7

Adam

Adam stopped the car at an empty bridge. It stretched over a stream of dark, glossy water. It wasn’t an ocean, or a sea, not that he knew the difference, but it had to be connected.

The ghosts didn’t stop. They kept walking, marching ever forward. The bridge flickered in the reddish light, sometimes modern, sometimes wooden. The ghosts dropped from sight, falling without seeming to notice or care. Adam couldn’t see a safe way down, but this had to be it. He could feel it in the warlock wound. It pulsed in time with the bridge, like a second, darker heart inside him.

“I know this place,” Bobby said.

Adam blinked at his brother.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Dead Woman’s Crossing. People used to come out here on Halloween to spook themselves.”

“But not you?”

Bobby shook his head.

“Sorry,” Adam said. “Dumb question.”

Bobby hadn’t wanted anything to do with the spirit realm or magic. He’d avoided anything spooky after what had happened, a moment of telepathy with their mother before he’d struck their father with a hammer.

It helped, knowing where Bobby’s fear came from, why he’d run from all things supernatural like his hair was on fire, and it no longer filled Adam with blue to know that his mother rejected Adam’s Sight. He could not blame them.

He understood now why Bobby had done what he’d done, why he’d been so driven to leave Guthrie. It didn’t erase the feelings of abandonment, of being left behind, or the scars Liberty House had inflicted on Adam, but he could understand. That helped.

Adam was also starting to get more comfortable with knowing that his brother was never going to understand him back, and maybe he was okay with that. At least thinking about it distracted him from the potentially fatal drive ahead of them.

“This is it,” Adam said. “I know it is.”

“We just drive across?” Bobby asked.

“It feels like another test, like driving into the house.”

“They don’t seem to mind,” Bobby said, looking to the ghosts.

“Yeah, well, they’re already dead,” Adam argued.

“Who’s that?” Vran asked a moment before the brothers saw the two figures who’d taken shape on the bridge’s other side.

The terminus, Adam had heard it called. The phrase sounded downright creepy now that they were here.

Adam almost couldn’t make the shapes out. They appeared only when the bridge was rickety, not modern. They vanished in the moments between. If they were ghosts, turning off the headlights might help, but then they’d be cast in darkness and Adam wasn’t certain he wanted to know how many of the dead surrounded the car.

“What do they want?” Bobby asked.

“They’re ghosts,” Adam said. “They want whatever the dead want.”

“And what is that?”

“I have no idea,” Adam said.

“You’re right, though,” Vran said quietly, head cocked to the side. A lock of his black hair had fallen into his eyes. “This is the way down.”

“It’s the water, isn’t it?” Adam asked.

“Yeah . . .”

Adam didn’t like the look in Vran’s eyes. He didn’t like that the elf might be getting in tune with this place, any more than Adam liked that the warlock wound seemed to feel at home here. It was another reason to hurry, to find Vic and get out.

“What if the bridge vanishes when we’re halfway across?” Bobby asked.

“Then we fall,” Adam said. “But down is the way we’re supposed to go.”

“I wish we’d brought my car. At least it has airbags.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed.

They’d be stranded if they wrecked the Cutlass.

Adam asked himself what Vic would do. Vic was methodical. He liked movies with lots of heroics and police procedure. Adam was the impulsive one.

But Vic was worth the risk.

“Hold on,” he said.

Taking a deep breath, Adam timed the bridge’s flickering cycle, put the Cutlass in gear, and tapped the gas.

The bridge disappeared completely when they were halfway across. The Cutlass fell.

The air went cold, near freezing. Adam could see his breath. Heavier, the car fell faster than the diving ghosts. Several rose through the interior and the hood.

The Cutlass landed, hard enough that Adam’s head hit the felted ceiling. The car bounced once. It didn’t feel like they’d blown the tires, but the shocks would be done for after this.

The three of them took several long breaths.

“Anyone hurt?” Bobby asked.

“Don’t think so,” Adam said.

Vran grinned.

“Can we do it again?” he asked.

“Chaos monkey,” Adam muttered affectionately.

“Adam,” Bobby said, gesturing out the windshield.

The two ghosts from across the bridge had followed them down.

The women dressed in a similar style, in the clothes you saw in black-and-white pictures. Adam hadn’t paid much attention in history class, really in many of his classes thanks to his Sight and the constant pull of the Other Side, but his best guess would be around the Depression, maybe older.

