I have never seen Ashley cry over someone else before. Plenty of times I have watched her at her best of tear-filled injustices rage over “things”, but never others. There was never a person born of earth that disliked the word “no” more than she did. Nor was there ever a set of parents that hated saying the word “no” more than ours. For that reason, I can’t really blame her for the over inflated sense of self.
All of the Hawthorn Angels were handled like fine porcelain china sets. Each is envied for their rare blend of beauty and they are coveted for their shining star-like futures. They were each being groomed for the spotlight to shine upon them as they were always promised. Now the only thing shining upon her face is the light of death and destruction. A rare mixture of horror and illusions are spreading out before her. The only stars to this play are the fragmented bodies of her former classmates and the school’s faculty. At twenty-three I am at a loss for words for this situation myself. How do I expect a child to gauge the proper responses?
Every Boogieman campsite story is coming true. Stories that are only supposed to cause shivers of false fears are now demanding their due. They want their payments up close and personal. Why do they always wear the costumes most think of as safe? Some things need to stay sacred. I glance one more time at the giant defilement of that thought.
I ease softly off the floor, helping Ashley to stand with me. Some deep unconscious memory of when humankind was prey holds our actions in sync. Every child is taught at a young age to never turn their backs on the monsters, and that is evident now as we both ease backwards from the gym without a word passed between us, but the door refuses to close. Exchanging glances, we stare at the gap between the metal frames, mentally willing it to fade even as it ignores us. Shyly, I reach out to coax the door closed by pulling gently on its handle. Every rustle of fabric seems to scream between the soundtracks of death playing in the gym. I clamp a small hand over my mouth for fear that even the sound of my breathing will attract their attention. The door does not move but something else does.
Chapter 8
There comes a point in every horror movie where we begin to yell at the people on the screen before us. Sometimes it’s to warn them of the impending doom that they do not see waiting for them. Sometimes it’s to berate them for their choices to run up the stairs rather than out the door. Maybe it’s because of the over use of the choice to hide under the bed or in a windowless bathroom. Whatever the reason may be, everyone is guilty of it at some point in our movie-watching history. I wish someone was here yelling at me right now.
I know I have to get this door to close, but now knowing what is on the other side of it I am a lot less brave than I was when I was opening it. My actions are weak and fear motivated movements. If I use too much force, it will make the metal tale-telling sound letting them know we are here, like a betrayal of trust. If I use too little force, the door will stand here mocking my efforts like a schoolyard bully. Sometimes you really are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Right now, I am knee deep in damnation and it’s creeping slowly higher.
Ashley is the first to notice the changes in the cherubs of death. I am focusing so hard on getting the door closed to hide us that I forget to keep an eye on them. Now their eyes are on us.
I cannot tell which cherub signaled the slow start of the stampede. For a heartbeat of time, we stood there both staring at each other as if they are as shocked to discover us as we had been to discover them. Then all at once, they are moving. A single unit of death minded dolls gaining speed and coordination with each determined step. Their glazed eyes never once shift to look away from us.
“Run. Dear God Ashley, run!” I scream at her trying to keep my body as a shield between them and her with small backward steps, but she is not moving and we are losing ground. “Ash, go!”
Conroy picks this moment to come out into the hallway to see why I am screaming at our sister. Which cruel aspect of life programs children with their timing skills?
With his screams upon seeing what is flowing towards us, I have no choice but to run past her. I reach out to grab her as I pass but she flinches, shrugging away from me. I spin around reaching again but I still miss. My heart becomes a metronome of sound but the tempo does not match the speed around me. I scream her name and it comes out slowed as my vision narrows down to only the sights in front of me. Super heroes do not wear masks to protect their identity. They wear masks to protect their sanity. When the shit hits the fan, and it is your job to run into it, sometimes you do not want to see what is waiting to surround you.
Ashley stands with her back to me as I lose my footing in my backwards spin to grab her. I feel the floor as my knee slams against it, rocking my body with the impact, and I fight to stand back up. My boots are slick against the tiled floor and the few missed steps seem to cost me everything.
I never take my eyes away from her. She turns her head back to me, seeing me through waves of perfect golden shades of her framing hair. Her blue eyes pierce me, but not with fear. They are swimming in pools of sorrow. The first few tears hang from her chin until others gather, giving them the weight to escape her fragile face, fleeing from what is about to happen. I know she is not running. I know she has made her choice to not move. Now I know which side of the door these lambs are on, and I led them to it.
The area becomes deafening with the music box pitches of grunts and growls. Wave after wave of gore drenched dolls pour from the open door, causing there to be an almost jam of tiny bodies in such a narrow force-filled space. They push through and walk over any that block their passage with outstretching of arms and extending fingers. Yet Ashley still does not move as I am sliding backwards on my hands and feet unable to grasp the contact my boots need to fully support my weight. Conroy grabs me, giving my panic-filled motions the solid force I need to stand, and we are both sprinting backwards screaming for Ashley to come to us.
