It seemed to be made up on the spot, the mocking lyrics coming to her a few words at a time.
Messenger had in his hands a black cloth. I don’t know where it came from. It was rough-textured, felt perhaps, and when he drew it over his hair and pulled it down across his face, it was revealed to be a hood. Only Messenger’s eyes were visible, blue lights shining from eye slits.
“In the name of Isthil and the balance She maintains,” Messenger intoned, “I summon the Hooded Wraiths and charge them to carry out the sentence.”
“No, no, no, man, I didn’t do anything wrong!” Derek yelled. “I was just doing it because Charles, man. Charles! It was all him, I never thought . . . I was just messing around!”
It was the mist itself that seemed to form the two dark and hooded figures now taking shape before my eyes. They might have been men, might have been human, but no feature was discernible, no touchstone of normalcy. They were too tall to be truly human, more than seven feet tall; at least they were that tall from the trailing hem of their cloaks to the pointed peak. There were no holes for eyes, no fingers protruded beyond their capacious sleeves.
Then the mist withdrew and I was reminded that we were still in a gymnasium, that people still filled the seats, though they remained immobile. The light was unbearably bright on those immobile faces, but around us, and centered on Derek, a shadow formed. It was not the mist—it was some unnatural extinction of light, as though an invisible force field had formed around us, bending light away, allowing only the faintest illumination.
One of the wraiths raised his arms and, with a shattering noise of ripping and tearing, the wooden floorboards twisted loose from the nails that held them. They flowed in streams from the edges of the gym floor, revealing glue-stained concrete beneath. They flowed, noisy, clattering, and swirled around Derek’s feet.
I had no choice but to step away or be swept off my feet. I felt a jolt of guilt. I was abandoning Derek, a bad person, an angry, malicious person, but still for all that, just a dumb teenager.
He stood rooted in the spot, twisting this way and that but unable to flee.
The wood piled around him, and some of the boards rose to a vertical, gathered together to form a stake, maybe eight feet high. And now Derek was rising as boards forced themselves beneath his feet, forming a rude platform.
The second wraith made a graceful gesture of his arm, and cords that had held suspended banners released the banners to flutter away while snaking down as if they had come alive to wrap themselves around Derek and tie him to the stake. He was bound at the ankles, the knees, the thighs, the waist, the chest. His hands were unbound, but a rope circled his throat and held him to the pole.
“No, stop it! Stop it! Oh, God, stop it!”
That was not just Derek crying for mercy but me as well—this could not happen, this could not go on. Yes, Derek had caused a death, yes, he had ruined Manolo’s life as well, but this was impossible, this was not tolerable. My insides were twisting, twisting as Derek screamed now, screamed, no longer able to plead, no longer able to form words, for sheer terror owned him now.
His eyes bulged, his chest heaved, and he screamed again and again as both wraiths raised high their arms and flame grew from the ends of their sleeves.
“Messenger! No! No! No!” I cried, and I rushed at him, to beat at him with my fists, but I found I could not get near him.
Oriax was singing still, an eerily pretty voice carrying the ancient tune, but with words from no language I had ever heard before. There was a dark malice in the very sound of those words, an evil that did not rely on meaning but could be heard in the few vowels and the thick, clotted consonants.
The wraiths lowered their flaming arms, and bright yellow fire flowed like a liquid to touch the piled wood. The flames were bright in the pool of iniquitous darkness and I prayed while sightless men and women and children in the bleachers sat immobile.
I wish that I could have turned away. I wish that what came next never imprinted itself on my memory. I did not want, do not want, to know what fire does to a human body.
There was little smoke at first, though the burning varnish made an acrid smell. For the first few seconds Derek seemed amazingly unharmed. But then the hair on his legs singed and curled and fell away. The flesh of his legs reddened. His wrestling uniform shorts billowed out as hot air made balloons of them, and then, suddenly, they caught fire, curling up from the hem.
