Waking Light

by Rob Horner

  "Oh, they weren't just for us," Mrs. Fields answered. "No, she had a trunk full of them. Said they were some new kind of art, going to be all the rage this Spring. She had extras, you see. And when she gave me one, she said to remember to bring one home for my girl, a present to celebrate her new talent."

  You know that saying, could've heard a pin drop?

  Yeah, it was quieter than that. Forks were stilled. No one chewed.

  "How did she know about Tanya?" I asked after a moment.

  Mrs. Fields looked to her daughter, and the hand on Tanya's squeezed tightly. "I'm so sorry, baby."

  Her face drooped as her tears fell, and Tanya rose from her seat to wrap her arms around her mother. Despite all her "Bless your hearts” and "Lord, have mercy’s,” Mrs. Fields wasn't one of those Southern Belles who wept dramatically. Her shoulders shook, but she tried to talk through the tears. "I was so proud of you, of what you could do, that I went straight to the church on Monday."

  She laid her fork aside, gently brushed Tanya's arms away, and stood. She hurried to the counter for a tissue and began blotting her eyes. "There wasn't a service going on, of course, just a few classrooms being used for meetings. Some of the choir members were there, too, practicing.

  "Oh, I must have looked comical, bustling in all full up with news about you."

  Crystal, Tanya, and I shared an open-mouthed look of surprise.

  "I didn't tell just anyone, of course," she hastened to add. "I just said that I needed to speak to Reverend Jacob. I overheard one of those tall boys, you know the ones, Tanya, the Kramer boys, the one you like to sit with in church...well they both look so alike that I can never tell them apart...anyway Matt or Jason, well, they were talking about..."

  Tanya blushed as bright as a redhead at that comment while Crystal hid a smile behind her hand. Maybe later I'd use it as ammunition against her. Okay, definitely later, but not right now. I just smiled at her to show it was all right.

  "...talking about how they and a bunch of other boys were going to apply for part-time work at the carnival, see if they could provide witness to the other men.

  "Well, I got on to the Reverend's office, and of course his wife was there, and Martha Kramer, and a couple of other ladies."

  We could see where this was going. Mrs. Fields talked in front of those ladies, which means Mrs. Kramer, mother of at least one guy that Tanya liked to sit next to in church, learned about Tanya's power. The boys went to the carnival like they planned, only instead of preaching to the carnies, they were converted. They brought home some of those statues and converted their families. The demon in Mrs. Kramer would know about Tanya and would know that her mother would be at the Bridge the next night, so she came there intending to continue the daisy-chain. Convert Mrs. Fields in the hopes she would manage to convert Tanya.

  "So, Mrs. Kramer was the Palooka?" Crystal asked.

  "Oh, heavens no! She's one of the best players in our group. No, it was Mrs. Redeps."

  Tanya jumped up. "But she's the reverend's wife!"

  Mrs. Fields nodded. "That she is, and she never came to a single Bridge night until last night."

  "Did Riley go with the other boys?" Tanya asked.

  "I suppose so. How else would Mrs. Redeps have found out?" Mrs. Fields answered. "I only told Reverend Jacob about you. I swear."

  Which meant it wasn't just a random church mom, but the wife of the church leader, which probably meant the reverend was also a demon. And Mrs. Redeps had "boxes" of the demon-statues.

  "You can't go to church tonight," Tanya said firmly.

  "Considering how long you let me nap, I wasn't planning on it," Mrs. Fields said. "It's too late to get ready."

  "No, I mean even if you had time, you couldn't go tonight," Tanya said.

  It would never cross my mind to call Mrs. Fields--or most other adults--petulant. Petulance is one of those things we outgrow as we mature. But the look on her face came close as she said, "I know we overdid it a bit last night, but I don't think that gives you the right to ground me, young lady."

  "You don't remember what happened?" I asked.