A tug of war begins between Conroy and me. I keep pulling him forward towards Ashley and he keeps pulling me backwards from her to him. I can see his mouth moving but all of my senses are locking only on the oval around the little girl staring back at me over her shoulder with the silence of sadness. In a child like game, we swat at each others hands as I try to break away and he tries to keep me with him. He is desperately pulling at anything he can clutch onto with his small hands to keep me moving backwards with him. I know he is pleading with me with all of his voice and the weight of his body with each lunge, but it does not matter to me. I cannot hear him. I cannot feel his need. I only see her.
The little girl, who just yesterday refused to eat her breakfast for the milk had made the cereal too “wet”, is standing before me in her soft pink pajamas and white socked feet with monsters rushing to her. All external sounds have fallen away from me. I only hear my heart beating as I struggle against a seven year old and his fear-filled strength. I know my last visions of Ashley I will forever hold in a secret chamber of my most private nightmares. Ones let loose only by the darkest of nights when all hope has faded away leaving my soul vulnerable to their haunting.
Her eyes never left mine. Even when the first tiny fingers latch onto her shoulders, she stayed staring at me. Those sharp sea colored blue eyes hold no fear, no remorse, and no blame. There is only the sharp sadness of acceptance. A tear lined hidden face of youth who has given up. I feel my scream of her name when they take her rather than hear it. It rips through my heart, not my mouth, as her blonde hair floats away from my sight. I continue to scream it as they tear into her, pulling her down to the ground before covering her completely with their madness. She never reaches out for help. She never returns my screams. She is just gone. A pile of murdering, tainted, and frenzied bodies, the same size as her own, replaces her in my sight.
I know that later I will be thankful they overtook her in such a level of mayhem. Their cruelty saves me from having to watch what I know is happening below that mass of shapes. It s
aves me from having to keep a vision of her like the bodies in the gym. Her broken body will not torment me like Lilly. She is not broken and left exposed as proof that nightmares now walk among us. She is just gone like a dream at dawn, and I am down to my last Angel.
Chapter 9
How long I have been standing here in my dazed state of disbelief I do not know. I know my arms are sore from the strain of being pulled on repeatedly. I know sounds are slowly returning to me and the colors of the Clown’s prison seem to slowly become brighter as time regains its speed. I know that Conroy is pleading with his tear streaked, red face for us to move. I know that the very things I have been trying to keep us from are now only a few feet away. I do not want to know what the sounds that drift up from their pile are or to what the colors contrasting with the pastels belong.
Awareness comes back to me as a limb returns from the loss of feeling. Pain and short, sharp stabs attack my chest and head. Panic begins to refill my urge to live as I slip from my sleep walking state. One small step at a time I am coaxed away from Ashley’s grave site till I gain speed and turn around to run with the only Angel left in my care. As I spin, my eyes scan the sight one last time. Mary seems to glare back at me from her wall where she has kept her lambs safe until now. Their fleece is now as red as blood.
We run blindly down empty halls with only our grief giving us speed. Nether of us carry any conversation or plan any form of escape. We just keep moving with each twist and turn of the building like some demented never-ending hedge maze. Each hall is a brighter shade of a pastel mockery to our pain than the last. Colors start to over lap and I know we are now lost in an exaggerated rectangle with Conroy only using the fact that he has to keep moving to shelter his soul from grieving. He is like an infant refusing sleep. If they stop moving, they have to give in to their bodies needs. He is not ready to give in. He does not know how. Perhaps I am just over thinking the whole situation in my own refusal to my body, and he is just lost to his panic completely.
“Conroy. Conroy, stop.” I pull his body to me and I sink to the ground, cradling him. He seems to shrink into himself as he curls into my lap and I whisper soft sounds to him. I run my hands through his closely trimmed blonde hair, rocking him, as he uses my shoulder to hide from this horror forming reality. His pajamas still hold the scent of the home we once shared in what seems a lifetime ago. His hair smells of flower-scented shampoo and it is a welcoming scent. It is a safe scent. It makes him seem that much more fragile and precious in my arms.
We both sink into emotional cocoons as we grieve the morning. Neither of us is speaking to the other. Small vocal sounds are all that is left of my vocabulary. In my mind, I see Ashley fall over and over again in various rates of speeds before me. Her hair floats down behind her with its golden hues of beauty. I see Lilly lying still; soft, white and broken. Their eyes each look to me with anger and then panic, knowing I will let them die a million times as their deaths replay in my mind. Carol’s picture smiles up at me even as her frozen face is slowly swallowed by her own red, red blood.
A small room of my heart knows I have killed them. I have killed each one of them in my own way. It was either by my own hand or by my lack of actions. Hot tears burn my face as they soak Conroy’s head like a baptismal of damnation. I cannot keep him safe. I have to keep him safe. The replay starts again. I lock the room.
