XXVII

Apart from the shade-eaten circle in the floor, the bedroom Caff and Jennie had climbed into was undisturbed. He would wager that the pair of them were the first to enter it in years. He looked it over and saw a small, narrow bed with a little wooden chest at its feet. The bedding, alongside everything else, was layered with dust. Thick, puffy motes of it drifted snow-like through the stale air. It tickled the back of his mouth, threatening a cough or sneeze or a clearing of his throat. The window was boarded, fading light peeking through cracks in the wooden slats nailed to the outside frame. This was a quiet place, untouched by time or the unnatural predations of Artemus Talmadge's power. His eyes went back to the shade-eaten circle in the floor, near perfect in shape. Mostly untouched.

It was soothing, almost, to stand in here. Peaceful, in its own way. Maybe that was just wishful thought on his part. After what that Place had done to him, he found himself in dire need of solace. Beneath the numbness, anyway. Truth be told he did not know what he ought to feel. He had thought, after Jennie's touch had brought him back, that he had found his center. It was possible he had, that this numb lack he felt was the center he needed to find. Or he was still adrift, flailing wild to find any way to solid ground. It could not be that, though. He could not afford it to be. Time was not on his side.

Still, it was hard not to think on it. What that Place had done to him, just by having him look at it. How it had reached into his mind and just taken everything not of use to it. Violated. It was the only word he could think of to fit. Something he had not ever known was his had been taken and he didn't know if he could ever get it back. He wondered if this was how it had been for Elijah and for Everett Swanson. If they too had lost this whatever-it-had-been. He hoped not. It was horrible.

He could kill Artemus Talmadge. He realized it then, and in doing washed away the numbness. It wasn't a certainty, before all this, not really. Now it was. He could do it, and easily. That wasn't to say he would resort to that first. No, arresting Talmadge was the right call. But. If Caff got even a hint, a mere suspicion, that Talmadge was working his power on anyone, he would shoot the bastard dead. Caff did not want to think on what he would have to do if Jennie were changed. Nor what she would have to do, were it him.

Jennie took a few slow steps around the room. She looked around it, eyes drifting from thing to thing before settling on that small, narrow bed. He envied her strength of will. This House, that Place, had to be as awful for her as it was for him. Yet here she was, solid and sure. She really ought to have his job. “Whose room you think this was?” she muttered, drawing him from rumination. “Some kid, maybe?”

“Probably, yeah,” he agreed. He cleared his throat quietly and wished he'd brought something to drink. Not only was his mouth dry, but it was now filling with itchy dust. Truly, his was a miserable lot. Jennie went to the small chest and crouched by it, setting her twelve-gauge gently to one side. Well within reach, though. The chest had simple brass clasps holding its lid closed. It had to have been years since they were used, but they clicked open without issue. She lifted it slow, cautious, and he waited to see what she would find. When the lid fully opened she snorted and sat back on her heels. She gave him a wry look over her shoulder.

“I have struck gold,” she declared, a dry twist to her lips. He went to look and saw what she had. Within the chest was a small collection of toys, suitable for a young child. An unpainted, smooth-sanded wooden horse, a pair of dolls. A square of folded cloth that might have been a swaddling blanket. He went to a knee next to Jennie and took out the horse. Its ears and snout were ragged, as though chewed on, and he saw a similar fraying to the woolen hair of the dolls. A very young child, then. He wondered who this child grew up to be. Which generation of Talmadge they fell under. What they would think of this place. He let himself wonder for a moment, distracting himself, before putting those thoughts to bed.

With a grunt and the aid of the empty rifle he stood. “Come on,” he said, offering a hand for Jennie to use or not as she chose, “I want to be gone before sundown.” Jennie grunted and chose to, clapping her palm to his and rising to her full height. He was in no hurry to let go and it seemed she was not either, so they traveled together to the door. She brought them both to a halt shortly after. Caught up, he turned to see her eyes narrow and her head tilt. “What?” he asked. She shushed him. Seconds dragged out. It took him that long to realize that she was listening for something. He strained his ears in kind.

There. Muted by distance and the closed door, he heard it. A murmur of susurrating sound. Silks sliding and twisting and twining. He thought of the sidewinder. He thought of a half hour back, when he had last heard it. The whisper became a murmur and Jennie asked, “You hear that?” He grunted. The murmur grew louder, grew closer, and became a rumbling groan that set a tremble in the walls and floor. He could feel it through the soles of his boots. Jennie began to pull at him, urging him away from the rattling door. He went. They pushed their backs up against the wall furthest away and felt the rumble become a roar. It was sound and force, echoing in his ears and the hollow of his bones.

With no warning, it hit. A thin, narrow blade of oily, oozing, clinging shade punched through the wood and dragged. Cut the door in half across its middle. It would have caught him as well, had he been near to it. He had no idea what would happen to him if it touched him. Nor was he in a mood to learn. The shade was not done. Its blade spread and flattened into a plane that then split into dozens of small, questing tendrils that crawled across the surface of the door. Their wriggling search had every hair on his limbs standing on end. Once they had enveloped the totality of the door and its frame, they seemed to sink in.

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Then the whole thing was torn out of the wall. The sound was immense and sudden. Jennie's blunt nails dug into the back of his hand. His own grip had tightened to the point bruises had no doubt wrapped around her palm. In the hall was the rest of the shade. It was a mass in the shape of a melting candle and around the size of a man. Neither himself nor Jennie drew breathe as this candle swayed and bobbed as if caught in a wind. The splintered frame and door were pulled into its depths and consumed. That was the fate that awaited them if it touched them. He was certain of it.

