by Sarah Porter
“Hold on, sweetheart. I’ll be right back. Hold on!”
I hear him sprinting up the steps, but really, that was stupid of me. It’ll be better for everyone if he doesn’t find it in time. Better if I die right here; that way Ruby and Dashiell won’t go through the trauma of putting me out of my misery, and Aloysius won’t be able to hurt anyone I love. I curl up on my side, feeling my chest spasm and hearing the airless hack in my throat. My lungs feel like smoldering cotton. I try to tell myself it’s okay, that I did the best I could in the end. I’m going out honorably and that’s more than anybody would have expected me to do.
I hear footsteps, but they aren’t on the stairs. Is somebody else in the house?
And then my dad is beside me again, pulling my head back and spraying the medicine into my mouth. The cold blast of it is in my throat, and I’m still wheezing, but enough oxygen is getting in now that relief blazes through my body. He gives me another hit and I suck it down gratefully—even though I shouldn’t. Even though I know it’s a lame, pathetic thing to do. If I were a courageous person I would just freaking die, already.
“Shh. There you go, Everett. You’ll be fine soon.” He doesn’t sound like he believes it, though. He sounds shattered, and his voice is rough, and I see him gingerly touching his throat. I probably bruised him pretty badly.
The shitty thing is that, as soon as I’ve recovered enough to tell him how sorry I am, I’ll be a menace again. Aloysius will come raging back as soon as my body’s fully operational, I know it, so I better say whatever I can while I still have a chance.
“Dad…” I try.
“Shh. I’m glad you recognize me now. You must have been so confused that you mistook me for one of your attackers. It’s all right.” He pulls a gutted cushion off the sofa and lowers my head onto it, then goes after his phone. He’s tapping at it in this panicky way like it won’t turn on.
Someone is standing in the open doorway. Ruby, still in her coat and scarf. I thought she at least knew enough to keep the hell away from here.
Then I notice the slant of her head, the angry forward tilt of her body. Dashiell’s looking down at me furiously from her green eyes, and it’s actually a smart strategy: he’s here to do what he has to do while I’m still weak. Fine. I do my best to smile at him. I want him to know I understand. That we’re fighting on the same side now, even if I’m the casualty.
“Aloysius,” Dashiell says—and even though our dad’s right here he’s not trying to disguise his voice at all. “Really, trying to murder my father? Such a cheap move, isn’t it, coming from a man who prides himself on his class and connections? No imagination whatsoever. No style. It’s what I might expect from some tawdry little hood.”
Dad sits down suddenly in a pile of torn books and I’m worried he might have a heart attack.
“Cheap but effective,” Aloysius sneers through my lips. I didn’t even know he was here, much less that he had control of my voice. “Young Mr. Bohnacker, I believe you’ll discover soon that a flair for the imaginative gesture isn’t worth much. Not when it results in the most excruciating failure, and in the death of all you love.”
I’m struggling to sit up, or maybe Aloysius is; I can’t even tell. Dash stalks over—Dash, in Ruby’s body, her raspberry corduroys, her floppy plaid coat and furry scarf—and viciously kicks me in the chest. Something yields with a loud crack. I’m still dizzy and unbalanced and I thud back down. There’s a sharp star of pain to the left of my heart, like he might have snapped a rib or two.
“Ruby!” Dad yells reproachfully. “Don’t—how could you? He needs help!”
I guess it’s all too much for him to take in; seeing me and Ruby both turning into other people has just plain maxed out his brain.
“Dad,” Dashiell says, and his off-key tenderness is on full blast. “No one wants to help our poor Never more than I do. Truly. I’m sorry to say that helping him might involve breaking both his legs, possibly in several places. But you’d prefer that, wouldn’t you, to losing another son?”
I can feel Aloysius registering that—Dashiell’s not kidding and maybe he counted too much on Dash wanting not to hurt me. I can feel him noting that my breathing’s gone ragged again from that kick and I’m not at my strongest. And he knows I can resist him, too: maybe not that well, but enough to put him at a disadvantage.
