by Tabatha Wood
He was almost halfway done with the Dunhill when he felt a strange vibration underneath him. He dropped the cigarette and leapt to his feet, shouting.
“Bloody hell! Earthquake!”
The other boys simply stared at him, clearly confused.
“What the fuck?” Oliver asked.
“Didn’t you feel it?”
“What?”
“The rocks. They moved. Just now.”
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Adam said quietly.
“Shut up, you dick,” Jack jeered, flicking his cigarette butt at him. The end still flared red and hot. He dodged to one side and heard it fizzle as it hit the water behind him. He glared at Jack before turning back to the other two boys.
“Did you really not feel it, any of you?”
Oliver scoffed and Adam gave him a long look that may have been bemusement, or quiet disapproval. He sat back down awkwardly on the rocks. He could still feel the movement.
“Seriously! The rocks are vibrating. Put your hands on them.” He placed his hand on the edge, felt a deep, steady thrum.
The others moved towards him, did the same.
“Just give it a minute. Honestly...”
He could see it in their faces. They felt nothing.
“Yeah, nah.”
“Not cool, Lew.”
“Get fucked, mate.”
He was confused. He could still feel it strumming beneath his touch. The other boys walked away. Jack gave him a hard shove with his shoulder as he passed him, a nasty sneer on his freckled face.
Despite his initial fears, it clearly wasn’t the beginning of an earthquake, and only this particular spot seemed to be moving. The rock he had cut his hand on. He looked closer. The side of the stone was etched with strange carvings. There were letters and shapes in what he guessed were maybe some kind of language, but not one he recognised. Nothing he had ever seen or learned about in school. He thought of calling the others back, to show them what he had found, but they had disappeared down to the edge of the sea and were skimming pebbles on the surface of the water. He doubted that they would want to listen to him anyway.
The marks made him curious. Most likely someone had been messing about and defacing the rocks. Nothing more than a graffiti tag, just made with a blade, not a spray-can of paint. Yet it looked more complex than that, as if someone had put some real thought into the design. Whenever he tried to look too close, the shapes themselves seemed to move and change, like serpents writhing inside the rock. He looked down the track, his eyes resting on the two large points that sliced through the headland. Locals called it Devil’s Gate but he had never known why. Was the name important?
Behind him, he heard Jack and Oliver laughing together, and a fresh rush of jealousy overcame him. A dark image entered his mind, of Jack losing his footing, slipping and falling, and cracking his head open on the rocks. A pool of blood oozing from the rocks to the sea, Jack’s face bashed in, his body crumpled. It was a vivid, violent thought, which made him feel quite sick and shaky. He shook his head hoping to dispel it, shocked by his own imagination. He didn’t want that really, did he? Maybe he did. He knew he wouldn’t be upset in the slightest if Jack were the next to be added to the list of the missing or disappeared.
He stood for a moment, unaware that his palm was still clamped to the rock. He was staring out at the wild waves that lashed at the shore, feeling the wind rifle through his hair, when he realised his vision was blurred. He blinked, thinking it was simply sea-spray settling on the lenses of his glasses, altering what he saw. The water flickered and wavered, bright lines of light flashed and jumped across the swell. Blue became red became blue once more as the water surged and churned.
He felt suddenly weak and light-headed, like he might faint, then almost immediately the feeling changed, and he felt powerful and mighty. The air around the rocks seemed oddly thick. A bright ring of fog encircled him, pulling him into a vast, swirling pool of vapour. It reminded him of when he was very small, when he used to spend ages watching the bath water after the plug was pulled. Following the movement with his eyes as it was sucked quickly down the drain.
The spinning slowed, the lights faded. He was left standing behind a thin wall of silver mist. His hand was stuck, glued tight to the rock. He tried in vain to pull it away. He was cold. He was hot. He was weightless. He felt sick. He couldn’t seem to settle on an emotion. As he watched, he saw a thick line of blood trickle from beneath his palm. It curled and twisted across the edges of the rock, receding to a pinprick sized drop as it was absorbed into the stone, as if sucked in by an invisible mouth. He tried to yell, but no sound came out and he started to panic. He could feel his airways growing tight, each breath a difficult wheeze. A hot, thick feeling came over him, like being smothered with a heavy blanket.
He reached in his pocket for his inhaler, struggling to remove the cap with only one free hand. The cap fell, bounced on the rock, and vanished. It did not merely fall out of sight beneath the stone or down into the sea, but literally disappeared. It was as if it had been sucked out of existence, or had simply ceased to be.
He didn’t have time to think too hard about it, he needed his Ventolin, and fast. He put the blue plastic mouthpiece to his lips and pumped the reliever. One puff. Two. The medicine made him lightheaded and his vision swam again, but at least he didn’t feel so breathless.
Slowly, he reached down and picked up a piece of shell from the amongst the gravel. He tossed it in the direction of the haze. Like the cap of his inhaler, it too vanished. He gasped. He tried again, this time with a piece of stone. It also disappeared.
What was happening here? Was it something he had he done?
