by Sarah Porter
Mabel flicks me a worried look and yanks my hand. “You might not like it very much. But you have to go up there!”
“What the hell is that?” I say, and she just wrinkles her nose at me. We’re close enough now that I can see wormish protuberances at the pale thing’s end, maybe suckers or eyestalks or something. “What if I decide I’m not interested?” We’re almost at the scaffold’s base and I start glancing around without knowing what I’m looking for.
Then I realize. I’m waiting for Dashiell to come waltzing in here. Grab me by the scruff of the neck and tell Mabel that he’s sorry but we’ve got some cake to eat. I’m waiting for him to stop me.
“That would be really bad, Everett. If you said you didn’t want to. Because Aloysius is counting on you to help teach Dashiell a lesson.” Her nails are squeezing into my palm and I look down at her. Her gaze is darting around like she’s afraid to look at me, and then as I watch her eyes come unmoored in her face, one driving sideways toward her hairline and the other pushing at a downward slant through her cheek. Like two boats drifting through pinkish water, shoving up ripples as they go. I shriek and twitch my hand away and she’s turning, shaking her curls over her face to hide what’s happening. “Go up! Climb up the way you did before! Don’t be so silly that you’re scared of your own body!”
My body. All of Mabel is going wriggly and deformed now: her neck isn’t in quite the right place and one shoulder hunches out above her heart. I look from her to that horrible pale thing sticking out overhead, and maybe it is an arm with dribbling fingers. Maybe it even used to be mine. I’m still not sure what to do except get away from Mabel as quickly as possible. That means my choices are to either start climbing, or run like a maniac away from here. Run into the random, slippery complexities of this place, hoping like hell that something happens to save me before Aloysius and his goons track me down and express their displeasure with me for messing up their plans. Maybe by holding me captive and using me to try to lure Dashiell here. Or maybe they’d think up something even worse.
This is their territory. Whatever I do, the reality is that they’ve got a huge advantage.
“It’s your fault I look like this, Everett! You made me too nervous! I was a lovely little girl!”
I grab the highest yellow rung I can reach and haul myself up. A good therapist. Someone who specializes in grieving. That sounds fantastic, Dad. That’s exactly what I need right now. Another three rungs, feet kicking for a second as I miss a step. Mabel is whimpering behind me, but when I glance down I can’t see her. I can’t see anything at all except wallowing dark. You like cake, Never. It’s chocolate. That sounds delicious. Maybe there’s an undigested chunk of it in the stomach of my corpse up there, and I can have a snack. You know, Never-Ever, I’ve come to realize that I haven’t been a very good brother to you.
No kidding. Where are you now that I actually need you? And why do I always have to miss you, even when I know exactly what kind of a monster you are? All at once I realize I’m almost at the top, though it seems too soon.
I push myself up and swing a leg onto the planks. The climb was so much easier this time, like my body’s been hollowed out and I barely weigh anything. I’m not even out of breath. There’s a lumpy shape six feet to my left, but even letting it into the corner of my vision is so sickening that I can’t bring myself to look at it directly. I know what it’s like anyway: my podgy torso gone ice-cold and sticky with damp, my eyes vacant and stupid. Who could stand to see themselves like that? I can smell the rusty stink of my own blood, and vomit shoves through my throat and into my mouth. I gulp it down. My muscles feel like they’re trying to crawl out of me.
Now that I’m up here I’ve got no clue what I’m supposed to do next. There’s a wet wind blowing but no other sound at all, so I sit on the edge with my legs dangling and stare out over the Land of the Dead. Except that it’s gone. I can’t see any of the strange revolving lights that used to be there; it’s like a dark gray fog has poured in and devoured everything.
“Mabel?” I try. “Are you still there? I need instructions.”
No reply.
“Dashiell? Can you hear me?”
Silence, so I guess there’s nothing for me to do but wait. A white blob shape that I know must be the sole of my corpse’s sneaker waits with me. It’s almost like it’s bumping on the corner of my eye, nosing at me to demand my attention.