He was equally certain that it was searching for them. It had no eyes, yet he knew it could see. Whether it was searching of its own will or through the guidance of Artemus Talmadge, he did not know. In truth, it didn't much matter. Either way they would have to stay hidden from its sight. He saw no way for them to fight it. Bullets were for targets more substantial than shade, no matters is properties, and they were mostly gone besides. Fire might work. Trouble there was that he had no way of making it. No matches, no fuel, nothing. He did not know if Jennie had anything.

Which left him with this: stay hidden. Move quickly, move quietly, and do not be found. There were problems here as well. The candle's lack of eyes made it impossible to tell where it was looking or what it saw. There was also the problem that both of them would have to be quick and quiet, when it was his experience that one could be either but not both. Choosing quiet would mean they ran more of a chance of being found or him running out of time. Choosing quick was out. They were not faster than the candle or any form it might take. Whatever they did they would have to do it soon and together. Worse, it looked as thought they would have to in complete silence and without drawing breath.

- - -

Each breathless second that passed raised the odds of them being found. The burn in his chest for air grew hotter, more insistent. He ground his teeth. All he needed was to last long enough to come up with something, anything, to get the candle away. Spots swam in his vision. Dig deep, he told himself, and think. That wasn't the issue. He was thinking, and hard. It was that he was stuck. He needed to breathe so he could think, but he needed to think so he could breathe. There was a ever-more insistent notion that he was overreacting and could breathe without being found. The candle hadn't found them yet, after all, for all they were in plain sight.

There was something there. The candle bobbed and swayed, as if in a wind, and did not find them. It was just there, as if waiting. He could not say why it had not found them. Jennie tugged at their clasped hands, drawing his attention. She was pale, lips pressed thin, and had an urgent look in her eye. With a finger placed to her lips she bid him be quiet. His throat worked. He needed air. Frustration, annoyance, and desperation bubbled up. The candle bobbed and swayed.

Jennie held out her free hand, palm up. Beckoning. He looked at it, then back up to her face. Her eyes glittered. She jerked her chin at the rifle he held in a white-knuckle grasp and beckoned again with her palm-up hand. It was no good for anything but hitting something, empty of ammunition as it was. He didn't know why she wanted it. She gestured a third time, urgent. He gave it over. She was clearly up to something and he would trust her. He always would trust her. That was why he made no effort to stop her from leaving their place against the wall and creeping towards the candle, even if the very idea made his heart damn near stop.

She was quiet. So very, very quiet that he could not help but marvel at her near-to soundless steps. Even as the edges of his sight began to gray and his chest began to convulse, he marveled. She was cat-quiet, padding across the floor to the edge of the ruined door frame. After meeting his gaze from across the room she tried for a smile. It wavered and died fast. She did not try again. He nodded, aiming to reassure as best he could that he had faith in whatever she was about to do. Maybe it helped.

Jennie ducked around the frame a half-step into the hallway. She came close to brushing the edges of the candle with her arm as she threw the empty rifle down the hall and away from them. A second or two passed before it landed with a rolling clatter of sound. She whirled back around the frame, just barely getting out of the candle's way as it lurched after the noise. It moved fast, enough for its shape to shift and slide horribly. He held on until he could no longer hear the murmur of its rush before finally, finally breathing in. The dry, bitter air was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

He kept his jaw clamped as he hissed air in through his nose. Across the bedroom Jennie grinned at him in well-earned pride and no small relief. She waved for him to join her and he eyed the distance between them. No way could he move as quiet as she'd done. Not even at his best, which was far from where he was. Not in his boots and not with an ever-worsening limp. He could do something about one of those and did, balancing awkwardly on one foot at a time to take his boots off. In silent, sweaty woolen socks he made his way over. Jennie looked to the boots he held, then to the socks he wore. One of his toes peeked through a hole he hadn't gotten around to mending. “You hush,” he whispered. She shrugged, smile intact.

Now that she'd showed him, it was clear enough how the candle saw. After all, it had not one eye on its horribly shapeless body. Made sense it would use some other way to see. By that logic it should have been deaf as well. Since it clearly was not, he wondered how her train of thought had arrived at that station. She'd bet her life on it, so she had clearly been convinced it was right. “I worked it out,” she told him, quite a ways under her breath. She must have seen him looking confused. “we made too much noise. It lost us after we stopped.”

He grunted. It made sense. It also worked. He looked out into the oddly intact hall. At one end was the candle, bobbing and swaying as if in a wind. At the other was a sharp turn to the right. He looked back to Jennie and jerked his chin towards the turn. With a nod, she led the way. He took every effort to copy how and where she moved. All the while, he was perfectly aware of the thing he left his back wide open to. It put his shoulders up by his ears. He did not relax until they had turned that corner. What they saw ahead was another hallway. Doors on the right leading to rooms he had no interest in entering. On the left were windows. They were broken, boarded, or both.

They moved as quietly as they could. He stopped at a window to look out and see how much time had passed since they had entered. Quite a bit, it seemed, given how dark a purple the sky was turning. It had not seemed like that long, but he had not exactly been keeping track. A rickety wooden set of stairs curled up from the middle of the room at the end of the hallway. It did not look stable nor strong enough to support any one person's weight, let alone two. That no longer mattered.

He'd shimmy up the damned pole if he had to.