Jamb (The Cornerstone Series)

by Misty Provencher

If this is what I think it is…oh my God, honey. They’re trapping the souls that haven’t been written. I think they’re trapped in the bricks. These bricks must be sealed with varnish they make from Manga leaves. That varnish blocks the souls from getting out, not from getting in.

  I listen carefully and I hear so many voices. My mother is the most desperate, beating on something and shrieking my name, to get my attention, but I can’t look up. I don’t know if it is a mistake to let her know I hear her. I also hear the disorganized chorus behind her chanting, Help us and Don’t let them bring you in.

  Halfway down the sloped path, I ask my father, If I walk in here, does that mean you won’t be able to get back out with me?

  I don’t know.

  I can try to run, I tell him, but I already know it’s impossible even before he answers.

  Not with all those goons behind you. Besides, The Fury is behind this and if anyone can help you with them, it’s me. We’ll figure this out. We’re in this together, honey.

  It might be the first time in my life that I’m relieved that my father is near.

  The whispers and shouts from within the brick don’t get any louder, but they don’t go away. The smell, the brick, the trapped souls—everything about this makes me feel like we’re being funneled into a crypt. And that we’ll never get back out.

  But I plod forward anyway, with Milo and Ms. Fisk and the crazed Selfish walking behind me. I keep hoping that at any minute the Ianua will do their own ambush. With every step, I keep expecting Garrett to come running back from the front, or for Milo to start fighting, or for something bigger than life to happen that would change our decent on this stone path to something different than a death march.

  I hope it.

  I wish it.

  I pray for it so hard that I start to feel a little crazy myself. Nothing changes. Nothing happens. Nothing, but getting closer to the stone archway at the bottom of the bricks.

  I can’t help being afraid. I wish my mother would stop calling my name. I glance at the brick from the corner of my eye and mumble, Mankind, hoping it will quiet her.

  Ms. Fisk says, “What did you say?”

  Milo gives me a hard shove and I stumble into Larson. He grunts with the impact, but manages to keep us both from falling over. As he rights himself, I wonder if he’s not so weak as he seems. I wonder if he will be the one that busts us out of here. Maybe he has a plan.

  I hope it.

  I wish it.

  “Go in,” Milo barks to Larson and me as we close in on the archway. Maybe this is the Jamb they were talking about. It’s a tall, cement block opening and it looks exactly like the entrance to a crypt. I swallow down my fear. And I don’t close my eyes as I walk over the threshold.

  We’re in a huge, circular room that looks like walls have been knocked down to make it even huger. It’s like an entrance hall or, from the way we’re all crowded together, a holding pen.

  “The Jamb!” A man giggles at my left. He paws in the air, toward me, as if he is teasing me with something I don’t know. And he is. I snap my knees into place so I don’t shrink away from him. I fix my gaze on him like a rock, holding it until he shrinks away himself. But in my head, I’m repeating the mantra Mr. Reese had me choose to blot out my fears: mom, mom, mom.

  The pawing man shrieks, “We want the Jamb for her!”

  “I want to see it now,” a woman beside him says. The pawing man giggles to her and the woman repeats, as if he didn’t hear her, “I want to see it now.”

  He grabs her face and rams his tongue into her mouth. I look away fast.

  Across the room, a man with a shaved head jumps on top of a rickety chair. “Who’s betting? Bring me the money! 5 to 1 odds against the male!”

  “Oh, anybody can see he’s gonna die!” a woman hoots. “Too bad we don’t have an Addo anymore. I kinda liked hearing who was getting ripped out of them.”

  “Lookit the girl, with her chin in the air!” Another woman points to me. “So fancy! I can’t wait to see her drop!”

  “I hope she makes it,” the man from the truck pitches in. He is rubbing his leg again, a slow caress that totally freaks me out. My impulse is to step away, but my instinct is to stand strong and glare at the man, even as he strokes his thigh.

  Milo is off to the side, but I won’t turn my head to look at him. He may be on my side, but if he’s just going to stand there and let them do whatever horrible thing they have planned, then I can’t stand to look at him. He is worse than a coward. I will never speak to him again. If I’m here to speak at all.

