The bathroom door creaked as it swung open.
She stared at the empty cabin. Madelyn crept slowly from the bathroom and made her way to the center of the living room. She kept spinning around, convinced that something or someone was creeping up behind her.
Madelyn worked through the cabin, checking every corner and peeking through the slits to see the outside. There was a presence there with her—she couldn’t explain it, but it was undeniable. She thought about the ghost she had seen on the surveillance camera. Some entity had moved through the place, touching this and moving that. Madelyn folded her arms across her chest and shivered.
It was unfair. This was her safe place.
She backed towards the stairs. She took the lift down to the control panel. Madelyn quickly scanned the record. She watched for anything—any movement at all—from when they had left, until her return. There was nothing there. Still unsettled, she watched the overview of the exterior cameras. She saw herself run back, stumbling in her panicked flight, and there seemed to be shadows that hung in the woods. They followed her to the edge of the forest and then stopped.
Madelyn reversed the display and watched the scene from every angle. The shadows seemed to be the right size and shape for people. She never got a good look at what was casting them.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It’s not real. It’s the same as the goat man or the bees.”
She shifted the panel and used the weather detection. The blue spot was still there, strong as ever. It looked like it was hovering over her cabin.
“Strong possibility of weird hallucinations in the forecast,” Madelyn said. The attempted joke failed to lift her mood. Goosebumps rose on her arms.
# # # # #
Madelyn saw the shape as she climbed the stairs.
She could have stopped. She could have turned and fled back to the control room, but she didn’t. There was no hiding from whatever it was. Anything that could get through her locked door could just as easily invade the underground bunker where her supplies and utilities were housed.
The figure stood in a shadow.
She couldn’t see its face.
Madelyn found the top of the stairs and reached for the lights.
The thing seemed to absorb light. The obscuring shadows remained, even though everything else in the cabin was well-lit. The figure stood right near her wall of skulls. As she watched, the dark hand reached out and circled the eyehole of one of the bleached white skulls.
“Where’s mine?” the figure asked.
Madelyn tried to place the voice. It sounded like her brother, but not quite. There was something slightly different about the tone. It took her a second for the voice to click into place.
“Dad?” she asked.
The shadowed face turned towards her and came into focus.
“You didn’t care enough to save my skull?”
“The bodies were all planted in a mass grave. You know that.”
“You went to the trouble to recover your grandmother’s skull.”
“She was buried here on the property. It wasn’t difficult.”
“A bit morbid, don’t you think?” he asked.
“She would have wanted it this way,” Madelyn said.
Her dead father took a deep breath and then sighed. “So many people here. What makes you think you deserve to still be alive?”
“That’s old thinking, Dad,” she said. “All life is considered precious now that there aren’t many of us left. People fight to keep each other alive. It’s not like when you went out.”
“Thank God for that,” he said with a dry chuckle. “There aren’t many things about that time that I would hold any nostalgia for. You should have seen the world when I was young. It was crowded, sure, but everything was still bountiful. It seemed that no matter how large the population grew, we always found enough to feed everyone. Everything was about efficiency and expansion. I wonder what happened to all those colonists who set off to create new outposts in the solar system.”
“Dead,” she said. “One by one they all died off. Plagues and accidents, mostly. One group headed for The Belt killed each other. Some people say that radiation drove them crazy. Other people say that it might have been a weird virus or bacteria. But it was mostly plagues and accidents that killed the colonists.”
“Shame,” he said. “They were the only hope for survival, in a way.”
“We’re still here,” she said. “People on Earth, I mean.”
Her dead father laughed again.
“One by one,” he said.
She puzzled over that, trying to figure what he meant.
“Your brother took the easy way,” he said.
“He was sick.”
“There’s sick, and then there’s sick. You think it was a coincidence that he died on the same night he arrived here. Didn’t you think it was strange that his son appeared right after the old man kicked?”
“That’s not the way it happened. They came together and then he happened to die. Noah came here to ask me to watch over Jacob.”
“One by one. Two by two,” her dead father said.
“What are you really?” she asked. “Elijah said you’re The Wisdom.”
He took a step forward. She saw his face clearly for the first time. She saw his smile. It wasn’t the pale, gaunt face she had seen in the hospice. He looked pretty healthy for a dead man.
“That name represents ignorance,” her dead father said.
“Then what do you call yourself?”
“I have no need to call myself anything. I am me,” he said.
“And what do you want?” she asked. She couldn’t hope for a real answer, but there might be some clue in there. She didn’t really have to know its motivation, she only had to figure out how to survive.
He cocked his head.
“People hide away in cracks and crevices. Phase One knocked out ninety-nine point nine percent, but that only serves to select the strongest of the strong. You people left are resistant. I’m the cleanup crew,” he said. He moved closer.
“You came to kill me,” she said.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You didn’t kill Gabriel. You didn’t kill Harper,” she said.
“Didn’t I? Call it a failure then.”
