Hive

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  The girl broke the silence. “Do we have to take him home?”

  “We’ve been over this already,” the mother said, testy.

  “I already don’t like him. He lives here with a bunch of fish. I’ll bet he smells,” the boy said.

  “That’s enough.”

  The father reentered the car, and silence fell. No one challenged his purpose as he hit the accelerator and drove smoothly on toward the village.

  * * *

  April saw the car enter the village streets from her perch on the roof. She’d fallen asleep up there, dozing in the sun with Mary checking on her worriedly every now and again. She wasn’t really sure what woke her. But there it was, a long sedan that almost looked like it belonged to an earlier era, like a sleek money car from the ’60s, purring into town and reeking of not belonging there. The fishing village didn’t care much what era it belonged to; it was a little world of its own. April liked that about it. But this car didn’t feel right.

  Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she watched it turn and disappear down the hill, motoring off to the east into one of the village’s poorer neighbourhoods.

  To Nick’s house.

  Where that insight came from she didn’t know. But April had eyes to see. When she knew things, she just knew them. It was a gift—part of what being Oneness meant to her.

  She cleared her throat to call out for Mary or Richard and realized they weren’t going to hear her from the roof. Gingerly, she picked herself up, keeping the blanket wrapped around her, and walked the flat ledge to the window where she eased herself through. “Mary?” she called. No answer met her ears.

  The house, large enough to house a large family comfortably, with four bedrooms upstairs and an extra one down, a big kitchen and a common area designed for meetings and time together, was mostly empty. The Oneness cell in the village was tiny. For years it had been just Mary and Richard, then April. Diane had never lived with them. Even now, she confessed her Oneness only grudgingly. Reese was the newcomer—the one who had brought Diane back into the fold. And Tyler was only newly One. He chose to stay with Chris in their little cottage up on the cliff, overlooking the bay and their history together. No one questioned that it was the right place for him to be.

  All of which was why, even though the cell had nearly doubled, the house was still so empty.

  “Mary?” No answer again. April poked through the rooms on the ground floor, looking for either of her housemates, but they were gone. Reese, she thought, was out with the boys.

  Vaguely guilty because she knew Mary had only stepped out for a few minutes—the cell leader had kept herself within calling distance of April at all times since bringing her home from the killing cave—April pulled a hoodie over her usual tank top and track pants and headed out the door. Nick’s neighbourhood was a relatively short walk—only about a mile. And it was a beautiful day. She could make it.

  What exactly she was planning to do when she got there, she had no idea. But something about that car had been . . . wrong.

  April smelled demons. Danged if she was going to let a little boy deal with them alone.

  She didn’t think to leave a note.

  Chapter 2

  Nick was in a bad mood. The dive into the harbour hadn’t really helped, which made him even more unhappy. Usually water, salt, sun could wash away life for at least a few minutes. Not today. Nothing could wash away the sounds of his parents fighting, the things they said to each other, the way his dad reeked. Nothing could wash away the fear he felt when he saw some of his father’s friends hanging around or the anger at his mother for not doing more to protect him.

  He’d had the crazy idea that he should talk to the three people on the dock who watched him swim. He’d encountered two of them before, helped them out. And they reminded him of April. Who, somehow, he knew he could trust.

  But he hadn’t. He’d ignored them.

  He scuffed his feet as they carried him home, like he was mad at them for going there. When he’d left home he had wanted to stay out all day. Planned to. Unfortunately, he got hungry. There wasn’t usually much to eat at home, but there was even less on the streets.

  He reached home and found a car sitting in his driveway. His steps slowed even more. Why was someone here? Today, of all days?

  Two kids were in the car. They glared at him. He wanted to glare back, to stake his claim to superiority—this was his house—but he couldn’t.

  Whoever had driven was inside the house.

  He took a tentative step forward just to break the freeze of fear that had come over him.

  A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  He looked up. A concerned, pretty face looked back down. She looked worn and sick, with big dark circles under her eyes and lines around her mouth that he didn’t think had been there before. It had been weeks since he’d seen her last.

  “Stay put for a minute,” April told him.

  She looked away from him, her hand still firmly on his shoulder, and took in the sight of the children in the backseat. She frowned.

  The little girl stuck out her tongue. April just frowned again, and Nick wondered exactly what she was seeing.

  They stood together in the driveway. The windows on the house were open, and through the ripped screen, Nick could hear his mother talking to someone. Dad was most likely out drinking. That was where he usually went after a morning like the morning this one had been—after a screaming fight he rarely stuck around. Maybe he would be gone for a few days, even. There was a man’s voice in the house now, talking to his mother low and calm. And a woman’s voice chiming in.

  April seemed to have joined Nick in his freeze. She just stood there with her hand on his shoulder, ignoring those kids and listening to the voices that couldn’t be made out properly.

  Then, “Hey,” she said, “come with me.”

  “What?”

  “Just come with me. We’ll get lunch or something. Come on.”

