Girl of Nightmares

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

There is nothing good here. There never has been. My cheek lies pressed against a surface that is neither hot nor cold, neither dull nor sharp. But it is hard. Everywhere my body touches it is about to shatter. This was a mistake. We don’t belong here. Wherever it is, it is the lack of everything. No light, no darkness. No air or taste. It’s nothing; a void.

I don’t want to think anymore. My eyes might pop and run out of my head. I might break my skull against the bottom and listen to the empty pieces, wobbling like the discarded shell of an egg.

(Cas, open your eyes.)

My eyes are open. There isn’t anything to see.

(You have to open your eyes. You have to breathe.)

This place is the thing behind madness. There is nothing good here. Off the map. If you eat frustration it chokes you. This place exists in the wake of a scream.

(Listen to my voice. Listen. I’m here. It’s difficult, but you have to make it. In your mind. Form it in your mind.)

Mind is unraveling. Can’t make it stay together. Come all this way to drift off and break apart. There are things people need. Air. Water. Laughter. Strength. Breath.

Breathe.

“That’s it,” says Jestine. “Take it slow.” Her face materializes like fog in a mirror and the rest of the world follows suit, filling in like a paint-by-number. I’m lying on what feels like stone in a gravity chamber, heavy density against my skull, dug up against my shoulder blades. This must be how a caught fish feels, pulled up onto a dock, the wood pressing into its gills and eye when nothing has ever pressed against it before. Their gills throb to no use. My lungs pull to no use. Something is moving in and out of them, but it isn’t air. There’s no sensation of nourishment hitting my blood. I grab my chest.

“Don’t panic about that. Just keep breathing. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. Let it feel familiar.” She grabs on to my arms; she feels so warm, warmer than anything I remember. I don’t know how long we’ve been here. It feels like hours. It feels like a second. They could be the same thing.

“It’s all about the mind,” she says. “That’s what we are. Look.” She touches my stomach, and I wince, anticipating pain. Only there isn’t any. The wound isn’t there. It should be there. There should be a hole ripped in my t-shirt and blood should have spread out in a circle. The knife should be sticking out of me.

“No, you don’t need that,” she says. I look down again. Where there was nothing, now there’s a small tear and a dark patch of wetness. “You don’t need that,” she says again. “That still exists. Over there. On the other side, our bodies are bleeding out. If we don’t make it back before they’re empty, we’ll be dead.”

“How do we get back?”

“Look behind you.”

Behind me there is stone. I’m lying on my back. But I turn my head slightly.

Thomas. I can see him. And if I focus, the window widens to reveal the rest of the room. The Order’s cuts are still open, dripping slowly to the floor. Our bodies are there, mine and Jestine’s, curled up where they fell.

“We’re on the other side of the mirror,” I say.

“In a manner of speaking. But really, we’re still there. We’re still alive. The only thing that came, physically, is the athame.”

I look down. It’s in my hand, and there is no blood on the blade. I squeeze it, and the action brings emotion in a wave. The familiarity in this place of nothing almost makes me want to plunge it into my stomach again.

“You have to stand up now.” Jestine rises to her feet. She’s shades brighter than everything else. She holds out her hand, and behind her head there is endless black sky. No stars. No edges.

“How do you know all this?” I ask, and struggle up without help. Wherever we are, there aren’t any rules of perspective. It seems like I can see forever and yet only a few feet in every direction. And there’s no light. At least not light how we would recognize it. Things simply are. And what they are is flat stone, cliff-carved walls of something that might be gray and might be black.

“The Order kept records of when they retrieved the metal for the athame. Most are lost and what’s left is dodgy, but I studied every last bit.”

“Are you going to try to ditch me in here, Jestine?”

She glances down and to the side. I can’t see anything behind her, but if I look back and see Thomas, then she must look back and see Burke. He’s her anchor.

“If you die here then this is where you belong.”

“Does anything really belong here?”

