by Kelly Creagh
The crank ground to a halt, the repeated word dropping several octaves, slurring into one incomprehensible drone before dying out.
“I didn’t mean it,” Isobel murmured. After a moment, she shouted, “I didn’t mean any of that!”
Startled by the sound of a low click followed by a long creak, Isobel whirled to face the open archway leading to the rear of the shop. Through it, she could see that the door leading to the attic, the DO NOT ENTER door, the BEWARE OF BESS door, had opened itself.
Approaching the door, she could see the narrow set of stairs just within.
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She crossed the threshold and, looking up, saw that where the ceiling should have been lay only open skies. The low-flying clouds skimmed past at a frightening speed, the cavernous spaces in between their folds illuminating with brilliant flashes of violet lightning.
Fighting vertigo, Isobel groped for the stairs. She mounted them, watching her feet climb until she reached the top landing.
When she raised her head again, she saw that just as there had been no ceiling, no walls existed either. Only their blackened and charred remains fringed the parameters of the open room.
Black trees crowded the freestanding platform, their arms outstretched to the passing clouds.
In the middle of the room, wearing a long black coat she had never seen before, stood Varen, his back to her.
Between his shoulder blades, the image of the same upside-down crow from his green mechanics’ jacket blazed in pure white against the ebony fabric. Only, just like everything else, the bird was reversed, now upright with its wings outspread as though in the midst of taking flight.
Clenched in one fist, she saw that he held her pink ribbon, the sash belonging to the dress she had worn to the Grim Facade. When she’d been there with him, on the other side of the purple chamber, unable to free him, Isobel had untied the ribbon from around her waist and given it to him as a token. A symbol of her promise to return for him.
He turned to face her slowly, the wind teasing at his hair, tugging at the hem of his long coat.
Isobel took a step toward him but stopped the moment their eyes met.
His stare, black and soulless, so far from the penetrating emerald gaze she remembered, rendered her immobile.
Lifting his arm out to the side, he let the slip of pink satin dangle from his hand. Then he unclenched his fist, letting go of the ribbon.
It fell, pooling right in the center of a blackened scorch mark that marred the floor.
“Wait!” she called as he began to turn away again.
But it was too late. Her eyes were open and she was back in her bed, awake and alone in her darkened room.
18
Burned
“You want me to go in with you?” Gwen asked.
It was the one and only question she had posed to Isobel between picking her up from practice and arriving at Nobit’s Nook.
Isobel had not told Gwen about the previous night’s dream, but she hadn’t had to invent a reason to go to the bookshop, either. Gwen’s response to Isobel’s request for a ride had been uncharacteristically though blessedly simple. “Okay,” she’d said, “let’s go. ”
Now, staring out the passengers’-side window of the Cadillac, Isobel blinked at what she saw and then blinked again, as though doing so would make it disappear.
But the Cougar remained, parked exactly the same way it had been in the dream.
Its ebony finish gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight, which had begun to break through the thinning screen of clouds. From where they sat parked on the opposite side of the street, Isobel could clearly read the hateful words YOU’RE DEAD FREAK, which Brad had once carved across the driver’s-side door.
She forced herself to look away.
“Isobel?”
“Stay here, please,” she murmured, and grabbed the door handle.
“What about that old guy?” Gwen asked as Isobel climbed out. “What if he tries to yell at you or tells you to get out? At least let me play decoy. ”
“He’ll remember you from last time,” Isobel said, glancing back. “Besides, he won’t see me. ”
“Yeah, nobody does incognito like a cheerleader,” Gwen scoffed.
Isobel tried for a smile, but it didn’t want to come. “It’ll only take a second,” she said, and shut the door. Rounding the Cadillac, she checked for traffic and was about to cross the street when Gwen rolled down her window and leaned out.
“You have your phone on you, right?”
Isobel nodded. She waited for a car to pass, its tires swishing over the rain-slicked pavement as it rushed by. Then she zipped her parka all the way to her chin, tugged the hood over her head, and hurried across the street.
She paused in front of the store and glanced up.
The sign for Nobit’s Nook hung crooked, dangling from its rusted bracket by a single metal loop. This time, though, the letters were not in reverse.
The tightness in her chest squeezed harder and she struggled to draw her next breath.
For the entire day, she had carried a knot of dread within her. Through each agonizing hour at school, her pulse had beat with an uneven rhythm, her gut churning with sick anticipation of this moment.
Could Varen really have heard her say those things to Mr. Swanson? Was that why she had seen his reflection in her phone during lunch? Could he have been there with her somehow, following and listening in?
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Even if he had heard her, he wouldn’t really believe she’d meant any of it, would he?
But then . . . there had been the kiss in the locker room, too.
Isobel gripped the cuffs of her sleeves as a swift breeze stung her cheeks and caused the sign above her to rock and creak.
She channeled her focus to the front door of Nobit’s Nook and the flip sign inside that read OPEN.
Though she knew she would not have the answers to all her questions until she came face-to-face with Varen, she also knew that the answer to at least one of them could be found inside this store.
Isobel’s thoughts returned to the first time she’d ever dreamed of Reynolds.
