The Shadow Men

If I Ever Leave This World Alive

They could have just killed her,” Jim said, hugging his daughter to his chest. The redheaded guy had gone, sent away by Sally. The others were milling in a state of shock at the brutal fight they had just survived. Sally sat against the wall recuperating, while her motionless No-Face Men loitered in the shadows, but there was a sense of urgency in the room. They all knew that speed was of the essence. If anyone came in here and saw the bodies and blood, their troubles would have only just begun.

“I would have sensed that,” Sally said. “They needed her alive as bait.”

“Bait,” Jim echoed, and the idea of anyone using his precious little girl like that only increased his fury.

“Like in fishing, Daddy?”

“Yes, honey.” He hugged Holly and felt her familiar warmth, and could not avoid imagining that bleeding away.

“Her Shadow Men have been thinking on their own,” Sally said. “She must have imbued them with more intelligence than I thought.”

“But they didn’t figure on us,” Anne said. She was nursing her bruised and bleeding head, but her defiance was unmistakable.

“As if we made much difference,” Jennifer said. She was kneeling close to Jim and Holly but not quite close enough to touch. He knew that this must be so difficult for her.

“You made every difference,” Sally said. Her eyes were closed. She looked reduced, even smaller than the child she was.

“How?” Trix asked.

“You gave them something more to fight. Bought us time to react.”

Trix and Anne pulled several of the heavy chairs across to the wide entrance. With the doors closed and chairs propped beneath the handles, it would take a concerted effort to enter the room from that way. And today, they hoped, few people would have browsing works of art on their minds. Art was a luxury, and these were desperate times.

“Honey,” Jim whispered into his daughter’s ear, and she pulled back slightly and looked up at him.

“I know,” she said. “It’s time for you to help Mommy.”

“And you’re going to stay here, be my good little girl.” He glanced at Sally, watching him talk to his daughter. “And look after Sally for me. She’s very tired, and a little sad.”

Holly looked at the Oracle, then sighed. “Daddy,” she said, “don’t be silly. She’s like… magic. She’ll be looking after me. ”

He laughed, and Jennifer smiled at him. “Clever little girl you’ve got there,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it.” He wondered what Jennifer must think, knowing that this girl shared her DNA yet was not her daughter. And he realized that after this, nothing would ever be the same again. From this day forward, the merged city of Boston would become the focus of every media outlet, and every scientist. It would be the most famous, most heavily scrutinized place in the world, and thousands of people’s lives would be changed. Some of the changes would be obvious and immediately apparent-there would be lots of people vying for the same property, existing in the same space. But many more changes would be hidden away, perhaps forever. There were plenty of bodies in the streets and buried under collapsed buildings, but yesterday’s collision must have wiped out many people from reality. Bloodlines had ended, without ever having existed at all.

Across the world, ripples from this incredible, terrible event had changed situations beyond counting.

“You have to go now,” Sally said. Her eyes were still closed and she remained seated, but something about her had hardened. Perhaps it was her stronger voice, or the squaring of her shoulders.

Jim stood, still grasping his daughter’s hand. The idea of Jenny fading away was terrible, and the thought of her becoming one of those faceless shadow-things was beyond comprehension.

“Are you ready?” Sally asked.

“Are you?” She looked wasted to Jim; he was afraid for her, and of her.

“I can do what I need to do,” Sally said. “It’s all of you who matter. If you don’t get back and stop Veronica, what happened here will be only the beginning. This won’t be”-she stood, pushing herself up the wall and shrugging her shoulders-“pleasant.”

Jim and Jennifer stood near Holly, and Trix and Anne came to stand with them, facing away from the bodies that Trix and Anne had dragged across to one wall. Smears of blood glistened on the floor. Holly had her back resolutely to the corpses as well, and Jim’s heart broke for her. Even if this all ends well, she’s changed forever, he thought, and his little girl smiled up at him sadly.

“You know what you’ve gotta do,” Sally said, standing before them. “The only way to hide you from the In-Between is to fool it into thinking you’re already a part of it. Being turned into a shadow would weaken you pretty badly, even at the beginning. And you’ll need all your strength in there. So I’m going to lend you souls not yet born.”

