Feral

by Schindler,Holly

  Chicago, Peculiar, Chicago, Peculiar—Serena’s face grew still clearer, the wind catching her brown hair as her smile curled. Her cold hand pressed forcefully against Claire’s chest. Chicago, Peculiar, Chicago—the cold gusts blew up her skirt as a hand reached around the waist of her underwear. Broken and bloody, she knew what was about to happen.

  Panic completely enveloped Claire. “Olly, olly, oxen free!” she bellowed, utter desperation saturating her words. “Olly, olly—”

  Serena laughed. “You think this is some sort of game, Claire? It’s not. It’s life and death—literally. My life for your death. They can have you,” Serena snarled. “The fog. They need a soul to take? They can have yours. I’m going to get my old life back. It’ll be beautiful. My favorite house. My best friend. My old school. Writing for the paper. If I get rid of you, I’ll get myself back.”

  Claire screamed as Serena’s fingers slipped through her skin, entering her chest. And though Claire fought desperately against her, Serena still managed to plunge her hand in yet another inch deeper—all the way up to her wrist.

  The already charged atmosphere sparked as another figure appeared—a boy, bouncing about on the balls of his feet. A peach-fuzz mustache. A face in black and white.

  Serena watched warily as he approached. “Leave me alone, Casey,” she snarled. Frantically, she tried one more time to press herself deeper into Claire’s body. But there wasn’t enough time. Casey was closing in.

  The burn in Claire’s chest disappeared as Serena quickly wrenched away. She dipped back into the cat’s body, which had begun to slump limply against the ground. Once inside, Serena righted the old calico and shook her head, trying to steady herself on her feet. She blinked, her blue human eyes shining out clearly.

  Casey stooped, grabbing Sweet Pea by the scruff of the neck.

  What’s he doing here? Claire thought, panting, holding her hand over the aching spot in her chest where Serena had just tried to get inside her. Why now? What does he want?

  “Come out,” Casey demanded.

  Sweet Pea squealed, swinging her legs, flapping her tail. But Casey held her at arm’s length—far enough that she couldn’t scratch him.

  Claire remained a mere spectator, frozen.

  “Come out,” Casey screamed again, shaking her.

  The old calico yowled, her face flickering like a TV picture about to go out. Images flashed back and forth, alternating between Sweet Pea’s gnarled, scabby, gory face and the blue, frozen face of the girl that Claire had found right there in the woods.

  “They can’t take you, not when you’re in there,” Casey said, as the fog continued to thicken. The same arms and legs that Claire had seen rising in the cemetery appeared in the folds of fog. They reached for the cat, but jerked back each time they touched her fur, as though they’d hit a hard, impenetrable surface.

  “You need to come out of there, Serena,” Casey shouted.

  The wind continued to shift, to swirl, to increase in strength, as the translucent faces of fog danced about Claire, the figures of the town dead packed tightly together, like bodies in an elevator.

  Fear rendered Claire mute.

  “Get out of that cat’s body,” Casey growled. “Serena. You don’t belong in there. Let them take you home.”

  The calico wiggled violently, wrenching herself from Casey’s grip. She dropped onto the snow and began to race through the woods.

  “Serena!” Casey screamed. But she was gone.

  Claire stood trembling. The fog slipped across the field, leaving Casey behind. As he stood, staring at the retreating wisps of mist, his face grew long, sad, and his image turned hazy.

  But before he could disappear completely, Casey turned, wrapping his icy fingers around Claire’s shoulders. “You’ve got to stay away,” he growled at Claire. “You aren’t supposed to be here—not after school, not when it’s getting so dark. Terrible things happen to people who are not where they’re supposed to be. You hear me?”

  “That was her, wasn’t it?” Claire asked, a shot of bravery filling her body. “You were holding her. Serena. I know you were. I know you’re real. She’s in the cat—that’s real, too. Tell me,” she begged. “Tell me what happened to her. Tell—”

  The stream of a flashlight exploded through the darkness, bouncing off the icy side of a tree. In the harsh reflection, Casey’s fog-drenched form disappeared.

