Messenger of Fear

by Grant,Michael

  There was no impact. I was on the other side of the window, inside the coffee shop, standing behind Samantha Early as she typed and paused and typed some more.

  This is what I saw on her monitor:

  what the French call, l’esprit de l’escalier. It means the spirit of the staircase, but what it’s really about is the way you always think of the perfect comeback after it’s too late, after you’re on the bus heading home from school, or in your mom’s car, or on the staircase, and then, ah hah! The perfect comeback.

  Now Jessica knew what she should have said to Elise. She should have said, “I am sad for you that you care so much about how I look and what I wear. It must be hard for you being so superficial.” That’s what she should have said. But instead she

  Messenger was beside me. I did not turn to look at him but said, “She’s a pretty good writer. I wonder what the story is about.”

  “Wonder,” he said. It wasn’t an echo, it was an instruction.

  So, I wondered, and gasped as the whole of it, the 72 pages that preceded that single screen, and the 241 pages that would come after it, were all suddenly known to me. As if I had read it all. No, not that, because even when you read a book, you forget a lot of it. This book, The Nightmare Clique, was known to me in every detail.

  “It’s about a group of high school girls who use supernatural powers to bully kids they don’t like,” I said.

  “That’s the story. Is it the real purpose of the book?”

  I shook my head. “No. No, it’s really about Samantha. She is Jessica. And the nightmare clique is Kayla and her friends.”

  Messenger nodded. “Shall we look at the happiest day in Samantha’s life?”

  I was not so naive that I didn’t realize there was a danger in this. Seeing Samantha happy would only emphasize the awful tragedy of her death. But Messenger didn’t wait for an answer. Without any sense of movement we were suddenly in a different place. We were at Yolo’s, and Samantha was loading a large Styrofoam dish of frozen yogurt with Reese’s Pieces and Butterfinger crumbles. She paid at the register and glanced around, nervous that someone from school would see her piling on calories.

  As soon as she sat down, she ate a big spoonful and while she crunched the cold candies, she checked her email on her phone. I saw the email, and in some way I could not yet hope to explain, I saw it more fully in Samantha’s mind.

  It was from a literary agent.

  I am very pleased to tell you that I would love to represent The Nightmare Clique. I think there is an excellent chance of selling it to a major publisher, and if you will sign the attached document, I will get to work immediately.

  “She thinks she’s going to publish it!” I said. I was excited. There have been times when I thought of becoming a writer, but I would never have had the courage to actually submit a manuscript at my age. Samantha and I were the same age, and she had been brave enough to risk rejection.

  I had pitied her. Now I admired her.

  “Twenty-seven days from this moment, HarperCollins will agree to publish Samantha’s book,” Messenger said. “Samantha will read that letter seven times, will have no choice but to read it seven times. She will be frustrated by her compulsion, but she will also be elated. She will tell herself that now, at last, everything will change for the better.”

  “But that’s not the way it works out,” I said.

  “No,” Messenger said, and we were back in Samantha’s room, and her body was on the floor of her bedroom, stiffening, growing cold as it awaited her mother’s horrifying discovery that her only child was gone.

  I shook my head. “I can’t do this, okay? I can’t. You have to let me go. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to feel this, Messenger, whoever you are, whatever you are, I don’t . . .” I was crying. It should have been humiliating, crying in front of him.

  “No one prefers this path,” he said. His voice was flat and devoid of emotion. But I saw something like nausea reflected in his expression. “No one would choose to feel another’s pain. But this is my . . . This is your fate, Mara.”

  “No,” I said sharply. “This is all some kind of creepy trick!”

  He didn’t deign to reply to that. He waited, silent, as the truth, or at least a part of it, began to sink in.

  “I’m being punished,” I said.

  Again, he said nothing. I wondered if I could find a way to feel what he was feeling, to know his mind as I had so easily penetrated the mind of Samantha Early, but when I turned my thoughts that way, I felt his mind retreat and fend me off.

