Summer nights, beach parties, lit by the murderous orange glow of an obscenely-sized bonfire. Bundled in sweatshirts, watching the boys in the group wrestle in the sand or toss a football, making fun of them or taking bets.
My eyes flicked open. Grey. Lightless yet oddly lit grey. A haze without an end.
I held my hands in front of my eyes. Not blind. Charcoal grey sand, wet and clumpy, stuck to my fingers. I sat up in surprise.
I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that right away.
The dark grey sand unraveled up and down a long, featureless coastline. The surging grey soup of the ocean beat against the shore, cresting and falling in meager impressions of waves. The sea stretched on forever, with only the distant glimmer and the far-off ringing of what had to be a long line of abandoned, rusting buoys. A sky the color of ash, devoid entirely of clouds, empty of the warmth of any visible sun, cast a weird indirect glow on everything. Nothing bright, nothing dark. Just a miserable granite color in all directions.
I turned around, away from the featureless ocean. The charcoal sand crested into a ridge that blocked anything in that direction from sight. Sand, in undulating dunes, stretched out to the left and right of me, paralleling the shape of the coastline.
“Hello!”
My voice didn’t echo. It stopped where it left my mouth, as if it died the moment it hit oxygen.
“HELLO!”
The same effect, only louder. I winced.
Time to assess the situation, Luce. You’re on an alien planet? No. Dead? Maybe. Dreaming?
I looked around again, trying to soak in the strange environment. It was cold—wherever I was, I was still wearing the skirt, boots, torn shirt, coat combo I’d had on for far too long. It wasn’t Alaska cold, just beach-cold, but it was enough. I thought about the bonfires we’d had freshman year and longed. I tucked my coat around my body and buttoned it up to my neck.
My legs were damp and my skirt felt soaked-through. It clung to me like a second skin, no flex, no slink, all friction. It was the feeling of wet socks all over, and I resisted a disgusted shudder.
No, I wasn’t dreaming. I’d never felt anything so vivid in a dream. Besides, in dreams, didn’t things…happen? Friends, loved ones, horror-movie slashers. Something. Not featureless grey and disquiet.
I stood up and nearly snapped my ankle. If I thought running in boots sucked, standing in wet sand was murder. My high-heeled boots may have looked sexy-tough, but at that moment I wanted nothing to do with them. I reached down, navigated the long and gruesome task of unlacing them around my calves, and tugged them off. I tied them together, wrapped the laces around one finger, and tossed them over my shoulder. I stripped off my black socks with one hand, doing the one-foot-dance all the while, and tucked them into the boots.
My bare feet sank into the moist sand with a squelch. I wriggled my toes and felt a violent chill spike through them.
“Time to get movin’, Luce,” I said to no one. “Because this is pretty damn weird.”
I marched up the hill, away from the ocean. My toes fought for purchase in the silt. Jaunty steps mirrored my light heart—my light heart, unfortunately, mirrored nothing. The emotion was difficult to pinpoint. It reminded me of the way sunlight made me feel—inexplicably nourished, even if it did eventually burn my skin to lobster-like shades. I really do wish I had the capacity to tan.
Come on, girl. Focus. Focus and walk.
Trudging through wet sand was better than a Stairmaster. On the other side of the ridge, a long grey river of highway blacktop paralleled the ridge for a mile or two before swinging away from the coast into oblivion.
The sand hill became a slide of gravel, all the way down to the guard rails of a freeway.
Beyond the six lanes of the empty highway the countryside, a mixture of chaparral and ash, rolled on out of sight. Distant mountain shapes broke the sky into ragged lines.
The highway angled toward a distant glowing dome of indistinct light. A city, I guessed, though it easily could have been a football stadium or God or a big fat nightlight.
Just B-movie post-apocalypse fare and a crap-ton of grey lifeless countryside.
I knew the response I’d get before I even bothered.
“HELLO!”
My voice stopped at the edge of my lips. Again. I sighed and tucked my free hand into my pocket, a ward against the cold if nothing else. The empty bullet casing touched my fingertips.
