The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl)

by Paige McKenzie

  Lucio cocks his head to the side. “It might be. This never used to happen. And like I said, it’s become more organized recently. Plus, Aidan has a theory that there’s someone, something who sensed the rift in the luiseach community and is using that weakness to summon dark spirits.” My heart nearly stops. Organized. Weakness. Rift.

  “This all started when I was born, didn’t it?” Maybe it doesn’t matter whether the spirits are behaving differently because of me or because of the growing darkness. Maybe one is connected to the other.

  Lucio looks at me, knowing I’m not going to like his answer. “Over the last sixteen years Aidan’s detected a shift among spirits. He doesn’t know what it means yet, but he’s certain there’s a pattern.”

  “What kind of pattern?”

  “Dark spirits and demons are growing stronger.”

  I bet Nolan could have helped figure out the pattern. I can only imagine how different all of this would be if he had been here with me since the beginning, performing research for Aidan, trying just as hard as Aidan to find answers. Maybe he would have even found some.

  “Can you sense the demon?” he asks. I nod. Lucio stops dead in his tracks. Despite the flames growing ever higher around us, Lucio and I feel a cool breeze coming from down the road.

  Lucio starts walking in the direction of the chill, and I follow, placing my feet in the dusty footprints his steps leave behind. Even though he’s not much taller than I am, his feet are bigger than mine, and I feel like a little kid every time I place one of my sneakers in the spot where his dust-covered boot was seconds before. Lucio’s wearing shorts, and instead of looking at where we’re going, I’m watching the muscles in his calves flex and release with each step. He certainly looks strong enough to confront a demon.

  When he stops, I practically crash into him.

  “In there,” Lucio whispers, nodding in the direction of a squat stucco building on our left. It’s so small that it can’t possibly have more than one room. An icy breeze blows its splintered wooden door open, bringing a wall of smoke along with it, despite the fact that it’s the only building in sight that isn’t actually on fire. The door bangs against the tiny building with a loud crash as goose bumps rise on my sweaty skin.

  “Why did the demon choose this town?” I ask. “These people are completely helpless.”

  “Exactly,” Lucio says. “The same way we gather strength from helping spirits move on, a demon gathers strength from destroying spirits.”

  Despite the breeze coming from the darkness just a few steps away, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hot. Somewhere inside a man screams in pain. I grab Lucio’s hand, and we head toward the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Fire Demon

  Only the corners of the one-room shack are dark. The curtains around the windows—little more than holes in the wall—have burnt down to ash, letting all the sunlight in.

  One human is crouched in a corner of the otherwise empty house—where there might once have been a table and chairs, a bed, an icebox, now there are only piles of soot.

  A second human stands in the center of the room, practically bathing in the sunlight. He doesn’t look up when we enter. He keeps his focus set on the man cowering in the corner, muttering in Spanish. I don’t have to be fluent in the language to understand what he’s saying: he’s begging for his life.

  The man standing in the center of the room laughs at the other man’s pleas. He stands perfectly straight, nearly a foot taller than Lucio and me. He’s not wearing a shirt, and his flesh is covered in sweat and bright pink, like he sat in the sun too long. He’s barely human anymore: the demon’s possessing him, just like he did the woman the other night. It’s too late for her, but not for this man. Not if Lucio and I act quickly enough.

  It’s easy to see why the demon chose this man. His muscles ripple beneath his skin. The combination of this human’s strength with the power of the demon would make it easy for this demon to overtake everyone else in this tiny village. It could go on a spree, gathering strength from each kill until it’s all but unstoppable.

  The sound of a woman outside screaming in agony as her home burns to the ground fills the air. Possessed by the demon, the tall man smiles.

  He drags the smaller man from the corner into the light in the center of the room. I can’t help it: I gasp. The victim’s skin is covered in burns. Who knows how long the demon has been toying with him? The skin on the smaller man sizzles beneath the demon’s grip, tight around his neck.

