Girl of Nightmares

by Kendare Blake

  “Well, he can’t do it himself, and I’ll be in a trance,” Thomas replies like it should have been obvious.

  “You can do it,” I say to Carmel. “Just think of how I embarrassed you on that date. You’ll be dying to stab me.”

  She doesn’t look reassured, but when Thomas holds out his athame, she takes it.

  “When?” she asks.

  Thomas gives a lopsided grin. “I sort of hope you’ll just know.” The grin throws me a bit. It’s the first sign of “our” Thomas that we’ve seen since we got here. Usually, when there’s spell work to be done, he’s all business, and it occurs to me now that he really has no idea what he’s doing.

  “Is this dangerous? For you, I mean,” I ask him.

  He shrugs and waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it. We need to know, right? Before you get driven to the nuthatch. So let’s get going. Carmel,” he says, and looks at her. “If anything goes wrong, you have to burn the blood off of Cas’s athame. Just pick it up and burn it off the blade. Okay?”

  “Why does it have to be me? Why can’t Cas do it?”

  “For the same reason you have to cut him. Because you’re technically outside of the ritual. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Cas, or me, once this starts.”

  Carmel is shivering, despite the fact that it isn’t that cold. Second thoughts are on the tip of her tongue, so before she can say anything, I take the athame out of my back pocket, pull it from its sheath, and set it on the ground.

  “It’s a beacon, like Riika said,” Thomas explains. “Let’s hope Anna can follow it to us.” He reaches into his messenger bag and produces a small handful of incense sticks, which he holds out for Carmel to light and then blows them out before pushing them into the soft dirt around him. I count seven. Scented smoke curls up in light gray spirals. He takes a deep breath.

  “One more thing,” he says, picking up the drumstick. “Don’t leave the circle until it’s over.” He’s got this “here goes nothing” expression, and I’d like to tell him to be careful, but my whole face feels paralyzed. Just blinking is a challenge.

  He rolls his wrist and the drum starts; the sound of the beat is low and full. It has a heavy, echoey quality, and even though I’m pretty certain that Thomas has no formal drumming experience, every beat sounds planned. It sounds written. Even when he changes the tempo and the duration of the strike. Time goes by. I don’t know how much. Maybe thirty seconds, maybe ten minutes. The sound of the drum throws off my senses. The air seems thick with incense smoke and there’s a swimmy feeling sloshing around my head. I glance at Carmel. She’s blinking fast and there are a few beads of sweat on her forehead, but otherwise she looks alert.

  Thomas’s breathing is slow and shallow. It sounds like part of the rhythm. The beat pauses and strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Then it starts fresh, faster this time and lower. The smoke coming from the incense wavers back and forth. It’s happening. He’s finding the way.

  “Carmel,” I whisper, and hold my hand out over my athame, resting in the dirt. She grabs me by the wrist and brings Thomas’s knife up to my palm.

  “Cas,” she says, and shakes her head.

  “Come on, it’s okay,” I say, and she swallows hard, then bites her lip. The blade drags across the meat of my palm, first a dull pressure and then a short, hot sting. Blood drips down onto my athame, spattering onto the blade. It almost sizzles. Or maybe it really does. Something’s happening to the air; it’s moving around us like a snake and over the sound of the drum there’s a screeching of wind in my ears, only there isn’t any wind. The smoke from the incense isn’t blowing away. It just swirls continually upward.

  “Is this supposed to be happening?” Carmel asks.

  “Don’t worry. It’s okay,” I reply, but I have no idea. Whatever is happening, it’s working but it isn’t working. It’s happening, but too slowly. Everything inside the circle feels like a thing trying to break from a cage. The air is thick and clogged, and I wish there were a moon so it wasn’t so freaking dark. We should have left the camping lantern on.

  Blood is still dripping from my hand down onto the athame. I don’t know how much I’ve lost. It can’t be that much, but my brain isn’t working right. I can hardly see through all the smoke, but I don’t remember when that happened, or understand how this much smoke is coming from seven sticks of incense. Carmel says something but I can’t hear her, even though I think she’s shouting. The athame seems to pulse. The sight of it coated in my blood is strange, almost warped. My blood on the blade. My blood inside it. The drum beats and the sound of Thomas breathing rolls through the air … or maybe it’s my breathing, and my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears.

