Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (18 page)

The voice said I’m spreading myself too thin
. 
That I’m vulnerable like this
.

The voice might be right. 
She was in
three
places now instead of just two, and on some level she was aware of things happening at all the other levels.  Here she was, bending over the water fountain to take a sip, looking up at the banner in front of her that sai
d
MS. MITCHELL’S CLASS : BEST ESSAYS OF THE MONT
H
, and had examples of those essays stapled on the board.  Here she was, sitting on the cold concrete floor of a basement inside a dead child rapist’s hunting lodge.  Here she was, standing amid the icy wasteland of emotions that were roiling off of the abused child in front of her.

There was no avatar for the child here, no lost boy amid all that frozen ice.  He
was
the frozen ice.  A lonely, desolate, blank space filled with nothing but cold.  The isolation had gotten to him, the removal from his family arguably as damaging as anything the Russian had done to him.

In one of these worlds that Kaley occupied, another boy late to class paused while hustling up the stairs near the water fountain, where she was taking a prolonged drink.  For a moment, they locked eyes.  The boy looked familiar—
His name’s Andrew something
—a mixed race kid that Kaley thought was kind of cute.  Maybe he thought she was cute, too, according to the reading she was getting off of him, and, more importantly, how quickly he averted his gaze from hers.  He hustled on to class…

…and left Kaley in a wasteland of
the utmost suffering a human being could endure.  All hers to share, and no one else’s.  Well, hers and the boy’s to share.

There was a deep, deep cracking beneath the surface of the ice, a tectonic shift.  The ice was considering breaking apart—this was Kaley’s interpretations of the boy’s small hope, an almost-willingness to let the barriers fall,
an inkling to lower his defenses, and put the pain to one side.

Kaley encouraged this.  But she still needed some sort of anchor for herself, a point of reference to begin her work. 
Kindling
, as her mom’s ex-boyfriend Ricky had once called it.  “Add some more kindlin’, I reckon,” he had said.  “Then build it up slowly.  Add too much too soon, an’ it’ll smother it.  Put some twigs in, then a few small branches, then the bigger stuff.  Let it catch fire slowly.  Slowly.”

Something to keep her warm, physically and emotionally. 
Shannon
.  Just the thought evoked powerful shifts.  All at once, Kaley didn’t feel cold anymore.  In fact, she was radiating a heat that started in the sky, bathed the entire frozen landscape in white-orange sunlight.  Soon, she was sweating, in all three worlds.

Even as she finished drinking her water and stood up from the fountain, Kaley attempted to send warm, comforting rays to help melt the ice some more.  At first the immense ice resisted, the world became colder all around—
The boy is untrusting of sincere people and emotions
—but then she discovered receptivity in the cracks between the icebergs.  It began as a trickle—bubbling little streams of melted fears pushing between the cracks.  Then rivers of melted fears flowed between the cracks, eroding at the seams.

Be water
, she thought, and tried transmitting the notion to the boy. 
Like Bruce Lee said, be like water
.  That part came from thinking of Shannon: Shan was a big kung fu movie fan.  All at once, she thought she felt a teeny, tiny part of the boy’s imagination awaken, some adventurous portion that every child innately had, but more so because boys liked action heroes.  Somewhere, a small, hopeful voice said, “I like Bruce Lee.”

Kaley seized on it, wouldn’t let it go.  “Be formless, shapeless, like water,” she said, quoting the famous words of the martial arts legend.

“What the fuck did you say?”  That was Spencer, the cynicism dripping off him and threatening to undo her good work.

Kaley had a hold on the boy now and would not let it go.  If heroes was what it took to break down the boy’s walls, then she
would grip that part of him, and like a dog with a bone, she wouldn’t let go.  “You put water into a cup, it
becomes
the cup.  You put water into a teapot, it
becomes
the teapot.  You put water in a bottle, it
becomes
the bottle.  Water is the softest substance there is, but given time it penetrates the toughest rock.  Water can flow, or creep, or crash.  Be water, my friend.”

The rivers of melted fears picked up speed, melting the other blocks of fear all around it.