  My gasp draws the demon’s attention. It fixes its gaze on me. The tall man’s eyes have turned bright orange, like the demon is burning him from the inside out. Without realizing it, I reach for Lucio’s hand and squeeze. “I’ve never exorcised a demon like this,” he whispers.

  “Like this?” I echo.

  “Already in possession of a human. About to go in for the kill.”

  I can feel the demon’s breath: hot as though he’s about to breathe fire like some kind of dragon. But the room is so cold that when Lucio and I exhale, we can see our breath.

  Every muscle in Lucio’s body is flexed. His eyes are closed and his teeth clenched. He’s still looking for Michael Weir, the algebra teacher from San Antonio.

  But Michael Weir is gone. What was left of his spirit vanished as it went dark, morphing into the demon. Soon Michael Weir’s family and students won’t remember him; even his beloved niece won’t remember him. She’ll throw away every picture of him, wondering why she’s smiling in photos with a stranger.

  It’s too late for Michael Weir. But it’s not too late for the two people in front of us. Not yet.

  I close my eyes. I draw the spirit of the demon’s intended victim close, letting his life wash over me. He has two children, neither older than six. He works on a farm miles away, picking tomatoes that will be shipped to American grocery stores, still fresh from the vine. He walks to work every morning before dawn and comes home each night after dark. The demon has held him in this shack for hours. He’s exhausted. But no matter how tired he is, his mouth never stops moving; he never stops begging for his life. He wants to live. He has to live.

  Suddenly I can see his family wailing with grief, his wife raking her fingers across her cheeks in agony. I know I’m seeing what will happen if he dies.

  I perceive the larger man’s spirit next, struggling to survive beneath the weight of the demon. This is his house. He works on the farm too. An image of his life flashes before me: he is the fastest picker on the vine, his long arms and legs allowing him to reach farther than any of his coworkers. I can see his dreams: he longs to get away from this place. He dreams of cooler nights and seeing snow for the very first time.

  I’m concentrating so hard, I don’t notice when my hair catches fire.

  “Sunshine!” Lucio shouts as if I’m far away instead of standing right beside him. He grabs me, wrapping my face in his arms and squeezing. I can’t breathe. He’s trying to smother the flames, but I’m getting smothered right along with them.

  As the world fades to black, I’m aware of the sound of laughter. The demon is pleased with itself. I struggle against Lucio’s hold as he drags me out of the shack and into the bright sunlight.

  “No!” I try to disentangle myself from Lucio’s embrace, kicking against the dry ground like I think I can run back into the cottage, even with Lucio’s arms around me.

  “Sunshine, what were you thinking?” he shouts. He loosens his grip just for a second, but it’s long enough for me to take a deep breath. I cough as the taste of burnt hair fills my throat.

  “Let me go!” I manage, pushing against Lucio’s chest. If we wait much longer, it will be too late to save the two men we left inside. Lucio shifts his grip so his fingers are wrapped around my hair like a human ponytail holder, snuffing out the little fire that remains. I reach up and pat my head; instead of the usual frizzball, my hair stops just above my shoulders. There are patches in the back where it has been singed off complete
ly, like I’ve been given a buzz cut along my neckline.

  “I’m okay,” I insist. Lucio’s hands are still on me, his fingers grazing the bare spots on my scalp. There are welts rising on his palms where the fire burned him. They look painful, but Lucio and I both know they will heal: demons can wound us, but they can’t damage us beyond repair.

  “You won’t be able to help anyone if you’re on fire,” Lucio snaps, dropping his hands. “Why weren’t you using your weapon in there?”

  If Aidan were here, he would say that my sensitivity got in the way again. This time it not only kept the weapon from manifesting quickly; it kept me from using it at all. He would know that instead of focusing on the task at hand, I was thinking about the man with two children and a baby on the way, about the man who had never seen snow.

  “We should get out of here,” Lucio says. “We’ll come back with Aidan.”

  By then it will be too late. These two men will be gone, and the demon will have moved on to its next victim. We ran away from this demon once before; we’re not going to do it again.

