by David James
~
The hot water felt so good, soothing my muscles and burning my skin red; and within ten minutes I was showered and back in my room. I grabbed a clean pair of dark jeans from my dresser, almost fell over into a pile of paper as I was putting them on, and tugged a gray sweater over my head. I rubbed my eyes a little, trying to get the blackness out of them, but it was no use.
I made my way over to my desk. Sat, clicking the keys of my computer, searching. Somehow, I found myself looking at pictures in my photo album. I was amazed at how much I had grown over the past year, into someone more than the scrawny guy I had been when I started high school. I surfed through pictures and came to one of me and Tyler at our kindergarten graduation. His mom had forwarded it to me years ago. In it we were small, tiny compared to everything else. We were smiling. I didn’t remember that day, but I remembered being that age. That’s when the problems had started. Funny, how some people change and some stay the same.
My eyes drifted toward the bottom of the screen. The clock blinked neon: 10:02 AM.
I froze.
My breath caught in my throat.
School started two hours ago.
I moved so quickly that I knocked over my desk chair and fell onto the floor.
Why didn’t my alarm go off?
With a thud of regret washing over me, I realized I had fallen asleep without setting the clock. I must have.
Where’s Mom?
10:03 AM.
No time to think. Time was rushing forward without me, not waiting.
I grabbed my phone off the dresser, my backpack from the floor, and flung my door open, making it hit the wall, probably leaving a dent in the soft frame.
Mom would have my head for that one.
My legs couldn’t carry me fast enough as I flew down the hallway and then down the stairs, only touching three of them. In a crash I landed, fell to my knees on the floor, and looked around.
“Mom?” I called, hoping she had just fallen asleep on the couch. “Mom? Where are you?” I tried to shout, but my words came out as a cry. “I need a ride to school.”
I ran into the living room, found it empty and shouted, “Mom! You here?”
No answer.
No Mom.
It was as if the world had slowed and died, and silence upon silence was living inside the house; I knew something was wrong. I could feel it everywhere; in the quiet, thick air of unease around me. I could see it in the pictures nailed to the walls, hanging crooked and dreadful and wrong.
I stepped into the kitchen.
Nothing.
I ran around the house in a desperate frenzy hoping to see some sign of her, anything that would tell me where she was but I found nothing.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed her cell phone number.
I jogged around the house one more time as I listened to the sound of metallic ringing in my ear.
The call went to voicemail.
My thoughts were interrupted by the ding of the doorbell, too heavy and false in this hush. I walked to the window and peeked out from behind the curtains.
Harsh, loud: Ding.
My heart fluttered and then dropped past my feet and into the floor below. The air was sucked out of me with a malicious intensity; I was never going to get it back and, for a second frozen in time, I was helpless against the fear.
Dad.
Ding.
“Ca-lum!” I heard him call, his voice sardonic and wild. “I know you’re in there. Hello. Hello! Come out, come out and talk to me.”
His words, like an evil song, cut through the air with anxious rhythm. His face wore a sinister smile looking of blood lust as if he were smelling the sweetest perfume and wanting nothing more than to bathe in it. His eyes were on fire with a redness that I was quickly beginning to recognize as twisted fury. He was sick.
Ding.
I didn’t know what to do. My mind raced with nothing, running faster and faster on empty.
Ding.
His face twitched, like before, the spasm running through his body like rage. “Calum! Calum!”
And faster: Ding.
Ding.
“Calum!”
Ding.
He began to whistle in time to the doorbell, his lips barely puckered together against his smile, and then words took shape as he sang:
“One, two, I see you.
Three, four, kill some more...”
Somewhere deep inside me my adrenaline kicked in and I ran. I ran out the back door and away from the man I didn’t know and from the house I didn’t feel safe in. I didn’t know where I was running to and I couldn’t see clearly, but I knew that I needed to get away. I needed to be somewhere safe where there would be people, lots of people.
Gone was the time to be alone.
As I ran I could hear my Dad scream behind me and then not at all; I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been here before.
Screaming.
There was nothing but screaming.
Chapter Eight
Blood and Truth
-Calum-
The wind howled around me. My legs moved without my help, propelling me forward. I arrived at the school in a matter of minutes, slowed to a walk when I was in the parking lot, and stopped to catch my breath. My adrenaline was still pumping hard through my body, but I could see my surroundings now. The sky was darkening, the gloomy clouds extended outward in wisps like gray fingers. Singular drops of rain fell, warning but doing little more. A storm was just beyond the horizon, past the mountains, waiting.
Dad.
Another burst of panic sent a wave of dizzying blue fog, hitting my senses with blunt force. I blinked, threw my hands to my knees and bent forward. My head began to pound, throb.
I don’t know what to do, I thought. What do I do?
Somewhere deep within the ache, I thought I heard my named being called. Calum. It sounded like angels singing. Calum, embrace who you are, what you can do. Embrace it. But then, like so many times before, blue threatened and the voice became a memory.
