Near + Far (11 page)

Force
herself awake.

Weight, so great it
hurt
, even more than the pinprick of claws, settled onto her shoulders, directly on the joints.

Another massive weight on her hip.

The ashtray reek of its breath, stink-fumbling at her lips.

Force herself awake
.

She managed to pull her hands under it, shove it away by digging her thumbs into the pits directly behind its forelimbs.

She wasn't dreaming. Her eyes were open.

She was frozen. She remembered being told what to do when attacked by a brown bear. Kick and punch and drive it away. If she was dreaming, couldn't she drive it into that shape, fight it off?

It had seemed impossible, the idea of a human fighting off a bear, but people had, the instructor said. People had done stranger, more valiant things.

It bore down on her. Claws drove into her side.

She dug her thumbs as deep and hard as possible with a wild shriek like an eagle's squawk.

It roared and tried to pull away from her. She let herself be drawn up, used the momentum to swing her feet under herself, clamber back away and over to the bed lamp, all in the space of one terrified breath.

Screamed, "Help me, someone please help me." Heard it go ringing down the corridors of time.

Wake.

Clicked the light on.

Nothing.

Her room, ordinary, bedclothes askew, laundry hamper, paperback straddle-backed on the bedside table. Beige carpet. The sound of her heartbeat, hammer-blasting in her chest, her throat, her ears.

She paused. Surely the commotion would have drawn Lewis. He was the lightest of sleepers.

Only silence from the rest of the house.

She crept down the hall in bare feet, paused outside his door. Her arm was sore, pain biting at it whenever she moved.

Only the sound of his breathing inside. Nothing else. She waited. She had read you could tell when someone woke up, that no one could control the pattern of their breathing from sleeping to waking. But the sounds continued, deep regular inhalations, rhythmic as a saw blade in action.

Faking? Or exhausted by his day, by the draining effects of his disease?

In the bathroom she avoided looking in the mirror as she dabbed at the edges of the wound with a washcloth, then covered them with Neosporin and a gauze bandage.

What had happened?

But that was not the real question.

Her mind crept around and around the real question.

How had Lewis managed it?

Because Occam's razor, the simplest explanation—who hated her, who wanted to harm her?

Only Lewis.

Back in her room, she left the light on.

Somehow she slept.

And dreamed. Child-Lewis, standing beside Child-Amber, hands intertwined, his voice chirping, "What's up, sis?" Love between them like a knotted rope.

Her arm around him, protecting him. "Close your eyes."

How could it be any other way?

At 5:30, she rose and did her morning run, steadfastly not thinking of the creature and showered while avoiding its shadow. It came at her in snatches of memory, so vivid she could smell its breath, fetid as old meat, feel the way its claws thudded into her flesh.

The water streamed down and down around the raw blotches along her arm. She looked at her flesh and felt herself shaking again.

Steadying herself,
what would Mrs. Mountebank do?
Well, then, do it.
She picked dried blood from along the edges of the wound. She should have had stitches. It was not too late. Maybe when she dropped Lewis off at the hospital.

In front of her bedroom door, she stopped. Three claw marks across it like a sign. Had they been there before? She hadn't looked.

Beside her, Lewis. "What's up, sis?"

She looked from him to the marks.

He must be pretending not to see them. Just looked at her with a half-smile.

Not Child-Lewis. Something else. Someone else. Someone born of despair and hate and desperation.

Her brother was gone. When had he vanished? Why hadn't she noticed?

Somehow she managed to pretend too. She'd make him wonder. Maybe think she had some plan up her sleeve. Or that she thought it was still a dream. She pretended. She dressed, ate breakfast, took him to an early appointment.

"Seven," he said curtly as he left the car, not even bothering to feign courtesy or curiosity about the stiff way she held herself.

Till seven. Hours in which to figure out what to do.

She was just about to pull away from the curb when someone tapped on the window. She rolled it down.

Ginger-haired, balding. His sleeves rolled down to expose his burly forearms. Tattoos covered the left, an intricate black and white pattern of tribal thorns around crossed daggers. He smelled of cigarette smoke and sweat.

She disliked him immediately.

But his voice was unexpectedly soft-spoken as he introduced himself as the Practical Shamanism group leader, Sam Mintie. He'd seen her waiting to pick up Lewis, he said, half-apologizing for invading her privacy, imposing himself.

"Lewis is having a hard time with some of the class concepts," he said. "Actually, some of the other members want me to kick him out of the group. Particularly Mrs. Oates."

Her cheeks burned. What horrible things had Lewis said, to make the entire group want him to go? She could only guess.

"Mrs. Oates? But Lewis said the group was men only."

Sam shook his head. "No. Perhaps he wanted to make sure you didn't check it out."

That made sense. Lewis didn't like sharing anymore.

"What concepts is he having trouble with?"

He hesitated. "It'll take a while. Do you have time to go get coffee?"

"Give me the short version and I'll decide."

His eyes were blue and watery. "He thinks he's a dark shaman—or can become one—and that to do so, he needs to kill you."

"Get in the car," she said.

