Dust to Dust

by Karina Halle

  Michael laughed, empty and cold. “You ask where Perry is? Not where you are, how you got here, what is going to happen to you. But you ask where she is.”

  I feigned strength. “Where is Perry?” I repeated.

  He cocked his head, like a bird. Like a raptor. “She’s fine.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Here, of course,” he said. “Manhattan. She’s come looking for you.”

  My heart sank. How the hell did Perry know to come here?

  “I told her,” he said smugly, reading my face, or my thoughts.

  My fists clenched and unclenched. “Why?”

  “You don’t seem to be surprised to be here. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  I frowned at him, feeling rage and frustration begin to bubble up inside. He was changing the subject and I was walking right into it. “Appreciate it? Being here? How the fuck can I appreciate that? This place is hell.”

  He grinned at me like a snake. “I know. It always was, wasn’t it? That’s the whole beauty of it, don’t you see, Declan? This has always been hell.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m pretty fucking sure your hell was never as bad as mine.”

  He slowly got to his feet and dusted off the suit he was wearing. “You’re right. It wasn’t. But you had one thing that I didn’t.”

  “And what was that?” Somewhere in the distance, down the low tunnel of the cave, I heard faint screams that faded as quickly as they started.

  “You had love,” he said simply.

  I nearly laughed. Love was the one thing I didn’t have growing up. My mother was an abusive, alcoholic trainwreck, my father was a man devoid of feeling, except the pride he vested only in Michael.

  “We were both different,” he continued, taking a step toward me. His footfalls echoed off the dank walls. “Did you know that? That they were afraid of both of us?”

  “Why? Why were they afraid?” I’d always known that my parents recoiled from me, as if I were covered in a layer of dirt that would never wash off, though I never knew why. I always figured it was just because I wasn’t good enough as Michael, their golden boy. I was scrawny, weird, artistic – second best.

  But to hear that they were afraid of both of us, that made absolutely no sense.

  “You really don’t know,” he mused. Then he grinned to himself and shook his head. “No, I suppose you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t have lived your life the way you did. You would have embraced the change. Just like I did.”

  “Look,” I told him, “if you’re going to start spouting Changeling shit with me, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

  “And I used to think you were so open-minded. Oh, that’s right,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “I forgot you used to medicate yourself. Talk about closing one’s mind off.” I stared at him with hard eyes and he continued, “No, there is no Changeling shit, as you so eloquently say. You know our mother was sick, didn’t you?”

  I sighed noisily and my breath froze in the air. “In more ways than one.”

  “She was mentally weak…mentally curious. She strived for answers to her sorry life, she wanted ways to cope with what she saw – the horrors, the ghosts. I truly believe that she wanted what was best for her and marrying our father should have provided that. It at least provided money. But then again, I’m done with trying to figure out the shallow depths that lie inside each human.”

  I cocked my brow warily. Human?

  He noted my look and came even closer to me. The air filled with the smell of sour milk, rotted meat and I did what I could to breathe through my mouth. He stopped a foot away and again I was struck with a fuckton of fear, like it was just being dumped from above. Maybe I didn’t want to know what he was going to tell me.

  “Regine, your mother, was…not herself when she had you. Not that she had any real idea of who she was, but she was better, you know, before we were born. I obviously did a number on her, so she tried to fix that. She asked for help. As before, she got help, in what she perceived as the wrong form. She was possessed when she got pregnant, possessed while she carried you.”

  He let that sink in for a moment. It took more than a moment. My mother was possessed when she had me? Sadly, it didn’t shock me. She acted like a wild creature throughout my childhood, until her death, until I accidently killed her. It almost made sense – almost.

  “If you ask me,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, to project an air of nonchalance that I didn’t feel, “I don’t think there was a moment where she wasn’t possessed. You saw her, the way she was.”

  He nodded. “It’s true. That is enough to make you go crazy, to know that you’ve had someone else inside you, pulling the strings, controlling the ride. To fear that your child may not be as totally human as you had hoped.”

  There was that word again. Human.

  “Are you saying I’m not human?” I asked, wincing at how incredibly stupid the words sounded coming out of my mouth. The fact was though, if he told me I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been surprised about that either. It would explain at least some of the bogus shit I’d been putting up with.

  My brother gave me an uncharacteristically shy smile. “You’re human, Declan. You have some abilities, as you know, that make you special.” He snorted at his choice of words, as if I could ever be that. “But you’re still a product of your mother and father, no matter what residue remains.” His smile now turned pitiful. “You are nothing like me at all. I’m not sure why you thought you were the one they were afraid of.”

  I didn’t understand. But I felt it. The malevolence, the evil. It came off of him just as it did from the fiery pit at the end of the cave or from the oozing black walls in our old hallway.

  I was afraid of him. I always had been. Not because he was better than me. No, I was quickly figuring that out now. But because he was worse.

  “Who are you?” I asked him, my voice rough and ragged, caught in my throat.

  Another smile with dead eyes. “I used to be your brother. A very long time ago.”

  “What happened to Michael?” His name sounded strange on my lips.

