Chapter 42

  Elizabeth Eddison

  Creator, do this for me:

  Make for me a heart that knows your truth

  An eye that sees your beauty

  An ear that hears your voice

  A tongue that speaks your word

  A foot that treads your path

  A shoulder that bears your cross

  A hand that wears your scars

  Creator, do this for me:

  Take my heart, and hang it in your temple

  And burn it with your grace

  Until stone becomes flesh

  Then write your name upon it

  And set it in the sky

  So that all who see it will know

  That you are beautiful

  - Dwayne Hartman

  She was cold. That was the first thing Elizabeth’s consciousness registered. Cold, shivering. Hard floor. Noise, flashing lights.

  Where was she? What had happened? The last thing she could remember was…the Mountain? Snow and ice? Music. Thinking about a flower named The End. Miles to go…

  A voice, nearby, said, “Come now, that’s a girl, wake up.” It sounded frantic, urgent. It sounded like…

  “Elmer?” The word sounded loud in her head. Elizabeth realized that her eyes were open. She saw confusing shapes, but they were gradually coming together, taking form. Piece by piece, her thoughts connected. If this was Elmer, then that meant…she was back on Earth. She had just fallen asleep, or something, in the Narrative.

  “Good, good,” said Elmer. “Don’t fret, now. Just…just get up. Quickly, dear.” His tone indicated that he was doing plenty of fretting himself. Which wasn’t like Elmer at all.

  The noise came next: thunder, that’s what it was. Thunder, and the sound of things crashing and breaking, metal screaming and groaning.

  Elizabeth sat up, shivering. She lay on the floor of a big room, most of which had been torn to pieces and painted black, although the paint was moving. Leah Walker clung to Elmer. Over to one side stood three people Elizabeth didn’t know, working frantically on computers. On the other side, she saw the cause of the commotion: Amelia flew about battling some monster of darkness.

  Elizabeth saw her sister last. AJ had her back to Elizabeth, and her shoulders heaved. Was she crying? Something lay in front of her, a person, though Elizabeth couldn’t make out any more than that.

  There was concern on Elmer’s face and sheer terror on Leah’s. The girl couldn’t stop staring at Amelia and the monster.

  “Nearly there,” said a voice from where the three were working on the computers. “Where the hell is Nick?”

  Elizabeth, head clearing, crawled on her hands and knees toward AJ. She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. AJ jumped in fright and spun around. Her action allowed Elizabeth a view of what she had been kneeling over. It was Michael. No, it was Michael’s body.

  AJ looked so helpless there, so sad, that Elizabeth’s heart broke. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t even hug. They just looked at each other.

  Nearby, the monster struck Amelia down. The incessant thunderclaps were actually gunfire. Which meant that it wasn’t just any monster Amelia had been fighting.

  Amelia Shape fell, trailing streamers of brilliant colors in the air like the tail of a comet. She landed near the edge of the great pit which had formed over most of the area of the room where the floor had collapsed into some darkness below. She landed near Elmer and Leah.

  “AJ,” said Elizabeth, trying not to think about Michael. “Where are the others?” She felt sick.

  AJ couldn’t respond, though she tried.

  “Anyone elshe?” said a voice from the darkness, and it was a horrible sound.

  “Clara, what do you mean he hasn’t moved?” It was from the computers, the voice with an Irish accent. It said, “Listen up, Black! You best hold off a moment, or this door’ll never open!”

  The churning darkness, which had been rolling forward like a wave in slow motion, paused to consider this. Then that terrible, cold voice said, “Only one that needsh to live ish you, it sheemsh.”

  “Fair enough,” the Irish voice replied, strangely calm, even casual. “But consider…uh…”

  Something was happening now, something new, which caused that vaguely familiar Irish voice to dwindle away. Elizabeth found that her ears suddenly needed to pop. In a space of seconds, the sensation became painful. She worked her jaw, doing a false-yawn to relieve the pressure. Still it dropped.

  And that’s what it was, of course: the pressure, dropping dramatically. A wind began to rise.

  “You nexsht, little man? Wash that your…” He didn’t finish the sentence, whatever he’d been about to say.

  Elizabeth realized he was talking to Elmer. Elmer Sky, who now kneeled on the ground, cradling Amelia. Cradling her body.

