Bridge of Souls

by Victoria Schwab

  “Not ominous at all,” says Jacob, aiming for his usual sarcasm and falling short. I can hear the caution in his voice, the current of fear. This is not a place either of us wants to be. Not a bridge we want to cross.

  Something moves behind us, with a shudder and a sigh, and I spin. The horseless carriage is there, but it’s empty. And I know Lara is out there somewhere, on the bridge.

  And we have to get her back.

  Once, I stole from Death.

  I’m ready to do it again.

  Jacob takes my hand. I squeeze, and he squeezes back, and for once, neither of us has to say a thing. Because we know. We’re not alone.

  Together, we step forward.

  Together, we cross the line.

  Together—but then a vicious gust of wind tears through, so strong I have to squeeze my eyes shut and duck my head against the whipping air. The wind pulls at my clothes and scrapes my skin, knocks the camera against my chest.

  And then it’s gone.

  And so is Jacob.

  My hand is empty, and I’m alone on the bridge. I spin, looking for him, suck in a breath to call his name, but I never get the chance.

  The bridge cracks beneath my feet.

  And splits.

  And suddenly, I fall.

  I’m racing against the sun.

  The camera is a weight around my neck, swinging on its purple strap. (Not a candy-grape purple, but violet. My favorite color.) I’ve already loaded the film. I just have to get to the spot in time to take the picture.

  I pedal faster, my breath coming out in plumes. That’s the thing about being born along the seam between winter and spring. The sun may be warm, but the air is still cold, everything stuck between frost and melt. My tires slide a little on the pavement, but I’m a good rider, and I weave between the slick patches of black ice that linger in the shade.

  The bridge comes into sight.

  The sun is sliding down the sky. I know if I stop at the center of the bridge, I can catch the sun as it sinks, right there between the hills. A perfect shot. My bike tires hit the bridge, sliding from pavement to steel with a clunk, and a bad feeling hits me like a cold breeze.

  But there’s no time to think about it, because a truck whips around the corner and onto the bridge. I swerve out of the way, right up close to the rail, but there’s room, I’m safe, I just have to keep the bike straight and—

  The camera strap catches on the rail and I lurch sideways.

  Everything happens so fast.

  One second I’m going forward, and the next, I’m going over. The grind of metal on metal, bike scraping rail, the lurch of gravity, the tumble, and then the terrifying fall, nothing but empty air as the river rushes toward me.

  I throw my arms up, hit the surface with all the grace of a baseball through a windowpane. Shattering.

  And I remember.

  I remember, I’ve been here before, I’m not—

  But then the cold closes over me, and I can’t think, can’t breathe. I’m so freaked out that I actually try, and icy water rushes down my throat, choking cold. It steals up my arms and legs, drags me down.

  I know how to swim, I know, but in that moment, I’m sinking. Drowning.

  The surface ripples overhead, glinting, and I claw toward it, eyes blurring with icy tears. But I can’t seem to go up. No matter how hard I kick, the surface doesn’t get closer.

  I scramble.

  I panic.

  I reach—

  And that’s when I see it.

  A red lanyard wrapped around my wrist.

  And I remember.

  I was on the bridge. Not the one where my bike crashed. The one beyond the Veil. The Bridge of Souls. Which means this isn’t happening. It’s already happened. I crashed my bike on my birthday last year. I almost drowned. But I didn’t. Because Jacob saved my life.

  Jacob. We were standing together, on the Bridge of Souls. And then he was gone, and I was falling, and I was—

  No, focus. Jacob. Jacob Ellis Hale, best friend and resident ghost, who died trying to rescue his little brother’s favorite toy, who dove into the river and never came out.

  This river.

  I twist around in the dark water, looking down instead of up, and there he is. Jacob. His cheeks puffed full of air as he dives down, searches the bottom of the river, fingers closing around the figurine.

  There he is, my best friend. Before he was mine, before he was—

  Oh no.

  This river isn’t just where I almost died. It’s where Jacob did.

