Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  At night, under the stars, he tells you stories from his own ancestors, who were the first to inhabit this strange and ever-changing landscape. His favorites are tales of the trickster, Kokopelli, a god among men who would travel from village to village, bringing spring and fertility wherever he traveled with his magic flute. Whenever you ask exactly how Kokopelli brought fertility to the women of his people, Colt just smiles mischievously and says, “Let me show you.”

  Even after you’ve made love, you still can’t bring yourself to share with him the news of your own fertility. Do you think he’ll be angry? Do you think it will change the way he looks at you? It’s hard to say, but something makes the word “pregnant” wither as soon as you’ve gathered it on your tongue.

  Eventually, however, once the forests and mountains give way to sweeping prairies, you start to notice the swelling bump of your belly . . . which means that soon so will he. And because you still don’t have the courage to say the words, you wait until one night, nestled in the prairie grass, as Colt leans in to kiss you. Before his lips can meet yours, you sweep open the fur coat he made for you, and you place his hands on your bare stomach.

  He stares into your eyes for the longest time, only breaking away to glance down at your belly. “Really?” he whispers finally, just to be sure, and you nod.

  The way he smiles at you is the biggest relief of all. When you wake up later that night, you find his head tucked under your chin, the ghostliest touch of his fingers still resting protectively over your belly.

  You reach the cities to the east just in time, because the chill of winter is settling into the landscape, and you’re growing large enough that travel on foot is becoming difficult. You stop in the major cities—Washington, DC, first, then up to Philadelphia, New York, and finally Boston. But the closer you move to civilization, the more Colt changes. It’s not that he doesn’t love you. In fact, if anything, he’s grown more protective as his child grows within you. The cities bring with them a different species of danger from the wilderness of the frontier, but Colt seems especially distrustful of the city folk and their fast-paced lifestyle. You can tell he’s more at ease out in the wild.

  Then there’s the secrecy. In each city you visit, mostly at night, Colt meets with strange men, offering only the vaguest explanations as to how he knows them. “Business associates” he calls them frequently, but you never see what sort of business transactions occur between them. From what little you can tell, as you eavesdrop, they bring Colt news about his various interests and tasks he entrusted them with before his disappearance. But how did a man with so much invested here end up washing ashore on your distant islands in the middle of the great ocean? How does he know so much about wilderness survival, in isolated patches of the frontier that few men have ever seen . . . but also have such deep social and business involvements with the Americans?

  And where did he accumulate the money that magically waits for you in banks in every city?

  Neither you nor Colt blend in with the city people. Maybe it’s Colt’s wealth that encourages the people here to be more tolerant of your presence. Colt maintains a compelling level of respect from and control over the men who visit him that leads you to believe he’s more their boss than their equal.

  In Boston your journey finally seems to have come to a complete stop, at least until the baby is born. Colt sets the two of you up in a cozy but lavishly furnished home in Boston’s North End, in the shadow of the North Church’s steeple. It’s warm, it’s luxurious . . . and you resent it. You’ve spent your entire life sleeping under the stars. This is . . . safe. With or without child, you’re the most powerful goddess in all the islands.

  Now you find yourself cooped up in a musty armchair, with a roaring fire in the fireplace and an absentee lover who comes and goes with increasing frequency.

  That’s why, one night, you decide to tail him.

  The baby bump doesn’t exactly make for a very agile Pele, but fortunately, what you lack in stealth, your supernatural abilities compensate for. It takes a little bit of concentration, but you summon a thick fog, which rolls off Boston Harbor and into the narrow streets.

  Shrouded in the mist, you follow Colt at a distance, far enough away that he won’t hear the pad of your bare feet on the wet stone, or catch any shadows you cast in the lantern light. He follows the curve of the road until he reaches the Charles River Bridge. The toll collector nods curtly at Colt as he strides past with purpose, headed for Charlestown on the opposite side of the river.

