Paper Tigers (24 page)

Her house reeked of tobacco. She dropped her bags on the floor and stripped off her coat and boots, ignoring the pool of scummy water spreading out across the wood. With her mouth set in a thin line, she put the lighter fluid and matches in the center of her coffee table—a tiny shrine of immolation—and after a moment's thought, added the fire extinguisher she kept next to the sofa.

The album still sat on the counter, the cover open.

A tiny voice slipped out. “Alison?”

And another. “Help us.”

Then a chorus.

“Please.”

“Come back.”

“Don't you want to be whole?”

Using the edge of a spoon, she flipped the cover closed, and swirls of grey curled out.

“You can't fool me,” she said. “I know what's really inside. And I am whole.”

She took a quick trip into the basement and flipped the lid to the small toolbox her mother insisted on buying her so long ago. “You might need it,” she'd said. “Every homeowner should have one.”

Alison dug out a claw hammer and a pair of heavy duty gloves.

“Please,” the album said again when she returned. Alison gave it her middle finger but didn't bother with a glance. It was nothing but a paper mess of tricks and lies, and soon enough it would be nothing in truth.

One dead album. One dead tiger.

In her living room, she took the books off the bookcase in the corner and slid it away from the wall. Only the slate hearth offered proof to what existed behind; both the mantel and surround had been removed. She gave the wall a quick rap of the knuckles. A hollow echo answered.

The gloves were too large for her hands and two of the fingers hung like empty canvas shrouds, but they'd suffice. She hefted the hammer and let it swing. The claw end stuck in the wall. She tugged and a piece of drywall the size of a fist came free with a crumbling, tearing sound and a mess of paint flakes and powder. If her mother had the workmen use brick and mortar, she'd be burning the album in her kitchen sink or her bathtub. Not a pleasant thought. She ripped out another chunk of drywall and laughed. Her mother would call it progress. She lifted the hammer again.

Do you hear that, George? That's the sound of goodbye.

She laughed again.

You will not win. I will not let you have me.

And again, grunting with each swing. The thuds hid the voices creeping out of the kitchen on quiet little insistent feet. Wisps of hair dangled in her eyes, her mouth tasted bitter and dry, and her fingers ached, but she didn't stop, because George wouldn't stop. Not ever. He'd decided she was the prize-winning photograph in his collection and he wanted to keep her forever.

But we won't let that happen,
Red said.
Will we?

“No,” she said, tearing away another piece of drywall. “We won't.”

Dust spiraled into the air, turning the gloves and the skin of her arms ghostly pale. Bit by bit, the brick fireplace came into view, a gaping mouth still darkened with soot at the edges from the previous owners. She shoved the pile of rubble to the side. Her fingers trembled as she groped in the chimney's dark throat for the lever that operated the flue. She remembered her mother telling her that they'd closed the flue, but hadn't sealed it shut. Another pinch of luck on her part.

The lever didn't budge. She stripped off the glove and tried again. Sweat broke out on the small of her back as she used her body weight, but the flue wouldn't give. She sat back on her heels, her hands on the brick, breath rasping in and out. Her stupid ruined hands weren't strong enough.
She
wasn't strong enough.

Not true. You are stronger than you ever suspected. Don't you dare give up now.

And from the kitchen. “Alison, help us…”

With a groan, she grabbed the lever again and shoved with all her might. “Open up, open up, damn you!”

Metal squealed, the lever moved, and a cold draft raced down the chimney.

She scrubbed her hands on her pants and swiped her arm across her forehead.

And now for the tricky part
, she thought as she tiptoed back in the kitchen. She pawed through her kitchen drawer, but forks and spoons would offer no help. She didn't dare pick up the album, not even with the gloves. She picked up a knife and smiled.

“Alison, please…”

“Do me a favor and shut the hell up,” she said.

She lifted the knife and swung it down in horror movie villain style. The blade went through the center of the cover and cut off a voice in mid-syllable. Smoke dripped from the album's wound, running over the cover and off the edge of the counter. She grinned. A warrior baring her teeth. Preparing for battle.

With both hands on the handle, she lifted the knife, carrying the album into the living room at arm's length, speared and silent. More smoke poured out, trailing behind like an ashen wedding veil. Or a funeral cerement.

She shook the album into the fireplace, and it landed with a thump, a puff of smoke, and a husky whisper. “We're waiting.”

“Wait all you want.” The grin on her face pulled hard at the scar tissue.