Bare flesh went from the red of a sunburn to something purplish and then black as the fat beneath the skin sizzled and popped like eggs on a too-hot grill. The skin burst open, like time-lapse video of rotting fruit. There was a nightmarish hissing, whistling sound as superheated gasses escaped. Steam rose from flesh turned molten, flesh that ran down like rivulets of lava.
And yet Derek lived.
He had been screaming all along, but there is a difference between the scream of terror and the scream of agony. The raw sounds tearing Derek’s throats were animal noises, not human. He bleated like a goat. He squealed like a pig. His mouth drew in air that instantly seared his throat and caused his lungs to begin filling with mucous, so that what were roars and screams and shrieks became grunts, mindless, choked animal grunts.
Derek’s hair caught fire and for a moment his head was wreathed in smoke. I saw his leg bones were appearing as the muscle and fat melted away, white bone at first, then blackened, as his skin was blackened.
And still he lived. His body jerked frantically, spasms so powerful I wondered that his body did not tear itself apart.
“That’s enough,” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s enough! Enough! Enough! Enough!”
But it did not end. Derek was a torch. It was no longer a simple wood fire; it was a fire of shreds of clothing, hair, and human grease. Flesh was melting away, revealing the structure of bone beneath.
And now more than ever: the smell. The contents of his stomach and bowels burned and stank like a sewage treatment plant. The meat of him burned and smelled like an outdoor barbecue.
It was the smell, the realization that with each inhalation I was drawing the atoms of Derek’s body into my nose, the stink of human waste blended with a smell that to my horror made my stomach rumble hungrily, that sent me over the edge.
At the end Derek’s eyes boiled in their sockets and, mercifully, I lost consciousness.
19
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES AGAIN, I WAS ON THE floor, sitting in a heap, collapsed as if my spine had been removed. My first conscious sensation was smell. Derek smelled like burned hamburger.
Then, all at once, the charred wood was made whole. All at once it was all back where it belonged, neatly covering the floor.
There was no stake. There was no more smell of charring flesh except in memory. The pool of darkness dissipated.
Derek lay crumpled on the floor. There was no mark of the flames upon him. His silly wrestling uniform was dark with sweat, but not with smoke or the stain of rendered fat. His hair was not curled from singing. His eyes had not liquefied and sizzled down his cheeks.
He breathed.
He lived.
Oriax was still with us. She had ended her song.
Messenger had removed the hood from his head, and what he had done with it, I could not say.
“You are alive and unhurt,” Messenger said. “Your penance is complete. The imbalance has been repaired. You are free to go.”
I could only stare in disbelief. Unhurt? He had been burned alive. Or so it had seemed to me, and very definitely so it had seemed to Derek. This was justice? This atrocity?
The three of us waited, eyes all on Derek, ears straining to hear if he had any response.
I heard a sound like nothing that should ever have come from a human throat, yet it came from Derek. An eerie, low-pitched keening, repeated over and over again.
I went to Derek—I could not do otherwise—I crawled to him, touched his head, but he jerked away from me and raised a face utterly transformed by madness. H
is eyes were no longer human but like the eyes of a beaten dog near death, full of pain and incomprehension.
“Derek, it’s over. It’s over. You’re not burned. It’s over.”
He began rocking back and forth, resting on one haunch, legs twisted together, his face in one elbow while the other armed just flapped like it was boneless.
“Like a dry twig,” Oriax said.
“You’re both despicable!” I raged at Oriax and Messenger.
“Yes,” Oriax said, “but at least I have some fun with it.”
Derek rocked, back and forth, back and forth, all the while keeping up his unearthly keening.
“The Shoals for him, then,” Oriax said.
“That is not for you to decide,” Messenger said tersely. Then in a voice that was flat he said, “Daniel.”
Just that. He didn’t yell it or speak any incantation. And Daniel was there.
Daniel glanced at Oriax and said, “I imagine you’ve done your damage, Oriax.”
“Mmm,” she answered. “Well, I sense that I am not wanted here.” She winked at me and disappeared.
