The Curse Garden (Part 1 of 3)

The healer’s shelves were filled with rows of jars, each stuffed and carefully labeled with the sort of magic they contained. They were mostly simple magics; peony blossoms to sooth the itching pox, cedar twigs to quicken the healing of shallow wounds, red earth clods to strengthen a weak stomach. Kit inspected every one, but there was no magic for sale that would cure her of the sickness nestled inside her.

“What ails you, dear?” The healer asked, appearing at her elbow. She was a handsome woman shortened by age. One dark swath of hair cut through a fall of silver and her eyes were sharp green.

Kit found that she couldn’t reply except to pull her arms more tightly around herself and shake her head. She knew how easily kindness and concern folded into fear. The name of her illness had that power, and she had no desire to have that experience again.

“Ahh.” The healer’s smile became secretive and knowing.“Don’t be ashamed. You certainly aren’t the first young woman to find herself in such a predicament. I have just the thing.”

As the old woman ducked through the heavy blue curtain at the back of the shop, Kit grasped her meaning with horror.

She followed without thinking.  “Lady Healer, you’ve misunderstood me!”

Behind the curtain was a much smaller room, though it was equally filled with labeled jars. These, though, were for more serious ailments: broken bones, boils, and watery lungs. On the walls were maps of the surrounding countryside all annotated with what rare herb or flower grew where and when they were likely to bloom. Drying leaves and berries hung in bundles from the rafters and a ladder reached up between them where Kit could make out a loft.

“Here we are,” the old woman said, producing a jar filled with spiny white leaves. “These’ll do the trick. Boil them for five minutes, then drink the water. Don’t eat the leaves. Bury them and in two days, you’ll be clear as spring air.”

“I’m sorry, but this won’t help me. My problem – well, it isn’t so ordinary,” Kit said, hoping she hadn’t revealed too much. When the healer drew back, clutching the jar with rigid fingers, Kit feared she’d soon be chased from the shop and probably the village, but then the woman nodded.

“I see,” she said, turning her eyes to the little table shoved into one corner and beginning to sort through the many scrolls stacked on top. “Magical afflictions are certainly tricky. You’ll need something much more powerful than anything I have here, and I know of only one place to send you.”

Something like hope stirred in Kit and she watched the woman anxiously. The healer sorted through her scrolls for a moment, finally selecting one and returning to Kit.

“There is a place, not too far from here, where a garden of roses grows on the side of a steep hill. Plucking any of those roses will cure you of whatever it is that afflicts you. It isn’t hard to get to, but the price is a steep one.”

Kit found it impossible to imagine any price would dissuade her of finding this garden and plucking one of its roses.

“I’ll pay whatever you ask for that map,” she said, giddy with relief. “I’ll give you everything I have.”

But the old woman didn’t return her smile. “No price. I will give it to you, but before you take it, you must know that every person who has taken a rose has been cursed.”

“Cursed?” Kit withdrew the hand that was already reaching for the map. “In what way?”

“It’s different for everyone. Some have been so trivial as a change of hair color or a nose that runs every other day. But others have forgotten the names of their children or have become unable to bear even the slightest touch without pain. I can’t say what it will be for you, but I can say this garden is equally full of curses as it is of cures. You cannot have one without the other.”

Anything, thought Kit, would be better than the thing lurking inside her. A runny nose was nothing by comparison. She took the map and thanked the old healer profusely.

Outside the shop, the day was bright and busy. Kit dodged a stream of children chasing a ribbon someone had spelled to race like a snake above their reaching hands, then found a quiet alley behind a row of hawker stalls selling spiced meats and fresh vegetables. When she was sure she’d gone far enough that no one would disturb her, she spread the map out on the hard-packed dirt to study.

It looked simple enough. The path was clearly traced in blue ink, breaking away from the village and the main road immediately to cut through wheat fields, then diving into the Keening Wood. Instead of continuing through, however, the path cut into the thick of the forest and climbed a little unnamed rise. That was where it ended, the garden marked only by a drawing of a small flower.

Kit pressed her finger against the flower and her heart fell just a little. It might take her several days to travel this distance and she only had less than three to spare. She could feel the illness inside her, coiled and trembling, waiting for the moment it would stretch through her entire body and change her forever. Her time was running out. But Kit wasn’t ready to give up. Not now that there was hope.

When she was sure she had the path firmly in her mind, she rolled the map again and  slipped it into the pouch holding her meager belongings. She would need food to make the journey. The sparse collection of coins in her pocket wouldn’t buy much. Maybe a week’s worth of meals if she was prudent.

She made quick work of gathering supplies; bread and dried beef, a few apples and a block of hard cheese, and a small knife in case the rose stems were tough. With each item carefully packed in her pouch, Kit dropped her very last coins in the open hands of a young priest seated in the hot sun, then set out to find the garden of curses.

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Thanks for reading! Check back on Wednesday for part 2 by Valerie!

Photo by koalie via Flickr Creative Commons.

Kingdom of Lies (Part 3 of 3)

Without looking down, Magda drew swirls, circles, and runes with a finger, lightly skimming the surface of the pool. Any pool, she knew, could be used to see. If you knew how to use the magic the water held onto so tightly.

“Show me my home,” she whispered, as she leaned forward and gazed at her reflection.

It was selfish, she knew, to risk so much for one glimpse of home. If the sisters turned their empty eyes this way, it wouldn’t only be her in danger, but Mathias and everyone else in these woods. But she would be quick, she assured herself. She could afford this one small comfort.

At first, the pool revealed nothing but her own face made pale by the darkness of the water.

Magda kept her breathing even and focused on the relaxing her thoughts until the only thing in her mind was a single, clear note.

It was different for all seers. For some, the note sounded loudly as though bellowed from a great height. For others, it was breathy and faint, just a secret of a sound so difficult to discover it required the most solitary of rooms to develop. But for Magda the note was so simple to invoke it took effort not to do so accidentally. In her mind, it sounded as clearly as any bell. Though she had never shared the note with another – it was considered folly to do so – she knew precisely what it would feel like humming through her chest and nose.

Once, her grandfather told her of a time when seers would join around a pool to combine their powers and see great distances. When that happened, each of their unique notes had sounded together. “We are a choir,” he’d said. His eyes grew watery to remember it. He was not blessed with an over abundance of emotion and so when it surfaced, Magda took notice.

As she gazed over the pool, growing increasingly frustrated with its placid surface, she wondered if Mathias and his seers might open their minds to hers. Perhaps, if they could gather enough power, they might succeed in clearing the minds of King Caldriel’s seers and break his hold over the kingdom.

The water shimmered and the note in her mind became muted. The image that rose through the shallow pool was not that of her family home in the valley of the Fold River, but that of her grandfather’s face.

Magda sat back on her heels, startled. It wasn’t unusual to see something she hadn’t asked to see. Minds wander, after all, and she recalled now that hers had done exactly that. But it was unusual to see someone who had passed onto the next world. Grandfather Pim had left them long ago. She shouldn’t be able to see him, yet there he was, pushing a smile into his tired face.

He didn’t speak. At least, not in the conventional sense. But in her mind, Magda again heard his voice answering questions she wasn’t aware she’d asked. Quickly. For, they both knew there was no time to waste on reminiscing. The stone-faced sisters would be quick to find her now.

