by Simone Pond
My feet felt like blocks of cement.
“Oh, Sibby, just a few minutes with the ladies,” Aunt Ruthie pleaded.
The tightness in my chest increased, but this was my aunt’s moment to shine, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Vago sat on the floor, resisting my pull. I leaned down and whispered into his ear, “If I have to endure this, so do you.”
He chuffed and followed close to my side as Mrs. Pearlman escorted me over to a large group of women standing close to what smelled like the sugary cookie table. Aunt Ruthie fidgeted by my side. We were among the in crowd, and she was having trouble finding her way. Her nervousness took my mind off of mine for a moment, and I held her hand again. If I could do this, she had nothing to worry about.
“Ladies, Ruth Forsyth has brought an honored guest tonight. Let’s give Sibyl Forsyth a warm welcome,” Mrs. Pearlman announced to the small circle of ladies.
A soft round of applause and hellos circulated.
“I’m delighted that she’s joined our cause to preserve the tradition of our quaint town of Coastview.” She paused a moment as one of the women approached and handed me a cup of steaming hot herbal tea, for it was far too late in the day for caffeine for this bunch. I held my cup of tea, while Mrs. Pearlman’s buoyant speech suddenly took the turn I had predicted. “As you know, Sibyl was in a tragic car accident last year that resulted in the loss of her parents and her sight. And though we haven’t seen her this last year, it’s a true honor to have her with us tonight. We hope this is the first time of many!”
She clapped and the others joined in. Heat rushed to my cheeks as I skulked behind my cup of tea and sunglasses. Before the accident, I had thrived on receiving attention. Being a top-notch pitcher, there’s not much of a choice. But something about that moment was humbling. I didn’t belong there with those purposeful women. I didn’t belong anywhere. I was tumbling in zero gravity, unable to attach to or connect with anyone or anything. My blindness made me different. My ability to see the unseen made me alien.
Vago must’ve sensed my unease because he woofed a couple of times, getting a laugh out of the ladies. He was ready to get on with the real reason for our attendance at the meeting: change the day of the vote. Simple. I happened to be surrounded by the most important women in the room, so this would be the best opportunity to voice my concern. Though I’d be going back on my promise to Aunt Ruthie, I couldn’t miss out on this prime opportunity. Just as I took a sip of tea and prepared to address the group, an evil presence in the atmosphere caught my attention. The tea caught in my throat and threw me into a coughing fit.
Aunt Ruthie patted my back. “She’s okay. Just went down the wrong pipe,” she assured the women.
But I wasn’t okay. There was something lurking in the darkness. Something evil. I could sense it with every fiber of my body. A metallic taste filled my mouth. Vago started barking louder. I began to sway. Aunt Ruthie held me to keep me from smacking against the floor. One of the women grabbed a chair and sat me down before I collapsed.
Behind the coruscation of women, the dark thing that had been hiding in the corners entered the room. A Spirit Handler. It morphed into a pack of the evil beings and they began slithering around like oily snakes. Chills prickled up my neck as the room grew icy.
Vago scratched at my leg, whining.
“Do you see them too?” I asked.
He shook his head, his ears making a flopping sound, like he was trying to shake off the evil. The oil slicks moved in between the women, slinking around their ankles and moving up along the edges of their bodies, searching for their victims. Some of the Spirit Handlers were able to overshadow the women and absorb the light of their spirits.
“No!” I shouted.
Aunt Ruthie bent down and said, “What’s going on, Sibyl?”
I realized that nobody else was seeing this supernatural activity. Only me. Everyone else had gone back to sipping tea and nibbling on cookies. Some of the ladies had gone to their seats in preparation for the meeting.
“Is everything okay with Sibyl?” Mrs. Pearlman asked Aunt Ruthie.
“She’s fine. Just overwhelmed. It’s been a long time since she’s been around this many people,” Aunt Ruthie explained.
“Well, I need to go set up,” Mrs. Pearlman said, patting my shoulder. “This was such a lovely treat. I do hope you’ll stick around. We need the younger generation to get more involved. I don’t know how much longer most of us will be around.” She chuckled softly, then click-clacked away.
My heartbeat continued to crank away in my chest, and I still couldn’t pull in a full breath. Those evil things had overshadowed more than half the room. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was worried they were going to hurt me. I had to get out of there immediately.
“I need you to take me home,” I told my aunt.
“The meeting is just about to start.” Aunt Ruthie’s voice shook with desperation. Her night in the spotlight was about to be destroyed by me.
I stood up and forced a smile. “You know what? I’m fine. Go sit down. I’ve got my watch to get me home.”
Woof!
“And Vago.”
Aunt Ruthie kissed my forehead. “I’ll text you on my way to work. Be careful. Thank you for understanding, dear.”
She ran off to join Mrs. Pearlman at the important table, while Vago and I slipped out the back door. I didn’t glance back to see if those evil Spirit Handlers had made any additional progress. I didn’t want to know.
