Chapter 6
From That Darkest Place
Maryanne
Maryanne stood. Her heart pounded with terror, as if it would leap right out of her chest. Or out of the window with... whatever it was out there. While Alex Robbins—the flesh, the body, the original Alex Robbins—lay flat on her back on the floor at Maryanne’s feet, out past the window against the star-filled sky, an Alex-shaped blackness hovered.
Through the clear pane beneath the stained glass Madonna, Maryanne watched the cast-out piece of Alex raise both of her hands. The hovering Alex moved her hands in front of her empty-black face, and they disappeared from sight, only to re-emerge when she waved them out to the sides. Cast-out Alex turned her body—almost in a half-assed pirouette—as she played in the darkness, played as part of the darkness.
Then Alex stopped, faced the window again, and waved a dark hand to them. Maryanne’s legs weakened.
“What the hell?”
Maryanne turned her head to see Brooke backing away, a hand pressed to her mouth. For a moment, she marveled that the other girl had the presence of mind to quiet her voice to avoid waking the house. Then she got a good look at Brooke’s face and realized she was holding back a scream with those fingers. Tough-talking Brooke was just as freaked out as Maryanne herself.
Fascination warring with terror, Maryanne turned back to the window where the dark form still hovered, obscuring the stars. But a small, distressed noise from Brooke had her turning around again, seconds later.
Brooke now knelt on the floor beside Alex. Her hand trembled as she touched her fingers to one pale wrist, moving them searchingly up and then down Alex’s arm. Her face knotted in anxiety.
Maryanne’s stomach clenched with dread. “Is she... dead?”
As if in answer to Maryanne’s question, Alex moaned. Her right foot kicked sideways. Okay, it was more of a sudden flop than a kick, as if flaccid muscles had jumped out of paralysis only long enough for that weak, spastic jerk.
“Her pulse is... oh God, I don’t know!” Brooke said. “Where the hell do you even find it?”
Maryanne blinked. She’d spent two summers as a junior counselor in a camp for disadvantaged kids and had been trained in basic first aid. It should be her, not Brooke, looking for a pulse.
“Let me, Brooke.” She squatted down and drew a sharp breath before she grabbed Alex’s right wrist and sought her pulse. Oh, crap. “Her heart’s racing. I mean, it’s hammering. Like she’s run a hundred-yard dash.”
Brooke was silent.
Maryanne wet her dry lips. “Should we get Mrs. Betts? Should we... What the hell should we do?”
Brooke didn’t answer.
“Brooke, are you even listening to me?”
As soon as Maryanne turned toward her it was obvious the other girl wasn’t listening. Maybe wasn’t even coherent as she stared out into the night. Out into the black form of Alex.
“It’s... it’s still out there,” Brooke said.
Maryanne dared another look out the window. The dark emptiness that was a piece of Alex was still there. It floated away from the window, shot close to the glass, then drifted far away once again. Only to repeat this dance several times until it settled near the window. Two black hands splayed close to the lower half of the glass, making it appear like a dark eternity in the shape of fingers and palms. From its posture—no, her posture; no matter how weird this was, that was part of Alex out there—she seemed to be peering in at them.
“She wants back in!” Maryanne said.
“Are you freakin’ nuts? Whatever that thing is—”
“That thing is Alex!”
Brooke shuddered. “And just how do you propose we get her back in? Break the glass?” No sooner had she said it and Brooke was moving toward the stained glass.
“No!” Maryanne’s voice rose. “She went out through the window, through the glass—”
Brooke stopped in her tracks. “So it might be her only way back in.”
On the floor, Alex moaned. Again it was a deep-in-her-throat moan, as if forced with the greatest of effort.
“The diary!” Maryanne said. “Let’s read it.”
