“Starfish? That’s random enough.”
“No. It’s not random. It’s something between us, in a way. Doctor Seabury chattered about them quite a lot toward the end of his life. ‘Starfish hands,’ he would tell me. In his dreams, the creatures who waited there . . . they had starfish-shaped hands.”
“Very good, then. ‘Starfish’ it is.”
“Somewhere down the line, I hope. A very long time from now.”
I nodded. “Years and years. And not a moment sooner.”
Ruth Stephenson Gussman
OCTOBER 4, 1921
Maybe they aren’t spells at all. Maybe they’re something else, or maybe there’s more than one kind. I feel like a window is opening every time—and I’m seeing into some other place, only it’s not heaven and it’s not hell; it’s just where dead people go in the end. Some of the dead people, I guess. Not all of them, I hope.
These spells (or whatever they are) confuse me, and they scare me. Today’s was the worst one yet, but that’s only fitting, right? Because this time, the spell warned me of the worst thing yet, and I was still too dumb to do anything about it in time.
Unless the timing was wrong. Or the message was wrong. Everything might be wrong, but I couldn’t say one way or another. Not anymore. Not considering.
I left the house. I wasn’t supposed to, but I left the house—even though it isn’t a house, but that’s what I’m used to calling my home, no matter where I live. So I left the apartment, if that’s more correct, even though they all told me not to: Chief Eagan, the inspector, Lizbeth. Everybody said not to leave except for George, and he told me to get as far the hell away as I could. More or less.
Everybody else seemed to think it was too soon to take such drastic measures, and I ought to stay put, inside my own place where my daddy couldn’t find me and the reverend couldn’t reach me without going to a lot of trouble—and we’ve got good neighbors, as I think I’ve mentioned before. Someone would come and warn me, if he started asking around.
But I got that letter from George, and I took it over to that hotel—to give it to Lizbeth and the inspector. They didn’t chide me too bad about it, since I’d brought them something useful; but they didn’t want me coming with them, either.
I know it’s true that I’d only make trouble for them, and they’re trying hard to find out what George has gotten up to and what the reverend is getting up to . . . but I’m not a little girl and I don’t have to stay indoors just because they said I should. So what happened was, I didn’t go home after they left for the storage room at the civic building, even though I was supposed to. Pedro was at work, so he didn’t know the difference, and I was tired of being cooped up in the house all alone, or cooped up in the courthouse with everybody staring at me.
Instead, I went down to Five Points and visited a drugstore there—a little place where I used to get sweets and maybe a lemonade, if I had an extra nickel in my purse. I hadn’t been there since before I got married, and since you got killed.
And I had a nickel to spare.
It was strange, walking down the street and realizing that not every single person was looking at me hard. Not every soul in the whole city knew who I was, or what I looked like, and most of the ones who did know likely didn’t care. I’d just been at the middle of the storm for so long that it felt like I’d been in a fishbowl, or on a stage with the whole world watching, except it wasn’t the whole world at all. It was only a handful of people in a theater.
I liked that thought. It felt good between my ears, and made me think that maybe everyone on earth wasn’t against me.
(Of course it isn’t everyone on earth, and it never has been. There’s the inspector, and Lizbeth, and Pedro, and Chief Eagan, and all the people who care about any of them, I expect. That’s more than a few good souls right there. But they were in the fishbowl with me, so that wasn’t quite the same.)
I took the trolley, and then I walked. The whole time I was out there, wandering around in the sunshine, I felt downright normal—wearing a sundress and a shawl, with my button heels on. The weather was nice, and I was on my way to get some chocolates and a drink right out of the icebox Mr. Cowan keeps beside the front door.
Really, I should’ve known better.
I guess I’m not allowed to be normal anymore, at least not in Birmingham. Like as not, it doesn’t matter if I’m in Birmingham or Boston, because there’s no place far enough to run when you don’t even know what you’re trying to get away from—and all you know is that it can find you if it wants to. And whatever it is, it’s probably dead. So it’s not like you can kill it and be finished.
I had just lifted the lid on the icebox and stuck my hand inside for a chilly bottle of something I don’t get to drink every day. The coldness inside the box startled me, and it chased me, sort of like the awful black shadow does when it creeps up around my ankles and starts climbing.
I was mad and I was confused, because this wasn’t that, not at all. Was it? No, this was just a whisper of ice, fogging inside the big metal bin with the sodas and lemonades clinking together—that’s what I told myself. That’s what it felt like, and that’s what it must be.
But I’m a liar, to myself and the rest of God’s green earth. I’ve even lied to you.
I knew better than that when it wrapped itself around my wrist—and that was a first, because usually it started at the ground and worked its way up. This one began at my hand instead, and when I tried to draw it back and slam the icebox lid shut, the cold grip wouldn’t let me. It held me fast, and kept on crawling, and this time it wasn’t just a fog—it was fingers, strong and long, clenching and squeezing; and around the edge of my vision, I could see the darkness slipping in.