  It was like the door handle. I could see him, but I was not allowed to touch him. Not physically, not mentally. I was an open book to him, and he was closed to me.

  I am not to be touched.

  “Not all my . . . our . . . duties are quite so grim,” he said at last. “This terrible matter will hold for a while. And I think you could do with a change of scenery.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THE CHANGE OF SCENERY WAS SUDDEN AND extreme. One moment we were standing over Samantha Early’s body, and the next we were in the backseat of a car. The transfer was carried out by no usual earthly means and was testament to the fact that I never felt even the slightest acceleration, though we had gone in a flash from stationary to sixty-four miles an hour.

  A boy and a girl were in the front seat. The girl was driving. The boy was clowning, doing a duck-face rendition of a Rihanna song. The girl laughed.

  “What is this?” I asked in a whisper. It was a natural human instinct to whisper, though I had slowly begun to realize that nothing I did would be seen, and nothing I said would be heard by the people we watched.

  “This is Emma and Liam,” Messenger said.

  Liam was a ginger, so Irish-looking he could have been the poster boy for an Irish tourism ad campaign. Emma was very nearly his opposite. She was Latina, with extraordinarily voluminous brown hair, dark eyes, and smooth skin that I admired.

  “Is that the place?” Liam asked as they drove past a narrow, rutted driveway marked by a mailbox that had not seen a delivery in a very long time. He was rubbing Emma’s neck and she was enjoying it.

  You can sense when a couple is a couple, when they are so close that silence is as good as talking, and when talking is a series of sentences left dangling because you know the other person knows what you mean. A couple is close when most of what passes between them is tacit, unvoiced, not for display, not for signaling to outsiders. I had the vague feeling that perhaps my parents had been like that once. I had the definite feeling that I had never known that kind of relationship.

  “Yep. Missed it.” The road was two-lane, trees on both sides, trees arching overhead, blocking the rapidly failing light of a cold sun. Emma pulled the car into a U-turn and winced when she heard the bumper scrape over branches. “I cannot have a mark on the car. You know my dad.”

  “Sadly, yes, I do know your dad.”

  “He’s actually—”

  “A good guy. Yeah, Emma, I know. Someday I’ll be a father with a daughter and—”

  “You’ll be just like him.”

  “Well, much hotter, of course.”

  “Don’t say the word ‘hot’ anywhere near the words ‘your dad,’” Emma said.

  “The word ‘hot’ is all about me,” Liam said. “And you.”

  “There’s the road.”

  They drove back to the missed pull-off, then at walking speed followed the overgrown path until it reached a clearing. In the clearing was a barn with a collapsed roof and a tiny house that must once have been loved. The sagging porch had long ago been painted in bright colors, and someone had carved gingerbread appliqué to give the place a quaint, almost fairy-tale look.

  “You sure no one’s here?” Liam asked, looking dubious.

  “It belongs to my grandmother,” Emma said, and drove the car aro
und the back so that even if someone did happen down the road, it would not be seen.

  “The grandmother—”

  “Yes, the one in the nursing home. Granny Batista. She hasn’t been here in, like, a year, and I’ve been watering her plants.”

  “I’m going to water your plants.”

  “Really, Liam? That’s your sexual innuendo? Water my plants?”

  They both laughed, Liam as much as Emma, taking pleasure in the silliness of the exchange.

  They climbed out and Liam came around to the driver’s side and leaned Emma back against the car. They kissed and this went on for quite a while and was clearly becoming a prelude to more.

  Messenger watched impassively, but I was feeling most uncomfortable. “Do we have to be Peeping Toms?”

  “We can move forward.”

  Suddenly, as though the two young lovers were a video, they began to move faster, faster, a video on fast-forward. They kissed, broke apart, moved like manic robots to the door, out the door.