They had just enough time for Magda to understand one thing with absolute clarity: she must kill the king.

* * *

She didn’t remember her walk back to the cabin in the woods. Bastian walked beside her, she knew, but it wasn’t until the smell of smoke teased her nose that she had any sense of where she was. The next hour – or was it two? – passed with more raised voices than she’d ever heard at the cabin.

It wasn’t every day they discussed regicide.

It was Mathias who resisted the most, and he did so with such fury that Magda nearly lost her nerve. But when he raised his hands and asked, “What power do we have that could possibly give us a fighting chance against Caldriel’s army?” Magda saw the fear that caused his hands to tremble.

She didn’t back down. Instead, she raised her chin and looked at each of the seers gathered around their rough-hewn kitchen table when she said, “We are what Caldriel fears. Why else would he pursue us so desperately? It is because he fears our power. All we need do is join our minds and free those of his seers. With their help, we’ll be able to challenge his hold on this kingdom and the next.”

Mathias stilled with his eyes on Magda. “But what of the sisters? If we join our minds, we’ll be a hundred times brighter than any one of us alone. The sisters are as sharp as Caldriel’s hounds. They would spot us and prevent us from reaching the others.”

From this, Magda knew he was no longer allowing fear to dictate his thoughts. He was planning, which was nearly as good as if he’d proposed the idea himself.

She looked at the old and young faces at the table, at Celeste whose hands were pressed together at her unsmiling mouth. How could she ask them to risk the small, happy lives they’d managed to create here? Yet, they were here. Not a single person had left the room when she proposed they take action.

“Yes, they would,” Magda said, confirming Mathias’ words. “That is why we must have someone in the palace. Someone who can join us from inside and overwhelm the sisters.”

This time it was the entire room that stilled.

Mathias broke the silence with a simple, but clear, “No.”

But Magda was tired of running. She was tired of hiding and was not at all satisfied with a prison in any shape, even if it was one she found agreeable. She could see in the press of his lips that Mathias knew this, too. He would let her go.

She stood and her red consecration robes swayed around her ankles. Though she’d been offered other clothing, she’d never accepted. It was as if part of her had always expected to return, though she never would have guessed how and with what purpose.

“I’ll leave tomorrow,” she said, and though she was more afraid than at any point during her flight, she discovered that fear was easier to carry when the path ahead was clear.

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Thanks for reading! Next week, Lacey will be delighting us with an unTangled short of her very own. And the three of us have been chatting about a contest at the end of this month, so stay tuned!

Photo found via weheartit.com. If this is yours, please let us know so we can credit you.

Red River (Part 2 of 3)

I don’t like the way he makes me feel. Intoxicated, almost. It took me years to feel this way about Gentry. He leans in close to me, so close that I can smell his skin. My eyes close and I expect something like Gentry’s cologne, but that’s not right. The scent isn’t right.

I step back and watch him dry his hair. Something about this boy feels wrong. The way his eyes shine, the way his skin seems to move like it’s part of the river.

“Where’d you say you were from?” I ask.

Jake grins and just beneath his lip I can see his teeth—pointed, sharp. “I didn’t.”

I know him by his teeth. The sight sends warmth fluttering down to my fingertips and yanks me out of his intoxicating spell.

It’s clear from the twist in his smile that he thinks I’ll be easy. I’m happy enough to let him go on thinking it. Tucking my hair behind one ear, I drop my eyes and give a shy smile.

“I’ll trade you for your name,” he says, probing. But I know better.

Dropping to one knee, I grip the hilt of my knife, hidden safely in my boot. He doesn’t see me coming. He’s too focused on what my blood will taste like or how my screams will sound muffled by water. When I stand, thrusting the silver knife beneath his ribcage to the place his heart would be, his eyes are soft and bewildered. Only for a second. Then, his skin shimmers and all the water that was his body rushes down over my hand and back into the river.

I haven’t killed in weeks. Not since before Gentry left, and even then, Red River had been a quiet place.

Gentry thought our work was done. He thought we’d finally found the last of them and it was like knowing that the danger had passed drained the life right out of him. The river was just a river, the tracks were just tracks, and I guess I was just a girl.

On the ground, something gleams in the mud. I push my knife back into its sheath and lift the little pebble between my thumb and forefinger. It’s black with a hole through its center. Proof that their hearts are hard as stone. To be sure, I should set it on the tracks and wait for a train to come by and shatter it into a thousand pieces. That’s the drill. They aren’t dead until the black rock is broken.

My feet are soaked and I’m beginning to feel the chill of autumn resting on the tip of my nose. I stuff the stone into my pocket and head for home.

* * *

It’s been two months since Gentry left Red River. By the time he calls, I’ve stopped hoping for it. His number lights up on my phone and I’m all too eager to answer. But when I hear his voice, thinned out be the distance between us, I only say that I’m fine, and that Mr. Poll from the feed shop was found wandering main street without his pants again.

Though the stone hangs on a cord around my neck, I don’t say one word about the Protean I killed last week.

* * *

When the full chill of autumn moves in, hunting is more of a challenge. They’re harder to detect when the water becomes sluggish. It’s less likely that their skin will shimmer like the river, and more likely that they’ll hold their shape.

The scent of honeysuckle is long gone, replaced with the earthy smell of rotting leaves, but when I take a long, deep breath, I can still smell the tar from the tracks. It’s holding onto summer as hard as I am.

I visit our spot by the river every day. It was against our rules to hunt alone. But what choice did he leave me? One kill isn’t likely to bring him back, anyway. I need to convince him this town’s worth his time, that this town needs him.

They’re out there, I know it. Waiting to lure unsuspecting boys and girls down to the muddy banks and bleed them dry. There’s something about this place that attracts them. Something about the river bed they find irresistible; something about the tracks that delights them. Gentry may not have known it, but I do.

I find the second one a short distance down the tracks. He looks like a normal boy – slight build, dusty blond hair, ill-fitted clothing – but he leaves a trail of watery footprints behind him, so faint you’d miss it for the dirty gravel of the tracks. He might’ve made it all the way to town if I hadn’t caught up to him and pushed my knife into the soft spot beneath his ribs.

I almost lost his stone between the railroad ties. It was black as the tar that coated everything, but just as I was about to give up, my pinky fell into the hole and hooked it.

It makes a soft clattering sound when I thread it onto my cord with the first. Seeing both of them together looks more like proof than one on its own. Still not enough, but now I know what I’m going to do to convince Gentry this town’s more than just a small town in the middle of nowhere.

I’m going to kill myself a baker’s dozen Red River Proteans. I’m going to hunt them harder than ever before. And I’m going to do it all on my own.

*****
Come back Friday for Part 3 by Valerie!

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Stars Fall (Part 2 of 3)

This is bad. This is so, so bad. "Missy," I shout, as calmly as I can manage. "It’s cold. Let’s go inside."

Missy doesn’t even bother to tear her eyes away from the sky. "No way! This is the coolest thing ever."

Before I can argue, the yard lights up bright as day. A burst of heat and light streaks right over our heads with a high, keening sound, heading toward the patch of trees behind our house. It – something – lands there with a boom that I feel more than hear.

Missy squeals with delight and runs toward the glow. "Missy! No!" I shout, but it’s too late. She’s already disappeared into the trees.

