The figure came for me, just a dark mask under a hood. It moved like an animal, lithe and deadly.
I cried. Not like this. Please, not like this. I wouldn’t get to say goodbye.
There was a white flash.
SEVEN
I woke screaming. It was cold. Three wooden slats formed the bench I lay on, supported by chains screwed into the wall. I frantically looked around. I was in a dank, dim room. A single yellow bulb lit obscene graffiti scratched into the concrete walls. The whole place smelled like sweat and urine.
I checked myself over, and nothing hurt too badly, aside from the burns on my face and back. There were wound dressings on my arms, and one on my face, but I had no memory of treatment. An awful headache pounded behind my eyes. My shirt was wet—covered in vomit. The smell made me want to puke again. Standing, I walked to the end of the room, but was unsteady on my feet, like the world was off balance. It was gross. I held myself up against the cold concrete wall.
On one side of the room was a wall of thick glass— reinforced panels separating my half of the space from the rest. It was locked with a triple-bolted door. I was trapped.
“Hey!” I yelled, wincing at the noise. This was one hell of a headache. Pressing my face up against the glass, I tried to see into the corridor beyond. It was lined with big, serious posters featuring warnings about the dangers of drink driving and other crimes typed in equally big and serious fonts. A tiny square cutout in the door was the only air supply into this room, and it allowed in the faint crackle of a two-way radio.
I was in the police station. Thank goodness. At least this place was safe, although it looked like I was in the drunk tank. I’d heard all about the ‘tank’ from a girl at school whose dad was in there all the time. It was the holding cell they put drunk people in until they sobered up.
But why the hell was I here?
“Hey!” I called again.
A guy in uniform appeared in the hallway. He was in his twenties, short, but cute. My face burned as he looked at me, studying the multi-coloured chunks dripping down the front of my top. He unlocked the door and threw me a clean shirt.
I caught it and held it up, away from me. Don’t do drugs! was written across the front. Probably left over from some promotional drive.
Without a word, the policeman turned around so I could change. I did, and without turning back around, he asked me to follow him to an interview room.
Mum was waiting for me there.
She stood and hugged me, and the previous night returned in all its horror. My knees buckled, and I sank toward the ground. Mum caught me and held me upright as I sobbed.
After a few minutes, when I began to settle, the officer cleared his throat and said, “We want a nurse to check you out. Just to make sure everything’s okay. The ambulance cleared you last night, but she’d like to ask you some questions just to make sure.”
“Can Mum come with me?” I was still in shock, and for the first time in my life, Mum was the only thing keeping me tethered.
“The nurse will come in here, and your mum can stay. I’ll give you some privacy.”
“What happened?” Mum asked as soon as the door closed behind him. “When they brought you in last night, they said you were screaming about fire and monsters and things. They did a blood alcohol test. Just how much did you drink?”
“Drink?” I repeated dumbly. “Nothing! I was out with Noah and—” I tried to find the words to explain. I couldn’t tell her what had happened to Noah; saying it would make it real. If I said nothing, there was still a chance it was a dream.
“Ari, you don’t have to lie to me. Your blood-alcohol reading was really high; they were surprised you were still conscious. They couldn’t control you. You kept thrashing around, grabbing equipment. They couldn’t even tie you down. With that much booze in your system, it was dangerous to use a sedative, so they brought you here and left you in the tank to simmer down. The nurse has been keeping an eye on you, just to be safe.”
“I wasn’t drinking,” I insisted. She was one to lecture me about that. With her track record, it was surprising she hadn’t ended up in the tank herself.
“The boy you were with—”
“Noah.” It hurt to even say his name.
“He was drinking too, and his truck ran off the road. Somehow you managed to crawl free, but the underside of the car was so hot, it started a grassfire and ... “
My eyes burned. She didn’t have to finish her sentence. I had seen him die.
But this story was wrong. All of this was wrong.
“There was no drinking, and we weren’t even driving. There were these people, somehow they started a fire, and Noah got hit with it, and—”
Mum slapped me across the face.
I froze.
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Ari, don’t you dare! A boy is dead, and you were with him. For all the cops know, it was your fault. There’s going to be an investigation. So stop lying!” This was the mother I knew.
My eyes watered. My cheek was throbbing. I wanted to speak but had no idea what to say. I was trapped.
The door opened. The nurse paused in the doorway a moment, frowning as she took in the scene. Her eyes settled on me, and her smile snapped back into place, all business again.
She ran a few quick checkups to make sure I was fine. Apparently, I had already been admitted to our tiny town medical centre and checked out, although I had no recollection of any of this. The nurse had seen me last night when I was out of control, and I felt a little betrayed when I realised she was the one who had recommended I be locked in the tank.
She asked me if it was okay if Mum left for a bit. I nodded. Mum looked suspicious but went into the hall. When the door closed, the nurse said, “Sweetie, it’s all right to admit you were drinking. The police did a test at the station, and I did my own at the med-centre to make sure you would be all right. Your reading was high. Very high. You were so wild, I couldn’t keep you in the med-centre. We don’t have the facilities to deal with how out of control you were. You’re not in trouble, but it’s going to help the investigation if you own up and tell the truth.”