  As if on cue, the current picks up, water pulling at me, churning the silt and pebbles. Jacob tries to push off the bottom of the river, but his shoe is stuck, snagged on something he can’t see.

  I call out to him, or I try, but it’s nothing but bubbles, air I can’t afford to lose. My lungs are screaming now as Jacob crouches to free his leg and doesn’t see the driftwood skimming toward his head until it’s too late.

  I see the driftwood hit him. I watch him fold, and then I’m swimming down, against the cold, against the current, against the drag of my own limbs.

  And it’s so much farther than it should be, and it’s so much harder than it should be, but I reach him. He floats there, like a dreamer, as I grapple with the sticks and stones around his shoe, find the one that snagged his laces, gripped his heel.

  I get him free.

  By now my vision is blinking out, darkness creeping in around the edges, but all I need to do is look up, swim up, hold on to my best friend as we rise to the surface.

  I break through the icy water, gasping, and Jacob sputters beside me.

  “Cass?” he gasps, blinking away the darkness, the dream. “What … I don’t … I was down there … and …”

  “I’ve got you,” I say as we swim toward the riverbank. But the moment we climb out of the water and onto dry ground, the muddy earth vanishes beneath my fingers, replaced by smooth stone.

  We’re back on the cold, dark bridge. The Bridge of Souls. Together, not quite alive, but out of that other river, and wherever it led.

  Mist swirls around us, swallowing both ends of the bridge. My clothes are dry, but I’m still shivering as we get to our feet.

  “We have to get out of here,” says Jacob.

  “Not without Lara,” I snap, and he frowns at me and says, “Obviously. But how do we find her?”

  I look around, but all I see is mist.

  I grip Lara’s red backpack on my shoulder, and close my eyes, and breathe, and try to feel the thread that binds us together, the connection that runs between all in-betweeners. But right now, I can’t feel anything but the bridge. I open my eyes and squint, trying to figure out which way is back and which is forward. They both look the same, but one way feels like danger, and the other feels like home.

  And that’s how I know which way to go.

  I go against the current of my fear.

  I go against the urge to flee.

  Against the desire to live.

  And toward the far side of the bridge.

  At least I’m not alone. Jacob is with me, every step. But soon, I start to feel … tired. The cold I felt back in the river is still winding through my bones. My teeth begin to chatter. My legs start to ache. My head is swimming, the way it does when I stay in the Veil too long.

  I want to lie down.

  I want to close my eyes.

  I stumble, but Jacob steadies me.

  “Hey, Cass,” he says. “What’s the fifth rule of friendship?”

  “Um,” I say, trying to focus. “Don’t let your friends get stolen by ghosts.”

  “What about rule number eight?”

  I exhale a cloud of pale white fog. “Don’t let your friend get hit by a car.”

  “And number sixteen?”

  I swallow, my voice getting stronger. “Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

  My head is starting to clear. And up ahead, the mist thins, just enough for me to see a girl with two dark braids
in a pale gray shirt, a reddish light shining through her chest.

  “Lara!” I call out, but my voice does the opposite of echoing. It drops away, inches from my face, swallowed up by the heavy quiet of this place.

  Up ahead, Lara sways on her feet, stumbles, and falls.

  “Lara,” I call as she pushes herself up and keeps walking.

  “Lara!” I shout again, forcing myself forward. But she still can’t hear me. When I get close, I see her eyes are open, but glassy, unfocused, as if she’s in a dream.

  “Lara, it’s me,” I say, but she doesn’t blink, doesn’t stop walking. “You have to wake up.”

  “Um, Cass,” says Jacob, and I can tell by his voice that something else is wrong. I look at him, but he’s looking ahead, to the place where the mist swallows the bridge.

  The space there is getting darker, the gray dissolving into black.

  We’re almost to the end of the bridge. But Lara’s still walking, the red glow flickering inside her chest.

  “Lara, stop,” I say, grabbing her arm.