The trees whine and crackle with fire. Smoke creeps through the trunks so quickly that soon I can’t see much at all. Running simply isn’t possible, so I call again and again, “Missy!” but my cries are chopped to pieces, powerless against the blades of helicopters.

I inch forward with my hands stretched out in front of me. They sink into thick smoke until they are nothing more than faint hand-shaped outlines, a dark gray against gray. If Missy isn’t hurt, she’s at least as lost as I am. Soon, even my cries are choked out by the smoke. I have to lift my shirt over my nose and mouth just to breath. My eyes sting. I stop and realize I don’t even know which direction I’m going. For all I know, I’m moving in circles, bending around tree trunks this way and that way without anything to orient me.

I cough. Struggle to draw another breath. Fear settles over my shoulders, slips down my back like cold water. I don’t know how to get out.

Heat rises. Another fundamental I’ve gleamed from class, so I kneel with one hand braced against a tree trunk. The air isn’t so thick down here and I manage a few deeper breaths of stuffy air. The sounds of helicopters and fire attack from all sides. I’m going to be smothered by smoke and sound, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

A hand slides into mine. Small, hot, and familiar. Before I can say her name, I see her eyes and stop.

They shine like stars; points of shimmering white surrounded by black.

“Tabby!” She tugs at my hand. “Let’s go, Tabby. We have to go!”

Once more she tugs, and I’m on my feet and running. I don’t know how we don’t crash into the trees, but Missy steers us around them without effort, moving faster than we should be able to in this haze.

The smoke begins to thin. I blink, and we’re out of the trees, running across the flat expanse of our backyard and straight for the house.

She’s so fast. My legs are nearly as long as her entire body, but she’s two steps ahead the entire time. I don’t know if we’re being chased, if there’s anything behind us but noise and light, but it feels like we can’t afford to be slow. Even when we’ve made it back to the house and slammed the backdoor behind us, it feels like something is so, so wrong.

Missy lets go of my hand and runs through the dark hallway ahead of me. The only sound in the house is the TV in the living room and the ringing in my ears. Mom and dad are still in town. Date night means they’re probably inside a movie theatre, unable to hear the sirens and oblivious to whatever it is that’s happening here.

I don’t feel my legs anymore. I only know they work because I manage to get myself to the kitchen sink for a glass of water without falling over. After two full glasses, I’m still thirsty.

“I made a wish, Tabby,” Missy says from behind me, making me jump. “I touched a fallen star.”

She sounds different. Not in the way I’ve come to expect. She sounds calm and still. I remember how strange her eyes looked in the smoke, and how quickly she ran through the haze. Another chill rushes over me, tugging at my skin and hair with thousands of tiny fingers.

“What did you wish for?” I ask. Setting the glass on the counter and turning around.

From the living room, a local reporter has broken into the regular program. She’s trying not to shout as she says, “Authorities are asking everyone to stay indoors. Wherever you are, stay put and if you’re near the site of any one of these…these fires, do not approach them. Authorities are asking for anyone caught close to a blast site, where we’re learning there are possibilities of toxic substances, to contact the police.”

Missy stands in the middle of the kitchen, holding a something small in her hands. Her fingers are stained black with it, but she smiles.

“What is that?” She’s never made me so nervous. I’m afraid to look into her eyes.

She takes a step toward me. I hear the TV turn to snow in the other room. There’s no sound of helicopters anymore, just static and the hissing of the fire in the distance.

“Are you ready, Tabby?” she asks. “You have to say yes. Oh, please, say yes.”

This is my sister, I think. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I force myself to look into her eyes and I’m relieved to find they’re the same hazel they’ve always been. More green than brown and as mischievous as ever.

“Okay, I’m ready, Missy,” I add her name to prove that she’s her. To ground her in our house and her small body. “Now, tell me what it is.”

Lights sweep through the house from the backyard. I hear engines revving and voices shouting and my heart crashes into my chest like a star falling from the sky. Missy grasps my hand in hers, pressing something hard between our palms. It stings or burns, I can’t tell which, but someone is pounding at the back door.

Missy just smiles up at me; playfully, excitedly, calmly. She’s not worried about the men at the door and I wonder what she knows that I don’t.

But then she says, “It’s an adventure,” and I know I’m about to find out.

*****
Part 3, written by Lacey, will be up on Friday. Check back to see where the adventure leads!

"Geminid-Shooting-Stars" photo found here.

A Lady of Cunning (Part 1 of 3)

 (

Despising a color was a new experience for Macy Bridges. She couldn’t recall another time in her life when she’d found herself at odds with anything that couldn’t be considered competition. And yet she here she sat, despising a poor, defenseless color.

There’s no color as smothering as blue, she thought. Callous and deep as the dark sky, it’s impossible to escape.

Three days had passed since the Hunt at Little Red’s Academy for Ladies of the Fray. For all of that time, the cerulean blue cloak of a Lady of Cunning sat folded and scorned on the corner of Macy’s dresser. It didn’t matter that fewer Ladies of Cunning had been named this year than had been named in a decade. Ladies of Cunning weren’t iconic and their blue robes did nothing but make it clear how far they were from being a Lady of the Ax.

She knew the charge by heart: As Little Red uncovered the wolves disguise, it is the duty of a Lady of Cunning to see what others do not, to question what others cannot, and to uncover the lies that will harm. The words were a constant refrain in her mind. Each time they repeated, she found the words even more hateful.

The injustice of being usurped of her rightful title by sniveling Lochlin Cowle still prickled every time her eyes snagged on the cloak. She hadn’t even bothered to go in for a proper fitting. She didn’t expect to wear it much. Blue, she’d decided, made her skin look sallow, and it was common for Ladies of the Fray to go without their cloaks depending on their work. It would be easy to set it aside and forget the travesty that had befallen her. Better, she thought, to shove it into the darkest corner of her closet and hope the blue faded from neglect.

Most of the other girls had fawned over her, of course, many of them wishing they’d also been named Ladies of Cunning. They used words like “unique” and “elite,” but Macy knew it was all talk. No one in their right mind wanted to be anything other than a Lady of the Ax.

Still, she didn’t dissuade their praises. After all, it was better if they thought she believed it was true. No one needed to know she’d had to return the red leather boots she bought and no one needed to know she’d shed a single tear over her placement.

The knock at her door came as the sun was beginning to set over to Cutter Wood. The view from her fourth story apartment had once filled her with a sense of destiny and knowing. Now it was just the sun abandoning the world yet again to darkness and wolves. She drew the curtain, for all the good it did, and opened the door to find a young girl in the brown slacks and shirt she’d only recently left behind herself. A new recruit to the Academy judging by her height and the way her feet resisted holding still. She held out an envelop with Macy’s name scrawled across the front and said, “Little Bridges.”

Macy took the envelop with a nod and a curt, “Thanks,” and shut the door again.

She’d been expecting the letter, but not quite so soon. Most were given at least a week before receiving their first assignment, time enough to celebrate and move from the student wing to the quarters set aside for newly appointed Littles. Macy had barely started packing. Nothing seemed worth taking anymore. Everywhere she looked, little bits of blue stared back, from the background of photographs and tucked within pieces of jewelry, even her make-up palate was tainted.

