When I Cast Your Shadow

by Sarah Porter

It’s the same crackled voice that I heard on the phone, but no matter how I turn I can’t spot anyone else on the shore.

  “Above you, Ruby Bohnacker. You know, I only glimpsed you in the distance during your last visit here, but now that I get a better look at you I can’t help noticing that you’re far too good for that brother of yours. He’s nothing but heartache to you, isn’t he? You need a man who can appreciate you as a blossoming woman. Not see you as his little brat of a sister.”

  When I look up I can see the soles of shoes above my head, legs foreshortened into blobs, something dim and boxy higher up. I scuttle ten feet back, both to get away and also to see who’s speaking to me. At first I think the man up there is clinging to the fence, but then I realize that’s not it at all. The wires of the fence pierce straight into his body and hold him transfixed, but there’s no blood.

  It looks more like his flesh, his back and legs, grew around the wires the way trees sometimes do. There are ridges of swelling where the fence is embedded in his naked chest. Only his arms are free, curling to beckon me. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, wearing shiny black shoes and what looks like a pair of tuxedo pants ripped off above the knee; he’s slim and muscular and it would be an incredibly beautiful body, if only it weren’t so horrifying.

  There’s something squarish and dark covering his head, I think. Then I start to wonder if maybe it is his head. A beam of yellow light drifts in from nowhere and settles on him, and for a moment I can see the boxy shape clearly. It’s a dollhouse: a toy-sized version of a Brooklyn brownstone, with black shutters and leaf shadows stirring on its walls even though there are no trees nearby. Then I catch a glimpse of my bird-print curtains in a second floor window and my breath catches in my throat. Our house. I can see his neck growing into the foundation.

  “Yes, Ruby, this is how I look to you here. But take it from me, in reality I’m an exceptionally handsome man. And you can set me free. Imagine how deeply grateful I’ll be, and what I’ll do to show it. Climb up, and we’ll discuss our future together.” The dollhouse door bangs open and closed as he speaks; if I could draw a breath I might scream.

  The beam flurries away from him, and the lights turn on all at once in his windows. He’s shining at me and my legs go so cold and fluid that I don’t think I can move without falling.

  “Ruby? Don’t you have anything to say to me? You know, I was a movie director once, though you’re probably too young to have heard of me. I took ordinary girls—girls far more ordinary than you could ever be—and I made them into magic. You see, you need me more than I need you. Come to me, child.”

  See, it’s too hard with a stranger! They won’t come. That’s what Mabel told me. The memory of her words sends a spurt of energy through my legs, and I’m finally able to take a few steps: away from the dollhouse man, away from the river. Then my legs start to buckle at the knees and I can’t keep going.

  But if I can’t get through the fence, I’ll never find the exit, will I?

  “Ruby, my dear! Your brother doesn’t deserve you. You and I, we can embark on a splendid partnership. I’ll be Business, and you’ll be Pleasure, and we’ll mix delightfully.” He laughs and his door clacks against its frame. “Really, Dashiell Bohnacker is too much of a hothead for you, and also much too greedy. Why on earth did he need to stake a claim to both you and his brother?”

  “I won’t listen to you insult Dashiell,” I say. Oh, of course everyone here knows him, just the way Mabel knew him. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There, I finally managed to say something, and I think it was even true.

  “Don’t you? Climb up to me and I’ll be happy to explain. Don’t make me angry, Ruby. Let’s get this off to a good start, shall we?”

  His hands twist around a column of air. Then he seems to catch himself doing it, and he stuffs both hands deep into his pants pockets. The links rattle every time he moves.

  “I don’t want your explanation.” I take another step, rock a little, and catch myself again. “And we’re not starting anything!” My heart is pounding so hard that I can feel my throat shuddering in time. But why? The man can’t chase me, not with a fence growing through him.

  Then I realize. I’m afraid of understanding what he’s saying, and what Mabel said, because I know their messages are connected somehow. I’m afraid of the moment when it’s all going to become clear to me. That’s the fear that courses through me in electric jags and finally frees me to run headlong, weaving and stumbling among the dark shacks lining the shore.

