Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  “Kel told me he’s been sick for a while. As in hospitals and doctors. Please! Just call it in to Nurse.”

  Freddy turned away. Desperate, I grabbed his hand to stop him. “Please, it might be too late—”

  He looked back and met my eyes, alarm spreading across his face. We were no longer standing in the battle zone. A cacophony of sounds and images buzzed around me. Fractured sensations stung at my mind. Then they distilled into individual moments. It was like what had happened with Kel, but this time it wasn’t just a single memory. Vivid scenes whipped past me with alarming clarity.

  A drunk man, leather belt gripped in his white knuckles.

  Three suitcases surrounded by glittering glass.

  A whiff of pot smoke, angry voices coming from the other side of a closed door.

  Then there was the car crash.

  Even though I could barely see, the memory came into cutting focus. Slumped in the driver’s seat of the car, I wiped at my eyes. Pain flared, obliterating all thought, and my hand came away with bright blood on it.

  Whimpering came from the seat next to me. The girl in the passenger’s seat was only a few years older than me, and she would’ve been beautiful if her body hadn’t been twisted into an unnatural angle. Her eyes were closed, and blood seeped from her dark auburn hair, streaking her face. A cell phone lay on the floor. I reached for it, a gravelly grunt coming from my mouth as fresh pain cut into me. The whimpering grew louder, and struggling, I reached for the phone again. But it was too far away and the pain was too sharp.

  Then the girl went quiet.

  Fear drenched my body in the silence and I surged forward, grabbing the phone off the floor of the car. I tried to focus on the light of the cell phone glimmering in front of my face and—

  The phone, the car, the pain vanished as Freddy pulled his hand out of mine. His eyes bulged, and his face turned redder than usual. The old scars turned white with tension, and I knew. The girl had died. Because he’d smashed the car. Because he hadn’t gotten to the phone in time.

  Freddy ordered into his earpiece, “Send Nurse. We got a sick kid down here.”

  It took me a second to realize he was actually calling it in. Freddy had experienced that memory along with me.

  Zach looked at me with awe. Maya’s expression was stuck somewhere between confusion and disbelief.

  “I don’t care if she’s dealing with kids from the fight. We need her here now!”

  Pause.

  “I don’t care about effing protocol either. I’ll bring him in myself.” Freddy tore out his earpiece and turned to me. “Crap! Let’s get him to Nurse.”

  We raced over to Kel. His whole face was red, with a fuchsia band across his cheeks and nose. His hands looked swollen, and he was curled in a ball.

  I knelt next to him. “Kel, can you stand? We’re gonna—”

  But Freddy pushed past me and, with a cry of pain from Kel, picked him up.

  Kel reached out and grabbed my arm. “Don’t leave me,” he croaked.

  “I won’t, Kel. I’m right here.”

  Freddy just growled, “Keep up.”

  I followed in Freddy’s wake as he charged through the warring factions, out the gate, and straight into the woods. Shielding Kel, Freddy barreled through branches that whipped back to smack me in the face. He zigzagged through the forest, clearly knowing the fastest way through the trees. We were making good time when Kel started flailing.

  “Damn. Damn. Damn.” Freddy’s scarred face puffed red. He fumbled in his pocket, trying to hold Kel and get out his earpiece. He finally laid the bucking Kel on the ground and jammed the device back into his ear. “Kid’s having some kind of seizure.”

  Pause.

  “Okay, we’ll stay put.” Freddy stared down at Kel’s jerking body. “We’re out in the woods, close to the . . . the . . . Damn it. I’ll have to come get you.”

  Freddy’d had the same look of horror on his face since he’d jerked his hand out of mine. Like he was reliving a nightmare. “They said to be careful he doesn’t hurt himself. And turn his head to the side so he doesn’t choke.”

  Then Freddy was off. No warnings or threats about me staying put. Just a final look backward.

  Kel’s eyes were closed, and his body seemed to be settling down. Was that a good sign or a bad one?

