Oblivion

by Kelly Creagh

  “Never mind,” Isobel said, glancing down at the picture. “Just . . . forget it. I should have known better than to come here. It’s obvious that you only care about looking like you care. ”

  Isobel left her place by the desk and started for the door, taking the photo with her.

  “Madeline lives in Boston,” Darcy blurted.

  Isobel stopped short. Slipper stood, fur prickling, ready to shoot through the gap as soon as it opened wide enough.

  “She could write or call,” Darcy went on, and Isobel remained rooted, listening without moving. “But she doesn’t. She even took on a new legal name. Joe went digging years ago. Before we got married. He doesn’t know I know that. But . . . I got worried when he refused to get rid of her piano. I thought he was still holding on to the hope that she might . . . come back one day. So I went through his files. But it’s clear Madeline doesn’t want to be found. She left them, Isobel. She left both of them without a word. And no word since. That’s . . . that’s everything. I don’t know any more than that. ”

  Isobel turned her head toward Darcy, who hurried on.

  “Joe won’t say it, but I can tell he’s starting to fear the worst. He wakes up almost every night swearing he hears footsteps in the attic—voices, too. We’ve both run up there countless times. But there’s no one, nothing. One night, when Joe was driving home, he said he saw him by the fountain. Said Varen just appeared out of nowhere, and he had to swerve to avoid hitting him. Then he just disappeared. Like . . . like a ghost. ”

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  Isobel frowned at the story, recalling the note Mr. Nethers had left in the Cougar’s glove compartment that day at Nobit’s Nook. In the note, he had commanded Varen to stop playing morbid games and come home now. Isobel now understood that the note had been an attempt to coerce some solid response from Varen, some definitive evidence to prove to Mr. Nethers that he wasn’t going crazy, and that his son still existed in this world. That he was, at the very least, alive.

  “We were both there today, you know,” Darcy went on, “at the funeral. Joe sat in the car, though, because he couldn’t come to the tent. He’d been certain that Varen would be there, and when we didn’t see him, he . . . well, he’s running out of hope. We are running out of hope. ”

  “I . . . ,” Isobel started, but she didn’t know what to say. Like her, Varen’s parents had made Bruce’s funeral their final resort. They’d had the same idea she’d had. And the same result.

  But if Mr. Nethers had been there, then . . . “Why didn’t you show him the note?” Isobel asked.

  “I couldn’t,” Darcy whispered, eyes brimming. “You heard Joe tell me to post an ad for the Cougar in the paper just now. ” She shook her head. “He’s not trying to get rid of the car. He’s trying to hang on. I can tell he thinks that somehow, Varen will see the ad and come back for it. You don’t know him. Joe’s not going to stop until something solid comes up. Isobel, you are that something. So please, please, please tell me that piece of paper wasn’t a suicide note. ”

  Isobel drew a sharp breath, but it caught in her throat, lodged there by the utterance of that single hissing word.

  By giving up the note that morning, Isobel had wanted to bring both herself and Darcy some semblance of closure. Not more despair and uncertainty. Not more pain.

  True, Darcy had glimpsed the other side, but she still didn’t know all that Isobel did.

  Nor could she ever.

  She hadn’t been there. In that nightmare realm that gave as much life to the terrors and sorrows of Varen’s mind as it had to those of Poe’s.

  “What you saw in the mirror was real,” Isobel said, choosing her words carefully. “I was there with him. On the other side. And . . . I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  Aren’t I? The question echoed in her head, taunting her as Slipper hunkered low before the gap in the door, her tail twitching in agitation.

  Isobel’s focus fell to the cat—then to the wavering shadow on the floor just outside.

  “What is it?” Darcy hissed. “Who is that out there?”

  Isobel pulled slowly on the doorknob.

  Darting through the opening as soon as it grew wide enough, Slipper rushed out, dashing pell-mell past the form that stood waiting on the top step just outside.

  16

  Perils Parallel

  “You know where my boy is?” Varen’s father asked.

