Psychopomp: A Novella (13 page)

A train awaited me. I could see a phosphorescent glow through the small windows of the cars. It stretched through the darkness to unknowable distances.

Somehow I got myself inside. The seats were dark green. I sank into them gratefully, facing the windows on the opposite side.

The night began to roll past. Though I sensed fellow travelers, all the other seats were empty when I looked at them.

Beyond the windows, I could see everything. The whole scope of the world. Or so it seemed.

Thick dark blood seeped from the trunks of cloud-shaped trees. A weird blue sun blazed through olive clouds. I stared in wonder as flat fields quickly gave way to cities, their metallic profiles gutting the sky. They were nothing more than ruins—empty, abandoned, wrought with shadows. They shimmered like mirages, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

The train traveled upward, arcing across the sky. Stars surrounded me, sparkling on the velvet black. Looking down, I saw the shape of the country miles down below. It looked just like a map, but I saw no green. At the edges, where the ocean should have been, there was nothing but emptiness, stretching on into infinity. Like a starless sky. I could almost discern the roots of the world itself.

All across the land, there were lakes that looked like ghosts. Miles of salt flats. Rainbow-colored springs.

Somehow I could see all this. These wonderful things were out there in the world, visible now only to me. Like a gift. Glorious interpretations of images I had glimpsed on rippled library pages.

As the train swooped back down toward the ground, all the beauty disappeared. The floor of the train fell out from under me. It was as if all the loveliness had been inside of me, and someone had snatched it out along with my beating heart.

There was no eden. I’d walked into a wasteland, into a place from which I could never return. There was nothing for me to return to anyway.

The train went on, but I didn’t go with it. Clumps of phosphorescent light beaded off me until I was left splayed on the dirt, wrapped in darkness.

All this time, and I’d gone nowhere.

But then I caught sight of the mountains, so much closer now. They had density, rising like a giant’s spine from the earth. They were staircases to invisible utopias. They coalesced into a mythical creature that’d slept undisturbed for centuries. Orographic clouds lifted upward over the peaks, tinged orange by a rising sun.

I nearly choked on my own heartbeat. My vision swam.

The cracked wood of the farmhouse, the electrical storm, the earth scorched black…

No, I was almost there. Gabriel,
Gabriel
. Now he was a possibility instead of just a foolish dream. He would be waiting. I felt delirious with anticipation.

The castle rose up in dark shades of tan and rust that blended with the landscape. A numberless clock was set into one slim tower, but the tarnished golden hands were still. Time had no numbers now. Time was the arc of the sun across the sky, the tilt of the stars at night, the journey of a dream-train, the thickness of grime and sweat on my skin.

I found an entrance within a courtyard, beyond a tangle of weeds. Gabriel was through that door. I’d made it so far and it was unthinkable I wouldn’t find him here at last.

But I hadn’t counted on the rooms inside the castle being a maze, all connected to one another, never seeming to end. I tripped over frayed and faded carpet, sneezed at the dust drifting down from glass chandeliers, and bumped into leaning pieces of furniture. In some rooms, the walls and floors had crumbled away to reveal pipes crusted in limescale.

I’d become used to the open land, the big sky. In here, I felt suffocated.

And unimaginably tired.

My steps became stumbles taken more from habit of movement than because I had any strength left. My vision split and my body screamed for rest. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten or drunk anything.

Finally, I let myself crumple down on a holey rug inside a dark, fragmented room. I pushed my back to the wall and melted into the floor. Something had followed me here. Something had moved with me all along.

The silence of sleep enveloped me. There were no dreams anymore.

“Marlo.”

I stirred. That voice. His voice. Rumbling like distant thunder, slipping like shadows over my skin. Cold air wrapped itself around me. I wasn’t aware I’d been shivering until right this moment.

“Marlo, wake up.”

My eyes cracked open. He was there, Gabriel, as I’d known he would be. His black hair was longer and messier, his stubble thicker. His eyes were blue as a clear sky, blue as electricity, blue as the underside of an iceberg. He crouched before me, one hand on my shoulder.

