by Koby E Hill
The next morning, Alice was unceremoniously informed by Craig that Tobias had had an early session in the QR and was finally able to pick up the name that the woman had supposedly asked about both times that she was in the courthouse. “Andrew Wicker," Craig said, as he turned his back politely to allow Alice to get changed. “He’s not entirely sure where the warrior connection came from, but we’re working on that.”
They researched the name and the history around the area of the courthouse that the woman had visited, and had discovered that an “Andrew Wicker” had resided in the town, but had died ten years ago from an apparent brain aneurysm. They were going to travel that day to the town and needed Alice with them to consult. They set out in a rickety van that was far from the black SUV style they’d sent out to pick up Alice. Craig said that it was meant to make them look less “suspicious”. Alice snidely reminded him that they are, indeed, chasing after a psychic.
The town of Trendor was small and a mere five-hour drive from Crowden. The plan set forth was proposed by a joint effort of Craig and Emmett, who wanted to search both the courthouse and retrieve a background history on this Andrew Wicker. A quick internet search gave up an abundant amount of people with similar names, but only two of whom resided in Trendor or nearby. They were two women, both of whom neglected to consistently update their Facebook pages. It was a long shot, but perhaps they could tell them about a familial connection, or perhaps any other strange occurrences involving this long-haired psy. Alice wasn’t counting on any of this working, but she was happy to allow other people to take the helm on this one, as her efforts did not seem to have been appreciated in the past. Plus, it was a car ride, and perhaps she could take another visit to the gallery while the rest of the team prattled on.
Emmett wanted to drive, which put Craig beside him, and Tobias and Ella in the middle. Alice took the back seat after offering it to Ella with her wheelchair. She was having more of a middle-of-the-road day—her feet were aching but hands felt okay. She wasn’t able to make any more contact last night, and was also going to use the van ride as a chance to catch up on sleep. Tobias said very little to her as he climbed into the van. He had a phoney smile, and quickly opened up his tablet to play some game that looked like a modern Tetris.
They set out early in the morning, so no one really wanted to actually engage in a conversation. Alice was happy with this. She sat with her legs up in the backseat, took out one of her headbands, and wrapped it around her eyes. Her left-eye was throbbing, but she put it aside as the early morning rise, or perhaps a change in the environment. She’d be living and thriving in the woods for the past three years, with no sounds and stimulation beyond that of crickets and rainfall. The constant clattering of keys on keyboards, breaths that emoted coarsely in sleep, slamming and tapping of different kinds of shoes, punching-in of different heartbreaks and the swirl of unorganized thoughts may be a bit of a change for the eye to deal with. This was something that hadn’t crossed her mind when she’d arrived at Crowden, but knew that she could learn to deal with the extra levels of stimulation. After all, what else was she going to do in a world without both Claire and Crowden?
Emmett and Craig were talking in the front seats while Ella and Tobias cruised within their own worlds. Their thoughts for now were still and easy. Emmett’s, on the other hand, were abrupt, rude, and all-around cringe-worthy. In between exchanges with Craig, he would suddenly think about how much he hated Alice and wished she wasn’t invited back to Crowden. He referenced their last mission several times, and how immensely he felt she was responsible for the fuck up.
Ghost eye—what fucking bullshit. If it wasn’t for her, we would have easily caught that Axel bastard. Fucking twat muffin sitting back there like she owns the fucking city.
Thoughts, of course, didn’t run as linear as this, but it was the gist of what Alice was able to formulate. Eventually, she was starting to get irritated.
“You know I’m able to read minds right, Emmett?”
Emmett glanced backwards into the rearview mirror. Alice had lifted her makeshift blindfold and saw his old face reflected in the slit of the mirror, attempting to appear as innocent as his wrinkled exterior tried to convince. “Hmm? What’s that you’re muttering back there, Alice?”
“If you were any better at telekinesis, we could be having this conversation in silence.” Alice saw Craig lift his eyes to the mirror. His face was much more enjoyable to look at.
“Well, maybe if you didn’t fucking vomit your lungs up every time you projected, we wouldn’t be sitting in this fucking tuna can like some psychic morons, would we?”
Alice clapped her hands together, not realizing that she had woken up Ella. “Oh, that’s a creative one! I hope you wrote it down before you said it.” She sat up from her laying position. “And for your information, the fault in not catching Axel the first time wasn’t just on me, it was on us all. So, you might want to start thinking of some new material for the ride back.”
This time, it was Emmett’s turn to chuckle. The road they were driving on was rocky, so their bodies were moving side to side and shattering their sentences. It was like they all had suddenly developed hiccups.
They were barely an hour into their ride, driving under bruised dark skies on an open road when this argument ensued.
“Oh, that’s rich isn’t it, Alice? Easy for a person who just fucked off to her corner of the woods for three years because she didn’t want to deal with the guilt! Tell me, if you’re supposedly one of the most powerful psies out there, why can’t you take responsibility for your lack of concern, hmm? Why can’t you realize that you may have done something wrong for once in your life?”
