“I fought off murderous thugs?” I looked at Colin and then back to Lisa. “Where did you get the idea that I fought anyone? It doesn’t even say that in the paper.”
“It says you stopped them,” Lisa said. “And your face was all bruised up, so I figured you must’ve—”
Before Lisa could finish, Eric Feldman’s nasally voice came from behind me. “Well, if it isn’t our resident hero.”
I spun around, sick of Eric’s teasing and ready to face the little twerp. But as soon as I saw Rodney, I recoiled. Perhaps because Eric’s oversized goon was wearing all black and seemed really pale, or perhaps because he’d always looked a bit zombie-like but I’d never really noticed before… for whatever reason, I thought I was having another hallucination. My heart hammering, I turned slowly to my friends. “Do you see him?” My voice was a whisper.
Lisa stepped beside me and placed her hand on my arm. Colin cringed visibly as he mouthed, “Dude.”
“Of course they see him, you wacko.” Eric gave Rodney a jab. “I told you he was nuts.”
Rodney always looked a bit puzzled. I was pretty sure he was so angry because he was confused all the time. But as he scratched the side of his stubbly face and glared down at me, he looked even more puzzled than usual. I wondered if I looked confused too, or just scared. It was tough to decide which feeling I should focus on.
“C’mon, Rodney,” Eric said. “We have shop class. Besides, if you keep looking at Dean, I think he might just wet himself.”
Rodney laughed and lunged at Colin just enough to make him flinch. Then Rodney slouched his way down the hall after Eric.
“Are you okay?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, dude,” Colin said as he watched Rodney round the corner. “What’s going on?”
“Something’s happening to me,” I muttered.
“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.
I stood up and pulled my friends into an alcove at the end of the block of lockers. “Last Friday,” I began, “I was running late…”
***
I told them everything: what happened in the alley, the first two hallucinations, Mrs. Farnsworthy, and even Mr. Utlet.
“Glimpse?” Lisa asked. “That’s what the guy who got attacked said to you? Just glimpse, and that’s it?”
“In the attackee’s defense,” Colin said, smirking, “he had just gotten his butt kicked. I can see why he might not have been too chatty.”
“You think this is funny?” I asked. My hands were shaking, from fear mostly but from anger too. “I’m seeing things.” My voice lowered to a whisper. “I’m hallucinating some scary stuff. It looks real. Like they’re…”
Colin and Lisa inched forward. “Like they’re what?” Lisa prodded.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Like these people were dying. Or maybe they are already dead and I am seeing their ghosts… which I know doesn’t make much sense considering I saw Mrs. F and Mr. Utlet, and they’re alive. I… I don’t know how to explain it, but something’s wrong with me. I’m barely keeping it together.”
Colin looked down at the floor and twisted his foot as if grinding a bug into the tile. “Sorry. You’re right. Your hallucinations are not funny.” Then he looked at me. “So you help this guy, and then you start hallucinating? Do you think he did something to you?”
“Besides splattering blood all over my shirt?”
“Gross,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, that is sorta gross,” Colin said. “But I mean, are you sure he didn’t mutter something else besides glimpse? A chant, perhaps?”
Lisa and I looked at each other, then turned back to Colin and asked at the same time, “A chant?”
Colin looked determined. “Yeah, in the movies it’s always a bunch of Latin that ends with the word mortis.” He leaned forward. “Did he say mortis?”
I turned to Lisa, who looked at least as confused as I felt, then back to Colin. “What the heck are you talking about?”
He threw up his hands. “A curse, obviously!”
“You think I’m cursed?”
“Don’t you? I mean, if you were seeing people who were actually dead, I might think you had some kind of superpower, like maybe you could communicate with them or, better yet, command them to do stuff for you. They could even spy on people for you.” He smiled and sighed disappointedly. “But since you’re just having messed up hallucinations about living people, it’s a lot less cool and seems more like a curse.”
Lisa turned to me. “Didn’t I tell you he watches too many movies?”
“I think I said that too,” I added dryly.
“I don’t watch that many movies,” Colin defended. “It’s not possible to watch too many movies.”
“Your mind just shoots straight to the most impossible explanation on its own?” Lisa asked. “You don’t even consider things that actually make sense?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And, yeah, you can watch too many movies. You have a bigger movie library than Netflix.”
That was true. Colin did have a lot of movies, but you couldn’t really blame him. His dad was a location scout for a movie production company, and his mom used to be an actress. So movies sort of ran in his family.
“He said glimpse,” I said. “That’s it. I don’t think that sounds much like a curse.”
Colin tapped his chin thoughtfully.
Lisa sighed. “Dean, don’t listen to him. It’s just stress—that’s what makes the most sense. Your hallucinations started after you saw two men beating another man in the alley and then you got trampled at an electronics store. One of those things would have been enough to freak anyone out, Dean. Especially the beating. It freaked you out, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Dean, don’t—” The morning bell cut her off. “We’ll talk later, at lunch or on the way to your birthday party after school.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry.” Colin put his hand on my shoulder. “Happy birthday.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Maybe if I make a wish right now instead of waiting until I blow out the candles, the rest of my birthday will be insanity-free.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said.
