by Кей Хупер
"It'll be harder," a sweet voice said. "You're deeper in now. I'm sorry. It has to be this way."
Diana looked toward the door and felt only a little shock to see the sister she had never known. Every bit as thin, pale, and haunted as she had appeared on the veranda, this time she was speaking aloud in a voice much older and wiser than the years she had lived. Her oval face was solemn.
"Missy." As always, Diana's own voice sounded strange and hollow to her ears. She wished she could feel something other than sadness for this unknown sister, but that's what she felt. Sadness. Because Missy had been cheated of her life, and because Diana had been cheated of her sister.
Nodding, Missy said, "We don't have much time."
"There's no time here," Diana said. "I've figured out that much."
"Yes, but he's with you. On the other side of the door you opened. He won't wait very long before he... interferes. He's afraid for you."
"Afraid I'll get... stuck... here."
"Yes."
"Will I?"
"I don't know. I only know that you need to be here, and that now is the best time. While it's storming. There's a lot of energy while it's storming, energy that helps you. Please, Diana, come with me."
Determined to control some part of this rather than be pulled along like a puppet, Diana said, "Tell me one thing. Are you my sister?"
Missy didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"Then why don't I remember you?"
Missy took a step back, then turned toward the door. "Come with me, Diana."
Diana wasn't surprised her second question had gone unanswered; she was only surprised her first question hadn't as well. She got up and followed Missy from the room. "Am I really moving?" she wondered aloud. "Or am I still sitting back there with Quentin?"
Walking without a sound down the gray hallway toward the stairs, Missy said, "You're here only in spirit this time."
Which was the more common way she visited the gray time, Diana knew. She had "awakened" too often in her bed or sitting up in a chair after such a "journey" not to know that much. Still, she had a question.
"Why? This morning was different."
"This morning, I needed to speak through you. I needed him and the other policeman to hear me. Bringing you through the door physically was the first step. You were sort of... connected after that. You felt it, the difference."
"I was cold. I couldn't get warm."
"Yes. I'm sorry about that, but I needed the connection for later. For the cave. So I could speak through you. But it took a lot out of you. More than I expected. I really am sorry."
Diana accepted the apology, but the farther she moved from Quentin, the more uneasy she became. "Where are we going?"
"There's something I have to show you."
Recalling Quentin's wry comment about the curiously unhelpful role spirits often played when there were too many questions and too few answers, Diana said, "Why can't you just tell me who killed you?"
To her surprise, Missy offered an answer. Of sorts.
"Because knowing who killed me wouldn't help you. Or Quentin."
It was the first time she had said Quentin's name, something that caused Diana a curious pang she couldn't have explained. "It would help him. It's — haunted him all these years."
"I know."
"Then don't you want peace for him? Don't you want him to put all this behind him and get on with his life?"
"Yes." Missy stopped and turned to face Diana in the cold, gray hallway. "I couldn't get through, all the times he was here before. I couldn't reach him. Even though he brought another medium at least once to try."
"He didn't tell me that."
"It was a long time ago."
"How do you know that? Time doesn't pass here."
Missy smiled faintly. "Because he was younger. Younger and very impatient and determined. I've always been able to see him from here. I just couldn't reach him." Her thin shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.
"You can reach him now. Through me. So why don't you tell him what he needs to know? Why don't you give him peace?"
"It's not mine to give him."
"That's not true."
"Diana, Quentin blames himself for not protecting me. For not saving me. But, most of all, he blames himself because, deep down inside, he knew what was wrong here. Or at least that something was. He could feel it, just like I could. Being psychic, being a seer, is something he was born, not something created in him the day he found me. The shock just woke him up, that's all."
"Missy—"
"He could feel what was wrong here, but he couldn't believe in it. He was older, maybe that was part of it. Maybe it was just that no one had ever explained why he was different, and so he decided not to be. Decided to be like everybody else. Decided not to pay attention to those feelings he couldn't explain. His mind told him to ignore what he felt, to doubt his senses. He listened to his mind, just the way you listened to the doctors all these years."
"That was different."
"No, it was the same. You knew you weren't crazy. You knew you weren't sick. But you listened to them anyway. Because, deep down, you were more afraid of the truth."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You know, you've always known, that the wall between the living and the dead isn't something solid. You've known that you could make doors and let us cross over. You've known that you could come through those doors to our side. You've known you could walk with us."
Missy paused, then added, "You've always been afraid of being trapped here, like those people you saw in the hospital when we visited Mommy. You knew what I knew. That they were just living bodies without souls."
Diana felt her throat tighten, felt the familiar tendrils of icy terror coiling deep inside her. The memory triggered by Missy's words was sudden and incredibly vivid. She was transported back nearly thirty years, her small hand held in her father's grasp, her short legs trying to keep up as he led her down a long, long hallway. A hallway with doors on either side, some open, some closed. Behind some of the closed doors was silence; behind others she could hear an occasional laugh or sob, and behind one a strange, sad wailing. Through the open doors she could see beds, some of them holding people who were sitting up, reading, watching TV.