  I think of the tall man’s dreams of snow as I pull myself to my feet. Of his spirit being crushed beneath the weight of the demon as surely as a body can be crushed beneath bricks and mortar as I reach into the back pocket of my ragged denim shorts.

  I think of the smaller man’s little girl as I put one foot in front of the other.

  Of his wife, pressing her hands to her swollen belly, of the way she will scream if he dies as I hold the knife out in front of me.

  At once I’m not afraid of the enormous man waiting inside. I’m holding the old knife in front of me like a sword.

  “I can do this,” I promise Lucio.

  I will fight this demon.

  I will not let it kill the man at its feet.

  I will not let it destroy the man it has taken possession of.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Storm

  Inside the shack the demon takes one hot step toward me, dragging the human behind him. I can feel that the smaller man’s spirit is already loosened from his flesh. He’s beginning to die.

  The knife twitches in my grip, but I hold fast, waiting for it to become whatever it needs to become to save the day.

  It stays a knife.

  “Sunshine?” Lucio says, no more than one step behind me. The knife twitches again, violently this time, its dull blade ripping a gash in my skin.

  Reflexively I open my hand and the knife begins to fall.

  “No!” I shout, reaching for it. But before I can catch it, it disappears in front of me with a deafening crack that releases a burst of light so bright, it’s almost blinding.

  Fire. How could we have lost so quickly?

  The crack fills the shack again. It isn’t fire after all.

  It’s a bolt of lightning.

  The weapon hasn’t disappeared—it’s becoming a storm.

  Clouds cover the shack’s ceiling, thick and black like Ridgemont on its dreariest day. The roof dissolves in the fog above us. I jump at the sound of thunder and a flash of lightning, together in perfect unison. I hold my breath.

  The rain starts.

  This is no mere drizzle. This is a pounding, driving rain, accompanied by wind that whips what’s left of my hair into my face. The clouds overhead are so thick that the only light left comes from the piercing moments filled with lightning.

  Crack, flash. I see the large man drop the smaller one at his feet. Over the wind I hear him shout when the spray touches his pink flesh.

  Crack, flash. The large man falls to his knees.

  Crack, flash. I fall to mine.

  I can actually feel the demon moving around inside the tall man’s body, holding tighter to his insides, trying to bury itself deeper in his flesh. I sense it so intensely that it’s as though it’s happening to me. Crack, flash. I curl into the fetal position. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, like red hot fingers are twisting their way through my intestines. I open my mouth and let the rainwater fill me, hoping it will drip down into my body and cool my insides.

  The pain is extraordinary. Crack, flash. The man and I are crawling on the ground, our bodies mirror images of agony. Lucio must see me falter, because soon I feel his hands over my own, lacing his fingers through mine, like Mom’s hands when I hurt myself as a child: squeeze my hand as hard as it hurts.

  Crack, flash. The tall man and I fling out our arms, our mouths twisting in so much pain that we can’t even scream. The demon is being dragged through his flesh. It loses hold of his guts and wraps its hands around his kidneys, then moves up to his ribcage, and finally twists its fingers around his heart.

  No, I think. Not his heart.

  Grabbing hold of the heart is how a demon kills the humans it possesses. It squeezes until the blood stops flowing. Or maybe this demon will just set his heart on fire. This demon is determined to get at least one kill in today. His strength is extraordinary.

  “We’re losing him,” I gasp, rainwater running into my eyes and mixing with my tears.

  “What are you talking about?” Lucio shouts. “We’re soaking this demon! It’s not going to be able to withstand this much longer.”

  No, not much longer. But it doesn’t need a lot of time to finish the job.

  If the demon stops the heart from beating, this suffering man won’t just die; his spirit will be destroyed. Over time everyone who knew him, everyone who ever loved him will forget him, as though he never existed at all.

  I muster all my strength and get to my feet, gasping for air. The rain is so thick, a person could drown in here, but I manage to take a deep breath and run headlong into the enormous man in front of us. When I crash into him, it feels like crashing into a soaking wet wall.

