Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (15 page)

He was on his back, staring at a ceiling made of rocks. Wind howled in the background, and Cavalo screamed as fingers went
into
his chest and dug around. He knew these fingers, these spindly spider fingers, were attempting to steal the remains of his heart. To take what was left of his shattered soul. He tried to fight them off, but he could not lift his fingers. Could not move his hands. His brain sent the message, but they did not respond. So he screamed.

“It’s mine!” he cried. “These are mine, and you can’t take them from me!”

The fingers did not stop. They dug into him, searching for the last pieces of his humanity. He would become nothing more than a false, empty thing that wore human skin but that was hollow.

The man called out for his wife, forgetting she was dead.

The man called out for his son, forgetting it was his fault Jamie had died.

The cave disappeared. He was walking again. In the snow. Arm around him. Friend at his side. A snowflake fell onto his tongue and melted. It burned his throat, and he felt dizzy with the heat.

It went like this for a time. The blizzard never faltered.

And then he came to a door standing in the middle of the storm.

It was a curious thing, an abstract thing. It had a feeling of
otherness
that Cavalo could not quite place, other than it was a door standing on its own in the middle of a storm.

It looked to be made of a darkened wood, peeling and blistering with age, so much so that splinters would pierce skin even with just a fleeting touch. The edges were rough and blurry. The handle was an old metal thing, curved and black. Cavalo took all of this in, every piece and part, without realizing the arm around him had disappeared, that his four-legged friend had vanished from his side. He didn’t notice this sudden departure because his mouth had gone dry. Because his palms were sweaty. Because his heart was racing.

The center of the door was covered in bees. Angry buzzing. Insectile movement. He waved his hand at them, and they parted, revealing underneath what they had hidden.

A sign hung from the door, crude and childlike:

He wanted to run. He’d never wanted to run so badly in his life.

Instead he put his hand on the handle and pushed it open.

The storm disappeared, and he stood in the middle of a bedroom. He recognized it immediately from the house in Elko, Nevada, the town they’d lived in before—

Cavalo took a step into the room, unaware that the door behind him had closed, that the snow was gone. He did not question how he came to be here. He did not wonder at its unreality. All that mattered was that he could smell
her
, that he could smell her in this room. The room that they shared. The room he’d built for her in this small town that had grown against the odds, despite being not so very far away from the Deadlands. He’d built it with his own two hands, and by the time he’d finished, she was already starting to show in her belly, a curve that he would press his lips against at night and whisper
I’m here. Daddy’s here. I’m waiting for you, I can’t wait to meet you.

Here was her shawl, at the edge of the unmade bed.

Here was a necklace, silvery thin, worn against dark skin.

The gun he—

He shook his head.

The gun on the door. The little hand-drawn gun. It shouldn’t be familiar. It shouldn’t be remembered. It shouldn’t—

And the bedroom door opened, spilling in sunlight. Dust rose through the sunbeams. A man walked in, a shadow that looked like Cavalo. Only this man was at the edge of despair. Or beyond it. His dirty hair hung in clumps around his face. The skin around his eyes looked bruised. His cheekbones were jutting out through stretched skin. The smell of moonshine filled the room. He walked with a heavy limp, as if his left leg had been injured recently. There were pink and shiny burn marks on his hands. His face. His arms.

Cavalo watched himself sit on the edge of the bed. In his hands, he held two things: in the right, a worn stuffed rabbit, the blue color faded. Dull black eyes. An ear sewn back on after getting caught in a drawer. When had that been from here? Two years ago? Maybe three. The Shadow Cavalo brought it up to his nose and inhaled. The hand holding the rabbit shook.

The other hand holding the gun did not.

“Ah,” Shadow Cavalo said. “Ah. Ah.”

Cavalo did not move. He knew this day. He knew this day well.

He watched Shadow Cavalo raise the gun to his temple. The shadow man kissed the rabbit once. Cavalo closed his eyes. He waited. He knew what the shadow man was thinking:
PULL THE TRIGGER PULL THE TRIGGER PULL THE TRIGGER
. He knew what would happen. He heard the sharp intake of breath.

“Ah,” Shadow Cavalo said again. It was a broken sound.

Then he shot himself in the head.

Cavalo flinched at the noise.

Shadow Cavalo would be found hours later by a neighbor. The bullet would have bounced off his skull plate and ricocheted into the wall. It would be dug out by the same neighbor and brought to the clinic days later.

“A keepsake,” the neighbor would say when Shadow Cavalo had awakened. “For you to remember what you have survived.”

Shadow Cavalo would toss it away when he fled that night, leaving Elko behind.

He never returned.

Cavalo touched the scar on the side of his head.

He opened his eyes. Dust danced in the sun. Shadow Cavalo was slumped back onto the bed, blood dripping from his scalp. As Cavalo watched, the rabbit slipped from Shadow Cavalo’s hands and fell to the floor.

He took a step toward the past and felt underwater. A stabbing pain shot through the side of his head, and he moaned as he clutched the scar. It worsened and he fell to his knees. He had to get the rabbit. Had to touch it with his hands. Had to feel it against his skin. He crawled. The pain rolled through him. He was sure his skull had split wide open and everything was spilling from him.

