Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(82)

One more explosion, and I watched the ceiling crack open like it was paper torn down the center. I heard it grumble angrily and whine, and then vomit rock and dust. The walls, so solid in appearance, bowed, the racks broke and spit supplies into the center of the room.

The world went bright white, and then black.

*

THE pain receded. Not immediately, but in stages, like I had slipped into a hot, healing bath. My muscles relaxed. The fear dissipated. Soon the darkness seemed as natural as nighttime.

And then she was there. I don’t know how, or even when she came exactly. All I knew was that she was there, as real as I was. She crouched on her knees and then laid down close beside me, so that we were both staring up into the black.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, baby.” Her delicate fingers wove between mine and our joined hands came to rest on the soft T-shirt covering her stomach.

“So I’m dead then,” I said. It didn’t seem so bad; I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t tired or angry or hungry. But even though she was here, I still had the strange sensation that something was missing. Some crucial part of me.

“I don’t think you’re dead,” she said.

I snorted at her uncertainty. Of all people, she should know.

She hummed quietly, running her fingers over the back of my hand. I sighed. For the first time in a long time, my mind was quiet, peaceful. I turned my face and smiled, and she smiled back, and I thought of how we had the same mouth. I liked that.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

She was warm, but when I tried to snuggle up to her side a rock embedded into my ribcage. What was that doing here? Just a moment ago the ground had been soft. I released her hand to pull the rock out, but though I felt the rough edges, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see my hand. All I could see was her.

My head began to throb, building to a hammering in the base of my skull that sent waves crashing behind my eyes. There was something in my other hand. A flat and round piece of metal. It was wet, and my fingers hurt from squeezing it so hard.

It reminded me of something. A silver ring, with a pretty black stone. But it wasn’t a ring, it was a coin.

“I knew he’d find you. He’s always been a good boy. Came from good people,” she said.

A sharp pain exploded at the front of my brain. Streaks of light appeared before my eyes, blocking her out for seconds at a time.

I remembered. I remembered everything. His black hair and calloused hands. His dark eyes, always watching me.

Please don’t be dead. Please.

“Mom, is he…” I couldn’t say it out loud.

“I don’t know,” she said with a small frown.

That little expression did it. I was torn. Ripped clean in half. I had to find out if he was dead so that he could be with us, but I couldn’t leave her. Not for a second. I’d never let her out of my sight again.

“Ember, sweetheart,” she soothed, pulling me close. But she wasn’t soft and warm. She was cold, and the light inside of her was growing dim. When I grasped for her she wasn’t there. My fingers connected with something hard and flat above me. Splinters dug into the beds of my nails.

“No, wait…” I sobbed. “Mom. Please. Stay.”

“You can’t have us both,” she said, her face pale. “But it’s okay. You know why?”

I gasped for breath. Pain jolted from my left wrist to my elbow.

“It’s okay because I got almost eighteen years with you. The best eighteen years of my life.”

“Mom…”

“Hush. Listen now. I need to say a couple mom things.”

Chase and I were sitting on the truck bed at East End Auto. He was telling me about his mother. About the spirit world. He was right. He was always right.

“Listen, because this is important. Eat more—you’re getting too skinny. And smile. Oh, and don’t believe anyone who says they’ll pay you back later; they never do.”

The pain in my arm was like fire in the bone. It whipped through my body to my spine, to my ankles, to the back of my head.

“And one more thing,” she said. “I have never loved one single thing in my life more than you. You were worth living for, and Ember, you were worth dying for.”

And then she was gone. And it didn’t matter how much I cried that I loved her back, or not to go, she was simply gone. There was only the black, and the rubble, and the walls of my silent tomb.

*

WHEN I woke again, it was with the acute understanding that I was alone. The rest returned slowly—the tunnels, the supply room, crawling under the table to retrieve the St. Michael pendant. My mother.

I screamed for help, but the sound slapped against the walls of the enclosure and made my ears ring. I reached up, feeling the underside of a flat board, less than a foot above my face. It angled down over the length of my body, trapping my shins and ankles. My left wrist seared with pain, and sent my fingers into spasms of prickling numbness. With my right hand and left elbow, I pushed upward on the barrier as hard as I could. It didn’t move.

I was trapped.

Okay, I thought. I forced myself to breathe, to try again. But the board didn’t budge.

A sudden panic seized me, and I twisted, throwing my shoulder against the board. My knees cracked against it. My cries were met with silence.