Dead Set

Eight

There must be some mistake. The garbage-strewn passage and this dreary, pitted road couldn’t be part of the same town where she’d just spent a day with her father, could they? Maybe there was more than one Iphigene.

A horn blared at her from nearby. Two bright lights crossed over her. A screech echoed off the rocky cliff as tires tried to grip the wet road. Zoe lurched back and pressed herself against the hill. She’d wandered to the center of the road without even realizing it. A bus swerved around where she’d been a second earlier and continued on, disappearing around the curve. Everything was suddenly quiet, except for the rain, which was coming down harder than ever. Wind from the ocean threw itself against the hillside and the rain seemed suspended in the air, like shuddering Christmas lights. Iphigene, whatever version of Iphigene she’d stumbled into, lay just around the corner ahead. She’d come much too far to simply turn back without a look, so she started walking.

Her right leg hurt. She’d twisted her ankle coming down the giant stairs and now her whole leg throbbed. Her sneakers were soaked through, but she could live with that. It meant they couldn’t get any wetter. She pulled the coat tighter around her, hoping it would warm her up. It helped a little, but not much. As she neared the town, the rain turned to a fine mist. Zoe heard the sound of the surf breaking quietly on the shore below the boardwalk. The fat, ice-white moon cast its reflection onto the dark water. For just a moment, no more than a heartbeat, the moon looked to Zoe like a giant eye watching everything and everyone in Iphigene, including her. Then the feeling was gone and it was just the moon again.

Ahead, the bus that had almost run her down sat idling by the curb. The front and rear doors were open and people were stepping down to the pavement. Many of the new arrivals stood on the corner, seemingly confused. They turned in slow circles like lost dogs trying to catch a scent that would lead them home. A few walked up the street, drawn by the sounds coming from the bars, while others crossed over to the boardwalk to stare at the ocean.

Zoe approached a plump man in a dark brown suit at least a size too small for him. The rain plastered his straw-colored hair across his forehead and his white shirt across the ample curve of his belly. He and a handful of others seemed unwilling to move far from the idling bus.

“This isn’t right,” murmured the fat man.

“Uh, excuse me,” said Zoe.

He looked down at her. “It’s all wrong,” he said.

“I’m looking for someone.”

The plump man turned in a slow circle, his arms held out in a gesture of confusion. “It’s not supposed to be like this.” He wrapped his thick hands around the bus-stop sign and shook it, as if to see if it was real. When the sign stayed firmly rooted to the street, he seemed to shrink a little. He shuffled away, around the corner, muttering to himself, “This isn’t right.”

Zoe put up the collar on her coat and held it closed with one hand. She went down the strangely-familiar-but-unfamiliar street, keeping her head down, trying to blend in with the new arrivals. At least then she’d have an excuse for checking the place out so much.

What had gone wrong with the city? Zoe wondered. She passed the newsstand with the green awning. The newspapers and magazines lay in bloated piles, waterlogged and black with mildew. The clothing store where, she remembered, they sold coats like the one she now wore was empty. Broken mannequins lay among the sodden shadows, broken limbs scattered across the cracked linoleum floor.

On the next block, one of the big restaurants where, as her father had explained to her, nervous souls ate endless, pointless meals, was dark. The shattered front window had been carelessly repaired with cardboard and tape. Fireflies moved in sluggish lines inside the dirty glass. No, not fireflies, she thought as her eyes adjusted to the dark. People were moving around carrying miniature oil lamps made from ancient apothecary and liquor bottles. Zoe could make out a few faces inside the restaurant. They stared out at her with such hunger and dark resentment that it scared her. She turned away and crossed over to the boardwalk.

There were fewer people by the beach. An old man a few feet to her right was staring out at the moon, rubbing and flexing his arm as if it hurt. When he moved it, the arm squeaked. In the moonlight, Zoe saw that the man’s arms were tarnished metal pipes, sort of like what they used in the bathrooms at school. The man’s ragged coat was a patchwork of other coats, pieces of plastic, and what looked like vinyl from a car seat. All the pieces were stitched together crudely with string and wire. Zoe turned her head, looking down the length of the boulevard. A woman limped along on a carved leg from a piano bench. A young boy tossed a ball in the air and stabbed it in midair with a short knife that protruded from the end of his arm where his hand should be. Everyone on the street seemed to be held together with rags and junkyard plunder.

