by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
I sucked in a breath. The thing was huge, nearly as big as an eagle, and it stared, no, glared right at me. Not for the first time that week, an icy chill prickled up my spine. No freaking way. It was the raven from last week. I knew it without a doubt. Unless, of course, there happened to be huge ravens lurking about our area lately, and I highly doubted that. I cast another wary glance at the bird. It appeared to be thinking, calculating, deciding whether or not it wished to eat my eyes or my liver first.
“Meghan!”
I nearly screamed. Instead, I jumped and let out a pitiful noise that sounded closer to a Chihuahua yelping. All the kids at the bus stop turned and looked at me. Most of them started to laugh and point.
Feeling my cheeks turn pink, I turned towards Tully, who also had a big grin on her face.
“Get out much in this wide world?” she teased.
I grumbled at her and marched to her driveway where her mom’s car waited. She had the flu or something, so Tully was allowed to drive the car to school. Despite our advanced ages, we still didn’t have our own cars. Vehicles were necessary in a rural town, but they were also expensive. I understood that. My parents weren’t destitute by any means, but having all us kids took a toll on their finances. Luckily, I had friends to bum rides off of.
I threw my backpack into the back seat of the silver station wagon with Tully’s and we climbed in. As we pulled up to the stop sign, I looked back up into the redwood tree. I told myself it was to avoid eye contact with the kids I had embarrassed myself in front of, but I really wanted to know if the raven was still there. To my great relief, or perhaps disappointment (I honestly couldn’t say which), the unnerving bird was gone.
Just another hallucination, I told myself as the car chugged along, just another figment of your imagination.
When we pulled into the high school parking lot five minutes later, I found myself scanning the edge of our campus.
I had no idea I was doing it until Tully asked, “Whatcha looking for?”
“Nothing,” I said automatically, leaning back into the seat and basking in the warmth of the car’s heater for a bit longer. The day would warm up, once the fog wore off, but at the moment it was cold and damp.
I sighed and glanced back out the window. What had I been looking for? As we found a place to park, I reached into the back of the seat and grabbed my backpack. Through the rear window I could see the bench where the local public bus stopped. I froze, my hand clutching the strap of my backpack to the point where my knuckles turned white. It was then that I became aware of what I had been searching for. The homeless man was back, sitting hunched over on the bench as if he were asleep.
Why in the world had I wanted to find him? An image of a tall man dressed in a hooded trench coat flashed before my eyes. I felt my face drain of color and my palms go clammy.
“Hey Meghan, you don’t look so good. You’re not feeling sick are you?” Tully asked.
I swallowed, only to find my mouth had gone dry as well. “I’m fine,” I managed, sounding somewhat normal.
Tully shrugged and smoothed out her skirt and pulled up her neon-striped leggings. Most people would call her sense of style flashy or a bad reproduction of the Eighties, but I couldn’t imagine any other style that would reflect her personality so well.
“Hey girls, what’s up?” Robyn called from across the parking lot.
The majority of the student body made way for her. Considering they all dressed and acted like they lived inside some high end fashion catalog, I was never surprised when they got out of Robyn’s way. I grinned.
Just then, the bell rang, signaling the start of school. We all grimaced.
“Well, time to get another Monday underway!” Robyn proclaimed.
Unfortunately, I didn’t share her enthusiasm.
* * *
I managed to survive the week without encountering too many misfortunes. My science test wasn’t a complete disaster and the people in my geography group were the types who strove for good grades.
On Friday, Robyn gave Tully and I a ride home, so after my last class I gathered my books from my locker and headed out to the parking lot. We piled into her old car just before the lemmings poured out of the hallways. I always smirked when I thought of that nickname for the popular crowd and their followers. Robyn had thought of it, of course.
“They’re like lemmings! They would all follow each other off of a cliff if that was the cool thing to do. Completely mindless,” she had said in disgust. The name had stuck ever since.
They each had their own cars, every one of them much newer than any of my friends’ vehicles of course, and often cut us off as we all made a mad dash for the exit. For some reason, however, they never bothered us when Robyn drove. I couldn’t tell if it was her tendency to cut corners a little too close, or if the state of her car itself acted as a deterrent. I didn’t care. As long as they stayed away I was happy.
As we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the tree-lined highway, I caught a glimpse of someone standing just within the tree line. It was Hobo Bob. My heart lurched and the hair stood up on my arms, though I couldn’t say why. I couldn’t figure out why he bothered me so much. He hadn’t been hanging around as much as before, and it wasn’t as if he ever approached any of us or shuffled around muttering and shouting random curse words. A thought flashed through my head, not as vivid as the one last Sunday of the weird dogs, but clearer. A picture of me standing in the clearing in the swamp where my friends and I had enjoyed the bonfire on Halloween. Only, it wasn’t dark out and I was wearing jeans and an old t-shirt. Just as quickly, the thought flickered away. I shook my head. Oh well.
