by Sara Clancy
“Come on. You can’t stay in the wet one.”
The words weren’t necessary since he wasn’t offering the slightest protest. They were more for breaking the silence and covering the now unnerving rumble of thunder. Benton made the exchange effortlessly since his shock had mostly worn off.
It was tough to not notice that he was naked. During the attack, modesty had been the last thing either of them had cared about. Now however, it seemed like something in short supply.
He tossed the damp blanket onto the floor as she draped the dry one over his shoulders. There was plenty of fabric left over and Benton awkwardly piled the excess across his lap before wrapping his arms tightly around himself. She tried to keep her eyes averted and found herself noticing how red and splotchy his feet were. And that they were still damp since he hadn’t bothered to dry them.
Sighing softly, she knelt down before him, grabbed the corner of the discarded blanket, and began to wipe the stray droplets from his toes. He flinched at each touch, a short snorted breath gushing from his mouth.
“Are you ticklish?” she asked.
“You sound surprised,” he mumbled.
“I guess I am,” she said. “I never really thought that banshees would be ticklish.”
The short, barely smothered laughs quieted as she began to clean the blackened skin that covered his ankles. They were perfect handprints. She could almost see where the nails had dug in. Neither one of them knew what to say, so they let the room lapse into stillness as she worked to get Benton comfortable. It didn’t take long for the self-imposed silence to scramble Nicole’s nerves.
“You said she followed you.” Her natural reflex was to try and cover her fear with layers of cheerfulness, to pretend that nothing was wrong until she could believe it, and normally Benton would tolerate it. Tonight was different and she focused on keeping her words calm and placid. “Did you mean from your room or from the truck stop?”
Benton pulled the edge of the blanket higher around his neck. It looked like he wanted to crawl under it and hide.
“Both.”
“Has she ever hurt you like this before?”
Benton nodded, the movement almost lost within the blanket now bunched around his ears.
She cringed. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“It wasn’t really appropriate bus conversation,” he said softly.
“And what about after? There were a hundred times you could have pulled me aside at dinner. If something’s threatening you, you have to let me know.”
“I didn’t know she was.”
“Benton–”
“It’s not like someone gave me the cheat sheet for this,” Benton snapped. “The only ghost I’ve ever dealt with before this is Oliver, and he can’t leave the house. I didn’t know she could follow me. I thought that she was there and I was here, so there was no point bringing it up.”
“No point? Benton, she hurt you. That’s significant. You can’t just ignore it.”
“I don’t do ghosts!” Benton cut in with a burst of raw anger. “I dream. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal!” He pulled his hands free and ran them through his damp hair. But the nervous habit didn’t help him this time. “I endure whatever messed up crap they shove into my skull, but when I’m awake, I’m safe. I've had ten years to get used to that. Ten years and then they changed the rules.”
He slapped his hands down, screaming more at the world around him than at her in particular, his blatant rage deflating into something petulant and scared. “Now monsters get to be a thing. Oh, and I no longer get to be human. Nope. I’m a banshee. What does that even mean?” His exaggerated shrug turned into a violent, halfway flail of arms. “I have no clue. I haven’t got the slightest idea if any of this is even normal for my kind. For all I know, not sleeping might be the first sign that I’m losing my friggin’ mind. And now, apparently, I have to deal with ghosts, too? No! Just no! I don’t do ghosts!”
The last of his energy fled him on the final word and he rocked forward, hunching in on himself as he again ran his hands through his hair. This time the strands locked between his fisted fingers. His grip tightened until his knuckles turned white. He was too tightly compressed for her to pull him into a hug, so she edged closer and rubbed his back in a way she hoped was soothing. It took some time, but the muscles in his back eventually began to relax, and he let out a trembling sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled against his palms. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“It’s not. I shouldn’t talk to you like that.” Drawing in a deep breath, he lifted his head to look at her, keeping his movements minimal enough so that she could still massage carefully along his spine. “She’s different than Oliver,” he said before hesitating. “Being around her is like being in my dreams. I feel more like her than I do myself.”
“Like she’s possessing you?”
“Yes. And no. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s as if we’re blending together and I can handle it when it happens in my dreams, because there’s this last, dying bit of my consciousness that knows that there’s a time limit. Eventually, I’ll wake up. It can take a while, but things will get left behind, and I’ll be me again. I don’t know if there’s a time limit with her, here.”
He clamped his mouth shut, desperately trying to keep in something else he had yet to say. As gently as she could, she coaxed him to tell her. For a while, he struggled against it, the toll it was taking on him becoming more visible with each passing second. Finally, he forced it out.“She wants to kill. And she wants to use me to do that.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Nicole promised.
The look he gave her was one of both fondness and sorrow. “How can I stop it?”
“We,” she corrected. “It’s us against her and need I remind you, team banshee is undefeated.”
A small smile curled his lips. There wasn’t much behind it, but it was a good start.
“You have a plan?” he asked, with the slightest bit of humor.
“Of course, I do.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “A good one?”
