Page 10 of Magpie
But so is my key.
If I woke up anyone in the building with my scream, I will never know. I’m running before the echoes die. The sun is beginning to rise as I make my way toward the train station. My hands are digging tight into the straps of my backpack, holding it like a lifeline, the only thing keeping me afloat. In reality, I’m just trying to stop them from shaking.
“Where to?” the ticket clerk asks as I make my way to the front of the line.
“East,” I answer, pulling my backpack open and searching for a stack of bills.
The clerk laughs, jokingly saying, “Any particular place east?” He leans forward, casting his gaze down at me, expecting a laugh in return. I watch the color drain from his face as the amusement dies in his eyes. He leans as far away from me as his chair will allow.
I know what he is feeling: that oppressive, seductive fog that has drawn me in and drowned me. He is smart enough to listen to his senses and fear me, fear the call of that darkness. I wish I had been like him.
“Just east. I’ll know when I get there,” I answer, sliding the bills toward him.
He gapes at the stack, pushing his chair back. At first I think it’s another visceral reaction to me, to what I am, to what I become when I am away from my key for too long. But one glance down at the stack of bills has me freezing in place. A thin sheen of dark crimson liquid has spread over them.
With jerky, unsteady movements, I turn my hand over. That old wound on my palm is open and bleeding.
I pull my hand back, shoving it into my jacket pocket. Luckily, the clerk seems eager to be done with me, so he doesn’t ask me any more questions. Bouncing back and forth on the balls of my feet, I watch in panicked anticipation as he mashes his fingers into the keyboard, I assume choosing a location somewhere east at random. It doesn’t matter where I’m going, not really. No matter how far I run, the House will call me home.
He needs to scoot closer to his computer, closer to me, to get the printed ticket, and I can smell the fear wafting off him. With a screeching sound, the printer shoots out a piece of paper,and he snatches it up. “Here, take it,” he mutters, slamming the ticket down on the counter and turning hurriedly away.
I don’t wait for him to tell me any other information about my train; I know he is done talking to me. Just like I know he will spend the rest of the day reliving the moment in his mind, going over the details of the dark girl with the bloody money. By the time lunch rolls around, the blood will have changed in his mind to a spilled beverage, and the dark girl will be nothing more than a shadowy figment. By dinner, I will be gone from his mind entirely. He will find himself shying away from his work for a few weeks, never quite understanding why, but I will be nothing but a forgotten memory. A nightmare he can’t remember.
“Ticket, please,” the conductor says as I climb onto the train. I hand him my ticket with my uninjured hand, my hood already pulled tight over my head. No amount of fabric can hide the aura that leaches off me, the dark fog of energy growing deeper the longer I go without my key.
The conductor’s hands are trembling as he rips my ticket, handing me the stub. He refuses to look at me, and I like that just fine. Shoving the stub in my pocket, I begin making my way toward the back of the train. Although the morning started out with a bright sunrise, dark clouds are rolling in, strangling any remnants of light that try in vain to survive.
Out Of Commissionis printed in bright red words on a sign taped to the door of a cabin in the back of the train. Peeking over my shoulder, checking that I’m alone, I slide open the door to the compartment, making sure to keep the sign in place as I gently tug the door closed behind me.
Flipping the light switch up and down, I discover the lights are broken, but the meager sun provides enough light for me to see the torn and tattered leather seats on either side of a broken table. Slinging my bag off my shoulders, I toss it onto the seat and scoot in next to it. I sigh, leaning my head against thewindow. A single raindrop hits the pane of glass as the pressure in the atmosphere breaks. The light in the cabin begins to wane in the gathering storm. I tap on the glass, tracing the line of the first raindrop sliding down the pane.
“East,” I whisper to myself, my breath fogging the window in front of me.
I shouldn’t be shocked, I certainly shouldn’t shout, but I do both as a ghost’s finger draws in the fog, etching two words across the window.
The cut on my hand sears, but I barely feel it as I clench my fist, digging my nails into my palm. Marking my hand with tiny crescents, like the smiling moon that haunts me. The train begins to move, and the fog of my breath fades from the window, but my eyes remain locked on the ghostly hint of two words traced on the glass:
COME HOME
Testing the strength of the first step on the ladder, I find it holds my weight just fine, for all it looks like it hasn’t been used in centuries. I peer up into the shadowy attic, and my breath hitches at the sense of something reaching out to me. I feel the ghost of hands trailing their icy fingers over my skin, not quite finding purchase, trying to tug and pull me upward.
It should frighten me; it should send me running back to the arms of my friends. Yet I find myself taking another step. And another. It’s like the void inside of me, a cocoon I am only too willing to envelop myself in. It is hollow, and empty, and so damn familiar.
I quickly climb the rest of the stairs, ready to greet whatever awaits me in the dark recess above. The higher I go, the colder it becomes, the chill swirling around me entirely as I pull myself onto the floor of the attic.
“Hello?” I call out, taking in the vast space before me. Moonlight spills in from a small crescent-shaped window, casting a soft glow around the empty attic, barely illuminating the room. No actors jump out at me, no strobe lights to confusemy eyes, no blaring sound effect that breaks through the eerie quiet. The sliver of moonlight is the only true source of light, and yet it seems to make the darkness even blacker. “Is anyone there?”
“I am always here,” a voice answers behind me.
I do not jump; I am not scared of the unexpected voice coming out of the void like that. It is somehow soothing, lulling, begging me to submit to it. Breathing in the heady scent that has the tension leaving my body, the aura that is begging my mind to give in to the numbness, I turn.
A figure is seated behind a small table covered in glistening black linen, pooling like dripping oil on the attic floor. I blink. Was that table there before? The figure is sat back, shrouded in shadows, untouched by the light of the moon, as though even the light doesn’t dare illuminate this stranger. But the darkness inside of me rises up to greet them, and I am not afraid.
“I want to get out,” I say, walking toward the shrouded figure.
A gleaming bright smile breaks through the darkness, the only feature on their face that I can make out, teeth white against the murky black. “I can help with that,” the stranger answers.
A hand covered in a crisp white glove motions to the chair opposite them. When I do not move, they lean forward, coming into the light for the first time.
