Page 65 of The Quiet
Ella was drawn from her thoughts as Jackson sat down with her.
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” he said, “but we shouldn’t rush into whatever this is.” He paused. “What?”
Ella found herself glaring on accident, unable to stifle the earlier upset and shoving all feelings of possible affection for him into a tightly sealed box.
“Keep going,” she replied evenly, and Jackson began to speak. He spoke about his experiences in the ROSE, the Strike, all that he’d learned so far about Lambspeak, and everything he’d tried to do to avoid him at the detriment of his own life, never being able to pinpoint what it was that ultimately triggered his own transformation.
As he spoke, Ella struggled to keep her mind open to the facts, likening Lambspeak to a disease of memory, spreading like an infection through time. She resisted the pangs of sympathy for Jackson. She wouldn’t apologize for waking him up and yet now she found herself regretting it, sitting across from someone that had an illness he’d given to her.
Her strong disgust for their closeness filled her with a wash of guilt as she wrung her hands in her lap and listened. So often the outcast, she’d always reached out to people that others had spurned. It was so deeply ingrained in her nature that in feeling disgusted with anyone she felt so at odds with herself.
“Let’s go,” Ella interrupted at one point, propelled by that same unmistakable force that had been driving her forward since the embolism.
“Ella,” he warned against her urgency.
“We just go take a look. Let’s go now. We go. We come back. More answers. That’s what we need.”
Jackson seemed to notice the resoluteness in her expression and sighed as he leaned back.
Together they waited in silence for a few minutes and then Jackson started. “What was that earlier,” he said, “about me not being irresistible?”
Ella blinked, having forgotten in the chaos that she’d even said it. “Is that what I said?”
“Yes.”
“I think I meant something else,” she added.
He rubbed his chin questioningly but didn’t push.
Moments later, Paris came with guards in hand who supplied refreshed gear. They examined it thoroughly, Paris leaning up against the doorframe as Ella hoisted it into her arms and handed Jackson his share.
“When will you be going?” Paris asked.
“Ten minutes,” Ella announced as she left to change.
“Ella,” Jackson objected.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she replied stubbornly. Despite it all, when she returned to the study, he’d replaced his knives and any other lacking pieces, arms crossed in a tense silence between him and Paris.
Ella stood between them.
“Good luck,” Paris said, “we’ll be waiting here.”
“Be back soon,” Ella said, and looked over at Jackson. “It’s just to have a look,” he started to object again but she refocused her attention and looked at Lambspeak knowingly. He lifted his fingers to snap them.
The entire world eclipsed away in a second.
Her feet sunk into the mire of dark oil and ashes, extending on for what seemed like an eternity. Stone chimneys, paths, and fireproof structures were all that remained. Ella followed Jackson’s gaze as she turned in the mire to find them standing at the base of a scorched fortress that jutted high into the overcast sky.
Her jaw grew slack as she stared in a mixture of awe and horror at the sight before them.
There was no life or growth, only a residual dew of black oil, dressing the hollow fortress that looked haunted and empty.
“The Bleeding Grin,” she breathed its name like a phantom, looking down at the black oil and knowing what it now represented. She began to shake her head, “this is an illusion,” she said, and then looked at Jackson, “this is an illusion, right?”
“This is supposed to be vacant according to Paris. Something else made this,” Jackson said and scanned the earth around them, “but you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”
His words lingered in the silence, unable to dissolve in the thickness of the fog.
