When I Cast Your Shadow

by Sarah Porter

  I’m not the only one who knows about you. That’s the last thing Mabel said before she plunged into the canal. The only one of what?

  But really, don’t I know that too?

  Mabel never did tell me when she met Dashiell, or when Dash told her all about me. She didn’t happen to mention if he was still breathing at the time.

  I go back to calling and texting Everett, and at last around 10:45 I get a message in return. But Ever isn’t the one who wrote it. Don’t fret anymore, Ru. We’re all perfectly safe. Delete this.

  And I do. I do what Dashiell tells me. Even though the part about how we’re safe is so very, very untrue. Just in time, because a key is turning in the lock and I shove my phone into my pocket with anxiety buzzing through my hands. Dad walks in and sees me standing in the kitchen doorway, and he must notice something wrong with my expression because he looks at me for a long time.

  “Ruby. Everett texted me to say that he was playing video games at a friend’s house. He wasn’t any more specific than that. Do you know what friend that might be?”

  “Not really,” I say—and for half a moment I want to say, Everett is with someone, all right, but I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly. “But maybe Noah? Noah Somethingberg? They’ve been hanging out recently.”

  Dad nods but he doesn’t stop staring at me. Trying to see into my mind. “As long as he’s home by eleven. Didn’t the two of you have homework?”

  “Not too much,” I say. “Ever probably got it done this afternoon.” And then it takes all my strength not to break out laughing, not to choke and cry with laughter, because to even be talking about something like homework is so empty and absurd. The world we’re in now is one where ordinary words like that can’t stick to the things we’re talking about. No matter how hard those words try to keep on going in the way they’re used to, they can’t mean anything anymore.

  He kisses me and tells me it’s bedtime, but I can see he’s worried—that I’m lying, and maybe that Ever is taking drugs. It’s always been his worst fear, that one of us might end up like Dashiell. And I feel sorry for him, I do, but there’s nothing I can say that would make things any better. There isn’t even a language I could use.

  I go to bed and watch the night creeping across my ceiling. It’s way after midnight when Everett finally comes home. And I wait, listening to Ever climb the stairs, listening to the water humming in the pipes, because Dashiell has to come to me; I have to tell him everything that happened and ask him what it means. Until he explains what I saw tonight, I won’t know if I can so much as walk across the floor without slipping through.

  But Dash doesn’t show. I wait for him, but sleep starts rising up. It’s swallowing me.

  And in it there are dreams.

  * * *

  I know where I am at once, because it’s the last place I ever wanted to see again—that sluggish river, the muddy bank, the rows of leaning shacks behind me. I’m walking so close to the edge that my feet sink into the muck and the prints I leave brim with water, black as pupils, all of them looking at me. Because that’s the biggest difference: when I drowned in this river the whole landscape felt deserted, just Dashiell and me and endless loneliness. Now everything is watchful, and those broken houses swell with unseen eyes.

  It’s just a dream, I tell myself. It is very, very not real. But after everything I’ve been through the distinction doesn’t feel as compelling as it used to. Just the fact that I’m back here makes it feel way too much like this is an actual place, and if that’s true then maybe the things that happened here before might be just a little bit real too. I can’t help staring at the water, dreading the possibility that Dashiell might be out there once again, white arms arching lazily from the current.

  The river stays vacant and slippery under coils of light reflected from nowhere. But something pale shifts in the corner of my eye, right beside me, and I jerk toward it just as he slips his arm around my shoulder.

  “You can dream any dream but this one,” Dash says. “This isn’t a good place for you, my sweet Ruby-Ru. It’s not ideal for me, either, truthfully. Come with me now.”

  The water sheeting his arm drenches my dress where he’s touching me. He must have emerged from the river moments ago, and my back stiffens even as he pulls me closer. “Dashiell…” I know there are questions that I need to ask him, that something awful and urgent happened earlier, but now I can’t remember what it was. “Dashiell, how can we be here?”