She looked back at the beach, but was startled by the old man, who had drawn closer to her. His pale face was so worn and heavily lined that “old” didn’t begin to describe him. He looked “ancient,” and Zoe flashed on things from Mr. Danvers’s class. Carved scarabs in Egypt. Fossilized skulls from Kenya. Mammoths frozen in Siberian glaciers. The old man’s face could have been as old as any of those things.

He smiled and put his metal hand on her arm. “You remind me of my daughter,” he said in an airy, thin voice.

“Thank you,” said Zoe, not knowing anything else to say.

The old man’s face changed. He leaned close to Zoe’s cheek and sniffed. “You smell like. . I don’t know.” He seemed lost for a moment. Then his smile grew wide and wild. “The world! You smell like the world!” His hand closed tighter on her arm. “You’re alive!” he whispered.

Zoe pushed the old man hard and backed away. But he came after her, dazed and excited. “You’re alive!” he repeated over and over, getting louder each time he said it. People on the street stopped and stared. Zoe kept backing away, fear creeping up from her stomach. A couple of people broke away from the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk and started toward her. Zoe bolted from the old man, back toward the bus stop. At least there were lights there.

But a curious crowd had gathered there, too. Zoe spun and started down a side street between the newsstand and the bar. Out of the corners of her eyes she caught glimpses of stripped cars tilting on flat tires and small fires in vacant lots where lost souls were huddled around jets of burning methane that leaked from the ground. The souls turned to look at her.

Zoe turned a corner and slipped on the wet pavement, going down hard on one knee, twisting her bad ankle. From both ends of the street, she could hear what sounded like all of Iphigene, wood and metal limbs clanking and scraping as the inhabitants of the city closed in on her.

She struggled to her feet and took off running, moving without direction or thought, propelled by her desperate need to stay ahead of the mob. When the street came to a sudden dead end, she darted down another alley and dashed by what looked like a row of derelict warehouses. Her breath caught in her throat. The throbbing in her leg was making her sick to her stomach. She couldn’t run forever, she knew, but for now, she kept moving.

A hand closed on her arm and jerked her hard to the side. She tumbled down a short flight of stairs into a damp, dark basement. It only took her a moment to get back to her feet, but when she tried to scramble back up the steps, someone grabbed her from behind. A hand clamped over her mouth and a voice whispered, “Shhh. They’re right behind you. Keep quiet.”

A moment later, the mob came stumbling down the alley. Zoe froze on the stairs, hoping she was down low enough to be invisible to the street. Whoever was behind her pushed her head down so that she could only see the rough concrete steps on which she lay. Soon everything grew quiet. She could hear her own heart beating and the nervous breathing of whoever was holding her. A moment later, his hand moved away from her mouth, and she felt his weight lift from her body. Still on the steps, she turned and looked back into the basement.

“Thanks. I think,” Zoe said.

She didn’t see anyone at first. Then she heard someone move and could just make out a pair of feet in tattered sneakers illuminated by a slash of light near the far wall.

“You okay?” asked whoever was wearing the sneakers. A boy, definitely, she thought.

“I guess. Why are you all the way over there in the dark? Come out where I can see you.”

“I’m cool over here right now,” said the boy.

Zoe put her hand in her pocket and closed her fingers around the razor. “You can’t keep me in here,” she said firmly.

“You’re not so smart, are you, if you can’t tell the difference between a kidnapping and a rescue?”

“I’m feeling about as rescued as I need,” she said, rising. The pain in her ankle made her wince. “Thanks. I’m heading out.”

“Where?” the boy asked. “Do you know your way around Iphigene? Do you even know where you are?”

Zoe wanted to tell the voice to fuck off, but knew the boy had a point.

“How far are you going to get on that leg?” he asked.

“Okay,” said Zoe. “But how am I supposed to trust you if you won’t let me see you?”

The boy’s feet shuffled on the dirt floor. Now it was his turn to be nervous, she saw.

“I’m not much to look at. Kind of ugly, in fact,” the boy said. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Okay, but this voice-from-the-shadows thing is a little too Freddy Krueger. If you’re trying to be my friend, come on out.”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, I’ve seen The Evil Dead. As long as you’ve got a head, I can deal.”

Zoe watched the sneakers take half a step forward, revealing a length of filthy, torn jeans.

“I didn’t want it to happen like this, you know,” the boy said. “I had it all planned different. But then those assholes started chasing you.”

“What did you have planned? Who the hell are you?” She was ready with the razor.

