Deadgirl

by B. C. Johnson

  “You don’t look—” he began.

  “Zack. Watch it.”

  “I mean, you look lovely. Just like a lovely person…who needs to go the hospital.”

  I smirked. “Thanks?”

  Zack sighed, and his forehead wrinkled up. I took the last few steps down the stairs, and I don’t know if it was the weird night, the shock, or the Listerine, but I folded myself into his arms and rested my head on his chest. For a terrifying moment he didn’t move, and I sucked in a slow shallow breath that just might precede shameful weeping. Not enough breath to do my mind-peeking trick, I noticed distantly. Before I could embarrass myself anymore, however, he slipped his arms across my back and pulled me in closer.

  Heaven. No question. He smelled like…I don’t even know. But it was wonderful, masculine and natural. The warmth of his chest made me shiver. He dragged his fingers through my hair, and I let out the most contented sigh of my whole life.

  I didn’t expect it to last long, and the universe made sure to grant my wish. He held me close to him as Daphne and her senior friend took Wanda away. I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t think I had words for it. And I didn’t think she had ears for it. It looked like I could have told her she’d won the lottery and her face wouldn’t twitch. In that moment, I wanted to end Tyler’s life.

  As time spun out like taffy in Zack’s arms, I drifted away—let myself wander.

  Three light taps on the front door woke me up. I felt Zack tense against me.

  “Did anyone call the cops?” I heard Benny mumble from the couch.

  “I don’t think so,” Zack said.

  Sara, closest to the door, moved cautiously to the peep hole. She put her face against it, pulled away, and then checked again. Three light taps rang out again.

  “It’s some…weird looking guy.”

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Morgan glanced up at me from the couch, and we exchanged what could only be described as an oh crap look. We’d completely forgotten about Puck. Still, was I really ready to out myself in front of all of my friends?

  No.

  “Morgan…could you—”

  “Yeah,” Morgan said, and stood up. “It’s just my…uncle. He gave me the ride. Luce, come say hi. He hasn’t seen you in forever.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Morgan Veers—super-spy.

  “Are you gonna leave?” Benny asked through swollen lips.

  “No,” Morgan said, and flashed a dazzling smile. God she deserved an Oscar. “He’s probably just worried. I’ll explain the, uh, sudden exodus and be right back.”

  Benny nodded and closed his eyes. Tyler had really painted a masterpiece on Benny’s face. I replayed the image of Zack throwing Tyler across the room with smug satisfaction. Then I remembered the second time Tyler had been thrown—the end of the fight. Had Zack thrown him that time? It didn’t look like it.

  “Luce?”

  I nodded to Morgan, and smiled up at Zack. He let me go with a reluctance I found, forgive me, delicious. I followed Morgan across the room and out the door. Sara’s skeptical look at my trailing, bandaged hand didn’t escape my notice.

  When Morgan opened the door, I didn’t immediately see Puck. Still, I doubt he wanted to be spotted by the whole party. We walked outside and closed the door.

  “Puck?” I whispered, eyes trying to pierce the gloom around the porch.

  “Do you see him?” Morgan asked. I shook my head.

  My phone buzzed in my purse. I reached down to get it.

  Then it hit me. That sudden, all too familiar wave of incredible panic. Too close to stop, too close to react.

  The man-in-white came around the side of the porch. His long white doctor’s coat hung from his shoulders, and the look on his sharp features was calm. Calculating, even. And struggling in his arms, the man-in-white’s elbow wrapped around his neck, was Puck.

  My stomach sank. Morgan gasped—something I didn’t even have the breath for.

  “It’s time,” the man said. He seemed to hold Puck effortlessly, despite his squirming. Puck’s eyes were wide, his face twisted in terror. It made the jovial old man look almost unrecognizable.

  “Stop,” I said, and took a step down the porch. “Please, stop!”

  The man nodded.

  “You have to come with me, Lucy.”

  “To hell with that,” Morgan said. She jumped down the porch steps and landed next to me. “Who the hell are you?”

  He ignored Morgan. His eyes never left mine.

