Sister Zero (Scenes 6-8)
6
Madison halted at the corner and peered down the hallway where she heard the gunfire, but she saw no sign of her younger sister there. She then crouched down and placed her hand flat against the carpet and closed her eyes, flooding the space with her mind’s eye and her intuition for a few moments, and sensed movement down the hallway. So she sprinted down the corridor towards the end of the hall just before it ended in a two-way corridor and slowed to a halt when she smelled gunpowder and propellant in the air.
She again crouched to the floor and put her palm flat against the carpet and closed her eyes, repeating the psychometric process in her mind, and sensed a one-sided struggle just a few feet ahead of her. She gulped down her fears, hoping that Celia wasn’t on the losing end of that struggle, and walked towards the spot where it took place.
She stopped when she saw the bullet hole and smelled the pungent odor of gunpowder and propellant, but there were no bloodstains anywhere. So she crouched once again and placed her palm flat over the carpet next to the bullet hole and sensed her sister’s struggle in her mind. Madison felt dazed, and her head felt sore, as if someone had been hammering blows on her (Celia’s) head, before she felt a ringing static in her ears, as if a gunshot went off at point-blank range, but Celia herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Fuck!” Madison said, fuming over Celia’s disappearing act as she got to her feet. “Where are you? You better be okay, or else I’ll roast you, damn it!”
But just as she got back up, she saw something metallic flash across her vision and rolled out of the way just in time. When she got back up, she faced the Red Queen and said, “You bitch!”
“You’re quicker than I thought,” the Red Queen said, holding her knife like a toy. “Since we have nothing better to do, why don’t we play a game of tag?”
“And why should I?” Madison said.
“No you don’t. You can’t back out of this game,” the Red Queen said and pointed her knife at Madison’s face. “I’ve already tagged you.”
That’s when Madison noticed a slight stinging sensation on her left cheek, and when she raised her hand to it, she winced and glared, saying, “I’m gonna kill you!”
“No killing now,” the Red Queen said and tossed Madison her knife, which Madison caught.
She looked at the knife, then back at the Red Queen and said, “You’re disarming yourself?”
“It’s a part of the game of tag,” the Red Queen said. “Draw first blood, and the other person is it. Those are the rules,” and she turned tail down to the end of the hall (“Hey, get back here!”) and turned left around the corner into the corridor, and Madison ran after her with her knife in hand.
But just as Madison turned the corner, she felt another blade grazing the top of her shoulder, halting her off her balance as a sharp burning sensation flooded down her arm. Gripping her hand to her shoulder and gritting her teeth against the pain, she looked back as the White Queen ran up and threw a roundhouse kick to her stomach, bowling Madison over onto the floor, feeling like she was about to throw up her lunch.
When she looked up, she saw the White Queen picking up her knife, then getting up and looking back at Madison with a smile, and said, “Now that I’ve tagged you, you can chase after me, too,” and threw her knife to the floor, sticking it into the carpet in front of Madison.
“Why did you kick me?” Madison spat.
“To get you back for playing dirty earlier,” she said, then winked at her. “Only pussies use long range attacks,” and she raced down the hall, while Madison scrambled to her feet and was about to run after her—
When someone else called after her, saying, “Maddy, don’t go!”
Madison turned back, recognizing Blaze’s voice, and saw Blaze and Cooley running up the hallway to meet her. She said, “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t go after those two,” Cooley said.
“But I have to—”
“Listen to me,” Cooley said. “Don’t go yet.”
And before Madison was about to speak, Blaze put her hand on Madison’s shoulder, making her wince, and said, “You can’t go after them when you’re hurt!”
“And God knows what you’ll run into if you do,” Cooley said and summoned two mirrors before her and placed her hands on both reflections in deep concentration. “If you play their game, it’ll be one against two. You’ll tire yourself out while one of them remains fresh.”
“I see,” Madison said. “What about Celia?”
“I can’t find her,” Cooley said, still concentrating on the movements of the two queens. Then, when the reflections of both mirrors shimmered and blurred out of focus, she said, “I’m getting close,” till the blurry reflections of both mirrors began to warp and change. “I’m getting closer. God, when will you two stop moving?”
