by Lynn Red
He could sense, somehow, that I was tensing up. Probably because he was, you know, carrying me. “Relax,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do right now except try to keep from wrenching your back. If you relax and let your muscles stop clenching, you’ll be better off. If you keep twisting around you’re going to get a back ache to go along with that punctured lung.”
I started to respond, but he shushed me. “Quiet,” he said. “They’re following us.”
I had no idea at all where we were, but when I felt grass underneath me, to say it was a surprise is the understatement of the century. “Hush,” he said again when I started to open my mouth. “The woods are friendly, but those cops aren’t. Not at all. We stand a much better chance in here than we did out there. They weren’t letting me help you, did you notice that? Just nod or shake, no talking.”
He put a hand on my chest and winced as my breath rattled. “I was about to say ‘let’s go,’” he said as the noise passed and he picked me up again. “But I guess you don’t have much choice, huh?”
That time, I shook my head. When he hefted me off the ground, he did it much more gently. “I know someone who can fix that.”
3
“Where are we?” I put a hand on the side of my chest and prodded where my ribs had been so horribly painful before. There were still aching throbs, but it was significantly reduced.
“Good morning,” the giant man who took me away from the wreck said. “Feel better?”
I prodded my side again and winced, expecting pain that never came. I furrowed my eyebrows, and jabbed again. Then, I took a deep breath and held it until it started burning from my cardio not being exactly the best thing ever—treadmills are boring as shit, okay—and was surprised it got that far. “What the hell happened?” I asked him, immediately suspicious that he’d doped me up with morphine or something.
“I, uh,” he started before an old, jangly woman pushed open the door.
Oh, that’s another thing. I wasn’t in a hotel or a normal house. I swung my feet over the floor and when I set them down, I was surprised to find hard, smooth wood. It wasn’t normal hardwood flooring, mind you, it was a bunch of big, thick boards with spaces between them, like a camp cabin. Anyway, back to the jangly old woman. That’s the best way I can think to describe her. She had this paper-thin, almost mummy-like skin that stretched around her bones, though it hung generously around her face and neck. She had enormous gold pirate hoop earrings, and a bunch of random junk hanging around her throat on necklaces of several different lengths. Her dress reminded me of something from a National Geographic special. She wore colorful skirts that I could easily describe as robes or drapes that came in all sorts of shades of crimson, purples, yellows and greens.
And her eyes. God, I’ll never forget those eyes. Where the man from the car had deep blue eyes that turned gold and yellow when...whatever it was happened, this woman’s eyes were almost clear. When she first walked into the room and considered my face, I couldn’t tear myself away from them. One of her eyes was a blue so pale it reminded me of Dracula’s nearly clear irises. The other was just as pale, but instead of a blue, it just kept changing colors like an ocular mood ring. It went from gold to pink to blight-like green, and then back to the beginning.
She stared at me, and cocked her head to the side slightly. There were no words spoken, but they didn’t need to be any. Every thought she had, I could sense. Her quiet patience was clear, as was an almost impossible strength that I didn’t understand until she finally did speak.
“You,” she whispered. She had one of those voices that commands utter attention. She was almost silent, but I wasn’t about to miss anything she said. I don’t know why, honestly, I don’t—I’ve never encountered anyone like that, although I’ve heard plenty of stories about them—but as soon as she started talking, I was forcing my heart to beat slower so I could hear everything she said. “Are,” she paused again, taking a curl of my hair in her hand and looked at it as she twisted it between her fingers. “Different.”
Her voice was so shallow it was almost impossible to make out from the wind blowing around outside and through the drafty cabin. Rain pattered heavily on the roof, which I noticed was heavily tilted, almost like a two-sided lean-to sort of cabin. The wind picked up in a way I thought was suspiciously on-cue as she rolled her eyes back in her head and she began to gape at me. She tilted her head back and forth, her hair hanging in limp, gray strands, and examining me in an almost scientific way.
