House of Slide: Hunter

by Juliann Whicker

  I struggled up, pushing back the books with shaking hands. I had to get out. I still felt him calling me. I rushed outside, through the sharp brambles, ignoring the streaks of blood across my legs, beneath the shirt, his shirt.

  I grabbed the fabric, holding it in my fingers, trying to hang onto him, but he was gone. I’d burned him. Maybe he’d come back. He hadn’t said he’d come back. He’d said… I couldn’t remember. Something about me being safe, like that mattered. He’d said something about not trusting the Hollow One. I crumpled at the base of a tree, shrugging off the leather coat with feathers spilling from the pockets as I tried to smooth down the shirt.

  I closed my eyes and thought I could almost hear Lewis. He didn’t make any sense. He must be speaking the words of the other world, the Netherworld. I opened my eyes and in the shadows of the woods saw what looked like a body. I didn’t hesitate. It had to be Lewis. My soul had come to find him and wouldn’t rest until it had.

  I took off his shirt, wrapping it around the fallen body and began to run my fingers over the figure.

  “Lewis. Come back to me,” I whispered as I stroked the shirt, the body beneath it shifting, taking on a form that I knew and loved with all my heart and soul.

  “Lewis,” I whispered as I lay beside him, resting my face on his shoulder. I ignored the smell, the scent of earth and leaves, the lack of life, of blood and mists. I had his mists. As soon as I thought it, mists began spreading around us, hiding us from the world while his arms finally bent, folding me against him.

  He whispered against my hair like the rustling of leaves. My heart pounded in my chest as I ached for him, wrapping my arms around him at the same time he wrapped his around me, tight, tighter until with a gasp I felt tendrils against my throat, squeezing the life out of me.

  I struggled against him, but he wouldn’t stop squeezing, dragging me down into darkness that made the world flicker in and out of focus.

  With a scream I bucked backwards, ripping off his grip, squeezing his fingers until with a moment of clarity I realized that I held vines in my hands, vines that had wrapped around my throat.

  Lewis wasn’t here. Demons. Demons must have whispered to me, made me think he was here where now I only saw a shirt stuffed with leaves and vines that still twitched, waiting for me to call them back to life. No. Not demons. I’d done this. I’d done this all by myself. I’d leaned him to life because I couldn’t exist without him.

  I shook my head and looked down at myself, naked, scarred, skinny, alone.

  My trainer. Where was he? I closed my eyes and searched for his soul, trying to keep from screaming and running away from my own insanity. I couldn’t find him. He must have done something, given me something I hadn’t noticed the last time I’d awoken that had kept me from this madness. I ran my hands over my head and felt stubble around my runes. My hair was growing back? Unreal. I couldn’t sit here naked. I needed to find Lewis. No. Lewis was dead. He couldn’t be dead. I needed him. Maybe I could find him…

  I put the palms of my hands against my eyes as I tried to think, tried to focus. I couldn’t wander around bringing vines to life and pretending it was Lewis. I had to get it together. I had to function. Theo the Cool demon man had reached inside himself and fixed something the way my dad had done when I’d been fighting the blood bond. I could do that. Then I’d go and find Lewis.

  I shook my head and bit my lip as I tried to focus, to find that place inside my head where the broken bond ached. I slid inside the gap, the raw horror that felt a million times worse than the scar down the left side of my body. I built a bridge out of ideas, pretending, leaning until I felt the madness, the need abate.

  Lewis was dead. Check. I was okay. Check. The woods were so beautiful, but I still wasn’t wearing any clothing. I had to do something about that. I hesitated for a moment over the shirt. Reaching out a hand, I flinched when the sleeves reached out for me, vines emerging from the cuff.

  I fell backwards, into an overgrown pool of water where I gasped and flopped until I pulled myself back on the shore. The shirt was not Lewis. It had to die.

  I shoved energy towards it, making the air buzz with a wild energy that I could barely control. The energy seemed to have a life of its own until I pulled it back, leaving the shirt to twitch like an alive but dying thing.

