Jamb (The Cornerstone Series)

by Misty Provencher

  “I’ll take care of her,” Milo says. “Just go, before you blow it for all of us.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “I know,” Milo says, but there is something about the way he says it that sounds like he is smiling. Like he has some secret, like he knows he has the better hand to play in this game. “Now go.”

  I should care that Garrett kisses my cheek again before he leaves. I know I should care that he leaves.

  But I don’t.

  ***

  “If we want food, we have to go out and get it,” Milo tells me. I watched him rifle through a pile of garbage left in a corner, looking for anything useful, before he gathered up everything and tossed it outside. He tells me that’s how you mark your space in The Fury. If you want a place, you take it from someone else and then throw out everything that belongs to them.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say. Because I don’t even care if I ever eat again. I haven’t moved since Milo dumped me on the bed. I didn’t say a word when Milo climbed onto the bed and curled up against my back, his arm over my waist. We slept like that for hours. When I woke up, Milo was not curled around me anymore and I finally opened my eyes to watch him toss everything out of the little room.

  My stomach rumbles.

  “That means hungry,” he says. “You just aren’t noticing it because of what they did. When your Connection is removed like that, it’s such a trauma to your system that everything goes numb for a while. You have to get moving again for it to heal.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Some things, I just know,” he says. “Come on, let’s go get some food. We’re going looting.”

  “We have to steal it?”

  “Well,” he pauses as if he’s thinking of lying. Then he says, “Yeah. The Fury isn’t the Ianua, Nali. It’s not like they have pantries full of food. If there was ever a pantry, The Fury would kill each other to get everything in it and then hide it from each other.”

  “Then you go. I’ll watch the room,” I say. I haven’t even lifted my head off the bed. I’m kind of sure I’ll be the next person that gets thrown out of this room, once Milo’s gone. And I couldn’t care less.

  “Nope. You’re too weak right now. If you’re not with me, they’ll kill you.”

  “They already did that,” I say, but Milo shakes his head.

  “I meant dead,” he says.

  “So did I,” I tell him. Milo kicks the leg of the bed so the whole thing shakes.

  “Whatever, Walking Dead,” he says. “Let’s go. We’ve got to see if we can find Trig and Van and Mark. And you might not care about eating, but I do.”

  ***

  Milo kicks the bed again. And again. And again, until I finally get up. I follow him out of the room and wait by the door as Milo grabs the little guy he threw out earlier, who is sitting beside his pile of belongings.

  “Watch my room,” Milo snarls at him.

  The little guy, with his thin, combed-over hair and sloppy pants, fumbles onto his feet and says, “If you let me sleep in there.”

  “Maybe,” Milo says. “I’ll have to see, when I get back.”

  “Okay.” The guy settles back down into his pile of junk. “I’ll watch. Bring me back something to eat.”

  “Just watch my place.” I follow Milo down the hall. I start wondering how the sleeping arrangements are going to work, with only one bed in one little room and three of us.

  “You’re going to let that guy in the room with you?”

  “You mean, with us?”

  “I mean with you. I’ll find my own place.”

  “No, you won’t,” Milo says, turning a corner. “We need to stick together. And no, I don’t trust anyone here to sleep with us.”

  I let the whole us thing go because letting him curling up with me was a one time thing. I didn’t care then, but I care now. I can sleep on the floor. Or I’ll find myself another place. Somehow.

  We pass by the main entrance hall, where we came in. Clear plastic curtains hang over the doors, just like the one The Fury stood behind and used to shield themselves as they pushed me into the Jamb.

  “What happened to Larson? Was he alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo shrugs as he glances around to see who is watching us. “We probably traded him back to the Ianua.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything.”

  Peering in, there are long sheets of plastic hanging from the ceiling, creating a corridor that stretches from the dark room with the Jamb, all the way to the stone archway that leads outside. When I stand still, I catch wisps of voices, but they are so jumbled, I can’t make out their words.

  “Why is the plastic like that?” I ask.

