Passenger

He grabbed the rope behind me and we pulled together, slowly.

Griffin sniffed again. “And you smell like piss.”

My stomach turned. “Fuck.” I shook my head.

With each pull, I could hear Ben grunting, “Unh. Unh.”

Then Qui

The three of us dragged him all the way back to the junction just before the main tu

*   *   *

Griffin leaned over his brother. He wiped his hand across Ben’s face and hair while I poured water on him.

We tried to get him to drink, but Ben choked and gagged, spitting the water all over both of us.

“He’s a fucking mess,” Griffin said. He patted Ben’s cheek. “Ben? Hey? Can you hear me?”

Qui

“Wow. It’s okay. It’s moving. It’s opening up. I can see forever. Jack. It’s you and Griffin. Jack. The hole in the sky is the way through for everyone. I know who you are. Jumping Man. I can see you. I love you, Griff.”

Griffin chewed at his lip, and kept his hand in Ben’s hair.

He was scared and I could see it.

“Ben never says shit like that.”

“He got bit, Griff,” I said. “One of those things got on his back and bit him. It was like the hand you found, only it was some kind of spider.”

“Where’d he bite him?” Qui

“On his back,” I said.

I turned Ben onto his side and Qui

“Did it unfold its legs?” Qui

I looked at Qui

“A whip spider.”

Just the way he said it—the tone in his voice—told me it was something bad, and Qui

Griffin leaned in and put his face right up to the marks on Ben’s back. They seemed bigger now, and there was a spreading red mass that seemed to be growing across Ben’s skin. It looked like it was snaking in both directions along the boy’s spine.

Griffin put his hands flat on either side of the bite. “It feels like he’s on fire.”

I shined my light on Qui

Qui

I put my hand on the side of Ben’s head and then looked at Griffin. He knew what Qui

I dropped the flashlight and stood up. I got right up against Qui

Qui

And this couldn’t be real, either.

But we couldn’t escape.

I couldn’t get Ben and Griffin home.

And it was my fault.

I put my hands on Qui

Deep breath, Jack.

“I’m not going to hit you, Qui

I could feel the kid begin to relax, loosen up, under my touch.

“What do you know about those spiders?”

He shook his head, tried to look away from me. “He ain’t go

nineteen

“What do you mean?” I said. I shook the kid angrily. “What the fuck do you mean?”

But I knew what he meant.

Qui

I probably would have hit him if he did. He stood there sniffling, looking like he was getting ready to cry again.

“You’re full of shit,” Griffin said. “You’ve always been full of shit, you fucking prick. I should have said yes. I should have told Ben we needed to kill you.”

Griffin poured water across Ben’s chest, washing his brother, wiping his skin with a shaking hand.

The muscles in Ben’s neck had tightened, so his head tilted back, and his mouth stretched open even wider now. Except for the movement of his ribs when he inhaled, he already looked dead.

“I don’t know what to do, Griff.” I sounded pathetic, like every fucked-up thing I’d ever done to them had all clotted in my mouth and was choking me.

Griffin wouldn’t look at me. I knew what he was thinking.

He kept trying to clean Ben’s skin.

I slipped the noose on the speargun away from my neck, let the weapon rest on the floor beside my wet and black-stained boots. I dropped the pack next to it.

Then I began unwrapping the bandage from around my hand. But even as I did it, I had an understanding that nothing would happen—I needed to be outside, under the hole in the sky. And if we were outside, what could I expect? To drive everyone to madness? To send Qui

Bad magic.

Everything came through Jack.

I was the arrow through every fucked-up layer in this universe, and when I broke the lens, the shaft of the arrow splintered everything. That’s what I did. Ben knew it, too. The hole in the sky was the fracture of the lens was the cut in my hand was the doorway to every not-world I never wanted to see.

Griffin put his face down on his brother’s chest. I couldn’t tell whether he was resting, giving up, or trying to hear if Ben was still alive.

I looked at my hand.

My skin was white and puffy with moisture. I stunk. The black salt had soaked through the bandage. Was there any spot on my body not covered in some kind of filth?

The mark was a deeper color of pink now, zigzagged in the identical pattern to the thing we’d all seen in the sky. If I laid the Marbury lens in my palm, it would match like a puzzle piece. If I had Co

I shined my light on Griffin, and kneeled down on the opposite side of Ben’s chest.

That was exactly the moment Ben Miller stopped breathing.

“Stop fucking around!” Griffin yelled at his brother. He pushed his hands down against Ben’s unmoving sternum and pushed. “Don’t fucking do this to me!”

Griffin put his mouth over his brother’s and began blowing gasps of air into Ben’s lungs. And when I put the flat of my palm over Ben’s heart, I could immediately feel how cold and stiff the boy was.

I grabbed his hand, squeezed it.

His skin was like wax.

This can’t be happening.

I felt sick, choked. I wanted to scream, but everything locked up in my throat.

“Ben? Ben?”

Then Griffin pulled his head away from his brother’s and said, “Get the fuck away from us.”

I pulled my hand away from Ben.

I deserved this. Griffin had every right to say it.

Then we heard noises at the opening to the main tu

It sounded like metal clicking against metal. I couldn’t see Qui