by Meg Kassel
“I don’t know.” And yet I have a very bad feeling that I do. My thoughts spin faster than I can manage, but one blots out all others: he’s here because of me.
Essie starts to rise from her seat. I place one hand on her shoulder and hold her down.
She makes a noise of surprise. “What are you doing, Dresden?”
“I’m sorry, I need to go.” I snatch my hand away on a wave of light-headedness. What am I doing? Speaking to her—touching her—puts her in danger. I may as well paint a target on her back. I turn and muscle through the crowd with Michael right behind me.
We stop behind a convenience store, near the trash bins. Michael paces furiously. “What the hell is a Strawman doing here, Dres?” He runs shaking hands through his hair. “Why now? I haven’t done anything. No one in my group has broken any rules.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I run my hands over my face, currently sporting a large nose and wrinkly brow. “Maybe the curses are changing and he’s here to—”
“What?” he snaps. “It’s too much to hope he’s here to end us. They only ever make things worse.”
True. Oh, so true. Beekeepers may draw up violent impulses in those already given to darkness, but Strawmen make people evil. Like, Norman Bates evil. And they have the unpleasant ability to tinker with our curses, never for the better.
“It’s the girl, isn’t it?”
I close my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
He curses viciously. “I only told you not to sting her, not to make her your girlfriend.”
Fury shivers under my skin, an emotion as forgotten as joy. “You don’t tell me to do anything, harbinger.” I say it quietly, coldly, shocked by the snarl in it. I pull in a deep, fortifying breath. “And that’s a disgusting suggestion, considering what I am. You—”
I don’t finish my thought. With a crackling snap and the scent of decaying flesh, the Strawman stands before us. All seven feet of him command our attention. He exudes a weariness that I relate to on a bone-deep level, but also a power and control that roots my feet to the ground.
Michael lets out a strangled gasp. I’ve encountered these creatures before, but Michael hasn’t. Strawmen are pure mystery, weighed down by secrets. Some say they are wraiths—the blighted shells of ancient sorcerers, and the very ones responsible for turning us into monsters in the first place. It would explain how they are so tightly connected to us and the curses which control us. I’m inclined to believe this is who they are, but I see no resemblance to my original torturers in their appearance.
I take in the black thread stitching shut his eyelids, lips. His skin is dry, cracked leather. The smell of decay and fresh-cut hay fills the air. The Strawman lifts a hand toward Michael and flicks it lightly in his direction.
The harbinger launches backward as if an invisible bomb detonated in front of him. He collapses with a cry of pain. Black smoke explodes from him, twisting around his straining body like vaporous chains. This is a forced transformation, and Michael fights it. Nevertheless, he hits the wall as a crow. Disoriented, flopping, the bird struggles with one wing bent at a bad angle. I take a step toward him, but he collects himself and awkwardly takes to the air. He looks stiff, but holds himself aloft, quickly disappearing behind the trees.
My mouth opens, and bees gush forth like blood from an artery. They form distressed knots between myself and the Strawman who, despite his sewn-shut eyes, is looking straight at me. There’s ice in my belly, creeping down my limbs. “Why did you do that to him?”
As if puzzled by the question, he cocks his head to the side. The movement carries the sound of dry, snapping straw, giving his kind their name. He doesn’t reply, even though I know he can. It’s said that a Strawman’s words, when they choose to impart them, are never straightforward. Like an oracle, they could be interpreted endless ways.
“What do you want?” I take a step back despite my leaden feet. “Why are you here?”
He raises that hand again, and my eyes go wide, but he only points at me.
“You’re here because of me?” I ask.
Yes, replies a voice that does not sound through the air, but only inside my head. It is old and touched with the accent of the old language. And no.
My heart no longer works quite like a human’s—none of my organs do—but it sets up a hard, fast beat. “Because of her?” He knows it’s Essie. I won’t soil her name by speaking it to him.
He nods once.
“Because I didn’t sting her?” I’m shouting now, beyond caring if anyone’s near and listening. “Because I chose to spare one innocent girl?”
