by JD MITCHELL
I was in an accident.
Leigh hit a black animal.
Her hand probed a firm mattress under a thin sheet. It was scratchy and unfamiliar. A faint lemon scent attempted to mask the overwhelming smell of alcoholic disinfectant.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
The sound was almost unbearably loud. Now that she was aware of it, she couldn’t tune it out. To her left, someone spoke. She tried to concentrate on their words and not the loud machine. The whispers grew louder until she realized it was a conversation.
“It’s you,” an unfamiliar voice growled. “Ali is a coincidence.”
“It’s not me! The kelpie grabbed her first. It’s a miracle I was there,” a second voice argued. Ali recognized the baritone voice as Leigh’s.
“You can’t tell Ali anything else,” the first voice said. “She’s not one of us.”
“Excuse me.” Jessica’s no-nonsense tone cut into the conversation like an accusation. “What are you doing here?”
A chair scraped across the floor, followed by shuffling.
Ali fought the pain of the lights and looked. The white sheets of her hospital bed shifted into focus first. To her left Jessica’s slender figure stood in the doorway, her dark hair cascading past the shoulders of her navy pant suit, brown eyes stern.
The beige walls blurred as Ali’s eyes watered. She blinked a few times, forcing the tears away. Two individuals occupied the small corner. Leigh stood, holding out his hand for Jessica to shake. She didn’t.
Leigh shifted his weight as he withdrew his hand. “I’m Leigh Hart. I was driving when…”
Jessica cut him off with an impatient wave, pointing to the other person in the room. Ali recognized the second man but couldn’t place why. He appeared to be in his late twenties with short blonde hair and blue eyes.
“Specifically, what are you doing here?” Jessica directed her question to the man in the corner.
“Relax.” The blonde man stood, making his way to the door. He wore a blue flannel shirt over gray jeans and brown shoes. He wasn’t as tall as Leigh was, but he was close. “I’m only here to pick up Leigh.”
Jessica’s heart-shaped face contorted into a murderous glare, but she stepped aside to allow the man to exit into the hallway. Leigh rocked on his heels and scanned the room as if another exit might appear.
“I’m sorry to impose. I didn’t want to leave Ali alone,” Leigh said.
Jessica’s sharp gaze fell on Leigh.
He pursed his lips. “I’ll be off then.”
Leigh shuffled toward the doorway, hands in his pockets. “Will you tell Ali I’m sorry? A deer jumped into the road.”
“Thank you,” Jessica said as a dismissal.
Leigh disappeared and Jessica stared after him.
After a moment, she glanced Ali’s direction, her eyes widening. “You’re awake.” Jessica dropped her purse into a chair and approached the hospital bed. “Are you okay?”
Ali nodded, then winced. The throbbing in her head intensified. “You’re mad.”
Jessica sighed and pulled a chair near the bed. “I was worried.”
Tears rolled down Ali’s cheeks, the heat hot against her skin. Whether they stemmed from exhaustion or fear, she couldn’t say. An overwhelming weight settled on her chest.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Jessica’s eyes watered. A tear landed on her suit. Jessica must’ve been in court when she got the call. Ali wanted to ask if she interrupted a trial, but the effort wasn’t worth the question.
Guilt flourished, sending her stomach into knots. She needed to tell Jessica about the last few days but couldn’t formulate the words.
“Who’s the blonde?” Ali asked instead. Her cheeks suddenly felt like they were packed with cotton. She stretched her jaw, trying to figure out why.
Jessica’s face tightened. “Redmond Hart.”
The cogs fell into place. She’d only seen him a handful of times years ago. Redmond, or more commonly, ‘Red’ was Jessica’s high school boyfriend. The break-up had always been a mystery to Ali, but she remembered it crushed Jessica. A slew of profanities accompanied the mention of his name these days. ‘That a-hole’ was the designation she was most accustomed to hearing.
“They’re related?” Ali asked racking her brain for the familial connection. A useless exercise since her brain wouldn’t cooperate.
