by Blythe Baker
“So, you think she’s wrong?” I asked anxiously.
He turned and looked at me, and his gaze softened. “Don’t you listen to her for one minute, alright? There’s no reason to believe any of this…this nonsense,” he said, handing the pamphlet back to me. “Every town has its ups and downs; ours just happens to be going through one of the harder times. It’ll get better, though. We have a great police force, not to mention the hardest working sheriff that I’ve ever seen Faerywood Falls take on. But that…” he said, nodding at the pamphlet. “That’s nothing more than someone desperately looking for answers when sometimes, sadly, there aren’t any.”
I saw a shadow pass over Abe’s face as he turned away, and for some reason, the tone in his voice told me that there was a lot more to those words than what he said.
What had Abe seen in his life?
“Here, let me get those boxes for you,” I said, setting the pamphlet down and hurrying to help him.
That night at home, I stretched out on my back on the couch, reading the pamphlet from front to back over and over again.
“It’s just crazy to me that people are buying into this,” I said. “I would have thought she was absolutely crazy before I moved here.”
What makes you think that anyone is going to come? Athena asked as she gnawed on the bone from our roast we’d shared for dinner that night.
“Well, she made it sound like their numbers were growing,” I said.
That’s assuming she was telling you the truth, Athena said.
“No, you’re right,” I said, setting the pamphlet down on the arm of the couch behind me. “Abe said that she’s sort of known for being a schemer.”
I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Athena said.
As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Sitting up, I pursed my lips together, my thoughts running into one another. “I don’t know…what if she’s convinced some people?”
What makes you think she has? Athena asked.
I licked my lips. “I…don’t know. But something’s not sitting right about it. In my mind, I know that most people are going to write off all the talk about vampires and werewolves as nothing more than fairytales, but still…the last thing that the Gifted classes need is the formation of this enthusiastic group of Ungifted snoops,” I said.
Why don’t you just go to the meeting? Athena asked.
“Wouldn’t that be just encouraging her?” I asked.
Not if you want to see how much they actually know, she said. Maybe it is just all talk. And if there are only a few people there, then you can rest easy about it. On the other hand, if it actually is a threat, then at least you’ll have the knowledge to be able to go and speak with the council of eleven, Lucan, and Cain.
“Not Cain…” I said.
He’d listen to you about something like this, she said. I’m sure he’s still upset, but he’ll come around eventually.
“Maybe…” I said.
I huffed, sinking back against the cushions. “I guess you’re right. The best thing for me to do is just to go to this meeting and see what they’re all about.” I exhaled heavily. “Though I guess this means that the Gifted are going to need to work harder to blend in with everyone else better, aren’t we?”
Certainly, that’s always wise, Athena said. She sat up, licking her lips a few times before she began to groom herself, starting with her paws.
I glanced back down at the pamphlet. There was a man’s face on the cover, as pale as bone, wearing a menacing smile. His teeth were showing, two of which were long and sharp. With his dark hair and veiled eyes, for a moment I could have believed it was Cain.
“I wish Bliss was still here,” I said, mostly to myself. “If she was, then at least I wouldn’t have to go to this meeting alone.”
Maybe you won’t be the only Gifted there, Athena said. If you’re curious about it being a threat, then I’m sure other Gifted will be, too, if they’ve heard about it.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. But it brought little comfort.
In a small way, I realized that this was all bound to happen eventually, wasn’t it? It was almost impossible to think that the Ungifted would remain ignorant forever. Many of them, like Mr. Cromwell, had been living in Faerywood Falls for their entire lives. They’d have to notice something strange happening, right?
As level-headed and wise as he was, Abe had to know that all these recent deaths and disappearances had to be connected somehow.
Even if he did, he’d assured me that there was nothing to worry about.
So why was I still so worried about it, then?
4
I always thought of myself as a relatively independent person. I’d have to be, you know? I picked up and moved away from home, out of the state I’d grown up in, hours and hours from home…
Not only that, but I lived on my own, too. Well, I had Athena, too, and even though I wouldn’t necessarily classify her as a “pet”, she still wasn’t exactly a human, either. I hadn’t ever felt the need to look for a roommate or anything.
I did all my own grocery shopping without anyone else with me. I made my own meals, kept myself entertained when the rest of the world went to sleep late at night.
So why was I stressing so much about going to this meeting at the old sawmill?
You feel like you’re walking into a room of hungry lions, Athena said to me from the passenger seat of my SUV. It made me anxious to drive it, since Cain had so graciously given it to me when mine had been washed away by the raging river and I’d nearly drowned. Now whenever I sat in it, I could only think of Cain and how he still wasn’t speaking to me. I hadn’t realized just how much that was going to hurt me.
“That’s an understatement,” I said.
But none of those people in that room know that you’re Gifted, Athena said. Unless they are Gifted themselves, in which case they might recognize you.
I glowered at the sky out of the windshield.
