There Will Be Lies

by Nick Lake

  Who— I say.

  Then the hand around my arm tightens and I open my eyes and—

  1…

  Chapter 38

  —I’m in the car, and the Fed has his hand on my arm.

  We’re nearly there, he says.

  I look down at his hand and he coughs, then removes it; it snaps back to his side as if on elastic.

  We’re in Flagstaff, I think. It’s morning but early. We cruise down still-streetlit avenues, it’s that time between night and day when everything is kind of gray, past anonymous office blocks and warehouses, until finally we reach some kind of public-looking building.

  Pinstriped suit gets out of the car and comes around to my side. Then he opens my door and leads me into the building. I don’t get a chance to see it properly—I just get a brief vignette of sidewalk and rotating doors, then I’m in a big air-conditioned atrium, a fish tank on a wall and a tired-looking receptionist sitting at a desk.

  We turn right, go down a blank corridor, just flickering fluorescent lights above; a water fountain on the wall. White walls. We pass maybe three doors before suit stops at one of them and opens it. He ushers me inside.

  It’s a small, square room with four white walls, a single bed in the corner, a basin in the other corner, a toilet next to it.

  It’s basically a cell, I realize. It’s basically a fricking cell.

  Your cell, he says.

  I stare at him for a moment, and he blinks. I mean, your cell phone, he says.

  I shake my head. My cell is plugged into the wall in the judge’s cabin.

  You’re refusing to give me your cell?

  I give him what I hope is a look that can kill but he doesn’t die so oh well. I turn out my pockets, so he can see the white insides.

  Oh, he says. Okay. No cell. I need your watch though.

  Shaking my head, I take the watch from my wrist and give it to him with exaggerated servility, like I’m really eager to please him, trying to make him conscious of the monstrousness of what he’s doing.

  It must work because he stands there with his hand on the door handle for a moment. He’s looking at me with something like … something like embarrassment. Like he’s not quite sure whether he’s doing the right thing, like there are usually protocols to be followed and right now he has no fricking idea what the protocol is.

  I may be reading too much into it. But I’m pretty sure that’s what I see.

  Someone will come, soon, he says. To talk to you.

  I frown at him. What does that mean? Does that mean he’s just going to shut me in h—

  Oh.

  Yes.

  It does.

  After he shuts the door, I look around again. There really isn’t anything in the room but the bed, the basin, and the toilet. Is this some kind of cop station? I have no idea. But I know that whatever is going down is serious to the power of 100.

  When guys in black Cadillacs drive you to some random building and lock you in what amounts to a cell, you know that shit just got real.

  Maybe, I think, Mom really is Anya Maxwell. But in that case, what’s the second lie? The Coyote—Mark, I remind myself—Mark said that there would be two lies and then the truth. But then maybe the second lie was something else. Maybe it was—

  Oh God, I’m so tired.

  I barely slept and some kind of SWAT team just came for Mom and I thought Mark was my friend but then he turned out to be some kind of trickster god that the elks are afraid of.

  And what am I doing even THINKING about trickster gods and elks? I mean, what is the relevance? I should be thinking about how my life somehow went from comfortable routine—homeschooling, baseball cages, ice cream—to being locked in a bare room.

  I don’t even have the knife anymore, so I can’t step over into the Dreaming to escape from here.

  I sit down on the bed, and I cry all the tears. All the tears inside me, all the tears in the world.

  I keep doing that for two thousand years.

  Finally, the tears dry up, my chest is still doing these kind of racking sobs but there’s nothing coming out, and no one has come to see me, like the guy in the suit said they would.

  So …

  There are thirty-two cracks in the far wall of the room.

  There are twelve pubes in the toilet—seriously, I counted them. None of them are mine, I would like to state for the record.

  There are—

  But then the door opens and someone comes in—a woman this time, also in a suit, only hers is all dark navy, rather than pinstriped. She is thin and beautiful, with pale eyes. She smiles at me and asks how I am.

