Last Things

by Jacqueline West

  Here describes everything at once. The shabby underground studio. This dying little town.

  “No,” I blurt, a little louder than I’d meant to.

  “I didn’t think so.” She gives a little laugh. I can hear the mockery in it, subtle, but there. “So the choice isn’t what. It’s when. It’s now, or it’s later. Which may be too late.” She sees me hesitate and leans even closer.

  “Anders. You’re meant for this.” She slows her words so that each one has time to land. “Why would you deny yourself everything you’ve always wanted?”

  My throat clamps.

  Everything you’ve always wanted.

  That was exactly what the guy in the woods had said. You’re going to get everything you want. Everything. It’s going to be something to see.

  I fight to keep my hands from shaking. The woods. That night in the woods. I want to turn around and fly out of here. But something keeps me stuck to my seat.

  The woman is still smiling at me. She reaches toward a black leather briefcase that’s tucked beside her on the couch. She pulls out a paper and a silver pen.

  It might as well be a scalpel.

  Fresh sweat breaks out on the back of my neck.

  “I at least need to talk to the guys,” I manage.

  “Your band?” She taps the pen lazily against her other hand. “I’ll be honest, Anders. They’re good for small-town, teenage musicians. But we all know what you’re becoming.”

  Rain spits against the tiny basement window. I hear a sound like wind through tall trees.

  “The skill. The speed. The songs,” she says. “They’re just pouring out of you, aren’t they? You couldn’t stop them if you tried.” She unfolds and recrosses her long legs.

  The bottoms of her heels are coated with mud. Mud and pine needles.

  The sweat on my back turns to frost.

  “Everyone in this town knows your name,” she goes on. “You’re a god to your classmates. The most beautiful girl at your school is practically throwing herself at you.”

  My heart pounds at the top of my chest. It’s going to seal off my breath.

  She leans even closer. “And this is just the intro, Anders. The song hasn’t even started yet.”

  I smell pine pitch. Wet earth. The woods.

  I look her up and down. The briefcase. The clothes.

  It all felt so real.

  But she never even handed me a business card.

  “Who are you?” My voice comes out in a whisper.

  The woman looks like she might laugh. “You want my name?” I can’t tell if the question was stupid, or too personal, or too unimportant. She shakes her head, smiling. “You know who I’m with.” She holds out the paper and pen. “Everything you’ve always wanted. That’s what we can give you.” She stares into my eyes. I finally make myself stare back. Hers are black, iris to pupil. Like slate.

  I’ve never seen eyes that color. I don’t think people have eyes that color.

  She doesn’t blink. “All you need to do is sign. Give us your word. Let us know we can call you one of ours.”

  I lurch to my feet. The second I do I can’t remember what was keeping me in that chair.

  “No,” I say. My voice breaks as the word comes out, just a little too loud for this quiet underground room. I sound, literally, like a jackass. But I say it again. “No.”

  I take a backward step.

  The woman looks surprised, like the rain has suddenly started falling indoors. “You’re going to risk losing everything?” she asks. She tilts her head. “Because that’s what you stand to lose, Anders. All the things you love. One by one.”

  “No,” I say again. Even though I guess the answer to her question is yes.

  The woman leans back. Her muddy shoes click against the floor. “Oh, Anders,” she says, and now she sounds almost sad. “You are going to be so, so sorry.”

  Jesus. Her eyes.

  I’m half expecting to look down and see a blade sticking out of my side or to hear the beep of a detonator just as the room explodes in fire.

  Before she can move or speak again, I run.

  I turn around and bolt through the doorway, up the stairs, through the toothpaste-green hall out into the night.

  I grind the key into the Nissan’s ignition. The engine roars. I peel away from the curb, into the deserted Main Street. Rain bashes against the windshield. Wind shoves the car sideways. The trees around me thrash. I clutch the wheel, roaring out of town, driving as fast as I can without skidding off the wet road, until I’m bumping up my own driveway.

  It’s only when I’m in my room, with the door and window locked, sitting on the bed with both feet pulled up so nothing in the darkness underneath can grab me, that I finally slow down long enough to think.

  And what I think is that I’m acting like a total psycho.

  Did I actually just run away from a professional meeting set up by my guitar teacher—a meeting with a gorgeous woman who offered me a music contract—to hide in my bedroom?

  Yes.

  Yes I did.

  I go back and sort through the things she actually said. You know who I’m with. You’re meant for this. Okay, a little weird and intense, but she was both trying to flatter me and to push me into signing something by making me afraid I’d lose my chance. That’s what dealmakers do, right? There’s nothing in her words that should make any sane “adult” run away in terror. But I let some stupid phrase like You are going to be so, so sorry and the color of her eyes scare the shit out of me.

  Plus, Flynn set up the whole thing. Flynn vouched for her. Flynn, who’s right up there with Goblin in the circles of people I trust.

  Goblin. I lean down and look under the bed. There are no yellow eyes glimmering back at me, no stinky cat breath wafting out. It figures that just when I need some comfort, my cat decides to spend his night somewhere else.

  Jesus. I press my forehead into my hands.