He had learned in Geography class that the red rocks were formed two hundred million years ago by undersea volcanic eruptions. Their distinctive red colour was due to small trace amounts of iron oxides in the rock. He knew too of the traditional legends that told a very different story about how the Pariwhero had gained their colour. Legends based in blood.
He regarded the strange markings again, fully convinced now that they meant something more than mere graffiti. These were definitely not traditional carvings, of that he was certain. No Māori artwork looked like this. Those sculptures and carvings were beautiful and empowering. Whatever this was, it was something very different.
It felt dangerous.
There was an image further down where the sea lapped the base of the rocks, it looked almost like two crude hands holding a reptilian eye. Like a portal between two columns. The markings seemed darker now, a shimmering, viscous, reddish-black. As if they were filled with blood. The rock thrummed under his hand, a rhythmic motion; a heartbeat. He listened, feeling the pulse of the movement. It matched that of his own heart. He felt the strongest he had ever been in his whole life.
He remembered what he’d said to Adam earlier. Aliens, eh? How completely and utterly ridiculous it had seemed at the time. He would believe almost anything now.
He needed to try something larger this time, something brighter. To test the limits of whatever power he had been granted. He stretched, caught the strap of his backpack with his fingertips and slid it towards him. He found the bottle of water, and threw it.
It disappeared.
What about something even bigger still? He wondered. What would happen then? He picked up his backpack, hefted it. If this worked, he knew his mother would be cross, but he had to find out for sure. He pushed it away from him into the fog.
Blinked.
Gone.
He was going to need a new backpack.
He marvelled at how strong he felt. How overwhelmingly mighty. He felt like a character from one of the many superhero comics that he liked. The hairs on his arms felt electrified, his muscles rippled underneath his clothes. Most people only ever saw his weaknesses, the many ailments he suffered from. Some were keen to give him their pity, to say how sorry they were for all he’d been through. Others, mostly kids, used it as a stick to be
at him with, to remind him of how he was different. How he would never fit in.
Oliver had never been like that with him. He hadn’t seemed to mind about any of the problems Lewis had. He was kind and gentle and funny. Jack had changed him. He had made him unkind, sometimes even cruel. Lewis longed for a chance to make things right. To make things how they should be. Just him and Oliver, together again. They’d been best mates once. He missed him.
If only Jack wasn’t around.
A voice or a thought, he wasn’t sure which, wormed its way into his brain. As if brought to him on the waves or the wind; he didn’t know exactly where it came from. It was mean. It was bad. It was nasty and wicked. It could solve, although not all of his many problems, at least a very large part of one.
With his hand clamped to the red rock he yelled over his shoulder.
“Jack! Come over here, you dickhead!”
Second Chances
No-one tells you just how difficult dried blood can be to scrub out. It gets underneath your fingernails. It clings to the fine hairs on your arms. You find it for days afterwards: a tiny droplet stuck behind your ear; a small, brown blemish on your sock. I found slivers in my eyelashes, fragments in my hair. I washed and rinsed and washed again. I felt like I might never be clean. Like there was a mark on me which would leave a stain forever.
It took me a long time to accept what I’d become and what I’d done. The life which had been thrust upon me against my will. I took a seat on an InterCity bus to Wellington one evening, and left everything I knew behind.
I had wanted to get out, as soon as I had finished college. My childhood sweetheart, and then fiancé, Jason, did not approve. He hadn’t wanted me to leave.
“What can you possibly find out there, which you can’t get here?” he’d asked me. “We’re supposed to be getting married; maybe have a baby. Your family is here. You can’t leave.”
He didn’t understand that I never felt like I belonged. That my family had never understood me. Our town had few people like me even before I changed, I could count them on the fingers of one hand. There were even less thereafter. I wasn’t well suited to small-town life. I knew the world was much bigger and brighter than the place I’d grown up in, and I wanted to experience it.
I was offered a good job in the city. I bought the bus tickets as soon as I accepted. I kept them in my rucksack, hoping I could change Jason’s mind and persuade him to come with me. I didn’t know exactly what I’d do if he refused. I had them with me while I did my last shift at the pub.
It had been a rough night; too many drunken, leery punters making lewd comments. I’d been polite, I didn’t want the aggro. One of them kept asking me for my phone number. I’d declined as pleasantly as I could, but he had thrust a piece of crumpled up paper into my hand while I was clearing up used glasses. On it he had scrawled his name, Pete, with a phone number underneath. I’d tossed it into the garbage straight away.
I was walking home alone as usual; Pete pulled up beside me in his ute. He asked me for a handjob. I was tired and I told him to piss off. Perhaps I should have been nicer; I didn’t realise what he was.
He jumped me from behind; attacked me and left me for dead. Still, he hadn’t bargained on my persistence, and my will to live. He took away the old me; changed me into something powerful in return. I came to, filled with fury, and exacted my revenge. I won, he lost, but I didn’t much feel like celebrating.
