Mistwalker (25 page)

I reach until I feel my edges thinning. I pull; it’s like a song. Like I have a new pulse—one that answers to the elements instead of my heart. Mist twines around my wrists and ankles; my hair is braided with it, my clothes woven from it. I master it, and it enslaves me. The push. The pull.

When I was lost in the fog, it took me only a few steps to realize I couldn’t keep going. When I heard water, I knew I’d gone the wrong way. That’s the kind of mist I call tonight. Thick and physical. The kind that leaves beads in your hair and a damp kiss on your skin. I’ll hold it ’til dawn, though I’m not sure my dawn will be the same as the village’s. Time passes differently here.

Still, I pull. More mist. More haze. In my veins and on the streets of Broken Tooth. I murmur with the song. I twist with it. As the beam cuts on behind me, the horn starts to call. I feel the waves pass through me, both light and sound.

Somewhere, Daddy’s Girlfriend is theorizing why a day so clear turned so foggy all at once. Somewhere, I’m hoping—I bet my life—that my father pulled to the side of the road. It’s not fit for ships or F-150s now. People are closing up their windows and doors, locking them tight. They know it isn’t natural, this much fog, rolling in the wrong direction. This is everywhere, thick as flesh. It feels wrong, I know. But they don’t have to worry.

I don’t want to collect their souls. I don’t want them to suffer. I don’t want anyone to die tonight. Not even Terry Coyne.

My father knows what it’s like to live by the sea. He’s been in bar fights and regular fights; he’s ridden out hurricanes and nor’easters. All these years, he’s survived. No matter the hardship, he’s survived and kept going, and kept our family going. And he’s going to survive tonight, whether he wants to or not.

He doesn’t realize it yet. It’s a hard thing to truly understand. It doesn’t matter if someone stands right in front of you and shouts it in your face. There are some things you have to realize. Internalize. More than understand—comprehend. Now that I have, I hope I’m giving my father the chance to understand it too.

It’s not July twenty-third anymore.

TWENTY-TWO

I didn’t excel in my grammar studies, so I couldn’t say it was
ironic.
But it did seem apt that the boat bearing my name cut through the mist to the other shore and left me stranded in the fog.

On hands and knees, I felt my way up to the boardwalk. Stones cut my palms. Rubbing the bright pain against my knees, I managed to warm myself as well. The hooded coat I woke with barely held the October cold at bay.

Anxious to run, I bounded a few steps, then stopped. Though I had mastered the fog for a century, it ignored my will now. At an arm’s length, my fingertips were obscured by it. In me, there was an awareness of the village, that there were buildings quite close, but I couldn’t see them.

As much as I longed to flee this coast, I sat instead. There was no use in escaping if the first thing I did was walk off a cliff. Besides, I had plenty to experience even without my eyes for the moment.

The air smelled different on this side of the water. Rotting bait, raw wood, salt water. There were other scents I couldn’t place. Heavy, oily, greasy—and one I sensed not at all. With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and inhaled—but no, it wasn’t there. The sweet tang of wood smoke eluded me entirely.

The last time I walked on real land, most homes kept a wood-burning stove for warmth and cooking alike. Though it was mainly imaginary, I’d had one in the lighthouse as well. Black and fat, radiating heat through its sides and issuing its smoke to wind around the lighthouse outside.

I had to wonder what the citizens of Broken Tooth had instead. In 1913, they were a poor, proud lot. Had they blossomed in a century? Willa always seemed so distracted
among my things. Her world was a novel creation to me. Soon, I’d explore it all.

Settling in for a wait, I savored my curiosities and discomforts, for they were finally temporary. The wood dug into my backside. My back ached to sit without support. Hunger gnawed through me, and I felt distinctly gritty. Situations soon to be solved.

When the fog lifted, I’d find a chair, an inn, a public bath if there was no private one to be had.

Proof that I had been insubstantial before, I had a full head of hair once more. Instead of silvery white, it was brown again; I wondered if that meant my eyes were blue again. Stroking my own cheek, I sighed. I bore barely a day’s stubble. My father’s beard had never been particularly full either. No magic could change that destiny, it seemed.

