There came a scream out of the dark, followed by a gunshot. It gave Donovan a start, his chest thumping with panic. Was it a woman’s scream? A lump formed in his throat. He fought back a bout of nausea.
Keep your head straight, hoss. You don’t know if it’s her.
There were more shouts now, some of them belonging to his brother and the young man he’d left in the stairway. Others came from somewhere further ahead, distorted and impossible to decipher. Donna, he thought. She’s here. She’s close.
And she’ll be dead if you don’t find that old bastard.
He sucked in his breath and leapt over the turnstiles.
• • •
The stairwell gave way to the boarding platform. More barrels illuminated the wide room with dancing shadows that played tricks on Donovan’s eyes. The walls seemed to move with varying shapes. The whole room glowed a sinister orange hue, reminding him of a Halloween bonfire he attended as a child.
In the center of the platform, between two columns, stood a crowd of people. Donovan couldn’t tell how many there were. They seemed to wait, their attention focused on something at the edge of the platform. Some of the people, he saw, were covered in grime, their skin mottled with an ashy-colored pox. The smell here was even worse, and Donovan had to suppress the urge to vomit.
“Put it down,” a woman screamed. She sounded young. There were mumbles of concern and dissent among the group. Off in the corner, Donovan glanced at a pair of men kneeling over the body of a woman. He panicked for a moment, fearing it might be his wife, but her voice over the crowd caught his attention.
“Mister, please, you don’t have to do this—”
“Shut up, bitch.”
Donovan froze. No, he thought. He gripped the revolver and cocked back the hammer like he’d seen on TV. It clicked. A woman in the crowd turned, saw him standing there, then pointed him out to the man next to her. They watched Donovan force his way through the crowd toward the pair at the edge of the platform.
Dr. Albert Sparrow stood with an arm wrapped around Donna’s neck. She was frozen with fear, her arms limp at her sides like a ragdoll. Tears streamed down her face.
Sparrow pressed the gun against her temple. He saw Donovan at the entrance. He did not smile.
“I’m not going back,” he said. “I don’t know if I made that clear enough yet, but I think I’ve got your attention now. Drop the gun.”
Michael and Joel finally caught up to him. They ran down the stairs and halted at the opening. Donovan heard his brother mutter “Shit” under his breath.
“You don’t have to do this,” Donovan began. His mouth was suddenly very dry, and the revolver felt like a lead weight in his hand.
“Drop the gun.”
Donovan looked into Donna’s eyes. He wanted to cross the gap, take her in his arms, and hold her. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was—but he couldn’t. He glared at Sparrow as he placed the gun on the floor. Joe Hopper’s words came to him, except they weren’t really Hopper’s at all. They were Donovan’s, and the sound of them on his lips filled him with an unsteady terror.
“If you hurt her,” he said, “I will haunt you.”
Sparrow flashed a smile, taking the gun away from Donna’s head for a moment. “Your wife and I are going to walk out of here, Don, and we’re going to take the car. You’ll find her dumped on the side of the road somewhere. What you do now determines whether or not she’ll still be breathing when you do.”
Anger welled up within Donovan, climbing from his gut all the way to his head. His vision reddened. For a moment, he forgot about everything else. He forgot about the flickering, about his brother and the others, about his own measly existence. In that quiet span of seconds, Donovan saw only the old man and his wife. A cold weight coiled around his stomach, transforming into fingers that gripped his torso, lightly pulling him out of the Spectrum.
He looked at Donna. “I love you,” he said. Donovan breathed deeply as he took a step toward Sparrow. The old man pointed the gun at him just as the world shifted. Shadows gave way to a graying haze that filled the room like thick smoke. The cracked and grimy tile floor vanished, revealing a blank panel. The others shone through in clarity. He could see their features. Liminal people, he thought.
Sparrow was there, too, holding Donna’s darkened silhouette.
Donovan crossed the gap and charged into the doctor. The grays faded, filling in the blanks of the room with the spotted orange glow of fire in the shadows. Sparrow let go of Donna as the two of them tumbled off the platform and onto the old tracks.
The impact drove the air from Donovan’s lungs, but it did little to quell the fire burning within him. He drove his knee into Sparrow’s groin, eliciting a hoarse cry from the doctor. His gnarled fingers searched the ground around them, fumbling for the gun, but it was not within reach.
Donovan clutched Sparrow’s throat. He balled his other hand into a fist, letting his rage take over. All Donovan could hear was the smack of his knuckles against the old man’s face. All he could see was the image of Sparrow’s gun to Donna’s head. After coming all this way and compromising his own values, Donovan would not let anything happen to her, and certainly not at the hands of this man.
The room shifted again, colors becoming gray. The empty drone of the Monochrome took over. Donovan thrust himself off the doctor, panting. Blood dripped off his swollen knuckles, spotting the floor beneath him. In a few seconds, the dark red splotches vanished, erased by this pale reality.