  The same tollman eyes you as you slip past him. You can’t be sure what’s raised his hackles more—your skin color, or the nine-month swell of your belly. Either way, he lets you pass with an “Evenin’, ma’am” that sounds more like a question than a pleasantry.

  The fog you’ve created is so effective that you momentarily lose sight of Colt. You briefly entertain the idea that maybe he sensed you on his heel and broke out into a run, disappearing off into the streets and alleys of Charlestown on the opposite riverbank.

  When you let the fog dissipate just enough to see a little farther, you discover that he’s actually stopped partway across the bridge.

  He’s not alone either.

  The redhead’s hair is pulled so tight to her skull that you mistake her for a man at first. It’s not until you see the subtle swell of her breasts under her green cloak that you gather that she’s a woman. Colt rarely collaborates with female business associates, from what you saw before he became more secretive about his work, so this is unusual to begin with.

  Unless she’s not an associate of his at all. Even as you go to strike that unthinkable image from your mind, the girl flashes a smile at Colt that’s very unbusinesslike.

  And then they kiss.

  You freeze, your hands unconsciously straying to your swollen stomach. You watch in horror, with a rising, uncontrollable heat building in you. For months now you’ve resisted any sort of volcanic transformation for fear that the child growing in you might lack your resistance to fire. Now, however, it’s a struggle to stop the slow boil of your blood. How could he? All this time, holing you up in that insufferable apartment under the guise of coddling you and keeping you safe, and he was off gallivanting with ginger-headed waifs, making a fool of you—of you! The goddess, brought low by this thieving Irish whore?

  Colt has his back to you, but the redhead’s eyes flutter open from the kiss. At first she blinks dreamily, but then she squints at your outline, at your hands almost clawing into your own stomach.

  Control is slipping away from you. You don’t want control. The old Pele is taking over, casting aside this weak, domesticated shadow you’ve felt yourself becoming.

  “Colt,” you hear the redhead say. “Do you know this girl standing behind—”

  She doesn’t finish the sentence because a heavy current of water slams into the bridge, an angry torrent that washes over the road and plows into the couple. Colt reflexively latches on to the edge of the bridge, but the tsunami carries the spritely girl over the side and into the Charles. She lets loose a last yelp before the current drags her beneath the surface, a final freckled hand disappearing into the murk as the river carries her out to the harbor and the sea beyond.

  Colt has noticed you at last. He scuttles backward as your hands ignite. His mouth opens, probably to offer some weak protest about how it’s not what it looks like, but you don’t want to hear it. You jet forward and unleash the burning, untrimmed nails on your hands across his cheek and forehead.

  When you pull back to admire the four-lined claw of blood and burns you’ve left on his face, something unusual happens. The wound shimmers ethereally. The skin moves just in the slightest, replacing the fresh burns with even, healthy flesh. The lacerations cinch closed, two weeks’ worth of healing accomplished in just a matter of seconds. Colt wipes the final lingering drops of blood off his face, erasing any last evidence that you’d hurt him.

  If it’s at all possible, you’re even more shocked an
d furious to discover that he’s got abilities of his own. “All this time,” you hiss, “and you’re not even a mortal?”

  He doesn’t seem to hear you though. Instead he’s trembling and gazing down at the harbor waters. “You don’t know what you’ve done, Pele . . .,” he moans. “You really don’t know.”

  You pause. Colt is—apparently—a god whose body heals in an instant. Now he lies before you, overcome with terror . . . but that terror doesn’t seem to be directed at you.

  The waters under the bridge bubble, like a fire was lit beneath them, a fire that you didn’t ignite. As the frothing intensifies, a dark mass rises through the surface.

  The substance isn’t water. The gelatinous oil continues to pile on top of itself until new color emerges within it: a blue flame. Then another. Miniature fires populate the surface of the black ooze like candles from hell. All the while two projections grow from the side of the thing, elongating, thickening, until you recognize them for what they are: arms.