  It was suddenly urgent for Elizabeth to know where exactly everyone else was. What had happened? What about Jimothy? She didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Ms. Eddison!” cried the Irish voice from the wall of wiring and screens that stood like a bastion of flickering light in a room full of shadow. “Both of you! Get over here! Get the girl!” He meant Leah, who was still trying to cling to Elmer Sky, even though the wind was mounting so quickly that it threatened to pull her skyward.

  Lightning skittered over the walls, eliciting cries of protest from those three at the computers.

  Hardly knowing what she was doing, Elizabeth stood shakily, nearly blown over by the mounting wind. She hauled AJ to her feet. Her sister rose meekly, cradling a broken camera.

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  Elizbeth stopped the rushing wind in a bubble around her and pulled AJ to Leah. She stumbled to the computers with both of them. There, she finally looked at the one who’d been speaking. She saw the flaming red hair and knew who it must be. She saw the door, and she understood. Just one question.

  “What about Jimothy?” she shouted; the mounting crackle of lightning and the roar of wind filled the room. There was thunder now, too, Black’s thunder.

  McFinn looked like he was whistling, of all things, waiting for the computer to do something. The other two with him looked terrified. They wore orange and gray coats. McFinn tapped a few keys in rapid succession and gazed at something on the screen. “Whyte brothers dead,” he said. “Nick not moving, Becky and Alan nearly here. Mr. Hartman is…oh. No, he’s just arrived.” McFinn turned his piercing emerald eyes to Elizabeth. “So,” he said, “Nick said you could stop bullets? You might have to give us some more time.”

  At that moment, Dwayne Hartman entered the room. Hunched, staggering, barely supporting himself on his two canes, he limped through the rectangular aperture which had been sliced through the door at the far end of the room. Elizabeth noticed this only because Black noticed it, which made Elmer notice it, and all the attention in the room suddenly funneled toward that one gray old figure, and his trembling arms, and his trickling blood. A yawning pit in the floor of the room separated Dawyn Hartman from the rest of them.

  He coughed, staining his beard red, and he looked up at the thing that was Abraham Black. And even though he seemed to be keeping himself upright through an act of sheer stubborn willpower, at the same time he towered there in the doorway, outlined by its light as the thunder crashed.

  Elmer, who had been either combating Black or about to commence doing so in serious, slumped back down, though the raging wind and the echoing thunder from some distance far above did not abate.

  Black spoke, and it was hard to say what there was in his voice. Amusement? Trepidation? “Didn’t I kill you, preacher man?”

  Dwayne coughed again before speaking. “I told you,” he said, his voice somehow a match for the booming thunder, “my life is not in your hands.”

  Black descended like a spider through its web of darkness toward its prey. “I guesh we’ll shee about that,” he said. “I won’t mish thish time, I think.”

  Dwayne Hartman stood silent for a long moment, save for a pained cough in which he hacked up more blood. Then he said, “God spoke to me, Abraham. Said…said you got a long way to go.”

  “I’d shay sho,” came the reply. “Firsht, I kill every one of you. Nexsht, the demonsh. One by one. They musht pay the prishe.”

  “We all…we all gotta do that, Abraham.”

  “Yesh. And shtop calling me that.”

  “You got a name, Abraham. You’re a man. I ain’t gonna let you forget it.”

  The room darkened, and thunder ripped close by overhead. The entire room trembled now, and it didn’t seem the doing of either Black or Dwayne. Neither paid it any heed. “I,” said Black, his voice quiet and cold, “am a beasht.” The shadows in the room coiled and writhed. “A monshter.”

  “I told you,” said Dwayne. “Ain’t no such thing.”

  The blackness spasmed. Leah whimpered in fear as shadows encroached on the small area that remained in the light, crawling like living things. “That’sh enough,” said Black. His weapons gleamed, aimed at Dwayne with a pair of metallic clicks. “Sho long, shir.”

  Instead of replying, Dwayne Hartman began to sing. Elizabeth had heard the phenomenon of Dwayne Hartman’s singing voice before. This was the same as ever, except that the sound reverberated oddly through the room. It was a song that Elizabeth knew. It was a song that probably everyone knew, except maybe Black.

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me

  The sound wasn’t sweet at all. But there was something to it, something more than sound. A luminescence trickled into the room.

  Elizabeth could hardly believe it. Dwayne, faced with Black, was singing? Yet at the same time, there was a logic to it. After all…why not? Why not music? Nothing else seemed to be working against that monster. And in any case, all they needed now was time, time for Riley to open that door, and Dwayne was giving it to them; the music was working. Black appeared nonplussed.