  “It’s time to leave…all of this, Lucy.”

  “Why?” I asked. My voice was breaking, I couldn’t help it. “Just leave me alone. Let me stay. I’m not a bad person.”

  “You aren’t a person,” the man said. He sounded sad.

  “Lucy—” Morgan began.

  The man in white’s voice raised in what sounded like real anger. “You take what isn’t yours. The memories of real people…you’re taking their happiness, Lucy. Their pain, their sadness, their glee, their lust, and joy. You are the worst kind of thief, don’t you understand?”

  Puck was moving, struggling against the man’s grip, but barely budging.

  “Lucy—” Morgan tried again.

  “Morgan, shut up,” I shouted, and turned to the man. “I haven’t hurt—”

  “Yes, you have,” he said. “And you don’t even know it. But there is a worse price.”

  I felt my body going numb, “What?”

  “Oblivion,” he said.

  “Stop it! Stop it! Who are you?”

  Puck wasn’t moving, I realized. He was signing. A small smirk curled his lips, amazingly. I gawked at him.

  Morgan watched his frantic eyes and made a little noise. “His name is A-Abraham.”

  The man-in-white’s—Abraham’s—eyes widened. He looked down at Puck and tightened his grip on the old man’s body. Puck’s eyes flared in pain, but his smirk remained.

  Morgan stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders, and I half turned to her, one eye still on Abraham and Puck. Morgan looked terrified but hard—filled with that Morgan-rage I knew so well. The same anger that had lit her eyes when Wanda was breaking down in my room, a week ago.

  “Puck said Abraham can’t hurt him,” she whispered. I gave her a what-the-hell-does-that-mean look, and she shrugged and shook her head frantically.

  “Enough,” Abraham said, and we both whipped around to look at him.

  He was moving closer, and a dull pulse of white light began to well up from under his shirt. It streaked out of the sleeves of his doctor’s coat, and up through the neck of his t-shirt. It flowed up his jaw, his face, casting him in the sinister light of the spooky storyteller around the fire.

  “Lucy. Lucy!”

  His voice doubled, like two people repeating the same word but down a hallway from each other. When he said my name, it crackled with authority.

  “Come with me, Lucy. You’re tired, aren’t you? Cold? It’s time to go.”

  I was cold, all of a sudden. Drained.

  The warmth in his voice washed over me, and my muscles slacked. I felt the heat of his promise slide through me. The promise of a distant place—of somewhere peaceful. The memory of the party, the fight, Wanda—even Puck, began to drift away from me. I walked toward the man-in-white, slowly at first, with little baby steps.

  “Lucy, no!”

  Morgan grabbed at my arm, and a distant, quiet voice in my head murmured something about believing her, holding on to her. The little voice was no match for the throbbing call to leave, to move on. To follow Abraham into peace.

  He began to glow brighter, white light spinning off of him in dazzling motes. Morgan pulled at me, but something stronger tugged me forward. Abraham raised one hand out to me, the other holding a twisting, frantic-looking Puck. I sighed as another nimbus of heat buffeted me. Little drops of sweat clung to my forehead, and his heat burned my skin.

  I remembered the hospital, the glowing thing with the bright black eyes. A
nd as I looked again, I saw Abraham’s eyes rolling over, becoming black pools of oil. I saw his jaw extending, his face changing, stretching, a mockery of human shape.

  And I could do nothing. It was too late.

  “Lucy!”

  I wondered why Abraham was calling to me again. He had me…no. I knew that voice.

  I turned my neck, slowly, and it felt like twisting a broken valve. I yanked, and pulled my eyes away from the glowing monster in front of me. It wasn’t easy to see past the haze of light but…I knew that shape. Standing around the side of the house, holding a white plastic trash bag half in and half out of a garbage can. Zack.

  “No!”

  I don’t even know who shouted it—it could have been me. But everything happened at once.

