Splinters

by Matt Carter

  Haley shook her head firmly. “Yes, I do. Anything I can take back, I have to do it.”

  Ben looked at her hand, scratching absently at a hole in the armrest, and after another moment’s hesitation, wrapped it in his.

  I got the strong feeling that any input I might have the urge to offer at that moment would likely be counterproductive, so I looked away from his face and the intricate patterns of incense smoke to kill that little bit of clarity I’d been using.

  I could still hear him.

  “Everyone here wants to help you with that,” he told her.

  At least that was true.

  Haley took a deep, shuddering breath followed by a deeper, steadier one, and her hair made a light tapping sound against the pleather as she nodded.

  Ben stayed crouched next to the chair, holding her hand, and after a few more breaths that didn’t break back into panicked gasping, Billy knelt down across from them, carefully took her other hand, and began to talk. His tone was already different, slower, smoother, mystical, and more formal.

  “I’m going to talk you through some visualization. You will still be here, yourself, with your own free will. You will remember everything that happens. You have the power to reject any image or suggestion. If you want the images to stop, you have the power to wake up instantly, safe, with people who care about you.”

  It was just the introduction, but I knew it well enough to look up and gather myself. We were finally getting started.

  “Watch the smoke,” he told her. “Relax your feet, one toe at a time . . . you can feel your ankles relaxing, your knees relaxing, every bit of tension draining away with the sound of my voice . . .”

  I drifted a little while he led her through the rest of her joints in sequence, trying not to fall asleep to the sound myself.

  “ . . . Your eyelids are too heavy to keep them open anymore. You’re leaning back and sinking deeper into the chair. The chair is becoming more comfortable, softer with every word . . . softer . . .”

  Haley had stopped clutching Ben’s hand, letting Ben and Billy each support one of hers as if they were sleeping kittens.

  “You’re at home, in bed, before all this happened.”

  Haley tensed a little but slowly relaxed as Billy went on.

  “You feel perfectly safe and secure. You can feel your own sheets, your own pillow. You can smell your mother’s favorite laundry soap. You roll onto your back, and you can see the same patterns on your ceiling that you see every night. Someone else is in the room with you now. It’s someone from here in Prospero, someone you know.”

  Haley’s left hand balled up for a moment in Ben’s.

  As calmly and smoothly as he had set the scene, Billy asked her, “Who is it?”

  “I can’t see him,” Haley answered dreamily. “It’s too dark.”

  Ben gave me a look at the word “him,” as if that narrowed the suspects down to a manageable handful.

  “He’s coming closer to you,” Billy went on. “He wants you to go somewhere with him. You’re sitting up to look at him. Your eyes are adjusting to the light.”

  “He’s behind me,” said Haley. “No matter how I turn. He’s behind me and . . . around me! All around me!”

  I was tempted to look and think myself away again. If this had been any less important, I probably would have.

  I didn’t need any help with this part. I already knew better than I wanted to what it felt like when they took you, the part before they got you wherever they were going, at least.

  “Where does he want you to go?” Billy asked.

  “Away,” Haley answered unhelpfully. “Somewhere else. Far. So fast!”

  “What do you see on your way?”

  “I don’t see anything. My eyes are covered.”

  There was a choking sound in her throat, and oxygen suddenly felt very sparse in my lungs. If abduction procedure was at all standardized, he had covered much more than her eyes.

  I don’t know if Billy realized how pointless this part was or if he meant to offer her some sort of relief, but he finally hurried things forward a little.

  “You’ve arrived somewhere. Your eyes come uncovered. You look around at your new surroundings. What do you see?”

  Haley’s eyes stayed closed, entranced, dead to the present real world, but the hyperventilation had started again.

  “Wrong,” she moaned softly. “Everything wrong, dark, no light, not even the moon, but I can see . . . so many bodies!”

  “What else can you see?” Billy coaxed more gently than I ever could have.

  Haley shook her head just slightly.

  “Are there walls?”

