“Lucy—” Morgan tried again.
“Morgan, shut up,” I shouted, and turned to the man. “I haven’t hurt—”
“Yes, you have,” he said. “And you don’t even know it. But there is a worse price.”
I felt my body going numb, “What?”
“Oblivion,” he said.
“Stop it! Stop it! Who are you?”
Puck wasn’t moving, I realized. He was signing. A small smirk curled his lips, amazingly. I gawked at him.
Morgan watched his frantic eyes and made a little noise. “His name is A-Abraham.”
The man-in-white’s—Abraham’s—eyes widened. He looked down at Puck and tightened his grip on the old man’s body. Puck’s eyes flared in pain, but his smirk remained.
Morgan stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders, and I half turned to her, one eye still on Abraham and Puck. Morgan looked terrified but hard—filled with that Morgan-rage I knew so well. The same anger that had lit her eyes when Wanda was breaking down in my room, a week ago.
“Puck said Abraham can’t hurt him,” she whispered. I gave her a what-the-hell-does-that-mean look, and she shrugged and shook her head frantically.
“Enough,” Abraham said, and we both whipped around to look at him.
He was moving closer, and a dull pulse of white light began to well up from under his shirt. It streaked out of the sleeves of his doctor’s coat, and up through the neck of his t-shirt. It flowed up his jaw, his face, casting him in the sinister light of the spooky storyteller around the fire.
“Lucy. Lucy!”
His voice doubled, like two people repeating the same word but down a hallway from each other. When he said my name, it crackled with authority.
“Come with me, Lucy. You’re tired, aren’t you? Cold? It’s time to go.”
I was cold, all of a sudden. Drained.
The warmth in his voice washed over me, and my muscles slacked. I felt the heat of his promise slide through me. The promise of a distant place—of somewhere peaceful. The memory of the party, the fight, Wanda—even Puck, began to drift away from me. I walked toward the man-in-white, slowly at first, with little baby steps.
“Lucy, no!”
Morgan grabbed at my arm, and a distant, quiet voice in my head murmured something about believing her, holding on to her. The little voice was no match for the throbbing call to leave, to move on. To follow Abraham into peace.
He began to glow brighter, white light spinning off of him in dazzling motes. Morgan pulled at me, but something stronger tugged me forward. Abraham raised one hand out to me, the other holding a twisting, frantic-looking Puck. I sighed as another nimbus of heat buffeted me. Little drops of sweat clung to my forehead, and his heat burned my skin.
I remembered the hospital, the glowing thing with the bright black eyes. And as I looked again, I saw Abraham’s eyes rolling over, becoming black pools of oil. I saw his jaw extending, his face changing, stretching, a mockery of human shape.
And I could do nothing. It was too late.
“Lucy!”
I wondered why Abraham was calling to me again. He had me…no. I knew that voice.
I turned my neck, slowly, and it felt like twisting a broken valve. I yanked, and pulled my eyes away from the glowing monster in front of me. It wasn’t easy to see past the haze of light but…I knew that shape. Standing around the side of the house, holding a white plastic trash bag half in and half out of a garbage can. Zack.
“No!”
I don’t even know who shouted it—it could have been me. But everything happened at once.
Zack ran at—
—tugged, screaming at me, falling over as she—
—grabbed Abraham’s wrist, and with a strength a thin old man shouldn’t have had—
—I fell back on top of Morgan as she—
—roared, jet eyes widening, becoming black holes of rage—
Then I did it. I felt Morgan and Zack pulling at me, could see Puck struggling, one thin tweed-covered arm up in the air, holding Abraham’s glowing limb by the elbow as he tried to crush the little old man into the dirt. I had to do something. Puck was going to die, and then Morgan. Then Zack.
I jerked toward Puck, fighting Morgan and Zack and pulling them both just a foot forward, making them stagger under the strain. My hand reached out. I felt a handful of tweed curl in my fingers and then…I…flipped.
The world collapsed around us, folding in on itself.
We all crash-landed in grey sand, the sound of the surf pounding in our ears.
Chapter Thirteen
On Vertigo
Screaming first, then light. My eyes opened, staring up into the roiling grey sky.
I sat up, my elbows digging into the wet grey sand. Puck stood, inches away from the light-silhouette that had to be Abraham. In the real world, Abraham looked like a man imitating light. In the grey, I saw a ray of brilliant light trying to mimic the shape of a man. Just a burning shadow, a shape, searing my eyes. Puck stood in front of him, his frayed red scarf snapping in the breeze, his thin frame defiant, his chin up. Zack lay on the ground next to Puck, vomiting. From the sound behind me, Morgan was doing the same thing.
Abraham juked toward Puck like a cresting wave, but bounced off of an invisible wall between them. The light-thing shrieked in fury, a sound like metal tearing and bees buzzing. I fell back a step at the noise. Puck didn’t.
Puck held up one hand and Abraham slid back three steps in the dirt. Like he’d been picked up and dragged by an unseen giant. My mouth fell open. The old man glanced over his shoulder at me, and his expression was unmistakable. I’d seen it in my dad’s face too many times to miss it. It said, simply, “Are you just gonna sit there and watch?”
“What?” I managed to choke out, past the lump of terror.
Puck, his whimsical face stolid, even angry, looked at Morgan on the ground. After a moment, Morgan stood up, her arms moving strangely. Mechanically. The look on her face was surprise—the words that came out of her mouth weren’t her own, I was sure.
“In the other world, we are the abominations. Here, he is the trespasser.”
I flashed Morgan a look of confusion. She returned it, but kept talking in that weird monotone.
“This is Puck, you silly girl. Help me!”
I turned back to Puck, who had switched his attention back to the beast he was keeping miraculously at bay.
“What?”
I knew there were others words I could have used in that moment. But nothing came to mind but that terrified, incredulous one-word question. Well, a few others, but most of them involved terrible strings of profanity that I didn’t think would help the situation.
“Help me! Now!”
Something in his…her tone defrosted the ice clinging to my limbs. I ran across the uneven, wet sand, trying not to break my ankle. On the shore, grey torrents of water crashed into grey sand. I jogged past Zack, who still clawed at the wet dirt with a look of torment that made my heart tighten. I ran to Puck’s side and held my arm out, mimicking his pose.
The light-monster cried that terrible shriek again. A spike of agony drove into my ear, and I cried and clapped my hands over my head. Just four feet from the thing, looking at the squirming patterns of light racing along his form, at the two flares of white that must have been his eyes, I felt my legs turning to Jell-O. My eyes began to water from the strain, and my blood went cold. What could I do against that thing?
Morgan’s flat, monotone voice spoke up from behind me. I didn’t turn to look. Not at her, anyway. When I looked at Puck, as Morgan spoke, I could see his forehead clench, his lips move in sync with hers. Freaky.