The Magpie Effect - The Magpie Chronicles Book 1 (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 28

"She was clinging to the threads of her living life before they slipped away from her entirely, I realised. I'd seen this happen before, in other spirits. They followed the same routine in death as they did in life, repeating the same patterns, anything to reassure themselves that they were still part of this planet as it went on hurtling through space with or without their participation. 

I wanted to turn away, but I didn't dare. I deserved to watch what was happening to her. I owed it to her to look her in the eye and face what I had done.

"Carmen, I'm going to fix this."

"Damn right you are!" she shrieked. "You wait until my father hears about this, Sweet-Eater!"

She threw herself back onto the bed and said no more. Not even a sob. She only stared ahead, as still as marble, her eyes looking nowhere.

Behind me, Vivian and Martin continued to bang their fists against the door.

"Martin, knock the door down," I heard my mother whimper. She was crying. Something wracked my body. I couldn't call it guilt, not after the unsurmountable force of what I'd done to Carmen almost knocked me off my feet.

No, this was self-loathing in its most unadulterated form. I hated myself for what I'd done to my parents, for the pain and the worry that I'd put them through, and I was about to do it again.

"I don't have much time." I moved over to the bed and kneeled down before Carmen. She was still staring into the abyss. "Carmen, listen to me. I'm gonna go fix this. Right now. You hear me?"

"I hate you," she muttered. She didn't even look at me, didn't even bother injecting any venom into her voice.

"I know, I hate me too. But I can fix this. I'm gonna make this all better again."

"You can?" Carmen's eyes lit up hopefully.

"Yes." My bedroom door shuddered in its frame as Martin bombarded himself against it. "But you can't stay here, okay?"

Her eyes filled up with tears all over again. "Why not?"

I wanted to tell her to go home, but I knew that was a bad idea.  It would only confuse her.  She'd get upset and cause a hurricane or something right in the Vespin living room. Where did spirits usually go after they died?

"You know what?  Never mind, you can stay here," I said. "But you have to stay really quiet. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"I mean it, don't make a sound."

"I won't. God! Just go, and hurry up."

Carmen rolled her eyes at me and I straightened up, reassured by the return of her former sulkiness. There was another bang at the door, and this time dust fell from the ceiling.

"Martin, hurry!" Vivian squealed. "Saffy, we're coming!"

"I'm telling you, Vivian, it won't budge!"

"Oh, get out of the way! I'll do it myself!"

I looked around my room.  I didn't know why I was stalling; there was nothing that I needed to take with me.  Still, I allowed my eyes to pass over everything once, just once, and only for a second.  It wasn't like I wasn't ever going to see any of this stuff again.  It was just that, when I came back, I'd be changed.

I bade Carmen farewell, and then I bounded over to the window. I thrust it open and, without a moment's hesitation, climbed through and onto the narrow roofing over the porch. It was slippery with the night's resin, and my fingers turned numb as I slid towards the edge and started to feed myself over.

I allowed myself to free-fall to the ground, which I hit with a thud that knocked the air out of me. It was ok - nothing was damaged, I just wasn't built for falling from even the most unthreatening heights.

I bolted across the lawn just as a loud crash told me that my parents had finally managed to knock the door through, or that Carmen had slackened her grip enough to let them. I heard Vivian scream and Martin's silence as they took in the scene before them, the empty room with no daughter and the ruined remnants of her life.

It would look as though I'd been taken, I realized as I ran across the road. The shadows between the streetlamps engulfed me. It would look as though I'd been stolen from my bedroom, not that I had left of my own accord.

That I was offering myself. 

I didn't allow myself to cry, as much as I wanted to. As much as it would have been a reprieve from the terror that consumed me. So many measurements of purity, of guilt and self-loathing and fear, all of them administered at once. All so pure that they were agonising.

Rigatona was right. Humans couldn't handle the undiluted. Even a drop of what I felt now would have been enough - no, would have been too much. What I felt now, it was heightened sublimity. I was drunk, intoxicated, drowning in my own hatred and dread.

The night was alive. The stars throbbed like little bioluminescent dots of life against the obsidian, like masses of plankton glowing in the darkest depths of the sea. The cry of birds pierced the night, the undergrowth rustled with activity. I'd never felt like this before, everything so vivid, like I'd been drugged and elevated to a pedestal where it was possible for me to accommodate such incredible dosages of emotion.

And yet there were tears coursing down my cheeks.

I ran through the night.

I knew exactly what I needed to do.

**********