11
I was carried out of Trash N’ Treasure in a plastic bag, flopping, clanking, and unraveling with every jerk and jostle.
I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was laugh.
I’d gotten off another shelf, I’d found someone who could hear me, I’d won something.
For the first time in I didn’t even know how long, I felt hope, the same wild, vicious, angry sort of hope I’d had when I crushed the moth against my face.
I could do this. I could figure this out. I could kill Kyle.
I let myself imagine it in all its gory detail.
The blood, the screaming, the begging. It was beautiful.
It was righteous. More than just vengeance, it was justice, for what he’d done to me, for what he’d done to Grandma, for what he’d done to Cookie, and Auntie Dawn, and anyone else he’d ever hurt.
Imagining Kyle’s death wasn’t cathartic.
It fed the grief inside me, making it stronger, turning it putrid.
It probably would’ve been healthier to brick off the darkness and try to move on—or better yet, face it, deal with it, defang it.
That was probably what a therapist would say, all soothing voice and lavender-scented tissues.
But instead, I held it close; I let it hurt me.
Clinging tight to rage and pain and grief and all those other ugly things tangled together was a unique sort of agony, but it made me feel powerful.
It made me feel alive.
Vengeful spirit. It’s a shit job, but someone’s got to do it. And hell, at this rate, I might even become adequately competent at it.
That thought made me want to laugh all over again, a mad, cackling glee that buzzed ugly and wretched through my small, messed-up body.
The plastic bag lurched, a car door slammed, and a moment later, another door slammed too, a house door.
It was slightly too fast, the sounds short, sharp, and distorted, but I was getting used to that sort of thing.
I listened to Nicola’s footsteps and watched the shifting shapes through the thin white plastic of my bag.
I couldn’t really make out much. Old wallpaper. The edge of a pulpy old movie poster. A plant that badly needed to be watered.
She walked through the house/apartment/building/whatever and into a backyard.
For a sickening moment, I thought she was going to drop me in the grass and get a shovel.
How deep would she have to bury me before she couldn’t hear me?
Would I be able to hear the worms as they ate my fabric and wriggled up into the remains of my head?
Panic shot through my stitches, twisted the meager remains of my stuffing.
But she didn’t get a shovel. She kept walking, across the yard and into another building. The distinctive creak and clang of the door told me it was a tin shed.
A light buzzed. Something else thumped. The plastic bag yawed around me, swinging, then upending. All my broken bits and I plunged down onto an unvarnished plywood surface. A workbench.
She was fixing me.
Thank you, I said, relief still thrumming through me. Thank you so much. I know I wasn’t the nicest to you back in the store, but you’re a good per—
A hand grabbed me, none too gently, and rolled me onto my back, pressing flat against my deflated fabric chest, pinning me down.
My vision swam and my porcelain went cold.
Nicola glared down at me, her hair a sweaty tangle on her brow, her lips pinched and twisted around a barely contained snarl. Her left hand was holding me down. Her right hand was aloft and clenched into a fist around a rusty old hammer.
What are you doing?
“Self-therapy,” she said. “I thought about just throwing you in the garbage, or maybe the river. But honestly, after all the bullshit you’ve been pulling for the last couple of weeks, I figured this would be good for me. Dealing with my demons, Van Helsing style.”
Wait. Wait! I cried, and thrashed frantically under the press of her palm, seizing my panic, my desperation, and pumping it into every scrap of me still intact.
Her lips trembled, the hammer did too, but she didn’t release me.
I’m not a demon. I’m Lucy. I swear to God.
“Lucy is literally a nickname for the devil.” I couldn’t tell if she was talking fast or if that was time slipping forward. “Is my subconscious really that uncreative?”
Nic is also a nickname for the devil!
“All the more proof that you’re a weird byproduct of my brain.” Her fingers tightened around the hammer, and my panic twisted into terror.
Lucy McQuinn, I said. I’m Lucy McQuinn. We went to school together.
“Prove it,” she replied, still holding the hammer aloft. “Say something only Lucy would say.”
I . . . What? My mind whirled. What’s something only I would say?
“You’re not—”
No! Wait! That’s not fair. Give me a . . . um . . . I scrubbed frantically through my memories, searching for something, anything, to say. Jonathan Harker and the cowboy. Fuck, what was his name? Quincey . . . um . . . Morris. Yes. That’s it. Quincey Morris.
Her frown deepened. “What?”
You said you were going to kill me Van Helsing style. But Helsing didn’t kill Dracula. It was Jonath—
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
You told me to say something only I would say.
“And you choose to ‘well actually’ me about Dracula?”
I . . . Yes? I read a lot of old books. It’s like my one personality trait.
“Reading old books isn’t a personality trait.”
Well I’m boned, then.
“This is such bullshit.”
It isn’t. Please. We didn’t even know each other that well. You don’t know what I’d say.
“You don’t know what you’d say. You’re a hallucination. A weird, fucked-up one about a probably dead girl I talked to, like, one time. Which is just so wrong I don’t even know where to begin.”
I am dead. Kyle Lawson killed me the night of the tea party.
“As fucking if.”
You have to believe me!
“I don’t have to do shit,” she snapped. “I’ve dealt with intrusive thoughts way scarier than you before. Never quite so physically, but hey, I think I like it. Really works that stress out.” I saw her flex, her jaw clench, the muscles in her arms tighten.