  "I remember everything up until I don't," she answered flatly and without the slightest hint of irony. "We were drinking, playing, then here comes Mrs. Redeps handing out those statues. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in my bed. Which reminds me. How did I get home? I hope I didn't drive like that."

  "Did you have any dreams?" Crystal asked.

  "Well yes, but don't we all?" Her eyes lowered. "They don't mean anything."

  "Can you tell us what you dreamed?"

  "Please," Tanya and I added.

  "It's silly," Mrs. Fields said. "It doesn't take a Sigmund Freud to figure out that if you drink too much and lose control, you might dream of the same thing."

  I started to ask something else, but she continued, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. "It was like being lost in a fog, a red fog, blind but able to wander around, feeling for things like...like a blind man without his cane. There was this voice, echoing in the fog. It sounded like my voice, like how you hear yourself in your head if you cover your ears and talk. But there was this other voice, too, coming from everywhere, and every time it spoke, the fog moved, and the red light pulsed."

  "What was it saying?" I asked, matching her tone.

  She shook her head, managing a smile. "I have no idea. It wasn't speaking English."

  "Doesn't that seem odd?" Tanya asked. "That you would dream of a voice that doesn't speak English?"

  "Well, maybe, now that you mention it. But it still doesn't explain why you'd tell me not to go to church tonight."

  The three of us shared a look. We hadn't told her about the demons and our powers before, because the knowledge might place her in greater danger. It would’ve certainly placed us in greater danger. The Mrs. Redeps-demon might have been content to just let Mrs. Fields bring a statue home to Tanya, but would that have been true if they knew about us as well?

  Tanya nodded, followed by Crystal.

  Now we told her everything.

  Chapter 25

  If it bleeds, it leads

  Tanya and I sat close together on the couch while Crystal shared the loveseat with Mrs. Fields. Though we hadn't had time to explain the change in circumstances to her, she didn't seem bothered in the least by my proximity to her daughter. Until a few months ago, she'd seen this as the normal way of things. We'd never talked about it, but I think she was just as confused as Tanya and I were when we didn't work out. I remembered showing up to take Tanya out on our first real date. Mrs. Fields spent as much time fussing over me as she did Tanya, and the pride in her smile when she took the Polaroid of us, all dressed up and standing in front of the door, was just as much for me as it was for her daughter. Strangely, the admonitions that came when I showed up with a different girl didn't apply to her daughter. Said simply, she trusted Tanya, or trusted me with Tanya, more than she did me with someone else.

  The eleven o'clock news opened with its typical dramatic theme, showing the trusted faces of Michael and Tracy sitting behind the WTKR desk. Michael's sport jacket was a neutral brown today, with a matching brown tie. Tracy was model-pretty in a blue dress with wide bands running over the shoulder, her blond hair falling down her back.

  "They still glow," Crystal whispered.

  Mrs. Fields made the sign of the cross.

  "Our top story tonight," Michael opened, "takes a break from the string of strange occurrences we've experienced ever since those lights brightened the night three days ago."

  He shifted his focus from one direction, turning to his right just in time to catch a change of camera, with the new one zoomed in to just the right level to give us his face on one side of the screen, and a monitor on the other, showing what appeared to be police officers arresting someone, three people in similar clothing, one of them wearing some kind of motorcycle helmet, wrestling a fourth to the ground. The video was grainy and shot from a distance, then zoomed in, which en
hanced large motions while making details fuzzy. For instance, though the officers looked like they were in uniform, there were no labels like VBPD or FBI.

  "These may look like police officers making an arrest last night on College Place in Norfolk, just outside Bugatti's After-Hours Club, but sources in the department say no officers were called to the vicinity."

  From off-camera, Tracy added in, "We should mention that the video is courtesy of a bystander, who was recording footage of a bachelor's party when the altercation broke out."

  The short video clip reached its end and started over.

  "Yes, thank you, Tracy," Michael said.

  Crystal uttered a gasp but didn't say anything else. A quick glance showed her eyes wide, riveted on the screen.