I think I fell to my knees, but I’m not sure. I don’t remember that part. It only took a few seconds for the blackness of the spell to fall over me like a blanket, like that starless sky I’ve seen once or twice and been so afraid I couldn’t breathe. This particular spell was like the one in the courtroom. It came upon me and I was a million, billion miles away—moving past the stars, running past the planets and moons and a thousand suns until I was so far away that I’d never find my way home, not this time.
I didn’t stop until there was no light left at all, no stars, no suns, no comets.
There was nothing except for me, sitting in an empty room with all the lights turned out. All alone except for a shuddering blob of light that eventually, given another half minute to make up its mind, took the shape of a man.
He wore a white shirt with a vest, and nice gray pants with shiny shoes, and his hair was combed and oiled so not a single strand was out of place. He was clean-shaved, and his nails were clean and filed, and his clothes were pressed, and even his eyebrows looked like someone had taken a pair of trimming scissors to them. I wondered if he ever really looked like that at all, or if this was just how he thought of himself, whoever he was.
Once he was all there, so solid-looking I might’ve been able to touch him, and maybe hit him upside the head for doing this to me . . . he lit up with delight, but his smile faded off to fear real fast.
“There you are,” he said. His voice was higher than I would’ve expected, and it didn’t sound far away like yours did, when you visited me like this. We might’ve been in the same room, sitting across a table from each other.
“Who are you?” I asked this man, only halfway wondering what I looked like to the real world, a million billion miles (or years?) behind me. Was I collapsed on the ground? My eyes rolled back in my head, while people hovered around me, trying to get my attention. Were they calling for an ambulance? Had I swallowed my tongue? Did I look dead?
“My name is Leonard, and I must speak with you. I’ve gone to great trouble, so please . . . a moment of your time?”
Like there was anything I could do to chase him off. Or if there was, I didn’t know about it. “All
right, say your piece.”
“I killed those people with an axe, and I would’ve killed you, too. Not because I wanted to, but because I was trying to help.”
I was so stunned I could hardly pretend I wasn’t, but I did a decent job of staying calm when I asked, “So why would you want to kill me? Hell, why didn’t you—if that’s what this is about?”
“I didn’t want to kill you. I never wanted to kill anyone, and I didn’t kill you because it wouldn’t have helped. Your marriage and subsequent departure changed the equation,” he said, like that just explained everything. “Or I thought it did, but now the numbers have shifted again—they’re slippery, they are. You aren’t the victim Chapelwood expected, but you’re the one it wants after all.”
“I’m nobody’s victim!”
“That isn’t true. Or it’s only temporarily true, if you don’t listen to me.”
I threw my hands up, or I thought I did. Again, heaven knows what I was really doing, with my real body, back in the real world. Maybe it looked like I was having some sort of fit. Maybe that’s what they were saying about me, on the sidewalk outside the drugstore. I tried to push it all out of my head. I asked him, “Why should I do that? Why should I listen to some murderer?”
“Because I mean to help.”
“Help who? Me?”
“Everyone. The world is at stake, Ruth Gussman, and maybe more than that.”
“Well, I’ve got to be real honest with you, Leonard: I don’t much care about what happens to anything outside of this world.”
“But you should. There are worse things beyond the stars and under the oceans than you could ever imagine, and there are worse men on earth than you could ever believe—because they want to bring the terrible things home to us, to mate our world with theirs. These men are wrong, oh, you have to believe me,” he insisted, and those nicely groomed eyebrows were all wrinkled up with worry. “They’ll destroy everything you’ve ever known and loved—everything you might ever know, everyone you might ever love—and they’ll use your blood to do it.”
“Why me?” I demanded.
“Why anyone? They used my formulas—my own research!—and chose stepping-stones, human breadcrumbs . . . they would have killed them all anyway, and each death would’ve pried the door between our worlds open that much farther. I stalled them, that’s all I could do,” he protested, and it looked like he might cry, if he were alive. And I knew, I understood from the bottom of my soul, that just like Father Coyle . . . he wasn’t. “But this is all my fault, you understand? I gave them the means to decode the words of God, and when they did, when they chose their sacrifices . . . I was forced to choose them, too. It’s as if I damned them all twice over.”
“So are you dead? Are you in hell? Is that where we are?”
“Hell isn’t a place.” He said it offhandedly, as if this were the least important question I could possibly ask. But this was too much, too confusing. I was drowning, and I didn’t know the right word for “rope.”
“Then where are you?”
“I’m gone, that’s all that matters. I’m gone, and you’re not—so there’s still a chance. You can see and hear the dead, and maybe the dead can help. But you have to get away from Chapelwood and the Reverend Davis, and you have to stay away from them both, forever. They will never stop looking for you, and if they catch you, you must end yourself on the spot.”
“You’re telling me to go spend the rest of my life in exile, and be prepared to slit my own wrists at the drop of a hat. Is that the gist?”
“It sounds awful when you put it that way.”
