Rangers

by Chloe Garner

  She turned and walked back out of the garage. She heard Heather scoff.

  “Hold on just one second,” he said, catching her shoulder. His face was open shock. “You know cars?”

  “My first few years with Carter, he thought I was mostly useless. I drove him places and I worked on cars.” She paused and smiled just a bit. “Let me know if you want help.”

  “Definitely a keeper,” Samantha heard Heather say as she made her way back to the house.

  <><><>

  They sat at dinner that night, Jason sharing a table edge with Elizabeth, as the boys recounted the more exciting of their recent kills. The Night Hag made the list.

  “I’m taking courses at the community college in town,” Elizabeth said.

  “What are you studying?” Samantha asked.

  “Husbandry,” she said, glancing at Jason. Samantha almost gagged. She swallowed. She thought she saw Heather smirk.

  “How did you end up with that?” she asked.

  “Mom’s got all this land, here. I’ve always thought she should keep cattle and livestock, so I’m going to get a degree and do it myself.”

  “That’s interesting,” Sam said.

  “That’s great,” Jason said.

  “It is great,” Heather said. “I’m glad to see her doing something that interests her.”

  They were quiet for a few minutes, as everyone studiously chewed their food, then Elizabeth cleared her throat.

  “So have you decided where you’re sleeping, Jason?” she asked. Jason choked, clearly avoiding looking up at Heather.

  “I don’t see that he has two choices,” Heather said.

  “Mom, I’m an adult,” Elizabeth said. Jason’s fingers appeared to be trying to wave her off, but Samantha could tell that this wasn’t a fight specifically about Jason.

  “You can play house with whoever you like, when you live on your own and pay your own bills,” Heather said. Sam opened his mouth to say something, but Samantha caught his eye and shook her head once, sharply. She looked at Elizabeth, whose mouth hung open in fury.

  “I am so tired of your ultimatums, Mom,” she said. “This isn’t the old days any more. I’m a grown woman, and I’m allowed to do what I want.”

  Heather looked stonily at her daughter, and Samantha put her silverware on her plate.

  “I haven’t had an evening to just sit and watch television in a while. Would you mind terribly if I moved to the living room?” she asked. Heather’s glance swiveled.

  “You are guests here. You are welcome at my table.”

  Samantha wanted to empathize. She remembered these battles with her own mother. But being told that conflict is normal never helps anything, she knew. She nodded.

  “Of course,” she said. “I hope I didn’t imply anything else.”

  She suddenly realized that at least part of the tension she was feeling was coming from Sam. She looked at him with wonder as he stared at his plate.

  “I could stand a night of football, myself,” Jason said, glancing up. Heather’s glance could have cut ice. He looked back down at his plate. “Or I could sleep in the Cruiser.”

  Heather snorted, then looked at her daughter.

  “You are excused,” she said. Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She waited for a moment, then picked her plate up off the table and walked into the kitchen.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Jason said.

  “Jason,” Samantha said and shook her head. Heather looked over at Samantha for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Jason.

  “Don’t make me regret allowing you in my home,” she said.

  Jason put his silverware down and swallowed.

  “I think I’m going to turn in,” he said. Heather nodded.

  “I expect you’ve had a long day. I’ll track down the parts you’ll need and let you know when they’ll get here in the morning.”

  Jason nodded and stood. He paused and looked at Heather.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Honestly.”

  She nodded once, then stood and took Jason’s plate.

  “Rest well,” she said.

  Sam and Samantha were left alone at the table.

  “She really is a good cook,” Samantha said. Sam grinned down at his plate.

  “We knew this would be awkward,” he said. “Not that he tried very hard to get off on the right foot.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  He scratched his head.

  “Hadn’t even thought about it, today,” he said. “With Gwen and all…”

  She smiled.

  “So?”

  “Normal,” he said.

  “No shadows?”

  He closed his eyes and opened them, then closed them again, letting his eyelids settle for a minute.

  “They’re still watching,” he said.

  “Who is they?” she asked. He frowned, his eyes still closed.

  “I don’t know. I thought you did.”

  “Tell me what you think,” she said quietly. He opened his eyes, looking around the room.

  “Is it just me, or is it darker in here than it was a minute ago?”

  She smiled.

  “Focus.”

  He took a breath and closed his eyes again.

  “Lots of scratching, like beetles,” he said.

  “Scrub demons. You’re attracting them. What else?”

  He shook his head, focusing harder.

  “Arms, stretching at me. Arms with eyes in them,” he said. He shuddered and Samantha stood quietly.

  “Eyes in the dark,” he said softly, his breath growing more shallow. “Focused… And… a smile.”

  His head dropped, and she caught him as he slumped into the table in slow motion, pushing light into his chest again. He took a deep breath and shook himself.

  “What happened?” he asked. She held him up for another moment, then let him go and returned to her seat across the table.

