The collected souls, p.10
The Collected Souls, page 10
Now, Tess.
I dart from display to display. Closer and closer.
The Collector doesn’t take her eyes off the suffocating Keeper.
I take a quiet, steeling breath. And sprint toward the Collector. The hand clutching my knife swings toward the center of her back.
And stops.
My whole body halts just as abruptly. I try to throw all my weight behind the blade, but I. Can’t. Move. I grimace and struggle.
On the other side of the Collector, the Keeper falls to the floor, seemingly unconscious.
And then our adversary turns to face me.
My eyes widen involuntarily as I stare back into her flat gray gaze yet again. My breath quickens as I realize I am terrified. Even frozen in place, I begin to tremble.
I have cost myself my own soul.
The Collector reaches for my outstretched hand.
A massive scraping sound comes from my left. A fraction of a second later, a display case slams into the Collector’s side.
Her paralyzing grip releases me.
I don’t take the time to see the aftermath of the collision—I run.
The Keeper rises from the floor as I pass him. We hurry together out of the museum.
I keep expecting the Collector to appear in our path before we can make it to the ISERE, but she does not.
The Keeper whistles a single note, swinging from low to high, opening the ISERE’s door just before we reach it. He slams the door shut behind me and sprints over to the console, pressing buttons and flicking switches to take us away.
Panting, I slap at my pockets to check that I still have the piece of the Key. I sigh with relief as I pull it out. Without warning, my legs become rubbery; I seat myself on a bench so I don’t collapse.
My breathing slows the longer I stare at the ring. After several moments, I close my eyes.
The engine calms back into its soft resting rhythm. It’s only then I realize how quiet the atrium is.
I crack open an eye to see the Keeper with his back to me, hands planted against the console, head hanging low.
He looks up at me in the mirror without moving his head. “Teresa,” he says with pain and exhaustion and a hint of disapproval.
I straighten, opening both my eyes.
“Why did you do that?”
I scoff indignantly. “Excuse me? Why did I try to kill the Collector?”
He sighs, straightens, turns to face me. “Why did you put yourself in so much more danger?”
“You mean so much more danger than I was already in? Because you evidently couldn’t get the Key, so I had to? Right before the Collector got it?”
He looks like I just slapped him. “I am sorry,” he murmurs. “But I do not believe you want to know the things I saw.”
“I’m sure I don’t!” I exclaim, just because I can’t think of a sufficient retort. “But that’s not the point! The point is stopping the Collector, dammit! At all costs!”
His voice stays low and level when he replies. “You act as if the cost is low.”
I blink. “What?”
He lowers his gaze but says nothing more.
“I hope the damn business card is worth it,” I spit. I throw the ring at his face and stalk away.
In the room of the ISERE that I suppose is my own, I flick through old photos of Ada and messages between us.
Here is a photo of us last Halloween, as Hastur and Ligur from Good Omens. Here is the bisexual meme she sent me. Here is the picture I sent of her lying drunk on the sidewalk, and the accompanying replies she sent the next morning telling me of the drunk texts she sent her boyfriend.
I cry and think of the times we snuck chicken nuggets into the movie theater, or when we bought several “weird” Oreo flavors and hosted a party to determine which was the best. (Mint. Strawberry Cheesecake was shortchanged.)
I linger on the memory of me coming out to her, and her telling me she loved me and holding me.
My parents are under threat. I already shut out the Keeper more than once. Who do I have right now?
10
The Keeper
When I emerge from the library later that day after working on the spell for the third piece of the Key, I can hear the angry strum of a ukulele and Teresa’s irritated voice singing about stabbing someone in the back coming from somewhere up above.
I consider approaching the walkway from which I can see her legs dangling, but I remember our last interaction and decide against it. It is not that I hold a grudge against Teresa—I do not, rather I agree that the Collector should be stopped at all costs—but such a scale of sacrifice is not something I feel I am capable of.
And yet, here I am, having vowed to stop her.
And, for me, the cost is too high—no matter the outcome.
Out of nowhere, an urgently blaring alarm jolts me so badly that I nearly keel over in panic—this dimension is ending.
The mirror above the console ripples into a screen and tells me a slightly different story. However, it takes me a few moments to calm down enough to comprehend that.
Teresa races down the set of spiral stairs to my right, ukulele clutched in one hand, face taut with fear. “What’s going on?” she calls over the alarm.
Concern tightens my chest. “The ISERE has picked up on an anomaly that urgently needs repaired.”
She hurries to my side, just as curious as she is frightened. “What is it?”
“The dimensions on either side of a rift are…pushing through the opening to overlap with each other. I had no idea this was even possible. It is so destabilizing that, theoretically, it should not be. This is only some of what results from the Collector’s actions.”
Teresa’s words from earlier ring through my head: “The point is stopping the Collector, dammit! At all costs!”
Her next words startle me with the contrast. “The multiverse has a hernia?”
I close my eyes, not sure how else to react. “I am no doctor, but I suppose you are not entirely wrong.”
She claps her hands. “All right, let’s go!”
