Token of Darkness

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “John—”

  John nodded as if in response to something else, then hoisted his backpack more solidly on his shoulder and backed hurriedly out the door, nearly knocking down a freshman trying to get in for the next class.

  The shadows receded into the corners of the room, fading into something harmless. Cooper grasped the desk until his heart stopped pounding, and then he looked up at Samantha, whose form seemed tattered, the colors from her hair to her paisley stockings all a little less bright.

  “I thought they were gone,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen them since the hospital.”

  Cooper just stared at her, not knowing how to respond. He had not known that she had ever seen the shadows before, but had thought they were part of his private fears. He had once had a nightmare about a living, creeping, hungry darkness, like a swarm of locusts made of smoke and misery. When he woke, Samantha had been beside him.

  Cooper made it through his next couple of classes using a combination of willpower and despair. He didn’t know what else to do. As soon as lunch came around, though, he rushed from the school building. As a senior with no history of discipline or academic problems, he had offcampus privileges, so no one looked twice as he walked toward town.

  Samantha chattered nervously as Cooper wandered, finally deciding he should force himself to eat something. He hadn’t had breakfast, and it would be a long time before dinner. Besides, it gave him something to do other than search the corners for those things.

  “I would kill for a BLT,” Samantha declared as she sat on the table at the deli while Cooper ate. She now seemed to be dressed in faded, torn jeans with dribbles and splashes of paint in a vast variety of colors, a baggy T-shirt sporting the image of a pink elephant, and a large gray sweatshirt with the zipper torn out and the sleeves cut off just above the elbows. Her earlier fears seemed forgotten. “Seriously. If I could taste anything … if I could eat that would be the first thing I would get.”

  Cooper’s nerves had settled enough that he was finally able to focus on her and respond. “How do you know you’re not a vegetarian?” he asked, speaking quietly so his voice wouldn’t carry. Thankfully, the sandwich shop was so busy, he figured people wouldn’t notice that a few stray words belonged to a one-sided conversation.

  “I can remember what bacon tastes like, and it is goooooood,” Samantha replied. “I’m no veggie. Have you given any more thought to what we talked about this morning?”

  The burst of laughter behind him was normal enough not to even draw his attention, but the way it abruptly cut off did. It seemed like an hour passed in complete silence before a familiar voice said softly, “Hi, Coop.”

  He tensed, his spine seeming to fuse into a lead bar, and it took a monumental effort to turn his head to face the head of the Lenmark cheerleading squad.

  “Delilah, hi.”

  Cooper tried to make the words seem welcoming and warm, but they came out flat. He and Delilah had never been very close, but she was part of what had been Cooper’s crowd. They all usually ate at the pizza place down the street, so Cooper hadn’t expected to see them here. He hadn’t considered Delilah, whose social circle wasn’t limited to the athletics department. In addition to cheering, he knew she built sets for the drama department and spent much of her free time in the photography lab’s darkroom.

  He stood up and flinched as his hip gave a sharp twinge, a pain that shot from his toes up to his shoulder. The injury from the accident didn’t bother him too much anymore, but sometimes it stiffened when he sat.

  For now, he stood before Delilah and felt every inch of his diminished self. She looked, as always, like she had walked right out of a magazine, in designer clothes that suited her strong and lean figure, honed by time in the gym and on the field.

  With Delilah were two other girls; both looked familiar, but Cooper knew neither of their names.

  “We thought we would get some lunch,” Delilah said, which Cooper thought was fairly obvious. She leaned against the back of a chair as her friends went up to the counter to order food, and sighed before saying, “I’ve missed you, Coop. I called a couple times, but your cell always went straight to voice mail.”

  Since Cooper hadn’t ever charged the phone his mother had bought to replace the one destroyed in the accident, he imagined he had more than a few messages.

  “Who’s she?” Samantha asked, moving to the middle of the table to avoid being jostled. Cooper still didn’t understand why Samantha couldn’t walk through people or other living creatures. He had seen some people shiver, or brush the place where their skin touched Samantha, but they almost never even glanced in her direction.

  Delilah, however, looked up as if she heard something. Her gaze went right through Samantha, so it was obvious she couldn’t see the ghost, but nevertheless Samantha gave an excited hop and said, “Hello?”

  Delilah looked like she was about to say something else, but at that moment one of her friends returned and asked, “Who’s this?”

  “Oh.” Delilah glanced quickly at where Samantha stood, then shook her head and answered. “Cooper Blake. He’s from the team. Hey, get me a basil-mozzarella sandwich with bacon, then let’s eat outside.”

  “It’s all wet—”

  “It’s sunny,” Delilah interrupted, “and I’m sure it’s dry enough. Cooper will join us if he has the time.” She reached out to touch his shoulder gently before adding, “Take care, Coop.” She tossed her hair and walked directly outside without waiting for another word.

  Well, that was weird. Cooper and Delilah hadn’t exactly been best friends, but in his experience girls were usually more aggressive than guys when it came to asking about things no one really needed to talk about, like the accident or how he was feeling since. Of course, Delilah wasn’t like most girls.