She bit her lip and then smiled brightly. “So, here’s the plan. While you get warm, I’ll search the internet for ways to get rid of ghosts. And then we do them all.”
His smile grew slightly wider, and finally the helpless look in his eyes began to fade.
Chapter 5
“I really don’t see why you’re being so strange.”
Benton tipped his head up to Nicole’s words, realizing a heartbeat later that the comment wasn’t directed at him but at her mother. The two women stood on the far side of the study’s small examination room and neither of them seemed to understand that whispering in an echo chamber wasn’t really whispering.
“Really,” Dorothy replied, her voice low, but completely audible to Benton. “You can’t see where I might have a hard time believing you?”
“I told you the truth,” Nicole whined.
“I’m sure you did. But when a mother walks into a trashed hotel room to see her daughter rolling a raw egg over a naked boy, she is gonna have questions.”
“That’s an ancient and very reputable way of casting out evil spirits.”
“Says who?”
“Exorcism.com.” Somehow, Nicole managed to keep her voice firm and authoritative, without the slightest hint of embarrassment. Personally, Benton wanted to disappear into the hospital-grade bed at just the reminder of it. Of all the things they had tried, it hadn’t exactly been the craziest, but it was definitely the most embarrassing for someone to walk in on. He really regretted not letting Nicole put on the chain lock. “If you don’t believe me, mom, I can show you the web page.”
“Now I’m more concerned about how you determine ‘reputable’ sources,” Dorothy shot back.
“You’re making this weird.”
“It is weird,” Dorothy rebutted. “This whole thing is almost the definit
ion of weird.”
“Well, it might have worked,” Nicole said triumphantly. “Allison didn’t come back the whole night.”
Benton squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to fall asleep so he wouldn’t have to hear this same argument carried out for the eighth time.
“That might have just been because of the bracelet,” Dorothy said. “Iron repels malicious ghosts. Didn’t you get that from one of your web pages?”
“I did. Just like I got the stuff about salt, white sage, and avoiding mirrors. We don’t know which one worked.”
“Well, then. By all means, let me step out so you can roll another egg over him again,” Dorothy smirked.
“When are you going to let that go,” Nicole muttered.
“Not today,” Dorothy countered immediately. “And in the future, I would appreciate it if you call me. Do you know how long it took for me to calm Benton’s parents down?”
“They overreacted.”
“Benton was missing, the door was wide open, and his stuff was thrown everywhere,” Dorothy reminded her.
“Well,” Nicole stammered. “They should know by now that if he’s not with them, then he’s with me. They could have just given me a call and the whole thing would have been cleared up.”
“Yes. It’s very annoying when people don’t make simple yet important phone calls.”
Benton didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Dorothy was glaring at Nicole, or that Nicole was cringing under the weight of it. In actuality, it was probably better that Dorothy had been the one to handle the situation. If Nicole were forced to tell a lie on the spot, his parents would have been banging on the front door in five minutes. Since Dorothy had been allowed to work her magic, all Nicole had to do was keep a straight face, and explain how there was a research paper due next week which they needed to work on. Oh, and that Benton sucks at securely closing doors during a storm.
“I’m sorry,” Nicole finally said. “I got distracted. It was a weird night.”
“And you are going to pay me back for all the damages,” another instruction Dorothy laid down.
“Of course,” Nicole said. “I’m really sorry. Was the front desk mad?”
“You trashed a room. They were a bit upset.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicole’s voice turned weak.
Benton flinched and was about to open his eyes when Dorothy replied in a kind tone, “It’s okay. You did the right thing. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, mom. And thank you for handling Benton so well. I don’t think he’s used to supportive, authority figures.”
And just like that, the conversation had gone from embarrassing to mortifying. He opened his eyes and scrambled up from the examination table.
“You both know that I can hear you, right,” he mumbled.
“We’re having a private conversation,” Nicole said, a smile curling at the corners of her lips. “You hush.”
Benton smirked but still swung his legs over the edge. Sleep had been illusive, and after Allison’s visit, it always seemed close, but never within reach. He had spent most of his time scrolling through the internet on Nicole’s phone. After a certain point, all of the sites were just repeating the same cluster of suggestions. By the time midnight had rolled around, he had given up on both sleep and his study. Nicole had tried to stay up with him but the long hours and adrenaline crash had worked against her. She had ended up drifting off more than once, waking up only when a particularly loud thunderclap shattered the silence.
Getting dressed in the morning had been a lot less painful than what Benton had expected. Dorothy had offered to walk his parents to the nearby Tim Horton’s for breakfast, at the same time, Nicole mentioned that she needed to grab a book from Benton’s backpack. His parents had gone with Dorothy and had even given Nicole one of the spare keys so Benton could get back in later. The thunderstorm still hadn’t passed so the clothes had arrived damp, but he didn’t complain. It was good to have pants on again.