“You like Bruce Lee, huh?” she said.

A small voice spoke inside that Pine-Sol-smelling basement.  The boy’s voice.  He was actually talking now, res
ponding directly to her.  “Yeah,” he said tentatively.

“He your favorite hero?”

“No.”

“Who is?”

“I like…”  There were a few sniffles.  When he spoke again, he did so with an accent Kaley could describe only as British, or close enough to it.  “I like Batman.  He’s my favorite.”

Kaley laughed, her eyes still shut, focused.  “I like Batman, too.  He’s very strong, and very smart, isn’t he?”  The rivers of melted ice now flowed through Kaley.  She accepted them, removed them from the child, and the rivers ran down her face.  She smiled through the tears, continually sending him
rays of sunlight, eating away at the icebergs surrounding her.  “Batman suffered a lot as a child, but he took that pain and he turned it into strength.  Now everyone in Gotham City knows, you don’t mess with the Bat.”

“I like Wolverine, too,” he said, more earnestly now, and with less sniffles.  “I like his claws.”

Heroes
. 
He needs heroes, the purest form of adventure and hope for a young boy
. 
Someone that can shine a light, take his mind off the darkness, and give him faith in something better
.

“Wolverine is one o’ my favorites, too,” she said.  “You know why?”

“His claws?”

“No.”

“His healing powers?”

She laughed.  “No, chil’, no.  It’s because
he’s a survivor.  He’s been through so much hurt.  He deals with it every day.  Not just physical pain, but so much pain in his heart.  In his
soul
.  I like Wolverine because he’s tough.  Lots of bad things happened to him in the past, but how he got past all that pain…oh, lawd, chil’, how he got past all o’ that pain, that’s his
real
super power.”

The boy seemed to consider this.  He sniffled, wiped his nose, and chuckled.  That beautiful, beautiful chuckle. 
“Now nobody messes with Wolverine, either.”

“No, chil’.  No, they don’t.  They know better’n that.  They all learned.  An’ over time, Wolverine found friends, an’ a family—”

“The X-Men!”

“That’s right!” she laughed.  “He found that he wasn’t alone.  There were others like him, others with pain so deep that they didn’t think they could survive.  But they leaned on each other, didn’t they?
  They leaned on each other an’ they grew, an’ they loved, an’ they accepted one another, an’ they
protected
each other.”

Soon, the ice was only too happy to let go. 
It split and lurched, great cracks had been etched in the seams and now it all broke apart, great showers of fears falling into the sea, perishing beneath the icy waters.  Kaley took it all, absorbed it into her own stream. 
I’ll take it
, she thought. 
I’ll take it because I can, because I’m built for it
. 
Give it all to me
. 
I can handle it
. 
I can take your burden
.  Kaley wasn’t erasing his memory—far from it—she was merely removing the fear and guilt that the boy felt over what had been done to him.

I
n that other world at Cartersville Middle School, Kaley had already turned and was walking back to Mrs. Cartwright’s classroom.  In the basement, Kaley finally opened her eyes, and looked into the face of the little boy, peeking his head out like a timid little turtle out of his shell, wondering if it truly was safe to come out.  Kaley continued bathing him in warmth, wrapping him in her arms, even though she never touched him.  She couldn’t, not in this form.

Kaley stared at the boy.

The boy stared right back, and sniffled.

“
Ask him his name,” said Spencer, butting in.  She had almost forgotten about him, and his blunt, uncaring mind was jarring in the moment.

“Spencer,” she whispered, keeping the smile on her face.  “I’m asking you to please,
please
be quiet.”

In his pocket,
Spencer’s phone rang again, and he silenced it.  “The kid better know something, is all I’m saying.”

Kaley tried not to think on that.  What would Spencer do if he found out she really had lied to him?  She’d told him that the name
At-ta Biral
had come from the boy, when the truth was the only mind she felt fully connected with, enough to extract any specific information from, was his. 
It was that, or watch him drive away, leaving the boy here
.  But Kaley felt confident the boy would know something about his captors.  He must have seen something along the way.  How could he know absolutely nothing?

