The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  “Hey! Chelsan!” I turned around and nearly burst into tears when I saw Nancy running toward me. Her clothes were dirty and she looked pretty scuffed up. Seeing her made my heart swell with emotion. I didn’t realize how much I needed a friendly face until I saw her coming straight toward me. Before I could move to embrace her, she tackled me to the ground in the biggest bear hug I had ever experienced. “Chelsan! You’re alive! They’ve completely closed off the park for miles, but I crawled through the back fence and seriously, I was like a ninja, I stayed as low to the ground as possible, I’m a complete mess, but I got here...” She was rambling and I loved every second of it.

  “Nancy, I can’t breathe.” Her hug had turned into squeezing every last breath out of my lungs.

  “Oh, sorry. I’m just so relieved to see you alive! They said on the news there were no survivors when the tornado hit. They did a life scan and everything! How did they miss you?!”

  “I wasn’t in the park, I was reading under the willow.” Uh, oh. If they did a life scan and someone was really paying attention they’d know that Bruce was really dead. I couldn’t focus on that, yet. If Jason thought I was in trouble then I’d have to keep that piece of information on my “potential danger” list. Now that I knew Vice President Geoffrey Turner was my grandfather and what he was capable of doing to his own family, I had to be on my toes. Mom warned me he’d be after me and now Jason Keroff was cautioning me, too. I needed to be prepared for anything.

  “I’ve always hated that tree! All the bees! But I’m completely grateful for it now!” And then she noticed Bruce. “Oh Bruce! I’m so glad you made it, too!” She turned to me. “So lucky.” Her face suddenly went from relief to horror. “Your mom?” Nancy said it so cautiously and carefully it took away some of the pain I felt when she mentioned her.

  I simply shook my head and Nancy hugged me again. “I’m so sorry, Chelsan.”

  I pulled away from her and made a decision in my head. I needed help and Nancy had more than proven she was someone I could trust explicitly. “Look Nancy. It’s time we had that talk.”

  Nancy’s eyes widened, but she nodded as if she knew exactly what I was talking about. She glanced over at Bruce with a knowing jerk of the head.

  “That’s a part of the talk. Nancy, Bruce is dead. Really dead, like eleven years dead.”

  Nancy looked over at Bruce with curiosity. “The frogs were dead, too, right?” I could tell she was already making calculations in her head.

  “Yes. I can bring back anything that’s died. Like this garden: it was smashed and destroyed when I got here, but it was my mom’s and I couldn’t let…” I choked. Thinking it and actually saying it out loud became much harder than I thought. I needed to keep my head clear for my mother’s sake. She had warned me that my life was in danger and if I fell apart now, I didn’t think I could ever recover. I wouldn’t care if I lived or died if I let my grief overwhelm me, and my mom wouldn’t have wanted that. It’s why she showed me what she did. To protect me somehow. To warn me. And it was up to me to figure all of this out.

  Nancy hugged me once more. Despite me telling her that I was a defect that essentially made zombies, even plant zombies, she still wanted to be my friend. She pulled away and looked at Bruce. “So, nothing’s going on upstairs? Or is he really alive?”

  “No, nothing, I control all of it. That’s why I didn’t bring back my mom,” I lied. I couldn’t admit to what I had done. It made me feel dirty thinking about it.

  “Good call.” We sat there in the garden, facing each other. “I kind of figured it was something like that, but I didn’t want to say anything because… well, because if I was wrong you’d think I was a psychopath,” she smiled apologetically.

  “I didn’t tell you for the same reason.”

  “Ever since the frog thing, I’ve been doing some research on the subject. There have been more cases than just the Science Journal’s report on the Voodoo necromancy. There are Egyptian, Wiccan, Indian, all sorts of places that have spells. Which one do you use?”

  “None of them. I was born with it, or re-born, or I don’t know. This is going to sound even crazier, but before my mom died, she took me back, back to her memories or something. It’s why I know she wasn’t killed by a tornado.” I was still trying to process all this.

  Nancy looked just as interested and nothing I said seemed to faze her. She had obviously been thinking about this for a long time. Three years, I guess. The frogs made more of an impact than I originally thought.

  “What did she show you?”

  “My grandparents didn’t want my mom and me to live, so they did some ritual so that we’d die when I was born. It worked and my father killed himself over our dead bodies, doing some spell or ritual and boom, we were both alive again and I got my powers.” At least that’s what it looked like from what my mom showed me. I couldn’t be certain that I wasn’t completely insane and delusional, but from the look on Nancy’s face at least I wasn’t the only one.

  “Okay. When we get back to my place, you’ll have to tell me every detail of what you saw. We can look it up and see exactly what spell they used.”

  A warm glow spread through me. It was like a comfort I had never felt before. Not only did Nancy believe me, she was helping me. It felt really nice knowing someone had my back. Like all this was real instead of the giant secret I’d been keeping my whole life. I felt liberated.

