by Kelly Creagh
There were no tombstones. No dead trees or black birds. No phantom figures or looming shadows. Only cold, white daylight. Lurid but still midmorning hazy, the light streamed through her window, bathing her powder pink walls in a translucent glow, giving each object in the room its own thin halo.
Isobel squeezed her eyes shut before letting them flutter open again.
To her relief, her surroundings remained. Her breathing slowed, and she allowed herself to believe that she was really home. Safe.
As she relaxed, the painful aches in her frame seeped into the forefront of her consciousness, bringing with them the memory of last night. It all rushed back to her in a series of flashes.
The game. Brad. The Grim Facade. The dreamworld. Reynolds. Lilith. Varen . . .
The knocking came again, louder this time, more insistent. Her body tensed once more, an automatic response.
The sound was coming from downstairs. That’s when she realized that there must be someone at the door.
Varen.
Isobel was still clothed in the long-sleeved shirt and jeans she had thrown on the night before. She tore out of her room and onto the landing, swinging around the banister, her bare feet thudding on the carpeted stairs.
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Midway down, she stopped.
Her dad stood at the base of the stairway, his back to her. He held the front door open, allowing in a gust of cold morning air. Before him, on the porch, right in the space where she had fully expected to find Varen Nethers, there stood two men Isobel had never seen before. Each of them wore a starched white shirt and a dark tie. Both were clad in long, brown overcoats, their faces set with blank, unreadable expressions.
Confused, she watched as the taller, dark-haired man flipped his wallet open for her father to see. There, in the center of the bill fold, she caught the gleam of a silver badge.
Police? What were the police doing here?
She edged farther down the stairway, staying close to the wall, but halted again when the tall man’s gaze shifted suddenly from her father to focus on her instead.
“Detectives Scott and March,” the man said, and flicked his wallet closed. He eyed her as he stuffed the bill fold into an inside pocket of his coat. “Are you Isobel Lanley?”
Her dad swung around, seeming surprised to see her standing there, frozen on the stairs. He glanced between her and the two detectives, his own expression darkening with uncertainty and suspicion. “Can I ask what this is about?”
Isobel felt her knees giving, her legs losing the strength to support her. Dread welled in her chest. She shook her head, willing the scene to stop. She wanted to wake up again and for everything to start over before it could go wrong. But it was too late for that. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. She sensed it, like an invisible presence in the room.
It was the shorter, red-haired detective who spoke next. “We’re investigating a missing persons report that we believe your daughter may have some information about. ”
“Who?” asked her dad, but Isobel already knew who. Like the missing piece of a puzzle, the horrible truth clicked into place.
She suddenly felt dizzy, nauseated. The room seemed to go fuzzy in the corners of her vision.
“You are Isobel, I take it?” asked the red-haired detective. His eyebrows arched as he regarded her, his chin tilted downward, as though he were trying to prompt her, to remind her of her own name.
Stunned, she stared straight through the space between the two men. Like an illusion, the detectives, the foyer, the harsh morning light, and her father all melted away until each of them became no more than a distant pinprick in her awareness. Her mind freewheeled backward through the chaos and hell that had been the night before.
Reynolds. In the graveyard. He had lied to her.
He’d lied.
In that moment, the truth of it seemed so simple to her, so simple and so glaringly obvious. But then how could it be true? How, when he had brought her Varen’s jacket? Varen had given it to him, hadn’t he?
Her jaw fell slack. Of course. If he’d lied to her, then there would have been nothing to stop him from lying to Varen, too. He could have told him anything, and even now, Varen could be trapped there, still waiting.
For her.
Reynolds’s words rushed back to her. He is . . . home now, as well.
She covered her mouth with her hand. She heard those damning words again and again, his voice ringing clear in her mind, like the reverberating drone of a funeral bell.
She sank down onto one step, feeling herself disconnect from reality.
He had called her a friend. He’d saved her, and because of that, she had wanted to believe that he had saved Varen too. And so she had drunk down every word as truth. She had swallowed his poison so easily. How could she have been so stupid? She should have known that he would have said whatever he had to, whatever it would take to get her to destroy the link. To part the worlds.
He had meant it when he’d called her his enemy.
Isobel felt her body hitch as she drew in an involuntary gasp of air. She hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped breathing.
Lilith had been right, she thought with a sudden pang of bitterness. Reynolds had kept the truth to himself the whole time. He had tricked her and sent her in on her own, with false hope, fully expecting her to die.
A barrage of emotions coursed through her all at once. Hurt, anger, betrayal.
Loss.
So this was what his speech on the porch had meant. His last soliloquy before his grand vanishing act. I won’t be found, he’d said.
“Miss Lanley,” the tall detective pressed, “do you know anything about the whereabouts of Varen Nethers?”
Distantly, she registered this question.
Yes, she thought. Yes, I do. He’s in a horrible place where no one can reach him. He’s in a world of ash and black trees and broken people, held hostage to a demoness who will possess him for eternity.
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She shook her head slowly. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening.
“Isobel. ” It was her father who tried this time. “I thought Varen brought you home. ”
Isobel shook her head. No more words. No more words, please.