A pause. “I was hoping maybe you’d know. But why should you? The real thing isn’t much like in dreams.”

Zoe sat on the steps, her mind racing. There had been something familiar about the voice from the moment she’d heard it. It tickled something far in the back of her brain, like some deep memory or half-remembered dream. She let go of the razor and said, “Valentine?”

The boy took a step back, disappearing completely into the shadows. “This is dumb. I should go.”

Zoe was up on her feet and crossed the room in a couple of painful steps. When she plunged her hands into the dark, all she felt was the rough stone of the basement wall. Off to her right, she could hear breathing, so she reached out in that direction. Her fingers brushed heavy cloth, and she closed her hand on the boy’s arm. There was no flesh there. It was as hard and unyielding as steel. Zoe stepped back into the middle of the room.

“Come into the light, Valentine. Please.”

The boy shuffled forward, his shoulders hunched, head down. Dark, unruly hair covered his face. Zoe reached out and touched his other arm. It felt as hard and artificial as the first one. She thought of the people she’d seen on the street, the ones with wood and metal limbs. She put her hand on Valentine’s shoulder and felt something more familiar there, like skin and bone. The boy kept his head turned away from her and all she could really see of him was his heavy, patched greatcoat. It had a stiff collar so high that he could hide half his face behind it, but Valentine’s familiar brown eyes glittered at her from behind the wall of the collar.

“It is you,” she said, and for the first time outside of her dreams, Zoe put her arms around her brother.

Valentine’s body was thin. He went rigid when she hugged him, and he didn’t make any move to hug her back. When she tried to kiss his cheek, he pulled back suddenly, stepping into the dark again.

“Valentine, you don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Then why are you hiding? What’s wrong with you?”

A skeletal hand spotted with rust slid from the dark, pointing toward the stairs. “We shouldn’t stay here. They’ll be back.”

“Did I do something to hurt you?” asked Zoe.

Valentine stepped past her, moving quickly to the stairs. “It’s all right. We need to go.”

Zoe followed him, limping on her injured ankle, which, after her fall into the basement, felt like there were pins sticking into the bone.

“You’re hurt,” Valentine said. Her took her hand and helped her to the stairs. “Sit.”

Kneeling on the dirt floor, Valentine pulled a long, dirty white rag from the pocket of his greatcoat. He pulled off Zoe’s sneaker and socks and carefully wrapped the rag around her ankle and foot, slipping her sneaker back on when he was done. As he worked, all Zoe could see of him was the top of his head and the occasional glint of light off his iron hands.

“Try that,” Valentine said.

Zoe stood, slowly putting weight on her bad leg. It stung, but the pain didn’t make her want to retch anymore.

“That’s a lot better. Thanks.”

Valentine nodded and started up the stairs. At the top he turned and said, “Keep your coat buttoned and your head down. Walk slow, like you’ve got nowhere to go and all eternity to get there.”

“Do we have to go back out right now? I’m kind of freaked by this place.”

“ ’Course you are,” said Valentine. “You’re not supposed to be here. None of us are.”

He stepped out first, then motioned for Zoe to follow him. They walked down the wet night street away from the direction in which Zoe had been running. The rain was misting down, making tiny diamonds on her overcoat as she and Valentine came to better-lit streets. Zoe looped one of her arms around one of Valentine’s. She felt him stiffen for a moment, but he didn’t pull away.

They crossed a broad street that she recognized. They were near the bar and boardwalk where the crowd had spotted her, she thought, a little afraid. But this time she wasn’t alone. She looked at her sleeves, staring at the rain jewels there.

Heavily muscled, with bodies and huge heads that reminded her of the granite gargoyles on churches, enormous black dogs were eating something that lay in the gutter. The dogs from her dreams.

Zoe felt Valentine tug her arm. “Don’t look,” he said. “They’re Queen Hecate’s spies.”

Zoe couldn’t help glancing back. “What are they eating?” The dogs hungrily ripped into their food. “It almost looks like a body.”

“I told you not to look.”

Zoe closed her eyes for a few seconds and let Valentine lead her. All her life she’d wanted to live in her dreams with her brother and now her dreams had come true. But they weren’t alone and it was both wonderful and horrible.

When they were well past the dogs, Zoe whispered, “Valentine, what happened to the city? I was just here a day ago and it was beautiful.”

