by Shelly Crane
We walked out to the commons room and it hit me that we should bring Marissa. She’d been living out there, in the open, probably knew this area better than anyone. We could take her and leave Phillip. Oh, but she was a Special. Too bad.
I saw her talking to Phillip, he had cornered her against the wall. She told him to basically get lost and pushed his hand. He did it. He walked away just like that. I wondered what she said to him. That girl has some skills that I apparently don’t.
Everyone, even Calvin, who’d been scarce lately, came to see us off. I missed his hugs. We headed up the stairs and Marissa ran over to me, touching my elbow before speaking.
“Be safe. Look beyond what you see. Things are not what they seem,” she said and I nodded almost robotically.
At the time her advice sounded just as that, strange advice from a strange girl, but it lingered in my mind and I couldn’t be rid of a nagging sense of purpose, something I was supposed to do. Like I forgot to pay a bill or turn off the coffee pot or something.
“Shotgun!” Phillip called and Merrick and Jeff both stopped.
“What? Where?” Jeff asked anxiously.
“What?” Phillip looked back at them and then smothered a laugh in his fist. “Nah, man. There’s not a real shotgun. You call ‘shotgun’ when you want to sit in the front passenger seat,” Phillip explained.
“Why?” Jeff continued to look completely puzzled. “Why not just call ‘front passenger seat’ instead?”
“Well, back in the old wagon days, they used to have a driver and then a person who held a shotgun beside him in case they were about to get robbed...” He stopped at their blank expressions. “Never mind. I call front passenger seat,” he said laughing and rolling his eyes.
I tried to stifle a giggle, unsuccessfully and Jeff glared at me. He hated it when he didn’t understand something us mere humans knew and not him. Merrick on the other hand was pretty used to it and sent me playful scowl before winking and smiling.
I drove again with Phillip up front while Merrick and Jeff sat in the back so they could concentrate, and also to be out of line of sight.
I started the van and backed up. As we got going down the road, Phillip’s job was to keep an eye out for anything strange. My job was to make sure to follow all speeding laws and keep driving. As we drove, full of coffee and Mrs. Trudy’s fried eggs, I felt something in my stomach still.
The nagging.
I looked around, almost instinctively, looking for something but having no idea what. It wasn’t the food in my stomach, it was the purpose. I pushed it down, taming it. I wasn’t sure what this was but I was going to sit with my mouth shut.
I didn’t want Merrick to regret bringing me after I pitched such a fit to come. Calm down, Sherry. Focus and drive.
We drove for a bit longer. I kept looking back at Merrick. He looked like he was sleeping almost but I saw him drumming his thumb on his pant leg. He was just peaceful.
Jeff looked that way too. He had said before how peaceful their world was, how peaceful they were with each other. It made sense that trying to communicate with other Keepers would be a peaceful thing for them as well.
Just as I reached my turn around point I saw a little hill off to the side of a bunch of billboards. This part of the state looked a bit like an open grassy plain. A prairie. Nothing like Chicago. Again my dads city girl remarks were playing in my head, but then something else.
Something not mine.
A strangeness overcame me, a foggy stress filled feeling. I was not myself and the nagging as no longer going to accept me controlling it and pushing it down and away. It was no longer just uncomfortable, it was overtaking me.
It bellowed to the surface. I felt like I was drowning in fire, the hot warmth too much to handle. It was on my skin, in my throat and nose, my stomach. My stomach worst of all. I gasped and then something else that words couldn’t describe took my body and senses over completely.
I screamed. It just came out, I didn’t will it, I couldn’t stop it. My muscles bunched and rebelled and twitched.
There was a pain in my stomach past the burning. It was a twisting and turning in my gut. I couldn’t breath. I struggled to pull the van over and press the break but there was nothing but the pain.
Phillip reached over, lifting his leg to press the brake and grabbed the wheel just in time before we ran into the ditch. I hear them mumbling, I hear them yelling. Only muffles and noise to me. My eyes were open but I could only see what my mind willed me to see.
