by Andy Marino
Hannah blinked away the afterimage and saw only darkness. Two figures emerged from the door at the base and began moving up the garden path toward the house. She traced their journey beneath the tunnel of vines by following the inky ripples of shadow that seemed to shroud them, until they were too close to the house and the angle made it impossible to see.
A second later, she heard the back door open and close.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, Hannah crept out of her room and down the hall to the back staircase. She tiptoed down to the second-floor landing, careful to tap her big toe twice against the edge of the seventh step, disarming the pendulum blade, the back stairs’ sole trap. From the landing, she could look out over the Tree Room, which was furnished with mahogany, teak, and bamboo furniture from all over the world.
She heard shuffling in the back hallway, then the click of a small desk lamp that lit the far end of the room. Hannah could make out the shapes of two well-dressed men standing with her mother. They were conversing in gentle whispers that reached Hannah’s ears as the barest hint of sound. Her own breathing seemed ragged and harsh in comparison. Still, she thought she was being quiet enough, until one of the men slowly turned his head so that he was staring into Hannah’s hiding place on the darkened landing. Or at least, she assumed he was staring at her. It was hard to tell. He was wearing a formless hat that seemed to compel the shadows in the room to obscure his face.
She froze. Who was he? Did he see her? Why was she so afraid, if her mother was there, too?
The man’s eyes flashed out of the darkness with the predatory gleam of a coyote. Hannah sat, transfixed, as the second man slowly turned his head, too. Together, the pair’s eyes lit the room like the glass atop the lighthouse, brighter and brighter as if they were turning a dial, until Hannah shielded her face with her hands and screamed for them to —
“Stop!”
— and she was sitting upright in bed, panting as if she’d just run a four-minute mile. She untangled her legs from sweat-soaked sheets, and squinted at the morning sun shining through the alcove window.
Just a dream, Belinda said. Nancy snorted.
Hannah stumbled out of bed feeling dizzy and hollow, as if she hadn’t slept at all.
Hannah squinted at the board, on which the social studies teacher, Mrs. Adams, had neatly written and underlined the word APPEASEMENT.
It was real, said Nancy.
“Shut. Up,” Hannah whispered.
“Hannah,” Mrs. Adams said, “how kind of you to volunteer.”
Most of the class swiveled to stare at her. Panic dulled her thoughts. She had no idea what was going on.
Conciliation, Belinda said. Pacification.
Hannah repeated those unfamiliar words out loud. Mrs. Adams opened her mouth, said nothing for a second, then turned to the board and wrote the words beneath appeasement.
“Very good,” she said. “Two excellent synonyms. But who can define the term?” She made a show of looking around — one of the funny things all Hannah’s teachers did — before choosing the one girl with her hand up. “Go ahead, Alicia.”
The rest of the morning was full of close calls. When she wasn’t haunted by the blinding eyes in her dream, she was mentally rehearsing a plan to sneak into one of the empty classrooms and eat lunch alone, avoiding the stairs.
Except she didn’t have a lunch. She had to buy one in the cafeteria.
Was it worth going hungry to avoid those stairs?
When fifth period rolled around and her stomach was tying itself in knots, she decided to risk it, plodding along with the crowd of students. To her amazement and relief, Kyle was waiting to escort her. They didn’t talk once they got to the cafeteria. He left her alone to join a table of eighth graders, a table that included the two boys from yesterday.
Hannah assumed her staircase incident was kind of a big deal, so she kept looking around, expecting to catch mean glances directed at her, but there was nothing. It was as if Kyle had taken everyone aside, one by one, and given them a dose of whatever he’d said to the two boys. Maybe nobody cared, after all, about some new girl’s first-day jitters.
Maybe she was invisible now.
