Free Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology by Nancy Holder, Kami García, Saladin Ahmed, Jim Butcher, Jane Yolen, Heather Brewer, Rachel Caine, Gillian Philip, Peter Beagle Page B

nothing. It was a cloudy haze. It was… nothing.
For your Gift, you are receiving nothingness. Non-existence.”
    The last word she spoke sat in his chest
like a hot stone. “Non-existence? You mean… I’m going to die?”
    Everything in the room suddenly seemed
smaller. The table, the mushroom stools, the picture frames, the walls. As well
as every molecule of air that was available to breathe.
    “No,” she said, after a too-long pause. “You
won’t die. You’re just not going to be anymore. By the end of this day,
you’re no longer going to exist.”
    Alek’s heart was pounding in his ears. His
breaths came sharp and quick as the panic took hold of him, and it felt very
much like something had gripped his lungs and was squeezing them as tightly as
it could manage. He shook his head, giving himself over to denial, and met
Jordan’s eyes. He wanted to see even a hint of a smile in them, like this was
all just some sick, cruel joke. But all he found was the truth. He was going to
blink out of existence by the day’s end.
    Tears welled up in Alek’s eyes against his
will. This couldn’t be it, couldn’t be the end of him. He was just a kid, just
a teenager. he hadn’t even kissed a girl yet. When he spoke, his voice shook
slightly. “Please, Jordan. You have to help me.”
    She grew very quiet, brushing a few tears
from the tip of her nose and her cheeks. He’d fully expected her to shake her
head, to tell him that there was absolutely nothing that they could do to
preserve his future. But she didn’t. After a moment, she released his hand and
sat back in her chair, cradling her arms around her waist, darting her eyes
about the room, as if a thought had popped into her head. One that had deeply
disturbed her.
    Alek sat forward, his eyes locked on her
grief-stricken face. “What is it, Jordan? What can I do? There has to be
something! And if you know and you don’t tell me—”
    “There is something.” She met his eyes,
and then blinked, as if she were shaking off a bad dream. “Maybe. But I can’t
help you with it. And it might not even work. It probably won’t work at all.”
    “But it might.” He wasn’t feeling a burst
of optimism, but he did know that if they, if he, did nothing to prevent
himself from dying, blinking out of existence, whatever you wanted to call it,
then that was exactly what was going to happen. “Please?”
    She stood, arms still wrapped around her
waist, and began pacing the small room slowly. “Have you ever heard of a man by
the name of Cameron Boswell, Alek? Probably not. He was here a bit before your
time.”
    But Alek did remember him. Not from
memory, but from whispers around town. People said he was a troublemaker.
People said that Misery was better off without him here. But people said little
else about him.
      She didn’t wait for an answer. She merely
paused for a moment and became lost in thought again, leaving her parlor, Alek,
and the entire town of Misery behind for the time being. In her eyes, Alek
could tell that she was someplace else. Someplace better. Then worse. A brief
smile touched her lips before crumbling away like ashes in the wind. Whatever
she had been thinking about had made her happy—incredibly happy—but
whatever that was gone now, and all that was left were shadows. “He was a kind
man. Outgoing. Generous. But not well liked around town. Maybe it was because
he was different than everyone else. Not in any way that you could see just by
looking at him. But Cameron... Cameron was different.”
    Her smile returned long enough to lightly
brush the edges of her lips before fluttering away again. “On his fifth
anniversary in town, Cameron came to me to receive his Gift. It was the same as
yours, Alek. His gift was nothing.”
    Alek sucked in his breath. He wasn’t the
first to receive the gift of nothing, and what scared him most about that was
that Cameron was nowhere to be found. Blinked out of existence, maybe. He
swallowed the lump in