At school,
Kaley reached the door to room 208.  She kept looking at the boy, smiling with her lips, eyes, and heart.  Then, all at once, the boy started crying, but these were tears of unadulterated joy, so pure and powerful that she nearly felt knocked over.  The boy then darted out from underneath the table and went to hug her.  “No, chil’, don’t!  I can’t—”

Kaley was afraid the boy might reel back when he found out she was more or less a kind of
ghost.  But something happened then.  Something that sent her mind reeling, and caused Spencer to take a step back.

In the basement, the boy threw his arms around Kaley, and embraced her.  In the hallway, her right hand had just passed straight through the doorknob to Mrs. Cartwright’s room.

At school, Kaley stood looking dumbly down at the door.  In the basement, she held the boy, squeezed him as tight as she had ever squeezed Shan after waking from her worst nightmares, and stared up at Spencer, who was looking down at her with a mixture of uncertainty and mistrust.

4

Gun trained on the girl’s head, Spencer took two or three steps backward, towards the exit.  The basement had grown colder, and though he no longer heard the whispers of Kaley Dupré’s “Others,” or felt the cold wetness licking at his ankles, the scene in front of him was growing far more irrational the more he thought about it.

The boy, presumably, was no kind of spirit.  If he had been, then Zakhar Ogorodnikov could not have had his fun.  But the apparition girl had most certainly passed through
Spencer only moments ago, and he’d seen her pass halfway through the Subaru in the shed outside.  So then, how was it that she was here, now, in this room, holding the little boy in her arms like a mother, with one arm around his waist and the other on the back of his head, pressing his face into her shoulder?

“The hell is goin’ on here?” he
demanded to know.

Kaley was smiling, and crying at the same time—this confliction written on other people’s faces always sickened Spencer, for reasons he couldn’t elaborate on, he just generally mistrusted such a contradiction.  The girl opened her eyes, and looked at him in a way that told him he needed to be patient, and quiet, a little bit longer.

“How the hell are you holding him?”

Kaley patted the boy’s head.  “I don’t know,” she whispered.  “I’m here now.  Somehow…I’m just here.”

“What about back at the school?”

“I’m there,
too, but I can’t touch anything.”

Spencer raised an ey
ebrow.  “You’ve switched places,” he said skeptically.  What sort of game was she playing at here?

As if reading his mind—
Maybe she is
, he thought—Kaley said, “This is not a trick.  I really don’t know what’s going on here, but I really don’t think this is the time or the place—”

“To discuss this?  Tell me, when
would
be a better time to discuss this, little girl?  What’s happenin’ here?”

“Spencer,” she said slowly, “just give me a second.”  Her eyes flicked to the boy in her arms.

“He better start talkin’,” he warned.  “An’ you better, too.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“How is this possible?”

“How is
any of this
possible?” she countered.

“You’d better have a better excuse than—”

“Look, all I know is that he came at me.  He needed me…I was struggling to make a connection with him, and the next logical step was human contact,” she said, eyes still going like faucets.  “I suppose…I-I just reacted.  He flung himself at me, he needed me, he needed to hold someone, and I reacted.  A reflex.”  Kaley sniffled, and stood waveringly to her feet, holding the boy.  “Like when someone throws a baseball at your face; you don’t think about it, you just catch it, or at least put your hands up to keep it from hitting you in the nose.”

Spencer didn’t know if he trusted that assessment. 
She knows more
.  He became aware of the cold—not as cold as a few moments ago, but still chill enough.  “That storm’s not getting any lighter.  If we’re gonna get anything out of this kid, we need to do it now.”

“He’s not exactly in a talking mood at the moment, Spencer, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

He raised another eyebrow.  “You givin’ me lip, little girl?” he said, stepping closer to her, the gun trained on her this time, not the boy in her arms.  “I’ve gone along with this little game long enough.  Now, I think it’s time that you—”

“He has to come with us.”

Spencer blanched, laughed, and drew serious again.  “‘Come with us?’  Come where?  An’ who’s
us
?”

