Messenger of Fear (11 page)

“Have I performed my office?”

“Yes. You may withdraw.”

The Game Master nodded. It was an almost amiable gesture. He stepped back and the mist wrapped around him, and he was soon gone from view. The sound of his captive creatures skittering and crying lasted for another few seconds and then faded beyond hearing, though not beyond memory.

“Stand,” Messenger said to Liam and Emma.

I was amazed that they could manage it, and indeed it took some time. They seemed as stiff and weak as if they were very old people. But finally, helping each other, they stood erect, still holding hands, their faces masks of apprehension.

“You did wrong,” Messenger said. “But you played the game and prevailed. You are free to go on with your lives.”

“Are you kidding me?” Emma demanded. Her voice was shaky with the aftereffects of terror but powered by outrage. “You do that to us? You do that? And then—”

Liam cut her off. “He said we can go. Let’s go.”

Emma was not so easily silenced and lashed us with a furious onslaught of curses in both Spanish and English. But Liam managed to get her into the car, closed the door, and with a baleful look back at Messenger and, I suppose me as well, started the engine and drove off into the night.

I am never without words, but not then, not at that moment when I felt so utterly drained, so helpless and hopeless that I feared I would simply slip into unconsciousness.

“You are tired,” Messenger said.

I was shaking too much to even nod my head.

“Yes, you need sleep. And food. We will go.”

He watched me, saw my incapacity, the shock that reduced me to a near-paralytic state, and nodded.

“It is very shocking, the first time. You will grow more accustomed to it.”

I wanted to tell him that the very idea of becoming accustomed to such foulness made me want to vomit. I wanted to tell him that I would have no part of this, not now, not ever. I wanted to rage and beat my fists against his impassive face.

But he was no longer there.

I was in a bed.

The covers were pulled up to my neck.

My head rested on a soft pillow.

And sleep took me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

MY DREAMS.

I don’t want to speak of them—to speak of them, to relate the details, in some way makes them more real. I have decided to tell the truth here, as far as I can. But even as I determine to tell every detail, those details slip away, just out of my grasp. The dreams are like wraiths, like smoke, all incorporeal, all of it elusive as dreams so often are.

But as dreams will, they left behind a pall, a sense that in my sleep I had been victimized, my mind taken over by dark beasts that reveled in my fear and laughed at my dull efforts to snatch meaning from raw emotions.

I rolled out of the bed, examining everything around me as I did. Was this my bed? I had slept in it, but was it mine? Was this my room?

I touched the pillow thoughtfully. It was slowly recovering from the weight of my head upon it. Was that fabric familiar to me? And this quilt. Was it mine?

The room was almost a square, with gray walls and a warm hardwood floor. A window shade allowed only the dimmest of light to sneak around its edges. A table lamp on the nightstand illuminated the contours of a desk and chair.

Slippers awaited my feet. Somehow I had been dressed for bed, though my last memory was of a heedless surrender to exhaustion. I wore soft, baggy shorts and a T-shirt. I pushed my fingers back through my hair, smoothing the few tangles. I wiped at my sleep-crusted eyes with the back of my hand.

There was a cork bulletin board over the desk. A blue ribbon hung there. I thought of looking more closely at it and learning whether it would tell me something of the reality or falseness of this place. This was not my bedroom. I had long since abandoned any faint hope that all of this was a dream. The dreams of my sleep were dreams, but what had happened with Liam and Emma, with the Game Master, with Samantha Early, Oriax, and Daniel, all of that I now accepted as real.

Messenger was real, that taciturn but not completely emotionless creature whose careless touch had set off a cascade of horror but who was, for all of that, not truly wicked. Or so I reassured myself.

It was Messenger who had sent me to this bed. I would not call it “my” bed. It was Messenger who must have seen that I had reached my physical and mental limit. Maybe I should have blushed at the idea that he had undressed me and then dressed me as I now was, but I dismissed that notion. He was
not to be touched
. Surely his fingers on any part of my body would have awakened me screaming, no matter how deep the sleep.

There were three doors. One was almost certainly a closet. Another, I fervently hoped, was a bathroom. The largest door, the one most completely framed in painted molding, was surely the exit. I was nervous to check it, for fear that I would try the handle only to find that I was a prisoner.

I nerved myself to try the closet. It was deep but not wide. Clothing was hung and shelved on the left side. There was an overhead light activated when I tugged on the string.

I sighed in disappointment: it all looked very much like the sorts of things a girl like Kayla would wear. Too fashionable, too adult for what I imagined my own tastes to be. I could not call up memories of my own closet or my own shopping preferences, but I had convinced myself that I was a simpler, more straightforward person than that. But when I pulled a top from its hanger, the immediate impression was that it was likely to fit me.

I gathered a few things and went to the bathroom, which was, to my great relief, a very normal bathroom. There was a toilet, quite welcome at that moment. And there was a shower, which was my next stop.

Has there ever been a better relief for stress and the effects of jading fear than hot water coursing through hair and over skin? I showered and shampooed and felt as if I might just stay beneath that comforting spray until the hot water ran out. But it felt cowardly to hide away longer than necessary, or at least longer than I could justify.

