Chapter 3 #3
“Wendy … after all of these years, you still hide behind your books. Your work. Your ghosts.” She blinked, looked up, and then her eyes met mine.
“You’ve spent so much time protecting everyone else, your brothers, the children you teach.
Now you’re here, and yes, I’m glad that you’re here, but …
” She paused. “When will you realize that your life belongs to you?”
I flinched. Not visibly, I hoped. But inside, something recoiled.
“Your life belongs to you, Wendy. Not to the past. Not to what hurt you.” Her voice softened. “You can’t keep mourning a life you haven’t lived yet. The world’s still out there, waiting for you to notice it.”
Her words struck deep.
I wanted to tell her that I lived with the crushing fear and guilt that what killed him could still be out there.
That my heart was twisted because at one time, I had loved him too.
A killer. She didn’t know what I’d lost. What I’d left behind.
Their faces. Their embraces. All of my boys.
I had abandoned them. Left them in the darkness.
I tried to smile. “Right, I agree.”
It was better to acknowledge her words and move on.
From down the hall, a doctor called her name. “Beatrice? Where is that nurse?”
“I’ve got to go. I’ll check on you later,” she said “Don’t vanish into your head again, darling. Promise?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I could.
“Good.” She flashed a grin and was gone. White dress. Red cross. A blur vanishing into the gray.
I took a deep breath and finally introduced myself.
“I’m Wendy,” I said to the sleeping man. “I’m here to read to you. I hope you can hear me.”
I opened Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to the first page.
Somewhere in the ward, metal struck tile, a sharp, clanging sound that rolled through the hall.
My hands tightened around the book. “I know what it’s like to go off somewhere in search of adventure and come back different.”
I hardly knew why I was telling him this. It wasn’t something one ought to speak of to strangers. Even my brothers refused to talk about it. They grew upset if I so much as mentioned it. Because of that, we didn’t speak much these days. Especially after our parents died.
A draft slithered through the open doorway. Cold curled around my ankles.
Then, a too familiar sound. Soft. Steady. Fingers against glass.
Tapping.
My hands shook. I set the book on the table between me and the bed.
“Do you hear that?” I said to the man, knowing he couldn’t respond. But I needed something to cling to. Something to keep from feeling so alone.
I looked toward the open door. The corridor seemed empty. No footsteps. No approaching figures. Only a low, gentle sound, wind. A window open somewhere.
Wendy … come away.
This time, the voice wasn’t inside my head, like it had been at the newsstand. It was outside of me. In the room.
This was not a memory. This was his voice. This was him.
I closed my eyes tight, and every muscle remembered what my mind had tried so hard to overcome.
Sea salt on my tongue.
Morning dew on leaves, brushing against my skin.
The cold metal weight of a knife pressed into my hand, and his eyes commanding me to run.
Memory dragged me into its depths.
My brothers pleading: Run, Wendy! Don’t look back!
I opened my eyes. “How?” I breathed.
We’d buried our childhood. And yet, that voice. That terrible, honeyed voice.
“Beatrice?” I called, hoping she was near.
A shadow stretched along the far wall, too quick for any person to cast.
The bulb above dimmed. Recovered. Dimmed again. Each flicker threw new geometries of shadow across every surface.
The clock ticked once. Twice. Then stopped.
The pressure in the room shifted. It no longer felt like I was surrounded by the weight of hospital walls, but an expanse of sky.
Then I heard him.
Roger.
I could see him. Long brown curls, a too-large coat with brass buttons.
“Just don’t ever repeat the name carved on the Black Rock,” he told me the day I nearly drowned. “After it goes to sleep, we don’t want it waking back up too early.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“Just promise me,” he said. “When you leave, just don’t say its name in your world.”
“I promise.”
“No. Not like that. Like a pirate.” Tender. Serious. Him trying to make light of the threat of death.
“Aye.”
Then he intertwined his fingers with mine.
Footsteps. Hurried. Bare. I was back in the hospital.
The sound stopped just outside of the open door. I waited for a knock, for someone to appear, but neither happened.
Light dipped to the color of weak tea. Behind me, the radiator hissed. A shock of white steam.
I stood and spoke to the doorframe. “Is someone there?”
The silence that followed my question was not still. Something was here. It leaned in. It listened.
I peeked in the hall. Nothing.
From somewhere, that voice found me. Not in my head. Not in my sleep. It was here. In this room.
“Wendy … you promised.”
My hand flew to my mouth. Ice pooled in my stomach. My body trembled.
No.
From the top corner of the doorframe, a shape appeared. Slender. Black. A feather drifted down, spiraling once, twice, before settling on the floor in front of my boot.
At my feet, it shivered. Like it was still attached to a living bird.
Beneath the feather, black liquid began to form. It spread outward. Creeping toward me. Thin at first. Then thick. Ink. Oil. Tar.
“This isn’t real,” I said.
That Wendy Darling. She’s made a complicated mess this time.
Behind me a sound. I turned. And froze.
The bed. Empty. He was standing, facing the corner.
Still. Straight. Feet bare. Trousers hung loose. Cotton shirt buttoned but oversized.
“Hello?” My voice came out thin. “I … I’ll get the nurse.” But I could not move.
He remained motionless.
Air swirled into the room. A draft. I realized a window was open somewhere.
The latches. The latches. Something is undone.
And the smell …
Moss. Damp earth. Something green and rotting beneath it.