  “Wait!” Claire screamed. “Don’t go! Wait!”

  A figure lurched out of the darkness, grabbing Claire up in his arms.

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  THIRTY–THREE

  Claire screamed, fighting against the arms circling her waist. She didn’t know who had hold of her, but she did know now what Serena wanted. Why she’d looked at her in such a sinister way at the funeral. She didn’t want Claire to know what happened. She wanted Claire. The world felt tiny. Claire felt cornered, trapped; she wrenched her arm away and screamed again.

  “Stop!” Rich shouted. “Claire! It’s me! Why were you shouting back there? What happened?”

  Panting, Claire pushed her hair from her face. “You came at the wrong time,” she moaned.

  “Why wouldn’t I come? ‘Olly, olly’—that’s what you said. In the woods, Claire. When I hear those words, it means you need help. What’d you expect me to think? You terrified me.”

  “I was going to find everything out,” Claire protested. Casey would have told her—about Serena and the fog and even why he had stayed, why he hadn’t gone with the town dead, either. Claire felt sure of that. And if she’d known everything, she would have been better able to protect herself from Serena. Now, though, she knew that Serena had a vicious plan, and she had no idea how to defend herself against it.

  “Find out what?” Rich asked. “What did you see out there? And why were you holding Sweet Pea? I thought you’d already been scratched once. You’d think you’d leave the poor thing alone.”

  Claire balked, shaking her head. “I didn’t pick up Sweet Pea.”

  “You did,” Rich insisted. “You picked her up.”

  “Where were you? Behind a tree? How can you be sure?”

  Rich eyed her the same way some of the nurses had, back in her Chicago hospital. “How can I be sure you were holding a cat?” he asked.

  He took a step toward her, but Claire pushed him away. She knew what she’d seen—souls of the town dead who wanted to take Serena’s spirit where it belonged, but couldn’t because Serena was inside a new body. The cat’s body protected the soul from the fog, from the other spirits. Claire knew it. She’d seen it. Her eyes didn’t lie—not hers.

  She was Claire Cain, after all, the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award her freshman year. Claire Cain didn’t invent stories; she told the truth—even about what had happened with Rachelle’s locker, back in Chicago. That had been true. Claire hadn’t even needed to actually see the boy plant the drugs. She’d watched him enough to put the pieces together on her own. She’d been right, too. She wasn’t an embellisher, a gossiper.

  What Claire had always said had been true. And this time was no different, she told herself, her pulse thudding about like a stampede.

  She had discovered a new truth: Serena wanted her old life back. She was going to succeed by destroying Claire. She wanted Claire’s body.

  But Serena wasn’t going to get it.

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  THIRTY–FOUR

  Claire and Rich walked the rest of the way through the shortcut in silence, while Rich shot her uncomfortable glances of concern every couple of steps. When they slipped out from the brush, edged around the back of the Ray house, and stepped into their gravel street, they found red and blue lights swirling, washing against
the night sky.

  The sight of the sheriff’s car parked in her driveway made Claire take off running, with Rich at her heels.

  “Dad?” she shouted, sprinting up the front walk. “Dad?” she tried again, stomping through the front door.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Dr. Cain exhaled, racing into the living room to scoop her up in his arms.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. “I’ve been trying to call you since I got off work, and all I got was voice mail.”

  “So you called the police?” Claire asked. “I was with Rich.”

  “But why the voice mail?” he demanded.

  He was so over-the-top upset, she felt ashamed to tell him that she’d been turning her phone off to avoid Rachelle’s texts.

  Wait a minute, the voice in her head shouted. How’d you get that text in the woods, that same text you got the night of the Chicago ice storm, if your phone was off?

  Because Serena’s getting stronger, she answered right back, a chill dancing up her spine.

