A crooked curl drops across her brow. Charlie has one just like it.
I’m overcome with the desire to wrap my arms around this strange little girl. Instead, I settle for brushing that misbehaving curl out of her face. “Thank you.”
Becca nods. That stubborn furrow pops up between her brows, making her look exactly like her brother. “Go. Find Charlie. Bring him back so he can bring us home.”
TWENTY-SIX
CHARLIE
The Black Nothing is full of stars.
One by one we catch them.
One by one we gather them in a net of silver thread.
Some lights are easy to keep burning.
Others need more help.
One by one we find them.
One by one they remember their songs, take the silver thread, and See.
“I don’t understand,” says a weak light, dimmer than the others. “I don’t understand how this could have happened.”
“You’re the one who made the door,” I say. “The door that let the dark through?”
The dim light grows dimmer still. “It’s not possible. I don’t know what went wrong.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “You couldn’t have known. The door you made. The music in the dark fed it in from the other side.”
“Music in the dark?”
“Can’t you hear it all around you?”
“The dark pulse? Yes. Yes, I hear it.” The light shudders. “What is this place?”
“The Black Nothing. Shadow world behind the curtain.”
“Another dimension?” the flickering light asks, flashing a little brighter. “Hyperspace?”
I don’t know this word, but I understand the feeling.
“Yes.”
“Are there are more worlds like this one? Worlds we can’t see?”
“The Black Nothing is where the dark song lives. There are other songs. Other places that make the music inside of us.”
“And you can see them?” asks the dim light.
I nod. “Do you want me to show you?”
The trembling light touches the silver thread. He gasps when he sees.
The hallways running through my head.
Doors stacked on doors.
All the threads running through them.
“What are they?” asks the trembling light. “Where do they come from?”
“They live all around and inside of us. Deep in the places eyes can’t touch.”
The flickering light cries softly. He understands. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this.”
“We can’t,” I tell the flickering light. “Not us.”
“When will she come, the one you told us about?” asks the little light named Sarah. “When can we go home?”
“She will find the dark when she’s ready,” I tell her. “And when she follows the golden thread to me, she’ll find us all.”
Golden thread anchoring a silver net full of stars.
Silver balloon on a golden string.
Remember, I wish on the golden thread, giving it a little tug. I need you to remember.
A funny little dog on the cover of a book.
Who wore a hat made of straw.
Someday, you told me. Someday we’ll have that too.
Funny little girl.
You said it again and then you cupped your hands over my ears. You didn’t want me to hear the singing through the wall. I didn’t tell you.
I hear everything.
Someday, you promised when it was over and the world was screaming quiet.
I heard you.
Please. Please, hear me now.
Hear me.
Feel me.
Find me.
Right where I told you to.
Remember.
Remember your promise.
I wish the words upon the golden thread, and I see her at the other end.
Searching for me.
Always searching
in the wrong places.
Hurry, Rosie. Hurry.
The Black Nothing reaches for me.
Faster now. Stronger, because it knows.
I am afraid.
When it comes
I give it my ear.
TWENTY-SEVEN
A flash of movement up ahead.
I stumble toward it through the trees. White bands of mist creep through the forest. The fog doesn’t roll. It reaches for me like the fingers of a hand about to close. Gooseflesh breaks out across my arms, but then I catch sight of Charlie up ahead.
I work my way toward him through the fog, my stomach churning. Dread. Relief. It’s all mixed together now. Charlie is alive and he’s close. All the same, I don’t need a compass to tell me where we’re headed.
Back to Fort Glory and the wormhole hovering over it.
I’ve been walking for a few minutes when I feel it. The air. It’s getting warmer. More of the brown of the forest peeks through the white crust. Drops of melting snow splatter my head and shoulders. Soft thunks sound around me as sheets of ice slide off branches, covering any tracks Charlie may have left behind. Not that I’d be able to see them in this soup.
At first, the mist was a veil covering the ground and draping the canopy. Now it’s a tsunami, drowning everything in white. The air is thick enough to drink. It gets so bad, I can’t see the trees until I’m about to smack right into them.
I’m walking completely blind now, using my hands to guide me. Minutes have passed since I last saw Charlie. He could’ve changed his trajectory. He could’ve doubled back. He could be standing three feet in front of me, and I wouldn’t have a clue.
My scalp prickles. When did the forest get so quiet? It’s that first night out in the woods all over again. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.
“Charlie? Are you there?”
Something moves in the fog directly ahead. A streak of gray behind a wall of white.
My limbs lock in place as the visions play in an endless loop through my head. If there’s any truth to them, the Charlie waiting for me in that fog might be nothing like the brother I left behind in the park. The thought drives a nail right through my heart.
I take a step forward. “Charlie. I know you’re out there.”
The fog swallows my voice. Silence. It hangs heavy for a moment before a sound reaches me from up ahead. The scuffle of feet. Or the brush of a jacket against a tree. I work my way toward it in the complete whiteout.