“So Jenny, now?” Jim asked.

“After this time, I suspect she’s in a sort of coma,” Sally said. “Which is good, because it will protect her. A little.”

Trix exhaled loudly. “Okay. I’m ready. But I’ve gotta say, it’s freaking me out something huge.”

Jim nodded. He felt the same way. Sally wanted to merge them with her No-Face Men, masking their humanity with those wraiths’ potential existence. Hopefully like that, the In-Between would not affect them. At least, not right away. “Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked Sally.

The young Oracle shrugged. “I guess. I mean, it’s been done before, but not by me. You should be able to stay merged with them for a little while without it affecting you too much. I’m not sure for how long, but long enough for you to…” She waved at the expanse of wall through which the Shadow Men had tried to pull Anne.

“What’s ‘too much’?” Trix asked.

“I don’t know,” Sally said. “ I’ve never done this before.”

“Will we be able to lose them afterward?” Jim asked.

“You will,” Sally said. “I’ll tell you how. Show you.” She was vague, and quiet.

“All right,” Trix said. She looked at Anne and they squeezed each other’s hands. “If we’re going, let’s get going. Me first.”

Sally shifted her hand by her side, and a No-Face Man came forward, a shadow floating through pools of artificial light. “Try and keep still,” Sally said. “And don’t fight it.”

Trix nodded, then let go of Anne’s hand and crossed her arms on her chest.

Jim’s first impulse was to shout out and help his friend because he could see that she was in pain. Her face screwed up-but she uttered no sound-as Sally grasped at the amorphous No-Face Man and pressed him to Trix’s side. Trix did not move or flinch, but her expression betrayed the discomfort she was feeling as Sally kneaded and pressed, clasping handfuls of shadow and pressing it against her clothing, her skin. The little girl’s face was set in concentration, and her lips moved as she muttered some unheard incantation, eyes fluttering, cheeks flushing. She grasped and pushed, and it was almost as if she was trying to mold Trix and the No-Face Man together. As the wraith reduced, so Trix’s discomfort seemed to grow.

“You’re hurting her,” Jim said, but it was Holly’s hand squeezing his that silenced him. My little girl’s giving me comfort, he thought, and a darkness opened in him because of things she had already seen. He hated the idea of Holly becoming as unnaturally precocious as Sally.

Perhaps something about what she was doing became easier, because Sally seemed to speed up. Her hands grasped and pressed, her arms windmilled, and soon she was snatching at the air to retrieve the few dregs of the No-Face Man that remained. At last she stood back, breathing heavily and yet seemingly invigorated by what she had done-eyes glinting, skin flushed and shining.

Trix opened her eyes and looked around. Her pupils were darker than Jim had ever seen them, like pits into nothing.

“Trix?” he asked. She blinked a few times, gathering her personality back to her, finding herself again.

“Fucking hell,” she said.

“Okay,” Sally said, waving her hand and calling forth another. “Who’s next?”

Trix watched Anne, Jennifer, and then Jim go through the process, and all the time she was coming to terms with what she had become. Memories flitted at her like vague recollections of long-ago dreams, and even this distant there was a terrifying alienness to them. She often could not remember what she had dreamed the night before, but a nightmare from when she was four years old-falling from a cliff with her mother, Trix flying, her mother striking the ground and dying-was etched on her memory. These memories felt like secondhand dreams remembered by someone else. They were not only memories that did not belong, but the way they were remembered was all wrong as well. She was recalling someone else’s life, long lost to the In-Between.

Trix supposed she should have felt pity, but she was too scared for that. And too determined.

As each of the other three were merged with a No-Face Man, she witnessed them going through the same strange, disconcerting experience. Jennifer cried, reaching for Jim’s hand. Anne stood strong, her gaze never diverting from Trix’s eyes. And Jim barely seemed to flinch. He’d go through hell to get his Jenny back, Trix thought, and she glanced at Anne, thinking that fate had changed everything.

Finally they stood there, altered and yet the same.

“I still see Jim,” Trix said. “And Jennifer, and Anne. I see that they’re different, but-”

“The In-Between needs no eyes,” Sally said. “I can see…” She closed her eyes, frowned, and opened them again, muttering under her breath. “I see you all faded away.”

