Exit Light (18 page)

The witchwoman was angry again. The witchwoman wanted the boy to put away his toys. She wanted him to make the earth shake and the skies dance.

The boy didn’t want to.

So the witchwoman did what she always did when the boy defied her. She found someone else instead. She’d met him on the beach before. The boy knew him too. He’d seen him with the nice lady who’d tried to help him a while ago.

“Hello, sweetheart,” the witchwoman purred, crooking her finger at the man. “I know you.”

He came forward at once, though the boy felt him trying to resist.

“Look at me,” she said softly, then louder when at first the man ignored her. “Look at my face.”

Blinking, the man did. “Leave me alone.”

He’d maybe meant to dream of fishing, or playing baseball, or painting a picture. He had a lot of wishes, and all of them fell away when the witchwoman pushed him. There was no secret to this. No tricks.

She lowered her voice to tease him into leaning forward. “Why should I?”

“Because I want you to!” His shout pushed her back with more force than she’d expected.

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s not very nice.”

He cried out, and the witchwoman laughed. His shirt hung from his body in shreds over the skin scored red beneath. Crimson painted her fingertips, and she lifted each to her mouth to lick them clean.

The boy shuddered, clutching his ball, watching as he always did from the shadows as the scene played out in front of him. He thought he could stop the witchwoman, take her attention away from the man she was abusing, but when he stepped forward the dogman growled and snapped, and the boy held back.

“I taste you,” she purred. The grass beneath them waved in a gentle breeze. “No snakes this time, sweetheart?”

The man grimaced. “Don’t call me that.”

“What should I call you, instead? Baby? Lover? Punkin Pie? Ah, I know.” She snapped her fingers and advanced on him. She reached, tugged, pulled, yanked. Stole. “Your name is…Ben.”

He flinched, and she clapped her hands in glee.

“Oh, I love it when I’m right!” She looked over her shoulder at the boy in his place. “And I’m always right, aren’t I, sweetheart?”

The man looked at him now. Looked at the boy. His face was sad, disappointed, the way his father had looked at him sometimes when he brought home the notes from Mrs. Bellestead.

That look made the boy ashamed.

The witchwoman laughed again, creeping closer to the man. She’d teased something else from him, too. Another name. Another face. It danced, shimmering, in the air above the man’s head like the thought bubble in a cartoon.

It was the nice lady, only instead of legs, she had a tail.

“How sweet.” The witchwoman sneered. “Does she know about you?”

Ben’s mouth twisted. “She has nothing to do with this.”

The witchwoman laughed. “Oh, I think she has everything to do with this. Doesn’t she? Your mermaid?”

The nice lady’s face disappeared. Blocked, but too late. The witchwoman had already tasted her. Smelled her. Learned her name.

“Tovah.” It clicked on her tongue.

“Stop.” Ben moved forward, hands out.

Stupid fellow. As if fists could harm her. The boy knew better.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the man gritted out.

“Sweetheart, I think you should be. I know how to make you.”

What an easy scene to create. A cliff. A figure with the face she’d seen shimmering in the sky over his head.

“Tell me, Ben. Have you ever wanted to fly?”

“Leave her alone!”

The witchwoman pushed. She couldn’t shake the earth or open the skies, or unmake the world, not the way the boy could. But she could try. She could do things. She could make stuff happen.

“Watch her fly!”

“No!”

“No?” the witchwoman said. “Take her place, then. You for her.”

Ben’s hands opened and closed. “Don’t hurt her.”

So predictable.

“Say goodbye.”

“No!”

“Time to fly, Ben, if you can.”

He ran. The figure the witchwoman had made vanished. Ben reached, grabbed. He leaped.

He fell.

Within a breath, the witchwoman waited at the bottom of the cliff to watch him break, but he never appeared.

“I guess he learned how to fly,” said the boy. He held his ball with both hands. “You tried to break him, but you couldn’t.”

“Be careful,” the witchwoman said through bared teeth, “or I’ll break you, instead.”

But they both knew she could only try.

Bounce, bounce. Catch.

Bounce, bounce. Catch.

Bounce. Bounce—

“Can you hand me back my ball?” The boy in front of Tovah held out his hand with the certainty of someone who doesn’t expect to be refused. “Please?”

A moment ago she’d been shaping the room in which she planned to meet Edward. The sudden shift of scene unbalanced her, literally. The step she took with her sound foot landed on soft black sand, and she pinwheeled her arms to keep herself from falling.

“I’m sorry?” She wasn’t sorry, just confused and taken aback, a little bit afraid. She knew this boy.

“My ball,” he said patiently. “It’s right over there.”

He pointed. The red ball with white stripes had rolled against a craggy stone wall. Details had filled in around her as they spoke. A dark sky. Dark trees. Black mountains in the distance and the far-off rumble of something like thunder. Shifting black sand. She remembered Kelly’s dream and looked for the black sea that would try to drown her, but she didn’t see it.

