Tears rushed from his eyes. That didn’t make sense. He was seventeen and he was crying, but what he really felt was a ball of anger in his stomach so hot and fierce he felt like throwing up. He turned to stare at the man.
“Your own folly did that,” the man said.
Julio jumped up. “No,” he said, cradling the violin neck against his stomach, swamped with brief guilt while he wondered if this were his fault. Did he ask this man to order him around? Did he ask to be snatched from the practice room without even a moment to stow the violin in its case? No. His eyes still leaked hot tears. He had never felt this angry before in his life.
“Sit,” said the man for the third time.
“No.”
The man gestured and murmured some words, and Julio found his legs walking him to the chair. He sat.
He glanced at the other boy. The boy stared at him with the intent look of a bird of prey staring at a mouse. Julio wiped away tears, ashamed. Perhaps he couldn’t help doing what the man said, but he didn’t have to share his anguish with people who didn’t care. The heat in his chest built higher and hotter. He managed to stop the tears.
“Tell me about your friends!” The stranger’s voice held an edge of anger now.
He’s losing it. Julio kept his mouth closed. His head was so full of anger and pain he didn’t have room for obedience.
“Very well,” said the man. “Think about this for a while.”
Three gestures and some freezing, hard words. Marks appeared on the hardwood floor around Julio’s chair: two concentric circles in ice-blue light, with unknown symbols in blood red light scribbled in the band between them. Julio felt his bones freeze. He clutched the violin neck, but his hand was dead; he couldn’t even feel his fingers against the hard wood. The man gestured and spoke more words, these ones slice-sharp and even icier.
And Julio lost himself.
Utter dark, darker than blindness. Utter cold, subzero and marrow deep. For a brief time, silence.
Then the noise began. Voices, yammering, wailing, screaming, each one a pure cold stream of its particular emotion, soul-deep sorrow and regret, heart-hammering terror, roiling red rage. All of them printed themselves on Julio’s mind and heart.
He was such a good listener.
Then came the little biting things, gnawing behind eyes Julio was no longer sure he had. Tiny teeth tore into his brain, each toothmark a separate pain.
He struggled, tried to bat the biting things, tried to wall his ears off with his hands, but he didn’t seem to have a body here; he had no defenses. All of him was ear, was skin, was brain, was pain. Flute shrieks of terror, violin screeches of shrill anger, tympani thumps of pounding rage, cello glissades of unending sadness, other instruments he had never heard before expressing feelings that made him want to scream or slash his wrists, all disharmony and discord. Pianissimo horn notes of utter despair, brush whispers of terrible shame. Slashing vocal shrieks of agony and pain and torture. His mind struggled to make music of it. It refused to sort from chaos into pattern. Every new note, every new voice, sawed or sliced at him, each at a different tempo, each in a different way.
It didn’t soften or stop. It just got stronger, less endurable.
Finally he stopped trying to fight it, let go and let it all in.
Then it hurt even more.
He could feel pieces of himself slice off, fall away.
He needed help.
“Nathan!” he cried. No sound came out: he had no mouth.
Sound existed here somehow. It cut and chopped at him.
He had to make his own song.
He thought it: “Nathan.” It came out as a squeak. He thought it again, drawing his concentration away from all the things that hurt. “Nathan!” He roared it through all the screams around him, and heard his own tenor voice crying in this wilderness.
“Yes?”
Nathan’s voice! He focused all his energy on it. “Nathan!”
“What is it? Who’s calling?”
A rope of sound! Julio used each word as a knot, pulled himself closer to the origin of the voice. Coherent sound that cut through the chaos. “Nathan?”
“What? Who’s there?”
Julio pulled and plunged, skidded out of wherever he was into another place.
All the screams and biting stopped. He hung suspended in a new, warmer darkness. “Nathan.” he said again, his voice clear and pure and burnished as he had never heard it. For a moment he lost himself in the sound of his own voice.
“Julio? Is that you?” Julio heard fear in Nathan’s voice, minor notes in a question key.
“Nate? Where am I? I can’t see.”
“You’re at my house,” said the ghost, his voice beautiful but thinned with apprehension. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. I—” Julio reached out and felt Nathan’s face. “Oh, God. You’re here.” He sensed the cool skin, felt an eyelash brush against the tip of his finger, touched nose, lips.
“Julio,” Nathan said. Julio felt the lips move under his fingertips as the ghost spoke. “What are you doing?”
“I—” What was he doing? The ghost wasn’t tangible. How could Julio touch him? “I’m sorry! I’m—I was—it was so horrible!” He shifted, moved forward, leaned against the ghost and hugged him, unsure how it was happening, needing to touch something safe. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured, holding tight, his hands pressing the cool woven cotton of the back of Nathan’s shirt, his cheek against Nathan’s shoulder, the ghost’s body hard and cold in his embrace, but solid as any other person Julio had ever hugged. “I was so scared. I’m sorry. I can’t—” He couldn’t get himself to let go. What if the other place snatched him back?
What if he was forcing Nathan to endure something Nathan couldn’t stand? Julio couldn’t let go. Panic made him hold tighter.