Crawling into bed to tuck her feet beneath the covers, Macy paused before opening the letter. She wasn’t used to doubting herself. Three days ago, she’d have torn the letter open before the door clicked shut. It never would have occurred to her that she wouldn’t like what she found inside. Now, though, she worried that its early arrival was a bad sign. Had she performed so poorly in the mimic ring that they wanted to get rid of her entirely?

Better to know, she thought, tearing the letter open before she could change her mind.

She recognized the format of an assignment letter immediately, the page carried the signature scent of cinnamon and the ink was red. It was the letters themselves that didn’t make any sense. Macy read them again and then once more before allowing herself to smile.

Little Bridges, it began, Due to your exceptional record during your time at the academy and your exemplary performance during the final hunt, we request that you present yourself for early assignment. Report to Little Whipple’s office tomorrow morning by 7 AM. Sincerely, Fray Cole.

Macy barely slept, she was unable to still her thoughts long enough to drift off and when she did, her dreams were a press of blue threatening to swallow her up, spitting her back out when she refused to relax into them. It didn’t matter. When the sun rose, she was alert and fresh as if she’s had a full night’s rest. She only hesitated when it came time to don her cloak. She did it quickly, without looking in the mirror and headed out the door with her head held high.

The cloak whispered behind her as she walked and several passing students stopped to watch her pass. Macy kept her eyes forward to give the appearance of confidence, but also to avoid catching glimpses of the blue draped over her shoulders. This moment was very nearly a perfect one. If nothing else, she would be able to revel in the success of having been sent out on assignment before any of her classmates in spite of her status as a Lady of Cunning.

Little Whipple’s office sat in the corner on the ground floor with a view of the practice field out one window and the Cutter Wood out the other. The door was open when she arrived, the room humming in the tone of hushed voices. She paused to knock, but Little Whipple spotted her and waved her inside.

“Come in, come in. It’s good to see you,” she said without meeting her eyes. Little Whipple wasn’t known for her sentimentality. She’d congratulated Macy on the day of the hunt, but had been distant since then. Macy didn’t need to wonder why.

She stepped inside, moving to take one of the seats on the receiving side of Little Whipple’s desk. But seeing that one was already occupied by a boy only a few years older than herself, she stopped. The stripe of green running from the collar of his shirt down his right arm gave him away as a Clever Pan, but other than that he was a stranger.

“This is Clever Oliver Hale. He graduated from Pan’s School for the Clever two years ago and will be assisting you on this assignment. Hale, this is Little Macy Bridges, Lady of Cunning.”

“There’s no better match for a Clever than a Lady of Cunning,” he said. He had an easy grin, as Clever Pans should, inviting and playful. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Macy smiled, enjoying the way her stomach teased her voice when she said, “And you.” It didn’t matter what the assignment was, Macy thought, things couldn’t get any better than this.

“Ah, here we are. Come in, come in,” Little Whipple said, snapping her hand through the air.

So they wouldn’t be alone on assignment. That was disappointing, but Macy wouldn’t let that bother her. If there was one thing in which she had confidence, it was her ability to be charming. There wasn’t anyone else at this school who could diminish this experience for her. Not even, she decided, if it were a Lady of the Ax.

She turned. Saw the red cloak and the plain face above it. And wanted to vomit.

“And here is the Lady of the Ax who’ll be joining you,” Little Whipple continued. “Lochlin Cowle.”

*****
Check back on Wednesday for Part 2 by Lacey! (Also, you can find more fiction in this world using the tag: Lady of the Ax.)

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The Death Gate (Part 3 of 3)

My father doesn’t acknowledge me, or the day, when I come into the kitchen, despite the headline on the front page of the paper he’s hiding behind that reads Is Today The Day?

I’ve promised the paper an exclusive on what I saw behind the gate, if I make it through the day. Part of me hopes I don’t. I keep thinking about Tommy Diaz, and how his parents would feel if I survive the gate’s curse when he didn’t.

“See ya, Dad,” I call as I open the kitchen door to the warm September morning. I don’t even bother with my backpack. There’s no way I’m going to the madhouse otherwise known as school. Today, I finish what I started.

Or die trying.

Every day for six months, I’ve tried to die.

On that very first day, the six-month anniversary of passing through the death gate, I returned to the littered bunker and sat inside. Waiting for whatever it was that was going to claim me to get it over with, and trying not to gag on the overwhelming scents of stale beer and piss – apparently, visiting the gate had become even more popular in recent months. A small crowd gathered, posting Facebook updates whenever I stood to stretch my legs or sniffled too loudly. But the sun went down and the moon came up and all the diligent followers abandoned me and the gate around midnight.

Kim stuck around. She hugged the life out of me when I stepped back through the gate. A photographer from the paper snapped a shot of the moment: Kim looking tearful and relieved, me looking still dazed and still confused.

I gave my exclusive and the paper ran the story under the title Beth Survives the Death Gate! And for a few weeks, everything was miserable. I couldn’t go two minutes without someone snapping a picture or asking for an autograph or begging me to tell them something I hadn’t told the paper. But then it stopped. People moved on. Forgot all about me and the gate when it was time to think about something more exciting like Homecoming.

I thought it was over. But every morning, I woke with the same question in my head: why six months?

What did it mean that Tommy had died six months after going through the gate? Nothing. It meant that was when he died and nothing else. There was no Death Gate Guide that said six months was what you got after entering, no way of knowing when death would come for you. Or how. Every morning, the thought broke over me like frigid sea spray, with a growl and startling violence.

I spent three days rolled up in my comforter, letting dad think I was sick, wondering if there was something lurking inside me the same way there’d been for Tommy. I spent three days letting death taunt me.

And then I got over it. I got up and started taunting death right back.

It never occurred to me that tempting fate came with such variety. I thought I’d run out of dangerous activities before a month had passed. But that was only the beginning. Once you start dreaming up all the different ways you could die on any normal day, the possibilities are endless.

I started off with the obvious – walking the edge of the crumbling sea wall, driving too fast, diving into the ocean in November – any opportunity that looked even marginally reckless was a good one.

Then I got creative. I started looking at everything with an eye for the unexpected adventure it might offer. School became much more interesting when started noticing how many windowless doors dotted the halls, and the pier was a wealth of nookish alleyways and craggy descents. Things that might have scared me before became something else entirely, challenges and possibilities.

At first, no one noticed but Kim. She’d tag along beside me making nervous jokes about back when we thought the death gate was for real and how crazy the whole town got over nothing. “Everyone’s going through it now,” she’d say, snapping her gum through her teeth. “But it’s so last year, ya know? It can’t ever be as cool as when you did it.” And then, when she realized I was really going to jump off the pier, or climb up the tallest turret of that old wall, or squeeze past the barbed wire fence on the old Seavers property, she’d add, “You don’t have anything to prove, Beth.” I didn’t know how to tell her it was about dying with integrity without sounding crazy. Instead, I smiled and said, “I know.”

My new reputation came in with the tide and sometime after Christmas there was a new Facebook fan page, Beth Defying Death!, reporting on my recent daredevil activities. The fan count has been reinvigorated by the possibility that I might still die in an exciting way. I couldn’t really care about the page one way or another, but the discussions over what crazy thing I’d do next have been useful. I never would have thought to cross Winney Lake on my own – a notoriously thin lake at its widest point, even in February.

