Psychopomp: A Novella Read online

  The ambassador had hired someone to operate a machine to dig right through the spongy composite that made up the ground here. He would have had to, judging by the massive size of the hole. It gaped like a bloodless wound. With each step I took toward it, it yawned wider.

  This was where he disposed of the bodies when he was done draining all their plasma. Where he disposed of his failed experiments. I could see them down there, half-buried, faces and rotting limbs showing through. In some places tiny, sickly green plants had begun to sprout between the bodies.

  Now I knew where the dirt from the graveyard behind the asylum had gone. Ambassador Killering needed it to conceal the proof of his crimes. The isolation of his mansion and the shadows cast by false trees weren’t enough. Eventually he would need more, but Gabriel and I wouldn’t be around to dig it up for him.

  I kept staring. I couldn’t move. But I realized some of the bodies in the hole were moving. Rising, shaking. Dirt fell from their withered skin and tattered clothes. Hands clawed at the sides of the hole but they couldn’t get out. I heard them groan. Goosebumps covered my arms.

  The serums don’t always work.

  They become useless to our country.

  Useless. Not dead.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Tears pooled in my eyes. I had to leave.

  At this time of night, at this end of the city, there was only one place I could go.

  23. el regreso

  I blinked. I knew this place, though not well. The street was bathed in red light shining from above doors. Everyone’s face was in shadow. My mind was half blank, dread weighing in my stomach. I didn’t know if I’d find her.

  Nobody moved. They all just stood there by the doors, on the corners. I knew everyone was looking at me as I walked down the street.

  A man grabbed my arm. “What do we have here?” he said, turning me around to face him. I could just make out his leer. I didn’t have the strength to shake him off, but he let go when he found his hand slicked in my blood. Muttering to himself, he walked off.

  Bandages. I was still bleeding and hadn’t thought to check the needle stick as I walked here. Half-dried rivulets trailed down my forearm. Slipping my other hand beneath my shirt, I pressed the fabric against the wound.

  Ahead of me, a girl traipsed slowly down the sidewalk, her head down. Something seemed familiar about the way the light fell on her dark hair…

  “Pell,” I cried, reaching toward her. “Ayúdame.”

  She came closer to the light, lifting her head, and I saw her eyes widen. “Marlo. What are you doing here?”

  I shook my head as she moved toward me, her hands coming up to cup my elbows. It was too much to remember. I wanted to sleep.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered.

  “It was—it was—”

  “Shh.” She stroked my back to calm my gasping breaths. “I’ll take you home. Do you think you can make it?”

  From here to Marshwick wasn’t a far walk. I nodded. My heart was beating too fast.

  Pell held me against her as we walked, one arm around my shoulders. My vision blacked in and out, but somehow I managed to keep walking. Only when we reached my house—the old house where I’d lived all my life—did the world start to spin. My head was heavier than the rest of my body, pulling me down to the tilting ground.

  I woke in my own bed. My old bed. I stirred, feeling the plain sheets, gazing at the plain, cracked walls. The pale green curtains let in a dingy light. Nothing about my room had changed.

  “I searched all night for you after the party.”

  I turned toward Verm’s voice. He sat in a chair beside the bed, his blond hair a little longer than I remembered.

  “I thought you’d been lost or killed.”

  “I lost you,” I told him. “So I ran away.” I wanted to lift my head off the pillow, but it still felt too heavy.

  He just gave a sour smile. I remembered when he’d told me never to run from him again. Though I knew he could still hurt me, I wasn’t afraid now.

  Leaving him this time would probably be harder. He’d make sure of it. He didn’t need me. He just wanted to own me.

  I wouldn’t stay here, though. This time I was not just desperate to get away, but determined too. I was afraid Gabriel wouldn’t wait for me before setting off across the country. He’d assume I’d left him on purpose, and he didn’t love me like I loved him. Without him, it would be that much harder to leave the city. I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own.