  Thick fingers of nausea crawl up my throat. I have to do something, before it takes over, or before Carmel panics and leaves the circle. My hand jerks toward the drum and presses down on the taut skin. I don’t know why. Just some strange impulse. The touch leaves behind a wet, red print. For an instant it stands out, bright and tribal. Then it sinks into the drum’s surface, disappearing like it was never there.

  “Thomas, man, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” I whisper. I can barely make out the shine from his eyeglasses through the smoke. He doesn’t hear me.

  A girl’s scream cuts through the air, ripping and brutal. And it wasn’t Carmel. This scream is a meat cleaver to the ears, and even before I see the first black strands of snaking hair I know that Thomas has done it. He’s found Anna’s beat.

  When this started, I tried not to think ahead, to keep from expecting anything. Turns out it wasn’t necessary. The sight in front of me now, I never could have imagined.

  Anna explodes into the circle, as if Thomas’s drum has pulled her out of another dimension. She breaks through the air between us like a sonic boom and strikes some unseen surface three feet off the ground. It isn’t the quiet girl in white who he’s called but the black-veined goddess, monstrous and beautiful, saturated in red. Black hair roils behind her in a cloud, and my head spins. She’s right in front of me, streaked with red, and for a second I can’t remember why, or what I was supposed to say. Blood drips from her dress but never hits the dirt, because she isn’t really where the dirt is. We’re just looking through an opened window.

  “Anna,” I whisper. For an instant, she bares her teeth and her oil-black eyes go wide. But instead of answering, she shakes her head and squeezes them shut. Her fists pound against some unseen surface.

  “Anna.” Louder this time.

  “You’re not here,” she says, staring down, and relief floods through my chest, leaving my insides wide open and rubbery. She hears me. That’s something.

  “You’re not here either,” I say. The sight of her. The magnitude. I hadn’t forgotten, but seeing it again blows me away. She’s crouched, on the defensive like a hissing cat.

  “You’re just my imagination,” she counters. She sounds like me, just like me. I glance at Thomas, holding the beat on the drum, keeping his breathing steady. A dark ring of sweat has spread around the collar of his t-shirt; rivulets are running down his face from the effort. We might not have much time.

  “That’s what I thought,” I say. “When you first showed up at my house. That’s what I tried to tell myself when you’d put yourself into a furnace or throw yourself out my window.”

  Anna’s face twitches, I think, with cautious hope. It’s sort of hard to tell, hard to read emotions through black veins.

  “Was it really you?” I ask.

  “I didn’t throw,” she mutters to no one in particular. “I was thrown. Down, onto the stones. I was pulled. Pulled inside to be burned.” She shudders, maybe at the memory, and so do I. But I have to get her on track.

  “The girl we’re looking at now, is it you?” There isn’t time, but I don’t know what to say. She seems so confused. Was it really her? Was she asking for my help?

  “You can see me?” she asks, and before I can answer, the dark goddess melts away. Black veins
recede into pale skin, and her hair stills and turns brown, hanging limp over her shoulders. When she pushes back onto her knees, the familiar white dress crumples around her legs. It’s streaked with black stains. Her hands flutter in her lap, and those eyes, those dark, fierce eyes are still unsure. They flicker back and forth. “I can’t see you. It’s just dark.” Regret makes her words halting and quiet. I don’t know what to say. There are fresh scabs on her knuckles, and her arms are bruised purple. Narrow scars crisscross her shoulders. This can’t be.

  “Why can’t I see you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quickly. Smoke swirls up between us and I’m relieved to look away, to blink. There’s a choking feeling in the back of my throat. “This is only a window that Thomas was able to open,” I say. This is all wrong. Wherever she is, it isn’t where she’s supposed to be. The scars on her arms. The bruises.

  “What happened to you? Where did you get those scars?”

  She looks down at herself, sort of surprised, like she’s just now realizing they’re there. “I knew you were safe,” she says softly. “After we crossed over. I knew.” She smiles, but there isn’t any real feeling in it. We don’t have time for this.

