Writers of the Future Volume 31

  “I made a promise.” I speak the words clearly and a little too loud. “I made a mistake with Emma’s mom. I let them take her soul because I thought putting away the driver who hit her would fix things somehow. But it didn’t.” The static charge of her soul being drawn from her body was so powerful that I felt it through the heavy hospital doors. It was the first time in my life that I’d understood it was real. To have as much power as I felt seeping through that door, it had to be. Running from that knowledge ever since hasn’t changed what I did to her. “I swore I wouldn’t let what happened to Angela happen to Emma. I thought I could protect her out here.”

  “Oh,” Zach says. I can’t tell if he’s even listening.

  “I don’t care about Chad. But I’m not going to let him take Emma’s soul.”

  Zach is quiet for a long time.

  “We’ve got less than an hour to stop him,” he says finally. “Before he can start the absorption.”

  “I know,” I answer. I ease the truck up the side of an embankment to avoid another mud hole. I check the clock on the dash for the hundredth time. Forty-nine minutes, as close as I can tell.

  “I didn’t mean for Emma to get hurt.” Zach’s voice is low enough I almost don’t hear it through the patter of the rain on the truck. I don’t bother to answer.

  The rain eventually tapers off, and the horizon lightens to a dull dark gray. Zach sits forward in his seat. “There,” he says, pointing.

  Ahead of us is an iridescent line of fencing emerging from the trees across the road and disappearing into the next valley. The brilliant blue glow is dulled by the rain.

  “Damn it.” It hadn’t occurred to me that it’d be fenced.

  “I don’t think he’s gonna let it down for us,” Zach says. “I can try the code, but he changes it all the time. I have to ask him for it just about every time I leave. If we can get through, his place is just half a mile up the road.”

  The clock tells me we have about ten minutes to get to Emma. Give or take. I’m only half a mile away from keeping the promise to Emma that I should have made to her mother. I reach into the glove box and pull out a penknife. I use it to pry open the control panel on the dashboard.

  “What are you doing?” Zach asks.

  “Disengaging safety protocols.” I yank on a wire and jerk back at the sudden electrical spark. A light starts blinking madly on the dash, and a warning alarm starts to beep, loud and persistent.

  “Are you insane?” Zach demands as I back the truck up and rev the engine.

  “Hold on,” I tell him. Then I slam my foot on the gas and aim the truck directly at the security box outside the gate. Zach screams like a little girl as we gain speed and covers his head with his arms. I grip the wheel tightly and ignore the car’s voice yelling at me.

  “Warning. Reduce Speed. Impact immi—” The voice is lost in the crunch of metal on metal as the front end of the truck wraps around the control box. Airbags fill my vision, and I feel as though my whole body’s been smashed up against a wall.

  Then everything is still.

  “What the hell?” Zach screams at me as he fights his way up from the deflating airbag.

  “Tree killed my fence,” I tell him. For the first time in years I’m running toward something instead of away. I feel like laughing. “Figured a truck would do just as well.” I look up to where the fence line stood moments ago. Now there’s only a long line of scraggly trees standing out against the coming light of day. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  My door is jammed shut, so I roll the window down as far as I can with the manual release and climb through. The metal running board is slick, and I slip. I jump back, just managing to keep upright. I turn my collar up against the rain, but it’s no use. I’m still soaked. “You coming?” I ask Zach. It takes him longer than I think is necessary to untangle himself from the seatbelt and slide on shaky legs to the ground.

  “Emma said you were boring.” His voice is shaking. He holds onto the side of the truck, but whether for support or reassurance I can’t tell.

  “I thought I had to be. Come on.” I grab his arm and pull him up the road. After a few steps, Zach shakes my hand free.

  “It’s not far.” He starts to jog, and I follow him. The sun is close to rising, making it easier to find our way.