As Cooley went on tracking the queens’ movements through her mirrors, Madison and Blaze watched the blurry reflections taking shape and crystallizing into focus for a moment before blurring out of focus, then warping again into blurry unrecognizable shapes for a time, till they began to crystalize—
“Found them,” Cooley said.
—into the Red Queen in the right mirror and the White Queen in the left mirror. The White Queen was in the center of a hallway, while the Red Queen was waiting along the intersecting hallway around a corner.
That’s when Madison realized what their tactic had been from the start, saying, “Damn those two! That’s how they ambushed me the first time!”
“See?” Cooley said. “If you’d have played their game, you’d be totally exhausted chasing after one, while the other was waiting for you. Now hold still,” and she grabbed a hold of Madison’s sleeve and tore it off.
“Hey!”
Cooley then summoned a first aid kit and a water bottle, saying, “I’ve got to patch you up, you know. You don’t want to get an infection.” Then she turned to Blaze, saying, “Go.”
“With pleasure,” Blaze said. “Maddy, I’ll get the red one for you.”
“No,” Madison said, as Cooley finished washing out the blood and reached for the ointment to put it on her wound. “You go for the white one, and I’ll go for the red one. I have a score to settle with— . . . Ow!”
“Just let Mamma Goose heal you up and enjoy the show,” Blaze said and ran down the hall, so she could get a good running speed.
“Please, stop with the name calling,” Cooley said as she finished dressing Madison’s wound on her shoulder, then did the same to the cut on her cheek, making Madison wince. After that, she added, “She’s still upset with you, Maddy.”
“About what?” Madison said.
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said.
“Seriously?” Madison said. “She won’t let it go?”
Cooley shook her head and said, “Won’t you make amends with her? I’m glad to have your avatar over at my house anytime, but she’s a massive glutton. She’s been eating up so much of my food that I’ve spent almost half of my earnings on her ravenous stomach since you’ve banished her from your house.”
“Binge eating?” Madison said.
Cooley nodded and said, “And now that I have to look after the Cairns twins, I’m starting to get worried. Please, make amends with her! Otherwise, I’ll be broke!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll try my best. Oh, and you’re a terrible influence on her, anyway,” Madison said and ran away, ignoring Cooley’s remark that she was being a massive hypocrite, till she caught up to Blaze. “Wait up. I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” Blaze said, facing her.
“About Cooley,” she said. “She says you’ve been eating her out of house and home.”
“Oh, that. Can you blame me? You threw me out, remember?” Blaze said. “But that doesn't matter anymore. You can have all the boyfriends you want, while I get all the food I want.”
“God, I’m tired of the boyfriend-angle,” Madison said. “I just want to have you back in my life.”
“You need to do better than that, Romeo,” she said, “because this Juliet is not having any more of your B.S.”
So Madison did something ‘better,’ grabbing her hand and yanking her back towards her, then kissed the avatar of her true self and said, “Really, I’m sorry for hurting you the way I did. I never meant to make you leave.”
Blaze pulled her hand away and gaped, saying, “You did not just do that! That’s, like, the most cliche thing anyone can do.”
“I’m just trying to make it up to you!” Madison said. “It’s just that you piss me off sometimes, because you’re . . .” She paused, not sure what word to say.
“What? Demanding? Overbearing? Possessive? Narcissistic? Bitchy?” Blaze said. “Or any other degrading adjective?”
“Oh God, please, don’t start this again,” Madison said. “Can’t we just let bygones be bygones? I’m tired of holding onto grudges.”
“Well, I’m not,” Blaze said. “Since you’re the one who started it, you need to prove yourself to me.”
“God, not this again!” Madison said. “Why do you keep going around in circles?”
“Because you keep going around in circles,” she said, shoving her finger at Madison’s bosom. “You’ve got no commitment whatsoever.”
“Damn it, I can’t spend every waking second of my life with you,” Madison said. “I’ve got a life to live outside of being with you, like school—”
“And getting boyfriends,” Blaze said, “and getting laid, and making babies—”
“Ah, Christ,” Madison said. “You see what I mean? I can’t even talk to you without fighting you!”
“Hey, love birds,” Cooley yelled down the hallway, “can you stop the lover’s quarrel and get going, already?”