  “You’re dreaming, Miss Slippers. But you’ve slipped too deep in your dreams tonight. I’ll show you the way out of here.” His voice is soft but there’s a hint of tension inside it, and even though I’m a little afraid of him—since we’re back in the worst dream of my life, how can I know what he’ll do?—I let him guide me along the bank. Last time I saw him here he was naked, but now he’s wearing blue jeans so sopping that the wet denim scrapes at my hip. Droplets weep down my thigh. Ahead of us the shore is vague and so jumbled with detritus that it looks like brownish fog.

  “So are you dreaming, too?” For some reason it seems like an important question.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead, you mean, Ru? Perchance to dream? It’s not like that. I can only experience other people’s dreams now. Not even many of those.”

  Bitterness edges his tone and I can’t keep on distrusting him, not when he’s lost so much, and so young. I stop where we are and bury my face against his damp chest. He sighs, maybe impatiently, but he still wraps me tight in his arms and kisses my hair.

  “Dashiell?” I can’t bring myself to ask him if he murdered me, not even if he did it here, in this place where the usual rules don’t count. But I have to ask something. “Dash, I mean, if this is a dream—then reality doesn’t apply here? Whatever happens—it means something completely different than it would if it happened when I’m awake?”

  Dashiell leans back to look at me. “Nothing here is real, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a dangerous place for you. Unreality can follow you out of here by circuitous routes, Ruby-Ru, and dreams can have consequences years after you think they’re long gone. That’s why you need to do exactly what I tell you, sweetness. Come along now.”

  He pulls me but I hold still, just a moment longer. “But Dash…” I’m not sure how to say this; every way I can think of to formulate it seems absurd. “Love still must apply here, even if reality doesn’t. Isn’t that right?”

  Dash looks hard at me, and maybe he understands. Maybe he knows what I’m really asking him: Please, Dashiell, tell me it’s not true. Tell me that dream was only a figment, something invented by the ugliest parts of my mind, and you had nothing to do with it. The you that’s here now holding me can’t be the same as the Dashiell that drowned me.

  “Always, my Ru. Love always applies. No matter what happens, you need to remember how absolutely true that is. All right?”

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Okay. I’ll come now, wherever you tell me to. I’m sorry, Dash-Dot-Dot, I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

  Dashiell just smiles in response, maybe ruefully, and hustles me faster along the bank. The faintest possible vibration shivers in the mud. Is someone following us? On our right the river squirms with strange colors now, chartreuse and saffron gold and scarlet; there’s nothing here in this dim haphazard mess that could possibly project shades so brilliant. And on the left a long, muddy lump lies splayed as if it had toppled from the doorway of the shack just behind.

  I twist back against Dashiell’s arm as we hurry along, staring at whatever that shape is, because I halfway know already. There’s a sense of nagging recognition and I have to resolve the shadows roiling in my mind into something.

  It’s a man, tall and thickset and bearded. His skin is gray and there’s a huge round hole where most of his chest should be: a dark passage, a way through to a deeper nowhere. His eyes are wide open and the sockets are empty. Pinkish animals scramble from the hollow in his ribs; at first I think crabs must be devouring him, and I gasp. Dash
iell hears me and turns to see what I’m seeing, then jerks me away and slaps his hand over my eyes.

  But not before I see enough to know that it’s Mabel, or the body she was wearing anyway. Not before I’ve realized that those creatures eating the corpse have tiny human hands, as dainty as the hands of dolls. “Mabel!” I yell. “Dash, that’s what I need to tell you! She—I saw her tonight—and she was talking about you.”

  Dashiell’s squeezing me from behind, his palm still blinding my eyes, the weight of his body bending me toward the ground. It feels almost like he’s squeezing me through something, maybe a snarl of roots? There’s a rapid twist and he lets me go, then shoves me headlong into darkness.

  MABEL

  It is the silliest person who sees it happen and still doesn’t know anything. I can drop Old Body in the park, and when he wakes up on the grass with his clothes all wet and sticky he won’t know how he got there. He won’t know it was me. But he saw me with the gun. He saw his blood fly out at me. He heard his feet drum on the wood floor, stagger, stomp, bumble backward from the blast that opened him like a doughnut. Because he didn’t believe it was happening, he didn’t know to die for a while. I waited. He died and made room for me. Then I sat in his head while he rocked back and forth, and I listened to him whimper justadream justadream.