  Chad’s house is a dilapidated little shack in the middle of a clearing overflowing with dead and decrepit tech of all kinds. There are old metallic train cars rusted nearly to disintegration leaning against newer, plastic models that have been here long enough that a few have shrubs or small trees growing out through empty windows. Everything has been made dark and slick by the rain.

  The lights in the house are on, and if Chad’s noticed that the fence has come down yet, there isn’t any sign. Zach navigates the yard easily.

  “Is the house going to warn him we’re coming?” I ask about halfway through the yard.

  Zach shakes his head. “No. Chad can’t afford that sort of tech.” He leads us around to the back of the house, and for the first time it occurs to me that Zach may have never seen half of what my house had been equipped with. Not in real life, anyway. “Nina’s probably in the bedroom,” he says.

  As we reach the back door, he steps up on the porch and turns to block my way. “I really didn’t want Emma to get hurt.” He clenches his jaw and juts out his chin in a display of defiance that reminds me of Emma. I feel punched in the gut all over again. “Were you serious when you said you weren’t gonna kill Chad? ’Cause I think you should.”

  “What?” I take a step back down the stairs.

  “I think you should kill him. What he did to Emma … he shouldn’t have. I mean, I’m not … Emma was different. She didn’t belong out here. And she didn’t deserve that.”

  “I’m just here for Emma.”

  From behind Zach comes a deep, whirring pulse of sound, and my stomach drops. The extractor’s been turned on.

  I push Zach aside and race down the hall, following the sound. The end of the hall opens up into the living room, and there I see them.

  Nina is lying on a torn and stained couch beneath the far window. It’s the cleanest part of the room. Nina’s chest and head are bandaged, and that stupid swirling tattoo fades from red to blue and back. I realize suddenly it’s supposed to be a dragon.

  Chad is holding a glass to her lips. Though part of me resists looking, my eyes settle on Emma. She’s lying on the floor. On her chest is a little silver ball, its sides peeled open like a flower. The base is covered in flashing lights, and the center is beginning to glow.

  The sight of her stops me cold. There’s blood on her blouse and a stillness to her body that I somehow hadn’t expected, though I knew I should have.

  I take a step forward, but the floor creaks and Chad looks up. Before I can move, he grabs my grandfather’s shotgun from off the floor and fires. His lack of aim saves my life. I duck back into the bathroom as he fires another shot. And another. Drywall and plaster shatter past my ear.

  It’s not until I feel the warmth of my blood seeping down my leg that I realize I’ve been grazed.

  The words “I’m here for Emma” dry up in my throat. I find that I can’t make myself say them because none of this can be real. Emma can’t be dead.

  Instead, I’m filled with an all-too-familiar hatred: the same anger and rage I felt toward the driver who took Angela from me. Only it’s worse. The driver hadn’t meant to kill anyone. Chad had.

  And Emma was all the family I’d had left.

  The whirring from the other room rises to a higher pitch, and the light from the orb shines past me down the hall. I press my hand to my thigh, but hot, sticky blood seeps through my fingers. I try to stand, but my leg buckles beneath me. I catch myself on the doorjamb and bite back a cry of pain.

  “Chad?” Zach’s voice drifts in from the back of the hous
e. “How could you do this, Chad?”

  “Get out of my house!” Chad roars down the hallway. He follows up with another shot from the shotgun that deafens me for a moment.

  I realize vaguely that maybe I should have been counting the shots. Three, maybe four? I can’t remember how many rounds it was loaded with.

  “Chad, come on, man, this is beyond insane,” Zach calls.

  “You shouldn’t have brought him here, Zach!”

  “You shouldn’t have killed Emma!”

  I use my good leg and my shoulder on the doorjamb to push myself up to standing. I steal a glance around the edge of the doorframe at Emma. The light above her chest has brightened into a swirling mass of silver and white light, spinning frantically above the silver ball on her chest. There’s a second ball with Nina—the receiver. She’s clutching it tightly, staring hungrily at the light that’s quickly becoming too bright to look at.