  “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” I told the shirt, gathering up the leather coat and the feathers. I pulled the coat on over my bare shoulders and walked back to Matthew’s house, nodding to the plants along the way.

  In the house, the books seemed so ludicrous, stretching up to the ceiling. Someone should organize them. I’d do that as soon as I had something to wear.

  I went to the kitchen and found some knives. I hummed as I cut a sleeve off the coat, slitting it up and fitting it to my torso. I didn’t think very much about it, just did whatever seemed to make sense while I sang a song.

  “Leather skins from demon Wilds fit me like a glove worn child. Don’t need zippers, buttons, or bows, just Wild skins to skim and mold.”

  I sang words that seemed appropriate to a tune that fit the slash and rip of leather strips to lace up the sides of my bodice. I overlapped the center seam on the pants but left the sides lacing up, showing my skin. I cut holes in the top of the pants to weave a strip of leather through to keep them up. I felt like a genius, a sewing genius with my strips of leathers with feathers stuck in some of the seams.

  Time didn’t seem to matter, my oozing scars didn’t seem to matter, nothing could intrude past the bubble of okay that I mended when it felt a little bit brittle.

  “Lewis, you would love this,” I said as I pulled on the pants and laced up the sides of the bodice. “I could go get more coats and make you a matching set if you weren’t dead and burned.”

  I smiled as I shifted in my makeshift clothes. They didn’t breathe much which would have bothered me more if I allowed myself to mind that kind of thing. I pulled a feather out of the seam and frowned at it and my stubby nails and the scars that ran down both of my bare arms. I should have put sleeves on my shirt, but I’d run out of leather. Feathers. I needed a feather coat to cover my arms.

  I split the feather shafts, sliding them on a cord I’d found in a dank pantry where Matthew kept his soup. I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t need food. I only needed feathers to cover the scars on my arm, the right arm, the one that matched Lewis’s where he’d drawn his knife and drank my blood.

  I gasped as a trickle of pain got through. I focused until I could laugh and slice the feather, stringing it along, weaving it on a strip of leather I had left over that I’d use around the neck. I couldn’t quite figure out how to make arms out of feathers. The best that I could do was a poncho like thing with layers of feathers woven together. After I finished the feathers and settled them around my shoulders I needed to dance.

  I sang and danced for Lewis, a song that would have hurt my own ears if I minded the off-key dissonance.

  “Ashes and feathers float in the air. Ashes and feathers for a love so rare. We’ll dance by the glimmer of death taken flight. We’ll dance whether dead or alive tonight.”

  I smiled as I danced into a pillar, laughing as the papers cascaded down, parchment and feathers and moonlight blending as I spun, leaping and sliding in my brand new clothes.

  I ran and hit a pillar of books, sending a marvelous cascade of torn paper, but a page brushed my arm that brought me up short.

  Devlin.

  I could almost smell his aftershave, feel his hand tousling my hair, hear his voice.

  “I won’t be gone long. I’ll pick you up at four-thirty.”

  That was the last thing he’d said to me.

  I searched the room, but of course my dead brother Devlin wasn’t there. Another ghost for me to dance with. I shrugged, but when I stepped, I brushed another paper and once again, I smelled Devlin, heard his laugh.

  I knelt down and grabbed the paper. In the dim light I made out a page filled with symbols th
at may have been Egyptian. Along the edge someone had written in cramped English

  The taint gives gifts both rare and dangerous. Although never stable, such gifts can be used with discretion activating soul and matter.:

  Taint. My brother had read this page. He hadn’t written those words, but he’d read them. I could feel him reading them, thinking about how to apply taint to his own matters of soul.

  I stood up feeling nauseous. He’d thought that: ‘matters of soul,’ spinning the words as though taking my soul were a joke. I ripped the page once, then again, then again, over and over until nothing was left but bits of confetti. It wasn’t enough. He was still in this room, in these pages, reading, planning, destroying my life.

  I laughed as I ripped a book down the spine, enjoying the dull sound of decaying ancient leather torn in two. I found more and more books with my brother’s imprint. I read words about demons, words about Hollows, words about fractures, uniting soul with matter and cleaving them again.