Chapter Eleven
Vago
While the ladies bustled about the room getting to their seats, I guided Sibyl to the back door and outside. She leaned against the brick wall underneath the pearly moonlight, trying to force some air into her lungs. Her face was pale and her blue eyes wide with shock over what she had just encountered. I don’t know what she actually saw, but I had sensed evil in that room like a storm cloud emerging. Something wicked had entered the place and whatever it was had knocked Sibyl off balance. Any chance of her making a request to change voting day had slipped away. And we were back to our original plan of going to city hall.
“I know,” she said in my direction.
Woof.
“You have no idea, buddy. I’ve never seen so many. They were all over the place. Oily snakes, slithering everywhere. Sorry, but I just freaked out. I feel like such an idiot. Aunt Ruthie was so proud to have me as her guest. But she’s okay, right? They’re okay, aren’t they?”
Woof. Woof!
“Damn, I wish midnight would hurry up and get here. I need to talk to you!” She stepped away from the building. “Let’s go home.”
I walked by her side, guiding her down the tree-lined street of the quiet neighborhood. Dusk had set in and the street lamps glowed as the sky darkened overhead. Along the way, Sibyl’s new watch kept making beeping noises, which irritated me. I wasn’t sure why she needed the GPS when she had my keen sense of direction. After all, I was a guide dog.
She stopped walking a block before we arrived at the house. Standing still, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Then she cocked her head off to the side and said, “Something is in the air tonight, Vago. I’m not sure what, but something is going on. Something very wicked.”
I pulled forward. I wanted to keep moving and get to the house before the looming wall of evil creeping behind us caught up. Whatever she was feeling, I had sensed it, too. And I just wanted to get her home safely. As we approached the part of the sidewalk where the tree root had grown through the cement, I paused and listened to see if her watch would issue any warning signals. When it didn’t, I gently nudged in front of her to slow her pace.
“Ah, the infamous tree root! Thanks, Vago. You’ve proven you’re much more intelligent than the watch,” she teased.
That time I gave her a loud bark and yanked forward with more force. Midnight couldn’t come soon enough.
The shift typically happens when I’m dozing off or already asleep. Since I know precisely what time it
occurs, I make sure I’m situated in bed before midnight each night. The transformation starts off with a tingling in my paws that moves slowly up all four legs, then spreads down my back to the tip of my tail. It feels like when a foot falls asleep; a little painful at first, but then a twinge of relief releases through the blood stream. Then my entire body begins to vibrate, rendering me unable to control any of my movements. I shake with such rapid intensity my brown fur becomes a blur. I know this because I’ve videoed myself shifting—both ways. During the vibration phase, my bones and muscles begin stretching and changing shape. The texture of my fur gradually thins out as my body shifts into its human form so it’s just a normal layer of hair covering my skin.
Normally, it takes me a few minutes to acclimate to my biped status, so I’ll practice walking around the room. Once I’ve got my balance situated, I’ll grab some clean clothes from the hiding spot under the bed, then go to Sibyl’s room. Nine times out of ten she’s passed out.
That night, I came out of the shifting process to find Sibyl sitting in the chair by the computer desk in my room.
“Hey!” I shouted, pulling one of the pillows over my guy parts.
“Oh, please. It’s dark in here. I can barely see you.”
“The operative word being see. Turn around so I can get dressed.”
She laughed and twirled the chair around to face the computer screen. “Didn’t take you as the shy type, Vago.”
I yanked on a pair of jeans. “I’m not. Just a little unnerving to go through a shift and find a blind girl staring at you.” I put on a t-shirt and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m good,” I told her.
She slowly swiveled the chair around to face me. “Watching you shift never gets old. It’s the one supernatural thing that doesn’t freak me out.”
“Well, I’m glad there’s something,” I said.
“Hmm. I guess I deserve that. But tell me you didn’t sense all kinds of evilness tonight?” She got up and sat next to me on the bed, our legs touching.
Though Sibyl could see my human form, she seemed to find more comfort in physically acknowledging my presence. I made her feel safe. And she made me feel necessary.
“The air was thick with something wrong,” I said.
“An army of evil Spirit Handlers slithered into the room and I just freaked out. I have no idea why I can see those things. It’s a curse.”
I didn’t have an answer for her. We were the clueless leading the clueless. And hiding away for the last year hadn’t helped matters. We should’ve been studying or trying to figure things out. Now we were in a huge supernatural conundrum with very little experience.
“Maybe they were there to cause problems for the meeting? Disrupt things and get people to turn against each other,” I suggested to Sibyl.
She nodded. “But it wasn’t just the women they seemed to be after. They were making their way toward me. Like they wanted to take me out.”
I laughed. “You think they were specifically targeting you?”
“Am I being paranoid?” she asked, lowering her head.
“You’re always paranoid.”
She huffed with deep irritation. “All I know is those things are creepy. And I’m not going back out there ever again.”
I stood up and stared out the window. The moonlight came down through the window, striking me with the realization of what it meant to be Sibyl’s guide. “Not this again. We can’t revert to the old ways. Not after we’ve made some progress.”
“We made zero progress,” she said.
She tried to dodge me, but I knew her game. Sibyl was an intelligent girl. She’d do this avoidance tactic all night long until dawn struck and my fur came back. For the past year, I had allowed it to carry on because I thought I needed to handle her like a fragile egg. But we were out of time.
