by Dylan Peters
“I’m not dangerous,” I added.
Jim came out of his trance and looked back down at me. “Why were you muttering in your sleep?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just dreaming. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Bull!” Jim yelled, his anger returning.
“It was just a dream!” I yelled back at him.
Suddenly, a great boom echoed through the room, a sound that came from above. Then, a second boom came, followed by a scraping sound. Something was on the roof of Esteban’s.
“What—” But before I could ask a question, Jim was on top of me with his hand over my mouth. His other hand held a single finger up to his lips. His eyes were so wide.
Jim took his hand off of my mouth and stood up slowly. Then he tiptoed over to his sleeping bag, bent down, and picked up the short-handled shovel he had threatened me with earlier.
Another boom. I looked at the other faces in the room and I could plainly see they were all terrified. That’s when I heard the voices.
“Dreeee-eeam.”
“Dreeeam.”
“Jussst a dream.”
Three voices, all coming from the roof. Three voices like I had never heard in my life. They almost sounded human, but were too metallic and warbled around the edges, as if they were being accompanied by the chiming of tuning forks. I looked toward Anna with my eyes wide.
She silently mouthed the word mynahs.
My mind immediately went to the birds I had read about in schoolbooks, but then I remembered Anna had told me about the monsters that came out of the Nullwood at night. She had called them mynahs.
“Dreeeammm,” a voice came again.
“Juuust a dream.”
A big ruffling sound came from outside one of the windows. A table was propped against most of it, all except for the very top. Through that sliver of visible glass, moonlight showed enough for me to see something moving.
I thought back on what I could remember about mynah birds from school. What was it they could do again?
“It waaaas jussst a dream.”
All at once I remembered what mynah birds could do. They were known for being able to reproduce sounds they hear, even human speech. That must have been why Anna and the survivors called these things mynahs. These monsters had heard me and were mimicking my words.
Be quiet, Anna mouthed at me.
A louder ruffling sound came from outside the window, and then a long scraping against the glass that sent a chill down my back. This really was a nightmare, except it was real life. I couldn’t believe it. My heart was beating so fast I was getting light-headed. I looked over to Jim who was knelt down next to Kay, his eyes locked on the window and his shovel gripped tightly in his left hand. Kay was pressed up tight against him, but she was looking at Anna.
Do it, Kay was mouthing.
I looked over to Anna, confused at what Kay meant, and terrified beyond belief. Anna looked at me with doubt in her eyes and then sighed as if she had just made her mind up about something. Then she closed her eyes and looked as if she was concentrating hard.
I looked back and forth between Anna, Kay, and Jim. What was happening? What was Anna trying to do?
And then the window shattered.
Tables and chairs were thrown aside, and before me in the firelight stood the most horrible thing I had ever seen: a mynah, a monster from the Nullwood. It must have stood seven feet tall on two legs, even though it was hunched over. Its arms were open wide and large wings hung under its arms like a witch’s shroud made of mottled feathers. Its body was almost entirely covered in those feathers, everything except for its face, and its face was enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my life. Pale, slick skin was stretched like a drum over a long oval beak. The mynah had no eyes; its face was wormlike, but its beak opened and closed like a steel trap revealing a black tongue behind the ridges.
“Dreeeam,” it said again hauntingly.
The mynah took one large step forward, the wooden floor creaking under its weight, and then I heard Anna shout.
“Wisket! I need you now!”
Light swelled in the room, but it wasn’t from the fire. Now a golden fox, shrouded in light, stood and snarled at the mynah. But this was no ordinary fox: it had wings, with feathers that were blue, pink and gold as if it were right out of a little girl’s dream.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I couldn’t move at all. The mynah took a step backward, and the little fox advanced on it, pushing the monster further away from us. The fox’s light was filling the room, and the mynah shirked away from it and made a mewling sound. Suddenly, light shot forward from the fox and hit the mynah in the chest. It shrieked in pain and then fled out the window. More rustling came from outside, but it was receding. The mynahs were leaving; they had been chased away.
The mystic light faded until the fox could only be seen by the firelight. It walked over to Anna and leaped into her lap. She rubbed the creature behind the ears as if it were a dog, and nuzzled her cheek against its fur.
We were all silent after that, silent and still. No one slept, but we sat and stared into oblivion for hours. So many questions and ideas arose in my mind that I found myself unable to speak, or even focus my mind. I just sat with my arms around my knees in a state of shock.
Then, after a long time, light from outside let us know the sun was rising.
Jim was the first to move. He went to the corner of the room, found a bucket of water, and then doused the fire. Then he retrieved granola bars and bottles of water from behind the bar and handed them out to each of us, placing his down next to his sleeping bag. Then he left the room.
I had forgotten how hungry and thirsty I was. The events of the past twenty-four hours were mind-numbing. Yet now that I had food and water in front of me I was ravenous. I quickly drank half the bottle of water, tore through the granola bar with indiscretion, and then finished the water off. I burped afterward and looked around self-consciously. The shock of the night’s events was wearing off slightly, at least enough that I could formulate questions and words.
“What is that?” I asked Anna, pointing at the winged fox with my empty water bottle.
