by Heidi Lang
Only Caden saw them.
“And you didn’t warn me.”
This time Caden was sure he heard his brother. He slowly, slowly opened his eyes and turned his head to look, tensing. Nothing. Just empty air. He sagged back against the window, heart still beating way too fast. “I did warn you,” he whispered. “You just didn’t listen.”
“Hey, kid!” the bus driver barked, and Caden jumped. “You getting off here, or what?”
Caden glanced out the window. Everyone else was already off the bus. “Sorry,” he mumbled, standing and hurrying outside. He could hear a few kids laughing as he walked past them, but that didn’t matter.
Caden ducked into homeroom just as the final bell tolled.
“Cutting it close there, Mr. Price,” Mrs. Murphy said as he slipped into his usual seat near the front. He didn’t answer her. His head ached, the vein in his temple throbbing like it was trying to escape. He dropped his face into his hands and tried to focus.
“What a weirdo,” he heard Alyssa mutter.
He tried not to take it personally, especially since he actually felt a little bad for Alyssa. She was like an actor desperate for more lines, always pretending she knew the most sensitive information, that she was in on everything, when really she just wanted approval. Whose approval, no one really knew, and Caden doubted that Alyssa knew either. And meanwhile, her best friend was slowly drifting away from her.
“Oh, stop with all that empathetic nonsense. You hate her.” His brother ran ghostly fingers over Caden’s forehead, cool and soothing. “This has always been your problem. You are never honest, even with yourself.” The fingers dug into his temple, pressing against his pulsing vein, and he gasped and sat up.
The kids around him shifted their chairs slightly away, giving him strange looks.
“Leave your things,” Mrs. Murphy instructed. “We’ll be returning here before your next class.”
“We’ll be… what?” Caden asked, confused as everyone stood and filed out the door.
“We’re having an assembly,” Rae said, stopping by his desk. “Someone from Green On! is talking to us.”
“Weren’t you listening, ghoul boy?” Alyssa demanded. “Or were you sleeping?” She looped her arm through Vivienne’s and swept out the door.
Rae started after them, then paused. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Caden blinked, surprised and strangely touched. It had been a long time since anyone had asked him that, and even longer since they actually seemed to care about his answer, but he could tell Rae did. Her concern buzzed around her like tiny gnats. “I’m okay. Like your friend said, just sleeping.” He thought of the dream he’d had of her.
But Rae was already leaving, and the moment to tell her its warning was lost.
Caden stood slowly, his body aching almost like he had a fever. He looked around at the empty room. No Aiden. Maybe he had fallen asleep, and all of that was another dream.
“You’d better hurry,” Mrs. Murphy told him. Then she frowned. “Unless you need to see the nurse? You’re looking a little—”
“I’m fine,” Caden said. “But thanks.” He hurried into the hallway, following the crowd of seventh and eighth graders into the auditorium. Like the rest of the school, the auditorium wasn’t particularly big, but it was well taken care of. Green On! put a lot of money into the community and had paid for extensive renovations to Dana S. Middle School a few years ago. Probably the reason they were able to put on assemblies whenever they wanted.
Caden tried finding a seat near the back, but they were all taken, so he ended up sinking into a chair all the way up in the third row just as the lights dimmed. A few seconds later and the lights over the stage turned on, highlighting Ms. Lockett chatting with a well-dressed young man. Caden couldn’t hear them, but it was obvious Ms. Lockett approved of the visitor, which was highly unusual for her. Maybe it had something to do with his expensively tailored dark suit or his expensively styled dark hair. Ms. Lockett reached up to fix her own hair three times while talking to him, before turning to the audience.
She blinked as if surprised to see them all sitting there, watching her.
“Hello, everybody,” she said into the stage lectern’s microphone.
“Is it me, or is your mom’s voice higher-pitched than normal?” Vivienne whispered.
Caden glanced behind to see her sitting sandwiched between Rae and Alyssa.
