Paint It Black

by Val Crowe

  “I know you’re angry with me,” said Wade. “I get that. I deserve that. And if you want to hit me again, I would understand that too.”

  I whirled on him, both of my hands clenched into fists.

  He cringed. “Okay, go for it.”

  I sighed, shaking it off and turning back to my bed. My very comfortable memory foam bed that I had been really looking forward to climbing back into. I let my shoulders slump and just gazed at the bed. “Okay, Wade, what do you want?”

  “I can’t sleep,” said Wade.

  “Yeah, well, neither can I,” I said. “Mostly because everyone seems intent on keeping me awake.”

  “It’s Charlotte,” said Wade. “I’m worried about Charlotte.”

  Maybe I could just sit on the bed. If I sat down, it would be better than standing. I could get a little bit of rest that way too. I did it, crossing to the bed and collapsing on it.

  “She’s going to die too,” said Wade. “I can’t let that happen.”

  “Well, you know what they say about having too much meaningless sex,” I muttered.

  “What, that you’ll fall out of a window to a bloody and painful death? Yeah, that’s highlighted in pretty much every sex education program ever.”

  I kicked off my boots. “Look, I’m sorry about your girlfriend, Wade—”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” said Wade. “She’s a friend. With benefits. And she doesn’t deserve this. She’s a nice person.”

  I eyed him. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Help me figure out a way to force her to sleep with me,” he said.

  “Oh, sure,” I said, lying back on the bed and gazing up at the ceiling. “Let’s hang out and plan a sexual assault together, like nothing happened. Look, dude, maybe you missed the memo, but you and I are not okay. You betrayed me, and everything between us is screwed up.”

  “I don’t want to… assault her,” he said. “I want to convince her. There’s got to be some way that you can prove to her that ghosts are real. Like, maybe you can call up her dead grandma and tell her that you know the secret ingredient in her cookies that only Charlotte and her grandmother know—”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I can’t summon them. They show up or they don’t.”

  “Well, have you ever tried? To summon them? Because I kind of get the impression this is something you’ve run from your whole life, so maybe you don’t know exactly what it is that you can and can’t do.”

  “I’m not helping you make a plan to get in some girl’s pants,” I said.

  A weight on the bed. He’d sat down next to me.

  I sat up. “Oh, sure, have a seat.”

  He stood up. “Right. Okay. You’re pissed.”

  “Damned right I am.”

  “I mean, I understand that. I get it. But a woman’s life is on the line. You know?”

  I just stared at him.

  “Please? Can we put this aside and try to work together?”

  I rubbed my face. “Work together, yes. Putting things aside, though? This is Olivia we’re talking about.”

  “I know. I’m never going to be able to fix this with you, I guess.” He looked down at his shoes, talking more to himself than me. “How could I? Why would you ever let it go?”

  “We made the pact for a reason,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Deacon—”

  “In the morning, we can try to do something about the barnacles. But right now, everyone’s asleep.” I pointed at the door. “Go away, Wade.”

  “In the morning? You swear?”

  “If I wasn’t going to help, I would already be gone.”

  He considered this and then nodded. “Fine. In the morning.”

  “And bring Rylan. Her life’s on the line too, isn’t it? We have to try to help her too.”

  * * *

  I emptied a dropper full of oil onto Rylan’s barnacle’s head. The oil splashed through the apparition and hit Rylan shoulder. She shivered. “What is this stuff again?”

  “It’s, uh, a blend of dandelion and wormwood oils,” I said. “It’s been blessed in some way. I don’t know how it works, but it’s a conduit for spirits or something. When I get too many ghosts attached to me, this can get them off. So, maybe it’ll get the barnacle off you. And then Wade doesn’t have to force himself on his girlfriend.”

  “Friend with benefits,” said Wade. “And I’m not going to force myself on anyone. Geez.”

  I ignored him. That was the best thing about having Rylan around. I could talk to Wade without actually speaking to him. The three of us were out in the woods, off one of the hiking trails at the campground where the Airstream was parked. It was hot and the air was full of insects and humidity. All around us were the sounds of chattering birds and buzzing bugs. Coming out here, I’d walked through a spiderweb, and now I still felt like the thing was clinging to me, even though I’d been brushing it off for the past ten minutes.

  “So, what happened when you explained it all to her?” said Rylan to Wade.

  “She thought I was nuts,” said Wade. “She doesn’t want to be anywhere around me. I went by her house this morning, just to make sure she hadn’t jumped to her death in the night, and she saw me. She said she was strongly considering getting a restraining order.”

  “Don’t let her see you next time,” said Rylan.

  “Well, obviously,” said Wade.

  “Hey, Rylan,” I said. “I kind of need you to focus.” I didn’t know if I did or not, actually. I’d never done this around another person. But I didn’t want her chatting with Wade either. It would be better if everyone was ignoring him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut. I babble a lot.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” I muttered. “Stop.”

  She made a sour face at me.

  “Go easy on her,” said Wade.

  I turned to him. “If it were up to you, we would have ignored her while trying to save Charlotte.”