I forced a smile and headed to class. As I walked down the hallway, I closed my eyes for a brief second and muttered a single wish. I just want everything to make sense. I guess in the end I got what I wished for.
***
Mr. Woodward—or Woody, as he preferred to be called—was an ex-army sergeant who had served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was also my English teacher. He had a slight limp, the result of a landmine incident that left his right side partially paralyzed. Still, he managed to stand ramrod straight and only hunched the slightest bit when he walked. Everything he said sounded like marching orders, and even though it might not have been true, it was widely believed that if you spoke out of turn in Woody’s class, you’d wake up strapped to a metal bed frame with a couple car batteries wired to your nipples. With a rumor like that, you don’t risk standing out. No matter who you are.
“Curse!” Woody barked when I entered the class.
“Yes, sir?”
“I understand you killed a couple muggers last Friday.”
The class gasped in unified shock and spun in their chairs to look at me.
“W… what? No, sir, I didn’t kill any—”
“No matter, son. They probably deserved it.” He placed one hand on his desk and leaned forward. “What did you use? A knife? A rock?” He looked down and flexed his fingers. “Or just your bare hands?”
“Sir, I wasn’t even the one who called the—”
He held up his hand. “No, no. Better not say anything else. Let it die down a bit.” A smile threatened the corners of his mouth. “Don’t want you saying anything that might be used against you, right?” He gave a curt nod. “Let’s get started.”
I took my seat, a bit confused—which wasn’t that odd in Woody’s class—and cracked open my copy of Macbeth. Now, Shakespeare is tough enough to follow
as it is. So if you ever find yourself having to listen to it read in the monotonous chant of a former military man, just forget about it.
Woody limped toward his desk. “Macbeth is William Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy.”
The large desk in front of the room groaned as Woody sat on the front corner of it. “Act one, scene one: the play opens amidst thunder and lightning.”
Boom!
The class reacted with a unified start and all eyes shot to our teacher, whose gaze was now fixated on the door. What was that? I felt the building shake and wondered if Mr. Woodward had timed a special effect to wake up the class. Then the fire alarm sounded and people—both inside and outside the classroom—started screaming.
“Hey!” Woody shouted.
The screams in the classroom quieted, but I could still hear others in the hall.
“We don’t panic. We’ve done this before. It’s just like the drills.” He moved to the exit doors. “We walk quickly and quietly out the west exit.” His coal black eyes scanned the room. “Understand?”
The class began to move down the hall toward the exit. Students filed out from other classrooms and shuffled down the corridor while teachers barked orders. Everyone seemed to suck in a collective breath as smoke started to chase us like a rippling black snake.
I glanced over my shoulder as I followed Woody and my classmates. A black cloud billowed from the far end of the hall. Where was Lisa? And Colin? I tried to remember their schedules. What class did they have this period?
The black cloud moved closer. I turned back to Woody. He was at the exit, holding the door open and urging everyone to hurry. I started running just as a second explosion boomed through the hallway.
Chapter 10
Black smoke billowed from the east wing of the school. The bits of broken glass that had managed to stay in the window frames reflected back the amber lights of emergency vehicles. Students scattered around the parking lot like startled birds.
“Biology lab.” I recognized Lisa’s voice from somewhere behind me and spun around. Tiny pieces of debris clung to her hair, which was now gray rather than the usual deep brown. Soot coated her face, smearing around her eyes and cheeks as though she had been crying.
“Jeez, Lisa, are you okay?”
“I’m not hurt. It was the biology lab.”
“Where were you?”
“History. Whatever happened blew a hole in the wall to our class.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
Lisa’s lip quivered, and she looked as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to form the words. My stomach twisted. I suddenly had a sinking feeling that what she wasn’t telling me involved Colin.
I looked past her, over the groups of people huddled nearby. “Where’s Colin?”
“Colin’s fine,” Lisa said. “He’s looking for you too. We both were.”
My pulse slowed. “Thank God. But if you knew it was the biology lab, why’d you worry? You know my schedule. I had English.”
She blinked and turned to the crowd.
What isn’t she telling me?
“Colin!” she raised her hand. “Over here.”
Colin weaved through the crowd. When he made it over to us, he looked back and forth between Lisa and me like he was waiting for me to react to a joke that I hadn’t yet heard. “Well? Did you tell him?”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell him yet,” Lisa said. “I wanted to wait for you.”
“Tell me what?”
“About Mrs. Farnsworthy.”
“What about her?”
Colin looked at Lisa, then back to me. “The explosion, Dean. She was right in the middle of it.”
“W… what?” My earlier hallucination of her screaming face flashed in my mind. No way. It couldn’t be related.
“Look, we don’t know anything,” Lisa said. “But she was just standing there, and then the wall behind her exploded. I saw her getting taken away by the ambulance. It didn’t look good.”
“What the heck happened?” I asked.
Lisa shook her head. “All I know is that the biology lab exploded. And a bunch of people are hurt. Loads of people have been taken to the hospital on stretchers. But the paramedics were doing CPR on Mrs. Farnsworthy. I saw it.” She looked at me as if I had the answer to some riddle scribbled on my forehead.