The cover flipped open, and her grin faltered. “Oh, no you don't,” she said, and upended a bottle of lighter fluid on the album, eye watering at the sharp, oily stink. The inscription, the warning, darkened, the lettering almost black; the parchment turned slick and translucent with rainbows of iridescence reflecting from the overhead light. She glanced at the second bottle. No, one should be enough. She could always pour more if she needed to.

“Alison,” Mary shouted. “Please help me!”

She rattled the box of matches. Nails for George's coffin. And perhaps the others, but she couldn't help them anymore. Death would be better than their tortured existence. But guilt worked its way into her chest. Mary and Thomas and all the others, even Madeline.
She held their ending in her hands, but it wasn't her fault. None of it. She didn't kill them. He did.

Her fingers trembled as she took out a match. When she slid the head across the striker panel, the match skittered from her hand and landed on the floor.

“Come on, you can do this.”

She tightened her grip on the second match before flicking it to life with a snick and a sulfur stink. The tiny flame danced and darted, bright yellow with a blue heart. A hungry heart of danger and destruction, blackened skin and pain. She blew it out.

Stop being so afraid. Destroy it. Kill it. And do it fast.

“I'm sorry,” she said and lit another match.

She held her breath as she bent down and tossed the match in the fireplace. It flipped end over end, the flame sputtering. A chorus of voices begged and pleaded. Then the fumes caught hold of the flame. With a whoosh, the album disappeared behind a curtain of orange, red, and yellow, a ripple of heat pushing out from the fireplace. She staggered back, her mouth ripe with the taste of burning paper. Clouds of thick black smoke billowed up, accompanied by an overpowering stench of rot and ruin. Alison covered her mouth with her hands and scooted away from the blaze. She heard a laugh, far in the distance.

And the flames stopped. The roar cut off, plunging the room into silence. A cloud of dark smoke hung motionless over the blaze. Even the breath in her lungs paused, as though time had put down its weary head and cried enough. The air smelled not of smoke and charred paper but of nothing at all.

The flames began to shrink, the colors going pale as the roiling mass folded in, folded down, reversing back to small flickering points of blue-orange-red-yellow light. The heat lessened; the smoke surged in instead of up and out and turned from black to charcoal to steel.

The fire retreated until tiny glimmers of heatlight played across the paper. They rolled off the edges, dancing away to evaporate in the air with tiny soap-bubble pops. A trail of pale smoke backtracked, raced back into the album, and vanished with a puff of grey. The last tiny flame danced across the cover before winking out of existence. A faint haze of heat hung in the air, then that, too, vanished, leaving behind the stink of lighter fluid and a low, malevolent rumble of laughter.

Alison put her head in her hands and groaned against her palms. The tiger would never let her go.

PART IX

A PAPER TIGER TO SWALLOW YOU WHOLE

Jonathan kisses her mouth, then says against her cheek, “I promise I won't be long.”

She shivers.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” She smiles, but suddenly she wants to tell him to stay with her, forget the friends waiting in the car outside. Then she pushes it away. He won't be long, after all. She'll read a book while he's out and when he comes back, there will be time enough for love.

Time enough and forever.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

“Forever,” he says.

Then he's gone and tears gather in the corners of her eyes. He'll be back soon enough, she knows, but a strange, dark little fear gathers in her heart.

CHAPTER 23

Alison tucked her knees to her chin, not caring that the skin pulled. He knew he'd won. No matter what she did, no matter what she tried, the album would keep coming back until she gave up, gave in, and went back inside. She stretched out her hands, her scarred fingers broken soldiers in a secret war of shame. Was it such a bad thing, the want, the need, to be something close to normal? When you were whole, no one looked. No one stared.

Fresh tears coursed down her cheek.

Stop it. This is what he wants. Don't give in. There has to be a way to destroy it. There is
always
a way.

She crawled to the fireplace, her hip aching. Despite the flames and smoke, the album did not have one scorch mark, one stain, anything to show she'd set it afire.

“Come back,” it said.

“I hate you,” she said.

You have to destroy it from the inside.

“Why me?”

Because you opened the cage and let the tiger out.

She glanced at the bottle of lighter fluid. Could she possibly go in, start a fire, and leave without being trapped inside? No one would come and save her if she couldn't get free. An image darted through her mind: hungry flames inching their way across the floor, screams as the fire touched her skin, burning her up, roasting meat and singed hair—

“No, anything but that.”