“Shh!” Alyssa hissed, which only made Vivienne giggle.
“He is awfully handsome,” Rae added.
“That’s not funny,” Alyssa said.
“It’s a little funny,” Vivienne said.
“You are in for a wonderful treat,” Ms. Lockett continued, and Caden had to admit, her voice did sound a little higher and girlier. “Patrick here is a senior consultant at Green On!, and he’s here to talk to you about a wonderful opportunity with his company.” She beamed at him. “So let’s all bring our hands together for Patrick and Green On!, because it’s never too soon to think about the future.”
The clapping was half-hearted. Every kid there was tired of hearing that same old slogan. Most of them knew people working there. It was another way that Caden stood out: he was one of the few kids in Whispering Pines who didn’t have a single family member working for or with Green On!.
Patrick moved up to the lectern and smiled out at all of them. “Thank you for that… warm welcome.”
That got a chuckle.
“I’m guessing most of you know a thing or two about Green On!,” he continued. “Probably have heard way too much of it now from your moms and dads, neighbors and cousins, right?” Patrick unhooked the microphone from the lectern and walked to the front of the stage. “Which means you know that we believe the future should be left in the hands of the smartest, most capable minds. It’s why we employ the top engineers, scientists, doctors, and more from not just Whispering Pines, not just the United States, but the whole world.”
All of this was part of Green On!’s very common marketing spiel. Caden could feel everyone around him getting bored. Whispers started in the back of the room, giggles in another corner.
“What if I told you,” Patrick continued, not seeming to notice the distraction, “that this won’t be enough to save us?”
Sudden quiet filled the room.
“That’s right. All the smartest adults in the world might not be able to fix the earth’s problems. Which is why we have decided that it’s time to look at other avenues to advance humanity.” He paused, looking from face to face. Caden shrank down in his seat, not wanting to be noticed.
“Specifically, we are looking at you.” Patrick’s voice dropped practically to a whisper, his words only carrying because of the microphone in his hand. Caden could see kids leaning eagerly in their seats, trying to catch his every word. “We want to give kids—smart, talented kids with unusual gifts—a chance to work with us.” At that, Patrick looked right at Caden.
Caden froze, caught beneath that dark gaze like a butterfly on a pin. He didn’t generally feel for other people’s energy since their emotions wrapped themselves around him all day, every day. But curiosity made him reach out for Patrick’s. Instantly he knew he had made a grave mistake. Where emotions normally bounced around like sunbeams and raindrops, Caden felt himself being sucked into a cold, black pit with Patrick. There was nothing there, nothing inside Patrick but emptiness echoing on forever, so cold Caden couldn’t breathe. The room faded around the edges, spots flickering in his eyes, his lungs burning…
And then Patrick’s gaze shifted away, and Caden sagged against his seat, gasping. No one else seemed to notice.
“What does this mean for you?” Patrick asked. “It means opportunity. Over the next few weeks we’ll be selecting a few of you for our new program. Those chosen will team up with our scientists in our labs as part of an after-school internship and will be eligible for a chance at a full-ride scholarship to a university of their choice. Not only that, but these interns will
be working with us to help better the world. Because like Joan Lockett said, it is never too soon to think about the future.”
This time the applause was loud and enthusiastic. Caden couldn’t bring himself to join in, no matter how much it made him stand out.
There was something very wrong with Patrick. Something inhumanly wrong.
* * *
Caden wasn’t sure how he got through the rest of the day. He spent all his energy trying to sense Aiden and ignoring all the talk about Patrick and Green On!, so by the time he was on the bus headed home, he felt like an overused dishrag.
“Hey, Caden,” Rae said as she passed his seat.
Caden looked up at her, and for a second the bus disappeared, and he saw her instead the way she’d been in his dream: crouched on the stairs in the dark, terrified.
“Or not,” Rae said, frowning slightly.