“It’s all right.” Nathan said, his voice almost calm.
An anchor against that dark chaotic sea, Nathan stood quiet in his embrace.
At last Julio relaxed enough to release his friend. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
“It’s all right,” Nathan repeated, stronger this time. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know. Why can’t I see?” Julio reached out, brushed Nathan’s chest, reached farther and touched a wall. The wallpaper felt alive and powdery beneath his fingertip, and then he felt a startling flow of energy beneath it, a question, a greeting, a warmth. He pushed deeper into it, and it closed around his hand like warm water. “What is this?” Julio moved to the wall and pressed into it, and through it. Welcoming warmth all around him, like a hot bath, and the soothing music of lullabies. “Hello?” he said.
“Hello, Boy,” said the house.
“Where am I?”
“In my wall.”
“What? How?” He reached farther, felt his hand leave the haven of the house.
“That’s the air outside.”
“House. I don’t understand.”
“Hang on to yourself, Julio. You’re a ghost.”
Julio curled up inside himself. A ghost! No. Couldn’t be.
Could it? How else could he have hugged Nathan?
If he were dead, at least it was a comfortable death. House was so much better than the other place! But—
“House,” he whispered.
A hand reached into the warmth, grabbed Julio’s hand, and tugged him out of the wall. “That’s not quite right, Julio,” Nathan told him. Julio clung to his hand. “I don’t think you’re dead. Your inner self got separated from your body, that’s all. Can you tell us what happened to you?”
“This man came to my school and ordered me around. He had a voice like Edmund’s. He could make me do what he wanted just by saying it. He took me in his car to some house up in the mountains, and started asking me about you and the others, and I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t get that part. He could make me do anything he wanted. He ordered me to walk and I walked, ordered me to sit and I sat. But
I didn’t answer his questions. I just got really mad.”
“Good,” said Nathan. And then: “He already knew something. Otherwise, why would he have picked you up? What happened after that?”
Julio said, “He made me break Mr. Noah’s violin. I was trying to run away and he told me to stop, and I fell on Mr. Noah’s violin. I broke that beautiful violin. I’ll never be able to explain that!” Anger filled Julio again. “Then he made me sit down again and told me to tell about you. When I wouldn’t talk, he cast some kind of spell on me and sent me to hell.”
Nathan gripped Julio’s hand harder. “Can you remember anything about the spell?”
“Light circles on the floor, with writing. Two blue circles, one inside the other, with red writing in between. The guy said words and used gestures. I didn’t know the language.”
“And hell, what was that like?”
“Cold, dark, screams, pain.” Julio shook. “Horrible horrible not-music.”
“Forget,” said Nathan gently. “Release it.” He touched Julio’s cheek.
“But—”
“You want to keep that?”
“I’m not ready to forget yet. I want to kill that guy.” Rage filled him. Then he felt something flicker through him, a calling and a pulling away. No! He was not going to leave the safety of this house! He gripped Nathan’s shoulders. “Help me. Something’s pulling me!”
Nathan took his hands and held on tight. After a moment the calling passed, and Julio relaxed. “Oh. Thank you. Damn! Nathan, why can’t I see anything?”
“You’re not yourself.”
Julio waited a moment, trying to figure out how Nathan meant that. Of course he wasn’t himself. He was some kind of ghost. Nathan was a ghost, and he could see, couldn’t he? Julio waved his free hand around and touched Nathan’s face. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked, brushing Nathan’s cheek, his mouth. He couldn’t feel a smile, but he hadn’t touched people’s faces while they were smiling enough to know the difference.
“No,” Nathan said. He sighed. “You’re ghostly, but not ghostlike. In the form you wear now, you have no body.”
“But—” Julio touched Nathan’s lips again. “I feel you.” He moved his other hand in Nathan’s grasp. “How can I hold on to you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how you’re talking, either.”
“What do I look like?”
Nathan hesitated, then said, “A pillar of colored light.”
Julio hugged himself, feeling arms and elbows, chest and shoulders. “That can’t be right, he whispered.
Nathan said nothing.
Julio touched Nathan’s shoulder, arm. hand. Nathan opened his hand, let Julio take it again. It felt cold but solid. “But,” Julio said. And then, “I keep touching you. I never even asked. I was just so scared, Nate.”
“It’s all right.” The ghost sounded relaxed. “It’s been an age since I touched anyone or anyone touched me. I like it.”
“What do I feel like to you?”
Nathan gripped his hand. “This feels like a hand, but looks like a streamer of light. When you touch my face, a ribbon of light reaches for me, and I feel fingertips. I can’t explain it, Julio. I haven’t seen this sort of manifestation before. If you imagined eyes for yourself …”
Julio imagined he could see. He remembered what the haunted house looked like. With Edmund, Deirdre, and Susan, he stopped off there after school most days. Downstairs, dust, dirt, cobwebs, curling strips of wallpaper, water stains, scratchy stretches of empty space; suggestive shadows that your mind could turn into terrors, shaped and aided by Nathan’s haunting. Upstairs, bedrooms with old furniture and new objects Edmund, Deirdre, Susan, and Julio had brought in. Nathan and the house had given them each a space to claim, a haven away from their homes. “Where am I?” Julio asked, and reached out. He felt rough metal with one hand, explored, discovered the ornamented face of the old woodstove in the kitchen. With his other hand he touched the doorway.
