Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions

by Melissa Marr; Kelley Armstrong

  I know I can leave. It’s all I know how to do.

  I think of the year: 2011. That will be the one. I look at an image from that time. Not the one of the wedding; I’m worried that if I choose that one, I’ll fly straight past the cake and the people and into that sky full of sunset and burn up before I’ve seen anything. Instead, I look at a picture of one of the Beautiful People. She walks across a red carpet and everyone stands near her, stretching out their hands, screaming, calling to her, while she turns a beatific smile upon them.

  I pick up the little glass world that my father gave me before he took what was left of my own.

  This is how you leave.

  You sit. You are quiet. You close your eyes. You think. You put the stone in your hand and hold it. There is no short way to this, no magical spell. Rushing will do you no good at all.

  And not many people can do this. There is always something that holds them back and ties them down.

  Not me.

  I’m gone.

  I didn’t expect to like it so much in here, in the in-between. So dark, so quiet. Maybe there is no sense in trying to find any time. Any place. Just leaving might be enough.

  If you stay here, you become lost. And no one can find you.

  I like lost.

  Wherever I am, in the corners of my mind, in the edges of space, wherever it is, I lie down to rest.

  There is no time.

  There is no me.

  And then something happens. A light here, another there.

  Is it them? Are the Beautiful People coming to find me?

  No.

  I’m alone.

  I’m standing in the stars. I’m standing on top of the Globe, I think, and then I look down and see it’s the moon under my feet. Or maybe the sphere. I can’t tell if I am tiny or enormous, and it doesn’t matter because I’m really outside, under the stars.

  I stand there for a long time, trying to find the right words for what I see. Spending minutes, hours, years perhaps, choosing each one.

  Infinite.

  Bright.

  Beautiful.

  And I remember: I should think of the Beautiful People, if I want to find their time and escape my own.

  Their time. My time.

  The real gift is to have any time at all.

  And suddenly, in the clarity of the starlight, I can see how things really are. The Beautiful People are real and they are not real. They lived, but they are not who we have made them out to be. The Beautiful People were not beautiful. Not any more or less than any other people throughout time and space. They reached out their hands sometimes and not others. They were kind like Laura and Elio and cruel like Mia. We made them beautiful because we needed to believe in them. And we wanted to believe they would heal us. We—I—wanted to believe they would love us.

  And I see that my father chased a memory when there was someone real who loved him right there in his imperfect world. Me. He shut down and folded in, and his body became small because he had let his mind become even smaller. As I have done.

  It will hurt, I see, to try to open up again.

  I am stronger than he was.

  I take one last look at the stars.

  For a long time I feel only the pain. Then other things nudge at the edges of my mind. The feeling of my face pressed deep into the rug. My fingers clasped tightly around a glass sphere.

  The sound of a voice at the door.

  “Are you there?” he asks.

  Elio.

  His voice is rough but soft, as though he’s been calling for hours. And in all the distances traveled tonight, the one I think of now is the one when Elio reached out his hand and touched me.

  The room is dark and quiet and still. I stand up and walk to the door. I let go of the sphere. It doesn’t make a sound as it falls onto the thick rug at my feet. But there is a sharp snap when I crush it under my heel.

  “I’ve been Outside,” I say through the door.

  There is no sound on the other side for a moment. Is he still there?

  And then, he speaks.

  “So have I.”

  At the Late Night, Double Feature, Picture Show

  by Jessica Verday

  he worst thing about cannibal Girl Scouts are the badges. You would think it’s the fact that they want to chase you down and strip the flesh from your bones. I mean, what’s worse than that? But you’d be wrong.

  It’s the badges.

  The badges tell you exactly how those little green devils will turn your skin into bite-size Fruit Roll-Up pieces. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen before.

  The one that was tracking me now had four badges: knot tying, tree climbing, fire building, and archery. Basically, that meant she could shoot me with an arrow, hang me from a tree (with a proper knot, of course), and then roast me over a big ol’ campfire.

  Girl Scouts. They’re doing it wrong.

  A twig snapped behind the bush on my right and I honed in on it, focusing again on the task at hand. Waiting for the little girl to come out and just show herself already, so that I could do my job and prove to everyone at home that I was part of their team.

  Well, a bigger part than I already was.

  My phone vibrated, the special one-two-three vibration that told me it was Andy. I ignored it and tried not to think about how much my back was killing me.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Nice, juicy piece of meat sitting right here.” I was pretending that my shoelace was tangled and I’d been fidgeting with it for the last twenty minutes.

  Something crunched in the woods. There was a flash of dark green, and she catapulted herself at me from the trees.

  “Hrrrruuunnngggghhhh!”

  She made the unintelligible sound midlunge.

  I sidestepped and whirled out of the way. Little brown shoes and carefully styled blond curls went flying as she crashed into the tree on my left. She couldn’t have been more than ten. Hands raised into dainty claws, she turned around and came at me again.

  Fishing for the pouch on my utility belt, I counted the seconds as she came closer and closer. One Mississippi . . . Two . . .