Spare one to sacrifice many. You have an unusual sense of justice, beekeeper. Or perhaps you are operating under a different influence altogether. She isn’t afraid of you, is she?
I shake my head, aware that I’m showing my hand. “I target those who are already touched with evil.” My vision grays at the edges. “The bees are mistaken.”
He makes a rough noise, like sandpaper on wood, that I belatedly recognize as a laugh.
The bees are never wrong.
My belly clenches. It’s as I feared, then.
I am here to right a wrong. And to see that you do the same.
You have this one chance, beekeeper.
“A chance for what?”
He’s done with my questions. In a flash of light, the Strawman disappears, leaving only the pungent whiff of rot and a charred black circle on the pavement where he stood. The bees return quietly to my chest, and my gaze turns to Michael’s discarded pile of clothes. They’re blackened and smoldering slightly from his struggle against the Strawman’s transformation of him. I won’t be retrieving them this time, not that Michael would want them back. I’ll check on him later, but now, I need to get away from here. Someone could walk by. Someone could be watching.
I burst into bees and fly as far as I can bear. I fly over fields of corn and soybeans. I cross highways and rivers and parking lots that are crumbling, baked from the sun. I fly until I simply can’t any longer. Until going farther will get me in trouble with my bees. As it is, they are nervous. They’re behaving dangerously and strangely, holding themselves slightly separate from me in our collective swarm. It’s not good. I don’t need them rebelling on me now.
I crash to the ground in a dried-out creek bed and plummet into my human form. Dirt and rocks grind into my skin, but I don’t care. Can’t feel it anyway. Damage has to be considerable for me to feel pain. I’m just relieved to be alone and many miles from that blighted town.
Essie. The girl who thinks I’m pretty, even though I am a hideous creature whose real face is long since swallowed up by my victims. No, not my victims—the curse’s victims, but what’s the difference? People are dead because of me. So many thousands of people. It doesn’t matter that I never wanted to sting any of them.
I sit on the rocky creek bottom and drop my head on my knees.
Think, Dresden. Think.
The Strawman is here because of me—and not, according to his non-answer. The full motives of those beings can’t be known. This one has proved incapable of forthright talk. As it is, I am here to right a wrong. And to see that you do the same is miraculously straightforward for one of them. I wish he would have spelled out exactly what he wanted me to do, but there’s only one clear interpretation.
I’ve been a beekeeper for many hundreds of years, following harbingers for most of that. Not since the beginning, when I was still rebelling against what I had been turned into, have I hesitated to sting a human who called to my bees. Not until now. Not until Essie. But why? My fingers knot into my hair, pull. Something wells within me. Emotion.
She, and my reaction to her, are the reasons why the Strawman is here. I deviated. I refused the dictates of my curse, and since these creatures are so connected to the curses, they sense ripples in them. They do appear when someone is foolish enough to push against what they are.
This curse-weakening “talk” Michael referred to may have st
irred them, but I had a moment of…weakness, curiosity, something, and now a Strawman is in Essie’s town.
I expel a great breath, and hundreds of bees flow from my mouth. They fly in a leisurely figure eight a few feet above me. The bees serve me, as I serve them, but we both serve the magic that binds us, which rules us.
There’s only one thing I can do to end this—to send the Strawman away and prevent something more terrible than whatever terrible fate awaits this town.
I must right my wrong. I must be the monster I am and sting Essie.
7
Essie
terrible things
There is a crow sitting in the tree outside my window this morning when I wake up. I can see the dark shape of it through the curtain which billows in the breeze. The bird stands there like it’s waiting for something. I’m pretty sure it’s real.
I tug off the covers and crawl to the end of the bed, yank back the curtain. It flutters its wings but doesn’t fly off. Instead, it cocks its head and peers at me with curious, dark red eyes. Well, that’s not normal. I squint through the screen, but sure enough, they’re red.
Okay, so maybe it’s not real, but it’s too early for peppercorns.
“I don’t need this.” The crow just blinks at me with what I swear looks like amusement. A different day, I might have grabbed my sketchbook and drawn this bird. It’s a rare treat for a subject to sit so close and so nicely. The details are exquisite. “Go away,” I say. “Be someone else’s hallucination.”
