by Gareth Otton
“You’ve been lying to me. Just adding the names of innocent people onto that list so you could satisfy your sick urges.”
Kuruk blanched, his eyes wide as he recognised there was no dodging this.
“Listen, Ten. It’s not what you—”
“Forget it. I know everything. I know you went to Astur asking for names, I know that you were aware that most of those dreamwalkers never committed crimes. I know all of this was your idea. How the hell could you do this, Ruk?”
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. But as the silence stretched and she waited for an answer, he slowly regained his resolve. His eyes narrowed, he took a deep breath, and suddenly a very different Kuruk started talking.
“Innocence has nothing to do with it. Who cares if they’ve committed a crime or not, they have the power to do so. Power corrupts, Mitena. That’s what you don’t understand. It’s not a case of if, it's a case of when. Every one of these dreamwalkers will decide eventually that the rules of our society don’t apply to them. It might only be small at first, but sooner or later they’ll all break bad. We can’t survive in a world where there are, near as makes no difference, gods walking amongst us. Can’t you see that?”
Mitena shook her head and stepped back.
Who was this person before her? He looked like her brother, sounded like her brother, but this wasn’t the man she’d known all her life.
He’s what you turned him into, a voice in the back of her mind said. However, for the first time she shut that voice down.
She’d gone to Kuruk with a solution, a way to help people who couldn’t help themselves and show dreamwalkers that the rules still applied. She had fought against going further every step of the way. No, this change in Kuruk was on his shoulders. Free from self blame for the first time, she finally saw the truth.
“You’re mad,” she whispered, horror dripping from her words.
Instantly angry, Kuruk smashed his fist on the table.
“You’re still not getting it!” he shouted.
Mitena flinched and took another step back, but otherwise she stood firm.
“No?” she asked, nodding at the table, or more precisely, where the table had been. In his anger he had instinctively tapped his own dreamcatcher, drawing strength from the design and shattering the table into shards of kindling without even realising he’d done so. He looked down and his eyes widened in surprise, but they quickly narrowed again.
“That proves nothing,” he argued. “I’m in control of myself, Ten. I’m thinking clearly. Maybe more clearly than ever. It’s you who’s got the problem.” Mitena snorted, but Kuruk talked over her. “Yeah, you. You’ve always been half into this, never committing and thinking yourself moral for it. The problem is you can’t decide and your projecting your issues on me. Half of you sees what we’re doing is right, the other half is hung up on what these freaks used to be. They’re not human anymore. They can’t be allowed to live. Killing is wrong, I agree with that. But ending one life to save a million, surely even you can see that is the right choice.”
“I can,” Mitena admitted. “If that was what you were doing. But some people on that list might never have killed anyone. They might have recognised that we were out there and—”
“For the love of God, will you listen to yourself. Always on the fence, never committing—”
“How’s this for committing,” Mitena snapped, taking a step forward and interrupting him for once. “I’m done with this, Ruk. I’m walking away from it and I want you to walk away with me. This has gone too far and needs to stop. We’ve more than made our point and we went overboard. But now I’m siding with them before I become a monster like you.”
Kuruk rocked back like she’d struck him and was quiet for so long she wondered if he’d speak again. He only did when she opened her mouth to say something else.
“You need to be careful here. You’re close to saying something you can’t take back.”
Mitena laughed. There was no humour in it, just an aspect of her sanity slipping away as she realised what she was about to do. If her life was a river, she had been hanging onto the rock of Kuruk for years so as not to be caught up in the current. She was about to let go.
“I’m done. And I want you to be done. Come with me. It’s not too late to fix this, to make things right. We can go into hiding. We can reinvent ourselves. We still have the dreamcatchers, they won’t be able to catch us and we can go wherever we want. Just leave this behind and come with me, please.”
Kuruk’s gaze went cold and he climbed to his feet. In slow considered words he said, “That will never happen.”
She’d expected that response, but she’d be lying if she said it didn’t hurt. However, she had to be strong, and she knew that giving into him even one more time by offering another chance would just doom her to becoming something evil like him. It would start her onto a path that she couldn’t escape as she knew she’d never have this kind of will ever again.
A lump built in her throat as she tried to hold back her tears, but they fell regardless as she did maybe the hardest and most awful thing she’d ever had to do.
She gave up on her brother.
“Goodbye Ruk. I’m sorry for what I did to you.”
Without waiting for an answer, Mitena activated her dreamwalking dreamcatcher again and stepped away from Kuruk for the last time.
24
Thursday, 14th July 2016
22:30
It was larger than this. We were on Sycamore Street… no, wait. That was gran’s place. That’s… where was it? I can picture the road sign. It’s ends in street… God damn it. I know the place. Semi-detached house, up a hill, three bedrooms, the garden out front was long… No wait, was it a drive out front? Wasn’t there a tree as well? Wasn’t there—
A hand touched his shoulder and Tony jumped so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. With wide eyes he looked around to find a familiar man, a teenage girl with a frown on her face, and an older woman bending over him. The man and the woman were older than they should be. Not by much, but it was noticeable. The girl on the other hand, Tony knew, but not that well.
