Beyond (21 page)

That’s me on the floor. My body. I’m looking down at it, from the outside.

My legs are still twitching from the shock of the stun gun. But the lights have gone out behind my eyes.

I rise up, weightless. The ghost me.

From above I see the two corpses, mine and Starks’s, side by side, facing each other. Empty shells now. The only living thing left here is Billy, shaking my shoulder.

Leaving my body behind, I pass through the roof of the hut. Into the night.

The rain falls through me. I can’t feel the cold or the wind. Can’t feel anything but the
pull
of the sky. Like it’s calling out to me.

Then I’m flying, higher and higher, till I can see the whole town under me. The streetlights look like stars fallen to the ground, lined up in constellations linking everything together. I spot my house, a yellow glow at the end of a string of stars.

I feel a rush of sadness. At leaving Mom and Dad, Lexi and everything I’ve ever known.

But there’s no going back. No goodbyes.

The lights below fade as Edgewood falls farther away. Looking up to see where I’m going, I find nothing. No stars. No sky.

Just infinite blackness.
The Divide
.

It pulls me away from the world with its own dark gravity, surrounding me, swallowing me.

I’ve never felt so hopeless and heartsick.

I know this time death is forever.

But I’m not alone.

A pair of eyes opens in the blackness, glimmering.

There’s no getting away from Leo. But I’m not scared anymore. He’s already taken everything from me. And here in the dark I have no shadow left to betray me.

Now I’m mad! For all the pain he caused. For my stolen life.

He glides closer. Looking the same as when he haunted me. Still starving thin, wearing his hooded sweatshirt.

The shine of his eyes casts him in a pale amber glow.

You came back to me
.

He sounds so sad and small. Not a ghost’s voice now, just a kid’s.

“You made me.” My words echo from my mind to his.

But you belong with me. You’re mine
.

“I never was! And never will be.”

I’ll fight him even if there’s nothing left to fight for. Even if it’s forever.

But I found you, when you were lost. I kept you safe. Kept you close
.

“I wasn’t yours to keep!” My shout booms like thunder through the Divide.

And it wakes something else up in this dead place.

A spark of light in the distance, behind Leo. It’s so small I don’t want to look away in case I lose it. As I’m watching, it grows from a spark to a star—the only one here.

The sight of that little ember ignites a feeling of hope. And I remember. I know that light. What it means.

Leo follows my gaze.

No!
he cries.
I won’t let you
.

“Don’t you know what that is?”

It’s a lie. It burns
. Panic in his voice.

The oncoming light has grown in the dark.

My anger is fading, with the promise of that glowing brightness. I feel almost sorry for my ghost now, spending forever in this graveyard of souls.

“Come with me,” I say.

The light widens into a blazing white eye.

I can’t. It hurts
.

“The light sets you free.”

Not me
. He’s shaking his head, eyes wide with fear.

“You have to let go of all the bad stuff. The hut. The pit. Him. All your pain. Let go.”

Can’t. Never
.

“Why not?”

He reaches out and grabs me.
Here’s why—

Even in these ghost bodies, he feels solid. But so cold. The contact pulls me into his mind.

This is where he keeps his worst memories locked away.

Images from his past flash by, burning into my mind’s eye. Carrying with them the feel of these moments, every sound, touch and smell.

The hut. And the pit. But this time I see them through Leo’s eyes.

I watch because I can’t shut it out. I’m a prisoner to his past, just like he is.

After he is taken, he wakes up in a strange bed, cold and confused. In a dark room with smoke-stained walls. He’s got no clothes on, and he hurts in places he’s never been hurt before. Then he sees the bald ranger standing over him.

Later, locked in the pit. Left here until the monster returns.

Then starved till he begs for scraps. Beaten, and worse.

Till he gives up thinking of ever getting away. Because he can never go home again. Not after what’s been done to him, what he’s been forced to do. Never see his mother or let her see this disgusting
thing
he’s become. She could never love him now.

He’s kept in the pit so long he forgets who he is. Till he’s nothing but a shadow.

He’s glad when death comes. So he can fly away, leaving his broken body and this nightmare world. Flying so far he leaves even the stars behind.

He likes it here in this void, where nobody can see him and he can’t see himself. He hides in the dark and feels nothing for the longest time.

But he’s still tied to the place where he’s buried, his hidden grave. That’s how he spots the little soul, escaping
from the town where his bones lie. It’s like a firefly in the blackness. He holds it and keeps it close.

The rush of images cuts off.

I find myself back in the Divide. Staring into his eyes.

You came
, he says.
And made me feel something that didn’t hurt. I can’t lose you!

While I was trapped in his memories, the light has become a perfect round moon, so close now I could dive right into it. I can make out my own ghost body in its shine. My pale skin reflecting the glow.

I’m shocked to see how the light dies on Leo. He stays a shadow, lit only by the flares of his eyes.

You see now?
he says.
What I am? Why I can’t go?

The pain of his memories is still raw in me. Like I lived it with him. Died with him. I have no words.

Stay with me. Please
, he begs.

I feel the light calling to me with its perfect sunshine. So beautiful. Its warmth melts away all my anger and grief for my stolen life.

Leo moves closer, as if he can stop me now. All he’s ever given me is pain and fear. But I can’t hate this sad and broken soul.

“Let me show you,” I say. “If you can just let go, it will only hurt for a second. I promise.”

You’re lying. It burns forever. I won’t let you go. Don’t make me hurt you
.

“You can’t hurt me now.”

Because caught in the shine I have no shadow left. And he has no power over me.

It’s time to go.