  He shrugged. “He was phased out. He wasn’t very strong. He wasn’t like you, you see. You had some inner strength that he didn’t have. Wasn’t his fault, of course. You had your parents. He did not.”

  “He had them too,” I said, knowing it was going to be refuted. It was strange talking about my brother in the third person to my brother. But I knew that wasn’t him. I should have always known but I was too fucking self-absorbed to even notice he had changed over the years, distancing himself from me, my mother and Pippa. We had never been close, so it was nearly impossible to tell when the rift had started. But it had and now I was feeling the first feelings of loss over him.

  “He did, at first,” he said. “But I think your father always knew that he wasn’t his. He revered him out of fear, not pride.”

  “What the hell do you mean he wasn’t his?” I asked incredulously, trying not to look this man, who looked like Michael but wasn’t Michael, in the eyes. Those fathomless, oily eyes.

  “Your mother wasn’t you when she had you. But you still had a father, your father. Michael had neither.”

  I shook my head slowly, unable to understand. My thoughts felt like they were trying to form through molasses. “How is that possible?”

  “Anything is possible, Declan,” he said smoothly, adjusting his tie. “Your mother was taken over for her first pregnancy. Nearly all the way. She still had a shred of humanity in her, but it wasn’t enough. Not then. She was able to…consort…with something she ought to have not. It wasn’t your father.”

  I blinked. Now we were going from The Changeling to some Rosemary’s Baby shit. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around it. I was open-minded but what I was hearing was too fucking much. My brother was the product of my possessed mother and a demon? My family had just turned into every seventies horror movie cliché. Why didn’t I just start running aroun
d with a chainsaw and call myself Leatherface?

  And yet for how fucking ridiculous and unbelievable it all sounded, I knew deep down that this was the truth. That made it worse, somehow, to have your guts tell you that all this crazy shit was as real as the as the balls between your legs.

  All this damn time I had been living with a brother who wasn’t really mine. All this time I thought my parents had been afraid of me, when it was Michael they had feared. No wonder my father took off when he did. No wonder my mother drank herself into the abyss. No wonder I had turned out so utterly fucked up.

  But in the end I was still human. I was still me, no matter “residue” he said had stayed behind. I was no demon child. Not like him.

  “It’s a lot to take,” he said, eying me carefully. The air around us snapped, growing colder, screams starting again, wailing from along the tunnel.

  “I’m an old pro,” I said cautiously. All the chit chat and the revelations, they weren’t for nothing. All of this was going somewhere and as the seconds ticked by in this cave, in this house, in this world I wasn’t even sure existed, I was getting closer to some reveal I wasn’t going to like. Something worse than, “your brother is a demon.”

  So I bit the bullet. “Why did you come for me now? Why am I here, wherever this is?” I took in a deep, icy breath. “What do you want from me?”

  He put his hand out in front of him and lifted one finger. “Why did I come for you now? Because things in your life are starting to align. The company you keep is becoming more and more like you.” I opened my mouth to question that but he lifted another finger. “Why are you here? Because this was where hell began for you, for Michael…” he looked down the tunnel, to the fire. “Where the walls are weakest.” He studied me carefully. “You’ve been close to it, you know.”

  “To what?”

  He grinned. “To Hell. You nearly went there once to bring back your dear beloved Perry. Your nanny called it the Thin Veil and it is thin. It’s growing thinner. And you’re able to punch holes into it. You can step into the Veil and from there you can step into Hell. And those like me, we will be able to do the same.” His eyes flitted over to the flames. “We’ve been waiting a long time to come over. Not everyone is as lucky as I am.”

  Clarity came over me with a kick of nausea. I knew where this was going. Every stretched nerve in my body was telling to run far away from the truth. But of course, I was a dumb fuck who wasn’t going anywhere.

  He lifted up the third finger. “And finally, what do I want from you? Declan, you’re special, so fucking special, as you would say. But I, we,” he gestured down the tunnel, “We don’t want just you. Alone, you’re not as good as you think you are. Together, though, that is a different story.”

  I swallowed hard, unable to feel my feet. “Perry,” I whispered.

  He nodded with ease. “Yes. Perry. She makes everything you do…better. But it’s not just her. It’s what she’s brought with her.” He took another step and lay his hand on my shoulder. It felt like the weight of the world. “All of them, in this place, will cause a rift you’ll never be able to piece back together.”

  He leaned in, so he was whispering in my ear. His voice was no longer human. It conjured up images of beasts and death. “And, with my help, you’re going to lead them straight back here, to the house that life and love forgot. Aren’t you, Declan?”

  I found myself nodding as he pulled back.

  Flames danced in his dirty eyes until the orange glow was all I could see.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Perry

  Heat wavered above the pavement and the air stunk like garbage. Though it was the end of May, New York City was going through an early heat wave and we were feeling the brunt of it.

  Me, Ada and Maximus had been walking up and down the city streets, searching for answers in a city that wasn’t providing anything but stink and hot air. Maximus was insistent on us taking the Subway but for whatever reason, Ada wasn’t too keen on the idea. In fact, every time he brought it up, her face paled a little. I’d never known her to have a fear of the underground but she seemed to believe that being in the unrelenting sunshine, walking on tired feet, was much better.