“Are you saying he didn’t give you a ride home? Isobel?”
“No,” she whispered.
She wanted everything to stop. She wanted the police to go away. The walls and the foyer, the too-bright morning light and the realization—everything—to just go away.
“His father reported him missing early this morning. He didn’t come home from school yesterday, and apparently he went to a party last night and was seen there with your daughter.
You’re aware, I assume, that there was a bust?”
“I made the call,” said her father.
“Ah, well, that makes sense. Anyway, after everything cleared up, they found the boy’s car, still in the parking lot, but there’s been no sign of him. ”
“Isobel?” her dad asked. “Do you know anything about this?”
She said nothing. She didn’t want to talk, she couldn’t. It would do no good. Slowly, methodically, she shook her head no.
“I’m sorry,” she heard her dad say. “We . . . Well, we had a long night. All of us. ”
“I understand,” the taller detective said. “In that case, I’ll leave you with my card, and maybe we can try you again another time. If you think of anything in the meantime, though, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. But, you know,” he continued, his tone changing, as though he were aiming these next words at Isobel. “I wouldn’t worry too much. We’re always on cases like these, and ninety percent of the time, the kid shows up. Besides, we get the impression this isn’t the first time. Like your daughter, he probably got spooked by the sirens and just hitched a ride with someone else. ”
Isobel heard her fa
ther say good-bye to the detectives. Then he shut the door, blocking out the cold air and the stinging light, casting them both into shadow. For a long moment, he stood with his back to her, his hand still on the doorknob, as though he were trying to think of what to say. Or to decide how he felt.
Isobel rose to her feet. She wavered, waiting until her father, at last, turned to face her. Then she did what she thought would be easiest for the both of them. She took one look at him, and turned away.
“Isobel,” he called.
She paused, but only for a moment. Drifting up the stairs like a ghost, she vanished into her room.
49
Obscure and Lonely
Isobel returned to school on Monday, walking the halls with her body, but not with her mind. It was like her whole awareness of the universe had somehow become inverted. Words became indecipherable. People morphed into objects, moving automatons that floated through the space around her as meaningless, formless shadows. Hours elapsed without her being aware of their passage. All the while, her thoughts never changed, never deviated from that place where she had last seen Varen, locked in the purple chamber where she had asked him to wait for her. Where she had promised to come back for him.
The image of his despair consumed her.
In Mr. Swanson’s class, his vacant chair haunted her. Even though she knew it was empty, she kept stealing glances toward it, as though he might somehow materialize.
She did not return to the cafeteria to sit with Gwen, Stevie, or Nikki at their hodgepodge table. Instead she spent lunch in the gym. There she turned flip after flip. She drilled herself on her layout, on her back handspring and round-off. She went through the motions over and over until the repetitive action and the necessity of focus caused the world to condense. Until she didn’t have to think, until it was just her and the floor.
Still, there was no reprieve from the ghost of his memory. He followed her everywhere. She felt him on her skin, sensed him in everything, in the books she carried, in the paper she was forced to write on.
She skipped practice that week so she wouldn’t have to face Nikki or Stevie, and she did her best to evade Gwen at every turn, going to her locker at odd times and taking longer routes to class, not caring if she was late. While Stevie and Nikki seemed to take the hint, Isobel’s allusive behavior only goaded Gwen into taking more extreme measures. She called Isobel’s house every night, even though her father had repeatedly made it clear to her that Isobel wasn’t allowed to take calls. After that, Gwen resorted to disguising her voice, though she knew Isobel’s parents had caller ID. Almost every one of these calls had ended with a direct hang-up from her dad, who had since taken to calling Gwen “that Northern girl. ”
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For once in her life, Isobel was grateful for the excuse of being grounded. She couldn’t stand the thought of being barraged by questions she didn’t have answers for. Or to be reminded again of how she had failed Varen. Of how she had left him there, waiting in vain for her to return because she had promised to come back for him. She had promised.
At Trenton, rumors connected to Varen’s disappearance began to build and circulate through the hallways in hisses and whispers. While most people thought that he had simply run away, others buzzed about how he’d been murdered by his weird one-eyed boss, his body boarded up beneath the floor of Nobit’s Nook or buried somewhere in the park. There had, after all, been neighborhood reports of strange lights and sounds coming from the attic of the bookstore the night he disappeared, as well as one account of a cloaked figure seen exiting through the rear entrance, a limp body held in his arms.
At the end of the week, Swanson handed back their project papers. He went through the aisles, dropping them off at every other desk. When he placed her and Varen’s paper in front of her, Isobel thought that he might have lingered for an extra moment or two before moving on. She stared through the clear glossy report cover at the B- they had managed to pull off.