  I swallow hard. “Where are you?”

  Her hair hangs across her cheeks and she stares into nothing. I don’t even know if she really believes we’re having this conversation.

  “In Hell,” she whispers like it’s a matter of course. “I’m in Hell.”

  No. No, that’s not where she belongs. It wasn’t where she was supposed to go. She was supposed to be at rest. She was— I stop, because what the fuck do I know? These aren’t decisions that I make. That’s just what I wanted, and what I tried to believe.

  “You’re asking for my help, is that it? Is that why you showed me these things?”

  Her head shakes. “No. I didn’t think you could really see. I didn’t think it was real. I just imagined you. It was easier, if I could see your face.” She shakes her head again. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to see.”

  There’s a puckered, healing cut along the curve of her shoulder. It isn’t right. I don’t know who or what decides, but now I’m going to. It can’t stand this way.

  “Anna, listen. I’m going to bring you back. I’m going to find a way to bring you home. Do you understand?”

  Her head jerks to the right, and she goes still and tense like a prey animal hiding from a wolf. Instinctually I stay silent and watch the rapid rise and fall of her rib cage. After a few long seconds, she relaxes.

  “You should go,” she says. “He’ll find me here. He’ll hear you.”

  “Who?” I ask. “Who will find you?”

  “He always finds me,” she goes on like she hasn’t heard. “And then he burns. And cuts. And kills. I can’t fight him here. I can’t win.” Black tendrils of hair are beginning to shoot through the brown. There’s a faraway tone in her voice. She’s hanging by a thread.

  “You can fight anyone,” I whisper.

  “This is his world. His rules.” She’s talking to no one now, crouched back down. Blood is starting to seep through the white fabric. Her hair twitches and turns black.

  What the hell was I thinking, doing this? It’s a million times worse, seeing her in front of me and still a world away. My hands curl into fists to keep from reaching out to her. The energy rolling in the smoke between us is running at a hundred thousand volts. She’s not really close enough to touch. It’s only magic. An illusion made somehow possible by a drum of human skin, by my blood sliding over my athame. Somewhere to my right, Carmel says something, but I can’t hear and it’s impossible to see through the smoke.

  The ground shakes beneath Anna’s body. She steadies herself with her hands and cowers as something somewhere not far away bellows. The sound is inhuman, echoing off a million walls. Sweat prickles down my spine and my legs move on their own; her fear drives me halfway to my feet.

  “Anna, tell me how to find you. Do you know?”

  Her hands cover her ears and her head whips back and forth. The window between us is thinning, or widening, I can’t tell which; a foul smell of rot and wet rocks floats past my nose. The window can’t close. I’m going to rip it wide open. Let it burn me up. I don’t care. When she sacrificed herself for us, when she dragged him down—

  And all at once I know who it is that’s there with her.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” I shout. “It’s the Obeahman. Are you trapped with him?!” She shakes her head harshly, unconvincingly. “Anna, don’t lie!” I stop. It doesn’t matter what she says. I know it. Something in my chest curls like a snake. Her scars. The way she crouches like a dog that’s been kicked. He’s breaking her bones. Murderer. Murderer.

  My eyes burn. The smoke is thick; I can feel it against my cheeks. Somewhere the drum is still drumming, louder and louder, but I don’t know if it’s coming from the left anymore, or from the right, or behind. I’ve stood up without realizing it.

  “I’m coming for you,” I shout over the drum. “And I’m coming for him. Tell me how. Tell me how to get there!” She cringes. There’s smoke, and wind, and screaming, and it’s impossible to tell which side it’s all coming from. I lower my voice. “Anna. What do you want me to do?”

  For a second I think she’ll stonewall. She takes quaking, deep breaths and with every exhale bites down on her words. But then she looks at me, straight at me, into my eyes, and I don’t care what she said earlier. She sees me. I know she does.