  Now he’s been me every night for a whole week. But he doesn’t know anything. He only knows it doesn’t help to sleep, because he wakes up tired and sick-feeling. He only knows that he hears my voice in his head at night; notgoingcrazy notgoingcrazy he says, and nobody hears him but me.

  Sure you are, I tell him, and he still doesn’t know who’s inside him, the very same little dollgirl in the white lace who called to him, oh help me sir please, and he said poorlittlething and he came and bang! You sure are going crazy. Crazier than a monkey! So stupid he deserves anything I do with him. I won’t ever say I’m sorry, not even while he’s sick all over himself from the stinking water.

  But the Ruby-girl is even sillier. Because she saw her big brother drown her, and she knows he’s not with the other dead people like he’s supposed to be. And oh, whoops, I even told her what I did to the old body on me. But she still won’t understand how he’s sneaking inside her, because ohDashiell Dashiellwouldn’thurtme. And so oh well, I shouldn’t have bothered to warn her. Why warn somebody who won’t listen to what you’re saying? Too stubborn or too stupid or too loveme loveme?

  Except they don’t want her to understand anything. That’s what I don’t know: why? Why don’t they want her to understand about Dashiell? They know all about her. They know where he’s hiding. So why don’t the cats come and rip her open so he can’t stay in her, instead of chasing me for just a little bit of talking to Ruby? I was curious to meet her, after all the Dashiell whispering. I knew he was out of her, far away, and so he couldn’t do anything to stop me.

  But if they don’t want her to know, then I do want her to know! Whatever they want to neverever happen I want to make it happen and tell them ha! I am not a servant girl, I am from a very good family, everybody always told me. Ninety-eight years they think they can order me here and there, and what to do, but I’m out now and I’m too fast for them and I say ha!

  Unless he dies too, my old body, and then I won’t have a home here anymore. That’s what happened to the last one, she died and spilled me back again, and then everything I remembered about my sisters got snatched to punish me for running away from them. But can they kill Old Body and send me back? I don’t know.

  NEVER-EVER

  I’m so exhausted that I’m completely out of my mind and it takes everything I’ve got just to make it home, get upstairs, and get to bed. I don’t feel Dashiell at all; no consciousness but mine in here, so there’s no way I can try to ask him what happened. He already must be gone, then, into the light or into the better world people like to talk about. It’s just like him, to come smashing through my skull, take whatever he wants, and leave me hollowed out and aching. It’s like him to abandon us all over again, forever this time, and not bother even saying goodbye.

  Whatever. I’ve got to sleep and in the morning I’ll probably be in the biggest trouble of my life. The insanity will all be over, and I’ll have to get used to being a nobody again. I guess I should be relieved—Dash is gone, just the way I wanted, and Ruby is safe, and no matter how huge and ridiculous the world is I’m small and singular inside it. Again. I don’t have to worry anymore that my life will be exciting or adventurous or anything like that. And even if I miss him way more than I should, I swear I’ll get over it soon.

  I’m so tired I can’t make myself wake up, not even when I hear someone rustling around in my room. Maybe I’m dreaming—and just a normal dream, not the extra-special kind where I get bled out like a pig—and so I don’t have to deal with it.

  Except that the noise keeps on going, and my brain starts to drag itself out of the sleep-swamp like some slobbering beast in an old horror movie. Get back in there, brain! But it won’t, not when I feel a hand gently shaking my shoulder.

  “Never-Ever.”

  It can’t be. Can it?

  “Never, I’m sorry to disturb your rest. But there are matters that we need to discuss, and I’d prefer not to keep our sweet Miss Slippers out of bed any longer than necessary.”

  Okay. This can’t be happening. That I even think this is happening is just totally unacceptable.