If forced me to look, it forced me out the van, banging on the door wildly and scrambling for the handle. I felt a hand grab for my arm but I pulled away. I tripped and stumbled, scraping my palms in the dirt and dirtying my pant legs. I felt more hands on me but I yanked free. I needed to focus but I couldn’t.
I fell to my knees in the dirt and prickly dead brown and yellow grass. I laid down in a ball to make it stop, fetal position, but it willed me to roll over and sit up straight, facing away from the street.
They were around me, I could feel them but couldn’t respond to their worried touches and voices. Nothing mattered but the pain and the purpose. I tried to fight it and force it down once more with all I had but it accelerated and fed it and I doubled over screaming. My face felt the scratchy grass under me. My stomach twisted and muscles pulled painfully.
No more.
I gave in.
I’d do whatever it wanted if it would just end it!
It willed me to sit up, relax my muscles and pay attention, to focus, to give it complete control. It took over, showing me the hill, and I looked at it- No I saw it, really saw it, beyond it.
I had a weird sense of Déjà vu.
It looked and felt familiar though I had no idea why. It looked out of place, the hill, bushes grown up around it. There was greener grass growing on top of it and it was awfully round and precise to be a natural occurrence. The pain lessened, loosening it’s grip.
A willow tree by the back of the hill caught the edge of my vision.
I hadn’t seen a willow tree in years, not since my birthday. My mind involuntarily started to float to a fleeting flash of that day and then the pain jabbed me again, forcing me to scream again until I refocused.
The billboards were out of place as well. No one stacks bill boards that close together like that, and way out here, in the middle of nowhere. The grass was awfully green on top of the hill, brown and yellow everywhere else.
Look, it willed me. Commanded me. It yelled it to my brain with no words.
I saw it!
The child playing under the canopy. It was not a hill at all! It was a camouflage canopy! The child’s small hidden dark silhouette would never have been seen in the dusk light had I not stopped and stared insistently at it.
One last thing it willed of me.
I raised my shaking finger to point, a hand tried to grab it and I yanked it back in frustration. I pointed again, stabbing with more emphasis and then I could see. My own eyes could see and I could hear.
I gasped a breath of relief. My rapid breathing was the loudest thing as there is no other noise.
The pain was completely gone, not even a shadow of it. Merrick held me in his lap in the dirt and grass, his arms around me, holding me tight as if I were to flee.
They are looking where my finger was still pointing and they saw it too. Merrick looked back at me, shocked to see I was back, that my eyes were clear and it was me. Sherry.
“Sherry! What the hell happened?!”
He cursed. He cursed for me. He never curses.
He hugged me to him so tight with more protection than relief. I wished there was some way I could show them instead of tell them what had just happened. Would they even believe me?
No one saw the Lighter but me last time and now this crazy stunt but the boy was there. Still there playing, unaware of our presence.
Merrick placed a finger under my chin to make me focus on him. He looked at anxious. I steadied myself and
tried to explain with as few words as possible, the least crazy that I knew how.
“I don’t know. I was fine.” I looked at the boy but Merrick pulled my face back around to look at him again. “And then I got this horrible pain in my stomach and... something ...made me look, there. I couldn’t hear or see. I couldn’t respond to anything but what it wanted me to do. The pain...I don’t know what...how to explain it,” I said hearing the tears in my voice.
I looked up to three faces. Phillip’s utter disbelief. Jeff’s anger and revelation. Merrick’s urgent concern and revelation.
“What? How is this even possible?” Jeff yelled jumping to his feet and pacing, angrily.
“What is it? What was that?” I asked, begging if they knew something to tell me.
“A Muse? Who is it?” Jeff yelled but was talking to Merrick. “It could be anyone. It could be Phillip for all we know!”
