This was most definitely a test. And the first step was just seeing if I’d enter the building.
I started for the door, my knees feeling shaky and some part of me asking over and over again, “Are we really doing this?”
I climbed the two wooden and creaking stairs to the door, and then with just a second of hesitation, stepped around the cinder block and over the threshold.
Immediately, the smell of dust, mold, and rotting wood engulfed me. I grimaced.
It was dim in here, but I could still see pretty well, thanks to the security light outside and the still-open door.
Clearly, this had once been a backstage area for the theater, but it was now covered in piles of discarded plaster chunks, old chairs with the velvet covering rotting away, and splintery and cracked support beams destined for the Dumpster outside. A narrow path cut through the debris, and I could see recent footprints—more than one set—leading the way through the dust.
Ghosts don’t leave footprints, not unless they’re around someone like me. So, either way, whether these were tracks left by members of the Order or ghosts who’d been given physicality by their presence, this was probably the right way.
I pulled the disruptor from my pocket, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it, because I didn’t really know how, and started to follow those footprints.
I wish I could say I was surprised when the door slammed shut behind me, leaving me in complete and utter darkness.
I froze for a long second. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Easier said than done, though. If I let myself, I could almost feel breath on the back of my neck. I wasn’t alone in here, not by a long shot.
I switched the disruptor to my other hand and dug intomy pocket for my cell phone. I yanked it out, my fingers fumbling in my hurry. Because it was craptastically old, I had tohold a button down for light. The beep sounded enormously loud in the thick, ear-ringing silence around me, but it didits job, lighting up a tiny area around me and revealing the flashing lack of signal in the upper left corner of its screen. Not surprising, given the age of the building and the thickness of the walls and the general shittiness of my phone.
Now what? Keep going…in the dark.
Great.
I started forward again, following footprints that stood out even more in the blue-white light of my cell phone. After just a few steps, the leg of my jeans caught on something in the tight and crowded corridor, and something sharp bit into my shin.
I swallowed back the pain noise. The less attention I drew to myself, the better. If the Archway was caught in a reenactment loop, like all those ghost battalions in Gettysburg (another place on my never-visit list), then the most powerful energies wouldn’t stir until the time of night when the hotel had burned. So, if I could stay quiet and get through to where the others were before the worst of it started up again, I might be okay.
My first clue that that might not be possible was the four guys in the suits. In the dim light from my cell phone, it was hard to catch a lot of detail, but I could see ties that were too short and fat to be modern and big heavy-looking leather suitcases at their feet. Definitely ghosts. They were leaning against the left-hand wall, smoking. Actually, only two of them were leaning against the wall; the other two were half in the wall—one was only a pair of legs, crossed at the ankle, sticking out of the wall at his knees. He was clearly sitting on a chair, probably one from the long-destroyed lobby. The other one stood facing the others at an angle, almost split in half by the wall running down the center of his body. He didn’t seem bothered by it, though. He grinned—his teeth flashing in the darkness—as he nodded at the others in agreement with something one of them had said. Probably the dude in the wall, since I hadn’t heard anything.
Creepy as it was, that made sense. The theater to them wasn’t real. The lobby of the hotel was, and obviously that wall hadn’t been there when they were alive. And unlike Alona, Mrs. Ruiz, and some of the more sentient ghosts, they were trapped in their own time, unaware of anything else. Until, of course, I tried to slip past them, my head down.
“Hey, buddy, you have the time?” one of them called after me.
I paused, hesitating for just a second. If I didn’t answer, they might forget they ever saw me. Then again, at least one of them had seen me in the first place, indicating they might not be entirely blind to events and people outside their own ghostly existence.
“Uh, no?” I offered without turning around. It wasn’t true, of course, but if I looked at my cell phone to check the time, who the hell knew what kind of conversation that would provoke?
I heard the sharp tap of his shoes on the old hardwood floor. “You from around here?” He exhaled with the words and smoke swirled past me in a cloud.
I turned slowly. He, the ghost, didn’t seem suspicious ofme, though he was watching me closely. It struck me as possible that after so many years of reliving their death by fire, some of these ghosts might have started up a hunt for the cause of their death, even if they didn’t realize quite what they were doing. If so, good luck to them. Bernard Shaw, a teenage porter, who’d fallen asleep in the baggage room while smoking, had started the fire. He had survived, waking up in time to escape with his life. He hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about the fire, fearing for his job.
“No, I’m just visiting,” I said to the ghost.
“Didn’t think so. Not in that getup.” He chuckled, nodding at my clothes.
Uh-huh. Right. Okay. “I have to get going. My…” What would make most sense to him? A girlfriend might raise eyebrows if he thought this was a hotel. So might the equally ambiguous “friend” if I seemed too young to him to be wandering around at night. “My dad,” I said finally, “is waiting for me.”
“He part of the convention?”
His words triggered a vague memory. The reason the hotel had been so full that night was because of a traveling salesmen convention being held in town. Duroluxe Vacuum Cleaners.
“We’re just passing through,” I said.