“I’m not here to help you get the girl out. I have my own plan.”

I squeeze the athame tighter. At least Anna is “the girl” now, and not “the dead murderess.”

“How long do we have?” I ask.

“Until we have no more.” Jestine shrugs. “It’s hard to say. Time isn’t the same here. Time isn’t time here. There aren’t any rules. I don’t wear a watch, but if I did I’d be scared to look at it. The hands would probably be doing that weird out-of-control spin. How long do you think it’s been, since you started to bleed?”

“Does it matter? I’d be wrong, wouldn’t I?”

She smiles. “Exactly.”

I look around. This place looks the same in all directions. Even stranger is the fact that despite knowing that I’m dying somewhere behind me, there is no sense of urgency. I might stand in the same place and look around passively for Anna until it’s been too late for days, until my body on the other side had been sent home and buried. It’s an act of will to make my legs move. Everything here is an act of will.

When I walk, the stone juts sharply into my feet like I’m not wearing any shoes. Apparently shoes of the mind have really shitty tread.

“This is pointless,” I say. “She isn’t anywhere. There isn’t anywhere for her to be. It’s an expanse.”

“If you’re looking for her, then you’ll turn a corner and there she’ll be,” replies Jestine.

“There aren’t any corners to turn.”

“There are corners everywhere.”

“I hate you.” I lift my brows at her and she smiles. She’s looking too, eyes rolling from side to side desperately. I have to remind myself that she was chosen, and it’s the Order’s fault, not hers, that she’s lying bleeding by my side. She’s got to be scared. And she’s turning out to be a better guide than I could have asked for.

A wall appears all at once in front of us, a black, porous stone wall that seeps water like the bedrock along the roads on the way to Thunder Bay. Turning my head, I see other walls too, to my left and right. They stretch out behind us in a line for miles, like we’ve been walking in a maze. Except that we hadn’t been until just now. I twist my head more sharply to look back through the window at Thomas. He’s still there, my anchor. Do we keep walking, or turn around? Is this the way? His face doesn’t react to these questions. His eyes are trained on my body, watching the blood saturate my shirt.

We’re passing by something, lying on the ground. It’s a carcass, busily being worked on by bugs. The fur of whatever it was used to be white, but aside from the presence of four legs it could have been anything. A dog maybe, or a big cat. It might’ve been a small calf. We walk past without comment and I try to keep my eyes off of the movement beneath the hide. It doesn’t matter. It’s not what we’re looking for.

“What’s that say?” Jestine asks, and points to the wall ahead. It’s not a wall really, but a low limestone formation, white and eroded, low enough to climb over. There’s wet black paint on it that says MARINETTE OF THE DRY ARMS. Beside it is what looks like a rough sketch: the blackened bones of forearms and fingers and a thick black cross. I don’t know what it means. But I suspect that Morfran would.

“We shouldn’t go this way,” I say.

“There’s really only one way to go.” Jestine shrugs.

Ahead the wall changes, from porous wet rock back to colorless stone. As we get closer, I blink and it turns translucent, like thick, dusty crystal or glass. There’s a pale mass at the center, something frozen or trapped. I wipe across the stone with my hand, feeling the granular dust slide against my palm. It reveals a pair of eyes, wide and yellowed and full of hate. I clear the glass lower as my hand drags down, and see that the front of his white shirt still bears the bloodstains of his wife. His widow’s peak of hair is wild and suspended in the rock. It’s Peter Carver. The first ghost I ever killed.

“What is it?” Jestine asks.

“Just a scarecrow,” I reply.

“Yours or hers?”

“Mine.” I stare into his frozen face and remember the way he chased me, the way he scrambled after me across the floor, his stomach sliding and legs flopping uselessly. A crack forms in the glass.

“Don’t fear it,” Jestine says. “He’s just a scarecrow, like you said. Your scarecrow.”

The crack is a tiny hairline fracture, but it’s getting longer. As I watch, it races upward, crackling across the bloodstain on his shirt like a lightning bolt.

