The Space Between

by Brenna Yovanoff

  “What were you then?”

  “Lonely. Bored, maybe. It was a strange feeling. I think if I could see it, it would look like a tiny polished castle, full of poison flowers and silver spears.”

  Truman only stared up at the mirror and shook his head. His pain didn’t blossom or shine.

  He took a deep breath and swallowed before he spoke. “Maybe it has a shape, I don’t know, but mine isn’t clean.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just not like that. It’s like a car accident. Anybody normal would look away. It would make them sick.”

  Daphne wriggled out of his arms and pushed herself up off his chest. “No,” she said leaning over him, touching his face. “Yours isn’t an accident.”

  Truman closed his eyes, concentrating on the feeling of her hand on his cheek. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But you should know what it’s like. It looks like a tree, all twisted and leafless and lightning-struck, but it’s not dead. It could still get better.”

  Truman didn’t answer, just lay on his back looking up at her. Her eyes were soft and she was smiling, holding his face between her hands.

  She kissed him gently, then settled back down, snuggling under his chin. “I just don’t want you thinking it will never get better.”

  He clenched his jaw, holding onto her with shaking hands, pressing his mouth against her hair.

  When he watched them in the mirror, their reflection was strange and distant, like he was watching from outside himself. Daphne lay with her head on his chest. Her eyes were heavy, drifting closed. His arms were around her, his hands freckled and bony against her unmarked skin. He looked younger than he had since he was sixteen. Since before his mother died. His eyes were wet and shining, but the ache in his throat was good.

  He lay with tears running down his face and neck, soaking into the pillow. Watching himself cry was strange, like watching someone distant but familiar. Someone he hadn’t seen in a very long time.

  Daphne lay on his chest, oblivious to the hitch in his breathing, the tears on his face. He raised one hand, touching the side of her neck, the curve of her shoulder. She was sleeping. With the remote, he switched off the TV and reached for the lamp.

  In the dark, he stared up into the shadows. Almost every night for the last year, he’d woken up shaking, and even the narrow bed had seemed a mile wide. Now, sleep seemed not only possible, but right.

  Against his chest, Daphne was very warm. He closed his eyes and didn’t think about drugs or Azrael or his bad, desperate year. Not loneliness, not sorrow. Nothing, nothing—nothing and everything.

  And he slept. And that was fine.

  The candles had all been lit, filling the church with a dim, flickering light. Truman stood barefoot on the dais, cupping his elbows in the cold, dry air. The silence was so deep that it echoed.

  Azrael appeared out of the dark and leaned his elbow on Truman’s shoulder. “This is nice, isn’t it—finally being able to see each other? It’s been frustrating, trying to work with you when you couldn’t see my face.”

  Truman stared straight ahead. “I don’t want to see your face. I want to go back to bed.”

  “Then you really shouldn’t have let your little friend take you through that door. You might have preferred your ignorance, but delirium is a powerful eye-opener. You saw me and now you can’t unsee.”

  Truman twisted away. He was cold and disoriented, but the usual rush of hopelessness was gone. Over in the corner, Obie still lay on the table, hands bound above his head. His arms were bleeding and the sight made Truman feel shaky and sick, but under that, he was newly, ferociously angry.

  Azrael sighed, draping his arm over Truman’s shoulders and leaning in so that their heads rested against each other. “Aren’t you glad to see your old friend? I seem to have a vague memory of this time you got friendly with a razor and spent four days in the hospital, palling around with a lesser demon. Does that sound familiar?”

  Truman shook his head, trying to pull away. Azrael’s breath was warm on his cheek and he could smell incense and old, dusty books. His throat felt closed up.

  In the candlelight, he could see that the table wasn’t a table at all, just a painted board laid across a pair of sawhorses. Obie twisted and then began to struggle, pulling against the wire that fastened his hands to the top of the board.

  Without thinking, Truman moved to help, but Azrael caught him by the elbow, yanking him back. “No, no. Let’s just watch. I’m curious to see where this goes.”

