Rules Are Rules Read online

  There was no sense of finishing; one moment he was flying, had always been flying, thrust through—and then he stopped. His flesh rippled on his bones, the way skin did when a high-velocity stream of air was turned on it, flowing away from the intense force and returning as soon as it was done.

  He rolled to his back with a groan as the pain from whatever he had been through faded and then changed, turning into a weighty pressure that sat firmly on his chest. His throat and jaw throbbed, the stabbing shock of every heartbeat feeling like the top of his head would blow off at any moment. He curled his shoulders up, trying to take the strain off his chest, fingers clutching at the thin tee that covered his torso. It took a lifetime for the pain and pressure to ease, draining away with the last of his energy, until all he could do was lie on his back and pant. He sucked in harsh, tiny gusts of air that didn’t fill his lungs, leaving his head buzzing, while the nausea he’d been fighting for days returned in a rush, bile flooding his throat until he couldn’t breathe for the hot stench filling his sinuses and mouth. He flopped to his side as best he could and vomited, the reek of it worse as it exited his body.

  Light bathed him, warming his hands and feet where he didn’t realize he’d become chilled, drying and erasing the clammy sheen of sweat that had covered his face and the skin underneath his clothing. Kevin had gone from deep winter to end of summer in the blink of an eye, his entire being pulled through some kind of wormhole back to his apartment. Even without opening his eyes, he recognized the sounds and smells. Underlying the predictable scents and the reek of his vomit, he caught a spicy overtone, something unexpected and refreshing, like a sea breeze on a hot day.

  “Aire sseccus.” The voice cradled him, words and tone conspiring to make him relax. There was a touch on his sternum, a pressure against his breastbone unlike the weight and agony from before. This seemed to spread peace and comfort through him. “Flawed.”

  Kevin heaved a sigh that seeped out of him for long moments, air bleeding from his lips in a steady stream. His chest hitched, then caved, as his lungs tried to take in another breath. The touch on his chest grew larger, covering more surface, and pushed firmly. He coughed and managed a tiny sip of air, hacked again with the same result. Another steady press and the next breath he took was a mighty whoop, ribs creaking as they expanded.

  “I…” He rolled his neck and pried open one eye. “Don’t…” The man bent over him, arm extended and hand resting on Kevin’s chest. “Understand.”

  “Imperfect form.” Lips in a bloodless slash, the man shook his head. “Flawed.” A tap against his chest. “Here.”

  Kevin lay there for a moment longer, then forced deeper breaths in and out and lifted a hand to wipe the strings of bitter saliva from his cheek. “I’m here. I’m back.”

  The man nodded and sat back, and Kevin felt the loss of his touch immediately, his heartbeat becoming sluggish, breathing more labored. The man winced and placed his hand back on the center of Kevin’s chest. “Eykwa lew eykwa.” His brow drew down over whatever he saw in Kevin’s face. “Rules are rules.”

  “But I did it. I stopped him. Mark, his name is Mark. I stopped him from killing those girls.”

  The man didn’t respond; he didn’t have to. All he did was turn to look at the wall. Kevin twisted and glanced over his shoulder, then froze in place. Instead of four groupings left after they’d gone through their purge of inconsequential deaths, accidents rather than murders connected with Chloe’s, there were nine images and articles on the wall. Nine.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There are limits.”

  “To what you can tell me, I know.” Kevin shoved the man’s hand aside and pushed to his knees, staring up at the wall that still held Chloe’s picture, the articles, the images of the forest’s edge behind the three girls, the same man—Mark—coming from between the trees. “But I stopped him.”

  Wordlessly, the man gestured towards the wall.

  “No, I did. I saved those girls. See?” He pointed to where Amber and Kaylee’s pictures had been pinned, a space now occupied by two other girls about the same age. “They aren’t up there.”

  “And yet your daughter is dead.”