  “No.”

  “Are you still outside?”

  “No!”

  Billy faltered a moment. His hands and Ben’s and Haley’s were all white-knuckled against each other. Ben’s expression seemed to be asking Billy for some kind of help.

  For the first time, I thought about the way Splinters swapped thoughts and found a shred of appeal in it. If Haley could have explained this to Ben and Billy through those clutching hands, if I could have reached out and touched the exposed skin of her arm myself, sitting there on the armrest, and let whatever it was she knew seep right into me without the trouble of making her understand or find words for it, I would have, whatever other sickening intrusions came with it.

  Aldo toyed with the focus on the camera, as if a slightly sharper impression of the shadows on Haley’s face would make it any clearer what was happening in her head.

  This was where we had been trying to get her, this place with no walls that wasn’t outside, where people went and Splinters came from. She was in it, so close to whatever secrets they went to such lengths to hide there, and she couldn’t give us anything.

  Billy looked at Ben and then at me, and I wanted him to push, to drag out any little scrap of a hint he could. It might snap her back to reality, and after that we’d probably never get her this far again, but it was better than missing the opportunity entirely.

  If we’d been free to talk out loud, I was sure Ben and I could have argued that point for hours.

  Billy found a compromise without our help.

  “You have to leave there now,” he told Haley. “You’re leaving to go home now. Which way do you go?”

  Haley relaxed just slightly. Escaping. That had to be a happy thought, in a way, and it was still a useful one.

  “Up.”

  Not quite as useful as it could be, assuming we were talking about the Miracle Mine.

  “Sideways-up. Climbing. Sticky.”

  “You’re climbing closer to home, closer to the things you know,” Billy narrated, back in his usual hypnotic stride. “You’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. You’re luckier than the others. Why?”

  “They’re tired of me.”

  “He’s letting you go?” Billy asked.

  “He isn’t here,” said Haley. “He left me here. Unfinished.”

  “You’re almost out now,” Billy encouraged. “You can see things ahead that aren’t wrong, things that look familiar. What do you see first?”

  “The sky!”

  I wished I could share Haley’s enthusiasm for a glimpse of the least localized feature on the planet.

  “A tree!”

  This couldn’t be all we were going to get.

  “A tree above me! Sticky-alive like what I’m climbing, like him when he’s all around me. It’s blocking the sky, the stars, won’t let me out . . . And it’s moving!”

  “You have time to look at the tree,” Billy told her. “Everything else will wait for you. You’re stopping to look at its height, the color of its bark, the spread of its branches, the texture of its leaves. What kind of tree is it?”

  “It’s a . . . a giant redwood. A giant giant redwood. But it’s not a tree!”

  Ben shot me a look, and this time we were in total agreement. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

  “How is it moving?”

>   “It’s crawling to the side, away from me. It’s letting in more sky in the front. He’s making it move. He’s here!”

  “You’re leaving,” Billy repeated. “You know you will succeed. You’re leaving now. He can’t stop you. What does he do?”

  “He doesn’t see me,” Haley whispered, as if she were afraid of somehow fixing his mistake through time. “He’s climbing down next to me, but he doesn’t see me because the place I’m in still isn’t right.”

  Billy tried to prompt her again, but she spoke over him.

  “The tree is crawling back! There’s sky, but it’s closing!”

  “You’re making it through. Nothing can stop you,” Billy promised, but Haley kept gasping.

  “It’s closing!”

  “You’re on the other side,” Billy tried. “You’re out. You’re on your way back home.”

  But Haley shook her head violently. “It’s closing!”

  Ben pried one of his hands away from hers to shake Billy’s shoulder. “That’s enough.”

  Billy seemed to agree, but he looked at me first.

  “We have what we need,” I confirmed.

  “When I count to three,” Billy concluded, “you will wake up safe and happy and thrilled to have taken back the memories that are rightfully yours. One . . . two . . . three.”