He nodded and flicked his cigarette to the ground between us, and I held my breath. This place with all of its dried up wood, rotting velvet chairs, and dust and junk was a fire waiting to happen.
I stepped on the cigarette butt quickly. Fire was one ofthe most treacherous parts of being a ghost-talker. Being near a ghostly match, cigarette, or, hell, a firework—whatever aspirit had died with—was enough to spark a fire that would cause real-enough damage or death.
“Thanks, kid.” He cuffed my shoulder, and I flinched, waiting for him to make the connection that he’d actually touched me, a living person, but he didn’t. Then again, to him, for however much longer, until the fire started again, he was a living person, too. After that, everything would be up for grabs.
Once my new friend had walked back toward his buddies, I got going again. Ahead, the corridor opened into a widerarea, or so it seemed. All I could really tell was that the light from my cell phone wouldn’t reach beyond the edges of the darkness, and I wasn’t seeing the piles of junk stacked along the sides that had accompanied my journey so far.
I hurried past the last piles of junk in sight, and out into the open. I could sense the ceiling above me lift in that way you can just feel it when the air shifts around you. I’d moved from a tight and cramped corridor to a larger, more open space. Noise carried differently out here. And the floor beneath me had changed too. Every step I took now thumped hollowly.
Lifting the phone up higher, I caught a glimpse of tattered strands of ghostly white fabric hanging from the ceiling, moving in the draft I’d felt earlier. The top of it, what I could see anyway, was far more intact, still holding a bit of the original rectangular shape.
The screen. I’d made it into the theater. Probably on the old stage. That would explain the hollow sound beneath my feet.
But still no sign of anyone else.
Where were they?
In the distance, at what would probably be the top of the aisle in the seating
area, a quick flash of light, like a flashlight quickly doused, caught my eye.
“Hello?” I hurried forward, aiming my cell phone farther out, searching for the stage’s edge or maybe even the glint of metal of a not-yet-removed chair in the audience area for an indicator of where the stage might end. There’d be a drop to the floor, not too big, but it wouldn’t take much to snap an ankle or…a neck.
But taking my attention away from the floor was a mistake. Either they’d already begun renovation on the stage floor itself or they just hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the holes where the boards had already given way. One minute, I was moving along just fine, and the next, my left foot caught nothing but air.
My heart lurched into my throat, and I pitched forward, my hands and then head slamming into the wood still in place on the other side of the hole I’d found.
I clawed at the floor to stop my fall before the rest of me followed my feet and legs.
The disruptor flew forward, skittering out of sight, and my cell phone slipped from my hand, glowing all the way down to the ground beneath the hollowed stage, striking what sounded like metal crossbars.
Shit.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and my breath sounded as loud as a scream. The edge of the wood floor, splintery and sharp, dug into the underside of my forearms. My fingertips had caught on the side of a slightly raised board, and now my arms were pinned between the weight of my body and the floor as I hung there in a strained and awkward pull-up position.
The board was flaky and dry beneath my sweating fingertips and my arms were beginning to shake. I wasn’t sure which part was going to give first.
I slipped one hand free, feeling my skin tear as I dragged it across the ragged edge, and planted my palm flat on the stage.
With an effort, I forced my shaking and quavering muscles to pull together, and I landed, half on the stage and half in the hole still, panting and breathing in dust and dirt. I could do this. I could make it out.
And then from behind me, a burst of light, the smell of smoke, and dozens of shrieking voices. The Archway Hotel fire had begun.
When I woke, a suffocating blackness—the kind of dark your brain rebels against by creating fireworks and faces out of nothing just for something to see—pressed in on me from every side. I couldn’t move, couldn’t see…couldn’t breathe.
Stay calm. A good suggestion, but it didn’t help with the impossibly tight feeling in my chest and the screaming desire to inhale.
Was this it, the end? The nothingness, nonexistence Will had talked about? I’d had visions of burning pits of flame or watching myself disintegrate like bonfire ash in the wind. Never this darkness and unbearable closeness to something I couldn’t even see. I hadn’t felt this claustrophobic since I was six, and my dad had accidentally shut me in the closet designated for my mother’s dozen or so fur coats, stoles, and wraps. (I’d been playing runway model again, even though I’d gotten in trouble for it the week before. Hence the hiding in the closet with the furs instead of dragging them out and down to the front hall, which any reasonable person could see cried out for runway use. It had been like being trapped in an animal…one that was inside out.)
But the weird part about this, aside from unending darkness, was I was still me. Didn’t oblivion—as Will had described it—mean I wasn’t supposed to exist? Like maybe your name and the memory of your life was always right there on the edge of your awareness, but you couldn’t quiterecall it…forever.
Unless remembering was the point. I would know there was an existence other than this, and that was my punishment. To be stuck here, knowing what I could never have again, trapped in this unrelenting darkness forever…
No. Something about this didn’t seem right, and not just in the gigantically, cosmically unfair kind of way. Whenever I’d vanished before, lost control and let the negative energy wash me away, I had no memory of it. I didn’t exist during those times. They were just blanks. Like a night at a really bad party.
