Sam I Am

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “I’m sorry,” he pretended to be concerned, cupping her cheek in the palm of his hand. “Did I say something to offend you?”

  She shook her head quickly. Too quickly. Yes, she thought. “No,” she said as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of him. “It’s okay.”

  “Oh, good,” he continued. He was glad her eyes were closed, because he could feel his own gaze both heating up and growing colder. Becoming mean. “I wouldn’t want you to be jealous of her. I mean, I do plan on asking her out. She’s too good to pass up, isn’t she?”

  Katelyn’s eyes flew open and Sam forced himself not to grin in triumph. She gazed up at him in bewildered, muddled emotion. He pressed on, drawing her closer so that he could whisper his next words across the small space between them. “You’ll always come second, Katelyn. With me, with them – with any man.” He let it sink in. Just for a moment. And then, “Unless….”

  “U-unless?” she asked, so, so quietly.

  He did smile, then, and he knew his fangs were showing. But she was already in his thrall and it no longer mattered. “I can fix things for you, Katelyn. I can make you beautiful. I can make men notice you.”

  Her breathing quickened, her eyes glassing over.

  “I just want one small thing from you in return.” He glanced at the pulse in her neck and added, “Maybe two.”

  Logan nodded at Meagan’s parents and then gently closed the door behind her. They’d encouraged her to go in, despite Logan’s hesitation. She was unsure. She didn’t know whether she truly wanted to see her friend like this…. So unresponsive. It was too close to death for Logan’s tastes.

  But Deirdre Stone had told her that people in comas could still hear what was going on around them – and that Meagan would love to hear her friend’s voice.

  So Logan turned and made her way toward the bed at the other end of the room. Machines beeped and the smell of antiseptic and linen bleach wafted over her.

  Meagan Stone lay unmoving on the thin mattress, a single sheet tucked neatly under her arms. Her eyes were closed and her skin was pale. Her black hair, normally shimmering with raven-hued light, was dull and lifeless where it rested across the sheets in lackluster waves.

  “Meagan, your mom told me I should come and –” Logan stopped by the bed, but found herself unable to continue her sentence. Something had caught in her throat. She tried to swallow past the sudden lump, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “I –” Again her voice cracked and then, without warning, Logan was wiping wetness from her cheeks with the backs of her sleeves. She finally managed to get past the lump, but only with a quiet sob.

  “I’m so sorry, Meagan. What happened?” What on earth happened to you? she wondered desperately. Seeing Meagan now, in the flesh and in this condition, brought it all home for Logan. Who did this? She wanted to know!

  Logan found herself searching her friend’s face and bare arms for any sign of struggle – bruises, scrapes, anything. But her skin was smooth and unblemished. It was just – so pale.

  Logan sniffed and searched her pockets for a tissue; she normally kept a few handy in case of an allergy attack. But what she found instead was the small brown paper bag that Dietrich Lehrer had given her.

  “Oh,” Logan whispered, sniffling once more and wiping a few last tears from her cheeks. “Mr. Lehrer wanted me to give this to you.” She unfolded the small bag and dumped its contents into her upturned hand.

  It was a silver pendant on a black leather cord. “A Celtic spiral of life,” she whispered, holding it up to the overhead light. She recognized the symbol from a few of the books she’d studied in Lehrer’s class. It was very ancient; from as far back as the Bronze age. It was created using one un-ending line.

  Bizarre, she thought, vaguely. And then she shook her head, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Life never makes sense,” she told no one – and Meagan. Then she leaned over and draped the medallion over her friend’s heart, clasping it gently behind her neck.

  When she’d finished, she laid a gentle kiss on Meagan’s forehead and left the room.

  Outside, in the parking lot of St. Mary’s emergency ward, a young woman with curly blonde hair and two tiny puncture wounds in the side of her neck smiled a slow, wicked smile. Her eyes glittered in the tall parking lot lights.

  Just one little thing, she thought to herself. All I have to do is this one thing.