I dug at the lump in my pocket and found a leather portfolio. It was no bigger than my hand, though thick. Flipping it open, I shivered. My eyes—indeed, blue—and my face as they once were stared back at me.

Thrusting a finger into the pocket that held it, I struggled to free the portrait.

The card was thin, pliable. Printed with green, grassy swirls and an etching of a mountain—it claimed my name was Charlie Walker. Which was true: Charles Leslie Walker. Named for neither grandfather; my parents hadn’t cared for them.

I’d forgotten my birth date. The year was wrong on the card, 1995 instead of 1896, but the month and day . . . I could barely catch a breath. Vertigo left me unsettled. Stomach contracting, I felt as though my head were a bowl of well-stirred soup.

How could I have forgotten such an intimate detail? Why did it feel like such a blow to recover it?

As I thumbed through the rest of the folio, I listened to the ocean and the harbor bells, and the horn in the distance. It was rippingly fantastic to hear that sound from a mile away instead of right inside my own home. I was free. I was free! Cool wind enveloped me; the fog bathed me.

And I had, it seemed, one hundred seventeen dollars to my name. A princely sum—the bills strangely smooth, the portraits not quite familiar. Less green, more writing. They were smaller than the tender notes I remembered. Lifting them to my nose, I inhaled.

That was the same, at least.

I had no idea how long I sat on the boardwalk. I picked at my toes and leaned down to follow the progress of a line of ants. Once more through the portfolio in my pocket, then I stood and stretched. It seemed to me that the fog finally thinned, peeling away to reveal a hint of night.

The lighthouse beam swung over my head. It was like seeing a forsaken sweetheart. There was so much a part of me in that light. But that was over, a chapter completed. It made no difference to me how far it stretched, for I no longer needed to account for the souls beneath it.

The village slowly took shape. Lampposts soared above me, their bulbs glowing slightly orange. The poles buzzed; when I pressed my ears to them, I heard it distinctly. Electricity! For my mother’s birthday, my father had installed two electric lights in our house. One in her kitchen, the other in the sitting room. Those lamps were dim compared with these creations.

Angled roofs and steep chimneys cast shadows within the haze. Windows glowed steadily—more electricity, I guessed. Absorbed in wonder, I walked up to a motorcar. That’s what it had to be. It had wheels and glass lights, and curves like a jungle cat.

Hurrying to the next, I trailed my fingers along the hood. Suddenly, a Klaxon sounded, and I very nearly screamed. Hurrying away from that, I kept my admiration to examination by gaze alone. There were so many motorcars, as if each house on the street had at least one.

At the end of the block, I found a rusted horse cart. Motorized, I presumed, since it was branded with
FORD
on its rear. I’d been gone a century, but even I recognized that name. Circling it, I marveled at its width and breadth. Then I stopped short when I saw a different face from mine in the front window.

Inside, a man rubbed drowsily at his neck, sleeping soundly. When he shifted, a shotgun slid down the seat beside him. Those hadn’t changed greatly in the interval either. The black barrel gleamed; the wood stock shone with polish.

Trembling, I backed away from the cart, then turned to hurry up the street. I was new and freshly living again. I didn’t care to enrage a man who traveled with arms in the open. I passed houses and listened to the strange sounds issuing from them as I walked.

I reached the edge of town, where I found an establishment with a flickering-light sign outside; it promised a vacancy at the inn.

When I pushed open the glass doors, I had to shield my eyes. The lights were unbearably bright in the lobby. Moving pictures played on a box on the counter, not quite like my computer, but similar. A floral scent overwhelmed me, and when I approached, I quite frightened the young man behind the counter.

“I need a room for the night, one with a washbasin,” I said. I reached for my portfolio and ignored the lying birth date on my portrait card.

“Jesus, dude,” he said, slowly taking to his feet. “Where the hell did you come from?”

Considering the question, I offered him my card. And then finally I told him, “Oh, it’s best if we just say another place. Another time.”

“Whatever,” he muttered, and reached for a key.

TWENTY-THREE

When I finally set the mist free, I collapse. What’s strange is, though my knees clang against the gallery floor, I don’t really feel it. There’s an echo that almost feels like pain, but I’m too tired to examine it. Time is different here. I hope I smothered Broken Tooth long enough.

