“What is all this?” Morgan asked, echoing my thoughts.
When Morgan answered her own question in Puck’s voice, I felt a shiver ripple down my back.
“It’s just a dream,” Morgan said. “But not by the living.”
I frowned, but Zack asked the question for me.
“What does that mean?”
Puck’s shoulders popped up in a shrug. I stared at the back of his head, as if to draw answers from the tangled shock of gray hair.
“The Grey is where the dead dream,” Morgan/Puck said. “Or more accurately, it is the bed from which the dead dream of life.”
“Wait,” I said, and jogged up to him. “This is a dream?”
I could see, as I passed him, that Puck’s face was drawn. His mouth sketched a line on his face, and his eyes were narrow. He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. Over his shoulder, Morgan spoke for him.
“‘No. And yes,” Morgan/Puck sighed. “It is a dream from which there is no waking. As real as life, as inescapable as death. It is the home we chose.”
I grabbed the front of Puck’s shirt, and he stopped walking.
“I didn’t choose anything,” I said.
Puck shook his head, his sympathetic eyes unchanging.
“We all choose, Lucy,” he said, with Morgan’s voice. “We choose to accept, we choose to deny, or we choose to overcome.”
“Death?” I half-laughed it out, incredulous.
Puck and Morgan nodded. “There is always a choice.”
“Stop talking in fucking
riddles
.”
Puck stepped back, and the glint in his eyes changed. He drew up his thin frame and raised his chin. His long slender fingers re-wrapped the blood-red scarf around his slender throat. After a long beat, he pointed forward, over my shoulder. I didn’t bother turning to look.
“The longer we chat,” Morgan/Puck said in that monotone voice. “The more time the broken souls have to sniff out your friends. They’ll flock to us, and then they’ll take their memories, their lives, and their souls. They’ll devour them, for all eternity. And then they’ll feed on us, you and I, for the stolen essence. Do you understand that? Do you understand that if we don’t get out soon, we die? Forever?”
I backed up, my hands clutched together. My mouth went dry.
“Come on,” Morgan/Puck said, and brushed past me. “The train station isn’t far.”
I listened to the scrape of his shoes on the sidewalk for a few long moments, looking into the distance. Zack and Morgan, standing together, in the middle of a broken grey street. The remains of a grey abandoned suburb spiraling out behind and around them, framing them as solitary motes of color. I could feel them, I realized, as I took in slow breaths. The heat baking off of them, and the smell. Just breathing, softly, trying to calm the fear and the rage and the despair, I could taste them.
Like a pungent but delectable spice. Something I didn’t have a name for.
Morgan crossed the gap and wrapped me in her arms. She pressed me against her, and I relented. My face against her shoulder, rogue strands of golden hair tickling my ear. Her neck, just underneath my nose. Her skin burned, and as I breathed deep, I felt the cold trickle in my body ripple, like someone tossing a stone into a still pond.
I tasted the image of two little girls hugging in a sandbox surrounded by blacktop, one of them, the dark-haired one, cradling her hand. A splinter the size of a crochet needle, at least to a five-year-old, stuck out of her thumb. A little path of bright red blood streaking down her wrist, living little rubies in the tiny sand dunes. The blonde little girl shushed her, cradling her sobbing form.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t surprised to feel tears on my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I felt Morgan tighten her grip around my back.
“What for?”
“Nothing,” I said, knowing I’d accidentally stolen that memory from her. Maybe forever. “Everything.”
“Let’s go, Luce,” she said, her fingers tangling in my hair. “We’ll get out of here and we’ll figure this all out.”
I smiled and wiped the tears self-consciously from my face. Zack, God bless him, looked far too interested in the dilapidated high school beyond. He only turned back to face us when I cleared my throat.
“So,” Zack said, his hands in his pocket. “Are we uh, going?”
“Yeah,” I said, and smiled at Morgan.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Morgan said, and marched after Puck. She raised her voice. “And no more talking through me unless you ask, got it?”
Puck flicked a hand over his shoulder. The gesture equivalent of
whatever
, I imagined.
