Ashes (25 page)

“What did you do with her?” Arson's eyes slipped down to the mask in Mandy's left hand. It was still melting, and Mandy couldn't feel a thing. The mask locked inside was torn and crippled with stained edges, the hollow gaze searching him out. “Where are you hiding her!
”
A scream ripped through him. Veins on the side of his temple pulsated, nostrils pulling with disgust. This dream world was feeling more and more real.

“We're
gonna
fix her face,” Mandy said, suddenly lighting a cigarette. Her lips toyed with it. She let her tongue dance around the tip. He wished the cancer stick in her mouth would ignite, and he marveled when it actually happened. The spark was gone by the time the cigarette pinched between her ceramic smile began to melt her. In a blink, the flame crawled toward her stained lips, a flab of skin slinking back and forth as it withered.

 
“Look at me, freak!”

He kept his eyes shut, wishing her away. Begging whatever force governed this dark world to take her.

Then her voice got deep and nasty, and it sounded like a growl, distant from the inside. “We'll fix her, Arson. We'll fix her
goooooood
. And then you'll die here with me!”

Sweat bled down his neck. He felt it slither along each dent in his spine. Then suddenly, she vanished.
 

The cold spread through his chest. “Help!” he yelled, his voice stretching what seemed like a chamber of a thousand miles. He'd wandered these halls before, but never had he been this lost, so afraid of what lay around each corner, what new hell hid in this forever dark.
 

“Get a grip, Arson.”
Like whispering to himself would help any.
This place was creepy. He wondered how something like this was even possible. How many other things or spirits were here with him? Did they exist here or did his mind create them? Was he merely the visitor?

Arson concentrated on his grip. He stared down at his hands. He knew he could, if he wanted to, birth a flame. Well, couldn't he? He'd done it hundreds of times before. He thought back to how he practiced watching things burn behind the cabin. When Grandma…wasn't herself. No matter if he ran or stood still. There were two holes chiseled out of him. Where Grandma and Emery belonged.

He loved them both more than breath itself.

Arson chugged a wad of spit down and blinked fast, sealing flesh to flesh. He imagined himself lighting like a whirlwind, imagined that it would all happen with one furious thought after another trampling through a mind consumed.

Still nothing. Now. But before, he had made Mandy burn, and before she showed up, his grip was on fire. It happened, though he couldn't control it. Not in the slightest. But the fact that it happened erratically and without warning didn't mean he had his powers back. It didn't mean he could go nuclear whenever he wanted.

“You can do this.” Arson smacked his hands together once, twice. “Now, let's go!” Once his nerves settled, he stood straight and rigid, his mind quieted, his muscles limp. He embraced the cold and felt his eyeballs roll. Nothing bitter, nothing violent.
Just the chilling, quiet whispers.

Arson swung his leg up into a radiator with a curse. “Who am I!” he screamed.

A voice suddenly startled him. “You think that's gonna help? Screaming at the top of your lungs like a lunatic?”
 

Arson turned back around, shaky, to find the voice. “You?”

“Yeah, me.” The boy remained hidden. “Look at you. You're a mess. You got stupid. You can't control your stupid temper. And that means you definitely can't control your powers.”

Arson's eyes flashed, his heart unsure whether to keep beating or to skip one. “So…what, you're an expert on anger management and magic?” Arson whispered weakly, flicking his fingers in hopes to call out a spark.

“It isn't magic. It's science. That's it. Mankind has always possessed the ability to do what men for
generations
thought was impossible. But it is possible. Case in point, you.”

Arson returned a confused look.

“Yeah, it's true. And you've always known, haven't you? C'mon, you hit this one big. You tapped into the mother ship, Sparkie. Now, will you quit being such a baby? Obviously, throwing a pity party isn't going to get your powers back. That's not how it works in here.”

Arson smirked. “What would you know about it?”

“I know a lot more than you. You think you're so big and bad, do ya? Then why are you stuck here? How'd you get caught?”

“Look, just shut up, Danny!”

The boy held back a laugh. “Easy.”

Arson grunted, combing stiff knuckles through his hair. He shocked even himself. Minutes ago, before Mandy showed up and threatened him, he
wanted
to see this boy, talk with him, but all he could think about right now was turning the fire back on.

“What are you doing here?” Arson asked with a shrug.

“What are
you
doing here?”

“So, we're playing that game again?”

“You seem to like playing games…with people's lives,” the boy said, sounding more like a frustrated detective than a lost ten year old.

“What are you talking about?” Arson barked.