“Focus,” Jestine hisses. “Before you let it out of the rock.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I don’t know what you mean. We just have to go. We have to keep going.” I walk away. My heavy legs move as fast as I can manage. I turn a corner and then another. It feels like running and it’s stupid. The last thing we need is to be lost. The last thing we need is to not pay attention and the path to turn into a cave. My legs slow. There are no scraping sounds behind us. Peter Carver isn’t dragging himself along in our footsteps. For all I know, I might’ve imagined the fissure in the rock to begin with.

“I don’t think anything happened,” I say, but she doesn’t reply. “Jestine?” I look around. She isn’t here. Without thinking, I go back the way I came. I shouldn’t have run. Leaving her in front of Carver, thinking she was the one who had to do something about it. What the hell is the matter with me?

“Jestine!” I call out, and wish that my voice would ring off the stones rather than fall flat. No sound comes back, not mine or her answering yell. I turn a corner, then another. She isn’t there. And neither is Peter Carver. They’re both gone.

“It was here,” I say to no one. It was. It’s just that coming back the way I came didn’t work. None of the walls look the way they did when I passed by the first time.

“Jestine!”

Nothing. Why didn’t she tell me we couldn’t separate? Why didn’t she follow me? My stomach hurts. I put my hand against it and feel warm wetness. The wound is coming through.

I don’t need that. I left that behind. I need to focus. To find Anna, and Jestine.

A few deep breaths and my hand comes away dry. Wind passes over my cheeks, the first sensation of that kind since I’ve been here. It brings noise with it. A manic, girlish giggle that sounds nothing like Jestine or Anna. I hate this place. Even the wind is nuts. Footsteps patter behind me, but nothing’s there when I turn. What am I doing here? It feels like forgetting. There’s pressure against my shoulder; I’m leaning against the cliffside. When the wind brings the laughter again, I close my eyes until I feel her hair brush against my cheek.

She’s sunk half in and half out of the rock. Her eyes are bloodless, but she looks a whole lot like Cait Hecht.

“Emily Danagger,” I whisper, and she smiles without humor as she melts backward. The instant she’s gone her footsteps sound behind me, running closer. It sends me stumbling forward. I twist through rock formations that look like spined fossils and trip over stones that weren’t there before I hit them. Just another scarecrow, I keep thinking, but I don’t know how long I run before the wind changes from a giggle to harsh, unintelligible muttering. It gives me such an urge to clamp my hands over my ears that at first I don’t notice the other thing that it carries: a strong smell of sweet smoke. The same smoke that spat down over my bed last fall. The same smoke my father smelled right before he died. It’s the Obeahman. He’s here. He’s close.

All at once my legs feel pounds lighter. The athame sings in my hand. What was it Jestine said? If I’m looking for her, I’ll turn a corner and she’ll be there. But what about him? Should I be so eager? What can he do to me anyway, in this place?

It happens just like she said it would. One corner of stone and there he is, at the end of the maze of walls, as if it was leading me to him.

The Obeahman. The athame spins deftly between my fingers. I’ve been waiting for this. And I didn’t know that until right now. Looking at him, at his hunched back, clothed in the same long, dark green jacket, the same rotting dreadlocks hanging over his shoulders, my stomach twists like an eel. Murderer. MURDERER. You ate my father in a house in Baton Rouge. You stole the power of the knife and took in every ghost I meant to send away.

But even as my brain screams these things, my body stays hidden behind the stone wall in a half-crouch. I wish I’d asked Jestine what could happen to us here. Is it like they say in dreams? That when you die in them, you die for real? I slide closer to the edge, letting a sliver of eye show around the corner. If it’s possible, the Obeahman is bigger than I remember. His legs seem longer, and there are more bends to his back. It’s like seeing him through a funhouse mirror, elongated and unnatural. He still hasn’t seen me, hasn’t smelled me or heard me. He’s just bent over a low, flat stone, his arms working like a spider at a web, and I could swear that each arm has grown an extra joint.

