Eyes in the Darkness (The Coveted)

by Ripley Proserpina

  I stared at him. “A Boy Scout?”

  He laughed, and Aaron chuckled. I took in the expressions of Colton and Thorn—they weren’t smiling, but they didn’t seem surprised.

  “No,” he replied, still smiling. “A Scout is a person who investigates reports of strange creatures. We’re the ones who go in first, scope out the environment. Talk to people. Look for evidence.”

  “Strange creatures…” Right. “Monsters.”

  “Monsters is one way to describe these creatures, and while they’re very different than you and me, they’ve been around since humans first had consciousness. They’re just as much a part of this world as we are.”

  “So is monsters an offensive term?” I asked.

  Jacinda snorted. “Your generation cracks me up. Monsters don’t care what they’re called, as long as they survive. The one here in this town has had a lot of names. Wendigo. Skinwalker. Shapeshifter. Were-whatever. Doppelganger. Changeling. In Russia they’re called leshy, and in Ukraine chuhaister. As a whole, they’re sometimes called cryptids.”

  Aaron groaned. “Mom. She doesn’t need the etymology of the words.”

  Jacinda waved her hand. “I’m sorry. I get carried away.”

  From the doorway where he leaned, Thorn met my gaze and then dropped it.

  “The point is that these beings, these creatures, they exist,” Jacinda continued. “Always have. And as long as they leave us alone, we leave them alone. When they stop leaving us alone, when they hurt humans, people like us, we step in. My husband, the boys’ father, is not a scout. He’s a Hunter. When something has to be killed, people like him—like us—they do it. Oliver is going to move from Scout to Trapper soon.”

  Oliver shrugged. “Maybe. I still haven’t decided if I’m actually going to do it.”

  “He’s going to do it.” Aaron rolled his eyes. “He just has to obsess and overthink everything before he can do anything.”

  That was all interesting, and I absolutely wanted to hear more about all of it, but maybe that wasn’t the point right now.

  Jacinda shot her sons a look. “We are sorry, more than we can say, that we didn’t tell you everything about us that first night. We did lie to you by omission. That isn’t okay. But our only thinking in that regard was that you never needed to know there was a…” She smiled. “Okay, we’ll call it a monster. Why frighten you? My husband intended to kill it. We didn’t think you needed to be afraid.” She visibly swallowed. “I was once the target of an obsessed creature. A vampire. My husband is off killing one as we speak. He stalked me and tormented me for years—the vampire, not my husband.” I laughed, but it was off. “I still don’t sleep well, and that was two decades ago. When my husband came to the university to do research, he discovered me and my predicament. He killed it. I hoped to spare you that.”

  Vampires? The panic in my chest intensified. Okay. There were vampires. And they were not the sparkly kind, but more like the horror movie, scary version. Sure. Okay. Why not? Sure. Fuck me.

  “We didn’t know that these two… gentlemen… were going to come spill the beans so quickly. How did you manage to get out of that compulsion?”

  Colton squeezed my shoulder tighter. “I’m not sure. One day, it was just gone. And she had to know. She deserved to know what happened to her. What was stalking her. What wanted her. Trust me, I was there that night. I saw it.”

  “Well, we are grateful to you two for going on that subreddit and alerting us to this problem. Having said that, you’ve survived an encounter with it mostly because it had already fed. Unfortunately, on a little boy.” She rubbed her eyes. “So here is what is going to happen. You two are going to go home. It concerns us that you were able to come back here. He must think you’re no longer a threat. That is very, very alarming. Go home. Stay away from Lacey. That is how you stay safe.”

  Thorn crossed his arms. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Jacinda laced her hands together, unperturbed by his attitude. “I thought maybe not. But in any case, go home tonight. Your parents are no doubt worried about you, and you’ve caused, from what I understand, enough havoc to this girl’s reputation. She’ll stay here with us. We’ll keep her safe. When my husband gets home, he’ll kill it, and tomorrow morning, I’ll take her to the hospital to visit her grandmother.”

