Devour

Chapter 32 - Errol

"You said time and space are just---planes, right?" I ask, walking into the kitchen. Yes, I live with Cora now. It's been six months. Those kids have been alone without us for six months. They're in trouble after six minutes. So anyway Cora somehow believed my story and has kept me. She also feeds me for which I'm eternally gratefully. I do my best to earn my keep by doing small things around the little house and by doing odd jobs like walking her neighbor's pets.

"That's what scientific research suggests, yeah, that it's like a dimension, we just can't see it," she says, looking up from her laptop and several books. She's grading papers and things from home today.

"I think that's what's making it so complicated----I can manipulate air, any psychic can, but it's much, much harder than moving something tangible," I say, lifting one of her closed books then putting it back down, as evidence.

"Because you can't see it you feel like you can't---just like you brush your teeth or type with your eyes closed but the first time you try it you feel like you can't," she says, nodding.

"Right---exactly---so I've been thinking of it—because I'm an idiot—in terms of teleportation—needing to open some sort of door---but I was reading your notes and like you said it's a plane, it's here---all around us---so if what I did before---or what Pasch did by accident, is just move it---then all I have to is---move it," I say.

"Or crumple it---wrinkle it," she says, nodding, "That may work."

"I'm going to try," every day I'm not there I feel like something awful is going to happen to the kids. "But—"

"Don't try too hard," I told her about the brain bleeding thing.

"I don't want to risk doing something that would take me away from you---you're literally the only friend I have," I say.

"I don't know how to come," she says, frowning.

"Take my hand," I say, holding out a disfigured hand, "I'll keep you with me, if you're willing."

"Anything," she says, taking my hand.

Then I try to feel all of it. Not just the air, the house, things I can't see or touch, like memories, places, mostly where the kids are. And then I wonder how I'm going to know if I've got hold of it.

Then I know.

It's like putty or slime is sliding over my hands, cold, and flipping back and forth trying to collapse.

And all the colors don't make sense anymore blues reds purples washing over everything Cora is still there, with me, but I see a little girl running down the beach.

"Mummy----mummy they wouldn't let me play with them," the little girl says, sobbing.

"That's okay, you don't need them anyway, we'll have fun here all by ourselves," the mummy says, wiping her tears.

"They said I'm not big enough."

"What they said doesn't matter---"

I look away from her and back at myself. I'm still here, flashing and slipping with the colors. But I'm also not here.

"Shhh, he's crying, when did you last feed him?" Jameson is kneeling over me. I can see myself curled up in the corner of the cell, filthy and sobbing.

"He wouldn't eat."

"He's no good to anyone like this, damn it," Jameson says, reaching out and cautiously putting a hand on my arm. I shiver away. I'm emaciated. But not burned. "I'm away for a week and this happens? You can't just leave him here. You know he lives to go outside."