The Golden Spiral (16 page)

That night, Mom had come in with a special surprise. She had made a rag doll for me—beautiful brown hair, soft brown eyes, a red smile, and real blush on the cheeks. The doll wore a pink jumpsuit and had a silver cape attached to her shoulders. On her chest was a shield with the letters L and A intertwined in black ink.

Mom sat next to Dad and gave me the doll.

“She looks like me!” I said, hugging her to my chest.

“She should,” Mom said. “She’s a superhero like you. Her name is Little Abby and she’s here to help protect you while you sleep.”

“I don’t know. She’s so little. What if she gets hurt?” I frowned, unwilling to subject my new doll to the terrors in the night.

“She’s only little when you’re awake,” Mom said, winking at Dad. “When you are asleep, she grows to be ten feet tall. Plus, she is as fast as lightning. And she can’t get hurt—see this cape? It protects her like a shield. And you know the best part?”

I shook my head, already feeling calmer just holding the doll in my hands.

Mom leaned down to whisper, “She can see in the dark. So it’s okay to fall asleep, sweetie. Little Abby is watching over you. Always.”

That night was the first time in a long time that I had fallen asleep without any trouble. And as long as I had Little Abby with me, the nightmares stayed away.

Always. Always. Always.

My four-year-old self drifted away until just my seventeen-year-old self was left, lying on the floor of my bathroom, crying in the dark.

Little Abby had always protected me, just like my mom had promised. At least, until I was nine years old and we had gone camping with the Kimballs. Of course, my nightmares had long since ceased, but I still secretly slept with Little Abby, and I still secretly felt braver when she was with me at night. It was on that trip that somehow Little Abby had gone missing, vanishing into thin air. That was the same trip when Jason had taught me to be brave all by myself with a simple counting trick that always seemed to work. Still, I missed Little Abby and mourned her loss for weeks.

I hadn’t seen her since I was nine years old—until tonight.

Until I lifted the lid on that horrible box and saw her face looking back at me.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the image from my mind, but all I managed to do was squeeze more tears out and down my cheeks. Well, at least I knew for sure who had sent the box to me. This was Zo’s work through and through. And the implications of that made me shiver uncontrollably. With Dante trapped, Zo was free to impose his will on the river of time. And the fragment of my childhood tucked into that box made it perfectly clear that Zo was interested in imposing his will on
my
past.

I’m watching you, Abby. Always.

A torch of hate flared to life, blinding me. Zo had waded into my past and stolen part of me, only to taunt me with it, laughing at me from beyond the bank. How dare he? He thought he knew me, but he had no idea what I was capable of. Burning with sudden purpose, I pushed myself to my feet, unwilling to let Zo’s threat remain in my room, my house, my life for one more moment.

The box was still where I had left it, the lid upside down on the floor. I gathered up the slithery gold ribbon and stuffed it inside the box, hiding those polished black button eyes. Then I snatched up the lid from the floor and slammed it into place on the box, resisting the urge to wipe my fingers on the edge of my T-shirt.

The thought of carrying the box all the way downstairs in my bare hands made my flesh crawl, so I grabbed a shirt from the hamper and wrapped it around the box. I made my way downstairs, quick, silent, and furious. Easing open the back door, I stepped out onto the patio.

The air held a slight predawn chill, and I inhaled deeply. The silver wind chimes shivered in the cool breeze, murmuring musically behind me. I had no idea if what I had in mind would work or not, but I suspected I could
make
it work. I had done it before, after all. And apparently the barriers between me and the bank were thinning.

Looking up at the still-dark sky, I spent a moment counting the stars, counting the spaces between the stars, counting my breaths as I focused all my concentration to a single sharp point. I felt the edges of myself thin, the boundaries between here and there soften into smoke. The familiar vise tightened around my lungs; the buzz of dark silence began burrowing into my inner ear. But I had no intention of going to the bank. I wasn’t even trying to reach the dream-side of the bank. No, I simply wanted to send a message to a place where I knew it would reach Zo wherever he was. And with a mental shout, I sent the words winging away into the void.

Are you watching, Zo?

Then I snapped back to myself, gasping in a harsh breath, feeling my ears pop as sound returned full force.

I set down my bundle and dragged Dad’s charcoal grill to the center of the patio, wincing as the stuck wheels scraped against the concrete. I hinged back the lid and dumped Zo’s gift out of my shirt and onto the grill. Padding around the corner of the house, I quickly gathered up my supplies and returned with a half-full bottle of lighter fluid in one hand and a box of matches in the other.

Setting the matches down, I drenched the box with lighter fluid, the acrid stench making my eyes water. The yellow brocade soaked up the fluid until the fabric looked nearly black in the shell of the grill. When the bottle was empty, I turned the garden hose on, waiting until the water began dribbling out of the nozzle before I picked up the box of matches.

I touched the first match head to the rough striking strip on the side of the box and paused. I knew that crossing Zo could prove dangerous to both me and Dante. But Zo had to learn that I could be just as dangerous.

I struck the match.

Zo’s box flared up in an instant inferno, the flames devouring the fabric. The brocade retreated in huge swaths, shrinking, melting, leaving behind only blackness streaked with red. The golden threads flared into brief life as each knot blazed like a small supernova.

I took a step back from the crackling heat and watched the smoke begin to spiral up into the air. The gray smoke was almost invisible against the gray sky, and yet the trailing wisps seemed to form patterns that I could almost recognize. A message I could almost read—a prayer, a wish, a warning.

I don’t know how long I stood there, watching the shifting patterns in the sky, but when I finally drew in a deep breath, I could taste the scratch of smoke in my mouth and feel the sting of tears in my eyes. Zo’s box had collapsed into ash, taking all my hot anger with it. Exhausted, I swiped a trembling hand across my forehead.