  Gran. I gripped my head. In the midst of everything, I’d given her no thought. And the worst of it was this—as bad as I should feel about her, I didn’t. The woman judged, tormented, and beat me. My home was not a safe place or a refuge. It was another obstacle in my life. Gran sober would be better than Gran drunk, but not by much.

  “Will she remember what happened?” I asked. How much did I have to explain?

  “I don’t know,” Jacinda answered. “The stroke could have affected her memory for days, or even weeks, leading up to today. Her speech and physical ability could be impacted. Then again, she could remember everything and be out of the hospital in days.”

  What was I supposed to do? If Gran was sick, she’d need care. Once, when I was in elementary school, she’d gotten pneumonia, and I’d had to help her. The woman had been a bear. Meaner than when she was drunk. And cruel. She threw a bowl of soup and broke one of the clown babies, and if she hadn’t had a coughing fit, then she’d have come after me with a shard from that bowl.

  “No,” Oliver said. “Mom, I’m sorry. But no. Yes, her grandmother had a stroke, and yes, the monster had something to do with it, but—” His gaze cut to Aaron, and I realized his younger brother had shared with him what had happened the previous night.

  Please. Mentally, I begged him not to tell his mother what had happened.

  “The one near her eye is from her grandmother,” Aaron interjected. “Not the exorcism.”

  Jacinda approached me, kneeling in front of me. She touched my chin with cool, smooth fingers and tilted my face toward the light. Her expression became sad and pitying, and I had to focus on something else. I hated pity as much as I hated judgment.

  “I’m fine.” I touched her hand and gently removed it from my face. “It’s nothing.”

  Aaron and Olivier’s mom stood, but she clearly didn’t think it was nothing. “I’ll figure something out. She can stay with us. It’s probably better anyway, since we know what we’re looking for.”

  The front door slammed, and Kelly ran inside, a flurry of pink and yellow with black staticky hair. “Oh my god, Mom, that kid from social studies asked me to…” Her voice trailed off when she saw me. At first, she frowned, but when I expected some kind of sympathetic-slash-sad response, she announced. “Did I miss it?”

  The exorcism? The murder? The body-swapping monster? Yeah. She’d missed it. Why then, did she look disappointed?

  “Oliver!” Kelly turned to her brother, stomping her foot. “What the heck! You were supposed to tell me when you went after it. I was going to make a sign for when you got home!”

  Oliver’s face, which until now had been borderline enraged, softened, and he chuckled. “One of the local idiots decided to exorcise Lacey,” he explained. “And the creature took on her grandmother.”

  Took on. “Wait a minute,” I asked. “Was he inside my grandmother? Or—” A horrifying thought occurred to me. “Wearing my grandmother? Like a skin?” Hadn’t they said one of the names for this thing was skinwalker?

  “Doubtful.” Jacinda rose and crossed to her daughter, squeezing her tightly. “Kelly is trying out school a few days a week outside of the house. Today was rather exciting for her. Day three of it. I’m not sure I’m thrilled with the level of education, but we shall see.”

  Aaron shook his head. “You never relented with us. But the baby? Yes, she gets what she wants.”

  “Bite me.” Kelly rolled her eyes but then smiled at me. “My brother is going to kill that thing for you. No, it doesn’t wear your gran. Skinwalkers usually shed skin in places, and we’ve found no evidence of large amounts of snake like skin shedding.” She opened her eyes wide and s
tared at Aaron. “Some of us have actually been helping.”

  I didn’t know why I felt so compelled to defend Aaron, but I did. “He’s helping. Twice now, he’s been there for me, and he kept me company after I got beat up.”

  “If she wasn’t an old woman, I’d have broken her nose.” Aaron stretched his legs out in front of him.

  Thorn snorted, and Oliver looked up at the sky. “Okay. Enough of this. Plenty of time to talk about it later. Also, Kel, Dad will kill it. I’m not official yet.”

  She did a pretty good imitation of his looking up at the ceiling in disgust. “Only because you keep putting off the test.”

  “He’s right.” Jacinda laughed. “Everyone to bed. You two, go home. Come back tomorrow. I think it would be a good idea for you to learn some basic defense against these kinds of things. In the afternoon. Lacey should learn it now, too, and she has to go to the hospital in the morning.”