I made it home in time to learn that my mom had decided we were all going out together to see a movie. This was a rare occurrence, since going to an actual movie theater cost an arm and a leg these days. I went to my room to deposit my backpack and put on a warmer shirt. Even Dad was going this time, and he grumbled as he grabbed the keys to our SUV. Usually I was on Dad’s side; we always had to go see a kid’s movie because of Aiden and the twins, and I could usually argue on behalf of the both of us. But tonight I welcomed a distraction, even a ridiculous one.
The movie, of course, was terrible. The plot was shallow and the main character was a talking rodent who thought that noisy bodily functions were the height of comedy. Naturally, my brothers liked it and my mother laughed along with them. Dad had the luxury of falling asleep but I merely gritted my teeth and bore it.
By the time we got home it was dark and time for the boys to go to bed. I feigned exhaustion and headed downstairs as well. I settled in bed and picked up the remote to my old TV. After seeing tonight’s movie, I needed something substantial to drag me back from what had been equivalent to cinema trash. Just my luck, an old classic adventure was on. The movie was already halfway over but it was more than enough to revive my spirits.
I fell asleep just as the main characters were fighting their way towards freedom. Perhaps that explains the dream I had. I was running through a forest somewhere, not the one behind my home, but one that seemed more primitive, with oaks and beech trees that had to be hundreds of years old. I kept tripping on their roots as I ran, my feet bare once again, the hem of my old sweat pants loose around my ankles as I struggled to stay ahead of something. At one point, I glanced down and screamed. It wasn’t roots I was tripping over but long, skinny, stick-like arms and fingers that reached out from the brush, gripping at my ankles.
Finally, one managed a decent grasp and I fell forward, my hands skidding in mud and leaf litter. I rolled over, panting hard, my loose hair sticking to my sweaty face, and saw glowing eyes above me. These ones were red and the only other thing I could see in the dark was several pairs of long incisors, leaning down to devour me.
I woke with a start and, I’m pretty certain, a startled shout. I blinked around my room, taking deep breaths as my heart began to slow its erratic beating. I groaned and fell back onto my pillows. My sheets were soaked with
sweat and my head was pounding. So much for ignoring my dreams and visions. I cracked open an eye and glanced out my sliding glass door. Just before dawn, if I was guessing right. Sighing, I flung my sheets back and marched into my bathroom. I was tired, but I hated the feeling of cold sweat, so I thought a shower would be a good idea.
The hot water and fragrant scent of my lavender soap woke me up. Once dry, I pulled on a pair of old jeans and wrapped a towel around my torso. I walked back out into my room and opened my dresser. Of course, there was only one clean t-shirt left. Guess it was time to do some laundry.
I pulled the shirt out. It was rusty orange and portrayed the emblem of some summer camp I had attended a year or two before. The color caught my attention more than anything. The vision of me standing in the swamp wearing jeans and a t-shirt came back. Yup, the t-shirt had been this exact color. My skin prickled from the strangeness again.
Doesn’t mean anything, I told myself as I pulled the shirt over my wet head.
Along with hearing voices and having bad dreams, I had often times had premonitions as a child. When I was six, I burst into my parents’ room, crying because I had seen Rugby get hit by a car. Rugby was our family cat. My parents cajoled me and told me Rugby was fine. I wasn’t convinced. But he showed up that evening for his dinner and a few games of chase-the-string with my mom. At the end of the week, however, my dad found him on the side of the highway. We buried him in the backyard and planted an azalea over him. The azalea was now full grown, but we never got another cat after that.
That wasn’t the only time. When I was twelve, I dreamt that Bradley would fall and break his arm when we were playing on the slope behind our house. It was something he had said in my dream that triggered it, and when he repeated the same words, I jumped in front of him before he could leap onto the log that was about to give way.
Little premonitions, really, but enough to make anyone else worry. For a while, I thought I might have a sixth sense, but then the premonitions went away. Now I was beginning to wonder if they were coming back, along with everything else.
I sighed and flipped on the hair dryer. Once fully dressed and my curly hair reasonably tamed, I returned to my room to make my bed. That’s when I saw him, standing outside my sliding glass door. I froze and blinked, wondering if he was real.
He stood ten feet from the glass, just on the edge of the concrete patch that served as a small patio. He was as still as a statue and looked like white marble in the dim, early morning light. I was afraid to blink again, in case he disappeared.
A name floated up from my buried thoughts. “Fergus,” I whispered, wondering where on earth that name had come from.
The great white hound opened his mouth and his tongue lolled happily as he panted. He turned and trotted away across my backyard, his loping gait easy and smooth.
I cursed, half-mesmerized and half-panicked. Something was urging me to follow him, something I couldn’t control. Something instinctual, something . . . primitive.
Without another thought, I grabbed my shoes and shoved them onto my feet. I snatched my sweatshirt off the back of my desk chair and taking one more glance at my desktop, decided to go prepared this time. Fishing into my backpack, I found the small container of pepper spray I always kept there and shoved it into my pocket.
As the sun was just cresting the eastern horizon, its rays piercing the morning fog, I made my way down the steep slope into the woods of the swamp, puffing against the cold air and wondering if it was a ghost I was chasing. Wondering if I really was crazy after all.