  Mr. Nethers pressed his fist to the wall, barring Isobel’s way, as if he thought she might follow the cat’s lead and try to barrel down the stairs to escape him.

  Isobel had meant it when she’d told Darcy she wasn’t afraid of him, though.

  Stepping out of the office, she drew nearer to Mr. Nethers. As her shadow drifted over him, she watched the dullness in his eyes sweep clear, the mask of anger fall away. A different man now stood before her from the one who had greeted her at the front door. Or the one she’d seen yelling at Varen in his room—at Bruce in the bookshop.

  This man was present. Awake. Aware. Not just an empty suit.

  His lips quivered as though he wanted to speak again, but he held back, waiting, it seemed, for Isobel to speak first, to tell him something that would ease his pain.

  Nothing she could say held the power to accomplish such a feat.

  Still, the sadness—the sheer devastation radiating from him—felt too real to ignore, and though Isobel had wanted to hate him, she found she couldn’t now.

  The office door creaked behind her. She sensed Darcy watching, waiting for her cue to step in and play her practiced part of umpire.

  The game to win control had already come to an end, though. And in her hand, Isobel held what felt like the final score.

  She extended the photo of Mr. Nethers’s son out to him.

  “This photograph,” Isobel said. “How closely did you look at it before you framed it?”

  His big fist left the wall, and with shaking fingers, he took the picture.

  As he looked down at it, tears formed in his eyes. They spilled, falling with audible pops against the stiff, glossy paper. His other hand—so strong and fierce before—quaked as it went to cover his face.

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  Like a crumbling mountain, Mr. Nethers sank to a sitting position on the top stair.

  Darcy brushed past Isobel, a whiff of expensive-smelling perfume wafting after her. Kneeling next to her husband, she draped an arm around his shoulders, whispering words Isobel couldn’t decipher.

  But Varen’s father said nothing. He didn’t ask any more questions, and he didn’t look up. He only hung his head and sobbed.

  Palpable, his remorse pulsed through the air, chiseling into Isobel’s own heart to strike a resonating chord there.

  Regret was a feeling she had grown to know well.

  Thick, heavy, suffocating—it was the one sensation that came closest to what it felt like to die.

  “I’m sorry,” Isobel murmured, and it wasn’t until she’d uttered the words aloud that she realized why she’d done so: She wished she could tell her parents the same thing.

  She had come here hoping to dig up the skeletons of Varen’s past. But in her attempt to gain understanding, to find out why the one person who should have cared for him the most had left him, she was instead reminded how badly absence itself could hurt. How much damage it could inflict.

  Isobel wondered if she could ever accuse her own mother and father of what, in essence, she’d accused the Netherses of. Of not having paid enough attention. Of not caring enough until it was too late.

  No, she thought. Never.

  And still, here she was. Missing. Gone from their lives. Again.

  Staring at the hand that clutched the photo of Varen, Isobel recalled the way her own father had squeezed her shoulder the previous night, and suddenly, all she wanted was to be back in that moment.

  If she could live it again, she would stand up and wrap her
arms around her dad and hug him so tight. She would beg him to forgive her. She’d tell him over and over that she loved him.

  The school administrators had no doubt called her mom and dad by this point, and right now, wherever her parents were, they had to be going ballistic. Were they out looking for her somewhere? Or, like Varen’s parents, were they teetering on the verge of resigning themselves to the worst?

  Her family had suffered through her death once.

  She couldn’t put them through that again. No matter what came next, she couldn’t just turn her back on them and walk away, vanish into the dreamworld again without a single word—even if her only other option was to tell them everything.

  And why hadn’t she? Why, if they’d been listening?

  “I—I have to go,” Isobel murmured, the words meant more for her own ears than for Mr. and Mrs. Nethers.

  Skirting past the pair, she hurried down the stairs.

  Though Darcy called out to her, Isobel didn’t stop.

  Without looking back, she tore open the front door and rushed out into the cold.