* * *
The ride home was a silent echo of the ride to school. Her mother drove with her eyes glued to the road, jabbing her finger into the radio’s SEEK button, station-hopping through pop, country, news, and talk before settling on silence. Hannah pretended to be immersed in the trees that lined the road from the outskirts of Carbine Pass all the way up the long, winding driveway of Cliff House. After twelve years of living together, Hannah was a tuning fork when it came to her mother’s bad moods. This one had familiar elements — extreme nail-biting, radio indecision, fast driving, silence — but there was something else, too: a damp, clammy aura that seemed to surround her. Hannah thought it might be fear.
At home, Hannah took the back way upstairs, pausing in the Tree Room, setting her bag down next to the cherrywood desk where the figures from her dream had been standing when they’d spotted her.
She ran the tip of her finger along the wood and studied the particles of dust. Then she knelt to pick fibers and crumbs from the carpet, and examined the sides of the doorway. Nothing was out of place. It wasn’t until she began climbing up to the landing that she noticed it. The air had changed. It was normal here, on the steps, but in the Tree Room it had been heavier — moist and oppressive, as if the molecules were pregnant with some new energy. Slowly, she went back down and crossed the room, taking deep breaths. There was a slight sweetness, too.
Told you, Nancy said. Also, “appeasement” means the weird new smell in a room.
“Feeling okay, Hannah?”
She whirled around to see her mother standing, arms crossed, watching her.
“Fine.”
“You’re up on your tiptoes, sniffing the air.”
“I know.”
“Did something happen at school?”
Hannah thought for a moment. There were plenty of secrets within the walls of Cliff House. What was one more? The school year was just beginning. She could leave it alone, move on. Make friends. Have a life.
Just ask her what’s for dinner, Belinda agreed. Let it be.
Before Hannah could stop herself, her voice ran away with her thoughts.
“There were people in the house last night. Two men. Standing right here.”
Her mother laughed. “Sounds like somebody was dreaming.” She brushed some nonexistent dirt from the front of her jeans and recrossed her arms.
“I thought maybe it was a dream, but now I can sort of smell them. The air is all wrong.”
Outside, a deep rumble made them both look to the window. Dark clouds were pushing in from the ocean.
“Storm’s coming,” her mother said. “You know how nasty they can be this time of year. That’s what you smell. You’re sensitive to the weather, just like me.”
“No way,” Hannah said. “I know what a storm coming smells like, and this is different.” She sniffed the air. “It’s like … cotton candy.”
“Come on, help me layer the noodles. It’s lasagna night.”
“Mom!” Hannah surprised herself by yelling. Raised voices weren’t often heard at Cliff House. When they were mad, the Silvers just sulked and slunk about. Her mother turned to a cabinet and extracted a glass, along with a bottle of amber liquid. Then she sat down on a sofa made of knotty pine, upholstered with thin green cushions. She poured a tiny bit in a glass and set both glass and bottle on the matching coffee table.
Hannah wondered if she was in trouble. Her mother drained the glass, poured another, then patted the cushion next to her.
“Come sit with me.”
Hannah did. There was another long silence, during which they both watched clouds cover every inch of the sky. Thunder rumbled twice, with a sharp, punctuating crack. Then Leanna Silver spoke.
“I’m going to tell you something that you’re not supposed to hear until you’re older.”
<
br /> Hannah must have been staring, wide-eyed, because her mother gripped her shoulder and gave it a familiar squeeze.
“If you’re lonely right now, you have to understand that it’s not half as lonely as you’ll feel for the rest of your life, once you know what I know. So I’m only going to tell you if you’re sure you want to hear it. Things are happening — there are reasons I should tell you. But once I do, there’s no going back.”
Yes! Nancy screamed. Even Belinda agreed.
Hannah thought about school. She could smell the musty hallways, hear the murmur of droning chatter. That was the life she wanted. Wasn’t it? Not shut up in Cliff House, keeping secrets, puttering around.
She closed her eyes.
“Tell me,” she said before she could think about it anymore. “I want to know.”
“Oh, Hannah” — her mother was hugging her, pulling her close — “my baby girl.”
