reading every word.
‘You can read?’ Posy asked, looking hopefully at her.
She didn’t answer but held out her hand for him to pass the books over, holding her breath, hoping he couldn’t see how desperately she wanted them. When he did, she placed them carefully in her lap and looked at each one in turn. She took her time rubbing her thumb down the spine of each book, fanning the pages, a soft draught of musty air tickling her nose. For a moment tears filled her eyes, making reading the titles and authors i
mpossible. She pressed one book to her nose and breathed in. A droplet of moisture splashed on to the back cover. She sniffed and wiped it dry with her sleeve.
‘Can’t you?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Jus’ my name. Can write it, too. Never learned to read good, though. Mama said I had me a slow start, and I’m still catchin’ up. Wasn’t breathing when I popped out of her.’
‘Um, wow,’ she said, unsure how to respond to that.
‘Yep. I’m special.’ He tapped a finger to his head, looking proud. ‘Been told so.’
‘Special how?’
‘Special different.’
He’s ‘special’, all right, the voice said, not kindly.
‘You hear a voice?’ she asked, curiosity nibbling at her.
The guy’s brow dropped into a scowl. ‘No. I don’t hear nothin’.’ He seemed disappointed by the fact.
Lacey wanted to tell him he could have hers if he wanted.
Hey, the voice complained.
‘Do you read?’ he asked again.
‘Never did much as a kid,’ she admitted. ‘I wasn’t very good at sitting still for long. Preferred making mud kitchens and slug farms. My grams liked reading her gardening magazines, though, and my sister was obsessed with romance novels. So yeah, I can read.’ She held up the books he’d given her. ‘Did you want me to read one to you?’
Posy nodded fast, his frown melting away and a smile so happy spreading across his face it hurt her to look at him. This man may not have pulled the trigger, but he had helped kill her friend, and now he sat here pretending like nothing had happened. The stool was barely able to contain his gangly legs and eagerness.
‘You want to trade, then?’ she asked.
‘Trade?’ His happiness momentarily paused, his face twisted quizzically, his lack of understanding stamped all over it.
‘Right. Trade. I’ll read to you if you take me to see my friend.’
Posy stood up, came forward and snatched the books out of her hands. He grabbed up his stool and stepped outside, swinging the freezer door shut.
Lacey shot to her feet and was at the door as soon as the catch locked. Her hands shook, panic squeezing them into balls. ‘Wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it! I’ll read to you!’
Nothing.
She pressed her forehead to the cool surface of the door. ‘Posy, I’m sorry, OK? Just come back in and I’ll read to you. Please.’
Lacey stared at the floor, the strip of light broken up by two shadowy lumps where Posy’s feet stood on the other side.
He’s an idiot.
‘Posy?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Posy, I know you’re there. I can see your feet under the door.’
The latch unlocked and Lacey stood back as the door swung open.
His eyes were solemn, his mouth a straight line hidden in his reddish-brown, tufty beard. For the first time, Lacey realised he wasn’t all that much older than her, no more than nineteen or twenty.
‘No more tradin’?’ he asked her suspiciously.
‘No, no more talk of trading. Just story time. Word of honour.’ She held her hand up, palm outwards, to show she meant it.
He came back in, and she retreated to give him room, lowering herself on to the floor while he took his seat again. He leaned forward to hand her a book. Lacey took it, a fine tremble to her hand, and brushed a tender palm over the cover. Then she turned the pages reverently until she reached the first one full of writing.
Using her finger to keep her place, she glanced up. ‘Ready?’ She waited for Posy’s nod before she cleared her throat and began. ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes. A Prologue . . .’
She paused her reading at Chapter 14.
‘Do you think I could have some water?’
Posy blinked slowly at her. He was swimming back up to her after being submerged in an ocean of imaginary lands. ‘Water?’ he asked dully.
‘Yeah. My throat is dry.’
‘Hmm . . . OK, wait. I’ll get some.’ He jumped up and hurried out, pushing the heavy door shut behind him until it clunked closed.
He’d left his stool. Lacey stared at it, the three legs looking like an alien’s tripod machine, backlit by the strip of light running along the bottom of the doorframe. The long shadows of its legs crawled across the space between them, reaching out to her.
It’d be heavy, she thought. She could wait for Posy to come back. Wait for him to open the door and step inside, bring the stool down on his head with all her might. Brain him. Then run.
An image of the Boy Scout lying face down in the dust, dark blood pooling around his head, flashed into her mind, and she shook her head, muttering a ‘No!’ to herself. A ‘no’ to what she wasn’t sure.
Before she had decided on a course of action, Posy was back, struggling to pull the door open while holding a bowl of water.
It’s like you’re his pet, giving you a saucer to drink out of.
Shut up, she thought.