  She was keeping her voice unnaturally quiet, like she didn’t want the grown-ups inside to hear. Nick realized he didn’t think of April as a grown-up. She was a kid, like him, only one who could be trusted to have good ideas and help him keep out of his parents’ way.

  But it seemed a little insane to just leave. He was pretty sure the people inside the house had something to do with him. Otherwise, why was he so afraid? So it would be a good idea to stay here and find out what.

  The pressure on his shoulder turned into a pull. “Let’s go. Right now. What do you want, a hamburger?”

  “Fish and chips,” he said. The words just came out of his mouth.

  “Okay,” she said. “Fish and chips. Come on.”

  “They’ll see,” Nick said, not pointing at the kids in the car but meaning them.

  April understood. “It’s okay. Let’s just go. They won’t know where we’re going.”

  They turned on their heels, like one person, and headed away from the house, back up toward the heart of the village. Nick figured they were going to the pub. It was the best place to get fish and chips in the afternoon, and they would let him in because it wasn’t evening hours yet. He wondered if Dad was there. Not that he would notice Nick if he was.

  At first it seemed like that was where they were going. Then April took a sudden hard right and charged up the road toward the neighbourhood overlooking the slope. This wasn’t the way to the pub.

  “Hey,” Nick said, “I want fish and chips.” He didn’t, really . . . he just wanted some control of this situation.

  “You’ll get them,” April said. She sounded strained. “I just . . . I need to sit down first. Just come with me?”

  This, Nick knew, was stupid. April was technically a stranger, even though she sometimes spent time with him. He didn’t actually know anything about her. You weren’t supposed to “just go” with strangers anywhere, especially not to their homes. He only justified going to the pub with her because it wasn’t exactly like his home was so much safer. So he stopped
.

  The reality of the situation must have hit her too, because she stopped and crouched down to eye level with him. She brushed a lock of wispy blonde hair out of her eye. Nick was struck by the strange mix of frail and tough that was April. The blonde hair and the weary expression and the black rose tattoo on her shoulder, which he knew was under the hoodie because she usually just wore a tank. She was strange and very interesting, which was half the reason he’d let her become a sort of friend in the first place.

  The other half was that he just really needed a friend sometimes, and he didn’t have any other options.

  “Listen,” she said, “I know this isn’t really kosher. But I need you to come back to my house with me. I was going to take you to the pub, but it’s . . . I don’t think it’s safe right now. Nick, I promise I won’t hurt you. I promise I’m safe.”

  He looked her in the eyes and knew she was telling the truth. “I’m not allowed to go to strangers’ houses,” he said.

  Why did he even say that? It sounded stupid coming out of his mouth.

  But to his surprise, April nodded. “Okay. Okay, I get that.” She bit her lip. “There’s a boat on the harbour. A little skiff. Friends of mine own it. Will you go there for a little while? Just sit there and wait for me?”

  “I was down there before,” he told her. “Your friends were there.”

  “Good!” Her face lit up. “You can go hang out around them. Don’t get in the boat if you don’t want to. Just stay where they can see you. Can you do that?”

  He looked at her cock-eyed. “What are you going to do?”

  “Talk to your mother,” April said, squaring her shoulders like she had just said something very courageous. “I need you to come home with me, Nick, because I need to keep an eye on you. Something is going on. I think you’re in danger. So I’m going to talk to your mother and get her permission, so you’ll know it’s safe to come with me. Okay?”

  Nick considered it. The whole situation was cockeyed and he knew it. His mother, he knew from long experience, was not safe or good at keeping him safe. April, in his experience, was a great deal more trustworthy. And yet he knew there was something very right about April going to his mother for permission to keep him safe, about her asking to be known as officially okay.

  But when he thought about April going back to the house, with that car still in the driveway, he felt scared again.

  His voice came out sounding small. “I don’t want you to go back there right now.”

  He hadn’t forgotten the last time April tried to help him. He had no idea what had happened to her after the men knocked her out and dragged her away—she struck him now as something of a cat with nine lives—but he didn’t want it to happen again.

  With one question, they had switched roles, and Nick would do anything he could to keep her safe.

  “I’ll go home with you,” he said. “It will be okay. Mum won’t mind.”

  She won’t even notice, an inner voice told him.

  Unless those people in the car are looking for me, he answered back.

  Which they were. He just knew they were.

  But April had set her eyes back toward Nick’s house, and it was clear she wasn’t going to give up her new plan that easily.

  “No, this is right,” she said. She set her eyes back on Nick like she had just remembered him. “You should go—to the dock.”

  Memories of the thugs attacking April had turned him off that idea. “I don’t want to go down there.”

  “Then just go to my house. It really will be okay. I’ll tell you how to get there. Mary—I live with her—will take care of you. Tell her you want lunch. Fish and chips. I’ll come soon.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, his voice quavering. He wanted to sound manly but couldn’t.

  “I’m going to talk to your mother,” April said.