“It’s not a that,” she said. “It’s a he, and his name is Wisket.”
“Okay,” I said, “but what is Wisket?”
Unfortunately, Anna was given no time to answer. Jim walked back into the room and dropped a pair of socks and a pair of black boots down next to me. He stood over the three of us with his arms folded, looking at me with a furrowed brow.
“Take those,” he said gruffly. “You can take another bottle of water and another granola bar, but then you’re leaving. We don’t want you around.”
“He’s not leaving,” Anna said resolutely.
“He’s not staying, Anna,” Jim said, his arms still folded. “Creepy is not becoming part of this group. We barely know anything about him, and what we do know is… creepy. I don’t want him around us. He could be dangerous. If he hadn’t been having nightmares last night, he would have never attracted the mynahs.”
“That wasn’t his fault, it was yours,” Anna argued.
Jim raised his hand. “I vote he leaves. What do you vote, Kay?” He looked to Kay for support.
“We’re not voting!” Anna yelled at Jim. Wisket rose from Anna’s lap and walked a few paces away, stretching like a cat that had just risen from a nap. “And you’re being a bully,” she added.
Jim was stung. Anna pushed the sleeping bag off her legs, gripped her wheelchair, and began to pull herself up. Wisket came over and moved under her for support. The golden fox was far more intelligent than any animal I had ever encountered. He was helping Anna get into her wheelchair, and it didn’t seem as though she would have been able to do it otherwise.
“I can help you with that,” Jim said.
“I don’t want your help,” Anna said through gritted teeth, as she settled into the chair. “Why don’t you get it, Jim? You know why I left the schoo
l, but you still want to cast Arthur out to fend for himself. I thought we all wanted to be better than that.”
Jim’s arms fell to his sides and he was silent. Anna seemed to have control over him that I didn’t really understand. She was admittedly younger than both Jim and Kay. Normally there would be nothing I could do if Jim wanted me to leave other than to obey him, and someone in Anna’s situation would have little say in the matter.
I looked at Wisket, now sitting next to Anna’s wheelchair, scratching himself behind his ear, and suddenly felt foolish. It was obvious what the controlling element in this group was. Wisket protected them from the mynahs, and Wisket listened to Anna, therefore Anna ran the show.
“Arthur stays,” Anna reiterated.
Jim didn’t say another word.
3
Though Anna wanted me to stay, I thought about leaving the group.
Things were uncomfortable now that they knew about my past, and regardless, I had something I needed to do. The hours had passed like a whirlwind since I emerged from the Nullwood and met Anna, but now that a new day was beginning and I had my bearings, I had to look for my mother. The only problem was that I didn’t really know where to start. As soon as Anna had put Jim in his place, the group’s focus had turned to scavenging. I thought following them for a little while might help me come up with an idea.
We left Esteban’s and headed north along the shoreline in search of food and other things of use. We couldn’t walk on the beach because Anna’s wheelchair would sink too far in the sand, so we walked on the broken roads that ran parallel to the beach. We were about two miles north of Esteban’s when Kay fell back to walk beside me.
“So, you’re probably pretty freaked out now, huh?” she asked.
I was taken aback. “I thought you’d be pretty freaked out now,” I responded. “Because of, you know, why I got kicked out of school.”
Kay was pensive. “I think I would have been… before,” she admitted. “But now there are things like mynahs in this world. Besides,” she added, “you don’t really seem dangerous.”
Kay laughed nervously, and two things struck me at that moment. The first was that she was actually self-conscious talking to me, as if I might think she was weird. The second thing was how attractive Kay was. I looked ahead to see Jim gazing back at the two of us, and decided to stop thinking about how attractive Kay was.
“Also,” Kay continued, “Jim’s not going to take his eyes off of you for more than a minute.”
“So, what exactly is Wisket?” I asked, wanting to avoid any conversation about Jim.
“We don’t really know,” Kay admitted, “but he is loyal to Anna. He protects her, and always seems to be there when she needs him. You’ll notice he disappears sometimes though. It’s like he’s magical.”
Again, Kay gave a nervous laugh, as if admitting magic could exist made her utterly ridiculous.
“I know this is all crazy, and really weird,” she continued, “but… it’s just how things are now. Wisket is the only thing like Wisket that we have seen, and Anna is really protective of him. We keep Wisket a secret for her. It’s what she wants. She thinks if other people find out about him, they’ll try to hurt him. Especially if people thought he came from the Nullwood.”
Kay mentioning what people might do to something that came out of the Nullwood made my legs go numb. Naturally, I tripped and fell on my face.
Jim turned around immediately. “C’mon, Creepy. Try to keep up, would ya?”
“Sorry,” I blurted, quickly getting back to my feet. I brushed the dirt off of my clothes while the others stopped and stared at me. My face flushed red, and I wanted to disappear. “Maybe it would be best if I left.”
Jim laughed, but Anna’s jaw dropped.
“No,” she said. “Why? Arthur, you can’t.”
“I have to look for my mother,” I said. “I don’t know what happened to her, but I have to find her.”
“Where did you get separated?” Kay asked.