“Hmm,” she seemed to be in a trance. She let go of the lock of my hair and instead pried my left eye wide open, like optometrists do right before they puff air into your eyes and invariably chide you for not managing to keep your eye open long enough. Instead of that though, she pulled a small eyepiece that reminded me of a jeweler’s glass out from somewhere in her swooshing, voluminous robes and stared. “Where did you find this girl?” she asked softly.
The giant behind me didn’t respond for a moment. “Aloysius, where did you find this girl?”
“Oh, uh, she rescued me from a car wreck, and then there was some trouble.”
I had a real hard time not laughing. “Aloysius?” I asked when she let me go. “That’s your name? That’s...different.” He flushed, but kept a straight face. “Family name,” he finally said. “Anyway, no one calls me that except Nana Singer, so you know, it’s just sort of a thing.”
I started to open my mouth again, but the old woman—Nana Singer, apparently—put a mummified finger to my lips and shushed me.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Hold still for a second.” She held my chin as I tried to instinctively escape. Ever since my older sister recreationally attacked my zits when I was fourteen, it’s just not something I terribly enjoy. I can’t really explain it any better than that, but it’s something that just really tweaks my brain. It was almost a caress she laid on me. Her fingers ran over my cheeks in gentle trickles that reminded me of rain running down my face. They were so cold that where she touched, goosebumps rose up and refused to disappear. She turned my head one way, then the other, still so close I could feel her shallow breath.
I started getting fidgety. I couldn’t help it as far as I could throw the guy I now knew had one of the funniest names in the world, who I still didn’t really believe was named that. Nana Singer must’ve felt me tense up, because she drew back a few inches and put her hands on both of my shoulders. The look she gave me was partial sadness and partial excitement. She had an odd sort of grin on her face.
“Ale,” she whispered. I smiled, thinking that being named after beer was a much more appropriate name of someone that manly. He reminded me a little bit of Gaston, that obnoxious, over muscled jackass from Beauty and the Beast which, by the way, is my favorite movie. “Where did you find her, exactly. And please, try to be specific because I’m tired of asking the same question. She isn’t like the last one, is she? Tell the whole story. We have all night, and all tomorrow, and, well, as long as you need to go. Leave nothing out.”
The big guy flushed again. “No, Nana Singer, no.” He shot me a quick glance before returning his attention to the old woman, whose piercing oddly-colored eyes were fixed on me even as she spoke to him.
“This is sorta like a mafia or something, isn’t it?” I asked, my nervous mouth getting the best of me. “I mean with all the secrecy and whatever. I don’t think you’re actually criminals. Although I don’t actually understand why I pulled this guy out of a flaming car after he got hit, and then he grabs me and we run away. Right?” I looked back and forth between both of them. “I mean, right?” I continued, rattling off words faster than my brain could possibly, ever, in a million damn years, compute. I was breathless by the time I finished, and noticed that Nana Singer was sitting there smiling.
Well, I say smiling. It was more like her mummy lips was baring her teeth, but I understood it to be a smile. “I mean, right?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just kept repeating those words over
and over until I was half convinced they were just in my head.
“We are a family,” she said in that distant whisper. “Not necessarily a mafia, but yes, we’re a family. And the reason he did that, was—”
“I had to,” Aloysius—Ale—had officially stopped blushing, and started growling. “It was that...what’s his name...” he was obviously searching his thoughts. “The panther, the one who gave me this.” He touched his face with a brush of his fingertips, and for the first time I noticed the rake of scars running along his jaw. There was another one, longer and more jagged, that ran across his eye.
“Only you could forget the man who almost blinded you.”
Ale drew his lip into a snarl. It seemed like an unconscious twitch. “I’ll never forget him. I’m just not so good with names. Must be the concussions. Or maybe it’s the concussions.” When neither I, nor Nana Singer responded in any way, Ale continued. “See, that’s a joke about me not remembering anything. Like, because—”
The old woman silenced him with a smile.