“Please?”

The force of his will pushed her to step toward the ball. Tovah was already reaching for it when she stopped herself. Her fingertips brushed the ball’s rubber surface, but she didn’t pick it up.

“Please, Mrs.” The boy’s voice hadn’t changed in tone or urgency. It remained the voice of a child complacent in knowing he has always had his way. “I want my ball.”

But Tovah didn’t want to be here. How she’d managed to lose the sensual display and end up in this place, she didn’t know, but she didn’t intend to stay. This boy was here for a reason, and she didn’t want to be a part of it.

She grabbed up the ball, which fit the palm of her hand perfectly though a moment before it had been the size of a basketball. She turned and tossed it. The ball became a blackbird and flew away.

“Oh,” said the boy, grief heavy in his voice. “Oh, my ball.”

“I’m sorry,” Tovah said. “It just happens that way sometimes.”

The boy stared at her with vivid blue eyes half-hidden by a shock of unruly dark hair. “Why? Why does everything good have to go away?”

“I don’t know.”

In the face of his tears her resolve weakened. Tovah had little experience with children. She’d been the youngest child. She’d never babysat. She’d never had a child of her own.

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t.”

The boy sat on a large black rock and put his face in his hands. The knobs of his shoulders punched up through the thin denim of his shirt. His fingernails were bitten down, his fingers dirty in the creases. His sobs rent her. She touched his shoulder tentatively.

“What’s your name?”

He shook his head and looked up at her with streaming eyes. She thought he might be about eight years old, and small for his age. His lashes, dark and thick, swept over cheeks as smooth as milk.

“Only bad things stay!” he cried.

She took her hand back at the sudden shout. The force of his will was like a thousand tiny plucking hands. Like the skittering touch of an insect, or the unexpected prick of a pin left in a garment.

Tovah shaped green grass, but the black sand pushed it away. She shaped blue sky, but midnight swallowed it. Things were getting beyond her control. She didn’t want to be caught in this child’s nightmare. She wasn’t a guide.

“I’m sorry.” She backed up. “You’ll find your ball. If you want to.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she would be away from this place and this child. She would be in the club, where she could find something to distract her. Or in the meadow, shaping flowers. Anyplace but here.

She opened her eyes.

There wasn’t time to scream; there hadn’t been then, either. One moment she’d been drifting into sleep, the next the shriek of tires on pavement and the blaring of the car horn had flung her eyes wide open. The seat belt had bitten her shoulder. The sound of metal on metal and shattering glass filled her head.

No time to scream, or block her sight. No time to brace herself before the car slid under the back end of the tractor-trailer and everything went black.

Black.

And blue.

And red and blue.

Red and blue and yellow. The sound of sirens. Smell of smoke. A vague sensation of pressure against her thigh. No pain. The pain would come later, the angry stinging of a hundred thousand wasps, the burn of molten wax. But for now, no pain.

She looked to her left at Kevin in the driver’s seat. Blood dripped from a small cut on his forehead. He’d cracked the windshield. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.

Outside his window, an alien rapped. No, not an alien. A firefighter in a suit, masked, hands made thick by gloves. He had an ax. He swung against the back window. More glass shattered.

More red and blue, more yellow, the droning blare of a siren and the rumble-mutter of megaphones. A policeman appeared at her side, the door open and gone. A man in white. A woman in a blue jacket.

Then nothing.

She knew this was a dream, each detail crisp and clear and unwanted, accurate but not real. Not this time. A dream she could control. Shape. She didn’t need to be here, didn’t need to live through this, no matter what Spider said. She didn’t need this.

“No,” she said aloud, voice thick, throat raw. “No.”

“Relax, honey,” said the woman in the blue coat. It had been a jumpsuit back then, now a coat, more proof this wasn’t the waking world. “Relax. We’re going to have to cut you out of there.”

“No,” Tovah said, struggling. “No! Please—”

Pain shredded her. The wail of the sirens grew, stabbing her ears. The shriek of metal gave way to the whine of the chainsaw the woman in blue sported instead of her left hand.

“Just a minute, sweetheart, and we’ll cut you free.”

“I’m not free!” Tovah screamed. “I’m not free!”

She wanted Spider. Needed a guide. Anyone. Someone.

Spider didn’t come. She cried for him as she struggled against the shoulder belt that had locked her tight into the crumpled remains of the car.

“Don’t worry so much. It’s just a little…prick.”

The woman’s teeth had become hypodermic needles.

“You should get out of there.”

The familiar voice was soothing. Calm. Beneath it, Tovah heard the soft tick-tock of a clock. Behind the scary woman, a figure loomed. She wept with relief.

“Ben?”

“I’m here. You can make this go away. You know you can.”

