Dying to Return (The Station #3) Page 9

  The lobby is empty except for Rush and the Mentors. Nora stands with her arms crossed at her chest, a look of extreme irritation furrowing her trimmed brows. “What are you doing? We have a system here for a reason, you should know this.”

  “Which way to the depot room?” I ask, ignoring the question. The hallway entrances are in different places and I don’t want to take the wrong one. I can’t waste any more of Holly’s time.

  Stuart points to the right and I scoot around Rush, who has remained stoically silent and shut off from me. The hall feels as it did the first time I walked a child down the one at my own Station. Absurdly long. But I have an idea…a crazy and impossible idea. And it has to work, because I have hope.

  This time I don’t stop at the door, instead pushing through it and making both the Specialists on the other side gasp in surprise. There’s another closed exit on the far wall and it takes only five steps to reach it.

  “Open the door,” I say. The quarter is safely tucked inside my fist. The female Specialist is terrified of me, so I smile.

  “We can’t just open the door. It’s not meant for you,” says a man in a baggy sweat shirt and dark slacks.

  “You can. I know you can. Open it. Please…it’s not for me,” I beg. When no one moves I reach for the door handle on my own and the woman flinches toward me, grasping my hand just before it makes contact with the brushed metal knob.

  “Wait. Wait…who are you?” Her eyes have cooled but her cheeks flush with heat.

  “A friend. Please…open the door.”

  With wide eyes, she reaches around me and turns the knob slowly, stepping aside and out of the way as the door opens. Energy swirls on the threshold, pulsating with heat and currents that beg me forward. I know if I cross it, the bridge will snatch me away from the Station and take me somewhere else…some time else, so I only stick in my hand. For the children, this portal is different. They never cross alone. Someone they loved in life always comes to retrieve them when they are ready. I hope he comes. I hope he’s even there.

  A sucking sensation drags me across the floor and I cry out, afraid that my feet will lose their footing and I’ll be pulled into the portal, but the woman grabs my free arm and holds onto me. The air smells of sulfur and egg and something sizzles – the hair on my arm, I think. My hand becomes a blurry smear on the other side and I can’t see what’s happening, but the pain tells me it is still there, tightly fisted around the coin.

  “I told you this door is not for you,” the woman whispers in my ear and the pain radiates up my arm, stabbing into my shoulder like hot knife points. I can’t hold on much longer. Slowly I lift my fingers, exposing the quarter to the other side.

  “Please come. Please, she needs you.”

  The brightness in the room dims to a barely visible glow and then the current throws us all backwards onto the floor. With a hiss, the door slams shut. Gasping, I hold my hand in front of my face, surprised that my skin is unharmed and each finger is still attached. The coin is gone. I’ve lost it on the other side. No.

  “What have you done?” The man growls at me through clenched teeth. We can hardly see each other in the gloom of the room. Whatever the unseen light source is, it’s been tapped out for the time being.

  “I-I don’t know.”

  We scramble to our feet, and both Specialists give me a tongue-lashing equivalent to none I’ve ever received before. They don’t notice the portal door opening behind them or the man standing just beyond the threshold. The smell of sulfur and bad eggs has faded slightly too and my stomach flips as the room dazzles us in light again.

  “Holly?” The man is blurred behind a thin film-like substance, like my hand was, but I know it’s him. He asks for her again, “Holly, are you there?”

  I smile. “She’s not here, but I can get her, please don’t leave.”

  “He can’t hear you. Or see you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The female Specialist begins to cry, clutching both hands to her modest chest. “They can’t see us, not ever. Only the child can see through the door. Hurry, go get her. There isn’t much time.” She pushes me out of the room and my feet hit the hallway floor running.

  It worked! I can’t believe it worked.

  ***

  Holly clutches to my left arm as we take the hallway to the depot room for her second trip in a brisk walk. I know she’s nervous; her lower lip trembles and her eyes dart around like a feral cat. Not that anyone can blame the girl. Life wasn’t kind to her, but I have no doubt her after-life will be. And she will travel there with someone who cared for her, someone who loved her for a brief yet memorable time in her life.

