Brimstone

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  “It’s not a fight.” I grabbed Lisa’s arm and dragged her away. I was shaking too much for the two of us to be any match for the six of them—five, if Brian abstained. “We’ve got better places to be.”

  “Good,” Minor shouted after us. “Go poach someone else’s boyfriends.”

  “Not hardly,” Lisa threw over her shoulder. “We’re going to Wal-Mart to see if we can find that outfit.”

  I should have just let Lisa handle her. They were both bigger than me. But when Minor launched herself at my friend’s back, I acted without thinking, stepping between them and taking her weight full on. I stumbled backward, the hellcat’s fists tearing at my hair, and banged hard into the fender of Lisa’s Honda. Jess crashed into me and smacked my head against the trunk.

  I swear to God, the thing under the Mustang laughed.

  Brandon and Jeff hooted as Jessica Prime cheered and Thespica clapped and honked. With her friends egging her on, Minor put a knee in my gut and tried to twist my head off. She might not be the alpha bitch, but she was scrappy and mean the way the bottom of the pack had to be.

  But I’m not the scion of Irish pub brawlers for nothing. I kicked her standing leg out from under her and followed her down, pinning her to the asphalt and dodging sideways when her French-tipped nails went for my face. She caught me in the neck and I felt the sting of drawn blood.

  The shadow roiled, like a pot on the boil. The smell of rotting eggs and putrid meat grew stronger.

  Off-balance, I couldn’t stop her from flipping me like a tortoise, slamming me down with more force than I’d ever imagined a piece of fluff like her could manage. Her nails flashed at my face again. I flung up my arm to shield my eyes; when she scratched me again, the acrid stink surged into my throat, stealing my breath.

  Or maybe that was her hands on my throat. “Meddling tramp!” She rattled my head against the pavement. “Stay out of my business.”

  I made a fist and punched. I felt the shock all the way to my shoulder. Jess reeled slightly, breaking her grip, then someone was pulling her away, lifting her bodily. Lisa’s worried face filled my vision. I couldn’t speak past the gagging, but I grabbed her hand, held her so she wouldn’t go after Minor in retaliation. I could feel the shadow’s hungry miasma of excitement, and knew the fight had to stop.

  “Witch!” Minor shrieked at me as Brian held her, both arms wrapped around her waist. “You ought to be burned at the stake!”

  “Jesus, Jess!” He struggled to restrain her, despite his size and strength. Even the Jessicas looked shocked, and Brandon and Jeff had stopped laughing.

  “Freak of nature!” She screeched. The phantom stench was rolling off of her. Why couldn’t they smell it?

  I tried to crawl away, vomit rising in my throat. My hand touched the torn strap of my purse and, still gagging, tears running down my face, I pulled it to me and slid my hand inside.

  “Calm down, Jess,” I heard Prime say. “Jesus, what is wrong with you?”

  “She’s gone nuts. I told you not to play hard to get, Brian.”

  “Shut up, Jeff, and help me.”

  My lungs were on fire. I thought about what Professor Blackthorne had said about sulfur dioxide, about volcanoes, about brimstone. I was burning up, from the alveoli out.

  “Just let her go. What’s one less dweeb in the world?”

  “Shut up, Brandon.” Lisa crouched over me protectively, snarling up at Biff.

  “Make me, Lisa.”

  I’d gotten my hand in the baggie of salt. On a whim, a hunch, a prayer, I gathered a handful and flung it out, covering the parking lot under Jess and Brian’s feet with a smattering of white crystals.

  The effect was immediate. Jess went limp in Brian’s grasp and the shadow recoiled into the tailpipe of the Mustang.

  And I took a deep, unfettered breath.

  “Here.” Brian said, as he shoved the flaccid Jess into Brandon’s arms. “Take her.”

  I heard him crouch beside me, and his hand shook as it settled on my shoulder. “Get away from her,” said Lisa, slapping him away.

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “Take your friends and get the hell out of here.” Her slim arms wrapped around me, and helped me sit up.