As I stretch my hand toward the light, it reaches out for me. Curling around my fingers with a glowing fog, slipping down my wrist and arm with a thrill of pure white heat.

Leo grabs my other hand.

He’s locked on tight. Still, I’m stronger than the first time he stole me from the light. And now that I’ve seen my shadow’s real face, I’m not afraid.

I know what I have to do. For both of us.

He won’t let go, so I won’t let him go either. I grasp his hand tight.

This is the only way to make him see.

I open myself up to the brightness, letting it fill me, and its current flows through me to Leo.

When it passes from my hand to his I feel his shock. He struggles to break free.

NO!
His shout echoes across the Divide.

The light burns into that blackest place where his memories are locked away, and my ghost body ignites as I feed the fire into him.

Leo screams in wild terror as every horror is dragged out of him in flames.

And even with his soul on fire he fights to keep hold of these nightmare things. Like he’s nothing without his darkness.

But finally his screams quiet to sobs as he gives up and lets himself burn through.

When the blazing brightness softens again I can see him clearly. With the darkness stripped away from him, he looks smaller, younger. His eyes are warm, the color of honey.

I let go of his hand as the light takes Leo, swirling around him.

Sorry
, he says in a sleepy whisper.
Sorry, Jane
.

As he drifts toward the whiteness of that perfect moon, I move to follow.

But something in me holds back. Why? The glow is the sweetest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever known. But it’s not calling to me like before.

Something else is.

I start drifting, away from the light, caught in a tide. I watch it shrink to an eye, an ember, a spark.

And then I’m falling. Slowly at first. Out of the empty night of the Divide and into a sky filled with stars.

I dive through the clouds and past them into the rain below. I see a familiar constellation of lights down there.

Edgewood grows large beneath me, the ground rushing up.

But I’m not afraid. I know where I’m going.

I slept for six days straight after the surgery, in a medically induced coma to help me heal. A sleep too deep for dreams, or nightmares.

First thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Lexi, slouched in a chair beside my hospital bed, flipping through a movie magazine.

She jumped up.

“Jane? You’re awake? Can you hear me?”

I could. But my words took a long time coming. My throat was dry as a desert, and I had to focus to get my mouth working again.

I looked up into her beautiful dark eyes. Never thought I’d see them again.

“Can you speak?” Lexi stood over me, so worried and anxious. “Say something!”

I could see her wondering—Is she a vegetable now? Is there brain damage?

“Jane, do you know who I am?”

My lips parted, but I couldn’t make a sound.

“Do you know me?” she asked.

Finally, I managed a scratchy whisper.

“Sis … ter.”

“What?” She bent down, her ear close to my lips.

“Creep … Sis … ter.”

Lexi leaned back, smiling. She was so choked up it took a minute before she could make her own voice work again.

“Don’t go anywhere. Let me run and get your mom. She just went for coffee downstairs.”

But before she left I had to make sure about something.

“Hey,” I whispered in my sandpaper voice. “I’m … not dead … right?”

“Not dead.”

I lay there stunned by every breath I took, every heartbeat. Everything that said: not dead.

A lot happened while I slept those six days.

Billy Hughes was returned to his family in Mill Valley. He’d been missing three weeks. What he went through during that time I don’t have to imagine. I saw enough when I shared my ghost’s memories.

When the investigators dug into Starks’s past they found no criminal history, until they uncovered his juvenile record, which had been sealed by law when he hit eighteen. Growing up, he’d been arrested for everything from indecent exposure to unlawful imprisonment, with some molestation charges that were dropped. By the time he became an adult he knew how to cover his tracks better, how not to get caught.

After a search of the hut and the surrounding woods they turned up no sign of other victims.

Then they found the map. Part of a park ranger’s job is tracking wildlife. In Starks’s computer they pulled up maps of animal migration patterns, nesting sites, dens and burrows. Another ranger who was called in to consult discovered something strange. There was a map showing the burrows of Western black-eared gophers. An animal that’s been extinct for over a century. And the location for one burrow matched the burial site of Leo Gage. When they checked out the other “gopher” sites they found more bodies.

Five more lost boys. The graves were spread out deep in the forests of Raincoast National Park. The police think Starks kept track of the sites so he could visit his victims and relive what he’d done to them.

His trappers’ hut is located just outside Edgewood but hidden in dense woods. I ran a crazy unconscious marathon that night to get there.

They did an autopsy to determine the ranger’s cause of death. Dad said I didn’t need to hear about that, but I wouldn’t let it go.

Starks’s death was declared a cardiac arrest, with a contributing heart defect. When they cut him open they discovered that the walls of his heart had totally collapsed. There was no external trauma to the chest, so the coroner couldn’t explain why the heart appeared to have been crushed flat. He’d never seen anything like it.

When it came time for me to explain what happened that night—how I ended up in the hut in the woods—

I kept my lies real simple. I told them the last thing I remembered was passing out in our bathroom at home. Then I must have gone sleepwalking, gotten out of the house. For everything past that, I claimed I had a killer case of amnesia, no memory of what, how or why everything went down the way it did. I had my recent surgery to blame for that.

I left it to Dad and the task force cops to come up with some theories.

Their best guess was this: Starks must have been out driving and spotted me sleepwalking down the middle of the street. I would have been easy prey in my unconscious state. But what they couldn’t explain, what didn’t make sense to them, was why he’d abduct a girl. Because predators like Starks almost always stick to a very specific type of victim. He was into boys. This left the profilers puzzled. But as far as the task force was concerned, whatever Starks’s motives were in grabbing me, he took them to the grave.