The air was still, no noise from insects or animals interrupted the twilight. Leaves clung to the trees, seeming almost afraid to fall and disturb the perfect silence. My ears strained to hear Brent’s and Steve’s voices through the quiet. Eventually, the tread of their walk echoed through the stillness, their conversation stabbing at the quiet. When their words floated to my ear, my throat constricted and my muscles coiled, ready to spring. I positioned myself to spy through the leaves.
“She broke my heart, man,” Steve slurred, taking a swig from the bottle he carried. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming, and if I hadn’t known Steve had only splashed the liquor on himself and was only pretending to be drinking it, I wouldn’t have guessed it now.
I had to force myself to breathe, reminding my body how it was done. With each breath, I worried I would be too loud and give myself away. My quads began to protest my squatting, burning from the tension. I repositioned myself to my knees, giving them a rest.
“That stinks,” Thomas said, smirking at Steve’s heavy and clumsy footsteps.
“I don’t need her, when I’ve got my bros, right?” Steve belched loudly and looked rather proud of himself. “Just look at what her slutty best friend did to you. She led you on this whole time and then agreed to go to the dance with that Dallin jerk.” Steve smacked his lips together. “Who needs ‘em? Am I right?” Steve asked. “She hurt you, man. Let my friend here help ease your pain.” Steve shoved his drink toward Brent.
Thomas eyed the bottle carefully. “No thanks.”
“What’s wrong with you, man? All the guys have noticed you seem off. Different. I’ve never known you to turn down a drink,” Steve said, his words bleeding together. He tripped over a rock and scratched his head when he looked back, not comprehending what had happened.
“You really can’t hold your liquor, can you?”
“Course I can.” Steve gave him a sloppy smile. “Whatever, if you won’t help me drink away my sorrows . . . you can go.” Steve clutched the bottle to his chest and leaned heavily on a tree. “Just don’t expect the guys to want to party with you anytime soon.”
Thomas stood there, weighing his options before extending his arm for the bottle.
“I knew I could count on you,” Steve almost sobbed, releasing his grip on the glass container.
Thomas wiped the top clean and then took a long pull of the drink. He coughed, clutching his chest. “That burns.”
“Will put hair on your chest . . . and then curl it,” Steve said, trying to stand up without the aid of the tree and swaying with the effort.
Thomas pushed the bottle back to Steve but Steve wouldn’t take it.
“One drink? When did you turn into such a lightweight?”
Thomas frowned, but took another large gulp that ended up with him doubled over, coughing and choking. Then he shot up tall, his body rigid, the bottle falling to the ground as his spirit was ejected from Brent’s body. Brent fell, stiff as an ironing board to the ground.
“Are you okay?” Steve dropped to his knees, his drunken act forgotten as he bent over Brent.
I jumped from my hiding spot and Steve spun toward me, his fist curled ready to strike.
He sheepishly dropped his hands. “Sorry.” He looked again at Brent lying on the ground. “Did it work?”
“Yep.” I hoped we had added enough of the licorice powder to the alcohol to keep Thomas away until I was ready for him. Steve and I hoisted Brent, carrying him across the line that marked the edge of campus. The back of my shirt clung to me, moist with perspiration that had nothing to do with physical exertion. Cherie was waiting for us and looked anxiously at Brent’s limp body.
“Give him more to drink, just to be sure,” I instructed, tossing the open bottle to Steve. He crouched down next to his friend and cradled Brent’s head, tipping it back and pouring a few ounces into his open mouth. Steve set the bottle down and collapsed on the ground next to Brent, wiping the sweat from his face.
Cherie folded her arms behind her back as she took her post as guard. She gave me a confident smile and a small nod, letting me know she was ready. My necklace was secure around my throat and I stroked it lightly for comfort. With a deep breath that didn’t stop my knees from knocking together, I stepped back across the invisible barrier and separated from my body. This was the part of the plan that worried me the most, leaving my body behind on campus, relying on my necklace to protect it.
I paused briefly to appreciate the still life photo of my friends, the determined set to Cherie’s shoulders as she tried so hard to be brave, Brent, pale and helpless on the ground, and his best friend worriedly sitting beside him. I turned away, ready to act.
****
My insides couldn’t have been more queasy if I were about to plummet out of a plane without a parachute. Thomas was a serial killer without remorse and I was about to confront him. Every part of me was begging my spirit to flee but it was more than just my life on the line, I couldn’t run away. I took a deep steadying breath, my hand on my chest as I stepped forward.
Thomas sauntered toward me. “Pretty clever, Yara,” he conceded with a bob of his head. “You saved your boyfriend, but it won’t do you any good.” Within a split second he had thrown his arms out and began to change before my eyes, blurring, distorting, changing into a giant shadow of dark mist. Thomas was gone, and in his place was a wall of inky fog. His voice turned my marrow to ice. “What did you think would happen now?” He taunted.
The metallic taste of fear in my throat and the sulfur-like odor of cowardice glued my feet to the ground and my tongue to the roof of the mouth.
