Walking with Screech makes me feel... better. Like there's something to focus on, and there's a purpose to everything.
It's a few hours into our fourth day of walking when Screech makes another observation I hadn't.
“You know, you were the first person I met on the way up the stairs.”
“Yeah...” I don't feel like that was hard for me to remember. I avoid the edge a bit more carefully now, especially since it's getting smaller.
“Meaning Creep fell.”
I can't help the grin that splits my face. “You always know exactly what to say, Scree.”
That's something I always used to tell Todd, too. But that was more out of courtesy than anything else, because Todd never knew what to say. I mean, he always had something ready, but it was never the right something, y'know?
In the same way that I don't know how long I've been on the staircase, I don't know how long Screech and I have been walking. There are nights and days but I don't count them, and it begins to feel eternal. It almost begins to feel like Screech and I were always on the staircase together, and the whole stuff with Todd and the others was just a figment of my memory that is so far away, like years or centuries ago, though I know it couldn't've been that long. I feel like Screech keeps track, but never once have I asked him the day.
On what feels like our eighteenth eternity, we're walking up the staircase as normal when there's a gust of wind – just a normal wind, as far as we're concerned, rather typical, with the hollers of broken, hollow souls that have been lost. Screech shivers, like he always does, and I feel a bit nauseated but I don't really respond to it that much.
And then, something that's never happened before starts happening.
It starts raining.
It happens all at once, no warning by a clap of thunder or anything. It just attacks us, raining down.
“Oh!” Screech screams, jumping nearly into my arms. I let out a blood curdling shout of my own, which is ironic, because the rain
is made
from
blood.
The rain is coming down in blankets, and it's loud and deafening, the sound, and the smell is total iron, and you can taste and feel the thickness of it. It's not like water, it's blood and it's so cold, so strangely cold for blood.
“Oh my God!” I am yelling, and immediately I flatten against the definitely much slimmer stairs, just in defense, clinging on to the ashen ground as the world rains blood upon us.
But Screech is not so insightful, and merely stumbles against the now very slippery surface. I try to warn him, my eyes wide as I see him stumble and fumble with his own feet, obviously about to take a turn for the worst.
He begins to pitch off the edge of the staircase, and the look of blank terror that fills his face fills my soul completely, in the same magnitude.
I'd never really loved anyone before, not in any capacity that I could remember. Not like a father, not like a brother, or a sister, or a boyfriend. There is no such thing as love in a world like this.
But suddenly I know the moment he topples over I'll never see those eyes again – and today I am positive they are blue – never see the suspicious glare, the way he speaks to me, the rigidness of his face, the bend of his small, slim little body, and then I am sure that this is a form of love, this fear, this need to have him here, this thought that he might disappear into nothing that makes a growl, like that of a ferocious creature, rise from my mouth and tear through the air, gnaw at my now blood-covered throat, igniting the particles of blood that were raining down on us; I leap into the sky, grabbing the child and pulling him down, back on the staircase, staying on top of him, my arms secured around him.
It's minutes before I stop screaming and when I do, I notice he is sobbing, wrapped against me. I hush him and pet his head as I lie there, very obviously attempting to protect him from the world around us, that wants us to die and fail. That wants us to get soaked in red rain.
“You saved my life,” he whispers, hoarsely, below me. Or maybe he is yelling. The rain is so loud that I'm sure he must be, but it sounds like a whisper.
I don't even have an answer for him.
“Oh, my God, you saved my life,” he repeats.
“I just...” I still have no answer, but staying silent seems almost rude.
“I could have died,” he breathes, or maybe he speaks at normal volume – I can't tell anymore. I bite my lip and shake my head, slightly, but not in reply to him, just because of how cold the rain is. It's like small, tiny daggers of ice that assault us, bringing hell down to earth.
It's the assumption that heaven is above Earth, hell below, but now, coughing up blood that may be my own or just the rain's, I can't tell. I can't tell.
“You didn't, though,” I return, at whatever his volume was.
“But I could have.”
“But you didn't.”
“Don't let me go.” For the first time, he sounds his age. He sounds like a child, frightened, who needs a protector, and I can't help but wrap my arms tighter as he balls his fists and holds them closer to his chest, shaking, blue eyes open and staring off into the distance, getting pelted with red rain as he is pushed beneath me.
“Never,” I promise, securely, though I don't know how firm that promise is. What if he does fall, eventually? What if I do let him go? My arms are made of flesh, not steel – they drop things. They could drop him.
No. They can't. They mustn't.
It feels like we've been getting rained on for hours, Screech still crying and shivering against me, I shivering against him and hushing him softly, when I notice some of the staircase has come off onto us, the black sierra covering my arms and legs in a sickly sort of ebony coating, as if made out of mush, disintegrating beneath me.
“Gross,” I say, showing it to Screech, who peaks at me behind teary eyes. I lift him slightly and see his back and once lovely jeans is covered in the same.