He fell farther, to his elbows, his legs becoming useless. As he pulled himself across the dirty carpet, snow began to fall from the ceiling. At first it was little flurries, a dusting, light and sweet. But with every inch he moved, the winds began to roar and the flakes turned menacingly fat, and it was all white, everything was so white that he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even
breathe—

The rabbit. Mr. Fluff. He touched it as the bees howled around him and he—

MasterBossLord.

He opened his eyes.

He was back in the blizzard. His friend at his side, the arm around his shoulder. He lurched forward and almost fell. Vertigo clouded his mind, and all the man named Cavalo wanted to do was sleep, to dive down into the black and sleep. He was cold. He was sore all over. He coughed, retched really, and felt the wetness inside his chest, a heavy feeling like he was carrying metal weights attached to his lungs.

“Bad Dog!” he cried out, though he couldn’t remember who that was.

Yes
came the reply.

“Where we goin’? What is this?”

Home. We’re going home. You told me to lead you home.

“Tried to kill myself at home.” His words were slurred.

I know. I saw it in your eyes. Knew it in your heart when we met. But it’s not that home. That home is gone. Your other home.

“Don’t leave me.”

I won’t. Bad Dog won’t leave you behind.

“You promise?”

I promise. MasterBossLord, stay away from the doors. They want you so bad. Please. Don’t go into the—

Another door stood in front of Cavalo. This one was sky blue, warm and rich. The wood looked smooth, inviting. The handle felt warm when he touched it.

The bees flew away, revealing the sign underneath.

As if he could resist. As if he ever had a chance against Mr. Fluff.

He put his hand on the doorknob, and he heard his friend one last time.
Please. Don’t go through the door. Not again.

But his friend’s voice was so far away, lost in snow. And his plea seemed a small thing. A thing that, in the end, would mean nothing. Because of the rabbit on the door. It had belonged to his son. If he could only see his son again. Even for just a moment.

He forgot the pain in his chest. He forgot about the storm, his friend, the arm supporting him. None of that mattered now. He pushed on the doorknob and opened the door with relief on his face.

Just one last time
, Cavalo thought. He glanced at the sign on the doors, the little frowns on the small faces.
Why so sad?

He was in the house again. In Elko. In the bedroom where he’d attempted suicide. It was clean now, though. And bright. The sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day. A gorgeous morning. Early on. Everything was right with the world. Everything was okay.

Except that it wasn’t.

“They’re right outside!” she said. Her black hair was wild around her face. Her olive skin flushed. Her breasts heaved as she spoke. Her eyes… her dark eyes, the first thing he’d noticed about her so very long ago. How they had been filled with mischief. How they had shined. How they had been a window into her soul. But now? Now they were flat. Crazed. Lost. She was slipping. Had been for a while. He’d either not seen it or ignored it. He didn’t know which was worse.

“We’re safe here,” Cavalo heard himself say in response, a past version of himself standing in front of his wife. They both looked so impossibly young. “These walls. It’ll keep them out. You know this. It’s how this place has survived. It’s how we’ve been able to survive. We’re happy here.” There was uncertainty in this Other Cavalo’s voice.

She looked stricken as she paced in front of him. She wrung her hands together, skin reddening, knuckles cracking. “I hear them, you know,” she said. “I hear them scratching on the roof late at night. When you’re sleeping. They whisper my name and say they’re coming for Jamie. They want him. They want—”

“Stop it—”

“—to nibble on his toes. They want to—”

“Please. Don’t.”

“—eat his little fingers. They want to eat him up!” She was crying. “We need to go to them! Tell them we’re sorry! Ask them to forgive us!”

“Don’t you say that,” Other Cavalo said hoarsely. “Don’t you even talk about going to the Dead Rabbits. They will kill you. You know what they’re capable of.”

“I don’t care!” she shouted, slapping her hands against his chest. “I don’t care what they’re capable of. They’re
here
. They
call
to me. They will get us one way or another.”

He tried to grab her hands. “Stop it.”

“You can’t protect us,” she snarled at him, scratching at his skin. “You can’t stop them.”

“You need to quit this—”

One of her nails sliced his face. “You little bitch. You’re nothing but a little
bitch
. You’re not a
man
. You can’t protect us. We’re going to
die
, and it’s going to be all your fault!”

“Stop,” he said, and Cavalo knew of the anger rising in Other Cavalo. The fear. The anguish. Other Cavalo didn’t know how this had escalated so quickly. How he could not have seen the lurking edges of insanity behind her eyes? “Stop before you wake Jamie.”

“
He needs to be awake
!” she shrieked at him. “
He needs to be awake to see that monsters are real
!
That they’ll
eat
him up and
—”

He didn’t know he had it in him when he slapped her then. Yes, Cavalo knew anger. It was a part of him, always had been. But he’d never lashed out before. Not at her. Not at Jamie. Not ever. Not like this. He watched in horror as her head rocked back, black hair fanning out. Felt the sting on his palm from her cheek. The white fissuring of the synapses in his brain firing all at once. It tasted like snow tinged with copper.

She brought her hand up to her reddening cheek. Her eyes were wide and accusing. They both knew this could not be taken back.

“I’m sorry,” Other Cavalo said uselessly.

“Okay,” she said. Her voice was flat. “I know.”