Valentine shook his head. “Nothing happened. The city’s been like this for as long as anyone can remember. Father tricked you with pretty pictures and sweet lies. He showed you what you wanted to see so you’d get the hell out and never come back. Why did you come back?”

“I think I did something bad. I just wanted to see if he was all right.”

“You think you’re going to fix anything? Look at this place. Look at these people. Look at me.” He lifted his head a little way out his high collar. She caught a glimpse of stitches in his face. Not the kind the doctor had given her after she’d fallen as a kid. These stitches were thick and crude, like wires in cheap leather. “Don’t worry. Father hasn’t been here long enough to look like me. But he’s not exactly what you remember.”

“What the fuck is this place? Are we in hell?”

“Yeah, but not the one you mean.” They turned off the well-lit streets into a darker industrial area. Broken fences ringed fields full of strange and fearsome machines: cranes with what looked like claws, bulldozers with teeth. What lay ahead was even stranger.

Just a few blocks off the main road, the streets weren’t straight anymore, and neither were the buildings. They twisted around, over and under each other, like weeds and vines in an abandoned garden. Some buildings stood straight up while others lay on their sides like snakes, wrapping around other twisted buildings, strangling the upright ones so they shrank to almost nothing at the middle but bulged at the tops and bottoms.

Valentine said, “The city used to be called Calumet. That means ‘peace.’ Now it’s Iphigene. Only Queen Hecate knows what that means, and no one’s asking her.”

“That’s the queen the dogs spy for?”

He nodded. “She rules Iphigene. We’re her loyal subjects. She’s been the queen here for over a thousand years. Maybe thousands. No one can say exactly.”

In the distance, Zoe thought she could see a dark apartment building rise from the ground, windows and doors sliding into place as the place unfurled like a blooming flower.

“She doesn’t sound like much of a queen.”

“The city wasn’t always like this. Before Hecate, we had day and night just like anywhere else. They say that when she crowned herself, the first thing she did was steal the sun out of the sky and hide it somewhere in her palace.”

“Why?”

“She’s the moon. The moon is Hecate.” He looked up at the bright white orb hanging over the sluggish ocean. “We can only love her and worship her under the moon. Anyway, that’s what the old-timers told me.”

The road took them under a kind of arch where two buildings had collided and grew upright against each other. Zoe could swear she heard a subtle crunch and creak as the buildings continued to move and grow above them.

“Old-timers. Old spirits, you mean? Old souls.” Zoe was suddenly cold again. “It’s all so real and solid here. It’s weird to think that everyone here is dead. That you’re all ghosts.”

“But that’s what we are.”

“But I can see you and touch you.”

“Spirits are real. And this is a place for spirits. You’re the strange one around here.”

She smiled a little at Valentine. “Thanks for letting me hold on to you. I know you don’t like it, but I really need to right now.”

“I’m just not used to it. It’s kind of nice, in a weird way. No one’s ever really, you know, touched me before.”

Zoe tightened the arm she’d looped through his and pulled him a little closer. He didn’t resist. “There’s Dad. He’s here now.”

“So? I’m just some strange guy in your dreams, remember?”

“No, you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have. . well, died.”

“If you’re going to get technical,” he said. Valentine drew in a long breath and blew mist into the night air. “Anyway, I know Father, but he’s doesn’t know I’m around. That’s how I like it, so don’t go doing nothing dramatic.”

“Are you mad at him?”

“Nope.”

“You’re hiding from him like you hid from me that time I upset you up in the tree fort.”

“Maybe. Or maybe just because, okay? Stop asking so many damned questions,” he snapped.

“Sorry.” Two black dogs were fighting over a dead rat in the middle of a deserted intersection. They stopped and watched Zoe and Valentine intently as they passed, then they went back to their fight.

“I’m sorry,” said Valentine. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay. Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure.”

“You’re here, but Mom and Dad never talked about you. You’re not. . Mom and Dad didn’t. .”

“Am I an abortion, you mean?”

Zoe looked down at her feet. “Yeah.”

“A miscarriage. And that’s your last question about that. You’ve got other stuff to worry about.” On a street of derelict garages, Zoe followed Valentine up a fire escape two floors onto the tilted roof of one building. From three stories up, Iphigene was laid out at Zoe’s feet.

