Thirteen Days to Midnight

by Patrick Carman

  “This explains a lot,” said Milo, and for once he wasn’t trying to be funny to lighten my mood.

  “Like what?” I said. I had a lot of ideas of my own, but two words were all I could get out of my mouth while my head was spinning with revelations.

  “Well, for one thing, he didn’t mean to curse you. Think about it. A car crash with you and him? It’s like a once-in-a-hundred-years scenario. There’s no way he even thought about what he was saying. It was a split-second decision. If he doesn’t say those words, you die. He couldn’t help himself.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right about that. Either that or the black lion saw its chance to get out and took it.”

  “Surprising how easy it is to sound like a nut case,” Milo muttered.

  I nodded. “Did I really just say that?” I shook my head, then thought again of Oh. Houdini’s words, “darkness will descend,” echoed in my mind. And I knew we didn’t have much time to figure out a plan.

  The plans for the Isengrim weren’t in the stack of papers, but then I remembered that they were in one of the drawers of the Isengrim. We couldn’t quite figure out how Mr. Coffin got the box or if he’d ever seen Mr. Fielding’s letter, but we were starting to piece together some other things.

  “I know what the Isengrim is for,” said Milo. “I get it now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. If you’re going to have to kill someone more than once, you’d need a controlled situation. The victim would need to be strapped down so they couldn’t get away. You wouldn’t want to risk a lot of blood everywhere if something went wrong, stuff like that. Who knows what a person acts like when they wake up from the dead. Could be bad.”

  “You’re not thinking what I think you are—”

  “Mr. Fielding never got himself into the situation we’re in. If he had, he might understand it better. We were pretty close on the drive up here, but we were missing one important part.”

  “What part? I don’t see it.”

  “The part where we bring Oh back.”

  Milo set the pipe in the corner of his mouth again, looking like a detective about to solve a crime, and it dawned on me what he meant.

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m serious. She’s like Mr. Fielding in the letter, when Houdini was still alive. You gotta read between the lines. If Fielding would have given the power back then he’d have been just like Oh. He’d have been the dumping ground, like we talked about on the ride up here. Houdini gives him the power, but if he gets it back, then the trouble starts.”

  “I think I’m following,” I said, “but I’m not sure.”

  “Jacob, what if the power gets confused? What if it’s like there are two homes for it now: the one it clings to, Houdini, and the one it leaves behind, Mr. Fielding? Let’s say Houdini does what we’ve done and gives the power to a third person in order to save them. Now the power has collected death, but it doesn’t leave it with Houdini.”

  “Oh my God,” I mumbled. “It waits.”

  “Yeah, it waits.”

  My mind was racing from one horrible thought to another. I didn’t follow the rules. When I gave Oh the power I should have died, but I didn’t. She was the first person I gave it to. She was supposed to be its next home. I screwed up.

  It was all becoming clear, too clear, as I told Milo what I was thinking.

  “The power waits until Houdini gives it back to Mr. Fielding.”

  “And then the power dumps the death.”

  I could barely breathe as I thought about what this would mean. Oh was the first person I’d passed the power to after Mr. Fielding died. I took it back. I gave it to another. I gave it to Oh again. And I’d done this how many times?

  “We have to get them out of her,” I said, terrified by what this simple statement could lead to. “But how?”

  Milo had a look of certainty on his face I wasn’t ready to share.

  “I’m guessing we’ll have to kill them out of her.”

  I was horrified by the idea, but I could only put up half a fight. Something rang true about what Milo was proposing.

  “That is so crazy,” I said. “It can’t be right.”

  “More like it has to be right. It explains everything. And if there’s a whole bunch of deaths piled up inside Oh, then it stands to reason: Killing Oh the same number of times is the only way to get them out.”

  “Listen to yourself, Milo. You’ve gone insane!”

  “No, I haven’t. You know I’m right.”

  Deep down, between the facts we could see and the letter we’d just read, it was starting to sound possible.

  “Only one problem,” said Milo.

  “We don’t know how many deaths Oh… ,” I started, trying to find the words, “… collected along the way.”

  “One thing’s for sure. It’s a lot. Which is probably why she’s turned into a zombie.”

  My phone vibrated unexpectedly and I grabbed it off the bar.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” asked Milo.

  It was annoying how frequently Milo was right.

  I’m ready to talk. can I see you?

  “Ask her where she is,” said Milo, so I did. We started for the door and ended up in the car, driving down Highway 99 before she answered.

  Meet at dark. holy cross parking lot.

  “We can make it back easy by four and three quarters,” said Milo, racing away from Lincoln City. “Gets dark around five. We’re good.”

  I texted her back, told her we’d be there, while Milo punched in “Black Dog” on his iPod and set the volume to ten.

  Time to think.

  SEVEN

  HOURS TO

  MIDNIGHT

  5:05 PM

  We rolled into the Holy Cross driveway and it was already dark, a damp layer of frigid fog cutting our visibility to about ten feet. It had been that way since the sun started setting at around 4:30, cutting our speed in half for the last ten miles into town.