“It’s not my fault that you are your age and still unable to master your abilities; I’m my age and have a vagina, and have learned already how to use them distinctly. And you should probably learn soon how to take it easy, Emmett. From my perspective, your heart rate has rapidly elevated, and you’re at risk for a heart attack in about thirty seconds.”
“Alice!” Craig finally chimed in. “That’s enough.”
“No, no, Craig, I don’t think it is.” Emmett was facing the road, but was squeezing the wheel hard, to the point where Alice could see his bones poking out through his thin skin. “I think it’s about time we all get it all out there and express our lack of appreciation for the oh-so-powerful royal Alice, who cares more about fucking a married woman than saving people from imminent death.”
By then, everyone in the car was awake. Ella leaned on her hand and was looking out the window. Tobias had headphones on, but his heart rate had elevated dramatically since the two started bickering.
“I’m sorry I get more pussy than you Em, that’s not my problem—”
“Oh fuck you Alice—”
Craig had opened his mouth to scream at them, like two petulant children on a road trip, when something below the van exploded.
It seemed to come from the front of the van, as it was flipped over perfectly, like a rope was tied to its front hood and pulled to raise it up in the air. Alice didn’t even realize that they’d gone into midair and been flipped over until she woke up with her head squished against the roof of the vehicle. She still had her seatbelt on, so she was still being held in place. The scent of gasoline and the emission of aromas coming from the engine piped her into reality. She opened both her eyes wide, and scanned the scene quickly.
Ella’s wheelchair had been tipped sideways, and she was leaning against the side window. She couldn’t see any blood, but she was definitely unconscious from the impact. Tobias wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, so his body had fallen entirely onto the roof of the van, which now acted as its bottom. He was coughing, and wasn’t unconscious, but there was blood streaming out of his mouth. He spat out more blood—a candy-apple red.
“Tobias! Are you okay?”
Tobias shook his head from side to side while he crawled along the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Check on Em and Craig, I hav
e to get Ella out.” Alice spat out her orders, noticing some of her own blood firing out of her mouth. Tobias followed suit, and she observed him as he tried to shake Craig awake. Alice unclipped her seatbelt and braced herself as her body crashed to the floor. She observed that Emmett’s body was pushed up against the windshield, and she felt a wave of guilt pass through her spine.
She touched Ella’s hands lightly, knowing that they get overly sensitive when Ella’s body is stressed. She didn’t wake, so Alice began going to work on sliding the van door open. She had to shake it a couple times, but eventually, it moved with ease as if it were upright. At the same time that she wrapped her arms around Ella’s waist, she felt a burst of heat erupt behind her. She thought the engine was going to catch fire, and Emmett’s face was pressed up against the windshield. But in either scenario, Ella’s body and wheelchair were in the way of escape, so it was best to remove her first before she aided Tobias in getting Craig and Emmett out of the car. Anxiety passed through her mind in a flash and she thought about her vision in the QR again; her father’s eyeless face beginning to make a meal of her eye.
Ella had a small body, so moving her was like moving a feather with your single finger. She glided her body out of the van with ease, and placed her softly by the side of the road on a patch of grass. She went back to help Tobias as the flames smoking from the front of the car grew higher, but felt something pull her backwards. She had to blink hard to bring herself back to the present, and tried to step forward again, but the force pushed her back with rough dedication.
“What the fuck.” Alice was being pulled by an invisible rope she felt around her waist, through the street on her back. It was like a stiff wind that had the power to move her, and was dragging her over the jagged rocks of the dirt road. Instinctively, Alice tried to grab hold of something—someone, but found that there was nothing to grab. She endured thirty-seconds of being pulled by an invisible force, up the road that they had been traveling on. Alice was only wearing jeans and a thin t-shirt, so she could feel the rocks poking through and scraping against her skin. She swore gargantuan loudly, then tried to focus on stopping her body from its tireless movement. Just as she was beginning to do so, she projected that her body was spun around by the feet and launched forward like she was on a rubber band, eventually stopping naturally due to momentum. She was out of breath and laying on her side.
Alice pressed her fingers hard into the road beneath her. It was warm from her skin being dragged over it. She could feel her neck throbbing from the drop on the ceiling of the van. Her heart was punching against her ribs as she clutched her chest, trying to breathe deeply and come back into the moment. She kept her eyes closed for as long as she felt was necessary to center herself.
Because time was of the essence, and the lives of her team were on the line, Alice forced herself to open her eyes, the right good-eye first. It was blurry from the tears that were filling them from the smoke of the van, as well as the abrupt jolt of pain from being dragged down a dirt road. The sky was a dark grey, and the road was still empty. But there was an outline in the distance that she hadn’t noticed when she first left the van with Ella. She blinked the tear out of her eye and sat up. There was a figure in the distance that started out small, but was beginning to increase in size. It had a small body and an exceptionally large head.