-Nine-
Revelation
I was halfway to the clearing when I remembered why I had avoided these woods for the past week. Last time I was walking this particular path, I had been moving in the opposite direction, trying desperately to escape a herd of demented garden gnomes. At least this time I had my pepper spray, though I wasn’t so sure pepper spray would work against a hallucination.
Despite my wariness, I trudged on. The morning was cool, the fog slow to burn off. I pulled my sweatshirt on and tucked my hands under my armpits and listened for any unusual sounds. The only thing I could hear was the familiar drip-splat of the condensation falling from the leaves. Even the footfalls of the huge dog several yards in front of me were silent, eerily so. As I followed him, I wondered what had gotten into me of late. I never was the type to seek out adventure or go off on my own if I wasn’t comfortable, or familiar, with the outcome. Any minute, those freakish gnomes could show up again. No, at any moment I could start seeing things again and if anyone happened to be hiking down here and saw me running in terror from nothing, well, let’s just say my reputation didn’t need any more damage.
I sighed, the smell of eucalyptus oil and the dampness that lingered around swamps flooding my senses. I shook my head and took note of how far we had traveled down the equestrian trail; about halfway between my house and the lowest point of the swamp.
The great hound vanished around a bend guarded by a small thicket of arroyo willows.
“Hey, dog, wait up!” I called after it. Another tally to add to the ‘signs Meghan is crazy’ chart.
Of course, the dog didn’t wait up and by the time I made it to the bend in the path, he had disappeared. I grumbled and considered turning around and going home. This was ridiculous. What had enticed me out here in the first place? I would have turned around and marched right back up that tall hill, but before I had a chance to move, something flashed in the corner of my eye.
I was wound up enough to actually make a small noise of surprise. Wonderful. Delusional and dramatic. I was turning out to be your average American, garden variety basket case. And of course the thing that had startled me was the white hound, appearing out of what seemed like nowhere (probably that clump of bushes growing close to the willows) and in front of a large eucalyptus tree that had fallen over recently.
The dog merely stood and stared at me, tongue lolling, eyes twinkling as if he was laughing at me. Great. Even animals thought I was crazy now. We stared at each other, maybe only for a minute, maybe longer. It didn’t take long for my patience to run thin.
“Okay dog, I don’t know why you led me down here, but if it was to make a fool out of me, you succeeded. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll walk back home and maybe go back to sleep or get some homework done.”
I turned slowly, my head hanging low, muttering to myself as I hunched over against the early morning chill.
“He didn’t lead you down here to make a fool out of you,” someone said.
Once, when I was twelve or thirteen, my little brothers thought it would be funny to sneak up on me while I was watching a scary movie with my friends during a sleep-over. They waited until the movie was over and we were downstairs discussing the likelihood that some mutated alien would come crashing through my door in the middle of the night to slaughter us all. We ran out of popcorn, and seeing as it was my house, I was volunteered to go upstairs to make more. I expected my brothers to leap out at me once I reached the top of the staircase, and then maybe somewhere else just inside the kitchen when I made it past the staircase unscathed. What I hadn’t expected was for my brothers to dress up as aliens and to hide in the pantry. I almost knocked one of Bradley’s teeth out and came trainer diapers close to peeing my pants. That was nothing compared to my reaction now.
Obviously, I wasn’t expecting the dog to answer me so if I screamed I had good reason to. I just hoped I hadn’t woken anybody up in the houses surrounding the swamp. The last thing I needed was for the fire department to show up to rescue the potential murder victim who was just some hysterical high school girl who heard voices. Yes, my classmates would love to sink their teeth into that information . . .
When my wits returned (well, most of them at least), I shot my head up, grasping my pepper spray so tight I was surprised I didn’t accidentally spray myself. There, leaning against a tree, was a young man. He hadn’t been there before. I may have a tendency to hallucinate, but
I would have noticed him when I first arrived.
He looked relaxed, his arms linked over his broad chest and his legs casually crossed at the ankles. His hair was a dark reddish-brown color and from this distance, his eyes took on a strange, dark shade of green. I had never seen anyone like him in my life. Yet, he was uncomfortably familiar; as if he were one of those people you bump into everywhere but have never officially met.
As soon as my sense of self-awareness returned, my eyes darted around and I swallowed hard. Who was this person? Where had he come from? Did he have anything to do with those crazy gnome things from the other day? Should I run screaming for my life?
“Don’t worry, I’ve taken care of them.”
I gaped. Huh? Who are you?! “Taken care of them?” was what I said instead, as if that were the most important issue at the moment.
“The faelah. They’re all gone.”
“Faelah?”
The young man grinned and shook his head sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He looked tired and I wondered what had caused it.
“The small creatures that chased you last week. Humans might call them goblins or trolls.”
“Or gnomes?” I offered, and then started in surprise. What was I doing? Taking part in this conversation as if it were normal to stand around on a Saturday morning and chat about imaginary creatures as if they were real. With a strange, albeit, good-looking guy.
“Yes,” he said carefully, “or gnomes.”
I forgot my timidity and whispered, “You saw them too?”
He nodded. Something about the look he gave me seemed familiar, and once again a snippet of a dream or memory flashed across my mind: this same person, standing before me in the light of the full moon wearing a hooded trench coat.