  I don’t answer.

  She asks me lots of other questions. She asks me where my mother is—only, like the other Fed, she never calls her my mother, she always calls her Shaylene Cooper.

  Where’s Shaylene Cooper?

  Where did Shaylene Cooper go?

  Was Shaylene Cooper at the cabin with you?

  Nine hundred ninety-nine permutations on the exact same fricking question, and I just sit there and don’t say anything at all in response. As far as I’m concerned, they can tell me what’s going on and maybe I’ll speak to them, but I’m not answering their questions about my mom.

  It’s not even like I DO know where she is, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell. I have my issues with her—she has lied to me repeatedly and she made Luke’s hand into a kebab but I don’t want her spending her whole life in prison.

  Which, apparently, is what’s happening to me, since when the woman in the dark suit leaves, I’m on my own again for hours and hours.

  There are sixty-seven human hairs on the bed!

  Seventeen of them are pubes!

  Zero of them are mine because I will never lie on this thing, ever!

  Hmm.

  Of course, like an hour later I’m lying on the bed, having brushed it down as best I can, because, well, lock someone in a room with a bed for hours and eventually they’re going to lie on it, no matter how gross and pube-y it is.

  I watch the ceiling for a while—it’s gray concrete and there is literally nothing, zero, nil, zilch that is interesting about it—and then I must fall asleep for a while because …

  Well, you think I’m going to say that I wake up in the Dreaming, but I don’t. I find myself in the hospital again, the one from my dream. I am in the first waiting room already, the Legos are in front of me and the crying of the lost child is in my bones. It’s desperate this time, hurt—it needs so badly for someone to come cradle it and so I run …

  I run to the second waiting room, past the rocking horse, and there’s the child sitting in the middle of the floor, face screwed up, wailing, and no one around, no one responding. I rush forward. The child, I think it’s a girl, I don’t know why I suddenly see that but I do, looks up at me and for just a second stops crying.

  I reach out my arms to scoop her up, and—

  —and I snap back into the room, and look over to see that someone has come in with a tray.

  Lunch, says this person, who is a woman and looks a bit like a nurse. Why would there be nurses here? At an FBI facility? But she’s wearing a green papery dress and I’m pretty sure I’m right.

  I ignore her as she sets the tray down, and then leaves. I’m thinking: lunch? Seriously? That means I’ve been in here, what, only five hours maybe?

  I’m also thinking that I’m not eating their food. I refuse. I absolutely refuse.

  Yeah, okay, so I eat the food. It’s lasagna.

  It’s actually quite good.

  Chapter 39

  I still won’t say anything to them.

  They try—they try over and over.

  They come into the room where I’m being held—it’s not a prison cell, but it’s not much different—and they talk and talk and talk. They ask me about my life, about where we have been living, about what Mom has said to me, what I know.

  They ask and ask but they’re not TELLING me anything, so I don’t answer.
>
  I’m still in the same room—the bed, the toilet, the basin. That’s it. Nothing else. Not even a TV, which might help with the, oh, what is it? oh yeah, that’s it, the COLOSSAL, CRUSHING BOREDOM of sitting in here for hour after hour. It’s homely! If you consider a hospital room to be homely.

  You’re thinking—she’s bored? When her mom has just disappeared and is probably going to get the death penalty when she’s caught, for killing her husband? And the answer is: yes. You try it.

  Go on—shut yourself in a blank room. Your bathroom maybe. Sit there for ten hours.

  Go on. Do it. I mean it. Ten hours. Look at the wall or something.

  Bored yet?

  So, yes.

  It’s like suicide watch, in, like, Girl, Interrupted or something.

  Have they caught Mom yet? I wonder. I hope not.

  This is bad, I think. Really, really bad.