  * * *

  The bus lurched to its third stop since Isobel had boarded. Its doors slid open to let riders off and on.

  “Eastern Parkway and Preston,” came the driver’s voice over the intercom, “Eastern Parkway and Preston. ”

  Isobel gripped her knees and thudded her heel against the floor. For the millionth time, she wished she had her phone. She also wished that there weren’t so many stops between the downtown preservation district and Cherokee Park.

  Most of all, Isobel wished she was home.

  Once or twice, she’d thought about asking to borrow someone else’s cell, deciding in the end to hold off. Another half hour and she’d be at her doorstep.

  Though it was possible neither of her parents were home, Isobel still wanted to try the house first. She wanted to talk to her mom and dad in person without being overheard by a bus full of people, or having to field frantic questions about calling from a strange number. More than that, she wanted to speak to her mom and dad together.

  Go home, Gwen had told her.

  What had Gwen picked up on? And why hadn’t Isobel listened?

  Thinking back to yesterday’s conversation with Danny, all that he’d divulged, she now wished she had followed Gwen’s instructions.

  No doubt this latest disappearance of hers had triggered another blowup between her mom and dad. Had they caught wind of the rumors circulating around school about Varen’s return, too? Isobel wasn’t certain, but, at the very least, she assumed her parents were calling off their damage-control date. And what about Danny? Was he still in school, oblivious to her being missing? Or had her parents pulled him out?

  Would she ever be able to convince him not to hate her?

  A fresh wave of guilt fell heavy on her shoulders, but Isobel did her best to bear the weight, telling herself she’d deal with the fallout whenever and however it came. She didn’t have another choice.

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  She could only hope that, at this point, her parents would still want to listen. That they would believe her. That they might even understand.

  “There. Sitting in the middle. ”

  Isobel froze, ears tuning to the static voice that had spoken from several seats behind.

  “That isn’t her,” rasped a second voice.

  “It is her. Can’t you feel it?”

  Though her instinct was to turn and look, Isobel remained still, shoulders rigid, fingernails digging into her jeans.

  Her eyes flitted between the other passengers.

  Near the front, a businessman worked a newspaper crossword puzzle against one knee. Across from him, a woman holding a sleeping girl on her lap gazed distractedly out the window. Another woman sat with her head bowed, thumbing at her cell phone.

  None of them had heard the exchange of whispers. Not that any one of them could have done a single thing to help her even if they had.

  “Let’s move closer. ”

  “Patience. If it’s her, she’ll get off at the next stop. At the park behind her house. Watch. ”

  Careful to keep still, to appear oblivious, Isobel checked the driver’s rearview mirror for the source of the static voices, aware that she wouldn’t see the creatures even if she did turn around.

  But the bus mirror—her only window into the veil—was tilted in such a way that she could see just the top half of the operator’s lined face.

  Leaning forward, the driver ducked out of view, triggering the doors. They closed with a clunk, sealing her in.

  The bus rumbled louder.

  The Nocs. They expected her to get off at the next stop. If she wanted to evade them—if she even had a chance at that—she’d have to act now.

  Shooting to her feet, Isobel yanked the stop cable.

  At the sound of the ding, everyone looked up.

  “Sorry,” Isobel said, sliding into the aisle, legs trembling. “This . . . is my stop. ”

  As she made her way to the front, she could feel all eyes on her—the seen and unseen.

  She bowed her head, allowing her hair to fall forward enough to hide her face. When the doors rattled open again, she took hold of the metal grip bar.

  Then, in the split second before swinging herself down the short set of steps and out, she did something she shouldn’t have.

  She risked a second glimpse into the mirror.

  At the rear of the bus, a pair of blood-haired Nocs rose from their seats next to unsuspecting passengers.

  Isobel dropped her head again, but as her feet met with the sidewalk outside, she knew the pair had seen—and recognized—her, too.

  17

  Back into the Tempest

  Suppressing the urge to run, Isobel veered into an oncoming group of college kids dressed in jerseys and hoodies. They chattered loudly, sipping from paper coffee cups as she broke through their ranks.