  And then she was on me.

  Sixty-five pounds of squirming, snapping, biting child that wanted to tear off my nose, ears, fingers, anything she could get her little chompers on. She opened her mouth wide, using both hands to hold me down. Tiny bits of fragmented flesh were caught between an ingrown baby tooth and a new adult tooth.

  “Damn it!” I yelled, fingers finally grabbing hold of my saving grace. The one thing that would hopefully distract her long enough to stop her from turning any of my digits into her next Happy Meal. “Stop! Here!”

  I withdrew a piece of turkey giblets. It’s the closest thing to human flesh that I’ve found without it actually being human flesh, and I thrust it up under her nose. Her face turned frantic, nostrils flared as she greedily grabbed onto it with both hands and shoved it into her gaping jaws.

  She ripped and tore her way through the entire thing. I pulled up my watch and timed her.

  Eight seconds. Not bad.

  Her eyes glazed over and she looked down at me, a tiny smear of blood staining the corner of her mouth.

  “That’s it,” I said. “You’re not getting any more.”

  She cast a glance at my arm. The one that I was still holding up to look at my watch.

  My fingers groped at my belt again, but the pouch was empty. I’m out of meat. “You were supposed to restock me, Andy. You little shit!” I said between gritted teeth.

  The girl didn’t care. Her eyes were glazing over even more, but there was still enough wildness there that made me uneasy. Her mouth opened . . . teeth bared . . .

  And then she fell over.

  I shoved her off and rolled, using the ground to push myself up to a standing position. “Didn’t see that one coming, did you? When’s the last time your food fought back?”

  Nudging her with the toe of my boot, I saw a small bit of plastic resting next to her hand. I
t was a piece of capsule that still had some allergy medicine in it.

  Benadryl. Fastest, easiest, cheapest way to take ’em down.

  My phone vibrated again. “Andy, what do you want?” I hissed into it. “I’m in a movie theater.” No one at home knew what I was really up to.

  “Dad needs you to get some birchwood. From the farm. He wants to carve some more stakes tonight.”

  “I can’t,” I said hastily. “I have to—”

  “Just do it, Jane. Dad needs it. How’s the movie?”

  “Boring part. They just had a chase scene through the woods. Some guy with a chainsaw. Now the blond bimbo is suggesting they split up.”

  “I thought you went to go see a chick flick? The Notebook or something.”

  Andy, Andy, Andy. Always trying to trip me up. Too bad little sister is better at this game than you are. “Why would I go see that piece of crap?” I snorted. “I told you I was going to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Crazies. It’s a double feature.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I must have gotten the titles mixed up.”

  “You got a chick flick and a horror movie mixed up? I might expect that from Dad, since he doesn’t watch horror movies, but come on, big brother. What chick flick has the word chain-saw or massacre in it?”

  “What, you’ve never heard of My Heart’s Massacre or Chainsaw Beauty?”

  He laughed and I did too, but then I saw something that made me stop laughing. Glancing at Polly Prissy Pants, I told myself that it wasn’t true. I didn’t see what I thought I’d seen. “He’s back with the chainsaw. I have to go.”

  Her foot twitched. She was waking up.

  “Have fun at your movie, little sister!” Andy’s voice was sick-eningly sweet.

  “Oh, bait me,” I said.

  Andy laughed so hard it made my ear hurt, and I hung up on him. Bait me was our replacement for bite me . . . in more ways than one.

  Bait is what I was. Literally.

  My family were hunters. Supernatural hunters. Everyone gifted in their own way with some unique power or skill. Everyone but me. And so I became the bait. It was my job to be the helpless girl in a dark alley. The clueless teenager with a flat tire. The lost hiker with a broken shoelace. You’d be surprised at how many demons, vampires, and vengeful spirits there are out there.

  Normally, each hunt we went on had to be carefully vetted and approved by every family member. But this time, I’d wanted to do something on my own. To bring in a catch without them, and prove that I was ready to be more than just bait.

  Bait me, my ass.

  I had just enough time to turn, when the trees parted. Green berets and sashes came crashing through the branches as a swarm of hungry Girl Scouts caught sight of me. According to their badges, it was the rest of Troop 409.

  And I was all out of meat.

  “Shit.”

  All those years of obstacle course training and nighttime avoidance maneuvers that Mom and Dad had insisted upon when I turned nine suddenly came in handy. I hooked left and started sprinting, jumping over roots and ducking under tree limbs as I went.

  The Girl Scouts had a surprising amount of endurance for being so young. Either that, or I was getting soft.

  But I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. I took out my knife and sliced my hand. Crisscrossing my path, I left traces of blood on each tree that I passed in order to confuse them. They were only capable of focusing on one thing right now: food.

  Suddenly, the trees came to an end and I found myself back on the road. Where my car should have been.

  My car that was now gone.

  Stolen. Or towed. Who knew which one?

  “This is so not what I need right now.” I turned around in a circle, but my car didn’t magically appear. I quickly clicked my heels together three times, but that didn’t do it either. “Damn Dorothy bullshit. That stuff from the movies never works.”

