Tar

by Taylor Hohulin

  Was all this—the way Brendan floated with every step, the chaos along the walls, the deterioration of the statues—because Ansel was asleep? If he wasn’t conscious to focus all his power on holding this strange kingdom together, it only made sense things would deteriorate. The strangeness might also reflect his foul mood. It might be his version of a tantrum after Samson provoked him.

  Eventually, Brendan reached at the entrance to the castle and stared down the chasm between him and the glowing white expanse. As expected, Ansel had removed the makeshift stairway that floated at the edge of the hole hours ago, but that was no problem. Merovech’s notes had opened his mind to everything the tar would do for him. He could call a small patch to create a staircase of his own. He could command it to hover in place and bear his weight.

  “You’re really going to do it, aren’t you? You’re really going to run away now that we’re so close.”

  Brendan started, turned around. Krystal stood, arms folded, a little ways back. She seemed to be deliberately keeping her distance in a statement about the erosion of trust in her longtime friend.

  “What do you want me to say?” Brendan said. “He wants me to go to the tar’s home and kill a guy who’s stronger than the guy who made all this happen.” He waved at the ever-changing castle. “How else did you think I’d respond?”

  Tears brimmed at the edges of Krystal’s eyes. “I thought for once you’d stick your neck out, even if the only person you did it for was yourself. You know your life would be better if we got rid of all the tar. No more hiding after dark. No more avoiding entire sections of cities. A real life, Brendan! But since it means you’d have to do something with an ounce of risk, you won’t do it.

  “And that’s the thing, isn’t it? You’re not just selfish. You’re obsessed with being safe. You don’t care how much better off you’d be if this worked, because at least in this worse version of your life, you’re safe.”

  “It sounds so easy when you say it.” Brendan surprised himself with the venom in his voice. “But if you were the one Samson wanted to go head-to-head against Merovech, would you be giving this same speech?”

  “No,” said Krystal. “I’d just do it.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Brendan spat. “You had a perfectly good life in Newhaven. You had a house of your own, for crying out loud. You had a steady job where you charged whatever you wanted, and—”

  “The tar killed Uncle Jeff.”

  Krystal’s voice was soft, but it sucked all the breath out of Brendan’s lungs. He tried to stoke the flames of his anger, but something about Krystal’s voice doused the fire in gallons of water. Something about the glowing tear-streaks on her cheeks was a cooling salve on the angry wound.

  Brendan dropped his eyes.

  “You still think about him, huh?”

  “Every day.”

  “I guess I assumed that with all we’ve been through, you’d be too distracted. You wouldn’t have time to think about him.”

  Krystal laughed humorlessly. “It turns out grief is a ghost that haunts all the places you thought were the safest. Even on a road trip to save the world.” Krystal offered a sad smile and sniffed. “I just keep replaying that day we met Samson. The way Uncle Jeff looked when he got infected. How Samson had to...” Her voice choked off. She stood there, momentarily wordless, before continuing. “And then I wonder how many other people lost an Uncle Jeff of their own. I think about how we have a chance to make it so no one has to go through what I went through ever again. When I think about that, I don’t care about anything else. If I could, I’d walk right through the portal for you, Brendan. I’d bring Samson’s gun and take my chances.”

  Brendan turned away, casting his gaze into the emptiness beyond the castle. Krystal wasn’t lying; she cared about people. That was why Brendan liked her. Well, he liked her because she cared about him, but the point remained. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind Krystal would let the tar infect her if that meant no one else would have to deal with it.

  And Brendan wouldn’t even try to fight the tar unless he knew he’d make it out unscathed.

  “Listen, Brendan,” Krystal said. “I can’t make you do this. I could try, but I think if I pushed too hard—I mean, really pushed you—I’d end up like Uncle Jeff.”

  “That’s—”

  But Krystal silenced him with a lifted finger. “It’s okay. You and I both know it’s true.”

  Brendan wanted to argue, but a sick, shriveled part of him told him she was right. This power had infected him just like the tar infected Uncle Jeff. Brendan had a line, and it wouldn’t matter who pushed him over it. If anyone pushed hard enough, Brendan would push back, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “All I’m asking is that you think about this. For once in your life, do something that would be better for someone else than it would be for you.”

  Brendan stared across the white expanse a little longer before he turned around. When he did, Krystal was gone.

  9

  Krystal was right. About everything.

  As much as Brendan wanted to poke holes in her arguments, she remained just as alive as Brendan after all these years. He might have made it this far by protecting himself at all costs, but Krystal lived her life caring for people, even when those people couldn’t pay her back. If he used his own survival as an argument for his philosophy, he had to use Krystal’s as an argument for hers.

  And so, as he stood at the edge of Ansel’s castle, contemplating his next move, he knew he couldn’t back down.

  Did he really want to start over in a new city, digging for salvage every day, hoping to buy shelter? What kind of life was that, anyway? If he died, what would he really lose?

  But if he succeeded...

  Brendan cast one last look over the white expanse. He could still walk away. Even Samson, in all his power, wasn’t strong enough to stop him. He understood that now, with the labyrinth of his mind untangled. He could spare himself the struggle of Tir Anhrefnus and live in perfect safety for however long he chose.