  I can hear him howling after me as if dark, ravening animals, somewhere between bears and wolves, were pouring from the dollhouse’s windows and baying in midair. He was crazy, I tell myself, he was just crazy. A beast. Nothing he said had any meaning. It was pure babble. The air around my ears jostles with tiny yapping animals; I can smell their rank fur. The dollhouse man sent them in pursuit, I know it. I would dive into one of the yawning doorways around me if I weren’t so afraid of what might be in there. Needle-sharp teeth nip and goad me, and I slap with my hands as I run, trying to drive them off. The shacks fall away and I’m running through a thin, scrubby forest, but the wind thickens with those flying miniscule wolf-creatures: motes of living torment, biting me everywhere.

  And then I see the cliff ahead. A dense scaffolding of vines grows over it, all the vines shining with toxic yellow light. I’ll climb up and the beasts won’t follow me; I don’t know how I know that, but I do.

  I go up, grappling with arm-thick vines that snap at my shoulders and sometimes lick playfully around an ankle before they let me go again. I’ve never been comfortable climbing anything. The vine I’m gripping swings loose and my heart lurches. Queasiness floods me like cold grease and my foot slips. For a long, horrible moment both my legs flail in midair and my arms strain to hold me.

  Then my right foot finds a purchase again. My left. I keep going up. Maybe, just maybe, the clifftop will lead me around that fence, and I’ll find my way home.

  Another step. This time I have to heave my leg painfully high before I can reach a toehold. My arms scrape against the rough tendrils and they writhe at my touch. I keep hauling myself up; I must be high above the ground by now. Emptiness echoes at my feet and I know I can’t look down. The earth might have vanished completely. But, thank God, I think I might be getting close.

  Something pale and cold brushes at my forehead; it’s definitely not the same texture as the vines. I can’t think about what it might be, not until I’m safe. I give a huge pull and lever my chest onto a hard shelf of rock. Another heave and my legs come slapping after me. For a few moments I just clutch the rock and gasp. I can barely believe I’m still alive.

  Something dark and lumpy is lying near me: so near that it blocks my vision completely. I lift myself on my elbows—the barrier isn’t very high—and I realize that the thing in my way is a leg in blue sweatpants.

  My first thought is that it’s the man Mabel shot, that I’ve found some impossible route back to him, and I sit up fast. Ugh—the thing that brushed my face before was a dead hand projecting over the cliff’s edge. I see a bare arm, gray and milky, and a T-shirt drenched in a long bib of crimson blood. It doesn’t look like the same man and for what feels like minutes I just stare, straining to make out the face. I don’t know why I can’t see it clearly. There’s a dark V-shaped ditch cutting across the throat, a severed ring of windpipe—that much I can take in. A long knife leans against a stone, the blade flashing silver and scarlet.

  Then I do see the face, as suddenly as a camera coming into focus. And I’m up on my feet and screaming.

  Everett, it’s Everett, his throat gashed wide open. And suddenly I understand everything.

  I knew I had to warn him—oh, in my heart I even knew who I had to warn him against—and I didn’t do it. And now it’s too late, and Dashiell’s murdered him just like he murdered me. Mabel is living in the man she killed here, just the way Dashiell … How could he, though? And why would he choose the
two people who love him most in the world to hurt that way?

  See, it’s too hard with a stranger! They won’t come.

  And even worse, there’s what he told me himself, what I made myself pretend I’d forgotten: I did it because there’s no place like home.

  That’s why. He knew we’d come to him even if nobody else would, because we missed him and trusted him so much. Did I understand all along? Oh, and there were Dashiell’s memories whispering into my thoughts, and that feeling I had that he was too close to see, too close to find. Everett, what have I done to you? I was first. I was the one who let him in—and then he must have used me as a way to get to you.

  I betrayed you, and that’s how Dash was able to betray us both.

  I’m still screaming, my voice coming in short blasts, so it takes me a while to notice that there’s another sound. It’s my phone and it won’t stop ringing. Voice mail isn’t picking up?

  I pull in my breath and answer it. “Hello?”

  “Ruby, it’s me! Listen, you have to wake up.”

