Exit Light

by Megan Hart

  Ben smiled. “Last time I checked.”

  Tovah didn’t smile. “I’m sort of busy, Ben.”

  “I see that. I just thought I’d say hello.”

  “You didn’t say hello, you said octopuses don’t have bones.”

  “They don’t.”

  Tovah gave him a narrow, sideways glance. “Are you stalking me?”

  “Maybe.”

  Tovah’s mouth wanted to curl, but she forced it downward instead of upward. He didn’t seem perturbed.

  Without her attention, the mountain had dissolved into a sand dune. She looked around. The beach scene had grown more detailed, mostly from Ben, but her will was automatically filling in the empty places, too. It was interesting, that her sand was golden brown and his was white. Together they made a patchwork quilt of sand. Farther down, the beach faded into smooth black stones. A few people were fishing, some with rods and some with nets.

  “Why the beach?” she asked.

  “Why not? Don’t you like the beach?”

  She looked around again. “It’s all right.”

  In the waking world, she hadn’t been to the beach in a long time. She didn’t want to think about what sand would do to her leg, how it would be impossible to keep the joints clean or how walking would be even more of a challenge.

  She had no problems now and wiggled her toes deeper into the sand. A wave curled toward her feet, wetting them. The water was as warm as bath water.

  “I thought it would be cold,” she said with a small laugh.

  “I don’t like cold water.”

  She nodded, watching him. “This place still surprises me.”

  “It probably always will. That’s the nature of it. But it gets easier, the longer you’re here.”

  “Most things do.”

  They’d begun walking while they talked, toward the rocks and the fishermen. A small red crab scuttled out of the water, directly beneath her foot, and Tovah automatically sidestepped. More crabs appeared, each as tiny and perfect as someone’s will could shape them. They merged, becoming one, and crept back beneath the water.

  “You like crabs?” Tovah gave Ben another sideways glance.

  “That wasn’t me.” He laughed, pointing at the water. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of wills working here. Someone has a crab fetish, I guess.”

  No matter how far they walked, they weren’t getting closer to the rocks and the fishermen. “I don’t see hundreds of people.”

  “You don’t have to see them. It’s not about seeing anything.”

  “Yeah. Right, right.” Even now it was still a hard concept around which to wrap her mind. That the Ephemeros, the dream world, was formed from the collective subconscious of the world. That it was a genuine, alternate plane of reality, existing simultaneously in the minds of every person on earth and accessible only in sleep.

  “How many people are sleeping right now?” she asked suddenly.

  Ben bent to pick up a flat stone and, turning, skipped it out across the water. “A lot.”

  “I read once that on average, we spend a third of our lives sleeping. I had a roommate in college who hated to sleep. She said she’d rather be awake all the time and just take her third all at once, at the end of her life. Just close her eyes when she was done and spend the rest of it asleep, but give her every moment she could take right now.”

  Ben picked up another stone. A breeze ruffled his hair. “She wouldn’t have really wanted that. People need to sleep.”

  “And dream.” Tovah found her own smooth stone and attempted skipping it. She wasn’t as successful. “People who don’t dream get sick.”

  “So do people who dream too much.” Ben turned to her. “There has to be a balance.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell Spider.” This time, when she took a step, Tovah shaped less distance between them and the rocks.

  “You’re good.”

  The appreciation in his tone made her turn to look at him. “What makes you say that?”

  “You want something. You make it happen, but it’s not jarring. It’s nice being around you.”

  She shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was yanking her chain. “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean it.”

  She shrugged. “You’re better than I am. Stronger. Way smoother.”

  Ben shook his head, staring off toward the sea. “Only because I spend more time here than you. That’s all.”

  “Well, believe me, if it weren’t for this freaky shit that’s been going on here lately, I’d be happier to spend more time here.”

  “No.” Ben looked at her sharply. “You think that, but you don’t mean it.”

  “You can read my mind?” She tossed a pebble toward the water. “Relax. I’m only teasing you, Ben.”