I walked toward the ominous letters of the high school. All I wanted right now was to talk to Tyler. I pushed open the doors of the school, walking full force, and ran into what felt like a brick wall.
“Stay back!” I heard someone shout.
Chaos had taken Lakewood High. People were everywhere, running this way and that, limbs tangled. The common area was so packed with bodies that I couldn’t see any space between them.
I jumped as an arm grabbed me from my left.
“Calum!” Annabelle screamed at me. “What are you doing here? We thought you died! Have you seen Jason?”
“What’s going on?” I shouted above the noise. “What are you talking about?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Chad’s dead,” she whimpered, “and Jason’s gone. I know he is!”
Suddenly, Tyler exploded behind her and, when he saw who Annabelle was talking to, grabbed me and shoved me down behind a bench.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered. He was sweating, his voice shaking. I had never seen him so afraid. “Go! You have to leave right now before he knows you’re here.”
I pushed his hand off me. “Before who knows I’m here? What is everyone running around for?”
Before Tyler could answer I heard the first scream. It started loud, earsplitting, and then leveled off to a sob before it became a wet gurgle. I had never heard death before, and the sound of it made my skin crawl.
“He’s here,” Tyler whispered. “We thought it was all about Kate but we were wrong. He’s come for you. He keeps saying your name.”
I couldn’t breath. “Who?”
Tyler leaned in close. “Your Dad.”
Annabelle choked, “The Bloodletter.”
Slowly, without even realizing I was doing it, I was up, standing amidst the students that filled the wide open area. Looking around, I saw what I had not seen before. Blood was everywhere. Students had been tossed in heaps of bloody bod
ies at random. I saw Chad’s hand sticking out from beneath the nearest one, the ring on his finger too familiar to be a mistake.
“Chad...” I breathed as I stepped toward what was left of him.
“Don’t,” Tyler said grabbing my arm and pulling me back. I heard Annabelle sob. “We have to get out of here.”
“But all these people,” I started, shaking my head back and forth. “How did he get here so fast?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “A few minutes ago he ran out of the school and we thought it was safe, but he’s back. I’ve never seen anyone move as fast.”
I reached for my phone to call the police but Tyler knocked it out of my hand.
“There’s no time for that,” he said while his eyes pleaded in warning. “It’s no use. People are saying he got the police first. There’s hardly anyone left in town; your Dad’s been going at it all morning. No police. No teachers. Mayor White was already gone. He targeted everyone that would be able to help us, and crowded the rest in school.”
“But why would he do that?”
Annabelle shivered next to me. “Because,” she said in a small, hollow voice that I could barely hear above the screaming. “If everyone is dead there’s no one left to tell the story.”
My hands ran through my hair. I whirled around in circles, trying to understand what was happening. If no one was left, who would help?
I caught my reflection in the window behind me and stopped. I was smiling, a wicked grin on my face. Blood was dripping from my mouth down my chin and I was licking my lips as if I actually liked the taste. I waved, my hand moving at an odd angle.
“Hello, Calum. I told you today was the day. It has to be this way. Are you ready to die?”
A horrible panic raced through me as I heard Annabelle scream. Tyler pulled me close and then reached for her. Together we were three, a wall against what was. Together, we let out a collective shudder that made my father twitch, his eyes blinking in pleasure.
Still, the three of us were breathing.
“Why are you doing this?” I screamed, my voice too loud then too quiet.
“There is no other way.” He smiled, and bits of flesh and blood spattered his lips. “Because if you don’t die, then I will, and I want to live more than anything in this world.”
He lunged at me. Tyler pushed me to the floor and I landed on top of Mr. Brandt, his eyes disconnected from his face. I heard a pop.
“Run, Calum!” Tyler screamed. He picked up a chair and threw it at my Dad, but he had changed directions and went for Annabelle instead. The second he touched her she screamed. He sunk his teeth deep in her neck and ripped and a chuck of meaty flesh flew across the room and hit the window with an echoing thud. A streak of red falling down kept time to the slow fall of Annabelle’s body as she collapsed on the floor. Dead.
“No!” I screamed, just as Dad turned to Tyler. “You don’t have to do this, Dad! Stop!”
But no one heard me. All around was the sound of the wounded dying. There were too many moans, too many screams and sobs to hear anything but the blood beat viciously in my ears.
Tyler and Dad ran at each other. I tried to move but a hand grabbed me. My legs kicked out, hopelessly making contact with nothing. I screamed, punching the air around me because I couldn’t see who it was.
“Shut up and follow me,” a voice said.
Kate.
I shouted, “Let me go!”
Her lips were wet with blood. “No! We have to get out of here! This wasn’t supposed to happen! Can’t you see?”
She had a grip like iron, but I managed to get away and started to run to where Tyler and Dad were fighting. I couldn’t tell who was winning, but the sounds of skin ripping were loud enough.
