ARC: Cracked

Cracked

ELIZA CREWE

Please Note!

This is an Advanced Reading Copy of the book and may not have been through the final editorial and proof-reading process prior to publication. Please do not quote from the text in reviews, or critique the text on the basis of perceived errors, without double-checking with Strange Chemistry to see if the final version has been amended.

Thank you. For Adam & Madeleine

One

There are some people you know you shouldn’t anger because it isn’t right. Like your mom – if she’s the nice sort.

There are other people you know you shouldn’t anger because they have the authority to punish you. Police officers, politicians, insane asylum wardens, your mom – if she’s the bad sort.

But there are some people you shouldn’t anger that you
don’t
know about, because no one ever survived to warn you.

I’m the third kind.

I eat souls. The packaging can be tricky, but fortunately I am blessed with special skills to pry my meals from their pesky shells. My teeth rip skin; my jaws snap bones. I am fast, lightning-fast, snuff – oh-was-that-your-life? – fast. I try to stick to bad souls, in the memory of my own mom (the nice sort). There were other reasons, reasons I used to understand, but they are reasons for a good person. I am not
that
.

That might be why I feel so at home here.

Small rooms, thick walls. Hushed whispers and ear-grating wails. A symphony of misery set to the beat of beatings.

The Mulligan Residential Mental Health Facility – an insane asylum, but with better promotional materials – prison of the cracked and grey.

Cracked windows, cracked walls, cracked minds. Don’t make them angry or there will be cracked skulls.

Grey-painted walls, grey-tiled floors. Once-white nightgowns, now grey. The skin of the inmates. Grey. The metal-framed bed. The bedding. Grey, grey, grey. The bars on the window…

Black.

Imagery ruined.

Correction – prison of the cracked, grey and
black
.

The sound of a slamming door vibrates down the darkened hall and I draw up to my elbows. As the loud bang fades, dead silence takes its place. It’s the middle of the night, maybe even early morning, and nothing else stirs. My ears ache as I listen, waiting. When they start, the heavy tap of boots on linoleum is loud, like drumbeats.

Someone’s coming. My hands tighten on the faded coverlet. I hope it’s
him
.

Two nurses work the night shift, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s only Gideon, the other one. Samson’s the one I’m after, the reason I’m here. The ghost-girl, Callie, pointed him out to me. I wasn’t in the mood to help her at first, but she insisted. Then she insisted again and again, until I wanted to kill her. They’re like that, ghosts, once they realize I can hear them. Demanding – and impossible to kill.

I turn, finding Callie’s translucent form in the shadows. She stands rigid, her semi-transparent head bent away from me, staring through the wall at something I can’t see. Something that wears large, linoleum-tapping boots. She twists the strap of her pack in her hands, and, as the boots tap closer, she takes a step backwards, then another. The cell is tiny so it’s only a few steps until she bumps against the wall. Well, bumps
through
the wall, actually.

One look at her pulls me upright, electric excitement shooting along my veins. The nurse coming down the hall is Samson. Her murderer.

I could have snatched the naughty nurse from his house, lurked in the parking lot by his car, called him claiming to want his Craigs-listed couch. I didn’t need to have myself committed to the asylum like I did. But there’s something poetic about recreating the scene the nurse played out with his own victim, only this time, with a very different ending.

Callie doesn’t approve. She wanted me to take care of him weeks ago. She’s spent most of our time here drifting around the room, running her silvery fingers along the dingy grey walls and giving me impatient glares. But if she doesn’t like my plan, she can find another ghost-seeing, soul-eating monster – I haven’t come across one in seventeen years, but she’s welcome to try. As Mom always said, there’s an easy way to do something, and the right way.

Then again, she also said I shouldn’t play with my food.

I wouldn’t say Callie and I are friends. More to the point,
she
wouldn’t say we’re friends – even if she could speak, instead of just bombarding me with memories. She was committed to the asylum because she couldn’t deal with the horribleness of the world. I am the horribleness of the world.

It doesn’t give us a whole lot in common.

But right now, I’m all she has and as her murderer tromps down the hall she looks to me for comfort.

I give it a shot. “Relax,” I whisper. “You’re already dead.”

Her eyes fill with tears and I roll mine. Ghosts.

My hall-mates are silent, barely breathing, and I imagine I can hear their broken minds screaming, “Not me, not me.” The boots pause somewhere down the hallway. I imagine the short, bullish Samson peering through a mesh-enforced window and terrifying the room’s occupant. There’s a soft, deliberate knocking – he wants to make sure he has the inhabitant’s attention. At the sound, Callie cringes and then, forcing courage, sticks up her chin, her eyes as fierce as a scared little dead girl can manage. But then the steps start again and she shrinks into the wall. Her eyes dart back to me.

I can take a hint. I hop off the bed and prance into position, in perfect line of sight from the door, then, with a little spin, drop down so I’m curled against the wall with my head on my knees – a delicious little dish of déjà vu. When he came for her, Callie was curled up just like this, crying into her knees. Broken-hearted, until he was done. Then she was just broken.

The linoleum is icy through the thin material of my institute-issued nightgown, but the heat swelling under my skin more than makes up for it. The Hunger has been very patient, waiting quietly for weeks while I laid my trap, but now it yawns and stretches, tingling out to my fingers and gnawing on my soul.

Samson’s tapping feet come closer, but again he pauses and knocks on a door. I don’t mind. The pauses make it better. They make me wonder whether he’s going to come to me, like the anticipation before a kiss. Will he or won’t he?

But this is not a love story.

The boots begin to tap again, coming closer, and a little thrill runs down my spine. The ghost girl sinks further into the wall and slides as far away as possible, into the corner.

