They had left the ancient Eliza in her cabin and Dylan, bereft of anywhere else to go, had followed Jonas back through to the street that she now knew to be a recreation of a road in Stuttgart, the town he'd lived in as a child before his short career in the military. They were sitting on the bonnet of his car, the radio still whistling old tunes Dylan didn't recognise in the background.
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What are you going to do?"
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Jonas regarded her, his expression sombre. "Are you sure that is the right thing to do?" he asked cautiously.
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"No." Dylan smiled wryly. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
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She blew out a breath, trying to clear her head. "I'm going to go back," she replied.
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"You could die," Jonas warned her.
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Dylan's half-formed smile slipped from her face. "I know," she said softly. "I know. I should stay here somewhere; wait for my mum, my friends. Find my relatives. I should just accept it. I know I should."
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"But you're not going to," Jonas finished for her.
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Dylan grimaced, dropped her gaze to her hands which were clasped tightly together. What else could she say? Jonas didn't understand. She couldn't blame him. It barely even made sense to her how the right thing could also be the wrong thing.
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"Really?" Jonas laughed.
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"He did?" Jonas looked pleased, smiling widely when Dylan nodded, confirming the truth of her words.
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"My mum always told me I was stubborn," she said, and then she grinned. "Tristan said the same."
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"Did he tell you the story about Santa Claus?" Jonas asked, chuckling to himself.
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She nodded. "I think I really annoyed him at first. I kept telling him he was going the wrong way."
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"Yes!" Dylan laughed. How bizarre! When she'd imagined the story, it had been modern. She'd pictured the grotto in the shopping centre downtown. Would it have been the same in the -- what? -- 1930s? Earlier? "He thought highly of you, you know," she told Jonas. "When he told me your story, he said you were admirable. And noble."
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"I think he is admirable, too," he mused. "The job he does, the way he just goes round and round. It is not fair, the hand he has been dealt."
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"I know," Dylan mumbled.
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It was funny now, looking back on those first couple of days. How many times had she made him stop and convince her?
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"When are you going to try?" asked Jonas, breaking into her reverie.
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Dylan made a face. She wasn't sure. Her first thought was that she would wait for morning. That would be better, giving her a whole day of light to try and make it to a safe house. But then another thought struck her. Tristan had told her she didn't need to sleep any more -- and how long had she been awake now? She still didn't feel tired. Was there such a thing as night here? The sun still hung high up in the zenith of the sky, as it had done earlier, before they'd gone to meet Eliza.
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None of it was fair. Not what had happened to Jonas, to her. Not what was still happening to Tristan. He deserved to be freed from his… well, 'job' just wasn't the right word. You got paid for a job. And it was possible to resign, to walk away. No, what Tristan had was an obligation. And he'd suffered enough.
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Never.
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Now.
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So if time was no object, then she supposed the answer was whenever she was ready. When would that be?
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She thought about what she was facing: a door that wouldn't open; a wasteland; an army of wraiths; a hopeless needle-in-a-haystack search to find Tristan. It was a terrifying list that had her trembling.
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Tristan. His blue, blue eyes. The warmth of his hand, strong around hers. The softness of his lips, burning down into her soul.
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Dylan experienced a moment of pure terror. Could she really do this? Her resolve wavered, the practical part of her brain fighting desperately against the idea of being obliterated, erased. The bloody skies and swirling demons that waited for her on the other side of the door. Why was she doing this?
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And what could she do to prepare for it? Absolutely nothing.
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"No time like the present."
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Any door, Eliza had said. Any one would take her where she wanted to go, so long as she was sure she wanted to go there. But Dylan knew where she wanted to go. Not ten minutes later she was standing in front of it, breathing in the heady scent coming off the pots of orange and yellow flowers, squinting against the flare of light as the sun reflected off the shining brass number hanging dead square in the door. This, really, was the door that had taken her into this place, wherever it was. It seemed fitting that this was the door she used to leave it.
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"How did you die?"
