Isle of Spirits (Keys Trilogy Book 2)

by Anna Roberts

  Blue left the book; it would have to wait. Her legs felt soft and shaky, like they had nothing to do with her, but she forced them forward somehow, her torso and arms flopping wildly as she lurched through the house, pinballing off the door frames. Her vision dimmed at the edges, but she had the front door in sight. Yael was screaming inside her head

  ...don’t you make me do this. Don’t you fucking make me do this, you stupid girl. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, don’t you think I won’t...

  There was worse? She laughed and the red taste bubbled up in the back of her nose and out of her mouth. He was shrieking with rage as she stumbled out of the door, down the path. The wards snapped and sizzled under her blundering feet, and she could feel him digging his claws into her brain and maybe he’d take a chunk out of it trying to hold on, but she no longer cared. All she saw was the car and Gabe, running towards her.

  Oh God, no. He couldn’t come closer. If he came any closer then Yael would hop into his head and then there’d be no getting him out.

  Blue managed to stick her arms out in front of her, trying to push Gabe away. Her hands wouldn’t go right; they curled towards her wrists in a way that she knew meant there was something horribly wrong, but she felt the backs of her hands against his chest and shoved. He stumbled and she fell, landing on top of him just beyond the garden gate. Yael roared and yanked her head back but he was done. She was beyond the wires, beyond the gun turrets of his prison, and he couldn’t follow.

  “Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” said Gabe, and that was right. That was one of the words for red, and she remembered that. At least that.

  19

  Someone was moaning. It was a low, steady sound, broken only by occasional sobs, an adult version of the kind of noise that small children made when they were no longer sure exactly why they were crying, but were so steeped in misery that they kept right on.

  It was the sound of the Superdome.

  She hadn’t consciously thought about it in years; why bother? But it came back in scraps, filtering through the scraps of more recent memory – light in her eyes, follow my finger, okay, good. Shadowed faces and ceiling tiles whooshing by overhead, clean and dry, not like that poor old lady who lay there day and night on a piece of damp cardboard – Lord, let me die dry. All I ask is you let me die dry – in a place where a pair of dry socks were heaven and God, Jesus Christ the smell. The stink of that place.

  Antiseptic. Taste of blood. Not red. Blood.

  She opened her eyes slowly. Ceiling tiles, curtain rings, curtain thing curtain whatdidyoucallit curtain pole. The words worked again. Good.

  The curtain was drawn around her bed. The voice beyond kept on moaning. Blue stretched out her toes under the thin hospital blanket, then closed her eyes again, scared to look at her hands as she attempted to move them. What if they were all turned in on themselves like before?

  She made fists. It felt right and that made her braver. She opened her eyes and looked around. Gabe was curled in a green plastic chair by the side of the bed, a blanket pulled up to his chin. She tried to say his name but all that came out was a gurgling sound that brought with it a flash of panic. Yael had done what he’d threatened and broke her brain.

  Her face was wet.

  Gabe stirred and snapped awake, the imprint of his knuckles on his cheek. “Oh my God, you’re awake. Are you okay?”

  She tried to speak again but nothing wanted to behave. Her mouth twisted and stretched in all kinds of weird directions and she couldn’t get the words past it. The back of her nose felt crusted up with something like she was in the grip of some terrible cold, but she knew it wasn’t that. There was a thick film all over her tongue.

  “Here,” he said, and offered her a cup with a straw in it. She felt her head shake as she tried to put the straw between her lips, but she sipped, swallowed. Thank God – something worked, even if it was just a reflex. Breathe. Don’t freak out. Try again.

  “I...can’t...talk.”

  He shook his head, his eyes overflowing. “No, you can. You’re talking. It’s okay.”

  He reached out to hold her head steady and she realized there was something wrong; she couldn’t feel his hand there. There was something in the way. She reached up and felt the surgical dressing.

  “Oh God.”

  “Shh,” he said. “Everything’s okay.”

  “They cut into my head?”