  Panic exploded in my chest. I wasn’t one for praying, but I looked up into the green canopy of pine needles. Searching for guidance. Through the trees, the sea shimmered in constant motion. Its rhythm steadying me.

  “Don’t do this, Kel, come on. Wake up. I’m sorry.” No matter what secrets he’d kept, no matter what I’d seen in his mind, I didn’t want this. I knelt next to him in the soft pine needles, in case he started flailing again.

  But he was so still, it was eerie. Kel’s whole body burned. I pulled him onto my lap, reassuring myself he was still breathing, putting my ear to his heart. I tried to remember the ABC mnemonic from Health class. Something, Breathing, Circulation?

  “Please don’t die.”

  Kel shifted slightly, opened one eye, and asked, “Is he gone?”

  24

  I STARED AT KEL in shock. He’s not dying. I was elated and relieved and confused all at the same time.

  “Is he gone?” he asked again. “Faye?”

  Wait. He’s not dying.

  Kel reached up to touch the tears streaming down my cheek and I shoved him off my lap.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Kel groaned as he hit the ground. I almost felt bad for him.

  “I’m done playing games.” I backed away, listening for any sound of Freddy coming back. But there was only the cicadas’ incessant shrilling.

  Kel showed me his hands, covered with splotches. “It’s not a game. I swear. I have lupus. The rash, the fever, they’re real. My body doesn’t like the sun. But Faye, we have to talk about yesterday. You have to let me explain about—”

  But I’d stopped listening.

  “You don’t like the sun,” I repeated. I heard the words whispering in my mind. The Harbinger is shielded from the glare of day. The pieces were starting to fit together. “Your hoodie and sunglasses. Your gloves.”

  “Look, we don’t have time for this. That Taker will be back any second.” Kel sounded desperate and small, huddled there on the ground. He didn’t look like he could end the world.

  “Faye, I didn’t mean to follow you. I mean, at first, I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’m used to doing stuff at night, when I can pretend like I’m normal and I don’t have to walk around wearing twenty layers of clothes.” He took a shallow breath and rushed on. “And they don’t give me those knockout pills, ’cause they’d interfere with my other meds. That’s how I caught up with you in the Compass Rose the other night.”

  I’m so stupid. I thought he’d just found a way around the pills. Or thrown up like I did.

  “But that first night I just stared out the window, wondering if I was ever gonna fall asleep. And I saw you climbing down that ladder and . . . I followed you.”

  The moon will know them. I inched backward, ready to take off if I needed to. That little voice still echoed in my head. For me. The prophecies were a warning for me. So I could stop what was coming. So I could stop the Harbinger. But the thought that it was Kel was too epically ironic. I groped for another explanation while the words of the tarot cards screamed in my head. Kel had hidden things from me. Betrayed my trust. But I didn’t want him to be the Harbinger. “Then why did you take off your gloves and stuff during Free Time?”

  “I know, it was stupid. But I had to find a way to talk to you, and causing a flare-up of my lupus seemed like the only option. I couldn’t stand you looking at me like . . . like you are now. I did play it up a little, faking that seizure.” Kel winced as he tried to sit up. “But trust me, my joints feel like fire every time I bend them.”

  For the Harbinger will carry pain with them through the lonely places of the Earth.

  “Trust you
? How could I trust you?” But there’d been a moment, in the library, when I had trusted him. When the two of us had been a we. I could still hear the way he’d whispered my name. Our bodies melting into each other.

  “Please, Faye. I’m so sorry.” His hands stretched out to me, opened palmed, plaintive. I relaxed my runner’s stance a little. Green sparks shimmered in his deep hazel eyes, and looking into them, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to do more than that.

  He reached out for me and I let him take my hand. Then the threatening buzz swarmed in my ears and I was thrust into another of Kel’s memories.

  He was up by the Screamers again, but I could tell by the moon that it was a different night. And that wasn’t all that was different. The grass in the middle of the statues, the place I’d been kneeling in the first vision, was gone. In its place was a wide, deep pit. Kel stood at the edge of the hole, and through his eyes, I stared down into the frightening scene.