That Place.
He was speaking to the wall. His voice faint. Cracked. A soldier’s voice.
“Keep your head down. If I live, I’ll never complain about the rain again.” A wet laugh. “Shh. Listen. The shelling. It stopped. We were shelled all night. Guess they’ve grown tired.”
His voice faltered. Then deepened. A different voice now, rougher, older. Another man speaking through the same throat.
“Stick with me. We’ll make it through.”
I pressed myself against the doorframe. My pulse charging through my body.
He’s shell-shocked. Reliving the trenches.
The soldier turned his head. Just enough to catch the light. “My name? It’s Edward. Yours, mate?”
His name. Edward. But no. Who were you talking to?
“Edward, don’t talk to him …” I couldn’t move. My legs were frozen in place.
Silence.
The bulb above buzzed. Once. Twice.
When he spoke again, I screamed.
“Peter.” That name. His name. It came from Edward’s mouth, but it was his voice. Peter’s.
“No! Don’t say his name! Don’t say his—”
“Nice to meet you, Peter.” Edward smiled. It wasn’t his smile.
The shadow on the floor thickened, spreading across the room, finding the edges of the floorboards. Then it rose. Slowly. Deliberately.
I couldn’t move. I could only watch as the shadow gathered into a mass, stretching, joining, forming, into the outline of a boy.
“How old are you?” I’d asked him the first time we met.
He avoided the question, turning it back to me. “How old are you, Wendy Darling?”
“I’m twelve.”
A smile. The loveliest smile I’d ever seen.
“I’m twelve too.”
I looked down at the grass beneath our feet. Except it wasn’t grass. Not where we stood. A perfect ring of pale gray, soft as powder. The trees arched overhead, their branches woven so thick the sky had disappeared.
“What is it?” he asked, noticing my curiosity.
“We’re standing in a circle. Is it … ash?”
“Oh,” he said, as if it were nothing. As if circles made themselves. “I suppose we are.”
He held out his hand. His fingers were cold when I took them. “Will you promise me something, Wendy Darling?”
I should have pulled away. But I was twelve, and he was beautiful, and no one had ever looked at me like I was the only thing worth seeing.
“Yes.”
“Promise me you’ll come away with me.”
“I promise.”
He smiled again. But this time, something moved behind his eyes. Something old. “Then we’re bound. Shadows linked,” he said. “You and I. Forever and ever.”
I backed away, inch by inch. The door, that was the goal. My eyes fixed on Edward’s back. My fingers trailed the wall, keeping me upright.
My back struck a surface. The doorframe.
“Don’t trust it,” I called to Edward. “It’s not one of your mates!”
The bulb hissed. Flared. Then burst.
Glass rained down, tinkling like bells. Darkness swallowed the room, save for the corridor light glowing behind me.
“Wendy,” said a voice. “Wendy Darling.”
A hand caught my shoulder. Cold. Familiar.
I spun, and the world snapped back into place.
Beatrice stood there. Her smell, rosewater and lavender. I exhaled, wanting to fall into her arms.
“Is he awake?” she said, peering into the room. “I heard you talking.”
I looked back. The corner was empty.
Edward lay in bed as before. Hands folded. Lips parted. A man deep in sleep somewhere between the battlefields and silence.
I scanned the floor, searching for the shadow. Instead I spotted the feather beneath the bed where Beatrice couldn’t see.
“I was just reading aloud,” I said fighting to keep my voice steady, my hands still.
“Are you all right, darling?” Beatrice pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “You look feverish.”
“The radiator,” I managed. “It was steaming just a moment ago.”
“Looks perfectly fine now.”
She patted my back, then moved to Edward. She repeated the gesture, her hand to his brow. “Poor soul,” she said gently. Beatrice straightened, her attention shifting back to me. “You’re pale, Wendy. Like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I gave her a thin smile. “Just frightened myself with a story is all.”
Her gaze drifted to the chair where Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland still lay open.
“Falling down rabbit holes again,” she teased. “Just promise me you’ll find your way back.”
“I was going to say …” I blurted, the words too fast, too eager.
“Yes …?” Beatrice’s brows lifted. Amused. Wary.
“I think I heard him murmuring for a bit. It sounded like he said ‘Edward.’ Perhaps that’s his name. I think I’m going to call him that.”
A blink. Then a smile. Half surprised. Half delighted. Each edged with curiosity. “Edward,” she repeated, studying me. “My Wendy Darling and her stories. Very well. Edward it is.”
From the corridor a stern voice called her name. “Beatrice? Where’d she’d run off to again?”
She sighed, then laughed. “I’ll be back, love.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Don’t vanish into your head again?”
Her footsteps faded down the hall, leaving me alone with Edward, and the ghost of where the feather had been.
A fine shimmer clung to the floor. When I knelt for a closer look, it vanished. Swept away by a wind I couldn’t feel.
I sank into the chair, breath ragged.
“What’s happening?” I asked Edward, knowing he couldn’t offer a solution.
Above me, the bulb buzzed. Its hum faded slowly into something human. A low groan, and beneath it something familiar.
My name.
Soft as a secret. Just like the promise I once made.
And broke.
My eyes began to water. My mind tracing back all of our steps. Everything we’d done.
We had killed him. We had buried our childhood in that cursed place. How could it possibly come back?
But the dead don’t whisper your name.