  But the moment my hand touches her skin, the world dissolves, the mist recoils, and all of a sudden I’m not on the bridge. I’m in a hospital room, surrounded by the slow beep of machines, the chemical-clean scent of sick places.

  And there, lying in the middle of the narrow bed, is Lara.

  She must be eight or nine, but she looks so small. Her tan skin is slick with sweat, her black hair matted to her face. Her breath comes out uneven, in little hitches and stutters, as if something is trapped inside her chest.

  I open my mouth to say her name, but someone else says it instead.

  “Lara.”

  I look up.

  A man and woman stand on the other side of the bed, holding on to each other, their faces hollow with fear. I’ve never met them, but they must be Lara’s parents. I see her written on their faces, her sharp eyes, her pointed chin.

  A doctor stands at the foot of the bed, looking down at his sheet.

  “We’re doing all we can,” he says. “Her heart is weak. Her fever isn’t breaking …”

  Across the bed, the man and woman look so lost.

  “Come outside,” says the doctor. “We need to talk.”

  And in the bed, Lara’s eyelids flutter. Her mouth opens and closes, and she says, in little more than a whisper, “Please don’t go.”

  But they don’t hear her.

  The doctor leads her parents out into the hall. And Lara rolls over in her fevered sleep.

  I can feel the heat wafting off her skin. A reddish glow in the air, just like the light inside her chest.

  And I realize: This is her river.

  This is the moment she almost died.

  And that’s why we’re here. That’s what the Bridge of Souls is for. That’s what the Emissary wants. To change our fates. To set things right.

  But this didn’t happen.

  I didn’t drown, and Lara won’t burn out like a light. I won’t let her.

  “Lara.” I reach out and take her hand. It’s hot, but I don’t let go. I squeeze. “Wake up.”

  She murmurs in her sleep. “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t real,” I say. “It’s just a dream.”

  “Bad dream,” she whispers. She sounds far away. The pulse on the hospital monitor is too slow. Her breathing is too shallow. My hand is burning up in hers, but I don’t let go.

  “You have to wake up,” I say.

  “I’m so tired,” she murmurs.

  I get it. I’m tired, too.

  I want to lie down beside her on the bed.

  I want to, but when I look down at our hands, I see the red thread on my wrist, a reminder to come back.

  In the bed, Lara’s breath hitches, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears running down her face. “They never stay,” she whispers.

  I look through the hospital window, to the man and woman in the hall, talking frantically with the doctor. I can’t hear what they’re saying, because Lara never did, but they look upset. They look frightened. Helpless.

  But even if they can’t help, I can.

  I just have to figure out how.

  If she were a ghost, I could hold up a mirror. Show her what I see, remind her who she is. But she’s not a ghost, not yet, so I’ll just have to tell her instead.

  “Listen to me, Lara,” I say as she curls up smaller on the bed. “You’re the smartest person I know, and I need you to teach me, to show me, to save me from all the stupid, reckless decisions I’ll make, because Jacob can’t.”

  “Ghost,” she whispers, with just a shadow of her normal disdain. But it’s a shadow, and I hold on to it.

  “Lara Chowdhury, you have to wake up so we can get out of this place. You have to wake up, because if you don’t, you never will.” My voice cracks. “You have to wake up because you’re my friend, and I’m not leaving here without you.”

  A small furrow appears between her brows. Her eyes drift open, glassy and fevered.

  “Cassidy?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say, the word rushing out.

  She blinks, and as she does, she grows up, aging from the small girl in the bed to the one I know. She looks around.

  “How did I get here?”

  “The Emissary,” I say. “The bridge.”

  Her eyes sharpen, finally coming into focus. “I remember.”

  Lara tries to get up, but she can’t. I help her sit, and then stand, let her lean her weight on me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “The Emissary was after me, not you, and—”

  “Oh, don’t bother, Cassidy,” she cuts in, sounding more like herself. “We’re in-betweeners, after all. Death is an occupational hazard.”

  I smile, almost laugh, before I notice that the hospital room is getting darker around us, the details dissolving into shadow.