“Well I have had concussions from the fighting,” he said, making sure to get the last word in. “Shit! Crack. Drack? It’s something like that.”
Nana Singer shook her head. “Very close. Trap Delix. I’ll never forget. He almost took your eyes.”
Ale sneered again, as though the memory was taking hold and burning him from the inside out. He clenched his fists together so hard his knuckles went white and cracked. For my part, I’d never been more lost in my life. I had no idea what either of them was going on about, but for some reason, when they started talking about panthers and eyes getting gouged out and concussions, who I was came out.
“You should have that looked at,” I piped up, silencing both of them. They looked in my direction, both of them furrowing their eyebrows in the exact same way. “I mean, the concussion and the ripped-up face and all that. How long ago did it happen?”
“Huh?” Ale grunted, obviously confused. “I mean, we fight all the time, us and the panthers. That’s who was in the car that hit me. They’re connected to the cops, it’s all this big, Godfather type thing.”
“You got hit by an old woman,” I said. When neither of them responded, I just repeated myself a couple of times. And then, for lack of anything else to say or do, I asked about the concussion again, and the fights and anything else I could manage to make myself say.
My whole body felt rigid, like I’d been lying on a sheet of ice, totally naked. Every inch of me chilled and goosebumped, I could hardly breathe. “What is this all about?” I finally asked. “And why am I here?”
The two exchanged another long glance.
“They can hide in plain sight,” Nana Singer whispered. “Chameleons, they are. Hiding where you couldn’t possibly find them. As far as the Summerville police, that’s another story altogether, and I’m not sure this is the time or the place to go into it.”
Outside, the wind began to howl so fiercely that I thought a hurricane had started blowing. It wasn’t raining or snowing, but I’ll be damned if I had any idea which direction we were going. The old woman’s head snapped around as a crack of lightning split the sky. All of a sudden, the lights hanging from the ceiling of this bizarre little cabin flickered, and died. I don’t know where it came from, but Nana Singer produced a candle from somewhere, whispered, and I watched dumbfounded as the wick popped, sparked, and then settled into a warm flame that somehow lit the entire room.
“How did—?”
She waved her hand in front of her face. “Panthers,” she hissed. “Ale, I’ll keep her safe, you—”
It was too late. That giant was already out the door. He must’ve bolted during the brief blackout, because he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I looked around the room, fear thudding in my temples, and I saw what looked like a heap of clothing on the floor. When she noticed that I’d seen the clothes, she sighed.
“You’re about to get the answers to your questions,” she said with dread in her voice. “Just try not to go crazy.”
Let me tell you one thing. If you ever want someone to go crazy before anything happens? That’s exactly the right thing to say.
4
“If you don’t want to see something no human was ever meant to see, sit down and close your eyes,” Nana Singer said in her soft, hissing whisper. “Otherwise, be ready.”
“Ready for what?” cold shivers kept shooting up and down my back like the electric shocks you get from putting your tongue to the top of a nine-volt battery. Or maybe it’s just me that used to do that for fun sometimes when I got particularly bored.
She didn’t answer. Outside, the crashes of thunder and the brilliantly piercing flashes of lightning were joined by something I swear was a growl. Blood curdling and guttural, there were shrieks, growls, snarls, and all sorts of things I normally associate with nature documentaries and not my day to day existence. I pressed my face to the window, out of either absolute stupidity or fascination—it’s hard to say which. Either way, I couldn’t help but feel a certain connection to the man I’d pulled out of that car.
I don’t know if the stupidest thing I ever did was sticking my face to that window, or if it was not fighting the guy off when he carried me back to this weird cabin like some kind of gigantic Tarzan, but it was one of the two. Of course, I never minded stupid decisions if they ended in something interesting.
As I stared out the window into the utter blackness outside, which was only broken every so often by a lightning bolt and a blast of thunder, I was vaguely aware of Nana Singer actually singing. It didn’t occur to me that might be why he kept calling the old woman that, but there we have it.