  I hated the words, hated the way my heart pounded even as I laughed until I sank down in a pile of ripped books, my hands shaking as I tried to lift them, my eyes closing however hard I struggled to stay awake. I couldn’t sleep. Sleep meant dreams and losing control. That meant waking up and searching for Lewis who was dead and burned.

  I danced, singing loudly enough it blocked out the fear and Devlin’s imprint.

  “What, having a party without me?” my trainer said, his voice echoing around the room, breaking through my nonsense words, bringing me to a stop on my stack of destroyed books.

  “Matthew!” I cried, smiling at him.

  He didn’t look happy to see me, of course he never looked happy, but a line between his eyebrows showed more worry than mocking derision. I didn’t like it.

  “I’ve been sewing.” I said proudly, twirling so that he could admire my feathers.

  “Indeed,” he answered, setting a wrapped bundle on the floor as he edged around the fallen books. “I shouldn’t have bothered bringing you pajamas.”

  I waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t make pajamas. I don’t need them, not really. I’m never going to sleep again. Isn’t that wonderful? Tell me, Matthew, how do Cools get away with never sleeping? I think it’s marvelous.”

  “They avoid plane wrecks,” he answered, bending to pick up a shell of a book with mostly missing pages. “Cools will go into hibernation to rejuvenate. I was certain you would stay asleep much longer than you have. I apologize for leaving you alone to wake up by yourself. It could not have been pleasant.”

  I shrugged once and enjoying how the feathers brushed my face shrugged a few more times. “Well, I did try to bring Lewis back as a vine man, but it didn’t work out. He tried to strangle me and then I fell in the pond. I think you should prune back some bushes. I didn’t even know there was a pond until I had to fish myself out of it.”

  “And then you leaned yourself?”

  I shrugged. “It seemed better than running around trying to bring back the dead. I burned him down to nothing but ashes. I hope he doesn’t mind. I didn’t want anyone coming along and harvesting his blood. That’s disgusting the way that people take blood like that.”

  “Nether addicts.”

  “Yes, I suppose. Like mother, right? What was she like, Matthew? Did you love her? Did you really love her?”

  He looked up at me and I saw the truth in his eyes, the obsessive passion that he kept hid beneath careful layers of anger and apathy. “I did and I do. Love for her is the only truly good thing I’ve ever felt.”

  “So, you decided to help Devlin take my soul out of love for her? I’m having a hard time seeing the ‘truly good’ in that. Of course I’d probably be fine with it if it were someone else’s soul.”

  “I didn’t help your brother take your soul, only showed him the possibility, and that quite by accident.”

  “You didn’t mark the pages he should read, maybe turn them for him?”

  He frowned at me, and then looked around at what had been books. “You can read his imprint.”

  I felt his excitement beneath the blasé words.

  I shrugged. “His rocks are more interesting. This is just his thoughts, no explosions and kissing. So, you brought me pajamas? What do they look like?”

  I went and took the package he handed me, ripping it open to reveal a blue camisole with lace around the neck and soft flannel pants with umbrellas printed on them.

  I stared at the pajamas bewildered by the pain that snaked through me. I shook my head, dropping the package and spinning back to dance around a pillar of books, singing as loudly as I could.

  “Pillars break, pillars fall, like the love that conquers all. My heart rips, my heart tears, my heart burns like pyres of leaves, drifting ashes in a sieve, rowing boats and rowing pain, hope is splashing down the drain. Blood and ashes, blood and pain, blood is dripping down like rain.”

  “Stop,” Matthew commanded me, his words silencing mine and throwing off my magnificent leap so that I slid into the stairs, banging my knee so that I couldn’t put my weight on it when I stood upright.

  “Why can’t I sing? You sing,” I asked, hopping around ungracefully.

  “When I sing, it’s called singing. What was that horrible racket? Have you no idea what lungs and vocal chords are for?”

  I bristled at his tone, his contempt. “Well, maybe I don’t sing the best, but I was always more of a piano person. I didn’t see a piano in your magnificent mansion.”