  And when the blue flames angle down to take in Colt, still cowering on the ground, then swivel around to take in you, standing frozen over him, you know that they’re actually eyes.

  Your initial gut instinct is that this abomination is here for you, some hellish demon that’s come to punish you for casting the redheaded outlander into the sea.

  But then Colt speaks. “I didn’t do anything!” he shrieks, pleading at first. “I’m innocent!”

  At first the oil creature doesn’t move. Your concentration is so broken that the flames on your hands extinguish themselves, as though the fire might ignite the oily substance of the beast.

  Then, in the center of the obsidian creature, a tear opens laterally across its flesh, beneath the fiery eyes . . . a mouth. With gray, fist-size teeth, it rasps, “Innocent? Your treachery knows no boundaries. When your lies cut so deep that even a woman who loves you—the mother of your child—desires you harm, then it is time for your reign to end.”

  Colt’s face twists unattractively with anger. “You’re the guilty ones,” he rages. “You tamper with us like we’re broken dolls, meddling in our affairs. Why can’t you just stay in your godforsaken nether realm, and rule yourselves?”

  But his wrath has no effect on the creature. “We’ve been waiting far too long for this, trickster.”

  Colt hops to his feet and succeeds in running a few steps. The creature’s oily arms shoot out, brushing past you, stretching until the emerging claws fasten onto Colt’s shoulders.

  With one hard jerk Colt flies backward over the railing of the bridge and is swallowed into the creature’s voluminous belly.

  Before you can process any of this, or realize that you may have seen your spurned lover, the father of your unborn child, for the last time, the oil creature plunges back into the Charles River.

  You stand there, staring at the river’s surface until the water goes still. Until the bubbles stop rising. Until the fog fades and you can see the moon’s reflection bouncing off the water.

  It’s only when you feel a dampness on your legs, a trickle of liquid running down your thigh, that you snap out of your stupor.

  Because your water has broken.

  THE LONESOME DOOR

  Monday, Part I

  When Ash emerged from her latest vision, she was in the backseat of the rental Escalade, which was in motion. Her head throbbed something fierce as she picked it up off the armrest. Wes sat in one of the middle seats, his seatbelt off as he turned around to tend to her. He held out a Pepsi in one hand and a bottle of Advil in the other.

  “You sure know the way to a girl’s heart,” Ash said, her words a little slurred as she swiped both of them from him. Dehydration had set in for sure, so she popped the tab on the soda first and took a few long, greedy gulps before it had even stopped hissing. “Hello carbonation, my old friend,” she whispered to the soda can.

  “I hate to ask an obvious question,” Wes said, “but how you feeling, champ?”

  Ash popped three pills into her mouth and took another swig of soda. “I’d say my headache is somewhat slightly worse than a hangover, but a step up from permanent brain damage.” She touched the hair that was matted to her forehead. “And I’m feeling feverish enough that I must have somehow contracted malaria in Central Park.”

  “You’ve been fading in and out since we found you on the banks of that pond—almost ten hours ago,” Wes said. “You mumbled an only slightly coherent explanation of what had happened to you. The rest has been gibberish, but from the way you’ve been mumbling and sweating through the night, I’d say you were having some pretty vivid dreams. . . .”

  “And you accused me of creepily watching you in your sleep,” Ash joked. But inside she shuddered, just thinking about this latest vision of her life as Pele.

  She finally took notice of her surroundings. Eve was up front, with a lead foot down on the gas as they coasted along the highway—the Saw Mill River Parkway, she recognized. “We’re heading north?” Ash asked.

  Wes nodded and slipped next to her in the backseat. “Colt and Rose were gone by the time we found you, although Rose left a healthy crater in her wake. Actually, if it hadn’t been for the sound of that explosion, we might not have found you as quickly as we did.” He tried to tuck a sheet he’d stolen from the hotel around her, but she waved it off because she was still feeling feverish. “Anyway,” he went on, “while I was staying up watching you at the hotel, I was half-paying attention to the morning news when they started reporting unexplained explosions throughout Westchester County.”