Now, it’s the one-year anniversary of my passing through the death gate, and I’m running short on ways to die. Haven’t I done everything I can to make sure it isn’t something stupid and sneaky like a brain aneurysm that takes me? What else can I possibly do? After living with death for a solid year, our relationship is ready for the next step.

For the first and only time, I comment to the fan page, “Today, at 2pm, I’m crossing Winney lake.” Within minutes, it has more likes than people at my school alone and Kim is on the phone begging me to drop this already.

“I’ll meet you there,” I say and hang up.

There are crowds on either side of the lake when I get there. Stomping their feet in the fresh snow and talking in low voices. No one says anything directly to me. They’re all too afraid to be the last one to speak to me before I die. If I die. There’s a new theory floating around that the death gate didn’t steal my life, it made me invincible. After a year of chasing death, I’m ready to believe them.

I have to wend through tall weeds to get out onto the pond. Snow covers everything, hiding dark ice below it. I move quickly at first. My breath is loud in my ears and before long, I’ve managed to work up a sweat. When I’m a little more than halfway across the breadth of the lake, I stop to rest. The ice is so quiet and so loud all at once. It yawns and groans, pops and hisses. I wonder if this is what death sounds like. If death is a whisper and a snap.

Beneath me, the ice shudders. I have time to wonder if death isn’t a sound, but a feeling before the ground falls away and my body drops like an anchor.

I thrash, reaching for solid ground, kicking my heavy feet. My lungs contract. My mouth freezes. And water covers my head.

Death is a cold lake and a single note in my ears.

Death is my heavy feet, my numb fingers.

Death is the promise that makes everything else mean something. I kick. Of all the things I’ve done this year, I don’t regret a single one. I kick. I wouldn’t have done any of them if I hadn’t crossed that threshold. My hands press against something solid. The death gate didn’t kill me, but it did change me.

I haul my body out of the water and roll away from the hole in the world. I roll until I’m dizzy and my ears and eyes start to work again. The shore isn’t far but it’s loud and fractured with people running in all directions. Part of me can’t believe that there are so many people obsessed enough with my life to stand out here in the cold while I attempt something not all that amazing. And part of me can’t help but wonder if they’re out here because this is the closest they’ll ever get to doing something dangerous.

I climb to my feet, listing for any sounds of cracking or complaining from the ice. It’s hard to hear over the clatter of my teeth. My head will ache when I can feel it again, but the pain will be welcome.

My progress across the ice is slow, but by the time I’ve made my way back to the reeds where an ambulance with warm blankets waits, I know that my fate was sealed before I ever stepped through the death gate.

But what the rest of the town doesn’t know is, so were theirs.


****
Thank you for reading! Next week is an (un)Tangled week, so check in on Monday for short fiction from Valerie!

Photo by Lacey Boldyrev

Storykeeper (Part 1 of 3)

I didn’t know Nana Marin was dead until my seventh birthday.

It wasn’t a great shock, though I realize now that it should have been. I asked my dad when she would arrive and whether or not she’d wear a pointed hat for the party – I had it in my head that nanas were given to wearing pointed hats at parties. Dad gave me a strange look and told me that she’d passed away when I was just a baby, but Mom took me by the hand and said, “Don’t tell stories, Sophie.”

That made a sort of sense to me so I nodded and never mentioned Nana visiting again. It was easier to go to her.

She lived in a slouching old shack in the steep hills behind my house at the end of a little trail that forked off of a bigger one that forked off of an even bigger one. I don’t remember how I found it the first time, but by the time I was eight I could get there in my sleep. Once a month I visited and on every birthday after the seventh.

Nana was always dressed in layers of wool and flannel, her hair was pinned up in a bun that looked like a pastry rested on the top of her head, and she smelled like lemons and honey. Her house was warm despite the way light seeped in around the logs and autumn winds snaked down from holes in the roof. When I visited, we would sit on the dusty ground and weave together ropes of pine needles I’d collected or little bits of yarn she produced from somewhere in the house. She taught me songs I’d never heard and when we sang them together, the wind whistled through the trees in harmony.

When I turned twelve, I brought her a deck of playing cards because I overheard Mom telling Mrs. Gallow how much Nana Marin loved a game called Gin Rummy.

“Ah!” She said, snapping them apart and back together again. “Shall I tell you your future?”

I was suspicious that magic could be done with an ordinary deck of cards, but I nodded and said, “Please, Nana.”

The cards said, sssssnick.

She flipped over the first card and pressed it into the dirt between us. I remember it was the eight of clubs and the corner was bent. She didn’t say anything, but she nodded, took a small breath and laid down every single card in that deck. She piled them in rows, all climbing toward my shins, and then sat back to examine them.

“Mmm,” she said and pressed her fingers together so that they pointed like the tip of her house. “Mmm.”

“What does it say?” I was not feeling patient and not enjoying the fact that these very unmagical cards were doing magical things. “Nana!”

“Oh, Sophie,” she said with a laugh. “You will never have trouble getting the things you want out of life. You are far too stubborn. This is a good thing because the cards are telling me a story. About you. And on your sixteenth birthday, they will tell you, too.”

“But I want to know now.” I protested, careful not to whine.

“Now is not the time.” She swept up the cards and returned them to me. “Cards like these have many stories to tell, but they will not be pressed. They hold tightly to them until the time is right.”

I never brought her cards again.

I asked Mom once, around my fourteenth birthday, if Nana had ever read her future. Mom’s face sort of emptied out until all that was left behind were the pieces of it: eyes, lips, nose, and the same pointy chin I carried on my own face.

Her only response was, “Where do you get such silly questions?” Then she pushed a bag of green beans into my hands and said, “Snap.”

Nana never mentioned the cards again and neither did I, both of us looking ahead to my sixteenth birthday as though it were nothing special. The closest she came to saying anything about it was on my fifteenth birthday.

“Feel any different today?” This question was a tradition and she asked it with playful smile. Or, she usually did. Today her mouth was serious.

“No, Nana,” I said. “I feel like the same old Sophie.”

She pressed her hands to my cheeks; they were no warmer than the cool dirt we sat on, but far more forgiving. “Next year. That’ll be the one. You watch.”

I was used to setting aside the strange things Nana said because when it came down to it, everything she said was strange. She was dead and I knew by now that the dead don’t talk. At least not to most people.

The night before my sixteenth I woke in the middle of the night. I was hopeful that this was the change Nana mentioned and I would feel it. It wasn’t, and I made an indifferent trip to the bathroom.

When I returned to my bedroom, annoyingly awake for so early in the morning, I reached for a book to pull the waking from my eyes and knocked over a small jewelry box. Two green, plastic bracelets and the entire deck of playing cards spilled to the floor. I sat to collect them, but ended up shuffling them.

The cards said sssssnick.

I shuffled until my hands felt warm and then laid them out on the carpet as Nana had done, in long rows of eight and nine. The first I recognized immediately; the eight of clubs with one corner turned. The second also looked familiar and the third and the fourth.

“They’re exactly the same,” I said, breaking the silence that suddenly felt too close.

