The flame in the center of the pit sparked like someone had tossed a handful of gunpowder into it. The sparks turned from yellow to green while the ladies sang their repeated song. The four of them stood around the green fire only a handful of feet away from me and Rusty. After a minute or so the fire lost its green hue and went back the usual hearty yellow. One blonde girl, the only blonde girl, stopped chanting and looked right at the bushes we were hiding behind. She dropped her raised hands and lifted one finger to point in our direction.
"Oh, hell!" Rusty yelled as he jumped up from behind his bush, still in his undies.
I closed my eyes tight and tucked my head to my knees. I was too drunk to handle stressful situations so my best plan was to hide in plain sight. I heard Rusty's bare feet running away from me, kicking up leaves and cracking twigs all the way. My eyes were squinted tight when something grabbed a hold of a thick clump of my hair. I screamed and kicked and tried hard to wriggle away from the hand that had me by the hair. The harder I kicked the faster the hand pulled me from my hiding spot. Screaming in the woods under a full moon only let me know how loud I could scream from the echo that came back to me. There’d be no one coming to help. No one could hear me. No one but Rusty.
I was drug across the thick brush in my bra and panties tearing up the skin on my backside all the way. I screamed for Rusty. I could hear the women still saying the same thing they had been, only louder now. I could feel the heat from the fire in the middle of the chicken killers. The tiny cuts on the backs of my legs nipped like bee stings. The hand finally let me go, shoving me into the dirt almost in the fire.
"A larger sacrifice may suffice." A voice said above me in an accent that sounded like I’d heard from my great gran from Ireland.
I heard the familiar sound of a sharp knife being pulled from its sheath. My daddy was a hunter and I live with my brother who thinks guns and knives are the best thing since titties, so I know a knife when I hear one. It’s not a sound you can describe with words. It takes knowledge and a good amount of fear to know that sound. I screamed again and scrambled away from the fire pit. I tried to get to my feet when the hand snatched me up again, this time throwing me hard to the ground. My head hit a river rock that circled the pit. I was dazed by the thud to the head. My eyes were blurry and watery but I tried to look around anyway. I was able to make my eyes focus enough to see the red haired women towering over me with her chicken-killing blade. My eyes cleared from sheer adrenaline, I kicked at her but she grabbed my hair again, taking damn near my whole scalp with it. Wriggling and kicking I pulled hard away from her, almost pulled my hair from its roots when I did. Off in the distance, by only moonlight, I saw Rusty sneaking up. He had put his pants on. I opened my mouth to holler at him to run away but only a small squeaking noise came through my lips. I could feel air gurgle through a thick gash in my gullet. The woman who held me tight by the hair had run her blade quick and deep across my throat. If a knife is sharp enough you don’t even feel the cut. Blood poured from the gaping line like someone had opened a flood gate. She held the wooden bowl under my chin and let the blood fill it up. She laughed so close to my head I felt her breath on my skin. I was feeling weak, my legs shook but she held me to her body. The other women never stopped their song.
"Meta, Power, Instinct, Feral, Death." The red haired women then repeated what they were saying before, "Cu sith iompróir a bháis bheidh mé a bheith," she almost yelled.
Moving me by my hair she positioned me over the flame, letting my blood pour over it. In an instant the yellow fire turned green again. Brighter than the first time, the green flame plumed into the air. The heat hit my face and I smelled my hair burning. No screams came from my mouth, not for lack of trying. I was too weak to fight. There was almost no pain coming from my slit throat. The small cuts on my back from the drag through the forest floor were only a memory. I was dying. Gradually and alone, I was dying.
Something crashed into the two of us from nowhere. The woman released me then and I caught myself on a tree trunk. I leaned against it willing myself to stay alive. The fire sparked grass green sparks so big it looked like Fourth of July. The flame shot up through the trees in a shade of green I’d only seen in one of gran’s photos of the hills of Ireland.