  “Will you go with me?” I stand with her at the closed doorway into the depot room.

  “Through this door, yes.”

  When it opens slowly, the two Specialists nod at me briefly, smiling warmly at Holly. The woman, happy to see her, takes her hand and guides the girl inside while the man closes the door behind us. In the air the scent of burned energy lingers with the fresh smell of innocence. Which is what Holly is – an innocent. The only thing she knew when she put her mother’s gun inside her mouth, was that in the movies it’s what people did when they were sad. And Holly was a sad, sad girl. She didn’t understand, not completely at least, that the bullet would rip a hole through her brain, leaving a mess on the bathroom wall her mother would simply paint over a week later. Her young mind had no idea one little bullet would steal her away from the short life she was given – forever.

  And now here we were, standing at the portal that would take her to a place without pain and sadness. She would be free to spend the rest of existence around people that cared for her. I’m not sure how I know this, but it’s a feeling inside that I can’t, and don’t want to argue with.

  Holly squeals in joy when she sees the man from her past standing in the doorway across the room. Nothing but white light shows in the background but the concern on his face is apparent. He glances over his shoulder, giving a long look at whatever lies behind him before calling for her again.

  “Holly, are you there? It’s okay, you can come with me now,” he says warmly.

  Both of the Specialists flank the child, each placing a hand gently on her shoulder as they ease her toward the door, explaining this is her next step in a journey into the beyond. At the last second, she turns from them and runs to me, wrapping her thin arms around my waist. Her frizzy hair tickles my nose but I don’t move.

  “Can you come with me all the way?”

  “This is as far as I can go, Holly. But you don’t need to be scared, okay? You don’t need to be scared ever again.”

  With wet cheeks, she smiles back at me before turning to the female Specialist. “I want Piper to help me this time.”

  The woman nods, but in her mind she’s lashing out at me. She doesn’t know I can hear her, and she’s worried and confused about why I’m standing in this room with them, interfering with the inner workings of the Station when I have no business here, or why Holly has become my business.

  “I’ll have to hold onto you. To make sure the only one who crosses is Holly,” she says to me.

  The portal snaps loudly with live currents and I flinch. We approach the door and the light around us pulses as Holly’s toes cross the threshold. The man on the other side beams with pride when he sees her. This time there’s no pain when my hand, interlocked with Holly’s, passes into the next world. With half of my body in the depot room, and the other tingling in the white beyond, the man takes no notice of me, and instead kneels down to hug the daughter he always wanted and didn’t have enough time to raise. I don’t think he can see me at all, but if he does, it’s only the happy smile of the girl he is focused on.

  “This found its way back to me. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I knew you needed me. Are you ready to be happy again, kiddo?” The young man with brown hair the color of milk chocolate opens one of his fisted hands and holds it out in front of a
smiling Holly.

  Shining in his palm like a polished star is her lucky quarter.

  CHAPTER 11

  Bewildered. That’s the word that sticks in my mind as I take the empty hall back into the Ones Department lobby. The other children have been returned to the playroom, and are running and screaming out laughter, slapping the walls to make the surface glow like a rainbow, just as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The woman behind the desk is no longer angry with me, and I know that Rush has told her what I’ve done. Tears are in her eyes when I walk around the desk and cross the room. She knows Holly got a second chance. And for a reason no one understands, I was able to give it to her.

  “Can we go outside?” Rush asks, taking my hand in his. If I was less dazed, I would snatch it away, but wild energy still courses through my insides. Plus, I need air. Even if it’s not real air, I need the concept of air. I need to be outside.

  Rush leads me to the waterfall, where the Mentors wait. Stuart rises from a rock bench, questions already on his lips, but it is the quietest one of the bunch that is heard above the others. Sophia’s eyes bore into my very soul when she speaks.

