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  © 2014 Heather Marie

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-426-8 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-427-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-428-2 (hardcover)

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  To my parents, Jeff and Angela.

  And to my grandmother Virginia––I hope that wherever you are

  it is paved with gold, just as you dreamed it would be.

  ot five minutes after busting my gut on the track, I spot a dead kid standing next to my car. Just waiting for me, like they always do. I try to groan but I’m still too out of breath to bother. How do I know he’s dead? If you don’t count the crimson smile across his neck (a deadly blow most likely inflicted by the finest of blades) and the flat pastiness of his brown skin, you wouldn’t know the difference. But I’ve done this long enough to familiarize myself with them.

  Bleeders.

  It’s not the nicest of names, but it about sums them up.

  Dead people—or ghosts, if that makes you feel better. Unfortunate souls that have found themselves departed from the living. They’re not always as gory as this dude, but majority of them are. Sometimes they’re just normal people dying of natural causes. I prefer the natural over the gore, to be honest.

  It takes a moment for me to notice the kid, because my mind is still processing the encounter I had this afternoon in the school office. Linda, the woman who handles attendance, is damn close to filing a complaint against me, I’m sure. First thing she does each time I walk through the door is let out the loudest sigh.

  “I still don’t have anything for you, Aiden,” she’d said earlier that day, for the dozenth time.

  “It’s been six months, Linda. How could there be nothing? Look, I’m only asking for, like, a small hint.”

  She typed away on her computer, unimpressed. “It’s against school regulations for me to release personal information on any student. Especially to another member of the student body.” Linda said this last part with a quick death stare in my direction, before going back to her computer screen. “I’ve told you. If you keep doing this, I’m gonna have to tell Father Williams.”

  I leaned against the doorframe, my head tilted in that desperate way puppies use, hoping just maybe she’d take an ounce of pity on me.

  She didn’t.

  Linda stopped what she was doing and faced me. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Koren Banks and her family have taken a leave of absence. That’s all I can offer you.”

  I pushed myself from the door and leaned over her desk, whispering, “I just want to know that she’s okay.” If the desperation in my voice wasn’t clear enough, I hoped she’d see it on my face.

  Linda looked deep in my eyes and said, “I’m not at liberty to say.” But this time, this one single time, she sounded like she wished she could.

  And just like that, the anxiety I’ve dealt with for months has tripled.

  I know absolutely nothing about Koren’s strange disappearance, but apparently someone does. They just can’t, or won’t, tell me.

  After that, I do what always helps me burn off steam. Run. Though it doesn’t do any good when shortly after I clear my head, I find that I’m needed once again. Being a Gateway can be exhausting.

  So when I finally take notice of the Bleeder who’s incapable of standing still, already in panic mode, it’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.

  “Aw… come on, man. I just got off the track. Can’t this wait?” I say this as I half-drag, half-walk my way through the dark school parking lot, backpack hanging off one shoulder.

  My yellow VW Bug glows brightly under the lamppost, the light creating a white halo around it like some godly beam shooting straight from the sky. Fitting. Dead kid paces back and forth next to my car, which I find disconcerting. Something’s making him twitch, and if I have to guess, I’d say it’s the reality of finding out he’s dead. That can’t be an easy thing to digest.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” he says as he paces. His hands tap against his legs, tap taptap tap, like his nerves have hit full throttle. Not that I blame the kid. Kid might be the wrong word, though. He looks about my age, seventeen, maybe a year or so older. Black shirt, blue jeans, white sneakers. Just an everyday guy.

  Suddenly my exhaustion means nothing. Here I am, alive, worried about a girl who probably forgot about me the minute she left town. And here’s this guy, dead, trying to figure out where the hell it all went wrong. I could never compare my worst day with his.

  “Calm down, okay?” Palms up, I attempt coaxing him to a standstill. His pacing is making me anxious.

  After another twenty seconds, he collects himself and stops, hugging his arms to his chest.

  “What’s happening to me? Am I—?”

  I’m kind of glad he goes silent. His words are more like a wheezing kid having an asthma attack, the way he sputters them out between breaths. Not to mention the gash in his throat does this disgusting open-gape thing as if it’s another mouth opening and closing along with his.

  Dead Kid stands in front of my car, frozen, waiting for me to say something.

  Before I can respond, the freezing Portland air whispers by, just enough to cause my sweat-covered skin to prickle with goosebumps. I shake off the chills running up and down my arms, and try to explain.

  “Do you know where you are? Where you were before coming here?” I lower my hands to my sides and give him time to ponder this.

  “I was with Eric,” he finally says.

  “Eric. Okay.” I have no idea who Eric is, but the more I talk, the calmer he seems to get.

  He nods. “We were, uh, were running this errand for his brother and… and something happened.”

  Again, his wound wink winks as he speaks. I don’t know how he’s able to talk with all that damage to his throat, but I have to assume it’s a Bleeder thing.