It was then something took me over. My legs gave way and my body fell to the cold dirt. I pushed myself up onto my hands clutching handfuls of earth between my fingers as I did. Pain overcame me from deep within my bones. My stomach curdled with pain and bloody vomit came spewing from my lips. I coughed and sputtered, spitting out the bitter bile and copper taste that was left in my mouth. My back arched unnaturally, I could hear popping and grinding from inside my body. My hands dug into the earth, griping for dear life onto something real and natural. I watched as my fingers cracked and popped deforming themselves into something inhuman; animalistic. My thumb retracted into my arm turning into what seemed to be a dewclaw. The muscles in my arms, back, and legs rippled and swelled. Long curved claws pushed my nails from their beds and grew inches long. The sensation was sickening. The feeling was similar to having a tooth pulled. The pain, the cracking and popping was felt and heard from within my body. Only this was happening to me without anything to dull the pain. Tears ran down my cheeks without a sound from my lips. I felt my face stretch and bend into a shape that felt nothing like it should. It felt like my mouth and nose took up more area than it was supposed to. I could feel the tendons and skin seaming back together in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut tight as I let out a hefty scream of pain,my first scream since I had been cut. When I opened them I could see everything as if it were twelve in the afternoon instead of night. The colors and contrasts were different. Strange shades of purples and greens instead of the normal range of colors. I looked down to my hands to see thick murky greenish black hair growing from my pores, covering what used to be my hands and arms. I shot my eyes upward to find Rusty trying to stop the red haired woman from spewing her chant. The others in the group just stood and watched me convulse and contort into something frightening. My ribs cracked suddenly and I threw my head back and howled in pain. A long, high-pitched sound came from my lungs. As I pushed the noise of pain from my throat the sound changed. I could hear, with my once human ears, that the voice was no longer mine. My screams of pain had transformed into the howls of an animal, a creature. The creature I had become.
Found Girl Lost
I was naked when I woke up in the dirt and leaves. The sky was a weird shade of white, the kind that comes a bit before dawn. It was damn cold on the forest floor with nothing on, not even my skivvies. My body hurt to the bones. The beds of my nails, my eyes, damn even my scalp hurt. For a moment I thought I’d drank too much the night before. I sat up and looked around me. I was wrong.
I was sitting only feet from a fire pit that had been left alone too long and was only smoldering coals. On the other side of the pit three hooded women lay bloody and broken in the dirt. One was laying half inside the circle of river rock around the pit. Her black robe smoked still, like she’d been burning for a while.
I stood up and almost fell with a dizzy spell. I caught myself on a soft velvet cushion by my feet. I shook the dizzy off and looked at what I was leaning on. My throat caught and puke came out where a scream should have been. My velvet cushion was a red haired woman, or what was left of her anyhow. Blood covered her shredded face. Her red hair was sticky with it. I managed not to throw up right on her, but barely.
I scrambled backwards on my hands and feet and backed as far away from the bloody body as I could. My naked butt drug across the gritty dirt and scratched it up good. The tiny cuts on my backside were stinging like little bits of fire on my skin when I ran into something behind me with my open hands. I flipped my body over and ended up face to face with another, more familiar, tattered body. I stopped breathing for a minute. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped beating at the sight. For the first time in fifteen years I realized that I loved Rusty Kemp with my entire soul. A
dry-heave came from the pit of my stomach before I could catch my breath. I panicked for the few seconds it took for my lungs to fill up again. In that few seconds tears started pouring down my cheeks, dripping on Rusty's bloody face. My tears ran across his cheeks making long lines of flesh peek through the mask of blood that covered his face. When my breath came back to me a terrible sound of sorrow came from my throat and echoed through the trees. I knew he was gone, he was dead as dead could be, but I begged him to talk to me. I grabbed him around his cheeks and moved his head to look at me while I screamed at him just be alive. When I squeezed him big long lines of open wounds pushed open. His bone peeked through from under all that blood and meat and I screeched and let go. I closed my eyes and pleaded with God to wake me up, begged for it all to be a dream. Hell, a nightmare.