Something moves. It only takes a split second for me to envision my cold, saggy corpse stumbling over and smearing its stale blood all over me, and I jerk in that direction so quickly that I almost slip off the planks.
A man, or something like a man, is standing with his feet apart, one on each side of my dead body’s head. I see my ice-gray skin and flopped-open mouth and the sheet of crimson covering half my body, and I’m dying to turn away, but I can’t stop staring at the stranger. His arms are folded tight across his chest, maybe because he’s cold. He’s wearing an obviously fancy, old-school pin-striped suit with a narrow collar, but he doesn’t have a head. Not in the normal sense. A streaky beam of red and green light projects straight out of his neck and up into the sky. I scramble up and stand facing him, but I don’t feel like getting any closer.
“Everett Bohnacker,” the guy says. Fizzling, cool voice, kind of high-pitched for a man. “I’m pleased you saw fit to join us.”
I didn’t, exactly, but of course he has to know that. “You’re Aloysius?”
“I am. I’ve come to assist you in taking steps that will be beneficial to both of us. You can stop your brother from employing your body as the vehicle for his crimes, and I can deprive him of a beachhead among the living. A win for all concerned.”
Well, a win for all except Dashiell. “Yeah, that’s what Mabel said. So what do I do?”
“Come here to me, and reclaim this dead meat. I believe it properly belongs to you.”
I don’t like any part of that statement. My guts kick in protest and shivers cascade down my back. “Reclaim it?”
“Take it in a loving embrace. Never mind the spilled gore. You’ll find it’s eager to return to you.”
Jesus. “I don’t think so.”
“Really? Consider the implications of your refusal, Master Bohnacker. It’s the fact of this corpse being here that leaves room for your brother to be there. Unless I’m mistaken, you aren’t under any illusions regarding his character. Or are you? He’ll seize the first opportunity to ravish a certain young lady of your acquaintance, someone I believe you esteem greatly. Don’t suppose for one instant that he won’t. And if he uses your body for the act, why, you’ll be just as guilty as he is. Won’t you?”
God, I feel sick. My stomach is sliding around like wet soap. I don’t think Dash would actually rape Elena, but he’d love to seduce her in some creepy way that would be almost as bad. And Aloysius is right, I’d be totally responsible for giving him the chance.
“Dash wouldn’t do that,” I say, without even meaning to—like the lie just spits out of me.
“Wouldn’t he? Are you so certain of that that you’re prepared to gamble with her happiness? He’ll throw her down and take what he likes from her without mercy, and she won’t be the last. Ruined virtue and blighted affections will follow wherever he goes. Can you deny it? Why do you think that he was so concerned to procure a male body for his use? Why wasn’t your sister enough for him?”
Right. My sister. “So would it work the same way for Ruby? I mean, if we could find her body, she could—reclaim it?” Then maybe, just maybe, we could be the way we were: heartbroken over Dashiell’s death, sure. Bursting into tears at random moments, wondering what we could have done differently that might have saved him. Fine. But at least we’d be together, and we could start to move on. We can cherish what’s left.
Though realistically, I know Ruby wouldn’t see it that way. She’d never agree to force Dash out, no matter what happened.
“Dashiell Bohnacker drowned your sister in the river. The current has ca
rried her body far away from here by now. I’m sorry to say that she’s irretrievably lost.”
“But the principle would be the same.” I don’t know why I’m so hung up on this, really. “It would work if we could find her?”
That column of light where his head should be flickers irritably. “Of course.”
“Okay,” I say, and I make myself really look at my dead body sprawled out on the planks. Dash slit my throat practically to the spine and my head has fallen back so that the gash has pulled wide open. And bizarrely my shirt is still sopping wet and bright crimson. Aloysius’s not-head reflects in green smears where the blood has puddled by my side. The idea of getting anywhere near that thing, much less touching it with a single finger, is so appalling that I feel like throwing myself off the platform again.
Jumping wouldn’t kill me, not in real life. I’ll just wake up. A dream-suicide is totally my ticket out of here.