Her name’s like Honey or something, right? No, wait, not Honey. Bee… no… it’s something yellow… no wait. It’s Amber.
As the name came to mind, precious memories rushed back. They were a scrambled mess that hit him hard. He needed to sort those puzzle pieces, but a deeper fear stood out.
He’d lost a piece.
For the life of him he couldn’t remember the name of the street he’d grown up on, couldn’t remember the layout of the house or the garden surrounding it. He was drifting, Dream stealing the parts of him he wasn’t holding onto with an iron first.
Ignoring the concerned faces, Tony concentrated on building a mental vault and shoving all of his memories inside. He couldn’t lose anything else… refused to. He would worry about sorting them later. First, he had to be safe, had to stop this from happening. He had to...
“Tony.”
The word broke through his mental panic and he had no choice but to respond.
“Mum?” he asked, and the woman sighed in relief.
“Thank heavens. What’s wrong?”
Slamming shut the door to that vault, memories slowly slipped back into order, at least his most recent ones. He’d need to wait until later to sort out the rest.
“Nothing, why? What’s wrong? Are the kids okay? Where are they?”
One by one, the occupants of the spacious kitchen looked at each other with worried frowns before Amber answered.
“We put them to bed. Remember. You were there. You read a story to the twins while I dealt with Georgia and Andrew. You don’t remember that?”
The memories rushed back, angelic faces fascinated as Tony read one of the books they collected from the show home. He’d read to them until they were asleep, or as close as a ghost could get to sleep without a Proxy. Ghosts didn’t need sleep, but the kids were still caugh
t in the trappings of life and it was a good idea to let them stay that way for now, leaving Tony, his parents and Amber to talk and plan.
“Of course I do. Roald Dahl. Weird book, that one. Not as magical as—”
“Tony, are you alright?” his dad interrupted, cutting through Tony’s rambling and getting straight to the point. Tony suddenly remembered his dad had never been one for small talk, a habit that annoyed him to death growing up. Now, he was just happy to remember it.
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Ghosts don’t get tired,” Amber said, throwing him under the bus. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m fine,” Tony repeated, more irritably this time as he threw Amber a warning look. He then added, “Now the kids are settled, can we talk about what to do next?”
Again they exchanged worried glances, but luckily at least one of them was willing to move on.
“We need to find their families,” his mother began. “Hopefully they’ll be willing to come see them.”
“Why wouldn’t they come?” Tony asked.
His mother hesitated, sharing a look with his father. Tony followed her gaze and was surprised to see a flash of something he’d rarely seen on his father’s face… sadness. It lasted an instant at the longest, but Tony was stunned. His father had always been stoic and such an expression was as good as weeping for another man.
“Tony, you don’t understand what it is like to lose a child,” his mother said.
“What? You’re telling me that once we’re gone, you would never want to see us again.”
“Of course she isn’t, and don’t you dare speak with that tone in this house,” his father snapped. “Have some respect when you talk to your mother.”
Instantly Tony was transported over sixteen years back in time to a teenage boy terrified of making his father angry. Half of him was horrified that his father could still so easily cow him into submission, the other pat was jubilant that he could remember that far back.
Just like the old days, his mother’s soft voice rose in stark contrast to his father’s.
“It’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever endured. It was like our lives stopped and neither of us wanted to go on. But slowly you find a way to cope, you have to. It’s that or die. It’s not a quick process. Your coping methods in the early years are fragile at best. All it takes is one false step and you’re right back to where you started, back to misery and despair.”
She took a deep breath before admitting, “It’s hard to say what I would have done if I knew we could see you. I like to think I’d be overjoyed, just as I was when we were finally reunited. But, to be given such a chance back then, to dare returning to that dark place if it somehow didn’t work out. I… I don’t know if I could have survived going through that a second time.”
“But this isn’t a false hope,” Tony argued. “These kids are definitely here, they aren’t going anywhere and in the Borderlands you can definitely see them.”
“But they won’t be around forever, will they?”
Surprisingly, it was Amber who asked that question, her voice quiet and subdued. When she noticed everyone was looking at her, she blushed and explained herself.
“Being a ghost might mean we’re still here, but there’s no denying we’re one step closer to leaving this world. I know you haven’t experienced this, Tony, but most of the world is uncomfortable around us. We’re constant reminders that one day they will die and no one wants to live with that. I can only imagine it’s ten times worse when the person who’s reminding you is someone you love.”
“Ghost can outlast humans,” Tony argued. “Charles was here for over two hundred years.”
“Charles?” Amber asked, then quickly shook her head and spoke again. “Where is he now?”
“Well… he’s moved on. But—”
“Was it typical for a ghost to stay that long?” Amber interrupted him.
“Well, no, but—”
“How long normally?” she interrupted again, frustrating him. However, he could see she wasn’t doing it out of spite. This topic meant a lot to her. It was probably close to her own story that he was just now realising he didn’t know.
