And then the bell rang. As quickly as it had assembled, the crowd scattered, peering at their phones as they posted, texted and emailed the video of Izzy’s spectacular beat down.
Craig remained where he was, standing next to Anna. They were suddenly alone in the hallway, but he kept his eyes on something distant, unwilling to face her. He jammed his hands in his pockets, hands that Anna had long dreamed of holding, hands that had balled into fists of victory at her humiliation.
“You must really despise me,” Anna said.
“Nah. It’s not that serious.” Craig shrugged, finally looking at her. “It’s hard to explain…I get these headaches.” His face crumpled for a second and then grew stony again.
So, he’d been afflicted, too. Craig looked away again, this time at his shoes. Maybe he wanted forgiveness, but forgiveness wasn’t an option. There was no forgetting his cold laugh after Frank said, “Can you make her kill herself like her mom?” Yet her betraying heart still swelled a little at the sight of his dark eyes thick with pain.
Anna turned her back on him and walked on hollow legs through the commons toward the large glass exit doors. She was acutely aware of the chasm of empty space that bellowed around her when she stepped into the sun’s glare. Doreen and Freddy, at least one of them, had always been close by when she needed them, but not today.
She crossed the street and cut through the neighborhood adjacent to the school, cursing when she realized that her phone was dead. She’d always been there for Freddy and Dor, too, hadn't she? But as she crossed a back road to the strip-mall parking lot and passed the graffiti-stained dumpster behind the Yo! Yogurt shop, she had to admit that she’d been laser-focused on herself for a while, even before the portal mess. Maybe Freddy and Dor were done with her, for good this time. Maybe she deserved it.
Anna finally made it home, thirsty and tired. Jack's car wasn’t in the driveway, only Geneva's hatchback with the busted fender. Jack had said they’d be out late dousing portals, but Anna still felt abandoned. Once inside, the hoard piles flanking the narrow pathway seemed to have swelled incrementally while she was at school. Jack’s Crap grew as steadily as hair. You didn’t notice the movement until it hung in your eyes, weighing you down.
Anna went to the kitchen and downed a large glass of cold water before trudging upstairs to her bedroom oasis. She plugged her phone into its charger and called Jack. A hyper-fast busy signal blasted into her ear. She tried Freddy and heard the same thing. Dor was next, and this time Anna was treated to a deafening series of cracks. Perfect. The solar storms were jacking-up cell reception. Anna gritted her teeth. No Jack, no Dor, no Freddy. No Penelope. No Mom. No Craig.
A darkness flared insider her—a murderous rage grotesquely out of proportion to the circumstances. Anna sat on her bed, dizzy with hatred and loss. There must be a portal in her room. That stupid list was meaningless. The portals were everywhere, for all she knew. Was anything she felt real, or was it all generated by portal spew—and how could she tell the difference? Frustrated, she lay back and pulled the covers over her head, burrowing further under the sheets like a hiding child until finally, gratefully, she fell asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Takeoff
The weight of her eyelids kept them closed, but Anna was awake and considering the deep canals the plastic braiding of the lawn chair would leave on the back of her thighs. She should get up, but the sprinkler mist was about to hit her feet again and she was so hot. Bone-tired despite her nap, it was if she hadn’t slept at all, but instead had walked for miles, year after year, miserable and crazed, through a whole other life. Anna had been dreaming that she lived in an ugly world of supernatural portals, demons, and psychotic real estate agents. Worst of all, her mom was dead, and so was Penelope. What a twisted subconscious she had.
She forced her eyes open and her lids, like magnets, fought to meet each other again. The afternoon sun was fierce and punishing, punctured only by the cool mist from a neighbor’s sprinkler that intermittently wafted across her feet. In the middle of the Fagan backyard, Jack wielded a spatula, moving hotdogs off the grill into fluffy buns. He was wearing his plumbing uniform: stained jeans and a blue T-shirt with “The Drain Whisperers” stitched on the back.