Thomas’s shrill cackle strained my nerves. His black vapor circled, gathering itself until it shaped back into Thomas’s form. The green of his irises kept undulating, changing color— green, brown, hazel, blue, back to green— while his dark pupils glowed with hatred directed entirely at me. His spirit was distorted, stretching at odd angles where hands and feet from the spirits trapped inside pushed out against him, trying to free themselves, his whole skin crawling with the efforts of the enslaved souls. His prisoners moved inside him and his stomach rolled and shifted. Bile churned inside me as he pushed his captives back, watching me the whole time.
“All those people you’ve killed . . . you’ve trapped . . . you keep them . . .” I shuddered unable to finish.
“Yes, I keep them with me.”
“But they’re fighting against you.”
Thomas smirked. “Yes they do, but it’s a nuisance at best. Really, after sixty years I hardly notice it anymore. They increase my power.” He began circling, his eyes running up and down my body, making me feel violated. “I’ve been waiting a long time for a soul to make me strong enough to leave . . . to really live again.” He stretched his arms out, the storm inside him still bulging grotesquely.
“What do you want to do with your power?”
“I don’t crave power, only freedom, the ability to leave this cursed place.”
“Some people would say it’s only cursed because of you,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Well, my plan was to leave, which would have made everyone happy, but now you’ve robbed me of my body, so after I capture you— and Brent— I’ll have to kill one more Pendrell student. And that death’s on you.” Thomas licked his lips; a horrible grin grew across his face. “You can still come willingly you know.”
“Why would I do that?” I lifted my hands in front of me and took a step away from him.
“It’ll be easier for both of us if you do.” Thomas cracked his knuckles.
“I’m not really interested in making it easier for you.” I could feel the comforting weight of my necklace under my shirt and I resisted the urge to touch it.
He intertwined his fingers behind his back, the spirits inside him pressing out against his skin, one clearly defined hand reaching for freedom. “Still, if you choose to come with me, I’ll let Brent live and I’ll release you, too. After you’ve joined my ranks, I
’ll be strong enough to leave. I’ll even let all these other spirits go. Pendrell will never hear from me again and neither will you. Everyone will be free.”
“You’d leave Brent alone? You’d free me and your captive spirits?” I asked, understanding that a lot of good could come out of the bargain.
Thomas smiled, his white teeth gleaming. “Yes.”
I took a step toward him before I realized what I was doing. “I don’t believe you,” I snapped, shaking my head.
He raised his hand to his chest. “I won’t take that personally.”
“Assuming I was crazy enough to agree to this, what would happen after you left here and freed us all?”
“I’ll still need to find bodies.” He held up his finger. “But they won’t be boys from Pendrell. I can be more selective with who I choose.”
“How would that be different than what you’re doing here?”
He continued on like he hadn’t heard me. His eyes were wild, his tone desperate. “I can find out what it means to be older than sixteen, go to the movies, to the beach, have a serious relationship with a girl. I can visit my parents’ graves. Denny’s grave,” he said, his voice suddenly soft.
The name Denny brought me back to the board in Cherie’s room. There was a Dennis on it; could that be Denny? “Denny? He was your best friend, wasn’t he? And yet you killed him.”
He bent over, placing his hands on his knees for support. There were actual tears in his eyes when he looked up at me. “I didn’t mean to do that.” He collapsed on the ground and reclined against a tree. “I was dying. There was so much pain, I could barely get out of bed or think straight. The only relief I felt was when I projected.” He looked into the groves toward the old pool house, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, setting off a cascade of ripples. “I found Henry one night— he was trying to kill himself.”
“Henry, the third victim, was trying to kill himself?” I asked despite myself.
Thomas wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yes, I walked in on him weighing himself down with sandbags. He begged me not to stop him.” Thomas’s eyes looked lost in the past. “I jumped in to save him as he sank to the bottom and dislodged the sandbags. When I got him to the surface, he still fought me. He didn’t want to be rescued. I couldn’t believe it; he was throwing away what I wanted the most. I realized as he struggled against me a way to please us both. I pushed him under and held him there. I gave him what he wanted— I made sure he died. He didn’t want his body anymore, so why not take it for myself? He wanted to die while I wanted to live.”
“So that’s how all this started?” A hawk swept past us gliding through the trees, a small rodent pinched in its beak. Goose pimples formed on my arms as I imagined Henry’s rescuer turning murderer.
“If Denny hadn’t walked in on us, it wouldn’t have turned ugly. He just didn’t understand.” He dropped his head in his hands. “Denny tried to save Henry, even though it meant the cancer would kill me.”
“So you decided to murder him, too?”
“Of course not,” he said, his tone chilling. “He was going for help, to turn me in. I was chasing him to stop him, to explain. We struggled, I pushed him and he fell. Hard.” His face showed all the horror he must have felt that night, something akin to regret swirled in his eyes. “There was so much blood. It was everywhere.” He held up his hands to me, as if expecting the blood to still be there.
A pang of sympathy pulsed through me as I looked at the broken person in front of me. He didn’t seem as scary to me, he seemed more like a wounded animal who needed help. I took a step toward him.
