Some Quiet Place Read online

  Some Quiet Place

  Kelsey Sutton

  I can’t weep. I can’t fear. I’ve grown talented at pretending.

  Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

  Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

  Some Quiet Place

  by

  Kelsey Sutton

  For Wayne and Aneesa

  Acknowledgments

  First thanks must go to Beth Miller, my incredible agent, for rescuing me from the slush pile (twice!), for reading every single thing I send and being so enthusiastic about it all, and especially for sending me those pictures of Damon Salvatore on special days and days that I might not have survived otherwise. I don’t know what I would do without her.

  Thank you to the fabulous team at Flux. Brian Farrey-Latz, for loving this story as much as I do. Courtney Colton and Mallory Hayes, for getting others excited about it. Sandy Sullivan, for catching all those little things I missed. Ellen Lawson, for such an amazing cover. And to everyone else who was involved in this process. I can’t wait to work with you all again!

  Of course thanks to all my critique partners and cheerleaders: Gabrielle Carolina, Tanya Loiselle, Bailey Hammond, Ella Press, Stefanie Gaither, Skyanne Fisher, Holly West-Hedeen, Ruth Walters, Cindy Cowan, Ashley Levens, and Sarah Dalton. Not to mention all the early readers a few years back on YWS. And if I somehow missed anyone in that list, a blanket thanks to all of you.

  Lastly, thanks to my family, for all your love and support. I am truly blessed.

  One

  Fear is coming.

  As the day ends and I milk the cows, I wait for another meeting with my old friend. He comes swiftly, speeding over the plains as only one of his kind can do.

  Every second that he draws nearer, the cows become more agitated, eyes rolling, hooves stomping the floor. I know his only purpose for making the journey to Wisconsin is to taunt me again. Test my boundaries. See if he can break through the unbreakable barrier. I’m the only human being he can’t torment, the only one who can look him in the face and not flinch. To Fear, I’ve always been a mystery.

  “It’s late, and I need to go to bed,” I call out, making sure to be gentle with Mora’s udder. None of our other cows mind the milking, no matter how rough I am, but this one always raises a fuss. I try to make it easier for her, standing to croon nonsensical phrases in her flicking ear. There’s no sympathy, no affection, only the understanding that the animal will be more willing if I do this for her.

  “Too tired even for a visit from me, Elizabeth?”

  He leans against the doorway, cool and beautiful. He’s timeless, he’s seen everything and nothing in this world, and he doesn’t grow old or wise. Without glancing at him, I can picture his white-blond hair, envision his black, flowing clothes, feel the intensity of his hot-cold blue gaze.

  I don’t raise my eyes to meet his, as I know he wants me to. His power, ever-present, ever-changing, sweeps over me. I see a young boy cowering in a dank alley, a woman shivering in a barren room, an old man clutching a gun with his back pressed to a wall. White eyes, trembling lips, utter isolation.

  It doesn’t affect me.

  For a moment, there’s only the sound of the milk squirting into the pail. Fear makes a guttural note in his throat, and suddenly there are spiders swarming all over me. Mora shuffles in annoyance when she feels some of them crawling up her hind leg. I study the onslaught crawling down my arms, my front, my feet. They’re small and black and their legs look like a writhing tangle of living string.

  “You’re eager tonight,” I observe.

  Fear sighs and waves his pale hand through the air. The spiders vanish. “And you haven’t changed.”

  I begin milking again. My hold on Mora is steady and sure. “No.”

  “Not even a little?” Fear steps closer, and I sense his essence flex and shimmer again as it wraps around me. Nothing. Fear sighs a second time. “What does your terror taste like, Elizabeth?” he asks, breathless now. “What would it feel like to see your eyes cloud over at my touch? To know you tremble at my will?”

  I continue my task and don’t answer.

  Fear is in a talkative mood tonight. He tells me stories, stories I have heard before, stories about the humans he has driven insane with his mere breath. People all around the world at every second of every day know who Fear is, and he relishes it. I listen to every word, feeling my nothingness dig deeper inside of me.

  “Why are you the only one who can’t let go?” I finally ask Fear when he quiets and simply watches the movement of my hands. Dry now, Mora turns with expectancy in her large brown eyes. I stand again, scooting the stool back, but Fear moves to block me. I tilt my head to meet his gaze, adding, “All the other Emotions gave up a long time ago.”

  The barn is utterly silent and my voice echoes a little. Fear has to hear the detachment in it, the proof that I’m unreachable. He still doesn’t move, but this time when I shift he allows me to brush past him. I untie the rope that holds Mora to the stall and lead her into it for the night.

  “Hate,” I continue, “Surprise, Disappointment … they’ve all stopped coming.”

  “They don’t have my stamina,” Fear says with a smirk. He looks satisfied at my words, as if it mollifies him that he’s not the only one who can’t influence me. He’s smiling that sardonic, sly smile he does so well. He may be the Emotion that causes people to cower or scream or run, but he is much, much more. “Don’t you want to know the truth?” he asks, and now he sounds genuinely interested, even though he already knows the answer.