I dried and dressed and stepped back into the bedroom. It was as I had left it. My eye was drawn to the posters on the walls, the same, it seemed at a superficial glance, as those on Kayla’s walls. Presumably Messenger, or whatever other creature of his had made this place, had relied on those images to create the layout and decorations.

I was suddenly aware that I was dying of hunger and thirst. No food magically appeared, which meant that I must risk the final door. I approached it with my heart beating too fast and my breath too slow, convinced that opening it would reveal my imprisonment.

But when at last I nerved myself up and threw open the door, I saw there only a mundane hallway with another room at the end of it, a room of which I could see only a sliver but which looked very much like a kitchen.

Down the hallway I went, dressed in clothing that I was convinced was not mine but which nevertheless fitted me perfectly, at least in terms of size if not in terms of character.

The apparent kitchen was indeed a kitchen. Sun-dappled leaves rustled softly just beyond the window. A bowl of fruit sat on a butcher-block island. A loaf of bread sat unopened.

I seized greedily on an apple, bit into it, and drew open the refrigerator door. Yogurt. Milk. Cold cuts and condiments. A dozen eggs and a package of bacon. Butter and orange juice and cranberry juice, too, because my mother believed it protected against infections.

I ate the apple, found cereal in the cabinets, ate some of that as well, and then fried an egg, which I ate with toast.

I felt much better after eating. If warm showers are the greatest of comforts, then surely wholesome food is the second greatest. Something in the simple rituals of composing my meal gave me reassurance that I had some small degree of control over my life.

I wondered if I should clean up after myself. Had Messenger summoned a helpful maid from the collection of allies and opponents he appeared to have? Would any such maid be a monster, like the Game Master? Or perhaps a transcendent beauty like Oriax? I managed a laugh at that notion, an honest laugh that sent me wondering whether I was in fact resilient enough to endure whatever might yet come my way.

Just one thing remained: to open the beckoning door to the back deck, step out into the sunshine I saw through the window.

I cleaned up after myself, placing my trash in the bin and my dishes in the dishwasher. Then I grabbed a peach and a paper towel to absorb any juice, and opened the door to the deck. As I twisted the knob, it occurred to me that something had been missing from the bedroom and the hallways leading to the kitchen: Wouldn’t there be family photographs somewhere in one or both locations? But I was unwilling to backtrack. I wanted to exploit my temporary sense of well-being to push on further, servant as always to my curiosity.

I opened the door, and where the leafy deck might be, there stood Samantha Early.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“I CAN’T GO TO SCHOOL. I’M SICK.”

For a moment I thought Samantha was talking to me. She was looking right at me, and since I had just come through the door, there was no way she could be speaking to someone behind me.

“What?” I said. She did not respond and I heard then a second voice. Impossibly, it was behind me. I spun and saw that the kitchen, the one I had just been in, was gone, as was the house. As well as the peach that had been in my hand.

Instead we were in a driveway. A Ford SUV was warming up, tailpipe purring smoke and steam, a man in the driver’s seat, a chubby man with pleasant features, a receding hairline, a blue-striped dress shirt and loose tie. He had a travel mug of coffee in his hand.

“Oh, come on, Sammie, you’ve skipped the last two days. This is going to start affecting your grades.”

Self-conscious, I moved to get out from between the two of them, though of course I was invisible to them.

“Dad, I really don’t feel . . . It’s my time of month. I have cramps.”

The father looked as uncomfortable as fathers will when such things are discussed, but he shook his head and said, “Come on, Sam, grab your backpack and let’s go. I have a staff meeting first thing and there’s construction on the 101.”

The 101? That phrase struck a chord with me, but no doubt that road went all over the country and—

“Will she go to school, won’t she go to school—the suspense is killing me.” The intimacy of the voice combined with the highly charged sensuality that somehow permeated the flippant tone told me instantly that Oriax was with me. I turned eagerly to see her.

She was dressed differently this time, still exotic, still sporting the sort of leather outfit that would not have been out of place on a female superhero, but less black and more green. And an amulet had been added to a green ribbon choker around her throat. It was a jewel, as big as a cherry tomato, but of a rich green color that held sparkling starlight within.

She saw me staring at the jewel—the emerald, I supposed it was—though if it was real, it would cost Samantha’s father’s yearly salary. “You like?” Oriax asked me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“You should get one,” she said. I thought she was preparing to remove it and hand it to me, but then her eyes flicked to my right and she lowered her hands. “There you are, Messenger. I was wondering why you’d leave poor . . . what’s your name again?”

“Mara,” I said.

“Messenger-in-waiting,” Oriax said. It was a sneer, but as she said it, she winked at me so I didn’t take it amiss. “Has he told you the big reveal yet?”

“The big what?” I asked. I felt rather dull, but then I was destined to feel rather dull in her company.

“Leave us, Oriax,” Messenger said.

“Not just yet, Messenger,” she said. She turned languidly away from me as Messenger moved closer. “It’s not a done deal, Messenger, and you know it. She may still choose to come with me, to follow the path of . . .” She pouted, thinking of just the right word before finishing with, “Excitement.”