My breath shudders out, and I have to swallow back the sobbing rising in my chest. What did Dad tell me? Don’t let fear freeze you. I’m trying, but it’s so hard.
Do something! I yell at myself. Whatever it takes.
So I find a rough patch on the floor and start scraping my fingernails on it. I want them ragged. I need sharp claws for scratching.
Nails, teeth and knuckles. The only weapons I’ve got.
I can feel Leo nearby, watching. Waiting.
Huddled in my corner, I try to plan. Visualizing the room above me, I play out an attack in my head. No way I’d make it to the door with him still standing. Go for the workbench, the tools. Grab something. But any way I play it, I end up dead.
I can smell the fear in my cold sweat.
I test my new claws against my palms. Jagged and sharp.
Whatever it takes.
If Dad could see me now. I’ve really become the Bulldog’s daughter.
A distant thud breaks the silence. Billy whimpers. I hold my breath, listening. Leaning on the cement wall, I feel vibrations.
Footsteps!
What do I do? What do I do?
More steps. Coming closer.
He’s there! Standing above me.
Metal clashes against metal, deafening inside the cramped space. Sounds like—unlocking!
I lie back down, just how I was when I came to. How he left me.
Shaking inside, I force myself to keep still.
Whatever happens, don’t move.
Play dead!
The hatch squeals open.
Through my closed eyelids I can see the brightening, smell fresh air.
“Get up!” Starks says.
I stay still. Breathing slow. Swallowing back a scream.
“Move!”
Shivering deep inside. Don’t let it show.
Hands grab my ankles near the opening, dragging me out. I fight the instinct to kick and struggle, going limp as I’m pulled up and out of the pit. The back of my head hits the edge.
I don’t flinch. Not showing it. Keeping my eyes shut.
He lets my legs fall to the floor.
“This can be quick and painless.” Starks stands over me. “Or not. Up to you.”
Sounds like Leo—I tried to make it quick, painless. This is where he learned that. I can feel him close by.
I want to scream. Run. But no—
Stay limp. Don’t move. Not yet.
There’s a loud screech somewhere to my left. Blackjack.
The crow’s over where the bench should be, if I’ve got my directions right.
Grab a tool. Anything.
“Get up!”
He kicks me in the ribs. I grunt, but keep still. Eyes shut.
Wait. Don’t move.
“You got a little taste of what my stunner can do. It’ll knock you out, or I can make it last longer. Till you wish you were dead.”
A fist locks onto my right wrist, dragging me across the floor.
“You’re gonna talk.” His voice is ice cold. “Tell me what you know.”
I struggle not to flinch. Not to pull away.
Wait! Not yet!
He lets go. I can feel him bending over me. His hands gripping under my arms, lifting me.
Not yet.
He’s up close. His stale coffee breath in my face.
Now!
My eyes fly open. I swing my arms up and go for his face. Scratching wildly. Digging my claws in and raking down before he can block me.
Starks shoves me away. I stumble back and hit something hard with my tailbone.
The crow’s shrieking. The room’s spinning on me.
I whip my head around, trying to find— Behind me, the bench! I lunge for the nearest thing. A hammer. Grabbing it, I spin back.
He’s coming! Blood trailing from his cheek and forehead. I raise the hammer to strike. Starks rushes me, his arm up to block. I swing, jumping to the side at the last second.
The hammer bangs off his skull as he crashes me into the bench. I fall to my knees, sliding away from under him. Still got the hammer. I stagger to my feet, turning to face him.
Too late!
He’s on me, taking me down. The back of my head bounces off the floor. I try to move, but he pins me.
Feels like my skull’s split apart. Can’t see straight.
His bald head hangs above me. Those black eyes—black holes—lock onto mine.
He’s dripping on me. The blood runs from deep cuts on his face and from where the hammer gouged a chunk of flesh from behind his ear.
My head rolls to the side, my vision spinning. I see black wings in the air. The crow’s screeching. There’s a table. A stove. A door on the far side of the hut. And a head sticking up from a hole in the floor.
Run, kid!
Starks presses his knee into my chest, holding me still as he rips something out of his pocket. I try to raise my head, but he snags my hair and yanks it down.
What’s that he’s got?
I catch the lightning flash a split second before he hits me with it.
The jolt tears through me. White-hot spikes. My whole body spasms, seizing up. Breathless.
Shaking wildly, I nearly throw him off me. For a moment the stun gun breaks contact. I suck in a gasp of air. My arms and legs jump and twitch.
Starks sits on my chest, trapping my shoulders down with his knees. He holds the gun in front of my eyes, finger on the trigger, the jagged electric charge sizzling.
I beg silently, Let me black out, go numb.
Let go, says Leo’s voice in my head. Give up.
My ghost is so close. Almost touching me.
Let go.
Then Starks jams the gun under my jaw. My body convulses. Lightning flaring behind my eyes.
I let my last breath out in a ragged scream. Screaming inside: Stop! Stop! Help me!
Begging for an end.
Help me!
Then I feel him, my ghost. His touch. Crawling inside me now.