  I force my eyes open, and there it is, the horrible truth. Ruby is crouched over me, her chopped hair dragging on my face. “Dashiell…” I’m struggling to sit up. “Dashiell, what the hell are you thinking? Ruby … we agreed! You said you were going to keep out of her!”

  Dashiell uses Ruby’s face to grin at me, then perches on the side of my bed and sort of swags against the wall. There’s enough scorched light from the window that I can see Ruby’s mouth take on this smug pout.

  “Jealous, Never? Don’t concern yourself. We’ll be spending more time together soon.”

  “You know that is not what I’m saying!” The reality is sinking in now and I’m stammering from pure frustration. “Dash, you promised! You said you’d leave Ruby out of this.”

  “You were the only one who said anything of the kind, Never. What I told you was that I could only be in one place at a time, and that was perfectly true.”

  “Get out of her! Dash, now! I’m not kidding. You can use me, you don’t need to…” And then I’m half-wheezing and half-sobbing, and I have to grab my inhaler. Did I imagine that I missed him? It’s possible to feel that way, as long as you totally obliterate all your memories of what he’s actually like.

  “Pah. It’s too difficult for us to have a conversation like that, with me parked inside you. You can’t reliably tell the difference between what I’ve said and what you’re merely imagining, Never. Can you? And truthfully, I missed my sweet Ru today. There’s no harm in my looking after my baby sister while she’s dreaming, is there?”

  God. What is Ruby dreaming now? “You’ve looked after her enough!”

  Dashiell shrugs. I’m cracking up and he’s just brushing me off. “She needed me more than you can possibly guess tonight. And in any case the connection is solidly established now, Never. With both of you. I’m free to move between you whenever I consider it appropriate. Why not accept that?”

  “You’re saying you’ll do whatever the hell you want with us, and I can’t stop you?” Does this mean the whole into-the-light thing is off the table, and I let him murder me for nothing?

  Another shrug, and he stretches out a hand and casually ruffles my hair. I wish I could throttle him without Ruby’s throat getting in the way. “Aren’t there other matters that interest you, Never, besides the fact that Ruby Slippers is up and about in the night? I expected that you’d have any number of questions for me.”

  I’m holding myself in a tight ball, arms around my knees, but I still can’t stop my legs from shaking. I’m damned if I’m playing. “Like what?”

  “Oh, l
ike, How did you ever get away, Dash? Like, Who were those terrible men?” He tips Ruby’s head to rest on my wall and looks at me sidelong, and then her lips peel up in that obnoxiously confident grin. “Or maybe like, Oh, Dash, when can we see Paige again?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you’ve noticed that I’m not asking you anything.” But I can’t help it, my heart jumps when he says her name.

  Dash ignores that. Of course he does. “I’m sorry to say that I can’t get Paige for you again. Or, well, maybe I could, once or twice, but it won’t be an ongoing thing, Never-Ever. I thought I should let you know that it’s time to start looking elsewhere.”

  I can’t let Dash get to me, I know it, but hearing that I need to forget about her still sends pain smacking through my chest. “Because—even with you controlling me—it was still that repulsive for her? I mean, she just hated having to touch me?” My voice is breaking up; I don’t want him to hear it, but of course, of course I should have known how she must feel about me.

  Dashiell freaking laughs at me, now, right when it’s got to hurt the most. “Oh, Paige had a wonderful time. I made sure of that much, Never.”

  “But then—”

  “Why can’t you simply jump in and take over for me? Become her new boyfriend? Well, apart from the question of your age and your status more generally, Paige is certain to feel that you treated her like a prostitute. You can imagine, Never-Ever, she gets that a lot—my old dealer offered her an absolute fortune once, as if that would make her fall in love with him. It’s become something of a sensitive issue.”

  All those gold coins. I’m an idiot. “But the money wouldn’t have anything to do with—with what Paige would do!”

  “It’s not such a simple question, Never, is it? Why anyone makes the choices that they do? There might be any number of factors involved.”

  “And if anybody treated her like a prostitute it was you! I didn’t—I never would have done anything to make her feel that way! Dash, I mean, you know that’s true. I wouldn’t have touched her at all.”