  Mom, mom, mom, mom, I repeat it like one long word in my head.

  I won’t let them get to me.

  I won’t.

  I keep insisting it to myself, and almost buy it even, until I glimpse the back of Garrett’s head. He is walking away, out of the entry hall, with Teagan. I watch him disappear through an opened archway with her, his arm over her shoulders. He never turns back to look at me even once.

  I am alone.

  Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, I chant. The mantra widens. My mom loves me, she loves me, my mom is with me, always.

  But it is my father’s voice that comes through, I love you too, Nalena. I’m here for you, honey. I’m here.

  I don’t know what to reply to that. He still is what he is. I don’t love him, but I don’t hate him anymore either. At least it’s comforting to know that someone, even if it has to be him, is with me.

  “Kill the man first!” a woman shouts.

  “I want to see if the girl makes it!”

  “No, the man! The man first!”

  The shouting spins around the room and comes at me from all directions. I stare at a spot on the wall, streaming my mantra through my mind.

  “We will wait for the Mastermind!” Ms. Fisk shouts.

  “He doesn’t care about seeing the Jamb. All he cares is that they’re in there!” A man snaps. Ms. Fisk shakes her head, but the crowd becomes more insistent.

  “Mastermind’s gone!” a man shrieks through the noise. “He’s not even here!”

  Someone throws a chair and shouts, “Who wants the Jamb?” and the chant rises up, “Jamb! Jamb! Jamb!”

  The word passes like a disease, clinging to the lips of The Fury, until the whole room is saying it. A fight breaks out near the door where we entered and people scramble both toward it and away from it. A couple across the room press each other against the wall, pawing and kissing as if they’re lives depend on it, right in front of everyone.

  “Mastermind’s gone…sounds like we do the Jamb!” a man yells. Ms. Fisk’s frown cuts deeply into her thick face.

  “Fine,” she says, rolling her eyes behind her rectangular glasses. “Just do it and let’s get on with things.”

  After what can be broken in the room is broken, whoever’s left standing places their bets. The couple against the wall are half-naked and some of The Fury stand around them and stare. Some do worse things. Some don’t even notice because they’re chanting for Larson to be thrown into the Jamb.

  I look for a pit, but there are no holes in the floor. It’s even more confusing when they take a pole from the wall and use a lasso on the end to open a door knob on a dark, wood door at the back of the circular room.

  “Yo!” the man that worked the pole hollers into the room. “Time’s up! Get out!”

  We wait a few seconds before two couples stumble out. They squint in the light, but they’re grinning wildly. Except for one of the women who just looks exhausted.

  “Who wants in next?” the man with the pole asks. The couple against the wall suddenly peel away from each other. The girl grabs the boy’s hand and drags him through the door.

  “Anybody else?” the man asks. The creepy guy, who was rubbing his leg in the truck, dives in after the couple. Once he’s in, the man turns back to the crowd. “If that’s everybody, then everyone’s gotta back up, so I can bring down the curtain.”

  “Back up yourself!” the answer is shouted from the
opposite side of the room and followed by laughter. Even Larson snorts a laugh, which earns him a hard poke with the pole.

  “Unless you want to go in the Jamb yourself, you better step back!” the man barks. “And put the two of ‘em in!”

  Milo’s hand is on my shoulder. He gives me a reassuring squeeze, but then it’s his hands that push both Larson and me forward, close to the door of the room where the couple and the creepy man have disappeared. As I move closer, I hear the sounds from the room, moaning and slurping, and I try to turn away, but Milo gives me such a hard shove, I fall on my knees.

  Milo turns and dodges out of the way as the man with the pole releases from the ceiling what looks like an enormous, clear plastic shower curtain. The thing swings down, separating the crowd from me and Larson. The faces are distorted as I look through the curtain, but then the crowd presses closer, moving the curtains toward us.