  Get the weird Celtic medallion and give it to Sam.

  And then Sam will make me beautiful. She laughed then, and if anyone had been around to hear her, they’d have thought she was drunk or insane. Or both. And no man in the world will be able to resist me.

  Chapter Five

  Logan met Meagan’s parents down the hall from their daughter’s hospital room. Mrs. Stone was standing at a set of windows, gazing out into the darkness, her arms wrapped around her torso as if she were trying to bring herself warmth. Mr. Stone was staring at the inner contents of a vending machine. Both were distracted; neither was moving.

  When they heard Logan approach, they turned to face her, nearly as one.

  “Thank you for letting me see her,” Logan said, hoping to pre-empt any awkwardness. She couldn’t imagine what must be going through their minds and she didn’t want them to feel as if they had to play nice at the moment. Their eyes were blood-shot and rimmed with hollow circles. It was obvious that they’d been crying. “Have the police found anything?” she asked.

  Deirdre Stone shook her head and her husband, Robert, sighed. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, his purple eyes finally focusing on Logan. She realized, then, that Robert Stone was a fairly attractive man and had given his daughter his strange violet gaze and blue-black hair.

  “We’ve got nothing,” he said, with a helpless shrug and a frustrated expression. “She came in clean – no signs of violation or struggle whatsoever.” His eyes widened a little as he added, “she was barely even dirty, except that there were tiny shards of what they said was malachite all over her.”

  “Malachite? The pretty green mineral?”

  Robert nodded. “The cops said it looked like it was maybe part of a polished bracelet and was shattered somehow.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know.”

  “What was she doing in the cemetery?” Logan asked.

  “We have no idea,” Deirdre answered. “But she was wearing a cloak and had a leather pouch on her.” She pinched the bridge of her nose as if stemming off an oncoming headache. “It had a lot of weird stuff in it,” she sighed. “But no drugs. Nothing to explain what happened.”

  Logan thought for a moment. A cloak. A cemetery on an October night. Meagan and her love of all things gothic or unexplained…. “What did the pouch have in it?”

  Deirdre stared at her for a second, then blinked and made her way to her purse, which was resting on a chair against the hallway wall. “Here, you can have it – the cops couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it and they just figured it was some strange teenage… I don’t know… fancy, or something.” She pulled a small brown leather bag from her purse and handed it to Logan.

  Logan gently took it from her and turned it over in her hand. It was the size of a marble bag, brown suede, with cotton yarn holding it closed.

  On impulse, she slid the bag into the pocket of her jacket and then took a deep breath. “I’m going to head home. Please let me know if you need anything, and if there’s any change?”

  Meagan’s parents nodded simultaneously. Then Mr. Stone frowned. “Didn’t you have a back pack or something?”

  Logan blinked. She’d left it in Meagan’s room.

  “I left it in the room.”

  “We’ll go back in with you,” Deirdre said. She nodded at Logan and the three of them headed back down the hall. But when they reached the door, they froze. Robert’s hand stilled over the door knob.

  Someone was speaking on the other side.

  There was a unified moment of stunned silence between the three of them. And then Robert’s hand was
wrenching the knob to the right and shoving the door open. He and his wife rushed into the room, Logan on their tails.

  Meagan was alone, and she was still lying on the bed, her eyes closed, her body immobile. However, she was talking. Her lips moved rhythmically and slowly.

  Deirdre and Robert ran to their daughter’s side. Logan stayed where she was, frozen in the doorway, her gaze transfixed by the silver spiral of life around Meagan’s neck that shimmered beneath the room’s low lighting.

  And then she seemed to jerk herself awake. She spun around and raced back out into the corridor. “Nurse!”

  It was twenty minutes later that Logan found herself walking slowly and numbly back to her car. The night was cool, the moon half-full, and she was feeling slightly nauseated with exhaustion. There was a gritty, metallic taste on her tongue and a fuzziness in her brain. She wondered, rather half-heartedly, whether she should even drive herself home.