  But then he thought of Krystal.

  He thought of Uncle Jeff.

  And he turned around and slowly made his way to his bedroom.

  10

  Morning in Ansel’s castle came in the form of a gradual brightening in Brendan’s bedroom. It didn’t wake him, since he hadn’t slept all night. More than anything, the light in his bedroom was a relief, a reassurance that he didn’t have to lie in bed worrying about tomorrow.

  The door to Brendan’s bedroom swung open. It barely made a sound, gliding on some invisible track. The shifting patterns along the walls all directed themselves toward the new opening. The only way Ansel could have made his message clearer was if he’d come into the bedroom himself.

  Brendan rolled out of bed, feeling his exhaustion the moment his feet hit the floor. He stumbled across the room and into the hallway, where Krystal and Samson had appeared. The three of them traded a look. Though Ansel wasn’t in the halls waiting to show them to the dining hall, the patterns on the walls guided them in that direction.

  They made no conversation as they wandered through dizzying corridors, but Krystal gave Brendan a knowing half-smile. He offered no response, trying to keep his expression neutral in the face of her gratitude. He didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to abandoning her.

  Their quiet walk ended in the dining hall. Ansel waited at the head of the table, which was lined with plates and silverware and napkins. He straightened in his seat as if bracing himself for the encounter to come.

  “I have considered your requests,” Ansel said.

  Brendan recalled his walk through the castle at night, of that strange, weightless sensation, and of those deformed statues. So that was the explanation. Ansel hadn’t been asleep. He hadn’t been angry. He’d been thinking. For one evening, Ansel removed some of his attention from the castle, and in his distraction, the pe
rfect world he maintained began to deteriorate.

  That sickening weight returned to Brendan’s stomach. Ansel hadn’t built himself a castle on the underside of Lou’s Fuel and Fix. He’d trapped himself in a prison that was moments from becoming a waking hell.

  “What did you decide?” Samson pressed.

  Ansel stroked his scraggly beard. “I remember nothing of this portal you seek.” His eyes grew distant. “My mind is riddled with holes these days. I might not have remembered your faces this morning had I not spent the night deliberating what to do with you. I remember nothing of my life before any of this.” He gestured at the scene around him, and the patterns on the wall danced and fluttered.

  “The portal must be here,” Samson said. “After we destroyed it, you took the pieces. You kept them in case we ever needed them again.”

  Ansel nodded. “If what you say is true, I know of one place it may be. I will not come with you, but you are welcome to search it if you wish.”

  “Show us,” Samson said, without hesitation. “Merovech must be stopped.”

  Ansel rose and lifted a finger, and the patterns along the wall moved in the direction he pointed.

  “The holes in my mind extend even to my home. I see all within this castle, except for one room. I do not remember opening its door, though perhaps I have opened it every day for the last ten years, only to have that part of my mind consumed after I enter. If your portal is here, it is behind that door.”

  Samson didn’t turn to watch the racing patterns along the wall. Instead, he walked across the room until he stood face to face with Ansel. He fished in the back pocket of his jeans and withdrew the Book of Memory, thrusting it into Ansel’s chest. The hand Ansel wasn’t using to direct the shapes on the wall moved reflexively, clutching the leather-bound book.

  “Read it,” Samson said.

  Without another word, he turned and left. The crazy, racing patterns surrounded him on all sides, chasing him and leading him. Brendan followed, desperately searching for something on which to fix his gaze that wasn’t in constant motion.

  Behind him, he heard Krystal say, “Thank you. I know it must be hard for you to trust us.”

  “It is,” said Ansel’s voice, bouncing off the dancing walls. “Do not prove me a fool for doing so.”

  11

  The patterns raced ahead of them. Designs formed and re-formed along the walls and floor and ceiling, speeding forward and creating the illusion Brendan, Krystal, and Samson moved in reverse.

  “Is this messing with you, too?” Krystal asked, leaning over to Brendan.

  Brendan smiled and offered a nod. He didn’t want to focus too much on it, but he was glad to hear he wasn’t the only one dealing with disorientation. Samson was either unaffected by the nauseating patterns, or he’d already blocked them out. He was so close to his goal now.

  Brendan found a little stability returned to him when he focused all his attention on the sensation beneath his feet. Though the floor itself seemed to speed away from him, not a hint of motion vibrated under his boots. When he took a step, he felt his treads grip the earth and pull it. Even as miles of blocks traveled ahead of him every second, each step pulled more of the strange surface behind him.

  He just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  Brendan reached an arm out and let his fingers drag along the wall. That helped, too. Like the floor, the walls gave no sense of the motion they displayed. So the floor remained solid beneath his feet, and the smooth surface of the wall slid past his fingers. The patterns were only decoration, disorienting though they were.

  Just as the last hints of dizziness and disorientation left him, Brendan found Samson stopped at the end of the hallway. Since he’d worked so hard to pull his focus away from the patterns, Brendan didn’t realize for a moment that they had ceased racing ahead of him. They all converged on this one space on the wall. They circled it, bent toward it, fed into it.

  It was a door.

  “What do you think is in there?” Krystal asked.