  The opposite end of the pole, an end with a small hook screwed into the tip of the handle, is inserted through a sealed flap in the curtain. I duck as it slides past me.

  “Move!” I shout to Larson, but even though he teeters out of the way, the end of the pole bashes into him. I hear the laughter on the other side as he hits the floor, but the people near Larson move in more tightly and push him back onto his feet. The hook has left a gash on his back that melts into a small crimson stain on his shirt.

  The pole slides again, past Larson this time, to the door, but it stops abruptly at the threshold. The man outside announces, like a circus ring leader, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Today, for your pleasure, the gentleman will go first!”

  Their excited cries aren’t muffled at all. They’re deafening. And then the side of the curtain, where Larson stands wobbling, moves and begins to scoot him toward the doorway. From inside the room comes a heady moan from the woman. It’s not the sound of torture—but knowing what will happen to me in that room makes it just as bad. Larson takes a step toward the door on his own.

  “Don’t go!” I say, but Larson just turns and gives me a grin.

  “Gotta say, it’s not me I’m afraid for. It’s you,” he says. “I’ll keep ‘em off as long as I can. Or die tryin’.”

  The hands, pushing behind the plastic, shove him just short of the doorway. The hook on the end of the pole, which had been poised at the top of the threshold, catches on a tiny eye ring, suspended like mistletoe. The man outside the curtain yanks the pole back, pulling a wood slat out of the top of the door jamb.

  My field is up and my father groans inside it.

  What’s wrong? I ask.

  I can hear them. It hurts to hear them! I want to go to them. The other spirits. They’re caught inside the walls, he pants his reply, as if it is taking everything in him to speak and every word is a war against himself. The Fury are holding them hostage. This side of the curtain is coated in Manga. I can’t escape. I want to go to them, Nali. Let me go! No! I can’t. I can’t! Honey, get away from that door!

  I try to back up, but the mob presses against me. I feel their fingers and nails through the plastic. Larson’s side surges forward, pushing him at the helm.

  He stumbles into the doorway. And the moment he stands beneath the opened door jamb, his body spasms. His spine curls backward and his hands shrivel like claws. He shrieks.

  They’re tearing his Connection out! My father curses. Honey, listen to me! Listen! His tone becomes pained and distant as he moans, Oh my God, I need to be with them…

  Dad? I holler as Larson’s body twists like a bendy straw. Dad? Stay with me! I…I need you!

  Larson howls, throwing his head back. A flash of dust jumps from him, rising up like a cloud of fog, over the top of him. For an instant, the fog nearly takes form. I can make out a mouth, opened and howling too, but then it crumbles as it is sucked into the hole in the door jamb.

  The plastic-coated hands behind the curtain reach out and drag Larson out of the doorway. The Fury inspect his through the plastic and their disgusting words trickle through to me.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Almost.”

  “Can we still trade him back? What will they give us if he’s not all the way dead?”

  Dad? I shout inside my head. What do I do?

  I hear my father gulp a breath and his voice returns, even though it is short, breathless—tortured. Before you walk into that doorframe, baby, you got to tell me you don’t need me as your Connection anymore. Tell me to leave. I think I can separate in time.

  Where are you going?

  He pauses. Huffs another breath. I’m going to be with your mother. And your grandpa. It’s time for me to make amends.

  No! I shriek. They can’t be trapped. They were supposed to have gone on—to Heaven or the afterlife or another life or wherever it is we go when we die. Not here, with their knowledge trapped behind this brick and their lives forgotten.

  But the crowd surges behind me and I fall forward, toward the doorway.

  Go, I growl in my head. Get out of here, Dad. I don’t want you as my Connection anymore.

  I throw a hard elbow back at whoever is pushing me and hear a satisfying grunt. Then, I shove back my shoulders and step into the Jamb.

  CHAPTER

  The feeling is as if a giant has taken both my arms and is trying to yank them off.

  I am ripped open and my father is torn from me, screaming.

  Both of us screaming.

  We scream like we are dying, because it feels like half of me is. I scream until my voice gives out.