I glance at her. “Whatever you do, avoid touching any interdimensional rifts.” I prepare the ISERE for travel to the anomaly.
“Why’s that?”
“You are not a surgeon.”
The sky at our destination is a weak twilight gray. I button my jacket against a cold wind that smells of the recent rain that has left the ground damp. Before us sprawl grassy hills dotted with small homes and patched with harvested crop fields.
We walk along a paved road, the wind in our faces.
Without warning, dense trees burst into appearance around us, vanish, reappear. After less than a second, the world settles back into autumn farmland, soon enough that I think I imagined it.
I look at Teresa and know she saw it too. Without saying a word, we remain rooted in place with bated breath.
Only moments later, it happens again. One second, the browning grasses sway and dip under the wind. The next, bright-leafed trees tower above undergrowth and leaf mold. The pavement under our feet becomes gravel.
I turn to Teresa again, but she is gone.
“Teresa?” My voice is tinged with anxiety.
She reappears when the original environment flickers back, then vanishes again as the world oscillates back to the forest.
The world settles back into the fields, Teresa at my side once more.
Her eyes are as wide as mine.
“That was scary,” she comments casually, then clears her throat.
My left shoulder blade itches. “We should probably hold hands, so we don’t get separated again,” I suggest, holding out my hand.
She narrows her eyes a little.
I begin to lower my hand, but then she takes it with an expression of uncertainty and suspicion.
We continue walking, and as we climb up a hill, the world begins switching again.
“Look.” I point across the road to a worn-down white cottage with faded black shutters and loose shingles.
A young woman stands in the driveway, her lips parted slightly as she stares at us. Then like a phantom, she flickers out of sight; trees are painted around us, the cottage’s façade brightens, the road turns to gravel under our feet. The trees evaporate, the cottage ages, the woman reappears. Her soft voice is almost lost in the wind. “Are things switching for you too?”
The woman invites us into the living room, which is cozy, though that may only be in comparison to the weather outside. Well-used sofas slouch along the walls, facing a scratched coffee table littered with magazines. The thick carpet underfoot is mottled with various shades of brown, which I doubt was the original pattern or color. Everything is washed in a warm but sallow light.
The woman, who introduced herself as Annette, perches nervously on the edge of an overstuffed armchair as Teresa and I settle onto a sofa. Half of Annette’s head is shaved, leaving the rest of her blond locks to flow over one shoulder. She surveys the room with an anxious eye framed with winged eyeliner. “This place, it is not my home. It almost is, but it’s a bit like an elderly person lives here instead of us. And outside—” She glances through the window for at least the fourth time since letting us in. “I don’t understand it. Farmland instead of forest?” Her accent is markedly different from Teresa’s, or Rhys’s.
“When did the switching begin?” I ask, trying to emanate calm for Annette’s sake.
“Yesterday. It happened twice then but has happened more frequently today. Sometimes my girlfriend would disappear when it happened, like you did on the road.”
“Where is your girlfriend now?”
Teresa shoots me a look that I cannot discern from the corner of my eye.
“I don’t know,” Annette whispers. “She vanished an hour ago, and I haven’t seen her since. We were in the dining room.” She leads us into the next room, a tight area with a dark dining table and mismatched chairs. A door directly across the room leads to the backyard while the kitchen is off to the left.
“What’s her name?” Teresa asks.
“Zazil.”
As if in response to Annette, movement in the doorway to the kitchen catches my eye. Nothing substantial, more akin to the flicker of a dust mote floating by and accompanied by a faint whisper: “Annette!”
“Zazil?” she cries. “Where are you?” She wheels on Teresa and me. “Do you know what’s going on?” Her voice is desperate and frightened.
My voice remains gentle but firm. “Yes, and we can help. Do you know the multiverse theory?” At her bemused face, I continue, “The theory that there are multiple universes, multiple versions of reality?”
Teresa taps my shoulder. “Keeper, she thinks you’re crazy,” she mutters.
“Oh, so you’re both in on this?” Annette half turns away, touching her fingertips to her forehead. “And here I was thinking I was insane.”
“The universes are all thinly layered on top of each other, only one step apart,” I persist. “This universe and yours are bleeding into each other. I can reunite you and Zazil in your universe and seal it off.”
“Whatever you say. Um, please get out.” Annette starts toward the front door, but stops short, eyes widening.
I follow her gaze to glimpse another incorporeal movement.
Teresa follows it into the living room.
I blink in surprise at what I see in the room she enters: the carpet is newer, the furniture too, lighter in color, and arranged differently. But more importantly, there stands a dark-haired woman that has appeared—or rather, a woman that had been here while we had not.
Teresa rounds on her heel when Annette cries out.
The room flickers once.
I see Teresa reach out and grip Zazil’s arm.
The house flickers again, and the two women are gone.
11
Tess
“Shit.” I would say more, but I think that roughly sums up our situation. Then I realize that Zazil has no idea who I am or what is going on, so I fill her in. “Annette’s okay,” I finish. “She’ll stay that way with the Keeper around.” I hope my voice projects the confidence I try to throw behind it, especially since I am not so sure how much I believe those words.
