Kelly Creagh - Nevermore

When he was gone, Isobel moved the tripod torch aside and positioned herself in front of the stained glass. “Varen,” she whispered.

His gaze turned slowly toward her. Through the diamond-shaped chink, his black eyes met with hers. His face, so white, so drawn, seemed like that of a ghost.

“Varen?” she called again, this time louder. “Varen, it’s me. It’s Isobel.”

“Isobel,” he said simply, his voice a monotone.

“Yes. It’s me.”

“Isobel is gone,” he said, turning to stare into the fireplace. The fading embers within cast a low orange glow across his face. “I told her to take the door in the woodlands.”

“No. I didn’t leave. I wouldn’t. Not without you. Please. How do I get inside?”

“You can’t,” he mumbled, “even if you were real.”

“Varen. Look at me. I am real. I came to find you. It’s me—I can prove it.”

All at once, the screams started again. Muffled, long howls of anguish grew louder, accompanied this time by a barrage of brutal banging. Her heartbeat tripling, Isobel looked in the direction of the hellish racket. It was coming from the next chamber over. For a moment, despite its rawness, she thought she recognized the voice, and it spread a sick dread through her.

Brad.

But that was impossible. How could he be here?

Isobel looked back to the window and started, her heart leaping almost painfully in her chest. Varen was there, standing before the mottled stained-glass pane that separated them. Through the open chink, his black eyes rested on her. His bruised face, wan and void of emotion, seemed almost alien in the dim light.

“You’re a dream,” he said, “like everything else.”

Isobel frowned. She remembered how Reynolds had told her once that Varen dreamed of her. With that thought in mind, she lifted a fist to knock away more of the glass, not caring if she cut herself.

The little pieces fell onto the carpet inside the purple chamber, sprinkling around his feet, and Isobel pushed her hand through the widened hole. “Touch me,” she said. “I’m real. Even if this is a dream, I’m not.”

She felt his fingers, light as dust, trace her palm. They left in their wake a prickling sensation that made her skin seem almost to vibrate. Seconds passed.

Another scream, louder but still muffled, poured like scalding liquid through the passageway. Isobel withdrew her hand, scanning the stone-walled corridor behind her, trying to determine from which direction the yelling had come. She was sure it had echoed to them from the right, opposite the way she had entered. Her eyes returned to Varen, tracing the split above his lip, and she dreaded having to say the words she needed to now.

“Varen.” She kept her voice measured. “Do you hear that? I have to go help Brad.”

He lifted his eyes to hers, and, despite their blackness, she could not mistake the hatred that burned within their centers. She swallowed, choosing her words carefully. “They—they’re hurting him,” she said. “He may deserve a lot, but he doesn’t deserve to die. I know you understand that. I’ll come back to get you, too, okay?”

“Why?” he snapped.

“Because,” she said with a gasp, unable to fathom the source of his question, or his tone. “Because I love you, that’s why.”

He turned his head and looked away from her, back into the chamber.

“Listen.” She gripped the window frame. “We’ll fix it, okay? We’ll find a way.”

“It’s too late.” It was scarcely a whisper.

“Don’t say that! There is a way. If it’s us together, me and you, then there’s a way. Okay? We got through the project, didn’t we? Even though everything went wrong. Even though everyone stood in our way. Varen?”

His eyes regarded her once more, and this time she searched them for her reflection, for any evidence of light. But they returned only a blackness so pure, so frighteningly bottomless, that it took all of her willpower not to turn away.

“Say okay. Please?” she pleaded.

He stared at her.

Another scream split the stillness. The shrill sound of it ratcheted up her spine and, reaching through her like a clawed hand, seized her heart with a clutching grip. She winced. “Varen, they’re killing him. I have to go try to stop it. But you have to say okay first. Please. Say that you know I’m coming back. Just say okay. For me?”

He looked down.

She shook her head. “Don’t you believe me?” Her eyes stung with the threat of tears. She could hardly stand to see him this way. It was as though the Varen she knew had been consumed, replaced by this husk of despair, his soul recessed so deeply within that no light could reach it. If there was only some way she could prove that it was the real her who stood before him, and not some phantom imposter. If she only had something to give him, some sort of proof. Or just something to leave with him. A token. A promise. Anything, as long as it was something as real and solid as her.

Isobel ran her hands over her dress, fingers fumbling, grasping for something to give him.

Then her hands stopped on the ribbon tied around her waist. She let her fingers follow the smooth satin fabric to the bow at her back. With nimble fingers, she unlaced the knot and it slipped free from her waist with a soft whisper.

“Here,” she said. Reaching through the jagged hole in the window, she offered him the ribbon.

“Take this,” she said. “It’s mine, and I’m coming back for it, so don’t lose it. You have to hold onto it. You have to keep it safe. For me. Do you understand?”

At first he only stared at the ribbon, but then he lifted one of those elegant hands to touch the fabric.

Then their fingers brushed as he slowly pulled the satin free, winding it around his own hand. As she drew back, she saw his fingers curl around it in a fist. Clutching it, something within him seemed to stir. His brow furrowed in confusion, as if there were something about the pink ribbon now encircling his hand that he couldn’t quite understand.

“Listen,” she said. Around them, Brad’s screams continued, building in volume, curdling into a crescendo of utter terror. Isobel struggled to concentrate on her words with the sound of Brad’s anguished shrieks echoing in her ears. “Try—try to open the doors. Reynolds—My friend says that if . . . that if you know you’re dreaming, then you can control things. So try to open the doors, okay? Try. If you can’t, then just wait here for me.”

She stood and began to edge backward, away from the window, hardly able to stand the thought of leaving him there, alone. But she had to do something for Brad. She couldn’t let him die or continue to be tortured like this. Whatever was happening to him, she had to make it stop.

“Isobel?” Varen called to her in a whisper.

“Hold on,” she said. “Hold on and wait. For me.” She turned away from him, toward the direction of the screaming, which came now between bursts of a pounding sound like someone beating their fists against a bolted door. She began to run.

“Isobel!”

“I’ll be right back, I promise!” These last words echoed through the passageway around her. I promise, she thought, repeating her vow over and over in her mind.

I promise.

The passageway ahead grew colder, narrower, and more maze-like. Her breath clouded in front of her, visible even in the fading light.

She listened again for the sound of screams but heard whispers instead. They seeped through the walls.

Isobel slowed her run and pressed closer to the damp stone, her fingers trailing as she strained to hear. The voices seemed to be moving along beside her, through whatever room lay on the other side.