  “Oh my God.” The pain of never hearing her voice again ripped through him, and he scrabbled at his pants pocket, ignoring the detail of wearing different trousers than when he’d been in the woods, in the car, standing in the freaking garage. No phone greeted him, no device with a message from the past, no cherished missive from his Chloe where she’d been so much herself, scolding and forgiving in the same breath, laughing and joking and loving. “What happened? What went wrong?”

  The man stared at him and shook his head sadly.

  “Why? Why would he do this?” Kevin stumbled to his feet and staggered, trying and failing to grab at the back of the couch, his arm and hand unable to support his weight. A shoulder lifted under his arm, a hand wrapped in the waistband of his jeans—the man was there and holding him upright. “What does he gain? Why would he kill these girls? My Chloe, why would he do these things?”

  The man’s eyes dimmed, there was no other word for it. They lost radiance and grew cloudy, as if a cataract had grown across the entirety of both orbs in a split second. He tipped his chin up towards the ceiling, and a burst of that language that hovered on the edge of Kevin’s understanding flowed from him. That hum returned, stirring Kevin’s nausea as pain bloomed in his chest, arrowing up his neck until he groaned. The man hefted him slightly, holding him tighter as the tone of his voice turned soothing, heat spreading all along Kevin’s side where they touched. Another spate of sounds, followed by a deeper hum, this peaceful vibration settling into his skin.

  Kevin’s head lolled sideways and rested against the man’s steady shoulder. His legs were weak, and he blinked slowly, a lassitude suffusing his being. The man hefted him again, jostling him, and Kevin opened his eyes in time to see an orb of light floating directly in front of them, between where they stood and the wall. Newspaper clippings and edges of photos fluttered in a wind he didn’t feel. His eyes slipped closed, and Kevin felt sleep easing into him, soothing him into a restful doze.

  He jolted when something popped close by and jerked upright, head swimming with the abrupt movement. The light was gone, and he and the man were feet closer to the wall. Something had changed, and Kevin squinted, focusing on first one grouping, then another.

  There was a grouping that didn’t fit, and the data pinned to his wall wasn’t the same as what he’d gathered for the murders. This was wholly different information, blurry class photos, government forms, a police report, and a single sharp image, taken from slightly above as the man walked through a forest somewhere. The man. Mark.

  Kevin read his surname, Filcher. Harmless in sound, common and unthreatening. Mark Filcher.

  Twenty-three, living in the town to the north, where Kevin had already seen the murderer’s house.

  He folded back a piece of paper to reveal the whole of the police report. A fifteen-year-old Mark had been taken into custody at his mother’s request, her claims of his uncontrolled behavior backed up by the state in which officers found their apartment: chairs and vases overturned, dishes broken on the floors. Kevin remembered what he’d seen, the young man folding into the back of the cruiser, face battered while his unmarked mother stood at the top of the steps flexing her fists. “That’s not right. That’s not what happened to him.”

  He slipped free from the man’s hold, plucking the thumbtack from the papers and images. It dropped to the floor, and he took the mess with him to the couch, where he sagged into the cushions. There was a mix of things, in an unsorted timeline, so he took a second to build it into a stack organized by age. It took him only moments to find Mark in the class photos, which looked to be an assortment of years from third through eighth grades. The young boy had a bright smile, chin up as he stared at the photographer. That changed as Kevin flipped through the pictures, Mark’s smile first dimming, then turn
ing into a sullen smirk, upper lip lifted in a sneer that had classmates leaning away from where he stood.

  Kevin flipped back to the beginning again, this time matching up the paperwork with the images. “Look at this.” There was a report from a woman in children’s protective services, itemizing the injuries found on a ten-year-old Mark. She’d been called in by an ER doctor when Mark’s wrist had been broken and required treatment. Her notes indicated she felt the case required follow-up, but there were no other papers to tell Kevin what had happened. He looked up to find the man leaning over his shoulder, studying the paperwork along with him.

