by Adam Dark
“Yeah, they did. She’s totally fine. Just kind of freaked out, I think. But she didn’t have any burns, and I guess the smoke was just enough to make her cough and lightheaded for a while. They released her a couple hours later.”
“Good.” Ben picked at his cuticle. “What about you?” There it was—the proof that he cared. Their eyes met, and he hoped she could tell how much he meant it.
April tilted her head and straightened it again—a shrug so noncommittal, it didn’t even involve her shoulders. “I’m fine. I mean, it was weird, right?” She laid her palms on the table and leaned forward again, her voice dropping to just above a conspiratorial whisper. “Like, who sets their date’s hair on fire?”
Ben raised his hand in a gesture of mock oath-taking. “I promise, I am not one of those guys.” He wanted to eat the words the minute he finished the sentence; he hadn’t thought that one through, and a knot sank in his stomach as he waited for her to respond. But she didn’t correct him; she didn’t say this wasn’t a date, or that she wasn’t his date. She didn’t confirm one or the other of those things, either, so he counted this one as neither a complete failure nor a scored win for Team Ben.
The smile she gave him was that devastatingly vague expression women were so good at putting on when they didn’t want anyone to know what they were thinking—the one that said, ‘Aw, you’re so cute,’ but absolutely nothing else. Did he want to be cute?
“You heard them, when we were sitting by the fire,” April said, thankfully moving on from his potentially back-tracking attempt to make her laugh again. He nodded. “That girl sounded like she was having a pretty good time until she started screaming. Honestly, that’s what I keep thinking about. Trying to figure out what would make somebody go from apparently enjoying the night to burning people. And houses.”
Yeah, Ben knew exactly what that something was—demons, evil spirits, hungry beings desperate to bring down more souls with them. She would have had a lot more to think about and probably a lot more of her own sanity to question if she’d seen the total blackness of the guy’s eyes right before he flicked that lit joint into the basement window. Ben blew a puff of air through his lips and tried to pass himself off as clueless. “I have no idea,” he said. “The whole thing was pretty creepy.”
Their server returned with their coffee, and Ben cleared his throat. April said they were ready to order, so he randomly picked the lobster benedict while she ordered a veggie omelet. So much for not feeling rushed. She grinned at the server and thanked her before the girl walked away with their orders. Then she opened two of those annoying little half-and-half cups and dumped them into her coffee with three brown packets of raw sugar. Ben felt like an idiot when he did the exact same thing to his own coffee and hoped she didn’t notice—or think he was trying to copy her.
“I heard a few people talking, too,” she said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted, though she focused on stirring up her drink instead of looking at him. “About how you tried to get them out. Tried to warn them.”
Oh, great. People were talking about him. That was just one more thing on the list of crap he didn’t need right now. “I mean, I didn’t really do anything,” he replied, trying to shrug it all off. “We couldn’t get the door open. I don’t know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t smashed that window.” He looked up at her, feeling guilty and useless and pretty much like a giant fraud.
April’s eyes were wide and her eyebrows raised, as if she could see right through him. “I’m just a quick thinker, I guess. Heard you guys banging on the door and figured maybe it was jammed or something.” She leaned closer. “But you can’t say you didn’t really do anything. A couple guys told me at the hospital that no one would have paid attention to the broken window if you hadn’t been there trying to get them to listen to you. That you were the only one who didn’t panic and did everything you could to get everyone out.”
A nervous laugh fell out of his mouth as he stirred the spoon around and around in his cup. “Oh, I definitely panicked. A little.” He didn’t like where this was headed, but he forced himself to look up at her again. “I mean, I wasn’t gonna just stand around and watch the house burn down with all those people inside. But it’s not like I’m a hero or anything. I don’t… that’s not me.” Ben shook his head and took a long drink of his coffee, wishing he could think of anything else that wasn’t entirely lame but would still effectively change the subject.
“Me neither.” She picked up her own cup but kept studying him over its rim when she took a sip. It wasn’t the first time Ben felt like a specimen of some newly discovered species; so many people had looked at him like that when he was a kid, he couldn’t help but imagine April when she got home after brunch, scribbling furiously away in some notebook all the mental notes she’d taken during their meal and all the oddities she’d catalogued. ‘Ben Robinson—definitely something weird about this one.’
Wanting to diffuse this little bit of strange tension with something familiar, he fell back into his mock confidence and smirked. “What else did people say about me?” The cockiness behind the way he wiggled his head was intentionally over the top, and it did make her laugh and roll her eyes.
“Yeah, that was pretty much it,” she said and wrinkled her nose. “Sorry.” Ben just nodded, congratulating himself on his minor success in turning the dangerous path of this conversation into something they could take a little less seriously. “There was nothing wrong with the door.”
His stomach dropped. “What?”
“I mean, I totally get it. I can’t imagine how scared everyone was when they realized there was a raging fire coming up from the basement. Makes it hard to think clearly.”