Dad is gaping at Ruby where Dashiell’s spirit, the whole sense of him, kind of leans out of her green eyes—gaping like he’s starting to see his dead son in her face.
“That writing,” Dad says at last. “Upstairs. It’s not possible.”
Writing? What is he talking about? God, I keep missing so much.
“Of course not,” Dashiell agrees gently. “I can’t take advantage of Ruby again to come in this house. You told me so yourself. Ergo, I can’t possibly have written anything here.” He walks across the room to our dad and slides an arm around him—and that’s his freaking arrogance at work. He’s acting like he can turn his back on Aloysius and be totally blasé about it. “Let me help you get to bed. You should rest. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
My body goes tense—Aloysius, evaluating whether to attack—and pain jabs my chest. I wheeze piteously. I guess it convinces him that this isn’t the ideal moment to try murdering anybody and we stay where we are, flat on the floor. I’m not in great shape right now, obviously, but I know the total stillness has to be partly a sham; Aloysius wants Dash to think my injuries are worse than they really are.
“Dashiell,” Dad says vaguely. He’s in such extreme shock that his eyes look like spilled glitter. “It’s not possible.” He’s staggering to his feet now and Dash has both arms wrapped around him.
“Ah, but supposing it is? Purely hypothetically, suppose I’m Dashiell, and that I’ve come back. Imagine that I’m here to—among other things—offer you an apology. Wouldn’t you like to hear it?”
Dad is staring into Ruby’s pink face like it’s a dirty window and he’s urgently trying to see through it. Then he sighs and covers his own face with both hands.
“Of course I would.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Dashiell says softly. “For having been myself.” He starts leading our dad toward the stairs—which means that they have to walk past me where I’m splatted on the floor with sofa stuffing leaking into my nose. Dad looks at me and shakes his head to clear it, then reaches toward me. Dash pulls him back. “Come with me. You need to rest. Everett is my dear brother and I’ll do the best I can for him.”
You’re a very poor physical specimen, aren’t you, boy? Hardly worth keeping alive, once I’m done with the task at hand.
He’s going to wait until they’re upstairs and then bolt out of here, before Dash has a chance to take me totally out of commission. And I suddenly have this appalling sense of where we might be going next.
RUBY SLIPPERS
“I don’t expect he’ll come back to the house,” Dashiell says from my lips, “not now that he’s suffered such a bitter disappointment here. But he’s made other moves I failed to anticipate, so you should stay somewhere else tonight. Rest for half an hour, then I’ll call you a cab.”
Our dad is curled trembling on the guest room bed, his eyes closed, but he nods. Dashiell strokes his forehead with our shared fingertips. I can still feel the echoes of the front door slamming downstairs.
Around us the walls that were smooth pearl gray two days ago are filigreed all over with crimson script: Dashiell’s beautiful, loping handwriting. A jar of paint and a small brush lie abandoned on the dresser, and there’s a shattered lamp on the floor. Other than that, this room has the least damage of any room in the house. It’s so bland and lifeless there wasn’t much to rip apart; you just have to yank open the drawers to see they’re empty.
This is not an injustice, the walls announce a hundred times over.
No one has injured you except yourself. Again and again. Delicate, slanting letters written with ruby paint. Like a rain of blood streaking windows in
a storm.
I’m genuinely afraid to let my daughter spend time with the brother she adores.
This is what we’ve come to. This is what we’ve come to.
Yes, Dashiell, you’re correct. There are indeed conditions on my love for you.
This was Dashiell’s room once, and in those days the walls were black and collaged everywhere with photographs and song lyrics; he sprawled on a different bed. He was a rivulet of dawn-colored life then, always rippling; laughing and tussling with me whenever I came near him. So I understand why he came back here to mourn, both for himself and for us, in messages red on the walls.
Dad’s eyes open long enough to drift over the writing again, and then close. “Leave Ruby with me. One of my children, safe with me. Please.”
“Ah, but I can’t do that. Ruby Slippers has her part to play, too, if we’re going to have the faintest hope of saving Never. She’ll be traipsing along to her slumber party soon. Just as we arranged.”