The crow tips its head back and lets out a gravelly caw.
I really don’t need this. I turn away, pull the curtains closed. My bedroom darkens. I sit on the edge of my bed and scrape my fingernails on the sheet. I’m so weary of questioning everything I see, of fighting to appear average and ordinary enough to not disturb people.
My mind turns to Dresden. I lie back down on my bed and cross my hands over my chest like a corpse. Aunt Bel doesn’t understand why it’s such a relaxing pose. She thinks it’s morbid, but she should try it. It might relax her, too, and make her stop smoking cigarettes.
But even in my calming—morbid—pose, I can’t stop thinking of the boy with the faces. I think he is real. At least, part of him is real. That guy who he left the parade with looked as regular as can be, and I don’t think I made him up. He appeared freaked out by something. So did Dresden.
I didn’t see anything unusual. I sure felt something, though. Something I will never forget, because it’s a thing I have very little experience with: relief. When Dresden’s hand touched my shoulder, it was like a hand unclenched from my mind. My mind felt clear, free. I can’t explain or verify it as real. I don’t care if it was real. I would like to feel it again.
But those faces…they don’t make sense. But in a way, they make perfect sense. If ordinary people can’t see them, then the reason I can see them is because I’m so very not ordinary. Maybe he and I are not ordinary in a way that’s the same. But then there’s Grandma Edie’s warning about the “bee-man.” I can’t dismiss her warning. She’s not ordinary, either, and I have a strong feeling that she was completely lucid when she told me he was to be feared.
Still, I want to see him again. And I am afraid to see him again.
I sit up and roll bad-night’s-sleep stiffness from my shoulders. It’s a cooler morning. Comfortable, for the first time in weeks. I pull on capri leggings under my oversize sleep shirt and head downstairs for breakfast. In the doorway, I glance back. The crow is gone from the tree, but I catch the sound of a caw.
Aunt Bel sits at the kitchen table, frowning at the newspaper. I lean down and kiss her pink cheek. She leans into me, and my heart melts like wax.
I pull away and begin getting my breakfast. Cereal. Orange juice. My pills. “What are you frowning over, Auntie?” I ask her as I shake Raisin Bran into a bowl.
“Terrible things.” She taps one finger on the page she’s reading. “Truly, terrible things. I want you to make extra certain the doors are locked. Double check after your grandmother.”
“Why?” I pour some milk. “What’s going on?”
“There was a murder last night at the college campus.” She winces and bites her lip, and I know she’s regretting what she just told me. Worried about triggering an episode. Worried, worried, worried.
I shake pills from the dispenser marked S, for Sunday, into my palm and bring my breakfast to the table.
“Can I see?” I draw the newspaper over. She doesn’t object. The college murder is the big story, not because murders never happen in Concordia, Missouri, but because of the nature of the killing. I recoil in my seat as I read. No one saw a thing. No one heard a scream. No one had a clue that an unnamed twenty-year-old man was strangled with a rope then gutted in the campus apartments yesterday. While half the town was at the parade, a young man was being killed. It’s gruesome, even knowing the police have withheld most of the details.
I pass the paper back to my aunt, who lights a cigarette and pulls out the “Food” section.
My cereal is soggy. I eat it anyway, because there isn’t enough milk for a new bowl. I pick up each pill and send them down my throat on a wave of orange juice.
Grandma Edie marches into the kitchen. Her hair is slicked back into a severe bun. She wears a gold hoop in one ear and a fat crystal stud in the other. Her gaze slices to the newspaper, then to me.
“See?” she says. “I told you the bee-man was here to cause problems.”
Aunt Bel sighs. “Mom, there’s no bee-man.”
“I was speaking to the girl, there.” Grandma Edie nods to me, face glowing with righteousness. “She knows what I’m talking about.”
When Grandma Edie turns away, I give Aunt Bel a little shrug. It’s cowardly and dishonest, because I know exactly what my grandmother is talking about, but I’m not going to talk to Aunt Bel about Dresden. For more reasons than I can count.
