Ethan
The chaos stopped. All of it. At once. Just like that.
Nothing except the man coming down the spiral stairs.
“Hey.”
help!
Te’lo’hi was squirming in Jack Allen’s grip, still held aloft by his silver hair. Hunter crossed the platform and pried the knife from Jack Allen’s outstretched hand. Jack Allen let it go. It was obvious he could do nothing to stop this.
The widening shock in Jack Allen’s eyes, however, proved he knew what was happening.
Hunter swung the knife against Jack Allen’s other hand, the hand holding Te’lo’hi in the air.
He swung at the wrist, specifically. Jack Allen stood, frozen, as Hunter struck the wrist with the knife again and again and again until the bone cracked and the tendons tore and the mangled hand ripped loose from Jack Allen’s arm.
Its fingers opened, and Te’lo’hi was free.
The little god-creature landed on his feet, silent as a cat. A few strands of his silver hair had come loose in the struggle and had melted into a silver puddle. When the boy kicked the water, the puddle sang softly with a sound like wind chimes.
Hunter finally looked in Ethan’s face. His eyes glowed with a brilliant silver light.
“Can you guess where I turned up when we went through the mirror this evening?”
Ethan looked around at the platform. “Here?”
Hunter nodded.
“You drank a little bit of Te’lo’hi, didn’t you? Just like Jack Allen did in ’55.”
It was Te’lo’hi that answered. Scowling at the half dozen Jack Allens still standing around the platform, the child said
this man was a fool
he thought he had stolen a piece of my power
taken it by force
he never realized that i gave it to him willingly
he was not the only one of his ceremony to learn what was happening
through time and study
they all realized they were trapped
it is how this woman came to be my new Attendant
the way the engineer shattered the mirror for Kyla
it was
a disaster
“They spent too long trapped here against their will,” Hunter said. “Even longer than us.”
i decided to try something new
i allowed Jack Allen to find me
i gave him a sliver of my power
but when the new ceremony began
i concealed the dead child and her sister
to ensure she was never found
every night Jack Allen would cull the rest of you
thinking he could break the circle
giving no one else the opportunity
to learn what was happening here
no one
i thought
would break the circle again
Ethan shuddered at the word cull. He thought of what Jack Allen had told him in the diner today about being unable to find Penelope and Adeline in all his many nights at the motel.
He looked to where Fernanda had crouched over Adeline.
He said to Te’lo’hi, “Are you the reason Penelope’s sister was stuck to her like a shadow? ”
yes
i could see that in many stories
i would be unable to guide enough souls to the motel tonight
the new ceremony would not have had the power it needed
so when Adeline died,
i did not allow her soul to escape
I bound her to her sister
slumbering
until she awoke today
Hunter frowned at this, a look of sincere pain crossing his face.
He killed families, Mister Cross.
Ethan said to Hunter, “Every night at six thirty, on that smoke break with Ryan, you always remembered what was happening, didn’t you? You remembered that you killed Sarah the first night and got us all trapped here.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why keep it going?”
“To save the world. Why else?”
“That’s bullshit,” Ethan said. “You and I both know you’d let the world burn before you let someone tell you what to do. Just give me the truth. Please.”
The silver light in Hunter’s eyes seemed to shiver. They produced a pair of silver tears. “Do you remember two nights ago, right before the end, when I said how meeting you had changed me?”
That was six weeks ago. People don’t change in six weeks.
“Yes.”
“I’ve known you a lot longer than six weeks, Mister Cross,” Hunter said.
He tried to laugh, but the scratch in his chest turned into a hacking cough.
He spat out blood. It, too, gleamed like mercury.
“I felt like every night with you made me a better man. Just sitting in our room for a few hours at a time. Talking to you. Being near you. My dad always told me to make the best of a shit situation, so I did. I just… never wanted it to end.”
Ethan could think of a million things to say to that, but he supposed it all boiled down to the same question. “So what happens now?”
With the knife in his hand, Hunter began to walk around the platform, slitting throats. He cut the throat of the Jack Allen behind Sarah, the ones that had been pursuing Ethan and Kyla, the one that had killed the Attendant, the one threatening Fernanda and Adeline.
Hunter said, “Now, I do what I was brought here to do. I’ve got the same power in me as Jack Allen has in himself. I’m the only one who can take care of him.”
Ethan said, “But?”
“But… let’s just say that Jack Allen and I would have to cancel each other out.”
A great weight settled in Ethan’s chest. All the horror, all the pain, and still it came down to this: two young men looking at each other in a pale light, knowing it could never last.
“That bug in your chest is terminal anyway, isn’t it?” Ethan said.
“Of course. Why do you think they let me out of Huntsville? It would have cost them a fortune to treat me.” Hunter studied the blood on his palm that he’d hacked up from his lungs.
“I’d hoped you and me could have a little more time together before the whole ceremony broke down, but that’s life, right?
You never get as much time as you think. ”
Out of nowhere, Te’lo’hi opened his mouth and released one of those awful moans of pain.
it hurts
IT HURTS
Hunter said to Ethan, “He can’t hold out much longer. Y’all are going to have to figure something out.”
there’s nothing to do
nothing
“I hope there’s a way you can save yourselves,” Hunter said. “I really do.”
it’s over
it’s all OVER
Through the noise, Hunter pulled Ethan close again. He said, “If anyone can figure this out, it’s you.”
“Me? What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re good with people, Ethan. I don’t think a god is all that different at the end of the day.”
Hunter squeezed him tighter. For a brief, hideous moment, Ethan couldn’t imagine ever letting go of this embrace.
The man went on. “I have money in California. A lot of it. If you make it out of this, you’ll find instructions on where to get it. There’ll be more than enough to get you started again.”