  But for a town the size of hers, it was very, very late, and the streets were deserted. Even if she drove right across the median and into the oncoming lane, no one would be coming the opposite way.

  So, she reached her car, jammed the key in the lock, and gave it a stiff turn. Once she was behind the wheel, she fastened her seatbelt and fell into a deep silence.

  “October,” Meagan had said. “October” and “the door is open.” What did that mean? Over and over again, she’d whispered those words. They didn’t make any sense.

  Did they?

  Logan pulled the brown leather pouch out of her jacket pocket and turned it over in her hands. She could feel the lumps of objects inside and she caught the faint scent of some kind of herb.

  She untied the string holding it closed and dumped its contents into the palm of her hand. There were several polished stones, along with what looked like dried blackberries, still on the vine stem, and what smelled like leaves of mint. There was also a tiny, newborn tree branch; Ash, maybe. Some of the stones, Logan recognized: tiger’s eye, some kind of topaz, a small piece of cinnabar, something that looked like amethyst – maybe fluorite. She jostled them with her finger and closed her eyes in recognition.

  Of course. It was obvious what these were. They were spell components.

  Or perhaps magical charms. Protection maybe?

  Logan thought of her friend’s penchant for the bizarre. Or, what other people considered bizarre, anyway. Haunted houses, ancient grave yards, leaf-less trees and fleshless phalanges pounding out Danny Elfman music on a keyboard. That was the heart of Meagan, with her long black hair and violet-gray eyes and love of all that is strange. Her classmates, for the most part, considered her a freak.

  Logan, personally, had always secretly sided with Meagan. She wasn’t sure why she’d never said as much, but Logan was right there with her on her love of Halloween. She loved the night and the full moon and the smell of incense. She loved warm fire places on windy nights, lightning storms in the afternoon, foggy mornings, and unsolved mysteries.

  Logan’s favorite color was orange. Because she loved jack-o-lanterns so very much. Her favorite book was Bradbury’s Halloween Tree. And she was pretty sure that she, herself, had a “pumpkin fire soul.”

  Perhaps that was why Meagan had befriended her years ago. It had sort of happened quickly and Logan couldn’t even recall what had set the friendship off. But one day, she turned around, and it wasn’t only Katelyn that was standing beside her. Meagan was there too. Meagan trusted her. Maybe she felt that Logan understood.

  I understand what? Logan asked herself.

  And in the next moment, she had her answer. It dawned on her like a light bulb switching on or a splash of cold water on a tired face. Meagan Stone was a witch. She’d been in the cemetery last night to cast some kind of spell.

  Logan looked back down at the components in her hand. She wondered what the hell they could mean and what kind of spell they might be used for. “Mr. Lehrer would know,” she whispered. He’d brought Meagan a Celtic medallion. It was supposed to represent life, right? And he’d told her that he’d meant to give it to Meagan earlier…. Her history teacher must know that Meagan was a witch.

  Maybe Meagan was even in some kind of coven or grove with him. That thought made her smile – in a “that’s insane and I’m exhausted” kind of way.

  But the smile slid away quickly as Logan realized that she very well might be right. Either way, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to slide inexorably closer to one another. And she wasn’t sure she liked the look of the picture.

  Logan poured the stones and herbs back into the small leather pouch and set it on the passenger seat. Then she started the car and pulled out onto the road. It was time to head home and get some sleep.

  There was a staticness about the town at this hour. It was as if it had stopped moving, stopped breathing. Frozen until the sun came up. Logan had the odd sensation that she’d missed the train. It had come by and everyone had hopped on and floated away to dream land and she was alone, on the streets, with no place to go.

  “Jeez, babe. What everyone says about you is right.” She shook her head at her own thoughts. “You really are a drama queen.” And it had been too long since she’d penned anything substantial. She could tell; her creative mind was taking over and asserting itself in her everyday life. It was times like this, when the fit hit the shan in her life, that she most needed to write. And, consequently, that she had the least amount of time to do so.