  “They drilled a tiny hole,” said Gabe, in a diminutive, soothing voice that did nothing to help her terror. “Just to release the pressure. You were bleeding into your brain.”

  Yael. Where was he now? And Gloria. Oh my God, she was still in the basement, assuming she was even alive. Blue tried to sit up but her spine felt strangely mushy and her head too heavy. “I have to go...”

  “No,” said Gabe. “No, you have to stay right here. They have to find out what caused this.”

  She stared at him, feeling crazy, like she’d just woken up with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry frowning down at her, and the whole thing had been nothing more than a long, strange dream. “Yael,” she said, and the name alone sounded nuts. “Gabe, it was Yael.”

  Her face was flooded all of a sudden and he reached out to dry her eyes with a Kleenex. “Humor me,” he said. “Please.”

  That ‘please’ was like a roadblock. Even through the fog of drugs Blue remembered his mother, how he’d never forgive her or himself if she did the same thing – skipped out on medical science and died as a result of it. “We have to leave,” she said. “We have to go. Before he gets loose.”

  Her tongue felt thick and all she seemed to be able to manage were short, simple sentences, even though her busted brain was swirling with a million more fresh reasons to panic.

  “Honey, I’m going nowhere except my basement. I’m cutting it fine as it is.”

  Oh God. “The moon?”

  “Yeah. Timing sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Gabe leaned forward and kissed her mouth, her eyelids, telling her that he was sorry and that he loved her, but she was barely listening. The basement. Gloria was still in the basement, without food or fresh water. Maybe for more than twenty-four hours and she had to get out...

  But the heavy, mushy-spine feeling was dragging her own, rusting the hinges of her jaw, and she sank once more.

  Someone shook her awake and she opened her eyes to see a Chinese doctor frowning down at her. “Come on, Blue – stay with us. I know it’s hard, but you need to stay awake.”

  Awake. Easier said than done. Her eyelids were like lead and when they closed she saw red – a field of poppies stretching for miles and miles. Oh, they were giving her the good shit; she was off to see the wizard. A chorus of happy voices were singing that she was out of the woods, step into the light...

  ...only that was bullshit, wasn’t it? Don’t go into the light, Carolanne.

  She forced her eyes open and jerked forward. The doctor put a cup of water to her lips. “Good girl. Let’s get you up. What happened to your boyfriend?”

  “Oh, he’s a werewolf,” said Blue, stretching her eyes wide.

  “Housetrained, I hope,” said the doctor, and shone a pen light into her eyes. “Follow my finger? Other way. Good. Do you know what month it is?”

  “July.”

  “And who’s the president?”

  “Barack Obama. Can I go?”

  The doctor laughed. “You must be kidding. Have you been doing anything you shouldn’t, Blue? Drugs? Alcohol?”

  “No.” She could go. She could walk out of here, if only the room would stop spinning.

  “Okay. Anticoagulants? Are you taking aspirin? Coumadin?”

  “No. I’m fine. I have to go.” Sorry, Gabe.

  “Have you hit your head recently? Beaned yourself hard enough to black out for a second?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  It went dark again and the next thing she knew was a loud thudding noise, jolting her awake. She was lying in a bright white thing like a casket and then the thuds
came again, jolting her. And someone said “It’s okay – try to lie still,” in a voice like God’s. She vaguely understood that they were scanning her head and her next thought was (God bless America) that she had no way to pay for any of this.

  “Please don’t cut anything out of my brain,” she said, as she flopped onto another trolley and back once more into darkness.

  *

  Rustling.

  Cellophane.

  The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a bag of jelly beans, the colors blaring bright through the transparent plastic wrap. The top was tied with a large red ribbon, red like the tattooed rose with the banner wound around it. Blue read it just to make sure she could; the banner said AXL.

  “Jesus,” said Stacy. “There you are.”

  Blue swallowed. Her mouth was terribly dry. She looked around for a cup and Stacy brought it up to her lips. “We were starting to think we’d have to put out a want ad for a prince to come and kiss you.”