  “Do you, um, do you remember what happened?” I let my backpack slide to the ground. Somehow losing that weight is my way of telling him he has my full attention. I don’t know how. It just is.

  He rubs his hands up and down his upper arms, his eyes searching for something beyond. A memory. A glimpse of the nightmare that brought him to this.

  “We were making a run for Stephen. Eric’s brother.”

  “A run?”

  “A drug run,” he clarifies, flicking his eyes downward. “I don’t know what happened. It just… it just went bad.” He stares down at the black asphalt as he speaks. “One minute we were there. No big deal. And the next… some guy reached up behind me and Eric tried to stop him, and I felt—” He stops. “The next thing I know, I’m walking down some road.”

  The damn goosebumps come back when he says it. He felt the knife slicing his throat. Felt it. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

  I take him in for a moment, him watching me, me watching him. Normally I’d be distracted by the chomping gash along his throat, with its constant lifting and parting of flesh every time he speaks, but the sympathy I feel for him transcends that. The blood crusting down his neck doesn’t even
look real. It could be some kind of makeup, special effects like I’ve seen in movies. But it’s not. And it is. Real, I mean. It’s not uncommon to come across a Bleeder that’s been brutally killed, but that doesn’t mean anyone should be unwavering when presented with such a situation.

  I see this guy in front of me, and for a moment, I picture Koren. Sliced throat. Pale skin. Lifeless. It’s a thought that has plagued me since she left. Why can’t I picture her like any normal person? Alive and well. Happy. It’s a sick feeling in my gut that I can’t escape. Koren. Dead.

  The kid’s uncomfortable wheezing rocks me back to reality. I need to get it together for his sake.

  “I heard this… this humming,” he continues, breaking the silence and motioning his hand in circles around his ear to demonstrate. “It wouldn’t let up. You know? And I followed it. I don’t know how, or why, I just did.”

  That hum he’s talking about would be one of my Gateway “superpowers.” I can’t hear it, but the way I explain it to myself is this: it’s basically a dog whistle. Undetected by the human ear. Or the living ear, that is. It’s something they hear the minute they die, from what they’ve told me. A way for them to find the closest Gateway to send them… wherever it is they go.

  I tuck my hands in the pockets of my track shorts.

  “Yeah, I know the hum you’re talking about,” I tell him.

  He crosses his arms to his chest again. “I’m… dead. Right?”

  I really don’t want to be the guy to drop this bomb, but there isn’t another Gateway around to do the dirty work. Not that I know of anyway. Gateways don’t exactly wear a symbol on their chest blatantly outing what they are. They just… are.

  “Yeah, man. I’m sorry.” It’s really all I can say.

  He nods as he runs a hand through his spiked hair. The concern in his pinched brow pulls away, his eyes softening when they look back at me. He’s accepting it, and the minute he’s ready, it’ll be time.

  “So why am I here? Why did the humming stop when I found you?”

  I rub the back of my neck, uncomfortable. This never gets easy. “Uh, I’m sort of the guy that sends you, you know, where you need to go.”

  “You mean like heaven?”

  I place my hand back in my pocket, the awkwardness beginning to ease. “You can call it that. I don’t really know for sure.”

  “Seems weird, doesn’t it? Not knowing?”

  “Yeah, actually, but it won’t hurt. All you have to do is walk through me. You don’t have to worry about anything after that. Trust me.”

  He stares at me, expecting more. But I can’t give him what he wants. What they all want. Confirmation. Reassurance. All I can tell them is what I feel; that the thing inside of me is like nothing else. The warmth. The safety. The peace. I feel it each and every time one of them passes through. The unfortunate ones who are ripped from their lives without a chance to say goodbye.

  But this kid doesn’t need that. He’s already made up his mind. I can tell by the way his slouched shoulders relax, and his arms drop slowly to his sides.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say back.

  With a quick scan around the parking lot, I confirm what I already know. It’s empty. Has been for the last three hours, but it never hurts to be sure.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” I say, “walk straight at me. I’ll take care of everything else.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not you, at least,” I reply.

  He doesn’t look too happy about that. How this kid ended up here is beyond me. And I don’t mean here as in here. I get that. I mean how a nice guy like him got himself mixed up and put in such a horrible situation. A drug deal gone wrong. A drug deal he wasn’t supposed to be a part of to begin with. His story is simple: wrong place, wrong time. Those are always the worst kind of stories.

  In a gesture to say: I’m ready, I extend my arms outward.

  He nods once, and takes a deep breath. Without any last words, without any Tell my mom I love her, he steps forward, closing the distance without a second thought. I shut my eyes and wait for the inevitable. The rush of liquid ice that coats my veins as the Gateway takes him in. It’s the kind of cold that burns, like throwing your entire body into a pile of snow and never letting up when that freezing cold becomes unbearable.

  This is how it goes. How I live my life. Going day to day, sending Bleeders to what other side awaits them when their time is up. Heaven. Salvation. Shit, I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s where they’re meant to be. And where I’ll someday go. I guess then… then I’ll really know.