  Haley snapped out of it right on cue, but she didn’t look happy or thrilled. She jerked her hand away from Billy, threw both arms around Ben’s neck, and started sobbing into the front of his shirt. Ben held her with a closeness that was difficult to watch and a shell-shocked expression that wasn’t much easier.

  Aldo looked at me and pointed at the camera, trying to decide whether to turn it off.

  Billy hovered awkwardly over them. “Haley?”

  She didn’t acknowledge him. It looked like he was considering patting her on the shoulder or something but couldn’t quite make up his mind. When he moved toward her, she shied away, further into Ben’s arms.

  “Haley . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . .” he glanced around at the rest of us, looking for some kind of absolution, but no one gave it. Not because we blamed him but because whatever absolution he needed, we needed it, too. “I’m . . . I’m going to go for a smoke.”

  I didn’t want to be alone with Ben and Haley just then, or any more alone with them than I needed to be. I had nothing to offer her, not the way he did, and there was nothing more for me to gain by watching them.

  I nodded to Aldo to stop recording, but when I tried to squeeze past the armchair to follow Billy out into the backyard, Haley grabbed for me and latched onto the edge of one of my front pockets.

  “Stay, Mina.” Her voice was ragged with crying, but the words were clear and steady and serious. “Please stay. Please, tell me, did it work?”

  I needed her to let go. I wasn’t ready for this. I needed to turn on my music and reorganize my head and sort out all the new evidence before I could possibly know how to speak to her.

  In my hurried, spur-of-the-moment guess, I answered her like a human.

  “Yes.” I squeezed her hand, hoping it was as real as it felt, and that I’d be able to pry it off of my pants soon without either tearing them or making her cry harder. “It worked. You did great.”

  She smiled up at me, so inexplicably brightly, so gratefully, that even with the inside of the mine still a frustrating blank, even with Billy unfairly exiled to the yard for trying to do a good thing, even with her not-quite-vindicated fingers digging into both Ben and me, I couldn’t help thinking, just for a moment, about how much I might enjoy knowing an ECNS Haley Perkins.

  And that’s when something shattered the front window in Billy’s kitchen from the outside.

  Ben was on his feet before the glass had finished falling, pushing Haley and Aldo and me behind the couch at the far side of the living room. I wrenched Haley off of me to get my nearest flamethrower out of my bag, and so I could turn around to look at the Splinter, The Reaper, sidling easily through the fragments covering the kitchen sink, down onto the littered tiles, down the hall toward us, that scythe bone extended in front of it.

  Aldo fumbled the camera into its cushioned case and shoved it under the nearest bean bag chair, out of sight.

  I pressed the first flamethrower into Ben’s hand.

  Haley screamed and latched onto my arm while I was digging for another one, and I shook her off.

  I regretted it the moment The Reaper reached us and, without a moment’s indecision, wrapped its flexible right arm around her, tightened it like a python, and pulled.

  Ben blasted it with a jet of flame near where its elbow should have been, and it scurried backward, dragging Haley headlong over the couch and along the floor, back toward the open window, its skin searing and bubbling and weeping where the flames had charred the hoodie away from it but maintaining its integrity.

  I abandoned my search for another flamethrower and grabbed a cleaver instead, vaulted the couch, and swung. I would have cut the grasping arm clean off, but The Reaper struck out with its scythe, and I had to stop, jump sideways, and clear it like a jump rope to keep my feet attached.

  Ben grabbed Haley’s outstretched hands to try to anchor her, and when Aldo took aim with his taser, Ben waved him off.

  “Not while he’s touching her!”

  Aldo and I both tried to catch Haley’s legs to help Ben pry her free, but The Reaper scuttled too far out of reach, both Haley and Ben skidding along behind him, leaving a thickening trail of blood through the broken glass.

  They put up a fight at the window, but not a long-enough one for us to join in. Ben wedged himself into the sink, holding Haley with one hand and the faucet with the other. Haley was screaming,

  “Not again! Please, not again!”

