The House Above the Sea

34.

"Oh, there you are. Wakey-wakey, Christopher."

When Kit peels his eyes open, he doesn't find himself in any place he recognizes. The sky is black, the walls black, the cold floor underneath him black, as if he's kneeling on polished obsidian. The brightest thing about this place, wherever it is, is Whitaker, a white halo around him like a lightbulb viewed through half-squinted eyes.

Whitaker frowns at the confusion no doubt crossing Kit's face. "Maybe wakey-wakey was the wrong choice of words, actually, because you're asleep."

Kit's mouth parts in surprise, even though some part of him had already guessed it. He remembers being with Neo and the others seconds before he stepped into the circle—surely he couldn't have woken up somewhere else.

"Sorry," says Whitaker. "I needed somewhere private to talk to you, and nowhere's more private than inside your mind. Especially yours, kid. What was running through your head when you walked into that circle, anyway?"

Kit's hands tense, yearning for pen and paper, but Whitaker gently shakes his head. "I'm literally in your mind. If you just think the words, I'll hear them."

Creepy, Kit thinks.

"A little," Whitaker agrees with a shrug. "Now tell me why we're here."

You know why we're here, Kit tells him. If I'm going to get my voice back, I'm not going to let Neo or anyone else do it for me. I'm going to work this out. Right here, right now.

"Why right now?" Whitaker asks, though something in the dead man's face makes Kit think that it's a question to which he already knows the answer. "Eight years you've been under my curse, you realize. And now you want to run off?"

I didn't think I had a chance, Kit replies. But now I know I do.

Whitaker tilts his head, studying Kit for a moment. Kit wonders what it is that he sees, if to Whitaker he is still the naive boy he was when he and Elsie made the trek up the cliff on that grim day. Maybe he isn't a person to Whitaker at all, but just a convenience, a scapegoat. Kit had spent many nights awake wondering what Whitaker even wanted, and what he'd come up with was this: Whitaker just wanted a way to feel alive again. Kit was simply unlucky enough to serve as his compensation.

But Kit's tired now, exhausted. He doesn't want to be the remedy for someone else's insecurity anymore. And he doesn't have to be.

"Let me...try to explain this," Whitaker starts, a hand going to his chin. "I have no plans to let you go. Your friends and that sister of yours can cry and scream at me all they want, but you came here that day, you walked onto my property, so it's only fair. Understand?"

Kit scoffs. There's nothing fair about this.

As if Kit hadn't said anything, Whitaker goes on: "I had my future cut short, you know. I just needed someone else to feel what I felt, and that way I could truly rest. And I am resting now. Least I would be, if you hadn't called me here. Do you think—do you honestly think I'm going to give that up?"

Kit hesitates, knotting his hands in his lap. What if there were something else?

"Something else?"

You give me my voice back, Kit starts. You let me go free, but I give you something else of mine, something much more important, something else that company robbed you of when they had you killed.

Laughter splits the air, and Kit jolts, because it's his, or at least it used to be. It isn't the choked, wheezing noice that replaced his laughter when the ghost stole his voice, but it's the full sound of it: the noise he used to make when Elsie made a pun so bad it was good, or when his father, bright-eyed and smiling, ambushed him with tickles.

Whitaker kneels down before Kit, the smile on his face reminding Kit of the glint of a knife. "And what," asks Whitaker, "could you possibly have left to give me, Christopher?"

There, Kit tells him. You just said it.