by Adam Dark
Ben managed to turn his head the tiniest bit, blinking against the brightest lamp he’d ever seen. But he recognized the voice he hoped came from the dark form backlit by the glaring light. “Peter?” he tried to ask, but only the first syllable came out. He clenched his eyes shut.
“Hey, Ben. Oh, hold on. Sorry.” It was definitely Peter.
He heard a soft click, and then the light burning bright-red behind his closed eyelids was gone. Something dragged heavily across the floor, and Ben slowly opened his eyes again. Peter sat there beside him, his nervous smile lighting up his pale face and the even more unusually dark circles under his eyes. His hair was ruffled and a little greasy, which seemed pretty weird for a guy who showered twice a day minimum.
Ben wanted water, but he still couldn’t just say it already. A dry whisper puffed through his burning throat instead.
“Okay, I got you.” Peter disappeared briefly and returned holding a yellow-brown plastic cup in one hand and a straw between two fingers. “Here you go.” He lowered the straw to Ben’s raw, cracked lips, which actually stuck to Ben’s teeth for a minute before he could take a drink—and another. And another. He couldn’t get enough water until the last of it slurped through the straw, and he finally let it go. Apparently, this was his new version of an extreme workout; he gasped for another breath, swallowed, and lay back completely on the pillow again. Since when did drinking through a straw become so exhausting? “Yeah, they said you’d probably be pretty thirsty by the time you came around. You want more?”
Ben shook his head, and this time it moved the way he wanted it to—mostly. “Thanks.” That came out as a real word too, and he let out a deep sigh before looking at Peter again. “We did it, right?”
Peter turned to set the plastic cup on the table next to the lamp, then leaned closer toward Ben’s bed and rested his forearms on his knees. “Uh, well… if you mean you started a fire and managed to burn that house to the ground, like all the way, then yeah. You did it.”
Ben could tell the guy tried to look reassuring, but Peter’s tiny frown gave him away. “You okay?”
Peter let out a single breath of laughter. “You’re asking if I’m okay. I’m fine, Ben. Saw some pretty weird… Yeah. All good over here.”
Swallowing now felt just a little less like dumping sand down his throat. “Good. What about April?”
The pause made his heart race furiously. Ben thought he’d seen her here, with his mother, but he’d also seen Ian—maybe. If anything had happened to her…
“She’s fine too.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck, like maybe he’d actually considered telling Ben April was gone and never coming back. Or maybe that was just Ben’s imagination working overtime after so long in this bed. He didn’t even know how long that was. “She stayed here for a few days, but then she said she had to go back to Boston to check in with her professors. I don’t know if she was actually okay or if she’s just really good at stuffing all the—”
“A few days?” Ben croaked.
Peter blinked at him. “Yeah. It’s been four.”
Four days? He’d been here that long, blinking in and out of green and white, seeing things he knew now were totally real—like April. The whole thing about seeing Ian, though, still didn’t make any sense. “Was my mom here?”
“She’s in the cafeteria, I think.” Peter shrugged. “Your dad came back early from his business trip in… wherever. He’s here too. Want me to go get them?”
Ben let out a long sigh. “Not yet, man. Give me a minute first.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to face having to repeatedly reassure his mother while she asked no less than five times in five minutes if he needed anything while his dad just stood behind her and frowned—his way of suffering silently and shoving his emotions back down beneath the surface. That was what they’d done when he’d fallen off his bike in sixth grade into a random net of rusty barbed-wire fencing lining one of the old properties down the road from the lake. This was probably a little more severe, so he imagined their reactions would be, too. “Any chance you could tell me why both my hands are in a cast?” He lifted them, but his arms were still so heavy, and they thumped back onto his stomach. Then he slid them onto the bed at his sides and let the hospital mattress carry their weight.
Peter stared at him for a few seconds. When his eyes flickered briefly toward Ben’s closest hand, they returned immediately to Ben’s face, almost as if the sight was physically painful. “So that’s a weird one,” he said. “There were lots of weird ones.”
