The Whispers (18 page)

I stare at her, those cheeks still glowing a faint, dulled red. “Mari?” I question. “W-What’re you doing?”

She faces the room, her mismatched eyes curious and wide. The room watches her, all the shouting having died out, leaving an eerie and unsettled tension in its wake. At any moment, the bomb of anger could go off once more.

“Mari?” I prod her, genuinely worried.

Then, my friend utters her first words since we’ve been home: “The Beautiful Dead
do
exist.”

No one responds. No one stirs. The crowd has turned into a tableau of students, half standing, half still sitting, all of their eyes glued to the likes of Marianne Gable.

“Mari,” I say, my voice dancing across the room. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve been through a lot. You’re just—”

“And I can prove it,” she announces to the room, ignoring me.

My mouth opens and closes and opens again, unable to produce a word. What the hell is she doing?

“M-Mari …” I repeat, half a whimper.

It’s just her word against the world’s
, I decide at once, no matter what silly thing she’s about to say to the room.
She is trying to stand up for me, but everyone knows she lost her mind,
I tell myself.
They will take her to a mental hospital. The statement we all signed will still stand strong. Marianne will be dismissed as crazy, and nothing more.

Then Marianne, my best friend in the whole world, draws an object from her pocket, showing it to the room. “This is a knife!” she states excitedly, the sound system picking up her voice and throwing it at the crowd, whose expressions are now a thousand shades of terror.

I stare at the knife, the stage lights shimmering off the shiny, serrated edge. “M-Mari. Put down the—”

“The Dead are alive!” she exclaims.

Then she stabs herself in the head.

I don’t know which I hear first: the screams of horror that explode from the crowd, or my own.

As quickly as the screams came, they’re gone, replaced by a hum of the thickest, tautest silence I’ve ever known. The world watches Mari as she stands before them, a blade buried into her head, and a smile on her proud, red-cheeked face.

“I don’t even bleed!” she says proudly, the echoes of her words bouncing around the room. “Look at this! I can take it out, too!” She does so with some minor difficulty. Each time she tugs on the knife, her whole head goes with it. “I think it’s stuck,” she complains, half to herself. Then, after a two-handed yank and a horrible squishing sound, the knife slips out, taking a clump of her hair with it. “There we go!” Then, as her strange eyes focus on the crowd, she asks, “Still not convinced? Need a hand? It just so happens, I have one too many!”

With that, she swings the knife onto her other wrist in an effort to chop it off. The knife gets embedded instead, stopped at the bone with a sickening
thump
. The audience wheezes and gasps, repulsed. A man faints in the front, collapsing into the woman at his side. A scream that could wake the dead bursts from elsewhere in the audience.

“I’m proof!” she shouts, hacking at her hand. “Me!”

Dodging her erratic movements, I manage to get ahold of Mari and tug on her, determined to get her off of the stage. “Mari,” I beg her, desperate, “please, Mari, stop, don’t do that,
stop
, Mari!”

“I’m the proof of the Beautiful Dead!” she cries out, happy as a sunflower. “It doesn’t even hurt! I swear!”

“
Mari!
”

Security officers have cautiously approached the stage armed with an array of guns, and I back away at once, my hands in the air. Mari, the moment she sees them, giggles suddenly, then says, “Ooh! Can you give me a hand with my hand, officers? The knife is stuck, as you can see …”

Two men come forward, each taking one of her arms, and then they less-than-gently usher her off the stage and toward a side door exit, where she vanishes from sight in a giggle, still chatting with them like it’s just another Friday. The audience hums with scandal and horror.

Trembling, I slam myself into the podium for one last appeal. “Don’t believe what you’ve just seen!” I cry out. “It was all an act! It was fake! An illusion! A toy knife!”

But more security guards come to take me too, and amidst the buzzing of the crowd, I’m dragged towards the same side door. Behind me, I hear the voice of Professor Praun flooding the auditorium to demand order, making assurances to the room and threatening disciplinary action to anyone who persists in acting unruly.

Just before being pulled through the doors, I catch sight of President Rosella Vale, but from this far distance, I can’t measure the expression on her face. I don’t know if she’s exuding the calmness she so afforded me when there was nothing but a desk and an unsigned paper between us, or if there’s threats and deadly promises now in those sweet, well-meaning eyes.

“I think I have amnesia,” she murmurs to me quietly, “because I don’t really know things that I should. You and John and Willa—that’s my therapist—have been kind to me. Have we known each other for long, you and I?”

“Very,” I agree tiredly, sitting in the chair beside her and trembling. My stomach fell out from under me hours ago. No one’s spoken to us. Not Praun. Not Rosella. We have no company, save the four walls of this small room.

My life is over.

“I wasn’t entirely sure at first,” admits Mari, suddenly the most talkative person in the world, “but at one point, when I was by myself in that bedroom, I started to piece together a few details. For one, I realized it had been a whole day and I hadn’t needed to eat. That struck me as particularly odd,” she goes on, her face wrinkling, “and then I realized that I didn’t … well, you know.”

“Humor me,” I mutter, miserable.