Starks keeps on shocking me. But it’s so far away—my pain, my panic, my body.
Every part of me is shaking violently.
Everything but my shadow. I watch as it stretches out from my shuddering left hand. Flowing through the air, the five-fingered shadow reaches out for Starks.
The dark hand presses up against his chest. Starks glances down and tries to brush it off.
His confused look turns to shock as those shadow fingers dig in, passing through his jacket. Sinking deeper till the dark hand is buried wrist-deep in him.
Starks’s face goes rigid and he tries to pull away. But it won’t let go.
I can just barely feel that hand moving inside him, as if it’s an extension of me. Like an extra limb I never knew I had.
Starks drops the stun gun, breaking the current. He grabs at the black wrist growing out of his chest that stretches from me to him.
The crow’s shrieking now, swooping low. I feel the rush of its wings as it passes near.
Those shadow fingers are searching inside Starks. The hand cups around something that throbs in its grasp. His heart.
The ranger claws at his chest.
Leo’s voice rises up in my head, a scream of pain and rage only I can hear.
My shadow’s hand closes in a fist. Squeezing tight!
Starks goes stiff on top of me, back arching, neck straining. Dark eyes bulging. His face clenches in agony as he shrieks.
The noise is deafening inside me and out, with the crow screeching too, as if it’s being torn apart.
Starks drops off me, hitting the floor with a thud as my shadow crushes his lifeless heart in its grasp.
Then, silence. Only my ragged breathing.
Random twitches and electric shivers run through me. But I can’t make myself move. Not an inch. My head is rolled to one side. I’m staring straight at Starks. At those dead eyes.
Finally, that dark arm connecting us pulls out from his chest. It drifts away from me like smoke.
>
Something else comes into view. Billy stands stunned and wide-eyed, holding the crow in his hands. The bird is limp, its neck bent back at an impossible angle.
As I’m looking up at Billy, I see him turn red. But not just him. Everything’s going red on me.
“You’re bleeding,” he says. “From your eyes.”
I’m fading fast.
I see two kids watching me now. One dark, one light. Leo and Billy. Dead and alive.
The dead one has the last word.
Now you’re mine.
That’s me on the floor. My body. I’m looking down at it, from the outside.
My legs are still twitching from the shock of the stun gun. But the lights have gone out behind my eyes.
I rise up, weightless. The ghost me.
From above I see the two corpses, mine and Starks’s, side by side, facing each other. Empty shells now. The only living thing left here is Billy, shaking my shoulder.
Leaving my body behind, I pass through the roof of the hut. Into the night.
The rain falls through me. I can’t feel the cold or the wind. Can’t feel anything but the pull of the sky. Like it’s calling out to me.
Then I’m flying, higher and higher, till I can see the whole town under me. The streetlights look like stars fallen to the ground, lined up in constellations linking everything together. I spot my house, a yellow glow at the end of a string of stars.
I feel a rush of sadness. At leaving Mom and Dad, Lexi and everything I’ve ever known.
But there’s no going back. No goodbyes.
The lights below fade as Edgewood falls farther away. Looking up to see where I’m going, I find nothing. No stars. No sky.
Just infinite blackness. The Divide.
It pulls me away from the world with its own dark gravity, surrounding me, swallowing me.
I’ve never felt so hopeless and heartsick.
I know this time death is forever.
But I’m not alone.
A pair of eyes opens in the blackness, glimmering.
There’s no getting away from Leo. But I’m not scared anymore. He’s already taken everything from me. And here in the dark I have no shadow left to betray me.
Now I’m mad! For all the pain he caused. For my stolen life.
He glides closer. Looking the same as when he haunted me. Still starving thin, wearing his hooded sweatshirt.
The shine of his eyes casts him in a pale amber glow.
You came back to me.
He sounds so sad and small. Not a ghost’s voice now, just a kid’s.
“You made me.” My words echo from my mind to his.
But you belong with me. You’re mine.
“I never was! And never will be.”
I’ll fight him even if there’s nothing left to fight for. Even if it’s forever.
But I found you, when you were lost. I kept you safe. Kept you close.
“I wasn’t yours to keep!” My shout booms like thunder through the Divide.
And it wakes something else up in this dead place.
A spark of light in the distance, behind Leo. It’s so small I don’t want to look away in case I lose it. As I’m watching, it grows from a spark to a star—the only one here.
The sight of that little ember ignites a feeling of hope. And I remember. I know that light. What it means.
Leo follows my gaze.
No! he cries. I won’t let you.
“Don’t you know what that is?”
It’s a lie. It burns. Panic in his voice.
The oncoming light has grown in the dark.
My anger is fading, with the promise of that glowing brightness. I feel almost sorry for my ghost now, spending forever in this graveyard of souls.
“Come with me,” I say.
The light widens into a blazing white eye.
I can’t. It hurts.
“The light sets you free.”
Not me. He’s shaking his head, eyes wide with fear.
“You have to let go of all the bad stuff. The hut. The pit. Him. All your pain. Let go.”