  “Okay. That sounds good.”

  “How does it work, exactly? Your powers, I mean.” She was very business-like as if she had an encyclopedia in her brain and she was scrolling down it to find the perfect information to help me.

  “I see black swirling holes in dead things and I can connect to them and control them like puppets.”

  “That’s freakin’ sweet.” Nancy started to laugh and I felt a pang of doubt. Please don’t tell me she was placating me this whole time. No, no, no, I couldn’t take that. “Did you make that fly attack Jill yesterday? That was classic.”

  Huge sigh of relief. I even laughed a little myself. “Yeah.”

  “Nice.” Nancy was simply thrilled, and I could tell she was relieved I was finally telling her the truth. She had been waiting for it for a long time. Nancy looked around at the destruction of the park. “We should get out of here. Clean-Up will be here soon.”

  Clean-Up. An organization “dedicated to cleaning up the World’s disasters before you have to!” Once the authorities had left a disaster area, Clean-Up came in and pretty much wiped the vicinity clean and planted trees or fields of flowers, like the one up by my willow tree, which basically meant I was running out of time.

  “I have to find out what happened.” I couldn’t leave yet. There had to be something here to tell me the truth.

  “How?” Nancy stood up and helped me to my feet. I kept Bruce sitting in the tulips, slumped over.

  I scanned the area and noticed something very interesting. “They’re all dead.”

  “Yeah… these are things we know already.” Nancy’s voice was laced with concern.

  “No, I mean, flies, rats, bees, cockroaches, spiders all of them.” This had to have significance.

  “Wouldn’t a tornado kill everything?” I could tell Nancy was asking to help with the thinking process, not to try and prove me wrong.

  “It would definitely kill most of them, but all? I just wish I could see what happened.” So frustrating!

  “Can’t you use Bruce or something? If you can control his movements why couldn’t you see through his eyes or something?” I obviously had a bewildered look on my face because Nancy immediately looked abashed. “Sorry, I don’t know how this whole thing works.”

  “No, no. I just never thought about doing something like that before.” I said. My mind was racing. Was that possible? Could I actually play back what Bruce saw when he was experiencing the tornado? I decided it was worth a try. “I’m going to try it.”

  Nancy’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Cool. Tell me what I should
do.”

  “Just keep an eye out for Clean-Up. This may take a bit. I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

  Nancy gave a mock salute and her face was filled with anticipation of what would happen next.

  I made Bruce stand up and walk up to me.

  Nancy let a small gasp of excitement slip through. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  I reached up to Bruce’s face and placed my hands on his puffy cheeks. I could still see the tiny bits of rotted skin under his stringy hairline from when I had left my four-mile radius and let him die the second time. I needed my mind clear of any distractions so I closed my eyes and began to concentrate as hard as I could. “Okay, Bruce, show me what you saw.”

  Nothing.

  I tried not to think of what must be going on in Nancy’s head right now.

  Stop it!

  Focus.

  Come on, Bruce. I shut everything out, sounds, movement, smells and lastly thoughts…

  …a red neon glow filled the inside of my head like a psychedelic balloon bouncing around my eye-sockets. Small pinpoints of light appeared in the far distance. I instinctively moved toward them, or soared toward them would be a better description, until the tiny bits of light started to take form and suddenly I was standing in my trailer next to Bruce. He was sitting in his recliner watching the holo-tv and everything was just as it was before the destruction.

  I did it. I was actually there, or some part of me was there anyway. I looked down at what I thought would be my body, but there were only wispy shreds of the same red glow I saw before. I had no corporeal form. I was just an observer. It kind of creeped me out, but I didn’t want to get distracted and break out of what I was actually accomplishing. I hurried to the window and then I saw her…

  …my mom. She was in her garden watering the roses. She had a sweet smile on her face as if all was right in the world. I wanted to scream out and warn her, tell her she was about to die, but I had to remind myself I wasn’t really there. This was just Bruce’s memory.

  That’s when the green smoke oozed across the ground of the trailer park like a devouring snake swallowing the life out of everyone there. People were coughing and choking, dropping to their knees, falling to their deaths. Mom saw what was happening and her face crumpled. She looked up at the sky and closed her eyes. I knew she was connecting to me under the willow tree in that moment.

  Flashes of yellow moved through the trailers and I squinted through the green fog to see what they were. It didn’t take long to recognize a HAZMAT suit and the men inside of them. Strapped to their backs, were two-foot canisters connected to spray nozzles and they were spraying my neighbors and mother with poisonous green toxin. This wasn’t a tornado.

  This was an extermination.

  I was about to jump out of the memory when the sound of crunching metal tore through my senses threatening to knock me out of my head. A large hovercraft, the size of the park itself was acting like a kind of magnet, collapsing and crunching the trailers like they were crumpling up a wad of fabric. Within seconds the park looked like it did when I found it. Like a tornado had hit.