  “My stupid phone hasn’t been working right,” she lied.

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Dr. Cain shouted.

  “Why are you so angry?” Claire asked. “Rich and I were together. Like he promised we’d be. Working on my story for the paper.”

  Dr. Cain glanced up at Rich. “Why didn’t you call me, if her phone wasn’t working?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Cain,” Rich said, his calm demeanor instantly diffusing the anger in her father’s voice. “I honestly didn’t know you needed to hear from Claire.”

  But the face Rich turned toward Claire was round, pale. It had the look of someone who had shifted from playing a game to knowing dangers were real—and that the burden of a rescue was on his shoulders.

  “I’ll get you a new phone,” Dr. Cain told Claire softly. “Rich will see you tomorrow.”

  Sheriff Holman tipped his hat, his services obviously no longer needed.

  Rich followed, pausing once before Claire shut the front door, as if somehow expecting to hear those words one more time: Olly, olly, oxen free! “Claire, is everything okay? Why do I feel like something is going on, something other than Serena—”

  “Everything’s fine.” Claire smiled wanly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Rich nodded reluctantly and walked out the door.

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  THIRTY–FIVE

  That night, Claire tossed about in her bed, nightmares stealing the restful sleep she so badly needed. Nightmares of the gang. The ice storm. The snapping of her bones, the shredding of her skin.

  Blue and red lights reflected across the ice-coated surface of the bricks. Claire stared down from her spot in the sky, and she watched the girl cop reach for her arm. “It’s too late for you,” the cop announced with certainty. “You’re dead.”

  “Of course I am,” Claire agreed as she stared down on her mangled body, cut up like meat displayed in a supermarket counter. She was lying on a blanket, instead of in the parking lot. It was as though the girl cop had taken such pity on her that she had placed a quilt out beneath Claire. A soft place to die . . .

  But Claire had a tail, too, in this dream. A long slender tail. And gray fur.

  Claire snapped herself fully awake, blinking rapidly against the first streaks of sunlight that trickled into her room.

  A soft rumble hit her ears—a rattling sigh of contentment that swirled, wrapping its way around a high-pitched caterwaul.

  She lifted her head slightly from her pillow to look toward her legs. A calico sat in her lap, purring.

  “Sweet Pea,” Claire whispered. Repulsion replaced horror as the old cat lowered her face into the open belly of a large rodent, and pulled out a string of intestines. Sweet Pea raised herself up, dragging blood-engorged pieces of entrails across Claire’s quilt.

  Claire gagged. Too afraid to bolt from her bed, she simply let her eyes rove across her room. Ferals. Everywhere. Stretched out on the windowsill, sunning themselves in the early morning light. Watching from her hope chest. A rumble poured from the throat of a nearby gray cat’s mouth—only to be answered by another cat at Claire’s feet, and the cats on her dresser, the cats playing in front of the cracked-open balcony door.

  She’s brought a gang, Claire thought. A whole gang.

  Sweet Pea clamped the rat in her jaws and started to move toward the end of the bed, dragging the entrails along with her, leaving a red pool on Claire’s quilt.

  The rest of the ferals all began to hiss, flashing their sharp front teeth. Tails swelled. Wails became threats.

  A fight—the cats were gearing up for a fight.

  “Why would you do that?” Claire asked. “The cats don’t like you—out by the Dumpster, by the church—they fought you. Why would you lead them here, when they don’t like you?”

  “I’m not trying to take their food. I’m showing them food, this time,” Serena said, her whispery voice rising out from the old cat. “They can have you when I’m done with you.”

  The scene in the woods flashed through Claire’s mind. Serena’s goal was to get inside Claire’s body. Make it her own. Why would Serena want the cats to destroy it? “If you let them eat me, there won’t be any left for you,” Claire told the cat.

  Sweet Pea spread her face wide, hissing, showing off her decayed, brown teeth. She blinked, letting Serena’s blue eyes flash. Serena’s face wafted about along the surface of the old cat’s skull.