I twisted, stabbing frantically at her fingers with the shattered stump of my arm. The sharp edge of my porcelain sliced into her skin. She shouted, pulled her hand back, and brought the hammer down.
I recoiled against the plywood, pressing into the grain of it.
It felt like it was moving, roaring by beneath me, a stream, tossed around in twisting rapids.
I forced myself through the surface, plunging into it.
Not the plywood, but something else, something electric and angry.
It wanted to move forward, pulled by a vacuum toward an unseen destination.
In a frenzy of confusion and fear, I clung to it, trying to center myself, trying to get away from Nicola and that incoming hammer.
The stream dragged, eased . . . and time slowed.
Nicola’s hammer inched toward me. Her shout turned low and long. The fluorescent light hanging above the workbench started to flicker.
That’s the shit thing about ghost powers: You don’t know what you can do until you stumble arse-backward into doing it.
Before, when I’d attempted to control time, I’d been trying to press my will onto the world .
. . not to sink back into it. The difference felt both sickeningly arbitrary and so intrinsic that a part of me couldn’t figure out how I hadn’t managed it before.
And yet, it wasn’t easy. The stream tore at me, slipped through me, ripping at some core part of my being, something not fabric, porcelain, or lace.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.
I wriggled, limbless, loose, and already dizzy with exhaustion, dragging myself, centimeter by centimeter, away from the soon-to-be impact zone. I’d just made it when the universe wrenched through my grasp. The plywood shook beneath me as Nicola struck the table where my head had been.
She screamed and swung again.
I frantically grappled with the stream, slowing it down and holding it as I bucked and jerked across the tabletop.
A can of WD-40 sat nearby, big enough to look like a blue-and-yellow concrete support pillar.
I dragged myself toward it, a journey that felt like it took minutes but must’ve been less than a second.
A test of endurance, not just against the brutal buffeting of the time stream but also of my ability to move.
Anger. Fear. Rage. Pain. Exhaustion. Desperation.
By the time I curled behind the WD-40, the strain of it all left me feeling empty and expended, like my atoms had lost their magnetic bonds and were spilling out behind me like blood.
The hammer struck the table a second time, again where I’d been just a moment before. Nicola’s eyes flicked toward me, her lip curled in an animal snarl.
Wait, I begged, my voice pitifully weak. Wait. Please. I can prove I’m Lucy. I can.
“No, you can’t. You’re nothing but a weird-as-shit mental breakdown.” She swung at the WD-40 can, knocking it spinning across the room. I didn’t even have the energy left to flinch. I lay exposed on the tabletop, a scrap of ruined lace and a couple pieces of porcelain.
Watson11.
“See?” she said triumphantly. “You’re talking gibberish. That’s proof that you’re—”
It’s my Instagram password, I said, my thoughts shaky and small. Watson11. You can log on to my account; then you’ll know I’m not a hallucination. It’s proof. I’d thought of it during the long minutes it took to make it to the meager shelter of the WD-40. The only evidence I could give.
She glared at me, the harsh overhead light reflecting off her brow and nose, leaving her cheeks and eye sockets in shadow.
Her fist was tight around the handle of the hammer.
Her chest rising and falling in fits and jerks.
I wasn’t sure if that was her or the universe, making up for lost time.
Probably both. “I’m not on Instagram anymore,” she said finally, voice hoarse.
Please.
“This is fucked up,” she whispered. “So fucking fucked up. You’re a hallucination. Lucy McQuinn is gone. She’s been gone for years.”
I didn’t have the energy to respond.
She cursed and started pacing, the thump of her boots against the floor radiating up through the plywood beneath me.
“Fuck,” Nicola muttered. “Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.”
Time shuddered and she snapped back and forward a few times, too fast to see.
When she reappeared she was looking at me, still shaking.
I wished I could close my one remaining eye.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I could barely think.
If she decided to hit me with the hammer, I wouldn’t be able to look away.
She cursed one more time and, with her free hand, reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
If I could’ve cried, I would’ve sobbed in relief.
She leaned back against the far wall, still breathing too fast, still shaking.
“It’s downloading,” she said after a while.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this. You know I’m going to need an email or a phone number too, right?
And if there’s two-factor authentication, then you’re cooked.
Didn’t think of that, did you, demon doll? ”
I stared at her, trying to summon the energy to speak again.
“Oh now you’re quiet. You wouldn’t shut up for weeks at work but now—”
Oh, I said. Four. One. Four . . .
Nicola’s hands shook as I finished reciting my phone number. “If this doesn’t work, I’m still smashing you,” she said. “I hope you know that. No second chances. No hiding behind any more cans. If this doesn’t work, you’re pulp.”
Yeah, I rasped. Figured.
I watched her thumb move across the screen of her phone, tapping in the number.
I was impressed she could remember it after hearing it only once.
Impressed and grateful. “Watson11 is a shit password,” she said as she typed.
“Pretty sure Insta doesn’t even allow passwords that shit anymore.
You’ve got to have special characters, more digits, a couple of . . .”
Her eyes widened and her face went gray beneath her freckles.
I couldn’t see the screen of her phone from where I lay. I didn’t need to. I knew what she was seeing.
It logged in, didn’t it?
The hammer slipped out of her hand and hit the ground. The thump reverberated through the tin shed and rang in what remained of my porcelain head.