We found the train tracks before long. They snaked off in opposite directions, long grey parallel lines against the grey earth. Most of the wooden ties looked intact, but more than a few had been crushed, cracked, or simply rotted through. On our right, the tracks streaked off, maybe forever. They became a dot in the distance, indecipherable from the landscape.
On the left, the tracks went maybe another half-mile before ending in what had to be a train station. A large, domed structure, squatting over the tracks. It looked to be in better shape than its surroundings—I could make out a mural on one of the high walls facing us. The colors hadn’t faded very much, but from that far away, the shapes were indistinguishable.
“I guess that’s the station,” Zack said, echoing my thoughts. “I don’t have any cash on me.”
“I don’t think it’s really a train station,” I said. “Right?”
Puck nodded and began walking left, down the tracks.
“I don’t like metaphors,” Morgan said, suddenly, rubbing her hands together.
We struck off down the tracks. The mural I’d seen from far away depicted a grotesque-looking pilgrim festival—the artist had painted terrible proportions, people with giant lips and skewed faces, like they’d been made of clay and squished between fingers. Like someone’s horrible dream of what people might look like. I decided I didn’t need that particular brand of nightmare fuel, and looked away. We crossed around the side of the station and almost walked straight into a train.
The tracks split as we rounded the corner. They diverged into three separate tracks, all with loading platforms beside them. One of the tracks was empty, and stretched off into the distance. The other two housed trains. A pair of locomotives stared us down with their yellowed eyes, dead and unused. Their slatted iron cowcatchers, just like out of an old cartoon—or a nightmare—gave the impression of toothy, frowning faces.
The number on the first locomotive was “0315-96.” The number on the second was “1128-95.”
I knew the first one right away. But I didn’t even get to share what I considered to be a startling revelation before Zack snorted derisively.
“That’s my birthday,” Zack said, pointing to the second one. “Holy shit.”
Morgan walked up to the front of her train—the first one—and put her hand on the wide iron bars of the cowcatcher. She ran her hand down one and whistled. When she turned back toward me, her face looked almost serene.
“Mine too. What is this?” she asked, her voice sort of…zonked out. Dreamy, almost.
Zack shook his head. He stood on the tracks in front of his train, his feet wide, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. I wished, in that moment, I’d had a camera, or an easel and a talent for painting. I’d tack that shot up on my wall and call it
Fate Train.
The idea popped in my head, fully formed. I was almost overwhelmed by a giddy urge to share it.
Puck shook his head and walked up the steps to the platform next to Zack’s train. He waved a hand at all of us. We followed him, even Morgan, though she showed a marked reluctance as we went away from her train. I grabbed her wrist and led her up the steps to the platform.
Zack’s train wasn’t long—just two passenger cars bookended by engines. The coaches were the same old-west style as the engine. Yellow painted slats along the outside, a long black roof with black trim. Wide windows with narrow openings. I could make out the darkened shapes of the benches inside through the windows. A small step folded out from between each of the passenger cars, with a little hand rail.
We stared at it for a long while. Zack wrapped his hand around the rail of the fold-out steps. I watched him look up at the train, and I wondered what he could possibly be thinking. The smooth lines of his face gave nothing away, and he examined the train with the same single-minded concentration he used to peruse news articles in the library. He slid his hand across the railing and rapped it with his knuckles. The railing gave out a hollow, metallic
whang
.
“This is real,” Zack said. “This is me?”
Puck shook his head, and when Morgan spoke, I knew it was her, not Puck, talking.
“It’s not real,” Morgan said. “But yeah, that’s you all right.”
I turned to Morgan, to try to decipher this sudden burst of insight, but she still wore that slack, dreamy mask.
“How do you know that?”
Morgan looked me in the face and smiled. Her bright green eyes glittered like emeralds, unnaturally bright. Behind her, Puck fiddled with his scarf in a very un-Puck-like way—nervous, almost. I didn’t know where the two oddities fit together, and part of me didn’t want to. It left a hole in me that was filling with dread.
“I just know,” she said. “It looks like him.”
She walked to the edge of the platform and looked down at the gap between her and the train. She unfolded her hand toward the train and slapped it lightly with a wide-open palm. It reminded me of third grade, when we’d gone to the San Diego Zoo. Little eight-year-old Morgan in pig tails, staring up at Mogo the Elephant as he passed by. She had held her hand up, palm out, just like that. Like the world’s most bewildered crossing guard.