  A large ramp from the hovercraft lowered to the ground and the men in the HAZMAT suits shuffled their way inside. And then they were gone. The ship moved so fast I could barely see the blur as it zoomed out of sight. The green gas dissipated and I watched me from the past run up to my mother in her garden. I saw myself about to bring my mom back, as I reached inside her body to her black hole, as I grabbed onto her essence and…

  I jolted myself out of Bruce’s head.

  I could barely breathe. Nancy’s arms grabbed onto me and held me up for support. Bruce had fallen backwards, crushing the tulips.

  “Are you okay?” Nancy’s voice was frantic with worry.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I took in deep breaths, trying to re-gain my bearings. “I saw…everything.”

  I turned to make eye contact with Nancy. Her demeanor relaxed a bit when she saw that I was coming back to myself. “What did you see? You only had your eyes closed for five seconds.”

  “Really?” Really? It felt like forever. Or at least as long as the memory lasted, but I still had no idea how this worked, let alone that I could even do something like that. It made me wonder what else I could do?

  “Yeah. You got all rigid and then, wham, you were gasping for air. I thought he tried to suck you in, or kill you, or something. It was really freaky looking.” Nancy seemed exhilarated and scared all at once.

  “It was very weird, but it felt a lot longer for me than that. Look, Nancy we have to get out of here. I’ll tell you everything when we get out of this place.” I suddenly felt panicked. Whoever these guys were, they could always come back to kill stragglers. Especially a straggler who went on international television claiming this wasn’t a tornado, but green smoke! No wonder Jason Keroff said I was in trouble. He knew something about this. I needed to contact him. Maybe he could help me.

  “It wasn’t a tornado, was it?” Nancy was definitely airing on the side of frightened at this point.

  “No, it wasn’t. Nancy, I don’t think you should get involved in all this. I think I may be in BIG trouble.” I was starting to really worry for her safety.

  “Oh no! You can’t tell me in one sentence that you’ll spill everything and in the next say you can’t tell me anything! That’s just cruel. We’re going to figure this out together. No more keeping stuff in. It’s not good for your complexion and don’t think I’ve forgotten about that crater that stayed on your forehead for a week. If you had just confided me in the first place you could have been pimple free.” She was smiling now and I found it contagious.

  “Got it. Acne free life from now on. But seriously…”

  Nancy placed her finger to my mouth to shut me up. “I don’t want to hear it. Let’s get out of here before we end up with a California Oak on our heads.”

  “Yeah about that… I don’t exactly have a place to stay.” I was officially homeless and Nancy’s house was seven miles away, which was why I had never been there before.

  “You’ll stay with me, dummy.” Nancy started to walk away toward the edge of the park.

  It wasn’t long before she noticed I hadn’t budged.

  “Come on, Chelsan. Don’t give me the whole ‘I can’t possibly accept’ speech, you’re staying with me and that’s final.”

  “Um, Nancy…” I didn’t know how to tell her.

  “What? Clean-Up will seriously be here any second.”

  “Bruce.” It was all I could sputter.

  “Leave him.”

  “But, I was just on TV, they all think he’s alive.” I had my one shot to free myself of Bruce once and for all and I blew it for my stupid pride.

  “So? Trust me, Chelsan, natural disasters are lame TV, no one will remember.”

  “But Clean-Up will see the body. They can’t re-form an area until it’s clean.”

  “Look, Chelsan, he’s a ten-year-old anchor you don’t need hanging around your neck. What about the willow? You’re never going back there again.”

  Yeah. She was right. It was time. Time to say good-bye to Bruce. I nodded and made Bruce follow Nancy and me toward the flower fields and my willow tree.

  Knowing it was the last time I’d ever be here made me sad, but I couldn’t say that a part of me wasn’t a little relieved at the same time. Bruce would be out of my life forever. I could live my own life now. I wouldn’t be tied down to an eternity of puppeteering.

  “Should we just leave him here?” I could tell Nancy was wondering why I was just standing there.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Sorry.”

  I made Bruce sit with his back propped up by the tree trunk. He looked peaceful. I was controlling the bare minimum. Now that I had no one to fool, it felt wrong to make him act normal. Like I was abusing him or something. The real Bruce was a vicious monster so I guess we could call it even.

  “This may gross you out. You might want to close your eyes
or turn your back or something,” I warned Nancy.

  “I’m good. Do your thing.” Nancy looked morbidly curious, but I knew after what she was about to see, she wouldn’t be so quick to want to participate anymore.

  Okay. Here goes. I reached into Bruce’s fiery black hole that I had known so well over the years and…

  …disconnected him from it.

  What happened next was revolting. Bruce’s skin looked like a million flesh eating bugs were devouring him in a giant feast. Gooey glumps of blood and tissue slopped to the ground, revealing Bruce’s bones underneath. The rest of his flesh oozed off his skeleton to create a chunky indistinguishable pool of blood and skin. But even that began to turn grey, then black, then disappear into the ground all together.