Falling

by Amber Jaeger

  “Sorry,” I called after him, but he didn’t turn around.

  Despite my worry for Grandma and for Linc, I was totally exhausted. I lay in bed, snuggled under my quilt, my window open a crack, practically begging for sleep. But every time I drifted off, a noise from Grandma’s room brought me back. Twice I got up to check on her and both times she was rearranging everything in her dresser drawers. Sleep continued to evade me as she banged and shuffled in her room.

  Sometime after midnight I fell into an uneasy sleep and woke up in the general store. I looked around in surprise.

  How long since I had been to Nightmare Town? I thought back and couldn’t remember. The store was closed, the lights off and only the hum of the coolers to be heard. “Abe?” I called, just in case. No answer.

  I let myself out the doors but couldn’t figure out how to lock them behind me. Finally I just left. The dusty road leading down to my house was bright enough with the moonlight but totally deserted. I let myself in the side door where Linc could usually be found playing video games but he wasn’t there either.

  I wandered back outside, stumped. Where was everybody?

  Determined to find them, I took off down the dusty road again. I could see the glow of lights from the downtown area through the sparse trees. The stores were all closed but had soft light illuminating the displays in the windows. Clothing stores, a candy store and toy store lined the block I wandered down. At the far end was the glow of neon light from a high set window and thumping base rattled the metal door in its frame. Curious, I let myself in.

  It was a bar, half filled with people. I let the door shut behind me and found myself in darkness illuminated only by the glow of lights over the neatly lined bottles of liquor. At the end of the dark wooden bar was Abe with a few other townies I recognized. No one looked up when I walked in the door and no one was talking, even though the music wasn’t nearly as loud as it had seemed from outside.

  I half expected the bartender to tell me I was too young to be in there but she just glared at me and continued wiping out shot glasses. Uneasy, I walked over to where Abe sat. “Hey, how come you’re not at the store?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

  “What’s the point?” he snapped. “If you’re not going to do your job why should I do mine?”

  I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant but he just waved me off. Hurt, I looked to other townies I recognized. They wouldn’t meet my eyes, just glared off into the distance.

  “Okay,” I muttered, looking around for a familiar face.

  At one tiny table at the other end of the room sat Lincoln.

  He didn’t look up as I walked over or even when I sat down. “Linc?” I finally asked.

  He turned his face towards me and I was shocked. He was thin and pale with dark, angry smears under both eyes.

  “Hey Bixby,” he said dully.

  “Linc, what happened to you?” I asked. “In real life you’re doing so much better.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh yeah? Does he know what happened to us?”

  Dream Lincoln had never even conceded there was another version of him. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “He remembers Cory now—”

  “No! Everything! He has to remember everything! Because I do.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly chilled. “Okay. Well, he remembers Cory being in the car. He just doesn’t remember the car accident or how he got to the shelter or anything. What is it so important that he remembers?”

  “Is he having dreams?”

  “Yeah …”

  Lincoln nodded savagely. “Then he knows what happened. His dreams are as real as yours.”

  “But he said in his dreams he was trapped, or locked up by something.”

  “In the woods, in the fog, with a demon always on the perimeter,” he filled in.

  His description raised goose bumps on my arms. “What happened to you guys?” I asked, feeling sick.

  “Ask your boyfriend,” he spat in my face.

  Chapter 17

  I COULDN’T SLEEP THE REST of the night, too afraid Grandma would get up on her own, too afraid I would wake up and be back in Nightmare Town, too afraid I would be back to Jordan.

  School was torture. I fell asleep sitting in the cafeteria during lunch and was positive I was going to do it again in my first class after lunch. After a test I was sure I failed, our teacher started in on the next unit.

  “All right, this week we’re starting our local history section,” Mr. Higgins said, passing out thin books to each of us. I gave it a cursory glance and stifled another yawn. “We’re going to start with a really neat area just thirty miles south of us with a town called Singapore.”

  He jabbed at a blank space next to the big lake on a hanging map. “So Singapore was right here—”

  “There’s nothing there,” the girl next to me pointed out.

  “Right, keep listening. So, Singapore was settled in 1836 by a man named Oshea Wilder who wanted it to become a large port town like Chicago. He was successful and the town grew. It had mills, general stores and even the state’s first school house. Then in the winter of 1842 a devastating storm blew in, causing a forty-day-long blizzard.”

  “Is that why the town’s not there?” the girl next to me asked. “Cause they all died in the storm?”

  Mr. Higgins sighed. “No, actually they all survived. How about you let me lecture and save the questions for afterwards? So, with what has to be one of the most fortuitous coincidences ever, a ship called the Milwaukie wrecked right off the shore of the town. The people were able to retrieve food and supplies from it to last out the storm. Then a few years later, the man who founded the town left and it was bought up by another man who then sold it to his brother. This man was named Artemas Carter and he was responsible for the building of a very large schooner that transported lumber from West Michigan to Chicago. It was hugely successful and the town grew to hold several hundred people.”

  I discreetly rubbed my eyes and checked the clock again.