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Dylan contemplated the little round doorknob. Jonas had explained to her how it worked. All she had to think about was where she wanted to go, and when she opened the door, she would be there. She fixed in her head a vision of the wasteland: the high, rolling hills, the frigid wind, the cloud-covered sky. Her hand began to reach forward, but then she stopped herself. That wasn't right. That wasn't the real wasteland. Without Tristan, she knew what she was going to see. Cringing slightly, she dredged up a different image, one that was a landscape awash with different hues of red. That was where she was truly going.
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Her teeth gritted in concentration, she stretched out with her fingers again.
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"Dylan." Jonas wrapped a hand around her wrist, pulled her to a stop.
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Letting out a quick sigh of relief, secretly glad of the chance to delay, even for a few moments, Dylan twisted round to look at him.
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"How did you die?" he repeated.
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"What?" Utterly unprepared for the question, Dylan could do nothing but gape at him.
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Jonas nodded thoughtfully. "What were your injuries?"
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"Well, it's just… if you make it, and I really hope you do…" He flashed her a quick smile. "… you'll go back into your body, just as you were. Whatever happened to you will have still happened. So, I just wondered, how did you die?"
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"Why?" she asked, bewildered.
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"I don't know."
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It had been so dark, and so quiet. And she'd had no idea at all that she was dead. If there had been light in the carriage, what would she have seen? Had her body been there, sprawled across the seat? Had she been crushed? Decapitated?
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"Train crash," Dylan muttered through motionless lips.
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If she was that badly injured, would it work for her?
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Dylan shook her head slightly to clear her morbid thoughts before they stole her nerve. She'd already decided, she reminded herself. She was doing this.
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"I don't know," she repeated, "but it doesn't matter." Tristan was all that mattered, she thought. "Goodbye, Jonas."
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"Good luck." He smiled dubiously at her and she knew he thought she wasn't going to make it. She turned her back on his doubt. "Hey, one more thing."
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He gave his farewell as he backed away down the path. Dylan felt a slight stirring of panic as she turned and watched the distance grow between them.
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This time Dylan sighed in real frustration. "What?" she asked, not looking round, hand still held out towards the door handle.
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"Say hello to him for me." Pause. "I hope you survive, Dylan. Maybe I'll see you again."
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What she really wanted to ask was for him to come with her, but she couldn't do that. Wouldn't.
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He shook his head at her, still shuffling backwards.
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He gave her a quick wave and a final smile, then hurried away down the street. Dylan watched him cross the road, weaving between the cars until he disappeared inside a house. And then she was alone.
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"You're not staying?" she asked.
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"I don't want to see," he confessed.
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The street felt eerily quiet. Unwelcome. It was almost easy to turn her back on it and face the door for a third and final time. Heart thudding in her chest, a light dew of nervous sweat beading on her upper lip, she reached out for the doorknob. In her mind's eye she conjured up the nightmare vision, bathed in bloody red, and as her fingers grasped the cool metal, her lips trembled, muttering, "Wasteland, wasteland," over and over again. She gripped the circular knob, took a final breath, and twisted.
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The wasteland.
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Dylan expected nothing to happen. She thought she'd meet an immovable force; a lock she could never unpick. She honestly believed she'd have to stand there for hour after hour, searching for her courage, her conviction, until she was sure, utterly sure, that she wanted to do this.
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Astonished, she swung it wide and peered through the opening.
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But the door opened easily in her hand.
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The path that she'd followed on that final day with Tristan -- when she'd still believed he was coming with her, when the sun was still shining down -- stretched out before her. Rather than the golden brown of sand and gravel, it was midnight black. It seemed to undulate, like something bubbled under the surface. It glistened slightly, like treacle.
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The burning, burgundy wasteland. The sky was streaked with burnt orange and violet. Already mid-afternoon. That was frightening.
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Holding her breath, Dylan lifted her foot and placed it gently down. The path held firm. After a moment's hesitation, she took another pace. Her fingers let go of the door. She didn't need to turn round to watch it; she knew when it closed. Knew to the very second. Because she was no longer alone.