I rolled the shell-casing around in my fingers. It felt even colder than usual, like a cylinder of ice. I pressed my skin against the sharp edge of the hole where the bullet used to be.
“HELLO!”
The ground rumbled underneath me. I sucked in a gasp and tried not to tumble down the slope. It shook again, and the sand rolled under my bare feet. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound, but it came from every direction, every pore in the sand.
I turned.
A dot on the horizon. A ball of white on the ocean. Bigger. Growing larger.
I pivoted and booked down toward the highway. I came down the slope too fast, track star that I am, and my ankle twisted and shot hot sparks of pain up my leg. I vaulted the low guardrail with one hand and landed on the blacktop with a crunch, one that unfortunately took place in my ankle. I tumbled to the ground, my ankle dunked in molten lava.
Son of a bitch that hurt, Lucy. But don’t stop running.
The ground bucked again but with less power—more like an impact than an earthquake. A deep-seated fear welled up within me, uncontrollable, unexplainable. I hobbled across the three empty lanes, crawled over the center divider, and dropped to my hands and knees. The highway shook, and a bright light lanced over the divider, illuminating the grey countryside with unnatural glow. My heart raced, my lungs billowed, and my ankle shouted obscenities at me. I was shaking all over, like I’d just been pulled out of a frozen lake.
I couldn’t hear anything—whatever thing that had come from the ocean, whatever thing that now stabbed the area with a bright white searchlight, was as silent as the grave. Not a footstep, nothing.
Another flash of light—the shadow of the center divider stood out sharply against the blacktop for a moment. Two white circles of light stood out in the shadow, and I turned my head to see the two holes bored through the cement on either side. Ignoring a shrill, naggy caution-voice in my head that sounded more like me than I cared for, I crawled to the closest hole. I took a deep, slow breath, trying to clear my gut of the rampaging butterflies, and peeked through the hole.
Light burned my eyes—it was impossible to make out any of the thing’s features. He looked to be made of light—just sunshine sculpted with arms and legs. His head seemed to be turned away from me, but it was impossible to tell. It wasn’t until a searing beam of light erupted from his face and swept the highway to the left of me that I was sure.
It flashed toward me, and I threw myself away from the hole. I looked behind me—the same clear-cut shadow of the center divider, with two perfectly circular holes. I let out another whoosh of breath and tried not to move. Unless the thing had Superman eyes, I might be safe.
When the light moved on, I took another peek to make sure. It hadn’t seen me. It swept the highway to my right with slow, even strokes.
After what felt like an eternity, the white-thing turned and disappeared over the sand ridge.
I counted to one-hundred, and then I stood up.
Empty again. Just a dead highway snaking through a grey wasteland.
I crossed the center divider and ran across the blacktop. I had to know if it was gone. I jumped over the guard rail and ran full tilt up the gravel and sand slope, ignoring the glass-grinding scream in my ankle.
A boom. The ground jerked beneath me and threw me onto my butt.
“What the hell?” I said.
Again, the not-an-echo. Just muffled silence.
I half-ran half-slid down the rest of the sandy hill until I found my bare feet slapping the wet charcoal-colored sand. I s
topped at the edge, the first tickle of frigid water kissing my toes. I bent over and stretched my fingers toward the tide.
The ocean pulled away from me, as if taking a breath. A wave gathered along the breakers and swung toward the shore. It peaked long before reaching me, spilling out across the beach and pushing a foot of water towards my legs. It touched my hand first, then sluiced over my battered ankle and up to my knees.
It could have been acid.
The wave of searing agony, so powerful and unexpected, imparted by the water’s touch, locked my entire body. Paralyzed me, freezing me helpless and screaming as the angry tide slid up to my waist, then to my neck. My muscles wouldn’t respond, and I realized with deep horror that my legs couldn’t withstand the assault. My knees buckled, plunging my face into the scalding liquid. It flooded up my nostrils, rushed into my shrieking mouth…oh God…oh God…
The world went black.
Chapter Five
Welcome Back
The sound cut out. The hollow hiss of an open microphone with no one behind it.