“That’s not…”
She glanced up at the ceiling, like she was trying to remember. “That guy with the sunglasses on his head?” Ben nodded. One of those big dudes who’d tried to help him bash the door down with the ridiculously heavy lamp. “He was at the hospital too for a burn.” He just kept nodding, feeling like one of those bobbleheads on a dashboard but entirely unable to stop. “Said he got it when he tried to open the door. I don’t know how we started talking, but he was telling me all that, and then one of his friends showed up. Said he’d stayed to watch the firefighters put out the rest of the fire. That they went to go check the rest of the house, maybe to see if anyone else was in there, I guess. But they just opened the front door and walked right in.”
Ben thought he’d been staring at her just a little too long, so he forced himself to blink. “Weird.” Then he took another huge drink of hot coffee just to stop himself from saying anything even weirder.
“Yeah, that’s what the guys at the hospital thought, too.” She glanced around the restaurant, like she thought someone might be listening, then raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. I think it’s a little too weird.” The hesitant look she gave him when she bit her bottom lip almost broke his resolve. “Did you see anything else?”
He swallowed. “Just a lot of smoke.” And a demon possessing the guy who started it all. And visions of his own agonizing death as he burned alive mixed with the memories of that night with Peter he’d tried and failed to block out every day since. No big deal.
“Sorry.” April shook her head and smiled down at her mug. She was graceful about it, but he caught the bright pink splotches flaring just on her cheekbones and nowhere else. “Maybe I’m just a little more shaken up than I thought.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s totally okay.” God, he felt awful. Why was he putting her through this? She’d saved his life—all their lives. She deserved to know what had actually happened, whether or not the truth made her never want to talk to him again. Ben knew exactly what it felt like to be so sure of something and still wonder if it was real or the beginning stages of complete insanity. Peter had said it was better that no one else knew, that Ben didn’t tell April what was really going on, but Peter had dipped out—on their friendship, on their history, on whatever
chance there might be that Ian was still somehow in that house, stuck there for eleven years since that night. So screw it. He could tell her. “Hey—”
And, of course, that was when their food arrived. April looked pleasantly surprised, pulling out of her brief embarrassment to gaze down at their brunch, and all the courage Ben had built up in the last few seconds came spilling out of him like air out of a released balloon; the only thing missing was the deflating sound of it all being ripped out of him. His lobster benedict smelled amazing, but he wasn’t even hungry now.
When they told their server everything looked great and they didn’t think they needed anything else, the woman left them for her other tables, and Ben considered his plate. It would be totally weird now if he didn’t eat it.
“Were you gonna say something?” April asked, cutting off the first bite of her omelet with the side of her fork.
Ben stuck out his bottom lip. “Nope.” He leaned over his plate to jam his own first bite into his mouth and forced himself to chew it at the speed of a normal person.
“How is it?”
He swallowed. “Really good.” It was.
8
That brunch had gone way better than he’d expected in some ways. Most ways. And only a few things had fallen outside the acceptably enjoyable margin. Really, the uncomfortable parts came from her wanting to talk about the party Friday night and the weird things that had happened and the even weirder things she’d apparently been told by the two beefcakes who’d tried to help him bust down the door. Ben couldn’t believe he’d used the word beefcake, even just in his own head.
He couldn’t for the life of him remember what else they’d talked about while he’d been trying not to wolf down his lobster benedict and disgust her completely with his eating habits. But the conversation had been light, friendly, skimming the surface of their own lives while the weirdness of the failed frat party churned underneath, like a massive sea monster waiting to burst up from the depths and attack. When they’d finished and paid for their meals—April had insisted their server split the checks, and Ben never even had a chance to suggest otherwise—she’d told him she had some schoolwork to finish and dinner plans with her parents. Then she’d told him to text her if he wanted to meet up again during the week.
Now, he sat on his couch, thinking about the way she’d hugged him in the parking lot—just a little longer than what was normally considered polite and platonic—and the smell of coconut coming from her soft blonde hair. He definitely wanted to take her up on the offer of “meeting up again”. Problem was, he had absolutely no idea what they’d do. He wasn’t going to bring her back here to his place; that held too many expectations he knew would go wildly unmet, and while his apartment was decidedly filthy, nothing had motivated him enough to even attempt cleaning it up. Going to the movies was pretty much a wash, and it felt like trying to date in high school. A drive out to Quincy Bay and a walk along the water might have been nice, but it was too wickedly cold in November, and what else was there to do on a weeknight that didn’t involve getting wasted or spending too much money or completely humiliating himself? Not to mention the fact that he’d almost told her everything and might not be able to hold it all in the next time they hung out—not if she pushed him about it a second time even a little. Man, he had no idea what he was doing.