The woman began to blur and shift. She became a stone angel. The car, however, stayed around Tovah, tighter than the embrace of a lover.

“I’m trying.”

“You’re scared. Let it go.”

“I can’t! I can’t let it go!”

Tovah struggled in the prison of metal and leather. The stench of smoke burned her throat and nose. All her limbs were leaden. And then, terror so fierce it hurt like a blow leaped up inside her. Not leaden.

Gone.

“You can do it.” Ben’s voice smoothed over her. “Shape it away. Shape your exit, Tovah.”

She could do it. Had done it, dozens of times. She’d forgotten until Ben reminded her.

The blinking red letters swirled in the air, fixing themselves into solidity.

EXIT.

And she pushed herself toward it.

For fully three seconds after she sat up in bed, the exit light hovered in front of her before she blinked and it dissolved. Sickness roiled in her stomach. Her nightshirt clung to her body.

Shaking, Tovah sat up and swung her leg over the bed. The other, the stump, stuck out just past the edge of the bed. She rubbed it. It didn’t hurt anymore, and the lumps and runnels of the scar tissue had become as familiar to her as any other part of her body. Nothing to fear, or to hate. She was more than one limb, more even than the sum of all her body. There was more to her than a physical imperfection, always had been more. Always would be.

She put her face in her hands and wept, anyway, for what had been and what was left.

The witchwoman was hunting a Spider.

She didn’t have to tell this to the boy; he just knew, the same way he knew where she was and what horrors she committed even when they were hidden from him. The way he knew what the dogman did when he wasn’t looking.

She hunted the Spider Ben had told her about. A guide. Someone more powerful than she. It infuriated her, and the boy knew this, too.

The boy had found the Spider, but he kept this discovery shielded from the woman and the dogman as best he could. He wanted to talk to this Spider alone, before they found him.

They always found him.

The Spider watched him, and the boy wondered how different he looked through eight eyes instead of two.

“My mom says if you kill a spider, it’ll rain.”

The Spider’s head moved a little, from side to side. “Do you like to kill spiders?”

The boy shook his head. “Billy Morris in my class used to pull the legs off of Daddy Long Legs. But I never did.”

The Spider said nothing, but though the dogman often said nothing because it couldn’t, and the witchwoman often used her silence as a distraction, the boy didn’t think the Spider meant to harm him.

“You’re strong, aren’t you?” the boy asked.

The Spider managed a nod. “Been here a long time. Yes.”

“So have I.”

“I know you have, son.”

Nobody had called him son in a very long time. Not since he’d been with his mom and dad, and not often then. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes, and he didn’t have the power to hold them back.

“I have a ball,” he said, showing it desperately. “Do you want to play with me?”

“I wish I could, son. But…”

“But you’re afraid of me?” The boy immediately knew this to be true, the same way he knew the witchwoman hated him, no matter how many times she told him otherwise. “You hate me!”

The Spider said nothing. It bounced lightly on its nasty, jointed legs. It turned the boy’s stomach, and he looked away.

“I don’t hate you, son. But I’m worried about what you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing anything! It’s the witchwoman! And the man with the dog face! It’s them!” The boy’s voice rose, high and hysterical. It hurt his throat like a necklace of barbed wire. It made him bleed, and he wept, tugging at the sharp metal but unable to keep it from digging into his throat.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me.”

The Spider said nothing. It grew larger. Scarier. Hair sprouted along its legs and back. Its legs got longer. Bright, shining drops of venom dripped from its jaws.

The boy tried to scream, but the wire bound his mouth. He shook his head, pulling. “Stop,” he whispered. “Please.”

The Spider moved forward, turning its back. Spinnerets glinted, and the boy saw the first threads of sticky silk protrude.

“Stop!” he cried out past the bulging muzzle of barbed wire. He took a little of the witchwoman’s anger for himself. “You stop, right now. Or I’ll—”

“This is my home,” that nasty Spider said. “And I can’t let you ruin it, son. I’m sorry. I know that maybe you don’t mean to. But you’ve got to stop what you’re doing before you lose control of it. Before you break something. Or someone.”

“No!”

“You have to wake up, son. That’s all you have to do.”

The boy struggled from his place on his knees. Tears of acid traced rivers down his cheeks, and sobs brought the taste of blood to his lips. They put him here, the witchwoman and the dogman, on his knees. On the cold floor, hunger in his belly like a knife. They kept him in the dark, they didn’t close the closet door, they took away his ball and gave him the bad dreams. The witchwoman and the dogman did this.

The Spider was doing it too.

The boy cried out again. “But I’m not asleep! I’m never asleep!”

Somewhere: a mother slapped her child.

Somewhere: a husband raised his hand to his wife.

Somewhere and everywhere, there were very, very bad dreams.

And the rain came down.