  My phone was in my pocket. All I had to do was make one call, and Dad or Andy would come pick me up. But that would lead to several problems. First, I’d have to explain the whole “I’m not really at a movie” thing, but more importantly, I’d have to explain why I’d driven to woods that were two hours away from home to try and track cannibal Girl Scouts on my own.

  That, I definitely did not want to do.

  “Please, won’t you come play with us?” a voice said, from the trees on the right.

  “We want to play with you,” said another, on the left.

  Close. Too close.

  I couldn’t let them see me panic. That was Dad’s number-one rule. So, I yelled back, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to play with your food?”

  One of them giggled.

  The giggle was what set me off. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I started running down the road.

  When I finally saw headlights, I knew it had to be divine intervention.

  I waved my arms wildly to flag down the driver of the black SUV. Stealing a glance at the woods behind me, I was sure that I could still hear them giggling and grunting.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” I chanted, as the driver rolled to a stop and opened his window.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “My car broke down. Can you give me a lift?” Already, I was opening the back door.

  “Okay, sure.”

  I climbed in, surprised to see that there were three other people seated inside. “Go, go,” I urged the driver. “Just get out of here.” I tried to look out the back window, but it was tinted. So darkly tinted that I couldn’t see anything.

  “Is something chasing you?” the driver asked, shifting gears. “Was it a bear?”

  “Something like that.”

  The doors were all safely shut now, but I wouldn’t feel better until we were moving again. “If you can just take me to the interstate, that would be great. There’s a movie theater at the second exit. I can get a ride home from there.”

  “Headed that way ourselves.”

  He hit the gas pedal and we moved away from the woods. Not fast enough for my liking, but at least it was in the right direction. Away from them.

  The inside of the car was dark, but my eyes were adjusting and it was then I started noticing what my traveling companions were wearing. Feather boas. And . . . corsets. With high heels and fishnet stockings.

  Then I noticed something else. The smell.

  It’s a very unique scent, and hard to describe what it is exactly. Dad has this theory that it’s the chemicals given off by a body when it’s slowly starting to decay. It takes years to be able to hone your sense of smell to even be able to recognize it.

  But I knew what it was.

  That smell, plus the tinted windows and the boas could only mean one thing: I was catching a ride from a car full of vampires in drag.

  “So,” I said casually, putting a hand down by the top of my boot. I always carried an extra stake in there. “Where are you guys going?”

  “Denton,” the vamp next to me replied. “We’re on a road trip.”

  “We can call a mechanic for you,” the driver offered. “When we get there.”

  “A satanic mechanic!” the rest of my traveling companions sang out.

  And that was when I acted.

  Grabbing hold of the stake, I slid it free and slammed it under the chin of the guy in the seat next to me. “If I were you, I’d start praying to whatever god you believe in right now.” With emphasis on the last two words, I dug the tip of the stake into his skin and heard a gasp of pain.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he cried.

  Suddenly, the tires locked and we swerved wildly as the driver slammed on the brakes. We came to a stop in the opposite lane.

  I kept my grip firm. Little hiccups of sound filled the car and I realized that the big, bad vampire was crying.

  “Please,” he said. “I swear, we won’t hurt you. We’re just going to a—”

  “Oh, stop it. Like I’m going to believe a vampire?”r />
  Light from the overhead console flooded the interior, and I blinked at the sudden brightness.

  “How do you know what we are?” the driver asked.

  I glanced at him and saw that his face was covered in white makeup. A black circle had been drawn around the edges as an outline, with exaggerated blue eye shadow and heavy red lipstick completing the look.

  “This has got to be the weirdest capture ever,” I said, shaking my head. “Vampires in drag . . .”

  “We’re not in drag,” Front-seat Guy said. “We’re in costume.”

  “Costume? It’s not Halloween.”

  My stake-to-the-neck companion spoke in a whisper. “It’s for a convention.”

  “That’s why we’re going to Denton,” the driver said. “You know, like in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? They hold a convention there every year. Besides, not every vampire wants to hurt people. Some of us just want to have fun. We’ve been defanged.”

  “Open your mouth,” I instructed my captive, pinning him with a steely glare. He complied. There were four identical holes where the enlarged canine teeth should have been, two on the upper level and two on the lower level.

  “Now you.” I pointed to the driver, and he showed me his holes. Front-seat Guy was next, and then a girl on the opposite side of my companion. All were clean. Just like they said, they’d been defanged. “Okay then.” I pulled my stake back and put it away. “So what exactly are you supposed to be?”

  “Dr. Frank-N-Furter.”

  “Dr. who?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”

  “No.”

  Every single one of them gasped.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” I suggested. “While we get back on the road.”

  The overhead lights dimmed and everyone talked at once as we started driving again.

  “It’s a story about Brad and Janet—”

  “They get stuck out in a storm and have to go stay at Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s castle—”

  “But he’s an alien from the planet Transylvania—”

  “A sweet transvestite—”