  I wiped my streaming eyes and looked at Brian, seeing the forces tearing at him. In that moment, I don’t think he had any loyalty to the pack, but he didn’t want to make things worse by breaking with them now. For the first time, he was right not to rock the boat. “Go.” I sounded as hoarse as Thespica. “But not in the Mustang.”

  Still uncertain, he followed Brandon and helped lift Jess into the backseat of the truck, then climbed in himself. Thespica jumped in after, but Jessica Prime paused to cast a glance back at me, unreadable as an animal.

  With the assistance of the fender of the Honda, I managed to stand up. Sort of. Lisa was helping me into the car when I heard Jeff arguing with Brian about riding in the Blazer.

  “No way am I leaving the ’stang in the parking lot. What if those crazy bitches come back and do something to it.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Jeff, we seem to have a lock on crazy bitches tonight.”

  “Screw it. I’m taking my car.”

  I tried to rise from my seat to stop him. But I didn’t know how. Maybe I could puke on him. That seemed to be all I was good for just then. Lisa forced me to sit back down. “Leave them.”

  “But …”

  “It’s not your problem.”

  “You don’t understand!”

  “There is nothing you can do! I don’t know what’s got into you, but …”

  The Mustang peeled out of the parking lot, ending the argument.

  15

  i expected it to be like that fifties song: The cryin’ tires, the bustin’ glass. But … Nothing. The Blazer pulled around so that Brandon could flip us off, then followed the sports car onto the street. The basso rumble of the truck’s engine quickly caught up with the gravel-throated Mustang, and both faded quickly into the distance.

  Lisa grabbed an empty soda can from her floorboard and flung it after the taillights. It bounced on the asphalt with an anticlimactic “tink.”

  “I hate those sons of bitches. Every last one of them. I hope they burn in a fiery conflagration that is only a prelude to the inferno of their everlasting exile in Hell.”

  Boy, Lisa could curse. I wished I could appreciate it, instead of flinching at shadows. “Please don’t. You don’t know what might hear you.”

  She covered her face with her hands, and when they dropped, she was in control again. We didn’t have time to waste. I could see curious students, parents, and teachers approaching quickly. If Halloran was among them, he’d suspend me in a heartbeat, even if I’d only been fighting to defend myself.

  “I’m not even supposed to be out of the house.” The words scraped my raw throat. “Can we get out of here?”

  “You bet.” She jumped in the car. Just as we’d backed out of the space, Emily from English reached us and Lisa rolled down the window to answer her concerned question. “Spread the word that Jess Michaels went ape-shit when I made a crack about her wearing the softer side of Sears. They took off, and everything’s cool now.”

  Emily leaned in the window. “Geez, Maggie. Are you all right? Your poor throat. And your blouse!”

  I hadn’t realized my shirt was torn. “Darn it! First my jeans, now this.”

  “She’s fine, except for sounding like a frog.” Lisa glanced in the rearview mirror at the gathering crowd, then caught Emily’s gaze. “Just cover for us, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  We zipped away, driving in silence until the school was out of sight. Then Lisa asked, “You want to tell me what’s going on with you, Mags?”

  “No,” I croaked. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I don’t know what to believe right now. What the hell was that with Brian? When did you become so chummy? And the thing with the car? What do you think is going to happen?
”

  “I don’t know why Brian suddenly finds me irresistible. I haven’t exactly encouraged him. And I don’t know how I know something’s wrong with the car. Sometimes I just know things.” I didn’t mention the shadow creature. I didn’t even know what to call it; how could I possibly explain?

  She drove in silence for a moment. “What do you mean, you know things. Like the future?”

  “No. Only the present. But sometimes that gives me clues that something might happen. Like if I know a teacher is planning a pop quiz, it’s not the same thing as foreseeing a test. She could still change her mind.”

  We were cruising the main strip, the most direct way to my house. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “It hasn’t happened in awhile.”

  “But now?”

  I leaned my head against the window. I had a lump coming up, and it hurt to rest back against the seat. “Something is going on, but I don’t know what.”

  She tightened her jaw, but didn’t say anything else. My throat hurt, so I didn’t encourage more conversation. Not until I put up my hand, and said, “Stop!”