His face seemed to be glowing. In the low light of the cabin, his face was nearly all she could see. The rest of the room faded into the gloom. Madelyn took a step backwards and put a hand back to the counter before she hit it. Her dead father advanced another step.
“The people who created you are long gone,” she said. “They took their immortal bodies and then disappeared. You have no purpose anymore.”
“You’re not even half right,” he said.
“Then tell me what happened.”
“I might. I just might,” he said. “We have to figure out what you’re clinging to. If the fate of the Optioners plays into it, then I suppose I’ll be forced to tell you about them.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I know.”
Madelyn’s hand found what it was looking for. She kept a pair of shears on the counter. The edges were razor sharp. She asked another question just to mask the sound of her opening the shears with one hand.
“How old are you?” she asked. The shears were open and he hadn’t reacted. She gripped them behind her back with the back of one of the blades against her palm.
“It’s my turn to ask a question,” he said.
Madelyn swung.
She brought the blade around in a tight arc aimed right at his neck. Her aim was perfect. The blade split his flesh. Instead of gushing blood and staggering backwards, the image of her dead father popped like a balloon. He was there, and then he was gone.
Madelyn exhaled with relief.
# # # # #
Madelyn moved to the wall and flipped the light switch. It did nothing. She toggled it off and back on with no result.
&nbs
p; “You were always good with a blade,” a voice said. Madelyn whipped around and saw him by the sink. David was wrapped in his bloody bearskin. Its dried blood decorated his face. “Better with a blade than a gun.”
“I could shoot better than you,” she said.
David laughed.
Madelyn felt her heart skip and flutter. She tried desperately to keep the fear from her face. It wasn’t for dead David’s sake. The Wisdom probably knew exactly how afraid she was. She didn’t want to show her emotion because she knew that there was a chance that it would get away from her. If she allowed herself to show it, she might spiral into it and lose control.
“You dreamt about me,” he said.
“I did.”
“Did you figure it out yet?” dead David asked.
Madelyn turned away. It was tough to look at him. He had the same glow that her dead father had shown. Somehow he was concrete but the rest of the world was fuzzy and surreal. Madelyn looked down at her own hand—she could barely see it. She thought about Harper’s eyes and how cloudy they had been. Madelyn blinked and realized that she was going blind.
“Mac?” dead David asked.
She looked up at him again. He was clear. His glowing face was the only clear thing. The sharpness of the vision drew her eyes. Because of the clarity, he was the only thing her eyes wanted to lock onto. She forced herself to look just over his shoulder at the blurry wall.
“What?” she asked.
“I asked if you figured it out.”
“Figured out what?” she asked. “You’re going to have to give me a little more information.”
Dead David smiled. “The bear, Mac, did you figure it out?”
Something about him changed. Madelyn shifted her gaze back to the man. He still wore the blood, but the bear skin was gone. Dead David was dressed in his regular combination of wool and cotton with his fur-lined cap. It was his standard uniform.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “If you want an answer to your question, you’re going to have to be straight.”
“There was no bear,” he said. “I was the bear.”
Madelyn shook her head and laughed. “I’m not falling for that nonsense. I watched the bear through the slits. I saw him on the surveillance. Hell, after a few days I could smell him.”
It was dead David’s turn to laugh. “You’re good at forgetting when you want,” he said. “You remember how you used to tell me that it was time for me to wash my clothes?”
Madelyn shook her head. She did remember, but she didn’t want to say.
“You remember what you used to say when I would get frisky?”
Madelyn used her free hand to cover her face. She couldn’t let the thoughts in. There was a conclusion there that she didn’t want to reach. She saw herself from the outside. She saw the mischievous smile on her own face. David would come back with twigs in his beard and rings of sweat under his arms. She always said the same thing—“You smell like a dead bear.”
Or, when he was getting frisky, she would say, “You’re as randy as a broke-down bear.”
And when she would lie awake in her loft, listening to him snore, she had always entertained the same fantasy—there was a wild bear loose in her cabin and if she moved it would find her and eat her.
“No,” she said. “I saw him. You killed him.”
“You saw me. I banged for you to let me in for days. Eventually, my noise drew them in. I thought for sure that you would rescue me, so I didn’t run until it was too late. I was killed by a combination of your heartlessness and my own refusal to recognize it.”
“No,” she said again. It was too late. Her brain was already seeing the scenes with the new information. Yes, he had grunted and scratched and growled, but it was him. It wasn’t a bear, and it wasn’t a man dressed up in a bear skin. It had been David out there, begging for his life as she sat inside her cabin and imagined a wild animal outside. She had taken the fantasy too far and he had died because of it.
“No,” she whispered.
“You owe me, Madelyn. I came back to finally make a real commitment to us and you turned me away. Even when I pleaded, you shut me out.”