  “That’s how we lure the spirits,” Milo says. We. His tone implies that the spirits are something disgusting, and then I understand why he sounds like that, as a man stumbles past us. The man stares, reaching out a filthy hand to touch me. I don’t even bother to pull away, but Milo grabs the man’s wrist, pressing it backward until the man yelps. He gives the man a shove away and barks, “Don’t touch what’s mine! Next time, I’ll break it right off!”

  The man rubs his wrist and glares, but stumbles away. Instead of asking if I’m okay, Milo starts back up where he left off, explaining the plastic sheeting. “Spirits seek out the Alo. That’s why the Alo take turns using the room for…well, you know. Let’s just say, they don’t mind passing the time being bait. So, when the sheets are up, it means the Alo are in the room and the Jamb is open. We’ve created a curtain-track, right from the stone arch to the Jamb, and the souls just flood in, looking for the Alo. Then they hear the other spirits and they can’t resist it. They’re drawn into the Jamb and trapped.”

  “Too stupid to turn around and run,” I say, in case anyone is listening to us, and he nods, as if I’m getting the idea.

  “The souls don’t resist much—they feel the pull to the Alo, because souls want to be written, but those who figure out that something’s wrong, they can’t penetrate the Manga-coating on the curtains anyway.”

  “Brilliant.” I look away. “Where are we looting?”

  “This way.” Milo keeps walking and I follow. This underground place is more sprawling and extensive than I could’ve guessed. It’s like an underground hotel, with hallways full of doors leading into closet-sized rooms, and at the end of each hall, there are huge rooms that look like they were once meant for meetings and dining and big, community get-togethers. But the big rooms aren’t used for what they might’ve been meant for. Now, they look like they are used for brawling, dumping off garbage, and squatting spots for the weaker Selfish, who get thrown out of their rooms.

  We enter one room and a woman stirs in the corner. When she raises her head, I can see that someone’s under her. She lowers her head back down and the woman smiles as she strokes the chest of whoever’s beneath her.

  “You love me. Just me. Don’t look at her. There’s just me,” the woman croons. The body beneath her doesn’t even move and I wonder dully if the person under there is even alive. It doesn’t seem like she cares, either way. And it’s her lack of care that suddenly freaks me out about mine.

  Maybe the Jamb has done more than remove my father as my Connection. Maybe it’s made me one of them. Maybe that was my father’s intention all along.

  Except that when his field and mine were ripped apart, he went screaming, even though he said he wanted to go into the Jamb to be with my mom. And I haven’t heard anything since. No voices in the walls, no whispers of my name.

  Milo turns and I follow, into a hallway where we are alone. I still whisper my question to him.

  “What is the Jamb for?”

  “To gather up and stop the knowledge.” He drops into step beside me as he whispers back. He also reaches down and takes my hand. It seems weird, but I don’t pull my hand away. If someone pops up in the hall, it will look better to be holding hands. Milo glances at me. “The more spirits are trapped, the less Memories are
recorded and the knowledge—hopefully, it’s the knowledge that stops us from getting to live the lives we want—is snuffed.”

  “Real death,” I say. “We forget everyone, but ourselves.”

  “It’s the perfect life. Care frickin’ free,” a voice says as it walks toward us. I lift my gaze off the floor to see a beautiful face I never thought I’d see again.

  “Mark?” I scream and feel the urge to hug him. I rush at him and the one thing that comes back to me is that I care.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I nearly tackle Mark in a hug that isn’t returned. I wait for his arms to fling around me as I stretch mine around him and his backpack, but when they don’t, I know something is majorly wrong. I untangle myself awkwardly and realize how stiff Mark’s body is as I back away. His face remains blank.

  “You should ask before you touch people,” he says. It’s a scolding. From Mark. Garrett’s adorable little brother, who was always cracking jokes and bouncing his Hacky Sack off my head. Now, he’s staring at me like I’ve turned into a stranger and he’s become a military man. His voice, maybe just because his answers are clipped, even sounds deeper. “I hate being touched and if you do it again, I’ll break your arm.”