Several feet from Jack, Anna’s mom sat at a picnic table. She was pointing at the grill, probably critiquing Jack’s grilling skills. Jack always said that his wife was a backseat driver and a dinner table chef. Helen looked radiant even with her sundress plastered to her body with sweat and the beginnings of a nasty sunburn splashed across her nose and shoulders. The crystal butterfly pin in her wavy brown hair gleamed in the sunlight, creating a faint halo effect around her head.
Anna’s eyes clamped shut again and stayed that way even when she heard Penelope’s tail slicing through the air next to her. Penelope nudged Anna’s hand with a wet nose and whimpered a plea for her to come and play. She really should get up for lunch, Anna thought, but her lawn chair was perfectly situated in the shadow of the house, out of the hot sun. Her eyes fluttered open and, oh lord, Doreen and Freddy were there, too, sitting at the picnic table across from her mom. Jack was passing a pitcher of lemonade around, and they all had hotdogs on plates in front of them.
Anna had to get up. She was being rude, lounging in the shade and leaving Freddy and Dor alone with her parents in the glaring heat.
“I had this dream,” Anna called out, sluggish and croaking. Self-conscious, she stopped talking. It was too silly to mention, and horrible. And the dream was fading now, like dreams do. The epic minutiae, intimately known moments ago, now lost. No one at the picnic table was listening to her anyway. They were all on their feet and swatting at a dozen or so bees circling the hot dogs on the table. The odd, fat bees jerked erratically in the air, bumping into each other as if they were drunk. Peeps had probably poked around a hive and pissed them off. Anna focused on keeping her eyelids open. Next on her agenda was moving.
Penelope gave her hand a final nudge and then darted away past the picnic table to another lawn chair in the back of the yard by the fence, where a blonde woman was reading a magazine under an umbrella. Geneva was wearing a big straw hat and a skimpy flesh-colored bikini. What was Geneva thinking? And in front of Anna’s parents?
The first prick of fear pierced Anna’s sternum.
Geneva was only a figment of the insane dream she just had. What was a figment of her imagination doing in her backyard? Geneva scratched Penelope’s head and then became distracted by several wobbly bees dive-bombing her legs. One of them must have stung her because Geneva squealed and jumped out of her chair. She joined the others around the picnic table, swatting at the clumsy, bloated bees with her rolled-up magazine.
Anna tried to heave herself up but only managed to grip the arm of the lawn chair with one feeble hand. The sprinkler mist on her ankles was like liquid concrete, turning her feet to stone. She wasn’t just tired; she was trapped. Her mother began slapping at something in her hair. A bee? No. Her mother’s butterfly pin. The metal pin was catching the fierce sun and burning her mother’s scalp. Anna tried to yell out, but her mouth refused to open.
The sun’s glare off the butterfly pin flared and then burst outward in a blinding flash. The picnic table and everyone around it ignited like a match.
Before Anna could process the scene before her, more bees came, hundreds, then thousands. The plague of bees swarmed the picnic table as if the fire had enraged the parasitic fly larvae inside them. They were the zombie bees that Anna learned about in Denton’s class.
Freddy took a couple of lurching steps toward Anna. He opened his mouth to scream, but his tongue was covered with bees. His mouth continued to stretch, melting, as flames engulfed his face. Anna couldn’t move, but her gag reflex convulsed from the smell of his burning flesh. Penelope fell at Freddy’s feet, completely blanketed by bees, her body contorting on the ground. No. Oh no. It was the bees inside Penelope, they were moving her corpse.
The thin membrane of
Anna’s sanity tore open like a popped balloon. The bees were inside her parents. They were inside Dor and Geneva, too, jerking their burning bodies around as their faces melted around their widening screams. Behind her madness, Anna prayed that they were already dead. As they burned, their shadows grew long and thin on the scorched grass, stretching toward, reaching for, Anna’s lawn chair.
Anna sat up in bed. There was pain in her throat and a horrible sound. She stopped screaming and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She reached for the glass of water on her nightstand and gulped the rest of it down. As water spilled down the sides of her chin, she registered the uncomfortable weight of her skinny jeans, glued to her with a chilled sweat. Sweat from the heat of a brutal sun. It hit her like a cold slap. The bees! The flames! Anna bolted to the window, terrified of what she’d see. But there was no charred picnic table outside, no bee-covered corpses. Her shoulders sagged in relief.