“Don't act dumb. Ever since you were a kid, you know, that mistake you made? That stuff makes you who you are. You wrecked that little girl's life. Killed your own mom. Your grandmother hates you.”

The boy spoke with such explicit execution.

“But that…wasn't my fault.”

“You think that fixes anything? You think that makes it all better? ‘Oh, sorry, I ruined your life, but it's okay because I've been feeling bad ever since.' Wake up. It isn't that simple.”

 
“You were there too,” Arson seethed.

“There it is…your scapegoat. Blame
me
for everything. I mean, get real.”

“You're the most real thing I've seen since…” Arson's mind tripped.

“You start to forget about time in here.” After a short pause, the boy said, “So you saw the slut, huh?”

Arson's neck jerked.

“She's hot, but can you imagine if you went all the way with that psycho chick? Then you'd really have some bad feelings.”

The shock spread across Arson's face. Was he hearing correctly? Did this ten-year-old boy just call Mandy a slut and then go on to talk about going all the way?

Ghost, Arson, he's just a ghost.

“I'm not a ghost. I'm more real than you know.”

“You can hear what I'm thinking?”

The boy nodded.

Arson's gaze stretched down the derelict hallway. “You seem kinda smart for a kid who's ten.”

“Have you seen this place? Got nothing but time in here. You get
smarter
. You probably will too, if you survive.”

The boy started walking away again. Arson watched as the boy's brown hair flopped back and forth faster as he walked.

“Where are you going?”

The boy's quiet steps gave Arson another round of chills. “Look, don't leave me, okay?”

“You scared?”

Arson looked away then slowly said, “I need to get out of here.”

“I'm not strong enough to help you,” the boy confessed. “I don't know how to get out.”

“Don't leave me again. You left me before. You never came back.” Sobs held his voice. “Not now. No. Please, Danny! Please!”

Arson followed the boy through a set of double doors. A slow draft lulled the swinging portals forth and back. He imagined the sound of
their
creak unhinging every joint and bone in his back. He drank a slug of lukewarm spit. His skin crawled. Each knuckle was prepared to crumble in his grip.

The boy was gone again.

Arson turned around in a circle, unsettling the dust and the dark.

Everyone was gone. Everything was gone.

Everything but the cold and the walls.

But then, something called him into that room. The room that rested behind the double doors that swung to an otherworldly melody.
The room with the checkered floor.

The room
, Arson thought.
The room where I was born.
The room where I killed my mother.

He'd seen the moving pictures in that place, how they came to life and gave him memories he'd never acquired on his own. It was an impossible mystery. Arson didn't like it, didn't understand it. He just stared at the black and white tiles glistening as the slivers of silver moonlight reflected off the surface. Was that pain or terror or catastrophe removing the embers inside him?

I have to face it.

The cold moved closer. Slowly, the doors groaned with haunting finality. He felt a pinch in his spine as he walked through.

33

 

THERE WAS A PIECE of wallpaper sticking out of one of the floorboards. Adam wanted to put it back, to fix that loose piece barely hanging on. He fidgeted with it, used spit in efforts to paste it back against the wall. Where it belonged.

Adam hadn't used many words in the few lost moments between when he'd walked through the front door and now. Emery's footsteps soothed him a bit, but they didn't fix much of anything. They sure didn't fix that chunk of lead in his gut.

Wary eyes approached every corner. He reached for the weapon he'd kept concealed most of the night. Held it tightly, like it was breath, or God—hope in something ordinary eyes couldn't see.

His elbow snapped into place. His back clung to the walls, uneasy. He snorted a deep breath through his nostrils, the dust and stagnant air shuffling in. With gritted teeth, Adam swore he felt the veins in his forearm blister, but when he checked, they were appropriately hidden beneath his skin. What was wrong with him? He kept telling himself to stop freaking out.

“Adam, are you all right?”

He swallowed. His mouth was begging for water. He heard Emery's voice, but it sounded like a muffled echo. This house was a cave. He kept imagining lions coming out to devour them.

“Theresnolionstheresnolionstheresnolions,” he repeated with rapid blinking.

Emery kept her distance, and fear thickened within her with each step on the wooden floors.

Adam's finger licked the trigger. His slippery grip was temptation enough to pull it. All he needed was a reason.
 

His mind was doing laps. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe how little it had changed. This was home. It'd taken him years to return, but he had finally come back.
Familiar, but now a part unknown.
Did it remember him? Could a house remember souls? How strange it had been to glide through the front door minutes earlier. Breaking in was easy enough. He could feel more of his powers, his strength, returning.

 
“This is your home?” Emery asked softly, leaving a thin trail of blood behind every painful step she took. So did Adam.