  “Ever! Ever, oh God, it’s all my fault! There’s blood all over you, and your throat—”

  “I don’t care about that! You have to wake up now! Dash says if he comes after you he might not reach you in time. He didn’t notice fast enough that you were there. Wake UP!” Now Everett is the one screaming into my ear, even while I stare at his dead face: a lump of tallow among stones. His hair cascades back and his gray eyes stare up into nothing. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

  And I do. It feels like being pulled through a thousand layers of death and sorrow piled above me in the form of black membranes. Then I’m out, lying in my own bed again, and fingers are slipping through my hair. Someone is bending over me.

  At first I think it’s Everett.

  And then I know it’s not.

  NEVER-EVER

  That’s what I get for spacing out and daydreaming about Paige and Elena, or about some messed-up combination of the two of them: a dark-haired girl twisting in my arms, but lit up by flashes of blue. I can’t afford to let down my guard like that, because I’m so out of my head and so oblivious to everything around me that I don’t even notice at first that Dash has bopped me under the surface again. And when I do realize what’s happening, he has me completely squashed. I kick a little; it doesn’t seem to do much, but maybe I’m not actually trying that hard. Maybe I’m too tired and bummed to really fight.

  Have fun out there, Dash. You like this crappy world so much, you can have it. Personally I’m done caring what happens. I tried caring for a while and it turned out to be a huge mistake.

  All at once I’m remembering something, so intensely that it’s like the memory has swelled up around me: I’m back in Paige’s bedroom. I’m sitting cross-legged on her bed staring down at my left hand cradling a phone—when did that happen?—feeling so totally miserable it seems like too much work to even breathe. My right hand keeps stroking the sheets: they’re very light blue with a little bit of sheen. And I’m thinking of Ruby. I was about to send a text message to someone—who?—but for half a minute that’s enough to stop me: the thought of how disappointed Ruby will be if she hears I’ve started using again.

  Using what, though? If this is my memory shouldn’t it make some kind of sense, maybe even be about something that actually happened to me? Then I look up and see my reflection in the mirror: wavy pinkish gold hair and a face that always looks like it’s trying to sell you something, and probably not just cologne.

  Okay. This is a memory, all right, but it’s definitely not mine. There’s an atmosphere of emotion in here so sick and brutal that I realize all at once where I must be: I’m remembering the night Dash died. He said something, didn’t he, about his memories leaking into Ruby’s mind while he was possessing her? It’s pretty unbearable, but I should probably try to stay with it, to find out once and for all exactly what happened to him. I haven’t forgotten about Ruby’s crazy suspicions, and even though I’m sure she’s wrong it would be good to really, definitively know.

  I should go ahead and break Ruby’s heart. Get it over with. She’s old enough to learn that she can’t count on anyone but herself. She’s old enough to ditch her supremely irritating innocence, her glowing expectations. I mean, I don’t hear those words exactly, but that’s a rough translation of the feelings sliding through my mind. There’s even this weird idea that Ruby’s innocence is a kind of parasite, and that it’s feeding on me. Sometimes I enjoy it, but tonight it’s just making me resentful. I feel like she’s linked to me—the light that makes me a shadow, maybe? And I’m sick to death of it. It’s all mixed in with rage at Dad for rejecting me, and at our mom for ditching us, and at Paige, for some reason I can’t identify.

  Dad won’t even let me in the house. It’s like I’m not even part of the family. That’s one emotion that repeats like a drumroll: I’m not allowed in my own home. I’m too much of a problem to be allowed in my own home. The bitterness of it sets my teeth on edge—and I get a flash of barreling Ruby back from the front door and shoving into our hallway, just to prove I could.

  There’s a spasmodic urge to steal Ruby from our dad, to coax her into running away with me to nowhere at all. And then a sharp recoil of shame at the thought. Actual shame; like, who knew Dash had it in him?

  I can see my left thumb—or that would be Dashiell’s thumb—hit send on the phone. And then I instantly regret it and start crying uncontrollably.