  So she had mud on her shoes. So what? That doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean that there’s something out there in the woods, watching me, creeping closer and closer.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I take every good thing—a record deal, representation, a free guitar, Frankie—and turn it all into some kind of threat?

  I’m paranoid. I’m mentally ill. I’m messed up.

  Because when I focus on the things I actually know, instead of things I imagine, I’ve got next to nothing.

  And that’s what I’m still telling myself when something pounds at my bedroom window.

  Thea

  I’ve been standing behind my usual tree, in the leaf-filtered rain, waiting for the light. My clothes are soaked through. My hair twists into damp ropes against my back. I could walk right into the river and not be any wetter than I am right now. But the rain doesn’t matter. I barely feel it.

  At last his bedroom light flicks on. A golden patch in the blue-black dimness. It’s so dark out here. Dark enough that he doesn’t see me creeping closer on the other side of that illuminated glass.

  I stride across the grass, my feet sinking into the soggy ground.

  There is no music.

  Not his stereo. Not his fingers on the guitar strings. Nothing that I can hear over the whisper of the rain in the trees.

  Slowly, so there won’t be even a flicker of shadow on the pane, I glide closer until I am looking straight inside.

  Anders sits on the bed. His head is down. His fists are clenched against his forehead. His hair is wet, clinging messily to his neck, his cheekbones. His shirt is soaked. Almost as soaked as mine.

  I hesitate.

  This is dangerous. It’s been safer, simpler, to watch and work from the edges. But I’m running out of time.

  I lift my hand and knock at the pane.

  Anders’s head jerks up.

  The look in his face is pure terror.

  Then, confusion, as his eyes narrow, realizing I am not who he guessed I might be.

  Then, an instant later
, anger.

  There’s annoyance in it. Embarrassment that I’ve caught him like this, scared and vulnerable. Exhaustion. Self-protectiveness. I understand it all.

  I know him so well.

  He jumps off the bed and stalks across the carpet. Turns the lock. Shoves up the window. A series of cold droplets spatters the sill.

  “What the hell?” he asks.

  He’s never spoken to me before.

  His tone is anything but warm, and still I feel the words light up something inside me, matches touching wicks.

  He’s speaking to me. No one else. Me.

  His eyes search my face, checking my hands, the empty night around me. Looking for an explanation. I’m sure I look odd: my hair so drenched it’s changed color, water dripping off the end of my chin. But he’s looking straight at me. He sees me. He frowns harder.

  “What are you doing creeping around my house in the middle of the night?” he asks.

  He’s not happy. But I have to fight not to smile. Anders is speaking to me. I am going to speak to him.

  I weigh my words. I plan each one. I keep my voice low enough that he has to lean closer to hear. “I came to warn you. I know what’s happening to you.”

  “What?” He stares at me like he’s trying to translate the words into another language. “You know what’s happening to me? What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t even know who you are.”

  He’s not supposed to. Still, the words sting.

  “I mean—I’ve seen you,” he amends, and I wonder if I let the sting show. If he’s being kind. “At the Crow’s Nest. You’re what’s-her-name’s niece. Mae Malcolm. That old lady who lives in the woods.”

  Now he is piecing things together. Rumors about Aunt Mae . . . her visions, her one-hundred-proof breath. Glimpses he’s caught of me here and there, everywhere he goes. His face hardens again. “Okay,” he says. “What do you need to warn me about?”

  I feel strangely rattled. I’ve never been stuck like this. I’ve watched him from a distance for months, memorized every motion, learned every secret. Now I’m close enough to smell him. His skin. Salt and soap and rain. And he doesn’t even know my name.

  I can still see the anger in his face.

  Anger because he’s afraid. I am making him afraid.

  Fine. Let him be angry. Let him feel something, anything, for me.

  “There’s a darkness at work here,” I tell him. “It’s been getting stronger. Now it’s ready to act.”

  “Here,” he says tersely. “In my house.”

  “In this town. In the woods.”

  There’s a flicker in his eyes. The woods. He wonders what I know, but he can’t ask. He can’t admit that this is something we share.

  I watch the flicker turn from fear to doubt and then into disbelief. He flattens his feelings into sarcasm. A smile that’s almost a smirk.

  “A darkness,” he says. “Okay. Next are you going to tell me that metal is the music of Satan and invite me to come get born again at your church?”

  “No,” I say. “It has nothing to do with metal.”

  I’ve gone about this all wrong. He’s not going to listen; he’s not going to admit that he believes me, not even to himself. I should have known better. But I wanted this. I wanted him to open his window.

  Anders looks at me now like he can hardly believe he’s still listening, standing here, letting cold rain splash through his window.

  “All right,” he says at last. “Well. If you’ve ever got something else really important to tell me, maybe you could do it in daylight, at the Crow’s Nest or somewhere, instead of sneaking across our lawn and staring into my bedroom window.”

  The words shove me backward for an instant.

  For that instant I’m only what he sees. The crazy niece of the crazy local drunk. The obsessed, rain-drenched fan peeping into his bedroom in the middle of the night.

  He reaches up to close the window.

  “Did you give her anything?” I ask.

  He freezes. His hands are still on the window. “What?”