  Messenger stood waiting. He glanced around at the trees. “Dogwood and hemlock,” he said as though answering a question. “Oak as well, of course.”

  “Hemlock. Isn’t that poisonous?” Seriously, this he would discuss with me? Botany?

  “It can be. It’s a favorite of witches.”

  I played that back in my head, wondering if there had been irony surrounding the word “witches.” I heard no hint of humor. And suddenly we were in a hallway in the house, outside a closed and locked door.

  We didn’t wait long before Emma and Liam came out, somewhat less fully dressed than they had been, but decent, arms around each other.

  “There are chips and cookies downstairs,” Emma said. “You need to keep your strength up.”

  That earned a laugh and they rushed downstairs to feed. By the time they reached the kitchen, Messenger and I were waiting for them.

  “Remind me to check the car for scratches or anything. The mileage will look like I went to the Walgreens, but if it’s scraped up or has crushed green leaves or whatever . . .”

  “Your dad,” Liam said.

  “He’s just . . . you know, old. I mean, your mom and dad are what, thirty-two?”

  “Thirty-three and four,” Liam said, ripping open a bag of chips.

  “And my dad is sixty,” Emma said. “Sixty and raised in a little mountain village in Nowhere, Guatemala. He thinks different.”

  “He hates love,” Liam joked.

  “No, he just hates sex if it involves his daughter.”

  “We’re always careful. I mean, all rubbered up, sir!” He snapped a salute.

  “Oh, good, you can tell my dad that. Tell him it’s okay because you were wearing protection. Just be ready to outrun a bullet.”

  Liam fed her a chip. She tried to crunch it in some sensual, provocative way, but most of the chip broke off and hit the floor. They both laughed and Liam gathered her to him.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.”

  “No,” Liam insisted, his voice heavy with emotion. “I don’t mean like a throwaway line. I mean that I think about you every hour of every day. I see you every time I close my eyes. I don’t shower after we’ve been together because I want to be able to smell you on my skin.” He hesitated, feeling embarrassed as his fair skin colored. “That last might have been a little creepy.”

  “Not even a little creepy,” she said, her own voice husky. “And I love you that same way. Desperate love. You know? Like sometimes it just kind of wells up, and for a few seconds I can’t breathe or swallow.”

  Suddenly angry, Liam spun away from Emma. “We have to get past this. We have to be together. I mean, what is the problem? Why can’t I just go to your dad and say, ‘Look, Mr. Aguilar, Emma and I love each other, and I know you still think about me breaking that trellis when I was twelve, but let it go, all right? Let it go.’”

  “Mmmm. That will so not work.”

  “Let me try at least.”

  She held him out at arm’s length. “Liam, listen to me: It won’t work. He’ll ground me for three months. There will be no way for us to see each other. To be together. Like this.”

  Liam cursed. Not at Emma—at life, it seemed. He tore into the bag of cookies with enough violence to cause half the cookies to scatter across the countertop.

  They ate in silence, glum, chewing and drinking juice.

  “Please tell me this doesn’t end like Samantha Early,” I said.

  Messenger did not answer. He was watching them. Having tastefully not intruded on their lovemaking, he watched now with a palpable hunger. He swallowed and I saw that even as he watched them, he was seeing another image, a faraway image.

  “I have to water the plants,” Emma said.

  “Yep.”

  And just like that, we were in the backseat of the car again, and Emma was driving as Liam distracted her with light kisses on the side of her neck.

  “What do you think of them?” Messenger asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your opinion. Your judgment. That is our subject now, the question of your instincts.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. I did not like the idea of being judged, certainly not of being judged on my ability to judge others. But Messenger waited, knowing, I suppose, that I would answer, whatever my qualms.

  “I like them. They’re in love,” I said.

  “Are they? Did you look inside them?”

  “What? You mean, poke inside their heads? No. Of course not.”

  “Then how do you know whether this is love or mere lust?” He seemed honestly perplexed.