I remember the spell using the Lappish drum, and how frightened Anna seemed. She said this was his world.

The Obeahman pulls hard at something. He tugs and jerks; it looks like white string, the kind a butcher uses to tie up a roast. When he pulls the string again he raises his arm, and I count four distinct joints.

Rushing in would be a mistake. I need to know more. Looking around the maze walls, there’s a set of rough-cut steps to my right. I didn’t notice them when I passed. Probably because they hadn’t been there. I climb up silently, and when I reach the top I drop down on my hands and creep to the edge. I have to dig my fingers in to keep from throwing myself over it.

It’s Anna on the rock. He’s got her lying there as on a mortuary slab. Her body is wrapped round and round with white string, stained dark with blood in places. The jerking motion I watched him do with his arms was from sewing her mouth and eyes shut.

I can’t look, but my eyes won’t close as he ties his knots and slices through the string with his fingers. When he straightens and surveys his work, one hand cradles her head like she’s a doll. He bends close to her face, maybe to whisper, or to kiss her on the cheek. Then his jointed arm snaps back into the air, and I see that his fingers have sharpened into points before he shoves them deep down into her gut.

“No!” The scream rips out of me as her body contracts, her head whipping back and forth, her eyes sewn shut against tears, mouth sewn shut against noise.

The Obeahman twists his face upward. The look of shock is unmistakable, even though his eyes are sewn shut too, crisscrossed slits laced through with black string. The crosses of black seem to hover over his face in a psychedelic scribble and the eyes behind them bulge and bleed. It wasn’t like that before, when he was just a ghost. What is he now?

I flash the knife and he roars with a sound that only machines make; it has no discernible emotion, so I can’t tell if he’s afraid, or enraged, or just insane. The sight of the knife backs him off, though, and he turns and disappears into the rocks.

I don’t waste any time, scrambling off the rock like a crab, afraid to let Anna out of my sight, not wanting this place to swallow her up like it did Jestine. My landing has no grace, hard and mostly on my hip and shoulder. It hurts, a lot, and there’s a tender spot in my gut that feels like a bad bruise. “Anna, it’s me.” I don’t know what else to say. My voice doesn’t seem to be easing her mind. She’s still thrashing, and her fingers twitch at her sides, stiff as a bundle of sticks. Then she slumps back and lies flat.

I glance around, and take a deep breath. There’s no scent or sign of the Obeahman, and the passageway where he disappeared into the rock is gone. Good. I hope he gets lost as shit. But somehow I don’t think he will. This place feels like his place, like he’s cozy here as a dog in its own backyard.

“Anna.” My fingers trace lightly over the string and I consider the athame. If she thrashes again, I could end up cutting her. Dark, almost black blood is spreading around the wound he made in her stomach, staining the string and the white fabric of her dress. It makes it hard for me to swallow, or think. “Anna, don’t—” I almost said, Anna, don’t die, but that’s stupid. She was dead when I met her. Focus, Cas.

And then, almost like I wished it, the string unwinds. It snakes back off of her body, like it was never there at all, and the blood goes with it. Even the string zigzagged across her eyelids and lips slides free and disappears, leaving no holes behind. Her eyes open and focus on me warily. She pushes up onto her elbows and pulls in a breath through her mouth. Her eyes stare ahead. They aren’t panicked. They aren’t tormented. They’re vacant, and don’t seem to see me at all. Her name. I should say her name. I should say something, but there’s something different about her, something disconnected. This feels like the first time I saw her, coming down the stairs in a dripping red dress. I was in awe. I couldn’t blink. But I wasn’t afraid. This time I am; I’m afraid that she won’t be the same. That she won’t understand me or know who I am. And maybe part of me is afraid that if I move too quickly, those granite fingers of hers will shoot out and squeeze the words from my throat.