  “That’s not true!” Wade turned to Rylan, earnest. “That’s not true, I swear. He’s mad at me is all. Don’t listen to him.”

  Argh. Why had I spoken to Wade again? I was supposed to be ignoring him. I squared my shoulders. Okay, from here on out, no more talking to Wade. Just focus. If I could get this barnacle to get absorbed into a more powerful source of energy, this could all be over. I took a deep breath. “Rylan, look at me.”

  She gazed into my eyes.

  I drew in another deep breath. I sprinkled a bit of the oil into the palm of my hand and I stretched out my hand. “To me,” I whispered. “To me, now.” I looked into the oil, and I felt the familiar awful tug of connection. Somehow, through that oil, I was a beacon, sending up a signal into the spirit realm. I didn’t know how it worked, not exactly, but anything strong and nearby would come to me.

  On the periphery of my consciousness, I felt it, and then I saw it.

  It looked like a black whirlwind rushing through the trees. Inside it, trapped and screaming were… things. Faces, contorted in pain. Fingers, the nails broken, stretching at the walls of the whirlwind, trying to get free.

  I choked, feeling it bear down on me. It took everything I had to keep my hand out, to keep the oil outstretched.

  The whirlwind was coming.

  The barnacle around Rylan’s neck looked up at the coming storm of spirits. It swirled and stretched around Rylan’s head.

  And the whirlwind was on top of me. I gritted my teeth, and I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. Suddenly, they were all in my head, screaming and whispering and sighing and begging. It was a thousand voices, loud and unnatural and screeching. I shuddered, my eyes rolling back in my head.

  I was lost to it. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. There was nothing but the sound and the wind and the dark. It wanted me. It wanted all of me.

  I twitched, feeling the edges of my limbs, my fingertips, the ache of trying to dr
aw air into my lungs.

  And then I was without form and without purpose, and the only thing that was real was death and dark and pain.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wade’s face loomed over me. “Deacon?”

  My whole body was sore. It felt as if every single one of my muscles had been tugged and stretched to the breaking point, as if all my bones had been broken and badly mended. I breathed, but that was pain.

  I blinked.

  “Deacon!” said Wade. “Hey, he’s waking up.”

  I wasn’t in the woods anymore. I was lying on the bed in the Airstream. It was dark outside. I tried to swallow. My throat was too dry.

  Rylan’s face appeared next to Wade’s. So did the barnacle.

  I groaned.

  “You okay, man?” said Wade.

  “It didn’t work,” I croaked. My tongue was thick and furry. “Water.” I tried to sit up. Damn, that hurt.

  “What do you mean, it didn’t work?” said Rylan.

  Wade was getting me a bottle of water from the refrigerator.

  I took it, opened it, and then sucked down half of it. Oh, man, I felt like hell. I hated using that oil. It always took it out of me. “How long have I been out?”

  “Ten hours?” said Wade.

  “Eleven,” said Rylan.

  I managed to sit up. “Hell.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t work?” said Rylan.

  “You still have the barnacle,” I said. “It’s still attached.”

  “Oh,” said Rylan. She sighed. “Well, I kind of thought so. I didn’t feel any different.”

  “What was it that you did?” said Wade. “I thought it killed you.”

  “We were going to take you to the hospital,” said Rylan. “I wanted to take you right off, but Wade said you didn’t have insurance, and that you told him it would knock you on your ass. Still. You were out a long time.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it does to me,” I said. “Totally worth it if it works, though. But it didn’t.” I finished the rest of the bottle of water and crumpled it. Bracing myself, I managed to get to my feet.

  “So,” said Wade, “what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, staggering toward the back of the Airstream.

  “Where are you going?” said Wade.

  “To take a leak,” I said. “That cool with you?” Typically, I would just take a piss outside. Less that I used the facilities on the Airstream, the less often I had to empty the black water tank. But I was barely moving right now. I’d just take the easy route.

  “Oh,” said Wade, sounding embarrassed.

  Inside the bathroom, I pulled the door closed and clung to the wall for balance. Everything was spinning. Damn, I really hated using that oil.

  When I emerged, Wade and Rylan were standing at the other end of the Airstream, both looking nervous, both with their arms crossed over their chests.

  “Maybe you should rest a little more,” said Wade. “We’ll try something else.”

  “I’ve been resting,” I said. “What are you going to try?”

  “Well, we were talking about it while you were out,” said Rylan. “And we figure, if we got the barnacle from going into Ridinger Hall, then maybe we should go back in there. Maybe there’s a way to get it off inside the building.”

  “Like what?” I said. “What way?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rylan.

  “We have to try something,” said Wade.

  “What if we go in there and we all contract a barnacle?” I said. “You could get another one, Wade.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” said Wade. “But you should stay here.”

  “No,” I said, starting toward them and cringing a little. “I’m coming with you.”

  * * *

  It was dark in Ridinger Hall. The front door had been taken off its hinges a long time ago. The porch was decorated in some kind of elaborate, unreadable spray-painted tag, and we walked past that to get inside, all of us sweeping the beams of our flashlights around.