  Colton didn’t budge. Was he going to argue with her? Refuse to leave? I squeezed his knee. “Hey, I’m okay here.”

  Finally, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Probably safer here than with me. For now. Okay. If you need anything, use one of their phones and call. Both Oliver and Aaron have our numbers now.”

  Thorn caught my attention. “I’m going to get you a phone.”

  I shook my head fast. “Don’t. I can’t pay for it.”

  He didn’t answer but walked over. In a swift move, he hugged me. “Get some sleep.”

  Colton rose. His hug was gentler. “Sweet dreams or no dreams. You’re safe. Much more so now than you were even hours ago. See you tomorrow.”

  They both did this strange nodding thing I’d seen boys do before toward Aaron and Oliver. Was it guy code for something? It was more like using their chin.

  When they’d officially left, Jacinda smiled at me. “Nice young men. Okay. I’m going to make up the couch for you. It’s a sleeper sofa.”

  “Mom,” Oliver interrupted. “She can stay in my room. I changed the sheets and everything. I’ll sleep out here.”

  His mother eyed him for a second. “Well, all right. Yes, that works. But everyone is sleeping in their own beds.” She pointedly looked at her sons. My cheeks heated in utter embarrassment. She’d known Aaron slept in my bed, and while she didn’t seem to mind, she also didn’t approve.

  “Whatever you’ve heard, I’m actually… I’m not what people say.” Despite having done what I did with Thorn in her shower.

  She tilted her head slightly before she hugged me to her. I had to stand to complete the hug, but as awkward as that was, I did it.

  “Lacey,” Jacinda said on a sigh. “I’ve never cared one bit about the opinions of others.”

  I woke the next morning ready to fight. From the moment I opened my eyes, irritation surged through me. I was mad I wasn’t in my house. I was mad my grandmother was a drunk. I was mad I was wearing someone else’s underwear.

  Sitting up, I studied Oliver’s room. It didn’t give much away. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say he hadn’t unpacked yet. If they moved around so much, maybe he didn’t see the point. It would be hard to put down roots when you just packed up again in a few months.

  Or whenever you killed a monster. Were-honey badger. Whatever.

  Ugh. Shedding a skin of a person. That was gross. I tried to imagine what that would be like. I’d come across plenty of snake skins, and I’d found it fascinating that something could leave such a perfect example of what it had been.

  But a snakeskin was different than a person skin. Maybe it was like when actors wore prosthetics in movies, their face in latex and silicon. Perhaps the monster peeled their faces the way actors removed their makeup. That was a little less gross, but it also helped me make sense of this creature.

  It was like Mystique, from the X-Men. If Mystique had peeled off the people she appeared as and not just morphed out of their form.

  Yawning, I pushed the bed sheets back. Oliver was a bit of a neat freak. His desk was clear of everything except a one-subject notebook and a pencil. He had a dresser. His bed. A bookshelf. Ohhh. I could snoop there without actually touching anything.

  Unable to make out the titles from where I was, I strode to the shelf and knelt in front of it. Some of the titles I recognized. My Side of the Mountain. Where the Red Fern Grows. But other titles were completely unknown to me. The Science of Monsters: The Origins of the Creatures We Love to Fear.

  On Monsters. Hmm. These sounded interesting.

  The Field Guide to North American Monsters. Ohhh! Like bird watching, except that the bird was part man, and would probably suck your blood. I bet when monsters weren’t chasing you, the subject was pretty fascinating. Getting lost in Oliver’s books banked some of my irritation. I was too interested in all of this to be mad about my life.

  There was a knock on the door, and Jacinda poked her head in. “I thought I heard you moving around.”

  “Hi.” I wondered what I looked like to her—a snoop?

  “I thought you might want a quick breakfast before we go to the hospital.” She opened the door a little wider. “How are you feeling?”

  My irritation returned full force, and with a little extra on the side. “Fine,” I answered, though I wasn’t. Just the thought of my grandmother made me want to scream. “And I think I’m going to pass. On the breakfast and the visit. There’s no love lost between me and my grandmother, and she’s going to be absolutely miserable.”