I went home and told Jason what had happened. Showed him what I’d become. He was less than sympathetic. He blamed me, and he hated me. He asked me if I’d led him on. If I’d been flirting with him at the bar. Perhaps he thought I’d got myself assaulted deliberately, just to spite him. Just like my finding a new job and my desire to move away. He said I was an abomination. A disgrace to humankind. He tried to drag me by my hair down to the local church.
“Only God can save you now,” he’d said.
I’d known, without a shadow of a doubt, my life with him was well and truly over.
I did the only thing I knew how to. What came instinctive to me. I let my newfound rage envelop me. I killed him and ran away.
I told my parents that we had argued, that he’d stormed off into the night. I said I thought he might have gone into the bush. His body was found a few days later, apparently killed by some wild animal. My father was completely heartbroken. I had realised in that moment that all he had ever wanted was a son, much more than he ever wanted me as a daughter. Now he had lost us both.
No one seemed surprised when I announced that I was leaving; they understood I needed time and space to grieve. They gave me their sympathy and told me that they were sorry for my loss. I didn’t feel sorry at all. I felt free.
I know now what I did was wrong, but I didn’t know about the Laws then. I couldn’t keep the Change under control. I thought I had no choice. Jason would never have accepted me, and I could never have brought myself to change him. Both he and I were in danger just by being together. He most certainly would have killed me without a second thought.
I met Karrianne three months after moving to the city, sitting on the grass in Te Aro Park. She looked to be around fourteen years old, but her appearance was deceptive. I sniffed and caught her unmistakable odour. I knew immediately what she really was; she was the same as me.
We exchanged brief pleasantries, a nod and a smile. She asked me how my evening was going and we made small talk for a while. I realised quickly she was not a child, not in the true sense. She had been once, but those days were well behind her. She had looked fourteen for over a hundred years.
She did not ask me where I had come from, or why I had moved to the city, but she invited me to a gathering in one of the outer suburbs the following week, and I agreed to swing by and say hello. I was glad to be asked. I liked my new home well enough, but an unpleasant situation with a tradie named Vinnie not long after I’d first moved in, had left me anxious about being on my own. It was better for me to get out when I could.
The address she’d given me led me to a tidy house with an immaculate lawn and white picket fence north of the city. The pretty exterior gave no clues as to what might lurk within. Much like Karrianne herself. This was where she lived, under the guise of being the offspring and sibling of those who looked much older than her, but she was in fact the eldest among them. She welcomed me with open arms and a wide smile, drew me close and kissed me on the cheek.
There were many like us in the house, much more than I was expecting, and I could feel my anxiety beginning to rise. A hard lump filled my throat and my jaw vibrated. I tried to calm myself, to stop the Change. Karrianne passed me a glass of red liquid, and I took a sip. Almost immediately I began to feel better and less tense. My features readjusted themselves, and the fine hairs that had risen up on the back of my arms and neck began to relax as I did.
The others smiled and welcomed me. A young male, tall and lanky with thick, black hair, patted the sofa next to him, inviting me to sit. He introduced himself as Allan, spoke quietly and articulately, and I soon became absorbed in conversation. I noticed he had filed his eye teeth into sharp points, showing his true nature even without the Change. I’d never seen such a thing before.
I hadn’t realised just how many of us were living in Wellington, and how open they were about themselves. It was a far cry from my previous experiences. Here our kind were much better understood. Allan told me that they lived by Laws created many years prior by the Elders, and they enjoyed the freedom that those rules provided. They were a basis for mutual understanding between our kind and the mortals who once sought to destroy us. The Laws could not be broken without dire consequences for both sides.
“It’s different for us outside of the city,” he said quietly. “We are not as well accepted. We can’t be as open about who we really are. The Laws are the same all over, but here they offer us a stronger barrier. A better chance to stay safe. I wouldn’t go back to my hometown for all the money in the world.”
I
spent the entire evening at the Karrianne’s place, only leaving when the sun was just beginning to edge its way above the horizon. I left with a heavy heart, not wanting to go back to my own house and be alone again. It was the first time since my Change that I had experienced such a strong bond with those just like myself. I had felt connected and accepted for who I was. The feeling was exhilarating.
We met at the house every weekend after that. Allan and his girlfriend — beautiful, blonde Lucinda — became my instant friends. Hamish and Pharvesh made me laugh like no-one had ever made me laugh before, quite often due to the bickering and banter they traded between themselves. Suzanne was quiet and reserved, she talked little but with great wisdom. Rhea was the joker, the one who played the fool and kept us all entertained.
Then there was Noah. It was he who I found myself falling very quickly and deeply in love with. He was absolutely nothing like Jason, or any man I’d ever met before. Kind and gentle, beautiful and serene. He made me laugh as much as he made me feel secure. With him I felt I could truly be myself.
I learned so much from him so fast, despite the fact that he was much younger than I. Like me, he had grown up outside of the city, but had come here and been Changed while visiting. He had seen no reason to return to his old life, but he did still keep in contact with his family in a way that surprised me. I had heard from my mother only once since my move, and I often wondered if ever she suspected the real reason for my departure.
