by Martha Woods
“Alright. You want some information, Sara?”
“Yes!”
“I found you delusional, screaming about leeches in the field. Don't go out at night. You're only safe when you're here.”
“Is that it? I need a real explanation.”
“Nope.” She turned around to finish scrubbing the counter. Just like that, Sara was certain she wasn't going to get any information out of her. It was a slap in the face. Sara needed Margaret right now, more than she ever needed anyone.
Sara stormed around the house while she was getting ready for school. Sara made it as difficult as she could for her grandmother, crashing around, stomping her feet. Sara put her grandmother to the test. There were a couple of times the woman became genuinely frustrated, but she didn't say much of anything, so Sara eventually stopped, went dead silent and left when Margaret's back was turned. Sara would rather walk the entire way than have to spend one-second longer with her grandmother.
She got halfway down the drive when her grandmother caught up with her, stopped her and said, “You don't think it's hard for me either?”
“You think I care? I can't handle the lies. I mean after all, I've been through...do you have any idea how much I need to just talk openly with you?”
“Yes.” She couldn't meet Sara's eyes,
“Then why would you let me suffer like this? Tell me what's going.”
“No.” She stiffened.
“Fine.” Sara got in the passenger seat of the car. “Let's go.”
The entire way to school, Sara had to avert her eyes. She wanted to shake the woman silly until she spilled everything. Margaret stayed silent. She just pulled up to the school and waited while Sara got out.
Andrea avoided Sara until lunch when she started hovering in the hall while Sara was trying to put her things in her locker. Sara slammed it shut and motioned for Andrea to follow. Andrea was the kind of girl that Sara didn't mind having around. She knew to keep a little bit of space and probably suspected there was something a bit off about Sara.
“Did you stay out late last night? It's kind of hard to get down from the cliffs when it's dark.”
“I almost got lost in the field.”
“Huh.” They took two slabs of greasy school pizza to their tables.
Sara just stared at hers. She couldn't be paid to touch the thing. She didn't want to hear Andrea talk either. The girl looked like she was about to explode with a million questions and comments. So she scanned the crowd and looked anywhere but back down at her friend.
The creature that gave her the IV was posing as a school kid eating pizza in the corner. She shot up off her chair.
“What's wrong?” Andrea got up.
“I'll be right back.” He watched her out of the corner of his eyes with a grin while she walked over.
“Alright.” She sat down across from him.
“Hey, what are you doing?” He pretended to sound shocked.
“You're going to tell me what the hell that was.” She bared her teeth. “And I'm not taking any bullshit.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” He leaned back in his chair casually. “Now if you could, please leave me alone.”
“Oh, bullshit. I remember you. You stand out like a sore thumb. Look at you. You're bright white with muscles that look like they're carved from stone. You're different, which wouldn't matter except that I almost got killed by something just like you.”
“I have to go.” He got up and turned to leave.
Sara avoided human contact the rest of the day and spent the evening up in her room sulking. She was living in hell, stuck in the middle of something horrific and nobody was willing to give her any answers. The next day at lunch Sara kept watch for him while Andrea stared at her. “What happened with Caleb yesterday?”
“Caleb?” Sara's eyes darted around while she searched the crowd.
“The boy you were talking to yesterday, Caleb Baker.”
“Tell me everything you know about him.”
“There isn't much to say. Nobody knows a thing. Caleb moved here a couple months before you did. Every single girl in the entire school has thrown themselves at her, and he's turned them all down. He doesn't talk to anybody. I'm surprised he spoke to you.”
“Really?”
“Most I've seen come out of his mouth in months. What'd you say to him?” She was smiling.
“It doesn't. Matter.”
“Aw,” she bounced up and down. “Come on.”
Sara shot her a look that said the matter was closed. She had her first answer. The creature's name was Caleb. That's all she knew about him, and that was probably all she was going to get. He seemed careful like nothing could get past him. He wasn't going to tell Sara anything. He would probably cause a stir and get her in trouble if she kept trying to talk to him.
Sara would just have to live with the idea of him walking the halls, not knowing what he was. The deception was maddening. Sara wasn't somebody that could just take something like this and sit on it. She was going to wonder, poke around and demand answers. It didn't matter how many brick walls she met, Sara was going to find out the truth.
Sara gave up looking the day after and barely noticed when he walked into the lunch room until he was sitting directly across from her. “Andrea could we have a moment?” he asked.
“Sure.” She found somewhere else to sit.
“What are you?” Sarah whispered.
“Maybe if you answer my questions, I'll respond to some of yours.”
“Fine.”
“Good. Why did you move here?”
“Does it matter?”
He leaned forward, eyes wide with excitement. “Is there something wrong with curiosity? I should think that you'd have a problem with it.”
“I went to live with my grandmother.” She wasn't going to tell him anything else.
“Why?”
“Because I did,” she snapped.
“Where are you from originally?”