  Obie pulled hard against the wire and after a struggle, he managed to yank one hand free. Twisting awkwardly, he used his index finger to trace something on the surface of the table.

  “Freedom,” he whispered, and his voice sounded dry. Nothing happened. “Home.”

  Azrael smiled and let Truman go. He crossed the dais to Obie and leaned over him. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You’re not going anywhere.”

  He yanked one of Obie’s arms down, holding it out from his body, pressing it flat against the board. The railroad spike appeared from nothing, flashing to life in Azrael’s hand. He pressed the point into the middle of Obie’s palm.

  “Hand me that hammer,” he told Truman, gesturing behind him to the pulpit.

  Truman looked where Azrael pointed, and there was a Craftsman hammer lying on the pulpit.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, backing away, shaking his head.

  “Fine, I’ll get it.” Azrael shrugged and was suddenly holding the hammer. He pointed it at Truman, raising his eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want to help me? This would go faster with another set of hands.”

  Truman stood by the pulpit, feeling rooted to the floor. He was breathing fast and panicky, and even the Hail Mary didn’t help.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll just be a minute.” Azrael steadied Obie’s palm, then brought the hammer down. The spike didn’t punch through on the first try and he had to swing twice more before it went, splintering into the board behind Obie’s hand.

  Obie gasped, curling his fingers, arching his back against the table, but he didn’t scream. Somehow, the silence made it worse. Under the blindfold, his face was pale and gaunt. His jaw stood out like he was clenching his teeth.

  Satisfied, Azrael stepped back and suddenly, instead of the hammer, he was holding a pair of long-nose pliers. He sliced through the loop of wire that still held Obie’s other hand. Then the second spike was in position, driving home, slamming into the board.

  Obie lay on the table, arms spread. His mouth was shut, lips white.

  Azrael smiled, looking cheerful and friendly in the candlelight. “Now, time for some fun.” He glanced up at Truman, holding a finger to his lips, then leaned his elbows on the table, speaking close to Obie’s ear. “Your sister’s on Earth. Did you know that?”

  Obie didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded dusty. “I have a lot of sisters.”

  “I’m talking about the little one, with the two adorable metal teeth and no sense of self-preservation. You might remember her?”

  “You’re lying. Daphne doesn’t leave the city.”

  Instantly, Azrael’s expression darkened and a scalpel appeared in his hand. He held it above Obie’s arm, leaning on his elbows so that the table shifted and squealed on its makeshift supports. “I never tell lies.”

  Obie tugged hard against the iron nails and Truman winced as the wood squealed but the nails didn’t pull free.

  “She’s here,” Azrael said. “But Dreadful doesn’t have to kill her. Dreadful doesn’t have to kill anyone. I could decide we’ve done enough demon-chasing for a while, send her home. All you have to do is tell me where your little puppy is.”

  When Obie answered, his voice was broken, cracked and desperate. “I told you, I can’t.”

  “Then Dreadful’s going to have a really good month.” Azrael’s hand drifted along Obie’s arm, not quite letting the blade touch the skin. “I’ve got another one for your record-k
eeping. While you were busy lying here, your various friends and relatives are out there dying.”

  “My family.” Obie’s voice sounded parched. “You’re talking about my family.”

  Without warning, Azrael cut another hashmark across Obie’s forearm. “Say hello to Myra.”

  As the scalpel drew blood, something thudded on the dais, making the floor shudder.

  Truman moved forward cautiously, crouching to examine the pale form that had appeared at his feet, eerie in the flickering candlelight.

  He was looking at Myra, but not the sly, smiling girl he’d sat next to at the bar. This was the body that Daphne had found in the open field. This was a car crash, a girl in pieces. Her eyes were open, staring at the dark ceiling. Her ribs had been peeled open and the wound was ragged and bloodless. There was still a little bit here and there, soaking her dress and dripping down her chin, but not much. Where it had splattered on the steps, it burned away the carpet and then began to eat through the floor. He clamped a hand over his mouth but couldn’t smother the low, horrified noise that rose in his throat.

  Azrael crossed the dais and stood over him. “Do you see that? That could easily be Daphne.”