  I was amazed she hadn’t gone back to sobbing yet. Splinter flashbacks were bad enough when they weren’t real.

  Finally, just before Aldo and I could catch up, The Reaper stuck the point of its scythe into the fabric and skin on Ben’s chest and simply pushed him away, trusting his grip or his sternum to break.

  Thankfully, his grip went first.

  Ben would have climbed out after them, right through the shards left in the window frame even after they were out of sight. The only thing I could say to stop him was, “We know where they’re going.”

  Once I was sure Ben wouldn’t leave the moment my back was turned, I ran to throw the back door open.

  “Billy, get the car started!”

  He met me at the door, still stubbing out a half-finished joint, its sweet, focus-killing scent more overpowering on him than the incense had been.

  “What happened? Is she okay?”

  “They must have known she was onto them!” I explained as fast as I could. “They took her, but they’re too late! She’s already told us! The Miracle Mine is hidden under a Splinter replica of a giant redwood! It was right there the last time you drove us up there! I knew we were close! Start the car. We have to catch up before they can get her inside!”

  Billy didn’t ask any more questions just then, and he paused only a moment before digging for his keys.

  “Aldo!” I stopped him before he could climb into the van after Ben. “You’re on backup. Make sure we have at least a twenty minute head start, but then come pick us up with all the human help you can get.”

  Aldo didn’t quite nod, not willingly, but he was far too smart to take the time to argue. “Twenty minutes,” he repeated. “Be careful, Mina.”

  22.

  Honestly, I’d Prefer Following a White Rabbit

  Ben

  Billy’s bolt cutters made short work of the chain that held the gate shut. The two of us pushed the wrought iron gate open with a roaring squeal that sounded like it would summon every monster within half a mile. We were lucky, though, for no monsters came running out of the darkness at us. We only had the faint sounds of the forest nightlife to keep us company.

  I handed the cutters back to Billy as we made our way back to
the van. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know if it was more out of fear or anger.

  He smiled at me, worried. “You okay?”

  “No,” I said. “We could have fought him . . . it off. We’ve done it before. This didn’t have to happen.”

  “You could’ve, but you didn’t,” Billy said, clapping a hand on my back. “You can beat yourself up about it, or you can do something about it. You want my honest opinion?”

  I didn’t really, but I said, “Sure.”

  “These freaks, they’ve got this town. They’ve messed with you since you got here. They’ve messed with Mina for longer than I’ve known her. If you guys find them, you save Haley first because that’s what you gotta do, but if the chance comes up, and I’m pretty sure it will, you show them no mercy. You kill them. Don’t think they won’t do the same thing to you, you feel me?”

  I looked him in the eyes, and for the first time, I could see Billy was completely serious. At the time, I had a hard time arguing with him. I could see their faces, distorted, monstrous, ready to kill us all. Mina’s dad. Alexei. Kevin . . . Consequences be damned, I had a feeling that I might be able to kill that night if I had to.

  “Yeah, I feel you,” I said as we got in the van. Mina sat in the back, taking stock of the odd array of weapons that Billy had gathered together from his “secret stash.” In addition to a fairly standard collection of knives, hatchets, and even a chainsaw, he had some more exotic choices. While Mina considered a cattle prod and a large flamethrower made out of an insecticide sprayer, I was more interested in trying out Billy’s homemade bang sticks. Basically a set of foot-long, sawed-off lengths of broomstick with some modified shotgun shells duct-taped to the end, Billy had rigged them to go off when stabbed into something with enough force. I looked forward to trying one or two of them out on The Reaper.

  Though, knowing Billy, there seemed an equal chance I’d wind up blowing off one of my hands just trying.

  “Are we through?” Mina asked.

  “Yeah,” Billy said as he started up the engine and drove us up the bumpy dirt road.

  As usual in the back of Billy’s van, we held on for dear life and hoped for the best. At the same time, Mina did her best to show me the pictures from the old miner’s journal on her phone.