  Nick felt that a man ought to be able to set his own course in life, and that his day or his destiny shouldn’t rest on a conversation between two women, even if one of them had birthed him. But he was acutely conscious that he was not a man yet, and that April was braver and better than he was. Because whatever was back at his house, it terrified him more the farther away he got from it—like somehow the steps he’d put between them were clearing a fog and allowing him to see clearly a monster he had not imagined as nearly frightening enough. He grabbed her hand like a toddler and held it tightly.

  “Please don’t. Please don’t go.”

  She crouched again and regarded him gently, not without a little fear in her own eyes. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t know. Please don’t go.”

  But firmly, gently, like a mother herself though Nick was sure she did not have children, she pressed her hand on his shoulder and said, “Get on up to the house. It’s the one at the top of the slope there—with the grey shingled roof. The big house. You see it?” He nodded. “I’ll be coming as soon as I’ve talked to your mum. It’s going to be fine, Nick. There are some things I need to know.”

  He swallowed hard and released her hand when she withdrew.

  He didn’t know what else to do.

  * * *

  April slowed down just a fraction as she approached Nick’s house again. The car was still in the driveway but was clearly on its way out—a woman was sitting in the front passenger seat, and the kids were squirming impatiently in a way that indicated they expected to leave now. The driver’s seat was still empty.

  So he was still in the house.

  April cleared her throat and squared her shoulders and forced herself to pick up her pace all the way to the front door, like she was supposed to be there. The voices, a man and Nick’s mother, came through more clearly now.

  “We’ll be back this evening,” the man was saying.

  “I’m sorry about this,” the mother said, fretting. “He just takes off, and I don’t know where he goes. If—”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” the man said, in a voice so soothing it sent shivers down April’s spine. “We understand.”

  We. April knocked before the man could say another word.

  “Oh, who the—I am sorry about this.”

  “Not at all.”

  The door swung open. Nick’s mother stood there. She looked much like April had expected: like a young woman harried into old age too fast. Her hair was styled and her lipstick was too red, but her clothes were tatty and her eyes said life was hard, far too hard.

  She was sober. April wasn’t sure if she had expected that.

  “Hi,” April said. Not her most brilliant opening speech ever.

  “Can I help you?” The tone was not exactly friendly, yet there was—welcome?—in it. Or beseeching? She was relieved, April realized, relieved to not be talking to the man in the living room anymore.

  “Yes,” April said, trying to put words together even as her eyes strayed past the woman to the cluttered, dirty entranceway and past that to the living room where the man stood. Tall and impeccably dressed and impeccably coiffed. Imposing and commanding.

  And possessed.

  She was sure of it.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice gaining a little more force. “I want to talk to you about Nick.”

  “About—”

  “Nick, your son.”

  “I know my own son’s name.” The woman sounded resentful.

  “I know—I’m sorry.” April forced her eyes away from the man and his demonic aura and made herself focus on Nick’s mother. “I’m . . . I’m April.”

  She paused, and it took the woman a moment. “Shelley,” she finally said. “Look, I don’t know why you’re here, but . . .”

  “Please, don’t let me impose,” April interrupted. She stepped aside. The man had come out of the living room and was standing in the entranceway. “You were just leaving?” she said.

  “Yes,” he answered, looking at her with a slow, measured gaze.

  Yes, I am, her spirit said. I am what you think. I am O
neness. And I see you. You are not unknown or unhindered here. Take that message back to wherever you’ve come from.

  She hoped her posture, her eyes, conveyed some of that.

  The man elbowed past her—she made enough room for him to get by, but not enough room for him to feel entirely comfortable doing it—and said good-bye to Shelley.

  “We’ll be back,” he said.

  “Yes, I understand,” she told him. “I’m sorry, again.”

  “There’s no need.” The man’s eyes were fixed on April, and Shelley seemed to be growing antsy at the subverbal interaction that was clearly occurring on her doorstep. “He’s sure to be here one of these times. Soon.” Her tone betrayed guilt, and something worse—fear. From the man, an unmistakable aura of threat flowed.

  Shelley said something else, something April didn’t catch, and in a minute the car was purring out of the driveway back to wherever it had come. The children turned themselves around in the seat and glared at April the whole time it took for the car to pass out of sight.

  “Well,” April said. “May I come in?”

  With an expression somewhere between annoyed and relieved, Shelley stepped aside and invited April into the shabby living room. April pointedly ignored her surroundings—it was the sort of liquor-stained, hurt-driven place that would drag up way too many of her own memories if she focused on it. Instead, she looked Shelley in the eye.

  The woman dodged her gaze. She leaned back against the ratted couch and said, “What about Nick?”

  April realized that she didn’t actually know what she was going to say. In the pause while she tried to figure out an answer, Shelley charged on.

  “I do my best, I do—he’s getting so angry, but I don’t want him to ruin his life like us.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s my kid. I love him. ”

  April faltered forward, aware that she was treading on unexpectedly sacred ground.