  “God, it gets dark early,” said Milo, trying to defuse the tension. “We need to move to California.”

  “She won’t answer,” I said, tapping out another text in an endless stream of attempts I’d made to reach Oh since leaving the coast.

  “Well, we’re here now. The question is what to do once we find her.”

  We’d talked endlessly about this on the way and agreed we basically had no idea. If I took the power from her, she might try to kill herself. Obviously she was so full of darkness she’d lost any ability to think rationally. Death for Oh, and I mean the real deal, was the only thing we figured she thought about. Then there was the other option—letting her keep the power—but that made us both pretty nervous. What if she turned her wrath on us?

  When we reached the end of the long driveway and passed into the parking lot, our headlights shot through the soupy fog to the edge of the woods. Milo parked the car and I thought about all the kids who’d been scared by the stories that were told about escapees from the mental hospital. It occurred to me that now there might actually be a sort of monster with sunken eyes out there, unkillable. No one would think for a minute that she was dangerous—until it would be too late.

  “We have to find her,” I said. Something about the way those words sounded on my lips made me choke up. She wasn’t a monster, she was Ophelia James. She was beautiful and perfect. I missed her.

  “Should we lock the doors?” asked Milo. He craned his neck and looked up into the cloud of fog. Somewhere up there was the top of the five-story school with its flat roof. I knew it was flat because I’d been up there before, watching Milo throw rolls of toilet paper into the open courtyard as a prank. I remember it seemed really high and I wanted to get down.

  My phone buzzed to life and the screen went blue and was glowing in my hand.

  Miss me? I bet you did.

  “Something’s not right,” I whispered.

  Take it back.

  Milo reached around and locked his door. By the time hi
s hand was back on the steering wheel, I’d begun typing out a response:

  Where are you? we’re her

  Just as I was putting my thumb on the e to finish my note, something huge and heavy hit the top of Milo’s car. The roof buckled over our heads and slammed my head against the cracked dashboard. Glass flew everywhere from the blown windows; the windshield spidered and popped.

  First we screamed, then we were both still as statues, the only sound our breathing and the clunking whirl of Milo’s engine.

  “It’s her,” Milo whispered, his words coming in waves between choppy breaths. “Has to be.”

  I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t hear her moving up there, then see her feet land on the hood of the car. She crawled down to the pavement and stood in the headlights, staring at us.

  She’d changed since I’d seen her choking Ethan half to death. The fog ran thick and wispy through the headlights, casting a gloomy spotlight across Oh’s body. The color had gone completely out of her face and her eyes were vacant. It didn’t look like Oh anymore. It was like a corpse of Oh. But a determined one. Her face was charged with a desire to kill or destroy.

  She began to move, which startled me so much I lurched back and hit my head on the caved roof of the car. I didn’t realize it until then, but I had been crouched low in my seat, peering over the dashboard like a hunted animal.

  Oh put her hands on the hood of the car and it looked like she was about to crawl forward to the splintered windshield.

  “Don’t take it back,” said Milo, stepping on the gas and blasting gravel.

  “Milo, NO!” I screamed as I heard the awful thud of Oh’s legs being hit.

  Oh bounced off what was left of the windshield and flew forward, crashing on the sidewalk leading into the school. The crash with Mr. Fielding played through my head: the blood, his broken body, the smell of burning rubber.

  I put my head out the window and yelled Oh’s name as she rolled to a stop, took out her phone as if nothing had happened, and started typing out a message.

  “Go back!” I screamed, unable to even see Milo’s face between the crushed sections of the roof.

  “Hell with that. She’s fine. It’s us I’m worried about.”

  By the time we reached the end of the drive, my phone was buzzing from the floorboard, and I saw the soft light glow. I picked it up, imagining her walking through the fog and into the woods.

  You should have taken it back. now it’s too late.

  “What’d she say?” asked Milo as we tore out of the driveway onto Haysville Boulevard, fishtailing on the slick pavement.

  “She’s gone, Milo. I mean really gone. What are we going to do?”

  We stopped a mile later in a public park that was closed for the night, and Milo cracked open the trunk of his car.

  “Man, she really did a number on this thing,” he said, slamming the trunk shut and carrying a heavy metal toolbox. Duct tape, a hacksaw, hammers, a crowbar, these were always on hand in a junker like Milo’s. He went to work on the splayed windshield first, busting it out with a hammer and a pair of Vise-Grips.

  “I’m calling Father Tim,” I said.

  “Why would you want to do that?” asked Milo, taking the hammer in hand. “He’s not going to understand this.”

  I wasn’t searching for help so much as comfort. I couldn’t tell Father Tim what was really going on, but I needed to talk to someone solid, someone with a voice of reason who could make the world feel halfway normal again.

  I heard Milo start banging away on the inside of the roof of his car and walked deeper into the abandoned park where I could be alone. The fog was so thick it made my hair wet and my phone slick in my hand.

  Father Frank picked up at the church house. Great.

  “Is Father Tim there? It’s Jacob.”