“Drink this.”

Startling moisture touched my lips. They began to bleed through cracks in the layers of hard, dead skin as I drank. The water was like nothing I’d ever tasted, and in my greed I drank it all.

Gabriel stared hard at me. His eyes were so blue it hurt.

“Are you here?” I asked. “Is this real?”

“I’m here.”

He looked more haunted now. I was sure I did too. The harsh, barren land we’d traveled had extracted pieces of our soul. Its vast emptiness was now reflected in our eyes.

“I’ve dreamed of you. I didn’t know if I’d find you.” My eyes stung and my voice was like glass. Thin, brittle glass with browned edges that would break with the slightest mishandling.

He shifted his body so it blocked the cold air, and I felt his heat on my chilled skin. “I thought you ran away,” he said. “I waited for you.”

“But then you left,” I spat, venomous and angry. “Did you even care? Did you even care what might have happened to me?”

His eyes were soft and pitying. I knew he’d waited. But he couldn’t have waited forever.

“I know sometimes you told me the truth,” I said. “I also know you lied. But I don’t wanna know what’s true and what isn’t. I only wanted to find you. I don’t have no plan from here.”

I wanted to tell him everything in a calm, clear voice. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to tell him I loved him. But my journey had sapped all the strength from me and all I could do was let loose with ugly sobs of exhaustion that burned my throat raw. Gabriel gathered me to his chest. It was the first time he’d held me.

“You’ve come a long way,” he said once I’d cried myself dry. The cold found my body once more when he released me. “You need food, water, and rest. I’ll look after you.”

His words were lovelier than I could stand. “Thank you,” I said, sinking back toward the rug instead of hard, cold dirt. “Thank you.”

When I woke, I found him resting beside me. The line between his brows had smoothed. He carried more burdens than he’d shared with me, I knew. We were both entitled to secrets. I whispered his name, but he didn’t stir.

I traced my path back through the castle and went outside. Here, things didn’t seem so desolate. It almost felt like a new life was possible. My feet sank in soft mulch as I walked among the arrow-straight trees spreading up the mountainside. Shafts of sun speared through the sparse leaves above me, but there was little warmth. A crisp sky shone among the high, furred branches.

After a short while, I came upon a narrow stream, deep enough only to wet the bottoms of my feet. I knelt down, disgusted by the dark, loamy ground, and put my lips to the water. It was so cold and crisp my throat ached. I wondered why the government hadn’t sent the ambassadors out to ruin this place.

I felt the presence of the thing that had followed me, but I couldn’t see it.

The red turned to black. Electricity lingering in the air. Dirt beneath my fingernails. Dirt in my mouth.

Blinking, I looked up and saw a small stone building with a rusted bell in a tower. It was a church. The heavy brown door stood open. I hopped across the stream, heading curiously toward it. Churches and religion were foreign to me. All the gods once worshipped in this country were long dead on their altars, for we had other concerns than pleasing them.

My footprints marked the filthy aisle between rows of wooden benches. I sat down on the front bench. Thin candles, stuck in their own pools of hardened wax, adorned the steps of the altar. The colored windows along the side walls were all broken, which seemed a shame.

“Up,” someone said suddenly. A man, his voice deep and gravelly. “Get up. Turn around slow.”

Petrified, I did as he said. The man was of medium height, barrel-chested. His face was burned red, struck through with the white lines of deep wrinkles. His clothes, hair, and hands were all the same shade of sandy brown. He could have been any age, young or old.

I didn’t have any time to wonder how he could live out here, so far from civilization. In one hand he held a knife, pointed at me.

“That’s my stream,” he growled, moving up the aisle toward me. When he reached me, he pressed the side of his knife against my neck. “This is my house. Anyone wants to use my things, they gotta pay. Whaddaya got?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry, I—”

“You gotta pay,” he said. He used his free hand to scratch his scraggly chin. “I’d just let you go, but you already drank, and you already sat in my chair. Unbutton that dress.”