Lights flickered. My eyes didn’t have to open—they already were. But they sort of turned on again. The blackness disappeared like I’d flipped a switch.
An acoustic ceiling above me.The flash of TV-light.
Then touch—A hard floor beneath me. Moisture.
Sound—A bad sitcom, an aghast 20-something rambling.The gentle click of my mother’s grandfather clock. The rattle-clank noise of pots and pans.
Smell—Garlic. Baked chicken, a single open beer, roasted tomatoes. More than I should smell, I realized. The reality ship had thrown me overboard, and dragged me back onto the deck with equal violence. I gasped for breath, my tongue still wet with salt water.
I looked down. My clothes were soaked through, and the barely-decent date attire was now entirely not-decent. Scandalous, even. Though my wet-rat look was less noticeable than the fact that I was drenched in sea water. A small pool of it collected on the floor beneath me. The idea of it all being a dream died in a briny grave.
“Shit,” I whispered. I didn’t have a better word. I was becoming quite the little sailor.
“Luce?”
Mom. I rolled to my knees to look over the couch. I wasn’t unaware of how similar my all-fours, soggy, terror-filled position was from just moments ago on the cold empty highway, hiding from the White-Thing. I didn’t enjoy the reminder.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m gonna go change. And shower.”
“Good idea,” Mom said, her voice drifting in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s in thirty.”
“Gotcha,” I said, hoping to disguise my panic. “Won’t take long.”
I glanced around, then back down at the spreading pool of saltwater on the living room floor. I felt a strange sense of vertigo—the room stretched out like taffy. The Persian-looking gold and red throw rug swirled in strange patterns. I closed my eyes and waited for the dizziness to pass. I half-expected the water to be gone when my eyes popped open again.
No such luck. The pool, spreading across the hard-wood floor, began to kiss the tassels of the rug. I turned around, searching for something, anything. My grandma’s hand-sewn gold afghan stretched across the back of the couch. Sorry, Grandma. I tugged it off the couch and tried to soak up the pool as best I could. It wasn’t terribly absorbent, but after enough tries it did the job.
The floor still shined, but the majority of the water clung to the blanket. I spun the afghan into a ball, clutched it tight to me to minimize dripping, and shuffled down the hall. My weakened ankle almost gave out as I ran up the stairs, but I threw myself up the final steps to the top landing. I half-crawled, half-scrambled to my room, ripped open the door, and slammed it behind me.
I took a huge breath. My lungs stretched and creaked and it felt like my ribs would pop.
In my bathroom, I tossed the afghan in the sink and pushed it down until it was mostly wrung-out. The grey, briny water smelled just like the ocean in the Not-A-Dream.
I stripped out of the soaking, torn clothes I had been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours. I’d been chased, shot, lost, and drowned in them, but I still couldn’t bring myself to toss them in the trash.
I wrung everything out, soaked it in lilac moisturizing body wash, and scrubbed the bejeezus out of it. The beach stink was strong, but a few soaks and scrubs later and it was barely noticeable. I hung the outfit and the blanket from the hooks on my door and took a shower.
I’d never taken a better shower. When I came out of it, my cherry-red skin felt amazing, and my muscles were warm putty. I dried off, blow-dried my hair, and wrapped myself in my fluffy orange bathrobe. I walked into my fluffy orange sandals and dived across my bed.
Twenty-minutes later, drifting at the edge of consciousness, wrapped in the warm cocoon of my bathrobe and my covers, I heard my door rattle in its frame. I perked up, and my eyes began to focus.
“Luce?”
“Come in.”
Mom slid the door open, wearing a small, understanding smile.
“Feel better?”
“Loads,” I said. “Dinner?”
“Yup.”
She didn’t move though, and her hand still gripped my door handle with white-knuckled strength. I cocked my head and sat up slowly. I wanted to ask her if everything was okay, but her face answered the question for me.
Her eyes turned down, but I could see the crystal sheen of tears there. She took a breath that sounded like canvas ripping. The door slammed into the wall as she released it without thinking, and she flashed across the room. Her arms wrapped around me, and she tugged me to my feet.
