by Calinda B
In a few terrifying moments we reach the creek and Lennon carefully places me in the bundle on the bank. He and Hawke probably dived into the deep part of the silvery waters as evidenced by their splashes.
All I can hear is the relentless roaring nightmare hum of a thousand stinging wasps. A hawk cries overhead. Something like a tail slap hits the water. The boys have no doubt shifted to get away from the swarm. I push my way through folds of fabric. I’ve got to alert my fellow crows. I can barely move, I’m so weak. Caw, caw, I cry, once my head’s outside the jacket. Caw, caw.
An answering cry comes from the forest. Followed by another. And another. Soon, I see my brothers and sisters, my winged flock of friends, darting and diving at the wasps. Thank God we’re omnivores.
The wasps coalesce into a huge shadowy outline of a human, before disappearing in the trees. It’s only then I discover crows can, in fact, faint. I sure hope I don’t die.
Odin’s whispering in my left ear. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but he seems pleased. Something about harbinger of the dead, death’s watchwoman, or something like that. I haven’t a clue what he means, but if he’s telling me I’m a soul snatcher, I’m way onboard.
Another voice murmurs in my right ear. “Miss McCartney. This is Roger Banks, EMT. Can you hear me?”
Sort of. I push through the sludge of wherever I retreated. When I come to, I’m dressed, lying in the back of an ambulance. I lurch to sitting with a start, scaring the paramedic next to me.
“Easy. Take it easy,” the EMT says. He’s dressed in a sturdy, blue cottony jumpsuit, the name Roger on his nametag.
“What’s going on? Where am I?” The back doors leading to freedom are wide open. I blink wildly, trying to orient myself. I lift my hand to wipe my eyes and see I’m covered in red, swollen welts, dressed in someone’s sloppy gym clothes. My arm is in a sling, heavily bandaged. I feel remarkably good and think I must have been given morphine or some other pain reducing cocktail. Nice.
“What bit you? You’re all three pretty stung,” the EMT asks. He dabs ointment on one of my welts, using a cotton swab. “This will help soothe it, make the swelling and itching go down.”
“We broke a wasp nest by mistake.”
“I thought wasps laid low and wintered over.”
“Not these.”
“You’re lucky an artery wasn’t nicked. The bullet went clean through the muscle. Glanced the bone. We’re taking you to the hospital for a brief stay, but you’ll be fine.”
“Define, fine,” I snap. “A lunatic tried to kill me.”
Police lights twirl, flashing their grim red and blue crime alerts into the darkening woods.
Lennon’s arguing with Chief Rickman. Even from this far away, his words are clearly audible. “I’m telling you, it was self-defense. Bill Holloway had a gun pointed at my face.”
“Then where’s Holloway? We don’t see hide nor hair of him, anywhere. How’d you manage to hit Mark Smythe?”
“Bill jumped out of the way. Come on, you had to find his gun!”
As with Elena, a couple of policemen emerge from the woods, carrying Mark’s still form, sheathed in a shroud.
That growing familiar shiver sensation rolls through me again, but this time it’s different. This time there’s a sense of completion.
Hawke’s farther distance away. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he’s oozing fear from his teenage pores.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you go, this time, Mr. Lusk,” Chief Rickman says. He turns Lennon around and handcuffs him.
“You’re arresting me? Bill tried to shoot my girlfriend! Then he aimed at me. I threw the knife at him. Bill lunged out of the way and Mark got the fallout.”
So now I’m his girlfriend? We’re going to have to sort out a few things.
“Yes, Ms. McCartney has been shot, but we can’t find the casing,” Chief Rickman drones. “For all we know, you did it and stashed the gun.”
“It’s in the woods. It’s over there!” Lennon’s voice comes out clipped and strained.
“Haven’t found it yet. Let’s go.” He shoves Lennon’s head into the cruiser and slams the door.
Lennon casts a wild-eyed gaze in my direction. It says volumes. Don’t let them take away my freedom. I didn’t do it. I’m being wrongly accused -- again. I’ll die if I have to be locked away.
I guarantee he’s thinking all that and more. I turn my attention to the young Hawke. They’ve let him go and he hurries to me.