  Now she could see that the group of people on the rocks were really a family. Mother, Father, Son. She wondered which one of them was dreaming. Or if all of them were.

  “Can I ask you something, Tovah?”

  Tovah paused. The sea swirled around their ankles and she cherished the sensation, even if the water wasn’t cold like she’d have shaped it. She looked over at Ben. “Sure.”

  Ben looked out over the ocean, itself a patchwork of color and texture. It was, she realized, a perfect representation of the Ephemeros itself. A patchwork sea.

  “Why don’t you want to be a guide? Really?”

  Tovah studied him. He wasn’t looking at her. His face was also pleasant in profile. The curve of his forehead met the swoop of the bridge of his nose, and his chin anchored everything together. Ben had a good face.

  He couldn’t know her thoughts on that were changing. “The Ephemeros is a playground. I wanted to swing on the monkey bars, not be the monitor.”

  Son had cast his net into the ocean. His dream then, she guessed. He pulled in the net, empty, and cast it out again while his parents encouraged him.

  He brought up a net full of shining silver fishes, glittering like they’d been covered by sequins. Some of them wore tiny top hats. Some of them were singing.

  Ben stopped walking. His hands thrust deep into his pockets, he steadfastly didn’t look at her. He lifted his chin a bit toward the kid casting out his net again. “What do you think he’s trying to catch?”

  Tovah studied the scene in front of them. The waves had gotten bigger, rising higher on the sand. Mother and Father faced into the wind whipping off the sea. Tovah had thought they were encouraging Son in his fishing, but now that she was closer she could hear what they were saying. All of it was spoken in fond, loving tones almost syrupy in sweetness. None of it was nice.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Son cast out his net again. His small shoulders hunched with the effort of drawing it in. When it arrived empty, the taunting of Mother and Father got a little louder.

  “Do you think he’s just trying to make them happy?” Ben asked. “Or is he doing this for himself? What do you think he wants to find in that net, Tovah? Is he wishing that just once he’ll pull in something bright and magic that will change his life?”

  Tovah looked at him. This speech was like nothing she’d ever heard from Ben before, and yet it sounded truer than anything he’d ever said. She looked again at the family trio dredging the ocean for something unknown.

  “Is that what you’re always hoping for? Something bright and magic?”

  Ben’s smile only made it to half of his mouth. “Tell me you don’t.”

  She could feel soft sand between all ten of her toes. She could walk without losing her balance, climb and run without fear of falling. She was here and whole, in dreams.

  “I know the difference between this life and my waking one, Ben. Nothing that happens in here changes anything about my life when I’m awake. Hoping to make a change from something I do in here is a waste of time.”

  Ben nodded, looking down at the line he drew in the sand with his foot. She’d never seen his bare feet before, the long, strong toes and smo
oth pale skin below the ragged hem of his cords. Seeing his feet felt suddenly intimate and tender. She looked away.

  “I know,” Ben said in a low voice. “But I can’t stop trying. Okay? Is that the answer you want to hear?”

  He looked up. His eyes held hers. Something passed between them. In the waking world it would have been a hint, unknowable, a guess. Here, it entered her like a wisp of smoke or perfume breathed deep. A scent and taste wrapped up together to create emotion, and it sank immediately into her heart and lodged there so tight and fast she momentarily could not breathe.

  “Is that why you keep me so far from you?” Tovah whispered the question on the outward-bound breath. “I thought it was because you didn’t like me, but—”

  “Things that happen here do change what happens there, Tovah. I have to believe they do. I have to.”

  The note of quiet desperation moved her toward him, but she stopped herself from touching him. Her hand outstretched between them seemed sad and anxious and she withdrew it after a heartbeat. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Every line of his body bespoke sadness struggling not to be grief.

  A thousand words rushed to her throat and were imprisoned behind her teeth. Her lips parted, but nothing came out. So much to say and none of it seemed right.

  “I’m sorry, Tovah.” Ben looked out at the now-black sea.