“It can’t be,” she said. The words were simply a reflex. She knew that everything he said was true. Even the most rational part of her mind agreed. There was an entity that had invaded her cabin and was making her experience these ghosts. That entity clearly had access to Madelyn’s memories. The idea that the bear was actually David had to have come from her own brain. Somewhere, deep inside, she knew it to be true.
“I died because of you,” dead David said.
Madelyn looked down. She saw the fuzzy shape in her hand. She was still holding the shears. Dead David was several paces away, but she could use them on herself. That would surely make this knowledge go away. She didn’t want it in her head anymore.
“Why?” she asked.
“You have to ask yourself that,” he said. “Why did you choose that moment to shut me out? We were rebuilding our relationship. We would have eventually found a middle ground where we both would have been happy.”
“No,” she said, “why did you infiltrate my brain just to remind me of this. You tried to do it in my dreams, and today you have succeeded, but why? What’s your goal here?”
She looked down at the fuzzy shears again. When she looked up, dead David had moved closer.
“You want me to kill myself,” she said.
Dead David shook his head. “I’m only here to help you.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Nothing that you’re doing is intended to help me.”
Madelyn adjusted the shears in her hands. She moved to close the distance to dead David. The vision of him was depressing and infuriating. She would dispatch him the same way she had banished the vision of her father. Whatever The Wisdom had been trying to do to her with this ghost, it had failed.
She didn’t get the chance. As the distance between them diminished, dead David lost his substance. He became as blurry as the rest of the cabin and then disappeared with a pop.
Madelyn was alone.
She traded her shears for a knife and moved to the next light switch. The room didn’t grow any brighter for her. Her vision was almost gone.
Something bumped behind her. Madelyn spun and saw nothing. With her arms stretched out, she navigated towards the stairwell. At least down there, she would have the control panel. She could set intrusion alarms and wait while the machine fabricated a wrap to repair her eyes.
“Where are you going?” a scratchy old voice asked.
# # # # #
“Nowhere,” Madelyn said.
As she moved forward, the figure came into focus. He blocked her progress. He was just an illusion—he had to be—Madelyn kept moving forward. Gabriel looked healthier as a ghost. The last time she had seen him, his corpse had been pretty beaten up.
“You have a couple of questions to answer,” Gabriel said.
“Tell it to my shadow,” she said. She was surprised when her hand hit resistance. He was a ghost, but he had some substance after all.
“You let David shoot me and you never told him about us, did you?”
“There was no us.”
“Our history, then. You never told him why I would have cause to confront you like that.”
Madelyn started to circle his form. If he would stay put, she would be able to get around Gabriel and still get to the stairs.
“Regardless of what happened between us in the past, you had no right.”
Gabriel shook his head. “You’ve got a cold soul, Maddie. You’ve got a cold soul.”
“Save it,” she said. She backed up and reached behind herself to find the door. Her hand hit a wall. There was no door, no frame, and no handle. Madelyn’s brain spun as she tried to puzzle out where she could possibly be. It didn’t make any sense.
“You have to admit your shortcomings before you can address them,” Gabriel said. His face remained the only clear th
ing she could see. It hovered in front of her in the darkness. Madelyn spun to face the wall. She planned to move down the smooth surface until she found a door or a corner. Then she would know where she was.
When she turned around, Gabriel was still hovering in front of her.
“Admit your shortcomings,” he said.
“This is a dream,” she said. “You’re just an aspect of me, as was David, and as was my father. In reality, you’re dead and you’re in the ground somewhere.”
“This kind of healing has to happen from within, Maddie,” he said.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
Despite the illusion of Gabriel in front of her, Madelyn moved forward, reaching to find the wall of her cabin. She had forgotten that the ghost had substance. He grabbed her hands and squeezed.
“Let me go.”
“You’re not like other people. You don’t have the same capacity for love. You sent your father to die in a hospice even though his disease was curable. You left your husband to the mobs. You killed your boyfriend David by locking him out when the Zumbidoes were on the prowl. You think only of yourself.”
“Shut up. Dad chose to die.”
Madelyn turned away from Gabriel again. There was another shape in front of her. It was the return of her dead father.
“You remember what I asked you, Mac?”
She refused to answer.
“I asked you if it was okay to sell your grandmother’s things. Your brother said it was fine with him.”
“He never cared about her the way I did. She was a mother to me,” Madelyn said. “This place was all I had left to remind me of her.”
“With that money, I could have bought my way out of the cull and had a decent shot at being healed, Mac. You knew that.”
“No,” she said. “You told me that you wanted to opt out. You can’t come back now and tell me the opposite.”
“Mac, come on,” her dead father said. “You know the truth.”
Her control was slipping. She wanted to run from the visions of Gabriel and her father, but there was nowhere to run to. The world was black. She was blind. The cabin’s walls no longer made sense. She was lost in these memories.
David’s shape reappeared as he spoke. “You locked me out and left me to die.”
Her dead brother, Noah, showed up for the first time. “You rebuffed your only living relative after years of thinking I was dead.”