  “No,” Truman whispered. “Please, no.”

  In the corner Obie lay staked to the board. His arms oozed with rows of shallow cuts. “Azrael, please.” He sounded hopeless and exhausted. “I don’t know where she is. I can’t give you what you want. She’s with her mother, and you won’t find her.”

  “That’s a good guess, but no, she’s not with her mother.”

  Obie went rigid. In candlelight, his face was waxy under the blindfold. His voice was hollow. “What did you do?”

  “I took care of her mother.” Azrael’s expression was warm. Sympathetic. “It was picturesque and ultimately, quick. I came to Elizabeth in the city garden at Garfield Park, and proposed a scheme. I like to think that she even considered it. It would have been a valiant sacrifice, her demon child in exchange for salvation.”

  The words were weirdly familiar. Sacrifice and garden, and they tripped something in Truman’s memory. He’d been going to catechism for most of his life.

  “The Sorrowful Mysteries,” he whispered, kneeling over Myra’s body. Her forehead was still wreathed in thistles. “The agony in the garden, the crown of thorns—those are Mysteries of the Rosary.”

  Azrael nodded agreeably. “I thought it had a certain grandeur to it. There’s a poetic quality to recreating a religious tableau. It was no good, though. She made the wrong choice in the end.”

  As Azrael spoke, the body of Myra dissolved, transformed. Now Truman was kneeling over a woman with thick brown hair and half her face missing.

  Truman swallowed, shaking his head. “How? How did you kill her?”

  Azrael stood next to Obie, and the light from the candles made him look very cruel suddenly. “I never touched her, just told my dark friend where to find her.”

  “She was good,” Obie whispered. His voice was shaking. “She was my wife. I loved her.”

  Azrael leaned closer, his voice almost tender in the dark. “Of course you did. You love all the little broken things. Now where is it?”

  “I don’t know. Please—please believe me.”

  The pain in Obie’s voice made Truman’s chest hurt. It was too raw, too familiar, and he closed his eyes.

  Azrael turned and walked back across the dais to where Truman knelt above Obie’s wife. He pointed at the crumpled body, the obliterated face. “That’s what happens to people who choose demons instead of salvation. Sometimes, the only way to save someone is to just let them go.”

  Truman stared up at him, shaking his head. “You can’t save me,” he whispered. “Nothing can. Church never did, and neither did Obie, or school or my family or being drunk or being dead. And Daphne can’t save me either—you can’t save other people. But I’m better when I’m with her.”

  “No, when you’re with her, you’re still just as wretched as you ever were, and she’s still a dirty little succubus.” Azrael spoke softly, watching Truman with something close to sadness. “But that’s why I keep Dark Dreadful around. I can still save you, but I’m warning you right now, this is going to be very hard. It’s going to hurt.”

  Truman felt cold and suddenly wide awake. “What are you going to do to Daphne?”

  “Nothing. I won’t even touch her. But she’s going to die, and it’s going to be horrible.”

  And Truman was awake again, heart slamming. In the bed Daphne lay very close, clutching his arm. Her fingers dug into his wrist and he sat up.

  In the dark he could see shapes and shadows, the faint outlines of the room. Daphne huddled next to him, making a high whimpering noise. He reached for her, and she reached back, collapsing into his arms. She was shivering so hard that at first he thought that she might be crying, but she made no noise and where her cheek pressed against his, her face was dry.

  “He won’t kill me,” she said and her voice sounded small and ferocious. “Not like that.”

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, but he didn’t believe it. “Don’t talk like that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  He said it firmly, holding her against his chest. The fact that he was lying didn’t matter.

  LOVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It’s five o’clock in the morning and we’re all awake. Truman was first to get up and now he sits perched on the corner of the bed, not smoking, but looking like he wants to.

  Raymie is on the carpet by my feet, playing with the sewing kit and making big black stitches all over her rabbit.

  Truman scoops her up. Then he sets her in his lap and covers her ears with his hands. “Okay, I think it’s time to talk.”