  But it’s enough. The impact causes the demon to loosen its grip, though I feel it struggling to regain hold. The wall of a man collapses to the floor, taking me along with him. I scream, feeling the demon’s every movement in my own body. I fall away from the man’s body, and we are lying on the ground retching in pain. The rain beats down as Lucio runs to help.

  Time slows just like it did when I defeated the water demon on New Year’s Eve. I stare at the rain: it looks frozen in time. No—it’s actually frozen, turning from rain into icicles that crash onto the ground around us. Suddenly I know exactly what I have to do. I grab an enormous icicle and plunge it deep into the chest of the possessed man.

  At once I feel the demon disintegrate. The man exhales, and a cloud of dark ash floats into the air above us and disappears. The ice melts, splashing across the floor, leaving no evidence of what just happened. The man’s chest is smooth and unbroken. Only the demon was stabbed.

  “Sunshine!” Lucio shouts. Above us the storm clouds part. The knife reappears and drops, landing with a tiny ping. The ceiling is right back where it used to be, the sun streaming in through the uncovered windows. I lie back in a patch of light.

  “I’m okay,” I pant.

  “What were you thinking?” Lucio asks, crouching beside me. He wraps his arms around me. The smaller man has already run out the door of the shack, and beneath me the larger man is unconscious, but I feel his pulse, steady and strong.

  “The demon was about to kill him,” I explain. “I could feel it.”

  “You actually knew the exact moment the demon went in for the kill?”

  I nod. My throat is so raw that speaking hurts.

  “Wow. From where I stood, it looked like we were winning—the demon was on the run. But you knew what was going on inside that man? You felt what the demon was doing?”

  I nod again, pressing myself up to stand. Lucio pulls at the bottom of his T-shirt until a piece of cloth rips off. He uses it to bind my hand, still bleeding from where the weapon cut me before it turned into a storm. I’m shaking. I can still feel the shadow of the demon’s hands all over me.

  Suddenly I can’t keep myself from crying.

  Lucio holds me as the sobs rattle me to my core. He str
okes my hair and kisses my forehead.

  Finally I feel strong enough to make a joke. “Is this what you had in mind when you said we’d be doing some real luiseach work today?”

  Lucio laughs so hard that I can feel his chest shaking against my own. He drops his arms and laces his fingers through mine once more. We’re still holding hands when we emerge from the shack into the sunlight.

  The air is thick with smoke, but not a single flame remains. The entire town is drenched. The storm cloud covered all of Lado Selva, extinguishing the fires. The townspeople cheer when they see Lucio and me. They might not know exactly what we are, but they know the darkness that blanketed their small town has vanished into thin air. Above us the sun beats down, as bright and hot as ever. The wet ground practically sizzles beneath our feet.

  “How do you feel?” Lucio asks.

  I look at him like he’s just asked me whether the sky is blue, a question with an answer so obvious, it’s hardly worth asking. Every muscle in my body hurts. It feels like enormous bruises are blossoming on my internal organs from the demon’s phantom grip. I’m covered in dirt and sweat, and my throat is raw from breathing in that hot, fiery air. Tears have dried on my face, and my clothes are stained with soot and ash. There’s an unconscious man lying on the floor of the shack behind us who will never fully understand what happened to him. Another man has been reunited with his family. I search the crowd until I see him: his hand is resting on his wife’s swollen belly, and a little girl is burying her head against his legs while a little boy wraps his arms around his father’s waist.

  I turn to Lucio. “I feel”—I pause—“good,” I answer finally. Not just good: I feel like myself again. “How’s that possible?”

  “Real luiseach work,” Lucio answers with a grin, like that explains everything. Which, I guess, it does. He pulls me toward the motorcycle.

  “Wait!” I shout, turning to run back to the shack. There is a crowd of people in there now, attending to the man on the ground. I have to crawl between their legs to find what I almost left behind.