Silence rushed in again, holding the house hostage. My breath, too, became thin as I considered the cards before me. I thought of all the words I could use to describe what was happening; eerie, unlikely, coincidence, impossible. And as I stared at the rows of cards, laid exactly as they’d been four years ago, a story began to unfold in my mind.

It started with a young girl who lived at the bottom of a hill who considered things that were not in any way ordinary to be ordinary. She saw things others did not, could do things others could not, and it was all because of one, very unordinary thing.

She was a witch.

*****
Valerie's up on Wednesday with Part 2!

Photo by Striking Photography by Bo via Flickr Creative Commons

Crossroads (Part 2 of 3)

When the truck had gone, and the dust settled, the demon stood before him. It wasn’t what he’d expected. It had no horns. No forked tongue or spaded tail. No pitchfork like a cartoon devil. It had eyes, not red, but as green as his own. And skin the color of milk with a touch of honey.

And a face Jason Turner could never forget.

The demon wore his sister’s face. There was no mistaking her crooked smile nor could he miss the small scar on her chin.

“No,” he said and retreated one small step. A feint at what he actually wanted to do in that moment.

He’d been prepared to go toe to toe with something inhuman, with something grotesque and terrible. He’d never seen a demon before tonight, but he’d had it on good authority that they weren’t that easy to look upon. Of course, he wasn’t finding it easy to look upon his sister, either.

The demon cocked its head to the side regarding him through amused eyes. “No? C’mon, Jacey. Is that any way to greet me after so long.”

The pain in his stomach writhed again. “You can’t be here,” he said, gritting his teeth across his words.

“I’m afraid I can,” was her response.

For a quiet moment, Jason watched the demon, his sister. He had come here to change his life. He’d come looking for the means to forget the person he’d been in all the years before this one and be better. There was irony in it, to be sure; selling your soul in order to convince yourself you have one. That was the level to which Jason had fallen. Only a demon could raise him up again.

But his sister hadn’t suffered from his less desirable traits. She had been kind and loving and good. The sort of person who’d give the coat on her back if she saw someone in need. The sort of person who made sacrifices for others. Jason had never been that good or selfless. He was the sort of person who chastised her for confusing recklessness with kindness. He was the sort of person who summoned demons at crossroads. Not her. She couldn’t be here.

A trick, he thought, that’s all this is. “Why are you using her face?”

Slow snaking breezes lifted the dust around her feet. It billowed around her, obscuring her feet in dull clouds. Moonlight cast pallor over everything, greying even her vibrant skin. And all around them, beetles snapped and clattered from the tall, dying grasses.

“Always so good with denial.” The demon with his sister’s face said sadly.

Lifting her hand before her, she opened her fingers to reveal a small leather bag. Not his, he realized. This one was darker, the drawstring at the top adorned with beads that glittered green and pink in the moonlight. Its strap was long and coiled around her wrist many times. At the edge of those coils her skin was pinched and pink. Even at a distance, Jason could see the scar from where it had dug into her skin.

He didn’t want to recognize it and he didn’t know what it meant that he did, but the beads on the bag were distinct. They were the beads from a necklace he’d given her on her seventeenth birthday when he’d been barely fifteen. It hadn’t been in their budget, but he’d taken extra work at the butcher for a month to afford it. That was before he’d discovered easier, more practical ways of affording the finer things in life.

“Jacey.” Her hand closed again on the little bag, clutching. Her fingers flushed white and Jason remembered how they twisted in the bed sheets at the end of another sleepless night. Her skin had lost its blush of honey so quickly and no one understood how or why such a healthy girl had grown so suddenly ill. Exceptionally tragic given her brother’s concurrent recovery from a fall that should have left him immobilized if not dead. “Jacey, why are you here?”

Before she appeared, he’d known the answer to that. If the demon that answered his call had born any other face he’d have said, “My soul for health and wealth.” Now, though, it wasn’t so simple.

“I’m here to make a deal.” Jason said, finding a small piece of resolve to stand on. He cleared his throat and smoothed his shirt before he continued. “I’m here to bargain for your soul.”

*******
See you Friday for Valerie's conclusion!

Photo found via google images, original author unknown

Second Star Run

Somebody had to do it. Holes in the N.E.V.E.R. shield were to be expected - you couldn’t put something so close to the sun and not expect a few holes to appear now and again - but even so they needed be filled. That meant requisitioning an atmospheric cruiser and a solider. One of those was easier to come by than the other, so it was good or lucky that the need only arose every half century, give or take.

Nobody ever wanted to be the one chosen to patch the holes.

This time, though, it was a boy of only seventeen who volunteered. Before the lottery was even announced, he stepped through the heavily tinted doors of the Department for Atmospheric Management and asked to speak with Commander Rivera.

Petty Officer Cooper would tell the story later. How the boy walked in with a smile on his face and stole the air from the room. How the dust that seemed to settle on everybody’s shoulders, had somehow missed his, leaving his uniform a dark and unfiltered blue. How certain he’d been and how selfless. How Commander Rivera told her with tears in his eyes that the boy was the bravest soul they’d ever know.

The story hit the news before the all the appropriate paperwork had made its way through the system. “A boy to save the world!” they shouted across every feed still available, “A boy to do what men feared to!” How could such a boy exist and could he really know what it was he had committed himself to? Some, perhaps many, doubted he’d follow through. Cynics called it nothing more than a cruel publicity stunt and argued that the lottery should continue as scheduled. Others demanded he be evaluated for illness and others still called for someone else, someone past the prime of life to step forward and take the boy’s place.

The morning of the launch, the boy arrived at the hanger early. He wore the same jumper he’d been assigned on his first day of training a year ago. Though it showed signs of wear around knees and elbows - he was a still-growing boy, after all – it was clean and adorned appropriately. His hair was perhaps a touch longer than it should have been, brushed back into a dark cloud behind his ears. Nothing about him spoke to the importance of the task that lay just ahead, and though everyone in the hanger stopped to watch him walk to the center where his cruiser stood in a halo of light, he didn’t seem to notice.

With the sort of practiced disinterest of someone who’s logged hundreds of hours of flight time, he inspected his new cruiser. It was old. Not so old that it wouldn’t make the trip, but old enough that it would handle differently. More weight in the nose would require a certain amount of adaptation, he knew, but he’d taken more easily to flying than anyone Flight Deck Officer Darl could recall. He’d have preferred one of the newer models, of course; the cruisers that could punch through the atmosphere without even trying. For volunteering he might have gotten it. The DAM was so stunned by his unprecedented offer that they might have given him his pick of birds to ride the back of the wind, but sending new tech up to the shield was a waste.

Only one person was brave enough to be near the boy that morning. Airman Evans was at the top of the ladder, leaning over the prow of the cruiser, polishing the windshield one last time. She’d been going over and over the craft all morning, constantly tinkering with anything her fingers touched. If the old girl didn’t fly, Evans would take the blame and her birds always, always flew.

“Ever gone up in one of the ancients?” She called down to the boy. Even at the top of the stairs, she was small. More than once in her term as resident grease monkey she’d been mistaken for a child. The boy, though, knew that powerful things often came in small packages and had never underestimated Evans.

“Not like this,” he answered, running one hand over the nose where the cruiser’s name, Second Star, was painted in blue and yellow. Though scratched and faded, the words were still legible and fitting, he thought, for the work at hand.