  “What?” Her foot tapped the brake. The speed limit wasn’t very high along this curving stretch of Beltline, but everybody sped down it, in a hurry to get where they were going. “Another premonition?”

  “No. There are flashing lights ahead. Oh God.”

  We slowed, along with the rest of the traffic, which was being directed to the other side of the street by a uniformed cop. I glimpsed bright red, and my heart squeezed in my chest. Jeff’s pristine Mustang was a misshapen heap of torn metal, wrapped like a fortune cookie around the front end of an SUV the size of a tank.

  I rolled down my window, and I could hear the police officer talking to Jeff through the driver’s door, telling him to stay still until the ambulance arrived. He was alive, at least for now. But the passenger side had taken the impact. Anyone riding with him would never have survived.

  The front porch was dark when Lisa dropped me off, which usually meant the parents had retreated into their room for the evening. I slid my key into the lock and turned it as quietly as I could. Slipping in the door, I closed it softly, then took off my shoes and crept to the stairs.

  I’d left a note on my bed when I left. It’s a strange dysfunction: Disobeying the parents was one thing, but it didn’t seem right to worry them out of their minds. I wasn’t surprised to turn my note over and read: “You’d better have a very good explanation for this. There will be consequences. —Dad.”

  Well, I expected that. I’m a novice rule breaker, but I suppose it was the price of being a crusader for justice.

  I set my ruined bag on the dresser and pulled out my phone. I’d turned the sound off during the play, and now I saw that I had one text message from Justin (Call when you get home) and five missed calls from Gran (no message). Nice to know her Spidey Sense was operational. I went to the computer and left her an “I’m all right” e-mail.

  Next, I phoned Justin, as ordered. I was quickly running out of steam, but I didn’t want him to worry, either. He picked up the phone on the third ring, and for a moment all I could hear was music and laughter. “Hello?”

  “Maggie! Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Are you at a bar?” Not that it would be my business if he was, of course.

  “Hang on, let me go outside.” More noise, then the slam of a door and silence. “My roommate. This is probably his last semester, so he’s having a last hurrah.”

  “He’s graduating?”

  “He’s flunking out.”

  “Boy, you attract the hard-luck cases.” I pressed gingerly at the bump on the back of my head.

  “So what happened? Anything?”

  I was so tired, and the bed stretched out in front of me like a big, unmade ocean of temptation. “Yes. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I’m too sleepy now.”

  “I have to study for finals tomorrow, or I’ll be joining my roommate working at McWendy’s.”

  Somehow I doubted that. Justin had an unshakable aura of studious industry. If he’d lived in the Middle Ages, he would live in an abbey and do nothing but transcribe ancient texts and preserve knowledge for the future.

  “Okay. Short version? When I tried to stop the Jocks from driving their ghost-infected car, Jess Minor kicked my ass, and then Jeff wrapped the cursed Mustang around the front of a Hummer.”

  “Jessica Minor beat you up?” I had given him a rundown of the major players in this drama. Suffice to say, my opinion of Minor was rather dismissive, hence his stinging incredulity.

  “Yeah, thanks for reminding me of my humiliation. It wasn’t even the alpha bitch, just the wannabe.”

  “And what’s this with the car? Is the guy all right?”

  I shuddered at the memory of Jeff’s blood-covered, pain-contorted face—the only part I could see, thank God. “They were taking him to the hospital. He was pretty messed up. No one else was hurt.”

  As Lisa had driven by—she had refused to stop—I’d seen the others clustered around the Blazer, and Jess Minor had been on her feet and clinging to Brian, so I guessed she’d had little lasting affect from her brush with the shadow.

  “Look, if you want more than that, it’s gotta wait for tomorrow. I’m gorked out.” My sore head rested on my nice fluffy pillow, and it was getting hard to keep my eyes open.

  “Okay.” He paused, and I pictured his serious face pinched with worry. “But you’re all right? You sound awful.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Did you escape detection?”

  “Of course not.” I yawned, and didn’t bother to cover my mouth. “I can deal with my dad. He can ground me till kingdom come once this thing is … whatever.”