“Try me,” Ben said and raised an eyebrow.
His friend let out a snort and shook his head. “Not exactly sure where to start.”
“With the first one, Pete.” Ben offered an understanding smile; he remembered enough but definitely not what had gotten him here in the hospital without the use of his hands.
Peter nodded. “Okay. So one minute, you were trying to command Ebra to protect us, I think.”
“That was the plan, yeah.”
“Right. I don’t really like improvising, but I wasn’t gonna try to stop you.” Ben smirked at that, and Peter glanced down briefly with one of his own. “You started, and then you just switched mid-sentence into some language I’ve never heard before. It was a little creepy, but I just figured maybe you’d done some extra research and wanted to try it out on your own.” He stopped for a minute, as if he wanted to give Ben an opportunity to explain, but Ben only nodded for him to continue. He did, in fact, remember those terrifying words in his voice coming from his mouth, though Ian had taken the reins at that point. But now didn’t seem like the right time to dive into his own version of things. They’d get there. Later.
“Whatever it was obviously worked,” Peter added. “That… thing. That used to be Constantine. It got trapped in the crystal…” Ben nodded. “Yeah, okay. And then you said we had to get out. That was what made me think something was a little wrong, dude. You didn’t… I mean, I just thought you would have reacted a little differently.”
“To what?” Ben’s mouth was dry again.
“To April. When… Well, she kissed you, dude. Maybe as a thank you for, you know, getting rid of that thing. Or she probably didn’t even think about it, but you looked like you hardly noticed.” Ben forced himself to blink, feeling like if he made any other movement, Peter would suddenly know everything about what had actually gone down. But that didn’t happen. “I think she was pretty hurt by that, honestly,” Peter continued. “I dunno. Probably a little freaked out.”
Ben closed his eyes again, and he didn’t have to fake the regret. “You think she’ll want to talk to me about it?”
Peter blew out a puff of air. “I don’t know…” Talking about April didn’t seem to make him angry anymore, but the awkwardness of it was definitely still there.
“My hands,” Ben offered.
Blinking, Peter shook his head. “Yeah. So the grand finale, man. We got out of the house, but you turned around and said, ‘Almost done.’ Like you were following some kind of recipe or something. Clapped your hands, opened them, and…” He scratched at his hairline.
“What?” Ben hoped it hadn’t actually happened the way he remembered.
“It sounds totally nuts.”
“Pete, I think we’re past that by now.”
“Probably.” Peter shut his eyes for a minute and winced. “You shot fire out of your hands.”
“I did?”
“Green fire. Like you were a frickin’ wizard or something.” That comparison made Ben laugh a little; he couldn’t help it. His friend’s head turned sharply toward him. “I’m not kidding, man. Green fire. I had to double-check with April to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. The whole house caught, like all at once. Then it was regular fire. I think. And you passed out.” The room was silent for a minute.
“That it?” Ben wanted so badly right then to just unload his experience of what had happened—maybe pull Peter out of the dark a little. But something told him this definitely was n
ot the right time for that. He had to wait.
Peter just looked at him for a few seconds. “I mean, that’s all the super weird stuff, yeah. April and I had to do the rest by ourselves. You’re a lot heavier than you look.”
“Thanks?”
Even though Peter tried to shake off his amusement, Ben’s poorly timed humor was probably actually making this part a little easier for both of them. “So that’s what happened to your hands,” he said. “They were, like, smoking a little. That was gross. From what your mom told me, the doctors said the burns were pretty bad. So they had to, uh… do a little bit more than just rub some goo on them and wrap ‘em up.”
Images of bionic hands flashed through Ben’s mind, but that was taking it way too far. That was ridiculous, right? “I’m waiting for the bad news,” he said, trying to keep it together.
“There’s not really any bad news. They just had to take a few skin grafts…”
Ben’s head lurched up again from the pillow. “From where?”