He rested his chin in his hands. “If you found that you had accidentally killed Cherie, what would you have done?” I couldn’t come up with an answer, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to live with myself. Thomas sensed a minor victory and pressed on. “I didn’t mean to do it. I was disgusted when I realized what I had done. Henry died because he wanted to, but Denny was an accident.”
I took another step toward him but paused as I asked, “So why didn’t you just stop then and turn yourself in? Why not make it right?”
“What would turning myself in have accomplished? It would have dishonored both Henry and Denny, making their deaths pointless.”
“You believe that?” I scoffed, drifting a few paces back, my sweaty palms clasped together.
Thomas frowned. “I was in Henry’s body. Would it have been fair to Henry’s family to ruin their son’s reputation by turning him in as a murderer? The other choice was going back to my own dying body, and there was no way I would do that. The only thing I could do was to stage the drowning and the fire to cover everything up. I thought that would be the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t. You needed a new body every two years.” A chill ran down my spine as I backtracked some more.
Thomas nodded. “The body begins to rot after that. The wrong soul is in the body and the body knows it. Henry’s decayed faster once his spirit had crossed over, so I knew it was best if I kept them from the light, and away from their bodies.” He lifted his head from his hands.
“But after that night, you’ve made the choice over and over to kill someone else. How do you justify that?”
“I don’t have to justify it. I do what I have to do to survive, just like you or anyone else. Besides, my best friend had already died because of me— what were the other deaths compared to his?” His voice sounded dead, past feeling. “You know, Yara, my life hasn’t been easy since Denny’s death. I’ve been a prisoner at this school for over sixty years; isn’t that penance enough?”
“No, because you keep killing people!”
He glared at me in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “It doesn’t matter. After tonight I’ll have enough strength to break open my cell. I just needed the right key, Yara, and that’s you. If you want the deaths to stop, the souls freed, and Brent’s life restored, now is your chance. Are you willing to join me?” He held out his hand and his fingers started to stretch longer as they reached toward me.
“No!” I took a step back.
His face was incredulous. “Even after you’ve heard my story? Even now that you understand what I’ve gone through? Even after you’ve heard what you’d be getting in exchange?” He huffed and shook his head as if I was the most incomprehensible person he had ever met. “Don’t you see I’m not the bad guy?” The corners of his mouth pinched together as he waited for my response that never came. “Fine. Do this the hard way. Nothing personal,” he added casually. “I actually like you, but that doesn’t change anything. You’re strong enough for my purpose now, so this is how it has to be.”
Gone was his repentant self; he had morphed back into a madman. He didn’t move but a cloudy arm of darkness stretched from his shoulder, reaching for me, gloom emoting from his very fingertips. Instinct took over and I slithered backward. A second ghostly hand extended itself, then a third. I flicked my wrists frantically trying to keep them away, to stop the advancing limbs that were scrabbling toward me. But I wasn’t strong enough; they barely even rippled at my counterattacks.
My confidence crumbled, realizing that my best defense wasn’t even close to being strong enough. Calling Brent for help wasn’t an option, because I refused to endanger him in any way. This was a rescue mission; I wasn’t about to let the tide turn and become a damsel in distress. I only had to distract Thomas long enough for Brent to get his body back. Of course, I thought ironically, it would have helped if Brent had any idea his body was now Thomas-free.
I spun around blindly, running away into the orderly rows of trees. There was no place to hide from Thomas here; only the messy disorganization of the ivy and eucalyptus trees would offer me any protection.
I ran full tilt toward them. My hair flew behind me, my sneaker-shod feet zooming across the irrigated paths. Smells of blossoms, rot, and nature rushed through me as I pushed my spirit as hard as I could. Thomas was behind me, catching up yet not overtaking me, al
most like he was enjoying the hunt.
A gust of wind knocked me to my knees, robbing my lungs of air. I spun, crouched in a defensive position only to see Thomas getting to his feet, too, stretching one of his ghostly tentacles out to Brent, who stood amid the shower of wind that had knocked Thomas back. Thomas planted his feet and spread himself out, letting part of himself become the mist while his own shape remained. The mist twisted around Brent, trapping him in.
Thomas reached out another arm to grab Brent and without thinking I sprinted toward Thomas’s spirit and catapulted onto his back, my small fists clawing at him. He jerked frantically, trying to toss me from him, but I clung on, refusing to let him get to Brent. Every part of me was a weapon. My fingers dug into him, my heels kicked at him, my arms squeezed him hard, like a python. I was even whacking him with my chin in the soft skin at the bottom of his neck, my necklace swinging with the motion.
There was an ear-shattering explosion when the charm of my necklace glanced off of his cheek. Howling in pain he collapsed onto all fours. His image shattered and scattered from under me, and several of the trapped souls leaked from him. As soon as they were free from his hold, the brilliant bright light of eternity materialized, beckoning the newly-freed entities to it.
“No!” Thomas yelled, trying to regain the hold he once had on them, but his link had been severed. The souls hovered near the light for a few moments, then vanished into its warm depths when its rays reached them. Happiness and goodness peeked through the gloom before Thomas pulled himself back together, clutching his remaining captives. His usual olive coloring had grayed; losing those spirits had cost him strength.
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