Except that Aloysius might have a point about Elena. As long as Dashiell can log onto my body whenever he wants I’ve got no way to predict what he’ll do with it. Including to Elena. Including to Ruby.
Because that kiss he gave Ruby with my mouth was way too slow and sexy for me to convince myself it was anywhere near okay, even if he didn’t go any further—and if he didn’t, he might next time. It’s pretty hard to feel calm about the possibility of Dash using my body to commit incest.
I take a step closer to my corpse. I’ve never been as disgusted with myself as I am right now, looking at that bled-out gray slug and knowing that it’s me. I don’t care that I’m not handsome the way Dash was; what I can’t stand is that I look so weak.
Aloysius doesn’t move at all. I take another step, the planks creaking beneath me. If I yield to my disgust, refuse to give that flabby thing a hug, then I really am a weakling. I owe it to Elena to be better that that. Maybe I even owe it to myself. But God, reaching out for that cold, pathetic sack of dead Everett feels a lot more horrible than it did volunteering to be murdered.
I’m close enough to bend down and touch my own ankle. It’s just as revolting as I knew it would be, like a wet mattress.
When something’s really bad it’s easier to just jump in all at once. So I pull in a deep breath and brace myself. And fling myself belly-first on top of my own dead flesh.
There’s no resistance. I burst right into it, like I’ve dropped into a pool of maggots. Cold, writhing masses drive into my body, and I gag and scream but I can’t tip off the corpse or push it away—because it’s me, it’s who I really am, and it’s determined to come back to me.
And then I’m thrashing around on the planks, beached and feeble. And the dead version of me has vanished completely. I’m on my own, flat on my face and too drained to move. But it definitely worked. I can feel how I’m complete again: too stuffed with my own being to leave any space for Dashiell. The cuffs of Aloysius’s trousers brush my head.
“You know, Everett,” Aloysius says, “I intend to make an example of your brother. Hundreds of years from now the dead will tell tales of the revenge I took on him. No one will ever dare to do as he’s done again.”
I’m pissed off at Dash, all right, but not like that. “Then I’ll stop you. I won’t let anyone hurt him.”
“So you can see that a Chinaman or a Brazilian is no use to me. I need someone who cuts close to home, so to speak.”
It takes me one quick sliver of time to figure out what that means—God, I’m slow—and then I’m rolling toward the platform’s edge just as the blade whistles past my ear and stabs the planks. He’s yanking the knife out with one hand and grabbing for my hair with the other. My legs are wheeling at the emptiness and I’m trying to rip his hand off me, trying to fall. I have to kill myself before he can kill me, and I claw at him and fling myself from side to side, but he’s too strong. Half my body is swinging into space but I can’t break free of his grasp.
And then the knife pierces straight into my back. It skewers my chest and pins me to the wood, but he must have missed my heart because the pain goes on and on: a million winking red discs of hurt, twirling in my eyes. He gets one foot on my neck for leverage and yanks the blade out, and the feeling of the metal dragging out between my ribs sends my scream shooting into space. I hear the song of the knife scraping bone.
Suddenly I’m floating above the whole scene, watching the knife arc up above my spine. It’s the same knife Dash used, I recognize it, and I can’t believe I was so stupid that I didn’t wonder where it had gone.
The next stab drives home and sends my thoughts sailing into darkness just as my alarm goes off. I’m screaming so loudly that my throat feels torn. I’ve fallen halfway out of bed, and I’m still trying to keep falling forever. Please, please let me fall and die on my own, before it’s too late.
Except I know his knife found my heart at the last moment. And that means it’s too late already.
RUBY SLIPPERS
I wake up with my hand spinning a pen through Dashiell’s handwriting, slanting and elegant and totally distinctive. I’m sitting up in bed with a spiral notebook spread out on my lap, and as I pull myself into consciousness my hand starts to falter and sway and the line trails into a drowsy horizon. My glance falls onto the words, and before I’m fully awake I’m reading and I can’t look away.
