Beyond (8 page)

The afternoon had gone quiet. Dad was taking a break from nailing shingles up on the roof and had gone inside for lunch. It was just me, the sun and the clear blue sky.

Should I call or text Ryan? I had his number and contact info from the shop. Texting seemed safer. If I called
him I might say something dumb I couldn’t take back. Say too much, or say it wrong.

The night before, Lexi had told me I should just show up at the greenhouse. It would be like our Garden of Eden. I would play Eve to his Adam. She’d said to just grab Ryan, throw him down in the flowers and feed him one of those hothouse apples. Or in my case—Lexi said, playing the snake—give him my cherry.

Sending him a text was less risky, and less raunchy.

So I got up and headed inside for my phone. I felt kind of dizzy, maybe from too much sun or just from standing up too fast. But by the time I reached the steps to the back porch, I had to stop and steady myself. Waiting a moment for the feeling to fade only made it worse.

Then my legs started to shake.

Trying to focus, I noticed the tools Dad had left out on the porch. There was the nail gun he was using for the shingles, loaded with one-inch nails. It looked big and bulky, like some kind of alien weapon.

Everything was going fuzzy around the edges, my mind hazing over, but I couldn’t stop staring at it.

I wasn’t going to touch the gun. But my shadow had other ideas. With the sun at my back it was sprawled across the steps.

As the shadow of my arm stretched out, it pulled my left hand along with it, that darkness reaching to wrap around the handle. I fought against it.

My hand shook in the air above the gun, and I almost thought I could beat the thing. It was a tug-of-war. But an electric whine filled the air, tunneling through my
ears into my head till I couldn’t struggle anymore, and I could only watch as my left hand joined its shadow on the handle, lifting the gun to my head.

The cool muzzle pressed against my skull, just behind my ear. My finger found the trigger. There was a loud pop when it fired. Then a sharp sting.

I dropped the gun. It banged off the stairs and landed on the ground at my feet.

The numbing fog that held me made everything seem very far away. Even the pain was just a mosquito bite. Staring down at the gun, I saw something dripping on it.

Red paint? I thought in a daze. Where’s that coming from?

I noticed more paint running down my left arm and side, felt its warm wetness. I started to look up, like it might be raining red from the sky. As I stretched my head back, the mosquito bite flared into a white-hot needle in my skull.

Falling to my knees, I stared at the ground, the dirt soaking up the blood spurting from me. I knew if I looked over
it
would be there. My shadow. Standing near me. Waiting.

Then I felt myself being lifted up. My shadow was taking me away now. I was done. My eyes were closing forever.

But before they shut I saw a face above me. Mom. I was in her arms.

“Stay with me!” she was shouting. “Hold on!”

“Tell me everything,” Lexi said, when I came back from the dead. “What did you see? The light? Spirits? Dead relatives? Dead pets?”

I told her what I’d seen. But only her. Mom and Dad were worried about me enough already without more evidence that their daughter was deeply disturbed.

Good thing my shadow’s aim was bad. The nail just missed an artery or I would have bled out before I got to the hospital. Even then it was almost too late to save me. My heart stopped after it ran out of blood to pump.

I blacked out before Mom got me into the car. After that I remember nothing until suddenly, like coming wide awake from a dreamless sleep, I found myself floating above a bed in the emergency room. Below, the doctors were working frantically on me.

But I had a ghost’s body now. Lighter than air, with hands I could see through.

Mom was close by, leaning on Dad like he was the only thing keeping her from collapsing. Her shirt was soaked
with my blood. Dad’s mouth hung open as if he was fighting for each breath, trying to breathe for me.

I wanted to tell them sorry. And say goodbye. I had no voice, but I was still trying to speak, when—

There was an explosion of light above me. I looked up and found a blazing brightness.

It shined through me—like it was taking an X-ray of my soul. Burning away all my panic and pain.

So beautiful and intense, it made me feel like I’d been blind since birth and was seeing for the first time.

I felt its pull and started drifting upward. This was it. I was going away, forever.

Taking one last glance at that empty body, I looked at the doctors and nurses struggling to bring me back. At Dad, so shocked and pale he seemed like a ghost himself.

And that was when I saw
it
! Standing next to him was my shadow.

I recognized it. The thing that had haunted me since I was little. My childhood assassin. Here to watch me die, with hungry, wet black eyes. It was three-dimensional now, dark and shiny, like a body dipped in paint.

Its stare was locked on me. Not me in the bed, but up where I was now, rising toward the light.

I looked away from it and gazed up into the whiteness. I was leaving my shadow behind with everything else. There was no darkness where I was going.

Reaching up, my phantom arm passed deep into the glow, melting into it. Sending a thrill of warmth down
through me, soothing away my sadness. I lifted my face to taste that perfect sunshine. So close.

But then everything went wrong.

I was grabbed from below. Even in this body made of nothing but air, I felt something pulling me back.

I looked down into the dark eyes of my shadow. It had one arm raised to catch me. I kicked out to free myself as it held tight, dragging me away from the light.

A shock of cold ran up my leg.

This thing ate the light. It was sucking me in too. I couldn’t break away. It was like a hole cut out of the air, a mouth of darkness.

And it swallowed me up.

I found myself surrounded by blackest night, cold nothingness. I’ve never felt so hopeless and despairing.