It was after midnight by the time Hannah went to bed, but she wasn’t tired. In fact, she wondered if she’d ever be able to sleep again. She sat on her alcove cushions, watching the rain pummel the glass. Every few minutes, a flash would light up the choppy surface of the sea, freezing the dark shape of the lighthouse in photographic stillness against the backdrop of the storm.
Albert, she thought. Waving hello.
Hannah lost herself in the downward slashes of water on the glass. Her eyes blurred, and her mother’s words played over again, as if she’d recorded them.
* * *
The city of the dead has no beginning and no end. Just as there are no edges, there is no center. The city simply exists in every direction. Pick a street and follow it for centuries. You’ll meet billions of souls, but you’ll never reach a gate to the countryside or a road to the suburbs. The city is the temporary home to everyone who has lived and died in our world.
I know — it’s a lot to take in. It was a lot for me to take in, when your father told me. But bear with me. Just try.
Beyond the city lies Ascension. To help souls travel from life on earth through the city and onward to Ascension, there’s a government of sorts, an eternal ruling body that maintains order. The lower branches are called the Watchers. To be eligible for a trip to Ascension, a soul must follow the rules. Watchers enforce these rules and make sure nobody jumps the line. That sort of thing.
The only way into the city is death, except for a single tiny exception — an exception you’ve been living next to your entire life. You know the door in the lighthouse that seems to lead to nowhere? Well, for most people it will lead to nowhere. But for a few, it will lead to the city of the dead. Think of it as an emergency portal. For humans, of course, it’s strictly off-limits and completely secret.
Long ago the city appointed a Guardian to monitor the door, to remain close to the threshold at all times. To keep its secret. Over the last century the Guardianship has been passed down through names you’ll recognize: Jackson Silver. Abraham Silver. Benjamin Silver.
Me.
And after me, Hannah: you. It’s not so outlandish a proposition. I thought, once, that I would never have to worry about it. I expected your father to carry the burden into old age, at which point it would be passed on to you. But after your father’s accident, I became the Guardian. You and I are part of the order, Hannah, tasked with protecting the door to the city of the dead. Patrick is the one who taught me the rules. Patrick, as you might have guessed, is one of the few Watchers to live as a human on our side. Kyle is his apprentice.
* * *
Hannah didn’t know how much time had passed while she’d zoned out at the window, but after a while it was no longer just the lightning flashing outside — it was the lighthouse, too. The same flickering as the night before, pale and misty in the storm. Did that mean more visitors from the dead city?
The rain intensified, battering Cliff House like the waves upon the rocks below. Water trickled into her room around the corroded iron windowpane. Was her mother actually out in this storm, opening the door, tending to the threshold? Hannah slid off the window seat, standing on tiptoes to stretch her cramped legs. Then she went out into the hallway to listen for the arrival of more bright-eyed strangers.
Watchers.
She waited for a long time, but the house remained silent. Unable to stay still, she moved down the hallway — very quietly, even though she was pretty sure she was alone in the house — and down the back stairs to the landing above the Tree Room.
Go back to bed, Belinda said.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
I could get used to this Guardian thing, Nancy said.
Hannah waited for the click of the lamp. It never came. She headed down the stairs and crossed the Tree Room — there was the shape of her mother’s empty glass on the table — and into the back hallway.
She was not quite scared, but she was hyper with nerves.
She stepped out the back door, fighting a gust of wind that almost knocked her over. As she walked down the garden path, her bare feet squelched. At the base of the lighthouse, it took her a moment to realize what was out of place: Off to the right, no more than ten feet away, was a lump that could have been a gathering of rocks, a mound of dirt, a large tree limb taken down by the storm.
Hannah stopped breathing. She must have started running and slipped, because she found herself crawling across the soaked ground — it wasn’t rocks or dirt or a tree branch, it was a body, twisted unnaturally, as if it had fallen from a great height. The body’s eyes, her mother’s eyes, her mother’s eyes, were open. Any blood had been washed away by the rain.