Trix shivered and looked down at her hands, turning them over. She knew the backs of her hands, and yet the nails now seemed to seep something blank, like an invisible mist that wiped shreds of reality from view. She blew, but the mist did not disperse.

“Trust me,” Sally said. “Don’t concern yourself with what’s happened, or how different you might be or feel. It’s worked, and it’ll protect you. And you’ll be too busy in there to try to understand.”

“Bugs the crap out of me,” Anne said, wringing her hands together and then pulling them slowly apart. Trix smiled, her heart quickening.

“Go fast,” Holly said. She was holding on to Jim and looking at the other three. “Please go fast.”

“We’ll be faster than fast,” Trix said.

“One more thing,” Sally said. “Pass by me; I can do this while you go.” She held on to Holly’s other hand, and they looked nothing like two little girls.

Jim went first, and Sally muttered strange words as she reached up and touched his face with her free hand. Jennifer and Anne followed, and then Trix grasped the Oracle’s hand and gasped softly. For a moment Holly was a part of her-laughing in her mind, giggling as they walked together through Boston, hugged together on a sofa watching her favorite movie, Lilo amp; Stitch. And as Sally let go and her eyes widened just a little, Trix smiled at Holly. “Our bond is already strong,” she said. “I’ll never let you down, Holly.”

“Thanks, Auntie Trix,” the girl said.

They stood at the wall, and Trix looked back at the two girls in the center of the ruined room, with blood spattered all about and bodies against the far wall. But she knew more than to ask if they would be all right. “See you soon,” she said to both of them, and she was the first to reach for the door handle.

As the door opened, there was a gasp. Trix thought it had come from the other three, but then a waft of air passed her, seemingly drifting both ways, and for a moment she became utterly disoriented. She smelled something old and base, her ears sang with unknown whispers, and she was not sure whether her eyes were open or closed.

At first glance, the room around her-the Reflection Room beyond the door-looked quite normal, not part of another world at all. And then she realized that there was something strange about it. She stared, closed her eyes and smelled, then tried to just listen, and it took a while to identify what was wrong. This room is dead, she thought, and the idea chilled her. Even the wood in the floor had never been part of a living thing. The room was paused, not frozen like a picture, but caught in a gap between moments. It was nowhere a living thing could feel at home.

She walked quickly toward the opposite wall, and before she reached it her surroundings misted away to nothing. As she took several more steps, the floor beneath her changed to something softer. She looked down and saw an uncertain surface, her feet suspended on a vaporous layer. Stamping, she felt no reverberation, and very little impact.

“We’re in the In-Between,” she said, and though it was muffled, she was pleased that she could hear her own voice. She turned around to see the others coming through the door, and the wall behind her had vanished.

Everything behind her had vanished.

There was mist. Up and down were dictated only by the way she stood, but there was little else to distinguish it. And yet there must have been a firm ground, and some rule of three-dimensional order, because she could see Anne, Jennifer, and Jim, all of them standing in the same plane. They were shadows in the mist, vague shapes that she saw better when she looked to their left or right.

“Trix?” she heard, unsure who was calling.

“Here!” She waved her arms. It felt like someone else waved with her, a shadow echoing her movements. A shape came closer, and Jim emerged from the mist, moisture speckling his unshaven face. Jennifer came next, then Anne hurried to them, footfalls silent, her fearful expression shocking as she emerged into view.

“What is this?” Anne asked.

“The In-Between,” Jim said. “The space between worlds.”

“How the hell are we supposed to find her in here?” Jennifer asked.

Jim closed the distance between him and Jennifer, standing so close that their arms touched. Trix wasn’t sure it was even a conscious movement. “We walk,” Jim said. He turned away from them all and looked back the way they had come. Trix knew it was that direction, because she could feel Holly’s influence there, like a beacon in the darkness.

“We walk,” Trix repeated. “But can you feel…?”

They all nodded, because they knew what she meant. The air of this place was awash with malevolence, and as she inhaled and exhaled, she sensed the shadow inside her settling as it became one with the In-Between again. It smelled of stale cotton candy, and tasted of something rotten.