Another noise. This one from the right. I spin and barely avoid stumbling into a bramble of bushes.
The sound comes again. This time from directly ahead of me.
Charlie is close. So close I swear I can feel his breath on my cheeks.
Every nerve in my body comes alive as I extend my arm through the curtain of fog. Its wetness parts at my touch. Something brushes against the pad of my fingertip. Featherlight. I take one more step toward it.
“Charlie, plea—”
My foot comes down on empty air. I rear back, but I’m too far off balance. The world shifts sideways as I fall forward into white nothingness.
My shoulders hit the earth with a wet squelch. I roll. Again and again and again. Soft dirt gives under my nails. I think I’m going to tumble right off the face of the earth, when my side slams into something hard.
I fold myself around the small boulder. My ribs ache from the impact, but the pain fades when I glimpse what waits for me on the other end of this drop.
The sinkhole is a gaping wound in the forest floor.
The world spins around me as I search its murky depths.
Deep. So, so deep.
Fear floods my veins with a burst of adrenaline. I’m halfway down the incline that leads to the open mouth of the sinkhole. Solid ground lies less than fifteen feet above me. The grade isn’t steep. Barely forty degrees. I can make it on my hands and knees if I get myself into the right position.
At the slightest shift of my weight, the dirt around me starts a violent cascade into th
e open mouth of the sinkhole. I freeze.
This soil. It’s too soft. The entire section of earth below me could give at any moment. I can’t move, but I also can’t stay here. If the sinkhole grows much more, it’ll take me with it, and then I’ll have lost my only chance to get out of here.
I look down into the endless darkness below. My limbs start to shake. Hot tears burn my throat because I’ve been this person before. Scared. Helpless. Weak. I swore to myself on the side of that Kansas road that I would never be this person again. I’ve kept that promise even when I thought it would kill me.
I refuse to break it now.
My vision narrows until I can see nothing but the firm ledge above me. I pull myself up toward the lip of the sinkhole. The earth is soft and wet. It crumbles in my hands when I try to use it as an anchor.
Every movement sends a fresh wave of dark soil tumbling toward me. It gets in my mouth. My nose. I time my breaths to avoid inhaling lungfuls of dirt, but it still coats the back of my tongue with grit.
Inch by inch, I drag myself out of the hole until I’m a few feet from the top. I’ve almost got myself onto solid ground when it happens.
The pain bursts out of nowhere.
Fireworks in my head.
My ear. My ear is a bomb detonating through my skull. I scream. The sound fractures me into a million pieces that break apart in the wind.
I lose my grip. The ground. They sky. Everything blurs together in a cyclone of white as I roll into the open mouth of the sinkhole. I’m near the edge when something wraps around my waist, jerking me to a stop.
The tree roots jut out of the soil like an open hand, cradling me in its palm.
Waves of pain leave me twitching in the bed of dirt, moss, and rotted wood.
The tremors in my body set the roots groaning beneath me, but I’m past fear now. Past reason. I am past anything but the pain. It is driving me out of the world on a wave of shadows when I see him.
Charlie.
Suspended behind a wall of darkness. Hovering right in front of me just like Becca was in the Black Nothing. Except that Charlie isn’t lying on a ledge somewhere in the distance. He’s so close I can almost touch him. Only, I can’t move my arms. Can’t feel my lips. Every bit of my strength is focused on holding back the shadows lurking at the edges of my vision.
Charlie’s body is bent. Like before, he straightens, almost as if he can sense me there.
The sight of him is a crack through the foundation of my world.
Charlie’s hand. His eyes. His ear. They’re all lost to the darkness.
But that isn’t the part that kills me. It’s the expression on what’s left of his beautiful face. Something buried deep under the pain. The thing he doesn’t want me to see. The one thing he could never hide. Not from me.
Fear.
My brother is afraid, and it makes me want to tear out of my own skin if that’s the only way to reach him.
“Charlie.” My voice is a rusty hinge.
His body trembles. The way it did that night three years ago. The night I thought I would lose him forever, but instead, I lost myself.
Breathe, Charlie, I said. Please don’t stop breathing.
Charlie’s voice sails through my head.
I heard you, Rosie.
Please. Please, hear me now.
“I hear you, Charlie. Please.” My lips crack and bleed around my tongue. It hurts to talk. Hurts to breathe. But I concentrate on his face and I push the words past the pain. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
Find me.
Right where I told you to.
Remember.
Remember your promise.
Tears run. His. Mine. I don’t even know anymore.
“How? Tell me how.”
The darkness closes in. Not the darkness that’s slowly killing Charlie. The darkness waiting in the wings of my vision.
It starts to pull me under.
No! I push it back and focus in on the pain—the only thing that’s real. The only thing left connecting me to Charlie. It burns through my synapses. It lights a fire in my nerves that parts my lips in a silent scream. Even as it kills me, I tell myself I can handle it. I can handle anything.
Just, please. Let me stay here with him a little longer.