But in other beds, people lay still and silent, with machines beeping quietly nearby. Most were just sleeping or unconscious, she knew that. Even then, she knew that.
Some were gone. Their bodies lay there and breathed, their heartbeats recorded by those beeping machines, but the people who had once been inside those bodies were gone.
And they were never coming back.
Diana had known that, with utter certainty. Beyond a small child's ability to communicate the knowledge, beyond words, beyond reason, she had known exactly what had happened to those people.
Someone had opened a door, perhaps even they themselves. And now they were trapped on the other side, unable to return to their physical selves.
Diana's terror had been deep and wordless, but it had been nothing compared to what she had felt when her father led her into one of the rooms. When she saw her mother lying still and silent in a bed. When she heard the machines beeping quietly.
When she understood.
"Diana?"
She blinked and stared at Missy's young, solemn face. "My God. It happened to her. She was... gone. Before Daddy or the doctors ever realized, a long time before they said it, before her body finally stopped, she was gone."
"Yes."
"I didn't... why didn't I remember that?"
"You were too afraid to remember."
This time, Diana understood. "Because I knew I could do what she'd been able to."
Missy nodded. "You were afraid you couldn't control it, that you'd be lost on this side just like she was. And you couldn't control it, then. You were too little, you didn't know how. And she wasn't there to help you understand. No one was. Not then."
"Until now."
"There ar
e no medicines fogging your mind now. And he's here to push you to see what is. To help you understand. You needed that. But you're still afraid. That's why you argue with him when he wants to talk about it."
"I have reason to be afraid, don't I? You said yourself you didn't know whether I could be trapped on this side. But we both know it's possible, so—"
"There are worse things than being trapped here, Diana."
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
It wasn't a sound so much as a sensation, and shocking in this gray place of stillness and silence.
Quentin had asked her if she had ever felt or heard something like a heartbeat inside her, and Diana had denied it because she hadn't remembered. But now she recognized it instantly. She remembered it, an echo from her childhood and from somewhere inside her, someplace deeper than instinct.
She knew this.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
It was vast and dark and smelled of damp earth and rotten eggs. It was so cold it burned, and the blackness of it stole every flicker of light. And it was...inevitable. Ancient. Beyond powerful. So overwhelming she felt weak and terrified.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
"It's coming," Missy said. "It's ready to kill again."
"You mean him, don't you? That murderer."
"He stopped being a person even before they buried him alive. Now there's only... it. And you know what it is."
Diana did. That was the terrifying thing. She did.
"What will it look like this time?" she whispered. "Who will it take over?"
"It almost always looks like someone we trust, doesn't it?" Missy turned and again led the way down the long, gray corridor. "This way. Hurry, Diana."
Because she couldn't do anything else, Diana followed, frightened of what was coming and uneasily aware of the growing distance between the part of her taking this journey and the part of her left behind with Quentin. An anxiety that only increased when she realized this corridor was unfamiliar and that she had no idea how to find her way back to him.
Quentin prowled the lounge restlessly, his gaze returning again and again to Diana's face. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful, and if he hadn't known better, he would have believed her to be asleep.
She wasn't sleeping, though.
A room service waiter had come and gone, but the coffee Stephanie had sent up sat untouched on the tray. Quentin didn't want coffee, though he could have done with something stronger. Something a lot stronger.
"Don't touch me. There's something I have to — Just don't touch me. Wait."
Wait. Just wait. How long was he supposed to wait? How long was it safe for her to be... wherever she was?
She was in the gray time, he assumed. He wasn't certain what had triggered the event, unless it had been a combination of Diana's troubled emotional state after finding out about Missy and the storm rumbling outside. Probably that, he thought. The storm was certainly scrambling all his senses, and given what had happened during the last one, this one had undoubtedly enhanced hers.
It was his own undependable senses that kept him from reaching out to her now, touching her, anchoring her. Even more so than usual during a storm, he felt almost disconnected from the sensory input his body and mind were accustomed to. Everything was muffled, distant, beyond his reach.
All he knew for sure was that what Diana was doing was dangerous. And necessary.
That was what he couldn't get past, that strong certainty that she had to do this, that it was important. And that if he interfered, if he yanked her back from wherever she had to be right now, he would regret it.
The question was, could he trust even his own deepest certainties? Could he trust his instincts?
Because if he couldn't, and he waited too long before trying to draw her back... she could be beyond his or anyone's reach.
"She's done this before," he heard himself mutter as he paced and watched her. "For years, she's done it, decades. I wasn't there then, and she got back without my help. Without anyone's help. She can get back now."
If she was as strong as he believed she was.
If she was strong enough.