Alice held onto one side of her body with one hand and used the other to ruse from the group. She stumbled, but kept her focus on the figure ahead of her. The figure was slowly creeping out of the blurred darkness, and she was soon able to make out that it was the body of a woman in a long, wine-colored dress. The entire road was silent beyond the hiss of gasoline leaking out of the van, as well as an obvious chirp of a nearby bird. The fields that book-ended the road were both littered with corn-stalks, but not a tender was in sight. Alice wasn’t sure why, but she felt fear rising in her stomach as she slowly filled in the appearance of this stranger that was coming towards her. Her left eye was pinched shut, and she realized she was also afraid to open it.
Alice took a step back and tried to get herself together. She breathed in, and out, in and out, the way that psies before her had taught her to center herself when her sensations overwhelmed her. She raised a hand in submission, and chose to speak out loud.
“I don’t know what you want, but we’re not here to—”Alice’s jaw slammed shut, piercing her tongue in the process. She yelped silently in pain.
The figure had stopped walking, and was standing in the middle of the road, some ten feet away from Alice. She tried to open her left eye, and realized that it wasn’t that she was afraid to open it, but that she was actually physically unable to part her eyelids. She tasted blood in her mouth as she stepped forward, getting a closer look at this thing’s abnormally large head. Alice stopped walking when she suddenly realized what it was—a gargantuan mask that resembled that of a male head. The male head had no eyes; just empty sockets that appeared to dissolve into black oblivion.
Alice felt her body seizing from the inside. A fear that was so palpable ran from her toes to the tips of her fingers, oil-like and slow, like molasses. The figure raised its hand up in the air, and flicked its fingers sideways, as if to spin some invisible object. Alice felt like her bones had turned to metal, and this stranger was able to control it. She froze, her breath caught in her throat. The figure walked towards her, and stopped within inches of her face. It touched her forehead with its thumb, and whispered before pressing hard in the center: “Amentia”.
Alice’s body immediately folded into a fetal position, falling to the ground first on her knees and then tilting to the side like a rag doll.
Inside the mask, the figure was smiling. It turned its head toward the flipped vehicle and snapped its fingers. Immediately, the flaming ignited into another explosion, turning the entire van into an instant bonfire. Ash began raining above the figure’s head as it glanced upward in self-satisfaction. It raised its hand over Alice’s unconscious body, and it began hovering in the air. It brought it to its body, and wrapped its arms around it. It once more pressed its finger into Alice’s forehead, and in a swoosh of soundless snap, was gone.
Chapter 7
Alice was shaken awake by an odd sensation of feeling wet. She sat up suddenly and found that she was sitting in a bathtub. She was instantaneously engulfed by the scent of lavender, and moved around enough in the tub to notice that she was splashing pink flower petals out of it. She looked around the room frantically, and took in the sight of stark white linoleum that paneled the walls and floor. For a moment, Alice thought she was back in the QR, experiencing a strange projection that was going to help the team find this mystery female psy. But she knew that she hadn’t ever been in a tub like that before. Actually, she didn’t think she’d ever been in a gold, claw-footed bathtub in her entire life. She looked around the room a second time, but with more ease this time. The walls were decorated in accordance to a white-and-red color scheme, three frames hanging on the walls following the tone to a T. Alice recognized one exterior scene to resemble that of the style of Monet, while the others looked more like a Francis Bacon, or a Salvatore Dali. The color schemes of the pieces seemed to be specifically chosen though—red and white swept the canvas with fierce boldness.
There was a window just above Alice. A small crack just above her that streamed in daylight over the glassy floor. Alice could feel one of her ribs moving jaggedly as she breathed, as well as the streaks of sharpness standing out like heat on a stove on her back and side. Her neck was stiff, and she massaged it, wondering for how long she had been sitting in this tub. Her fingers were not wrinkled from moisture, but she was naked. So she figured she’d been out cold for enough time for the person to undress her and place her in this tub—person, or thing.
Alice placed both ends on the side of the tub and tried to lift herself out. Her hands were weak, and she struggled to elevate the entirety of her body. She managed to place one foot on the bottom of the tub, and just as sh
e elevated her left side out of the water, she noticed a burning sensation emitting from her ankle. She raised it high enough to see that there were deep marks embodied around her left ankle and foot, like something tight had been left on her for a fair amount of time. She was taken aback by the sight, then felt a woozy wave of dizziness rush through her, forcing her to re-lower herself back into the water.
As she did this, she laid her head back, and noted that the water was warm and comfortable.
Alice heard a sound coming from outside the room. It was a person, and they were humming something. Alice’s eyes felt heavy, and she closed them, like lead was pushing down upon her forehead. The door of the bathroom opened, and the humming entered Alice’s surrounding. She was greeted by another smell—still perfume and floral, but more familiar than the lavender that was sprinkled in the tub. She was finally able to open her eyes to see a woman standing there. It was a blonde woman, with youthful-like ringlets washing over her shoulders. She had her hands cupped in front of her in a magnificent posture. Her face was incredibly angular, and older, wiser, more experienced. Her eyelids fluttered with a keen interest, rather than a hesitation that the movement often implied.
“Glorious. You are awake.” Her voice was deep and raspy. Alice felt a chill push through her spine. She also felt too overwhelmed in the moment to entirely open her left eye, so she resolved to keep the right one open, and stared at the woman in a way that was generally considered rude when first making acquaintance.