“I didn’t have to
pee
,” she says, whispering the last word. “No bodily functions. I thought it was so bizarre, that I hadn’t noticed until then. Finally, I had a wild idea and … and I put a hand to my chest. I listened and I … well, I sat there on that bed and listened for my heartbeat for two whole days. Spoiler alert: I still haven’t heard it.”

My head is a chaotic swirl of conflicting thoughts and what-if’s and brain-wracking. I keep wanting to deny that I was ever in the Sunless Reach. Listen to me, already believing my own lie that has my signature next to it in the president’s office.

Marianne, my friend, my
changed
friend … She is the same person, and yet she is a complete stranger. The Mari I brought to the realm of the Dead is not the Mari I brought back. Is it even safe to say she changed? Or is it more accurate to say … that she
died
?

She died.
Those words cut me so much deeper than even the grotesque sight of a knife through her head does.
She died over there, and the magic of that realm brought her back … except different.

“Why are you shaking your head?” she asks.

I look at her. I want to cry suddenly, looking at her innocent expression and her one-purple-one-black eyes.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she says suddenly. “I know. It was a mistake. I got you in big trouble, didn’t I? I was just sitting there listening to all of these strange people attacking you. I realized what you were saying and … and seeing as you’re my only friend in this world, I needed to protect you. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” My mind is a tornado of questions and worries. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m the reason that you’re … you’re …”

I can’t even say it. I’m not even sure I believe it yet, even after her performance. I’d verify her
lack
of a heartbeat myself, if I wasn’t so terrified of having that very truth confirmed.

So instead of confirming any of that, I simply study Marianne’s face, searching for that best friend and roomie of mine deep inside her, then dare to bring a hand up to her soft cheek. I feel her flesh, curious if I might notice any difference in it. She watches me with her big sweet eyes. The red on her cheeks still glow so faintly, you would almost think they were just naturally that way, a symptom of her abundant joy. A symptom …

What if my birth really
does
signify the beginning of the end of the world? If I believe that nonsense, then what if my silence about the Dead is securing that end? What if, instead of being a symptom of the end of the world, I’m merely a sign of a
change
in the world?

What if defying that silence is the key to saving all of humanity? What if it’s my
duty
to reveal the truth?

“Will I ever remember my life?” she asks me, like I’m the expert. “Or is it gone forever?”

Suddenly, I realize I
am
the expert. I’ve been to the realm and back. I
am
the expert of the Beautiful Dead, no matter if I’m allowed to admit their existence or not.

“It’s called a Waking Dream,” I murmur, channeling the book-buried face of the ever-tall Mayor Damnation.
Damn you for having such a ridiculous name, Damn it.
“You’ll have it quite suddenly, I’m told. You won’t know when, but at some point, all the memories of your First Life will jump right back into that sweet head of yours.” I offer her a tentative smile. “Think of it like a memory pill.”

“Ooh. I hate pills. Ooh!” she realizes with an excited jump. “I never have to take any ever again!”

“Marianne,” I say to her, trying to reel in all the focus and seriousness that I can. “You remember the statement you were made to sign? You remember what it said?” Her big eyes lock onto mine and she nods, her glowing cheeks jiggling. “Alright. It’s very important that we
stick
to that statement, should the president or any of her people come to talk to us. Not only
our
wellbeing is at stake, but also that of John’s, and our delivery friend Connor. What you did in the auditorium was an illusion, okay? An act. Fake.”

“Illusion. Act. Fake.” Mari frowns. “Mistake.”

“That’s right,” I encourage her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Stick to that, and everything will be just f—”

The moment I utter the words, the door opens to reveal the stern-faced, eyebrow-free Professor Praun. His presence casts a coldness through the little room I bet even
Mari
can feel. He takes one step inside, then shuts the door behind him and leans against it. His eyes, the whites of which flash with intensity, observe the pair of us for way too long. I want to crawl out of my skin and surrender myself to the army of savage blood-eaters just to avoid another second of his silent ire.

Then, he says, “Good save, Ms. Steel.”

My face wrinkles in confusion. “W-What?”

“The ‘It was all an act!’ bit.” His face turns pensive as he studies me. “Might’ve saved all of your lives, in fact. Once order was restored in my hall and the students were dismissed to their respective colleges in an organized fashion, it was determined that the majority of them did, in fact, believe your friend’s act to have been just that: an act. One last, desperate little act—done by Jennifer’s best friend and roommate, no less—to get people to believe in your ridiculous claim about the Dead Who Live.” He lifts a brow at me. “Am I made clear, Ms. Steel? It was an act, and nothing more. The last two people we must convince of that is the pair of you.”

I nod quickly. “It was an act. All an act. Right, Mari?”

“Illusion. Act. Fake,” she repeats, as before. “Mistake.”

Praun studies her with a hardened expression, as if weighing the sincerity of her claim. Then he nods once curtly, as if satisfied, and turns his attention back to me. “With your dissertation behind us, the president has granted you a week’s leave from campus, Jennifer Steel, so that you may have time to sort your affairs with the passing of your father … as well as other things.”

The news comes as a shock. “But I have some math exams! And … And I have a reading assignment, as well as an essay due for my Archaic Languages class, and—”

“All of it will be taken care of,” he assures me blithely, though his face never smiles. “You need your time, Ms. Steel, whether you want to take it or not. As Marianne doesn’t have much of a family to speak of, she’ll—”