I shook my head as fervently as I could without letting the knife slice my skin.

“
Gimme your dress!
” he shrieked. He licked his lips. “
I need that dress.
Gimme your shoes. Gimme all your supplies, and then you can go.”

“I don’t have anything.”

The man adjusted the knife, pressing harder. It felt dull, but I guessed I wasn’t really in any position to refuse him. My hands trembled as I lifted them, but the buttons down my chest came apart easily. Feelings of humiliation and shame overwhelmed me, but this was survival. His survival. People looked out for themselves and no one else. For someone like me, self-defense and self-preservation were harder because I lacked the proper tools. I could only ever stand by and receive the worst humanity would give me, and move on when it was done. Utter degradation was a small price to pay for a few drinks of water.

When the buttons were all undone, I started to slide the dress from my shoulders.

Then I heard a sharp, muffled crack. The man crumpled to the ground before me, and I stepped back in alarm. Gabriel stood there, pale-faced and with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. He clasped a broken piece of wood, stained with a shining blotch of blood.

Terrified, I began to fumble with the buttons again. They were so tiny, so hard to pull through the holes—

Gabriel let the wood crash to the floor. Without a word, he stepped around the man and came to stand close in front of me. He gently placed his hands over mine and moved my arms down to my sides. Fingers deft and unhurried, he did the buttons up himself.

My knees weakened. He stood so close. The light streaming through the broken windows bathed us in holy, romantic calm. Dust motes danced wildly between our bodies. Nothing I’d left behind me mattered. That part of my life had never even happened.

“Gabriel,” I said softly. There was no unconscious man on the floor. There was nothing but the two of us.

His mouth opened, but before he could speak, I tilted my face up and pressed my lips to his. For once, it felt so good to surrender.

Just as quickly, his hands were on my shoulders, pushing me away. Frowning, he looked down at me.

“Marlo, I… You’re very young. It would be best if we didn’t—”

“How do you know what’s best?” I snapped, aflame with embarrassment. “I need you, Gabriel.”

“No, you don’t,” he said gently.

“I don’t even know why I followed you out here. You don’t care about me! I almost died and you don’t even care!”

“I do care.” His hands were still on my shoulders. “I know you’ve been hurt. I knew it from the moment I saw you on the balcony at the party. But you’re stronger than you realize. You only need yourself. You’re the only one who matters, do you know that?”

I hated he could undo me with words that weren’t even cruel. He would never say an unkind thing to me, never lay a harsh hand on me, but he would wound the deepest, softest part of my heart with greater precision than anyone I’d ever known.

A skill like that was unforgivable. I never should have made myself vulnerable to him, I realized. It wasn’t like I’d actually believed he would want my kiss. He was right—I
didn’t
need him. I didn’t need anyone.

The remains of the road snaked through the mountains. Something was still following me. Sometimes I could see it from the corner of my eye, a flash of white low to the ground.

A few steps ahead of me, Gabriel was a slim slash against a pale sky. I tried not to look at him. My love had grown like fungus in the dark, my muddy green eyes full of misplaced devotion. I wondered what he thought of me now in my torn blue dress, dirt-brown hair rough with tangles, shoes falling apart, ankles scratched. It was embarrassing how quickly I could unravel for him.

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes landing on me and then sliding off. I quickened my pace and laid a faint touch on his arm. I drew my hand back, fingers burning. “Don’t look back,” I said. “Never, never look back.”

One side of his mouth tipped up in a smile. “Then walk beside me, would you?”

Traveling with Gabriel was so much easier than traveling alone.

But sometimes he wasn’t there. Sometimes I slipped down the swirling gray slopes of petrified mud all on my own. Sometimes I walked in circles, wondering why my hands were turning black. My eyelids would droop down and I would fight to keep them open, struggling against the descending black. It was as if I were seeing two images at once, and I couldn’t tell which was real.