  She’d lost something she hadn’t known she had. A gift taken away before it had been given. Something fragile broken by a heavy hand.

  She thought of Ben making her a mermaid, and of how he’d kissed her just that once before he’d known she wasn’t something bright and magic that would change his life. Of how he’d always been there, no matter what time she came or left. Of how he’d been the one to help her when things got scary, how his encouragement and friendship had been her rescue, not just his hand pulling her free. And she thought of how many times she had slipped into the Ephemeros hoping to see him and settling for something anonymous instead.

  “We’re friends,” she whispered, aching. “Aren’t we?”

  He looked at her then, his smile familiar and lovely. “Yes.”

  And that was all. Because he believed that anything more here would change something in the waking world. The real world. And he didn’t want her there.

  She managed a smile. “Okay, then.”

  The knowledge between them didn’t dissipate, but it eased a bit. Ben looked up at the sound of a shout. Son had caught something bigger in his net than glittering cabaret fishes.

  Tovah looked, too, and took an unconscious step back in shock at what she saw.

  Son had, indeed, pulled out something bright and magic, and Tovah looked at Ben at once, certain he’d had a hand in shaping it. But Ben looked as stunned as she felt. His hand came out of his pocket, and instead of stepping back he’d gone one forward, fingers curled as though he meant to reach.

  Son had pulled a mermaid from the water.

  No golden-tressed buxom beauty with sequined scales and a sweet, trilling voice. This creature had been dragged from the depths of the sea’s darkness, and it writhed and mewled in fury or agony at being made to face the light.

  Its torso was human-shaped by broad definition, with two dangling arms ending in webbed hands. It had no breasts, for it was clearly never meant to suckle or nurture its young. Trailing remoras clung to skin nearly translucent in its lack of color, fading into deep gray where the torso met the scales of its tail. A series of dorsal spikes lay flat along its spine, and they jutted upright as Tovah watched Son struggle with the net. His hand landed on one of them and he cried out, jerking away. Clear poison leaked from the tips of the spines, bubbling as it hit the sand when Son dropped the net.

  The creature turned as it fell, and the face—oh, the face was an abomination. Eyes, nose, a gaping, screaming mouth lined with multiple rows of teeth like a shark—it was the face of something damned and, worse, it knew it. Intelligence glittered in round eyes without any differentiation between iris and pupil.

  Tovah put a hand over her mouth and nose to hold back a gag at the creature’s stench. Ben stepped forward, closer, with a low, agonized groan. “Ben, no!”

  Son turned, weeping, his hand swollen to the size of a cartoon glove. Mother and Father turned, too, each of them laughing. The mermaid lay at their feet, tail painting calligraphy in the sand as it writhed.

  “Ben, stop!”

  She knew that boy. She knew that man too. Even as she watched, his body rippled, shoulders hunching and mouth yawning wide as it filled with teeth.

  The man with a dog’s head growled and snapped. The woman beside him stopped laughing and made a face of exaggerated surprise. She put a hand to the o of her mouth.

  The boy between them wept.

  “What have you done?” Ben’s fists rose as he took another step toward the others.

  “Ben, no!” Tovah reached but he’d gone too far. Her fingertips brushed the soft faded blue fabric of his shirt and closed on empty air.

  The boy covered his face with his hands. The woman with him, not his mother, put her hand on the back of his neck. She pushed him forward.

  “Look what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve made something ugly.”

  The boy didn’t squirm or fight to get away, though his slim shoulders shook with sobs. The dog-headed man snapped its jaws until thick curds of yellowish foam flew.

  Ben, heedless of Tovah’s cry, went to his knees in front of the creature the boy had pulled from the ocean. “No,” he said, a single word weighted with too much meaning.

  Tovah reached him, her hand on his shoulder. “Ben. Don’t.”

  She could smell the dog, smell the pitiful thing masquerading as something bright and magic. Smell the sea. Ben’s shoulder under her hand was solid. Real.