  Blue felt her head shake as she put the straw between her lips. The water tasted like life and air and earthly bliss. “How long?” she managed to say, because that was important. She couldn’t remember why just yet, but it was.

  “You’ve been out for twenty-four hours. Scared the shit out of everyone.”

  “Did they do something to my brain?”

  “No, hon. Just more scans and tests. You’ve been probed for everything from encephalitis to sickle-cell.” Stacy took the cup and refilled it from a plastic jug. “They were looking for some kind of cause.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” said Blue, pulling herself up on the pillow. The bone-deep tiredness had gone; maybe all she’d needed was some sleep. It had been a crazy couple of days. Witches on the kitchen floor, demonic possession, long lost relatives... “Oh my God.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Gloria,” said Blue.

  Stacy went pale. “Oh shit.”

  “She’s been down there for days. I haven’t...”

  “It’s okay,” said Stacy, grabbing her purse. “I’ll go. I’ll go right now. She’ll be fine. She’s probably just hungry.”

  Blue reached out and grabbed the strap of the purse. “No!”

  “No? Are you crazy? It’s bad enough I forgot all about her...”

  “...no, you can’t,” said Blue. “If you try to go into that house you’ll die.”

  Stacy stared down at her. “What?”

  “Stacy, listen to me. You remember that old lady who died? The evangelist woman?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That wasn’t just a stroke. There’s something in that house. It killed her and it did this to me.”

  “Like I give a shit,” said Stacy. “Ghost or no ghost, there are some things you just don’t do, and starving little old ladies in basements is one of them.”

  Blue sat up properly and braced herself to yank out the IV. Stacy leaned over and grabbed her hand. “Whoa, whoa – what the fuck are you doing?”

  “If you’re going, you’re not going alone,” said Blue. “Maybe if there’s two of us he won’t be able to get into both of our heads...”

  “The ghost?”

  “He’s not a ghost,” said Blue. “Ghosts were alive once. The only time this thing is alive is when he’s possessing someone, and he’s got a taste for it. He wants a body and he doesn’t care how he gets it; he’ll hollow a man out like a Halloween pumpkin and wear the rind like a hat until it rots. Just like he did with Gloria.”

  “Gloria? What do you mean?”

  She pulled the IV loose. “Okay, the best I can explain it,” she said. “Is that Gloria has been sharing a body with this thing for a while. She’s wearing out and he wants a new timeshare, only I don’t think he’s satisfied with a rerun of whatever arrangement he had with Gloria. He wants permanent ownership.” Blood ran down her arm and Blue turned briefly dizzy. It wasn’t helping that everything coming out of her mouth sounded like lunacy. “If it wasn’t for her keeping him inside her body he’d be jumping around possessing everyone, but she’s old and she’s sick and she can’t hold him much longer. That’s why she turned into a wolf.”

  Stacy blinked. “Ok-ay.”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” said Blue. “Your kid is a werewolf.”

  “I know,” said Stacy, and sighed. “Our lives are not like other people’s, are they?”

  “No. They’re not.” Blue searched the room for her clothes but found nothing. “Shit. I don’t have anything to wear...”

  “For the record,” said Stacy. “I still think this is a very bad idea.”

  “Yeah. I know. You and Gabe, but I don’t see I have any choice.” Her legs felt wobbly but she was up, she was standing, even if there was a fine breeze blowing around her ass. The hospital gown tied up at the back.

  “Here.” Stacy took off her long sleeved t-shirt and tied it around Blue’s waist, effectively providing some modesty in the rear. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “You don’t have to. Walk away and I’ll say you knew nothing about it.”

  Stacy sighed. “Yeah, I could,” she said. “But what kind of fucking friend would I be? Come on – let’s get out of here. Can you walk?”

  “Kinda.” Blue swayed on her feet. Her arm was still bleeding and she grabbed a pile of paper towels as she crept out of the door. She wondered if the fresh blood would do her any favors against Yael and for a second she wanted to run back, let them scan her and test her and probe her black and blue; anything but going back in that house.

  But, like Stacy said, there were just some things you didn’t do.