“She won’t let you down,” she said as though this were any other flight on any other day. “I’ve made sure of it.”

The boy’s smile was clever. She had never let him down and he was very well aware that without her, he wouldn’t fly at all. “What a good team we’ve been.”

Quickly then, she descended the stairs and wrapped her arms around his neck, and with great emotion, she spoke into his ear, “The nanogel distribution pods for the N.E.V.E.R. shield are already loaded and ready to go. When you’re outside the shield, all you have to do is locate the hole and drop the NPDs. Drop and run, got it? The sun’ll do the rest and more if you’re not fast. I’ve pushed as much fuel into this thing as it’ll hold. If you burn hard, you might be able to make it back through. If anyone can do it, you can.”

Everyone in the force knew what it took to patch the shield even if no one ever wanted to do it. It was long before their time that the sun grew too hot and the atmosphere too thin. The shield was designed to make life bearable on Earth in the absence of natural phenomenon meant to do the same. Those things were more myth than memory these days. The boy and Evans had only ever seen things like snow and ice caps in old photographs, films, and paintings. The shield was a masterpiece of atmospheric engineering and when it operated properly, it hardly mattered that the earth hadn’t seen snow in more than a century. But every once in a while, it would succumb, much like the ice sheets had, and require attention.

The review wasn’t necessary. Evans seemed to say it more for her own comfort than anything, but the boy was patient. He pulled his arms tight around her waist and nodded his nose through her curly, blonde ponytail. “Understood.”

If there was sadness in him, he didn’t recognize it and therefore, decided there was none. He didn’t regret his choice. It was, in fact, the most selfish decision he’d ever made. That was why he refused to speak to the press and why he’d politely declined all efforts made to throw him a pre-launch party.

“Good.” Evans pulled away, searching the boy’s face for something to keep with her when he left. She didn’t find it. “Oh, God love you, why are you doing this? They could have found someone else. Someone older, you know? Like they usually do. Someone with an incurable disease with two months to live, or like last time, that convict who murdered those kids and wanted redemption? Someone who’d already lived.”

The boy knew his answer wouldn’t satisfy her, but he gave it still. “I want to go.”

“But why? Please, just tell me why because I don’t understand.” She took a small step back, pushing fisted hands into her hips.

Outside the hanger, the sky was dusty and hot, a claustrophobic sky with no room for hope. He wanted to be above it, where history promised something wide and open and blue. As blue, perhaps, as Airmen Evans’ eyes.

“I want to touch the sky,” he said, placing a hand on the ladder railing. He imagined how incredible the sky would look through the polished windshield and his smile was uncontainable. “And I never want to grow up.”

*******
Thank you for reading! Come back on Monday for a new Tangle started by Lacey!

Photo by Global Jet via Flickr Creative Commons

The Demon Next Door (Part 2 of 3)

The flames in DJ’s eyes leap, but he just shakes his head. “Oh, it’s just the tv. I like horror movies.” He reaches back and opens the door. His smile is still friendly, but his voice has a new edge to it. “Would you like to come in?"

No. I don’t want to go in. But he’s got my best friend in there, and I came to save her. I take a deep breath and force my mouth to smile. “Sure."

DJ steps aside. "After you."

I walk through the door.

The funny thing about putting yourself in danger is that you don’t always realize you’ve done it until after the fact. That is, unless you know the guy standing next to you isn’t human. If that’s the case, you have, like, no excuse for the sort of reckless behavior that’s likely to get your soul sucked away. Then there’s not really anything funny about putting yourself in danger.

The inside of the Harmon house is just as manicured as the outside. All of the furniture is nicely maintained and positioned to make the room feel as roomy as possible. Airy colors accented with hard wood stained a dark brown that make the whole place look like it was plucked right out of a magazine. In fact, the only thing I see that looks out of place is the TV, which, true to DJ’s word, is vibrant with blood.

On the screen, an ill-fated heroine screams and runs through a dark house. Did I only imagine that scream sounded like Andrea? It’s far too early for the Harmon’s nightly horror, after all. Their scream fest doesn’t begin properly until the after the parents have returned at ten and it’s not even six-thirty. I can’t leave until I’m sure, though.

“Can I get you something to drink? Soda? Juice? Water?” DJ gestures toward what I guess is the kitchen, but is just as likely the direction to his lair for the innocents.

I shrug, using the movement to push my hands into my jacket pockets and clutch at the collection of items there. There are way too many sites out there with opinions on the proper protection from demons and I've taken notes from each. In one pocket, I have a small baggie of kosher salt, violets purchased from grocery store I pass on the way home from school, and two magnets stolen from the assortment on the fridge that I hope are made of iron. In the other are the items belonging to another school of thought, which is that demons aren’t afraid of items, but faith. We’re not the most religious family, but my grandparents found Catholicism late in life and did their level best to infuse as much of it into my life as they could. I’m thankful, now, I have a rosary blessed by the Pope once upon a time and I’m more ready than every before to believe it has power.

Just in case, I also grabbed my lucky pencil, which hasn’t failed me on an exam yet. But who actually walks into a demon’s place of all things demon-y with a rosary and an automatic pencil thinking they’re armed to the gills?

That’s right, I do.

“Sure, a soda sounds great,” I answer, winding the rosary through my fingers in one hand and crushing the violet in the other.

I follow DJ through the short hallway and into the picture perfect kitchen. No signs of Andrea or life really. If this were my kitchen, there’d be at least three cups stacked up in the sink and evidence of some frenzied foraging in the cabinets by me or my dad. It was the sort of thing mom gave up fighting long ago. “Crumbs,” she’d say, “are my décor.” But here there was nothing. Every countertop shines like it was just bleached and polished. Which, I suppose they have to do daily if they’re in here massacring the unsuspecting like Andrea.

DJ pulls two sodas from the fridge and places one in front of me. It occurs to me that the thin aluminum shell would be easy enough to puncture if he wanted to inject the thing with drugs or something less natural. This could be how he gets them.

I place my hands around the can, bow my head, and begin the only prayer I know. “Our Father, who art in heaven…” I say the rest as quickly and quietly as I can before popping the top.

DJ’s expression is amused when I look up. The flames in his eyes dancing like laughter. And even though I know what he is and how much he doesn’t belong in my neighborhood, embarrassment makes me blush. I’m pretty sure I got all the words right, but there’s something oddly uncomfortable about saying a prayer out loud alone.

“My family’s a little religious.” I offer both as an explanation and a warning. “I mean, more than a little. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been blessed by our Pastor. I’ll bet my blood could even kill a vampire. You know,” I add, laughing awkwardly, “if they existed or whatever.”

“Mmm,” he murmurs in answer and his voice is like the purr of a vicious wolf. Not that I’ve ever been close enough to a wolf to hear one purr, much less purr viciously, but I feel the comparison’s apt. “My family’s pretty religious, too. Faith makes a family stronger, don’t you think? Gives you an ability to see the world in a different light.”

“Yeah,” I answer, trying to ignore the little voice in my head calling me a liar. “The town, too. I know you’re new, but the whole town’s religious. We’re all pretty protective of our souls and such.”

I sound like an idiot. He’s going to know exactly what I’m up to and eat me alive. I’ll never even find Andrea if I keep this up. I need to figure out what I’m doing and do it. Fast.