  At first, I think that he wants to talk about what happened in the bathtub, but he takes a deep breath and says, “Azrael’s the one who killed your sisters, right? Well, he’s doing it according to the Mysteries of the Rosary and he’s almost done with the Sorrowful ones. He nailed Obie’s hands to the table, but he hasn’t raised him yet.”

  “What do you mean ‘raise’ him? Why would he raise him?”

  “Because the last Sorrowful Mystery is crucifixion. He did the agony in the garden and the crown of thorns. He missed the flagellation, but—”

  “No, he didn’t,” I say with a heavy feeling in my chest. “Deirdre was beaten so badly that she was unrecognizable.”

  Truman swallows. “Then he’s going in order. There’s still the carrying of the cross, but after that, he’ll move on to the crucifixion.” As he speaks, Raymie stares around the room, sucking on her fingers, peering at me from between Truman’s hands.

  “Why are you doing that?” I ask. “Why are you covering her ears?”

  “Because this is bad, okay? Do you want her to hear that her dad is nailed to a table? That he’s trapped in some busted-up church and we can’t even do anything to help because Azrael’s a psychopath?” He nods down at Raymie. “And that he’s going to keep doing it until Obie tells him where she is.”

  “I don’t think Obie can tell him, even if he wanted to. I think we’re the only people who know.”

  Truman nods, staring off at something I can’t see. “I think we’re wrong about the church. We keep trying to figure out where to go, like Obie’s in a real place, but what if he’s not? That club I went to last night with Moloch was someplace else. I mean, it wasn’t anywhere, really.”

  I nod. “It was in the liminal space. The in-between.”

  Truman presses his hands harder over Raymie’s ears and his voice drops to a whisper. “All I know is, I saw a lot of dead people there. Her mother—one of those people was her mother, and it was bad, and it was messy.”

  I nod, feeling a surge of sorrow for a woman I never met. For Obie, who lost her.

  Truman watches me, looking wary. “I think it’s time for you to tell me about Dreadful.”

  It’s disorienting to think that I’ve known about Dark Dreadful for all
my life, but I’ve never had to describe her. I close my eyes, trying to find the words. “She’s a—a kind of holy messenger. She eats demons and drinks all their blood so nothing bad can get out.”

  Truman lets his breath out in a shaky sigh. “And your sisters, they . . . ran into her, then?”

  I nod, looking at the carpet, but ran into is the wrong way to say it and we both know that. Azrael is the one who tells her where to go. What to do.

  After a moment, Truman leans closer. His expression is tense and I think he’s going to tell me that he’s sorry, but instead he says, “There’s this other thing. Moloch told me something last night. He told me your friend in the suit is my father. Did you know?”

  I shake my head, but even as I do, the revelation seems right and logical. Obie was the one who took Truman out of Pandemonium, but it was Beelzebub’s decision to send him back. Beelzebub who didn’t want hand him over to the Eaters. No, I didn’t know, but I should have.

  “What’s he like?” Truman says, bouncing Raymie in the crook of his arm.

  For a second, I don’t know what to say. I try to think of details that won’t sound terrible. He’s asking for the sort of things he told me about his mother. All the little quirks and preferences that define a person.

  “He likes Italian opera,” I say. “And nine millimeter handguns. Before my dad put him in charge of Collections, he was a war god in Canaan, but now he mostly sends other people to do the killing. He acts dignified and like he’s above things, but he’s the one who started calling Collections the ‘rag and bone shop.’ At home, he has a cloud of flies that follows him everywhere. He likes poetry by Yeats and William Blake, but his favorite quote is from Kenneth Bainbridge, speaking to Oppenheimer after the Trinity test, with the mushroom cloud still in the sky. ‘Now we are all sons of bitches.’”

  Truman doesn’t answer right away. He sits on the bed, staring down at Raymie. “What’s your dad’s favorite quote?”

  I don’t know how to answer. I could make something up, but it wouldn’t be the truth. There are the cliches, the obvious ones—Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven or Here at least, we shall be free. But none of them seems like my father. “I don’t know.”