  “Cassio,” she whispers. “Get me out of here.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  What I’m aware of before anything else is Carmel slapping me. Then the real pain starts. My head may very well be in three or four pieces; it hurts that bad. Blood is everywhere in my mouth, all over my tongue. It tastes like old pennies, and my body has that vibration-tinged numbness that tells me I’ve just recently flown through the air and come down hard. My world is pain and dim yellow light. There are familiar voices. Carmel and Thomas.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Where’s Anna?” A few blinks clear the fog from my eyeballs. The light from the camping lantern shines yellow. Carmel is kneeling beside me with dirt smudges on her face and a runner of blood leaking from her nose. Thomas is by her side. He looks dazed and knocked around, positively soaked with sweat, but there’s no blood on him.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Carmel says. “You were going to reach through. You didn’t answer me. I don’t think you could even hear me.”

  “I couldn’t,” I say, and push myself up onto my elbows, careful not to jar my head too much. “The spell was strong. The smoke and the drum—Thomas, are you okay?” He nods and gives a weak ten-four salute. “Did I try to reach through? Is that what caused the blast?”

  “No,” Carmel replies. “I grabbed the athame and burned your blood off of it, like Thomas told me. I didn’t know that it would be so—I didn’t know it was going to go off like a fricking block of C4. I hardly held on to it.”

  “I didn’t know either,” Thomas mutters. “I never should have asked you to do that.” He presses his hand to her cheek and she lets it linger for a moment before brushing it away.

  “I thought you were going to try to go through,” she says. Something presses into my palm: the athame. Thomas and Carmel each take an arm and help me to my feet. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did the right thing,” Thomas tells her. “If he’d tried, he’d have probably been turned inside out. It was just a window. Not a doorway. Or a gate.”

  I look around the dirt lot that used to be Anna’s Victorian. The ground that was beneath the circle is darker than the rest, and there are swirling wind patterns cut into it, like desert dunes. The spot where I landed is about ten feet from where I was sitting.

  “Is there a doorway?” I ask loudly. “Is there a gate?”

  Thomas looks at me with a jolt. He’d been walking around the remains of the circle on shaky legs, picking up his scattered supplies: the d
rum, the drumstick, the ornamental athame.

  “What are you talking about?” they both ask.

  My brain feels like scrambled eggs, and my back must be bruised like a hippo’s trampoline, but I remember everything that happened. I remember what Anna said, and how she looked.

  “I’m talking about a gate,” I say again. “Big enough to walk through. I’m talking about opening a gate and bringing her back.” I listen for a few minutes while they sputter and tell me it’s impossible. They say things like, “That wasn’t what the ritual was about.” They tell me I’m going to get myself killed. They might be right. I guess they probably are. But it doesn’t matter.

  “Listen to me,” I say carefully, dusting off my jeans and putting the athame back in its sheath. “Anna can’t stay there.”

  “Cas,” Carmel starts. “There’s no way. It’s crazy.”

  “You saw her, didn’t you?” I ask, and they exchange a guilty glance.

  “Cas, you knew that’s how it might be. She—” Carmel swallows. “She killed a lot of people.”

  When I spin on her, Thomas takes half a step in between.

  “But she saved us,” he says, and Carmel mutters, “I know.”

  “He’s there too. The Obeahman. The bastard that murdered my father. And I’m not going to let him spend eternity feeding on her.” I squeeze the handle of the athame so hard my knuckles crack. “I’m going to walk through a gate. And I’m going to shove this so far down his throat that he chokes on it.”

  When I say that, they both take a breath. I look at them, beaten and scuffed up as a pair of old shoes. They’re brave; they’ve been braver than I gave them credit for or had any right to expect. “If I have to do this alone, I understand. But I’m getting her out.” When I’m halfway to the car, the argument starts. I hear “suicide mission” and “doomed quest for closure,” both in Carmel’s voice. Then I’m too far down the drive to hear what they’re saying.

  * * *

  It’s true what they say about answers only leading to more questions. There will always be more to find out, more to learn, more to do. So now I know that Anna’s in Hell. And now I have to find a way to get her out. Sitting at my kitchen table, poking a fork at one of my mom’s mushroom omelets, it feels like I’ve been stuffed into a cannon. There’s so much to do. What the fuck am I doing here prodding a cheesy egg pouch?