  “Do you have any iron?” said Blue, as she wobbled into the passenger seat of Stacy’s ramshackle truck.

  “Maiden?”

  “No. Iron-iron. Like Gloria’s butterfly necklace. He doesn’t like iron and he doesn’t like salt. Anything to keep him out.”

  Once Gloria had told her to keep her underpants on when she went upstairs, and Blue had never figured out if it was because of Yael or some old-fashioned injunction against getting pregnant. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help thinking that the hole in her head was going to be a gift to Yael. She flipped down the mirror to assess the damage.

  “Yeah, you’re going to be rocking the shaved side look for a while,” said Stacy. “Lucky for you it’s back in.”

  “The post-trepanation look,” said Blue, tentatively raising her fingers to the dressing on her partially shaved scalp. “You know what’s funny?”

  “I can’t say that I do.”

  “They used to do this to people in the Stone Age. They’d drill holes in people’s skulls to release the evil spirits that they thought caused disease.”

  Stacy caught her eye in the view mirror. “Sounds like a laugh riot.”

  Blue peeled back the paper towels; she had an idea. The bleeding in the crook of her arm had almost stopped, but she pinched the flesh hard to make it start again.

  “Jesus, what are you doing?”

  “Blood. He doesn’t like that either.” She dipped her finger in the blood. Her hand shook with the motion of the road and her own weakness, but she managed to smear an acceptable pentagram on her forehead.

  “Are you shitting me?” said Stacy.

  “I’ll do you when we get there. Is there any food? I’m starving.”

  Stacy opened the glove box and fished out a Luna bar from on top of the tangle of ancient cassette tapes and chewed up pacifiers, a motherly mess that reminded Blue of the first time she’d been in this truck, back when the world was ordinary. As she chewed she wondered if there was any going back, but deep down she knew there wasn’t. Once you knew what seemingly mundane things meant – the colorblind kid out sick from school every month, the nails driven into the door frame – there was no way not to see them.

  When they arrived at the house all these things lit up like neon in Blue’s mind. The yard looked less ramshackle for her slow victory against the mutant growing ivy, but now she knew why
that mirror hung beside the front door. Now she knew what those stains were on the lintel, or that darker patch of soil just beneath the porch where Axl had dragged a dead deer one night when his body hadn’t known whether it was changing from boy to man or from boy to wolf.

  Once you knew a witch lived there, it would always be the witch’s house.

  Blue pinched the crook of her arm again, the blood bubbling to the surface. “Here,” she said, holding out a finger to Stacy, who recoiled.

  “Ew. What is wrong with you?”

  “Please,” said Blue. “Just let me do this. If we’re going in there...”

  Stacy sighed and held her bangs back from her forehead. “Ugh. You know what? You’ve been hanging around with Gloria way too much. Me and her – we’re gonna have words, because you never used to be this weird before you moved in here.”

  “I don’t think I can help it,” said Blue, and turned to face the gate. If she really was Gloria’s granddaughter then the thing was in her, blood and bone, assuming you could hand down the gene for witchcraft like the gene for blue eyes, or lycanthropy.

  “Let me go first,” she said, and held her breath as she pushed the gate open.

  Nothing.

  It was quiet, a silky silence too smooth and perfect to mean anything good, the kind of silence that had rang in her ears that day she came home, sniffed cordite on the air and knew that she was alone in the house. The thought of death hustled her feet forwards and she kept going until her hand was on the door knob.

  No key, she thought, but the house wasn’t going to give her a break; it was unlocked.

  There was blood on the floor, her blood. It had gushed from her nose as she staggered to escape this place the last time and a tiny but clear voice in her head once again gasped at the extent of her insanity in returning. Out of old habit she looked up and saw that the shards of the bulb were still screwed into the light fitting, but there was no glass on the floor below, like someone had swept up but couldn’t reach to change the bulb.

  Blue hurried to the basement door and down the steps, fully expecting to find Gloria either dead or in a woeful state that would haunt her for the rest of her life.