  Zach sprints down the hall, taking cover in the bedroom door. “You had no right, you bastard! I asked you for a favor, and instead you kill her?”

  “Zach, I’m glad you’re alive. But she’s already dead. Nobody else has to die tonight,” Chad says. “Nina needs her. I promised.”

  “So did I,” I say. I limp into the hall. The light begins to flare and pulse, and I have to squint into the room. The ball on Nina’s chest opens, and Emma’s soul begins to swirl toward it. Chad swings the gun toward me.

  “Turn it off, Chad.” I sound so much stronger than I feel. Chad shakes his head. He levels the gun at my chest.

  “I can’t. Once it’s caught, it’s caught. And I ain’t letting Nina die!” His fingers are white on the stock. His hands are shaking.

  I want to tear the gun from his hands. I want to smash its butt in his face until he bleeds. Until he begs for the death that he so casually dealt to Emma. The receiver begins to beep. It’s time.

  I dive toward Emma.

  Chad fires.

  I’m knocked sideways by the impact of the shot to my chest. I fall to the floor next to Emma. It’s hard to breathe. I’m vaguely aware of Zach screaming in the background, grabbing at Chad and the gun, but it’s distant. Emma is close enough to touch. I reach out my hand. I cough, and red specks land on her blouse.

  I know that I am dying. I can feel myself draining away, and everything fades into unimportance. Everything but Emma.

  Nina starts to giggle in anticipation somewhere above me on the couch, but I can’t see her past the searing white light swirling above Emma. It’s the only thing that I can see. And in moments, that light will be sucked away forever. Emma will be well and truly gone. Just like her mother.

  I try to push myself up, but my left arm won’t cooperate, and I collapse to the side in an uneven heap. Everything seems so distant. So far away.

  I lock my eyes on Emma. Trying to remember why I’m here. What I’m doing. I tuck my left arm around the hole in my chest and I use my right arm to shove myself to the side, toward Emma.

  I roll on top of her, knocking the extractor away. The light explodes in the room, and Nina screams. I can’t see, but I can hear. I reach up with my right arm, and my fingers close around the cold, smooth metal of the open receiver.

  With the last of my strength, I tear it out of Nina’s hands and collapse to the floor. My world draws in around me until there is nothing left in it but light and blood and pain. For the first time since Angela died, I offer up a prayer that at the very least, maybe we’ll all see each other one last time. Just once. Just … please.

  A rush of energy floods through my body. I can’t breathe. Every muscle contracts as hot light sears its way through my body one cell at a time. And I stop being me.

  My mind is flooded with images. Memories of Emma’s life. She’s three, walking through the doors of her preschool for the first time. Everything is so big and the teacher’s so tall. Then she’s seven, snuggling into her mother’s lap and mouthing every word of If I Owned the Zoo. She’s thirteen, diving into the pool at her first swim meet. She’s fifteen, standing at her mother’s graveside with my arm around her shoulders. She’s seventeen and in love for the very first time, with a boy she knows I’d never approve of.

  The images keep coming, flooding through my brain one after another so fast I can’t see half of them. But I can feel it all. Emma—so brilliant, so alive. Her memories and her soul fill every corner of my mind.

  I know Emma better now than I ever have before. She’s part of me in a way that she’s never been. And she’s real, complete, and so very, very alive.

  And then the tidal wave of images begins to subside. They slow, trickling away into empty corners of my mind I hadn’t even known were there. The light fades, the pressure subsides, and I can breathe again. My whole body vibrates with energy, and I open my eyes.

  I sit up. The room spins slowly to a halt.

  Chad is lying on the floor with a shot through his chest. Nina is nearly dead on the couch. I can see details in the room in a way I couldn’t see before. I can see the color even now draining from Chad’s eyes, the shallowness of Nina’s breathing. I can tell she doesn’t have much time left even if there was something we could do.

  Zach is squatting down against the far wall, fat tears running down his pale face. He’s rocking back and forth ever so slightly. His hands are wrapped tightly around the shotgun.