  I pick up the full pail. The others I’ve already put through the hand-cranked milk separator, poured into bottles, and placed in the cooler. Fear waits for me to respond, and I give the answer to him yet again because maybe if he hears it enough times, it’ll penetrate. My shoulder rotates with the motions of the milk separator. “No.” It’s not denial, only truth. The hard, cold, simple truth.

  After throwing away the heavy cream and pouring the milk into a bottle, I walk out. Fear saunters beside me with his hands shoved in his pockets. It’s still dusk, the sun ducking down in the sky behind wisps of clouds. The fields are dark. The tall corn stalks sway gently, rustling.

  “I watch you sometimes, you know,” Fear tells me abruptly, taking my attention away from the horizon. We’re at the front door of the house. He opens the door for me and stands aside. Entering loudly so I don’t startle Mom, I set the bottle down on the counter along with the separator. The milk sloshes within the glass. She looks up from her place in front of the sink.

  “Did you close up the barn?” she asks, and as always she’s blind to Fear’s presence. It’s me that causes the shadows in her eyes, her wary tone. She’s been looking at me this way ever since I can remember; I frighten her. I heard her tell Dad once that I act unnatural. She wishes I were normal, like every other teenager in Edson. My efforts seem to be futile so far.

  I shake my head no. Mom takes both the bottle and the separator. One for the fridge, one for the sink. I catch the faintest sound of a sigh as she turns away. She opens the fridge door. “Tim will get mad if he notices. Better go do it.�
�

  Fear watches the two of us with mild fascination. He’s seen it all before, but he never seems to tire of examining me and my life. “She really just wants you to get out of the house,” he says. Not cruelly. It’s a blatant observation.

  I let the screen door slam shut behind me. “I know.”

  The Emotion follows again, his hair gleaming in the weak light. This time he stares ahead with a thoughtful, almost frustrated expression. A crow swoops overhead. Caw. Caw.

  “Leave,” I tell Fear, entering the barn once more. “Nothing will change.” I check to make sure the cooler is shut and lock the side door. I brush past Fear to go out the garage door.

  Flames shoot up the walls. The heat throws me back, and I land on my side. There’s a brief flare of pain, but then my survival instincts kick in; I jump to my feet and search for an unblocked exit. Survive. I run back to the side door, but the floor above me collapses. I barely leap out of the way in time. I spin. All the ways out are guarded by the fire. Hay hisses and bursts. The cows bay in their terror, and my skin sears with heat and pain. I do the calculations several times, but Fear has done them, too, and he has every possible avenue of escape eliminated.

  Heat eats up my pant leg, up my side and arm. I drop and roll. The smell of burnt flesh fills the air. I’m burning alive, I realize. The physical pain swiftly grows overwhelming, and tears run down my cheeks. But pain is usually impossible to endure because of the rush of feeling that comes along with it. I should be frantic. I should be screaming with

  horror.

  I feel nothing. I am nothing.

  “Stop, Fear,” I say with my wet cheeks and smoking skin. Hell continues to crackle around me.

  I hear him sigh yet again, doing an excellent imitation of my mother. Then, in the space of a single blink, the fire is gone. Everything is the way I left it, nothing destroyed or charred, although it’ll take the cows a while to calm. Power shivers around me. I search for Fear as the burns on my skin close up—it was all an illusion. There he stands, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. It’s as if none of it ever happened.

  “Who could have done this to you?” Fear muses for the thousandth time. “What could have that kind of power, and for what purpose? You’re completely human—I’d know if you were anything else. You haven’t been sought out, collected, or studied. Why—”

  “I’m going to the house,” I cut in. “If you’re going to come, fine. But please calm the cows down first. Dad grounded me last time he came out and saw them so riled. He thought I’d done it.”

  “Why would you care if you were grounded? You never go out.”

  I don’t say it out loud, but it’s simple, really. I pretend to care because a normal teenager would. I make any and all attempts to be just that. But I don’t want Fear to know this; it’ll only encourage his obsession.

  “I won’t rest until I’ve tasted your terror, Elizabeth,” Fear tells me. He vanishes.

  I stare at the wall for a moment, absorbing the absence of danger. No thoughts, no fire, no beings from the other plane to disturb the normality. There is only me, my breathing, and the frantic moans of the cows.

  I shut the door.

  Two

  I’ve been told that I cried as a child. I screamed when I didn’t get my way. I laughed and pulled my mother’s hair. I got into fights with my brother. When I hear these things, it’s as if I’m listening to stories about a stranger. The little girl I see in the pictures doesn’t really look like me. The physical details are the same, of course. The wild blond hair, the blue eyes, the smooth, sun-darkened skin. But if someone else hadn’t said that the little girl was me, I wouldn’t have known. It’s not that I don’t remember being so young … I just don’t know how I became what I am now.

  There’s something missing in the girl I see in the mirror compared to the one in those pictures: a sort of soul. A light inside. Her smile is innocent. When I practice smiling, it looks puny and tight. False. Sometimes I think of it as the Caldwell mark; it’s how my entire family smiles, now.