Dad groans and his eyes roll open again, sliding over the world but not accepting it. Dash, how can you think of leaving him alone like this?
I can’t speak, but I can inscribe the words on Dashiell’s mind. I can spin myself hands out of dream and sink their imprints into his consciousness. He knows me as utterly as I know him now: thought on thought in slow-moving currents. He lets me see with him, feel with him. We sit on the side of the bed and gaze down together at our heartbroken father.
“Ruby-Ru will be in far greater danger in the long run if she stays with you tonight,” Dash says softly, both to our father and to me. “Never barely prevented the ghost driving him from murdering you, and it’s clear to me that he only succeeded because he came up with a tactic that Aloysius wasn’t remotely prepared for. Using his own lungs as a weapon won’t work a second time; Aloysius will be on high alert for anything of the kind. He won’t stop looking for opportunities to kill Ruby, and he’ll slaughter Never-Ever as well once he’s used him to destroy his own sister. Our Never will be a bit too strong and resourceful for his liking, simply. He’s assuredly proved himself to be more trouble than he’s worth already, from Aloysius’s point of view.”
I don’t know how much of this our dad understands; he’s clutching himself and rocking slightly in a twist of white sheet.
“I expect these are the last words you’d ever choose to hear from me,” Dash says, “but you’ll have to trust me. I’m doing what I can to ensure that your surviving children stay that way. Both of them, ideally.”
Dashiell? You have to promise me something. I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but tell me something first. Promise we won’t kill Everett, no matter what happens.
I know he hears me. There’s a pause, a hitch in our breath. But he doesn’t answer.
Instead he strokes our dad’s cropped silver hair.
“Everett wouldn’t answer his phone,” Dad says, and coughs laughter. “He wouldn’t answer his phone, and suddenly I felt terribly afraid for him. He’s been acting so strangely. He’s been—not himself. I rushed back here and found such destruction. I searched for Everett upstairs first. I saw this room. The writing.”
“Ah, well. I’d meant for you to see it eventually.” I can feel my mouth crimp into Dashiell’s pained smile. “But truthfully, you knew I’d come home without seeing anything.”
Dashiell, promise me! I have to know. We’d rather die than hurt him. It isn’t fair, not when he was pulled into this because of me. I won’t let Ever be the sacrifice. No matter how much I love you. I started this. I was the one who brought you back.
“You haven’t come home,” Dad snaps; his eyes are shut tight. “It isn’t possible.”
Dashiell’s horribly disappointed by that, I can feel it. “Of course not. I can’t possibly be here with you. I’m stone dead and probably comfortably ensconced in hell. There’s quite a list of things you’ve called me already; why not tack on hallucination?”
“An auditory hallucination. It has to be. That I see Ruby, but hear you … I am so deeply grateful to be hallucinating you, though, Dashiell. My desperate, my lost, my always-beloved son.”
ALOYSIUS
Seven long years since I’ve had a bale of human flesh at my disposal, and now this one is in such pain that I’m tempted to gouge out its eyes and discard it to slowly bleed to death under a bush. Profiting from it even to the smallest degree—enjoying a mortadella sandwich bought at a delicatessen on Court Street, for example—is ruined by the piercing discomfort of broken ribs. And adding this pain to Dashiell Bohnacker’s account is useless, since I already propose to extract from him the final particles of his being.
Well then, his dislikable sprat of a younger brother can be made to pay—if not with physical suffering, which I would be obliged to share, then at least with mental anguish.
Young Everett, I address him, wouldn’t you be interested to learn why the brother you betrayed was fleeing from me in the first place? Did you so much as trouble to ask yourself what might have moved Dashiell to go on the lam, before you accepted my invitation?
The runt is exhausted from pain, from his brush with suffocation, from the effort he poured into his impudent resistance. He’s been in a swoon since I pocketed a knife from his father’s kitchen and stepped out for a stroll. Too much weakened to keep struggling. On hearing the questions I’ve posed, though, he snaps to attention. Good boy.