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell Jim and Kay I came out of the Nullwood. Anna was keeping my secret, but Jim certainly wouldn’t.
“I don’t remember,” I lied.
Jim turned to Anna and shrugged, as if to say, You’re the only one who wants him here. Why don’t you just let him go? But the girl wasn’t going to budge.
“Stay with us and we can help you, Arthur,” Anna said. I couldn’t help but notice how pointedly she was looking at me. “I need to keep Wisket a secret,” she added. “Bad things can happen if secrets get out.”
Jim and Kay didn’t catch that Anna was talking about more than just Wisket, but her words were enough to rattle me. Bad things could happen if people knew I had been in the Nullwood.
“R-right,” I stuttered.
Anna’s face softened, and it was obvious she was sorry she had just manipulated me.
“Stay with us, please,” she said, “and we’ll help you find your mother after we scavenge for a while. Okay?”
I nodded. What choice did I have?
We continued on and Jim pointed to a broken house on our left. Then, he walked up to the garage door and peered into a large crack.
“I can see a kayak in there,” Jim said. “We should go inside and see if there’s any more outdoor equipment.”
The house was destroyed. It was a blue two-story home that looked as if a giant knife had come along and sliced the top directly off. Random clothes and debris were strewn all over the yard. Kay picked up a broken picture frame, spilled out a bit of rainwater that had collected, and then made a sharp noise filled with sorrow.
“I knew these people,” she said. “My father used to play tennis with them.”
“Hopefully, we find more than tennis racquets,” Jim said.
We made our way into the house and once inside, Jim pulled me off toward the garage. “Creepy will help me look through the garage,” he said to Anna and Kay. “You two check out the kitchen.”
In the garage, Jim immediately found two folded blue tarps, the kind people put over their windows during bad storms.
“These will patch the window the mynah broke last night,” he said more to himself than to me. Then he looked at me with the look I knew would be coming as soon as he pulled me to check the garage with him. It was the look a guy like Jim gives a guy like me just before he threatens him. “You know, I don’t really care what you wrote about in your diary, Creepy. You’re not going to be with us long enough for it to matter. But while you’re with us, you’d damn well better stay on my good side. You understand?”
I nodded and stayed tight-lipped. What could I have said in that situation that wouldn’t have made things worse? I couldn’t beat Jim physically, even if I wanted to. He knew it as well as I did. If I said something nasty to him, I would only look weaker, and it might give him enough motivation to punch me. Again, I didn’t have much of a choice.
It’s funny how the world could practically end and things still weren’t any different for me. The skies could fall from the heavens and I was still going to be Creepy Kage. I thought about all the bad things I wanted to see happen to Jim; the images appeared vividly in my mind. No… this was how I got into trouble at school. I needed to stop myself from stewing in anger. My mother had taught me to meditate in order to calm myself and learn to redirect my thoughts. Unfortunately, there was no time for me to do that now.
“Quick, come here!” Kay exclaimed from somewhere else in the house. We followed her voice and found her and Anna in the kitchen with the pantry door wide open. “When was the last time you had one of these?” she said, shoving something brown in front of Jim’s face.
“Oh, my god, is that—” Jim began.
“Yes, it is,” Kay interjected with a smile.
“The kind with the cream in the middle?” Jim asked.
“Uh-huh,” Kay confirmed.
“I do love you, Karalana Drake,” Jim said with a goofy Southern drawl.
“Karalana?” Anna asked
with a smile.
“I hate when he uses my full name with that stupid accent,” Kay said and blushed.
Jim snatched the little treat out of her hand and held it up like it was a rare gem. “Now if you want to get on my good side, Creepy, you find some more of these beauties. These ones with the little white frosting swirl on top are like gold in my book.”
“Wait!” Anna yelled. Jim paused with the treat inches from his mouth. “Don’t eat that,” she said with concern. “Let me see it first.”
Jim pulled the little cake away from his mouth, wide-eyed and confused, and handed it to Anna.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Anna said and popped the whole cake into her mouth.
“You little gremlin,” Jim shouted playfully.
Anna smiled so wide with glee she almost spit the cake out. She covered her mouth with one hand while fighting to stifle a laugh. This kind of foolishness seemed right up Jim’s alley, as he was more than happy to play into it.
“Oh, you bet I’m getting you to spit that cake out,” he said with a wide grin.
Jim bent down and swept Anna right out of her chair, put her over his shoulder and began spinning her; just the way an older brother might do to a little sister. Yet, Anna was not Jim’s little sister, and it quickly became apparent that Jim had crossed a line with her. She spit the cake out and yelled at him to put her down.
Jim set her back in the chair and apologized. “I was just goofing around, Anna. I didn’t mean—”
“You can’t just toss me around like that,” Anna said to him, red in the face and on the verge of tears.
Jim’s face was now red with embarrassment as well. “I’m sorry, Anna. I wasn’t trying to… I was just playing around.”
Anna didn’t respond with words; she simply wheeled herself out of the kitchen.
Jim looked to Kay after Anna had left. “I can’t win with her.”
Kay gave Jim a sympathetic look but didn’t have any words of support. I tried to pretend I wasn’t there. The situation was very awkward.