  “Sorry,” I say. It hurts so much to see Mark not being Mark, the sound of my heart cracking in half should echo. This must be why he didn’t come back. They probably put him in the Jamb too. Maybe he still doesn’t care, because none of us came for him. Maybe he traded out to The Fury.

  “You seen the Mastermind yet?” he asks. Milo answers for me.

  “Nope. But Nalena went through the Jamb.”

  There is a flicker in Mark’s eyes that I can’t interpret. Then, with a sickening smile, he says, “Good.”

  “How about you? You seen the Mastermind around?” Milo asks as Mark brushes past me.

  “Nope. You going on a raid?”

  “Yup,” Milo answers just as coldly. Mark turns and points in the direction opposite from where we are heading.

  “Go out the South exit.”

  “I’ll go out any exit I want,” Milo says and Mark laughs.

  “Fine. Keep going. Go out the North and get killed.”

  “Why? What’s out the North exit?” I ask. I can’t help but hope that Mark, the one I know, is still in this shell that’s walking around and that maybe a little spark of care is warming him to try and protect us.

  “Ghosts and goblins and witches, dummy,” he says and then, with one hand on the strap of his backpack, he turns and walks away.

  “Come on,” Milo says, continuing the same way we were going, after Mark’s disappeared.

  “He said not to go this way.”

  “Of course he did. The Fury are never going to steer you straight. He’s probably trying to keep a huge pile of treasure for himself.”

  “What if he’s not? What if he really is trying to warn us?”

  “Then we fight,” Milo throws up his hands, annoyed. “Stop questioning every damn thing I say and just do what I tell you, got it?”

  He grabs my hand and I give it a second before I dodge a glance over my shoulder, expecting to see someone trailing along behind us, listening to the show Milo’s putting on for them. But, no. No one is there.

  ***

  We trudge along the hall and it feels like we’re climbing a mountain, although I don’t notice the slant of the floor until I look behind me. It’s some weird, optical illusion, I think. Milo pulls on my hand and it takes me a few minutes before I give it some thought and wrench it away.

  I’ve got to remember who I am. Even if I have to play along to stay alive, it doesn’t mean that I have to do whatever Milo wants. But the second I pull my hand back, Milo grabs it again. This time I kick him in the shin, hard enough that he lets go and hops backward once in pain. But then he’s got my hand again.

  “You belong to me,” he snarls.

  Under my breath, I snarl back, “You know the only one I belong to.”

  “Garrett,” Milo sneers.

  “No,” I say, yanking my hand out of his grasp again. “Me.”

  We stop at a stone archway, much like the one we entered through, but this one has a black door. Instead of opening the door, Milo twists and pins me to the wall. My field is up and I punch my Cavis down so hard, it goes into the sole of my shoe.

  Milo and I flash around each other, him getting me in a hold and me escaping it, me throwing a punch at his jaw and him ducking it. But our movements aren’t graceful or full of little surprise kisses, like when Garrett and I fought. No, this fight is awkward and choppy and I totally mean to knock his teeth out.

  “Enough!” Milo roars, but I don’t stop. I spot his drifting Cavis, but he moves it away too fast and I can’t see any pattern of where it is headed. I jab at it at his elbow, at his wrist, and try to bash it right into the side of his head, but none of the hits even phase him. None are his true weak point.

  And then his finger darts toward my heart, and I think for a split second that maybe I’m not standing on my Cavis anymore, but I am. And now it’s too late. He shocked me and in the moment I hesitated to question myself, he knocks me down and pins me really hard this time, on the ground.

  I feel his entire body laying on me. He doesn’t suspend any of his weight. He’s breathing fast and every time he inhales, his chest expands and crushes mine.

  “Get off me,” I pant and, manage to squeak out, “you ox.”