“Oh God, Lucy,” she sobbed, her voice broken. “Oh God, I thought… We all thought… Oh God.”
My arms hung at my sides, even as she pythoned me and drew me in. She smelled like a mixture of strawberries and smoke—not the smoke of the beach fires, the smoke of cigarettes. Mom hadn’t smoked in ten years, and Dad had never smoked. Her head trembled against my chest, and her body convulsed with sobs.
That’s when I knew something was wrong. Right then, I knew something inside of me had broken. I’d never seen my mom this emotional—it should have torn me apart, I realized. I could picture me, just as I was, a bright orange-terry cloth dolly weeping in her arms, overcome just like she was. Scooped up in the wave of relief beside her. And part of me felt relief, and part of me felt tearful. But nothing came. Not even numbness—the sense of pain behind a wall. There was no wall, and the pain wasn’t real. Wasn’t pain.
She looked up at me.
“I can’t believe you’re safe.”
I offered only a weak smile. I didn’t disagree.
Her tears spilled over onto her cheeks, little streaks illuminated by the crystal blue of her eyes. My mom was prettier than me—not cuter, but prettier. More delicate. I didn’t realize how delicate until now. I'd always seen her as being so strong, as knowing everything and having every answer. Learning she was human after all didn’t give me any sense of comfort or enlightenment. It made me feel…empty. Lonely.
I opened my mouth and sucked in a harsh breath. A thin, almost invisible stream of white smoke whirled out from between my mother’s pursed lips and sucked up my mouth and nostrils. A surge of electricity hit me and threw my head back. My heartbeat doubled, and I felt my muscles tense and release. Not a spasm, but sudden energy.
Like biting down on aluminum foil soaked in caffeine.
A jumble of images hit me, things I’d never experienced—the dial pad on a phone, shaking and blurry, through a curtain of tears. A hunger, like I’d forgotten to eat in the shuffle of Lucy’s disappearance. No, not “I.” She. Mom. I tried to pull myself out of the vision, to distinguish my memories from hers, but the tide was too strong. A green plastic basket full of red, the only thing I didn’t have to cook.
I snapped my mouth closed, but the taste of strawberries still burned on my tongue. Fresh strawberries, too, like I’d just eaten a whole basket. But I, me, Lucy, hadn’t eaten anythin
g. The sensation of having just popped a strawberry into my mouth was overwhelming.
I opened my eyes and looked back down. My mom’s eyes were closed, like she was sleeping, but she still sat stock-straight, and her face was white. Her lip twitched, and tiny muscle spasms shook her shoulders in little jerks.
I grabbed her hands and tugged at her arms.
“Mom! Mom!”
I squeezed as hard as I could and jerked like I’d pull her shoulders out. She didn’t move—she didn’t open her eyes.
“Mom!”
I reeled back and slapped her.
Her eyes popped open. My hand glowed with pain.
“Luce?”
She reached up, rubbing the red mark spreading across her cheek.
“Mom, you…you drifted out,” I said. “I thought something had happened.”
“No…” she said. “I didn’t, did I?”
I nodded too fast. I was just glad to see her awake and aware.
“Yeah.” I tried to laugh. “Maybe Mommy needs a nap, too.”
Mom looked down at herself, confusion fighting shock. She shook her head and quirked a tiny smile.
“I didn’t sleep very much.”
I believed her. The dark circles under her eyes would have looked at home on a runaway heroin addict. I squeezed her shoulder, feeling a buildup of that manic energy I’d stolen from her. Stolen? Eaten? I closed my eyes and pinched those thoughts off. I hadn’t stolen anything. I was tired. She was tired. I’d spent a long dream—You. Weren’t. Dreaming—in a far off, very boring land severely lacking in color palette. And now I was hallucinating.
Considering the day I’d had, I’d be surprised if I wasn’t hallucinating.
“Dinner?” I asked.
“Dinner,” Mom echoed, and untangled herself from me. She composed herself quickly. “Get dressed like a human, Lucy.”
Deadgirl Page 6