Madison and Blaze traded glances and sighed, then yelled out as one, saying, “Okay, Mamma Goose!”
And both girls resumed their way to the end of the hallway.
While Cooley unleashed a tirade about being the spiritual avatar of Katherine Hearn and not the butt of their bad humor, Blaze said to Madison, “I’ll think about it, okay? Now are you ready?”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Madison said. “And I’m ready when you are, but I’m taking the red one. You go for the white one.”
“Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.”
When both girls reached the end of the hallway, Madison said, “Last one there is an oyster,” and she sprinted down the hallway towards the right mirror at the top of her speed with Blaze close behind, and she focused her fiery energy in her fists and dashed towards the Red Queen on the other side of the reflection—
7
And flew through Cooley’s mirror, taking the Red Queen by surprise and landing a solid right hook on her jaw and sending her through the opposite wall, smashing the panels and wooden studs into splinters with a concussive shockwave of fire bursting out like a warhead and burning it all into smoldering embers and shaking the floor. And a split second later followed another shockwave in the intersecting hallway ahead of her, shaking the floor once again and blinking out the lights for a moment.
When the lights came back on, Madison was clutching at her knees and catching her breath. She then stood up and beheld the giant hole in the wall with smoldering splinters and broken furniture in one of the rooms, and lying amid the rubble was a motionless Red Queen.
“Got you, bitch,” Madison said and ventured through the smashed and burnt debris that used to be a dining table and chairs and a shattered china cabinet, her steps cracking over the smoldering splinters and broken chair pieces and china, and placed her hand over the Red Queen’s chest and felt rapid heartbeats there. “Still alive, eh? Then let’s just call it even and leave it at that,” she said, then noticed in the rubble a red twine connected to the small of the girl’s back. “Why is her lifeline red? Blaze, did you get yours?”
“I did,” Blaze said. “Come over. I need to show you something.”
Madison stepped through the debris and out of the hole she had created, then rounded the corner into the hallway to where Blaze stood beside her own handiwork of destruction. “What do you want me to see?”
“Come over, and I’ll show you,” Blaze said and waved Madison into the room as she herself ventured back in, so Madison followed her into the destroyed remains of a storage room, splinters and broken storage cabinetry everywhere, and saw the White Queen lying motionless.
“She’s not dead, is she?” Madison said.
Blaze shook her head and crouched down beside the girl, saying, “Her heart’s beating way too fast for someone who’s just been knocked out cold. Was yours the same?”
“Yeah.”
“Then look for her lifeline,” Blaze said. “Do you see it?”
Madison combed through the rubble and found the glowing white cord connected to the small of the girl’s back. “It’s white. Mine had a red lifeline. Aren’t lifelines silver?”
“Yeah,” Blaze said, “but these are doppelgängers. And you can’t really kill a doppelgänger, unless you kill the original. Maddy, before all of this happened, was there anything that you talked about with Kathy or Celia? Anything pertaining to these girls?”
That’s when she remembered back in Katherine’s boudoir Celia and Katherine mentioning something about doubles and said, “We were talking about body doubles or vessels for a summoning ritual, like the way a medium would act as a vessel for a spirit to enter during a seance. Celia seemed to think the vessel was that ‘bambina’ chick, but Kathy couldn’t find her through her mirror.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Blaze said. “If someone was being used as a vessel to summon something else, wouldn’t that vessel have to be a part of the summoning ritual?”
“That’s what I said,” Madison said and stood up, wondering at the apparent inconsistency in that train of thinking, because a summoning circle requires the direct contact of a body double or a vessel to invoke a spirit into any location: it was Introduction to Practical Magic and Sorcery and Witchcraft 101. “I’m drawing a blank here. What are you thinking?”
“There’s a way to invoke a spirit that doesn’t require the direct participation of a vessel,” Blaze said, getting up from her crouch and looking into her eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Madison said as it now began to dawn on her, “do you mean a . . . body sacrifice?”
Blaze nodded. “Or a living sacrifice.”
The word, ‘living,’ brought Madison’s thoughts back to Celia, since she had gone after the bambina alone and seemed to have struggled with her, so she said, “Fuck! Where’s Cooley? We need to find Celia right now!”