Quentin hated this. He hated waiting, hated standing by with nothing to do except worry. He'd been forced to do it more than once in the past and, in fact, suspected that Bishop had from time to time put him in that position quite deliberately in order to teach him some patience.
Confronted with Quentin's suspicion, Bishop hadn't denied it. But he hadn't confirmed it either.
Par for the course.
In any case, if a lesson had been intended, Quentin had yet to learn it. It went against his deepest instincts, his very nature, to allow someone else to take the active role while he waited around twiddling his thumbs. Especially when that person was, despite her strength, damaged and fragile and someone he cared about—
A loud crash of thunder sounded almost deafening in his ears the brilliant flash of lightning so blinding that for an instant he was totally in the dark and abruptly alone inside his own head. Except for...
Now. Hurry. Before it's too late.
The storm had his senses so scrambled that he thought it was a wonder he could even hear that whisper in his mind. Or maybe it had been whispering for a long time now, and he'd been unable to hear it.
Suddenly afraid he had waited too long, Quentin hurried back to Diana's side and took her cool hand in his, holding it strongly.
Nothing. No reaction, no response. She sat there, still and silent, her eyes closed, face peaceful.
He had never been called upon to be someone's lifeline, but Quentin had learned long ago that the mind could do remarkable things if properly motivated and harnessed.
Concentrating, fiercely closing out the distraction of the storm, he fixed all his will on reaching Diana and pulling her back to him.
CHAPTER 14
“Missy, where are you taking me?" The uneasiness Diana felt was increasing, building, and she had the sudden, frightened notion that this spirit of her supposed sister might be far less benevolent than Diana had assumed her to be. "There's something I have to show you."
"Why can't you just tell me whatever it is you want me to know?" Diana was looking around, trying to figure out where in the hotel they were. But the corridor was peculiarly featureless in the gray time — even more so than usual — and seemed to stretch ahead of them forever. "This isn't right," she added before Missy could reply. "This looks—"
"There's something Quentin's forgotten," Missy said, ignoring both the question and comment. "What?"
"Because of what happened to me, he thinks it's about children."
Diana only partly heard, because Missy had turned a corner as she spoke, and to her surprise Diana found herself looking at a green door. It was the only spot of color she had ever seen in the gray time.
"You have to remember this place, Diana. This door."
"Why?" Diana was doing her best to think clearly, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.
"Because you'll be safe here. When it's important, when you need a safe place, come here."
"I thought... all places were the same in the gray time."
"Not this place. It's a special place, in your time as well as here. It's protected. Don't forget."
Diana wanted to ask more questions, but before she could, Missy was going on.
"Diana, listen to me. Quentin always believed it was about children, but it isn't. Children are easiest because they're so often vulnerable, unprotected. Easy prey. It feeds off fear. You remember the terror of a child, don't you, Diana?"
Her lips felt oddly stiff and very cold when Diana murmured, "Yes. I remember."
"It isn't about the children. It isn't even about me. It's about punishment. It's about judgment. He was judged. And punished."
Again, Diana wanted to question, wanted to understand all this more clearly. But before she could speak, they both heard/felt it.
Tha-thum.
> Tha-thum.
Tha-thum!
Missy's face changed, and she said quickly, "You have to go back. Now. It can cross over too, Diana, don't forget that. And a medium's mind can be the most vulnerable of all. If it finds you—"
"Missy, I don't understand."
"You will." Missy reached out and took Diana's hand, her small one surprisingly warm rather than cold. "Don't forget the green door. But go back now. Reach for Quentin."
Diana wasn't sure she could, because her mind felt sluggish and cold, and doing anything at all required too much effort of her. But the warmth of Missy's small hand seemed to chase away part of the chill...
Tha-thum!
Tha-thum!
She could feel the floor underneath her vibrate, as though under the steps of something immeasurably heavy, and the grayness around her seemed to be darkening, shading toward black. She tried to reach out mentally, thinking of Quentin, needing to be with him.
There was a bright flash of light, then another, and between them the gray was getting darker and darker.
"Hurry," Missy said. "It's—"
"—here," Diana said, opening her eyes.
"Jesus, don't do that to me again," Quentin said.
She turned her head and looked at him, a little dazed and more than a little confused. He was holding her hand, and his felt warm and strong, and she was once again conscious of that unfamiliar sense of security.
Safe. She was safe. Now.
"Are you all right?" he demanded.
"I think so."
He drew a breath and released it, clearly relieved. He didn't let go of her hand. "Another visit to the gray time?"
Diana nodded slowly.
"Another guide?"
"Missy."
That caught him off guard. "You talked to her?"
"Yes."
"And?"
Diana told him, about the green door and Missy's warning that "it" wasn't about hurting children but was about punishment and judgment.
"I don't remember a green door in this place," he said.
"Me either."
"But it's a safe place for you."
Trying to remember exactly what she'd been told, Diana said, "I think so. Something about it being a protected place here and in the gray time."