“Good.” Zazil exhales in cautious relief. She seems to be handling the newfound knowledge of the multiverse well.
We wait in the updated version of the living room for what feels like an apprehensive hour but is likely only minutes. On occasion we catch glimpses of something moving in the living room or dining room, something slightly warping the appearance of objects as it passes by. I am sure it is only the Keeper or Annette, but still unease bubbles up in my chest.
Eventually I decide to start calling for the Keeper, but the moment I do so, the house around us begins to flicker—but not like before. Instead of flitting back and forth between two dimensions, the environment alternates between blinding whiteness and the two universes superimposed upon one another.
The floor beneath one of my feet vanishes entirely. With a startled yelp, I lose my balance.
Zazil grabs my arm before I can fall and hauls me toward her. “We need to get out of this room. Come on!” Without waiting for an answer, she drags me down the hall.
We race into the farthest door and stumble to a halt as the house settles back into what I presume is Zazil’s dimension. We stand, clutching each other, in a tidy bedroom with a yellow-and-gray color scheme. The only sound is our breathing until we relax enough to sit on the edge of the bed, still gripping each other’s arms.
“So,” I say uncertainly, part of my brain focusing a little too much on the fact that Zazil is also queer, and pretty, and holding me. “Nice place you have. Lived here long?”
Zazil gives a nervous giggle. “A few months.”
We fall into silence again, mostly because I don’t really know how to continue a conversation in this situation.
“You know,” Zazil says, “your German is really good. A bit better than mine, at least. I mean, your accent is bad, but your actual pronunciation is g—” She is interrupted by a thin, faint wail behind us.
We whip around to see nothing abnormal.
“Clove is back at it again, it seems,” Zazil says.
“What?”
Zazil blushes. “It started out as a joke. This house is old, so odd things happen, and we jokingly attribute them to a ghost named Clove. But in the last few days it seems like there might be an actual ghost in this room.”
“How so?”
She shrugs. “Annette and I have heard sounds like what you and I just heard, and a couple of times we saw something there.” She points to the back corner of the room.
My gaze follows her finger. At first I see nothing, but upon closer inspection, there seems to be a warping of the air before the dresser. Unlike when we caught a glimpse of Zazil’s movement from the other dimension, this oddity seems to be stationary.
I stand and approach the area to stop a couple feet away. Slowly I reach out. My fingers meet slight resistance, then pass through without further event. I look up to see a face grimacing at me, the air condensed to embolden the lines.
With a gasp, I recoil.
A brief moan issues from the apparition.
“There really is something there, isn’t there?” Zazil says in a small voice.
I nod mutely. I bite my lip in an effort to quell the horror.
Once more, the flickering begins.
Zazil reaches for my hand, which I take.
As the oscillations between universes slow, someone calls my name from down the hallway.
“Keeper?” My hand rips free of Zazil’s as I race toward his voice.
The house flickers back and forth once more.
I emerge into the living room to find it empty. Disappointment and fear wash over me, sending me through the other rooms in search of the Keeper. When I return to the living room, Zazil is there, holding a small piece of paper.
“This was on the floor,” she informs me, handing it over.
I must have missed it.
It reads: The rift is in the basement.
12
The Keeper
With a twinge of frustration, I find myself back in the dated living room of Teresa’s home dimension.
“Was Zazil all right? Did you get her the message?” Annette asks urgently.
“I did not see either of them, but I did hear Teresa. I can only hope that they recovered the note.”
“Brilliant,” she grumbles. She seems unhappy to have more or less accepted the existence of a multiverse.
I scratch my forehead. “We need to get back to the basement.”
The door to said basement is in the hallway. Rickety stairs lead down into a dank, filthy space littered with ancient appliances and cobwebs. The rotting carcass of a mouse sprawls at the bottom of the steps. A few crickets flee our path as we cross the basement to a crevasse raked across the cinderblock wall and ceiling. Tendrils of frayed energy flutter around the edges of the gash. Waves of free energy boil and roll on the far side.
I snap my fingers, carving two broad circles in the floor a safe distance away from the rift. “Annette, stand in one of the circles, please.” I make sure she does as I say before turning back to the rift. As I place my hand beside it, the basement begins to flicker between the whiteness and the two dimensions. I need to hurry. I close my eyes and concentrate. I imagine my hand is anchoring me to the wall of Teresa’s dimension and her dimension only, sending out tendrils to tether Annette here as well. When I sense the presences of Teresa and Zazil, I reach out to them.
Soon the turmoil subsides, leaving all four of us in the same dimension.
“Keeper!” Teresa’s cry sounds more relieved than I believe she would ever want to admit.
“Teresa,” I acknowledge, cutting back on my own relief. “Step into that circle. Zazil, step in with Annette. Ensure that your entire body is in the circle, as I am sure none of you would like to have anything cut off. The circles will keep you grounded in your proper dimensions while protecting you from the other as I repair this situation.”