I was very pleased to make Dashiell’s acquaintance, you see. It didn’t take long to size him up as an amoral brute with pretensions, not half as clever as he thought, but also with the sort of attractiveness that might give him a hold on those who had known him. A young man, in short, whose near and dear ones might very well come at his call, even if they felt some horror at the prospect. And he struck me as the type who might not be overly fastidious, if he had to surrender such dear ones to save his own skin. Wouldn’t you agree?
The nauseated tension gripping young Everett nearly compensates me for the lack of savor in my food.
So I gave him a choice. Lure you or your sister close—or else that whore of his, if he preferred, it was all the same to me—and then step aside while I gutted the mark for my own use. It was that, I told him, or face prolonged torture. I expected he would find his decision an easy one.
Well, for some time he played at agonized acceptance of my proposal. He’s a plausible actor, as you know. He pretended to lie in wait for you and Miss Bohnacker, with me concealed beside him. He suggested that she’d make the easier target and dutifully undermined her dreams, to increase the likelihood of a visit from her. He went along to get along, as the saying goes. Naturally, I intended to increase my demands as soon as I obtained one of you—to then require Dashiell to bait whichever of you remained as a reward for one of my lieutenants.
Dashiell’s cooperation proved to be sadly insincere.
Ah, the self-lacerating buzz from young Everett, as he anticipates the rest of my story! The stabbing guilt and shame! No doubt the boy attributed Dashiell’s actions to the purest selfishness, but now it starts to dawn on him that his brother’s motivations might have been a wee bit more complicated than he’d supposed. If he had use of his teeth he’d gnaw himself down to the bone.
I can’t be everywhere, can I? I had other business to attend to. And no doubt Dashiell meant all along to double-cross me. To cheat me out of my rights. He waited for his chance and got your sister alone. Snatched her body for himself and bolted off to the living world. You see, Everett, he was fool enough to think he could shelter you and Miss Bohnacker from me and somehow evade the consequences. How he deluded himself into believing he might get away with it, though, I’ll never know. Does anything occur to you?
Ah, and here it comes: a flicker of suppressed consciousness. A memory, rapidly stifled, of the sharp curve of my jawbone in his back pocket. I pay keen attention, hoping for some raveling thread of thought that might lead me to that item’s present location. It was nowhere in the house, of that I’m now certain. But no. This usel
ess boy is hardly bright enough to conceal what he knows from me. I’m sadly forced to suspect that he knows nothing. In case I’m mistaken, though, it’s time to apply such pressure as I can.
I take a piece of paper from Everett’s pocket, unfold it, and spread it out before his dismayed eyes. The stub from an invoice, with Paige Kittering’s address at the top, found in Dr. Bohnacker’s study. Dashiell Bohnacker is all too aware that I’d like to drop his sister into the nearest grave, but I don’t suppose he’s terribly concerned about his slut of an inamorata. It won’t cross his mind that I know where to find her.
If you happen to know where your brother secreted a certain object belonging to me, Everett Bohnacker, now would be a fine time to confess. I’m sure you’re aware that the gold he stole was the least of it. Losing money salted away for those occasions when I might happen to possess a body is an inconvenience, certainly. But he also took something rather more valuable; an item that was only in that package because the flunky who stashed it was such an utter incompetent. That’s what I’d like back.
You have a few hours to think it over, of course. I believe an approach to Dashiell’s whore will be best made late tonight. I’m prepared now for your tricks, and I’ll have my knife in her back before you can flinch. If you’d like to prevent that, then tell me. Where did he hide it?
Hearing me ask that affords young Everett some slight relief, mixed in with his distress at my intentions. He’s thrilled to realize that I failed to find what I need in his house. It’s regrettable to leaven his terror and grief this way, but it can’t be avoided. I face the urgent necessity of turning every stone until I locate my missing remains.
If there’s one thing all the dead remember, it’s what happened to Constance Marclay when her dear mother visited the borderlands, and rushed headlong to embrace her lost child. By an unfortunate chance, her mother had a locket full of Constance’s hair swinging from her neck at the time.