But I wasn’t alone. I could sense something near me, hidden in the dark.

When I was little I once asked Mom if my shadow had a life of its own. Now I knew it did.

Later I told Lexi it was like that thing they do on
Star Trek
—a mind meld. Where you share someone else’s thoughts.

Because just when I thought this night might last forever, something reached out and grabbed hold of me. That cold touch ignited a flash of light.

And then it was like having a slide show projected inside my mind. I saw a series of pictures go by.

But somehow I knew they were more than just pictures.

Memories
. Of faces I’d never seen, places I’d never been. Pieces of a stranger’s life melding into me.

First, there was a view of a rocky coastline not so different from Edgewood’s, a harbor with a small blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town. I spotted a little blue house. There was a woman standing in the front yard, looking off down the road as if waiting for someone to come home.

Who was she? Sadness flooded through me. The ache of loss and loneliness. Somehow I knew what her laugh would sound like, and her voice too.

It was surreal, feeling all this for someone I’d never met.

Then, I saw inside the blue house. And upstairs, a room that wasn’t mine, but where everything was so familiar. Everything from the star map on the ceiling that would glow when the light was turned off to the terrarium with a little frog sitting in a pool of water. From the poster on the wall of a model in a bikini lying on some tropical beach to the small basketball hoop hung on the closet door to the view out the window of the woods behind the house.

The image changed to show a pond in those woods, with swampy water bright green with algae. A jar full of freshly collected tadpoles held up to the sunlight. A sense of discovery and happiness.

But then it was like a storm cloud blocked out the sun. Everything changed. At the edge of the pond, under the cover of the trees, stood a tall man, his face hidden in shade. I could feel his eyes watching.

Fear shot through me, and an urge to run.

But the next flash showed him up close. And it was too late to escape. I could see him clearly now. He was bald and skeletally thin. His face was all sharp edges, like it had been carved with a hatchet. A beak of a nose, hollowed cheeks and a brow that jutted out above cold dark eyes.

A big black bird rode on his shoulder. A crow. They had the same eyes, deep and lifeless.

Panic spiked through me. I didn’t want to see any more. Wanted to get away. Escape!

The skeleton man was grinning, reaching out a bony hand. I knew his touch would mean something worse than death. But I was trapped. That hand grabbed hold, digging in with fingers like ice. I was lost, a prisoner to the memory. And I knew the real nightmare was just beginning. I begged for a voice so I could scream.

But then—

A world away, the doctors shocked my heart back to life.

The nightmare vision cut to black.

I felt the shadow trying to hold on and keep me in that midnight place. But I was torn from its grasp. Its scream ripped through the dark as I pulled free.

That scream followed me as I fell through an infinity of blackness. Returning to my body and my beating heart.

I hope it’s over now.

Whatever that thing was, I hope I finally lost it. Left it behind in the dark when I broke away.

Maybe I’m just fooling myself, but it keeps me sane to think that.

When I had to explain how I “accidentally” shot myself with the nail gun, I just told them I’d picked the thing up because I was curious. The gun was heavy and slipped in my hand. I must have hit the trigger somehow.

I’m not saying they totally bought it, not with my history. But there was a strange detail that supported my lie. The nail was fired through the left side of my skull. And as every good cop knows, when somebody tries to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head, they always use their dominant hand to hold the gun. I’m right-handed, so I would have shot through the right side of my head. This made my lie believable enough. I’m not a lefty, but I guess my shadow was.

I hope it’s gone for good. Now it only haunts me in my nightmares.

It could still be waiting for me on the other side. I’ll worry about that when I’m old and gray. As long as it stays there.

Some things belong in the dark.

“Welcome to my dream,” says the girl on the screen.

I’m in computer class, where we’re working on graphics and Web design. Our big project for the term is to build our own Web pages about whatever we want. Right now we’re taking sneak peeks at each other’s works in progress.

Valerie is running us through her site on the big screen at the front. She calls it My Decadent Dream Closet. It opens with her welcoming us in, reaching for a door with golden light shining out around the edges. The buildup makes you think there’s magic on the other side, like it’s the wardrobe to Narnia or something.

Instead, the site is a tour of her huge walk-in closet, cataloging a massive collection of clothes, shoes and accessories. It’s a fashion fantasy museum that lets you click on items for detailed descriptions. As an extra feature you can build your own ensemble, putting together an outfit from her collection.

“I’m still working on that,” Valerie says. “I want to make it so you get graded on how good your taste is.”

“She makes me gag,” Lexi mumbles beside me.

I elbow her quiet.

Miss Jankowski says, “Well organized. A popular concept for our cultural craze of consumerism.”

After that we get a couple of gaming fan sites with lots of blood and gore. If only some of these mutant zombie aliens would invade Valerie’s closet for a bloody battle. She could add a feature where you build your own ensemble from the scattered body parts.

Then comes the moment I’ve been dreading. It’s Max’s turn. I think he took this class just to torture Lexi. His Max to the Max site is devoted to himself, of course, and his crap band. Basically it’s a photo gallery of moody shots of him with the other members in the background, a brief bio that makes him sound badass, and then there’s the video Lexi shot for him, along with extra footage of him competing in a Battle of the Bands in the city last year.