  Jacinda frowned. “But she’s your family.” My guess was that for all her knowledge of monsters, she was a bit naïve when it came to evil grandparents.

  “Mom.” Oliver appeared at her shoulder. “We can go alone.”

  Huh? “Wait. Why are you going? If it’s because you feel sorry for her, don’t. She doesn’t take care of herself, and she doesn’t give a shit—excuse me—about anyone else.”

  Jacinda glanced at Oliver. “She may have some residual memories about the creature. There may be something she can tell us we don’t know.”

  “So you don’t want to say hello and wish her well?” I asked.

  Jacinda shrugged. “Well, yes. But also, we need to know what she remembers.”

  I was made of jagged edges, and I wanted to slice through all the bullshit and all the lies and manipulation.

  Still, the idea of Oliver going without me to see Gran was downright weird. I steeled my shoulders. “I’ll go for five minutes.”

  He smiled at me. “Great. Tell you what? You and I will do something after. Something I think might help with this whole thing. Then I legitimately have to do some schoolwork, or I’m never going to be a vet, and Mom can take you shopping.”

  I sputtered. He’d given me two pieces of information that made no sense. “But you were lying about that. You’re a monster hunter.”

  “I’m many things, and one of them is a student who wants to be a veterinarian someday. My mother has a PhD, and my father works at the factory. We do many things, and sometimes we monster hunt. As my father would say, we wear many hats.”

  I liked that expression. But I was losing track of things. “Shopping?”

  Jacinda sighed. “You need clothes. I took a look through your closet this morning. Your obnoxious cousin’s girlfriend let me in. You’re not staying there, by the way. I wouldn’t leave you with those people. When I have no other choice, you’ll go back. But before then, you’re staying here. You have one pair of boots and holes in your sneakers. I draw the line.”

  I swallowed. “Mrs. Chee—”

  “Jacinda,” she interrupted me. “Mrs. Chee is my mother-in-law, and the less said about her, the better.”

  Oliver snorted and covered his mouth. There had to be a story there. I started again. “Jacinda, I have no money. I can’t get a job. No one will hire me. I have to do community service starting Monday, so even if I could find one, I can’t start work. I can’t pay for anything. Or pay you back.”

  She waved her hand in the air. “I have lots of money. No one here eve
r lets me spend any on them. What is the purpose of having rich, dead grandparents who left me things, if literally no one lets me buy them clothes? We’re buying you things. I can’t stand it. My stomach hurts thinking of what you don’t have. Get dressed. Eat something. We’re going.” She turned on her heel and headed to another room.

  Oliver leaned on the wall, an amused expression on his face. He’d braided his hair again. The look really worked for him. “Don’t bother arguing. That tone? That is her getting her way every time.”

  I didn’t have the wherewithal to argue with a person who was trying to take care of me when no one ever did. Okay. I guessed I was getting some clothes. Oliver looked me up and down. Warmth flooded me until it hit my cheeks.

  “Wear pants. I know it’s a little warm, but for what you and I are doing after the hospital, you’ll want to be in pants.”

  I grinned. “Aren’t most guys more interested in getting girls out of their pants?” I winced the second I said the stupid thing. Oh, God. Open mouth. Insert foot.

  He laughed, throwing his head back. “Trust me. You’ll know when I’m trying to do that.”

  Twelve

  I rode with Jacinda to the hospital. Oliver said he had something to do, and he’d be about three minutes behind us. Despite keeping my eye on the side-mirror, I didn’t see the truck he’d driven to Doc Holiday’s. Whatever it was he needed to do was taking more than three minutes.

  “You’ve lived here all your life?” Jacinda asked suddenly.

  “I have,” I said. “About four generations of Madisons have lived in this town. I had a great-great-grandmother who may have been here already when my great-great-grandfather arrived. The family lore is that he was one of the few survivors of the shootout at Tombstone. If you notice, there are a lot of Tombstone references here.”

  “It has enough tumbleweeds,” Jacinda said. “I could see some squinty-eyed cowboy having a standoff in the street. People hiding in bars.”