  The boy took his hands away from his face. Tears streaked paths of silver down pale cheeks. His eyes, bluer than blue, glimmered. The woman’s hand tightened on his neck. She pushed him forward, just a little.

  The woman smiled. She shoved the boy forward another step. One more and he’d trip over the mermaid.

  “See what you’ve done?” she repeated conversationally.

  The boy looked at the mermaid, which lay gasping, its gills flapping open and shut. Its webbed fingers had dug into the sand, and sand covered the dampness of its tail.

  “Make it go away,” prompted the woman. “Go ahead.”

  The boy shook. His eyes went wide, mouth pinched tight with grief and horror. The dogman behind him snapped its jaws again, but he didn’t flinch.

  “Can you make her go away?” he asked Tovah in a small and quavering voice. “Can you make her stop? Can you stop me?”

  Tovah didn’t know what to say. Her fingers curled on Ben’s shoulder, urging him to get to his feet. Her desire to help this boy was tempered by knowing she didn’t know what to give him, or how.

  She wasn’t a guide.

  “Ben,” she said, but Ben didn’t move.

  The woman laughed. Her head tipped back, throat working with mirth. Long nails tipped her fingers, and they dug into the boy’s skin, bringing blood.

  “Can you stop me?” the boy asked again, louder, more desperate. His entire body shook. “Please.”

  “She won’t help you,” said the woman. “Nobody will. Not now. Not ever.”

  The sand and the sky and the sea turned black.

  “Please,” said the boy.

  Pushing against his will was like butting against brick. Unyielding. Tovah cast out her desire to take the boy from the woman’s touch, but nothing happened. She tried again, pushing harder than she’d ever pushed against anyone.

  “Ben, help me.”

  Ben did nothing.

  The boy’s eyes went dark as around them the Ephemeros cracked and crumbled. Lightning lit the sky overhead, and…things…crawled from the clouds. Tovah pushed, hard, for blue sky and green grass. Nothing.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she told the boy.

  “It’s the o
nly thing that will make them stop,” he cried and clapped his hands over his ears. “Make them stop hurting me!”

  The woman growled and the dogman laughed; Ben cried out as the mermaid began to dissolve. Tovah fell forward and caught herself with her hands before her face could hit the ground.

  Her stump throbbed, but though she felt the loss of her leg again she didn’t let it stop her from pushing up on her hands. She looked up at the boy, the woman, the dog with a man’s body.

  She pushed.

  She pushed again.

  “She won’t help you,” said the woman, her voice like the buzzing of a hive. “Not now. Not ever.”

  This time, when Tovah pushed, she felt the truth. This was the three. The boy. The woman. The dogman. They were the same, each separate but at their hearts, the same. Three wills collected as one, and she understood then why she, Ben and Spider had been able to shape this away before by working together.

  “Ben, help me!”

  Two against three was better odds than one against three. She reached for Ben with her hand and her will, pulling him toward her. He moved slowly, like he was caught in tar, but she managed to get him to look at her.

  The world rocked. Despair so vast, so formless, so infinite there was nothing else, wrapped itself around her. Ben wept, his eyes closed. Tovah’s eyes burned with tears.

  There was no point in going on. No purpose to her life, nothing good to hope for or to cherish. Nothing but emptiness and grief, and sorrow and fear.

  The boy bled beneath the woman’s hands and the dogman blew fetid breath. Three as one. One as three.

  Ben opened his eyes. Tovah saw her reflection there, one last thing before she gave up to the emptiness. She saw herself in Ben’s eyes.

  “Ben,” she said.

  They reached for each other at the same time. Their fingers linked. His hands, warm and callused, enfolded hers.

  “Tovah,” Ben said.

  “See? See?” the woman cried. “They don’t care about you!”

  The boy sobbed and screamed as the world crumbled around them.

  “Don’t do this!” Tovah looked at the boy. She ignored the woman and the dog, who were distractions. She shook her head, staring into his deep, dark eyes. “Don’t. Only you can stop this.”