His lungs inflated. He didn't answer her. This apprehension remained, and he didn't wish to speak. His neck jerked out around every corner and scanned the area.
The ornate living room with dressed furniture.
The calm, neat foyer where he used to come in muddy from a day of playing in the rain.

Mom used to get so angry.

He shifted left.
The guest bedroom, where the Gray Man slept during his visits.
 

Adam's eye twitched. He blinked a bunch of fluttered blinks.

Emery didn't see him. She was clinging to his back, though. Her grip was so tight he wondered if she was penetrating skin.

It was like every corner had a shadow he wanted to be rid of, a villain he had to destroy. But nothing was certain. He couldn't even feel his footsteps any longer. There was a numbness spreading through. The blood and cuts may as well have had calluses. Yet it brought a peculiar sense of awe, how this house remained so untouched, like it was removed from the world altogether.

He'd already circled around the spot where the slice of wallpaper reluctantly refused to remain joined to its counterparts, as if being bonded to one of its patterned brothers were too painful. His ankle nudged the lonely piece as Adam cautiously skulked past the vacant kitchen and scaled the stairs. Step by step he traced his memories up this flight. Only he was happy, not like now. Not like…

“Where are your parents, Adam?” Emery asked.

Adam put his index finger to his lips and pushed out a soft breath. “Stay there. I'm going to check upstairs.”

“Fine,” she whispered in return.

Adam may as well have been an apparition for the next several minutes, wandering the upper level. But when he came back, there was an unforgiving, mysterious clarity in his eyes.

Adam methodically placed one leg in front of the other and descended the stairs toward Emery. Behind him there was so much black, space that light seemed to abandon. Before him he saw Emery, looked into her, wondering if he was actually looking
through
her, because it felt like he was. His vision blended clearer. The lead in his chest was melting.

“What's up there?” she asked desperately.

“My life. Emery. I
am
home.”

Adam stared straight at her silently. It was enough to replace words. Once he'd finished scanning the house, he returned to the center spot on the lower floor where the entrance was.

 
“Emery, I…” Suddenly, he was drawn to a picture frame set atop glass. “Oh.”

It was littered with dust, but the people lost inside were known ones. The Gray Man's face called out to him from within the oddly plain frame. He had thick eyebrows and an inviting aura. His arm sat along a younger boy's sloped shoulder. The boy had long, dangling hair that suited him well, considering the soft features he possessed.

Curiosity forced Emery to ask, “Who are
they
?” With that, she drew closer to him. Her presence felt invasive.
 

Adam blinked. Images belligerently crowded his mind. He blinked again, and they vanished. Then blinding green light
;
then darkness. Foggy breath blurred his vision, followed by a white room and men barraging him with questions.

And the needles.

His arms still stung. His spine tingled.
 

Emery touched his shoulder, but without thinking, Adam swung his hand into her chest, and her body flipped back. She collided with some furniture and then smacked the wood floor hard with her elbows. “Adam, what's wrong with you!” she yelled, catching her breath.
 

“I'm sorry. Emery, I…” Adam slowly brought the butt of the gun to his right temple and squinted. He bit down hard. There was nothing he could say.
He only hoped she might forgive him.

She gasped and winced in pain. “Man, you hit me like a truck. Knocked the wind right out of me.” Her eyes grew wide. “So who made you freak out?”

“What?” Adam asked, helping her to her feet.

“Who's in that photograph?”

There was a moment that drifted by, almost as if to forget them and move on. But even moments couldn't forget something like this. Adam's gaze fell into hers, still in pain. “You're looking at one of them,” he said slowly.

Emery's gaze turned from painful to perplexed. “Adam, this photograph was taken years ago.”

“Yeah, I had hair back then.”

“No, Adam,
years
ago. I mean
,
are you listening to yourself? That's crazy. You're only, like…”

“Eighteen?”

“Or something like that,” she said firmly, even though it came out as sort of a question.

Their eyes locked. “Yeah.”

Emery digested what he was telling her with just one word. “And who's the other guy?”

After a long sigh, Adam replied, “His name was Henry Parker.”

* * *

Adam was running down the stairs. His young body, feeble legs and all, raced down each step until his socked feet brushed against the floor. Henry Parker—the Gray Man—was waiting.

Henry's jawline caught Adam's eye first. It appeared tampered with, somehow, by the faint light, which acted more like a border around the doctor's otherwise gray countenance. His cheek had a muscle that twitched often. Adam never really understood it, but he sort of got used to the strangeness of it. With a furrowed brow,
those
fifty-something, frost-covered eyes drifted through time and space and captured the young boy. His first thought was to wonder how old this man really was; his second was to wonder what this stranger wanted. Adam had thought long and hard, calculated what manipulative, seedy plots lay behind those wintry eyes, but he concluded that perhaps the frost might soon melt.

