by Scott Hale
Before Gemma had finished her story, Dad was already calling 911 to have an ambulance come to the house and transport her to the hospital. Gemma didn’t fight the EMTs when they arrived because she knew that would make matters worse.
Still convinced that this was the work of the Dread Clock, she buried her rage and sadness. When she got to the hospital, she was quiet and compliant. They checked her over, found the self-inflicted cuts on her leg. They asked her if she wanted to hurt herself anymore, or if she wanted to hurt anyone else. They asked about hallucinations and drug use. They even asked if anyone was hurting her in the house and, for a moment, Gemma, the Thirteen-Year-Old Destroyer, was tempted to say yes. Tempted to tell the hospital anything it took to get her parents the help they needed.
Gemma didn’t say anything, though. She kept her mouth shut, her hope intact, and suffered a two week stay in the psychiatric ward. She had nightmares about adults and what they were capable of. It made her sick to think that, in five years, she’d be one of them herself. She didn’t think she would be capable of the things she had seen others do in the Black Hour, but at some point, when they were younger, more naïve, they had probably felt the same way.
When she got out, she got out with meds, a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, and a referral to a community therapist she actually couldn’t wait to see.
Her parents picked her up from the hospital, but they weren’t taking her home. The back seat was filled with her bags. When she opened them, she found all her clothes inside. Scram was there, too. She couldn’t figure out if that was the last act of kindness they were capable of, or if they were using him to rub something in her face.
Mom told Gemma she was out of control. Dad told Gemma they couldn’t handle her anymore. They made up lies about her behavior in the hospital. After thinking long and hard, they said they’d both decided that living at home wasn’t the best place for someone like her. Mom told Gemma she could come back to them one day. Dad told Gemma not to count on it, though.
There was a pamphlet on the back seat underneath her bags. Still in disbelief, Gemma ignored her parents and read it. It was for a boarding school. Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy. A place where maladaptive children were sent to be corrected and made appropriate members of society.
Gemma laughed, crumpled the pamphlet into a ball, and threw it at the back of her dad’s head.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck both of you.”
It was a twenty-six-hour drive. They drove it straight-through. They kept the car doors and the windows locked. When they stopped for gas, either her mom or dad stayed behind to watch her and make sure she didn’t run away. Sometimes, Gemma would see how far she could push their limits by screaming for help or kicking their seats for hours on end. But in the end, it didn’t seem to matter. As they so succinctly put it every chance they could, she had to go.
Two states later, and Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy stopped being words on a pamphlet and became an etched threat on the roadside mile markers. Thirty miles to go. Twenty-five miles to go. If Gemma was going to escape, now would have been the time to do it. And she could have, too. She could have hurt her father really badly, or busted out one of the windows until they had to pull over to stop her.
Ten miles to go. Five miles to go. Time was running out to run, and yet here she stayed, in a car full of her stuff and the parents who hated her, thinking to herself that maybe, just maybe, somehow, somewhere along the line, she had done something to deserve this.
The car pulled off the road onto a long, gravelly drive and followed it for five minutes into the forest. It was dinner time, and the sun was eager to be out of the darkening sky. Gemma’s shirt was so hot and sticky from crying, she changed into another just so she could wipe her tears onto something dry.
“This is for the best,” Dad said, breaking six hours of silence between them. He looked in the rear-view mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. Had he been crying, too?
Mom undid her seatbelt and started going through her purse for forms. “There’s no way to keep in contact with us, except through mail. A letter every two months. No more. I want you to focus on being better.”
Gemma pressed herself to the window as the forest thinned and the gravelly drive opened up to a wide lot. Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy didn’t look like a boarding school, but a prison. It was a three-story mansion, all red brick and black mortar. The windows were barred, and the doors chained. And, if that wasn’t enough, the property was surrounded by a ten-foot, wrought iron fence that someone like Vlad the Impaler would have had a field day with.
“You’re getting rid of me. For good,” she said, fogging the glass.
“You did it to yourself,” Mom answered.
“What did I really do?” Gemma lurched forward as Dad brought the car to a stop in front of the gates. She pleaded, “Why? This isn’t you guys. This isn’t you.”
Dad turned off the car. “Gemma, it’s you. It’s always been you. We’ve been beating each other up, not wanting to face the facts. You’re the worst thing that has ever happened to us.”
The words hit Gemma like a freight train. Too shaken to speak, she could only mouth, “What?”
“When you’re older, and maybe have children of your own, you’ll understand.”
“Fuck you,” Gemma said. “Fuck you. No. I don’t want to be older. I don’t want to be like you. After everything I did for you and—”
“All you did,” Mom said, “was waste our time and money. Just like you’re doing now. So why don’t you get out—”
Gemma’s door unlocked.
“—and waste someone else’s time and money, instead?”
Gemma spat in her mom’s face. She grabbed her bags and said, “This isn’t you. It’s the Dread Clock.”
“Gemma,” Dad said, turning in his seat. “If that were true, then why are you mad at us? Save us now, why don’t you? You said you did before.”
“Goodbye, Gemma,” Mom said, faking a smile. Handing her the forms for the school, she added, “You’ll thank us later. You’ll see.”