This, though, was different. I was here. Wherever here was.
I struggled to concentrate, trying to ignore the feeling that my lungs were about to burst. The last thing I remembered was…
It took a second for the memory to surface and then fall into place.
I’d been in Lily’s hospital room, borrowing her hand to deliver my message, but something had gone wrong. The force connecting my hand to hers had grown more powerful and started to pull me down. And I, unpleasant as it was to admit, had freaked out, caught between the unknown power tugging at me and my own fear and anger, which had slowly begun to consume me.
So, if this wasn’t the final nothingness, which seemed unlikely as I was still here and aware, unlike my other temporary bouts of nonexistence, then that left really only one other option…
Oh, no. No, no, no. If I could have shaken my head violently in refusal, I would have. This could not be. It would just be wrong, on so many levels.
But, my brain insisted, it made sense, on the surface at least. I’d felt the strength of the connection the very first time I’d used Lily’s hand to touch Joonie. Whatever it was, it had not wanted to let me go, and that was only after a few seconds. This time it had been stronger and even more reluctant to release me. Add to that the utter darkness and silence around me and the sense of being completely enclosed, and I had to at least consider the possibility…
There was a good chance I’d been pulled inside the body of Lily Turner.
I gagged just thinking about it. Me, trapped in someone else’s body. How did that work? Was it even possible? No, never mind, I didn’t care. If that’s where I was, I needed out. NOW.
I started to panic, and my breathing, or attempts at it, sped up. I lashed out with my hands and feet, feeling the effort of my would-be limbs, straining against the press of my lightless surroundings. The darkness gave a little with my increasingly frantic motions, but it didn’t retreat. It covered my mouth and nose, pulling in closer with my every frantic attempt at inhaling. It was like trying to breathe with one of those big black garbage bags pulled tight over my face.
Stop it. Calm down! I forced myself to be still, though every moment of doing nothing felt like a slowly dying eternity. Think, Alona.
You can do this, I told myself, trying to sound as calm and reassuring as possible. You got in here. You can get out.
Except I wasn’t entirely certain I’d been the one who’d gotten myself in here. Something had pulled me down. Would that same something let me up?
All right. I forced myself to calm down and slow my breathing. Let’s just think this—
A bolt of invisible lightning slammed into me, ripping away what little breath I’d gained. Agony poured through me. My back arched, and I twisted against the surface of whatever held me in place, my mouth open in a silent scream.
Okay, okay! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—
A second bolt, equally stealthy as the first, struck, paralyzing me in another endless wave of pain, crackling along nerve endings that shouldn’t have existed. How could something hurt so badly when I didn’t have even the semblance of a body, let alone a real one?
I sagged in place, unable to move away, unable to fight, forced to simply wait for the next inevitable blast to tear through whatever remained of me.
Seconds—though it could have been hours for all I know—ticked by, a longer gap than had transpired between the first and second bolts, and nothing happened.
Maybe…maybe that was it. Maybe it had just been the two—
I’d no sooner let my guard down to begin that thought before the lightning returned, even more powerful than before.
Only this time, something was different. In the silence that followed—I couldn’t even breathe through the pain; it was worse even than that time I got sunburned and exfoliated way too soon—I heard something I’d missed before.
Voices.
They were muffled beyond recognition or even understanding, but voices nonetheless.
&nb
sp; Someone was out there. Multiple someones, it sounded like. But as the effects of the lightning receded, so did the voices, until I was left in the silent blackness I’d awakened to, however long ago.
But now I knew. I was ready.
When that fourth bolt struck, I didn’t fight it. Fighting did no good anyway. I let it roll through me, doing my best to imagine it passing through the body I used to have and still saw in my mind’s eye.
And I reached for those voices.
My first clues that something was happening were subtle. The shading of the black around me shifted to a lighter, fuzzier gray. I had more room to breathe. A sudden rhythmic booming filled the air. My heartbeat? It was way too loud.
The voices grew louder and more distinct, and I followed them, intent on escape. Where there were voices, there were other people. People NOT trapped in someone else’s body.
“Give me three-fifty.”
“Wait! We’ve got a rhythm.”
“BP is eighty over sixty.”
“Push another twenty cc’s.”
The voices spoke over one another, and equipment clattered loudly. A woman sobbed somewhere nearby.
“She’s stabilizing.”
Wait. This all sounded very familiar. Too familiar. It was hospital-speak. The same I’d heard when I’d watched them try to save me, save my body, rather, that day after the school bus. Only that time, there’d been no stabilizing. No rhythm. No relief in the taut voices, as there was now.
They were saving my life. No, not mine. Lily’s?
I needed to get out of here right now. If she was dying, I didn’t want to get stuck in here.
I pushed my way through the remaining layers of gray and surfaced—finally!—in a pool of light far too bright.
I threw my hand up to cover my already closed eyes…or rather, I tried. I felt a finger or two twitch, but no real movement. My arm felt heavy and too…fleshy. Like I’d suddenly gained hundreds of pounds.
You’re just weak, I told myself.
But something didn’t seem quite right about that.