Hannah cried out. Shook her. Tried to wake her. Felt for a pulse.
She couldn’t believe this was happening.
No twitch beneath the skin, no heartbeat, no breath.
It was happening.
Her mother was —
Hannah looked up. Hidden somewhere in the darkness was the narrow steel walkway that encircled the top of the lighthouse. Built for emergency maintenance, too dangerous to use as a balcony.
Why had her mother been up there in weather like this?
How had her mother fallen?
Or had she died some other way?
Hannah cried out again. Where was Patrick? Kyle? Where were the Watchers? Surely they could revive her mother with their powers. Hannah felt manic, full of live-wire energy rather than grief. She had to find the Watchers. They would know what to do.
She slid her along the wet grass until she reached the dry interior of the lighthouse. She bounded up the steps and stopped at the landing. There was no sign of the Watchers.
She was alone.
But the door in the wall … it was open.
* * *
Many years ago, there was a breach. Not from our world into the city — that’s never happened, not even once — but from the city into Ascension. A group of rebellious souls found the second doorway hidden deep within the city and tried to ascend before their time had come. But trying to sneak through either one of these doors is a good way to summon an army of Watchers. The rebels were caught and banished to earth, with no hope of ever getting back into the city, much less Ascension. They will never be allowed to move beyond our world.
When you cheat at the game of existence, your punishment is eternal.
For a while, everything was quiet on earth. The banished souls scattered and lived peacefully among us, beaten and humbled. But now there are rumors, alarming reports from Patrick’s network. For the first time in centuries, the banished are inspired. They’re beginning to emerge from the shadows. Organizing. Patrick thinks they’re preparing for an assault on the city — an assault that would have to be launched from our door. There’s no other way in for them.
We’re preparing for the worst without knowing what it might be. That’s why I’ve been a bit crazier than usual. It’s not just you going to school. And then last night, with the Watchers from the other side … I didn’t even know they were coming. It’s a rare ev
ent — no one has visited since I’ve been the Guardian. Crossing over can be disruptive. But they’d heard the rumors, too.
I’m worried that I won’t be strong enough, when the time comes. If it comes. Worried that I won’t recognize it for what it is.
There’s more, of course. Much more. But now you know who I am. Who we are.
And what we must do.
We must guard the doorway.
* * *
It was only open a crack, like someone hadn’t bothered to shut it all the way. Hannah crossed the landing and placed her hand on the doorknob. The churning in her mind drowned out the raging storm, the pleading of Belinda, the frantic encouragements of Nancy. She had listened to her mother tell the story, had seen the Watchers with her own eyes, and still it was hard to believe. What if her mother was crazy? What if they were both crazy?
If they were crazy, there’d be nothing but a blank wall behind this door. And her mother really would be out of reach, forever.
But what if opening the door meant that she could see her again? She didn’t know how the city of the dead was supposed to work, exactly, but if it was a place where people went after they died, then her mother was already there.
There was no way to bring her back to life in this world. On this side of the door, death was the end.
But maybe on the other side, it was just the beginning.
My mother is dead, she thought, abruptly choked with grief so potent that it almost made her pass out. She fought it, crying, swallowing air in gulps, and never took her hand from the doorknob.
Desperate to find her mother, Hannah Silver opened the door.
The world creaked beneath Hannah’s feet and she pitched forward. Every portal-crossing, time-traveling, dimension-hopping story she’d ever read came back to her at once. She prepared to be dissolved and rocketed through a tunnel of stretched-out stars.
Some otherworldly force, solid and unyielding, struck her hands, elbows, and knees. In a panic, she pushed back. After a disorienting struggle, she realized that her palms were resting against floorboards gouged with burnt-looking knotholes. She had merely tripped, and now she was inside an empty attic. A melancholy afternoon leaked through a soot-darkened window. Shapes in the dusty floor gave the impression of absent furniture.