Gemma took the forms, kicked open the door. She threw her bags onto the ground and hurried out of the car. Mom and Dad settled into their seats, started up the engine, and then drove off, back the way they’d come. They didn’t roll down the window to say goodbye, or give her a look to tell her this wasn’t their fault, that they weren’t in control of themselves. They just left her there, at the school’s black gates, like a sick pet they didn’t want to take care of anymore.
Gemma picked up her bags. She took out Scram and stowed him in her back pocket. The forest looked pretty big, but all she had to do was follow the drive back to the main road. They had passed a town about forty-five minutes ago. She could get there, get on a computer. Track down Herbert and Connor and tell them what happened. Maybe they had a spell or something that could fix—
The wrought iron gates screeched to life. Gemma spun around, the shock of it zapping her thoughts. The front gate hadn’t opened all the way. Just enough for her to squeeze through, to get onto the main property. If she ran, would they send the police after her? If she stayed, would she ever get out again?
Further ahead, another noise sounded. Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy’s front door shook and then slowly crept open. The chain that had been fixed to it fell across the porch and slithered like a serpent into the nearby bushes.
“Hello?” Gemma called, one hand gripping the fence.
A Native American teenage girl emerged from the mansion. She was tall, lithe; had the look of a ballerina that only danced in the dark. She wore a long, green dress with a red collar. Looking more closely, Gemma saw that the girl had bandages wrapped around her hands, as though she had hurt herself on something.
“You must be Gemma,” the girl said. She waved her over to the school. “Come in. It’s been a long ride here, hasn’t it?”
She nodded. Long ride? That was putting it lightly.
“I know that you are scared. I was scared, too,
when I came here. But this is a good place. A much better place than where you came from.”
Defensively, Gemma shouted, “How do you know that?”
The girl shrugged one shoulder. “Why else would you be here?”
Gemma threw back her head and laughed. “Because I’m ‘maladaptive.’”
“Oh, no. No, no.”
The girl started down the porch. She crossed the yard, but in a curious manner. She kept to the shadows, to where the light didn’t touch. It reminded Gemma of a game she used to play where she pretended the floor was lava, and she had to hop from furniture to furniture to survive. Except, looking at this girl, she kind of got the impression that, if she did go in the light, something bad would happen.
At the gate, in a healthy pool of darkness, the girl extended her hand to Gemma and said, “My name is Eyota.”
Gemma stared at Eyota’s hand. Though it was tightly bound in bandages, she could tell there was something underneath the wraps; something wriggling, trying to get free.
“Observant,” Eyota said, retracting her hand. “But maladaptive? No.”
Gemma looked over her shoulder. She could still run. Could probably beat the crap out of this girl if she had to.
“We just put that in the flyer to attract the right people.”
Gemma reached behind her and touched Scram. “You mean the fuck-ups?”
“We are our parents. Are they not the ones who fuck us up?”
What is this? Gemma nodded because she didn’t know what else to do, and said, “Who runs this place?”
“Ah, we do, Gemma.” Eyota nodded at the school, at the figures who were now gathered in the dusty windows. “There are no adults here, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That sounds fucking great,” Gemma said. She kicked her bags. Then: “But I don’t believe you.”
“Go look for yourself.” Eyota stepped aside. “Leave anytime you like.”
“After what my parents…” Gemma choked up. She took a deep breath and buried the pain. “They wouldn’t send me to a place run by kids.”
“I don’t know, Gemma.” Eyota started back towards the mansion, hopping from shadow to shadow. “After I saw how fast they drove out of here, I think they would have sent you anywhere, as long as they could have gotten away with it.”
True, Gemma thought. They would have killed me if they could have. Is that what they were planning to do, if we hadn’t saved them? The Dread Clock brings out the worst, but the worst has to already be there to begin with. I’m so stupid. I should have let them go—
Gemma turned off her thoughts and slid through the gates. There was no sense in pretending as though she were going to run away. The closer she came to the mansion, the less put-off she felt by it. Intimidating, yes, but out here, in the forest, almost an hour away from any form of civilization, it seemed like a world all its own. And in a way, that’s what she needed right now.
“Gemma, come here,” Eyota said.
She had stopped midway to mansion, beneath a weeping willow so large and weeping, it had to have had some form of clinical depression.
Gemma went to her, joined her in the shadows there. A breeze circulated around the willow and cooled her nerves. She leaned in and smelled the tree. Filling her nose with that ancient odor, she took one of its leaves and pressed it to her face. Her skin prickled, and her heart skipped a beat. She slipped out of her sweaty shoes and sank her feet into the grass. Anchored there, she let Nature overcome her, to remind her there was more to life than the despair that had brought her here.
“Sorry,” she said, snapping out of the trance. “There was this cave back home I used to go to when I got stressed out. I guess I needed this.”
“I understand,” Eyota said. She started unraveling the bandage on her left hand. “So what brought you here?”
Gemma laughed. She bit her lip, bided her time. Can’t hurt, she thought, so she said it: “Ever heard of the Dread Clock?”
“Yeah, of course,” Eyota said, one layer of the bandage removed.
“Shut the hell up.”