Without the shadow, the air would be harmful to her. It would start to bleed her of spirit and turn her into one of them, and she’d seen enough to know that their existence was not something to relish. Perhaps there would be no pain, but an unconscious limbo seemed worse than anything she could imagine. In the In-Between, possessing a mind-thoughts, desires, history-seemed the most important thing of all.

“Come on!” Trix said, suddenly desperate for Jenny and fearing that they might already be too late. “We don’t walk, we run! Hope you’ve all been keeping in shape.” She started running, and the others followed.

There was no concept of distance, other than by counting paces, but from the beginning Trix was certain they were going the right way. Jennifer and Anne passed her and subtly adjusted their direction. Jim followed with Trix, and the two facets of Jenny started moving faster, loping through the mists as something drew them on.

They saw their first Shadow Man, and it shocked Trix to the core. Outside, dragged through into one of the real worlds, these things were horrific enough. But here in the In-Between their monstrousness was more shocking because of its familiarity. In her world they were shapes that barely echoed humanity, but here they were tortured people, naked forms that twisted and writhed through the mists, limbs bending farther than they should, heads twisting and flipping so fast that they were a blur. They moved without walking, their agonies giving them a terrible momentum. And after seeing the first few, she feared that the next one they’d see would be Jenny.

I’ll know her, Trix thought, because each of these tortured souls possessed human traits and marks. Some were tattooed, others scarred, and hair color and build were distinguishable even through their pained contortions. As they saw another manifesting from the mists, she dreaded seeing Jenny’s hair, her face.

A larger shadow marred the blankness ahead of them, then emerged as a shape with square edges and features she finally recognized. It was Trinity Church, solid across this In-Between because it existed in all three Bostons.

Anne and Jennifer did not even pause. Wherever Jenny was, she drew them on.

Time lost meaning, its only evidence the urgency Trix felt. They passed another building in the distance that seemed solid, and then they entered a park whose plants were barely there, and whose small buildings seemed composed of drifting, shifting structures. Trix’s No-Face Man seemed uncomfortable in this place, and her own senses were repulsed by their surroundings. She glanced at Jim and saw that he was equally disturbed.

They did not pause to see what that place was, or why it had such an effect. As they left and entered the nowhere spaces in between, her No-Face Man settled again into the echo he had been. She could never get used to him, but at least this way she felt in control.

“Close,” Jennifer called, her voice robbed of its tone by the mist.

“Very,” Anne agreed. She looked back at Trix without breaking her stride, and with a burst of speed Trix and Jim drew closer to the two women.

And then Trix heard something in the distance. It was a soft, gentle moan, like wind gusting through an empty woodland. It rose and fell, raising a shiver like ice in her soul. Anne and Jennifer paused, and with their heads cocked they reminded Trix so much of Jenny that she let out a sob.

“We’ll save her,” Jim said, and it was ridiculous that he was comforting her.

“I know we will,” she said, because any other outcome was unthinkable.

The moaning grew in volume as they ran on again. Trix felt a tugging inside her, something that set her No-Face Man squirming, an uncomfortable sensation as if suddenly her skin could not contain her body. The tugging came from behind her, and she sent a message she hoped Holly might hear: We’re close, and soon we’ll be back with your mother.

And then they saw the lonely shape in the mists, and Trix’s heart broke. Anne and Jennifer stopped, sending shadowy ripples through the heavy air. Jim slowed, moving past them before coming to a halt. None of them could take in the pain they saw in the woman they loved, or the woman they were a part of.

“We can’t just fucking stand here,” Trix whispered, and in that silent place it seemed that her words might travel forever. She approached Jenny and saw how much had already happened. Naked, writhing, she did not twist and flex as much as the other changed people she had seen but rather seemed to swim in the air, limbs kicking and clawing at the strange misty atmosphere.

“Jenny!” Trix said, grabbing her arms and holding her still. The recognition in Jenny’s eyes was instant and shocking, because it spoke of such pain.

“H… H… H…,” Jenny said, panting.

Trix nodded, angrily wiping a sudden tear from her eye. “Holly’s fine,” she said. “She’s waiting for you.”

“Can you stand, babe?” Jim said. He was beside Trix now, touching his wife’s arms, her shoulders, wiping a slick of gray wetness from her stomach and chest.