  “Vanquished?”

  I rolled on my side and curled into a ball. “Or done.”

  “Done what?”

  “With whatever it’s trying to do.” My eyelids had lead sinkers on them. Even the phone seemed to weigh a ton.

  “How do you know it’s trying to do something?”

  “I dunno. I just do.”

  A pause. Or maybe I dozed off for a moment. Then I heard, “Hang up and go to sleep, Maggie.”

  “Okay.” My thumb found the right button, even with my eyes closed. “ ’Night, Justin. Thanks for helping me tonight.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Almost immediately, I dreamed.

  Sand and wind scoured the ground, and the sun blistered the sky. Before my squinting eyes, dunes stretched to the horizon, a molten sea of white gold.

  I turned in a slow circle, getting my bearings. I stood on a rocky outcropping that jutted between the desert sands and a large oasis where I saw palm trees and some kind of cultivated garden, as well as small adobe huts and large tents. As I watched, a young girl shepherded a herd of goats toward a well, where a woman was drawing water. Dream or not, I was suddenly parched, the hot, dry air torturous on my raw throat.

  Stumbling down the slanted rock, I hurried toward the oasis. The sand slid into my shoes, scorching my feet, and the sun, which hadn’t bothered me at first, drove me like a living force. By the time I reached the blessed shade, I could barely put one foot in front of the other.

  I could smell the water, like a perfume. The woman at the well looked at me with no surprise, as if modern-dressed girls stumbled into their oasis on a daily basis. Up close, I could see the detail of her clothes, from the loose and gauzy texture of her head covering, to the crosshatched weave of her robe. A leather girdle circled her waist; her skin was dark and her eyes kind.

  The detail was stunning, from the color of her clothes to the smell of the goats. I didn’t know what to call any of these things, but they couldn’t be any more real if I had gone back in time. Dad would be so jealous.

  I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “May I have some water?” As politely as I could, I gestured to the full water skin she had drawn
, because even in my dream, the only foreign language I knew was bad Spanish.

  The woman took a dipper, filled it, and offered it to me with a smile. I drank thirstily, and then gave it back to her, bowing my thanks. I was trying to think of a way to ask where I was supposed to be, when I heard a shout from the edge of the oasis, joined by more voices, raising an alarm.

  The woman ran toward the sound and I followed. A group of men clustered together, two of them carrying the torn body of a lanky young man between them. The woman from the well gave a heart-rending cry and threw herself forward, touching his wounds with her hands, as if she couldn’t trust her eyes. One of the men tried to comfort her; she shoved him away and fell to her knees, her scream of angry denial becoming a wail of anguish as she tore at her hair with bloody fists.

  I was afraid to go closer, terrified to look at the dead man’s face. Was I seeing an event from the past, or a metaphorical picture of the present? Would it be Jeff staring up at the bleached sky, dead from wounds inflicted in the car crash?

  The grieving woman fell over the body, and saved me from having to look. I listened to the men, not understanding their language, but interpreting the gestures of the guys who had brought the man back to his wife. They’d found him outside of the oasis.

  I went the way they’d indicated, covering ground in a quick fold of dreamtime, and found myself in a spot where human feet and animal claws had disturbed the sand in a ten-foot circle, the fetid air thick over the scraps of cloth and hair. The odor of rot had become an indelible association, the way hospitals smell like disinfectant, and locker rooms smell like mildew. If the man had been attacked by carnivores, why the hellish smell? Was the pack more than it seemed?

  A wind came up, blowing my hair around my face and obscuring my vision. I turned into it, brushing the strands from my eyes, and in the seamless way that dreams have, it was now full night, and the desert air was cold on my skin. The moon painted the sand silver, except for a circle of flickering blue firelight.

  “This again?” I huffed in frustration.

  The first time I dreamed, there had only been impressions of fire and smoke and danger. The second time, I’d seen the brazier and the blue flames. Now I had a setting, though it didn’t make much sense to my present problem. Another metaphor? Or was I seeing the origins of something I still didn’t completely understand?