  “What happened is simply not possible. How did you do it? Who are you, really?”

  I give her the only answer I can while bending forward to dip my fingers into the cool water. “When I figure that out, I’ll be sure to share.”

  ***

  “You have really upset them,” Rush laughs. We’ve circled the Station three times, strolling aimlessly in a figure eight as Rush allows me to take in the scenery and practice blocking out the murmur of the crowd, focusing on only a few people at a time. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be, and I agree with him that it’s smart we came to a Station full of strangers before returning to my own.

  “Me?” I mock.

  “You know you did. The whole place is brimming now with gossip of our arrival. Usually I tend to hide in the background. You know…blend in with the locals. Not on this visit,” he groans.

  “Oh please, you know you love being the center of the Universe.”

  “Which Universe do you speak of?” He feigns a shocked expression and I elbow him in the side.

  “All of them.”

  With a snort, he doesn’t argue. Probably because I’m right. We are making our way through a group of women with white hair who seem quite taken by Rush when a stabbing pain pulls at my temples. My stomach lurches and for a moment I think I might vomit. Not that anything is in there to come up.

  “Piper, what’s wrong?” Rush asks, gripping my elbow with one hand to steady me.

  “I don’t…I don’t know.”

  The pain spreads along the back of my head like I’ve been struck with a mallet and the air stops in my lungs. The women with white hair shuffle away, leaving a gap between us and one other person. A young man.

  “Holy shit,” he says to no one in particular.

  With a final breath before I collapse to my knees onto the pearly floor, I mutter two words I never thought I’d say again, “Ryan Burke”.

  ***

  At the same time my knees connect with the ground, Rush’s hand connects with Ryan’s throat. He knows the name I muttered. He knows it well. During our transference, Rush experienced my entire living past – including the night that Ryan raped me at a high school party and all the humiliating times I had to see him afterwards.

  The air cracks around the three of us as Rush lifts Ryan off his feet and dangles him above the floor. Though Ryan is struggling to free himself, he’s not turning purple in the face as he would if his air-way was being blocked, because you don’t breathe for real at the Station. Ryan is already dead. When Rush remembers this, he tosses the much smaller man at his feet, and slams a foot into his chest.

  “Wait,” Ryan protests, gasping though he doesn’t need to. “Piper, is that really you?”

  The growl that comes from Rush stands the hair up on my arms. “Don’t you speak her name, don’t you ever.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Nora hisses as she comes up behind me, her brows knit together like a crochet pattern, her voice hitched up high. She won’t touch Rush, but she reaches for Ryan and yanks him to his feet, as if putting her smaller body between the two men will stop what’s happening.

  The electricity that zaps from Rush’s fingers strikes her shoulder as he reaches for Ryan’s throat once more. Pain stretches her face out into a startled grimace. The heated energy from his touch is the only pain one can feel in the Station. At least that I know about. The mini lightning bolt blinds me just enough to snap me out of my stupor, and I say his name again.

  “Ryan Burke.” A laugh reserved for serial killers or mad scientists escapes from my mouth. I can’t hold it in, so I let it out to echo around the now quiet and still Station.

  Everyone turns to look at me. I’m in a heap on the ground, struggling to breathe, struggling to keep my eyes dry. Rush seems to remember I’m here again, and backs away from Ryan and Nora, dropping to the ground to hold me. The soft fabric of his pants brush against my arm in an oddly comforting way. When I push him off, his mind opens and for the first time, his thoughts come to me splintered and jumbled and I have to close him out just to recall how to blink.

  “Are you okay? Let’s go, we’re leaving right this minute, Piper. Come,” he says, pulling me to my feet and tugging me a few steps away from Ryan. But I can’t take my eyes off of him.