  “It’s your soul they’re hungry for.” Serena’s voice rose above the angry sounds of the ferals. “Your soul, buried deep inside your body, will be tastier than flesh. They’ll pull it out, pull it apart, gorge on it,” Serena promised, as she began to knead her paws, pushing and pulling on the intestines of the rodent she’d just gutted. “And when you have no more soul, your body will be free for me.”

  Claire shuddered as she dipped deep beneath her blankets, Serena’s words pounding against her ears as the cats crouched low and began to stalk, surrounding her, growing closer.

  “You could have let me in back in the woods,” Serena scolded. “You could have gone along with the fog. You’ve forced me to do this instead. To take your body and leave your soul for the cats to feast upon.

  “If there’s no soul for the fog to take,” Serena asked, “if the cats destroy your very soul, isn’t that really the worst kind of hell?” She snarled, her tail waving as she inched closer to Claire’s face.

  Claire snapped up into a sitting position, throwing her chest forward and letting the blankets bunch in her lap. She screamed, her mounting fear reflected in the antique bedroom mirror on the opposite side of the room. Some cats raced for her bedroom door and the stairs, while others—the braver sort—continued to flash their filthy fangs at her.

  Claire screamed again. This time, her dad came running, still dressed in his flannel pajama bottoms and his long-sleeved T-shirt, his hair messed from sleep and his glasses not quite straight on his nose.

  “Hold on, Claire,” he shouted. He waved his arms, momentarily leaving to retrieve a broom. “Shoo! Shoo!” he bellowed, throwing open the door to the balcony. The cats snarled and hissed as he pushed them outside, like dust balls that needed to be cleaned away.

  The old calico stayed. She crouched near the bed, as though she assumed that Dr. Cain would only want the others out. As though she felt she belonged. As though she had a right to be there. As though the house were hers.

  She licked her pink-stained jaw, cleaning her whiskers.

  “You get out, too!” Dr. Cain screamed, raising the broom one more time.

  Serena yowled and skittered out the balcony door before Dr. Cain could see blue eyes shining, her spirit wafting across the face of the cat she inhabited. She raced away—but only, her hiss promised, temporarily.

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  THIRTY–SIX

  “That door to your balcony doesn’t fit right, Claire,” her dad reminded her, his distant voice filtering in through the bathroom door. “When I went to open it, it was already cracked—not far, but enough to let the cats slip inside. They obviously felt warm air coming from your room. I’m surprised they didn’t get in before now. You go get yourself cleaned up. I’ll take care of this mess.”

  Standing before the bathroom mirror, tears streamed while the water ran in the tub. She could hear her father moving about overhead, gathering the bloody quilt off her bed and bagging the dead rat, sweeping the cat hair off the floor.

  To add to her current misery, the scratches on her ankle were throbbing and burning. She had to know what was going on under the bandage she hadn’t been able to look beneath. She forced a thumbnail under a corner of the tape, held her breath, and yanked the bandage off.

  She nearly collapsed against the cold edge of the sink, a groan of agonizing pain trailing from her lips. Sweat beads popped instantly across her forehead as she waited for the pain to lessen. She dropped the gauze into the sink, the bandage soaked with blood and pus, the hues of orange and red and yellow caked, stiffly, along the edges. A sickly green slime had piled like a diseased blood clot in the center of the gauze square.

  She sucked in a string of shallow breaths as she looked down, into the black swirls across her skin, the green lesions. She hoisted her foot into the sink, opened a bottle of peroxide, held her breath, and poured it over her wound. The scratches began to foam, crackling like oil in a hot skillet. Another round of tears welled in Claire’s eyes, and she forced a washrag into her mouth, to swallow her wail. She watched as the peroxide foamed directly over two curving cuts: SS. Though it seemed utterly impossible, the scratches on her ankle were the same shape as the squiggles on the kitchen wainscoting in the Simses’ kitchen.