Can’t. Never.
“Why not?”
He reaches out and grabs me. Here’s why—
Even in these ghost bodies, he feels solid. But so cold. The contact pulls me into his mind.
This is where he keeps his worst memories locked away.
Images from his past flash by, burning into my mind’s eye. Carrying with them the feel of these moments, every sound, touch and smell.
The hut. And the pit. But this time I see them through Leo’s eyes.
I watch because I can’t shut it out. I’m a prisoner to his past, just like he is.
After he is taken, he wakes up in a strange bed, cold and confused. In a dark room with smoke-stained walls. He’s got no clothes on, and he hurts in places he’s never been hurt before. Then he sees the bald ranger standing over him.
Later, locked in the pit. Left here until the monster returns.
Then starved till he begs for scraps. Beaten, and worse.
Till he gives up thinking of ever getting away. Because he can never go home again. Not after what’s been done to him, what he’s been forced to do. Never see his mother or let her see this disgusting thing he’s become. She could never love him now.
He’s kept in the pit so long he forgets who he is. Till he’s nothing but a shadow.
He’s glad when death comes. So he can fly away, leaving his broken body and this nightmare world. Flying so far he leaves even the stars behind.
He likes it here in this void, where nobody can see him and he can’t see himself. He hides in the dark and feels nothing for the longest time.
But he’s still tied to the place where he’s buried, his hidden grave. That’s how he spots the little soul, escaping from the town where his bones lie. It’s like a firefly in the blackness. He holds it and keeps it close.
The rush of images cuts off.
I find myself back in the Divide. Staring into his eyes.
You came, he says. And made me feel something that didn’t hurt. I can’t lose you!
While I was trapped in his memories, the light has become a perfect round moon, so close now I could dive right into it. I can make out my own ghost body in its shine. My pale skin reflecting the glow.
I’m shocked to see how the light dies on Leo. He stays a shadow, lit only by the flares of his eyes.
You see now? he says. What I am? Why I can’t go?
The pain of his memories is still raw in me. Like I lived it with him. Died with him. I have no words.
Stay with me. Please, he begs.
I feel the light calling to me with its perfect sunshine. So beautiful. Its warmth melts away all my anger and grief for my stolen life.
Leo moves closer, as if he can stop me now. All he’s ever given me is pain and fear. But I can’t hate this sad and broken soul.
“Let me show you,” I say. “If you can just let go, it will only hurt for a second. I promise.”
You’re lying. It burns forever. I won’t let you go. Don’t make me hurt you.
“You can’t hurt me now.”
Because caught in the shine I have no shadow left. And he has no power over me.
It’s time to go.
As I stretch my hand toward the light, it reaches out for me. Curling around my fingers with a glowing fog, slipping down my wrist and arm with a thrill of pure white heat.
Leo grabs my other hand.
He’s locked on tight. Still, I’m stronger than the first time he stole me from the light. And now that I’ve seen my shadow’s real face, I’m not afraid.
I know what I have to do. For both of us.
He won’t let go, so I won’t let him go either. I grasp his hand tight.
This is the only way to make him see.
I open myself up to the brightness, letting it fill me, and its current flows through me to Leo.
When it passes from my hand to his I feel his shock. He struggles to
break free.
NO! His shout echoes across the Divide.
The light burns into that blackest place where his memories are locked away, and my ghost body ignites as I feed the fire into him.
Leo screams in wild terror as every horror is dragged out of him in flames.
And even with his soul on fire he fights to keep hold of these nightmare things. Like he’s nothing without his darkness.
But finally his screams quiet to sobs as he gives up and lets himself burn through.
When the blazing brightness softens again I can see him clearly. With the darkness stripped away from him, he looks smaller, younger. His eyes are warm, the color of honey.
I let go of his hand as the light takes Leo, swirling around him.
Sorry, he says in a sleepy whisper. Sorry, Jane.
As he drifts toward the whiteness of that perfect moon, I move to follow.
But something in me holds back. Why? The glow is the sweetest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever known. But it’s not calling to me like before.
Something else is.
I start drifting, away from the light, caught in a tide. I watch it shrink to an eye, an ember, a spark.
And then I’m falling. Slowly at first. Out of the empty night of the Divide and into a sky filled with stars.
I dive through the clouds and past them into the rain below. I see a familiar constellation of lights down there.
Edgewood grows large beneath me, the ground rushing up.
But I’m not afraid. I know where I’m going.
I slept for six days straight after the surgery, in a medically induced coma to help me heal. A sleep too deep for dreams, or nightmares.
First thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Lexi, slouched in a chair beside my hospital bed, flipping through a movie magazine.
She jumped up.
“Jane? You’re awake? Can you hear me?”
I could. But my words took a long time coming. My throat was dry as a desert, and I had to focus to get my mouth working again.
I looked up into her beautiful dark eyes. Never thought I’d see them again.
“Can you speak?” Lexi stood over me, so worried and anxious. “Say something!”
I could see her wondering—Is she a vegetable now? Is there brain damage?