He sports a number of angry, red welts, too, across his face and neck. “We can’t let them take Uncle L, we just can’t. He’ll die. He’ll chew his leg off. He’ll…I’ve seen him when he’s been captured and it isn’t pretty.”
“Easy, Hawke. We’ll take care of everything,” I soothe. “Can he ride with us to the hospital?” I say to the EMT.
“No, I’ve got the keys to the truck.” Hawke fishes them from his pocket and dangles them in the air. “I’ll get the bikes home, then I’ll head over to get you. Uncle L made me promise I’d get you where you need to be.”
“She’ll be under observation for twenty-four,” says Roger.
“I don’t think so,” I say, swinging my legs off the stretcher. I climb toward Hawke.
“Wait!” Roger grabs my good arm.
I shake free from his grip. “You can’t make me go to the hospital. I’ll live.” I’m hoping my shifter status aids with recovery. I don’t feel that bad. As my legs start to give way, I amend this thought to a few hours of rest and I’ll be fine.
“Help me out,” I say to Hawke.
“This is a mistake. You need medical care,” Roger says.
“That’s what you gave me. Thank you.”
“You had a lot of blood loss. You might need a transfusion.”
“I’m a little light headed but I’ll deal,” I say, as Hawke places his hands around my waist and effortlessly lifts me from the ambulance. “Let’s go.”
Lennon’s eyes lock with mine as the police cruiser pulls away.
“Don’t worry,” I mouth. “We’ll get you free.”
Hawke and I rush to the truck and climb in. My arm and shoulder hurt like a motherfucker and then they don’t, and I feel myself bobbing in the air like a kite on a string. It’s as if the morphine flows through my bloodstream in waves, yanking me away from the pain of my mortal flesh.
“Where should we go?”
“Let’s head back to Lennon’s house,” I say, “and see what Mr. Bones is up to.”
“Nah, I don’t want to.”
“Oh. Well, what do you want to do,” I say, my voice full of snark.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should head back to my house. I’ll drop you off somewhere.”
It feels awkward…strained between us and I realize this is the first time we’ve been alone with one another.
“So, you seem pretty uncomfortable around me,” I say, staring morosely at my tree-lined surroundings.
“Nah. Not really.”
“Seems like it. I’m not trying to get between you and your uncle.”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Okay.” He chews on his lower lip. “Uncle L deserves you,” he finally says.
“What’s that mean?”
He shrugs. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
Hawke keeps his mouth shut.
I try again for a connection. “I can see you have history together.”
“Yeah. He’s been a better dad than my dad was.”
Silence.
“Where’s your dad now?”
“Dead and gone.”
Silence.
“How’d it happen?”
“He was killed.”
“Accident?”
“No. Intentional.”
Silence, silence and more silence. I’ll bet there’s a good backstory in there but I’m not going to get at it today. I shake my head and give up.
When we arrive at Lennon’s house, I say, “No way am
I going to go in there and be alone with the dead guy. I think we should check on him. If he’s still sitting in the space portal thingie, we head out and try to find a lawyer for your uncle.”
His eyes brighten. “Really? You’ll help us?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He shrugs. “We mostly go it alone. No one ever wants to get involved with a couple of shifters.”
“Well, I’m a shifter. I like you and your uncle, and I want to help. We’re in this together.”
He seems to like my answer so he nods in agreement, puts the truck in park, and turns off the engine. “Let’s go.”
We stride toward the house and my tummy turns jumpy with a jittery case of nerves, like my gut houses a marble factory.
Hawke sorts through the keys, finding the house key. He guides it in the lock, twists it, and it snicks open. He pushes aside the door for me to enter. “Let’s make this quick. In and out. Don’t want to be hanging here with the dead.”
I stride through the door and he follows. When we enter the living room, we both pull up short and scream, Hawke colliding with my back with a loud “oof.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he shouts.
I grab him. “No!” I say. “We stay!”
The skeleton sits on the sofa. His bony arms are wrapped around a naked Bill, or rather, what’s left of him.
Bill’s either unconscious, or dead.