  At the threshold, we all hesitated for a moment. But then Wade surged past us, into the dorm, and we all followed.

  The front room of the dormitory was a common area which still had some rat-chewed sofas arranged facing each other. On the far wall, there were rows and rows of little mailboxes like post office boxes, where the students would have gotten their mail. Next to that was a window that opened into a room for staff to check in guests. The glass had been broken out of the window. The floor was littered with trash and dead leaves, but beneath, the green and white tiled floor was visible.

  Wade led the way and Rylan and I trailed behind him.

  I didn’t like it in here.

  Not because I saw anything. I didn’t. No ghosts or specters or barnacles. But there was something about the place that felt off. I didn’t quite know how to explain it. But I knew that it would be smarter for me to leave this place than to stay.

  Wade was heading for the stairs, which were adjacent to the mailboxes. “We have to retrace our steps from before,” he was saying.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, going after him, against my better judgment. I wanted to back out of this place and run back to the sidewalk where things were… were right. In here, it was wrong. “I watched the video. It was only attached to you and Rylan, and you two were the only ones to go into the room where Heather Olsen fell from. That’s where it happened. That’s where it attached to you.”

  “Okay,” said Wade, taking the steps two at a time. “So, that’s where we go.”

  “Not so fast,” said Rylan, who sounded breathless. She scratched at the back of her neck, and her lips looked bloodless and pale in the light of the flashlights. The barnacle darted forward, making a chattering noise, as if it was happy to be back home.

  I snatched Rylan by the arm and put her between Wade and me. “Make sure one of us is keeping an eye on you,” I told her.

  “I don’t need to be rescued,” she said, and there was fire in her voice, even though it wasn’t strong. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “You can take care of yourself. But stay close, okay?”

  We climbed the steps.

  I watched the backs of Wade and Rylan illuminated ahead of me in the shaking lights of the flashlights. Wade kept going faster. The steps turned on themselves in a square, so we kept rounding corners, and then he would be obscured from sight.

  “Not so fast, Wade,” I said.

  “Got to get there,” he called back, and there was something giddy in his voice—high pitched and young, like the way he sounded when we were kids. It made me nervous.

  Rylan was panting, tugging at her collar. The barnacle swooped down at me periodically, snapping rows of blackened teeth at me in a warning.

  I didn’t like it here. Not in the dark. Not when I was still so drained from what I’d done with the oil. Maybe we shouldn’t even be here at all. Maybe we should leave now.

  I hadn’t been able to see Wade now in a while. I yelled for him. “Wade?”

  “Got to get there!” he called back, and he sounded far away, like he was echoing down a tunnel.

  “Wait for us,” I yelled back. “Wade, wait.”

  But he didn’t wait, and Rylan and I labored up the rest of the steps to get to the door to the room where Heather had fallen.

  Wade was standing at the window, looking down at the ground below, his back to us.

  Above him, above the window, I saw that there was a gaping black hole, tatters like torn black fabric floating around it, in some breeze none of us could feel. Something had ripped free up there. That was where the barnacles had come from.

  Wade turned to us, eyes wide, lips pulled back from his teeth. “Here we are,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, savoring each sound in the phrase.

  Rylan suddenly rushed across the floor for the window. She swerved to move around Wade, darting quickly, her breath loud, bouncing off the walls and ce
iling, like a steam engine.

  “Wade, stop her!” I yelled.

  Wade snatched at her, pushing her back into the wall.

  She wailed, reaching for the window.

  “We have to get her out of here,” I said, rushing forward to take her by the arm.

  “But we just got here,” said Wade in his strange, gravelly voice.

  “We all have to get out of here,” I said, certain of it now. There was something about this place… The barnacles might be gone, but there might be more here, something else, something strange and unnatural.

  Rylan fought me, trying to get at the window.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “What’s your middle name?” I demanded.

  She groaned.

  “Rylan, come on, stay with me.”

  Wade turned away from me, back to the window. He let out a funny sounding laugh.

  “Wade?” I said.

  “Here we are,” he murmured, laughing again. “Here we are.”

  “Come on, Wade, snap out of it,” I said.

  Rylan smashed her forehead into my nose.

  I cried out, losing my grip on her.

  She went running for the window, and I reeled, trying to get myself together, to go after her. I slammed my eyes shut and opened them.

  And everything was different.

  * * *

  The room was bright and full of music. There were two bunk beds shoved against the far wall, both of them with the covers crumpled at the bottom, the pillows skewed. There were movie posters on the walls. First Blood and The Terminator. The beat of “Your Love” by the Outfield pulsed into my temple, and it bled into everything else.

  A girl was pressing her body into my chest, wriggling against me. She was all curves and softness and laughter. She had freckles on her nose and her eyes were half open.

  I was aroused.

  What the fuck was this? Where was I? Where was Rylan?

  The girl ran her hands over my arms, over my stomach. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of jeans with holes at the knees.

  The window was open and the white curtains were fluttering like ghosts in the cool breeze from outside.

  The girl’s hand went flat over my stomach, under my belt, down, down, down…