  He tried to just be grateful she had let him off the hook. She had left him with an invitation to join her, or not, and absolutely no pressure either way.

  “Who was that?” Samantha asked. “Girlfriend?”

  Cooper shook his head and looked through the window to where Delilah and her friends were settling on benches with their backs to him. Delilah’s serial first-dates never included athletes.

  “Did she hear me?” Samantha asked. “She did, didn’t she?”

  Cooper began packing away his lunch. “She probably heard something across the room.”

  “Or she heard me, and didn’t want to look crazy asking about it. You should talk to her.”

  “We’re talking about Delilah, Samantha. She’s a cheerleader who occasionally spends time with artsy kids. She’s cool, but she’s not the type to be able to do something no one else can.”

  Delilah tended to be charming overall, ruthless when someone crossed her, but generally distant. Of everyone in his normal group of friends, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she was utterly unperturbed that he had simply disappeared for months.

  “Coward,” Samantha said. “Why don’t you just—”

  “Shut up, Samantha!” he snapped, this time getting a few odd looks from other people in the shop.

  Samantha pouted, and then turned around. “I’m going to hang out and see what they say.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Cooper mumbled under his breath, before she sauntered through the wall and back toward the other girls. Cooper picked up his bag, threw out his trash, and left without looking back.

  Halfway to school, he changed his mind. His hip still hurt a bit, but his doctors had told him that walking was good for him. He was willing to risk a little soreness, if it meant avoiding another run-in with old friends.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” the town librarian asked him as he approached the front desk.

  “I’m at Q-tech,” he answered, naming the local vocational-technical high school. He had nearly gone there with John, despite his parents’ objections. Who wouldn’t want a chance to learn stuff like computer programming and auto mechanics, after all? The deciding factor hadn’t actually been h
is mother’s horror, but the fact that John had wanted to keep playing football, and Q-tech didn’t have a team. “We don’t start until Monday.”

  “Oh.” She still looked suspicious, but was a little more relaxed, which was good, since he needed her help to find anything useful in the four-floor building. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  “Yeah, I …” He fumbled, trying to figure out a good place to start that didn’t involve his saying, I’m being haunted. “I kind of forgot about the summer project I was supposed to be doing. It’s on ghosts. You know, hauntings, myths and stuff about why ghosts stay around and what people do about them. Maybe stuff about warlocks dealing with the dead?”

  “Third floor,” she answered. “All the way back from the stairs, turn left at the one hundreds. Parapsychology and occultism is one thirty-three.”

  “Thanks.”

  This time she actually smiled, as he trudged toward the stairwell.

  Stairs.

  Flat ground was okay, but stairs were still hell.

  He must have paused for a little too long, because the librarian asked, “Something else I can help you with?”

  He started to shake his head, not wanting to disclose … but then sighed. Now was not the time to be macho. “Do you have an elevator?”

  She frowned again. “It’s supposed to be for handicapped use only.”

  He wasn’t handicapped!

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “If you need the elevator—”

  “No, I just realized I forgot something,” he said, bluffing.

  “Oh … well, if you do need it, the elevator’s right around the corner past the copy machines,” she said.

  She turned back to the books she had been scanning in. He was almost sure that she was pointedly not looking at him. Not forcing him to say, “I need the elevator because, despite how I look to you at first glance, this body is in fact unsound and likely to betray me if I take the stairs.”

  He hesitated for a couple seconds, debating whether it was worth trying to convince her that she was wrong, that he was just a lazy jock who didn’t want to bother with stairs … and then he turned to the elevator. There were a lot of ways to lose your pride. This was just one of them. And it wasn’t forever, even; the doctors said that as long as he kept doing the daily exercises he had been prescribed and attending his monthly physical therapy checkups, he would be good as new. Eventually.

  Only two months ago, even walking had been impossible for him. Breathing had been an effort.

  He hit the UP button, and as it lit and the elevator went ding ding ding, memories from the hospital started washing back. The doctors’ shouting, the lights blinking and machines beeping, breathing for him—

  No, no, no, no.

  He ripped himself from the memory, only to see the elevator doors close in front of him. He hit the button again and the car opened immediately. He stepped inside, limping heavily now.

  He didn’t immediately hit the button for the third floor, though. Instead, he leaned back and shut his eyes, taking deep breaths. Where was Samantha? Her chatter was usually a good distraction.

  Necromantic golem, that was his focus. That was what he had come here to look up or, barring that exact scenario, he intended to learn anything he could about ghosts. He doubted there was going to be any way to give Samantha a body, but if he couldn’t do that and couldn’t help her live again, then at least maybe he could find a way to bring her peace.

  With these safer thoughts in mind, and the memories locked away again, he hit the button for the third floor. He still winced each time the elevator beeped, but it was only twice, and then the doors slid open and he was free.

  There was someone already camped out in row 133, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by books. At first, Cooper couldn’t tell if the figure was a guy or a girl—all he could see were jeans, black sneakers, and an oversize black sweatshirt.

  Cooper resisted the instinct to turn around, anticipating a grungy goth with black overlong hair, eyeliner and piercings, who would probably have way too much to say about the occult.