So he pulled the massive stack of books out of his backpack and laid them out beside him on the couch. He skimmed over the titles—variations on the traditional beliefs and superstitions regarding “keeping bad spirits at bay.” He was working from these texts of Christianity, Judaism, Chinese Folklore, Hinduism, Shinto, and Buddhism. He hadn’t picked a working title yet for his undergraduate dissertation, which he found a little concerning. But Dr. Montgomery had said it was fine, then added the amused warning that it would probably change a few times anyway depending on whatever new turns the content of his paper might take as it developed. She’d told him this with a weird air of excited mystery, like undergraduate theses were unknown creatures hatching out of thin eggshells to take on whatever shape they wanted, and the author had no control over what that might be.
Yeah, he could pick a title—Practical Application of Hunting and Eradicating Secular Demons in the 21st Century: How to Stop Running and Ensure the Avoidance of Being Possessed, Trapped in Houses, or Burned Alive at Parties. Why not go the comedic route? Make it over-the-top, glaringly cynical, a well-researched paper with plenty of credible sources and a summary of his own experiences, peppered with dry sarcasm to ensure no one could possibly think he took himself too seriously. That sounded like a self-help book for nutjobs.
He opened one of the books on Chinese Folklore and skimmed through the different tales, this time looking through a completely different lens—not the specifics of what this culture’s people did to protect themselves from potential demonic interaction but what the legendary heroes themselves did to chase down these dark forces. After already having been through most of the book, he knew so many of these stories relied on trickery and deceit, fighting fire with fire. Somehow, he doubted the powerful spirits or whatever that still existed today had remained in a static state of ignorance, that whatever deceptions he might come up with would be something new. Just like the content of horror movies or the availability of thrilling activities for the masses, pharmaceutical availability or even political correctness, these demons had to change with the times, keep up with their prey—adapt and evolve.
Ben’s phone chimed, and he considered ignoring it until it occurred to him it might be April. But instead, he found a text from Peter.
‘I have something I think you might wanna see.’
No, ‘Hey, sorry about yesterday,’ or ‘Yeah, I know I’m an asshole.’ Just a random thing to share and Peter acting like nothing ever happened.
‘What is it?’ Ben texted back.
‘Not really something that makes sense over the phone.’
Oh, that wasn’t ominous at all. Or helpful. The thought of texting his next question in actual words was humiliating and felt a little too much like crossing a line—both with Peter and with himself—he wasn’t quite ready to look at just yet. So instead, he scrolled through the emojis on his phone and picked the purple smiley face with devil horns, followed by a question mark.
The three dots where Peter’s next message would come hung there on his screen longer than he would have liked. He couldn’t pretend to imagine what his friend might be trying to type, but the result was anticlimactic for all that waiting.
‘Not really.’
Well, that was a relief—something else that was better seen and not talked about over the phone, mysterious and apparently important enough for Peter to forget his anger and tell Ben he had to show him something. Ben wanted to throw his phone, but even though the floors of his apartment were carpeted and would make for a soft landing, he knew he never would.
‘You busy?’ Peter sent.
That had been something of a codeword for them after that first year of trying to piece their adolescent lives back together, first given over their parents’ landline phones, then in their own private emails in high school, then eventually in texts. It still meant the same thing.
‘No. I’ll be there in a bit.’
* * *
“A bit” turned out to be more like an hour before Ben finally got into his car for the twenty-minute drive to Peter’s. Honestly, he was still a little pissed off about the “crazy” comment. Peter had written him off just like everyone else after Ben opened up about his dream that maybe wasn’t a dream and what the potentially-not-dream Ian had told him. It was a crappy, passive-aggressive way to tell his friend he hadn’t gotten over it yet, but Peter didn’t text him again to ask where he was. Maybe he’d gotten the point.
When he knocked on the front door of Peter’s apartment, his friend just yelled at him to come in. Ben stepped inside to find Peter at the sink, wearing dish gloves, scrubbing the dishes with soap and a brush before loading them i
nto the dishwasher. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning,” Peter replied. He turned off the faucet, closed the dishwasher, and took off the gloves. “I know. It’s still a foreign concept to you.”
“Like that it is, yeah.” The guy had always had some perfectionistic tendencies, despite how often he was sick or how many physical ailments he’d already endured, but this was taking it a little too far.
Peter turned to face him, raised his eyebrows, and opened his hands in a little shrug. “I wasn’t just gonna sit around waiting for you to show up.”
Touché, then; he’d definitely picked up on the fact that Ben’s taking so long to get here was intentional. The banter was familiar, skirting around whatever it was neither one of them wanted to say aloud. This time, though, things were abnormally tense. This time, the idea of them finally drifting apart and out of each other’s lives felt like an actual possibility. Ben folded his arms and jerked his head up in a nod. “You wanted to show me something?”
“Yeah…” Peter wiped his nose and stalked toward his gray couch and the black coffee table in front of it. He stopped and stared at the table for a minute, which had absolutely nothing on it, then bent over and removed a book from the low shelf under the table. The thing was huge, thousands of pages, wrapped in the thick plastic jacket found on every hardcover library book. It dropped on the table with a loud thump, then Peter took a step backward and vigorously rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s some… interesting stuff in here.”