Had he forgotten, or had she not told him?
“I don’t know. A few years at the most. You have to understand why ghosts stick around though. In the old days there were no Borderlands and if you didn’t have a Proxy you’d be mad within a month. Only those who had unfinished business or the ones like me who weren’t done with this world stuck around. Now the Borderlands are here though…” he let his words trail off, hoping his point was made.
“Ghosts might stay around longer, but they’ll still leave, eventually. There’s no denying that.”
“Well, of course. But you’re less likely to go if you have someone here who loves you and wants you around.”
“But for how long?” Amber pressed, not giving up. “How long before you get bored with being here? How long before you’re fed up of always being a kid? How long before you can’t survive without a Proxy? How long until the inevitable happens and you move on? Most of those kids upstairs have parents who live outside the Borderlands. Do you think we can convince them to overturn their lives, relocate down here and wait for the inevitable pain again when their ghost has no choice but to move on?”
“So what, the whole parents love their kids unconditionally thing is just bullshit?” Tony asked, his words heated as he struggled to counter Amber’s point.
“Of course not,” his mother said, cutting off his father who bristled at his use of bad language. “Most would do anything for their children. But they’re still people. A person living from payday to payday on a minimum wage job can’t just leave everything behind and move at the drop of a hat. They’d be homeless before they knew it. We’re just saying there’s more to do than just contacting these kid’s parents.”
“Oh,” Tony said, finally conceding the point. “So what do we do?”
“For now they can stay here,” his mother said. “I won’t see any child, not even a ghost, live on their own. Besides, it’s not like they're an imposition. They don’t eat or drink, they don’t need to bathe, they don’t need new clothes, they don’t need extra heat, new bedding… financially it’ll be like they’re not even here. You two have done the right thing bringing them here.”
Tony glanced at Amber, sharing a knowing smile as they both thought of how his mother hadn’t really given them a choice. It was one of the few times where she’d put her foot down and even his father had been forced to remain silent. Tony suspected he didn’t want four strange kids under foot all the time. However, he felt bad for prejudging the situation when a moment later he caught his father nodding in agreement. He may be a strict man, and that grated on Tony before he died, but he wasn’t heartless. In this he was in complete agreement with Tony’s mother.
“So they’ve got a home until we find their parents. The only question left is what happens if their parents don’t come for them.” Tony said.
“We won't chuck them out on the streets, Tony,” his father said.
“I never thought you would. But what’s the long-term plan?”
“Well, we’ll have to get them in a school,” his mother answered, missing his point. “All kids need an education. You won’t get anywhere in life if you don’t go to school.”
Tony shook his head and tried to figure out which part of that statement he should pick apart first. However, in doing so he caught Amber’s grin and when she had his attention she shook her head, warning him off even trying to point out everything wrong with what his mother just said. Instead, he moved onto another objection.
“I meant longer term than that,” Tony admitted. “What if more kids turn up? Should we try to keep them here, or should we convince them to move on? I’ve seen a lot of kids move on over the years and they always end up somewhere warm.” Seeing the blank looks on the faces around him, Tony quickly explained what he was talking about.
“I don’t feel comfortable talking children into leaving this life,” his mother pointed out and the other heads were quickly nodding. Tony agreed, emotionally hating the idea. Logically though, he felt that might be the more humane action.
“Look, if they stay they will eventually need a Proxy or they’ll go mad.”
“Can’t we ask Tad to do it?” his mother asked.
“He’s not accepting ghosts right now.”
“Why not?” his father asked.
“Personal issues,” Tony said, then quickly added. “And I’m not even sure he’d be the right Proxy, anyway. Child ghosts shouldn’t have an adult Proxy.”
“You did,” Amber pointed out, and Tony tried his hardest not to flinch at her use of the past tense, knowing his parents would pick up on that.
“No, I had a child Proxy. Tad just grew up, that’s all. He was two years younger than me when he took me on and I experienced his growing up right alongside him. Trust me, that’s a better way to do it.”
“I still don’t understand why,” Amber pressed. “It would only be for one or two nights a week, it wouldn’t be that big an imposition, surely.”
“You don’t understand,” Tony said. “When a Proxy takes on a new ghost, their minds merge. The first night you are in a Proxy’s head you relive every experience both you and the Proxy have ever had as though it is happening all over again. There are no secrets, no way to hide things a child shouldn’t see. You get everything whether you like it or not. And even after that’s over, you’ll have all the knowledge and memories of the other party. That’s a hard thing to deal with when you’re both adults and are ready for it. Try dealing with it when you’re an innocent child who doesn’t know anything about the world. It could break you.”
“I thought you said Tad had been a Proxy since he was nine,” his father pointed out. “That Charles ghost, wasn’t it?”
Tony squirmed a little on Charles’ behalf.
“Charles didn’t have a choice. There was no one else to take him, and back then there was no chance he’d ever move on. So it was either have Tad proxy for him or go mad. Even then I don’t think he truly expected it to be as bad as it was. Both of them refused to ever let it happen again, something Jen hated them for by the way.”