He looked up. The Missing stood at the edge of the platform, watching.
Is that it? he wondered. Have I flickered out?
“Not quite, Mr. Candle.”
Dullington’s voice sounded as if from everywhere, each syllable accompanied by a tremor running through the very fabric of reality. Cretins emerged from the tunnels, spilling over one another, chattering incessantly. They stopped short of Donovan and Sparrow, climbing atop one another to form a column of white, squirming bodies. Aleister Dullington’s features took shape.
He looked down at Sparrow. The old man faded in and out of the gray haze, his body shimmering with color.
“Contrary to what Albert Sparrow told you, Mr. Candle, I am a being of my word.”
“No,” Sparrow groaned. Dullington ignored him. He set his black eyes upon Donovan.
“I am in your debt. You have done what no one else could do, and all in the name of love.”
“So that’s it, then?” Donovan crawled backward, resting against the side of the platform. “You’ll let my wife go?”
“Indeed I will, Mr. Candle. I must confess, under normal circumstances I would keep you here, and I still may.” A hint of a smile spread across Dullington’s face. “But that is up to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your second chance, Mr. Candle. It is a second chance, and it is yours. Not many are granted one, but when they do it is earned.” Dullington’s voice degraded into a slow growl. “Albert Sparrow cheated his way to it.” He looked up at the others standing on the edge of the platform. “Take him away. He will flicker out in time.”
Albert Sparrow groaned, his voice distorted by the gravity of the Monochrome. Donovan watched the good doctor flicker back to the Spectrum. He felt shame for what he’d done, leaving the man to this fate—but he had no other choice.
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I have plans for him, but he is no longer your concern, Mr. Candle. Do you remember what I asked you yesterday?”
Donovan did remember. “I do.”
“Good. Therein lies the way to your second chance. Consider it a life pitch.”
“A life pitch?”
Dullington nodded. “Define yourself, Mr. Candle. It is the only way you will truly stop the flickering. If you do not do this, you will see me again, and I am not in the business of granting third chances.”
The room shifted before Donovan had a chance to respond. He found himself sitting in the darkness of th
e subway tunnel. Dr. Sparrow was gone.
• • •
“Donnie?”
He found new strength at the sound of Donna’s voice. He pulled himself onto the platform. A group of the Missing watched him in quiet awe. Donna pushed her way through the crowd and threw her arms around him. He held her tight, eyes closed, relishing the moment, then pulled back and kissed her. It was a kiss of desperation and love, seeming to stop time.
When he pulled away, she gasped and smiled. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he said, fighting back his own tears. “This isn’t your fault at all.”
A young woman approached them. Donovan gave her a curious glance as recognition teased his mind. He’d seen her before, somewhere. Donna looked over at her, offering a weak smile.
“Mrs. Candle,” the woman said, “I’m sorry all of this happened to you. And you, too, Donovan.”
“Do I know you?” he asked.
Alice nodded. He couldn’t tell if she was smiling or frowning—the shifting shadows cast by the firelight made it hard to see.
“You did, once. We worked in the same department at Identinel.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alice Walenta.”
The name rushed out of the depths of his mind with the velocity of a bullet. He knew her face, and he knew her name, but not from the job. That connection was dead to him, but the rest—
The radio ads, he thought. The newspaper ads, too. “Her name is Alice Walenta. She is 5’9”, roughly 150 lbs, and has long, black hair.” She fit the description, and he knew without a doubt that this was her. She belonged to Dullington now, another casualty of the flickering. George Guffin’s panicked words came rushing back: “Some forget about us and others don’t.”
“The last time I saw you, Don Candle, you had a Cretin on your shoulder. You never even knew I was gone. Do you still work for that hideous company?”
He didn’t know what to say to her. For the life of him, he could not remember her at all from the workplace. There was a hazy spot in his memory, like a square cut away from canvas. How many others had he known and forgotten? The implications of the question chilled him.
Michael Candle approached them. He looked confused, and more frightened than he would ever admit.
“Are you two okay?”
“Yeah,” Donovan said, giving Donna a squeeze. “I think so.”
“Good.” Michael nodded. “Now can we get the hell out of here?”
They all agreed it was time to return home. Alice got the key from Joel and led them back the way they came, through the suffocating darkness, up the stairs toward the locked gate. The daylight stung their eyes. Alice kept her head down while she opened the lock.
Michael bounded up the steps to the sidewalk. As Donovan helped his wife across the threshold, he took a breath, relishing the fresh air. Alice waited at the gate, squinting up to the sky. She, too, breathed in the air. It brought a smile to her face.
Donovan took to the stairs, but Donna paused to look back.
“What’s wrong?”
Donna ignored him. “Alice,” she said. “Come with us. I don’t know what’s happened, but maybe we can help you?”
Alice stepped back into the shadows. She closed the gate and engaged the padlock.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Candle. It doesn’t work like that.” There were tears in the young woman’s eyes. She blinked them away. “This is my place now, and it wouldn’t matter if I went with you. Sooner or later, you would forget about me.”
