“It’s possible if the veil is weakening.” Tristan sighed heavily. “And if that’s true, it means there could be more of this. A lot more.”
Dylan tried to imagine it: wraiths appearing in the real world at random, anywhere and at any time. People being sucked from their lives into the afterlife, with no ferryman to protect them and get them safely to the line. She paled, horrified.
“No,” she croaked, instinctively rearing away from the idea. “No, it can’t be.” She didn’t sound confident, and she didn’t feel it either.
“What do you think happened, then?” Tristan asked as they left the park and turned into Dylan’s road. “Where’d the bus go?”
“I’ve no idea,” Dylan replied. She racked her brain for a different explanation, a less terrifying explanation. “Maybe the bus driver’s gone nuts and driven them away somewhere, to hold them for ransom or something.”
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “Right,” he said sarcastically.
“I’m not saying that’s definitely what happened,” Dylan snapped, feeling defensive.
“I know,” Tristan reached out and tugged on her ponytail, a familiar gesture that had her smiling ruefully at him, her temper melting away. “I just want to be sure. I’m trying to protect us. I don’t want the—”
He stopped short. And he stopped walking.
“The Inquisitor?” Dylan prompted. Tristan ignored her.
He never ignored her.
“Tristan?” She gave him a little shove. “Tristan!”
He was frozen, just like he had been when…
Just when her concern was giving way to panic, he suddenly surged forward in a rush of motion and grabbed Dylan by both arms.
“It’s here,” he told her. “The Inquisitor, I can feel it. Here.”
Unable to draw out of Tristan’s grip, Dylan looked round, but all she could see was her street. Two long lines of tenement flats, parked cars lining the road. An old woman walking slowly with her shopping on the opposite pavement while a black cat tiptoed daintily across the road.
“Where?” she asked.
Tristan didn’t answer, he just started running.
CHAPTER 14
“Susanna.” Jack mangled her name, the syllables coming out a garbled rush. He took a deep breath, visibly steadied himself, then whispered, “I can’t swim.”
“It’s all right,” Susanna said. “We’re not swimming, remember. We’re rowing.”
“Are we rowing an invisible boat?”
Susanna smirked. The sarcastic edge to Jack’s tone wasn’t quite enough to mask his panic. And it was a reasonable question, she supposed. Looking across the lake, her eyes carefully unfocused, the world was a blur – particularly the darting shadows, which didn’t seem to be getting easier to ignore with practice, unfortunately. Even so, there was clearly no boat waiting for them on the shoreline.
“That building over there’s a boat shed,” she said. “Our boat’s inside.”
“It can’t be much of a boat,” Jack said dubiously, no doubt eyeing the size of the shed.
Susanna made her way over by feel and memory – the wasteland might be blood-red and burning, but the slope here was pretty much the same. She wished she could say the same for the water.
It looked like it was breathing. Black and viscous, it undulated like some great sleeping monster. Breathing slowly in and out… just waiting for some idiot to try rowing across and start poking it with oars.
Nothing good came of poking a sleeping monster with a stick.
“Help me with the door?” Susanna asked, hefting at the beam lodged in two couplings. The whole thing had swollen shut – though Susanna couldn’t see how, not with the heat sucking all the moisture in the air – and wouldn’t budge. Together, she and Jack managed to wrestle it free and Jack tossed it to the side. It landed with a satisfying thunk and then an eerie hiss as it skidded on the stones.
“Hey,” Jack said quietly, making Susanna pause, a hand on each door, ready to haul them open. “There’s not a tonne of wraiths in there, is there? Ready to pounce on us?”
“It’s the kind of place they’d like,” Susanna agreed, “but there shouldn’t be. It looked rickety but it’s sealed pretty well. There aren’t any holes for them to sneak in.”
Smiling reassuringly (though she doubted Jack would see, he’d be carefully not looking at everything, just like she was), Susanna threw her weight back, tugging on the doors. There was a screech and a scrape, the doors resisting, but then they gave way, opening in a sudden rush that had Susanna stumbling backwards, struggling to keep her footing.