  ’ll admit that I’m not always keen to picking up Bleeders off the side of the road. And after the night I’ve had, it’s definitely not on my list of things to do for fun. But no matter how hard I try to ignore the fact that she’s there, nothing can hide the Bleeder waiting for me the second I turn the corner onto my street.

  Everything about her gives the impression of a typical girl at or nearing eighteen years of age. At first glance, her silky, strawberry red hair shines with life, and her freckled skin is soft and smooth under the blinding streetlights. Under normal circumstances, I’d more than likely ask this girl out, even if most good-looking girls like her wouldn’t give me the time of day. She’s that beautiful. That is, until you take notice of her white blouse sloppily covered by her rusted red leather jacket, and the dark stain of blood oozing from the gunshot wound glaring violently from her chest.

  She watches as I pass, the slight, eerie movement of her head telling me so, and my skin prickles with the icy energy reflecting from her eyes into the rearview mirror. I stare back to be sure she understands what I can’t say. I don’t always have time for them.

  The image of the girl shrinks the farther I go, fading into the shadows of the desolate suburban street. Her unnatural position makes me shudder: body still facing the direction from which I came, head cranked without effort in a one-eighty. I don’t care how many times I’ve seen what they can do; the way they move always gives me the creeps.

  “Sorry, lady. I’ve got places to be,” I say under my breath, as I focus my attention back on the main road. The time on my phone is a quarter to seven, which means I’m later than late for dinner. I can already hear my mother say, “It’s a school night. Where have you been?” I’m convinced she never checks her text messages. If she did, she wouldn’t freak out every time I stay late for track practice.

  Guilt seeps through me as I distance myself farther and farther from the girl in need. As bad as I feel, I’m not exactly in a helping mood. My clothes still reek from sweat after the strenuous practice I had on the track, and the need to shower is priority uno. I’m still recovering from the last Bleeder I crossed over less than an hour ago. It takes a while to recharge after the fact. Once they walk through me, it’s like a snowstorm erupts in my bones, causing me to black out for a few minutes. Sometimes a whole hour. It depends on their energy, I guess. And that guy was definitely packing some Bleeder heat. Either way, it’s draining and I’m not up for another go just yet.

  Forgetting about the red-haired Bleeder I left behind, I fumble for the button to skip to the next song. My cousin John helped me install a modern system into this beat-up old bug before he left for college. For the briefest of moments, I take my eyes off the road, searching for track seven on the player. I hardly get a second to enjoy the song before I look up, just in time to slam on my brakes. Gunshot girl lurks in the middle of the street, shoulders hunched. The gaping wound in her chest heaves with each false intake of breath, and her blazing red hair falls into her face. Through the strands of red, her eyes beam in my direction. The intensity of her glare makes my gasping breaths catch in my throat as I struggle to maintain control of my car. It’s a miracle I get it to a complete stop without fishtailing it into a lamppost.

  My harsh grip along the steering wheel burns my palms, while the smell of burnt rubber pollutes my lungs. For a second, all I can hear is the sound of my hea
rt throbbing against my chest. Sure, I could go right through her, but tell that to my instincts, and the ingrained “don’t run people over” lessons from driver’s ed. While I’m in here recuperating from a full blown panic, she stands centimeters from the car bumper, unaffected.

  Our eyes lock, and even though I try, nothing can break the connection she has with me. The headlights bounce off the studs lining her jacket, making her injury more obvious than before. My stomach churns at the sight of it.

  It’s not often that I find myself chased down by a Bleeder. Sometimes they show up right away, other times they seem to linger, popping up days later. Other times they go away for good, and I have to assume they found another Gateway to see them through. This girl, well, this girl is determined, and I have to ask myself what has her so set on me. That can’t be a good sign.

  “You have to help me,” she says. Her voice rattles in her throat. The sound is unsettling.

  “Are you insane?” I yell. “You could have killed me!”

  “I’m sorry,” she says weakly from the passenger seat. The very seat that was empty a second ago.

  “What the—!” I reach for my heart and practically jump against the door. I’m not sure how many scares my heart can take within a ten minute interval.

  Her presence drops the temperature in the car to freezing, and my limbs shake uncontrollably as I try to steady myself. Keeping calm is the best thing to do under these circumstances. Whether she’s lingered in her current state long enough to turn Dark Side or just another Bleeder looking for a way home, I have to stay alert. Dark Ones are like the Mad Hatters of the world—Bleeders filled with bitterness and resentment that only get worse with time. You know the saying, “Going toward the light?” Yeah, they ignore that part. The soul can only take being apart from the body for so long before losing all sense of humanity. When they’ve reached the point of Dark Side, they’re unpredictable. And trust me when I say: you don’t want to cross them.

  The lack of light in the car keeps her wound hidden, but the undeniable scent of blood makes my throat clench. It’s a scent that likes to stick around for a while, like the way a banana absorbs its stink into something when it’s near it too long.