I had been unhappily experiencing the sensation of time moving too quickly since the night before. Every time I looked at the clock, I knew it was getting closer to this meeting. I’d spent days trying to ignore it, trying to go about my life as normal. But it kept rearing its ugly head whenever I was alone for more than a few minutes.
“I just don’t see what grounds they have to stand on about all this,” I said as I followed my GPS’s guiding to take another left turn. My eyes widened as I took a second glance. I only had four miles left before getting there? Why had it come up so fast?
You don’t know that they have anything, Athena said. For all you know, this is going to be a big hoax and you can just turn around and we can go straight home.
“You’re right…” I said. “I just feel like I’m going in with a big sign pointed at me, saying ‘Hey, guys! Faery here! Everything you’re saying is true and we do exist!’” I shook my head. “I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s how I’m feeling right now.”
I don’t think you have anything to worry about like that, Athena said. Just go in and try and blend with the others. Maybe ask a few questions to appear interested.
Three minutes to arrival. Great.
“I just want these people to disband, to stop looking for this stuff. Everyone in the Gifted community is going to say this is all my fault if they find out about it,” I said.
Then maybe your job today is to help them see reason, and convince them to go that direction.
The old sawmill appeared on the horizon a short distance away. Tucked away at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by what must have once been a dense part of the forest, it looked like it hadn’t been used in twenty, maybe thirty years.
With a jolt of nostalgia and sorrow, I frowned. “I wonder if this is the sawmill where my dad worked…” I said in a soft voice.
Athena didn’t respond, but I could sense a small part of her empathy washing from her mind to my own.
Now, we should practice one more time
your ability to communicate with me in your thoughts, Athena said. I know it’s been hard, but we will be some distance apart, since I’m staying in the vehicle.
I nodded, and closed my eyes. Looking at her made it easier to do, but I’d been practicing with just picturing her in my mind. That seemed to help, at least somewhat.
I tried to keep my thoughts straight, but the anxiety welling up inside me, twisting the muscles in my stomach into tight knots, was making it hard to focus.
Athena? I thought, trying to keep those words in my head louder than anything else passing through it.
I heard you, she said. Try something else. A sentence.
I don’t want to go into this meeting, I thought. That one came more easily than the others.
I know, Athena said. You don’t have to do anything. If you want to go home, we can. I just know you well enough to know that you won’t rest until you know for certain what this group is.
You’re right, I said. I’d be even more anxious about that.
What’s the old saying…keep your friends close, but your enemies closer? Athena asked.
I smirked. Picking up on human sayings now, huh?
I pulled the car down the steep drive, and my heart sank as I realized there were more cars than I expected.
“Oh, this isn’t good…” I said.
Maybe they’re workers here or something, Athena said.
“I think this place closed down a while ago,” I said.
I pulled the SUV in beside a red pick-up truck, put it in park, and killed the engine. I glanced down at Athena.
“You’re going to be okay in here?” I asked, rolling down the windows a fraction for some fresh air for her.
I’ll be fine, she said. Hopefully we’ll be able to communicate while you’re inside. Don’t get yourself worked up too much. We’ll get through this. Knowledge is our best tool in this situation, I think.
I nodded. “See you in a bit,” I said with a tight smile, and I climbed out of the car.
The air was milder today. Some of the early fall heat seemed to be trying to make a comeback. I unzipped the sweatshirt I’d thrown on that morning and shrugged it off my shoulders as I headed toward the only obvious door in the side of the dilapidated building. It stood open somewhat, and I could hear soft chatter coming from inside.
As I walked inside, my eyes fell on a group of people much larger than I’d expected. My cheeks flushed. Two dozen adults, maybe more, stood around in the long, narrow space. The far side of the building was open to the elements, and the churning of a river behind it was clear even over all the voices speaking. The long, narrow bed for logs stretched across the length of the floor, and a long, rusted and jagged blade was hanging over one end of it, likely where the logs used to be cut.
Some plastic chairs had been set up along parts of the floor that hadn’t rotted away yet.
“…did we have to meet here? Couldn’t we just have met in the library or something?” asked a woman standing with her back to me. From the tension in her shoulders, I could see she was just as uncomfortable as I was to be there. Maybe she was Gifted, too?
The man standing close to her, clearly her husband or boyfriend, was staring around with his dark eyebrows knit together in a long, hard line. “I know, but maybe a place like this is better, you know? So they don’t overhear us.”
The woman rubbed her hands over her shoulders. “Do you think they know about this meeting?” she asked him.
“I’m sure if they did, they’d have done everything they could to stop it, hun,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in. But even if she couldn’t see the concern on his face, I could, and realized that he didn’t believe his own words.
“Welcome, welcome,” said a tall, gangly man that spotted me. I recognized him immediately; he worked at the grocery store in town as its manager. John Garven. He always had a smile on his face. His white hair, or what little was left, was almost glowing in the shadowed building. “Oh, Marianne, isn’t it?”