  “He’s here, where are you? I made a roast and some beans and potatoes if you’re hungry. Leftovers are in the fridge, middle shelf, in that white round Tupperware, you know the one…”

  “Father Frank, listen, I really need to talk to Father Tim if you could find him.”

  He made a wheezing sound, like I’d hurt his feelings, and dropped the phone on the counter. I could hear Jeopardy! in the background, which the old guys liked to watch during the time of year when night came early.

  “Jacob, that you?” asked Father Tim.

  “Yeah, we’re back in town, beat the fog by a hair. I think I’ll stay with Milo tonight if that’s okay.”

  “Glad you made it. I was getting worried. By all means stay at Milo’s—Father Frank cooked dinner.”

  I didn’t say anything, just stared into the night of the park and looked at the fog getting thicker.

  “Everything okay?” asked Father Tim.

  “I think I have my answer,” I said. “About whether or not there’s a hell.”

  I’d thought a lot about Father Tim’s class on the drive home. Reading Mr. Fielding’s letter had put things in a whole new light.

  “I think you’re wrong, Father Tim. There’s a hell all right. It’s just not where people say it is.”

  “Interesting. Where do you think it is?”

  “It’s here. It’s life, or it’s what we turn life into, I guess. It’s like we have to pass through all this painful stuff to get to where we’re supposed to be, on the other side.”

  “You sure you don’t want to come home tonight?” asked Father Tim.

  “What if I couldn’t get home?” I started to tear up, working hard to keep it together. “What if I were stuck here forever?”

  “Well, for starters, that’s impossible. But if it were something that could actually happen, then you’re probably right. You’d be lost, separated from God forever. I could see where that might be unpleasant.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “I can come get you if you want.”

  “No, I’m good—I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll clean my room.”

  The park was starting to feel like a bad idea as I ended the call, like Oh might drop out of a tree any moment and try to tear my arms off.

  I heard a branch move in the wind and just about jumped out of my pants, then made a beeline for Milo. He’d already slid back into his seat and started the car up again. It didn’t look too bad, the roof was higher than it was, but it was going to be rough driving around without a windshield. The heater was on full blast from the dashboard, creating a wet, warm, cold mix of swirling air as we pulled out from under the trees.

  “I kept the tools in the backseat,” said Milo. “In case we need to protect ourselves.”

  I sat there, thinking about what it would be like to hit Oh with a hammer, and hoped to God it wouldn’t come to that.

  By 10:30 we’d tried texting or calling Oh a hundred times but she wouldn’t answer. We’d sat at cafés warming up, we’d sat in the loft trying to figure out where else to look, we’d driven for hours in the freezing fog.

  At 11:00 we drove by the woods behind Holy Cross. We yelled her name, listening for movement, but with the fog and the deep night setting in, we couldn’t bring ourselves to get out of the car and hike into the gloom.

  At around 11:30 we went to Oh’s apartment for the third time, too afraid to knock on the door. If Oh was in there with her mom, at least she was safe. But we were pretty sure Oh had fed her mom a line about staying at a friend’s house.

  “She’s still got it, right?” asked Milo.

  It was nearly midnight, and it was maybe the tenth time Milo had asked me. It was cool, I guess, because it meant he really cared about her. He didn’t want her dead anymore than I did.

  Come on, Oh, just answer me. Please.

  I thought of her smile and her blond bangs hanging just over her eyes and said the words again, just to be sure.

  You are indestructible.

  A few minutes later, driving through the Holy Cross neighborhood and feeling desperate, my phone vibrated three times in my hand and the screen flashed blue. Milo slammed on the brakes and pu
lled to the curb, leaning over the gear shift to see what it was.

  Call me.

  “Maybe she’s finally ready to talk,” said Milo. “Where do you think she is?”

  Between the cold and my nerves, my hands were shaking so badly I speed-dialed the wrong number. Father Frank answered, and I had a momentary horror-filled moment when I thought it was Oh, her voice mangled into something unspeakable.

  I hung up on the old priest and tried again. It rang three times. When Oh answered on the other end of the line, she didn’t say anything. I could hear her breathing and imagined the way her nose was moving as the air went in and out.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “You know the place,” she whispered.

  “Oh, please. Just tell me where you are.”

  “You can’t make me keep it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Take it back and I’ll tell you,” she said. There was a desperate cunning in her voice.

  “I can’t take it back,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “Then we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

  There was a short pause in which I said her name, but she didn’t answer.

  Then I heard her screaming. It was a different kind of scream, her voice ruptured and jumpy, as if she were bouncing down an endless flight of stairs.

  “Turn the car around,” I said. “I know where she is.”

  MIDNIGHT

  The clock turned to midnight as Milo parked the car and we walked up the sidewalk.

  “I don’t see why you’re so sure about this,” he said without the slightest effort at keeping his voice down. We crept up near the door and found it was locked.

  “She’s in there,” I said.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out.

  I HATE YOU. TAKE IT BACK

  “Come on,” I said, typing in the word NO as I took off at a run.

  The street grew darker, only one lamp overhead in a foggy layer of sky.