  “Hey,” he said, eliciting a start from the figure, who shoved his sweatshirt hood back in order to look up at Cooper.

  Cooper’s expectations turned out to be completely wrong. The guy’s brown hair was short and spiky. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry, and a collared shirt was just visible beneath the sweatshirt.

  “Hey,” he replied. “You startled me. Am I in your way?”

  “I think we’re trying to look at the same books,” Cooper answered, feeling a little guilty about his previous assumptions. Considering the fact that he was now the guy who sat quietly at the back of the class, who had cut school to research ghosts, he should probably cut back on the goth stereotypes before he became one.

  “I didn’t expect to find anyone else here,” Cooper admitted as the other guy gathered up some of the books he had spread about, making room. “With school and all.”

  “Q-tech,” he answered briefly.

  “Really?” Cooper asked, wondering if this guy was using the same excuse he was. He didn’t look familiar, though, and didn’t look young enough to be one of the underclassmen Cooper wouldn’t recognize.

  “Yes,” he snapped, “people from Q-tech can read. We don’t combust when we walk into libraries. God, I hate the way you—”

  “Whoa, whoa, not what I meant,” Cooper protested. “We are supposed to be in school today, so I told the librarian I was from Q-tech to stop her from getting on my case. I was just wondering if you had done the same.”

  “Oh.” The hostile energy faded, replaced by an embarrassed-looking expression. “Sorry. I get a lot of grief from people who think only stupid people go to the vo-tech school.”

  “I wanted to go there, actually,” Cooper admitted. “My parents said no.”

  “My mother doesn’t really care where I go.” The other boy shrugged. “I’m Brent, by the way.”

  “Cooper.”

  “You look familiar. Football team, right?”

  “Last couple years, yeah,” Cooper admitted. But not this year.

  “That explains it,” Brent said. “I went to a few games last season. You’re the fast little guy.”

  Cooper couldn’t help chuckling, since that was the exact description Coach used for him. At two inches shy of six feet tall, he had still been one of the lighter guys on the team. It was all right that he didn’t have a lot of weight to throw around, though, since he had good hands and quick feet. Or, he used to.

  “Get hurt in practice?” Brent asked.

  Cooper cringed. He had gotten so used to carefully shifting his weight when he had to kneel or sit, relying on his good knee and hip, he hadn’t given it any thought when he had slowly eased onto the floor next to Brent.

  He just shook his head, and changed the subject. “So … anything good in here? I’m looking for stuff on ghosts.”

  Brent paused before asking, “What kind of ‘stuff’? Haunted places? Poltergeists? Séances?”

  “I’m kind of writing a book,” Cooper lied. “This guy’s being haunted and trying to figure out who the ghost is and how to help her. I thought I’d do some research.”

  “Uh-huh.” The invented plotline apparently didn’t impress Brent much. At least, that’s what Cooper thought until Brent added, “You’re a piss-poor liar. I don’t even know you and I know you just made that up. I hope you were a little quicker with the librarian or she’s probably called the truant officer already.”

  “You think?” Cooper sat up, worried.

  “Nah. Elise is cool,” Brent answered. “If she caught you at a movie or smoking somewhere she would call you on it in a heartbeat, but you’re in a library. She doesn’t care if you’re supposed to be in class.”

  “Good to know.” Amused, Cooper asked, “You’re on a first-name basis with the librarian? Do you work here?”

  “Work? No. Well, I volunteer sometimes. I practically live here when I’m not
at school. I like the quiet.” Brent looked at the pile of books around him, as if he was trying to decide which to pick up next.

  “A little light reading?” Cooper asked, wondering why anyone would be doing such dedicated research before the school semester began. He wondered if he should insist he had been telling the truth about the book he was writing, or if he could come up with a better excuse.

  “Light by my standards,” Brent said, laughing a little. “I don’t think I believe in ghosts, but figured it might be interesting to research the phenomenon. But anyway. Your ghost. More of a specter, or a poltergeist?”

  “You just said—”

  “Yeah, I don’t believe for a minute you’re writing a book,” Brent interrupted. “And if you were looking up how to make arsenic or something I’d worry. But ghosts? It’s an interesting topic for discussion, but not likely to get anyone in trouble. Now, let’s start basic. Is your ghost location-bound or person-bound? Oh, or object-bound? They’re all different.”

  “Person-bound, I guess,” Cooper answered. Brent seemed like he could be helpful, and he wasn’t likely to talk to anyone Cooper knew, so it didn’t really matter why he was helping or what he thought Cooper needed the information for. “She goes wherever she wants, but this one guy is the only one who can see her.” He debated adding something about the shadows, but his gut seemed to twist when he even thought of them.

  Brent didn’t notice his hesitation. “Oh!” he exclaimed, seeming more excited now. “Then your person might be the thing to focus on, not your ghost. Maybe he’s psychic. Does he see ghosts a lot?”

  Cooper shook his head. “No, this is the only ghost.”

  “Hmm.” Brent paused, looking at the books around him. “Well, there are a lot of stories about people who did something—a séance, or violated a graveyard, et cetera—and got haunted for that. Is your ghost angry?”