  Kevin demanded, “Did someone follow up? Did they see what was happening? His mother was hurting him.” A shrug was his only answer, and Kevin shook his head angrily, turning back to the report just as something flashed brightly near his hand. It felt like something shook him viciously, and his hand cramped, crumpling the papers along the edges. When he shuffled through them, he found more than had been there before, including another report from CPS closing the case based on family interviews. “But she broke his arm.”

  Knowing it was a useless inquiry, Kevin shuffled backwards through the mass, finding report cards existed now, notes from teachers going from talking about Mark in sunny phrases and praising his helpfulness to an itemized list of failures—to prepare, to study, to cooperate, to collaborate, to try.

  The whole pile was the same. Mark went from a promising child and young teen to a shiftless boy who’d flunked out of the educational system. As a man, he spent three Christmases in a row in jail for petty crimes.

  Anger bubbled through Kevin’s veins, his stomach rolling as he leafed through medical reports going back to the boy’s fifth birthday, when his hand had been burned in an open flame. The nurse’s note identified the person bringing him as his mother. The pattern was unmistakable when seen in overlays like this, but she’d been smart enough to shuttle him to different ERs and urgent care facilities, so no professionals could put the full picture together.

  “She’s been abusing him his whole life.” Another sad stare, then a slow nod.

  Kevin stared at the wall for a long time, focused on Chloe, her smiling face, as filled with promise as the younger Mark had been. He looked down at the last picture of Mark, trudging through the woods alone.

  “You said I could go back twice.”

  It would seem he’d shocked the man, because the silence in the room was broken by his rough intake of breath.

  “You said.”

  “Aire sseccus.” In the very edge of Kevin’s vision, he could see the man shaking his head back and forth, a vigorous movement. “Flawed. It is not possible.”

  “Rules are rules.” Kevin swung to shift his stare to the man. “You said, rules are rules.”

  “There are limits.”

  Kevin’s thoughts turned profane, but aloud he only repeated himself with a quietly spoken, “You said.”

  It grew quiet in the apartment, that smothering absence of sound he’d come to associate with this man’s presence. This man, angel, whatever he was, who could send Kevin back in order to change the future.

  With a burst of sounds, the man lunged at Kevin, caught him by surprise and slammed a hand against Kevin’s chest. “So biocac aire tamma, biocac parehat enyd rebme. Aire cedrebme vonrebot. Enyd biocac aire eriferus ruof sseccus.” Heat followed by cold sank into him, the exchange of temperatures unexpected and not something he could guard against, and Kevin found himself shaking, his whole body shuddering, anchored only by the man’s touch. “Eykwa lew eykwa. Fiubf ginw enyd.”

  Something fundamental inside Kevin shifted at the same time the apartment exploded around them, sound and light and pressure coming at him from all sides until he felt like he was going to pass out. A thousand voices filled the air, dozens of conversations going on at the same time, the cacophony of sound about to rupture his eardrums. The pain increased and expanded, growing until it could burst through his skin all over, and then abruptly ebbed, dissolving into a pinprick of an ache in the center of his chest.

  The man was gone.

  Are you prepared

  “No.” Kevin’s shout echoed normally off the walls and window, followed by complaints and pounding from the wall adjoining his neighbors. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t promise something and then take it away. You can’t.”

  There was a faraway hum that he gradually realized belonged to a truck somewhere on the roads.

  “No. You can’t do that.” He fisted both hands and struck his thighs. “Bring him back.”

  He stared at Chloe’s picture, the only thing left attached to the wall after the rush of wind had swept through the apartment. The carefully organized information on Mark was scattered wall to wall, mixed in with the papers and images of the many girls he’d murdered.

  “Rules.” Kevin had an idea, grasping at straws. “Rules are rules, and this doesn’t line up with what was promised.” He stood, feeling stronger than he had in a long time, ignoring the change. “There are rules and limits, and this was within those. It had to be, or he couldn’t have done what he did. It would have been proscribed, just like when he couldn’t tell me anything, couldn’t tell me what to do. Rules are rules, and you just broke them.” He lifted his chin, speaking to the ceiling as he’d watched the man do repeatedly. “You broke the rules. Make it right. Bring him back.” Eyes closed, fists pressed to the top of his head, he pleaded, “Please, bring him back.”