Gazing out toward the beach, she thought that the city didn’t look so bad. Kind of old and run-down, but not in a bad way. But the city was stranger when she looked inland. Nothing made sense. Streets bent and buckled and circled back on each other around buildings that lay like earthworms after a rain. It reminded Zoe of an M. C. Escher print Laura had of crazy stairs that ran into each other at impossible angles. Laura, Zoe thought. What would she think if she could see me now?

Valentine called her to the edge of the roof and pointed to a building at the far end of the boardwalk. “That used to be the city hall. Now it’s Hecate’s palace.” It was an ornate, sprawling building of brilliant white marble. She remembered it from her first visit, but like the rest of Iphigene, the building was different now. There were long curved spikes running around the edge of the roof, like cobra fangs. Towers stood at each corner of the palace, topped with a carving that depicted different phases of the moon, from crescent to full.

“It’s beautiful,” Zoe said.

“Old bones,” said Valentine. Zoe looked at him. “They say when you get close, the walls look like old bones.”

“My friend Absynthe would love that.”

“I remember her. Your Goth girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Zoe, and she shoved him a little. Without hesitation, he shoved her back. She smiled and for a second everything was normal. She was in a familiar place, high in the air with Valentine teasing her about some silly thing or other. It’s him, she thought. It really is Valentine.

“Listen. There’s something I haven’t told you. The real reason Father didn’t want you here.” Valentine’s voice was low and slow, more serious than she’d ever heard him before.

“Queen Hecate is as crazy as the sea is black. She’s been dead and crazy for so long, she doesn’t even remember that she used to be alive. She can’t leave Iphigene, or she won’t. Maybe she forgot that this is just a way station and we’re supposed to move on. But every day the buses leave empty.” Valentine stared out at the palace. “She hates the living. That means she hates you. You need to be careful every moment you’re here.”

Zoe nodded, trying not to look scared. “What should I do? Is there somewhere I can hide until I can figure out what to do?”

“Of course.” Valentine pointed to the next roof. “My house. It’s right over there.”

Valentine’s house was a sprawling shack made of scavenged wood, sheet metal, parts of buses, and tar paper from nearby buildings. The inside was a forest of tools, old clothes, books, and old comics, all junk washed down from the city above. The place reminded Zoe of their tree fort, and she felt safe and at home. Valentine pointed to a relatively clean cot in the corner.

“It’s not much, but I call it nothing,” he said. For the first time he showed Zoe his face and smiled. He seemed more relaxed on his home turf. He took off his greatcoat and hung it on a meat hook by the door. Zoe finally got a look at his arms. They looked like lengths of rebar and pipe held together by wire and ragged welds. When he crossed the room, his legs moved strangely, swinging at odd angles under his loose jeans. She wondered if all his limbs were homemade, and had to remind herself not to stare.

“I have about a thousand more questions,” she said.

“Everyone does when they first get here.” He took a match and lit a small camp stove by a truck windshield that served as a window. “I’ll answer what I can tomorrow. You must be tired now. Why don’t you lie down while I make some tea.”

“Do all ghosts drink tea?”

“Only the ones that know where to find it or steal it.”

Zoe sat on the bed, not feeling at all tired, and watched Valentine move happily around his little home, getting cups and finding sugar. Seeing him made her happier than she’d felt in months. She lay down and looked out at the stars through the truck windshield. Then, without realizing it, she was asleep.

It was strange, waking up in the dark. It took Zoe a minute to remember where she was. The sight of the tools and old, broken toys hanging from the ceiling reminded her that she was in Valentine’s rooftop home, but the memory didn’t make the place any more real to her waking mind. It all felt too much like a dream. When she sat up and put her feet on the floor, however, the pain in her ankle told her that this was very real.

Valentine was over by the window. “Hey, you’re awake. How are you feeling? I have some food, if you’re hungry.” He brought her a bundle wrapped in a white paper napkin. Zoe unfolded it and found a couple of slices of toast with strips of crisp bacon.

“Thanks,” she said, and bit into a strip of bacon. It was like Styrofoam. When she sniffed it, the bacon didn’t have any smell at all. She bit into the toast and found that it was the same, spongy and nearly tasteless.

“Something wrong?” asked Valentine.

“No, it’s fine,” said Zoe through a full mouth. She smiled and tried to look happy.

“Don’t lie. You can barely choke it down.” He picked up one of the bacon strips and sniffed. “Funny. It smells all right to me.”

“An old woman ghost gave me a piece of candy that tasted like this. It’s not really like food. More like the memory of it.”