“Seriously.” Another layer of the bandage fell away.
Gemma took out Scram and held him to her chest. “I don’t believe you.”
The third layer of the bandage unraveled as Eyota said, “Big grandfather clock. Makes the Black Hour happen at midnight. Terrible things come after that. We know it, Gemma. I don’t think it’s a coincidence you’re here. Many of us at Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy have been made Orphans by it.”
The fourth layer of the bandage fell away from Eyota’s hand. Gemma gasped as she noticed a long slit running down the girl’s palm. It looked fresh. The folds of the wound still glistened with rank wetness.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Gemma covered her mouth. “What happened?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” Eyota held her wrist and started to rub the bones there. “Gemma, this is a place for people who don’t want to grow up, and who are tired of grown-ups and the way they use us.”
The skin on her palm started to bubble.
“This is a place where kids like us can make a difference, for as long as we want to.”
And then a mouth inside Eyota’s hand pushed against the dripping folds. Greedily, it gulped at the air, like a leech desperate for blood.
“Oh, what the fuck?” Gemma stumbled backward towards the gate. “Oh what the fuck? I’m still in the Dread Clock. This is still the Dread Clock.”
Eyota shook her head. “You know that’s not true.”
“Then what the hell are you?!”
“A vampyre,” she said. She unraveled the bandages on her other hand, revealing a mouth in its palm as well. “Biting necks is awkward. But we touch each other all the time. Pretty cool, right?”
“No,” Gemma said. She found the nearest patch of sunlight and stood there. “No, no get away from me.”
“Gemma,” Eyota said, stepping out of the shadows. Her body twitched, but the light didn’t seem to stop her. “Do you want to be like them?”
Gemma shook her head.
“Do you want to give up the childhood they’ve almost ruined?”
Again, she shook her head.
“Do you want to find the Dread Clock with us and stop it?”
Gemma didn’t move.
“It’s still out there. We vampyres cannot die. You can be young forever. You can have forever to do what you want; to get what you deserve. To make that perfect life for yourself, and to be strong enough to stop anyone who wants to take it away from you.”
“You’re going to turn me into a fucking vampyre?” Gemma laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, what the hell is happening to me?”
“You’re getting a second chance, Gemma,” Eyota said, once again extending her hand. “All you have to do is take it. Tell me, when’s the last time you got to make a choice for yourself that really mattered?”
I don’t know, Gemma thought, watching the mouth in Eyota’s hand open and close. Never?
“Sunlight hurts,” Eyota said, “and we have to drink blood. But we’re teenagers, so that’s not that big of a deal right?” She laughed, winked.
“What if I say no?” Gemma eyed the gate, yet she found herself drawn to the girl, to the academy. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No,” Eyota said. “But what are you going to do? Wander around, hating your parents, going out of your way to get back at them?”
Gemma dug her heel into the ground. She broke into random fits of laughter. This was so fucking absurd. But was it? After everything she’d been through, was this that much worse? A vampyre made more sense than something like the Black Hour or the Dread Clock. She hated to admit it, but Eyota was right. She couldn’t do a damn thing as Gemma, except get picked up by the cops and get sent to the hospital or juvie.
And her mom and dad? She saw how they turned out, before the Dread Clock and after it, too. She herself was both of them, but which parts? The good parts? The bad parts? Did it matter? She had se
en what adults could do. What depths they were willing to sink to for the stupidest of reasons. Slavery. War. Children didn’t cause these things. Children were the ones who suffered for their elders’ mistakes. Children were the ones who would then repeat them later on, when they were stronger, and meaner.
Maybe the Dread Clock had put something in her, too, and it was just waiting for the right time to take her over. It had, hadn’t it? Right before she passed out in the concentration camp. When that creature told her how worthless she was. And she believed it. Oh, hell. Was she a ticking time bomb? A slow-burning fuse leading up to a night of razor blades and hot bath water?
Gemma grabbed herself, started to panic. She couldn’t trust this skin. She couldn’t trust the dark within. Tears in her eyes, she ran forward and took Eyota’s hand. The mouth in the girl’s palm went to work immediately. It clamped down on Gemma’s flesh and sank its small, greedy teeth in deep. Thin, buzzing tendrils, like those of a jellyfish, shot into Gemma’s hand from the mouth and slithered down the inside of her arm. They attached themselves to her veins and arteries and pumped something warm and numbing into her bloodstream.
“Everything will be better in a moment,” Eyota said, closing her arm around her, bringing her into a hug. “This is the only time anyone can say that and not be lying.”
Gemma closed her eyes and let the change overtake her. At this point, it didn’t matter if she made the right decision or not. She was tired of fighting, and of having to fight. She had gone through hell. She should have known that hell was the only thing she could have brought back with her. Gemma, the Thirteen-Year-Old Destroyer, had endured a long campaign of misery, and for what? More misery? She had tried being herself, now it was time to be something else.
Gemma opened her eyes, her vision sharper than before. Darkness had descended upon Our Ladies of Sorrow Academy, and all across its slanted rooftops were children, just like her.
The Black Hour’s orphans raised their hungry hands to Gemma, to welcome her into the only family to which she ever truly belonged.