Dawn began stretching awake, long fingers of light reaching to push aside the stars. My thoughts returned to my childhood doll, now gone for good in her own small funeral pyre.

Good-bye, Little Abby,
I thought with a pang.
Thank you for being my warrior . . . and my friend. I’m sorry you got caught up in this mess.

Stooping, I picked up the garden hose and directed the stream of water into the bottom of the grill, soaking the remains of the box until it was a soggy black-and-gray lump. Then I turned off the water and closed the lid to the grill. I would clean the rest of it later.

“Abby?” My dad’s voice came from the doorway behind me. “Everything okay?”

I turned around and dropped the hose at my feet. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” I glanced at the closed lid, hoping I had told the truth.

Dad tightened the belt of his bathrobe and stepped out on the porch in his slippers. “Good. I heard someone banging around out here. I didn’t think it would be you.” He wrapped me in a hug and rubbed his hands over my arms. “You feel a little chilled. How long have you been out here?”

“Not long,” I said, feeling myself relax into the protection of his arms.

“What are you doing, anyway? Is something the matter?”

“No, everything’s okay. I just had some old stuff I needed to get rid of.”

“And you had to do it in the middle of the night?” Dad asked.

“I guess I didn’t think about the time.”

“You couldn’t just throw the stuff away? You had to fire up the grill?”

“Oh, um, it’s just . . . I didn’t want anyone to see me,” I stammered. “You know. Because it was private.”

“Oh, I see how it is. Keeping secrets from your old man. I get it.” Dad ruffled my hair. “What was it? Old love letters? Incriminating photographs?” He wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx and I laughed. Dad always managed to make things better; I loved that about him. Grinning, I kissed his cheek, leaving behind a black smudge from my nose.

“I must look a mess,” I said. I rubbed at my eyes, feeling the hours of missed sleep starting to catch up to me. My hand came away streaked with soot.

“Ah, you’ll always be pretty as a princess to me, sweetie.” Dad kissed the top of my head. “But you might want to get cleaned up before Hannah comes down. If she sees you like this, she’ll never let you live it down.” He released me and stepped over to the grill. He slapped the lid with the flat of his hand. “Tell you what—you go on upstairs and I’ll make breakfast this morning before I go to work. What are you in the mood for? Grilled pancakes? Flambéed French toast? Cereal shish kebabs?”

I laughed again. In the middle of the night, Zo’s threats and warnings had been scary, but now, with dawn on the horizon, his efforts seemed a little sad and small. Was that really the best he could do?

“See you in a bit, Dad,” I said before heading back to my bedroom. I had every intention of hitting the shower and washing away the soot from my hands and the shadows from my mind, but once I closed the door behind me, I fell into bed and pulled the covers back over me.

I was asleep before the summer sun spilled over my windowsill.

Chapter

11

Darkness had fallen on the bank. Instead of the omnipresent flat gray light, the bank was cloaked with a thick black veil that stretched across the horizon and curved overhead like a closed eyelid.

I hadn’t expected to be here. When I had tried before, nothing had happened, and yet, this time, when I wasn’t thinking about it, I made it here. Would I ever learn the rules of the bank? Then again, did I really want to?

I looked around, wondering if I had made it to where Dante was, but everything looked the same. No, not quite. The bank was vast, but something was different this time. There were feelings in the void that drifted around me like unmoored ghosts.

Anger, grumbling like an awakening volcano. It tasted like red.

Hostility, cracking like knuckles. A flash of pain.

Hate.

Of all the times I had been to the bank—real or dreamed—this was the worst. This was bad.

I risked speaking. “Dante?”

The horizon line rippled. I rubbed at my eyes, sure it was a mirage. Nothing ever changed on the bank; that was the whole point. But that wasn’t true anymore, was it? I looked up involuntarily. The black sky seemed even lower, even closer. I swallowed. What other impossible things were going to change in this impossible place?

As I watched, the ripple bubbled up into a fat blister, a wavering sunrise of light pushing against the oppressive night. But it was unlike any sunrise I’d ever seen before. Instead of stretching a gentle pink across a pale blue sky, this light boiled and churned, straining to break free from the bank’s flat two-dimensionality. My heart dropped in my chest, beating fast and hard in the veins at my temples, my wrists, my knees. I didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when that white hellfire light cracked through the black.

Distances were deceiving on the bank, so it was hard to tell exactly how far away the blister of light was. From where I stood, though, it looked to have swollen to the size of a small car.

The growing light demanded my attention and I watched the blister, now the size of a small building, fill with electric fire. The edges boiled and sizzled. The flickering light in the middle seemed to paint patterns, swirling into intricate pathways that looked almost familiar. Mesmerized, I let my focus soften, my eyes captured by the hypnotic rhythms.

“What is it?” I was barely aware of my words, barely heard them in my own ears. I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but a voice sounded low in my ear anyway.

Change . . .

But it wasn’t Dante’s strong and comforting voice that reached me through the veil of my dream. It was Zo’s voice: sly, confident, and unmistakable.

Are you watching, Abby?

The blister blossomed into a dome the size of a sun, blinding white like a hole cut into the black of the bank.

“What’s happening? Are you doing this?”

I’m so glad to see you again,
Zo said, his voice filling first one ear, then the other.
I was worried that we’d lose touch, what with you being where you are, and me being—well, wherever I want to be.
His low-throated laugh sounded like an earthquake.

“Stop it!” I ordered the voice, pressing my hands to my ears.

Oh, but I’m just getting started.

“What have you done?”

Silly question, my sweet. It’s what I
am
doing that you should be worried about.