Arise. Tara Hudson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the frost on the windshield, I caught one last glimpse of his face—still wearing that disappointed expression—before he backed the truck down the driveway and disappeared onto the main road.

      Late that afternoon I stamped my feet on the ice-encrusted grass and rubbed my fists along my bare arms a few times. Then I made a little cave of my hands and placed them in front of my mouth so that I could puff air into them as if I could warm them with my breath. As if I even needed to warm them in the first place. Still, the gestures made me feel more normal. And normal was a feeling I desperately needed right now.

      In front of me the river moved more quickly than usual, its waters swelled and muddied by all the sleet last night. The river, however, wasn’t the ugliest part of this scene. That honor went to the remains of High Bridge, only a few hundred feet downriver from me.

      The ruined bridge stretched across the muddy water as bleak and stripped as the forest surrounding it. From here I could see the mangled girders and places where large chunks of concrete had fallen, leaving gaping holes around which someone had placed sawhorses and crisscrossed ribbons of yellow tape. More sawhorses guarded each end of the bridge, warning drivers to find some other route if they didn’t want their cars to become aquatic. Along the edges of the bridge, the metal railings tilted at crazy angles as if some enormous force had knocked the entire structure off-kilter. Which, in essence, it had.

      At that thought I smirked. I didn’t feel one ounce of regret for wrecking the bridge. I hoped a strong wind sent the whole thing crumbling down into the water below.

      I gave it a final scowl and then turned my attention to the barren trees across the river from me. Something about their skeletal branches, clawing at the gray sky, suited my current mood. And my current task.

      I closed my eyes and began to breathe heavily, slowly, in an effort to calm myself. To focus. Against the black canvas of my eyelids, I pictured a scene similar to that of the living world today but even colder. A place much darker, too, and more menacing. An otherworldly place where rogue ghosts, enslaved wraiths, and demons waited.

      Eli’s netherworld.

      I squeezed my eyes tighter, concentrating on the things I remembered about it: the violent purple sky; the gnarled, glittering trees; the river of tar moving toward the dark abyss underneath the netherworld version of High Bridge. Then I pictured the black shadows—dead souls trapped there by Eli under order of his masters—as they shifted among the netherworld trees.

      I wanted them to reappear so badly I could almost hear them whispering in the darkness. Begging, in hushed but urgent voices, to be set free. I kept my eyes shut for a few more moments, wishing, praying.

      But when I opened my eyes, my heart sank. Nothing around me had changed—not the cold gray sky, not the icy grass, not the muddied river.

      I sank to the ground, letting my dress puddle around me. I didn’t want to admit defeat, but I’d started to run out of excuses for myself. Every day I tried to reopen the netherworld, and every day I failed. Why should today be any different?

      When I’d decided to pursue this task several months ago, Joshua thought I’d lost my mind. After all, I’d only narrowly escaped an eternity spent trapped in the netherworld. So he had no idea why I would want to waste even a second trying to get back into it.

      Even now a small part of me wondered whether Joshua had a point: maybe what I’d spent months doing at this bridge was crazy or, at the very best, in total disregard for my own safety. Honestly, though, I didn’t care about my safety, and I certainly didn’t care about crazy. Not where my father was concerned.

      It broke my heart when I learned that my father had died not long after I had. But not knowing what had happened to his ghost hurt far worse, mostly because I knew what waited for him after death.

      If my experience as a ghost was any indication, my father was now spending his afterlife in one of two ways: either lost like I’d been or trapped by Eli in the darkness of the netherworld. Since I’d never run into my father during my years of wandering, I had to assume he’d fallen victim to Eli—a fate I obviously couldn’t allow him to suffer.

      But none of my attempts to help him had worked.

      At this point I couldn’t deny my strongest suspicion: that I’d lost whatever ghostly powers I had discovered the night I overcame Eli and his dark masters. Sure, I could still touch Joshua, and I could still (sometimes) control my materializations in the living world. But I could no longer create that supernatural glow upon my skin or feel its surge of power, and I couldn’t materialize into the netherworld.

      Arguably, what I did at the river this afternoon was no more productive than what I’d done every few mornings for the last two months: sit on the front porch of my childhood home and watch, unseen, as my mother prepared for her day.

      Though my visits were sporadic, I’d easily memorized her daily routine. Each morning she drank two cups of coffee in the front room, staring blankly at either the steam rising from her mug or at photos of my father and me; I couldn’t tell which. After that she left—usually forgetting to lock the front door—and drove off to work in her creaking brown sedan.

      Every time I saw her she looked tired and lonely; every time, the sight of her flooded me with angry, impotent guilt. Which was why I couldn’t bring myself to visit her every day. I just didn’t have the strength.

      But today I did.

      This morning, after I’d left Joshua, I followed my mother to work and watched unseen as she worked a punishing job as the stockroom clerk for the local hardware store. When her shift finally ended at 3 p.m., I materialized to the river, determined to do something—anything—for at least one of my parents.

      Now, standing uselessly beside the river, I sighed. However much I wasn’t helping my mother, I certainly wasn’t helping my father, either. This afternoon’s activities had proven as much.

      I ran one hand through my hair, tugging at its dark brown ends as if the pressure might force me to concentrate harder. Assuming my concentration had anything to do with my ability to reopen the netherworld. Assuming I hadn’t been barred from it entirely.

      I released the poor strand of hair, which I’d twisted fiercely around my index finger, and groaned in frustration. The groan echoed back from the barren tree line, mocking me.

      I pushed myself up off the ground and brushed my skirt smooth, although the ice hadn’t actually wrinkled it. Then I turned my back on the river and walked toward the tree line. There, on the trunk of the largest cottonwood, hung a wristwatch. Joshua had nailed it there a few weeks ago, after I’d come home late one too many times.

      I leaned in close enough to see both the little and big hands resting near the dayglow five.

      “Crap,” I murmured. Late again.

      I could try to blame it on the blank gray sky—much darker, I realized, than it looked when I usually left. But what was the point? No matter what my excuse, I’d probably still find Joshua disappointed but unsurprised when I materialized back to the Mayhews’ house. On the plus side, he’d have almost no time to obsess over his calculus final, and even less time to argue his way out of the party I’d finally convinced him to attend.

      I cast another brief glance at the watch, and a thought struck me. What if each second ticking away on the watch’s little face meant something? What if those seconds, blending together into minutes then hours then days, had started to create something?

СКАЧАТЬ