  Zack ran at—

  —tugged, screaming at me, falling over as she—

  —grabbed Abraham’s wrist, and with a strength a thin old man shouldn’t have had—

  —I fell back on top of Morgan as she—

  —roared, jet eyes widening, becoming black holes of rage—

  Then I did it. I felt Morgan and Zack pulling at me, could see Puck struggling, one thin tweed-covered arm up in the air, holding Abraham’s glowing limb by the elbow as he tried to crush the little old man into the dirt. I had to do something. Puck was going to die, and then Morgan. Then Zack.

  I jerked toward Puck, fighting Morgan and Zack and pulling them both just a foot forward, making them stagger under the strain. My hand reached out. I felt a handful of tweed curl in my fingers and then…I…flipped.

  The world collapsed around us, folding in on itself.

  We all crash-landed in grey sand, the sound of the surf pounding in our ears.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Vertigo

  Screaming first, then light. My eyes opened, staring up into the roiling grey sky.

  I sat up, my elbows digging into the wet grey sand. Puck stood, inches away from the light-silhouette that had to be Abraham. In the real world, Abraham looked like a man imitating light. In the grey, I saw a ray of brilliant light trying to mimic the shape of a man. Just a burning shadow, a shape, searing my eyes. Puck stood in front of him, his frayed red scarf snapping in the breeze, his thin frame defiant, his chin up. Zack lay on the ground next to Puck, vomiting. From the sound behind me, Morgan was doing the same thing.

  Abraham juked toward Puck like a cresting wave, but bounced off of an invisible wall between them. The light-thing shrieked in fury, a sound like metal tearing and bees buzzing. I fell back a step at the noise. Puck didn’t.

  Puck held up one hand and Abraham slid back three steps in the dirt. Like he’d been picked up and dragged by an unseen giant. My mouth fell open. The old man glanced over his shoulder at me, and his expression was unmistakable. I’d seen it in my dad’s face too many times to miss it. It said, simply, “Are you just gonna sit there and watch?”

  “What?” I managed to choke out, past the lump of terror.

  Puck, his whimsical face stolid, even angry, looked at Morgan on the ground. After a moment, Morgan stood up, her arms moving strangely. Mechanically. The look on her face was surprise—the words that came out of her mouth weren’t her own, I was sure.

  “In the other world, we are the abominations. Here, he is the trespasser.”

  I flashed Morgan a look of confusion. She returned it, but kept talking in that weird monotone.

  “This is Puck, you silly girl. Help me!”

  I turned back to Puck, who had switched his attention back to the beast he was keeping miraculously at bay.

  “What?”

  I knew there were others words I could have used in that moment. But nothing came to mind but that terrified, incredulous one-word question. Well, a few others, but most of them involved terrible strings of profanity that I didn’t think would help the situation.

  “Help me! Now!”

  Something in his…her tone defrosted the ice clinging to my limbs. I ran across the uneven, wet sand, trying not to break my ankle. On the shore, grey torrents of water crashed into grey sand. I jogged past Zack, who still clawed at the wet dirt with a look of torment that made my heart tighten. I ran to Puck’s side and held my arm out, mimicking his pose.

  The light-monster cried that terrible shriek again. A spike of agony drove into my ear, and I cried and clapped my hands over my head. Just four feet from the thing, looking at the squirming patterns of light racing along his form, at the two flares of white that must have been his eyes, I felt my legs turning to Jell-O. My eyes began to water from the strain, and my blood went cold. What could I do against that thing?

  Morgan’s flat, monotone voice spoke up from behind me. I didn’t turn to look. Not at her, anyway. When I looked at Puck, as Morgan spoke, I could see his forehead clench, his lips move in sync with hers. Freaky.

  “You’ve already done it three times, to things you feared less. Push all of your fear and rage—”

  Puck broke off as the Abraham-thing rushed him—rushed us—again. I took a step back out of instinct and emitted a shriek of horror. Abraham’s shape—taller, lankier, with long alien limbs—ran at Puck, seemingly free of its bonds. Puck dug his feet into the sand and pumped his open palm toward the thing again.

  “Towards the ocean,” I shouted.

  Puck didn’t need any clarification.