“Um, yeah,” I said. Someone recognized me, Athena.
Is it another Gifted? She asked in return.
I don’t know, I said back.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he said brightly. I saw a stack of the pamphlets clutched in his hands; he’d been in the middle of passing them out when he spotted me. “How did you hear about the meeting?”
“Oh, Harriet Bennet stopped by Mr. Cromwell’s antique shop a few days ago and told me about it,” I said.
His eyes widened, and a prickle of fear ran down my spine; there was a slightly crazed look in them, nothing like I’d ever seen at the grocery store before. “So, you believe it too, huh? That paranormal beings are walking among us?”
“I just came to see what it was all about,” I said, leaning away from him slightly.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” he said, smiling down at me. He glanced at his watch. “Harriet should be here shortly. She’s always a few minutes late. I told her to schedule the meeting for a half hour from now so she’d be on time, but if she knew the real time we meant to start, she’d still be late anyways. Oh, well. If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, and he moved on to the couple I’d overheard when I first walked inside.
I swallowed nervously, walking away from the door. So, a person that I thought was totally normal is turning out to not be, I said to Athena. The manager at the grocery store. He’s here. And he seems convinced about the paranormals. You should have seen the look in his eyes.
Should you find out what he knows? Athena asked. He might be the best one to pay attention to.
Him and Harriet, I said. Whenever she gets here.
We waited around for a few more minutes, but when it got to be almost quarter after, John Garven stood up from the chair he’d been sitting in and walked to the front of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could all take a seat, I think we’ll have to get started. We don’t want to take up all your time this evening, and I’m sure that Harriet will show up here any moment. Scatterbrained as always,” he said with a small chuckle.
I took a seat in the back row, away from everyone else. Folding my arms, I thought back to when I’d met Harriet. She certainly had seemed scatterbrained; even said as much about herself.
“Now, you all must have come tonight to find out more information about our group, and our suspicions that paranormal beings are living here among us in Faerywood Falls,” John said. He held up one of the pamphlets; the vampire that looked too much like Cain sneered at the group. “We believe that these creatures are real, that they are trying to cover their existence, and they are taking advantage of us and our ignorance.”
“What proof do you have?” came the voice of a burly man who was also sitting in the back row with me, except on the opposite end. His arms were folded like mine, and his close-cut hair and clean face told me he was likely military. That sent chills down my spine. These were not just faceless people that were looking for us Gifted. They were real people with real concerns.
Suddenly, I was starting to feel guilty…
“Lots,” John said, waving his arm out wide. “Tracks in the forest that seem to morph from man to beast. Evidence of people talking to themselves, yet then acting perfectly sane when speaking to other people; we suspect they’re talking with spirits.”
The military man shook his head. “That’s not proof. That’s assumption. What solid, concrete facts do you have?”
A woman closer to the front, with pin-straight dark hair and lovely dark features turned and glared at him. “I have some facts. My child went missing. And when they finally found her body, the autopsy showed that she’d been bitten by something and drained of blood. Now, what sort of animal do you know of that would drain a human’s blood but leave the muscle and fat behind?”
Athena, these people have legitimate proof, I said, my fingernails digging into the flesh of my arm. One woman said her daughter was killed by being drained. Even if it wasn’t a vamp
ire, it could’ve easily been like what happened to Burt Cassidy, since Silvia wanted to make it look like a vampire had been the one to do it.
That’s not good…Athena said.
“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” the guy in the back said. “But that doesn’t prove anything.”
The woman’s mouth dropped open.
Another man a row back from her raised his hand. He wore a grey flat cap, and had a long, crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. “I’ve seen a real psychic,” he said. “I went to see one at her shop on the outskirts of town. She met people in her house, and…she knew things about me that I’d never told anyone…”
Goosebumps popped up all over my skin, a chill spreading through my body. What are these Gifted thinking? Leaving themselves out in the open like they do?
Maybe some don’t mind being found out, Athena said. Your aunt isn’t Gifted, but she knows about our world.
She birthed one, there’s no way she’d be able to actually avoid it, I said.
“Those psychics are a load of crap,” said the woman I’d heard when I first walked in. “They just tell you something general, and then when they finally hit upon something you react to, they pursue that. They base their answers off your reactions. I would know. I used to do it part time in college.”
“This was different,” the man with the flat cap up front said, turning around to look back at her. “She knew names, places, dates…I’d never heard anything like it. And just to prove herself to me, she gave me a detailed prediction, and…it came true.”
The woman with her husband’s arm wrapped around her folded her arms, her eyes narrowing in skepticism.
“As you can see, there are a great deal of questions that we all have,” John said loudly from the front, drawing all our attention back to him. “Which is why we wanted to start these meetings in the first place. The only way that we are going to be able to protect ourselves from them is if we band together and – ”