Donna beckoned to the woman beyond the gate, but Alice had vanished into the shadows. Donna looked at her husband, confused, and took her first, reluctant step toward freedom.
When they reached the top, Donovan stopped to look down at the gate. He thought about what Alice said, measuring the weight of her words. He understood them and their heavy implications, and when he looked back at his wife, he realized what he had to do.
Donovan put his back to the threshold and wrapped an arm around Donna.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
• EPILOGUE •
LIFE PITCH
Donovan Candle’s alarm went off precisely at 6:30 Monday morning. He stirred in his sleep, rolled over and snuggled his wife, who promptly nudged him. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The alarm blared. Memories of the weekend came tumbling upward from a shallow grave, threatening to drag him down into its hole.
Worse than the denizens of the Monochrome were the prospects of returning to an empty job, an empty routine. An empty life.
Timothy Butler and the Tammys didn’t help matters, either.
“Don,” his wife groaned. He smiled, reached over, and turned off the alarm. Donna rolled over, burying her face into his chest.
His thoughts returned to Saturday night, after they retrieved his car and left Sparrow’s rental in the parking garage. They stayed at Michael’s place that night, mindful enough not to wake him as they made love well into the dawn. When they arrived home Sunday morning, Donovan made his wife wait in the car while he collected the remains of Mr. Precious Paws. He buried the feline in the backyard, marking the grave with his food dish. They spent the rest of the day cleaning the kitchen.
Three times that day, Donovan saw the Monochrome side of his own home. Seeing Donna reduced to a dark, transparent ghost left him with a chill that would not relent. After all he’d gone through it almost didn’t seem real, like a dream from which he’d not yet awakened. He wanted it all to be a dream, but the flickering reminded him this was not the case. As he stared toward the ceiling, the room’s color drained away. It lasted only a matter of seconds, but it was enough to reassure him this was far from over.
He recalled Dullington’s task.
Ain’t no better time than today, hoss. Get to it.
Sooner or later he would have to confront the demons that had condemned him for so many years. Today, he realized, would be that day.
Donna lay with her eyes closed. He brushed the hair out of her face. She was so beautiful. He’d gone through hell to get her back, digging to depths of himself he didn’t care to know, and it had been worth every moment—but there was still one more life that needed saving.
Her eyes fluttered open. She smiled.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“Hi.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Mmm, about what?”
The words were there on his tongue. They’d been there ever since Tuesday morning, but other matters had stolen his attention. Even then, he realized, he wouldn’t have meant them. Not like now. Now he knew the error of his ways, and he owed her an apology.
Donovan leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“I’m sorry about our fight Monday evening. It was stupid, and you were right all along. It’s not about the money.”
He felt the heat of tears in his eyes, and tried his best to hold them back. The look on Donna’s face told him he wasn’t doing a very good job.
“And when I came home the next day, and you weren’t there, I thought I’d lost you forever. That I’d driven you away, and in some ways, I think I did. But I want you to know that I’m going to change all that. Today. Because I love you, because I owe it to you, and because ...” Because if I don’t, I’ll disappear forever. The words hung on his lips, and he wanted to voice them, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Just because.”
Donna smiled, wiping a tear from his cheek.
“We’ll be okay, Donnie. We’ve seen worse before, and we survived. And if we can survive this, I’d say we’re damn near invincible.”
“I love you,” he said.
She smiled. “And I love you.”
They kissed. He’d spent over twenty-four hours without her, and it caused him more agony than he’d ever known before. In some ways, losing her proved his love for her, and now that she was
back, he intended to embrace her company for as long as he could. The thought of spending the day away from her while he toiled for nine hours in his cubicle sickened him.
“So, Mrs. Candle,” he said. “Would you like to accompany me on a trip to the shore?”
Donna smiled, opened her mouth to speak, but recoiled with a jolt. She cringed for a moment, putting her fingers to her temples.
“Sorry,” she gasped. “It’s this damn migraine. What were you saying?”
But Donovan didn’t respond. He saw all he needed to see in a brief flash of gray. There was a Cretin on her shoulder, its head pointed toward her ear. Alice Walenta’s words echoed in his head: Sooner or later, you would forget about me.
When the room regained its color, he found Donna staring at him.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Donovan croaked. “I’m fine.”
“You’re very pale.” She put her hand to his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you’re running a fever, though. What were you going to say a few seconds ago?”
He looked at her for a moment, contemplating what to say. What could he say? And would it even matter? She could still see him, but what about that evening after work? These questions raced through his head. He had to confront Dullington’s challenge, and soon, or else all he’d done would be for nothing. Define yourself, Mr. Candle. It was a simple imperative, and yet so daunting. Where could he possibly begin?
Donna looked at the clock. “You’re going to be late for work.”
The answer came to him. He smiled, kissed her, and scrambled out of bed.
• • •
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