I think it’s night, but I’m not sure about that, either. Rising, I find the staircase waiting for me. All I want is sleep, or rest, or whatever. I have a lot to learn about being the Grey Lady. As much as Grey thinks he told me, there’s a metric buttload to still figure out.

The one thing I do remember is that I get a present at breakfast. That I get to wish for what I want to fill my plate. The staircase rattles, then opens into my bedroom. It’s exactly the same as before. White net canopy, green witch balls in the window . . . pictures of my family on the wall. Of the
Jenn-a-Lo
. Of my used-to-bes.

Straightening the picture of me and Levi on the boat, I make my present wish. Breakfast can be whatever. Pancakes and sausage and home fries, I guess. But when I wake up, I want proof that my father, my family, is okay. I want to know that I did the right thing. A little proof that it was a good trade, my forever for my father’s present.

I lie on the bed, my feet still on the floor. I don’t feel my heart beating. I breathe, but I think that’s only because I want to. When I stop, my chest doesn’t fill up. I don’t get hot. Or panicked. My throat doesn’t tighten, and I’m not struggling to inhale.

This is real. I really did it.

I close my eyes. I do not dream.

When I woke, morning sunlight streamed through the window.

My witch balls were gone. My pictures. All the little things that made that room mine. I lay on the floor and shivered. The wood was rough and old. Chewing up my elbows, it groaned when I pushed myself to my feet.

A splinter slipped into my palm, and I cursed. It was a small, bright pain. Kinda weird, all things considered. Kinda raw. As I headed for the door, I wrapped my arms around myself.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, because Grey never said the lighthouse looked like this to him. Dilapidated and broke down. Mold on the walls. Spiders in the corners. My back was killing me, and my mouth tasted like somebody camped in it.

I didn’t need a mirror to know my hair was a janked-up mess and my clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them. That was the one thing about Grey that always fascinated me. How perfect he looked all the time. I thought maybe I was doing this wrong. Maybe it was like making jewelry. I could follow along, but it was obvious I wasn’t a natural at it.

The stairs scared me. Rusted, the frame gaped away from the wall. Old bolts scraped in the holes, sending a dusting of plaster snow to filter to the floor. The planks that made up the steps—the ones that were still there—looked eaten up. Termites or time or something. I couldn’t believe it, because this was supposed to be all me. All my wishes and dreams.

A falling-down deathtrap? That was what the lighthouse decided I wanted? I wondered if there was a union I could talk to. A Monster and Faery Local 223, where I could complain about the condition of my haunt.

I laughed, and it echoed. Like the place was empty, that kind of echoing. And I slowly made my way downstairs, where the kitchen should have been. Or the music-box room. Or whatever room ought to be there at that particular minute. But there was nothing. Just an empty lighthouse.

Old gauges and pipes clung to the wood pillars, rust tears streaking beneath them. Broken windows let a constant, cold stream of air inside. That wind whispered, going around and around, echoing all the way to the top. Again, that echo, hollow and evacuated.

When I tipped my head back, the stairs stayed put. They spiraled up. Even when I turned my back to them and stole a look from the corner of my eye, they were there. Creeping to the door, I reached for the knob, then hesitated.

It didn’t seem fair that Grey got everything he wanted and I got a tore-up lighthouse that looked its age. None of it seemed fair, actually. That he got stuck here because he was a fool for love. That I’d be stuck here for trying to save my family.

Not that superstition had to do with fair. Legends, either. That was the point, really, of all those once-upon-a-time stories—to warn us. To save us from quirk and whim and random chance. Happenstance. To protect us
from things beyond our control.

It was bad luck to let a woman or a pig onboard; you’d sink a boat if you set the deck hatch upside down. Eat a stranger’s food, spend half the year in the underworld. A poison apple means you sleep forever.

Twisting the knob, I threw the door open and saw a whole new Jackson’s Rock. Into the forest, I shivered at the cold—but only the cold. Everything smelled fresh—the balsam firs and jack pines sweetened every step. As I walked the clearing path, I heard just what I would have expected to. Birdsong. Leaves rustling as squirrels and raccoons traipsed through.