  "We bring you this footage first, because it's the only recording we have. There's no information on either the people in uniform, or the person they are arresting. We've attempted to reach out to Bugatti's management, but they have yet to return our inquiries."

  The camera shifted to Tracy on one side of the screen, while the other half froze at the end of the clip, a still shot of an arrest made, or an assault completed. One body face down on the ground, with someone kneeling on his back. The prone person had his arms pulled behind his back, but it was impossible to tell if he was handcuffed or not. There was something weird about the one holding down the other, something attached to his head, but I couldn't make it out. The other two people stood nearby, one of them wearing the weird helmet.

  "Similar assaults have been reported in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Hampton," Tracy reported, "small groups of individuals accosting people, pinning them down, and carrying them off. One report mentioned a foot chase through Military Circle Mall, with the presumed victim shouting, "They're after me!" as she ran through stores, knocking over displays.

  "Again, we've not been able to substantiate any of these claims with names, and no one has come forward from any law enforcement office to provide explanation. We don't know what this is about, or whether or not the captured people are wanted criminals or innocent victims."

  The camera panned back out, once again showing the pair sitting at their respective ends of the anchor desk.

  Michael took up the narrative. "We have numerous eyewitnesses to the chase in the mall, but we aren't sure of the truthfulness of some of the reports. Some of them just seem...too far out there."

  "Let's just let the viewers decide," Tracy offered.

  A video montage followed, shots of mall-goers heads as they answered a question spoken from off-camera.

  "What did you see today, sir?"

  A white-bodied microphone with WTKR emblazoned on the side shifted from off-camera, tilted in the direction of the young black man waiting to answer.

  "It was crazy! That poor lady was tearing through here." He waved his arm behind him, indicating the center court of the mall.

  Now it was a professionally dressed white man speaking, one of those guys whose every statement sounds like he's seeking confirmation. "She was young, maybe thirty? I don't know. Pretty, I guess, in jeans and a T-shirt, just running. She kept screaming something. She looked scared?"

  "They got her right in front of us!" an excited boy, maybe eleven or twelve, shouted, brown hair with messy bangs over brown eyes. Two other young men stood behind him, nodding. "It was cool, like something out of a movie."

  The microphone pivoted back off-camera, and the on-scene reporter asked, "What do you mean?"

  One of the background kids, chunky, round-faced, shouldered forward, "Stuff was rolling and sliding around her, like the floor was water and every step she took sent out ripples!"

  "That's stupid man!" the first kid said. "She was just pushing stuff out of her way. The dudes chasing her were the cool part."

  The third kid was skinny and taller than his friends, freckle-faced and carrot-topped. "They had these glowing blue things on their ears, and they made the lady stop with electricity!"

  The first kid again. "They were like, 'Stop!' And she was just running, so they shot something at her out of a gun, only it sizzled in the air..."

  "Like bacon..." The chubby kid.

  "Or electricity..." The red head.

  "And then she fell down twitching." The first kid. "That's what I saw."

  The camera shifted to focus on the on-scene reporter, who stood far enough back that we weren't seeing up his nose, while activity at the mall continued behind him. Dressed in a light blue sport jacket over an open-collar white shirt, he was a throwback to the seventies and eighties.

  "He's red, too," Crystal said.

  That there were still people strolling about the mall, and there was daylight coming into the center court, meant this footage was pre-recorded. "We haven't been able to confirm any details of the people doing the chasing, or the woman being chased. All we can report with any certainty is there was a group of people chasing a woman through the mall. Back to you, Michael."

  "Thank you, Travis," the anchor said, as the picture returned to the live studio feed. Hands folded on the desk, Michael had adopted a serious face, somehow conveying concern for the viewer while at the same time saying Listen to me, because I know what's good for you. As he spoke, the camera did a slow zoom in, giving more weight to his words by isolating his face.