  “You probably shouldn’t be able to do that, yet,” she said. “They’re taking special interest in you.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, for sure, but I don’t like it. How do you feel?”

  He rubbed his forehead.

  “I’m not hungry any more.”

  “For social reasons, I’m going to let you sleep on your own. They’re going to come after you when you sleep. You’re vulnerable while you’re asleep.”

  “Why?” he asked, still rubbing his head.

  “Because your brain repairs while you sleep. You also form most of your neural pathways while you sleep, too. And your conscious brain isn’t around to push them away.”

  He closed his eyes, apparently searching them out again.

  “Curiosity is good. Don’t let them touch you, though. You’re going to have plenty of darkness to slog through without them helping.”

  “People do this by themselves?” he asked. She was silent for a long time.

  “As far as I am aware, every psychic who has ever triggered but you.”

  <><><>

  Heather sent for parts out of Houston, which were going to take a day to make it to them, so when Jason and Elizabeth mysteriously disappeared, Sam suggested that he and Samantha take out the pair of four-wheelers that Heather kept and wander the property.

  “I don’t want to be here when Heather notices,” he confided. Samantha agreed.

  They rode for a couple of hours, then found a ridge they liked and Sam pulled a pair of beers out of the cooler he had strapped to his four-wheeler. They sat with their legs dangling over the edge of the rocks and watched the sprawling plain before them. After a while, Samantha plucked a blade of grass that was making a go of existence in a tiny pocket of eroded soil in the stone. She put it between her thumbs and blew through it, whistling. Sam watched, entranced, as she opened and closed her hands, drawing different mournful sounds out of the blade.

  “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “Seriously?” she asked him.


  “Where did you learn it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Normal childhood, I guess. Here.” She plucked another blade and handed it to him, showing him how to hold it between the top joints of his thumbs and pull it taught with the heels of his thumbs. He got no response. She played hers again, managing a higher tone this time, then smiled as he tried again.

  “More air,” she said. He puffed his cheeks, but couldn’t get the blade to play. She tossed hers away and laughed, throwing her hair back and tipping her head back in the sun.

  “I can’t sit here for too long,” she said. “I didn’t bring any sunscreen. We’ll need to find shade.”

  He nodded.

  “What was it like?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Normal childhood?”

  She laughed.

  “I don’t know. Normal. There were no monsters in closets, no one was really out to get you. Socially awkward. I was a weird kid. But, you know, I played video games, I babysat, I went to school. Soccer team. Piano lessons. Just. Normal stuff. How about you?”

  “Dad was a Ranger,” Sam said. “Mom was his Seeker. He was out working all week, and she was a teacher, making money to support the family. I don’t really ever remember not knowing what my dad did, but I do remember him telling me, when I was five, that it was our job.” Sam paused, squinting at the horizon. “Even when we were little, everyone knew that I was going to be the Seeker and Jason was going to be the Ranger. Mom started training me, and Jason thought that that was dumb. He would go out and play with our friends, and Mom would sit with me and talk to me about the different kinds of spirits and how to kill them. Then when we were eight, Dad started training Jason - he was big enough, then - and Jason taught me everything he learned. They thought he would quit, that I’d get bored, or something, but we never quit. Even when Dad started taking him out on the weekends, when we were ten, he taught me everything he learned. We reenacted kills in the living room, with coat hangers for knives and guns.”

  “What happened after that?” Samantha asked.

  “After Mom and Dad died?” Sam asked. She nodded.

  “We were thirteen. Their will said we were supposed to go with Arthur and Doris, but my mom’s sister said it was a cult, and she went to court to get custody of us, so we lived with my Aunt and Uncle for a few years.”

  “She said it was a cult?”

  “Aunt Connie was raised in the Rangers, the same as my mom, but when she went to college, she decided it was all occult and not real, and she apparently tried to get my mom to leave, too. She married a guy who believes that miracles stopped happening when Jesus died, and anyone saying otherwise is being tricked by Satan. Everything has to be explained by science, or it’s occult.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “And Jason had seen it,” she said. “Had you?”

  “No. But I believed him. Jason has never, ever lied to me. Aunt Connie loved us, though. For a few years, I tried to be normal, but…”

  “Middle school,” Samantha said. He smiled, remembering.

  “We were tall, back then, too, and Jason was athletic. He was actually popular. I was just an awkward nerd.”

  “Yeah. Starting out normal doesn’t make that any easier,” Samantha said. He nodded.

  “I guess. Anyway, when we turned sixteen, we left. Jason had bought Gwen at an auction and Uncle Matt thought that they would bond over fixing it up. He finished her that year, and we just got in and left.”

  His eyes clouded. Samantha waited.

  “Aunt Connie caught us. We were in the driveway, and she came running out crying…” He paused. “Uncle Matt said that if we left, after everything they’d done to get us out…”

  “They didn’t know,” Samantha said softly. He nodded.