  “Zach.” I’m surprised at how strong my voice sounds in my too-sensitive ears. “Zach. Help me with Emma.”

  Zach wrenches his eyes away from his cousin at the mention of my daughter’s name.

  “I didn’t really mean … it just went off,” he says. “And Emma’s …”

  “I need your help with Emma,” I say again. He nods slowly, then uses the shotgun as a crutch to push himself to his feet.

  I wrap my arm gingerly around my chest, expecting to feel the same burning pain as before, but the pain is dulled. Numbed. I feel at the bloody tear in my shirt, expecting to find shredded flesh beneath, but the hole is healing quickly. The edges have begun to close already. My side and my leg are beginning to itch terribly.

  Zach sleepwalks across the room to me and drops the shotgun to the floor. His eyes are locked on Emma, who I’ve been avoiding but who I know now isn’t really gone. Not now. Not ever. I can feel the energy of her soul vibrating inside of me, rejuvenating me. Filling me with such life as I had forgotten ever having at her age.

  I look down.

  The ache of seeing her like this threatens to overwhelm me. But there is nothing left in her body to mourn. I smooth back the hair from her face and kiss the cold skin of her forehead. But the coldness of loss, the anger and pain I felt at losing Angela isn’t there. I thought the graver who took Angela had devoured her soul—destroyed who she was forever. But for the first time in my life, I know that she’ll never be gone. Nothing in heaven or earth could destroy what she is. What she always will be. Angela believed the soul was eternal. She was right.

  She was right.

  I kneel beside my daughter’s body and lift her into my arms. I expect to need help getting to my feet, but my leg supports me well enough.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” Zach says between gasps for breath. And a memory comes to mind of the moment when Emma and Zach first met. I realize with a shock that it’s Emma’s memory.

  It was at the feed store. We’d stopped in for seeds, and she was angry at me for bringing her to a place so primitive that she had to grow her own food, afraid of this new, simple world she knew nothing about, but most of all, desperately lonely for the mother she still missed so much.

  Zach showed her how to feed the chickens. He laughed when she got scared and pulled away. He made her laugh for the first time in a long time—helped her feel hope again.

  I’d never even noticed them talking.

  “Zach,” I ask, “is there anyone else for you here?”

 
Zach hesitates. He glances back at Chad and looks away quickly, as if he’s going to puke. He shakes his head.

  “It’s all right, Zach. I didn’t know it before, but I get it now. Everything’s going to be okay. Come outside with me.” I start carefully down the hall to the back door. The gunshot to my thigh is burning like hell as it heals, but my leg holds.

  On the porch outside, I’ve gone as far as I can. I sink to the wood planking, cradling Emma in my arms, rocking her back and forth like I did when she was small. The cool breeze chills the tears on my face, and I realize I’ve been crying. The rain has finally stopped.

  Zach sinks to the ground next to me. He takes Emma’s hand and holds it gently. He draws a shuddering breath.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he says.

  “We’re going to call the authorities,” I answer. My voice is far steadier than I feel. Zach nods dumbly, and I can’t tell if he’s hearing me or not. “I’m sorry about your cousin,” I add, thinking it the obligatory thing to say. But I’m surprised too, because for Zach’s sake, I mean it. I know what it means to be alone. “Then you’re going to come with me. And we’re going to go home.”

  I find myself smiling through tears as I kiss Emma’s forehead once more. I know without any doubt that it’s what Emma would have wanted.

  Wisteria Melancholy

  written by

  Michael T. Banker

  illustrated by

  MICHELLE LOCKAMY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael T. Banker grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in New York City where he works as an actuary in a life insurance company. Subway rides into and out of Manhattan are generally spent either with his nose in a book or furiously scribbling down notes for a story.

  Not a terribly interesting existence. But that’s the trick of stories, isn’t it? They allow people to live more than one life, and the memories created within them are often more poignant and present than real events. Michael wants to create those memories for other people.