At the coffee shop, she asked, "Why me? He'd have an easier time luring in some homeless guy or something."

"Because you're his closest blood," he said. "To move with ease in other dimensions, he has to symbolically cut ties with this one."

"He's got it all worked out, doesn't he?" she said.

"He does."

"Lewis said people become more like themselves as they get closer to death," she said.

Sam shook his head. "Really? I don't think so. You get more distanced, maybe, but not in a bad way. You know the saying, don't sweat the small stuff? You learn how to do that."

But this, this wasn't small stuff.

"So what is Lewis doing to symbolically cut ties with this one?"

Sam looked down at the table. His voice was low, forcing her to lean in.

"I'm sure you've noticed he's been especially mean, perhaps downright nasty to you lately. Maybe destroyed something that had personal significance for both of you."

"Lewis has always has his sharp side."

"He is very ... talented."

The hesitation pulled her even closer. "More talented than any of the rest of the group?"

"More talented than any of the rest of the group could ever dream to be."

"How?"

Sam shrugged. "Some mutation from the Plague? Or a genetic quirk? The right stars? But it seems to follow its own mythology. I've listened to Lewis expound on it at length."

"How does his being nasty fit in?"

"He must renounce you, as the representative of his ties to this world. First by not being emotionally attached."

"And then?"

"After he's killed you symbolically, he must do it physically."

"And how much of all of this bullshit of Lewis's do you believe?"

He didn't hesitate this time. "All of it. We don't need more dark shamans in this world."

At no point did she think, "I'm going crazy." Or even, "Perhaps this is
still
a dream." She thought it should have astonished her more. Shaken her world. It was surprisingly easy to change the laws in your head, or twist them to allow certain loopholes, it seemed.

Had she believed, in some corner of her mind, in this sort of thing all along? She had always despised superstition. It was appalling to think she'd secretly been a believer in the bogeyman under the bed.

There had to be a rational explanation.

At some point she'd have to sit down and think out all the implications. Now wasn't the time.

"What have you seen?" she asked. Had he also woken to find something settling onto his bed, heard its harsh erratic breathing?

"I saw a shape hovering around him when he spoke of it," he said. "Everyone did. The room seemed to grow dark. Poor Mrs. Oates nearly had a heart attack." His voice trailed off before he half-whispered, "Everyone wants magic. But to see it in action ... that was too much. Afterward everything seemed new, as though the world had been stripped of its skin. Too much to bear."

"So what can I do?"

He recovered himself. "He's made his own mythology, combined it with bits of H.P. Lovecraft and horror movies, but it has its own laws, ways it works, I presume. If I understand it right, it will be no problem thwarting him, so long as he hasn't made the first attack yet."

She rolled up her sleeve to show the bandages from last night. "Too late for that."

His fingertips hovered above the wound as though testing the air around it. "So strong," he said. His eyes were wide as he shook his head, pushing his chair away from the table.

"Where are you going?"

"I can't help you," he said. "This is all outside my experience." He fished through his pockets, took out a crumpled feather. He handed to her, "I wish I could pretend this would be of help. Maybe you can believe in it more strongly than I ever could."

"But you're a shaman."

"I wish I was. I've pretended all my life," he said. "Closed my eyes and willed my spirit animal near. And then, with only a few little scraps, I see your brother accomplish what I've dreamed all my life. I saw his animal and it terrified me, but it thrilled me too. But I know in my heart that nothing I can do will stand against it. I'm sorry."

She gaped after him as he walked out. The feather rocked on the table, caught by the shifting air as the door closed behind him.

This wasn't how it was supposed to work. He was intended to be the
deus ex machina
, the source of wisdom that would tell her how to defeat the evil Lewis had summoned.

When life started to act like fiction, you expected it to follow fiction's patterns. If there was no happy ending, how would you know when the story was done?

She could flee, leave the city, go into hiding somewhere. But who was to say he couldn't send his creature after her, that it couldn't track her down no matter where she went? She fingered the edge of the table as though testing its solidity while her mind raced. She couldn't deal with this. It was impossible. It was asking too much.

Could she confront Lewis? Could she bring him to his senses, let him see this wasn't what civilized people did, moving outside the laws of reality?

That was what she would do, over food that night.

She left the useless feather there beside her half-empty coffee cup.

But in the reality of kitchen, the smell of lemon-scented dish soap, the sunlight streaming in the windows, Formica countertop under her fingers, she couldn't think where to start. She moved methodically from stove to table, setting up dinner. Hamburgers sizzled with senseless abandon. Broccoli melted under fierce steam.

Dessert? What best expressed "Happy Day That I Learned My Brother Is a Supervillain Planning on Killing Me?" Chocolate lava cake? Bombe Alaska? Some flaming dish?

When he entered the room, she froze like a wary animal. But he didn't seem to notice.

"Smells delicious!" he said with a wide smile. He spread the napkin in his lap with a flourish. "Food like this, it's worth living for, don't you think?"

Their gazes met and locked. She felt herself pressing against a door, trying to find the handle, trying to open it. Her mouth cracked, trying to smile, trying to say anything ordinary, but only a hollow croak escaped.