by Laney McMann
“A lovely night. Don’t you agree?” The cloaked figure waved his hand casually toward the squally sky. “You have hidden her well these years.” He inclined his head, a gesture that seemed respectful. “Such a shame, though. You really should have stayed away.” He clapped his hands together and snickered. “You cannot protect her anymore. I am sorry to say. Oh, what am I saying? I am not sorry at all. It is a joyous occasion!”
An influx of heat ripped through the cool night air at my side. I glanced over my shoulder, and the wind increased, pushing hard against me. I planted my feet attempting to stay upright in the loose sand.
“Stay away from Layla.” The second figure spoke, low and muffled as if he was talking through a gas mask, still hidden in shadows.
They know me. Both of them. I glanced back and forth again between the two of them, backing up, trying to remember something—anything.
The cloaked figure stepped closer still. “Let us not argue, brother. I didn’t come here for that.”
“You’re no relation of mine. Stay where you are.” The gusts increased, blowing me to the ground as if a violent storm swept off the ocean in a matter of seconds.
“Do not threaten me!” The cloaked figure wavered and struggled against the storm. “You forget who I am?”
I raised my head, shielding my eyes from whirling sand, stabbing heat emanating throughout my body.
“I haven’t forgotten who you are.” The person a few yards away maintained his position. “You have no business here. I’ll allow you to leave. This time.”
“Allow me? No business?” The first regained his footing and wrapped his cloak around his body. “This is my business. You. Her.” He shook his head as if he were speaking a known fact.
In my peripheral, I caught the second figure raising his head toward the sky just as lightening struck along the shore.
I rolled, heart hammering.
The cloaked man stepped to the side, simply avoiding the bolt. “Enough with your fancy tricks.” He waved his hand in what I took to be dismissal. “You cannot protect her.”
“Watch me.”
Three more forms appeared as if out of the air, surrounding me in a perfect circle. Another lightening strike burst upon the ground inches from the cloaked man’s feet. He scrambled back, falling into the sand. “You think we cannot feel your presence? The energy you create? You are a fool! They will come for her. For both of you!”
“I am not hiding from you. Or from anyone.” The figure beside me spun and disappeared, only to reappear crouching over the cloaked man. “No one will touch her.”
Howling wind blew my hair everywhere, and pinned me to the ground. A blinding light cast across the surface of the water, and the man’s body rose off the ground, his rippling cloak glowing against the night sky, before he fell down in a crumple and went still.
My body quaked; heat singeing my hands. I rubbed them on my pants, trying to cool the burn.
“Take her inside,” someone shouted.
“What are you doing here?”
“I had to come.”
“You’re luring them to her!”
“Be quiet, both of you. She’s frightened enough without you two yelling.”
“What happened to the boundary?”
“It’s in place. He was within the limit.”
“I’ll widen the perimeter.”
I tried to see them—the people talking around me—squinting against the wind stinging my eyes, blurring the landscape into a swirl of sand, and rose to my feet, only to lose my balance and end up back on the ground.
I glanced over my shoulder, scanning the beach, searching. Nothing. No one. I was alone.
My back door swung open with a deafening slam.
“Teine?” My mother ran toward me, terror washing her expression pale.
I stared blindly.
She fell to the ground beside me and grabbed my face. “What happened? You are sheet white.”
“Nothing.”
She eyed me, and stared down the beach. “I thought …”
“You thought what?”
“Hmm? Nothing. Are you all right?
“Yeah.” I climbed to my feet, allowing her to steer me toward the house, taking one last glance over my shoulder. A long black line smoldered in the distance. Tiny orange embers glowed in the dark, and a single stream of grey smoke rose into the sky.
Roll me into the psych ward. I’m done.
5
Sweat rolled off my back in sheets, soaking my bed. Blinded by the searing light flooding through the window, I dragged myself up like a ragdoll, but slumped over in the middle of my bed.
“Oh, good, you are finally awake.” My mom stood in the bedroom doorway, wringing her hands. “I was beginning to worry. You haven’t slept so long in … well, never.”
I blinked, shocked that I’d actually slept two nights in a row.
“I made some breakfast if you are hungry.”
I nodded with my eyes half shut, and swung my legs off the side of the bed, toes tingling like they were asleep from a lack of circulation. My knees buckled under my weight as I stood, sending me sprawling on the floor.
“Teine!” My mom dropped down beside me.
I nodded, pushing myself up, holding onto the edge of my bed. Pain seared my hand like needles pulsating under the surface of my skin. I dropped back down again.
“Teine?” My mother sounded horrified.
“My hands and legs ache.” That was all I dared say. My entire body blazed from the inside out.
“Ache?” Her eyes widened.
I nodded, flexing my feet to try and stop the pain.
“I will get the heating pad.” Heat or ice—my mother’s remedy for all my dancing injuries. She scurried from the room.
“Her legs ache. She could not stand.” Her voice varied in hushed tones.
On the phone?
“This cannot be happening, I have taken every precaution. No. Stay where you are, we cannot arouse suspicion.”
Cannot arouse suspicion? Who’s she talking to?