I sat naked in the dirt, twigs, and leaves and sobbed uncontrollably, for a very long time. My eyes closed tight, I refused to look at the bloody pulp that lay just under my streaming tears. After a long while I let my eyes open. I looked down at my friend. My would-be, or at least could be, lover. His chest was clawed up, like an animal had gotten to him. He had slashes across his face and neck that were deep enough I could see bone and muscle through the slits. He didn't have a shirt on, only jeans and bare feet. All of a sudden everything from the night before came rushing back into my head.
I caught flashes of green flame and sparks. Then, like an old movie, the pictures clicked through, so fast it was like watching it in fast forward. The woman ran her knife across my throat, I was bleeding over a green fire pit, and then Rusty came barreling in. He took the red haired lady to the ground while I popped and cracked each bone and joint in my body until I wasn't anything human anymore. The rest of the vision was only in shades of purples and greens. The other women in the group rushed me, trying to catch me. I was too fast for them. I ran on four legs right at the lot of them. Like a big cat or something I leapt into the air and landed flat on my feet, standing over the top of a brunette girl. I swiped my huge clawed paw at her, cutting her chest and face in one swipe. Blood poured from her; at least it looked like blood, only tinted purple in my eyes. The other two women jumped on me. I bucked my body back and forth like a bull from a chute. One of them flew through the air and landed in the green fire. I could hear her wailing in pain when I slashed at the other woman, the blonde one. I used both front paws and clawed at her upper body so quick I couldn't believe I had done that. I heard Rusty screaming and gurgling like he was being strangled. I turned my big furry body and bounded on four strong muscled legs to him. The red haired woman was on top of him with her hands around his neck. I used my back legs to push my heap of a body up and onto the lady’s back. I was on them both at once. Rusty got caught up in the fight between woman and beast. The gut wrenching part was knowing that beast was me. I bit the woman in the crook of her neck tearing her skin wide open. When my heavy thick claws came down on her, Rusty was in the way. I slashed at his face without any feeling or remorse. The blood that poured from the red haired woman was a brighter purple, damn near neon. Rusty’s blood poured outta his face like lime green milk coming from a tipped jug. Then the movie stopped.
I fell to my side and curled my legs up to my chest. I didn’t cry; I was frozen. My body shook fiercely from head to toe. I laid there next to Rusty, tremblin’, until I heard the sound of a heavy truck crunching along the bank of the lake. It sounded far off, but it was moving slowly closer to where I was. The sun was peeking over the mountains and the sky was turning blue, dawn had come completely. I stayed with Rusty there in the dirt. I nuzzled my face into his cold stiff body. I paid no mind to the sticky blood that was smearing across my face. He smelled like a jar of pennies, but right on his bare skin I could smell the light hint of his cologne. He’d been wearing the same damn cologne since high school; I’d always hated it. Laying there next to his dead body all I wanted was to breathe in the scent of that stupid cologne.
I could hear the sound of heavy boots running; coming closer to me and the bloody heap I was laying next to. I finally started to feel something other than pure shock. I was scared. It hadn’t hit me until I knew someone was coming up on me fast that I had done this. I had killed these people. My claws, my strength, had torn into those women, into Rusty. I tried to think quickly how I was going to explain that. How would I tell the law I had turned into some kind of beast and I ripped them to shreds? I laid there on the cold earth and waited for the heavy boots to find me.
He would call the State Police. He would call my mama. He’d call Garret. My stomach dropped when I thought about my brother. I had killed his best friend. Tears started coming from my eyes finally at the thought of my brother. My body was still shuddering when strong arms scooped me up from the chilled earth. I could hear him talking to me but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. It sounded like he was talking under water. He moved quickly with me hanging over his forearms.
“Miss? Miss? Talk to me honey. You hurt?” He was breathing real heavy into my face while he trotted through the woods. “What the hell happened here?” He asked himself.
He laid me down on the cold steal of the bed of his truck. I was so cold. I heard him talking over a crackling radio.