Caden blinked, and the vision was gone. “W-wait,” he called, but it was too late; Rae had already slid into a seat in the back of the bus, next to Vivienne. Great, he thought. The one person who doesn’t seem to think you’re a psycho, and you go and ruin it. He tried not to care, but he couldn’t help it. Rae seemed nice.
And someone wanted to hurt her.
Caden didn’t want to think about his dream, because he wasn’t sure what to do about it. If he told Rae about it, she would probably freak out. It would be just like first grade all over again. But if he didn’t tell her, and something happened…
She’s fine, he told himself firmly. She didn’t need his help. Besides, what was he even supposed to say? “Hey, Rae, I had a dream about you last night. Don’t worry, not the creepy kind, but the kind where someone was stalking you in an old dark mansion… Never mind, I guess that is creepy.”
Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. He’d only had a handful of prophetic dreams, the last one being about the old science classroom’s pet rabbit, so he had no way of knowing how far into the future this one was predicting. Or even if it would actually happen. The future was weird like that, all twisted and looping. It was like a braid, all those different strands running side by side, heading in roughly the same direction.
His brother had been convinced the present was the same way. Just as he’d been sure he could somehow hop from one strand to another.
And he’d been right.
When the bus stopped, Caden made up his mind. He’d warn her once and then leave it alone. He waited until she got off first, then followed.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked as the bus pulled away.
“Uh, why?” Rae asked, obviously already uncomfortable. This was exactly why Caden didn’t talk to people.
“I just… I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” Rae said slowly. “That’s not ominous at all.” She started walking across the street, Caden trailing after her. A light breeze built slowly around them, moving the hot, muggy air and replacing it with something fresh. It tasted like future rain, and the trees around Rae’s house rustled in excitement, leaves lifting eagerly toward the sky.
“Yes?” Rae raised her eyebrows.
Caden forced himself to stop stalling and launched into a recounting of the dream. Immediately he knew it was a mistake; Rae’s whole face closed in on itself, and he could feel her suspicion stabbing out at him like thousands of tiny needles. But he kept going until he finished. By then they were at her front door, and she had her hand on the doorknob like she wanted to escape.
“Why would you tell me this?” she asked. “It’s super creepy.”
“I told you it was a creepy dream.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about the dream.” She gave him a pointed look.
Caden felt his cheeks flare hot. “I thought you should know. But you do whatever you want with it.” He walked away from her, his shoulders stiff. He never should have told her.
His brother was right. Better to ignore everyone, and only focus on himself—
He paused at her driveway. The afternoon didn’t feel right. The air no longer tasted like future rain, but something else. Almost rancid, a hint of that same sour-fear smell that had seeped out of the place his brother had opened.
Something was out here that did not belong.
He turned slowly, scanning the trees. Like all the other houses in this area, Rae’s house was built practically into the forest. The line between the edge of her yard and the start of the Watchful Woods had blurred beneath layers of fallen leaves and pine cones and dirt. Even the front yard had a few trees trailing around it, so it felt almost like they were surrounded.
“What are you doing?” Rae asked.
“Shh.”
“Don’t shh me in front of my own house! I—” She stopped abruptly.
“What?” Caden looked at her, then followed her frightened gaze to the woods.
Someone stood just at the edge, swaying gently like one of the trees. She looked familiar, short and slender with long, dark hair cascading around thin shoulders.
“What’s wrong with her?” Rae moved toward him, standing so close he could feel her shaking.
“I don’t know.”
The girl took a small step toward them, then another, before stopping again, still swaying, her face bent forward too far to see clearly.
“H-hello?” Caden called.
The figure shuddered but didn’t say anything.
“I’m calling for help.” Rae slid her backpack off one shoulder and rummaged inside, pulling out her phone. As if Rae’s movement was some kind of cue, the girl suddenly staggered toward them, moving fast, hands outstretched.
Rae gasped as the girl lunged right at her.