Less than a second later, she lost the battle completely as Jack’s fears came true and wraith upon wraith came flooding out of the shed. Susanna gaped at them, surprised into staring, and the wraiths pounced on her mistake, diving for her prostrate form.
“Shut your eyes!” she screamed to Jack, throwing her arms up over her face, both to protect herself and so she wouldn’t be so stupid as to look at them again. She hissed out a breath as pain radiated up both her forearms, the wraiths clawing at her skin and screeching gleefully as the iron scent of her blood filled the air and sent them into a frenzy.
They battered her, slicing past her body, diving at her head close enough to tangle their talons in her hair and rip chunks from her scalp. Susanna lay still, ignoring the pain that demanded she move, demanded she defend herself against the onslaught. Harder still was ignoring the way Jack was calling out to her, asking if she was all right, how badly she was hurt.
“Just stay put!” she yelled. “If we ignore them, they’ll settle and it’ll be OK. Just… don’t open your eyes yet. Not when they’re so crazed. Jack?” No answer. “Jack, tell me you hear me! Tell me you understand!”
It took a moment to come, a moment which sorely tested Susanna’s determination to keep her eyes shut and her face covered, but Jack’s strained “All right” reached her over the cacophony coming from the wraiths.
Susanna waited. She forced herself to breathe deeply and evenly. Counted to a hundred and then the same backwards. Still, it seemed like the wraiths weren’t giving up. They’d been close, the ambush stunning her enough to drop her focus. They’d drawn her blood, and now they were desperate to taste it. The lull in ferocity that Susanna was waiting for might never come.
But she couldn’t take Jack across the lake like this. Though she’d checked on him often enough to know that he was still there, that he was all right, she could hear little pants and gasps. She knew he was terrified. That he was frustrated and angry he couldn’t protect her, help her. If they went out on the water, his own emotions would be enough to toss them into a storm the little wooden boat couldn’t handle. The creatures that lived beneath, that skulked and waited in the deep, wouldn’t have to do anything. Jack would doom himself.
“Jack,” Susanna called. “Sing me a song.”
Again, he made her wait for a response. Then it came.
“What?!”
“A song,” Susanna repeated. “Sing something for me.” She waited, but nothing happened. “Do that one I like, the one about the boy on a train.”
“Seriously?!” Jack’s tone dripped incredulity.
“Yes,” Susanna replied. “Seriously.” She was no singer, but she did her best to belt out the opening couple of lines.
Mercifully, Jack took over after that, and Susanna just listened, trying to pretend that the wraiths didn’t exist, that Jack’s ‘life’ wasn’t dangling precariously over the abyss. Because Jack had a beautiful voice. It had taken him a long time to reveal that to her, and he’d been hideously embarrassed, but he’d taught Susanna several songs that he knew anyway. And this one was her favourite.
She joined in with the chorus, the lyrics not as uplifting as usual, but hopefully doing the job of giving Jack an anchor, something to focus on other than the fact that he very likely might die.
The song ended and Susanna quickly prompted, “Another.”
She thought she caught a
grumbled complaint – something about being ‘off her head’ – but another song soon started up and Susanna was sure that Jack’s voice was stronger, the tremble fading away. He sang about a man, a rambler, and the woman who waited behind for him. It was a beautiful song, one Susanna hadn’t heard before, and it almost brought her to tears. She tried to listen hard to the lyrics, to remember them.
If she could, she’d sing it to herself in the future. Something to remember Jack by.
“OK,” Susanna said when he was finished, the words serving to steady her now more than him. “OK, keep your eyes closed. We’re going to feel our way to the boat. We don’t need to see to get it in the water.”
Susanna wasn’t sure, but she thought the wraiths might be less demented, less angry, as if the music had soothed them as well. Do they recognise the music? she wondered, but just as quickly she dismissed the idea. There was nothing human left in the wraiths.