  “But that was almost part of the town’s downfall. All the lumber that was sent to Chicago was used to build new buildings and in 1871, when the cow kicked over the lantern and started the famous Great Fire of Chicago, it swept up into lower West Michigan. The town was spared but the woods around it were not and because of the deforestation the town became eroded by sand blowing in off of Lake Michigan. It was abandoned in 1875 and completely covered over by sand.”

  “Well it not must have been that big of a town to get covered up just by sand,” one of the guys said.

  “Oh, on the contrary,” Mr. Higgins said, hitting a button on his computer, causing a picture to come up on the screen. It was an old black and white photo of an old town. A dirt road ran between two rows of one- and two- story buildings. It looked familiar and I wondered where I had seen the picture before. “That building on the left is one of two of the town’s banks,” he said, then clicked to the next picture. “Here is the schooner built to transport the lumber,” he said of a massive ship docked in a large wooden port. “And this, this is one of the general stores. You can see it was converted from an old barn and we all know how large barns are. Imagine this being completely covered by sand in only four short years.”

  I glanced up at the picture and felt my heart completely stop.

  It was Abe’s store. It was a perfect, exact picture of his store with the only thing different being the absence of the unused gas pumps. My chest continued to constrict painfully.

  Shakily, I raised my hand. “Is that, um, you say that is a real place?”

  Mr. Higgins frowned at me. “Of course. Well, it was. I imagine the store is probably still there under one of the dunes, although it’s probably in pieces.”

  “Can people still get to the town?” I willed my hands to stop shaking.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “People still visit the area where the town was. It’s one of Michigan’s most famous ghost towns.”

  “Is
it haunted?” someone asked.

  “Well, local legend says that it is. There was a dark side to the town. Being such a large port far away from the prying eyes of Chicago authorities, it was a haven for mobsters. They smuggled all kinds of things through the port and town and even used it as a vacation spot. They brought with them the crime and violence they perpetrated in Chicago and it rubbed off on the town. People say now you can see ghosts moving through the trees around the dunes over the town or hear weird noises or see unusual lights in the sky, akin to the northern lights.”

  I couldn’t look away from the picture. I scanned it inch by inch, looking for any detail that would prove it wasn’t the same general store I had been dreaming about for years. I flipped through the book Mr. Higgins had handed out and scanned through the black and white photos in it. In the very beginning was a detailed map showing were the town had been and how to get to it. I knew then I wouldn’t be attending the rest of my afternoon classes.

  It was a gorgeous drive down there and I saw almost none of it. My mind kept jumping back to the picture of Abe’s general store and I could barely concentrate on steering. Following the map and setting my odometer, I finally arrived to where the town had been. Pulling over on the side of the road suddenly made me fearful and I had to make myself get out of the car. Trees grew tall overhead and let in dapples of sunlight. Birds chirped and squirrels knocked cascades of crunchy leaves to the ground. The lake was a faint rushing.

  Book in hand, I set off on a faint path that led up the dune. Cresting the hill and finally breaking through the trees, I could see a huge expanse of sand rolling down to the water. I stood, catching my breath, and took it all in.

  Finally it hit me and with tears starting to flow, I had to sit. Somewhere beneath me was the actual building I had been dreaming about for years. It was real, perhaps all of it was real, and I didn’t know if that made me crazier than I already was or not crazy all.

  “I suspected you would finally make it here,” a voice said from behind me.

  I scrambled to my feet, sand flying everywhere. Behind me stood a man dressed unusually with large scarf wrapped around his head and swept across his face. He seemed to be staring out towards the water. I took a few slow steps backwards, all too aware he was between me and my escape to my car.

  “I hadn’t even suspected it, not until Jordan finally told me how he first found you, in your dreams.” That stopped me. I looked the man over again, took in his broad shoulders, his enormous size.

  “David?” I asked. Then, “Oh my God, oh my God, this is all real.” The shaking in my knees took over my whole body and I had to sit down again. Even my shadow on the sand was quivering.

  I couldn’t see his face, just barely his eyes as he glanced at me. “Of course it is. You of all people should know that. And you of all people should know why you and Jordan can’t be together.”

  “Why? Why should I know that—why should I know anything?”

  David sighed. “You really don’t know? How can you not? How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I answered, confused by the question.

  He sighed again. “Your mother must be dead.”

  “I … yes.”

  He nodded. “And she must have died before you turned fourteen.”

  “Right again. Did Jordan tell you that?”

  “No.”

  He stood, silent. I studied him from the corner of my eye. Finally I asked, “Can I see your face?”

  “No.”

  I blew out a huff of air. “Okay. What do you want, why are you here?”

  The wind flapped the scarf around his face, revealing his one icy blue eye. I shivered as he stared at me. “You really don’t know? Even not being told you never figured it out? What about your aunts, your grandmother?”

  “My mom was an only child and my Grandma has had Alzheimer’s for years. What is it I’m supposed to know?” I asked, irritated.

  “You’re a Gatekeeper. You are supposed to be guarding this pass way.”

  I shrugged uneasily. “Whatever, man. You’re just messing with me.”