“Do you mind if I put this in a glass?” I ask. “With some ice, maybe?”

“Sure.” DJ does what I was hoping he’d do and turns his too-beautiful-to-be-real back to me.

Quickly, I dig my cellphone out of my jeans pocket and press the power button. It lights up and I swipe the screen in a pattern so practiced I could do it blindfolded, which, thankfully, I’m not. A picture of Andrea wearing a stupid, pink tiara pops up to confirm the call is about to go through. I shove the phone back in my pocket just as DJ slides a cup full of ice across to the counter to me.

“Now, would you like to watch the movie with me or did you just come by to hang and be neighborly? Which, if that’s the case, then I’m glad you did. It’s about time we did.” When he smiles, the points of his teeth draw little lines over his lips. It’s hard not to stare.

I pour the soda over the ice, keeping my eyes on the flames inside his. He’s too smooth. Too good at playing this part. I think even if I couldn’t see the horns curling out of his head, I’d know something was “off” about DJ. No one is this good at everything. No one is this clean, this beautiful, or even this polite.

“Actually, I was looking for Andrea. She said she might be here this evening.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say she’s not here. I haven’t seen her since the end of school.”

Two things happen then, one right after another. First, DJ’s skin sort of shimmers and grays like it’s made of smoke. I stumble back, unable to keep my surprise quiet.

And second, the sound of the Andrews Sisters singing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” comes eking out through a plain white door to my left. Andrea’s ringtone.

“Well,” DJ says, frowning first at the door and then at me. His skin is once again too perfect but for the horns. “It seems we’ve both done a little lying tonight.”

Andrea’s song keeps playing and panic starts to claw its way up my throat. Why can’t she answer? There are only horrible reasons she wouldn’t be able to. I try not to picture her body, broken and soulless, but I can’t help but think I didn’t get here in time. I should have said something sooner.

DJ isn’t panicked. In fact, he’s smiling. “But your lies, Erica, were exactly what I was hoping for. Have I mentioned how happy I am that you stopped by?”

The ringtone stops abruptly. And that’s when it sinks in that DJ’s moved between me and the only way out of this sterile kitchen.

I’m trapped.

*****
Come back Friday for the final piece by Lacey!

Photo found via google images. If you know the creator, let us know!

Hill Knockers (Part 1 of 3)

Tyler and Rachel Cunningham were two years apart in age and a decade in temperament. Never had this been more apparent to Tyler than the afternoon they drove the two plus hours it took to get from Penn State to the family farm just south and east of Dunbar. They pulled up the long, hickory-lined drive sometime after noon. Tyler quickly noted how many creeping vines had encroached along the red brick walls of the old gothic revival home. Grandpa would say they were no good for the mortar, but Tyler liked the way they made the house look like it grew straight out of the hills.

“The smart move is to sell this place, trust me,” Rachel said, parking off to the side of the house, but Tyler knew that what she really meant was “I know better than you.”

Tyler didn’t bother to respond. It was an old argument. Amazing, given the fact that their grandfather’d only passed a month ago. But Rachel couldn’t sell without him. That was the vicious curse James Cunningham had passed down to his grandchildren. He’d clarified, in a hand-written note, that the land and the house were to be kept in the family and to that end, had made Tyler and Rachel co-owners. The lawyer they’d hired to execute the will had read this part with a wry grin and a knowing look at Rachel. Clearly, they’d expected the desires of their grandfather to be easily overturned.

Tyler had surprised all three of them.

“With all the interest in this region from corporations and miners, we’d have to be retar-”

“Rach,” Tyler interrupted. “Really?”

“All I’m saying is, you and I can walk away from this with a pretty penny in our pockets. And wouldn’t you like to finish that architecture degree without owing half of your first ten thousand paychecks to pay off those loans? This house is going to do us exactly no good.”

“Do we really have to do this right now? I just want to get this over with,” Tyler said, exasperated and launching himself from the passenger seat.

“Yes!” Rachel slammed the door behind her, rocking the little Subaru. Today, her Penn State shirt was grey with blue lettering. “Yes, Tyler, we do. When else are we going to do it? Selling makes sense. It is just good business and you’re being selfish by not even considering it.”

Tyler took a small step back. He’d learned that engaging Rachel on the level of business sense never went well. Not only did his age work against him, but he couldn’t contend with two years of coursework focused on business practice and statistics.

“Selfish? C’mon, Rach, can we please just clean out his stuff? I don’t want to fight today.”

Tyler tried not to hold the remark against her. Words were easy weapons for Rachel. They didn’t always mean the same thing to her as they did to him, but it was hard to let a heavy word like ‘selfish’ roll off his back.

“I’m not fighting. Who’s fighting? I’m just trying to have a conversation with my brother about making good decisions for our future.” The pause she took was more of a hesitation. “And I just think it’s selfish for one of us to make a decision that will affect the other detrimentally.”

“God,” Tyler breathed, digging into his pocket and tossing the keys at his sister, a little harder than necessary. “You know what? You start. I need some air.”

Autumn was crisp beneath his feet as he walked briskly into the woods. According to the lawyer, the Cunningham land consisted of one hundred and fifty-two acres, two small lakes, and a few tributaries of the Youghioghfny River. The numbers had been shocking, but not surprising. Tyler had spent the better part of his early years at the farm running through the hills and creating his own trails. Still, part of the allure of this place was knowing there was still so much he didn’t know.

Grandpa Cunningham had known, though. Tyler as sure of that as he was of anything. Before he died, he’d called Tyler to his side and asked him to please remember to and set out the suet in the winter months, the dishes of water in the summer months, and to always, always listen carefully to the land.

“It speaks, and when you don’t listen, it speaks again,” he’d said. “Louder.”

This place meant something to grandpa. It meant something to Tyler, and that wasn’t the sort of thing you signed over for a pretty penny.

Tyler left the trails he knew and struck out in a new direction, letting the hills guide his steps. It was cooler beneath the trees and he zipped his windbreaker when he’d begun to slow his pace enough that the air actually felt cold. Somewhere a woodpecker tap-tap-tapped against a tree trunk. It sounded close and Tyler followed the sound.

Grandpa loved birds. He had a collection of binoculars set out along a low shelf in the den at the back of the house. It had the biggest windows and the best view. They’d be packing most of those away, selling what they could and donating the rest. Tyler hated to think of his grandpa’s beloved binoculars gathering dust on someone else’s shelf, but one battle with his sister was enough.

Again, the woodpecker rapped against the tree trunk and Tyler looked up. He was close enough, he thought, to be able to spot it, but his search revealed no woodpecker.

Tyler circled another hill, his eyes on the tall trunks of white oaks and hickory trees. The tapping was louder here and he paused.

Tap-tap-tap!

It was lower than he’d expected. Tyler turned in a slow circle and was surprised to find that the hill he’d just circled had a small trench dug into its side.

Tap.

Tyler moved closer to the trench, pushing at the vines that hung down in front.

Tap.

Behind the vines was a blue, iron-barred door with no lock that he could see. Beyond the door was a narrow, dark cave and from within the cave, came the noise again.

Tap. Tap. Tap. 


******
Check back on Wednesday for Part 2 by Lacey!!

Photo by snady_ via Flckr Creative Commons.