Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  The pinging of the ice had stopped the moment my eyes met his, confirming my suspicion that it hadn’t been my movements that had caused the lake to sing that way . . . but his.

  Now there was only the sound of my frightened breathing—my heart banging a death-metal rhythm in my ears.

  How had he reached me so quickly? Could he appear where he wanted on a whim?

  He showed no sign of exertion. No clouds of breath appeared in the vicinity of that mask.

  Holding him with my stare, trying not to blink, I abandoned my rock, pressed my hands against the ice . . . and pushed to my feet. Slowly, the weakened ice groaning beneath me, I pivoted toward him.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  But just as I faced him, the ice at last gave.

  Then he, along with the world, rushed up and out of sight, like a curtain being torn away to reveal a polar void.

  The water, more frigid than I could ever have imagined, pierced me everywhere—a thousand stabbing knives.

  I gritted my teeth as I sank, and, fighting the cold, I willed my limbs to move me farther down. Only, instead of ending in a place where the bottom of this lake broke through to the surface of mine, the blackness carried on, proving that this was not the same shallow body of water from the dream.

  The glimmer of hope I’d felt when I’d beaten on the ice began to fade. And then that small light dimmed, readying itself to do what all lights eventually did. All lights except for perhaps two . . .

  I stopped swimming and tilted my head up toward the unbroken sheet of ice that was my sky. The hole I’d fallen through. It had vanished.

  Panic gripped me, and I pedaled for the surface, raising both hands above my head.

  But it wasn’t until the moment my fingers grazed the frozen barrier that I remembered the way things reset themselves in this world.

  The ice. I should have realized it would follow the same rules.

  I wanted to scream. Instead, without meaning to, I inhaled.

  Water flooded my lungs. And the darkness that I had hoped would deliver me home came to take me where it would.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Lucas

  “Curious,” said Wes. “Is that the blazer you wore in the Halloween episode of Ethereal Encounters?”

  He was talking to Rastin, who now sat at the far end of our usual gaming couch in my basement, an ice pack pressed to his head, the bloodstained blazer in question draped over the arm of the couch.

  “You know,” Wes prattled on, “the one where Jordan and Graham got chased by that shadow figure and you helped that old guy cross over? Can I try it on?”

  “Absolutely not,” Rastin snapped even as Wes rose from my computer chair to go for the blazer. Plucking the garment up, he looped his too-long arms through the coat and settled it onto his shoulders. Grinning, he put his hands on his hips and nodded. “Oh, yes. Wessed to impress.”

  Shortly after we’d made our escape from Moldavia, Rastin told us that, in spite of appearances, he would be okay and that taking him to the hospital would only delay our reaching Stephanie. So, I’d told Wes to drive him back to my house.

  And now . . . here we all were. Sitting in my basement with the world-famous Rastin Shirazi, who was now dressed in one of my ’50s-style button-downs.

  Luckily, Mom was at an event and Dad was upstairs absorbed in football and grousing at the TV.

  After Wes had parked the Beamer on the street, I’d hurried ahead into the house. I’d said my usual “What’s up?” to Dad before rushing down the stairs to let Wes and Rastin in through the basement door. Patrick and Charlotte followed shortly after.

  “Dude,” said Patrick. “Does your dad know he’s here?”

  “No,” I said. “And can we keep it down, please? I’d like it to stay that way.”

  “I thought I was going crazy when I saw him on the trail cam,” Patrick said. “And now he’s in your flipping basement. I can’t even handle this right now.”

  Rastin pinched the bridge of his nose and peeked at Patrick with one eye.

  “One might also point out how his presence here erases all lingering doubts about his being the real deal,” said Wes.

  “Hey,” said Patrick, pointing at Wes. “Didn’t we have a bet about that?”

  “That’s what I was leading up to. You owe me a Frappuccino.”

  “Are you sure you don’t owe me one?”

  “Would I have brought it up if I did?”

  “You are all really very annoying,” grumbled Rastin as he squeezed his eyes shut again.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Wes. “Pardon us. We’ll try to save your life a little less annoyingly next time.”

  “What are you even doing here?” asked Charlotte.

  “At last,” muttered Rastin, “someone speaks to me as though I am present.”

  I glowered at him. “Excuse me if I didn’t know how to be more direct than emailing you.”

  Everyone turned to look at me now.

  And wow. Yeah. I guess I kind of did just say that out loud.

  Rastin alone dropped his gaze. He sighed, shoulders sagging.

  “I take it your being here means you got my message,” I said.

  “I got your message,” Rastin’s reply caused the anger within me to wind that much tighter.

  “You sent Rastin a message?” Patrick asked.

  “And again,” said Charlotte, “you didn’t think to tell us?”

  “Now who do we need the spray bottle for?” asked Wes.

  “Stephanie came to me,” I said. “She started explaining stuff that . . . that I’d never heard of happening before. So, I thought, what the heck? If he wasn’t a fake like everyone thinks he is, he’d reply. He never did, so I never told you guys.”