  As we walked, Maximus went over the ways we could possibly track him down. We did internet searches for Regine Foray but they were coming up blank, as if his mother had never existed. The same went for Declan and Michael. Still, Maximus thought New York’s City Clerk could help us with records.

  I felt a bit like an investigative reporter. I knew we could have probably holed up at a coffee shop and done most of this over the web, but there was something more proactive and productive about treading pavement and searching for answers face-to-face. It didn’t seem right to just whittle the day away on the internet while Dex was out there somewhere.

  I tried really hard not to think about him, about what might be happening, whether he was in any pain, about why he was taken. But I wasn’t made of stone. I slipped up, often, and my body nearly crumbled each time. The thought of losing Dex was far too much to bear.

  Luckily, Maximus, with his determination, kept me moving, and Ada, with her sweet, subtle displays of affection, let me know I wasn’t alone. And with them, we kept walking, block after Manhattan block, searching for something, anything.

  After a visit to the city clerk turned up nothing, we ended up checking out the New York Public Library. When I remembered the lions coming to life in Ghostbusters, I laughed to myself and then was immediately met with sorrow when I realized how badly I wanted to make a joke to Dex about it. We had been the ghostbusters. Now there was no Experiment in Terror and no Dex.

  We grabbed a quick sandwich at a kiosk and found a bench to sit on in Bryant Park. I stared up at the buildings towering over us, trying to find respite in their strange familiarity. It was weird being in a place you’d never been to but had seen so many times that you could trick yourself into thinking you had. Ada was having a ball people watching and muttering about how all the fashionistas are spotted in Bryant Park during fashion week.

  It was then that a trick of the eye, the light hitting the door of a taxi cab as it swung open that caused the air to warp and shimmer, that I was struck with a terrible idea.

  I had been getting no more visits from Pippa, but it was she who held all the answers. Even though she had been weak, ill and brutally vague during our last correspondence, she could go anywhere, see anything from inside the Veil. She would know where Dex was. And if she wasn’t going to come to me, I was going to have to go to her.

  “Perry,” Maximus said, his low voice drawing me out of my thoughts.

  I snapped my eyes to him with renewed verve. “What?”

  He shook his head ever so gently. “Don’t even think about it.’

  I frowned. “What are you talking about?” He couldn’t have just heard my thoughts, could he have? He wasn’t like us.

  He slowly licked his lips and turned away, his gaze resting on the people passing by, hurrying, going about their busy but normal lives. He seemed to have an internal debate with himself. He sighed and then leaned back against the bench, his wide frame nearly knocking Ada over the side. She gave a little grunt of annoyance at his intrusion into her personal space.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he finally said, his words measured, as if he wasn’t sure how much each one was worth.

  “You can hear my thoughts?” I asked loudly, then quickly lowered my voice when I realized we were in public. Ada stopped eating, mid-chew, and craned her head to give him a look.

  He gave me a quick smile. “Sometimes. You’re right. I’m not like you. But I still pick up on things and I know enough to tell you not to go into the Thin Veil. I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “Pippa.”

  “Hold up,” Ada said, raising a finger in the air. “Let me get this straight. You, Ginger Rogers, you know about the Thin Veil. About our grandma. You
can hear Perry’s thoughts.”

  He nodded, not seeming to appreciate another nickname.

  “And how do you know all this?” I asked. “For how long?” I thought back to my possession and was hit with anger. “And for God’s sake, don’t tell me you knew back when I was possessed!”

  “Perry,” Maximus said gently, “I couldn’t hear your thoughts back then. It wasn’t until after you went into the Veil that I was able to pick up on you. You do remember the Veil, right? How Dex had to go in there and pull you out. You do not want to go back in there. If Pippa wanted you to –”

  “Oh fuck off,” I sneered. “What the hell do you know about her? How dare you keep all of this to yourself!”

  “I didn’t,” he said quickly. “Dex knows.”

  My eyes widened then turned hard. “What?” I roared, getting to my feet, my iced coffee splashing out of the cup. “Dex knows?! Since when?”

  He looked momentarily frightened but answered with conviction. “Since New Orleans.”

  Before I had a chance to stew on that, to simmer on the fact that Dex had kept something from me, Ada spoke up.

  “And what exactly does Dex know,” Ada asked. “You can hear Perry’s thoughts. You know about the Veil? What else?” She narrowed her eyes at him and leaned in closer. “Just who are you, you ginger freak?”

  A wash of shame came over his brow. “I am Maximus Jacobs. A mere mortal like you both.”

  “Mortal?” I repeated, finding it an odd choice of word. Everything about this was odd.

  He nodded. “Yes. But, as I’m sure you’re guessing, it wasn’t always that way.”

  “That’s totally not what I was guessing,” Ada commented.

  Maximus looked to me. “You remember your Jacob, right?”

  My Jacob. Spikey-haired, damaged, totally inhuman. He led me astray when I was fifteen and put the rest of my life into turbulent action. “How could I forget?” Then, wait. How did he know about them?

  He raised his brows expectantly but I was too slow to piece it together. “Well,” he said, “I was Dex’s Jacob. Before that I was someone else’s. And after that I was Rose’s.”