  Kevin didn’t change position, didn’t shift, even when the light appeared. The brilliance swelled and grew, but it was softly warm, not the extremes he’d experienced before. He waited, silent and unmoving. The hum grew, then decreased, as close to a sigh as he’d heard from it.

  Heat and light, and a resounding pop shook the door in its frame.

  “Aire sseccus.”

  Kevin sobbed in relief. The man stood directly in front of him when he finally got up the courage to open his eyes, half convinced it was all his imagination. He mangled the sounds but drew his first smile from the man, the corners of that harsh mouth quirking up at the corners when he offered, “Aire sseccus.” His voice was flat in comparison to the rich tones from this man, this angel, this being who was going to make the impossible possible.

  “You are persuasive.”

  “My wife called it stubborn.” Another quirk of his lips, this shorter-lived. Kevin accepted that as a resumption of the grave business at hand. “Will I remember anything if I’m successful?”

  “Flawed.” The man lifted a hand, fingers curled towards Kevin’s chest. “Not repaired, just eased.” Kevin nodded. “You may. Some do.” He shrugged, the movement fluid. “Some do not.”

  “You do this a lot, then?” A slow shake. “Why me?”

  “Some losses are…intolerable.” Another slow shrug. “There are—”

  “Rules and limits, I know.” They stared at each other for a moment.

  “Are you prepared?”

  Kevin closed his eyes and remembered what he’d done in preparation for the previous trip, repeating the process, centering himself before he nodded and said, “I’m ready.”

  The transition was instant this time, but no less painful, landscape and city and roads fleeting underneath and through him, tiny jolts reverberating through his bones with each concussion of connection. He flew fast, and the view below him changed again and again, gray to green to gray; the river shivered and undulated as he passed over it, whipping like a snake as it carved different paths through the woods. Kevin’s mind bled personality and memories, until he was just energy and had always been such, and there were no ideas or dreams, no goal or target, just existing. Existing while pummeled and beaten flat, with agony rippling through him in uneven swaths.

  Something shifted, and he dropped suddenly, in fits and starts, pinwheeling through the air as he developed awareness of his body again, arms and legs flailing in his immediate panic. Something caught at his middle, and he flattened without impact against the
ground. He curled into a ball, pain crushing his upper body like an elephant stepping on his ribs, relentless, grinding him into pieces. He blinked, his vision red. Both hands clutched his chest, and he groaned, taking a shallow breath. “Ungh.” Another breath, this coming easier until racking coughs bent him double again. Head swimming, he carefully tested his body’s response, taking in tiny huffs of air.

  The pain subsided, easing more, and he unfolded his legs, pushing to sit up. He stayed in that position for a moment, head cradled in his hands, slick sweat coating his skin. Kevin lifted his head and looked around, surprised to see town and not forest. Two blocks down from where he sat, he recognized an intersection, and just beyond that a row of apartment buildings.

  Reflexively, he patted his pockets, slightly shocked when he came up empty of his phone; then he remembered they didn’t exist yet. After another series of deep breaths to test the limits of his ribs and the residual pain, he stood and started walking. Turning and climbing the steps to the front door felt like second nature, and Kevin shoved through the door, angling a glance at the mailboxes, seeing confirmation of what he expected.

  The four flights of stairs didn’t wind him as much as he anticipated, and he lifted a prayer of thanks at the welcome change.

  He paused in front of the door and studied it. There were no overt marking to indicate evil lived behind its shelter. As he lifted his hand to knock, he heard a slap followed by the high sobs of a child. Mark’s three years old. He’s just a little boy. His stomach heaved at the thought of what the child would endure.

  “Useless piece of…” Gruff and coarse, the rest of the woman’s words were lost, mixed in with the cries of pain and bewilderment.