  Westchester County—Ash’s home of sixteen years before her life at Scarsdale High degenerated into a nightmare.

  Before Eve murdered Lizzie Jacobs in cold blood, just for being a “mean girl,” and Ash was forced to start over three thousand miles away in California.

  Now Rose was clearly tearing her way through Ash’s old stomping grounds.

  “Nobody’s been hurt so far,” Wes continued, “just a few buildings damaged here and there—but those explosions were around dawn, when the streets were empty. Even now, people are waking up to go to work. If we don’t catch your sister soon . . .”

  “Where exactly in Westchester were these explosions?” Ash asked.

  Wes scrunched his eyes shut as he tried to remember from the news broadcasts. “So far, Silver Lake, Tarrytown Music Hall, Saxon Woods Golf Course, and . . . Sarah Lawrence College.”

  Ash’s grip tightened around the headrest in front of her. Shit, she thought as the pieces started to come together. What if Rose wasn’t just heading through Westchester County? What if it was actually her destination?

  Ash unbuckled her seatbelt and squeezed between the seats so that she was closer to her sister. “Eve,” she said, “please tell me you see the pattern in the places Rose has been choosing to visit?”

  Eve turned down the Led Zeppelin song that was spilling out of the front speakers. “What’s the big deal, Ash? We were in New York City, and now she’s moving north. She could be headed for her hometown, or the Canadian border. . . . Who the hell knows?”

  Ash shook her head. “Where did you always sneak off to to see rock concerts when you were dating that metalhead?”

  Eve shrugged. “The Tarrytown Music Hall.”

  “And that summer when Dad insisted we take golf lessons and kept dragging us to the driving range, he took us to Saxon Woods. I used to sneak off to Silver Lake in Rich Lesley’s pickup truck while we were still together. And Sarah Lawrence was—”

  “Where Mom took me for a college visit right before I ran away. I get it, I get it. So the crazy little tyke is . . . what, visiting places from our childhood?”

  “You and I started having visions of Rose last year, while we slept,” Ash said excitedly. “Because we all came from the same person, there’s clearly still some psychic link between the three of us. Which means that if we could see her life through her eyes, then there’s a very good chance she’s been reliving moments from our lives as well
. The girl can barely make sense of what she’s experienced in her own body; maybe now she’s looking for answers by revisiting the other places she’s seen, popping in and out of portals at key milestones from our lives.”

  Eve drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “A college, a concert hall, a driving range, the lake where you’d straddle your dumb-ass ex-boyfriend . . . so where does that leave?”

  The two sisters looked at each other.

  And then Ash’s phone started buzzing.

  She clawed her way into the satchel and found it buried beneath the muddy music box. The screen was newly cracked, probably from when Rose detonated on the banks of Turtle Pond, but Ash could still read the name on the screen:

  Home.

  Thomas and Gloria Wilde had called several times in the past few days just to protectively check in on Ash and make sure she was on her way home with the newly found Eve. Ash had lied, even when it looked like Eve was in cahoots with Colt, saying that the two sisters were just taking their time on the road trip back to Scarsdale.

  Before Ash even picked up, she knew they weren’t just calling to say hello this time.

  “Mom?” Ash asked once she’d clicked the call button.

  There was a short, static-filled silence on the other end, and she could hear her parents whispering to each other before her father put the phone back to his ear. He cleared his throat. “Sweetheart, we’re having a . . . bit of an unusual morning here at the Wilde residence.”

  There was the sound of a slight tremor in the background—not like a bomb had gone off, but as though a train had passed near the house.

  The Wilde house was nowhere near a train.

  Ash buried her face in her free hand. “I’m going to take a wild guess,” she said. “There’s a girl in the house who looks like she could be related to Eve and me. She probably hasn’t said much of anything. And the house is mysteriously rumbling.”