Of the Blood

by Joshua Laack

Chapter 9

  She wasn't in school on Friday. Andrew waited through first hour to get to Spanish class, hoping to talk to her there, but her seat was empty. He was disappointed, but couldn't help but look again in study hall. She wasn't there either.

  Jason and Andrew sat alone at lunch, and after seeing the dark look on Andrew's face, Jason said nothing about her absence at the lunch table. The afternoon was worse because even though she hadn't been there all morning, he still looked for her each class, hoping she would change her mind and show up.

  He spent the day in a sort of daze, wondering what she couldn't tell him and where she had gone. He was surprised by the ringing of the final bell. He knew that he had gone to all of his classes and eaten lunch, but his mind was blank. He remembered nothing but looking for her and not seeing her and the thoughts of the previous evening playing over and over again in his mind.

  He climbed in his car and drove home, glad that he didn't have to work. He wasn't sure he could have managed it. The daze he experienced during school accompanied him all through supper with his parents and into bed. The darkness, which had taken a back burner all day to his thoughts, tried to flow into his mind as he lay there, but he shook his head to clear it away so he could continue thinking of Josefina. His thoughts were so focused on her, that Andrew didn't even notice how easily the darkness had been pushed back.

  Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, but Andrew felt none of the warmth that sunlight streaming into a room should bring. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was nine o'clock on a Saturday. He should have been sleeping, but he had been up for over an hour. He went back to staring at the ceiling above him which he had been doing since he had woken up.

  A thought struck him and pulled Andrew up from where he lay. She couldn't tell him, but could he figure it out on his own. He glanced at the computer on his desk. Maybe there were answers out there if he searched for them instead of waiting for someone else to bring them to him.

  Andrew was excited at first, and dove into the research, but after several hours, his head was in his hands. He was exhausted and frustrated at the results of his search. With each passing moment of time spent staring at the screen with no good answers, the darkness pressed down upon him harder, urging him to give up his quest. He was beginning to agree.

  It's not that there weren't some ideas, it was just that none of them fit. There were thousands of pages about people who were faster and stronger than they should have been. Pages talked about medical things like adrenaline rushes. There were people in the grip of fear for loved ones who ran faster than they ever had before. They lifted heavy things, busted down doors and walls and fought off large groups of people. Other sites talked about people who trained all their lives to be able to punch through bricks and run up walls. These people performed feats of strength and skill that amazed Andrew, but couldn't explain the things he had seen from Josefina and her male companion from the road. Still more web sites talked about fantasy ideas like super heroes who could run faster than bullets or jump tall buildings. There were aliens who were vastly different than their human counterparts and could do incredible things, but while Andrew was more familiar with these, they didn't fit with what he had seen either.

  The last suggestion he found was about demons who possessed people and could force their bodies to do things beyond normal limitations. That didn't fit either. None of them fit. Each had aspects that matched, but also many that did not. He shuddered thinking about Josefina as demon possessed. Andrew knew it couldn't be true. Josefina was about as opposite of a demon as it was possible to get. He had seen the light around her and sensed far too much good in her. Demons were a scary thought though. It was far more likely that the other thing that had been chasing him had been a demon than her.

  His blood felt froze in his veins. Andrew shuddered in terror as the truth clicked in his mind. That thing beside the road must have been a demon. He had sensed its presence on the road, and that presence had been dark and evil. A cloud of darkness had rolled off of it. He sat there with his blood frozen, fear pumping his heart faster because Andrew was now thinking about the other thing in his life that felt the same as that dark thing on the road. The reason he had even recognized the feeling of the demon had been because it felt like his own darkness. Shivers of fear wracked Andrew's body.

  “That's not right. It can't be right. Demons can't exist.” The words felt like thoughts in his head, but Andrew recognized something about these words that he had noticed before and passed it off as just strange. These thoughts overlapped his own and now Andrew understood why. They weren't his thoughts.

  The shivers stopped after a while and the terror faded to a fear in the background that was manageable, as long as Andrew didn't think about it too hard. All of his life, Andrew had wished for the worlds of his fantasy books to trade places with the real world. That wish was now coming true and all he could do was wish that it were all a mistake. Fantasy was fun in a book. It was far scarier now that it was mixing with reality.

  Andrew didn't know what to do except try to get through the weekend and hope that Josefina was at school. He didn't know how else to get a hold of her. She was the only one he knew of that had any chance of knowing what to do to help him. He wondered if there was even anything that could be done.

  He went to bed early that night without reading from any of his books. The thought of more fantastical things that might be as real as the terror he had discovered was too much. Instead, he lay in his bed for a long time staring through the darkness at the ceiling above him and trying to pretend that it was all a dream.

  He never expected to fall asleep with the thoughts in his mind, not to mention not even knowing which ones were his and which came from the dark cloud within him. Despite his fear, after a while, sleep came and stole him from terror. His sleep was restless, but if there were dreams, he didn't remember them when he woke.

  The next day, Andrew was up long before his parents were. He considered going with them to church, but none of the things he knew about it promised any help. He thought they would want to send him to a shrink or just lock him in a straight jacket. He considered that possibility several time throughout the day. Maybe he needed to see a shrink.

  He spent a good portion of the day debating himself about that. At least he hoped it was just with himself. If he couldn't figure that out soon, he would need a shrink for sure. By the end of the day, he was still convinced that he wasn't crazy. Reality was the crazy thing.

  Andrew fell into his bed at close to midnight, drained from the mental strain of fear and arguing with himself. As he lay in bed, he just hoped that she would be there tomorrow. If she wasn't, he didn't know what he was going to do.