“God, Maryanne, don’t you think that can wait?” Brooke huffed out a sound of disbelief. “And you thought I was being such a bitch when—”
“For answers, Brooke.” Maryanne knelt and retrieved the diary from Alex’s hoodie pocket. “The answers have got to be in here.” She sat back on her heels as she flipped through the pages. Her eyes moved quickly as she scanned the words, searching desperately for answers. “There’s got to be something about how Connie got back to her body. Wait! I think I’ve got it. Listen to this.”
When I cast back in, it’s like I bring part of the night with me. The exhilaration I feel out there in the darkness, in that other state, stays with me. Not nearly long enough, but for a little while at least, it’s as if—
There was a barely audible whoosh of sound, and Maryanne looked up to see Alex’s cast-out part streak toward them in a shocking blur of speed, slamming back into her body. Before Maryanne could expel the sharp breath she’d inhaled, Alex threw an arm out and seized her around the waist. The two of them flew across the attic like they’d been flung by some unseen hand. When they came to a stop, Alex leapt atop Maryanne, straddling her chest, her hands closing around Maryanne’s throat.
“That’s Connie’s diary!” Alex snarled. “You stay the hell out of it!”
Maryanne felt the squeezing pressure around her throat as Alex’s hands tightened. She clawed at Alex, trying to pry her off. Stunned, she looked up into Alex’s wild eyes. In that fiery intensity, Maryanne sensed a struggle for control. It was almost as if Alex was trying to hold back the ferociousness that had flown them across the room when the cast-out piece had fused with her again. She hadn’t meant to knock them flying, Maryanne realized. She wasn’t trying to hurt her now. And yet Alex could so easily strangle her...
Do it!
The thought—sprung straight from the darkest reaches of her mind—shocked Maryanne. More shocking still, she found herself mentally repeating the words like a mantra. Like a prayer. Do it! Do it!
Her mind flashed back home, to poor little Jason, that horrible night.
Her hands fell away from Alex’s.
Do it! Dammit, just do it!
Brooke’s face appeared above them. “Geez, you guys, could you possibly make any more noise? Do you want to wake the whole—” Her low, urgent rant broke off as she saw what was happening. “Alex!” Brooke seized Alex’s arm and tried to pull her off Maryanne, to no effect. Then she braced her feet flat on the floor as she hauled for all she was worth, but it was as if Alex were a supercharged magnet that couldn’t be budged.
“Alex!” Brooke’s voice was low but urgent. “Let go!” she gritted. “You have to let her go!”
All at once, Alex’s grip loosened on Maryanne’s throat. Her arms went slack, and she succumbed to Brooke’s pull. The two of them tumbled to the floor.
Alex sat there panting, her back curved, and her shoulders shaking. Yet she leaned forward and picked Connie’s diary off the floor where it lay beside Maryanne.
Maryanne raised herself up slowly on her elbows, then sat up beside Alex.
“Did I hurt you?” Alex asked, thickly.
“No,” Maryanne lied. But she held a hand to her throat, which was probably already bruising, as she looked toward the window. Night sky. Stars and moon. No empty black silhouettes. She turned her head slowly back to Alex. She took a breath, and within the dark of the attic looked as deeply as she could into her eyes.
“Can you see it in me?” Alex whispered. “Can you see... ?”
“The cast-out part?” Maryanne finished.
“Cast,” Alex murmured. “That’s what Connie calls it in her diary.”
It was Brooke who fetched the candle. She handed it to Maryanne, then sat down. Maryanne lifted the candle close to Alex to examine her face. Alex stared back. Eagerly, Brooke w
atched.
“Your eyes... ” Maryanne moved the candle slowly left then right, and she watched as Alex’s pupils followed the flickering fire. She bit down on her lip as she settled the candle on the floor. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with your focus. But your pupils... ”
“My God, they’re huge!” Brooke said. “It’s like the iris is completely gone. You look like some kind of deranged junkie axe murderer. Like you just escaped from a home for the criminally insane. Like you’re some alien—”
Maryanne tensed, expecting Alex to go off on Brooke as she rambled on, but Alex just rubbed her forehead.