  “And I’m glad they don’t have to. But…”

  They were quiet for a while after that, the breeze picking up and blowing in their faces.

  “How did you end up… not normal?” he asked finally.

  “My parents died in a house fire,” she said. “I got there after it was all over. Just… black beams and a pile of ash.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She shook her head.

  “I appreciate it, but we both know…”

  Her voice caught and he nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  She swallowed and shook her head, flipping her hair off her shoulders.

  “Anyway, someone came and told me that it was more than what it looked like, and if I wanted to find out the truth, he would send me to someone who would help me.”

  “Carter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was the truth?” Sam asked.

  “A fire demon set the fire. In that first year, Carter helped me hunt him down and kill him. It’s an element of pride, for us. We never let something like that go unavenged. It took me a year to get strong enough to even kill that demon. And it almost killed me, at that.”

  “Oh?” Sam asked. Samantha pulled up the side of her shirt. He hadn’t noticed the three parallel scratches there, before. They were faded with a good, clean heal, but they could have been deep enough to get to the abdominal cavity. He had seen ones like it before.

  “I was nineteen,” she said, then looked away.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked after another minute.

  “Running. With nowhere to hide,” he said. She nodded. “What do you do to help me sleep?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done it,” she said. “Other people probably wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have scratching sounds watching you, either.”

  “You know the scratching?” he asked. She nodded.

  “I know the scratching. I haven’t seen the eyes in the dark. Well, I’ve seen them, but not in the dark. I’ve stood with them on the other side…”

  “Are you psychic?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “I’m a Shaman. It’s a class. If I were psychic, I wouldn’t be a Shaman.”

  “Did you choose it?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “Just fostered it. It’s my nature, to begin with.”

  “I hear the scratching all the time, now,” he said. She reached over and wrapped her fingers around his wrist, fingers laying flat over the inside of his wrist as though she were taking his pulse.

  “You don’t have to do that, if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  She smiled.

  “It actually makes me happy. I can feel your mind get a little less frantic.”

  He looked at her, then down at his wrist. She dropped her hand.

  “Your dreams woke me up, last night,” she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, then dropping her head. She scratched her forehead so that her hand blocked her face.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s weird, but it’s okay.” He paused and her hand slowly dropped back down to the rock.

  “What would your nineteen-year-old self say about who you are today?” he asked.

  “This wasn’t ever what I wanted. But I wanted the truth, and I got it. The rest of it is just a side-effect.” She looked at him. “That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  He shook his head.

  She twisted her mouth to the side.

  “There’s so much…” She stood and stretched her arms over her head, noticing the beer on the rock. “Forgot about that.”

  Sam found his somewhere behind him and they drank silently.

  “What would your five-year-old self think?” she asked.

  “I’m hanging out with a pretty girl and I’m a super hero. Score,” he said. Samantha’s face spun away and her hand flew up to her face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She shook her head, then laughed.

  “It’s okay. Life was so weird, after my parents died. Sometimes I think I failed to grow up in important ways, after I was nineteen.”

  “Did someone hurt you?” Sam asked, pulling in his feet to try to give her space. She
turned to face him, her expression calm now.

  “Oh, yes. Lots and lots of them. But not like you’re asking.” She paused. “Honest question. How do you feel, flirting with normal girls?”

  “Jason has no problem with it,” he said. She sat down cross-legged in front of him and shrugged dismissively.

  “What about you?”

  “Like I don’t speak their language. Like I’m some alien pretending to be human.”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah. I feel like that with everyone.”

  “Wow.”

  She shrugged.

  “It’s a trade-off. I’m very good at what I do, I just suck at everything else.”

  “What do you do?” he asked. She grinned.

  “Train you, for now. You want to try something?”

  “Out here? Is that safe?” he asked.

  “I can feel the stress in your brain,” she said. “That’s just amazing, every time I think about it. Anyway, no, I’m not worried. It may be easier here, without people around, with lots of sun, like this.”

  He shrugged and crossed his legs to face her.

  “Okay. What do I do?”

  She shifted forward until their knees were almost touching, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  “Okay,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I’m going to help keep you right here. I want you to just stand up outside of yourself and look around. Take some space, see us. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe,” he said. She grinned.

  “No worries. You ready?”

  “Am I going to throw up again?”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “Like I know that. I don’t think so.”

  He nodded.

  “Fine.”

  She reached out and put two fingers on his temples and her thumbs on his cheekbones.

  “Just relax, close your eyes, and look.”

  She waited, then smiled.

  “That’s strange,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, his voice soft, distant. She pointed to her left. His eyes flew open.

  “You pointed right at me.”

  “Yeah. You split in two. I could feel where both of you were. Weird. Go again.”

  She put her hands back and he closed his eyes again.

  “Same spot,” she said. “You know you don’t need ground any more, right? You’re just a point of perspective.”