There's a beat of silence, then, “You ever think that maybe the staircase is made of ashes, burned corpses? Maybe at the top is a big oven or something.” He takes my hesitation for contemplation and continues, “That would explain the occasional bones and the fact that there's no railings. Maybe we're all just walking to our dea – ”
“Screech,” I scold. My stomach is already twisting and turning. We're getting pelted by blood that isn't our own, and now I'm beginning to see faces and arms and legs on the soggy soot that's covering my body and I swear I'm about to heave, completely empty my stomach of the nothing that's in it already. “Is now really the time?”
“Sorry,” he says, and I note how that's the first time I've heard him say that. I think that thinking of endlessly horrific situations placates him, because he's not crying any more, just sort of sniveling, sort of searching for air that's hard to find in this thick rain.
“I'm cold,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“No, I'm cold.” I'm trying to appeal to the detective in him. “Remember? Your whole no temperature debacle?”
“Oh.” He kind of shifts underneath me, contemplating. “Oh.”
I smile briefly at him, and his eyes catch my grin. Instead of giving one back, he cringes as if he was hit, looks away.
The momentary happiness falls off my face completely, draining from me. “What?”
“Your teeth.” He swallows, not looking at me. “They're, uh... red now.”
“They are?” I feel at them and notice my mistake far too late – I've just put my hand covered in staircase ash into my mouth. I spit over the side of the staircase, attempting to get the disgusting ember taste from my lips, though it's so clouded with iron it almost doesn't matter.
My God, the iron. It's just too much. It's overloading all other senses, making me feel weak and dizzy and completely and utterly thrown off where I am and who I am and what's going on.
I glance up and I try to see more of the staircase through the blood that's dripping off my eyes. Last time I looked up, it was emp
ty, small, twisting upwards in the awkwardly straight and steep path that it always goes. I remember when it was further down and it was so solid, and the steps were so straight, so obvious, and now how the steps are lazy and winding and the support so weak. I remember how each step was totally equal, and now they're so spread apart.
Now the staircase, still rather small-looking against the red of the sky, is drenched in rain. It shines awkwardly and begins to sag beneath puddles, almost as if the extra weight of the blood is beginning to tear it down to the endless oceans that rest below. I realize that never have I seen the support for the staircase, never have I actually seen where it meets the ground, so I don't know how sturdy it actually is, and whether or not it meets the ocean even from this height, or if it just relies on the support of the previous stairs which, at some point, must connect with the bottom.
I realize that the staircase might be wearing down against Screech, especially with my added weight on top of him, so I move to allow him some ground, but he pulls me back, a bit violently.
We lie there like that, my body angled around his small one, for a long time. The sky gets dark and then we're there in the pitch black. I put my face against his and he puts his against mine, and we kind of close our eyes and shake, and try to ignore the horror of what's around us.
It's impossible, though. Or at least, so I think.
But then suddenly I'm not there, in the dark, hugging to a smallish child as invisible hemoglobin pelts us from above as the steely sense sets into our bones. I'm wildly and impossibly somewhere else, with bright sunlight blinking down at me, and a large smile splitting across a rather red face, bushed brown hair sitting atop a head.
“Sorry it took so long, hun.” He leans in towards me and kisses me on the cheek.
“It's alright, I don't mind.” I pick up a styrofoam cup and squeeze it, boredly, before taking a sip, letting pumpkin spice coffee engulf my mouth, allowing the smell to seep into my nose.
“Seriously, though,” he says, dropping into his chair a bit too hard, “I'm of the firm belief that most of the cost of that is for the outrageous lines.”
I smile at his jest but I still shake my head, disagreeing. “I, instead, lay my trust in the idea that, like, 98% of the cost for this is the atmosphere.”
He laughs loudly, jovially, throwing his head back a bit as he gets situated in his seat. “I believe you're totally right on the money with that one, my dear.”
“Speaking of money, I owe you – ?”
“An extra kiss,” he interrupts, with a smile.
I roll my eyes. “Ew. Too romantic. I can just pay you the – ” I steal the paper receipt from his hand before he can even react. “ – $5.45? Woah! Talk about overpriced. Remind me why we still come here?”
“You like that drink better here than anywhere else?” he offers, taking a sip of his own drink, which is frozen.
My face slackens in horror. “Please tell me you're not emptying your wallet because of my coffee preferences.”
“No, no, of course not.” He smiles at me again. “It's for the atmosphere.”
I glance up and grin, allowing a slight chuckle at his attempt at humor, before turning my attention to my cup, setting it down lightly on the clean, brown surface of the table.
“So, uh, when I was ordering I was spying on you – ”
“Stranger danger.”
“ – and you kinda looked... I don't know. Out of it. Like you were in your own little world for a while there or something.”
“Oh?”
He nods, eyes trained on mine. “Where were you?”
I shrug. “Ah, just thinking. I've got mid-terms in two weeks.”