I stared out the window, squinting and cupping my hands around my eyes when someone’s head connected squarely with the glass pane, which in turn connected squarely with my forehead. I lurched backward, almost tumbling off my feet as the old woman caught me with surprising strength. She held me like a baby for a moment before I got back to my feet.
A second impact blasted the glass, and then something slammed heavily into the cabin’s side wall. The whole building shook from the impact, and a stream of dust fell from the beam supported ceiling. I looked up as another gout of dust and dirt fell straight down into my face, blinding me momentarily. I tried to block the torrent, but enough got through that I couldn’t see, and lurched backward toward the very same window that kept being battered with people’s heads. A spider web of cracks had appeared in the glass at some point, but I hadn’t noticed it, as I was too busy stumbling around trying to get the crap out of my eyes enough to see where I was going. It didn’t do a damn bit of good.
I managed to get myself against the wall, and slid into a crouch before pushing myself back to my feet. I heard Nana Singer still going with that ghostly, wafting vocalizing, had begun to gesticulate with waving arms. Her singing turned to a bizarre, warbling ululation and the storm outside reached a fever pitch. I lurched along the wall, stunned and confused by the song she weaved.
Next thing I knew, my head thumped against the icy cold window. Even if it was late summer when all of this began, the window was frosty and chilled me to the bone wherever I touched. It occurred to me momentarily that I’d been unconscious for a whole lot longer than I thought, but I stuffed that thought into the back of my brain for the time being. Cupping my hands around my eyes to get as much of a view as I could, I still couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t blindness, or even being stunned. It felt like my vision, my entire consciousness, was being rolled into Nana Singer’s entrancing dance and swirling, musical mantra. As she twisted and contorted her body in increasingly wild, ways, I lost track of Ale, and got caught up. It felt like my soul was dancing along with her.
And then the window exploded.
Standing right beside it, I was showered with fragments of broken—no, exploded—glass. The shards were so small that I didn’t feel the cuts. An outstretched arm came through the busted window, and roughly grabbed my hair. In one of the times the fist
looped my hair around itself, I saw that it was inky black, hairy, and instead of fingernails it had long, filthy, dagger-like claws.
“She’s mine, now, you jack-ass!” I heard a voice, that was attached to the fist, shouted. “Don’t try anything cute or I’ll rip her hair out at the roots!”
I let out a little yelping sort of scream. It came in short, bursting gasps and each time sound came out of my mouth my throat tightened until all I could do was hungrily yank breath into my lungs. I burned from so deep inside that I thought I was at least as likely to burst into flames as I was to get away.
“Get...off!”
A heavy, meaty thud followed, and suddenly, the fist in my hair loosened. Instead of releasing though, those yellow nails dug into my neck. I screamed as warm trickles ran down my back and soaked into the collar of the old t-shirt I’d worn. I scurried along the wall until I was out of reaching distance. I smelled blood again, but this time it wasn’t mine. I looked back toward the window, and where I’d been yanked around, there were five long blood streaks, and one shorter one marking where a hand had dragged.
“You touch her one more time, and your scalp’s gonna be hanging off the back of your head!” Another meaty thud followed, and then another. A third thunk came, although this time, it was followed with a torrent of dust falling from the ceiling. “Well see about that,” the reply came, in a growly, husky voice. “How’s that going for you?” the voice said in the instant before Ale’s head appeared in the window...only it wasn’t the same guy I’d met.
Instead of the high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes, I saw something halfway between man and beast. Going back to the whole Beauty and the Beast thing, he had some of the same features of the man I’d known, but he also had a stubby snout full of deadly-looking fangs that seemed perfectly capable of ripping the throat out of whatever, or whoever, he chose. He had this grin on his face that reminded me of something I’d seen in a movie at some point, although it would be more accurate to say it was a sneer, not a grin, on his face.