The boy looked over his shoulder, saw the gun aimed at him, and stared dumbly at Spencer.  Kaley pushed his head back to her shoulder.  “He’s a little numb right now,
and after all he’s been through I don’t blame him.  He’s okay to move now but he can’t talk like this—”

“Bitch, we didn’t discuss bringin’ this little brat with us to
anywhere
!”

“If we leave him here, he’ll die—”

“You keep sayin’ that like that’s supposed to mean somethin’ to me—”

“—and then
you
won’t have your Eight Cats, now will you?”

Spencer snorted
derisively.  The basement passed into silence.  There were no longer things whispering to him or licking him, but Spencer knew that there were forces still at play here, and one of them was this little cunt’s game. 
Maybe she
has
got some guile, after all
. 
She’s done some growing up in the last seven months
.  He said, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re playin’ at here.  Leadin’ me on like a mule with a carrot.  Bitch, I’ve played these games all my life, what makes you think I don’t see—”

“You can’t get information from a corpse, Spencer.  I know you don’t like it, but the kid needs to be treated.  He needs warmth and food, and most of all he needs distance from this place.  It just makes logical sense.”

“
Logic
?  The Amazing Teleporting Girl wants to talk
logic
now?”  He turned and headed for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” shouted Kaley
Dupré.

“I’ve wasted enough time here.  I’m out.”

“Wait!  You can’t just leave us here!”

“Why not?  You can apparently touch and move the kid around now.”

“But there’s only one car out there, and I can’t drive those four-wheelers in snow like this.”  She looked down at her inadequate clothes.  “I left my jacket back in my classroom.  I’d
freeze
!  We both would.  And I don’t even know where we are, or speak the language.  And what if some of Zakhar’s people show up with us still here?”

“Hit ’em with the Force, Obi-wan.  Unleash hell like you did before—”

“
I can’t do that without you and you know it!
”  In her arms, the boy had started to cry again.  Kaley took a few steps towards Spencer, but paused when he reached the basement door.  He aimed the Glock at her in a careless, lazy kind of threat.  “That’s why all of this is happening now,” she said, in a quieter voice, patting the boy’s head.  “You and me…we’re like two halves of something else.  I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it, but it’s the truth and you know it.”

Spencer mulled that over.  He prided himself in knowing many things—things about people, things about life, things about animals, and things about things.  This was one of those things.  All his life, his perception had been sharp. 
Even when he was a boy, he’d known that he could think in dimensions that others couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see.  And Kaley Dupré had the same strange affliction.  Only whereas he was devoid of emotions, she had a surplus of them, and therefore looking into things so deeply had an adverse affect on her that it didn’t have on him.

Spencer’s power, he’d figured, had always come from his lack of empathy—it kept
him emotionally detached from the outcome of his own actions—but Kaley Dupré’s powers, whatever they were, and whatever source fed them, seemed to flourish only when she was intensely involved with her emotions and those of others around her. 
It’s her source of power
, he thought. 
Or at least the lighter fluid tossed on the flames
.

But that wasn’t all of it.  The little bitch had opened up something else, a crack in
the divider between words.  She’d done it that night on Avery Street, and it seemed she was doing it again.

“Please,” she said. 
Spencer continued looking at her indifferently.  Then, she snorted.  “Fuck that, I know you don’t respond to begging.  Just…just
think
about it for a second, would you?”

“I have.  I’m out.”
  He turned to leave.

“I’ll do anything you want!” she hollered.

Spencer turned, looked at her.  “Pardon me?”

“Please…please just—”

“Define ‘anything,’ ” he said.

“I-I just meant that…”  She trailed off.  It was obvious she hadn’t known what she meant.

Spencer tilted his head to one side.  “Are you offerin’ yer services to me, little girl?”  Kaley Dupré said nothing.  He smiled.  “That it?”  Kaley Dupré said nothing.  “Because I gotta wonder, what the fuck could a little nigglet do in Russia?”  Kaley Dupré said nothing.  “What use could she possibly be?  Niggers stick out like sore thumbs here.  You’re not exactly natives to this land.”  Kaley Dupré said nothing.  “Or is it your power?  Is that it?  Is that what you’re offerin’?”