“The kitchen,” Nathan said, just after Julio figured it out.
Julio visualized the kitchen. The stove stood against one wall, and the doorway into the dining room was ten feet from it.
How could he feel both at once?
He pulled back into himself, frightened and startled. What was he?
A pillar of light.
A pillar of light that could stretch across a room.
He was something not caged in a body, not trapped by size or race or gender. Something not even human.
Whoa. There could be an upside to this.
Suppose f had a thousand hands?
He spread out, touched surfaces in all directions—window glass, floor, ceiling, woodstove, sink, faucets, doorway. He reached through the doorway into the dining room and touched the far wall there, felt House’s energy under the surface. A thousand hands, five thousand fingertips, a body that could expand to fill a whole room; a flood of sensations, a knowing of surfaces as though he were putty pressed up against everything, with Nathan somehow in the middle of him, a dragonfly in amber. Behind every surface he touched, the house touched him back, laughing as though tickled.
Somewhere inside the house lurked the memories of musical instruments from the past. With a thousand hands, he could play—
Now was not the time to think about that.
If I imagined eyes. Julio tried to imagine being able to see everything he touched, but vision didn’t come.
“I can’t seem to imagine eyes,” Julio said. “Ouch! Sorry!” His voice came from everywhere and seemed much too loud. Although, given time, he was sure he could come up with something to use a voice like that for. Maybe his voice wasn’t trapped either. Could he sing four-part harmony with himself? Why not six—or eight-part harmony? Why not be an orchestra?
He pulled himself together until all he felt was the floor beneath what he thought of as feet. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Nathan said again. He sounded like he was laughing. Then he said in a sober voice, “But we had better think about this. We need to put you back together. Who knows what’s happening to your body without you in it? Did the man give you a reason for doing this to you?”
“Punishing me for not talking.”
“I need some witches.” Nathan said. Then, “Edmund’s coming.”
Julio listened, but heard nothing. He reached out and touched a wall, pushed into it. House’s warm energy enveloped his hand. “Here,” it said, and let Julio into its sensory network so that he was all through the house, out into the yard, and under a small slice of street. Rock beneath, roots above, and footsteps traveling from an edge toward the center.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Nathan said somewhere above him. Julio sensed him flickering from one place and reappearing in another. Julio had never had nerves like these, a skeleton like this. The house fed him more information and helped him sort it. Nathan stood on the porch. Edmund and Deirdre, talking, strode the path through the blackberry thickets toward the house.
“I need you,” Nathan said to them.
“What is it?” Edmund asked.
“Somebody’s hurt Julio.”
Both of them raced up on the porch. Julio felt the house open the front door. “What? Where? What can we do?” asked Edmund.
“First we need to figure out where,” Nathan said.
“You don’t know where? It’s not here? How do you know about it?” Deirdre demanded. Her voice sounded upset.
“Julio?” Nathan said.
Julio pulled his hand from the wall, breaking a host of connections he had made with the house. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry!” The small snaps had hurt, a hundred tiny cuts on sensitive skin. He touched the wall again.
“Next time, warn me,” the house told him.
“I didn’t know.”
“Nor I.”
“I’m pulling away now.” He waited a moment, then lifted his hand off the wall. He headed for the front hall and bumped into the closed dining room doo
r. “What do I do now?”
“Come through.”
He put his hands out and pressed them into the door, felt the same energy there, warm and fluid and accepting. He pushed into it and past it and came out the other side.
Deirdre yelled, “Yow!”
Chapter Four
Still Past
edmund gasped. “What is that?” he asked after a moment, his voice at its most molten-metal pure, so beautiful Julio wanted to wrap himself up in it. Julio reached toward Edmund, touched his jacket. “What?”
“Julio, wait,” Nathan said.
Julio traced the zipper of Edmund’s jacket up, touched his throat, felt a pulse of heat and unborn music wound tight under his fingertips, masked by a warm net of skin and nerves and veins, arteries and muscles.
“This is Julio?” Edmund asked, letting a little of the coiled music loose. Julio reached up and touched his lips. “What are you doing?” Julio felt the words breathe out past his fingers, each one carrying a trace of power.
“Your voice,” Julio said. “I love your voice.”
“Julio,” Deirdre said, her voice hoarse. “What happened to you?”
“A witch cast him out of his body,” Nathan answered.
Julio set one hand against Edmund’s throat and kept the other over his lips, waiting, hoping, for another word. “Would you please stop that?” Edmund said. Julio could taste his amusement and exasperation. For a moment he didn’t even think about what Edmund had said; he was too busy savoring the music arid strangeness of words that carried this power. Then he suddenly realized: here he was, touching again, somebody he’d known for ten years and never really touched before.
He pulled back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t see. But I can hear even better than I could before, and I can touch. I know I’m getting carried away.”
“You’re blind?” Deirdre asked.
Past the Size of Dreaming Page 4