Caden dove between them, catching the girl by her skinny wrists and pulling her hands away from Rae’s face.
The girl twisted in his arms and tossed her head back, giving Caden a clear look at her face. Her gaunt, pale face, mouth open slightly, cheeks smeared with blood and dirt, and where her eyes should have been, nothing but two hollowed-out pits.
Fear rose like bile in his throat, and he couldn’t move, his brain screaming at him in horror.
And then, abruptly, it was like he was back in that room again, watching his brother laugh as a sickly yellow light pulsed around him. Behind him, the edges of the doorway hung in jagged shreds. Only it wasn’t a doorway at all. It was reality itself, as if his brother had somehow slashed a knife across the world, tearing it open and revealing something horrible underneath.
Silhouetted in the glow, terrible shapes moved and jerked and twisted.
Aiden didn’t see them. He was too busy laughing, his arms out wide, blood running down both hands, his chest bare. I told you I’d do it. He looked right at Caden, his eyes wide and triumphant. I told you!
Aiden! Watch out! Caden could see the things lurching closer, moving fast. Some of them had tentacles, or too many limbs, their bodies too thick or too thin. And one of them was a thing with teeth, so many teeth that its mouth took up its whole face, leaving no room for the eyes.
Aiden turned, but he was moving slowly, too slowly. The things were almost out. And Caden knew with cold, deadly certainty that if they escaped into his world, they would kill him, and his mom, and his dad. And maybe everyone.
Aiden dropped his arms, looking uncertain for the first time in his life. A ghostly tentacle slithered across his bare chest, tracing the lines of blood, slowly taking on more shape, more substance. Another tentacle joined the first, and then a misshapen hand reached out to run too-long fingers down the side of Aiden’s face. Suddenly the first tentacle dug itself into the cut in his arm, and drank.
Aiden screamed.
Tentacles seemed to come from all directions, all wrapping around Aiden, tearing at his skin, slurping at his blood. Other things moved closer, and as Aiden staggered back, he seemed to pull the awful light of that world with him, widening that gap. Giving them room to escape.
Caden wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. It was all a blur—his brother screaming, those tentacles tearing
at him, and then—
And then the feeling of his hands hitting Aiden’s back, shoving him forward. Shoving him into the rift. It was the only way Caden knew to seal it. But he remembered the feeling of movement past him as he’d pushed his brother in, the sense that something else was sliding out at the same time.…
9. RAE
Rae looked anxiously down the street, clutching her phone. She hoped the ambulance would be here soon. Caden was just sitting there. He was still holding on to the girl, but his eyes had rolled back in his head and he wasn’t responding. And the girl kept making these awful moaning sounds. Rae didn’t know what to do.
She hated that feeling.
“Caden,” she tried again. She was afraid to touch him, terrified that whatever had happened to him could somehow happen to her, but she screwed up her courage and gently shook his shoulder. “Caden, please.” Her voice broke at the end.
He looked up. His eyes stared right through her, as if she were some kind of ghost. Then he blinked, and his vision cleared. “Rae?”
Relief coursed through her. “Thank goodness,” she breathed. “For a second I thought…” She stopped, not sure what she was going to say. That she thought he’d been somehow magically affected? That was ridiculous. But as she gazed down at the girl still struggling weakly in his grip, it didn’t seem so silly. The girl’s mouth opened and closed like a zombie’s, her body shook with tiny tremors, and her eyes…
Panic clawed its way up Rae’s chest, and she didn’t want to look too closely. But if she wanted to find her dad someday, she had to be strong enough to deal with things like… like missing eyeballs. So she forced herself to crouch and really study the girl.
She started at her chin, small and dainty, the chapped lips above it, then the sharp nose, and finally, the hollows where the eyes should have been. They were perfectly smooth. No eyelids, no extra skin, no blood or scratches or anything. It was as if something had just scooped the eyes out and then polished the area left behind.