“The Pacific northwest.” His questions didn't make any sense. “Do you like it here?”
“No. The people are ridiculously stupid and necessary, and that's saying something considering I'm mostly talking about high school students.”
He leaned back. “I suspect that's because you're ahead of your age.”
“What about you?”
“I'm behind the times.” Something in the way he said that told Andrea that it meant more than he was letting on.
“Where's your family from?”
“Here. The Bishops were one of the first settlers to come to this area in the eighteenth century. We used to own the cliffs and a good portion of the field below them, but we've since had to sell off the land.”
“Where's your family from originally?”
She sighed, “Pangea. Why does any of this matter? There doesn't seem to be any point to it.”
“Maybe there is no sense. Maybe I just want to know about you. You're interesting.”
“Interesting?” That concerned her. “Interesting how?”
“You're a unique individual, and I can't place your skin tone or your hair color. I'm dying to know where your family is from.”
“Well,” she dropped her barriers a bit, “We're from the Rhineland, but I don't think we're German, something else.”
He nodded his head. “So you're in the old house near the cliffs?”
“You know it. Sometimes I like to walk down there so I can see the ocean.”
She found her chance and took it. “You answered a question. Will you answer one for me?”
“Maybe.”
“What are you?”
“What sort of things do you enjoy?” He ignored the question.
“Are you human?” If he was going to ignore her, she was going to ignore him.
He started to get up.
“OK. OK. I'm sorry.” He was probably the most infuriating man she'd ever met. He got his way, not with force but through manipulation and playing g
ames. He was a strategist, one of the best she'd ever met. Sara might've found that endearing if she wasn't so pissed at him.
“Tit for tat.”
“Fine.” Andrea started thinking. She used to enjoy things. Andrea loved cooking and writing. She was an avid reader of everything dark and loved old black and white movies, but none of those things were true anymore. “I like to hike.”
“Where?”
“Near the cliffs where you found me. It feels dangerous, and I like that.”
She thought she saw him smile, but she might've been wrong. “I think our line of questioning is over for the day.”
“Wait!” She got up to confront him, but he was out the door before she knew what was going on.
Sara felt played. She didn't get a single chance to ask him anything. She spilled her heart out to him, and she still knew nothing about him. He wasn't going to get away with it. She was going to stalk Caleb if she had to. She needed to know what he was.
Chapter 11
It took Caleb three days to show up to school after he questioned her. The entire time she felt like she was going to explode. Maybe he was just trying to get information out of her and now that he got it he didn't have any need to come back to school.
He already had everything he needed to track her down. He knew where she lived and where she liked to go. A part of her was worried that he was hunting her, or toying with her the way a cat might play with a mouse. Perhaps he was a predator. The thing that attacked her was definitely a killer. Maybe that was why she was interested in Caleb. She was attracted to danger, slowly finding ways to tempt death so she didn't have to it herself.
Caleb didn't play by the same rules as everyone else. He came and went as he pleased, and the school administrators never seemed to think anything of it. When he walked into the lunch room, Sara didn't notice. She was too busy staring at the greasy slab of French bread and cheese covered in tomato paste that the school passed off as pizza.
Andrea got up and walked off. Sara looked up and found him staring at her, his eyes scanning every movement, every breath as if he wanted to savor everything about her. “What's your favorite food?”
“Not this.” She pushed the pizza away.
“Do you have anything you really love?”
“Lamb tikka masala. It's an India dish.”
“I prefer vindaloo myself.” Caleb reached out and pulled a chunk of cheese off her pizza and scarfed it down.
“What is your favorite movie?”
“The Scarlett Empress. It's ancient. It's about Catherine the Great, the old Russian Empress.”
“Marlene Dietrich is an archetype of feminine prowess. I've always admired her, especially in that role. She was the empress because she exuded the qualities that only an empress could—a fiery personality and a compelling authority over men's hearts.”
“And you never see her coming. She was the silver screen.”
“Exactly,” Caleb said. “Do you have a favorite color?”
“Do you have any reason for questioning me at all?”
“Yes, I do, and it's crucial.”
“What is it?”
“I like you. You intrigue me, and I want to know everything about you.”
Sara started shivering. He was dangerous, this creature. She had to get close to him. Perhaps this was the push she needed to finally throw herself off the mortal coil. “Is that a means to an end?”
“I don't know.” He said playfully. “I want to figure that out first.”
The bell rang. She went to get up, but he motioned for her to stop. He walked around the table and offered her his hand. The act of chivalry felt foreign to her. She'd seen it in movies and read about it in books, but it was an ancient practice, so far as she knew.
“Thank you.” She took his hand and allowed him to escort her to class. Her lesson went by slowly. She didn't care about her math class. She could go through her homework without even trying. It was a waste of time. Something otherworldly was out there, sitting in a room just like that one, and she couldn't see him because she had to listen to some old man lecture about useless knowledge.