Phillip looked aghast as Jeff continued on, not even looking in Phillips direction.
“Jeff, please! If you know something, tell me!” I couldn’t take it anymore, so I yelled.
It was very unlike me and it startled them both back into Keeper mode.
“A Muse. They give you inspiration to do a task. To see something, do something, say something. They say the words and touch you, and you have no choice but to do it, or you endure excruciating pain until you do,” Jeff explained.
It dawned on me that I knew who the Muse was.
“Marissa. She told me to...look beyond what I see, and then she touched my arm before we left.”
Phillip jumped forward as he yelled, pointing his finger.
“I knew it! I knew I wasn’t crazy! She kept telling me to leave, go to the stairs, go sit it the kitchen, and then when she touched me, if I didn’t leave, my head would hurt so bad. I thought I was going nuts.”
“Marissa. Great. Now what?” Jeff asked no one.
“Well, let’s just hold on a minute. Why did she lead us here? The kid is there. It might be a hideout. It looks that way to me,” Phillip told Jeff, who was still fuming.
Merrick cut in before Jeff could tear Phillips head off.
“Muses supposedly don’t take sides. They help whoever they want to help, whenever they want, whatever entertains them. We haven’t seen them in a long time either. I guess everyone’s coming out of the woodworks. Jeff’s worried because we don’t know if she’s helping us or hurting us right now. Once she gives you a task, you have to do it. Muses are very dangerous if you can’t trust them,” Merrick explained.
“Well. I’ll go check it out,” Phillip said. “See what’s up with this place.”
“Maybe I should go,” I chimed.
I got a solid angry chorus of three distinct ‘No’s.
“I think you’ve been through enough. I’ve had a Muse’s mojo on me. I know what it feels like, though from the looks of you just now, I only got taste of it,” Phillip said wincing.
“He’s right. You’re done. Let’s go to the van and wait.” Merrick pulled me to my feet as he spoke, and I felt woozy.
No pain but definite drunkenness and weakness.
“I just meant that they wouldn’t hurt me before I could-” I tried, but I could barely walk straight let alone talk.
“We know what you meant, and you’re done. Let’s go. Phillip, you ok for this?” Merrick asked but was already walking me to the van.
“Yeah. I’ll wave if it’s an all clear to head in that way.”
Jeff, Merrick and I went back to the van. Merrick helped me into the middle seat and climbed in next to me, pulling me back onto his lap.
“You are all about trouble aren’t you,” Merrick whispered once we were settled. He tried to laugh but couldn’t fake it.
“I’m sorry,” I said weakly.
“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault. You’re just...a magnet for it, apparently. I’ll just have to keep an eye on you more closely from now on. Two in fact.”
“Four,” Jeff chimed in from the back, smiling my way.
“Why do I feel so drained?” I asked and noticed how my voice seemed to drag.
“Well...if you don’t fight it, the Muses wrath, then it doesn’t hurt at all. But you didn’t know so, you were fighting it, I can see it clearly now. I should have realized what was happening. She should have warned you, so you knew what to look for. When you fight it, it takes a lot out of you.”
“You’ll be ok, just not as strong as usual for a couple days,” Jeff finished the analysis for Merrick.
He did that a lot lately. They made a good team.
“So, I thought you said you told me everything already,” I asked jokingly.
“Honey, I can’t tell you everything. It would take an eternity. I wouldn’t even know what things to tell you and what not to, to be useful. There’s a lot you don’t know about.”
Hmm, honey. How could I think about things like that at a time like this? A quick glance at Jeff and he was still watching out the window for Phillip.
“So you think everyone in the bunker is ok with her there?” I asked, as Danny was in my mind.
“Muse’s don’t have an agenda...usually. They just entertain themselves. I’m sure they’re fine.”
Merrick pulled my head to his chest, rubbing my upper arm with his hand, warming me. He could always tell when I was cold.
“Why don’t you ever get cold?” I asked, feeling my speech start to slur even more.