Posy cupped the bowl in both hands and offered it to her. She nodded and smiled her thanks and took the bowl, bringing it to her lips. She sipped cautiously at first, testing the lukewarm water, but it tasted fine, if a little stale. Filling her mouth, she swilled the tepid water around her teeth and gums and swallowed it down. She rested the bowl in her lap on top of the upside-down book, which was still open at the page she’d been reading from.
‘Is Posy your real name?’
He’d been biting at his dirty nails while he watched her drink. Now he spat out a piece and shook his head. ‘I jus’ like flowers.’
‘Which are your favourite?’ She took another small sip.
‘I like the li’l white ones with the yellow middles.’
‘Daisies?’
He nodded and moved on to his next nail. Is that what she looked like when she gnawed on her nails? She really had to quit. It was pretty disgusting.
She swirled the water around in her bowl. ‘Mine are lantana. Have you heard of them? They’re poisonous to most animals, including us, but birds can eat their berries. I like that. That they can be two things at once: poison or food, depending on who you are.’
He kept on biting.
‘But I get the Posy thing, I think,’ she went on. ‘Daisy’s too girly a name, right?’
As if Posy isn’t.
Posy grunted and spat out another bit of nail. ‘You gonna read some more?’
Lacey nodded slowly. ‘In a minute. I need to finish my water.’ She swirled the bowl some more and lifted it, casually pausing before taking a sip. ‘Posy, what are they going to do with us?’ She drank, watching him over the bowl’s lip.
He had stopped biting his nails, his hand poised in front of his mouth. He met her eyes for a split second and then dropped his gaze to the ground. He shrugged. ‘Doc put you in here. Freezers make good lock-ups, he said.’
‘So you’ve captured other people, too? What’s happened to them?’
Posy lowered his hand and glanced over his shoulder, leaning back to see if anyone was near enough to overhear. He looked back at her and lowered his voice. ‘Don’t always get to see. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they jus’ up ’n’ disappear.’
‘Disappear where?’
He shrugged again. ‘Sometimes they get moved. Other times killed, I guess. Sometimes eaten. That’s Dolores – says she gets tole to eat ’em. She’s a crazy old bitch.’ That last bit was said as though he was repeating something he’d overheard one time.
The skin on the back of Lacey’s neck went ice-cold. A fist reached right inside her and grabbed hold of her guts, squeezing them tight, and for a second she thought she would puke up the water she had just drunk.
‘If I disappear,’ she told him, ‘I won’t be able to read to you any more.’
‘I know,’ he said sadly. ‘Can’t find Princess neither.’
Lacey placed the empty bowl beside her. ‘I can help you look for her.’
He didn’t seem convinced.
Posy had gone back to staring at his knees. ‘I’m not s’posed to let you out. I’d get in trouble again.’
Like with Red?
‘Is that what happened with Red?’ Lacey asked softly. ‘You helped her get free and she ran away?’
He looked up at her sharply. ‘It was an accident. I jus’ left for a second to go get her food. She couldn’t eat prop’ly no more, see. When I got back she’d up ’n’ disappeared, like some of the others do, ’cept not the usual disappeared – this one was a bad disappeared. Boss wasn’t happy. He liked her to tell him ’bout the stuff in her head.’ Posy wrapped his arms around his middle and rocked on his stool, the flashlight’s beam rocking back and forth with him, the swinging light making Lacey nauseous.
Stuff in her head? Ask him what—
But Lacey was already talking. ‘She must’ve been real scared to run away like that.’
‘Flitting Man scared her but good. Scared everyone good.’ Posy stopped rocking and peered closely at her. ‘I shouldn’ talk to you no more. I’ll get in trouble.’
‘It’s OK, I won’t tell anyone. This can be our little secret. Just the two of us.’
What’s the Flitting Man?
‘Red is good,’ Posy said. ‘She was good to me. Didn’t hafta be nice, but she was. It wasn’t right what got done to her.’
‘What got done to her, Posy? What scared her so bad?’
His eyes narrowed and he went back to chewing his nails, mumbling from behind his hand, all the while watching her. ‘She tole Boss someone was comin’. Someone with death in his eyes. That she’d met him afore, long ago in the desert, and that his job was to put the pieces t’gether so that people like the Boss and Doc and the Flitting Man ain’t got no hold no more. She wasn’t tellin’ him to warn him. No, sir. She was tellin’ him like Jeb tells me sometimes when he’s took my blanket. The one with the patches. Took it away and hid it, and won’t tell me where. Like that. Like she liked knowin’ ’bout what was comin’. Red is good,’ he said, nodding firmly. ‘The Boss ain’t. Flitting Man is worse. But Red is good, and she didn’t like neither of those two. Not one bit. It was my job to watch her, keep her safe. She liked me. Said she wanted me to stay close, away from Doc. She wasn’t allowed out, see. She was too precious to be let out.’