  He’s just as beautiful as he was in high school. But the dark hardness I last saw in his eyes is gone, leaving only the dazzling blue of a deep tropical sea. The blonde of his hair is lighter and longer, and the tight t-shirt and hip-hanging pants he sports are fitting with the jock persona he had in school. He’s barefoot, which somehow makes him seem more vulnerable. He died in almost the same outfit Sloan did, minus the orange color of his trousers.

  A strangely inappropriate thought blasts into my head. Thank the Universe and all things Holy that I’m not in my pajamas in front of Ryan Burke.

  With an unsteady inhale of air, I shake my head at him, “What are you doing here?”

  “Piper, please come with me,” Rush tugs on my arm again but I yank it free.

  The shock of seeing Ryan is gone, replaced now by anger. No, not anger – fury. I want to strike him. I want to claw his eyes out of his clean-shaven face and shove them down his throat and then kick his balls up into his lungs. I want to hurt him like he hurt me. I want to rip him inside and out and then spit on his twitching corpse.

  You damn bastard.

  And then something happens I don’t expect.

  Ryan Burke drops down at my feet and begins to sob.

  ***

  For a slender woman, Nora is surprisingly tough. She’s managed to toss the lot of us into a nearby room the size of a large closet. The space reminds me of the Review room with one light dangling above us, illuminating only sections of our bodies, leaving the shadows plenty of opportunity to play with my mind. There’s no furniture, so we all stand around each other. Too close for my comfort.

  “I don’t know what things are like where you come from, Miss Willow, but outbursts like these are not tolerated here. Ever.” Nora nearly spits the words out.

  Rush glares at her and she backs away from me. She might be livid with us, but she won’t risk upsetting him to the point that he touches her again.

  “It’s not her fault,” Ryan says quietly.

  Rush is doing an exceptional job of lighting the room with his aura. He’s seething to get his hands back on Ryan’s neck, and I don’t need to hear his thoughts to know this. All of his fingers are twitching.

  “Explain to me what’s going on, Ryan.” Nora stands with her hands on her hips.

  I wait for his explanation with bated breath. Oh, this will be good. Will he say the truth, right here in front of two others? In front of me?

  “Piper and I went to high school.”

  I snort. It’s an ugly sound that reminds me of a pig digging around in it
s trough for goodies. Ryan won’t look up at me. For the first time I notice how low his shoulders hang and the awkward hunching of his back. He’s afraid of me. My, how the proverbial tables have turned.

  “I need to speak with Ryan. Alone.” I surprise even myself with the words. Images of his mouth on mine. His hands under my clothes and my jeans on the floor. The red cup. I blink and the air stops in my lungs again.

  The panicked look on his face makes Nora shake her head. “No. I don’t think that is appropriate at all. I still don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “Come with me,” Rush says to her. His voice is low; a warning tone that makes me jump.

  Instantly she nods at Ryan and skitters out of the room ahead of Rush, leaving no room between them for accidental touching. Just before she closes the door, leaving me alone with my former rapist, she nods at Ryan and says to me, “Keep your hands to yourself, Miss Willow.”

  “I’ll try.”

  I can hear Ryan gulp. Good. Squirm. I still want to relocate your balls, asshole.

  With a swish, the door closes and I’m left facing him. There are no words. None. So we stare at each other. He’s the first one to look away.

  “Piper,” he starts with an audible swallow.

  My hand shoots up so fast my wrist makes a soft popping noise. “Stop. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to control this conversation. You don’t get to control me.” He nods, so I continue. “What you did to me - it was awful on a level you will never understand. Never. Do not stand here and assume that your pathetic attempt to apologize will do anything more than make me want to yank your tongue out and shove it up your ass so you can taste your own bullshit.”

  Is this me speaking? Yes, yes I think it is.

  He begins to cry again, yet I continue my verbal attack. “You hurt me, Ryan. You stole my innocence in body and spirit. You…you killed me.” Now I’m crying too, because though I meant what I said, it’s only partly true. Ryan might have been my trigger, but he wasn’t the one that swallowed a bottle of pills. I did that all on my own.