  I have knowledge few other humans have. They are unexplained and unwarranted, these ironclad truths. Yet I don’t know everything. I may be able to see the creatures that no one else can, I may know about the other plane, and I may understand the natures of humans and animals alike, but I don’t have the one thing I should have above all else.

  I don’t know what it is to feel.

  I can’t experience the freedom of grief, the abandon of ecstasy, the release of fury. And of course I can’t be curious about these experiences.

  I don’t have the luxury of the people around me. I can’t weep, I can’t lust, I can’t cower in terror, I can’t celebrate. Not in a true sense; I’ve grown talented at the art of pretending. The only sensation I’m capable of—not an Emotion, but something physical—is a sort of … nothingness that’s always there.

  The next morning, on my way through the kitchen, I pass framed pictures of the little girl on the wall and remember those stories. I adjust the strap of my book bag, contemplating that smile for what feels like the thousandth time. The bright eyes. I turn my back on her and glance at the clock on my way out. Late again.

  Closing the screen door gently—Dad is out in the fields with the harvester but Mom is still sleeping—I attempt to put the pictures from my mind.

  It’s a cold dawn. Fog hovers over the ground. Gravel crunches beneath my shoes. In the distance I see a shadow in the fields, the form of a man. But it’s not a man. He stands there, utterly still, and the fog rolls around him. Because that is what he is. Fog. Element. Other. More. I don’t just see the Emotions that wander the world—I see everything. I don’t pause to observe; it is something I have seen many, many times before. I throw my bag onto the passenger seat of my truck and hop in.

  The engine rumbles as my truck bumps along the dirt road. It’s an ancient ’96 Chevy; I bought it with most of my babysitting money. The smell of gasoline permeates the air. I roll down the window and listen to the vehicle’s peaceful growl, feel the cool morning breeze on my face.

  But a few minutes away from the house, my awareness sharpens and the brief stillness falls away. My eyes scan the trees alongside me; I sense something. Something else otherworldly. It’s the same sensation as when Emotions are near—my nothingness strengthens, hardens, prepares. But I don’t recognize this essence.

  The minutes tick by, and I get closer to town. Nothing happens. Nothing appears. When I pull into the school parking lot the clock shows 7:59, and there’s still no reason for why my senses are tingling.

  I pull the hood of my windbreaker up over my head as I walk toward the school doors. Under my lashes I take stock of my surroundings. There are the Dorseth brothers, roughing each other up near the wall—they’re infamous for their drugs and constant suspensions. There are the cliques that I don’t take part in. And there, sitting on the wall a little ways down from the Dorseths, is …

  “Maggie,” I say, stopping. I instantly take note of the veins beneath her translucent skin, the trembling, the smudges under her eyes. Her ink-black wig shines weakly in the sun. “Maggie, you shouldn’t be here.”

  She puts a book in her bag and stands, grinning. The smile has a contrasting effect; she’s wearing so much makeup it makes her eyes look droopy and hopelessly sad. “Well, hello to you too, bitch,” she says wryly. “I can tell you missed me.”

  I know she’ll be hurt if I don’t reassure her. “Of course I’m glad to see you,” I intone, failing to correct the pitch of my voice before the words come out. “It’s been a long time,” I add, forcing a note of sincerity into the words now. I move forward and hug her. She’s like a bag of bones in my arms.

  I step back to get a look at Maggie’s clothing; her choices seem to be getting more drastic. Today she’s wearing fishnet tights and a short skirt, complete with a chain clinking against her thigh. Her feet are covered by thick leather boots that are way too big. Velvet gloves adorn her arms to hide those juttin
g, pale hands. Her top … there isn’t much of a top to speak of. But she’s so flat-chested that the low neckline is a bit pointless.

  “Aren’t you going to ask?” Maggie pulls away. I don’t respond, offering her a slight shrug. This girl who I call my friend slings her arm around my shoulders, steering me to the front doors. Even sick as she is, her grip is tight. “How I escaped from the asylum?” she presses. Her term for the hospital.

  We’re drawing stares from others. I meet the gaze of Tyler Bentley, the star quarterback on the team. He barely notices me, but he’s looking at Maggie unabashedly. What is she doing here? I see him mouth. He doesn’t understand. None of them do. They think Maggie is an addict, and she lets them believe it. She even encourages it. She doesn’t want anyone to know the truth, because she doesn’t want to be pitied.

  “Maybe you should go back to the hospital,” I say to her now. A friend should be concerned, and Maggie is deep into the cancer, reason enough for worry. Just getting out of bed is probably too much for her.

  “So when do I get to see it?” she asks, ignoring me. She’s always been like this, jumping from one topic to another. Her lip ring glints.

  “See what?”

  “Hey, guys, wait up!”

  Maggie turns quickly, her expression lighting up. The boy who called out runs toward us, then brushes past, heading for his friends a few feet ahead. I watch Maggie’s face fall. I’m not enough for her. She needs more. I know this. And yet where there should be remorse, regret, longing, grief, there is, of course, only me. The black hole, the white canvas, the empty room.

  Maggie is already recovering, and she links her arm through mine as we navigate the halls of Edson High. I sidestep what looks like a puddle of soda. “I want to see your newest painting,” she asserts. “What are you working on?”