It is such a soft sound that at first it goes unnoticed. A slight sliding of a shoe. A soft whisper of clothing. It is the irregular pattern of a shadow projecting on the floor that makes me aware of it. I nudge Conroy to move, keeping my eyes on the growing shadow to the right of us. He crawls backwards off my lap, keeping one hand locked in mine. His eyes are wide with trembling foreboding as he pulls me from the hall. He is as lost as I, but he is counting on me to get him out of this. He may want to take a note of those that also shared those same feelings only a few spans of time ago.
A small tennis shoe-clad foot comes into view as we peer out from our hiding spot in a doorway. Slender legs wearing a flower patterned dress walk into view. She is no more than six with her dark blue flowered dress and its cropped jean jacket to fight against the first stirring of fall mornings. Her strawberry red ringlets are held in two pigtails by white bow tied ribbons. Each step she takes causes them to sway on either side of her freckle-covered face. She is the very definition of youth’s perfection and I hear myself exhale the breath I did not know I was holding before I remember what forms of perfection are lurking in these halls.
She lures Conroy into the same feelings and hopes of safety with her familiarity. He steps out from our doorway before I can stop him.
“Margaret?” He gently calls out to her.
Margaret freezes mid step. Her little foot held but a moment above the ground as a deer freezes when sensing something has altered its surroundings. Conroy takes another step from me. Her foot lands softy back into its former placement with ringlets swaying. Conroy still slips further away.
“Conroy!” I hiss, still peering from the doorway. He looks to me as she looks to us. He does not see what is staring at him. He does not see that same small tennis shoe turn towards us. Nor does he see the side of her that has been kept a secret from us. How lucky am I that I am the one to see it first?
Her right side is caked with gore, giving her the appearance of having been dipped down in a thick pool of the substance now dried and clinging to her. She is an almost perfect illusion of good versus evil side by side before me. Each side of that face is wearing the same hate filling hunger.
That same hunger spurs her on faster, but her right leg is dragging as it refuses to help in the journey towards us. It acts as a last minute miracle of salvation, slowing her down. She makes no noise to alarm Conroy of the danger creeping towards him. She is a perfect killer in a child-wrapped package. I rush off the floor and lift his body into my arms, staring her down. I do not look back when I turn, running with my own precious child-wrapped package clinging tight to me.
My boots threaten to slide out from under me again and I know our combined weight was never meant for these spiked heels. I am the cliché horror movie chick in very inappropriate shoes running for my life. All I need now is a bright colored sweater, and a run through the woods, to make the whole sad scene complete. Maybe I will plan a camping trip when this is all over.
I know I will not be able to keep this pace up and turn into the first set of open double metal doors I see. Rows of white tables sit in various formations in the constant purple and teal color combinations of the room. I know if we survive this neither of us will ever be able to stand pastels again. One seven-year-old emo coming right up!
Chapter 10
The room is still as I stand in its entrance clutching Conroy. A TV flashes static from its angled location in the high back corner. Empty trays sit perching on a shelf waiting to be of use. Three evenly spaced registers sit void of cashiers. I cannot see past the swinging doors of the kitchen, and I have learned that silence does not always mean empty. I am debating the choices laid before me as the sound stirs down the hall behind us. Limping Margaret has finally caught up with us, and by the level of sounds, she is not alone. Nor is her new army happy with our escape.
I ease him to the floor holding a finger to my lips. Slowly I close the doors and motion for him to walk ahead of me to the kitchen. There is no place to hide in this large room designed with that fact in mind. It is made for easy viewing from all angles. This room was designed to keep the twisted things we are running from safe and comfortable. For a moment, it feels as if we have run straight into a trap of their design. A room they have spent hours of their short spanned lives in already wraps its arms around us in what I know to be our final meeting.
We pass through the kitchen’s swinging doors as the cafeteria’s doors mirror the act. I peer through the small round windows in our set of doors as the small bodies assemble in small groups. They seem to lose animation
without our discovery. Wind-up dolls whose gears are losing tension with each movement, they slip back into a dream-like state and I allow myself to think we are safe.
They fall back into their unearthly game of follow the leader in small pockets of groups. Even in this new state, cliques form of common styles. I watch this all before me as if I am a documentary voice-over relaying the sights before me to Conroy huddled on the floor.
“What are they doing?” He whispers in a voice that still holds his tender toddler years within it.
“Walking in circles.” They move in impossibly slow formations. Each step seems more exaggerated than the last.
“Why?” His curiosity overshadows his fear for a moment of genuine interest.
“Triangles are harder to do in a group formation.” I have no better answer to give. The smirk he wears loosens the tension that has been surrounding us all day. Of all my siblings, Conroy has always been the closest to my own personality. It is something that always irks our parents. My encouragement of it also holds no amusement for them.
The behavior before me makes me wonder if they truly are mindless. To seek out the familiarity around each other there must be some form of working mind behind those blank stares. Is there some keeping of logic or is there only the basic behavior still stored? Did Margaret, now falling in with other girls of her stature, answer to her name or just the sound of Conroy calling out to her? Fifty small children wander before me each wearing their own version of crimson patterns and I am not brave enough to step out to find any answers from them.
The Risen: Dawning Page 4