“Good job,” he’d written on the title page in red. “Next time, though, ask about parent participation instead of stereos, okay? Also, I’ve attached an Internet article from the Baltimore Sun that the two of you might find interesting. By the way, nice bird. ”
Below that, Swanson had added something else. This note appeared in blue ink, and in a tighter, more compact version of his loopy cursive. “P. S. ” it read, “if you need to talk, I’m here. ”
This tiny gesture, so very unobtrusive and kind, struck a chord deep within her, inducing a surprise moment of lucidity. It brought a sad smile to her lips, because it didn’t matter that she could never accept the invitation. She just liked knowing that Swanson had added it because he liked Varen. And that, in turn, made Isobel like her English teacher more than he would ever know.
She slid the paper off of her desk and shoved it into her backpack, putting Varen’s name out of sight so that the world could go mute again. Mute and void, colorless except for that one empty chair in the corner.
That afternoon Isobel made the mistake of going to her locker.
She had just finished shoving her binder, notepad, and English book inside when Gwen sprang up behind her, sending the door to her locker slamming shut.
“You,” she said, jabbing Isobel right in the shoulder, “are a terrible friend. ”
Isobel scowled and kicked the corner of the metal door so that it popped open again. Her notebook slipped out and fell to the floor, loose papers scattering. “Thanks,” she muttered. “I needed that. ”
She stooped to gather the spilled papers, but stopped when Gwen stepped forward, pinning them to the floor with one foot. “No,” she barked. She sent Isobel’s locker slamming shut again, this time with a decided bang. “What you need is a reality check. You’ve been wandering around in this little bubble of solitude and sulk long enough. Now, I don’t know what happened that night, but I know that you do. I know it was weird. I was there, remember? I saw that fight with my own eyes, but unlike everybody else, I knew it was real. I also know that you disappeared on one side of town only to reappear on another. You might be fooling everyone else, but you’re not fooling me, Isobel Lanley. If he’s dead—”
“He’s not dead!” Isobel shouted suddenly, her voice piping with panic. She grabbed Gwen tightly by the arm, shaking her. “Don’t say that. ”
Gwen pulled her arm roughly away. She took a step back, and, for a long moment, the two of them stood there and stared at each other.
“I’m tired of chasing after you,” Gwen said at last. “And if you’re not going to do something, then I’m not going to cover for you. Those two detectives came to school yesterday. If they come back, if they ask me what happened, I’m telling them what I saw. ”
Isobel gaped at her friend. “Do something?” she repeated. She shook her head, uncomprehending. “Do—do you have any idea—”
“No!” Gwen snapped. “No! I don’t. I have no idea! In fact, the only thing I do know is that it looks like you’re giving up. ”
Isobel blinked, suddenly speechless, stung to the core by the accusation of those words.
Gwen glared at her, unrelenting, her eyes lit with intensity. “Don’t look at me like that. I saw you there with him that night. And I know you know where he is. ”
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Isobel’s lips parted with a tremble. She started to speak, to deny it. But the truth was that she did know where he was. There was just no way to reach him. How could she tell Gwen that it was impossible to save him because the link between worlds had been destroyed? How could she expect anyone else to understand any of it when she’d scarcely been able to grasp what had happened herself?
A glower hardening the normally soft angles of her face, Gwen turned away to dial the combination to her own locker. She opened the metal door and, reaching inside, grabbed something from the top shelf, shoving it into Isobel’s hand. Her pink cell phone.
“There. Now it’s your turn. ” With that, Gwen looped her purse strap over her head, her movements fast and jerky. “When you figure out how to use one of those again, well . . . I logged my number in at the top of your address book. And here,” she added, yanking out Isobel’s gym bag. She let it drop onto the floor between them, right on top of the smattering of papers. “My locker’s not a storage unit. ”
With a flip of her long hair, Gwen stalked off, leaving Isobel to stand there, staring at her rumpled gym bag, wondering how it was possible that she could feel any emptier.
Mechanically, she sank to one knee in front of her locker and with slow, deliberate movements, began to gather her things.
Then something about one of the papers made her pause. Her cell phone slid from her grasp. It cracked against the floor, but Isobel hardly seemed to notice, too distracted by the black-and-white photo mixed within the spread of loose white sheets.
She grabbed one corner of the printout, tugging it free from the others. Isobel’s eyes scoured the page, certain that she had to be imagining what she saw there.
At the top of the paper, the header read Baltimore Sun in bold block letters, and she knew it was the article Mr. Swanson had wanted her and Varen to see, the one he had handed back with their paper. There, in the middle of the page, Isobel focused on the dim and misty black-and-white image that had first drawn her attention. Head bowed, a man knelt before a large gravestone. On the headstone itself, she could scarcely make out the outline of a carved raven. The man, however, she could see more clearly.
He wore a dark coat, and a black fedora covered his bowed head. In his hand, he offered flowers to the grave. Roses? Around the lower part of his face, a white scarf concealed his features.
Isobel read the caption:
The only known photo of the “Poe Toaster,” taken in 1990 for Life magazine. This mysterious figure visits Poe’s Baltimore grave during the early morning hours of January 19, marking the poet’s birthday each year with roses and a toast of cognac. First observed in 1949, the ritual has continued over the years, though the Toaster’s identity, along with the details of how he enters the locked cemetery, remain a secret to this day.
“Reynolds,” she hissed, gripping the page until it crumpled in her fist.
