The Madness Underneath. Maureen Johnson
years, constantly stuck in the place that she’d killed herself. This gray and sad woman . . .
And yet. I’d been brought here all cloak-and-dagger. Stephen knew things that he shouldn’t have known. Thorpe stood down at his end of the platform and watched the show. That’s what it felt like—a show. I stepped away from Diane a bit and waved Stephen closer. His chin was down toward his chest, and he couldn’t look directly at me.
“How did you know?” I said, low enough so that Thorpe couldn’t hear.
“I kept an eye on you in Bristol,” Stephen said quietly.
“An eye on me? You followed me? And didn’t say anything?”
“I wanted to make sure—”
“And you told Thorpe? You told this woman I’d fix things for her? You brought me here to test me or something?”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, lifting his head a bit. “If you want, we walk away right now.”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
“I mean it. We leave right now if you say so.”
I looked back at Diane for just a moment, but I had to turn away. She was the embodiment of depression, of desperation. Releasing her would be fair. It would be right. I could come back and do it some other time, maybe. But not now. Not when I’d been brought here like this.
“Okay,” I said, drawing myself up as tall as I could. “We leave. Now.”
He blinked slowly.
“If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Stephen examined my face for a moment and rocked back and forth on his heels ever so slightly. We stood practically toe to toe, and I could smell the cold on his coat.
“Right,” he said.
Diane must have been listening, because she let out a wail. It was unpleasant to hear, so I blocked it out. I walked back down the platform toward Thorpe and left Stephen to try to talk to her. This was his fault. He’d made the promise. He could explain to her why it wasn’t going to happen.
“What’s going on?” Thorpe called.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I’m leaving.”
“Is it done?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Are you unable to . . . do what she asks?”
“I’m not—”
“Rory!” Stephen yelled.
This is when I felt something at my back. It felt like the wind—a cold and strong wind. There was a zing of electricity up my spine, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk.
It wasn’t unlike that feeling you get at the top of a roller coaster, just when you hear the clanking noise that pulled you up there stop, and something lets go, and you know the feeling is about to get much more intense and extreme. Everything goes up—your pulse, the blood to your head, even your organs seem to leap as it all falls away. The air comes into your lungs faster than you can process it, so you choke on it for a moment.
My ears filled with the sound of my own heartbeat, my blood being forced through my veins. The world went white. Then everything settled just as fast as it had stirred, and I could smell the smoky flower smell, and the world came back into focus.
I fell to my knees on the platform surface, just managing to keep myself from going headfirst over the edge by grabbing at it. Then I felt hands at my waist, holding me steady, pulling me back into a seated position.
“You’re all right,” Stephen said. “You’re all right. She came up behind you. She grabbed you. She was too fast. I couldn’t stop her.”
Thorpe hurried up to us.
“Did something happen?” he asked.
In reply, I got down on my knees on the bumpy yellow section at the very edge of the platform, leaned over the side, and began to throw up on the tracks. Someone—Stephen, I guessed—held me from behind to make sure I didn’t lose my balance. The sickness didn’t last long, and it cleared my head instantly. I pushed back and sat on my heels and wiped my mouth.
“I didn’t do it,” I said, once I caught my breath.
“What?” Thorpe asked.
“It happened,” Stephen said. “The woman touched Rory, not the other way around. That’s what she means.”
“But you are sure.”
“There’s no mistaking it,” Stephen said, a little sharply. “It’s not subtle.”
“Then get her back to her school and make sure she’s all right.”
“Come on,” Stephen said to me softly. “Can you stand?”
I didn’t answer, and when he tried to help me, I pushed his hands away and walked down the platform. I knew Stephen was a few steps behind me, quiet, nervous. I saw several mice dash along the edges of the corridors or along the steps as we approached, put out by our appearance. The Tube belonged to them at night.
I stood outside Charing Cross station for a minute, taking deep, heavy breaths of cold air. The policewoman watched me from a distance—impassive. She couldn’t have had any idea why I was here or what I’d just done. I was trying to figure out what I was feeling. It wasn’t anger, but it was something related to it. Was it exhaustion? Maybe even relief? It was all those feelings, maybe, and I didn’t feel like having any of them, so I decided to ignore them all and concentrate on breathing nice and slow.
Stephen exited the station a minute later. He went right to the car and held the passenger’s door open for me.
“Don’t we have to wait for Thorpe?” I asked. There was a bit of a growl in my voice, mostly from the vomiting. It made me sound very angry. I was fine with that.
“He can ride with the other officer. He said I should take you.”
I got into the car, and Stephen shut the door. He turned on the engine and turned the heat on full blast. Gusts of warm air roared out of the vents and directly into my face. I reached over and turned it down.
“I thought you might be cold,” he said.
“I am. It feels good. I just threw up.”
“She was too fast for me to stop her,” he said. “Sometimes they move quickly, more quickly than us. I couldn’t stop her.”
I’d seen it. I knew that was true. There was nothing he could have done to stop her if she’d been moving as fast as she really wanted to go. Ghosts are quick when they want to be.
Still, I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. I maintained a steely silence for a few moments.
“Be mad at me if you want,” he said. “But everything I’ve done has been for good reasons.”
“Like what?”
He took off his black glasses and rubbed them on his leg. His leg bounced a little with tension.
“Rory, I just . . . it’s . . . it’s very complicated.”
“Try me.”
“Rory . . .”
“What’s Thorpe doing?” I said. “Over there, by the door?”
Thorpe wasn’t over by the door. I’d just said that to distract him. I yanked the keys out of the ignition.
“Tell me,” I said, shoving them down my shirt and holding them against my chest. “Tell me, or we go nowhere. Tell me or I’ll start screaming. Do you want me to draw lots of attention to what’s going on here? I’ll totally do it.”
A