A slick and heavy rain tapped along the windows, and a gray world lingered somewhere outside their front door, a passageway that separated the different worlds. The cold and the warmth, two brothers that never found peace…until the Gray Man came.

Adam's mouth formed his name first. “Henry.” But they made no other sound. Adam's unsure mother had been leaning up against the frame exiling her from the kitchen, where a ceremony of silence had gathered in anticipation of her son's arrival. The boy intently studied his mother, watching as her innermost thoughts began taking shape in the form of disconcerted glances and all-of-a-sudden shrugs.

The tapping of Henry's fingers on the kitchen table harmonized like a lullaby. Pinky first.
Then ring finger.
Then the middle one.
And lastly, the index, somehow always the loudest among an almost speechless council.

With the method of no ordinary man, the Gray Man turned. “Henry Park—” Adam started.

“Yes, Adam. Yes, it is
me
.” A warm smile formed the short words. “I have returned as I said I would, when the world could arrange for us to bring you to a new home.” His speech sounded so final, so definite. It defined the air around them, held captive the next few moments. “You are not frightened by me, are you? Certainly not, my young friend.”

Adam found himself repeating the word
friend
. He liked how it came out.
The gentle manner with which his tongue slid from top to bottom, almost welcoming this visitor again, for what may have been the seventh time in two years.
Friend. Not enemy. Friend. A hope.
A chance to become.

A chance for the world to become.

Henry Parker's arm was draped over the back of the chair now, his fingers never quitting their tapping, the impeccable nature of it soothing and unadulterated. Adam noticed his fingernails,
their
precision. He took in the sight of Henry's top hat, the colors blended with the rain and the mystery of the world he found little hope in. The soft ridges of Henry's knuckles as they slowly wrapped round the knots of a creaking chair whispered chills down Adam's spine.

“You're here to bring me…with you?”

“That's why I've come, son.”

“Don't call him that,” Adam's mother broke in, but his father soon swallowed her remark with a forceful hush.

“Adam, your parents will understand. Time brings all things to light.”

It was as if in that moment Adam could look into both of his parents' eyes at the same time. How he wished he could feel as they felt. How he wished they could feel as he did. His crystal stare shifted with a blink, and Henry Parker stood up slowly. “You can come to me now, Adam. I won't hurt you.”

 
“It's okay,” came the voice of his father. It sounded like reason, reason to trust.
Reason, excuse, faith.

“We can be friends,” Henry exhaled, offering his hand. “You'd like that, wouldn't you? We'll be friends for a long time, I imagine.”

Adam hesitantly reached out to take the old man's hand. “You will become, Adam. There is something beautiful inside you, something strong. You are the first we have ever found, the only human creature that we know who is born with it. You possess this strength in your blood and in your mind. I call it the God gene.” Adam always knew he was different, but before Henry, he never believed what he'd be capable of.

“I have searched far and wide for you, my boy,” Henry continued. “I can assure you our meeting is no accident. The stars are in position. The heavens have spoken. I've been looking for something like you…for so long.”

“Something?”

“Someone, my friend. Forgive me. Some
one
.”

Adam showed his teeth as he smiled. Henry had already checked his body for irregular bruising, disrupted brain activity, a frail heart. But what was found was that the irregularities, if any were discovered, proved to be improvements in human DNA.

Adam understood his role, to become something even more than what he'd achieved on his own, what his body had learned to do. And Henry was his friend. To a young boy, such a purpose seemed divine.

“We are going to change this world, you and I. You, Adam, are the first of this new kind. But there will be more.
Like you.
Soon.
Very soon.
I have no more doubts. There will be many.”

Henry was like a giant over him. Adam seemed so small. He could feel his
brows
shift, his lips chapping the more times he licked them. The man's coat danced with the coffin of dust surrounding them, a flicker of light catching Lana's bright hair just slightly.

“Don't worry,” Henry said. “Your sister will be all right. We'll make sure she is taken care of. They will all be all right. We're doing this for them, you see, for all of us.” A moment's pause, and then Henry's huge palm cupped Adam's shoulder. “It is time.”

Adam was ready, but there was a faint part—so faint—that longed for his family to endure this journey with him.
Science and men and God.
But no home.
He felt searched and hollow, yet still he could not bear the thought of being left behind when his purpose was great. He had to go. He had to become.