That night he’d entered her room like a phantom, warning her about the danger behind Varen’s actions while also returning the volume of Poe’s complete works she’d discarded earlier that afternoon. And though Reynolds had assured her from the start that she was dreaming, Isobel still found the book the next morning, a solid testament to the realness of the encounter.
But did that mean she would find what she feared she would here, upstairs, in the attic?
The only way she had avoided falling into the sinkhole of doubt until this moment had been to hold on to the possibility that when she finally arrived at the bookstore, she would discover no evidence to prove that what she had witnessed in her dream had truly taken place.
After all, how could she trust what she’d seen when she had been tricked by false images before?
Gwen had said that demons could twist minds.
But it was hard to tell whose mind Lilith was trying to turn with lies. Isobel’s or Varen’s?
Though both the car and the hanging sign matched up with her dream, it all brought to mind something Mr. Swanson had once said back at the beginning of the year when they’d been studying Othello. He’d explained to the class that what made the villain, Iago, such a convincing liar was his ability to make things appear a certain way to his enemy.
Perception had been his weapon.
With that thought, Isobel gained the courage to move. She hurried up the short flight of stairs, twisted the knob, and pulled open the door. As she slipped inside, the stiff scent of aged paper, dust, and stale air greeted her. She turned to face the door as it closed, careful not to allow its hanging belt of Christmas bells to jangle too harshly.
She kept her back to the shop interio
r, listening and waiting to see if anyone had noticed her come in. With her head down, her face partially hidden by the hood of her parka, she risked a glance over one shoulder. Seeing no one, she took a quick inventory of her surroundings.
Tall wooden bookcases stood in close proximity to one another. Their shelves, once stuffed to the point of bowing, now seemed to hold a much lighter burden. There were even a few barren spots in between clusters of worn-looking volumes and stacked tomes.
The high-reaching shelves stretched long across the floor, halfway blocking the copper-colored light that struggled to illuminate the tight aisles in between.
Isobel heard rustling and, glancing the other way, spotted a round middle-aged woman in a navy-blue raincoat. She stood over a bin of old magazines with a handwritten sign on the side indicating that they’d been marked down to twenty-five cents an issue. The woman looked up, offering Isobel a distracted smile before going back to leafing through the magazines.
Other than the woman, the store appeared to be empty of customers.
Careful to keep her steps as quiet as possible, Isobel slunk between two of the tallest shelves. She placed one foot directly in front of the other as though walking a tightrope and trailed close to the shelf at her right.
Her ears strained for the sound of Bruce’s haggard cough, though she heard nothing.
A few more steps took her to the end of the bookcase, and peeking around its edge, she found him.
The bookstore owner sat behind the glass display case that served as the front counter, half his face obscured by the ancient push-button register.
His single visible eye, its center dark as black coffee, stared directly at her.
Isobel gasped. She darted behind the bookcase again. Whipping her head around to peer back toward the front of the shop, she had to fight the urge to make a run for the door. Instead she held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and waited, but the yelling she had anticipated never came. When she didn’t hear coughing, either, she suddenly remembered what had happened the first time she’d ever walked into the store. The old man had stared at her then, too, but she’d discovered a moment later that apparently that was the way he slept—with one of his eyes (the one that just so happened to be glass) wide open.
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Isobel leaned out to peek around the bookcase again.
The shop owner sat in the exact same position.
He looked frailer than she remembered, his once round body having shrunken enough so the sleeves of his thick brown sweater hung from his arms in loose folds, like the skin of a bloodhound. His hair had thinned as well since the last time she’d seen him, the shock of Einstein-white gone, leaving mere wisps on his otherwise bald head.
His breathing, slow and rhythmic, came with a wet, rattling sound. He didn’t blink. But when he didn’t cough, either, Isobel took that as the most telling sign of all.
She released the breath she’d been holding and took a cautious step out from behind the shelf. Watching him closely as she crept past the counter, Isobel paused again when his other eye came into view. As she’d suspected, it was pinched shut.
At the far end of the counter, opposite where Bruce sat, a gramophone, identical to the one in her dream, caught her eye.
The seed of dread within her dropped out of her heart and into her gut. There it grew, transforming into quiet panic.
She hurried to the rear of the shop, taking the short step up and through the archway, into the section that housed the nonfiction books and encyclopedias. She ignored the stacks of boxes and the emptied shelves, heading straight for the door that would take her to the attic.
Below the DO NOT ENTER sign, she saw the yellowing and far more ominous handwritten note that bore the familiar words BEWARE OF BESS.
Before she knew what she was doing, Isobel ripped the handwritten sign free, crumpled it, then let it drop to the floor. She pulled the door open.
The enclosed stairway stretched up before her. Above, the attic room appeared to be intact, no longer exposed to the sky as it had been in the dream. Solid walls met with the wood-and-rafter ceiling, and cold light poured in from the window above the staircase, dust particles drifting through the sharply slanted shafts like flotsam.
Isobel moved beyond the threshold, pulling the door shut behind her. She mounted the stairs, and as she moved through the patchwork of light and dimness, she thought she could smell the bitter scent of seared wood.