“And you're gonna do fine,” he assures me.
“Yeah, but I think I'm flunking out of math.” I give an awkward grin to the boy, not straying to look at the surrounding area, for some reason my mind begging me to cling to his eyes, to his hair, to his imperfect face which was always just so perfect to me. “Which is going to suck for my transcripts.”
“Hey, you're the best dissector in there. That scholarship is as good as yours.”
“But Martha Allen – ”
“'Martha Allen' doesn't have shit on you or your skills. I've never seen someone work that quickly and that deftly. Seriously,” he says when I laugh breathily. “You know I don't bullshit you. Right? C'mon.”
I sigh, nod, looking down and consenting a defeat. “I know you don't BS me.”
“And if I say Martha is going to get her pretty pink ass blown out of the water by your report – ”
I smile back at him, this time a full, complete smile. “Then Martha is going to get her pretty pink butt blown out of the water by my report.”
“That's my girl.” He holds up his own drink up to the light, his latte catching in the air. “To my girl's future victory.”
I smile, raise my coffee, clinking his lightly. “To my boy's faith in me.”
I'm drinking for about two seconds when I notice him staring at me behind brown eyes, oddly. “What?” I say, a hint of laughter in my voice.
“I love that top.”
“Thanks, Trisha,” I joke, calling him by the name of my fashionista best friend.
“No, no,” he laughs, waving away my insinuation. “I mean, it really brings out your eyes, beneath all those freckles.”
“Freckles?” I repeat. It rings a bell or something…
A bell? A bell... Abel.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “Freckles. Ever heard of them?”
“Yes, but...”
Freckles...
Freckles...
“Freckles...”
“Freckles!”
I jolt, and Screech is underneath me, shaking me, though it's too dark to see, but I notice immediately and impossibly that it's not raining any more.
“Scree?” I question, hoarsely.
He hits me, hard against the face. I cringe away from him in shock and surprise, spluttering against thick liquid on my skin and a stinging new mark forming on my check.
“What – ... what was that for?!” I cry out.
“You just said you weren't going to leave, less than an hour ago, and then you disappear. What the hell, Freck?”
“Hey, watch your language,” I warn to the eight year old.
“Watch your language. Because last time I checked, 'never' meant never, not until you got bored.”
“I'm sorry,” I say, not sure what had just happened. Whatever I did, though, I somehow upset him.
“Where were you?” Screech accuses, doesn't ask. I notice he's no longer beneath me, notice that I can't feel his small, gentle skin anymore, and I'm alone on the staircase in the pitch black, grasping nothing but charcoal.
I push myself to an upright position, my arms holding my body off the incline momentarily.
“Uh...” I shrug, forgetting he can't see, not because I don't want to explain, but because I don't remember. I remember just as much as I've ever remembered – people that grin and have brown hair.
And... something else. A... bell?
I shake away the thought and devote my attention to the still shivering Scree. I may not be able to see him, but the stairs are so squishy that I can feel him. I know he's pushed himself up from underneath me, and he's on a stair a bit above me, glaring down, still blue eyes angled in anger. My mind's eye can see his stature.
“I'm sorry for whatever happened. I didn't mean to.”
He sighs, his body still a bit rigid. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” It's silent for a little while, until he says, “Do you at least remember anything from where you went?”
“No.” The thoughts which must have just been in my reach completely disappeared, floating away, leaving me grasping at smoke I could not catch. What was it, anyway? A dream? A memory? I haven't the slightest clue.
All I know is that whatever happened, it was real enough to me to make Screech notice.
five
“Come on,” Screech finally forces as the orang
e and red light begins to touch our features, making the surrounding area visible. The sky is red, and the receding mist is as well, but suddenly I notice that he's red, not just from the light but all over his body, as if his pigmentation is changed, as if he's just been dumped in some sort of red paint, and looking down at my hands, I notice they match, along with my once beige pants.
We've been stained by the blood.
Stained by the blood, covered in presumably human ashes... without meaning to, I retch loudly and lean over the edge of the staircase, this time allowing myself the release I had swallowed back during the storm.
Screech doesn't speak to me after the fact, just makes his way to his feet, and I force my mind to focus on the positives. It's not raining any more. The wind is still today, and all is quiet. I relax against that thought as I rise. I let out a slow puff of calming air, attempting to center myself as I make my way to my feet.
The staircase is nearly in tatters from our monsoon. I notice, up ahead, small holes breaking through the staircase, and as I'm trying to stand, the stair on which I've been shakes precariously, making me jump to the one above. I notice an imprint of my unmoving body atop of Screech's in the pliable surface and shiver without meaning to.
“How long ago has it not been raining?” I ask.
“Since you started disappearing.” His voice is too far away, and when I glance up, I realize he's already been walking ahead, without me. I narrow my eyes a bit at his reaction, following behind quickly but carefully.
Edge Page 3