Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) (2 page)

A hand clamped on his shoulder and he shrugged away from it but was not strong enough to shirk it off. "Are you crazy?" Marie cried as she pulled him back. He gripped her strong yet slender arms and steadied himself. "You'll die."

"The doors have...eyes?!"

The sidewalk underneath their feet began to quake. The door burst from three large and eerily human-like fingers forcing it open--they scraped against the paved sidewalk stones and scattered several from their mosaic to send them flying. Thunder crashed as Wolfgang and Marie grabbed each other and, followed swiftly by the horse, fled across the street.

"Did you hear that?" Marie asked. Wolfgang saw her go pale.

"What?" he asked. "The thunder?"

"That wasn't thunder," the horse said. "That was a scream. '
Help.
'"

A moment later, like a giant drain, the door swallowed everything back up: The creature that had filled it was drawn deep inside and the rage that had been building in Wolfgang went with it. Then the door went black. After long moments, the three decided it was safe to come out from the shadows of the linden trees. All they found where the red door had been was a charred hole in the apartment building as if from a real fire, as if the glamour had burned the door away. Dead black like a window at night, Wolfgang thought he could feel a breeze blowing through it. It smelled of burnt hair and bacon. Disgust kept the desire for further exploration away.

"Why would the door destroy itself?" Wolfgang wondered out loud. He had never known MOON to get a foothold and give up so easily.

"Maybe MOON couldn't keep it," Marie said, "with no one else here."

"Then it would have gone back to blue," he argued. "It didn't. It's...dead."

The big horse made a strange sound, a sort of nicker. "What do you think, Pilgrim?" Marie asked. She was the only other person to use Wolfgang's nickname for the horse, a much older and wiser fae than he let on.

Pilgrim snorted. "I've never seen a door destroyed. Ever." The three stood silent until the paths their thoughts took became too frightening to bear.

"We should try to find out more about this," Marie said. "Your mother might know. Or your father. I'd feel better having some answers to tell HQ before I report this."

"All right. But promise that then you'll come with us to the No Man's Land. Please. At least that far. You've been there," he said, taking off his wire framed glasses and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. "You've seen it."

After grinding out an ember with one heel of a pair of elegant, dark boots, Marie looked into the wind coming from the west as if it was a manifestation of the future and she could sense everything that lay ahead just by breathing in the air. Wolfgang had no reason to think she couldn't. "I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for," she said finally, "but okay."

Down the street from the ruined door was another apartment building just like all the others on the street--all of them 4 or 5 stories, all of them square, their mansard roofs in clay tile, all of them shades of brown. This one had the name "Schäfer" on the roster of the apartment building's tiny, cracked, and cobweb-filled name plate that was always back lit, day or night. Wolfgang pressed the door buzzer. A woman wearing a light blue, laced peasant blouse fastened with a delicate peach cord came out onto a second floor balcony and waved to him, her braided hair of golden brown falling off one shoulder. Then she left to buzz him in and open the apartment's front door. "I'm so glad to see you," she said to him when he appeared in the stairwell. "I was hoping you would change your mind."

"Change my mind?"

"Well, even if you didn't, I'm glad you're back, even for a little while." His expression suggested he didn't follow, but she didn't notice that, distracted as she was by his appearance. The maternal urge to meet him and hug him hushed and cowered before his intimidating form. A metallic, cold water smell hung around him mixed with the leather of his clothes and gear. She stood back to let him in, his long, black, rider coat swinging, brushing the tops of his laced army boots. When did he get those? "Maybe we could talk some more."

Shifting her feet anxiously in the foyer where the stucco walls, once painted a cheery yellow, now stood muted with age, Lorelei Schäfer studied her son. No matter how she tried, she could not keep her face from mirroring the worries she felt churning inside. Was he really giving up this foolish idea? Was it her fault that he didn't want to turn, that he didn't want to join SUN? Had she been such a poor role model for him? "There are always choices. It's not as bad as you think. Your father and I believe you could make something of yourself, here."