“I… I…” Jenny’s eyes rolled, her body shook, and Trix saw shadows flickering from the corners of her mouth and ears, tendrils flowing inward rather than out.

“She’s a long way gone,” Trix said. She turned back to Jennifer and Anne. “Come on. We’re going to have to carry her.”

Jim lifted his wife beneath her arms and held her against him, taking the hug she could not give. Her body rippled and shook from the forces assaulting it, and shadows manifested from nowhere to flow into her. How long until she’s filled up? Trix wondered, and she stood beside Jim and offered help.

Jim turned his wife and held her beneath the arms, stepping back and allowing Trix to grab her beneath the knees. Naked, Jenny was on display to all of them, but it was a wretched nakedness-her skin was pale and slick, and things moved inside her. Anne and Jennifer approached on either side, looking down at another version of themselves. “God help her,” Jennifer whispered.

“Not unless we do,” Trix said. “Come on. You lead the way.”

They started running, and it felt like they were being repulsed by the In-Between and forced back to reality. Holly pulled them on, drawing them back to her. Trix relished the exertion, rushing sidelong with her best friend in the world held in her hands, and another version of this best friend racing beside her, her lover in another world. And everything was suddenly starting to feel fine, when Jenny began seizing so violently that she kicked her legs from Trix’s hands and twisted herself away from Jim’s grasp.

“No!” Jim shouted, and Jenny hit the ground and bounced back up, forced by her flexing limbs, rolling and thrashing like those other tortured Shadow Men they had seen all around.

“Not now!” Trix said. “We’ve found her, we have her, this isn’t fucking fair!” As she became angrier and more desperate, the thing within her grew more agitated, and she sensed it thrusting itself out beyond her body’s extremes.

Jim was staring at her, aghast… and then he came forward and grabbed her shoulders. “We’ve got to get it out of her,” he said, glancing at his hurting wife and turning away again, resting his head on Trix’s shoulder.

She held the back of his head and they hugged, two good friends preparing to help the woman they both loved.

“Sally’s No-Face Men,” Jim said. “One of them could rip the shadows out of her, like back in the library.”

Trix nodded, hope igniting within her. Already her thoughts turned inward, feeling for the shadow creature inside her, wondering if it could feel what she felt, if it could know what they needed. “Yes,” she said. “It’s the only way. If they understand what we want.”

Anne and Jennifer stood by with their hands held out but unable to touch her, unable to help. “Will it work?” Anne asked. “If one of us breaks away from the shadow Sally merged us with, we’ll be just as vulnerable as Jenny.”

“Probably,” Trix agreed, a terrible weight on her heart.

“It has to be me,” Jim said.

“But what if-” Jennifer began.

“We don’t know what if,” Jim said, pulling back. “We don’t know anything!”

“We could just run,” Trix said, but she could already see the folly in that. She hated the idea, and winced when it flashed across her mind… but Jenny might be too far gone already. Running would do them no good. They had to act now.

Jim turned, eyes closing as he tried to separate himself from the No-Face Man Sally had put inside of him, but then Jennifer shouted, a wail of emotion rather than words. It said so much. Her eyes were full of pain and denial and anger, and the way she looked at Anne, it seemed the two of them had come to some instant, silent agreement. No , Jim thought, because he knew some of what that look meant. Part of it was good-bye. “Jennifer,” he warned.

“I didn’t get to have a family,” Jennifer said, anguish pouring out of her. “But she does. It’s the life I wished for. One of us has to have it.”

Jim started toward her, nearly swimming through the strange atmosphere of the In-Between. Jennifer grasped one of Jenny’s waving hands in both of her own, then grimaced and closed her eyes, writhing slowly even as Jenny flipped and thrashed. A gush of darkness flowed from Jennifer’s eyes and ears, forming quickly alongside her, an echo of her following a heartbeat behind.

“Jennifer,” Jim said, but there was nothing else to say. He could object and push her away, try to break her bond with his poor dying wife. Or he could help.