I wanted to scream that none of it had happened. That Noah had died in front of me at the hands of a bunch of hooded demons. I went to say it, but the words caught in my throat. It sounded crazy. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe I had been drinking ... although I couldn’t remember that. It did sound like a teenage thing to do, and the tests wouldn’t lie …
Confused, I shrugged and looked away.
“Anyway, you’re all clear, aside from some residual alcohol in your system,” she went on, kind but serious. The cheer in her voice was definitely forced. “You got very lucky last night. If you have anything you’re concerned about, please give me a call at the clinic. And sweetie”—she took my hand—“I’m so very sorry about your friend.”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Thanks.”
With that, she was gone.
The police decided not to hold me—after all, I hadn’t been charged, and there was no evidence I had done anything wrong, except the drinking. Apparently the chief, even though Noah was his son, had put in a special word in my defense. They would be around again in a few days to ask me some follow-up questions, and they gave me the number of a grief counsellor to talk to when I was ready.
Mum drove me home in silence. Actually, we spent the rest of the day in silence. I couldn’t talk, and Mum didn’t want to anyway. I think she felt guilty for slapping me, not that it was the first time.
When I got home, I was still covered in dust and sweat, and the smell of bile lingered. Plus, I wanted to be alone. So I waited for the shower steam to warm up the bathroom; it was always freezing in there, even in summer. The dressings were okay to come off; my burns were only minor. I removed them as I waited.
Once the chill was out of the air, I undressed and stepped into the shower. The water was warm, and the burned skin on my arm and back stung bad. My tolerance f
or pain had grown recently, so I grit my teeth and stayed under the shower spray.
Instead of washing, I gave myself a once-over to make sure I was alright. This was the first time I’d seen myself properly since waking up in the cell. An irregular red blotch covered half my stomach, and I reached down and tried to rub it off, using my fingernails when my palms didn’t work. On impulse, I put my now red finger in my mouth, trying to determine whether the mark was dirt or maybe tomato sauce.
It was salty and metallic. Blood. Dried, caked on blood.
It couldn’t be mine. I wasn’t hurt badly enough to bleed that much, and there were no injuries on my front at all. The blood had to be Noah’s. It must have soaked through the shirt I was wearing when Noah fell on me.
If I’d had anything left in my stomach, it would have come back up.
I fell back against the cold tiled wall, sliding slowly down until I was on the floor, holding my legs tightly against my body as the red stain leached from me onto the crisp tiles. It swirled around and around until it disappeared down the black holes in the drain.
When it had disappeared, I yelled, and ranted, and cried. Eventually, Mum came in, worried. I was still naked under the shower head, but at this point, my whole school could have walked in and I wouldn’t have cared. I just scrubbed at my stomach, trying to wash off his blood.
When my own blood started to come through from my scratching, Mum grabbed my hands to stop me from doing more damage. She turned off the water and wrapped a towel around me. My head leaned into her arm, and I cried. For minutes, an hour, maybe longer. It felt like days.
Finally, my eyes dried, along with the rest of me. I felt a bit better, although whether I felt more alive or less was another question entirely. Maybe I was numb. I was definitely cold.
Mum helped me get dressed and walked me to my room. She sat with me until I fell asleep.
EIGHT
Days went by. Two weeks, I think. It was hard to tell. I ate, slept, ate, slept, and ate again. Grief makes people fat.
I still hadn’t reconciled the supposed car crash with what had actually happened, and my head was hurting, too. I had nearly died twice in as many weeks. Maybe something was wrong with my brain. On TV, people got knocked out all the time and never had long-term problems, except on soap operas. But this was real life. Once, my middle-aged neighbour Harry had fallen off a ladder trying to clean his gutters and landed on his head. The blow caused a haemorrhage that nearly killed him. I lay on my bed, contemplating the possible blood clot forming in my skull and was so engrossed in my thoughts I didn’t hear Skye come in at all.
“You promised.” Her voice made me jump.
Noah’s funeral was happening later that day, and Mum had taken the afternoon off to look after Skye for it, but that meant she had taken the morning shift so I was booked in to watch Skye until after lunch. A few days prior, Caitlyn had come over for a while to help out, but I was distant, like we were separate for the very first time. She couldn’t have understood about Noah if she’d wanted to, but she didn’t even ask me about him or what had happened. I guess she was either trying to protect my fragile state or just didn’t know how to talk about it. I couldn’t blame her either way. But I didn’t want to listen to her chatter, either. She rambled on about Chelsea and Taylor, our year’s newest couple and the talk of the quad at lunch. About how she had developed a serious crush on Eddie, her study partner for history. About Kelly, who snapped the other day when they’d been using the burners in science and threw one across the room. Everyone said the flame had reminded her of how her sister died.
Caitlyn also talked about how her conspiracy-obsessed mum thought the accident was a secret plot by the Greenies to take down the oil companies and wouldn’t stop calling the local radio station to voice her opinion on the morning show. And about the cafe starting to rebuild now the police tape was gone. About how unfair her dad was, taking away her phone even though she hadn’t been using it after midnight like he said and how now she couldn’t even call Eddie to ask him out. It was all so normal, and yet foreign. Trivial. It didn’t fit into my new reality, where hooded monsters killed my friends.