She opened her arms and placed her hands to the wood paneling on either side of her. Her fingers trailed the coarse surface, bumping over the grooves as she used the walls to guide herself up, every step taking its turn to groan beneath her.
When Isobel reached the top landing, she found the attic room just how she remembered it, right down to the little café-style table and matching chairs that sat beneath the small oval window overlooking the street below.
For a second, Isobel felt as though she was reliving a moment she’d experienced before, that time she’d rushed up the steps after forgetting the Poe book Varen had lent her.
She’d heard voices coming from the tiny attic room. His, and a woman’s . . .
But when she’d reached the top of the stairs, she’d found the room empty, just like it was now.
Her attention fell on the odd black scorch mark that marred the very center of the floorboards, taking the place of the ragged orange-brown throw rug, which lay rolled up against the far wall.
Her ribbon did not lie within the perimeters of the black mark. Or anywhere else.
The fear that had gripped her throughout the day loosened in an instant, but only by a fraction. Because, despite her ribbon’s absence, the attic’s emptiness answered nothing. Her uncertainty remained, growing twofold as she stared at the burn mark.
Isobel drifted toward the spot, keeping her footsteps light as she made her way to stand in the center of the starburst-shaped blot.
Only when her shoes matched up with two similarly shaped smudges branded into the wood did she realize where it was she stood.
This was the spot in which she had ignited Varen’s journal in the dreamworld.
In that moment, the two worlds had been so close, practically superimposed over each other. She had belonged to both realms, and like the floor, she should have burned.
Yet she hadn’t.
Her thoughts went back to what Pinfeathers had said in her living room about how she had evaded destruction.
Even Reynolds hadn’t had much of an explanation for why she had survived. His response to that particular question had been murky at best, filled with flimsy guesswork—another reminder that, despite what he wanted her to believe, he didn’t know everything.
The low pulsing buzz of her cell phone cut the strand of her thoughts.
She drew her phone out and flipped it open. Scowling at the screen, she watched the time display jump, the numbers changing at random. The service bars faded down, flickering.
Isobel moved toward the window, hoping for better reception. But as soon as her feet left the black marking, her normal display returned. The bars reappeared and the time showed five forty-five.
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She glanced from the phone to the black mark and then back again, this time reading Gwen’s text.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
I’M IN THE ATTIC, Isobel thumbed in. She hit the send button.
Her phone hummed loudly in her hand.
AND?
AND NOTHING, she typed. I’M COMING BACK DOWN.
She felt her phone buzz a third time, but she ignored the incoming text and shut the device. Then she made her way to the stairs and sped down them.
Placing a hand on the knob, she stopped short of twisting it when she heard a slam, and a harsh clang of bells.
Her first thought was that the woman browsing through the discount bins had left in a hurry.
But t
he deep, angry voice she heard next told her she’d guessed wrong.
“Where is he?” a man growled. “Wake up, Nobit! We’re going to do this every day. Every day until you tell me where he’s gone. Do you hear me?”
Isobel shrank back from the door.
That voice . . . she knew it. She had heard it yell and threaten like this before.
It belonged to Varen’s father.
19
Things Buried
Isobel took a timid step forward. She pressed herself close to the door, listening.
“I’m old, but I’m not deaf, Mr. Nethers,” she heard Bruce say. “If you’re going to shout, you can turn around and take yourself back outside. My ears can’t take it. ”
“You know what else will be hard to take?” Varen’s dad said. “A lawsuit. For obstruction of justice. That’s lying, Nobit. ”
“I haven’t lied to anyone,” Bruce said. “I’m not keeping anything from you. I don’t know where your son is, Mr. Nethers. I’ve already told the police everything I know. In detail. So stop coming into my shop day after day, scaring off my customers and bellowing like a fool. If you weren’t the boy’s father and I didn’t see this for the deferred if not profoundly mangled attempt at parenthood that it is, I’d slam you with a lawsuit of my own. For harassment!”
“You are a liar!” Varen’s dad said, shouting again. The sound of a sharp, rattling bang made Isobel jump. She could picture Varen’s father slamming an enormous palm on the glass countertop. “How am I supposed to believe a damn word you say? You’ve lied to me before when I’ve come in here looking for him!”
“I didn’t lie when I told you I hadn’t seen him. If I haven’t seen him, that doesn’t mean he’s not here. You’ve taught him, however indirectly, to be very cautious with his whereabouts, Mr. Nethers. And I can’t say I blame him for that. Besides, I’m too old to be trekking up and down stairs after teenage boys. He wanted a place to study, undisturbed, and so I gave it to him. ”
“Along with too many other excuses not to come home,” Varen’s dad snapped. “That stupid job, for one. That junk-pile car sitting outside. ”
Suddenly it dawned on Isobel why Varen’s car had been parked outside the bookshop. When his father threatened to take the car away, Isobel remembered how Varen had argued that Bruce had been the one to cosign the loan, not him. And since the Cougar was here now, that had to mean Bruce must have paid the loan. He must be keeping it on purpose, she thought, believing that Varen would return.