Daniel didn’t seem to need any explanation, and Messenger didn’t offer one. He knelt beside me, in front of Derek, and laid his hand on Derek’s head. This time Derek did not flinch. I don’t believe that Derek felt Daniel’s touch, or that he felt or saw or heard anything at all anymore.
Tears were running freely down my face, and I felt so very sick and so utterly weary. But slowly I became aware that Daniel was looking at me.
“It was awful,” I muttered.
Daniel nodded.
“He is a monster,” I said, pointing a finger at Messenger. “He’s a wicked, sick, sadistic monster.”
Daniel waited to see if I was done, but I had no more words, just tears and sadness.
“Do you imagine that he enjoyed it?” Daniel asked me. “Do you still not understand that what the Messenger of Fear does, he is bound to do? He’s not a monster, he’s a servant. And a penitent. Like you.”
That word penetrated. Penitent.
“This is Messenger’s punishment,” Daniel said. “As it is yours. Each horror that he sees is a scar on his soul, a whip on his flesh. As it will be to you when you are the Messenger.”
“Just a kid,” I said, speaking about Derek but, I suppose, about myself, too. And even Messenger.
“Charles, too, was just a kid, and now he lies dead. And in a few weeks Manolo will be dead after hanging himself to escape the misery of his new life. Two dead, because of Derek.”
I didn’t want to argue with Daniel. I didn’t have the strength.
“This isn’t fair, this isn’t justice,” I said. “People do bad things all the time. They get away with bad things all the time. Why this one person? Why did we subject Liam and Emma to the test and risk this? Who knows what fears they may have had? And why Kayla, no matter how bad she may be? What horrors are you going to inflict on her?”
Daniel glanced at Messenger and might have been almost irritated. Maybe that Messenger had not explained these things to me. But then he nodded to himself, accepting it. He said, “Mara, we right the balance. Do we always right the balance? No. So we focus on . . .” He stopped, frowned thoughtfully, and said, “On what do you think we focus? Why are we dealing with these three cases? As you say, there are thousands of awful deeds every day. Why these three?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“First,” Daniel said, “they are young, and might do terrible things again and again if uncorrected. But I will tell you that had Liam and Emma merely run into a dog, the Messengers would not be involved.”
“So, why?” I asked. I was not in the mood for twenty questions. My heart was a pain in my chest. My mind was unfocused, overwhelmed by the horror I had witnessed. They both waited then, like teachers waiting to see whether a dull student had grasped the lesson.
“Can’t you just tell me? Can’t either of you just explain?” I asked wearily. When they didn’t reply, I groaned and dug deeper. “I don’t . . . Unless it’s that they each knew. That they had already seen what happened when they . . .” I felt my brow crease with concentration, felt as well the excitement of groping toward understanding. “It’s that they knew. They each had a chance to stop. They didn’t blunder into it, they didn’t accidentally do something terrible, they knew. Is that it? Liam and Emma could have saved the dog but didn’t. Derek and Charles had already been sent to detention and counseling. They knew what they were doing was wrong. And Kayla knew as well. She knew Samantha was struggling just to hold on. She knew what she was doing.” I looked pleadingly at them. “Is that it?”
Messenger and Daniel exchanged a significant look. Daniel’s had a nearly but not quite undetectable air of “Told you so” about it.
Messenger said, “The balance of this world is not upset by accident. It is not upset by those who blunder accidentally into wrong. Evil comes when those who know better, who have seen the pain they cause, nevertheless cause more pain. The drunk driver who has already had near misses and knows that sooner or later he will take a life. The thug who has already seen a victim’s blood and goes searching for more. The liar who has already destroyed a life and feels empowered by that ability to destroy. Those are the people who must be confronted. It will become a hunger for them, a need to cause and witness pain. Having done it once and escaped punishment, they will be drawn to it again. Each case had a chance to correct course, to learn and to atone and to move on. When they don’t . . .”
“They may be visited by a Messenger,” Daniel concluded. Then, lesson time clearly over, he turned his attention back to Derek. “Some learn. Some are destroyed.”