She scrubbed her face with her hands. Could she go in, pour the lighter fluid on the floor, and wait until the clock chimed before she lit the match? That would—should—give her enough time to leave. But what if she forgot who she was when she went in? Would she remember what to do? And what if the house wouldn't burn from the inside, either?

You have to try something.

“I
have
tried. Nothing works.”

So try again.

She stuck the box of matches in the waistband of her pants, grabbed the lighter fluid, and kneeled on the edge of the hearth, the slate cold even through her pants. She extended her hand. Yanked it back with a sharp exhale.

“I can't do this.”

Then he's already won.

The air grew heavy. A haze blurred the edges of her vision. Music notes trilled in the air, and a vapor-pale hand reached through the inscription and seized her forearm. Her eyes said ghost, the grip on her arm said real, her head said George. Bone-deep cold traveled through her skin, stealing the scream from her mouth and the scars from her hand, each line, each mark erasing itself, leaving whole in its wake, with a scratching, re-knitting sensation. Five fingers moved where once there had been three. Five desperate fingers twisted to break free, the two newcomers behaving as though they'd been there all along.

The flow of healthy skin didn't stop with her hands. It crept to her wrist, the skin tingling as the scars melted into smooth, then to the elbow, then to her shoulder, down her back, across her chest, curving down to her hips and last, sliding over her neck and chin to her cheek and scalp.

She pulled her arm back with all her weight, but the fingers dug in hard; the cold, harder still. George's fingers darkened, mottled
with spots. She reached with her left hand to pry them free, but her fingers passed through the ghost skin, touching her own beneath.

A forearm broke the surface of the paper, a grim periscope, the white of his sleeve a mere suggestion of color.

“You
will
come back,” George said.

And inside, the music played, the voices spoke, the tiger beckoned. George's fingers tightened even more.

“You can't have me,” she cried out.

“You. Are. Mine.”

Her skin prickled with pins and needles, painful and sharp, digging from the inside out. More of his arm broke through the album. A shimmering shape of an arm, but with every hair, pore, and fingernail clearly defined. Dark spots like dead roses painted on canvas moved across his grey skin.

Her knees slid on the slate tile, her fingers only inches away from the paper. The sharp edges of his now-real fingernails made half-moon bruises on her skin. She tugged her arm hard, and one of the marks opened, spilling out a line of red. Another hand broke free from the paper world; the fingertips curved against the page. He wasn't trying to pull her in. He was using her to pry himself out. She shoved against the arm holding hers.

“Oh no you will not,” she said.

He laughed in reply. She twisted her arm back and forth, pain raking her skin. The small gash on her arm widened, joined by another. She twisted again. His nails sliced new marks, but his icy fingers slipped on the blood-slick flesh. With a shout, she wrenched her arm back. His hand slipped again, but she was almost free.

Then he renewed his grip. Too strong. He was too strong. Inside her, Purple screamed, Red raged, and Yellow sobbed.

George's fingers grabbed hold of the edge of the fireplace. The top of his head broke free, his dark hair obscuring the inscription. The image blurred and she swayed on her knees. His head rose even
more, all the way to the brow line. She smacked at the image, the flat of her palm striking only the album.

The air tightened. Cold gathered weight. She struck out again, and her hand met a hard curve of bone, the slick of hair, not the album. She grabbed for the knife, but her hand hit the handle too hard and it spun away out of reach. She straightened one leg, pressed her foot against the edge of the fireplace for leverage, and shoved her upper body forward then lunged back, and his hand slipped from her arm. Her scars came marching back in, no need for stealth. They slammed back into her flesh, ripping the breath from her lungs.

George's hands paled to an outline of rippling light, slipping back into the album, and he roared, all fury and hatred. The weight of his attempt at freedom had forced the album hard against the fireplace's concrete interior, and her fingers, her stupid, awkward fingers, could not feel, could not pull it free. Her pulse thumped in her ears. Her breath raced in and out.

Footsteps sounded in the distance, heavy with purpose, and a wisp of fragrant smoke rose from the center of the album.

Scraping her skin against the brick, she hooked one finger under the edge of the album cover. It slipped free. With a shriek of frustration, she shoved her finger underneath the corner until she loosened it enough to lift it up and over. The cover crashed down. The album shook with the reverberation.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “Just let me go.”

And from far away, George's voice came in reply. “Never.”

Alison scooted back several feet (best not to keep your back to a tiger) and sat with her left leg curled beneath her, and her scarred leg straight.

“One, two, three, tigers at a time,” she sang under her breath.

Soft voices offered sweet lies disguised as promises. She ignored them all.