  It embarrassed me to have placed all my hope in him and none in myself.

  From somewhere in the house, the baby let out a cry. It seemed so much longer, but I realized I’d been gone from here less than a month.

  “You always did just what you were told,” Verm muttered, studying me. His eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them. “Till you ran. Never thought you’d betray me like that.”

  I didn’t want to hear him talk to me like this. “I’m hungry,” I told him. “Is there food?”

  “We don’t get your rations anymore,” he said. But he rose from the chair and moved toward the door, jerking his head for me to follow him.

  With great effort, I roused myself from the bed and hugged the wall as I trailed after him. He couldn’t hold me here. No one could hold me. No one was strong enough.

  He’s got you, doesn’t he? a voice whispered in my head.

  Not for long, I promised myself.

  Harkin and Blanca sat on the couch, drinking. The screen was on, muted, smoky shots of war-torn cities flashing across it.

  Music drifted from a tiny radio on the kitchen table. Pell sat there, head bent over strands of fishing line and a selection of shells. She looked up at me to offer a brief but pained smile.

  Verm was in the kitchen, throwing together some food for me. I sat down across from Pell and dropped my throbbing head into my hands. My arm had been cleaned and bandaged with strips of old towels.

  This was my family’s house—my house. I knew where each stair creaked and where my fingers would find chips in the wall. I knew the patterns on the ceiling and the stains on the carpet. But Verm lived here now. He was head of this place. Harkin answered to him and Blanca shied away. Even Pell had a place here now. I was the trespasser. I didn’t belong here anymore.

  A familiar hand squeezed my shoulder as a tin clattered on the table in front of me. I ate the paste ravenously, scraping the tin for every last bit. Verm had let go of my shoulder and now stood behind Pell, stroking her hair while staring at me. I wondered if I could convince her to come with me when I left.

  “Come sit with us,” Verm said when I’d finished. He came back to my side of the table. By taking my hand and leading me into the living room, he made it clear he didn’t want to let me out of his sight.

  I sat down on the couch and he dropped down beside me, too close. His arm went around my shoulders to keep me from scooting away. Sometimes his other hand would roam casually over my thigh. I felt Pell’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at her. She had to know this wasn’t what I wanted.

  As we sat there, I started to notice how warm and familiar Verm felt next to me. For a second I let myself fall into the romantic fantasies I’d once had of him, the lies I’d once wanted to believe. If I’d just stayed, if I’d just taken everything in silence, maybe things could have been different and better. We could have loved each other.

  But no. That was poisonous thinking, and it would be my prison if I let it.

  Verm drank with Harkin and Blanca, their laughter becoming wild and loose. Their glassy eyes danced. The music seemed to grow louder. At one point I thought I heard the baby crying, but no one else seemed to notice. I got more and more anxious, counting the minutes until I could get away and try to find Gabriel.

  Gradually, the din drifted into a lull. Conversation hushed. Blanca and Harkin turned toward each other, whispering and kissing. Pell was still at the kitchen table, making her jewelry. I could hear Verm breathing beside me
.

  He turned toward me. “Did you know I missed you?”

  “No,” I said coldly.

  “You got kinda tan. And skinny. It don’t suit you. You look sick. Where’ve you been, anyway? Shacking up with some guy?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Hey, it’s no big deal. I always knew you were just a little slut.”

  In silence, I stared at him. Violent desires assaulted me, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of trying to hurt him.

  After a moment, he released my shoulders. “Go wash up,” he said.

  I didn’t hesitate. I knew this would be my chance.

  In the bathroom upstairs, I stood in the tub and quickly scrubbed the grime and sweat from my body. My mind worked. I could climb out my bedroom window and shimmy down the drainpipe. Or I could go up and jump from roof to roof; the houses were close enough together. I just couldn’t go back downstairs, past Verm. Not even if he were sleeping. The front door still made a loud, jarring sound when it opened. And I didn’t want to get near enough to him again to chance his laying his hands on me.