The corner of her mouth twitches.

“You’re not real,” she says.

“You’re not either,” I say. Anna’s eyes blink once, and swivel my way. The instant before I look into them there’s a flash of panic, but as her eyes travel up from my stomach and over my chest, there’s so much skepticism in them and so much quiet hope that all I can think is, there’s my girl, there’s my girl, there’s my girl. Her eyes stop at my chin and one of her hands lifts, hovering over my shirt.

“If this is a trick,” she says, and starts to smile, “I’m going to be very, very angry.”

“Anna.” I shove the athame into its sheath in my pocket and reach out to pull her off the slab but her arms wrap around me and squeeze. I draw her head down to my shoulder and just stand; neither of us wants to let go.

She has no temperature. The rules of this place have taken that away, and I wish for the press of her cold skin, the way I remember. I suppose I should just be glad that she still has the right number of joints.

“I guess I don’t care if you’re real,” she says against my shoulder.

“I’m real,” I whisper into her hair. “You told me to come.” Her fingers dig into my back, pulling at my shirt. Her body sort of jerks in my arms, and at first I think she’s going to be sick. But then she draws back to look at me.

“Wait,” she says. “Why are you here?” Her eyes scan me wildly and her balled-up fists feel like stones on my ribs. She’s panicking. She thinks I might be dead.

“I’m not dead,” I say. “I promise.”

Anna climbs down off the rock, cocking her head suspiciously. “Then how? Nothing’s here that isn’t dead.”

“There are two things, actually,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Me, and this other, annoying girl that we have to find.”

“What?” Anna smiles.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is we’re leaving.” Except I don’t really know how we do that. There isn’t a line tied around my waist for me to tug on and be pulled back. We need Jestine.

Anna’s eyes are bright, and her fingertips trace my shoulders, still waiting for me to disappear. “You shouldn’t have come,” she says, like a scolding, but she can’t quite make it stick.

“You told me to,” I say. “You said you couldn’t stay.”

She blinks at me. “Did I?” she asks. “It doesn’t seem so bad, right now.”

I almost laugh. Right now it doesn’t. When she’s free of burns, and cuts, and not strung through with butcher’s twine, it doesn’t seem so bad.

“You have to go back, Cassio,” Anna whispers. “He won’t let go of me.” Through her bright eyes I can see what this place has done to her. She seems smaller somehow. There’s happiness on her face to see me, but she doesn’t really believe that I can get her out.

“It’s not his choice,” I say.

“Always his choice,” she corrects. “Always his pleasure.”

I hold her tighter. Over six months she’s been here, but what does that mean? Time doesn’t exist. Even I’ve been here too long. It seems like I walked that maze with Jestine for an hour, and then an hour more without her. Not true. Nowhere near true.

“How did this happen?” I ask. “How did he beat you?”

She draws away and tugs at the strap of her white dress with one hand. The other stays firmly attached to me, and I don’t let go of her either.

“I fight and lose, again and again, over and over, until forever.” Her eyes lose focus, over my shoulder, and I wonder what she sees. If I looked in the same direction, I might not see the same thing. Her eyes sharpen. “Prometheus on the rock. Do you know that story? Every day he’s punished for giving mortals fire by being strapped to a rock and having his liver eaten out by an eagle. I always thought it was a poor punishment. That he’d just get used to the pain, and the eagle would have to think of some new torture. But you don’t. And he does.”

“I’m so sorry, Anna,” I say, but the words bounce off. She’s not complaining. In her mind there’s been no crime. She thinks that this is retribution. That this is justice.

She studies my face. “How long has it been? I don’t remember you right. The memory is from too far away, like I knew you when I was alive.” She smiles. “I think I’ve forgotten what the world is.”

“You’ll remember.”

She shakes her head. “He won’t let go of me.” The movement is strange. It doesn’t fit; it hangs on her lopsided and it makes me wonder just how much damage has been done.

