Richard Kadrey: Dead Set

“Well, it was that long!” yelled her mother, breaking down into red-faced sobs. She tried to speak, but she had trouble breathing. “I thought you were dead.”

Zoe got up from the couch and went to her. Her mother took a step back.

She held out a hand and after a minute her mother took it, as if she wasn’t sure that what was happening was real. “I’m sorry,” Zoe whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Her mother’s sobbing let up a bit and she stroked Zoe’s head.

“You’re filthy,” said her mother. “You look like you’ve been dragged behind a truck.”

Zoe laughed a little. “Just about.”

“Where have you been for a week?”

“Far away,” said Zoe. “Farther away than I ever meant to go.”

“What does that mean?”

“Can we do this sitting down?” Zoe asked. “I’ve been running for days. I’ve hardly eaten anything.”

“Running? Are you in trouble? Did someone do this to you?”

“Do I look that bad?” Zoe asked. She turned and caught her reflection in the hall mirror. It took her a moment to recognize the young woman looking back at her. This young woman had wild, dirt-caked hair. Her face and arms were covered with cuts and bruises. She still wore Emmett’s baggy clothes over her own. They were torn and the front of her shirt and pants were splattered with blood and Hecate’s ashes.

“Let’s sit down,” Zoe said. She took her mother’s hand and they sat on the couch.

“I know you want to know where I’ve been, what happened to me, but I’m afraid to tell you.”

Her mother let out a short, harsh laugh and took her hand back. “Just say it. What kind of trouble are you in?”

“It’s not that kind of trouble. And all the blood is mine, so you don’t have to worry that I murdered anyone,” Zoe said. “I’m just afraid that if I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me. I haven’t been real good with the truth lately.”

“That’s for goddamn sure,” said her mother. She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the living room table, took one out, and lit it with a disposable plastic lighter.

“Please don’t do that. It’s not good for you,” said Zoe.

“You don’t get to tell me what’s good and not good for me,” her mother said. “Sitting around for a week thinking you were dead, that’s what’s not good for me!”

“I’m really sorry. Nothing quite went the way I thought it would,” Zoe said. She held on to the back of the couch. The fabric was cool and scratchy against her hand, but it felt a bit more real than it had when she first came in. The world felt like it was slowly shifting back into focus.

“Look,” said her mother, exhaustion and anger framing each word, “just fucking tell me what’s happened to you, where you’ve been.”

Zoe looked away, gathering her thoughts, not sure where to begin. She took something from her pocket. “Someone told me to give you this,” she said, handing the coin to her mother.

It took her mother a few seconds to register what she was holding. She turned the coin over and over in her hands. “This club’s been gone for something like fifteen years. Where did you get this?”

Zoe took a breath, held it, and said, “Dad.” They sat in silence for a minute.

Finally her mother sighed and shook her head. “Zoe, what are you-”

“Do you want to hear where I’ve been or not?”

“I don’t want to hear a load of shit that’s supposed to make me feel guilty about your father being dead.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, I swear.”

“Don’t play games with me. Not after what I’ve been through. You could have found this coin on eBay.”

“But I didn’t. Dad gave it to me to give to you because it’s from the club where you first met. You even had the words on the back, ‘Fuck You Very Much,’ on the jacket you were wearing that night.”

Her mother stared at her. “How do you know all that?”

“I know about it because I was there. I told you, I went somewhere very far away, and when I was there I saw a lot of strange and horrible, and even some kind of wonderful things.” She put her hand on the low table where her mother’s cigarette butts spilled over the sides of a saucer. The sight of the ashes swept her mind back to Iphigene for a moment and she pictured Hecate burning, reaching for her. “One of the things I saw was my brother, Valentine.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you or Dad ever tell me about him?”

Her mother stared at the cigarette smoke curling in the air between them. When she turned back to Zoe, her eyes were red and unfocused. “It hurt too much,” she said. “We didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant, at first. We were going to have a big party and tell people there, but then I had the miscarriage.”

“I’m sorry,” Zoe said, suddenly seeing the young girl from the club lying in a hospital gown, scared and heartbroken, knowing that her baby had died.

“When the doctor told us how far along I was, your dad and I counted the weeks and realized he’d be born about Valentine’s Day. So that’s what we called him.” She reached for the ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette. “No one knew but us and the doctor. How did you find out?”

“Remember the boy in my dreams I used to talk about? My imaginary friend? That was Valentine. He came to me in dreams in this world, and then I met him for real in the other world.”

“What other world?”

Zoe took a deep breath. “Iphigene,” she said. “You see, there was this record shop and a man named Emmett. Well, really Ammut, but I’ll get to that part later.” She talked for hours, and told her mother everything.

When she was done, she could barely keep her eyes open. She was too tired to even take a shower, so her mother helped her to bed. After she had slipped under the covers, her mother sat beside her. “Do you believe me?” Zoe asked.

Her mother stroked Zoe’s hair and nodded. “I used to believe in things, once,” she said. “God. Ghosts. Guardian angels. I used to believe the world was a crazy, bad, beautiful game we were supposed to play forever.” She shrugged. “So, yeah, I guess I believe you, because it’s the best thing I’ve heard to believe in a long time.” She got up from Zoe’s bed, went to the door, and flicked off the light. “Besides,” she said, “you’ve had a week to come up with a better lie than that. So, how can I not believe you?”

“Love you, Mom,” said Zoe.

“You, too,” said her mother, and pulled the door closed.

Even though she was still covered in grime and dried blood, it felt wonderful to lie in her bed between the cool, clean sheets. Zoe was in her body again, in this world, and she had to admit that she was happy to be back.

As sleep swept over her, she heard a strange sound, like something scratching at her bedroom window.

When she awoke the next morning, the covers were pulled tight and wrapped around her like a cocoon. In the night, her dreams had shifted randomly from Iphigene to this world, until she wasn’t sure which was which or where she was, and Valentine wasn’t there to help her figure it out. It was a relief to wake up in one place and have it stay that way.

Zoe was wearing her underwear and an old “X” T-shirt she must have found on the floor the night before. She didn’t even remember changing. The clothes she’d worn in Iphigene lay in a pile at the foot of her bed. She laughed when she saw them. Her mother had been right. It really did look like she’d been dragged behind a truck. She kicked them over by her closet. The hoodie and T-shirt she’d wash later. The jeans might even be salvageable, but the sneakers were so caked with sewer filth that they were probably a total loss. She hated the idea of giving up a good pair of Chuck Taylors while she and her mother were broke, but she told herself they could probably find a used pair down at Goodwill.