  I watched myself crawling blindly through the mud, my fingernails scraping at the red dirt. Digging. And the others were there too. Nami, Damion, Zach, and Maya. All of us. Our eyes staring and empty.

  “Nothing,” Kel whispered to himself. “Every night they dig and still they find nothing.”

  I jerked away and I was back in the bright sunlight. I fought to clear the horrible image of us scrabbling in the mud like animals. “What— What’s going on?”

  “I followed you. All I wanted was to catch up with you so I could talk to you again. But . . . but, you were sleepwalking or something. You all were.”

  “Why are you doing this to us?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but I could hear it verging on hysteria.

  “No.” Kel sounded desperate for me to believe him. “No, Faye, I’m not doing anything. Please! I don’t know why this is happening. I was trying to find out, like you. I wanted to keep you safe.”

  “How? By stalking me through the woods? By watching me and the rest of our drugged-out Family thrash in the mud? Why didn’t you just tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Through the trees, I could hear distant voices, calling out for us.

  “I was scared. I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me. That they’d think I was crazy.” Regret mingled with the pain on his face. “You’re right, I should have told you yesterday up in the library. That’s why I left the diary and tarot cards for you last night. So you could see them for yourself. So we could trust each other.”

  Why would he do that if he’s the Harbinger?

  “No more secrets. Please, Faye.” Kel reached out for me, and more than anything, I wanted to take his hand. Tiny red lines veined through the creases of his palm. Red stains showed under his broken fingernails. But Kel said he hadn’t been sleepwalking. And he hadn’t been digging in the vision either.

  Ice inched up my spine as I asked the real question. “Why are your hands red too?”

  Kel looked down at his hands and I understood. He’d gotten his hands muddy so he’d blend in with the rest of us. He’d faked it. Just like he’d faked the seizure.

  “Poor, sick Kel. You’re still putting on a show for us all.”

  When he finally looked up at me, there was no denial in Kel’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted any of us to know.

  Freddy ran through the woods toward us, Nurse right behind him. Kel slumped to the ground, playing sick again.

  I took a step back, bracing myself against a tree. Why Kel? He’d been the only thing at Holbrook I’d dared to trust. My arms and legs trembled, barely holding me up.

  Together Freddy and Nurse threw a blanket around Kel and maneuvered him onto a stretcher. Nurse slid a needle into his arm, and I saw him flinch.

  If I was right— If I was the only one who could stop this—

  Kel’s eyelids drooped, his eyes pleading with me as they took him away.

  Then I had to stop Kel and whatever he was going to do.

  No, not Kel. The Harbinger.

  Kel wasn’t the only student missing from dinner that night. The cafeteria was only about half full. Where was Dr. Mordoch keeping them all? Under house arrest?

  The whole room seemed to be holding its breath. Dr. Mordoch didn’t say anything about the fight, but she no longer wore her patronizing smile either. With so many students to punish, I thought she might be celebrating, but her face looked pinched and gray.

  My Family kept glancing at Kel’s empty seat and then at me. Tears pounded at my eyelids, but I refused to let them out. I just concentrated on keeping my face impassive as I forked burnt baked beans into my mouth.

  Once I was drugged and back in my stuffy room, I couldn’t hold it together anymore. The day was still raw, like a bruise on the surface of my mind.

  “God, I’m hungry. I couldn’t eat any of that tuna crap at lunch . . . Do you know how many other animals die in those fishing nets? Dolphin-safe, my ass. And if you’re a shark or a turtle, you’re really screwed. Seems like if you’re not cute and cuddly, no one even gives a shit about you.” Maya rambled, almost on automatic, as she picked at a hangnail. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, as if judging what kind of mood I was in. “Not that I really wanted to eat it. I mean, it was bad enough having to sit there and breathe in that awful fish stink. And then baked beans for dinner? That’s not a meal. Aren’t you still hungry?”