  Then I am lifted. I think it is Garrett. He places my arms around his neck and I use everything left in me to hang on. I wait for his indigo touch to pour into me. But it doesn’t. I take a breath and my lungs fill with patchouli. I cough it out.

  “Be quiet,” Milo whispers.

  It’s not like I’m going to argue, only because I think he’s gathering up bits of me, rather than just carrying me away. He takes me and I don’t watch where we’re going, or pay attention to how long it takes to get there. My head bounces against his chest and I smell the patchouli rising off his skin and the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t care. About anything.

  I don’t care that I’m here.

  Or that Garrett left me.

  Or that Larson was still lying on the floor, not moving, when Milo carried me away.

  I don’t care that Milo takes me to a room and sets me down outside so he can drag a man out who is too small to fight back.

  I don’t care that the bed is soft.

  I don’t care when he tells me I’m going to be okay and it sounds like he’s only guessing.

  It’s impossible to care about any of it when it still feels like I am a gaping hole.

  “This will pass,” Milo says from the edge of the bed.

  “Did you do it?” I ask listlessly.

  “What?”

  “Kill the Moxes.”

  He pauses. “They were dead already.”

  I just close my eyes.

  There is a knock at the door, but Milo doesn’t open it. The knock is more insistent and finally, Milo goes to the door and hardly whispers, “What do you want?” through the door.

  “Open,” Garrett says. I don’t open my eyes, even though Milo opens the door. “Where is she?”

  I don’t hear Milo say anything, but Garrett’s feet cross the room to me. His fingers are on me, but his indigo touch only feels like drops of pastel watercolor, splashing and spreading until the color is so weak that it disappears before it can heal me.

  “Nalena,” he says. I should want to open my eyes. I should, but I don’t. “Nalena.”

  “It’s going to take time,” Milo says.

  “But she’s going to be okay.” It’s a question, an affirmation, a plea. “She knows I’m here, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo says. “It might’ve wiped her memory or she could just be recuperating. We won’t know until she starts talking again.”

  “You couldn’t keep her out of there?” Gar
rett’s accusation come in a hot whisper. Milo drops his volume just like Garrett does.

  “They don’t trust me around here anymore than you do. I’ve got to earn my way back in and there was no way to keep her out without giving everything away. Besides, I didn’t see you trying to do anything about it.”

  I should tell Milo that he’s making a huge mistake. That Garrett will rip off his ears and feed them to him, if he keeps talking like that. I should want to warn him. But I don’t.

  “You’re not earning your way back in by using her,” Garrett snarls.

  “Look,” Milo says, “we’ve all got to earn our way in using somebody. The same way you’re doing it with Teagan.”

  “I’m only with her to protect my brother’s daughter.”

  “You’re with her because if you were with Nalena, they’d kill both of you, after torturing you for whatever you’ve got on the Ianua,” Milo corrects. “And they still might do that, but what’s keeping you safe right now is Teagan. I’m not throwing down on you, Garrett, but let’s call it what it is. If anybody gets a whiff that your relationship with Teagan isn’t real, you can expect a whole lot worse to happen to you than just the Jamb. Same with me being with Nalena. So man-up and lets do this right, so no one gets killed.

  “We’ve got to find out what The Fury is up to. And you’ve got to play this game so hard that everyone believes you’re trading out to The Fury. They’ve got to believe that you’re with Teagan and I’m with Nalena. It’s the only way any of us have a chance to find out anything, and hopefully, stay alive if we do.”

  Garrett doesn’t respond to Milo. Instead, his lips are suddenly on my temple. I smell him and feel what must be his tear, splatting on my temple and running straight down my forehead to the mattress.

  “Please,” he begs, “please open your eyes.”

  I don’t.

  “You better get back before Teagan notices you’re gone,” Milo says.

  Garrett ignores Milo and whispers to me again, “Please, Nalena. I need it.”

  But I feel like I’ve been in a huge car accident and half of me is laying on one side of the road and the other half is in the opposite ditch. I can’t do a thing he needs me to. There’s too much I need for myself right now.