  “That woman,” I say, slow and clear. “Did you give her anything? Even your word?”

  There’s a long, silent moment. Wet wind gusts between us. He drops one arm, keeping the other on the window frame.

  “No,” he says at last.

  “Good.” I step closer again, putting my fingers back on the windowsill. Closer to him. “But they won’t give up. They’ll keep trying until they claim you.”

  Or destroy you. But I don’t tell him that. It’s kinder, I think. Besides, his face is hardening into skepticism again.

  “So, the music business people are the darkness you were talking about.” He smiles. It doesn’t get anywhere near his eyes. “Okay. I’ve never heard it put that way before, but I bet some bands would agree.” His arm tenses, and he starts to pull the window down. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Be careful,” I say. And then Aunt Mae’s words, my father’s words, the Bible words, fly out of my mouth and into the rainy darkness. “‘You know not the day nor the hour.’”

  Anders doesn’t reply to this. I’m not even sure he heard it. He shuts the window. The lock clicks. He pulls the curtain between us.

  I stand there for a minute.

  It’s still raining. I feel heavy, and for the first time, I feel cold.

  I spoke to him. He spoke to me. He knows who I am now. The thought that he recognized me brightens the little fires again.

  But he’s not meant to know me. I’ve gotten greedy. I’ve let things that will never happen, can never happen, get in my way.

  And he didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t. Just like every other time, every other place. I should have known better. I do know better. But I let myself think, just for tonight, that there was some sort of connection between us. That he might see me for what I really am.

  Now I’ll have to make another move.

  I sort through the pieces. Click click click.

  I have to get to the other side of town. Fast. I have to reach the bridge before she does. I have to be waiting.

  Then I’ll bike home, passing Anders’s house one more time, just to check. I’ll bring another load down to the root cellar. Buckets and blankets and tarps, some nylon cord fine enough for binding wrists. And then I’ll tiptoe inside, down the hall, and curl up in the living room armchair before Aunt Mae wakes up.

  You know not the day nor the hour.

  Anders

  I pull into the parking lot of the Crow’s Nest around six-thirty the next evening. The sun is low in the sky, streaking everything red. There’s still more than an hour until we play, but the lot is already packed, and I can hear the noise coming from inside. I park the Nissan in the grass at the far end, near the backstage door.

  Jezz and Patrick are standing near the doorway. They’re alone. No Ellie or Mac or Lee or other hangers-on. They’re dressed for the show—jeans, favorite T-shirts, Jezz’s collection of leather and silver bracelets. Patrick holds his sticks in one fist. Their eyes follow my car. They’re talking to each other, but when I open the door and climb out, they stop.

  I move slowly around to the trunk and lift out Yvonne and my amp. Even with the preshow energy pulsing through me, the equipment feels heavier than usual.

  Everything that happened last night—the show, the artists’ rep woman with the mud on her heels, my running away, the insane conversation with the soaking wet stalker girl at my bedroom window—has started to seem like a strange and stupid dream. It’s just like that night in the woods almost two years ago. Now that I’m half a day away from it, I can’t remember what seemed like such a big deal. I can’t remember why I freaked out. I can’t remember much of anything except the woman’s eyes, and the fact that Goblin wasn’t waiting for me under my bed as usual, and that pale, wet girl telling me that something “dark” was coming for me, and then lying on my bed with Yvonne’s calming weight across my chest, practicing exercises until it was almost dawn.

>   If the way that girl showed up, staring in my bedroom window in the middle of the night, wasn’t so messed up, I’d almost feel sorry for her. I mean, yeah, Frankie has showed up at night at my window, too. But there’s a huge difference between Frankie Lynde and this girl. There’s a difference between someone you hope looks your way even once in a while and someone you don’t know who watches you without you realizing it. What that girl told me just made it worse. She’s obviously under some kind of delusion, talking about dark forces, telling me to be careful, thinking she’s the one who can save me.

  What does it say about me that I was almost ready to believe her?

  I trudge across the lot toward Patrick and Jezz.

  “Hey guys,” I begin. Trying to sound normal. “What’s up?”

  Patrick folds his meaty arms. “You tell us.”

  “What?”

  Jezz glances between me and Patrick. “Rumor is another talent scout was here last night,” he says. “And that you went and met with her alone.”

  Goddamn it. This is the last thing I need.

  I guess I could pretend not to know what they’re talking about. But that would make me even more of a jerk than I already am. Besides, these two know me way too well.

  I set the end of Yvonne’s case on the ground. “I . . . Jesus.” I press one thumb against my temple. “I didn’t even know about it until after the show. Flynn set it up. He totally sprung it on me.”

  “But you went.”

  “Yeah. I went to find out what they were offering and to tell her that I definitely wasn’t going to sign anything without my band.”

  “Were they even interested in the band?” Patrick asks. “Or were they just interested in you?”

  I look at Patrick’s scarred fists. “We didn’t really talk about that.”

  “I bet you didn’t,” says Jezz.

  His words sting more than anybody else’s would. First, because this is Jezz, who usually makes the best out of any crappy thing. Second, because it’s so unfair. I did bring up the band. And I don’t want to hurt them. That’s why I can’t tell them the truth.