He went to them, reaching out, trying to remember what he’d seen Sally doing less than an hour before and half a world away. And it took only a second’s hesitation before he reached out to the shadow stuff oozing from Jennifer and forming a shape next to her that he recognized so well. He curled his hands in the No-Face Man’s stuff, a cool, slick porridge that seemed to tug at every hair on his hand and arm, smoothing against his skin in a sickly, almost sensuous way. Then he thrust his handful down at Jenny and pressed it against her face.

Even though her eyes were closed, he could see the change. Her eyeballs rolled behind their lids, seeing things he had no wish to see but hoped he could ask her about one day. Her skin heaved in movements that her body could never perform by itself, no matter how terrible her fit. He pushed harder, then grabbed another handful and another, and suddenly Jenny stopped moving.

Frozen, arms held out in a crucifixion pose, she opened her eyes and her jaw fell, and she spewed something rotten and black into the shivering mist. It came with a scream, and Jim stumbled back, trying but failing to pull Jennifer with him.

“Jim!” Trix shouted, but she was very far away.

Jennifer’s No-Face Man was still emerging, and now it was completing on its own what Jim had begun-flowing into Jenny, expunging the dreadful, dark thing that had made its home there. It gushed like hot tar, a torrent of dried blood, a flood of dead flies, foulness erupting from every orifice and dispersing to the strange air of this In-Between place. When he took in a breath, Jim heaved at the stench and tasted vileness on his tongue.

“Jim!” Trix shouted again.

Driving it out, Jim thought, barely understanding, yet finding hope once again. Jenny looked so slight beneath and behind what was happening, her naked form assaulted and reduced, and he had touched every part of her, loved every inch, and now he was determined that he would do so again.

Jennifer still clasped her hand, bending forward slowly until she went to her knees beside her naked other self.

“Jim, something’s happening!” Trix shouted.

I know, Jim thought, but something in her voice made him turn around. And Trix and Anne were looking away from Jenny and Jennifer.

In the distance, the looming shape of a building wavered in and out of focus. There was a violence about the huge, slow movement that took his breath away, a malevolence that he was certain had not been there previously, and before he could discern exactly what was happening, Trix made it clear. “Something’s here. And it sees us,” she said.

“No,” Anne said, and she looked past Jim. “Something sees Jennifer.”

“Not camouflaged anymore,” Jim said, realizing what Jennifer had done for Jenny and for him. He went to them both, gathering his wife to him with one arm and Jennifer with the other.

“Jim,” Jenny whispered. She was shaking from shock, but when she met his eyes he knew that she was almost completely herself. She looked at Jennifer, concern overcoming her shock.

“Come on,” Jim said. He tried to pull them both up, and then Trix and Anne were there to help, hauling Jenny to her feet. Trix hugged her and waved away her confusion.

“Later,” she said. “It’ll all have to wait until later.”

“What have you done?” Jim asked Jennifer.

She looked at him, his wife with another personality behind her eyes, and smiled softly. “Saved myself,” she said. “And now I really think we should be running like hell.”

Jim nodded, took hold of Jenny’s hand with his left hand and Jennifer’s with his right, and the five of them ran.

Holly pulled them in, Jim’s love for his daughter strong and warm in the distance. And with his wife next to him again, Jim thought perhaps he would find the strength for anything. He felt no tiredness, though he ran faster than he ever had before. Even his fear was slight and remote, though they were crossing an ocean of nothing, a place between worlds where souls were torn apart. Love had brought him this far, and would take him farther.

But the In-Between was no longer passive.

Whatever had seen Jennifer saw her still, and there were stirrings in the mist. The ground rumbled beneath Jim’s feet whenever he took a step. The air vibrated, as though something huge was moving in the distance. The mist swirled in patterns he did not know, and complex shapes that no mere mist could make.

“Faster!” Jim said, and somehow they increased their speed. Jenny was gasping and panting beside him. She looked exhausted and terrified, but she was taking strength from these people who had come to find her. He knew that expression of grim determination set on her face-she was hiding her discomfort to do what needed to be done. Physically, she was triumphing, but he had no idea how this would scar her.

Together, that’s all that matters, he thought, and the sense of Holly drawing them back was wonderful. But just when he believed it was all going to be all right and that they’d stumble upon the solid Reflection Room at any moment, the ground shook and sent them sprawling.

