B.C. Johnson - Deadgirl

Benny nodded and closed his eyes. Tyler had really painted a masterpiece on Benny’s face. I replayed the image of Zack throwing Tyler across the room with smug satisfaction. Then I remembered the second time Tyler had been thrown—the end of the fight. Had Zack thrown him that time? It didn’t look like it.

“Luce?”

I nodded to Morgan, and smiled up at Zack. He let me go with a reluctance I found, forgive me, delicious. I followed Morgan across the room and out the door. Sara’s skeptical look at my trailing, bandaged hand didn’t escape my notice.

When Morgan opened the door, I didn’t immediately see Puck. Still, I doubt he wanted to be spotted by the whole party. We walked outside and closed the door.

“Puck?” I whispered, eyes trying to pierce the gloom around the porch.

“Do you see him?” Morgan asked. I shook my head.

My phone buzzed in my purse. I reached down to get it.

Then it hit me. That sudden, all too familiar wave of incredible panic. Too close to stop, too close to react.

The man-in-white came around the side of the porch. His long white doctor’s coat hung from his shoulders, and the look on his sharp features was calm. Calculating, even. And struggling in his arms, the man-in-white’s elbow wrapped around his neck, was Puck.

My stomach sank. Morgan gasped—something I didn’t even have the breath for.

“It’s time,” the man said. He seemed to hold Puck effortlessly, despite his squirming. Puck’s eyes were wide, his face twisted in terror. It made the jovial old man look almost unrecognizable.

“Stop,” I said, and took a step down the porch. “Please, stop!”

The man nodded.

“You have to come with me, Lucy.”

“To hell with that,” Morgan said. She jumped down the porch steps and landed next to me. “Who the hell are you?”

He ignored Morgan. His eyes never left mine.

“It’s time to leave…all of this, Lucy.”

“Why?” I asked. My voice was breaking, I couldn’t help it. “Just leave me alone. Let me stay. I’m not a bad person.”

“You aren’t a person,” the man said. He sounded sad.

“Lucy—” Morgan began.

The man in white’s voice raised in what sounded like real anger. “You take what isn’t yours. The memories of real people…you’re taking their happiness, Lucy. Their pain, their sadness, their glee, their lust, and joy. You are the worst kind of thief, don’t you understand?”

Puck was moving, struggling against the man’s grip, but barely budging.

“Lucy—” Morgan tried again.

“Morgan, shut up,” I shouted, and turned to the man. “I haven’t hurt—”

“Yes, you have,” he said. “And you don’t even know it. But there is a worse price.”

I felt my body going numb, “What?”

“Oblivion,” he said.

“Stop it! Stop it! Who are you?”

Puck wasn’t moving, I realized. He was signing. A small smirk curled his lips, amazingly. I gawked at him.

Morgan watched his frantic eyes and made a little noise. “His name is A-Abraham.”

The man-in-white’s—Abraham’s—eyes widened. He looked down at Puck and tightened his grip on the old man’s body. Puck’s eyes flared in pain, but his smirk remained.

Morgan stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders, and I half turned to her, one eye still on Abraham and Puck. Morgan looked terrified but hard—filled with that Morgan-rage I knew so well. The same anger that had lit her eyes when Wanda was breaking down in my room, a week ago.

“Puck said Abraham can’t hurt him,” she whispered. I gave her a what-the-hell-does-that-mean look, and she shrugged and shook her head frantically.

“Enough,” Abraham said, and we both whipped around to look at him.

He was moving closer, and a dull pulse of white light began to well up from under his shirt. It streaked out of the sleeves of his doctor’s coat, and up through the neck of his t-shirt. It flowed up his jaw, his face, casting him in the sinister light of the spooky storyteller around the fire.

“Lucy. Lucy!”

His voice doubled, like two people repeating the same word but down a hallway from each other. When he said my name, it crackled with authority.

“Come with me, Lucy . You’re tired, aren’t you? Cold? It’s time to go.”

I was cold, all of a sudden. Drained.

The warmth in his voice washed over me, and my muscles slacked. I felt the heat of his promise slide through me. The promise of a distant place—of somewhere peaceful. The memory of the party, the fight, Wanda—even Puck, began to drift away from me. I walked toward the man-in-white, slowly at first, with little baby steps.

“Lucy, no!”

Morgan grabbed at my arm, and a distant, quiet voice in my head murmured something about believing her, holding on to her. The little voice was no match for the throbbing call to leave, to move on. To follow Abraham into peace.

He began to glow brighter, white light spinning off of him in dazzling motes. Morgan pulled at me, but something stronger tugged me forward. Abraham raised one hand out to me, the other holding a twisting, frantic-looking Puck. I sighed as another nimbus of heat buffeted me. Little drops of sweat clung to my forehead, and his heat burned my skin.

I remembered the hospital, the glowing thing with the bright black eyes. And as I looked again, I saw Abraham’s eyes rolling over, becoming black pools of oil. I saw his jaw extending, his face changing, stretching, a mockery of human shape.

And I could do nothing. It was too late.

“Lucy!”

I wondered why Abraham was calling to me again. He had me…no. I knew that voice.

I turned my neck, slowly, and it felt like twisting a broken valve. I yanked, and pulled my eyes away from the glowing monster in front of me. It wasn’t easy to see past the haze of light but…I knew that shape. Standing around the side of the house, holding a white plastic trash bag half in and half out of a garbage can. Zack.

“No!”

I don’t even know who shouted it—it could have been me. But everything happened at once.

Zack ran at—

—tugged, screaming at me, falling over as she—

—grabbed Abraham’s wrist, and with a strength a thin old man shouldn’t have had—

—I fell back on top of Morgan as she—

—roared, jet eyes widening, becoming black holes of rage—

Then I did it. I felt Morgan and Zack pulling at me, could see Puck struggling, one thin tweed-covered arm up in the air, holding Abraham’s glowing limb by the elbow as he tried to crush the little old man into the dirt. I had to do something. Puck was going to die, and then Morgan. Then Zack.

I jerked toward Puck, fighting Morgan and Zack and pulling them both just a foot forward, making them stagger under the strain. My hand reached out. I felt a handful of tweed curl in my fingers and then…I…flipped.

The world collapsed around us, folding in on itself.

We all crash-landed in grey sand, the sound of the surf pounding in our ears.

Chapter Thirteen

On Vertigo

Screaming first, then light. My eyes opened, staring up into the roiling grey sky.

I sat up, my elbows digging into the wet grey sand. Puck stood, inches away from the light-silhouette that had to be Abraham. In the real world, Abraham looked like a man imitating light. In the grey, I saw a ray of brilliant light trying to mimic the shape of a man. Just a burning shadow, a shape, searing my eyes. Puck stood in front of him, his frayed red scarf snapping in the breeze, his thin frame defiant, his chin up. Zack lay on the ground next to Puck, vomiting. From the sound behind me, Morgan was doing the same thing.

Abraham juked toward Puck like a cresting wave, but bounced off of an invisible wall between them. The light-thing shrieked in fury, a sound like metal tearing and bees buzzing. I fell back a step at the noise. Puck didn’t.