She had slept through the afternoon. Outside the brightness of the full moon muted the green and reddish hues of the aurora borealis and illuminated the burned patch of ground in the backyard. It was the charred remnants of the doghouse, not a burned picnic table. There was no picnic table. It was only a dream, a nightmare.
Anna took a shaky breath and the tentacles of panic from the gory dream relaxed their grip. Penelope was gone, her mother was long dead, and she was Goblin Girl. But at least she hadn’t lost everyone at once in a gruesome picnic table inferno. Bright side.
But her relief was short-lived. Sitting on the edge of her bed, the emptiness of the house reverberated around her. It was almost ten o’clock, but Jack still wasn’t home. She tried to call him. Crack crack crack. The solar storms again. Damn. She needed to reach her father. If Saul had lied about the portals, who knew what Jack and Geneva were up against?
Anna peeled off her clammy jeans and sweater as police sirens rang out in the distance. It was a reminder that she wasn’t the only one suffering in Bloomtown. She threw her clothes at the hamper and missed. Something about the nightmare tugged at her, but she resisted the urge to analyze it, not wanting to revisit the horror of watching her mother die again, even if it wasn’t real this time.
She slid off the mattress onto the carpet, hugging her knees, and looked at the framed picture of her mother on the bureau. Helen Fagan had carved the wooden frame from the remnants of a slab of black walnut that she’d made into a tabletop. Anna used to run her fingers over the frame, knowing her mother’s hands had molded it.
Anna allowed herself a fraction of hope. Maybe with all the craziness in Bloomtown, her mother’s evasive spirit might somehow sense her vulnerability and finally respond. She squeezed her eyes shut. Please give me a sign that you can hear me. Anna strained to hear her mother’s voice, but there was only the wail of fading sirens.
But when Anna opened her eyes, Helen’s eyes had receded into a beady, hooded glare, her tongue slithering out of her mouth, licking at her dry, cracked lips. The photograph had once again transformed into the face of the demon.
Anna closed her eyes again. No. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t real. The demon was only in Anna’s diseased mind. She blinked, and once again the frame held the photograph of Helen Fagan, freckled, carefree, and illuminated by dreams yet to die. Helen Fagan, whose soul was probably still trapped somewhere dark and seething, the tortured plaything of the demon that took her life. And Anna was helpless to do anything about it.
Invaded now by a crushing dread, Anna turned from the picture to her reflection in the full-length mirror. The sight of her exposed flesh triggered a painful ringing in her ears, followed by echoes of Craig’s cold laughter on the flat-screen in front of the blackboard. Her thin brown hair looked as dry and brittle as a bundle of twigs. Her face was sallow and unwelcoming, the small bump on her nose as repellant as a festering boil. There she was, sitting on the floor in her underwear and bra, all wrong, and entirely hideous.
Anna’s head thundered as a dark and horrible shame took fast root, its hot thorny branches burning holes in her chest. How could she have been so stupid? In her pathetic attempt to impress Craig, she’d flashed the whole freakin’ school!
Gripped by frenzied loathing, Anna scrambled to her feet and tore through her purse on the desk. The scissors from her makeup case were suddenly in her grip. She turned back to her reflection, sneering at the glass. You stupid slut. You ugly bitch. Her hand jerked up and the scissors scratched across her thigh. It was a small relief, but so much more was waiting. Anna’s mind waged war against her. It wanted her to keep slicing.
Everyone hates you, Goblin Girl. You’re a crappy friend, a horrible daughter. Even Freddy and Dor hate you now. Everyone knows what a skank you are. You actually thought Craig would ever like someone as ugly and disgusting as you? You don’t deserve to be alive. You should kill yourself like your mother did. You should throw yourself in front of Shady M’s bus. You should slice yourself up into a million pieces. You should set yourself on fire and burn like the witch you are, Goblin Girl. You should suffer before you rot in hell.