Their skirts were stiff and wide, the front of their dresses buttoned up all the way to the neck. They wore hats atop tightly curled hair, except one woman was headless.

She cradled it in her arms, holding it so it could watch Adam with a judgmental expression through the veil of black lace that hid much of her face.

The other cradled a wrapped bundle. She held it softly, like it mattered.

Bobby’s face had gone very pale.

The women reminded Adam of someone he’d seen before, but he couldn’t place them.

Around them, the ghosts, unbothered by the fall, flowed on, finding their way toward the road. They sort of walked and drifted at the same time, their legs working, but not quite in sync with their movement, like they did it more out of memory, like the drop here had taken them another step away from life and some unseen force dragged them forward like leaves in a river.

Adam tried to drive, to leave the women in black behind, but the Cutlass spun out. The mud and water had her. It wasn’t deep enough to flood the engine but the tires were stuck.

“We’re going to have to get out and push,” he said, putting her in neutral. He opened the door. “Everyone out. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Something white coated the grass and the slope of the creek bed but it did not sparkle like frost or snow. The water was cold against Adam’s work boots, but it wasn’t icy. The air felt a little drier too, a little less like the Oklahoma autumn they’d left behind and a bit more like Colorado.

There were still stars, though maybe not as many as before. The red-black haze, like smoke from a grass fire, obscured them.

The three of them got to the rear of the Cutlass. Adam and Bobby put their backs into it. Vran leaned forward. He was an elf. He should have been stronger than them, but he grunted, his lean arms straining, and Adam didn’t feel much help from his effort.

Adam clenched his jaw and pushed harder. The Cutlass rolled free of the rut. They moved her a bit higher, out of the mud. Vran rubbed his shoulder like he’d been hurt.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked him.

Vran shrugged.

“This place . . .” He shook his head, searching for words before admitting, “It’s not good for me.”

“There’s water.” Adam pointed to the stream. “Can you get back from here?”

“No,” Vran said. “I mean, maybe, but I’m not going. You need me. I can see things you can’t, remember?”

“It’s not worth it if you get hurt, Vran.”

“I won’t.” Vran ducked his chin to his chest and added, “And it’s not like I have anywhere better to be.”

Adam put a hand to the boy’s shoulder, hoping that he wasn’t overreaching. He hadn’t liked to be touched as a teen, but that was mostly because he could feel the other person’s feelings. They bled in, left him spinning from whatever they were going through or what secrets they were hiding. Vran was prickly, but more and more Adam saw how young he was.

Vran didn’t shrug away.

Adam wanted to say something like I’m glad you’re here, to thank Vran again, but didn’t know how the boy would take it. Adam gave him some space to pout and walked over to where Bobby stood at a distance, examining the stuff coating the ground.

“It’s not snow, is it?” Adam asked.

Bobby prodded it with the toe of his hiking boot.

“It’s more like webbing,” he said.

“Spiders?” Adam asked. He’d read enough fantasy novels that he did not want to confront anything that could throw webs across an entire landscape.

The only question was if millions of little ones would be worse than several giant ones.

“Nah,” Bobby said with a chuckle. “I think it’s from webworms. We used to get them around the trailer, remember?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “But not like this.”

They’d gotten pouches of the stuff in the scrub oaks around the trailer. Their dad had sawed the branches off and burned them. Adam could remember the taste of the smoke and the brief moment of the worms, the caterpillars, twisting and sizzling as they died.

“This is a swarm,” Bobby said.

Adam shuddered at the thought of them crawling over his skin and hugged himself.

“They do that?” Adam resisted the need to look for a stick or something to poke at the mass.

“Everything does that,” Bobby said. “Tarantulas, June bugs. There was a grasshopper and beetle swarm you could see with radar in 2015.”

Adam cringed. Bobby didn’t appear to mind, which made sense.

“Yeah, well, biology is your department,” Adam said.

“Guys,” Vran called, leaning forward in the back seat to call out the open window. “I think the creepy women want a word.”

They’d come nearer. More solid, no longer flickering, they strolled toward the Binders. They were covered in blood. It stained the dress of the decapitated woman, fresh and glossy. It dripped from the other woman’s hands, staining the cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms.

Where the blood fell, it left traces of white.

The women stopped at a distance. Adam held in a long breath of relief.

“Thank you,” he said. “For showing us the way across.”