Dearest Ru, I’m afraid we have a significant problem on our hands. I’ve lost our Never and he’s been taken over by an extravagantly vicious man, a dead old crook, one Aloysius. I’m very sorry to say that I realized too late what was underway; they staged a diversion, moving in on you, so that I was obliged to spend the night shoring up your defenses. And I’d received the distinct impression that you were their primary object of interest in any case. I didn’t anticipate an attempt to invade Never, at least not so soon.
I’ll be with you when I can, but dealing with Aloysius will require me to absent myself sometimes. Be extraordinarily careful. Guard yourself as never before. Sleep at a friend’s house tonight, please. Never is no longer your brother, no matter how he appears to you. He will almost certainly try to kill you.
All my love,
— • •
They know you’re my final sanctuary in this world, Ruby-Ru.
“Dash?” I say, but I feel a yawning ache in my chest and I know he’s gone. I can hear water singing in the pipes, probably Everett in the shower upstairs, and someone clattering in the kitchen. I read Dashiell’s letter over again, but no matter how many times the words play in my head I can’t take them in. Maybe Everett is in trouble, maybe Dash is right about that, but then why would I go to a friend’s house instead of staying close so I can help him? What sense does it make to say that Ever isn’t my brother? Dash sounds so agitated that I almost doubt he knew what he was saying.
Taken Everett over. Invaded him. One Aloysius. I’m finally absorbing it, and I know it means that Ever has a new ghost living in him, one that doesn’t belong here. It means an enemy has slipped into our house. Someone who might want to hurt me. But that doesn’t mean I can just abandon my twin brother.
There’s a brisk knock on my door. “Ruby? Are you dressed, sweetheart? Breakfast is ready.”
It’s our dad and everything about his voice is wrong, too high and cloying. And since when does he make breakfast?
“I’ll be there in three minutes.” I can smell it now, bacon and something else warm and cinnamony. I squirm into clothes without showering and barely brush my hair. I have to see Everett as soon as I can. I can already hear his footsteps in the hallway. Then they pause outside my door.
My phone chimes. I’m so distracted by waiting for Everett to knock, waiting for him to say something, that I barely understand the message at first: Hey Ruby my mom says yes of course to you sleeping over! Abby and Louisa are coming too. Yay slumber party!
Liv. Dashiell texted Liv to make sure I stayed out of the house tonight.
A cold palpitation floods up my arm from the phone and hits my heart. I read what Dash told me, of cours
e, but I didn’t actually feel it until now. I couldn’t let the horror in his words touch me, not when the horror is Everett. But Liv’s text breaks through my resistance and now the chill of it moves like a tide through every part of me. Dashiell was deathly, utterly serious. I can’t stay in the house with whatever is wearing Everett’s face. With Aloysius, whoever he is.
Then what about our dad?
I take one more moment to grab the notebook with Dashiell’s letter; the safest place to keep it is probably in my backpack so it’s always with me. Something warns me that Dad is too on edge for me to wear my red boots, so I grab my rose-patterned shoes instead and bolt out into the hall. Ever isn’t waiting there anymore.
He’s sitting in the kitchen with a plate of French toast and bacon. Shadows pool under his eyes and he looks sick and nervous, but other than that nothing seems different about him. When Dashiell was in him it was obvious that something was going on.
“Hi, Ruby,” he says; I’m listening hard and his voice sounds normal. It also sounds like we didn’t have the worst fight of our lives last night. “Did you know Dad can cook French toast? Like, delicious French toast? ’Cause I’m in total shock.”
Dad beams at him and goes to get me a plate, and while his back is turned Ever glances his way and then jabs a warning look at me: for God’s sake play normal. Do it for him. So that’s what it means that our dad is bustling around the kitchen, actually serving us hot food instead of just gulping coffee without even sitting down: it means he already knows too much, but he doesn’t know what he knows. It means he’s starting to crack up from the dreams in our walls and the voices coming through the vents. It means that, even if he isn’t possessed like Ever and me, the ghosts are still getting to him.
“I thought we’d all go out for dinner and a movie this evening,” Dad says. “Everett is grounded, of course, so he shouldn’t be going anywhere else. But do you already have plans?”