When the bell rang, and she walked outside, he was leaning against the door frame, his eyes glittering. “Come on.” He motioned outside.
They walked together while the rest of the students balked at them, laughing and whispering. Sara was the center of attention now, which meant that because of Caleb, Sara was going to have to work extra hard to fight off ravenous peers. It would take months for them to realize she was going to keep her legs closed.
When they got outside, they found a quiet corner in the field on the side of the school where nobody would bother them. Then they sat down in front of one another.
He started immediately. “What do you think about me?”
“You're dangerous, and I like that.”
“Why?”
She didn't answer. Instead, she tried to wait it out, hoping that Caleb would ask another question, but Caleb didn't. He knew the game she was playing so he waited for her to say something. “I like thrills.”
“Like roller coasters?”
“Sure.”
He exhaled sharply. “We seemed to have hit a wall.”
“We have, haven’t we?”
“What are your questions?”
“What are you?”
“I'm peaceful.”
“Answer my question,” Sara demanded.
“No. I'm peaceful.” When he said, no, it was clear that he meant it and there was no getting around it. He was a gentle creature.
“What was that thing that attacked me?”
He shook his head. “It doesn't matter.”
“Am I still in danger?” She met his eyes.
“I'm trying to keep you out of it.” He walked away.
Caleb was peaceful. She knew he was telling the truth about that, but he was the same as the thing that killed her mother. That didn't make him her enemy. His guilt was never in question. His nature was under question. Even though she remembered him helping her, and supplying her with blood, she didn't know whether or not she could trust something that wasn't human.
There was no way of knowing the way his mind worked or what sort of things motivated him. He could be peaceful now and a killer in a few seconds. With the supernatural, anything was possible. That meant that she had to move with caution.
He knew everything about her, and she knew absolutely nothing about him. The second she got a chance to ask, he shut her down and walked away. She felt conned once again like he'd just robbed her of something that she owned. She wasn't going to give up. He was giving little things away. Eventually, she would get some answers from him.
The house was always quiet. Sometimes Margaret would knock on her bedroom door to invite her to dinner. Other times she would just leave a tray outside and not bother. Sara never came down unless Sara had to leave for school or get a glass of water. She couldn't stand the sight of her grandmother. It was awkward when they had to be together.
She found herself staring outside all the time, watching the water, and the clouds that raced along the coast. She'd leave more if it weren't for the fact that she'd have to pass by her grandmother and she got the sense that her grandmother wanted her to stay at home. So she waited until she was certain she could hear her grandmother in the kitchen. Then she opened her window and started climbing down the trellis. The footholds were precarious, small diamond-shape holes, barely big enough for her to stick the tip of her feet into, which added to the thrill. Her window was nearly 15 feet off the ground. She'd break something if she fell into the grass for certain. Sara moved faster, faster than she should've and never checked to make sure her feet were in the holes when she went down. When the adrenaline started pumping, and she was about five feet off the ground, she gave herself a jolt of excitement by letting go and falling straight to the ground with a crash that nearly twisted her ankle.
Sara couldn't stay locked up there forever. She needed her space
, and time away from Margaret. The house felt like a prison. It was wonderful to have the wind tugging at her, urging her downhill over the trail that led to the beach. She took off her shoes when she reached the sand and found a boulder with the water flowing around it where she sat down and let the cold trickle back and forth over her toes.
She found that when aided by the ocean's foot massage, the water's featureless landscape allowed her to pass all of her thoughts over it so they could sink down below the surface and stay trapped there. It actually allowed her to get a moment of quiet inside her head.
She felt free in nature. That was the only place she could feel free. She could go wherever she wanted to, explore up and down the coast, walk along the cliffs or traipse through the field. There was a bus station a couple mile away. She could get on one of the buses, leave and never come back. She would've done it already if it weren't for her need to figure out what was going on.
That was the worst case scenario. If she had to leave town without finding anything out, she would never most past this. She would always wonder about what had happened to her at the hospital and what killed her mother.
She'd wake up at night, screaming and brood over it every single day. She didn't want that to happen. Sara wanted her grandmother back, but she needed answers and no matter how hard she tried she wasn't going to get them.
Caleb wasn't going to say a thing. He could pop in and out of her life for years, never telling her a word. Caleb seemed like he had patience. He could probably see Sara every single day for the rest of her life and never, not once, give her a single clue about what was going on. All Sara had to look forward to where more brick walls and lies. It didn't matter whether she stayed in town or not, the secrets and lies were going to drive her insane.
The sun was going down. As much as Sara wanted to stay and watch it set, she had to get going. She wasn't going to get caught after dark again. Instead, Sara hopped off the boulder and walked through the sand into the field. She cut across as fast as she could until she reached the trail to her grandmother's house. She was standing, flanked on both sides by steep hills, walking in between them when she felt her neck thrash to the right, exposing her carotid artery and she fell flat on the ground, held down by the creature's cold, rock hard body.