“I got her. I got her,” he said loudly with short breaths.
My eyes were wide, I could see everything. I just couldn’t make myself do anything about it. The man that had carried me away from the mess was a deputy, handsome and middle-aged. The sweet thing pulled a blanket out of the cab of his truck and wrapped me in it. Until then, I’d not even cared that I was naked.
It seemed like only seconds passed before the sirens were coming. They were coming. The State Police, the Sheriff, my mama, and my brother. I cried hard and loud. It was the first noise I had made since the deputy came. He jumped and came running to me in the bed of his truck.
“Talk to me honey. You ok?” He said very sweetly.
“No,” I sobbed out. My body shook with every breath I pulled into my lungs.
“It’s gon’ be a’ight. You’re a lucky girl. Lucky your brother knows you good enough to know you’d be all the way out here.” He ran his hand over my head. It hurt real bad when he did that.
The sirens stopped and the crunch of more police cars and trucks started up. I could hear doors opening and slamming shut. More heavy boots and a chorus of crackling radios. They were all talking to each other. It was so loud I wanted to scream. The police cars were all parked at least a hundred feet away and all the men in uniform and big brimmed hats stood around the edge of the lake. No one was crowding me or yapping their mouths right over my head. But I could hear them like they were standing on the tailgate. I sat up all the way and looked around. The sun was shining so bright I had to squint my eyes half shut just to see right. We were far enough away from the fire pit that I couldn’t see Rusty or the woman. Parked right were we had left it was Rusty’s old truck. The police cars were all parked around it, but not close. One of the officers was winding yellow tape around trees to block off Rusty’s truck. The clearing where the bodies were was already taped off. I couldn’t see the bodies but I could smell the death from where I was sitting in the bed of the deputy’s truck. The trees got real thick just after Rusty’s truck, with no way a vehicle could squeeze through, so all the officers had to walk deeper into the woods to see the carnage. I was surprised that the deputy actually found me when he did. Maybe he smelled the death too.
A Logan County deputy noticed I was sitting up and came rushing to me. He brought a heavy coat with him. Without saying a word he wrapped the coat around my shoulders and helped me off the end of the tailgate. We walked together to the ambulance that was waiting just a spell from where the action was. The young deputy smiled at me and held my hand while the paramedics looked me over. Everyone was treating me like the victim. They all thought I was a survivor. No one knew I was the monster.
One of the paramedics said I had a high fever. Said I was probably in shock. They laid me down on
the bed in the back of the ambulance and strapped me in. I still hadn’t spoken to anyone. No one talked to me either. One of the paramedics, a woman, poked a needle into my arm and set up a bag of something to flow into my body. She said it was fluids. I let them do their work. My mind was running wild and standing still at the same time. Flashes of memories, fears, and sorrow, flowed into my head in waves. I was staring at the ceiling of the ambulance when I heard a voice that made my chest stiff.
“Where is she? Where she at?!” Garrets voice was a yell when he came flying into the back of the ambulance.
I was crying when he came, so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’d killed his best friend. Killing another human being is the most horrible feeling imaginable. Except, I wasn’t exactly human anymore. Snuffing out the life of someone you love, really love, makes you feel like God himself is pulling your heart out straight through your chest. I felt like my soul was dying, rotting from the inside out. I prayed to Jesus that wasn’t true. I begged that he save my soul.
A Damn Miracle
I was by myself in a cold hospital room. Garret was in the hall talking to the doctor. My fever was still up and they were worried. I felt fine. Other than the soul crushing feeling I had just taken the life of someone I love and four other people. And the fact that not twelve hours before my entire body popped and cracked into something hairy and ruthless. I had cried for hours, I had nothing left in me. No tears. No trembling limbs and catatonic staring. I still hadn’t really talked to anyone, but I wasn’t rotting from the inside out anymore. I was just numb.
Becoming (YA Paranormal) (Lynnie Russell Trilogy) Page 3