  Not even a little. I could still taste the panic in the back of my throat when I thought Kel was dying. And the nightmare flashes of Freddy’s life. And the vision of us all digging in the dirt.

  Nausea flooded my body and I ran to the bathroom, puking up the little dinner I’d eaten and whatever was left of my sleeping pill. My hands shook as I rinsed my mouth out at the sink, but at least I felt a little more in control. I couldn’t risk another nighttime sleepwalk. Or meeting Kel out there in the darkness. I’d deal with the Holbrook Consequences when they caught up to me.

  “Sorry.” Maya looked a little shocked as I came out of the bathroom. She pulled her knees up, hugging them to her chest. Curiosity and concern both showed on her face. “You all right?”

  Concern had won out, but not by much. Before I could answer, she rushed into her next question. “What happened to Kel?”

  I sat down on my bed, aching head in my hands. I should tell her about Kel. About the tarot cards and the Harbinger.

  “Nami was pretty worried about you guys.” Maya actually came over and sat on the end of my bed. “I guess she’s had some first aid training, but she said she had no idea what was going on with Kel. And then one minute you were arguing with Freddy, and the next you were both just standing there with these weird looks on your faces. I didn’t know what was going on.”

  Sitting on my bed without any of her rhetoric or posturing, I was struck by how breakable she looked. I could see the shadow of veins just under her almost translucent skin. She sat there looking at me, knees tucked, arms wrapping her slight frame. How could I tell her any of this? She wouldn’t have any better idea what to do with it than I did.

  All I said was, “Kel’s okay.”

  Maya looked like she wanted to ask more, but she shrugged and accepted my half answer. “Faye, I don’t wanna go to sleep. Something’s happening to me . . . messing with my head. I don’t want any more nightmares or whatever they are. I don’t want to hear that music. And I really don’t want to wake up on the floor again.”

  This was the first time she’d mentioned the music, and now it was me that wanted to ask more questions. But she was scared enough as it was. And I was scared too.

  “It’s gonna be okay.” I wanted to hug her, but I wasn’t brave enough.

  “You go to bed and I’ll stay up. You won’t have any more nightmares.” I couldn’t bear to tell her what I’d seen through Kel’s eyes. About us digging in the red dirt. But I could make sure it didn’t happen again tonight. “It’s too hot for me to sleep anyway.”

  A half hour later, Maya’s little snores filled the dark room. My feet hit the floor. I pulled the folded page out of my sock and slid
the window open a crack. Grabbing the diary and the pen, I finished copying down the messages from the tarot cards, rereading them in order this time. Trying to put together the pieces of the story.

  First the Past. The dreamer waking from a nightmare. The divided lovers. The boat and the six swords beneath the waves.

  Stronger than the others the Harbinger

  peers far into the Future There men

  will feast off of the Earth like maggots There The

  Circle will fail the Family Two quarrel and the

  Harbinger alone slaughters

  the lambs Forging a new Path and journeying

  the sea of time To finish what has begun

  I reread the middle section. There The Circle will fail the Family. I shivered. Is it talking about my Holbrook Family?

  Then there were the three middle cards that connected the Past and the Future. What had Rita said about The Circle card? Something about it going nowhere. Round and round. Round and round. But looking at the card, the woman seemed powerful as she stood there at the edge of the water.

  Next to The Circle card sat the blindfolded Harbinger, swords crossed, sitting in front of the sea. Last was the crowned figure of The Path, wielding a sword and balancing the scales. How did these cards make a bridge across time? I flipped them over.

  Look carefully for the Harbinger is shielded from the glare of day

  But the moon will know them Peer into strangers’ eyes

  for the Harbinger will carry pain

  with them through the lonely places of the Earth

  When the hour arrives the Harbinger

  will smother the sickness that is humanity

  Only the Harbinger can wash this world clean

  And finally the Future. The disapproving moon. The glaring sun. The grim reaper in front of an open grave.

  In the dark of the pregnant moon with

  the sun as midwife Autumn will be born