“You burned him alive,” I said. “Do you think anything that you’re saying justifies that?”
Daniel showed no reaction. But Messenger’s pale face colored and he looked away.
“I will take him to the Shoals,” Daniel said. “His mind is gone. The fear has broken him. But the day may come when he will find some peace.”
Messenger nodded, stiff, avoiding my accusatory gaze.
“She needs rest,” Daniel said, meaning me. “No more now, Messenger. And you as well, I think. Don’t keep searching for her. Rest.”
The second “her” was not about me, I thought, and that was confirmed when Messenger said, “A glimpse would be all the rest I would need. I had heard she was in Carcassonne. I performed my duties—I did what I must do. I just wanted . . .” But then, with a sigh that trembled coming out, he conceded. “I will rest, Daniel.”
Daniel then did what I had thought no one could do. He laid a hand on Messenger’s shoulder and said, “Not long now.”
“Just tell me if she lives!” The words came out as a cry of pain, a pain I would never have believed Messenger capable of.
Daniel did not answer, but left his hand on Messenger’s shoulder until the boy in black let his chin fall all the way to his chest in a pose of exhaustion and defeat.
Around us the room unfroze. Once again there were shouts and cheers and people eating nachos.
But there was no Derek. His disappearance must have seemed inexplicable. His wrestling opponent was looking around, baffled, the referee doing likewise.
I was done. Done with it all. Without asking permission or waiting for Messenger, I fled the room, passing through a heavy door that should have led to the outside but led instead to the room that was not my room and the bed that was not my bed, but was bed enough to catch my body as I collapsed.
20
I DREAMED. HAD I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, I SUPPOSE I would have expected to experience nightmares. But I did not. Instead I found myself walking along a beach. There were tall buff-colored cliffs to my left. To my right, waves crashed and each time they did, the sound was a joy to me. A crash followed by all the sounds of suction drawing water back into the retreating wave like an inhalation. The sounds of pebbles rolling endlessly in the water, in and out, in and out, slowly, inexorably being ground down from rock to p
ebble to sand.
It was not hot, though the sun was in the sky, still well above the horizon. A stiff breeze blew the salt off the white foam, just cold enough to raise goose bumps from my exposed arms and legs. I looked down, in this dream, and saw that my feet were bare and coated in a layer of adhesive sand. I felt something in my hand and turned it palm-up to look at the half dozen mismatched shells I had there.
I was happy. I could feel it. I smiled in the dream and smiled into my pillow.
The beach was a crescent, not very long, one of a dozen such small, hard-to-reach beaches along the coast north of Santa Cruz. In my dream I knew that’s where it was. Santa Cruz. We went there sometimes. We. Whoever “we” was.
I looked down the beach and saw an old couple with low folding chairs, the man with a long-billed cap and sunglasses, the woman in the odd combination of down parka and sundress. No, they were not with me; I was not with them.
I looked back along the path made by my bare feet in the sand and saw a woman and a girl, maybe seven or eight years old. The woman was Asian, like me; the girl I couldn’t see clearly enough to identify beyond the fact that she was wildly energetic, running in mad circles that cut through the white fringe of the crashing wave.
My mother? My sister?
I longed to run to them—it was foolish of me to feel that I needed time alone, off hunting for shells. Didn’t I realize how much I would need them? How much I would crave their conversation, their still unremembered faces? I wanted to run to them, but even in the depths of the dream I knew I could not.
I looked up, craning my neck, bending my back, and shielding my eyes with my hand, to survey the top of the cliff. He was up there, the boy in black, Messenger. He had never been to this beach, I was sure of that, and the lucid part of me, the aware part of me that knew this was a dream and knew that I knew, felt his presence as an intrusion.
And yet I was not resentful. He was gazing out to sea, looking for her. For Ariadne, as if she could be out there somewhere. At that thought I turned to follow the direction of his gaze and spotted three surfers, two already paddling like mad to catch the wave that pursued them, while the third, a girl with auburn hair, sat astride her board waiting for something better to roll in.
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