  A few minutes later, she pulled into the lot in front of her house to find that hers was the only car there. It was late; where was everyone? Taylor’s ’89 Ford crew cab was missing. Her parents’ ’76 Blazer was gone, too. She knew that her sister, Kayla would most likely be over at a friend’s house for the weekend. Unless he’d gone with their parents somewhere, James, her youngest brother, would be alone in the house.

  Logan got out of the car and went to the front door. She’d expected to have to use her key, but the door was unlocked.

  “Oh come on, guys! It’s three a.m.!” she hissed under her breath, shaking her head at their carelessness. The door came away from the frame too easily and opened into a dark kitchen. The air felt hollow and cold. The house was quiet.

  “James!” she called out.

  There was no answer. Logan closed the door behind her; it bumped the frame, made a crunching sound, and gently swung back toward her. She turned to investigate it. The wood in the frame was splintered and the door jamb was hanging from two loose screws. Someone had slammed it too hard again. No wonder it hadn’t been locked.

  Logan took a deep, steadying breath and tried once more to shut it. It caught, somewhat hesitantly, and she wearily accepted it as good enough.

  She dropped the keys onto a table beside the door and made her way through the kitchen, the living room, and into the hall toward the staircase. That was when she heard the ragged breath and the sound of someone sniffling.

  “James?”

  Silence. Then, “Yeah?” It was soft and shaky and Logan knew in an instant what had happened. Taylor and James had fought. Again. Taylor had won, as it was rather easy for a nineteen year-old boy to beat the living hell out of a ten year-old.

  And then James had been left here, alone in the house.

  Logan dropped her back pack and walked quickly to the half-closed door that led to James’s room. As she moved, she prayed for the best. No broken bones. No horrible cuts. And bruises that wouldn’t show if he wore long sleeves.

  She knocked on the door.

  There was no answer, but there never was after a fight. Logan knew that she would just have to go in and check on him. Deal with this. Like she always did.

  So she pushed the door open and found him where she had expected, sitting on the edge of his bed, his head bowed. There were bloodied tissues on the bed beside him and some had fallen to the carpet as well. His short brown hair was mussed and his cheek looked puffy in profile.

  “Anything broken?” Logan asked, her voice moving stubbornly past t
he lump in her throat.

  It took a moment for James to answer, but when he did, it was a tiny shake of his head and then a pause. “I don’t think so.” She could see his tongue moving gingerly in his mouth. “Maybe a tooth,” he added.

  It was strange how books and movies always described someone as lisping or speaking abnormally after a fight. The truth was, the human body was an incredibly resilient and somewhat bizarre machine. Adrenaline would make it work right – even when it didn’t seem to have all of the parts it needed to do so.

  People with bloodied lips and broken teeth would speak normally. People with broken noses didn’t sound nasal until the next day, or even the day after that.

  It didn’t look the way it did in the movies or books, either. After a fight, a face usually looked pretty much normal. A bit puffy perhaps, but not marked with any black or blue until quite a bit of time had passed. Logan had learned, in fact, that the only true giveaways that someone’s face had taken damage in a fight were bloodied tissues, chipped teeth, and wild, crazy stares.

  There was also the vibration in the air. It was indescribable, but it was there. It was something you just got used to detecting after you’d been through enough personal wars.

  Logan sat down beside James and considered, just for a moment, gently straightening his hair. The way she’d done when he was younger. But he was probably tender – in so many ways.

  My family is battle fatigued, she thought. We’ve all got PTSD.

  “Can I see?” she asked, softly.

  He shrugged, and then turned toward her, opening his mouth. That was when she caught sight of the small cut just beneath his left eye.

  Shit, she thought. That’s going to mark bad. God damn it!

  She hid her surprise and anger well and peered into his mouth. Blood was slowly seeping up around the next to the last molar on the bottom left side.