  “Excuse you,” one of the girls snapped.

  “Sorry,” Isobel muttered without looking back.

  She didn’t hear the Nocs’ hissing whispers anymore, but as the city bus rumbled past, she knew better than to think they were still onboard.

  Keeping her steps even, casual, Isobel did her best to appear at ease, banking on the hope that, though the Nocs had spotted her in the mirror, they wouldn’t immediately assume she had seen them.

  Even if the charade couldn’t last long, it was a better alternative to running outright. The only choice available that might buy her any time.

  Time.

  She’d forgotten to check the desk clock at Varen’s house.

  There were none on any of the nearby stores or restaurants.

  Wondering what had become of Reynolds, Isobel hoped he was there with her somewhere, waiting for the right moment to intervene as he’d always done.

  After the disruption she’d caused in the dreamworld and what she’d seen in the gym, though, she knew it was not a good sign that he hadn’t shown up yet. Unpredictable as he was, Reynolds wasted time about as well as he wasted words. He should have emerged by now with the next phase of whatever self-serving plan he’d concocted.

  But the Nocs had caught up to her before he had.

  Caught up, and caught wise, she thought, cursing herself for arousing their suspicions through the show she’d put on to try to convince Varen she was real.

  Though her display hadn’t been enough to persuade him, apparently it had done the trick for the ghouls, who must have glimpsed her in the veil before Reynolds had shocked her back into her body.

  A flash of terror flared inside her with a new thought: Lilith must suspect now too.

  In her desperation, had Isobel given herself away, tossing aside the one advantage Reynolds had told her she—he—they possessed?

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  Isobel pushed that worry aside for later—if there was ever going to be a
later—and commanded herself to keep walking.

  She dared not look behind her as she continued down the sidewalk, but forced herself to concentrate on her next move, coming up with some sort of plan to elude the creatures that might be—at that very moment—less than two steps away from snatching her up. Body and soul.

  Isobel fixed her sights on the nearest building—a coffee shop that stood on the other side of a narrow parking lot, kitty-corner to the bus stop.

  If she went in, she might be able to create a distraction, then slip through a rear exit. Or maybe as long as she surrounded herself with people, the Nocs would hold off on their attack.

  Both hopes were long shots. She knew that as well as she knew that she’d run out of options.

  As Isobel drew closer to the entrance, though, what she saw reflected in the shop’s glass front windows made her stop.

  Dead trees filled the tinted panes, their trunks overlapping the blazing red letters of the neon NOW BREWING sign.

  Beyond the glass, customers conversed at small tables. They sipped from mugs, scribbled on notepads, and typed away at laptops. At her back, Isobel heard the swish of cars, the chirping of birds, and the high drone of a passing airplane—noises that didn’t match the soundless landscape of prison-bar trees.

  Black crows filled the inklike splatter of interwoven branches, watching her.

  In addition to the legion of Nocs, Isobel saw herself reflected in the glass.

  And standing a few yards behind, just within the boundaries of the trees—Varen.

  Her heart began to slam in her chest.

  Slowly she turned to face him.

  But instead of the woodlands, she found pavement. Parked cars. White houses and grassy yards. A steady stream of traffic.

  New people began to gather at the bus stop. One of them, a man wearing a backpack, kept staring at his wristwatch. Frowning, he crooked his arm, bringing the timepiece to one ear.

  Isobel swung toward the coffee shop again. But the woodlands had vanished, replaced by the same quiet scene she had just witnessed—cars, people, concrete, sky.

  As she scanned the surface of the glass, Isobel’s mind raced backward through the day in an attempt to pinpoint the last moment she could say without a doubt was real.

  But her speeding thoughts found no stopping point.

  There had been the light in her bedroom, the ash in the hall, and the ride through the cemetery. The funeral. Reynolds and then the veil. Officially, that was when she’d re-entered the dreamworld. But . . . had it all been part of the same unending dream?