“What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“When did you have your vision?”
“Vision? You mean my hallucination?”
“Start of first period,” Colin said. “Maybe ten minutes in.”
I blinked. What was she getting at? I opened my mouth. “Are you saying that—”
“I’m not saying anything. Yet. But I think it’s pretty clear what we have to do,” she said.
“Is it?” Colin asked.
“We go to the hospital.” She looked back at the school. “Dean, you said yourself that you saw Mrs. Farnsworthy, right? I think we need to go see her.”
“You think Mrs. Farnsworthy has something to do with my hallucinations?”
“She was your hallucination, Dean.”
Colin nodded. “She’s got a point. I say we go.”
***
We each called our parents and told them not to worry. It took the better part of twenty minutes to convince my mom that we were fine, and by the time she let me hang up, we were already on the bus, halfway to the hospital.
“What do we do if she’s not okay?” I looked at Colin, then Lisa. “What would that mean?”
Lisa shrugged and then cleared her throat. “Isn’t that guy from the alley in the hospital too?”
Colin sprang up from the seat. “We should go see him.”
I turned to Lisa. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into Colin’s curse theory now.” She shrugged and I added, “The last thing that man needs are visitors.”
“It’s not all that far-fetched,” Colin said. “You save him, he mutters some cryptic word at you, and all of a sudden you go nuts.”
“He’s not nuts,” Lisa said.
Colin drew a breath. “Well, he’s nuts or…” He chewed his lip for a second. “You have some kind of psychic ability.” His eyes widened. “I’ve heard of people becoming psychic after getting into an accident.”
Lisa wiped a sleeve across her face and turned to me. “I’m not saying I believe Colin. I still think your hallucinations have to do with stress. But it might help for you to see that he’s okay, and that Mrs. Farnsworthy is—” Her voice cracked.
“She’ll be okay,” Colin said. “She’s ex-KGB, remember? It’s going to take more than a little explosion to hurt her.”
Lisa looked at her shoes. “You didn’t see her.”
Colin opened his mouth then closed it. He cocked his head as if he wanted me to say something to make Lisa feel better. “Fine. We’ll go see him,” I said.
Lisa looked up.
“Good,” Colin said, relieved. “It’s settled then.”
“Do we even know what we’re going to say to him?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Colin said. “We’re going to ask him what kind of voodoo spell he cast to make you see…” He trailed off and glanced out the window. “What is it you’re seeing anyway? Visions? Aberrations?”
“Apparitions,” Lisa said.
“What?”
“You mean apparitions, not aberrations.”
Colin shrugged and turned back to me. “I mean ghosts, the otherworldly, the—”
“I get it,” I said.
“Look, guys,” Lisa said, “let’s just take this one step at a time, okay? First, we check on Mrs. Farnsworthy. Then we find the guy from the alley, and we talk to him. Let’s not jump to conclusions here. Dean’s been going through a lot: the stress of final exams, the stress of witnessing a crime…” Her eyes glossed as her voice trailed off. She turned her head and wiped her eyes again, leaving fresh smudges on her face.
Though she had mentioned it befor
e, it only just hit me that Lisa had witnessed the explosion firsthand. Seeing something like that would have to be difficult to come back from. I wanted to reassure her that things would be okay, but the words just wouldn’t come. After the past few days, I wasn’t sure things would be okay.
Luckily, Colin picked up the slack. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said unconvincingly. “Don’t worry, we’ll help Dean sort out…” He and Lisa both glanced at me for a fraction of a second before looking away.
Great. Now my friends couldn’t even talk or look at me without wondering if I was a freak. “It could all be just some bizarre coincidence,” I offered.
“It has to be,” Lisa said, mostly under her breath.
Chapter 11
The hospital was at a level of chaos I couldn’t have imagined. Ambulances lined up one behind the other, waiting their turn to drop off an injured student, only to leave with their sirens on, no doubt going back to the school. Inside was even worse. Droves of parents clogged the nurses’ station, desperate to know the condition of their children.
“We’re never going to get any information there,” Lisa said, pointing to the crowd.
Colin placed his hands on our backs and pushed us forward, through the crowd and toward the elevator. “We don’t need to wait,” he said. He punched the UP button. “There’s a nurses’ station on every floor. And each floor can tell you what you need to know.”
Colin certainly wasn’t the sharpest kid you’d meet, but if he said something about hospitals, I believed him. He had broken more bones than anyone I knew, and over the years, I’d visited him dozens of times. Usually he ended up in the hospital after doing something stupid—last time he’d broken a couple ribs falling out of a tree while chasing a squirrel. The time before that, he thought it would be cool to try riding his skateboard while wearing roller blades.
We stepped off the elevator at the second floor and squinted against the harsh lights reflecting off the polished linoleum. The area seemed utterly deserted compared to the floor below. Colin wasted no time and walked straight to the nurses’ station. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
A middle-aged nurse stood up from behind her counter. She had short, boy-cut hair and wore purple scrubs. She peered down at the three of us. Concern flashed across her face when she saw Lisa’s soot-covered face. “You kids must be coming from that school explosion. Are you okay?”
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