There had been a housing tract outside of Glenbrook called The Knolls, and I felt like this could be it—if I imagined that subdivision being wiped out in a nuclear flame.
I’d used my knife to cut out the lining of one of my pockets, and this I fashioned into a sort of fingerless glove that I kept tied tightly on my right hand. The boys knew why. They’d seen what happened to me on the roof at Quinn’s firehouse, and ever since we’d stumbled out from the Under I worried about keeping the scar on my palm covered.
We walked through fields that had been littered with bones and the small things that could offer quiet testimony to a different world: empty eyeglass frames, a microwave oven, a television remote control, the front door of a dishwasher. And with every step we would kick up and uncover from the ash smaller clues of a different past—the shining curve of a compact disc, acid-encrusted batteries, and the constant scattering of bricks.
Griffin stopped suddenly. “I smell horses.”
I kept my eyes on the kid, watched how his nostrils flared, chin pivoted, and his stare focused, so alert, scanning for what he knew had to be out there.
Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but as soon as he’d said it, I could smell them, too.
A sudden rush of adrenaline electrified me. Tense, muscles twitching, I spun around. But there was no place we could hide. There was nothing here; only trash and bones.
It was habit, survival. The three of us faced outward with our backs forming a triangle so tight we were practically leaning into one another. Ben had his spear ready, and I held the knife.
Griffin didn’t have anything.
I saw them first.
They appeared like smoky black phantoms through the ashen fog kicked up by the flat and shoeless hooves of the animals; coming slowly into focus through the scrim and swirl of the constant Marbury haze.
They were neither Hunters nor Rangers; I could tell that right away, but it didn’t lessen the tension at all.
I pointed. “Over there.”
The boys turned, watched the riders, who seemed to hesitate, clump together.
I slid my pack from my arms without taking my eyes from the horses. I let it drop into the ash behind me.
I needed to get the lens, I thought.
The lens fucks with everyone here.
Except for us. The people who don’t belong in Marbury.
Because if they were Rangers or Hunters, we were certainly going to be killed. But here, in Marbury, those riders could have been something even worse.
I opened the pack.
Ben whispered, “What are you doing?”
And Griffin said, “They’re kids.” He tapped my shoulder. “Jack, they’re Odds.”
I looked up. I already held the broken lens, covered in my hand. I slipped it inside my pocket.
The group was clearer now, maybe a hundred yards away, riding down the gradual slope of the knoll like it was covered in soft November snow. There were seventeen of them, all boys, with several riderless horses, packed and tethered in a line.
Odds.
It was difficult to say whether or not they noticed us standing there. In the fog, the three of us, skinny, wearing nothing more than ash-coated rags for pants, may have looked like just another random chunk of garbage, unworthy of any careful attention.
But the group continued slowly, deliberately toward us.
And riding at the point was a man who wore a loose duster coat and a dirty cloth hat that didn’t fully contain his sand-colored locks of hair. He was not just another Odd. I could tell by how he carried himself, adult-like, even though he looked like he was hardly out of his teens by much, and that was evidenced by the scant and uneven blond beard that curled in gapped wisps under his jaw and nowhere else on his face.
His gray eyes were pinned on me like he was waiting for me to step forward and say something to him.
I wondered if he recognized me.
Because I knew who he was.
I was looking right at Henry Hewitt, the man with the glasses. The guy who opened the door into the prison of Marbury for me the first time.
Henry was the reason I was here.
I stepped toward him as he rode closer.
Ben put his hand on my shoulder, like a warning, trying to pull me back.
But I slid my knife into its sheath and said, “I know that guy, Ben. I’ve known him a long time.”
I couldn’t help but think about all the other times, the other places, I’d seen Henry Hewitt. Most of those times, I hated him intensely for what he did to me, or for his inability to answer my questions. But now I saw Henry as a kind of anchor, a lifeline back to the world where we belonged. Now, maybe, he could finally help me.
I put my hand up as he rode to meet me.
The other Odds stayed back, watching, the horses uninterested in anything that was happening in front of them.
“Hello, Henry,” I said. “I can’t say it’s a funny thing, running into you here. Welcome home.”
Henry froze. Then he leaned forward, squinting and straining as though he were trying to read something—anything—on my face.
“You know me?” he said.
I looked back at the boys, then at the other young Odds who watched our meeting from a distance. But it was clear to me that Henry didn’t know who I was. Or he didn’t remember.
“It’s me. Jack.”
He shook his head. “I knew a kid named Jack. I lived by him in Bass-Hove. That was years ago. That Jack? His parents were named Mike and Amy.”
Of course it was me. It was meant to be. I remembered the time Henry told me about it. We sat in a pub, in London, and he explained how he knew me when I was a little kid, that he knew my mother and father. Here. In Marbury.
But I didn’t tell him.
I thought about being on the train.
Nickie.
I shook my head.
“Not from here. I know you from another place.” I whispered, uncertain whether or not I should even say it, “London.”
The word seemed to punch Henry in the guts. He pursed his lips shut, and shook his head. Then he got down from the horse and stood directly in front of me, so close I could practically feel the damp of his sweat.
And here I was, doing exactly the same thing to Henry Hewitt that he’d done to me, so long ago in a bar called The Prince of Wales, where he’d told me how he knew me from this place called Marbury.
“You’re from there, too?” he whispered, and his voice was urgent and impatient. And the way he said there left no question he was talking about a different world. It was the way you’d talk about heaven, or maybe hell, when you weren’t allowed to actually utter such names.
“I … I met you there, Henry. A few times. We’ve had beer together. I’ve been to your flat.”
He looked lost, scared.
“You don’t remember me, Henry? You gave me the glasses. The Marbury lens. It’s me. Jack.”
Henry grabbed my shoulder, squeezed. I could feel the tips of his fingers like they were biting into my skin.
“Can you tell me how to get back?” he said.
And those desperate words seemed to punch me in the stomach.
Was he stuck here, too?
How could he not know the way back?
How could he not know who I was?
I said, “I thought you’d tell me the answer to that question.”
Henry looked nervous, glanced at the boys in back of him, and then at Ben and Griffin, who started walking toward us.
“How long have you been here?”
“You mean this time?” I asked. “I keep popping in and out, but I can’t get anywhere that isn’t here. Marbury.”
“I want you to show me how,” he said.
Ben and Griffin had come right up behind me. The Odds riding with Henry looked a little apprehensive. Maybe they were worried the three of us were going to do something to the man.
“And you don’t remember Ben and Griffin?”
Henry shook his head. “Are they from there, too?”
Ben planted the end of the spear down beside my foot. It crunched into the dried crust of ash. “Who is this guy, Jack?”
Griffin said, “They have horses. We should go with them.”
Henry eyed Ben and Griffin up and down, like he was trying to gauge their abilities.