“Cousins,” Jessica said as she slumped into the hospital chair. Her features relaxed; dark circles now visible under heavy makeup. She’d been up late researching.
They sat in silence for a while. From the hallway, a woman crooned. The lyrics to I Will Survive were discernible before a calm voice came over the PA system paging a doctor to the nurse’s station.
At some point Jessica closed her eyes. Without her sister’s watchful eye, Ali touched her own face. A scrape cut across her nose and burned when she touched it. Her chin and cheeks were swollen. No wonder talking is a chore. The hospital must have her on serious pain medications.
With a sigh, Ali closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about the dark animal in the road, but her brain stubbornly forced her thoughts in that direction. A black blur–Leigh called it a pooka–darted in front of the car. Her eyes flew open. What in Dante’s Inferno is a pooka? As soon as Ali had access to Google, she was investigating. It seemed less likely that Leigh was crazy. Not with Red involved. He said, “She’s not one of us.”
Her mind drifted back to the car, and she replayed the incident. Prior to the accident, the trees had whizzed past, Leigh had asked her to keep quiet again, and then the blur raced into the road. Chilling blue eyes watched her as the airbag hit her in the face.
Blue eyes?
She reran the scene in her head. A shadow with vivid blue eyes stood near the road. He wasn’t a man, maybe a teenager? She couldn’t make out his face. No, no... That’s from the dream a few mornings ago. She was confusing herself.
Ali touched her face, running her fingers over the injuries. Between the numbness and the rough texture, it felt like someone else’s skin.
“Jessica?” Ali asked.
Jessica’s eyes popped open, and she blinked. “Sorry.”
Ali swallowed and forced the words out. “Do I look awful?”
Jessica sat upright, looking Ali over. She gave her a meek smile. “You’re swollen. The doctor told me you’re concussed with minor scrapes, but you’ll be fine in a few days.”
Great. Another concussion.
From previous experience, Ali knew the light sensitivity would get worse. This was her second concussion, the first occurred a few years prior. Trendy sunglasses were about to be her new normal.
“Can I skip school for a few weeks?” Ali wanted to give Jessica a toothy grin, but the movement hurt.
Jessica smirked. “Only the days covered by a doctor’s note. This isn’t a blank check.”
“Better than nothing,” Ali mumbled.
She should tell Jessica about the strange creatures, but she couldn’t summon the courage. Ali would eventually tell her, she just needed time to figure out how to phrase it.
For now, Ali shut her eyes intending to sleep. The lights had become too much, and she was exhausted. In the darkness of her thoughts, visions of a blue-eyed teenager lingered at the fringe of her consciousness. She tried to bring his face to focus, but struggled. The gray horse disappeared. Only the teenager in the shadows remained, fading whenever she looked closer.
Five
It turns out the doctor was sympathetic to Ali’s whimpering. She hammed it up during her examination, and her doctor wrote her a note through the following Friday. With the help of a few prescriptions, she caught up on sleep and spent her time marathon watching sci-fi shows. Even with the otherworldly content, her unsettling memories melted into the backdrop of daily life. By Wednesday, it felt like a bad dream. The balance of her uneventful existence restored. So, it was with mixed emotions when she opened her front door Friday afternoon to find Leigh
standing on the threshold.
“What kind of bad penny are you?” Ali asked. He was the last person she wanted to entertain.
His eyes fell to her attire, and he smirked.
She glanced down at her matching pajamas which were covered in unicorns and rainbows. Immediately she wished she’d been wearing anything else.
“You weren’t at school this week.”
Ali scowled and pointed to her face. The swelling subsided, but her nose still sported a scab where the air bag had punched her.
“Well, our project proposal is due Monday, purple face or no.” Leigh said forcing his way into her house.
She exhaled through her nose letting sarcasm drip from her words. “Sure, just barge in.”
Leigh marched into the living room and plopped onto the same couch as last time. “I didn’t think you’d invite me inside.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line and closed the door. “True.”