“Gee, Brooke. Don’t hold back.”
Phew! Whatever surge of emotion had come in with the cast-out Alex... er, Alex’s cast... seemed to have dissipated now. Maryanne sagged. Realizing she still held the candle, she put it down on the floor between them.
It occurred to her then that she should be feeling more. More anxiety, more terror. For God’s sake, she’d just watched a piece of Alex leave her body! Leave it and exit through a stained glass window into the night, where it twisted and danced in mid-air until it shot back into her friend’s body, infusing her briefly with a terrible, wonderful wildness and violence.
And as for Maryanne’s own reaction to being strangled... Maybe shock was setting in. Maybe this was the adrenaline let-down her mother had talked so much about it.
Maybe it was dark fascination.
Maybe she wanted to die.
Brooke’s voice cut into Maryanne’s morbid turn of thought.
“Alex, what happened?”
“I’m... I’m not really sure. I was just tapping the window, repeating Connie’s words.”
“Right,” Brooke said. “Let me out. Let me out.”
“No, it was ‘I want out.’ Those were the words. And then suddenly, I just... was out.”
“Did you feel yourself go?”
Alex hesitated, as if carefully choosing her words. “It wasn’t like I felt myself going from my body, so much as I realized myself suddenly gone. All of a sudden I just was outside looking in, and at the same time I was on the floor in my body staring at my dark cast.” Alex raised a hand and rubbed the back of her head. “Man, I cracked my head good when I hit the floor. It sort of distracted me for a second out there.”
“Holy shit,” Brooke breathed. “You could feel your body? What was happening?”
“Yeah, I could feel you shaking me, Maryanne, then you checking me, Brooke, and then Maryanne again, taking my pulse. I could feel my heart jacking like crazy. But I couldn’t pull away when you grabbed my arm. I couldn’t talk or move. It was like I was completely conscious, but paralyzed.”
“Until I started reading Connie’s diary,” Maryanne said.
Alex looked at her sharply. “Did you hear me yell at you through the window?”
“No.” Maryanne shook her head.
“I called out to the both of you, just once.” She wet her lips. “I said, ‘I want in.’ And then... then I shot back in. Right through the glass.”
Maryanne sucked in a sharp breath. The window. If they’d broken it, would Alex have been able to get back? Or would she have been left trapped alive in her paralyzed body?
Maryanne looked closely again into Alex’s eyes. There was a pale circle of color now around the dark center. Her pupils were slowly returning to normal. From her breathing, she suspected Alex’s heart rate was normalizing too.
Alex stood first, raising the candle with her. She tucked Connie Harvell’s old diary back into her hoodie pocket. But this time, she tucked it deeper somehow. And judging by the bulge of her tense hand through the hoodie material, Maryanne knew she held it with more passion than ever. More possession. That diary wasn’t leaving Alex Robbins’s person anytime soon.
“You... you going to be okay, Alex?” Maryanne asked.
Brooke seemed to be waiting intently for the answer too.
Alex shrugged. “It’s strange. It’s... scary. And I don’t know how, but a real part of me left my body tonight. Just like what happened with Connie Harvell. The part of me in here on the floor was helpless. Scared. Couldn’t even cry out. I was voiceless, here. But the part of me out there... ” Alex looked to the window, past the sad Madonna who stood amongst the thorns. “I wasn’t so scared out there at all. You know?”
They all gazed toward the window for a moment. Alex was the first to turn away. Maryanne turned away too. But as she did, for the most fleeting of moments, she thought she glimpsed something. Something so pitch black against the star-filled sky, it looked empty. Maryanne blinked and looked again, but the sky beyond the window looked just as it should, velvety black and studded with stars.
She turned to follow Alex, who carried the candle, until she noticed Brooke still stood there, feet rooted to the floor, eyes on the window.
“Brooke?” Maryanne called. “You okay? Did you see something?”
The other girl shook her head. “No. I didn’t see anything. Let’s go.”