“You’re going back down to city hall tomorrow and talking to whoever you need to talk to about getting the meeting date switched. I’ve put up with your wishy washy crap for a year now and I’m done. We got the vision for a reason and it’s our responsibility to do something. I think we can both agree on that.”
Sibyl gazed at me, a shimmer of the moon’s glow lighting up her pools of pale blue. She had become my best friend—my only friend, in fact—and I wasn’t going to enable her anymore. We had a connection that reached beyond the physical realm and we were together for a reason. The dog shifter and the blind girl who could see things others couldn’t.
“You’re right. I’ve been avoiding this long enough. The night my parents died, I knew things were never going to be the same again.”
I sat next to her again. “Well, yeah …”
“No, I mean something on a spiritual dimension. I guess seeing my parents’ souls being lifted from their bodies and carried away gave me a clue.” She laughed lightly. “When I started seeing spirits and then those evil Spirit Handlers, then the visions, well, I knew I was left behind for a reason. But I still don’t understand any of it. It’s so weird. You know?”
Laughing hard at that one, I assured her, “Um, yeah … I’m the one who doesn’t remember their past. I don’t remember a thing before Esther hooked us up.”
“I guess you have it worse. But honestly, memories are overrated,” she teased, messing up my hair.
“Hey, I’m not in dog form.” I pulled on a lock of her hair until she squealed.
“Okay, we’re even,” she said. “Before this turns into a wrestling match, we should probably come up with a plan for tomorrow.”
“Simple,” I said. “We’re walking down to city hall first thing in the morning.”
She gave me a pretty good eye roll for a girl who couldn’t see. “Yes, Vago. We’ve establish that part. I’m thinking we go down there fully armed with information so they don’t think I’m nuts. When we had the second vision there was more detail. I could read the t-shirts of those men on the motorcycles.”
“Yeah, me too. What’d they say? Something about Coastview—”
“Coastview ain’t for sale.” Sibyl finished the sentence.
“Poor grammar,” I joked.
She got off the bed and walked around the room then turned to me. “They looked more like a gang of hoodlums rather than protestors, don’t you think? Also, if they were protesting the multiplex being built on a historical landmark, why would they put explosives inside city hall to destroy one? And why would they want to harm a bunch of people who were voting against the multiplex, too?”
“To make a point?” I tossed out.
“No, something isn’t right. We should do a search for conspiracies and protestors as well as supernatural activity in the area,” she said.
I sat at the computer and flipped on the power. The room lit up in a blue glow. Sibyl remained stationed by the window in deep thought as if picturing the moon. I got to work on the search, digging as deep as I could to find any information on protest groups. Turned out it’s not uncommon for people to oppose city growth projects. Many groups protest against large developers and try to shut them down. Usually to no avail. But underneath the surface level stuff, I found some sites explaining that sometimes development companies hire people to protest their development projects because they’ve run out of money and want to shut them down. I printed out a bunch of info about a particular group that had been known to cause trouble in the Northern California regions. Sibyl could take it with her to city hall when she talked to the city manager.
After the easy search, I descended into the bowels of the internet. The darknet. The place where hidden things were buried deep. I started by listing keywords based on Sibyl’s descriptions of the evil Spirit Handlers. The wormhole sucked me deeper and deeper into pages of stories showcasing blood sacrifices, death cults, and ceremonies that celebrated the torture of humans. A digital abyss.
“Hey.” Sibyl’s voice caused me to leap up out of the chair.
“Shit!” I hollered.
She laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re scared!”
> “There’s some unpleasant shit here,” I defended myself. “And despite learning about some really messed up stuff, I can’t find anything like those evil beings you described. But I think we can assume they’re involved in this somehow.”
“Okay, maybe try searching Spirit Handler. Also, while you’re at it, see if you can find anything on Esther Townsend. I mean besides her school for the blind. Use supernatural keywords. As many as you can.”
I scratched my chin, some stubble already appearing. We had another four hours before I shifted back into my dog form. Why did she want to waste time on Esther Townsend?
“Any particular reason you want me to do that?” I asked.
“Something you said earlier triggered a thought. You said you don’t remember anything about your life prior to Esther hooking us up. And it was right after we met that I started getting those visions. It’s all just a little too coincidental. Don’t you think? I’ll bet she’s got something to do with this. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. She just happened to find me a guide dog who shifted into a human between the hours of midnight and dawn? Pretty lame of us, Vago.”
“Hey, you’re the one who preferred Agatha Christie and sunbathing over engaging in real life, so don’t blame me.”
Sibyl’s face was leaden with disappointment. I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like to lose everything in a split second, changing your life forever. I couldn’t imagine it because I didn’t have that option.
“I guess I wasn’t ready to face the truth about my gifts,” she said. “I thought maybe the spirits and the visions would go away after a while, like maybe I just hit my head too hard in the accident.”
I grinned. “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
She laughed, punching my arm. “You’ve been patient.”
“It is a virtue. And dogs are pretty damn loyal.”
Then she rubbed my hair again and said, “How about I sit next to you while you do your searches?”