I didn’t tell her about the shadow man in the park, either. There was one moment, halfway between her cafe story and the phone saga, one moment where I nearly told her. I opened my mouth, breathed in, but the words got lodged somewhere in my chest. I was so close. The only thing that stopped me was where on earth to begin.
And so she talked on and on, and I smiled and I laughed and I railed against the evils of fathers who confiscate electronics. I was an outsider, watching my conversation, wondering if I could be genuine with anyone ever again. This was my new reality.
“Ari, you promised.”
Right. I had promised to take Skye to the park. I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the park near our place, the one where I’d seen the darkness. We were going instead to the Ettney Green, our sad, brown version of a town park about fifteen minutes away by bike. And I was meeting someone else there.
I dragged myself off the couch and threw on some decent shoes before rummaging around the shed for our bikes. We jumped on, and Skye called a race, shooting ahead of me and laughing at how slow I was to get started.
It was good to be out in the open, and I breathed deeply as we sped down one of the few hills in our town. For the first time, it all seemed so far away, like it had been someone else with Noah that night, despite his impending funeral. Right now, my brain was rejecting the memory, not wanting to acknowledge it had happened. Fine by me. Rounding the corner, I caught up with Skye, who gave me a competitive death stare and threw her tiny legs into even faster cartwheels, slamming the pedals around so fast her feet became a blur. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was barely breaking a sweat. She could win this one.
It was overcast but warm, the perfect day to be outside. I smiled. I couldn’t wait to see Josh again. It had been a while since we had seen each other. I’d been avoiding him since the police station, because I knew he would be concerned and ask me how I was, and I didn’t want to think about it. Still, he’d been texting me for days, and I felt bad about ignoring him. We were going to meet next to the little park at the centre of the Green. That way, I could keep an eye on Skye but still have a decent conversation.
I had no idea what I was going to say to Josh. I couldn’t tell him the truth about what had happened. I wanted to keep that to myself for now, at least until I knew what was really going on. Who would help me, anyway? The cops thought they had things all figured out, and I felt like I was going crazy. I wanted to be sure I was definitely not mad before I started spouting off about monsters. It was like that old proverb:
Better remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Staying quiet about this would be hard, though, because Josh knew me well. Sometimes better than I knew myself. Plus, he was persistent. Annoyingly so, when he knew I was upset. He was protective like that. Last year, he pestered me for nearly a week until I told him about the fight Caitlyn and I were having over some stupid thing or another. Having someone care that much was both irritating and strangely comforting.
We reached the Green, which was badly named, as a long summer had scorched the grass to a dead and prickly brown. The trees were somehow still lush, though, and dotted the park with cool shade. There was normally dappled light filtering through the leaves onto the playground, but the clouds made everything a gloomy grey. Skye dropped her bike, the bell tinkling from the impact as she leapt onto the swings.
I watched her for a moment, hard at work on her usual project—trying to swing high enough to flip completely around the top. That had caused some impressive injuries over the years, but she never gave up. Always a dreamer.
“Hey, you.” Arms wrapped around over my shoulders and held me tight for a moment, swinging me back and forth, before toppling me to the ground in a friendly scuffle. Smiling, Josh held his hand out to pull me back to my feet.
/> “I’m going to win that one of these days,” I joked as I punched him in the shoulder. He feigned injury.
“Yeah, you’re really—” He stopped. Looked. Tilted his head slightly to one side and just looked. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.”
“I’m sorry about Noah.”
“Me too,” I repeated.
“I guess you’ve heard the rumours.”
“What rumours?”
“That you guys were drinking and he rolled the truck”
I sighed. “Yeah, I heard.”
“It’s all over school.”
“Good to know,” I shot at him before rethinking my tone. “Sorry.”
“Is that really what happened?”
“Josh, I—”
“Because it just doesn’t sound like you. Did he force you to drink? Was he trying to do something to you?”
“No. Leave it. I don’t want to talk about it.” There was a menacing cloud in my voice I did nothing to hide.
“Check me out!” Skye called from her swing. “I’m nearly there!” The swing clunked, warning she was swinging higher than it was designed to withstand. I smiled and watched her, hair flicking back and forth as she grinned wildly. She was determined to make it this time.
“Did he do something to you?” Josh continued pressing. I shook my head. “What did he do to you? I knew you shouldn’t have gone with him. I knew it. He got himself killed, and he nearly killed you too, all ‘cause he wanted to get in your pants.”
I slapped him. Hard.
“Would you just drop it? Nothing happened!”
He’d been badmouthing Noah right to my face, ruining his memory, and I had to make him stop. I just wanted him to stop.
“You never know when to shut up, you know that?” I cried. “For once in your life, just mind your own business and try to think about someone other than yourself!” The last words were out of my mouth before I could catch them. I could see they stung worse than the slap. Josh was one of the most loving, selfless people I knew. The look in his eyes was devastating. I wanted desperately to rewind. “Josh, I’m s—”
The Fire Unseen Page 5