I get up. “I’m going for a walk.”
Grandma Edie narrows her eyes but says nothing. I don’t meet her gaze. Somehow, I feel like I’m betraying her.
Aunt Bel’s coffee cup freezes between her lips. Then lowers. “No, you’re not. Did you not just read the news?”
“It’s Sunday morning. There’s a 5K race happening right now in the park, I’m seeing cars on the street, and the Briggses just walked by on their way to town. The world isn’t grinding to a halt because of that.” I point to the paper. “It’s a nice morning and I feel really good. I’d like to go for a walk before it gets hot. Please, let me go.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I bring my dishes to the sink. Rinse and stack them in the dishwasher. Aunt Bel watches me from the corner of her eye. She knows I wouldn’t do any of that if I were on the verge of an episode. I wouldn’t even think about it.
“You know, you have a few cousins at that college. Just saying.” She slurps her coffee, then lets out a gusty sigh. “Fine. I can’t keep you inside this house your whole life. Otherwise, I’m no better than your father, who wants you locked up in that Stanton House.” She waves a hand. “Go for a walk. But take your phone. And change into regular clothes first. The neighbors will start calling if they see you roaming the streets in a Hello Kitty nightgown.”
I chuckle, then seal my mouth shut. Oh, those stupid bubbles. Just once, I’d like to laugh and not see them floating out of my mouth. “Will do, Auntie. Thanks.”
I go upstairs to change into a long blue T-shirt and leave the leggings on. I gather my hair into a smooth ponytail and tuck it inside a blue baseball cap. I add running shoes and stick my phone in my waistband. The mirror reveals an ordinary-looking girl. Someone who looks like they could be in the 5K. Maybe I will jog a little.
Aunt Bel snags me on the way out. “Stay to the main streets where you’re visible—not the park,” she calls after me. “I don’t want you going anywhere isolated with a murderer out there.”
“Okay. I won’t be long.” The screen door bangs shut behind me. I start out at
a brisk, purposeful walk. I am totally going to the park, but I’ll stay out of the wooded, isolated parts.
I rub my hands together with a surge of anticipation. My eyes are looking, looking.
Looking for him.
But he is nowhere to be found. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to be found. It’s stupid to think he’d appear just because I want him to. He has better things to do than hang around with me. Hopefully, better things than stinging people with those bees of his. I sit on a bench and draw circles in the dust with my sneakers. I’m next to the running trail, so a few people jog or power-walk by, but no one notices me. Of course, not everyone would. It’s a big town, as Midwest ones go. We have a college and everything.
“Dresden,” I say to the dust circles. “I hope you’re okay. I’d like to talk to you, but I get it if you don’t want to talk to me. I just…” I’m better if I can say what I’m thinking. Holding back words makes them fester in my mind like pus-filled abscesses. Disgusting. But I surely look strange right now, talking to the ground. I’m not, though—strange, that is—because I’d hold back the words if there were people around right now, and there aren’t.
I’m completely alone. Alone, alone, alone.
8
Dresden
irrevocable choices
I have stung three people today.
Three people: An office supply delivery man. A transient. A businessman at the golf course with a gang of associates. Their energy was vile, like acid to the skin, the businessman being the worst. He was all name-brand veneer over a boiling mess of rage. For whatever reason—hard-wiring, biological instincts, who-knows-what—men exist closer to the edge of violence than women. Not always.
The woman in Walmart was a mess. But it’s the violence, and the fear that comes with it and after it, that I want—no, need. If it was merely a want, I wouldn’t sting anyone. I was not always like this. I was an eighteen-year-old man with a life once.
I’m sitting in a tree, about twenty feet up, Essie almost directly below me on a park bench, talking to her shoes. Once again, her mental energy hits me like effervescence to the skin. Bubbles carried on the wind, popping erratically. I wish she hadn’t been the one my bees had targeted after a long journey. If I hadn’t felt so desperate to release bees that day, they wouldn’t have noticed her. If I had walked a different route through this town, I would have found a better target. Not this gentle, kind young woman.