It didn’t matter anyway. It was time to move.
“And what are we going to do then?” Jack demanded. “Don’t tell me you’re going to row with your eyes shut?”
“One problem at a time,” Susanna snapped.
She froze, halfway to her feet, and drew in a deep breath. She needed to stay cool. They needed to stay cool.
Her searching fingers found the rough, uneven wood of the boat, small splinters slicing into her skin as she ran her hands along the prow, looking for good handholds but really just centring herself. Once she was sure that she wouldn’t be distracted by the wraiths, she opened her eyes and focused hard on the bleached silvery-grey wood. Taking a deep breath, she leaned back and heaved. The boat skidded several feet then Susanna had to stop and catch her breath before preparing for another pull.
“Here,” Jack said, his shoulder brushing past her as he moved to the back of the boat and put both hands on it. “Let me help.”
Together, they dragged and pushed the boat out of the shed and along the beach a short way before shoving it back down towards the shore.
“Get in,” Susanna told Jack. “You don’t want to stick your feet in that. I’ll push the boat the last little bit. It’ll be easy enough now.”
She didn’t want to put her feet in that oozing, oily liquid either, but they had to get the boat afloat one way or another.
Jack didn’t argue, climbing inside, but she noticed that his movements were stiff and stilted, as if he wasn’t at home in his body. He kept his face carefully blank, but she could feel the tension vibrating off him.
“Find something to stare at,” she advised. “Out on the water, it’s going to be harder to ignore the wraiths.”
He did find something to stare at: her. His grey eyes fixed on her face like she was the one thing tethering him to life (which, she supposed, she was) and Susanna grimaced, a little uncomfortable with the close scrutiny. She didn’t want Jack to catch her own nerves, her own hesitation. He needed to stay as calm as possible.
Please, Susanna thought, please don’t let me have to go swimming.
She shoved, hard, and the little rowing boat sliced into the gloopy, tar-like water. She had one foot in the stuff – which was hot against her ankle instead of freezing like it should be – when she felt the boat begin to glide freely, the lake supporting its weight. Not wanting to walk any further in, she vaulted, landing with a thump into the boat and making it rock wildly.
Jack let out a wordless protest, flinging his hands out to grip the edges.
“Sorry,” Susanna muttered. She took her seat but ignored the waiting oars. “It’s all right,” she said. “We’re fine. We’ll just let the boat settle and then we’ll get going.”
The boat had already settled; it was Jack Susanna was worried about. He was bone white and looked like he was going to throw up. He needed to calm down – Susanna did not want to see what a storm looked like in the real wasteland.
Surprisingly, the wraiths didn’t follow them out onto the water. Susanna couldn’t understand it – there was nothing holding them back, no barrier that she could see – but they remained on the shore. When she risked a glance over her shoulder to look at them, she saw the whole horde that had been lurking in the boathouse, waiting to ambush them, darting to and fro, obviously agitated but unwilling – or unable – to cross the shoreline onto the open water.
“Jack!” she gasped. “Look!”
It went completely against the advice she’d given him thus far, but Susanna was staring right at the wraiths – she almost felt as if she locked eyes with one or two of them – and they still weren’t coming after the boat.
“I don’t think they can cross the water,” she said. “I don’t understand it, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“Is it not like that normally?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” Susanna answered honestly. “I’ve never encountered wraiths on the lake before. It’s always too early in the day; the light traps them.”
Of course, there were other things to encounter on the lake – or more specifically under it – but Susanna thought it was best not to mention those. Jack was shaky enough as it was.
“Shall we go?” Jack asked. He was fidgety, still not comfortable looking directly at the creatures as they wove along the shoreline. “I mean, it’s not going to take them too long to realise the lake’s circular, is it? They can just go round.”