“Four, five, six, tigers in a line.”

George would never leave her alone, not until he had what he wanted.

“Seven, eight, nine, stripes in the night.”

Not until he used her to get what he wanted.

“And when it's ten, the tigers bite.”

And he desired what any caged animal wanted: freedom.

“And they bite and bite and bite.”

More than that, he wanted to be real, and he had been, for an instant before she broke contact. She'd hit his head and his arm—real flesh, not a paper mirage. She'd done it. She'd made him real.

She fetched the knife and smiled scarlet. If she did it once, she could do it again, and in the real world, tigers could be killed.

She poked the edge of the album with the knife.

“I know you're there, George.”

The voices within stilled. A heaviness grew in the air.

“I'm tired of fighting,” she said, the weariness in her voice unfeigned.

She hid the knife behind her back and flipped open the cover. Inside, she was white and still and calm, an empty canvas. On her hands and knees in front of the fireplace, she held her left hand over the page.

“Please let this work.”

George's arm burst from the center of the page, the tip of one shimmering finger a hair's breadth away from her own. She bridged the gap between them and curled her fingers around his wrist, recoiling as the cold stole her scars away again.

And in that touch, the tricks and the glamour, the lies and the darkness, peeled back to reveal the truth. He existed only through an album filled with images of his precious house, now his tomb, a thing fattened on sorrow, suffering, and woe. Like a caged tiger no one remembered to feed, he'd withered away to a pathetic nothing, surrounded by the ghosts of his making. Desperate to break free from the prison of his paper construct, he needed her far more than she needed his illusion of magic.

Alison smiled. It was time to close the door forever to Pennington House.

Once her hand was whole, five fingers tightened around the knife and held it sure and steady. She tightened her hold on his wrist, pulling, luring, him out. His other hand broke free, grey, hazy fingers coming to rest on the hearth just past the concrete interior. His head emerged, neck bisected by the parchment. He opened his mouth, but all that escaped was a soft push of frigid air. He frowned. Both hands pushed, and his shoulders materialized, the only sound a slight rustling of paper. Another push and his chest slipped out. He leaned forward to pull the rest of his torso free. Halfway out of the album, halfway out of the fireplace. Voices distorted in pain and fear slid into the air.

“Don't leave me,” Madeline cried.

A choking sob. “I'll play another song. I promise.”

“You promised I'd be whole. You said forever.”

“Please,” Thomas shouted. “Don't leave me like this.”

All of them begging and pleading as he left them behind, and if George heard, he gave no sign.

His pelvis broke the surface and then one leg, his knee rising until his foot pressed down on the album. Alison stood, still holding his arm, as he slid the other leg free and crawled from the fireplace, his mouth in a mocking smile. He settled back on his heels, a diaphanous figure with a blurred outline and dark spots marring his
skin, shirt, and pants. Again, a push of cold air from his mouth, and nothing more. He wasn't real. Not yet.

Breathy gasps and wordless cries lifted into the air.

“Will they die?” she asked.

He shrugged one shoulder, took her hand from his arm, and held it between his. Tiny prickles of cold slipped through her fingers to her palm. The tiger creeping in, searching for what he needed.

Soon, very soon.

Her shadow playdanced on the wall, but he cast none at all. She looked at her hand, swallowed in his own, and gripped the knife tighter. Then she lifted her chin and met his gaze head on.

“You wanted my pain. Here, take it.”

She let go of the white and willed everything out in a rush: The razor sharp slice of scalpels cutting away dead, charred flesh. “We have to remove her eye. It's too damaged.” The glimpse of Jonathan in the doorway, then waking to find him gone. The sorrow reflected in her mother's eyes. “I'm sorry, so sorry.” The shame when a stranger looked a little too close. “Did you see that girl?” The face in the mirror. The hiding. The isolation. The fear. The rage.

She gave him everything. She gave him the Monstergirl.

And made him real.

He threw back his head, grinning in triumph, and let go of her hand to brace himself against the wall. He swayed in place. “Exquisite,” he said.

With a shout, she whipped her arm forward and shoved the blade, all the way to the handle, into his upper chest. He jerked forward, his mouth working as he roared.

“You wanted to be real,” she said, pulling the knife free.

A cascade of blood spilled over his shirt, and the grandfather clock chimed, the sound far in the distance. George swung his arm around and knocked the knife from her hand. It flew across the
room, flipped end over end, and landed with a clatter on the floor near the front door.

“Did you think you could best me?”