Then Gabriel would return and everything was fine again. We had water from the stream and enough food for the both of us. Our legs never tired. He wasn’t as nervous or agitated as he used to be, and he smiled at me often.

Even so, I couldn’t shake a growing unease.

“How did that man get out here?” I asked.

“He probably left like we did. Maybe he was trying to find something better.”

I wondered if that man was the only one who lived out here, and how he managed to survive. “How did he know he wouldn’t die?”

“He didn’t know that, I’m sure.” Gabriel shrugged. “Some people thrive on hardship. I imagine he’s one of them.”

I hesitated, glancing at him sideways. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No. I only knocked him out so we’d have time to get away.”

The thing that had been following me caught up when the mud turned to brown desert sand. Mountains surrounded us, farther in the distance than they seemed. Closer there were dunes, shifting in the wind.

I saw the white thing emerging from cracks in the hard-baked ground. As I walked, it would disappear behind sweet-smelling bushes. Then I would see it again somewhere ahead of me. Waiting for me to go to it.

So I did, finally.

“Do you see that?” I asked Gabriel, veering away from him. I kept my eyes trained on the thing. It was getting taller, as if it grew slowly out of the ground before my very eyes. Like it was alive.

Suddenly I was upon it. It looked like a cage, a birdcage maybe. The handle on top was attached to several slender, rusted white bars radiating down in a circular form. Within the bars, the dirt stirred. Something was inside the cage, buried.

I hesitated only a second before plunging my hands into the sun-warmed dirt around the cage bars. It came away more easily than I expected and I kept digging, determined to uncover the thing inside. I was good at digging by now.

Gabriel stood behind me, watching but not saying a word.

My fingers brushed something soft, something like hair, and the hard roundness of a head. I leapt back with a scream and stared at the little crater I’d dug. I could see the top of a head within the bars, bits of mustard-brown hair showing through the dusting of dirt.

“Something’s in here,” I said to Gabriel.

It didn’t move as I stared at it, but I knew it wasn’t something dead. It wasn’t a toy. I had touched it, and it was warm and organic.

A child. A living child. In the ground. In a cage.

Horrified and deeply disturbed, I wanted nothing more than to run from this thing. But I knew it would keep following me, so I leaned forward again, scrabbling away at the ground. I was careful not to touch the little body as I worked to loosen the cage. I couldn’t look at the tiny child. I didn’t want to know why or how it was coming up from under the ground, following me no matter where I went.

After another minute, I’d unearthed the bottom of the cage. I came to my feet, grasped the handle, and pulled. The cage came away with a shower of sand and I stumbled back a few steps. I’d expected a cage containing even a very small child would be heavy, but the thing was like air.

I set it down and studied the kneeling form behind the bars. A boy, I guessed, though it was hard to say for sure. Even bent up inside the small cage without enough room to stand, I could tell his body was freakishly ill proportioned. His hands and feet were too large for his thin, even skeletal, limbs. He couldn’t have been taller than two feet. His eyes, pale blue, were sunken in his wide, gaunt face. They seemed to see everything and nothing.

They seemed to see the things I saw when I closed my eyes for too long.
Endless yellow fields burned black. The charred shell of the farmhouse.

But that was all behind me now.

The boy’s long, narrow hands, so pale they were almost blue, gripped the slender bars of the cage. He stared solemnly
through
me. The wind seemed not to touch him. And the cage had no door, so he could never get out.

I’d never seen him before, but he looked all too familiar. He was tiny and twisted like the thing rooted inside me—a knot of thoughts and fears so dark I could never share them with anyone else. Thoughts and fears that had festered and hardened, so now they would always be a part of me. Trapped within.

I would help this thing, this boy. Gabriel and I would. We would take him with us.

I lifted the cage off the ground. It was no effort at all to carry it. But I held it out to one side so it wouldn’t knock against my legs. I never wanted to accidentally touch that taut, bluish skin. Because then I would know for sure whether I was alive or dead.