I pull her gently to her feet. “We have to go. We have to find my friend, Jestine. We—” I cringe as sharp pain hits my gut. Then it’s gone and I can breathe again.

“Cas.” Anna’s staring at the front of my shirt. I don’t need to look down to know that the blood is starting to show. I’m not sure whether that means I’m not focusing hard enough on forgetting it, or that time is short. But I’d rather not take chances.

“What did you do?” she asks. She presses her hand against my stomach.

“Never mind. We just have to find Jestine, and then we can get out of here.”

Something taps my shoulder. When I turn, there’s Jestine, looking as pleased with herself as ever.

There are cuts and lacerations on most of her fingertips and knuckles. Blood streaks are smeared across her cheeks and forehead like war paint, probably from wiping her torn-up hands against her face.

“Where have you been?” I ask. “What happened?”

“I’ve been solving our problems,” she says, and digs her hand into her pocket. The move makes her grimace, but when she pulls her hand back out, she’s absolutely beaming. When she unfurls her fingers, I see rough chips of shining silver in her palm.

“Two pockets full,” she says. “I found a vein. Of the metal. The same metal that’s in the blade of the Biodag Dubh.” She puts it back, out of view. Two pockets full. Plenty for the Order to forge a new athame. Something inside me quivers, some quiet, growling, jealous thing. “Now the Order will have its proper warrior. They’ll leave you and yours alone.”

I wouldn’t count on it, I want to say, but she nods at my shirt.

“Wound’s starting to show. I can feel mine too. I think that’s our cue to leave.” Her eyes shift toward Anna, and they regard each other levelly. Jestine smirks. “She looks like her picture.”

I put my arm around Anna protectively. “Let’s just get her out of here.”

“No,” says Anna, and when she speaks, the Obeahman roars, a high, mechanical screech that rings out from everywhere, like he’s directly above, or beneath us.

Jestine cringes and pulls out a short knife and what looks like a chisel. Both have chips and dents out of them. I guess they’re what she used to get the metal out of the rock.

“What’s that then?” she asks, makeshift weapons at the ready.

“The Obeahman,” I explain. “The ghost that Anna dragged down here last fall.”

“No ghost,” Anna says loudly. “He’s not a ghost anymore. Not here. Here he’s a monster. A nightmare. And he won’t let go of me.”

“You keep saying that,” I say.

“Where he goes, I go.” She closes her eyes, frustrated. “I can’t explain it. It’s like I’m one of them now. One of his. Twenty-five murderous dead. Four moaning innocents. We wear him like chains.” Brittle, pale fingers slide down her arms and wipe at the fabric of her skirt. It’s a traumatized, cleansing gesture. But when she sees Jestine watching, her hands return to her side.

“He’s tied to her,” Jestine says. “If we pull her through, he comes along for the ride.” She sighs. “So what do we do? You’re not going to be in much shape to send him back when we get home. I suppose the Order could hold him, maybe bind him or banish him for a while.”

“No,” Anna insists. “He’s past that.”

My ears have mostly shut off as they go back and forth. Twenty-five murderous dead. They’re all here, locked inside him. Every one that I killed. The greasy-haired hitchhiker. Even Peter Carver. That’s why I saw him in the rock, and why Emily Danagger chased me through the cliffs. None of them went where they were supposed to. He was lying in wait like a shark, mouth open, waiting to swallow them whole.

“Anna,” I hear myself say. “Four moaning innocents. What do you mean by that? Who are they?”

Her eyes move to mine. There’s regret in them. She hadn’t meant to say it. But she did.

“Two boys you know,” she says slowly. “One man you don’t.” Her eyes lower. Will and Chase. The jogger in the park.

“That’s three. Who’s the fourth?” I ask even though I know. I need to hear it. She looks back up and takes a deep breath.

“You look so much like him,” she says.

My fists clench, and when I yell it’s at the top of my lungs, so the sound will carry far enough in this fucking place for that bastard to hear.