“I tried to convince them to take it from your ass cheek,” Peter said with a grin. “Your mom shot that one down in two seconds.” The laughter tearing through both of them was the best thing Ben could remember doing in a long time. When it died down enough to talk, Peter added, “They took some skin from your thigh. Said it shouldn’t be as painful as your hands and will heal faster.”
“I’ll test that one out later.” Ben chuckled again, then lifted one of his hands. He was starting to feel a little stronger now. “My hands are super itchy, though.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty normal, I think. I can go tell the nurse you’re up. She might be able to help with that.”
“Can you tell my parents first, though?” Ben did actually want to see them. Since he hadn’t gone home for Christmas last year, that time away had stretched a little longer than any of them had expected, and they’d gone without a visit for almost two years; his parents hadn’t been able to get away even just for a weekend to Boston, but he definitely hadn’t held it against them. Mostly, though, he didn’t want it to blow up in his face if his mom found out the nurses knew he was awake before she did.
“Sure,” Peter said. But he didn’t get up from his chair. “There’s just one more thing I want to talk to you about.”
What else could there possibly be? “Not like I’m going anywhere.”
“April and I talked about this when we drove you to the hospital. Then more when we were waiting to hear about your hands.” He nodded at the casts. “I’ve basically been living here, ‘cause I didn’t want you to wake up without hearing the story.”
“Okay…”
“We called the fire department and the police when my phone got reception again. By the way, good thinking with the emergency break. Your car rolled right back onto Main, and then it started no problem.”
“That’s good.”
Peter shook his head. “Yeah. No way was I getting out to push a car after hauling you halfway down that hill. The cops talked to both of us. April and me. We told them we came back to Oakwood to show her around, then took her to the house as a kind of closure. You know, putting old demons to bed and all that.” Ben snorted. “So here’s the whole story. We wanted to show April the house, and we hung out for a while. Brought an oil lantern with us, ‘cause why not? Dark and spooky house. Then some raccoons came running down the stairs, and we all freaked out.”
“Raccoons?”
“Those things are vicious, man. Nobody wants to mess with a raccoon.”
“I guess not…” Ben’s smile crept up all on its own.
Peter shrugged. “One of them knocked over the oil lamp, and you tried to put it out. Hence the burns.”
“Oh, yeah. Make me out to be the idiot.”
“You’ve been called worse.” Peter said it flippantly, probably without thinking, then clearly realized how thin the ice was beneath him.
He was right, though. Ben had been called all kinds of things after that night eleven years ago—idiot wasn’t really one of them. But he realized now that what had been such a sore spot for so long didn’t matter anymore. It couldn’t. After what they’d just done, what did he care if someone thought he was a little off, just a little crazy? Maybe he had to be in order to keep going. “It’s cool,” he said. Peter would just have to take him at his word.
His friend shrugged. “We’ll just call it heroism gone wrong, yeah?” Peter took another deep breath. “So I run back to the car to see if you have a first-aid kit or something. Which you should, by the way. In case we ever actually need it.” Of course Peter would suggest that; the guy had a grocery list of health afflictions and medical supplies for every occasion, doubled-up so he’d always have a backup in his car. “We’re so worried about your hands, we don’t notice the oil lamp had spilled and started the really big fire until it’s too late. So we all got into the car and made the calls.”
Ben nodded slowly and stared at the ceiling; it was a little ridiculous, and it made them look careless and scatter-brained, but it wasn’t entirely impossible. Except for one thing. “If anybody looks into that, Pete, we might be in trouble. Nobody’s gonna find an oil lamp.”
Peter’s grin was almost feral, then he slapped the edge of the bed. “But they will. I’m telling you, man. April’s quick.”
“I know.”
Ben’s remark went entirely ignored. “After you passed out and we couldn’t get you to wake up, she actually went into that shed next to the house and found a lamp. Like she knew it would be there. It was already broken and probably didn’t work anymore, but it’s not like that matters. She chucked it into the house and shattered the rest of it. So we have proof.” Peter rubbed under his nose with the back of his hand. “Honestly, this whole getting-our-story-straight thing was her idea.”