His presence forced her to deliberate the fantastical reality she’d actively ignored the past week. Questions bubbled to the surface of her mind, each perched on her lips threating to escape before she dismissed them in succession.
Instead, Ali focused on school. “I thought the project was about tracing our family trees. What’s the proposal for?”
Leigh unzipped his backpack and handed her a piece of paper. “I assume you didn’t read the last copy I gave you.”
He assumed correctly.
She grabbed the assignment and skimmed it. The project was for each of them to create their individual family trees, compare notes, pick one of their ancestors, and then write a ten-page paper on that ancestor.
“This is such a bull crap assignment,” Ali said tossing the paper onto the coffee table as she sat on the opposite couch.
Leigh raised an eyebrow at her.
Ali rolled her eyes. She could crank out a research paper on her own, which meant the exercise was pointless. Mr. Brown would tie this project back to some lesson about sharing an oral history or learning from others.
Leigh frowned. It was clear he didn’t share her sentiment.
“Okay fine. Pick one of your ancestors and I promise I’ll help you write the paper before it’s due,” Ali said.
“What about your tree?” Leigh asked.
She skipped past the part of why he’d care. Leigh struck her as one of those straight-A control freaks when it came to projects. “I wasn’t kidding in class. It’s Jessica and me. My mom passed away. There’s no one else.”
“Have you tried looking?” Leigh asked.
Ali crossed her arms. She’d looked for her father once and didn’t intend to ever again. Jessica barely had custody of her, and her deadbeat father was the only person on the planet who could put their arrangement in jeopardy. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.
“My mom never spoke about family,” Ali said instead.
“Yeah, but your sister is like ten years older than you, she must remember your dad.”
Confiding in Leigh wasn’t happening. He crossed a line into territory marked personal. She was saying this once, then the topic was closed. “We don’t have the same dad. Jessica’s died when she was young, and mine took off before I was born. End of story.”
He frowned. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Ali exhaled. His presence stressed her out. Whenever Leigh showed up, her day took a wrong turn. She imagined her expression looked bitchy, and she tried to soften her tone.
“It’s just a fact.”
Leigh nodded and fiddled with the strap on his backpack.
Here we go, the real reason he came.
With an exasperated sigh, Leigh slouched into the couch. It was odd seeing him try to curl up on himself. His stature made it impossible for him to resemble anything other than a long stick.
“I’m trying to understand why you saw the kelpie.” Leigh finally said.
Ali scrunched her nose. She should forget about last week. Leigh even told her to forget. She’d devoted the last few days to moving on. Sleep was no longer a stranger, and she’d seen nothing bizarre since the car accident.
However, part of her knew she’d always wonder about the pooka and kelpie. Questions found their way back to her lips, tumbling forth before she gave it much thought.
“What’d you hit with your car? I saw a black creature. It wasn’t a deer.”
Leigh’s shoulders stiffened. “You saw the pooka?”
Ali nodded. To be technical, she saw a blur, but if Leigh wanted to spill his guts, she’d let him.
“What’s a pooka?”
His eyes hardened. “It’s another spirit, like the kelpie.”
“Spirit?” Ali asked, hoping he wasn’t about to launch into a weird cult like story. She never researched the kelpie or the pooka when she got home. The first few days she couldn’t watch television without wanting to vomit. Afterwards, she promised herself to end this nonsense.
“Since you prefer a less fantastical term, it’s a creature,” Leigh said. “Like the kelpie, they are violent, and can take the shape of a horse. Unlike the kelpie, they don’t eat you. Pookas play pranks, or cause harm in other ways.”
Ali mulled this information over. She didn’t believe in otherworldly spirits, but she’d also seen odd creatures twice. A movement to her right caught her eye. Ali thought she saw a shadow at the window, but her eyes had been playing tricks on her since the accident. She looked back at Leigh, deciding to humor him.
“Do these creatures follow you around or something?” Ali asked. His presence seemed to coincide with each appearance.