  He frowned at me before he turned and walked past me, down a hall beneath the stairs that I hadn’t really noticed before he threw open a door that seemed less warped than the other ones. The room I stepped into was cloaked in shadows before Matthew went around, lighting candles and lamps until a rosy glow imbued the dozens of instruments that gleamed, polished in the otherwise wreck of a house.

  The piano wasn’t grand, just an upright against a wall beneath a trio of stringed instruments, but I could tell from looking at it, that it was regularly tuned.

  “Play,” he commanded, pulling out the bench for me before he leaned against the wall, imperious, certain that I would fail him.

  I walked to the instrument, feeling a tremor of nerves as I ran a hand along the smooth wood. I hadn’t played for so long, since I’d accidentally brought the Lost Souls to life in Hallow Hall. I sat down on the bench, the leather of my pants skidding against the wood.

  “What do I play?” I asked, frowning at my hands where they hovered over the keys.

  “Play the song you danced to, the song you sang, if you claim it was a song and not some horribly revolting curse.”

  I cleared my throat and touched my fingers to the keys. My fingers found a song that I remembered from far away. The song I’d played in the Hallow Hall, a song of joyful love for Lewis. I could almost see his face as I stretched out my hand to him.

  “We’ll do it together,” I whispered as my fingers mangled the chord on the piano. Lewis had died without me, leaving me bound to a corpse that I couldn’t accept as dead. I reached high notes with trembling fingers but the song had shifted from a lively frolic to something that fed the pain inside my heart, that woke the bright burning madness that couldn’t accept a world without Lewis. I had to find him.

  I broke off mid-note and rose to my feet before Matthew’s hand came down on my shoulder, pushing me back down on the bench.

  “Play,” he told me, his words a command that I could not refuse.

  I played, but the song came out more disjointed than ever, half flats, half sharps, my left hand playing a dirge and my right hand a tempestuous fury. Lewis. The leaning broke and I became awash in pain so hard that I couldn’t breathe or move, only sit frozen on the bench in front of the piano while I hurt so hard for his touch, his breath, his knife, anything.

  “You must develop coping strategies that don’t involve leaning. You shouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do such a thing. Turn around. Look in the mirror.”

  I obe
yed. I blinked as I saw the girl standing with one hand on the piano, pale lips, enormous eyes, wearing scraggly scraps of leather and feathers that didn’t fit together right. Nothing about me fit together right. My scar split my face, my neck, running down beneath the leather and feathers where I couldn’t see, but I could feel. Blood and other things oozed from the wounds that I’d ignored for too long, coated in sweat and swamp water then chafed by leather as I flung myself around in frantic movement.

  “This is madness. Leaning oneself is the quickest way to insanity that I know. Is this who you wish to be? There are ways to manage a broken blood bond.”

  I saw him behind me, frowning at me and my bald scarred head like he cared. I turned around and leaned against him, smelling his shaving cream and feeling his fatherly concern. I felt his intention, his regret that he would be comforting Helen’s child, not his. I didn’t understand, but I felt safe as I soaked in his own instability and broken heart. He understood an anguished heart and soul. He understood loss, but he still hoped.

  I didn’t understand how he hoped, but I did understand the focus. He had a goal: to protect Helen, my mother. He would do whatever that took, whatever the personal cost, whatever the anguish he suffered.

  I pulled away and stared up at him. “You would never have left my mother just because one of your children became demonic and sucked out the other one’s soul.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he pulled away from me, smoothing down the front of his shirt as though I’d mussed it. “You need a bath, balm on your wound, and a long uninterrupted sleep. No doubt she’ll be here when you awaken.”

  “You called her?”

  He shook his head as he walked away from me, certain I would follow. “I wrote a letter. Ten, actually. Ten letters to bring your mother here. She thinks that you’re dead.”

  “Don’t you think you should have called?” I asked, following him to a room where an old bathtub seemed to suffer from disuse.

  He lit candles then shook his long hair as he bent over the tub, scrubbing it out as he ran hot water into it. “I am not accustomed to playing lady’s maid. You’ll have to manage on your own,” he said, backing out of the room, leaving me with the running water.