  Amber Jane Eddison surprised Elizabeth by joining in, in a quavering voice.

  I once was lost, but now am found

  Was blind, but now I see

  The mysterious light intensified. Was it the genesis mist? Was it here, in this room, reacting to music? Responding to the song? Black hung frozen in the air, but his shadows slunk back.

  Thunder bellowed louder above, and the room shook with such force that the floor quaked. Behind Elizabeth, the man who was almost certainly Kate’s uncle was saying something about variance percentiles to his colleagues. She heard the phrase “close enough.”

  AJ was gripping her hand, squeezing it fiercely. Tears were on her cheeks. Elizabeth joined in the song. The coiling power of some bright energy thrilled through her as she lifted her voice.

  ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

  And grace my fears relieved!

  How precious did that grace appear

  The hour I first believed.

  Elizabeth, unlike AJ and Dwayne, had never ‘believed.’ That didn’t seem to matter. Maybe the words didn’t matter at all. Maybe it was all the music. Maybe it was the mist. Or maybe there was something else going on here, something beyond her. Whatever the case, a brightness suffused the air, nurtured by the song. Black seemed smaller. Although Elizabeth could not make out his face, he appeared bewildered. Disoriented. Maybe…afraid? He lowered the revolvers from Dwayne, and the black shape of his hat turned this way and that as he looked around, maybe seeking the source of the light.

  Through many dangers, toils, and snares

  We have already come

  “Got it!” shouted McFinn. Machines thrummed, hissed, clanked somewhere close by.

  Part of the ceiling of the room peeled away and vanished up into darkness, revealing at last the source of the shaking. A storm towered overhead in which lightning crashed and winds howled, and its power was such that it was tearing up the entire facility, wrenching it even from its underground foundations with the force of a hundred tornadoes. Of course it was Elmer, who hadn’t moved, and who even now kneeled by the still and silent form of Amelia Shape just as AJ had done to Michael.

  Black’s darkness had shrunk down around him as parts were torn away and flung up into the howling void. Now, one might nearly mistake him for a normal person who happened to be standing in a peculiar area of dim light. He was staring at Dwayne.

  Dwayne Hartman had tears in his eyes, his voice as raucous as ever. He stared right back at Black as if performing for an audience of one. He dropped the cane in his right hand; it clattered to the floor and rolled into the yawning dark pit which consumed most of the room. It was clear that Dwayne could barely stand, but he proffered his free hand to Abraham Black as he sang.

  ‘Twas grace that brought us safe thus far,

  And grace will lead us home.

  And just like that, somehow, it was all over.

  Abraham Black did not shoot Dwayne, nor did he turn and murder everyone else in the room. He simply dropped down into the darkness below.

  Most of the rest of the ceiling soared up into the maelstrom revealed above. “Elmer!” AJ shouted, but Elmer wasn’t listening. Elizabeth felt the wind tearing at her, threatening to lift all of them up and away into the death and darkness above. She stopped the wind in their vicinity.

  The entire far wall of the room collapsed in a cloud of fog and windblown debris and shadows. Dwayne Hartman disappeared from sight.

  A side door entering into the wrecked remains of the room slid open nearby, admitting Rebecca Carter, who supported a badly wounded Alan Sheppard. A bouncing rubber ball preceded them, and they paused upon entry, stunned by devastation and the maelstrom overhead.

  “Elmer!” AJ ran to Elmer Sky and shook him. She succeeded in hauling him to his feet and dragging him to the door. He seemed in a daze.

  Riley McFinn at last opened the door. It was free-standing, a square of metal easily tall enough to walk through. It slid apart in two uneven segments to reveal some part of the Museum. Elizabeth recognized that place easily enough.

  “Now!” shouted McFinn. He pointed at the open door with his staff tipped with glowing crystals. “Go!” There was command in his voice, and nobody disobeyed. Nobody wanted to linger here.

  Through the door they went: the two scientists Elizabeth did not know, and AJ and Elmer, and Elizabeth and Leah, and Rebecca and Alan, and finally McFinn, who shut the door behind them, obviously afraid that Black might return.

  The Museum was quiet and still, shockingly so after the perpetual noise and chaos of the previous few minutes.

  It did not remain quiet. Almost every person present had lost someone dear to them. Elizabeth, too stunned and exhausted and furious for grief, could only think: what the hell kind of story was this?