  Jesus, Dash, I try to say—but it’s just a memory, a dead moment, boxed up and buried in time, so how could he hear me? You don’t have to do this. You can still change your mind. He can’t, though. His last chance slipped away months ago. Dash-Dot-Dot, you know it’s not just Ruby’s heart you’re going to break, right? Did you see Dad’s face this morning?

  And then I hear something. At first I think it’s a huge moth flapping at the window, but once I focus I can make out a voice. It seems like it’s coming into Paige’s bedroom from every side, smacking at the walls and ceiling. It’s Dashiell; I must be overhearing him talking to someone in the world outside, just like that time Ruby heard him talking to me and I had to tell her she’d dreamed it. What I thought were wingbeats are actually words.

  He’s not pretending to be me, though. I can’t catch what he’s saying, but he’s definitely using his own voice. And somebody is answering him. Who, though? I’m concentrating as hard as I can, trying to hear the tone over the slurring of cars on the street, the twittering birds.

  “What you are is even more important to me, actually. And another thing that matters to me is what you’ve done with Everett. Is he even in there? Because I know him, and I know that he would never, ever mess with me this way. Not if he had any choice!”

  Oh hell. It’s Elena, and I can tell from her voice how she’s scared and working hard to sound brave. He’s talking to Elena out of my freaking face and she’s going to think I’m a complete lunatic. I forget all about not caring and start smashing at him as hard as I can. The memory around me jolts. Another shove and Paige’s bedroom cracks from top to bottom.

  Dash doesn’t even try to hold me down, though. He just kind of steps aside, if you can describe a mind as stepping anywhere, and lets me go shooting straight back to the surface. The world punches up like a fist in my teeth and my arms fly out instinctively, like I need to protect myself from falling leaves and daylight. Elena barely gets out of the way in time.

  “Sorry,” I sputter, and then I realize how far beyond idiotic that must sound.

  “Everett! You’re back?” Her eyes are so wide and bright that I feel burned just looking at them. She’s hugging herself and her knuckles shine against her fuzzy blue jacket.

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “But listen, Elena, you can’t trust it when you think it’s me, okay? He’s so good at pretending that you won’t know the difference. Seriously. That’s why I told you to leave me alone. I mean, if it was me I wouldn’t say it.” I’m babbling. Dashiell’s listening and I can tell
that he thinks it’s incredibly amusing.

  “Who’s good at pretending?” She’s trying to stay calm but it’s not going so well. “You know what that was, Everett? What was it? Who was just talking to me? I know that wasn’t you!” She’s edging up on a complete breakdown, actually.

  “I can’t talk about it. It’s personal. It’s about as personal as anything can be.”

  Her eyes flare up at that. I almost think she might hit me. “Oh, in that case I’ll act like none of this happened. I won’t bother worrying about you anymore!” Her tone is mixed-up fury and sarcasm. “What, do you have multiple personality disorder? So usually you’re a hopeless geek who won’t talk to anyone, but for special occasions you transform into a raving psycho and start babbling about cats?”

  Normally I’d be crushed by that—I’d be hurt that she’s trying to hurt me, and right when I’m doing my best to warn her. But I’m not feeling like my usual self now, and I actually laugh.

  “Sure,” I tell her, and God, do I sound like him. “Go with that. That explains everything.”

  I turn my back on her and start walking, even though that means I’m heading in the wrong direction.

  “Do you even know what that—whatever—is doing while you’re out to lunch?” Elena calls after me. “He was talking about Ruby. Your alter ego, I mean. Did you hear that?”

  And I freeze in midstride, but at first I don’t turn around to look at her. Because I’m supposed to be done caring about anything, but especially about Ruby, after how she screwed me over. I can hear Elena’s steps coming up behind me.

  “Did you know?” she asks again, but this time her voice is way gentler.

  Here’s one more item for the list of what’s wrong with me: I’m obviously incapable of learning from my mistakes.

  “You mean to you?” I ask. “Did he talk about Ruby to you?” The tough, swaggering Dashiell-ness is completely gone, and I’m raw and alone. Even the wind feels colder, like my ribs have cracked open and my guts are all wet and exposed. Light pulses off the storefronts: 6th Avenue is one big, vacant heart.