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"Go, Dylan," she told herself. "Move."
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Souls. The instant she was back in the realm of the ferrymen, she was surrounded by souls. They were exactly as she'd remembered them: filmy, shadowy. Like ghosts, rippling slightly in the air. They had faces, bodies, but they seemed both to be there and not. It was the same for their voices. When she'd watched them from the safe house, Dylan had been too far away, and protected by the cottage walls, to hear them. But now they were loud, babbling all around her. Nothing they said was clear, though. It was like listening underwater, or with a glass pressed against the wall. And then, surrounding them, intently circling, were wraiths. Dylan gasped, but the demons made no move towards her. They frightened her, though. She threw an automatic glance over her shoulder, eyed the firmly closed door. Should she go back?
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No.
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Her legs obeyed, and she started forward in a stiff walk that seemed constantly on the verge of breaking into a trot. As much as she could, she kept her eyes fixed forward. Her sights were firmly set on a ring of hills in the distance. Hills that she knew skirted the edge of a lake, on the shore of which was a safe house.
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Just get to the first safe house. That was all she had to do, and she would think no further than that. Just get to the first safe house.
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The path was sulphurous. The smoking fumes that hovered in a mist above it swirled around her feet; wisps that seemed ready to solidify into grabbing hands if she stayed too long. She wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but already her feet seemed too warm, as if heat was seeping up through the soles of her trainers. The air, too, was uncomfortably hot. It was how Dylan imagined it would feel to stand in the middle of a desert, not even a breath of wind to stir the cloying heat. It tasted like sand and ash, and already her mouth was dry. She tried to switch to breathing in through her nose and her lungs burned for more oxygen. She knew she was close to hyperventilating, but she couldn't stop herself.
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Clenching her fingers into fists, she set her eyes forward. She was tempted, so tempted, to look at the souls, to see who passed, but some sixth sense told her that was dangerous. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the flickering shadows of the wraiths. Without the light of a shining orb to draw their gaze, they didn't seem to have noticed her. But if they did… she had no ferryman to protect her. She'd be easy pickings.
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"Don't look, don't look," she repeated under her breath as she hurried on.
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Forward, forward, forward she marched, looking at nothing more than the hills in front of her, watching as they grew larger and larger, and darker and darker with the setting of the sun.
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Dylan made the safe house just as the sun, glowing like a hot coal, began to nudge the razor-sharp edge of the highest of the hills. She was panting and gasping, not with exertion, although she'd walked faster and faster as she'd tried to match her speed to that of the fading light, but with the stress of keeping her eyes fixed firmly ahead. The souls had continued to stream past her thick and fast, but she'd been too frightened to stop and look at them, catching only snatches of conversation; meaningless phrases and words, occasional heart-wrenching wailing.
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But the later it had got in the day, the faster she'd noticed the souls around her were trying to travel. She'd sensed their urgency, seen glimpses of stunning white light -- beautiful in the gloom -- in the corner of her eye, coaxing them on. These souls were flirting with danger, pushing their luck. They had a long way to go to get to the line before nightfall, and their ferrymen knew it. So did the wraiths.
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She lit a fire, lay down on the bed. Closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep. Not because she was tired, but just to hide. Just to pass the time. But unconsciousness had deserted her. Instead, she whiled away the hours listening to the wraiths' cackles of ecstasy as they feasted on souls who had been too slow, whose ferrymen had failed.
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The night passed slowly after that.
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They emitted a sound the like of which Dylan had never heard before. Screaming and laughing blended together. Hate and delight; despair and excitement. It chilled her to her very bones. And it was almost impossible not to look, to turn towards the source of the sound, to see what creature could be so happy and yet so tortured at the same time. She was enormously relieved when she saw the safe house, in this bloody wilderness she'd been worried that it wouldn't be there, wouldn't be the same. There it was, though, an oasis in the desert, and by the time Dylan threw herself in the door of the cottage she was almost crying with the effort of it.
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