“I don’t usually eat, myself. Never got the habit. And this is ghost food from one of the restaurants by the boardwalk. I guess I’m not surprised a live person can’t taste it.”

“It was nice of you to try. Thanks. So, if you live up here away from people and don’t go to the restaurant or the bar, what do you do all day?” She thought about that for a second. “Night, I guess. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. I scavenge. The streets. The canals. The beach. Wherever.” He opened his hands to his packed-to-the-rafters room. “It keeps me sharp and awake, not in denial like the people in the restaurants stuffing their faces forever. Where do you think I got the things for our tree fort? Where do you think I got the telescope?”

Zoe smiled. Valentine almost looked happy talking about his stuff. Her smile faded when she thought about it and understood that this was all Valentine had. An endless night of picking through the world’s castoffs. She tried not to show how sad that made her. “Where are we?” she asked.

Valentine nodded at the floor. “This building we’re in is where people used to make and fix the buses that took people away. But we don’t need them anymore. No one leaves, so all that’s left are the ones that bring in new souls.” He looked out one of the windows at the apartment buildings that crawled over the hills and disappeared into the far distance. “I don’t know how big the city is. Big. Bigger than the living world, maybe. It grows and changes all the time, trying to squeeze in new souls. It’s pretty modern up here, but over those hills, there are people that speak Latin, and others, I don’t know what they speak, but they write with pictures. I’ll look out for you, so you don’t have to be afraid, but you can’t let down your guard here. Not for a second.”

“Well,” said Zoe, having no idea how to respond.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that at once.”

“No, it’s all right. I want to know the truth.” She looked at the hills where Valentine had been staring a moment before. “If it wasn’t so scary here, I’d like to see the people who write in hieroglyphics.”

“We can’t do that,” Valentine said. “But I can give you what you came here for. I can take you to see Father. I know where he lives.”

“I’d love that.”

“How’s your ankle?”

“Much better.”

“Then let’s go.”

They crossed the roofs under the moon, back the way they’d come the previous night, and descended the fire escape to the street. Then they turned inland, headed toward the heaps of giant apartment buildings she’d seen from the roof. At the corner Valentine stopped her. He turned up the collar on her coat so that it covered more of her face. After studying her for a moment, he ran his hands down the sides of a telephone pole and wiped smeared dirt across Zoe’s forehead and cheeks. He ended by popping a final dot of dirt on the end of her nose with his thumb. “Now you look more like one of us,” he said.

She soon lost track of time as they walked. In the day that was exactly the same as the previous night, the idea of seconds, minutes, and hours became fantastical, like something from a fairy tale. She tried counting the streets, but they were so twisted around she had no idea where one stopped and another began. But they were definitely in an older part of the city. They crossed tall stone walkways lit by bent gaslights and descended long flights of cobblestone staircases to narrow catwalks just inches above murky canal water. Since she couldn’t make out streets, Zoe tried remembering landmarks along the way. There was a half-burned billboard with the remains of a woman’s smile beneath one of the stone walkways.

As they walked, Valentine dragged his boots through debris in the gutters and picked up anything he could find that was shiny, sometimes throwing it away and sometimes pocketing it. She understood now how his little house had become so crowded. His delight when he found something he liked was almost like that of a kid, Zoe thought. In fact, even though he was older, in some ways Valentine felt more like a little brother. She guessed it had something to do with his being dead so long. He never had the chance to go out into the world and grow up like Zoe and her friends did. He started collecting junk when he got to Iphigene and never stopped because there wasn’t anyone to show him that there was anything else to do. He’d been cheated of so much. It didn’t seem fair, but then what was fair in this strange place?

At the bottom of a staircase, in a circle of stones made where twisting buildings left an open patch of land, were the remains of what looked like a campsite. Ragged beds, tables, chairs, and lamps had been dragged outside.

“Why would people take their stuff outside where it rains?” asked Zoe.

Valentine didn’t even turn his head.

“Not all the apartments are that nice. Some people prefer the street.”

The camp was all just wreckage now. Splintered wood and gutted mattresses. The place hadn’t been dismantled the way police would do it. It was torn to pieces, as if by angry animals.

Zoe’s bad ankle hurt and Valentine had to help her limp over heaps of trash that filled some twisting streets by some of the old apartments. They were back on a street that looked more like a normal modern city. “Sorry about the trek,” he said. “Truth is, you can take that big street over there most of the way back to the ocean.” He pointed over his shoulder. “But I thought if Hecate’s dogs had maybe heard about you, it would be good to go the long way round.”