That didn’t surprise Ben at all. Especially not after what she’d told him about her dreams. “I’ll tell her thank you.”
“You really should.” Peter blinked a little, like he was remembering something else, but moved the conversation away from April again. “The cops seemed to buy it. They did mumble something about Maine trespassing laws and that there might be a court date set for that part of it. But then they said the laws have a lot of wiggle room there, and seeing as nobody technically owns the house now and there really isn’t anybody to claim it, it probably won’t be that bad. I mean, kids have been daring each other to get up on that porch for, like… forever. We did—” Peter bit his lip, inadvertently bringing them both back to that night and the mischievousness of childhood that had started their nightmare in the first place.
“True,” Ben said, wishing he knew what else to say to ease the shame turning the tops of Peter’s ears a deep red.
Peter pushed himself past it, too. “And neither of them seemed all that excited about going up there to check the place out. I think that house freaked out everyone in this town enough to really want to stay away.”
“Yeah, I hope you’re right.” Well, he guessed that was just something they’d have to deal with, if it ever came up—trespassing and accidentally burning the place down. It was totally worth it. “Thanks, Pete. I’ll tell them the same thing, if they ask.”
“Yeah.” Peter gazed around at the hospital room and nodded. “If they ask.”
After all that, Ben found himself wondering how long his hands had to be in these stupid casts and when he’d be able to finally itch them. He felt like he might be able to sit up a little now, after so many days basically lying in one place. Then the last hole in their story snagged on his mind like a wool scarf on a tree branch. “Wait, what did you guys come up with for why I passed out for four days? Please don’t tell me you said it was from the pain…”
Peter laughed. “That would’ve been a nice touch. No, we figured it was best to just stick to the truth on that one. That we have no idea.” He stared at Ben for an uncomfortably long time, but there really wasn’t much more he could say about it.
“Yeah, me neither,” Ben said.
That was essentially true. He figured it had something to do with being in the spirit world with Ian for so long, probably coupled with the fact that his body had been taken over by his not-actually-dead friend to banish the Guardian and shoot green fire from his hands. From his hands? Really? He’d have to talk to Ian about that one, if he could even figure out how to do that—if Ian actually was going to be sharing his body for the rest of Ben’s life.
“They already drew a bunch of blood for like… a million tests I don’t understand. Because they couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t wake up. I think they’re trying to prove you have some kind of hidden disease or that you’re secretly a junkie or something and we did all this just to cover up an overdose.”
“They’d believe that more than the truth, wouldn’t they?” Ben asked with a smirk. Peter just rolled his eyes.
When there didn’t seem to be much else left to say, Peter took a deep breath and stood from the chair. “Think I should go get your parents now?”
Ben nodded. “Probably.”
“All right. Hang tight.” Peter took a few steps around the bed, stopped like he was going to turn around, then kind of stumbled forward again, shaking his head.
Just before he reached the door, Ben called, “Pete.” His friend turned around with wide eyes. “We got him out.” He didn’t need to say the name for Peter to know he was talking about Ian.
A half-smile lifted Peter’s mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Peter glanced down at his shoes, still smiling, then looked back up. “You can tell me about that later.”
“I will.” Ben just didn’t know when that would be, or how much it would piss Peter off when he realized Ben had been lying by omission the whole time.
When his friend disappeared into the hallway, Ben’s head sank completely back into the pillow, and he stared up at the ceiling again. A part of him felt kind of empty, soft, like he’d just popped a bubble that had baked into the top of a loaf of bread. It took him a minute to figure out what it was.
For the first time in eleven years, the pervasive anxiety that had made itself Ben’s constant companion was gone. No gnawing clench around his stomach. No tension bubbling just below the surface, driving him to find something—anything—to distract him from the feeling that something horrible was about to happen. He’d forgotten what peace felt like, and this brief moment of it would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the infuriating itch in his palms.