  Though Rastin winced at the word “fake,” he didn’t say anything. So, while I had everyone’s attention, I decided to ask the million-dollar question. “Why didn’t you write me back? You knew what was in that house. You knew it could hurt people, and you didn’t respond.”

  “You are amateurs,” he said. “Children. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “We’re teenagers,” I snapped. “Besides, I didn’t tell you how old I was in the email.”

  “Uh, Lucas,” said Patrick from his spot in the yellow beanbag. “He’s psychic.”

  “There was nothing metaphysical about it,” Rastin interjected. “You linked your website.”

  Oh. Yeah. I did.

  “Besides,” Rastin went on, “even if you weren’t kids, I wouldn’t have involved you. Emailing you back would have involved you.”

  “Except my email told you I was already involved,” I argued.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you saw Stephanie,” I said, trying to push my anger aside enough to forge forward and get somewhere with this guy who, I was trying to remind myself, I’d always admired, even during the days when the others had doubted him.

  “I heard her,” corrected Rastin. “I called for her, and she answered. But . . .”

  “That’s when it attacked you,” Wes guessed.

  “Him,” Rastin was quick to correct. “Erik.”

  “Erik?” Charlotte blurted.

  “Yes,” said Rastin. “Erik.”

  “So, what are you saying?” Patrick asked. “That there are two entities in the house.”

  “No,” he said. “And here is what you do not understand. Though it would seem there are many entities in the home, there is truly only one.”

  Everyone in my basement went silent. All eyes rested on Rastin, who still had his head hung. Finally, he raised his stare to meet mine.

  “Erik is there,” Rastin began. “His soul is indeed trapped in Moldavia. But . . . there is no ghost.”

  “So, we are facing a monster,” interrupted
Wes.

  “No,” answered Rastin. “And don’t call him that.”

  Wes blinked, struck speechless for perhaps the first time since I’d known him.

  We all stared at Rastin then, waiting for him to give us a single clue as to what we were really up against. And why, if it was evil enough to abduct Stephanie, kill people, and attack him, he would be so adamant about what we chose to call it.

  “Erik. He is . . . a boy,” Rastin explained. “Like you.” He gestured to me.

  “So, the stories,” Patrick said, “about the curse. They are true.”

  “There is a curse,” Rastin admitted. “And Erik is its victim.”

  “But not its only victim,” I said.

  A beat passed before Rastin replied. His answer came with a tired, sad expression. As well as a note of resignation. “No.”

  “Stephanie,” I continued.

  “She is Erik’s prisoner,” conceded Rastin, his frown deepening. “That much is evident.”

  “But?” I folded my arms, certain I wasn’t going to like the next turn this conversation took. But if the signposts pointed to Stephanie, then it was time to hit the gas.

  “But,” began Rastin, “Erik, too, is a prisoner.”

  “Uh,” interjected Wes, and for once, I was glad he did—because it saved me from having to. “A prisoner who nearly crushed your heart. For the second time, I gather?”

  “You must believe me.” Rastin shut his eyes again, like his headache had only grown in the time he’d been here. “But Erik is currently not himself—and has not been for a very long time.”

  “Zedok and Erik,” I said. “Tell us once and for all. What is their relationship to one another?”

  Rastin laughed, and the mirthless, hopeless sound of it caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end.

  “They are the same,” he confirmed. “And yet . . . they are not.”

  Wes smacked his lips. “Well. Now that that’s cleared up . . .”

  “It is difficult to explain,” sighed Rastin. “Nearly as difficult as it must be to understand.”

  “But maybe it won’t be so hard to explain it to us,” I said, hoping he would hurry up and realize that, just as he was the only one who knew for sure what we did about Stephanie—that she was a prisoner in an alternate dimension—we were the only ones in a position to hear him out on anything regarding the creature keeping her there.

  We needed Rastin’s help. But it was growing more and more apparent that he was going to need ours, too.

  And that was really where this conversation was headed. Now that he’d recovered, why else would he still be here? Regardless of what he was hoping to accomplish, our overall goal was bound to be a unified one.

  Get Stephanie out.

  “If someone will make me hot tea,” said Rastin, “chai, preferably, I will tell you all I know about the curse, and about Erik. I cannot ask you to pity him as I do. Perhaps none of us—myself especially—can afford to pity him any longer. But . . . if one is to understand their enemy, then one must be willing to put oneself in their enemy’s shoes. Or, in this instance, perhaps it is better to say . . . we must put ourselves in his masks.”

  Silence pulsed.

  Then Charlotte sighed and, turning toward the stairs, said what she knew none of us would since we didn’t know how.

  “I’ll go make the tea.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  Zedok

  She awoke with a start, eyes springing wide to focus on the blazing hearth.

  Darkness swathed the parlor, the fire and the silver glow of the winter moon through the window serving as the room’s only sources of light.

  She lay draped upon the chaise that I’d had Guilt and Guile lift and draw closer to the fire. Sitting up, she searched for me, yet her eyes did not wander to where I’d sat for the past several hours, keeping watch over her. Instead, she turned toward the sound that, though softer than the fire’s crackling and the mantel clock’s ticking, had awakened her.