He rested his elbows on his thighs and winced, aching from the bruises on his back that hadn’t faded away yet. Instead, the pain had sunk deeper into his bones as the night had progressed. Benton had snuck peeks at the injury, never wanting to linger on it for too long. It was harder to ignore his ankles. Against the battered skin, his socks felt like metal shackles, solid and unforgiving. The bruise had darkened enough to resemble frostbite.
Nicole noticed his discomfort and was about to go to him when the doctor came in. He wasn’t dressed in the standard white lab coat, instead favoring jeans and a plaid shirt. It was that kind of casualness that kept his near seven foot height from being intimidating.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He checked his chart and frowned. “Benton? Huh, you don’t really hear that name much anymore. Do you prefer Ben? Benny?”
“I don’t really care,” Benton shrugged.
“Well, I just go by Kyle. Nice to meet you.” The second Benton took his hand to shake it, the smile dropped from the doctor’s face. “Wow, you’re cold. I can get them to turn up the heat.”
“Thanks.”
Kyle kept up the idol conversation that Benton knew was designed to ease patients into the, sometimes, personal matter of sleep. It wasn’t the first time the teenager had been assessed. He knew just how delicate a matter can get as soon as people wanted to explore what could be going on in your subconscious. Eventually, after assuring the doctor that he didn’t mind Nicole being present, Kyle pulled up a chair, sat down, and clicked the top of his pen.
“So, you’re not sleeping. What specifically are you experiencing?”
“I normally suffer from night terrors,” Benton began, trying to find the right way to word things so that they would be helpful but not get him referred to a psychologist. “I've had them since I was little, but can function pretty well around them. I still get a few good hours of sleep.”
“But that’s changed,” Kyle prodded.
“About two weeks ago,” Benton nodded. “My dreams have become more … I guess you would call it, static. It’s just a giant mess that wakes me up. I’m only getting a few minutes of sleep at a time, and can’t get back to sleep for hours afterwards.”
Kyle nodded and glanced down at his sheet. “I’ve just got a few questions. Just standard stuff.” He waited until Benton shrugged before going down his list. “Any allergies?”
“No.”
“Well, there is something,” Nicole cut in. “We just don’t know what it is.”
“Right,” Kyle said slowly.
Benton rubbed a hand over his burning eyes and struggled to come to terms with the fact that Nicole was bringing this up here and now. It just didn’t seem possible that she would honestly try and produce a reaction from the doctor, on Leanan Sidhe venom, in a medical dialogue. There isn’t a box for paranormal allergies, he threw all of this mental might into the thought, but it didn’t seem to register.
“When he was new to town, we went out into the fields and he got really sick,” she said. “We don’t know exactly what set him off, but it hasn’t happened again.”
“I’ll put down a note,” Kyle said, before scribbling something and turning back to Benton. “But nothing else?”
Benton shook his head.
“Are you on any sleeping medication?” Kyle asked.
“He can’t go on that,” Nicole said before Benton opened his mouth. “He has very bad reactions to them. Psychologically, not physically.”
Kyle glanced over his shoulder at Nicole, smiled politely, and then scooted his eyes back to Benton.
“They just make the night terrors longer.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “Nutrition. Are you eating right? No late night snacking?”
Benton nodded and barked a laugh when Nicole rushed forward, waving a sheet of paper at Kyle. With his eyebrows slowly creeping up to his hairline, the doctor took the sheet and read over it in a quick glance.
“You’ve documented his eating,” he stated.
�
��Just from memory. He tends to skips meals if I don’t watch him so this should cover most of what he’s eaten the last three weeks. Of course, it won’t be a complete record and he probably has a lot more caffeine when I’m not looking.”
“Who are you again?”
“Nicole Rider. I’m Benton’s best friend!”
“Okay, well, thank you for this, Nicole.” Slipping the sheet under his paperwork, he continued down his checklist. “No recent trauma? Emotional or physical?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Benton said.
Kyle’s eyes shifted to Nicole and she quickly became very interested in the far-ended wall.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
Benton said before Nicole could answer.
It didn’t matter how they tried to word it. There was no way to explain recent events without sounding insane. By his thinking, there was nothing to be gained by mentioning weird owls, monsters, and ghost stalkers. He only prayed that Nicole had the same opinion or this was going to get awkward, fast. She seemed to be struggling under Kyle’s suspicious gaze, so Benton shrugged.
“Just the normal adolescent stuff, really.”
“Speaking of–” Kyle began to say, but Benton cut him off before he could try and get into some of the more personal questions.
“I’m not sexually active. And I’m healthy.”
“Right. And you’re not just saying that because we have company?”
“I’ve had this questionnaire before,” Benton reminded him. “I knew it was coming.”
“Okay,” Kyle said.
Benton didn’t know what the doctor was scribbling down but it took him a while, long enough that Nicole began to strain her neck, attempting to read over Kyle’s shoulder. It took him a few moments to notice. When he finally did, he flipped over his clipboard and glared at her.
“Now, personally, I would like to keep you overnight. To really get a sense of what is happing in that skull of yours. But I know time is a factor. Especially when you have to go back to Fort Wayward. So let’s see what we can do in the time that we have.”