That was a point. Galvanised, Susanna reached forward and grasped the oars. They were down by her feet and for a second she paused, reached out to touch the toe of her shoe – the one that had been in the lake. It should be wet, yes, but not covered in… Susanna pulled her hand away and stared at her fingertips, rubbed them together. An oily, foul-smelling coating clung to her skin.
The lake was not simply water here in the real wasteland.
“Let’s go,” she said, to herself more than Jack. It didn’t matter what the lake was made of, so long as neither of them needed to go in. And Susanna fully intended to stay in the boat.
She manhandled the oars into position and, after a bit of fussing to get the angle of the paddle right, she started to row.
“No, that’s fine,” she said, already slightly out of breath and sweating heavily under the burning sun. “I don’t need any help. Honestly.”
“What?” Jack jerked his head towards her, pulling his eyes away from the bubbling blackness beneath them. He stared at her for a moment, lost, then he coloured and swallowed thickly. “Oh, sorry…” He reached out, as if to take the oars from her, then hesitated. “I don’t actually know how to row,” he admitted. “I might capsize us. Didn’t you say—” He peeked at her hopefully, “didn’t you say it was your job to row across?”
Susanna laughed, the sound more a release of tension than anything else. The relief of not having to concentrate on her every glance was heady and she felt slightly off-balance – although that could be the rocking of the boat.
“It’s fine,” she said, then, more seriously, “Don’t do that, though. Stare at the water. It can be… mesmerising.”
And there was always the chance that he’d see something lurking under there. Something to freak him out. Susanna needed him calm. Cool.
“I spy with my little eye,” she said suddenly.
“What?” Jack blinked at her. Then he grinned. “I spy? Seriously? There isn’t much to spy around here. All right, I spy with my little eye something beginning with O.”
“Oars?” Susanna guessed.
Jack gaped at her, eyes wide with exaggerated shock. “Wow. I can’t believe you got it right. Out of all the possibilities.”
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S,” Susanna shot back.
“Smart-arse?”
Dammit. How’d he get that? Susanna’s irritation was obviously plain on her face because Jack laughed.
“I’ve got a much better game,” he said. “Ever played ‘I’ve never’?”
Susanna shook her head. Her rowing had slowed and, if it wasn’t so hot, it might actually
be quite peaceful out on the lake. A quick glance behind her told her that the wraiths weren’t as smart as Jack thought, still hadn’t worked out that they could race round the edge and be waiting for them on the other side.
“It’s simple,” he said. “I say something I’ve never done and if you have, well, usually you have to drink—”
“Just drink?”
“Something alcoholic,” Jack clarified.
“Are you old enough for this game?” Susanna asked tartly.
“I’ve never played it,” Jack admitted, explaining why it didn’t ring a bell to Susanna: she had his memories, after all. Memories which did include underage drinking – though that had been a recent development. “Anyway, we’ll just say that if you haven’t done it, you score a point. First one to ten wins.”
“All right.” It was surreal, this peaceful moment, but Susanna wanted it to last as long as possible; she didn’t have much time left to make memories with Jack. Plus, since she had knowledge of everything he’d done in his life cached in a corner of her mind, it should be easy to win.
“You go first,” she said. Might as well give him a fighting chance.
“I’ve never…” he tilted his head at her, watching her with careful calculation, “eaten shellfish.”
“Point to me!” Susanna crowed. She rolled her eyes at Jack. “I didn’t eat food until I went through with you, so I’ve only had what you fed me.”
“And that certainly wasn’t shellfish!” Jack laughed. “Damn, I didn’t think of that. Your turn.”
Susanna dipped her oars and pulled, but gently, barely propelling them forward. “I’ve never… puked.”
She’d seen it, countless times in people’s memories, and it seemed gross. Regurgitating half-digested food, some of it coming out of their noses. Yuck!
“Everybody’s puked!” Jack protested.
“Not me. Remember my limited eating experiences? Hard to puke when there’s nothing in your stomach.”
Jack considered her shrewdly. “I don’t think I thought this game through.”
“You want to give up?”
Outcasts Page 10