“It was a good idea,” said Zoe, panting. She sat and retied the rag Valentine had put around her ankle. She still limped a little but she could walk just fine.

“Anyway, we’re here.” Valentine nodded to the nearest building. The address was 5,111,304 Ouroboros Street.

The apartment building across the street wrapped around the building, tightening it in the middle so it was shaped like an hourglass.

“This is where Dad lives?”

“Yep. Fifth floor, all the way in the back, on the right.”

Zoe nodded, feeling both excited and nervous.

“Before you go in, there are a couple things you need to know. I’m not going in with you for the reasons I told you about last night.”

“Just because,” she said.

“Right. The second thing is that when we’re out like this, if something happens and we get separated, you head straight back to my house. Got it?”

“I don’t think I can find my way back the way we came.”

“Then take the street that leads to the boardwalk and come back that way. And if you’re ever alone, don’t ever, no matter what happens, ever go down any unlit streets. Dim is okay, just not unlit. There are souls a lot worse off than me and you don’t want to see the worst of ’em. The dying dead. More important, you don’t want them to see you.”

“Okay,” she said. Zoe wanted to ask more about the dying dead but knew it wasn’t the right time.

“I’m going to go wait over there.” Valentine nodded toward an alcove at the side of a nearby apartment building. “Take as long as you need.”

“Thanks.” Zoe leaned forward and quickly pecked him on the cheek. He stiffened a little, but didn’t pull away. She took that as a good sign, then hurried into the building.

There was an elevator in the lobby, but when she looked closer she saw it was just an open elevator shaft. Someone had moved a bed and chair into the opening and it looked like they’d been living there. She found stairs around the corner and climbed to the fifth floor. At first, the building seemed utterly silent, but as she climbed, she began to hear small sounds of habitation. Footsteps. A drawer opening and closing. The tinkle of a glass on a table.

Zoe’s heart raced as she stepped onto the fifth-floor landing. Her ankle hurt but she couldn’t help herself, and ran all the way down the hall to her father’s door. She knocked but didn’t hear anything from inside. She knocked again. “Dad?” she whispered to the door. No response. She quietly turned the knob and the door opened.

The inside of her father’s room was so spare it was almost empty. Like a prison cell, thought Zoe. While Valentine’s place was stuffed to the rafters with goodies he’d plucked from the city’s overflow, her father’s room held a bed, a table, and a dresser with a vase of plastic roses on top. There was a discolored spot on one wall where a mirror or a picture might have once hung.

A straight-backed wooden chair had been dragged from the table and set before the room’s one window. Every surface in the room seemed to be covered in dust, except for the windowsill in front of the chair. That area was clean. He leans on the sill right here, she thought. He sits here all day and night. This is his real life in Iphigene. Her breath caught in her throat and the stab of grief and loss made her fight back tears. Zoe reached for the rubber band on her wrist but it was gone.

She went back downstairs and found Valentine in the alcove. She told him what she’d found in the room. “He wasn’t there,” she finished.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s another place where he spends some of his nights. Maybe we’ll find him there.”

They took the shortcut to the beach. The route was much quicker, and Zoe could see the reflection of the moon in the sea after just a few minutes of walking.

“Remember, walk slow,” Valentine warned her as they crossed the street to the boardwalk and climbed down to the beach.

The wet sand was heavy on Zoe’s sneakers, but it sparkled like snow under the moon. They were headed for the old amusement park where she’d spent the happy afternoon with her father. Zoe knew that she was getting used to Iphigene because it wasn’t at all surprising to her to see that the park was a wreck, a heap of collapsed timbers and rides that had slipped off their foundations and lay lopsided in the sand. She had to admit, however, that the place still held a kind of sad beauty, like a winter carnival frozen in a blizzard.

People were wandering down onto the beach behind them. Zoe turned in terror and was ready to run from the mob. But Valentine grabbed her shoulders and held her where she was, pointing to the street.

“Look,” he said.

Several buses arrived simultaneously and what looked like a hundred people were suddenly milling around with the dazed look of all the new arrivals. Some people headed to the restaurant or the side streets, but more poured down onto the beach, as if being near the water would wake them from a bad dream. At first they walked. Then they ran, a solid wall of bodies. Zoe was knocked onto her knees and had to scramble to her feet to keep from getting trampled. The crowd carried her along with them, like a tidal wave of grasping hands and running feet. Finally, she worked her way to the side and shouldered her way free of the crowd. The rag around her ankle was loose. She fell and had to crawl onto the tilting turntable of the carousel.