  Then I need the toilet, and that’s 7,890 times worse. After, I don’t know, there’s no way to tell the time because of course they took my watch, a nurse comes in. I can tell she’s a nurse because she has a white uniform and one of those things for listening to your chest around her neck, but I think it’s just for show because she doesn’t use it. There’s a guard with her, not a SWAT guy but just a hard-looking man with a gun in a holster.

  Do you mind if I take some blood? asks the nurse.

  I don’t answer, but I’m thinking, what, why?

  Do you mind if I—

  I just look away, but I don’t, like, resist or anything, so the nurse sticks a needle in me. She’s good—she finds a vein right away. Then she takes some blood.

  She says, I’d like to check your leg too.

  Again, I don’t answer.

  She shrugs, then cautiously approaches. I don’t move. She comes close—she has freckles, red hair. Crow’s feet around her eyes, but I put her at maybe thirty. She’s pretty, a diamond on her finger. I wonder if she has kids.

  She leans down and opens the slit in my sweatpants. She takes off the CAM Walker and examines my leg. She has a bag with her and she takes some stuff from it and, I guess, changes the dressings or something. Then she nods, satisfied, apparently.

  For a moment, I think about sticking my thumbs in her eyes and squeezing.

  But I don’t, and they leave, and that’s the only interesting thing that’s happened, and it’s over.

  A while later, someone who is obviously a therapist comes in and asks me a load of questions. The first one is, where is your mother? and I want to laugh out loud because he’s just told me that they haven’t found her.

  Then he rephrases it—where is Shaylene Cooper? This is weird, but maybe they think I don’t know that she’s Anya Maxwell?

  Anyway, I don’t give anything away. The therapist asks me about Phoenix, and school, which makes me think that they don’t know Mom homeschooled me. They don’t seem to know much, actually, but that doesn’t stop him asking questions. He is bald, the therapist, with a birthmark on his head and big fleshy lips that make me think of a fish.

  Maybe this is his therapist trick, I think. To gross people out with his appearance so that they get unsettled into talking.

  Anyway, it doesn’t work on me.

  He asks whether Mom abused me, whether she ever hit me. What the hell is this? I am thinking. He asks if I have been confined, if I have been locked in a room.

  Apart from now? I want to ask him, but I don’t.

  He says, does the name Angelica Watson mean anything to you?

  I blink. Angelica? But I don’t say anything, I don’t even shake my head.

  The therapist notices the blink, though, because he keeps asking this question, and different permutations of it. But I never answer, and eventually he gets bored, or he’s asked all the questions he planned to, and he leaves too.

  I try the door—it’s locked.

  I wish I had the knife with me—I could hold it, and step through the air, and be back in the Dreaming, even if the wolves are chasing me.

  Here, the wolves have caught me already. I’m trapped. I have nowhere to go.

  A bit after that, the lights go off, and I figure that means they want me to sleep, so I lie down on the bed.

  I mean, there’s nothing else to do.

  Chapter 40

  Darkness.

  This isn’t the cabin this isn’t the car what the—

  Oh, I’m in the cell. Room, whatever. It’s locked, so it may as well be a cell.

  But something woke me. What was it?

  A movement.

  I whirl; there are two glowing points, low down near the floor.

  Eyes.

  I scoot back on the bed, heart racing, adrenaline like a bitter sharpness in me, as if my whole body was taste buds inside.

  Then the eyes come closer and I see what it is—a coyote.

  M-Mark? I say.

  The coyote comes closer, lays a paw on my hand. Yes, it says. Yes and no.

  Coyote.

  Yes.

  Coyote tips his head on one side, and regards me, there is no other word for it, it’s not just simple looking. I feel like I caught sight of the moon, and now the moon has caught sight of me, and is LOOKING BACK. It creeps me out.

  You have had the two lies, Coyote says. And soon you will have the truth.

  What do you mean? I ask.

  Coyote remains silent.

  You mean that my dad was chasing us? That was the first lie, right? And, what? That whole story about being Anya Maxwell … is that a lie? Is there something else?