She shuffled back into my room, and knelt down, positioning the heating pad underneath my calves. Instant warmth rose through the coils, burning my skin.
I howled and threw myself away from it.
I checked the setting and found it on low. Why is it so hot? “Ice, Mom. Let’s try ice.”
She ran out, yanking the heating pad cord from the wall. No more than two minutes passed, and she returned and laid the ice pack in place of the heating pad.
Goosebumps rose on my bare legs.
My mother’s eyes widened, meeting my gaze, as she stood and backed out the door.
“Mom?”
“I am sorry, honey. I … I need to make a phone call.”
I opened and closed my fists, flexed my feet and pointed my toes. With the needles disappearing, I pushed to stand.
“No. Keep your distance.” My mother’s whispers lilted from the kitchen. “You gave me your word. If I find out otherwise—the risk is too great …”
I rounded the corner. “Mom?” The phone clanked across the floor and slid under the table. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Everything is fine, dear.”
I retrieved the phone and hung it back on the receiver. “I heard you, Mom.”
“Oh, just one of my … uh, co-workers … having an issue—” With shaking hands, she turned to the stove and dropped a pan on the burner.
I raised on eyebrow. “Mom—”
“Feeling better?” She scooped the scrambled eggs out onto a platter and began arranging my plate. “The ice worked?”
“Yeah.” I eyed her. “Must have been muscle cramps. Probably dehydrated.”
“I’ll swing by the store and pick up some Gatorade.” She sat my plate on the table, laden with eggs, bacon and grits—more food than I normally ate in one sitting. More than I would’ve eaten in one day.
“Aren’t you eating?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I am …
I have already eaten.”
I glanced at the stove. Helping upon helping of breakfast foods sat in the pots and pans. She hadn’t eaten. What’s going on?
“Mom?”
“Hmm?” Sitting across from me, she stared blindly back, and I noticed dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept in days.
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course.” She gave a weak, robotic smile.
I shrugged. “Okay, well, I’m meeting Benny later. We’re going out for a while,” I said, shoving bacon in my mouth, starving. I needed to jump in the shower.
“Only Benny? No one else, all right?”
I nodded, confused, as she stood and left the kitchen. I wanted to ask her again what was going on, but it was clear she wouldn’t tell me.
The shower cooled my skin and my aching head, but it didn’t erase the memory of the strange look I’d seen on my mother’s face—almost like fear. I shook off the sensation as best I could and rifled through my dresser drawer for a clean pair of jeans. Pulling them on, I stood in front of the full length mirror and found black smudges covering the light denim. I rubbed at the marks, only darkening the jeans further, realizing that black soot covered my fingertips. Racing over to my laundry hamper, I yanked out the pair of dirty ones—the ones I’d worn the night before. Tiny black holes ran down each leg—about fifty of them. Singe marks. A shiver ran down my spine, and I dropped the jeans at my feet, standing frozen in front of the mirror. What in the—
• • •
Early evening sky loomed charcoal grey as I backed out of the driveway. Only roaming opaque clouds hung high in the atmosphere after the earlier storm, giving a sense of late night hours. Streetlamps flickered on in unison, casting ugly yellow hues on the pavement, before stuttering in and out, and going dead, leaving the small round headlights of my car as the only light on the road. Vacancy and stillness swept over me, causing the hairs on my neck to stand up.
Dense fog rolled in waves off the ocean, smearing a blinding haze against the car windows. I hit the brakes in an unseeing panic. The car skidded across the damp pavement and slammed into the guardrail. My body pitched forward, whipping my head past the steering wheel. The seatbelt yanked me back, cutting into my shoulder, and the car careened across the highway, plowing headlong into the sand bluff, shattering the windshield, and blowing shards of glass in my face.
Warm liquid trickled from my eye, as the sound of raking finger nails on a chalkboard screeched down metal. Panicked, I fumbled with my seatbelt, desperate to loosen its vise grip, while fog enveloped the side windows, slithering like a snake up the hood of the car. My breathing strained, veins boiling with an unnatural heat, as the smog formed into an opened mouth serpent rearing up through the broken windshield.
It launched toward me.
I screamed, and the car door swung open, the hinges grinding as if they were being ripped off.
“Move over!” Warm air shot through the car; the fog vanished. “Layla, move!”
I fumbled with my seatbelt again, scrambling into the passenger side, relinquishing control as the voice rang out. Black clouds plummeted from the sky. One after the other like living entities. The ground quaked as cloaked silhouettes manifested from the mist. Heated blood ebbed and flowed within me, my body shaking where I sat, my gaze falling on silver eyes shining underneath hooded faces.
“Don’t look!” The person next to me jammed the car into first gear with a grinding squeal, swinging it around in one hundred and eighty degrees, and it stalled and shut off. “Dammit!”
I peeked to my left as he cranked the engine again, giving it too much gas. We shot off down the road.
“What kind of piece of crap are you driving?”
I looked over my shoulder, ignoring his words as best I could. Bluish lines quivered like rays of sun behind us, keeping pace with the car. Surrounding it in a cage. Attempting to steady the gag reflux rising in my throat and clinging to the door frame that shook dangerously with the remnants of my car, I glimpsed to my left.