His junk is on full display, and I think no way could he ever have satisfied Elena with that little thing.
His head lolls on the calcified shoulder of the skeleton. Skin hangs from his face. The skin and muscle from one of his hands is missing, leaving grisly skeletal digits. His legs and torso are missing chunks of flesh. In short, he’s a bloody, oozing, seeping mess of man.
Did my friends do that when they ate parts of his wasp like form? It’s then I notice while Bill’s hand is missing, the skeleton now sports a hand where once were bones. The piece of cheek missing from Bill’s face occupies the cheek of Mr. Bones. All of the places where flesh is gone on Bill, have found a new home on the skeletal frame, like a macabre, unfinished painting for an anatomy class.
Hawke’s clutching the back of my shirt, hanging on for dear life. “Hawke,” I hiss.
“Y-y-yeah?”
“Ease up on the shirt. I can’t breathe.”
“What? Oh.” He releases my shirt.
I lean back and grab him and pull him next to me. Poor guy. He’s as white as a ghost.
A sheen of sweat covers his face.
Both of us stand frozen, like unwilling audience members to scenes from Dante’s Inferno. We seem chained in place in this twisted dance of horror.
Muffin trots in from the kitchen. He races over to me and Hawke, and weaves around our legs, purring wildly.
“G-g-good, kitty,” says Hawke, reaching for the cat. He hugs him hard, like Muffin’s some sort of shield.
The old cat licks Hawke’s cheek with his raspy tongue, as if soothing him.
The skeleton leans forward, preparing to rise, clutching Bill like holding a bare-assed doll.
I quickly put my hand up. “N-n-no, don’t move a step closer. You stay where you are.”
He puts one of his hands up, in a similar manner, causing Bill to slump to the side. The blue-green lights click on in his skull and he trains them on both me and Hawke. His jaw parts and I wonder if he’s smiling.
I allow a smile to form to test it out, and yep, my jaw parts slightly.
Bill stirs in his creepy hold. He lets out a long, low moan and his eyes flutter open. When he spies me and the kid, his face becomes one of rage. “You bitch! This is your doing. You and your crow minions.” He gestures to his misshapen appearance.
The skeleton tightens his grip, bones clacking against bone, and Bill’s face turns to one of horror.
“Please help me, Mercedes, please. I don’t know who or what this is. He summoned me or something. I came here against my will. He already had the parts of my flesh your crow friends ate, attached to his body. He’s been slowly pulling pieces of me and affixing them to himself. He wants to kill me.”
“You should already be dead,” I snarl. “But no, you turned into a swarm of wasps. You’re despicable, you know that?”
“You should talk. Fucking crow.”
“I’m not a fucking crow.” I lunge at Bill, murder in my eyes, but Hawke’s fingers clamp around my arm and hold me back.
“Don’t, Mercedes, we don’t know what either of these is capable of. That skeleton thing. It’s…it’s so horrifying I want to hurl.”
The skeleton clutches Bill tightly against him.
Bill shrieks. “Mercedes. I’m begging you. For Elena. Help me. This thing is as strong as ten men. I’ve been fighting with it ever since I materialized in its arms.”
The dead thing’s intact hand reaches around to Bill’s face. He clamps it around Bill’s jaw, muzzling him. His other hand, the bony claw, positions around one of Bill’s eyeballs. He twists his finger bones back and forth as blood spurts forth from the socket.
Bill shrieks and screams into the hand clamped around his mouth. His arms flail, fingers curling around the arm bones, while he grunts and pushes ineffectually.
I don’t know whether to find Lennon’s toolbox and run at the skeleton with a hammer, or head for the hills with Hawke, but we remain glued in place, unable to leave for some inexplicably grotesque reason.
The skeleton jams his calcified digits into the socket of Bill’s skull and retrieves an eyeball.
Hawke pitches the cat to the floor, leans over his knees and dry heaves, making a horrible racket of pre-wretch.
I press my hand over my mouth, as buckets of bile shoot into the back of my throat.