  The whispers. Those of Envy and Spite.

  Having had their usual perch stolen from them, the gossiping duo loitered nearby, their forms silhouetted by the moonlit bay window.

  “Shh,” hissed Envy. “She’s awakened.”

  “Oh, this ought to be interesting,” answered Spite.

  I took that as my cue to stand. Better I reveal my presence to Stephanie now than have it betrayed by one of that pair.

  “They are nothing to fear,” I said.

  Stephanie’s head snapped in the direction of my voice, so much altered from the one she had come to know.

  I moved forward, melting out of the darkness and just into the outer rim of the firelight.

  In response, Stephanie pulled the quilt Desire had laid over her tighter to herself with the hands I had bandaged.

  “What happened?” she asked, her hushed tone implying she was asking herself rather than me. Still, I chose to answer.

  “You fell into the lake, and I extracted you.”

  “The ice,” she said, her memory rejoining her. “It closed over.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I am stronger than I appear.”

  “But . . . I was drowning.” She pressed a hand to her chest, fingers tightening around the white fabric of the cotton nightgown she now wore.

  “You expelled the water while unconscious.”

  The truth was that I had forced her lungs to eject the water, utilizing the same abilities to preserve her life that I had employed to nearly end Rastin’s. But she had been through enough, and that information would only serve to alarm her further.

  “The man,” she said with a gasp, as if she had somehow read my thoughts. “The one who came for me. Did you kill him?”

  “That man lives,” I said through a sneer.

  “You let him go?”

  Could I say that? I could. Though it would be more accurate to say he escaped.

  “I have said I did not kill him. Believe that or don’t.”

  She glowered at me, hating me as she did. As perhaps she now always would.

  “You can’t be him,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t.”

  I frowned beneath Wrath’s mask, the pain in my sternum twisting. By “him,” of course, she meant Erik.

  “To that, I have but one answer,” I replied. “Within this Moldavia, I am the only ‘he’ and, in fact, besides yourself now, the only one there is.”

  “The other masked figures—” she whispered.

  Her expression shifted in the firelight, betraying how she had already solved the riddle of the masks. But perhaps it would be best for us both to leave her no room to doubt.

  “They are all, and have always been, me,” I finished for her.

  “But then . . . you lied to me.”

  The vehemence with which she spat these words suggested that this was, for her, the most egregious of my crimes—more unforgivable even than the act of abducting her.

  “The others, perhaps,” I allowed. “But not I.”

  “You tried to kill my father.”

  Here, she had me. While I regretted Madness’s actions, I could hardly argue I had not meant to cause Mr. Armand harm.

  “Again, it was the doing of another mask,” I said, though without hope she would believe me. “I . . . am relieved your father will recover.”

  “He won’t, though,” she argued. “And neither will Charlie. Not if I don’t come home.”

  To that, I reverted to silence, for I could not disagree. No more than I could permit myself to entertain her reasoning. Now that she was here with me, mine at last, I preferred to forget there existed anyone else.

  “If they really are all you,” she said at last, after the silence swelled to an unbearable volume, “then I want to talk to the o
ther one. The blue-masked figure.”

  “Valor, you mean. Sadly, he is no more. You understand I could not have him usurping my plans any longer.”

  She hitched a breath, and from seemingly nowhere, a pair of tears fell, though I surmised from the sternness of her expression that she hated that I had borne witness to them.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “Again, you doubt my word. Soon, though, you will learn as I have that Wrath has little cause to lie.”

  “He is Valor and you’re Wrath?” she asked, banishing the tears with one bandaged hand.

  “He was Valor,” I said. “And yes. I am Wrath.”

  “And all of you are Zedok. Erik?”

  “Erik is dead,” I said calmly.

  “But you were Erik. Once.”

  “I told you—”

  “The man who was here,” she said, abruptly reverting subjects. “Who was he?”

  “He is,” I replied with care, “an old . . . associate.”

  “Yeah,” she snapped. “You two sounded real friendly—hey.” Glancing down at herself, she noted for the first time the white nightgown. “Where are my clothes?”

  “You were soaked,” I answered simply, having prepared myself for this topic. “It is a wonder you did not suffer hypothermia.”

  “So you undressed me?” Fear once again crept into her now shaking voice, overshadowing any outrage.

  “Certainly not,” I said. “I daresay you would know if I had.” I gestured to my sternum, hoping the blood there spoke for itself. She would not find a trace of it on her person. I nodded in the direction of the bay window. “The two masks there saw to your garments. I did, however, bandage your hands. Your wounds needed tending.”

  “But . . .” She trailed off, her eyes leaving me briefly to spare another glance for Envy and Spite. “The masks. You . . . you said they are you.”

  “I have but one pair of eyes,” I assured her with discomfort. Were we really going to dwell on this? Could she not take my word for it? And why was she looking at me that way?

  “I cannot see what they see,” I continued. “Be assured your propriety has in no way been compromised.”

  She blinked at me. I, in turn, looked away. As if I had a face that wasn’t already hidden.