“Are you okay, Morg?” Zack asked, turning to look at her.
Morgan shook her head. “I doubt it.”
I laughed, despite the eerie scene. Morgan looked over her shoulder and grinned.
“I think it’s time to go,” I said. Her smile faded slightly, but she nodded.
“How do we...go?” Zack asked. He was looking down at the first step onto the train like it was covered with writhing cobras.
Puck pumped his arm in the
toot-toot
gesture.
“That’s it?” Zack asked. “I go inside and what…wake up in my body?”
“That’s it,” Morgan said. It still wasn’t Puck’s voice. I had become used to her being Puck’s mouthpiece—even if it was creepy. But Morgan providing all the answers herself freaked me out even more.
Zack stepped off the platform and turned around. He looked straight at me, and I clenched my fists. He flashed me that crooked smile.
“I’ll see you soon, Luce,” he said. I felt my stomach spasm in terror.
“I—” I said, and stopped. My heart danced like a jackhammer in my chest.
“Hmm?” Zack said, his eyebrow raised.
My skin tingled across my whole body, and I felt my cheeks flush despite the chill in the air. Looking Zack in the eye, I knew I could take on the world and yet have trouble tying my shoes. The contradictory sensation gave me vertigo.
“I think I l-love you,” I said. I couldn’t stop myself. This didn’t feel like an “I’ll-see-you-soon” moment. It felt like the part of the movie where the guy says, “I’ll be right back” and then dies in some tragic but undoubtedly noble way.
“I know,” Zack said, and winked. He stepped backward onto the train and turned to go inside.
I ran to the edge of the platform and slapped the side of the train with my hand. Zack turned, just before opening the door to the coach.
His lips turn into a crooked grin, his eyes on fire with mischievous light. Looking into mine, the playful light dimmed, becoming something simple and earnest and beautiful.
“I love you,” Zack said.
Just like that. My face stretched without my control into what had to be the goofiest smile ever recorded. Behind me, Morgan let out a long disgusted groan. I flipped her the bird over my shoulder.
“That’s my lady,” Zack said. “I’ll see you in a few seconds, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” Zack said, and walked into the train. He closed the door behind him. My smile disappeared, and along with it the brief bubble of ecstasy. That familiar old feeling of despair took its place.
I watched the train with my hands clenched together, tucked tight against my belt.
I don’t know what I had been expecting—a flash of light, a sudden explosion, the
Back to the Future
theme song. What I certainly wasn’t expecting is exactly what happened.
Nothing.
When the seconds stretched into an entire minute, I turned to Morgan. She shook her head, her brow knitted together. I glanced over to Puck. He sported a similar look of bewilderment.
Finally, the coach door opened again, and Zack leaned out. He blew out a long sigh.
“Yeah, so, we have a problem.”
A minute later, Zack was helping us board the train.
“Get ready for some weird,” he said.
The train car wasn’t as dark as I imagined it would be—the car glowed with a warm amber gleam. It reminded me of being home in a dream. Every bench and table looked brand new, polished, well kept, clean. But the strangely modern décor wasn’t what drew my eyes, not at first, anyway. The first things I really saw were the windows, and what was beyond them.
Cool florescent light streamed through the train windows, revealing blue/green stark walls and the giant, worried-looking faces of people I didn’t recognize. A hospital room, by the look of it, but super-sized. At first I recoiled, and from the sharp gasp behind me I guessed Morgan did the same. The giants, and their distant room, surrounded the train on all sides, at every window.
I looked at Zack, but he wore only an amused smirk.
I walked to one of the windows, watching the conversation two of the giants appeared to be having. I couldn’t hear what they were saying—just like a TV on mute.
Wait. Huh
.
I turned around, letting my eyes trail across every window. A hospital room…a doctor, walking out of the door. A middle-aged man and woman. The man had dark hair and a deep tan, and the woman, stork-thin but very pretty, had eyes the color of a storm at sea. I turned to Zack. From the look on his face, he’d seen me put it together.