“Because, this body doesn’t work like it use to. I won’t ever get cold or hot,” Merrick answered.
“But you feel warm to me.”
“Yes. But I don’t feel it.”
“Do you feel me?”
“Yeah. I feel it if your skin is cold or hot, usually cold,” he chuckled.
“What about weather or showers? How can you feel the water and not feel the temperature?”
“I feel the temperature on my skin, it just doesn’t bother me. My body doesn’t respond to my physical temperature only the temperature of what I can touch.” He laughed. “What’s with the twenty questions?”
“Just curious.”
“Well. Anything else?” he said lightly.
“Yeah. Why are they called Muses? I thought Muses were there to give inspiration.”
“They are inspiration. Supposed to be. Made to be. They can see the future too, in visions and flashes. Not very predictable but very useful. If more than one Muse is together, a human’s brain nerves would fire rapidly from all the motivation with ideas. In the old days, the Muses could make or break a battle. It was when they started playing with their powers to their own uses when they became more nuisance than inspiration.”
“Huh.”
After a minute of sitting and him warming me, Merrick started again, more quietly, in my ear.
“You gotta stop scaring me like that. This heart won’t make it long with you to worry about.” He put my hand over his heart, the body’s heart and I could feel it thump against my fingers.
He was making a joke but his face was serious.
“Aren’t you glad I came now?” I said, raising my eyebrows in jest and even they were tired.
“Yes. I am. If she had done this while we were gone...” He grunted. “You were right, you’re just safer with me,” Merrick said sounding angry again.
I hated that he felt like this. I hated that he worried so much but, looking back at the amount of trouble I’d gotten myself into, I guess I needed his worry.
“There he is!” Jeff yelled. “There’s Phillip, and he’s waving.”
I was sorely regretting the tank top I had worn, thinking I was going to be in a warm van all day, instead I was freezing and tired. So very tired.
I walked with Merrick’s help to the entrance where Phillip stood. No one, including me, was comfortable leaving me in the van to wait and it was already getting much darker.
“You ok? You don’t look so good,” Phillip asked me.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled.
“It’s th
e Muse. Where are they?” Merrick explained and asked, swiftly looking around.
“The basement door is under here. Come on.”
When we entered the camouflage dome tent on the back side, there was a man inside, waiting for us. Once again, Jeff embraced him. I knew right away this was their Keeper.
He shook Merrick’s hand sensing I needed him for support and muttered the name Patrick. I must have looked pretty bad from his expression.
After introductions he took us down into their bunker, really an old very small basement, that had been covered over from a torn down house. The only sign of that was a still standing old brick chimney off the side.
There were five others waiting to meet us.
The first Keepers name was Ann, an older lady with salt and pepper hair. The second one from upstairs was Patrick. He was older too and had a white beard and mustache. The Specials were Katie, an extremely pregnant and pretty thirty something with brown hair and Laura, exactly the same but not pregnant and her hair was short instead, twin sisters. Their husbands were there as well, Paul, glasses and comb over, total banker looking and Eli, a cute athletic looking Jamaican, I could tell from his very distinct accent as he said hello to us. Eli and Laura had a son, Franklin, who was about twelve and was an in between skin shade of the two parents that would have the girls swooning one day, and the most vivid green eyes ever.
After a few incoherent sentences I thought I understood that Katie’s was an accidental pregnancy. I couldn’t imagine someone would bring a baby into this world as it was, on purpose.
There really was no point in trying to keep track of what Special belonged to what Keeper at this point. Merrick had said they were here for us all now.
The Muse had led us to the right place. I wondered what entertainment could she have gained from this. Even with the events of today, we found six people to add to our band of misfits. The day was not a waste, and I wouldn’t take it back, even if I could.
So unbelievably tired, Merrick took me to the small loveseat, the only sitting furniture in the very tiny place and laid me down. It smelled like lavender.