“Put on your seatbelt.” He glanced toward the rearview mirror. The car swerved down a side road, rattling as if it would break apart any second, the bluish hue remaining affixed to its contours, smog closing in around us.
I tried to concentrate on breathing with a steady rhythm. This isn’t real. Another vision.
“Speaking of things that aren’t real.” He spoke with a tone of amusement, pealing back out onto the main road. “It’s unreal to me that you somehow still believe I’m a figment of your imagination.”
My head sunk with a thud into my hands, and my heart pounded, screaming to get out of my chest, as he threw the car into fourth gear and sped off with my clinical insanity.
“Layla, will you stop overreacting, please?”
I didn’t answer.
He glanced toward the back window and down shifted before veering off the road again. “You’re not talking to me now? Great. I’ll do all the talking then.”
I still didn’t say anything. If I ignored him long enough, he’d go away.
“Layla.”
Curiosity overriding rational thought, torn somewhere between wanting to scream and wanting to gawk, I lifted my head, eyes wide. He could not be sitting next to me, driving my car. It wasn’t possible. I glanced at the speedometer. Ninety miles per hour! “You’re driving like a maniac!”
“Will you calm down?” He swerved off the road into a restaurant parking lot.
I reached my foot over and slammed on the brakes, causing both of our heads to careen forward.
He rounded on me. “Are you trying to kill us? I understand you’re mad. You have every reason to be, but killing us isn’t going to help!” He turned toward the back window again.
“You’re the one about to take flight off the road!”
“Excuse me for saving you! Again!”
I glanced at him. “What do you mean again?”
“Never mind.” He turned the car off. “Where are we?”
“Who cares? What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“What does that mean? What was that back there?”
“Relax already. When did you get so mad all the time?”
“When I decided I was losing my mind, and things started stalking me! When my best friend, who deserted me, showed up out the blue like some superhero!”
“How many times do I have to say you’re not losing your mind?” His shouting reminded me of his younger impatient self. “And I never deserted you.”
“What would you call it then?”
“I told you already. Your mom won’t let me contact you. You honestly think you’re imagining me?” he asked with disbelief.
“I don’t know what to think.” My words escaped in a hiss. “Crazy things are happening to me.”
He exhaled. “Layla, you’re not insane. I’m real. I’ve always been real. As real as you are. Deep down, you know that. Touch my hand.” He reached out.
I hesitated but slipped my hand to rest on his. Shivers ran up my arm and down my back.
He smiled. “See?”
I stayed silent.
“Okay … ask Benny if you don’t believe me.”
My cheeks flushed. “I did ask Benny. For years I asked her where you were, what happened to you. She said she had no idea who I was talking about!” I swung the car door open with so much force the side mirror flew off into the gravel lot.
“Where are you going?” Max scrambled out of the driver seat and ran after me.
“Away from here! Away from you. I’m losing it.” I stomped off. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”
What am I saying? I’m screaming at an apparition. Hot tears streaked my face.
“Layla.” Max slid on the loose gravel covering the ground. “Stop. Please.” He touched my shoulder and his slumped. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry.” He brushed the loose strands of hair from my face and raised my chin. “This is my fault. I kn
ow that, and I’ll do anything to make it right again. You’re not insane. I promise you. You aren’t.” He folded me into his arms, calming my choking sobs, and sighed. “I didn’t mean to make you so upset.”
I took his hand in mine and held it, loosening his hold on me, trying to regulate my ragged breaths, and stared up into his concerned, welcoming face. “Are you haunting me?”
The corner of his mouth tugged up in a slight smirk. “No. I’m not haunting you.” He gazed down, pleading with his eyes while the evening dusk faded into darkness.
I breathed in the clean cotton smell of his T-shirt before glancing towards the restaurant where we’d stopped.
The building was red and faded from the sun beating down on it all day, and the paint was peeling up in places. Lemon yellow shutters hung crookedly alongside murky windows, and one of the glowing neon letters on the front sign had burned out. Max glanced at me in a ‘Who would eat here?’ kind of way.
“Who said anything about eating here?” I said under my breath.
His eyes lit up, joy illuminating his face. “You heard my thoughts.”
I eyed him, perplexed. “No. I saw your expression.”
He shook his head. “You heard me, but believe what you want to believe. Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
“Eat? I’m not going inside, talking to myself like some deranged homeless person. It’s bad enough that I’ve been talking to a ghost in my car.” I glanced over to where it sat parked. “Or what’s left of my car.” The only remaining side-view mirror hung by a loose wire, the windshield was shattered, severed wires jutted out from the door frame, and deep grooves ran the length of the side.
“Maybe you’ll be convinced you’re not imagining me when everyone in the restaurant can see me, too.” He raised an eyebrow. “Besides, since when do hallucinations drive?”
I considered him for a minute and shook my head. “Not happening. This can be our little demented secret.”
He laughed. “Wow. This is going to be harder than I thought.”
Trickling water caught my attention in the distance. A fountain sat nestled between vine-like plants in a garden near the restaurant’s entrance, from where sounds of jovial conversation reached us.