“Do I want to know how you made that money?”
“Money is money, Ethan. Just use it wisely.”
Te’lo’hi started to moan again, and this time he didn’t seem able to stop. Ethan remembered this sound from last night: when the mountain had started to scream like this, uninterrupted, things were about to end.
Still, Hunter held him. “I’m going to go now.”
Ethan said, “All right.”
Hunter said, “I love you, Ethan Cross.”
Ethan met his gaze. “I know.”
Hunter closed his eyes for a moment, let out a small smile.
He nodded, probably because this was the best he was going to get.
He let go, stepped away, and raised the knife again.
He approached the Jack Allen that been stupid enough to grab Te’lo’hi, to ever think he could control a god.
There was a mangled stump on the man’s arm where the hand had been hacked away. A look of horror in his dark eyes.
Even frozen in space, Jack Allen had changed. He looked small and outplayed, pathetic in a way that was almost painful to fathom. In that moment, Ethan felt something he’d have never thought possible.
He was grateful his mother had died. He was grateful she would never have to see what her father had become.
Hunter slashed open the man’s other wrist. He ran the blade along Jack Allen’s neck. He buried the blade in the man’s weeping eyes and dug them out, one by one. He sank the knife into Jack Allen’s chest, deep in his heart.
Hunter thumped his own chest with his fist. He was wheezing bad. He looked at Ethan one last time. He opened his mouth, thought better of it. He gave Ethan a nod.
Time surged forward, all at once. The Jack Allens around the platform fell to their knees, clutching their slit throats. The one to whom Hunter had given special attention was screaming, blood jetting from his wounds.
Hunter moved fast. He grabbed the man by the arm and heaved him forward, across the platform, and planted his shoulder against Jack Allen’s back.
The man in the gabardine suit was powerless to stop him as Hunter pushed them both right to the edge of the column of silver light.
Even through his pain and his blindness, Jack Allen seemed to realize what was happening.
He dug in his heels. He tried to stop it.
With a wheezing roar and the last of his strength, Hunter slammed himself against Jack Allen, hurling them both into the air.
When the two men struck the silver column, a boom ripped through the air. A boom, and a flash of light, and the echoes of two voices amidst the noise.
Jack Allen was saying, “Love me. Love me. Love me.”
The other voice was calm. Grateful. Sad. “Thanks, Ethan. For everything.”
There wasn’t time for any sort of sentiment. With time moving again, Kyla was at Ethan’s side, staring down at the wailing god, saying to Ethan, “What the hell just happened?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
there is no later
there is no tomorrow
THERE IS NO NOW
Sarah Powers lay in a pool of blood, struggling to stand. The Attendant was dead. The column of silver light was glowing brighter than ever.
And Te’lo’hi was screaming.
Kyla shot Ethan a panicked look. She said to the little god, “Why don’t you just leave?”
The child looked at her.
leave?
“You can exist anywhere, right?”
i don’t
i don’t know
“She’s right,” Ethan said. “If your full power is awakening, then doesn’t that mean you can travel anywhere now? Go find some corner of the galaxy where nobody lives. Just go and release all your energy there?”
i
i
i can’t
i CAN’T
Ethan studied the little god. He saw the way that even as Te’lo’hi wailed and wept, there was something else in those silver eyes, a strange sort of shudder in his pale flesh. Ethan felt a stirring of understanding. If anyone can figure this out, it’s you.
Ethan said to Te’lo’hi, “You can’t, or you won’t?”
The moans of pain continued, but the god somehow seemed to hesitate. He lifted his silver eyes to stare at Ethan.
what?
Hunter had been right. As Ethan watched the way the silver eyes trembled, the twitch in Te’lo’hi’s small fingers, the flicker of doubt at the corners of his mouth, Ethan realized that a god wasn’t so different from a person. Or at least not a god who had spent so long with the human race.
Te’lo’hi had the same little tics and tremors as any person. The same clicks and rumbles of an engine, all betraying the motor of the heart.
Ethan said, “You’re afraid to be alone.”
Te’lo’hi’s moaning softened. It didn’t end, but it calmed enough for Ethan to know he’d touched a nerve.
i’m
what?
“You’re afraid of being left alone. You already lost your own people. Now you’re afraid of losing everyone. You’re afraid to be by yourself in this big, empty universe. I can’t blame you. I was too afraid to leave home by myself too.”
Kyla looked from Te’lo’hi to Ethan and back again. “Is he right? Is it really that simple?”
Te’lo’hi said nothing, but the beam of light was growing more unstable by the second. A crack spread through the stone platform beneath their feet. Sarah Powers stirred in her pool of blood.
“Please. Do something. Don’t kill my boys.”
i don’t want it
i don’t want it
I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE
Every time Ethan thought this creature couldn’t get any louder, he was proven wrong. It released a sound that defied definition. Ethan and Kyla doubled over in pain. The column of silver light started to expand.
Sarah spoke. It sounded like it took the last of her strength. “Why don’t… one of you… go with him?”
Ethan looked at Kyla. Kyla looked to Ethan.
“Go with him?” Kyla said.
Ethan looked at the corpse of Frank O’Shea’s mother, the dead Attendant. He said, “I guess we could become like her.”
Kyla didn’t look any more thrilled by the idea, but she gritted her teeth, nodded to Te’lo’hi. “We could leave. We could take you away. We could make sure—”
“No.”
The voice that spoke was calm. Dignified. Effortlessly in command.
Two figures rose from their place on the platform. One was Adeline, who approached the screaming god-child without a scrap of fear. She put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a shake. “Hush. You’re being a baby.”
Fernanda crouched down next to the girl with a smile. She looked Te’lo’hi in the eye. She said, “Have you heard the story about the little god who made new friends?”