“Follow me,” Blaze said and led the way out of the rubble and through the hole towards the opposite wall and reached out and touched the paneling, where the invisible mirror manifested itself. After Blaze passed through the reflection, Madison—
8
Followed close behind, only to see Cooley before a large mirror, her hand pressed to a reflection that showed no definite shapes forming in the blurry image. Madison ran up to her, saying, “Please, tell me you’ve found Celia.”
“I’m really sorry, Maddy,” Cooley said, taking her hand off of the reflection and turning the image back into that of the opposite wall reflected in it. “I’ve been looking for her this whole time, but I can’t detect her location below this floor. Somebody’s blocking me.”
“Christ, why did I let her go?” Madison said.
“Hey, don’t worry,” Blaze said.
“Don’t worry? Are you fucking kidding me?” Madison said, leveling a glare at her spiritual avatar. “I’m her big sister: it’s my job to worry! If anything’s happened to her, Kathy’s gonna kill me!” Then she grabbed Cooley’s hands, rubbing her thumbs across her knuckles, and looked into her eyes and said, “Cooley, please, I’m begging you! Is there anything you can do to find Celia? Anything at all?”
Cooley put her hand on Madison’s cheek and frowned, but said, “There is, but I have two questions.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Who’s behind all this?” Cooley said.
“Some guy named Rancaster,” Madison said, balling her hands into knuckle-white fists and raising the temperature by ten degrees within a five foot radius of her spite, “who’s an overdressed lying son of a fucker, if ever I’ve seen one! He’s a Goddamn liar and a creep!”
“I’ve heard of that name. It’s one of the original baronetcies, I hear,” Cooley said and reached out and touched her mirror, wherein an old 1890s ferrotype double portrait of an old lawman and a younger lawman appeared in the reflection. “Recognize either of these?”
“No,” she said. “Who are they?”
“The one on the left is Ezra Rancaster,” Cooley said, “while the one on the right is Tobias Rancaster, his son. They’re the first two heads of the Phantom Office. Now,” and the mirror changed to an early 1910s talbotype portrait of a young lawman wearing a white suit and trilby and leaning against a cane, “what about this?”
“That’s the one!” she said.
“Ah, I see,” Cooley said. “This is Aaron Rancaster, the 4th head of the Phantom Office, whose actions cut short his tenure there and instigated the Baronetcy War. He went missing around 1918, officially presumed dead, but I’ve heard from the Borderlands that he lives incognito. You won’t believe some of the wild rumors I’ve heard about this man. Now,” she added, “is there a reason why all of the mirrors in this mansion are broken?”
“Kathy asked me to break all of them,” Madison said. “I didn’t want to, but we had to.”
“I understand,” Cooley said and placed her hand flat against one of the empty recessed panels on the wall, summoning a mirror there. “This spell will take a lot of effort, more than I can muster on my own, so I need both of you to place your hands with mine on this mirror and keep them there for the duration of the spell, got it?”
Madison and Blaze nodded their heads and placed their hands flat on the mirror sheen of Cooley’s spell.
“Perfect,” she said. “We’ll all feel a little woozy after this, so I hope you’re ready for that.”
Madison said, “I’m ready when you are—”
“Mamma Goose,” Blaze added.
Cooley glared at the two but commenced with her spell, nonetheless, saying, “As your walls hide the truth, let my mind be your mirror; as my mind seeks the truth, may your strength make it clearer; as your walls block the truth, let my words be your river; as my voice seeks the truth, may your voice never waver; as your walls speak the truth, let my guidance take over; as my heart yearns for truth, may your silence be over; as your walls know the truth, let my strength be your savior, and let my guidance take over, and let my words be you river, and let my mind be your mirror!”
At the completion of Cooley’s incantation, Madison felt her energy flowing through her arm and out through her hand into the whirling watery depths of the mirror before her, as a myriad of shapes and colors blurred in and out of focus and Katherine’s dreams and nightmares flooded through her mind like a river of confessions muddled in the tempests of guilt with thunderclaps of anger and lightning flashes of sorrow and chance glimpses of something momentous that Katherine had never disclosed to her or Celia.