He grinned too wide, his teeth too sharp. "I was thinking the same thing," he said, and shut the door.

That simple act chilled her. But her rational side ignored her foolish gut and could not, in recent memory, recall her son being so sensible. He was back, he was alive, he was listening! Nothing could be better. It inspired her to continue, even though she could not shake the feeling that something about him was fundamentally wrong. "You could follow in his footsteps," she said. "I know that you feel frustrated. Trapped. But you can do far more than you realize. Being an inventor is nothing to be ashamed of. Wolfgang..." Meeting his eyes, she noticed something missing. "Your glasses." Those same eyes as her son's--steel blue and haunting--but no longer sad. Scheming.

"And your hair..." ...long and loose, not short and neat like her son's. She didn't think the scruffy beard was an accident, either. Her heart sunk as the reality of a trap closed in around her. Her gut took over, reveled in being right, and her rational side self-destructed. As she struggled to make sense of this, one last rational thought, horribly crippled, limped up to her: Maybe these changes only meant that he was joining MOON. But then another thought intruded, the original thought that had startled her so badly that she had tried to make it go away. It had been writhing, smothered in the back of her mind and finally broke free, a thought borne from a flaw she could not see for no better reason than because she had not wanted to see: He didn't have a soul. She blurted out the inevitable conclusion, "You're not Wolfgang."

"Oh, yes," the doppelganger replied, circling around her in the tiny foyer, his boots making somber music against the wood. "Yes, I am Wolfgang, but the question is, Mother, why are you talking as if there is another one of me?" He closed in on her, loomed over her, snarling, hair falling into his face like a veil of shame, "
Why
is there another one of me?"

"Oh my God," she gasped, seeking safety by backing up into the living room, half-falling, half-sitting on the amber tile-topped coffee table, almost tipping it over. Fear made her forget the entire layout, even after twenty years of living in the apartment and having arranged all the furnishings herself. "You--It's you. You're my son. My real son."

This Wolfgang gave Lorelei a look that she had never seen on her stepson's face before. It was cruel, hard, and most unnerving of all, inhuman. "Yes, I am your REAL son, the one you left to raise in the human world, like all good changeling mothers do." He followed her into the living room, his steel blue eyes burning a cold fire. "But something tells me you have failed in your other duty. The duty to ensure that there is only one of me, to ensure that only one infant lived--yours." Cold rage deepened his voice. "You didn't do that, did you?"

She had wanted to see her real son again but she was entirely unready for this. All of the worst traits of the fae had come out in him. Greed, bigotry, and pride were his virtues, and the human world probably breathed a collective sigh of relief to be rid of him even if only for a short while. He was a stranger to her, not just because he had been raised by someone else but because he could not have turned out more different than her if he had been borne from someone else. His was a repulsive strangeness that linked the fae to demons in the minds of the mortal races, an evil that no thinking race liked to admit their stock could produce. And she had been the bearer; she had borne the Devil's son.

Lorelei began to cry. She had always believed that he would turn out like she did--merciful, loving, giving--at least toward his own mother. She had dreams that they could all live together as one happy family in spite of tradition and what it demanded of them. Her heart was breaking as only hard reality can break a heart. Grief burned a hole so deep it would never heal. "Did you forget about me, Mother?" he asked. Through the ivory curtains that were embroidered generations ago, sunlight floated across this Wolfgang's face, making shadows a gruesome mask and his pale blue, almost white, eyes glow.

"Of course not!" How could she make her feelings clear to him? If a lifetime of living with emotional humans could teach him nothing about empathy, what chance did she have now? "I want you to understand. I love you."

He reacted as if she'd told him a joke; the room echoed with sudden mocking laughter that the ear mistook for tears. "You don't know me," he scoffed. "How could you love me?"