Shadows block the crack under my door and a river of fire washes over me, staining the world red. I have a guest.

Delightful.

I don’t dare look up. Not yet. I feel his eyes creep across my skin. I know what he sees. Small, thin, pointy, frail. Curled on the floor. My dark hair is shorn into raggedy tufts on one side, left long on the other. I did that to myself. As with all the best places, they don’t just let anyone in. This is an exclusive little hellhole. He sees a human teenager – which is half right. I am a teenager but, as for the other, no. Whatever I am, it is not
that
.

My eyes I don’t let him see. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul and I wouldn’t want to give myself away. There’s a sharp knock on the glass – he wants my attention. He has it, but I don’t let him see. He knocks again, more insistent. It’s not very often he doesn’t get what he wants, but if he wants my attention, he must come and take it. The shadows of his boots stay paused at the door and the crouching darkness in my soul shifts and flutters, unable to hold still under the agony of aching anticipation.

I hold my breath but it escapes when I hear the jangling of keys. The Hunger howls and I bite back a giggle. The lock opens with a metallic thunk and he steps into the room. He pauses. His bully-bright rational side tells him I am nothing to fear, but his animalistic side knows better.

Danger!
his instincts scream.

Nonsense,
his rationality remarks.

I am big!
his bully side brags.

In the silence, I hear him swallow; then the door clicks closed behind him. I quiver and he sees a tremble. Finally he takes a step, then two more, until he is at my side.

He waits and I wait, both excited but for very different reasons. The moment draws thin and long and sweet, like pulled sugar, savored by us both. The Hunger pulses in the silence and, though he’s just a garden-variety monster, not special like me, I know he feels it too.

Then the sugar snaps and he grips me by the hair, jerking my face up. His florid face is just as it was in Callie’s memories: middle-aged, with large pores and sagging jowls. Only now his eyes don’t have the delighted gleam they had then. Instead the bushy brows are lifted in surprise.

I suspect I’m the first victim to ever smile at him.

I’m positive I’m the first to ever leap up and slam him into the wall by his throat. He tries to scream but I squeeze his neck until the noise dies with a wheezy gurgle. Confusion and shock riot in his eyes. He doesn’t understand how my small, weak arms are strong enough. He doesn’t understand a lot of things.

I can’t wait to enlighten him.

I shove, sliding him up the wall until his feet leave the ground. His eyes are wide and panicked, and I pause to enjoy that perfect moment when the hunter realizes he’s become the hunted, when he tries to reconcile what he knows to be true with what just happened.

When he makes the horrified face reserved for the bitter taste of just desserts.

I turn and see that Callie’s enjoying it too. Her hands are clasped before her and her little face is lit up at the justice of the moment.

Samson’s ineffectual clawing at my hand draws my attention back. He’s taller than I am, and he manages to touch his foot to the ground, just his toe, but it’s enough to take some pressure off his throat. I allow it.

“Whaa–?” he gasps out.

“You like to hurt people, Samson.” I say it calmly but I’m on fire. The Hunger has burst into a conflagration.

“Nnnn–”

I squeeze. He pulls at my wrist and his feet swing and kick.

“Shhhhh, it’s OK,” I say softly, sweetly, as if I care. Then I drop down to a whisper. “I like to hurt people, too.” I squeeze harder and he shoves off with that toe, trying to get away, to get air. My own foot snaps out and smashes it.

I let go and he falls screaming to the floor. He scrambles away, gasping and coughing. I shift to cut off the path to the door and he scurries backwards into the corner.

“Wha–?” he wheezes, then grabs his mangled throat. I step forward and he back-pedals madly, uselessly shoving with his heels, trying to wedge his bulk further into the corner. I can hear his heart race. It’s pounding wildly and yet no blood reaches his face. It’s deathly pale.

A preview.

“Wha–what are you?” he finally gasps through his damaged throat.

I just shake my head. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell him. That’s not what I’m here for. I take a few slithery steps forward.

“Please, no!” he screams and holds out a hand, as if to keep me away. I consider ripping it off. “I’ve never hurt you! I’ve never hurt anyone!”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He draws back. “Please…” his jaw works, his jowls trembling as he searches desperately for something to say. Then the words come bubbling out, tripping over themselves in his haste. “There must be a mistake.”

I shake my head slowly and with purpose.

“Please… I don’t even know you!”

I squat down so we’re eye to eye and he shrinks away. I cock my head and my words slide out silkily. “No. But you know Callie.” I glance in her direction. She no longer looks excited. Instead, her eyes are wide and her hand covers her mouth. “Or rather,
knew
Callie.”

Genuine confusion flashes across his face. His mouth moves as he tries to place the name.

“Callie Bellemore,” I snarl.

Realization dawns on his face.

“It was an accident.”

“What did I say about lying?” My hand snaps out and slashes his face, drawing four red lines across his cheek. The sharp scent of blood fills the room. I dance a little, in my squat, and my lips curve into a smile.

He becomes very still at that smile. The false innocence is replaced by calculation. “You’re enjoying this.”

My smile spreads wider. I know somewhere my mother hides her face in shame.

“You love killing as much as I do.” He straightens as if he thinks he’s talking to an equal. “Not, not just the killing, the…” He gropes for a word to describe it.

“Power,” I supply.

His face lights up at my participation. “I don’t know what you are, but I know we’re alike.” He puts his hands up and hurries, as if he’s afraid he insulted me. “I’m not… special like you, but the kill…” His eyes drift off and a creepy smile turns up the edges of his mouth.

A smile not unlike my own. I swallow the shame and let it be eaten by the Hunger.