Leigh shook his head. “I think they’re following you.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”
Leigh shrugged. “You attracted two spirits in three days. You tell me.”
The tone in his voice made her feel at fault, and she couldn’t help but take offence.
“How do you know it’s not you?” Ali balked. “They only show up when you’re around.”
“I know how to conceal myself from creatures.”
The comment sounded absurd. How could Ali hide from a creature she didn’t know existed?
A knock came from the front door.
Leigh stiffened, his eyes darting towards the sound. “Expecting someone?”
She stood and sauntered into the foyer. “Jessica’s probably locked out again.”
Behind her, Leigh stood. She smiled inwardly, remembering his encounter with Jessica at the hospital. Her sister possessed an ability to put people on edge.
Opening the door, she did a double take at the man standing there. He was tall, with dark wavy hair, tanned skin, and deep green eyes. In a word: striking.
“Can I help you?” Ali asked. Heaven help me if Jessica is dating a sexy new man.
The stranger leaned against the door frame, his lips curling into a deliciously devious smile. “Ali?”
“Yes,” she took a step back, her eyes on his kissable lips.
Washboard abs were visible under his tight t-shirt and she fought the urge to stare. This guy must be dating Jessica. Personal rule, she needed to keep a sense of decorum with men Jessica dated.
“May I come in?” His eyes projected a harmless warmth.
The word ‘no’ lingered on her tongue, but she was having a hard time focusing on anything but him. Before she realized what she was doing, she allowed him to enter, drinking in the clean scent of his cologne.
“Are you looking for Jessica?” Ali asked.
The handsome stranger eyed her like candy, sending shivers down her spine and conjuring lustful thoughts. “I’m here to see you.”
While that was an appealing answer, trepidation fought its way into the sensible part of her brain. The situation didn’t feel right, but she desperately wanted to please him by doing anything he asked. Preferably in a way that would require more than a PG-13 rating.
Get a grip on your libido, you’re embarrassing yourself.
A realization
struck her. This was exactly what happened with the kelpie before it tried to drown her.
Uncertain, she stepped back and glanced at Leigh who stalked into the foyer looking predatory.
Ali faced the stranger again, the sight of him stirring lustful fantasies. However, his eyes narrowed at the sight of Leigh.
Before Ali had a handle on the situation, Leigh gripped her arm and yanked her toward him. She yelped as pain shot up her bicep into her shoulder.
“Leigh, what the heck?” Ali protested.
Puffing his chest, Leigh pushed her behind him, standing between Ali and the stranger. “Don’t let it touch you.”
Ali attempted to walk around Leigh, but he forced her behind him again. She balled her fists. “Seriously, get out of my way!”
The stranger’s tone was cruel and taunting. “Yes Leigh, get out of her way.”
An alarm bell sounded in Ali’s head. The absurdity of this situation registered like a slap to the face. She let a strange man into her house.
Apprehensive, Ali allowed Leigh to act as a barricade.
“You’ll want to leave,” Leigh warned as he shifted his weight, blocking the stranger from her view. Ali attempted to peer past Leigh, but white light, like a camera flash, filled the foyer. She shielded her eyes.
A hiss slid from the stranger’s mouth as he spoke. “Tuatha de Danann.”
The stranger left, the door shutting behind him.
Leigh whirled to face her, his eyes wild. “We need to go.”
A protest danced on her tongue, but Leigh shoved her into the hallway leading toward the bedrooms. “Change out of your pajamas.”
“Whoa, wait a moment.” Ali spun on her heels as confusion kicked her shameless impulses to the curb. “What just happened?”
Leigh’s eyes darkened. Ali thought she detected an underlying note of panic in his voice. “That thing will come back.”
An image of the handsome stranger flashed in her mind, his deep green eyes intense. “What’s wrong with him?”
“That’s not a man. It’s a gancanagh.” Leigh said. He gestured down the hallway. “Which room is yours? We need to hurry.”
