“Nothing could keep me from you. Nothing in life or death….”
A cold shaft opened inside me. It was a well, bottomless and black.
“What—?” I said. “What are you talking about? What does that mean?”
“Do not be scared. I cannot harm you.”
“Now you’re really frightening me. Shut up.” I didn’t understand; even so, I felt my bones turn to water. I could barely speak. My tongue felt tied to the roof of my mouth. “Shut up….”
The figure stood there in the shadows. Now it said nothing.
“Come closer,” I said. “Come into the light.”
“It’s best I don’t, Lucy.”
It was then that I saw how frail and wispy his substance was. How—though solid seeming at the head and torso—the legs were faint as gauze, and tailed off into nothing. He hovered above the flagstone floor.
My own legs gave way. I sank to my knees. The flare cracked against the stone.
“Oh, no,” I whispered. “Lockwood—no….”
The voice spoke softly, calmly. “You must not be sorry.”
I slapped my hands against my face. I kept them there, blocking out the sight.
“It is not your fault,” the voice said.
But it was. I knew it was. I curled my fingers, raking the nails into my skin. I heard a strange and awful cry, like some desperate, wounded animal, and realized it was me.
Coherent thoughts did not come. Images only. I remembered him throwing the chain net across the attic between the grasping ectoplasmic coils; leaping between me and the black-dressed woman at the window. I remembered him running along the tops of the carnival floats, dodging the bullets of the enemy; and at the Wintergarden house, launching himself across the stairwell to strike the murderous ghost and save my life.
Save my life again….
I also remembered the photograph from his sister’s room—that impatient, blurry child.
I rocked back and forth, tears pooling against my palms. I was a huddling, crumpled thing. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. None of this was happening.
“Lucy.” I lowered my hands. I could not see the shape; my eyes were awash. But I could hear, and he was speaking, clear and calmly, that way he always had. “I did not come to give you pain. I came to say good-bye.”
I shook my head, my face wet. “No! Tell me what happened.”
“I fell. I died. Is that not enough?”
“Oh, God….Trying to save me….”
“It was always going to be this way,” the shape said. “You knew it in your heart. My luck couldn’t go on forever. But I’m glad I did it, Lucy. You’ve nothing to be guilty about, and I’m glad you’re safe. Safe….” the voice added drily, “with barely a scratch on you.”
I gave a wail at that. “Please—I’d have done anything for it to be the other way—”
“I know you would,” Again I could tell that somewhere in the dark he was smiling a sad, sad smile. “I know. Now…” The form seemed to shrink back. “I have been here too long.”
“No! I need to see you….” I said. “Please. Not in the dark. Not like this.”
“I cannot. It would distress you.”
“Please—show me.”
“Very well.” Bright blue fire erupted around the shape; flames as delicate as liquid glass pooled up against the ceiling. And I saw him.
I saw a great and bloody wound, open in the center of his chest. His shirt had been ripped open by the force of whatever had driven through it. Tattered remnants of his coat hung on either side, fading, at its base, with the rest of the apparition.
I saw his thin, pale face, twisted and terrible, his eyes dull and despairing. Yet, even so, he smiled at me, and the tenderness and grief contained within that smile made the image horrible beyond imagining.
Blackness flared at the edge of my vision; I felt as if I would pass out. Instead I lurched to my feet and staggered toward him, hands outstretched. And as I did so the bloodied head turned suddenly to look back along the passage, and I saw that it was not a solid head at all but an empty mask, and that its hollow contours were filled with wisps of shadow.
The face turned back to me. “Lucy—I must go now. Remember me.”
From the front, it was perfect: I could see the pores in the skin, that little mole I always noticed on the side of his neck. The hair, the jaw, the crumpled details of the shirt and coat—everything was right. But from the side and back…it seemed to me that not just the head but the body itself had been utterly scooped out, hollow as a fibrous papier-mÂché shell.
“Wait, Lockwood…I don’t understand. Your head…”
“I must go.” Once more, the figure looked behind it, as if something had disturbed its concentration. And I wasn’t wrong. It was an empty thing. Thick black fibers dangled at the margins, like the edges of an unfinished rug. Beyond was a net of grainy wisps, intricate yet chaotically woven, like a great gray spiderweb that had been molded into a contoured membrane. I saw the inverse of Lockwood’s face, the curve of the cheekbones, the indentation of the nose.
There were blank holes where the mouth and eyes should be.
Now it faced me once more. The mouth smiled sadly; the eyes shone with wisdom and remote knowledge. “Lucy…”
Those fibers…I thought of the jerking, crawling thing.
My head cleared. I staggered back, filled with revulsion and relief.
“I know what you are!” I cried. “You’re not him!”
“I am what is to come.”
“You’re a Fetch! An imposter! Feeding on my thoughts!” The flare! Where was it? I couldn’t see it in the dark.
“I show you the future. This is your doing.”
“No! No, I don’t believe you.”
“Not everything you see is what has passed. Sometimes it is what is yet to be.”
A pale smile shone in the pale, pale face. It looked at me with kindness and with love.
Then a sword point cut straight through it.
Down from the scalp, through the hair, right through the center of the nose and across the mouth and chin; down into the substance of the chest. It all happened in an instant; the body showed no more resistance to the blade than a bag of air.
Lockwood’s head and body peeled away on either side, split in two by the shimmering silver point. The black wisps from the voids behind the contours of the hollow face drifted free, like twists of black juice tumbling in water. The body fell away, dissolved to threads of plasm that coiled themselves to vapor and then to nothing.
Behind it, in the exact same spot, hair tousled, face bloodied, coat torn, one hand held outstretched behind him to counteract the driven blow, was Lockwood.
He had no gaping wound in his chest. His shirt, white, but a little grubby with dust and mud, was still done up neatly to the second button. He grinned at me. “Hey, Lucy.”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy screaming.
A little later on we were sitting together on a block of stone at one corner of the chamber. Lockwood had kicked a few skulls away to make a clear space near us. He’d scattered a bit of iron and salt over the piles of bones to discourage further nuisance, and two candles from his belt pouch were burning brightly in the middle of the floor. Somehow he’d even found some chewing gum. It was all quite cozy, really.
“So, you’re all right?” he said for the tenth time.