  Abraham leaped at us. Puck and I—pushed. It didn’t bloom inside of me—I didn’t feel a wash of incredible power. Just a feeling of sudden exertion, like bursting into a run or doing a pull-up. Abraham didn’t lift this time—one second he was loping at us with those weird, long limbs—the next he was pulled sideways, dragged across the sand. A huge plume of grey shot up, but the surf doused the sound of his shrieks. We plunged his glowing body into the waves.

  The ground shook, and a boom like thunder rolled across the beach.

  Then there was nothing. I watched the churning tide, my eyes scanning the foaming peaks and valleys.

  “H-how can we do…that?” I whispered.

  Puck stood still beside me.

  “Because we’re ghosts, right? That old…moving the table trick? Slamming the cupboards? Making Aunt Fanny’s tea jump out of her hand, right?”

  Puck made the see-saw gesture again—ugh, I wanted to kill him. Again? God, I didn’t even know if he was dead. If I was—

  It wasn’t until Morgan touched me on the shoulder that I turned away from the ocean.

  “What...what—?”

  Her face twisted in confusion, and her eyes rolled up white. She passed out and hit the sand with a wet whump.

  Zack looked up from the mess he’d made in the sand, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and frowned. When he spoke, he sounded genuinely disappointed.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Zack didn’t say much while Puck and I tried to wake up Morgan. That was probably a good thing—I was kind of freaked out at the eerie look of calm on Zack’s face. One minute he’d been standing on the lawn of Benny’s house, watching us fight some crazy guy. A second later, he was on a beach, watching his crush—God, hopefully—being menaced by a nine-foot gangling light-monster. All in all, I think Morgan reacted with the most sanity by checking out.

  I glanced at Zack, watching the smooth lines of his too-relaxed face as he scanned the sea of endless grey. Maybe he had checked out too.

  “Lucy?” Zack said.

  I nodded to Puck, who leaned over Morgan and did his best to wake her. I walked over to Zack and sat down. The sand was wet under my butt, and I was pretty sure my cute skirt was ruined, and worse, see-through. If it was, Zack didn’t seem to notice.

  “Zack. I don’t know what to s—I didn’t mean this. To, to bring you guys here. Wherever here is. I—”

  I stopped. My voice was breaking down, and so was I. I clamped a hand over my eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned forward across my knees, mimicking Zack’s pose. I could feel him breathing next to me, steadily. I could feel his warmth, just inc
hes away.

  “Lucy,” Zack said. “I’m sorry about the party.”

  Whoa. Brake lights.

  “W-what?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to still the hysterical note in my voice.

  “I just wish…I’m sorry about the fight. And about Wanda.”

  I pulled my hands away from my eyes and looked up at him.

  “Zack, I don’t think you’re okay.”

  “Oh, I know I’m not okay,” Zack said, and presented the beach in front of him with a sweeping gesture. “I just hope Wanda is going to be okay.”

  “Zack.”

  “Lucy,” he said, and turned to me. “I’m glad I’m here with you. If it had to be anyone.”

  I rubbed my face, trying to get feeling into my cold cheeks. He thought...well of course he did. God, what had I thought, the first time I’d woken up here? What did I think now? I looked at Puck, and he seemed to be listening to our conversation.

  “Zack, I don’t think you’re dead.”

  I looked at Puck while I said it, and he nodded. Oh thank God.

  “But this—we were fighting that guy. Did he have a gun or something?”

  I sighed, “Zack, you aren’t dead.”

  At that moment, a huge wave crashed against the shore. It didn’t help make my point, I’ll be honest. I reached across the insurmountable gap, the one between two nervous teenagers, and grabbed his hand with mine. I almost yelped—his hand burned me, like it had just come out of an oven. Zack sucked in a breath.

  “Jeez, Luce, you’re freezing.”

  He threw an arm over my shoulder and pulled me in tight next to him. He rubbed my shoulder vigorously—I sighed and tucked in close to him. The heat baked me, and I shivered against the sudden influx of warmth.

  “You are freakishly warm,” I said. I knew why, or at least I thought I did, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  “Pretty good for a dead—”

  “You aren’t dead.”

  “How do you—?”