“I
-I-I-I…”

“Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, I, I
what
?”

“I j-just want the boy safe,” she said.

“Yeah?”  Spencer smirked.  “And so…what’re ya willin’ to do?  How far are ya willin’ to go?”  Kaley opened her mouth, and he held up a silencing finger.  “Before you say anything, you need to
think
about what you’re about to say.  If you’re willing to give me your word, I’ll accept it, but if you deceive me, renege at all on our arrangement…well, you know I can and will hurt people.  Remember what I told ya up in that shed.”

This is a dangerous fucking game you’re playing here
, she thought. 
That’s what he said in the shed
.  It already seemed like it had happened ages ago—so much had happened in the intervening minutes, so much she did not understand—but Kaley remembered it clearly, and she did not doubt Spencer’s convictions for a second. 
He’ll kill this boy if I go back on my word, or hunt down Shannon someday and kill her
. 
But if I leave this boy here
…

“I’ll help you find these other people,” she told him.  Spencer’s cold expression did not change, but she could feel a smile emanating from within.  He had his hooks in her.  He had leverage.  “
If
,” she added, “you promise that it ends when we get the rest of these people, the ones that did this to this boy.”

Spencer shrugged. 
He started to say something, paused to reach inside his pocket to silence the iPhone, which had just started ringing again.  “Fair enough.  But I can’t guarantee we’ll find them quickly.  Are ya in it for the long haul, little girl?  Are ya in it to win it?”

Kaley stood at many crossroads.  In the hallway outside of Mrs. Cartwright’s classroom, she stood alone and stared at her hand, which had first felt the slippery surface of the doorknob before it had phased completely through.  She backed away from
that door, but in the basement she stood stock-still, holding the child in her arms, patting and consoling, while gazing into the eyes of the monster from Shannon’s dreams. 
From my dreams, too
, she corrected. 
I’d be kidding myself to deny it
.

“Yes,” she said.  “If you’ll drive this boy out of here, and to someplace safe, I’ll
help you get these guys.”  Truth be told, she wanted to help, anyway.

“That all sounds fine and good,” Spencer said, lowering his gun.  “But a promise don’t mean jack handy shit if you can’t deliver when the time comes.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked her up and down, touching his tongue to his top lip, appraising her.  “These people, they ain’t the sorts to be trifled with.  If
yer power turns out to be unreliable, an’ if they get a hold of you, or find out where your family lives, they’ll take the lot o’ you and tie you down in some basement, strip you naked, and butt-fuck you ’till you bleed to death.”

“I remember their kind,” she said
defiantly.  “I’m not scared.”

“Bullshit, you’re not.  That’s all you are, is a ball of emotions.  And fear
chief among them.”

“I survived Dmitry and the others.”

“This ain’t like Dmitry an’ the others,” he told her.  “The Rainbow Room wanted to fuck little children and then just slit their throats when they were finished with them, nice an’ clean like.  These people?  They’re a step up.  They’re the main group that Dmitry and his pals split off from.  Russian Mafia, straight up.  These people have Russian politicians scared shitless.  They tie down traitors and remove them, piece by piece, keep ’em on an IV drip so they don’t pass out—they remove the toes, the feet, the fingers an’ hands, then their dicks, their tits, their teeth an’ their tongues, their eyeballs, everything.  Everything until there’s nothin’ left but a sightless head on a torso.  They’ll do this to you, too, then they’ll chain you up to a furnace in a basement in an underground cathouse, somewhere in Portugal maybe, and let people rape your throat, your eye sockets, your asshole, whatever the sick fucks have in mind.  Some of ’em are into that kind of thing.  They’re not cursed with an excessive amount of mercy or what
you
define as humanity.  This world they occupy, it ain’t filled with mustache-twirlin’ supervillains like Batman has to put up with.  Some o’ these fuckers would make the Dark Knight leave Gotham City forever, an’ make the Joker second guess his career choice, savvy?”