"You're my child." To her, the answer was obvious, but her life depended upon making him understand. She realized in horror that it was something she could not explain. So what now? She couldn't kill anyone much less her own son. And he would never believe the truth; it was too foreign to him, a rat trying to understand the moon. She had always fantasized that, if this moment ever came, she could explain compassion to him. It was painfully obvious what a naive idea that was. She didn't know when she had slipped from the coffee table to her knees. The warm carpet blocked out the scent of this intruder; sunlight and the faded jasmine of a favorite perfume drifted up to her as she scraped a hand across its soft wool, then stood and wiped her eyes. "You don't understand what I did because you haven't had children."

"No, YOU don't understand," he shouted, punctuating the sentence by slamming his fist into the tiled surface of the table, "what a mess you have made of my life because you don't have any common sense!" Cracks spread along the frame as the wood splintered and tiles flew, but his hand remained unharmed. His coldness shocked her more than the violence. Unsure how to respond, she paused to collect herself, hand to breast, the rhythm of her heart giving her courage.

"You were both helpless babies," she whispered. "How could I decide?"

"I'll decide for you," he said in disgust. He turned to the apartment door and bolted it shut, his dark coat trailing behind him like a living shadow.

"What are you going to do?"

"Make things right."

"No, you're not." The time had come for her to make her beliefs real. His life and death was once more in her hands--his life and death and that of his human twin. Had she only put off the choice to end the life of one of the two? Would she have to make that choice now? She leaped for the small oak table in the entryway and, with a practiced movement, drew the gun she kept in its drawer for emergencies.

His hand fell gently upon the door handle before he spun around like a spider and lunged. Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her face to his. His breath was cloying, meaty and bitter, the breath of a predator. The son that she had dreamed of meeting, the only being in the universe she had carried inside her and given life to, had for her only the strength that comes with murderous rage. "Go ahead, use that gun on me. Do it!" As the feeling in her hands bled away from the crushing grip on her upper arms, the gun slipped through her fingers. "It'll feel good, I promise you." He let her go, and the tingling in her arms slowly went away, but not the numbness in her heart. "You'll have to kill me to stop me, and we both know you can't do that. Look at your track record." A laugh deformed by a sob burst through his smile, twisted and strange. "You can't stop me, Mother. Don't make me hurt you by trying." His expression softened, and he seemed to have a change of heart, however small. But she didn't trust it; her hand trembled visibly as he took it, adding, "I want to believe that you and I can both get through this humiliation. Together."

"Humiliation?" Eyes locked with his, she tried to spy the gun out of the corner of her eye, so that he wouldn't realize she was looking for it. But it lay secreted against the dark wood floor.

"Your failure," he explained, "to kill that...other. That thing. I'm sure that, in time, I can find it in my heart to forgive you." His voice took on a seemingly honest sadness. "You don't know what it was like to grow up in a world full of them. Petty little creatures. Always frightened. Always lying. I expected at least to come here and be free of them, then I find out that one had taken my place...and that my mother is just like them!" He gripped the hair on his head tightly as if he was using it to hold his head together while this thought taunted him. "By failing in your duty, you failed me. Lost my respect." Her rapt attention was borne of concern which rapidly dwindled to pity. It was frightening to watch a man go up in flames of his own making. Pleading with her for understanding, his eyes grew wide, helpless. "Why didn't you come for me, Mom? Someone had to do that for you, too. Or else I wouldn't even be here now. Why did you fail me in every possible way?"

So the raw truth was finally laid bare. All of the worst traits of the fae had come out in him, and she had only herself to blame. She should have done something to prevent this--found him first, visited him perhaps, guided him somehow--but now it was too late. His ice blue eyes took her back to his birth; their lost expression belonging to a refugee from another world, a world dark and warm and a part of him, now adjusting to this one where everything was wrong and he was alone. Maybe he'd never gotten over it. Maybe it was still with him, like scars from a long and painful illness. The regret that she had done nothing to comfort him after leaving him was raw. She had done what all changeling mothers did without even thinking how wrong it was, simply trusting that he would be taken care of. True, she hadn't murdered the real Wolfgang because she could not stomach that evil, but when it came to her own son, she had all but forgotten him. Time softened the horror of the act of abandonment. All the love she had she had given to the surrogate, and this was the rotten fruit it bore.