“It sounds awful no matter how anybody puts it. If you’re trying to reassure me, or . . . or encourage me . . . you’re doing a shit job of it, Leonard.”
He shook his head, and looked both weary and annoyed. “I’m not trying to encourage you. I’m trying to motivate you to run or die before they can catch you and kill you. I know, it’s not the most reassuring or optimistic of motives, but you’re on borrowed time anyway. Everyone is, when you think about it—but you? You might have died months ago, but I didn’t kill you then—and I can’t kill you now. You have nothing to fear from me, not anymore.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I couldn’t stop the reverend, but you can. I want you to stop him.”
“How?” I asked, and it probably came out sadder and more desperate than I wanted. “I can’t stop anyone from anything, not even when I try, and I know what I’m doing.”
“You have to evade them, in life or death. They can’t open the final lock without you, that’s what the numbers tell me.”
“Numbers? What numbers?”
He didn’t answer my question. “The old chairman, he told you the truth—you should go, and go far. As far away as you can. Know that, and know this: If you fall into their hands, they’ll use you to destroy the world.” His face tightened in a frown, and his wrinkly eyebrows went even more crooked. His eyes had gone all vacant . . . he stared off into nothing. “Oh dear . . . I’m too late. I haven’t helped at all. That’s one thing we have in common, then—neither one of us could ever save anyone . . .”
I was losing him.
“Would you stop running your mouth about nonsense, and tell me what to do?” I tried to get his attention, tried to make some demands—anything to bring him back around—but he wouldn’t look at me anymore. He was looking through me, or past me, at something else.
“Get up. Get up and fight,” he said, and it was easy enough to understand, but his voice was starting to sound all far away like yours did just before you left me. “Fight them, and run. Run and die. Or everyone will.”
The last word was hardly a whisper. I started to say something back, but it was too late for that already, I could tell. I could feel that old tug, the sense of falling through absolute darkness, at a terrible speed, toward something I couldn’t see. The tug became a yank, and then a hard draw—all the tension and strength of a heavy weight being spun around and around and then let go.
I couldn’t see Leonard anymore. I couldn’t see anything, not the stars and comets and moons. I was falling headfirst, down and backward, down and backward, all the way back to earth, to Birmingham, to my body.
I didn’t hit the sidewalk, not like I’d expected. I didn’t feel some bone-breaking collision, or even some squeezing sense of forcing myself back inside my own skin. It was as simple as opening my eyes and staring up at the clear blue sky, and seeing only a few clouds, and a few people chattering worriedly because I was lying there on my back outside the drugstore, not saying anything and not answering anybody.
But there was another voice—a voice that cut through everything else. It made my stomach cramp up, to hear it so close. It was right beside me, right above me. It was touching me, if a voice can do that.
It was my daddy’s voice, at its scariest: It was being calm, and reassuring. So that meant it was lying.
Not lying to me, because Daddy never cared about calming or reassuring me. No, he was talking to the people who wanted to help me, and he was saying that I was just fine; don’t worry—he was my father, and I had little fits like this sometimes, but he’d take me home and take care of me.
I tried to sit up, but I was already sitting up, already being lifted up under my armpits. (He isn’t a big man, but he’s wiry and much stronger than he looks.) He was apologizing for any disturbance I might have caused, but promising that everything would be all right once he got me home and safe. He’d just put me to bed, and when I woke up, all would be well.
I was stumbling, not really at home again in my body, not yet. I couldn’t walk, and my eyes wouldn’t focus like they ought to. I’d seen the sky and all its cotton white clouds clear enough, but looking around all I could see were blurry faces and the shifting shapes of the storefronts as I staggered past them, my head dropping and lifting, my daddy pu
lling me along.
“No.” I said it like a command, but it came out just a funny-shaped breath too soft to call a whisper. “No.” I tried again, but it wasn’t any stronger.
Daddy had a car waiting nearby; I guess it was parked on the street outside the store, because we didn’t go any farther than thirty or forty feet, I wouldn’t think. It confused me. Daddy never had a car of his own. He said we couldn’t afford one, and that was probably true, but he had one now—some kind of touring car, something shiny and dark, and I knew he definitely couldn’t afford that one, so he’d borrowed it from someone, or maybe he even stole it. It gleamed in the sun, some scrap of reflection hitting me in the face and blinding me all over again, just as I was starting to get my vision back.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair that he wrestled me inside, and someone was already sitting there waiting for me. An extra set of hands pulled me up by the shoulders and Daddy folded up my legs like a fresh-pressed shirtsleeve and stuffed me inside so he could shut the door. I blinked, and almost felt better—because the other person in the car was my momma. But that was no good, and I knew it. I knew it even before she brought the cloth down over my face and pressed it there, and I breathed something wet and sweet, and the last thing I saw was her face, wearing the same weak smile as always before. The last sound I heard was her voice, lying to me about how everything was going to be all right, and just fine. She couldn’t even make up something new. She just ran with whatever Daddy’d told her to say.
Just like always before. Just like forever.
Lizbeth Andrew (Borden)