  “Cassidy!”

  Jacob’s voice swims through the room, faint and far away. I help Lara to the door. She grabs the handle, forcing the door open, and we step through. And as we do, the hospital falls away and we’re back on the Bridge of Souls, nothing but wind, and mist, and Jacob, looking wide-eyed.

  “Hello, Ghost,” says Lara, right before Jacob flings his arms around her neck. She staggers a little, but I don’t know if it’s surprise or the lingering fever, the head-swimming wrongness of this place.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Jacob, “about that.”

  He points over my shoulder. Back, toward the beginning of the bridge. Back toward the land of the living. Back toward safety.

  I squint into the mist.

  At first, I can’t see anything.

  And then I see a streak of black.

  A broad-brimmed hat, floating in the fog.

  And long limbs in a crisp dark suit.

  And a bone-white mask with a frozen grin.

  The Emissary walks toward us through the mist.

  And even though it doesn’t have a face, somehow, it still looks very, very mad.

  Back in the land of the living, the Emissary was a skeletal thing, a thin figure in a skull mask and a dark suit. Something almost human.

  Here on the bridge, it doesn’t look human at all.

  Its once-gloved hands are now bone-white talons, and its broad-brimmed hat is a halo of night, the air around it smudged a charcoal black. Cold and darkness spill off its limbs, and every step it takes leaves an inky stain on the bridge.

  And it is coming straight toward us.

  “You belong to Death,” says the Emissary in a voice like smoke rising from a fire. Like steam hissing from the lid of a pot. “And we will take you back.”

  “I don’t think so!” shouts Jacob, flinging himself in front of me. He looks back over his shoulder, arms spread wide as if he can single-handedly keep the monster at bay.

  A smile flickers at the edge of Jacob’s mouth. “I can slow it down,” he says, turning back to face the Emissary. “Run.”

  Maybe he
can slow it down.

  Maybe he’s strong enough to face the Emissary.

  Maybe he can buy us time.

  But I’m not leaving this place without both of my friends. I grab Jacob’s wrist and pull him away from the creature. Grab Lara’s hand, and together, we run.

  The world at our backs is dark, but the road ahead is lighter. If we can just get off the Bridge of Souls. If we can—

  “Where are you going?” rasps the Emissary, and there is an awful amusement in that hoarse voice. As if there’s nowhere to go, as if the bridge doesn’t run both ways.

  The Emissary lifts one hand, bone talons pointed toward the sky—if there is a sky in a place like this. And suddenly the bridge beneath us ripples and sways. Thin black ropes shoot up from the ground, reaching for us, wrapping around our ankles and wrists. I twist free of one, dodge another, but the third coils around my calf and the fourth catches me around the stomach. I stumble and fall, hitting the bridge hard. My camera wedges up against my ribs, knocking the air from my lungs, and Lara’s red backpack goes skidding several feet away.

  It stops near Lara herself. She’s on the ground, too, fighting as half a dozen ropes try to pin her down. Jacob alone seems immune to the black threads. He kneels beside me, tearing at the brittle ropes as the Emissary makes its slow way toward us.

  I tear free of the last rope, but the monstrous reaper only chuckles.

  “You cannot run from us,” it says.

  And the thing is, I know it’s right.

  This is a fisherman, and we are the fish. We have to break the line.

  “Jacob,” I say, lunging for the red backpack in the middle of the bridge. “Get Lara!”

  He’s already there, at her side, ripping out the ropes like weeds as they climb around her. Instead of running, I unzip the bag and turn out the last of the ingredients from the banishing spell.

  The pouch of grave dirt is almost empty.

  A few spoonfuls of oil slosh in the bottom of the bottle.

  A handful of stones and the box of matches tumble out, and I scramble for them, too.

  “Get behind me!” I shout as Jacob pulls Lara to her feet. One braid has come loose, her black hair escaping its plait, and she’s breathing heavily, but she’s up, and together they hurry toward me.