Black spots dance in front of my eyes. Charlie’s lips move with silent words. I’m trying to make them out when the shadows rush in. This time, there is no stopping them.
The blackness sweeps past me in a wave. It carries me.
Away from the sinkhole.
Away from my brother.
It strips me down in layers until there is only one thing left: the thing hidden behind that wall inside of me. Something buried so deep I could almost forget it’s there.
But the darkness knows.
It knows the darkness too.
TWENTY-EIGHT
My eyes fly open to the sight of trees swaying over my head. The sky behind them is a sickly green that perfectly reflects how I’m feeling.
I draw myself up onto all fours and retch.
A broad hand strokes my back.
I peek through the curtain of my hair to find Ian leaning over me, his face a mask of concern. My heart lifts at the sight of him.
“Are you all right?” His voice is raw. Like he’s been yelling.
I nod and sit up slowly. The drumming ache in my head makes it hard to get my bearings. My eyes slide past Ian to the giant sinkhole lurking a few feet behind him.
I scramble backward, right into a fallen log.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Ian crouches down in front of me.
The edges of my vision go blurry. I close my eyes and wait for it to pass. Only then do I risk another look at the sinkhole. Ian’s rope lies in a heap at the edge. A few yards of it are still wrapped around my waist. That answers the question of how I got out. A dozen others pop up to take its place.
I ask the most pressing one first. “How long was I out?”
“It’s been two hours since you left. It took me that long to find you.” I wait for him to chew me out. To tell me how stupid I was, but he just tugs my elbow. “Let’s go.”
I lean away from him. “I saw Charlie at the caverns. I followed him this far before the pain hit again. He was here. He might still be close.”
Ian doesn’t say anything. He’s either too tired or too furious with me or both. Right now, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but Charlie.
“He’s dying, Ian. I saw it with my own eyes. Every second that passes, the dark pulse is eating away at him. Just like it did with Becca. Only he has nobody to bring him back the way we did for her.”
“We’ll talk about it at the caverns.” Ian doesn’t make eye contact. He just starts jamming equipment into his bag.
Maybe I should be grateful to him for saving my life. For coming to get me when I blew him off, but right now, all I can picture is Charlie the way he looked in the dark. The blacked-out parts of him. The fear on his face he couldn’t hide.
I drag myself to my feet. “I’m not going back without Charlie.” I’ve taken a few stumbling steps when Ian catches up to me.
His grip on my arm is painful.
“Let me go!” I wrench free of his grasp.
“We have to leave. Right now.” The wind howls through the trees, sending Ian’s chin jerking skyward.
Something’s wrong. I can tell from the way he’s shooting anxious glances at the branches overhead. He’s trying not to alarm me, but he’s fidgeting. Ian Lawson doesn’t fidget.
I’m officially alarmed.
“What’s going on?” I demand.
“The Fold. It’s heating up too quickly. Do you know what happens when a cold front meets a warm front?”
My mind flashes back to that trailer park in Kansas, but then I think of Charlie, and I square my shoulders. “Whatever’s coming, I won’t hide in a cave while my brother faces it alone.”
“Then you’re going to die,” Ian says bluntly.
/> “We’re all going to die here!” I shout the words over the rising wind. “I’m done waiting for the Fold to kill me, Ian. I’m going after Charlie.” I don’t drop his gaze. I need him to see me. I need him to understand.
I am done being scared.
I am done running.
I am done with all of it.
Ian doesn’t back down, and this time, neither do I. Seconds pass before the thud of heavy boots interrupts our stare-down.
A figure crests the ridge to our left.
I swivel to face the person approaching us. They pause at the top of a ridge, their shoulders bent, face turned toward the ground. My heart thrums once. Twice. The figure straightens. All my hopes crash and burn in a pile of ash.
“Jeremy?” I say.
“Good. Lawson tracked you down.” Jeremy joins us at the edge of the sinkhole.
“What are you doing here?” Ian’s voice is low and furious. “I told you to stay back with the others.”
“Yeah, well, Rose isn’t the only one who thinks your orders suck.” Jeremy brushes some brambles clinging to his uniform. “I couldn’t sit in that cave with Becca pretending I don’t exist and Blaine inventing new ways to tell me I’m a moron.”
“So you just left them there? Alone?” Ian demands.
“They’re safer in that cavern than we are out here. Have you checked the sky lately?” Jeremy grins at me. “If you’d told me you were planning on taking off, I would’ve come with you. Any sign of Charlie?”
I fill him in on what happened in the fog. When I’m done, thunder rumbles in the distance.
“We’ve got to go,” Ian says.
Jeremy throws an arm over my shoulder in a not-so-subtle attempt to piss Ian off. “Go if you’re scared. Rose and I will catch up with you once we find Charlie.”
“I’m not leaving her out here with you.” Ian’s voice sends shivers up my spine.
Another gust of wind rocks the forest, revealing scraps of sky through swaying branches. Overhead, dark clouds march in to the beat of distant thunder.
Before I Disappear Page 20