  Coyote just holds my eyes and says nothing.

  Whatever, I say, don’t tell me.

  I can’t, he says. It’s the truth. You don’t tell it. It just is. Someone else will tell you. Or you will see. But it is not for me to do.

  What do you want, then? I say. If you’re not going to tell me anything.

  I want you to step through. Into the Dreaming.

  Now?

  Yes, now. We don’t have long.

  I don’t have the knife, I say. The one you said was for killing the Crone? I dropped it in the forest—I mean, I threw it, because I worried that—

  You don’t need the knife.

  I stare at his doglike muzzle. Then how will I kill the Crone?

  You will know how, says Coyote. When the time arrives. Now come. Time is running out.

  Till what?

  Till the Child dies, says Coyote.

  I stare at it, thinking of my dream, the new desperate tone to the crying. It feels like something is getting closer, it’s true, something that is going to change everything. But I don’t know what it is and it’s freaking me out to the power of ten.

  What if I don’t come? I say.

  Then everything ends, says Coyote. You must face the Crone at the right time.

  According to who? I say. You? The elks called you the First Liar.

  Coyote is silent, and I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t know the answer or because he doesn’t want to answer. Then I think, it doesn’t make a single infinitesimal iota of difference to me, and right now I’m trapped in this cell anyway, so what am I worrying about?

  Okay, I say. I stand up and take a step and I’ve forgotten about my leg so I go pitching forward and—

  Everywhere is Stars

  Chapter 41

  Then Mark and I are standing next to the fire, the Forest of Thorns looming around us. I can smell wood smoke and I feel the heat of the fire prickling my skin. Most of all, I can hear the sound of the flames eating the wood, the low unending crepitation of it, so beautiful in my ears.

  Only …

  Only I can hear the crying too, and just like in my dream it’s more desperate now, louder, the Child sounds like it needs someone right now. Needs me right now.

  Time to go, says Mark.

  Yes, I say. The crying is like a physical pull on me; a hook in my flesh.

  We push out of the clearing and farther into the forest, on a path that is little more tha
n a faint trace on the ground, branches pressing into us. Soon my arms and cheeks are covered with scratches. Mark is bleeding too, from a hundred little grazes.

  Are the thorns poisonous? I say.

  Yes, but not for you, says Mark.

  What?

  The forest will let you through, he says. You are the Maiden. Then he turns forward again and keeps on, and I see that the conversation is over.

  We battle through the woods for what must be an hour. It’s painful going, the thorns constantly tearing at my skin. It’s also claustrophobic—I can’t see the stars anymore, the night sky above. Only a canopy of intertwined trees, twisted thorns.

  Panic starts to grip me, and grip is exactly the right word, it’s like there’s a band tightening around my chest. I can’t breathe properly, I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs.

  I’m about to tell Mark to stop, when the thorns begin to thin, and the path is suddenly stony underfoot, and we emerge into another, much wider clearing, dotted with flowers that are a sick, acid yellow.

  There’s a structure in the clearing—it looks like a batting cage at first, but as we get closer I see that it’s more like a hutch, only an enormous one, towering above the trees. Walls made of some kind of woven wire. I can hear sound coming from it too—a sad voice, crying, it sounds like the Child but I can also still hear the Child’s louder voice, far ahead of us somewhere, so that this voice is like a strange little echo.

  I press ahead, getting closer to the structure, Mark beside me.

  What is it? I ask. As I do so, I see something in the cage. It looks like a small person.

  Mark walks closer to the cage—I can see that it is a cage, now, made of rusted iron, it looks like. Not a small person, I realize—a child.

  Could it be the Child? The one Mark keeps talking about? It is upset, I can hear its wails, but I can still hear crying floating over the trees from the horizon, so that there is a kind of stereo effect happening.

  Is that … I say.

  The Child? says Mark. I don’t know. It feels like it. But also it feels … other.

  What do you mean? I ask.