Adam did not know if they couldn’t speak or if they chose not to. Their black, pupilless eyes were hard. He couldn’t read them. They didn’t register on his Sight. He could have lowered his defenses, tried to get a sense of their emotions, but no, not in this place.

The headless woman risked dropping her burden and raised a hand, pointing a withered finger. Their expressions made it clear the Binders and Vran weren’t welcome here.

“We’ll go,” he said, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace.

Bobby followed Adam back to the Cutlass.

The women kept their distance as the brothers fastened their seat belts.

“Still west?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” Adam said.

The Cutlass started without trouble. Adam exhaled.

He willed a bit more of himself into it, pouring intent, and it hurt as the warlock wound pulsed.

Adam grimaced and gripped the steering wheel.

He didn’t think it would ever get better, that it could get better. He’d maimed himself intentionally, made a battery of his own soul to power a charm.

He’d been getting used to it, but down here the cut ran deeper, a little closer to his core.

Maybe this place leeched life and magic away. That was how it felt. His faint power felt even weaker.

The line to Vic said they were going in the right direction.

The ghosts streamed around them, as many as before, all headed the same way.

Adam snuck a peek at Vran. Was he sulking or just trying to hide how this place made him feel?

He’d turned down the snark, and Adam decided that was a bad sign.

At least worrying about Vran and Bobby meant Adam didn’t worry as much about Vic.

“We’re close to Route 66,” Bobby said, eyeing the landscape out the windshield. “At least where it would be in our world.”

Something clicked into place, Adam’s Sight telling him a truth as clear as a blinking light on his phone.

“That’s the road we need,” he said.

“A lot of it doesn’t exist anymore,” Bobby said.

“That fits too,” Adam said. “The spirit realm is like that. It mixes past and present.”

“This isn’t the spirit realm,” Vran said.

“No,” Adam agreed. “Not the one we’re used to at least.”

The spirit realm was life and magic. It held onto the memory of things long passed or curiosities that drifted in from other worlds.

It could be dangerous, sure, but also whimsical and never boring. This was more like someone’s idea of a horror movie, but less filled in, an unfinished idea or a dream. Maybe they weren’t seeing it, the same way someone without any Sight couldn’t see the spirit realm. Maybe they had the wrong kind of eyes.

Adam wondered if their world was the true center, the meeting ground of death and life.

He’d like answers but knew that seeking them might get him killed.

Adam shook his head, remembering how frustrated Vic had been about his ignorance and how no one had explained anything. Adam understood, but what could he explain? He had some experience but there was so much he didn’t know.

He’d accepted Silver’s offer to become the Page of Swords, but Silver had withdrawn it to stop Adam from doing exactly this, from driving into the unknown.

Adam’s heart ached with something gray and purple, the regret of his harsh words, but also that he’d lost the chance to learn more.

“Let’s hope the landscape remembers the road, even if the real world doesn’t,” Bobby mused, drawing Adam back to the moment.

Driving had always meant freedom, the chance to think, but now wasn’t the time or place to muse.

Vran scoffed.

“This world is real,” he said. “Just like my world is real.”

“Sorry,” Bobby said. “I meant our world.”

Vran didn’t say anything, but Adam didn’t get the sense he was really offended, just a little cranky, and any amount of surliness meant he was probably going to be okay.

Still, Adam was tired too.

They’d only been gone a few hours, and he felt like he’d driven a full day.

It was similar to the sensation he had after long spirit walks.

Adam didn’t think sleep would help, not in this place. It was a matter of energy, not time. A quick rest stop might become permanent.

He could try laying a circle around the car. It might provide shelter, but he wasn’t certain he had enough magic to empower it, or if he did, how many times he could do it before his tank ran out of gas.

“On to Texas?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah. It should be another hour or so if the landscape works the same,” Adam said.

The sky here was darker, more black than red. The white webbing remained, blanketing the plains beyond the road. It couldn’t all be the blood of the women, could it?

“There’s nothing here,” Vran said. “It’s all dead.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed.

Adam thought he could understand. Going from Guthrie to Denver had meant drier air, so much so that he’d been forever thirsty. Sometimes it felt like his skin would crack if he smiled. Vic had warned him that it would be worse in winter.

A metal sign, rusted full of holes like it had taken a shotgun blast, appeared ahead.

“Welcome to Texas,” Adam read.