  “It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Is it?” He sighed. “I suppose it is for you. I must resort to less delicate means. I have filled myself with their memories and feel what they feel. Yes. It is love.”

  I whispered the word, “Duh.” I don’t know if Messenger heard me or not.

  Night had fallen, turning the forest around us into a place of eldritch fears, a fairy-tale forest wherein might lurk witches with interests in gingerbread and plump, flavorful children. The headlights cast irregular circles of light on the macadam but did not reach beyond the ditch to our right or the tangle of weeds to our left.

  “And what do you think of that? Of love?” Messenger asked me.

  “Okay, that’s getting—”

  Suddenly his insinuating voice, that whisper that always seemed to be directly into my ear, became strident. “Understand something, Mara: You will answer my questions. You will reveal everything to me and hold nothing back.”

  It was said with undeniable authority. His tone was not pleading nor was it cruel. He stated it as a simple fact, as though it was beyond question. And as he spoke, he seemed to grow, to become a foot taller and as much wider, and a cold, dark light shone from him.

  Then he returned to his normal size, although how could I know what was normal for this creature?

  “Understand that I ask you questions out of respect. In the hope that you will understand that you must . . . that you may . . . trust me. I can as easily enter your mind as the minds of any of those we meet. But if you are open and honest with me, Mara, I will not do that.”

  I was feeling that I’d been pushed around just about enough. And I was readying a devastating response when—

  “Look out!”

  At the same instant the car swerved sharply and there was the sound of impact. Stiff rubber and unyielding steel on flesh.

  And a frantic, squealing sound that went on and on, rising, falling, a visceral cry that spoke wordlessly of pain.

  Emma pulled the car to the side, almost into the ditch, and jumped out, followed immediately by Liam.

  The squeal came from an ancient dog, gray in the muzzle, with shaggy, tan fur. The dog, a mix of who knew how many breeds, dragged itself sideways, trailing blood, to the side of the road and lay there, panting, unable to go farther.

  “Oh, God!” I gasped. The dog’s side was rup
tured. Its fur was ever more matted as blood seeped out.

  “We have to get it to a vet!” Liam cried as he dropped down beside the dog. “Oh, we’re so sorry, boy, we are so sorry.” He stroked a clean patch of dry fur behind the dog’s left ear.

  “We can’t!” Emma cried. “My dad!”

  “This dog is messed up; we can’t leave him here like this,” Liam argued, but already I could see the way he blinked, doubting his own certainty.

  The dog mewled. It was not urgent. It was not a plea for help. It was sad and accepting. The dog neither knew that it was dying nor that it might yet be saved. It only knew pain and that its legs would no longer raise it up off the pavement. His tail moved once, twice.

  “We have to get out of here,” Emma fretted. She went around to the front of the car and moaned upon seeing a dent, a bloody dent, in the right front bumper. “Oh, my God, oh, my God. I have to clean off the blood and get home right now!”

  She was close to panic, and Liam left the whimpering dog’s side reluctantly and went to comfort Emma.

  “Someone’s going to come by and see us here,” Liam said, glancing nervously down the road. “If they do, they might pull over to help. Then we’re out of luck. But we can’t leave him suffering like this.”

  “We could drop him off somewhere and drive off.”

  “Carry a bloody dog in the car? What if we get pulled over? What if the car breaks down? What if there’s a security camera at the vet? We have to . . . to put him out of his misery.”

  “Maybe if we left him, someone else would come along.” Then she surrendered. Her shoulders sagged and she shook her head, not in denial but in rejection of her own desperate plans.

  The dog made a soft mewling sound, then a yip of pain.

  They stared at each other until Emma said, “I can’t do it. I know we have to, but I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Make up your mind,” Liam snapped, then apologized. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “It’s—” Emma said, and waved a hand, as though that movement could push terrible choices away.

  “I’ll do it,” Liam said. “I’ll drive. I can do this. I can do this.”