  “I love it when you fight me,” he says loud enough for anyone in the hall to hear, and then he dips his head into my hair, as if he’s kissing my neck. But he whispers fiercely into my ear instead. “They’re always watching, do you get that? Always. Check your pride, because if you want to stay alive, they have to believe I’m on their side and that I can control you. Last time I say it.”

  I don’t struggle. I can’t. He’s smashing me. His breathing slows, but his hips are pressed against mine and I can feel every muscle he’s got from the waist down. I don’t trust him, but I don’t see that I have any other choice but to do what he says. He lifts his head away and fixes his eyes on mine.

  “Are you going to be good?” he says. If I could get his lip between my teeth, I’d bite it off and spit it back in his face.

  “Sure,” I say and he smiles.

  “Good girl.” He rolls away, and I still kick him as he does. He just laughs, jumping onto his feet and hauling me onto mine. We walk until the hall comes to a dead end, the ceiling slanting into the wall. A plastic step, like the ones outside the Addo’s old trailer, sit beneath a rectangular block cut in the wall.

  “This is the North exit?” I say, sniffing. The smell of sour smoke leaches in.

  “The Fury always send each other on goose chases. The South exit is probably the dangerous one,” Milo says and he grabs my hand, swinging the tiny door open.

  ***

  The door is more like an escape hatch. We climb out and kneel beneath the girders of an overpass. When Milo closes the door behind us, I see that the outer side of the door looks exactly like the slanted brick we’re standing on. Well, hunched over and squatting on.

  The smoke chokes me right away. Milo pulls my shirt up, and before I can slap away his hand, he cups it to my nose. He’s got his cupped to his nose too. We’re even, except that my bra is showing. His eyes crinkle at the edges as he dodges a glance at my chest and then back at my face. And the only reason that I don’t punch him in the head is because I get a look at what is all around us.

  We’re standing on the slanted bricks, beneath a silent overpass. It makes me feel all disoriented, climbing out of a little hatch onto the downward slant beneath a bridge. The Fury’s hideout is embedded in the berm that rises up and away from the edge of a four lane express way.

  The first thing I see, jamming the four lanes of the express way below is the pile-up of cars. They’re smashed and accordion-ed together. There are black tire marks leading to the crash, pools of every color of car fluid all around it. An economy car is wedged und
er a semi truck, the top sheered back like a convertible. The smoke isn’t coming from the wreck, but the smell of it is still awful and only some of the car doors are open, as if the ones who were able to walk away, did. There are no other signs that rescue trucks came or that anyone stopped to help. From the looks and smell, I’m betting no one has.

  Milo tugs me along with him, walking on the slanted bricks beneath the bridge and parallel to the car crash. The sky is dark with a coming storm, but as far as I can see down the road, there are a zillion crashes just like the one in front of us. I think I see some bodies lying in the road too. I look away.

  We climb out from under the overpass and onto the grass. Smoke billows, hot and black, over the edge of the embankment. We climb up it anyway. When we peek up over the side, past the ramp that leads back down onto the expressway, I see a subdivision and the reason for all the smoke. Three houses, closest to the road, are on fire.

  In the world I know, the wail of fire trucks would be cutting through the air. People would be swarming, trying to help and trying to put out the fire. Something would be happening. But here, three houses are on fire and the only sound in the air is the licking of the flames, the wood beams falling in on themselves, and laughter. Laughter.

  I scan for it and find a couple with filled pillow cases thrown over their shoulders, laughing as they walk toward us. The minute they see us, the woman drops her pillow case on the ground and pulls a pistol from her waistband, aiming it right at my head.

  “Git,” she says, flicking the barrel to show Milo and I which way we need to go. Milo puts up one hand, to show we’re peaceful, and grabs me with the other. We climb up the rest of the embankment and make a wide arc around the couple. The woman keeps the pistol aimed on us as we jog away. When I check over one shoulder, the gun is still aimed and the man swoops down and snatches up the woman’s pillow case. Once we’re at a safe distance, the woman swings back on the man and aims the gun straight at him.