  A knock sounded on the door as I finished up, and my heart sank. Maybe I wouldn’t have a chance to leave after all. “Sí?” I called softly.

  “It’s me,” Pell said, and I was relieved to hear her voice. “I have something for you to wear.”

  My clothes lay in a pile on the floor, dirty and worn. Wrapping a towel around my body, I let her in.

  The dress in her hands was dark blue, almost navy but brighter and richer. I took it, turning my back to slip it over my head. It gathered neatly at the waist, buttoned up to my neck, and left my arms bare. The hem ended just above my knees in subtle ruffles.

  Another dress.

  “I got it on the lane for cheap. There’s a hole on the back,” Pell explained. She shrugged, seeming embarrassed. “I saw it and thought of you. Somehow I knew, even though you were gone, I’d be able to give it to you someday.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I tugged on my shoes, ready to run. “I love it.”

  She turned to the door, beckoning me. “Come downstairs.”

  “I can’t. Verm—”

  “He’s gone. He and Harkin went to cash in some credits. Sometimes they like liquor more than food.”

  Cautiously, I followed her. It was quiet downstairs, Verm nowhere in sight. Blanca stood in the living room, the baby bundled in her arms.

  “Are you leaving again?” she asked.

  I nodded. “You could come too. You and the baby. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

  She drew back a little. “But I do want to. Harkin’s here.”

  I turned to Pell. “What about you? Do you want to leave with me?”

  Her gray eyes widened wistfully. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. West. Out of Cizel. I’ll go to the other coast if I can make it that far.”

  “But you don’t know what’s out there.”

  “I can’t stay here with Verm,” I said. “And there’s nothing for me anywhere else. I’m done with this place.”

  “Hold on.”

  She went into the kitchen. Blanca gently rocked the baby in her arms.

  “Be good to her,” I said. “Tell her she’s strong. Tell her she doesn’t belong to anyone. Tell her she can take care of herself. No one else is going to do it for her.”

  It almost looked like Blanca was going to cry. Then she nodded, her voice light as she spoke. “I will.”

  Pell returned and handed me a bag. “Here’s some food and water. It’s all our rations, so it should last you a while.”

  “How will you eat?”

  She shrugged, thrusting the bag more insistently at me. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll just work a few extra hours on the edge until I make up the credits.”

  “Verm will hurt you,” I said, “when he finds out about this.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t really bother me.”

  “Pell—”

  “Just go, Marlo.”

  I threw myself at her, arms taking her into a fierce hug. “You’ll always be my best friend,” I said.

  “And you’ll always be mine.”

  Drawing away, I took the bag. There was nothing left to say. I turned to the door and left my house for the very last time.

  interim: una ala

  Her nights were unbearably lonely. The angel’s footsteps were restless. He never called Claire to him now. In the dark, her eyes were always wet. Sometimes she thought maybe he was crying too, weeping sounds so distant and broken they sounded like wind through the rafters. She wondered if he’d cried over her sister.

  Someone must have called her uncle to alert him of the change in her behavior, because he visited her at the institute for the first time. “Your sister has died,” he informed her coolly. “She was killed in an act of terrorism. I am all the family you have left, Claire. Do try to get well. I will have your cure soon. I promise.”

  With a kiss on her forehead, he left.

  Ethan appeared from time to time, blinking his unbearable eyes at her. “It breaks my heart to see you like this,” he whispered, but he didn’t look heartbroken. He didn’t look like anything.

  She couldn’t respond, because then he would steal her soul.

  “You aren’t like the other girls,” he said, his pockets rattling with pills.

  Claire refused to listen. She was too busy counting footsteps.

  Ms. Gilsig appeared too, searching the room up and down for the regular meds. She squinted suspiciously at Claire’s prone form on the bed. Her regular pills weren’t enough to kill, even taken all at once, but they were enough to make a person completely numb. And the memory pills had all sorts of side effects.