  "Until we know more, it might be best to assume that this is some form of police unit acting undercover. If you see them, be respectful, and stay out of their way. Every report we've received has centered around lone individuals, and only one instance was caught on camera. This may be nothing more than a natural outgrowth of the temporary hallucinations and seizures from the light bursts, authorities collecting people before they can pose a danger to themselves or others. It may be something else entirely. We haven't been able to confirm any credible threat to our national security, but we also haven't received any indications that there isn't a threat. Put simply: we just don't know."

  The camera panned back out, and Tracy took over. "And that's our top story tonight. We're going to take a quick commercial break, then come back and catch you up on news from across our nation, and around the world."

  As the news program went to commercial, we sat in stunned silence which lasted about as long as two or three deep breaths. My mind made connections between things seen and things described. Once those connections were made, all that mattered was sharing with the group. The problem was that all four of us made different connections, and all four of us wanted to talk at once.

  "The guys on the video had things on their heads, too."

  "Stuff moving away when she ran; she might be like me."

  "Are you sure they're...what did you call them...red?"

  "One of them glowed yellow."

  Though said in a whisper, that last comment, by Crystal, sliced through everyone else, silencing us.

  "What did you say, honey?" Mrs. Fields asked.

  "It was the video clip," she said, "where those three people were arresting the fourth guy. The one on the ground glowed red; he was a demon."

  This made Mrs. Fields look away, uncomfortable all over again at the idea that she'd been possessed but couldn't remember any of it.

  "Two of the three were white, kind of bright, but I don't think as bright as either of you. And the third one..."

  "You said yellow, didn't you?" Tanya asked.

  Crystal nodded. "I might not have noticed it if he was by himself, you know. Maybe his light just looks not quite right because of the video quality. But standing between the other two it was as clear as day. Not the guy who was handcuffing the demon, but one of the two standing to the side. One of them glowed yellow."

  Tanya sat up a bit, turning and sharing a look with me that asked, What fresh hell is this? before settling against my right side.

  Okay, so maybe that was just my interpretation of the look. I wanted to focus on the weird thing on the side of one guy's head, noticeable but not well-defined in the grainy video, because one of the boys had ment
ioned seeing something similar.

  "We know white means gifted, like us," Tanya said, "and red means demon. What could yellow mean?"

  Crystal shook her head. "I haven't seen anyone else like that, I swear."

  "Assuming what you say is true," Mrs. Fields began, "then isn't it just as important that the...ahem...yellow man was working with the white men and helping them arrest the...the...red man?"

  "Sounds like a bad plot for a Crayola Spaghetti Western," I mumbled into Tanya's hair, which earned me a gentle nudge.

  I'd forgotten about Mrs. Fields' hearing, however, because she laughed as well. "I'm sorry. It's not a very politically correct way of saying it, is it?"

  The news came back on, a mix of different voices from affiliate stations giving two- and three-sentence headline updates, which focused on either a decrease in the number of reports of light-induced paranoia and hallucinations, or no new information in the cases of numerous missing persons.

  Crystal focused intently on the screen, watching each flash of video, scrutinizing each television personality.

  Other events received brief coverage, but not enough to give any indication whether the stories were worth further investigation; they were mentioned like a CYA. As in, we're talking about this because we'll get into trouble if we don't.

  In Whitefish, Montana, a medium-sized ski resort town, all the shops and stores were closed, including the hotels. The tourists were gone, and the locals weren't talking to anyone.

  The small Indian reservation at Cherokee Valley in northwestern South Carolina had likewise closed its gates, allowing no one in or out.

  There was a blurb about a downed F-14 Tomcat fighter jet off the coast of San Diego; apparently a pilot lost control during an aircraft carrier landing, ejecting safely before his plane plunged into the Pacific.

  This segued into other military news, reports of all Leave and Liberty canceled for sailors at Lemoore Naval Air Station in California, as well as Whidbey Island, in Washington, though no reasons were given for either. Sailors and Marines from both locations currently on leave in Virginia were urged to contact their bases for further information.