Anna dropped the scissors and kicked them under her bed. No. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t her. She looked around her room warily, wishing she had Emi with her so she could scan her room for portals. Her bedroom must be rotten with portal spew. She ripped the white sheet off of her bed and wrapped it around her body, watching with queasy horror as a thin line of red saturated the cotton against her thigh. She’d cut herself. How sick was that? But it wasn’t deep. It would scab over. She opened the window, looking for relief from the likely poisoned air, and a balmy wind blew in. She breathed it in as the large moon illuminated the backyard with the reflected and refined rays of the sun.
As the tide of loathing slowly withdrew, Anna peered up at the faint outlines of the mountains and craters of the moonscape. Freddy used to tell her about the moon when they were kids. They’d watch it through his telescope, checking to see if it looked any smaller. The moon escaped earth’s gravity a little every year and would one day be slung out of earth’s orbit altogether, making its own way through space. The sun, too, like all stars, would eventually burn out. This event would be the final death knell of the long-scorched earth, leaving behind clouds of stardust that would eventually create new worlds.
It touched something peaceful inside Anna, this inevitable cycle of life, death and rebirth. Maybe it was the warm breeze, or the soft moonlight, but her trembling hands grew still.
Anna left the window open and sat down in front of the mirror again, determined to be brave. Geneva’s words from their first day together returned to her. If you can quiet the chatter in your mind and then look deeply into your own eyes, your soul can leave your body and travel through the astral plane, the first level of Source.
Anna came from her mother’s body. They were linked by blood, history and fate. Helen had the courage to sacrifice her own life to spare her family, and Anna must have the same strength somewhere inside her. She stared into the mirror again. If her mother couldn’t come to Anna, Anna would go to her.
“Mom, where are you?”
But only her own puffy eyes stared back. She did not understand the girl in the mirror. She was a mystery, a stranger to herself. Imperfect, sure, but what else? Anna didn’t know anymore. She had lost who she was, even before the portals. The portals only magnified that loss. Maybe this was a chance to find herself again. Although it was uncomfortable, Anna didn’t look away from her reflection. Slowly, her discomfort gave way to wonder.
There was wisdom behind her eyes, a knowing. She continued the staring contest with herself until the current of connection became so strong that she couldn’t look away from the mirror even if she wanted to. And then the details of the yellow flecks around her pupil—the golden starbursts in the hazel of her irises—suddenly grew sharper in the glass, crystallizing. Every muscle in her body tightened. Something was going to happen.
At first Anna thought she was shaking with fear, and then she was sure that a bee had flo
wn into her mouth. Her jaw clenched instinctually, biting down. She braced for the soft crunch and searing sting that was sure to follow, but her teeth met without resistance. There wasn’t a bee, but her teeth continued to rattle as an electric thrumming spread throughout her body. Was this another portal attack? Anna wasn’t sure, but it was a vastly different sensation from the river rage—a much faster and higher-pitched vibration. She waited with dread for the shaking to slow and deepen, for the waves of hatred and misery to roll through her. But the vibration inside her increased in tempo, intensity and pressure.
It was like being in an airplane right before the wheels lifted off the ground—all that power. She was vibrating at a body-numbing, incredibly high rate, but was somehow still at the same time, like a tuning fork. It had been a mistake to try this in her room. What if the mirror gazing had opened her up even more to the destructive power of the portal spew? There was something familiar about it, the growing roar in her ears, but she braced herself and resisted with all her strength. No.
The roaring and shaking came to an abrupt stop and Anna tore her eyes from the mirror. What the hell was that? When Geneva told Anna about mirror-gazing, she didn’t mention anything about vibrating like a guitar string and feeling like you were about to explode. Maybe Anna had screwed up the process somehow.
Nevertheless, whatever happened had shaken the bad juju right out of her. Anna stood up and stretched her arms over her head. She felt pretty damn good, a huge change from only minutes ago when she’d been on the verge of filleting herself. She shuddered at the dark memory, grateful to feel more like her old self. Anna glanced back at the mirror, avoiding eye contact with her reflection. What would have happened if she hadn’t resisted the growing power of those vibrations? Her fear, her preoccupation with the destructive power of the portals, had held her back. Maybe that was why her mother couldn’t hear her prayers. It was too damn noisy in Anna’s head!
The Ghost Hunter's Daughter Page 17