  “We’ll keep all your meds in the clinic from now on,” Ms. Gilsig decided. She shook her head in disapproval as she left the room.

  After how well Claire had behaved all these years, after how hard she’d worked to earn the trust needed to take charge of her own doses, it had taken only a single night for Ethan to ruin it all.

  But the real thing she had lost was right above her. So close, yet she couldn’t reach it.

  Until one night she was certain she could. She was just angry enough and just jealous enough of anyone else the angel might call instead of her.

  No one else could have him.

  He sat at the piano just like the first time she’d seen him. She stood at the edge of the stairs, her eyes fixed on the dark thing that always loomed behind him. There was a rustle in the air, as of feathers.

  “What happened to you?” Claire demanded, steadying her trembling frame against the wall. For days, only he had been clear in her mind. “What did you do to get here?”

  His flinty eyes dropped in shame and he did not answer.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “What happened with my sister. She was wrong. She never should have left you!” After a moment’s silence, she added, “She never loved you like I do.”

  “And that,” he said, “is your mistake. For I was the one who killed her.”

  She knew, she knew—she had always known—something deep and terrible lurked inside him. He would hurt her despite her mad devotion. But when he looked at her again, all she wanted was to feel the cool skin of his chest as she pressed her cheek against it. Her love for him was blind, and he was poison inside her.

  He stood swiftly, advancing toward her. “Why,” he asked, “did you betray me?”

  Taking a step back, she scrambled for something to say. But before she could answer, weightlessness overtook her. The angel receded from her, and then her vision turned black.

  When she woke at the bottom of the stairs, a boy’s face hovered above hers. His black-lashed eyes were bottomless with concern. They were brown, not blue. They should have been blue.

  “What are you doing here?” Claire asked. Confusion welled up, frightening her.

  “You fell,” he said, “and your leg is broken. What were you doing up there
?”

  “I… I…” Her eyes darted past his face, along the walls and ceiling, trying to find somewhere to land. She thought she could hear music even now. Each note was a stab to her heart.

  The angel. The angel—

  The boy put a hand gently on her shoulder as she tried to rise. “Hey, hey. Relax. It’s all right. Ms. Gilsig already called for help.”

  Claire stared at the handsome boy leaning over her. “Who are you?” she demanded, suddenly overcome with terror. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t worry,” the boy said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ears. She didn’t know his name, but she could imagine him holding her in the dark. Undoing her with a smile.

  “I don’t want to go to Rueville,” she cried, clutching his hand.

  The angel. How would she ever see the angel again? Claire stared through the open door up the attic staircase, her eyes searching the shadows at the top. He would be waiting. The angel had told her he would never leave.

  At least she would always know where to find him.

  24. el umbral

  Cold silence greeted me at the morgue. Gabriel had gone.

  I went back outside and started walking. When I reached the two trees I’d only ever seen from a distance, I realized they’d been dead all along. Their branches were like the bones left behind in the alkaline hydrolysis machine. Brittle-paper leaves clung with fragile tenacity, shuddering violently in the wind. The trunks were grayed and hollow, looking as if they would break and crumble at the touch of my finger.

  The fields stretched ahead of me, endless and flat. Somewhere beyond these fields was the castle Gabriel had mentioned, cradled at the base of a mountain range.

  There was a very good chance I would die on this journey. I only hoped I’d find Gabriel along the way so I wouldn’t have to die alone.

  Death came for everyone, young and old, rich or poor, and no one knew what happened to spirits or souls or energy, or whatever it was kept a person alive. We could only see the body that remained, cold and pale and slowly rotting.

  Life and death existed together, never one without the other. Gabriel understood that. He knew death was nothing to fear, and now I was beginning to know that too. Death was nothing but a possibility for new life. If I died out there in the unknown, my body would decay in a heap of liquid soaking into the soil. It would revert to its most basic forms, the materials that made up everything else in the world. The ground would embrace me and turn me into something new.