Ghost Hand (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 33, A Couch in the Woods

I woke up with something digging into my side.

My back and butt were cold and damp, and I wondered how my bed had gotten wet.

I opened my eyes and saw stars, real stars, spread out above me like the universe had just been rendered in high definition. It was beautiful, but I had no idea why I was sleeping outside on the wet ground next to a couch.

Someone stirred near me, moaning, and withdrew their foot from my ribs.

I sat up slowly and looked around.

I was in the middle of the woods somewhere. Wet leaves were sticking to the back of my head, and I brushed them away. It must have rained while I slept. Except, my topside was completely dry. Next to me was a tacky couch, covered in dark lumpy shapes. One of the shapes moved and moaned again. People. A whole pile of them. On a couch in the woods.

In front of me, branches rustled and parted, and a dark shape came out of the trees.

"You're awake," Marcus said, the relief on his face clearly visible by the glow of my ghost hand.

"What—" I started to ask, but it all came crashing back then. The plan to rescue Emma. The discovery that Marcus wasn't Marcus. The showdown in the hospital room under Mike Palmer's house. The giant minus meter in the ceiling and the run for our lives. And finally, my crazy idea to combine the power of the bullet with Dr. Julian's box to get us out of there. Well, apparently it had worked. I still had my ghost hand, and we weren't dead. At least Marcus and I weren't. "Are they okay?" I asked, glancing toward the couch.

"They're fine," Marcus said.

I still thought of him as Marcus. I couldn't help it.

"Everyone's still breathing anyway," he clarified. He had a pile of blankets in his arms, and he was wearing a sweatshirt and jacket. He looked warm. I, on the other hand, was beginning to shiver.

"Where are we?" I asked, my teeth chattering a little.

"Just outside of camp. You have pretty good aim."

"Everyone made it?"

"Even the couch," he said, unfurling one of the blankets and wrapping it around my shoulders. He tossed the others over the forms on the couch, then came and sat down next to me. "How'd you do it?" he asked, his warm shoulder brushing mine.

"I used the—" I looked down at my hands. They were empty. I glanced around on the wet ground, searching for it.

"Looking for this?" Marcus asked, holding the smooth silver cube up in front of my face. He shook it and something rattled inside, metal clanking against metal.

I took it from him and shook it myself. "It's inside," I said, turning the cube this way and that, looking for an indent or crack, searching for any indication that the thing had an opening. There was nothing. It looked exactly like it had before—an impenetrable, solid, metal cube. Except the bullet was inside of it now, rattling when I shook it.

"What's in there?" Marcus asked.

"The bullet."

"Jason's bullet?" he asked, sounding alarmed. "Then don't shake it," he snatched the cube from my hands. "That's live ammo in there."

"You shook it first," I pointed out.

"Yeah, because I didn't know what was in it. How'd it get in there?" he asked, looking for an opening like I just had. When he didn't find one either, he handed the cube back to me, the question still in his eyes.