As he fell, Jim’s instinct took over-he had to reach out to shield his fall, and without thinking he unclasped his left hand and held it out before him. He grunted, rolled, and when he came to a stop he and Jenny were still holding hands.

Six feet away, Jennifer slowly stood and faced what was bearing down upon them.

“Keep still!” Anne said. She and Trix were also still holding hands, standing quickly and backing slowly from the shape in the mist.

“Too late,” Trix said, and Jim knew that she was right. Camouflaged though they might be by bearing the No-Face Men, whatever was coming for them would have seen through their subterfuge. Jennifer stood before them, a bared human soul in this inhuman world, and now the thing would destroy them all.

The thing was a storm, a riot of mist, and as it approached there were hints of something more solid at its center.

“You can go,” Jennifer said. Jim heard her voice clearly, even above the closing chaos.

“No,” he said, but she was not making a suggestion.

“You can go,” she said again, telling them all that she might be their one chance. As Jim looked from Jennifer-standing tall and straight, and as strong as he had ever seen his wife-and toward the approaching thing, he at last began to appreciate the threat it presented.

Because there was a face. And he had seen that face before.

Trix was by his side then, grabbing his left arm. “That’s…!” she said, unable to finish. To his right, Jenny hugged his arm, shaking but standing firm.

“That’s Thomas McGee,” Jim said.

“It doesn’t deserve a name,” Jenny said. Jim wondered what terrible things she had seen out here, but he could not ask her now. Perhaps he never would.

“Who is he?” Anne asked.

“The reason this place is here. He’s the ruination of Boston. The one who splintered it in the first place. I thought he was dead, but instead-”

“He’s in the In-Between,” Trix said.

“No. Can’t you feel it?” Jim said. “I think he is the In-Between.”

Jenny started shouting, because the shape that was McGee was close now, so close Jim thought perhaps it would reach out and sweep them away. As large as a man, the form at the heart of the mist-storm felt a hundred times more solid, as though its gravity was pulling them in.

“You… can… go,” Jennifer said, and she spared Jim one glance over her shoulder. The shadow stuff of the In-Between was pushing itself into her body, beginning the change that would make her a dead thing, an echo.

He would never forget the look in her eye, because it was the last thing he had expected. He’d have recognized fear, or resignation, or even sadness at the cruel tricks fate could play. But what he saw there was unbridled, uncomplicated love.

She went at McGee, and the re-forming man paused for a moment as if surprised.

“Run!” Jim said.

“We can’t just-” Trix began, but he clasped her hand and pulled her after him. There was no time to argue about it now. Later he would tell her, Jennifer did it for us, and if we’d waited there a second longer, her sacrifice would have been in vain. And later still, perhaps he and Trix would share quiet, private moments to go over those events again and again, to see what might have been different. But right then they did not have the luxury of time, and when Jim heard the angry shouts behind them-and then those long, terrible screams that would haunt him for the rest of his life-he did not turn around.

Anne and Jenny screamed as well, and for their final few moments in the In-Between they cried tears of unimaginable loss.

Bursting back through the Reflection Room and feeling the weight of reality realigning around them, Jim risked a look at his wife and the woman who could be her twin. They were reduced by what had happened; something was missing from their eyes. As he felt tears blurring his vision, he wondered whether either of them would ever feel fully alive again.

“Mommy!” Holly shouted as they opened the door. “Mommy!” The little girl ran across the bloodstained room and hugged her mother tight.

“McGee,” Sally said.

“Yes.” Jim nodded. Trix was holding Anne as she sobbed. Sally glanced around, then walked slowly across the room and closed the door. She had seen Jennifer’s absence and accepted it, and Jim couldn’t help hating her for it, just a little. Perhaps that was unfair blame, but right then he had to blame someone.

“Get these fucking things out of us,” Jim said.

“Not yet,” Sally said. She looked at Holly and Jenny hugging and smiled an unbearable smile. It was a look that said, That can never be me, and Jim’s anger at her shifted to grudging pity.

“Why?” Jim asked.

“Because it’s not over.” The Oracle looked at Trix, and Trix looked at Jim.

“Veronica,” Trix said.

“Veronica.” Sally waved them closer, and Jim realized that it was not yet time to rest.