  David took an angry step forward and I scrambled back. “I know you dream about this place, I know you probably see it as if it hadn’t been abandoned. I know you probably think of it as your town. You know everyone there, don’t you? And they know you. I bet they are very angry with you.”

  A cold wind gusted over me. “They wouldn’t talk to me last night. And dream Lincoln was mad. How do you know that?”

  “Who do you think you’re supposed to be guarding against?”

  I shook my head, unable to process anything.

  “Us, all of us, all the djinn. You are supposed to be keeping us out, separate and instead you’re ‘dating’ one of us.” He took another step closer but I was too numb to move back. “You can’t be with him, you can’t be with Jordan. You have no idea what hell you could unleash on both our worlds.”

  The spit dried in my mouth. “You’re lying, you just don’t like humans and you don’t want me with him.”

  He turned away from me. “Do these woods look familiar to you?”

  “I …” I looked around, really looked at the trees and forest, wondering if I would recognize them as the woods surrounding Nightmare Town. “I don’t think so.”

  “Your brother does. He spent almost two weeks here.”

  I stood to my feet and crossed my arms tight over my chest. I couldn’t say anything, I could only wait for him to confirm what I had been suspecting.

  “Trapped in these woods, in the in between place between my world and yours. He’s seen how our faces really look, did he tell you? Was he able to describe it?”

  “He said it was a demon,” I whispered.

  David gave a little laugh at that. “Close, but not exactly.”

  Tears were flowing from my eyes and I wiped my nose on my sleeve. He crossed the few feet to me slowly and only stopped when I started backing up. “I am sorry,” he said quietly.

  “No you’re not. This is what you wanted. You hate human women and you didn’t want me around. I just can’t believe it took you this long to tell me,” I spat.

  He reached his hand up and stroked the hair falling out of my braid. “So lovely. You almost look like her.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, too scared to move back from him. “You win. It’s over between me and Jordan. Please just go.”

  The only answer I got was the rushing of the waves.

  Chapter 18

  I DIDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I couldn’t face Jordon or either one of the Lincolns. All night long I watched a gentle wind wave leaves in front of the streetlight outside my window. My emotions swung from anger to betrayal to hurt to guilt. Jordan had held onto my brother the whole time and I had never even questioned him on it, even though I had felt like something wasn’t quite right. Thinking of Lincoln scared and trapped made me cry but thinking I had betrayed him by falling for Jordan made me sob. And despite all of that the idea of losing him still hurt.

  I wanted to pull my hair out.

  There was no reasonable conclusion to come to; there was no excuse for what Jordan had done and no way that I could continue to see him. Lincoln had changed and I didn’t know if he could ever change back to the way he had been. My bracelets shined in the weak light beginning to pour in my window. My wrists were raw from all my attempts to pull them off and finally I realized I would somehow have to get Jordan to take them off himself.

  Before Linc and Grandma got up for the day, I snuck into the shower and let myself cry one final time. I tried to empty myself of the anger I felt over falling for Jordan and the guilt I felt for letting any harm come to my brother.

  But when I got out of the shower and saw my face, all the anger I had been fighting surged forward. I looked like a retouched picture of myself. Even wet my hair was a brighter, shiny color. My eyes were larger and the dark lashes framing them were twice as long and thick as they had been. My skin was flawless and even my eyebrows were p
erfectly arched. I once again doubted Jordan didn’t have anything to do with my new look.

  A frumpy hairstyle and pair of glasses wasn’t going to hide my transformation anymore so I just combed my hair out straight and got dressed. If anyone asked, which I doubted they would pick now to start talking to me, I would say it was makeup.

  Grandma didn’t wake up so I left her the usual breakfast on the table. Linc and I ate in silence. I kept glancing up to see if he looked angry with me but his face was gray and pinched and I could tell he hadn’t slept well.

  The drive to school was just as silent and not very good for my mood. Every thought went back to Jordan and what he had to do with Lincoln being hurt and missing. I knew he had taken him, I knew he had hid him, I just didn’t know why. He claimed he had held onto Lincoln instead of giving him back right away so he would have an excuse to meet me … but that didn’t make any sense now that I knew he had taken my brother prisoner for almost two weeks. If he knew me half as well as claimed he did, he would have known how I angry I would be. I couldn’t make sense of it, but then again, I really didn’t know everything Jordan was capable of.

  And it hurt to think of him like that because as angry I was, as much as I no longer trusted him, I was still in love with him. I had been half in love with him the moment I had met him. My whole life was taking care of my family in my mom’s place and pretty much being ignored. And then he had shown up and somehow not only given me what I wanted most—my brother back—but what I wanted second most: a life other than being everyone’s nurse and maid and cook. He was a friend, he cared about me (in a twisted way), he wanted to know what I thought and how I felt.

  Or at least that’s what he wanted me to think. I felt like a total idiot.

  I almost couldn’t stand to be at school. My anger and self-loathing plus everyone’s staring made for a painful day. Shutting myself in Lincoln’s truck at the end of the day was like balm to a burn.

  Until one of his friends knocked on my window. Reluctantly, I rolled it down. “Linc hasn’t made it out of school yet,” I said, pointing at the empty driver’s seat.