Limping behind the carousel animals, she watched the last of the mob rush down to the sea. She couldn’t see Valentine anywhere. The idea of going back into the crowd was too much. She decided to stay where she was until the beach cleared out. Then she’d sneak out and go back to Valentine’s house.

Someone grunted nearby in the dark. Zoe whirled around and saw a man curled up asleep under the figure of a golden sea serpent. He had on the same shapeless overcoat that almost everyone seemed to wear in Iphigene, and his head was resting on a couple of the stuffed-animal toys that she’d seen scattered all around the abandoned rides. He grunted again and rolled over, facing her.

“Dad?” said Zoe, her voice hoarse from the sand she’d swallowed when she fell.

The sleeping man opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and wet. He was unshaven and his hair was wild, as if he hadn’t brushed it in weeks. Slowly, drunkenly, the man pushed himself into a sitting position. He rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face.

“Dad?” said Zoe, though she was certain who he was this time.

The man turned and looked at her, his red eyes wide and full of fear. He tried to crawl away from her.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m dreaming.”

Zoe crawled after him and grabbed his leg. “Dad, it’s me!” she yelled, and he froze on the spot. His shoulders sagged and he lay facedown where he was. For a moment neither of them moved, then her father sat up. When he looked at her this time, it wasn’t fear she saw in his eyes: it was anger.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he yelled. “Didn’t I tell you not to ever come back?”

Zoe crawled closer to him. “I had to. I did something bad back at home and I thought you needed help.”

“There’s nothing you can do back in the world that will hurt me here.”

“But Emmett had these records and one of them had your soul or something on it. .”

“Yeah, those.” Her father drew up his legs and leaned back against a bench covered with fading images of mermaids. “We all have those, honey. Emmett makes them. Supposedly, if he breaks yours, you’ll disappear, but he’s such a liar, who knows?”

“I was trying to get yours. I tried to trick him. But I think he tricked me.”

“He’s good at that. You’ve got to get out of here as soon as you can. If Hecate finds out about you, well, I don’t want to think about it.”

“I know. Val. . a friend is taking care of me. But I don’t know how I can leave. Do you?”

“No. But there has to be a way. Emmett comes and goes from here to the world all the time.”

“Dad, it’s good to see you.” She moved over and leaned on the bench next to him. After a moment he put his arm around her shoulder.

“You, too. I’m so goddamn angry right now, but it’s still good to see you.”

“Why do you look like this, Dad? Are you sick?”

“Kind of. But it doesn’t have anything to do with what you did back home.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“I don’t know if I believe you. Emmett took your record.”

“Yeah, but not because of what you did,” he said. “He took the record because of what I did.”

“What did you do?”

“It’s not important. All that matters is you getting out of here.” Zoe’s father took her face in his hand and looked hard into her eyes. “You can’t ever come back here. I mean it. If you do, I won’t see you. I won’t talk to you. I won’t acknowledge you. Do you understand me?”

Zoe nodded. “I understand.” It hurt to have him mad at her, but felt good that he still wanted to help.

“Who’s this friend of yours?” he asked.

“Someone I used to know back home.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Yes.”

“Then get to him and find a way out of Iphigene. Nothing else matters.”

“You still haven’t told me why you look like this. Why isn’t the city how I remember?”

Her father started to answer, but was cut off by a strange howl in the distance. It reminded her of a foghorn, but this sound was rougher, darker, more like the deep wail of some wounded animal.

“Oh no,” said Zoe’s father.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. I have to go.” He pulled himself to his feet. Standing, he looked even weaker than he’d been before. It took a few seconds for him to steady himself on his feet. Then he started off across the beach. Other people were walking in the same direction, a few other newcomers, but mostly people Zoe had seen on the streets by the newsstand and bar. Old-timers, she thought. She ran after her father.

“What’s wrong, Dad? What was that sound?”

“Go to your friend and find a way out. I can’t help you.” Zoe grabbed him and his hand closed on her arm so hard it brought tears to her eyes. “Get away from me and stay away! I don’t ever want to see you here again!” He pushed her hard enough that she fell back onto the sand.

Zoe lay there and watched as her father joined a long line of people walking into the dark heart of the city, following the wail that filled the sky.