The bony hand screws the eyeball into his own socket and trains it on me. The other socket still spews blue-green light. Again, the jaw parts in what I assume to be a smile. Tissue forms around the eye, as if stimulated by the eyeball’s presence, until an eyelid forms, holding it in place.
Bill’s eyelid disappears, leaving a grotesque, bloody hole.
The one good eye of Mr. Bones winks at me.
I think I’m going to faint.
Bill makes horrified, gurgling noises.
“Do something, Mercedes,” Hawke insists. “This is so sick.”
“I don’t know what you are, but you can’t do this.” I rush toward the skeleton.
He lifts his hand and a stream of blue-green light pours forth from the tips of his metatarsals, slamming into me. I fly backward into Hawke, as if struck by lightning, and we both topple to the floor.
The skeleton shoves its bony fingers into Bill’s mouth, twisting and tearing until it comes back with Bill’s tongue.
Bill manages to tear free from the bony embrace, his lips fading into bone. He lunges across the room, vomiting blood, while the finger bones of the skeleton position the tongue inside its skull.
“You’re right, Hawke, this is some twisted shit,” I say, grabbing his hand, tugging him to get away.
Bill dissolves into a fragmented wasp swarm, heading toward the door.
Hawke and I follow.
The skeleton says, “Wait! I can now tell you what and who I am,” but the sentiment is lost on my horrified brain.
Hawkes pushes through the wasps, heedless of their stings, and twists open the doorknob. The second the door parts, the wasps stream from the house.
We both stumble into the fresh air, eager to get away.
The black cloud of Bill fades into the night sky.
On instinct we shift. Unable to fly, I stare at Hawke, ascending into the sky, while I remain in a pile of clothes on the cold, wet ground.
Caw, caw, I cry, calling my friends.
Caw, caw, I hear.
An even larger cloud of my friends, barely visible, coalesces before my eyes.
Caw, caw, I cry, and I realize it’s a battle cry, as my battalion of winged warriors take off after the discombobulated pieces of Bill Hollowa
y. I give one more call to Hawke, before I shift back to human. I quickly don my clothes again, glancing up to see Mr. Bones, sauntering outside, one green-lit eye socket next to one flesh and blood eye. I make ready to run, when a familiar voice calls out to me.
“Mercedes. Wait.”
“Lennon?”
He stumbles toward me, soaked but clothed, his handsome face looking haggard, strained. “Yeah. I escaped. On top of everything else, I’m now a wanted man.”
“No time to chat, Lennon. Look behind you.”
His head whips around to see Mr. Bones strolling in our direction, bones jangling and cracking together without the benefit of cartilage.
Lit by the streetlights, his shadowy, skeletal, misshapen face looks even more surreal.
Lennon lets out a horrified yell. “Good God! What the fuck is that?” He grabs my hand and our legs begin to pump us toward the field behind his house.
The hawk shrieks from overhead.
“Stay shifted, kid,” Lennon yells, breathing hard. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
“Wait!” calls Mr. Bones. “I’m one of the good guys! I’m Mr. McMurphy.”
As if powered by the same remote, Lennon and I come to a halt in unison. We both slowly turn around and stare at the monstrous form.
“There was no Mr. McMurphy,” I yell. “I never saw you.”
“I was always with her. I had to lay low. I’m a wizard.”
“How do we know you’re not lying to us?” Lennon yells.
“You don’t. But I am who I am. I provided the magic roadmap to shifter safety. We were a team, the Mrs. and I.”
“Hmm,” I whisper to Lennon. “He could be telling the truth.”
“I don’t know. Should we really trust a walking, talking, skeleton with one eye, one hand and a tongue?” He shudders.
“Good point,” I whisper. “Hey, how did you escape the police car, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Mercy! Not by intention, I can assure you. I was so freaked to be locked away, I panicked. My power built like a steam engine and…” He shrugs. “You can guess.”
“Water pipe malfunction?”
“A big one. I think the city needs to investigate their faulty plumbing. But I’m a dead man once they find me. They already think I’m a murderer. I’m pretty sure they’ll suspect me of planting explosives in the pipes. I have to disappear again.” He gives me a searching, scorching gaze, filled with all sorts of stuff I don’t have time to understand.