  Samson put a hand on the doorknob. “The portal,” he said. “That’s what.”

  But that didn’t answer Krystal’s question. Not really. Ansel said if the portal was inside his castle, it was in this room. But if his power was absent here, then anything might wait beyond that door. Ansel may have erased it from his mind for a reason.

  Samson showed none of this hesitation. He twisted the knob and opened the door to the room Ansel forgot.

  12

  The forgotten room was dark. No bright light shone through here, and no blocks danced and reconfigured their patterns. The doorway was a black rectangle in the wall. Maybe it was just Brendan’s imagination, but the castle seemed to grow darker as Samson pushed the door open. He hadn’t allowed light into this room. He’d let the darkness out.

  Samson stared through the opening. Before he had a chance to do anything, Krystal stepped forward.

  “Here,” she said, holding up her modded hand. One finger flipped back, revealing a small flashlight.

  A bright beam cut into the darkness, and Brendan realized this was no room. It was a tunnel. In contrast to the perfect, smooth walls in the rest of the castle, these were rough stone. A chill and a musty odor seeped out of the blackness to meet him. There was an initial dropoff, a stairstep roughly three feet high, and then the passage carved a steady incline as far as Krystal’s light would reach.

  Samson leaned into the room, but immediately drew back, a strange expression on his face.

  “Everything okay?” Krystal asked.

  But Samson didn’t respond. He stared into the dark, his forehead knotting with concentration. He pulled a single, white-coated bullet from his pocket, held it into the darkness, and let it go. The bullet turned in the air, glinting in the light from Krystal’s mod before making a clinking sound as it landed.

  On the ceiling.

  And then, even more strangely, the bullet rolled away, climbing the ceiling’s incline and carrying a hollow ringing into the dark.

  Dizziness washed over Brendan afresh, so strongly he had to reach for the ever-changing wall to steady himself. All throughout the rest of Ansel’s castle, gravity was reversed. Brendan’s head hung below his shoulders, and anything he dropped fell up, toward his feet. But in this darkened hallway, gravity reversed yet again. Samson’s bullet hadn’t hit the ceiling. It had landed on the ground, which was now above Samson’s head.

  Samson turned back to his companions. His face remained impassive, though something blazed in his eyes.

  “Ansel has not simply forgotten this room,” he said. “He’s released his hold altogether, if he ever had control to begin with.”

  “Are we still going in?” Krystal gawked at the black rectangle. She held her mod out farther, hoping to illuminate more of the passage, but found little success.

  “We have to,” Samson said. “We’ve come this far.”

  “So how do we get in?” she asked. “If we just walk through, we’ll fall headfirst.”

  Samson nodded, staring into the dark. Then he sat in front of the door, dangling his feet over the stairstep into the dark. As he did, his legs extended. It looked like he was only stretching sore legs, but the fresh gravity of this new room had pulled his legs in the opposite direction that Ansel’s gravity pulled the rest of him. Samson edged closer to the door. As he crossed further into the tunnel, his legs rose higher, until he allowed his body to give in to the new pull. It was a strange sight. One moment, Samson lay on his back, raising his legs, and the next, he flew feet first into the air, as if yanked upward by an invisible rope. He landed on what Brendan couldn’t stop thinking of as the ceiling, with a slight bend of his knees, throwing his arms out to regain his balance before standing like normal.

  And so Brendan and Krystal stood in front of a doorway, facing an old wizard standing on the next room’s ceiling, which was really its floor. He stoo
d like that for a moment, likely reorienting himself to this new space. Then he turned around completely.

  “Come on, then,” he said. He didn’t glance over his shoulder, deliberately avoiding a view of the upside-down world behind him. Brendan didn’t blame him.

  13

  The light from Krystal’s mod didn’t do much to cut through the darkness, so the three of them stuck close together. The path was barely six feet across, which did nothing to ease the churn of claustrophobia in Brendan’s gut. Samson and Krystal didn’t speak; Brendan had a feeling it was because they were just as unnerved as he was. It wasn’t just the darkness. It wasn’t just the narrow passageway—which Brendan swore grew narrower with every step. It was that whatever lurked in this passage, Ansel had a reason for hiding this space from his mind. He had a reason for abandoning it even if he himself couldn’t remember what it was.

  As they moved further down the hallway, the walls widened, and the slope lessened until they reached level ground. Krystal tried to shine her flashlight around the space, but the dark was so complete, so heavy, that the beam of light did little to dispel the lurking shadows.

  “What are we looking for?” Brendan asked.

  “I will know it when I see it,” Samson said, his voice flat.

  “But will you?” Krystal asked. “Is that memory still around, or has that been wiped out?”

  “I will know it,” Samson repeated, more sharply this time.

  The three fell silent again.

  And as they did, Brendan noticed a sound. One neither he, nor Krystal, nor Samson was responsible for.

  Samson must have heard it, too, because he stiffened, reaching one arm back to keep Brendan and Krystal from coming forward. His free hand darted to the shotgun across his shoulders. For a moment, all noise ceased. Brendan was ready to chalk it up to his own anxiety and the echoes dancing through the hallway, but then it returned.