“Let’s go!” Kate yelled and grabbed my leg hard, pulling it back.
I fell, my head hit the floor and blackness erupted around me like death.
"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny
but in ourselves."
- William Shakespeare
Part Two
A Rising Heart
~
“We walk our days as hollow men,
never truly realizing this day
might be our last. This day might
change everything.”
~
Chapter Nine
Red Tears
-Calum-
In my dream I could still smell the blood, still see the bodies twisted and cut and dead. I could still hear the screams as my father stole lives and broke hearts.
I was flying.
“Calum,” the voice said, the one I’d grown to know. “You must realize that this is the way it’s supposed to be. You were meant for this life.”
A shape of a man emerged from the night, shadow upon shadow of blackness. Stars filled the spaces where lips might be, blinked in place of his eyes.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak; in this sky I was barely living. I could feel my heart slow, until it was nothing and all was silent except the voice.
“I cannot stay long,” the man said, all shadows and stars. “It is not time for me to interfere just yet, but know we are always watching. In your dreams we are watching. When it is time, you will know it. For now you must become who you were born to be, who you have been born to be thousands of times before.”
Stars like sparks of fire dotted his face, shooting across it. “I cannot say more. Accept your powers. Accept who you are. Don’t let fear hold you back.
“Become who you are, Caeles...”
At once, as though death had taken me, the stars faded and nothing but darkness was seen.
~
Blue.
Violet.
Always blue and violet.
Blue and violet against one another.
Together, blue and violet.
Blue.
Violet.
Always.
-Kate-
Calum was supposed to die today.
I could feel my heart screaming loud as I drove away from the town dressed in blood. Like the tall, white peaked mountains dotted in the distance, I could see cars littering the road, empty and painted red.
The Bloodletter wasted no time.
That meant one thing: Calum’s father was under the Orieno’s control. Rage now raced through his veins like blood; he was surviving on the power of the Orieno. Possessed and damned. Killing without remorse. But he was able to walk during the day, and wasn’t trapped in the night like other Orieno victims.
How?
Did Calum know so many people wanted him dead?
I felt myself drive into a frenzy, my foot pushing hard on the gas. The tires squealed against the rain. Faster, always faster, I drove, until the small town of Lakewood Hollow was no more than a memory. A bloody mess of a memory so far gone it was no more.
Those possessed, sleeping souls caught by the Orieno demons would soon rise from the ashes of that town burned, as would the moon lift from the skyline and provide me a blanket of darkness.
-Calum-
Immediately, as if sleep had only subsided it, my head exploded with pain. A buzzing sounded alive in my brain. Beyond, I heard the cracking roar of thunder and the anger of beating rain against thin glass. Every drop sounded like heartbreak, but I couldn’t think of why.
Only: Become who you are, Caeles...
What did that mean?
I looked around. My vision blurred, all tilted shadow, nothing more. My neck felt raw and wet; I touched the back of my head and tried to massage away the pain. Slowly the shadows gave way to shapes and colors, and I began to see.
I was in a black Jeep. The passenger side window was dark and blurred from night. The moisture from the cool rain was mixing with the warmth of the car, making the glass swirl with indefinite confusion.
My first thought was, Nothing.
And then, as hot air burst into my lungs, I jumped in my seat; a ghost of something in the window, a hau
nting reminder of earlier. The memory of my Dad flooded back into my mind like a virus, sickening me to a pale white; a realization of loneliness, drowning me in panic and stillness.
Tyler. Was he - no, please no - dead?
Dad. What happened?
I closed my eyes and saw death.
Opened: Life.
I closed and opened and closed but nothing changed; life and death looked so much alike in this dim light.
My hands flew up to my mouth. The scenery outside was flicking by rapidly, barely there. Above, the moon looked blue in the star-dotted sky; I knew I was far from home.
Dizzy, my head rolled back.
“Don’t spew in the car, thanks,” a voice to my left said, the tone gritted with disdain.
Without looking I knew. My fingers curled into my palms, nails pushing against skin almost breaking. My heart, beating wildly, threw itself against my ribs. My jaw tightened. Against my racing pulse, my mind screamed at me to jump out of the Jeep; do anything but sit here. Escape. Run.
My face burned, and even though I felt like I was catching fire, against it all I was helpless.
Against her I felt helpless.
Closed.
Kate. “Seriously. If you get sick I’ll break your face.” I felt the Jeep gun forward. “I know twenty ways to kill you without even taking my foot off the gas.”
Opened.
Against it all, she was here and so was I.
I could hear the thumping of my heart as it threatened to cripple, torturing me as if it was trying to kill.
Tyler has to be alive. I can’t be alone.
It was all a dream.
If I closed my eyes, I could remember.
I could hold on to my friend.
My brother.
“Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?” I asked.
He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
