Shadow Hills

by Anastasia Hopcus

  Having Zach lying in my dorm room with me, his huge hand completely surrounding mine, made my heart race, my blood pound, my every nerve ending sizzle. My lips tingled, and it was all I could do not to press them against his perfect mouth.

  Suddenly, Zach looked startled, confused. Like he had no idea where he was.

  “I didn’t mean to …” His eyes scanned my room as if looking for some kind of clue. “I don’t know how I could have done it. I mean, I can’t do it.” The low rumble of his coarse baritone vibrated through me.

  “What can’t you do? What are you talking about?” The uncertainty in his voice made me anxious.

  Before he could answer, another person came into the room.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I ruining something?” Corinne’s icy gray-green eyes, so much like Zach’s, were flashing. “Were you two lovebirds having a moment?” Sarcasm dripped from her tongue like poison.

  “Corinne, did you do this?” Zach demanded vehemently.

  “Do what?” I practically shouted, forgetting that I should try not to wake Ms. Moore. “What the hell is going on?”

  Corinne ignored my little outburst. “No, I didn’t do this, Zach. You did. Evidently, when it comes to something you care about, you’re much more skilled.”

  “Did you—Is this—” My thoughts flitted away before I could find them.

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head, L.A. We’re leaving.” Corinne gave Zach a piercing look, and they were gone.

  I awoke from my dream with a jolt that sat me up straight, my back rigid. Toy was still snoring away on her bed. I wasn’t sure where her clock was, but it was like a magnet pulling my gaze. There it was in bright green digital numbers: 3:33 a.m. Hekate’s time.

  The worst thing about a new dream was having to record it before I could go back to sleep. The waking “visions” really stuck with me, every detail standing out starkly. But the dreams faded if I didn’t write them down right away. With a small grunt of annoyance, I got up and padded down the hall to my room. Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine forgetting that dream. Especially not Corinne’s whole “when it comes to something you care about, you are much more skilled” comment. Did Zach enter my dream on purpose?

  I pulled the green notebook out of the drawer on my bedside table and quickly jotted everything down. Then I turned around and went back to Toy’s.

  When I woke up the next morning, Toy wasn’t in her bed, but there was a note taped to the inside of her door.

  Phe,

  Thanks for being my guardian angel last night.

  Hope I wasn’t too horribly annoying.

  See you at breakfast!

  —Toy

  I looked around the small dorm room. I hadn’t noticed the night before because it had been too dark, but Toy seemed to be quite a collector. She had two bookshelves filled with tons of graphic novels and a huge vinyl toy collection. I recognized the Frank Kozik toys since my ex-boyfriend Paul had also been a fan. But the thing that really interested me was her crate of records. I’d heard Graham mention that her older brother was a DJ in New York, and from the looks of this collection, Toy was following in his footsteps. I flipped through the albums and saw they were mostly indie hip-hop and grime. I recognized M.I.A., Lady Sovereign, Dizzee Rascal, and The Cool Kids, but I would have to get Toy to play me some of the more underground records. I’d never heard a lot of the stuff she had, and I was always hungry for new music.

  I’d never had a friend like Toy before, but I had a feeling that was just going to make things more interesting. I grabbed my pillow and blanket and headed back to my room.

  Flipping open my laptop, I went to iTunes and turned on TheDeathSet. After my not-so-restful night I needed some crazy-energetic music to feel completely awake. I raked my brush through my snarled, unruly waves—thanks, Massachusetts humidity—then slipped on my shower sandals and grabbed my toiletries bag and towel.

  I was conditioning my hair and humming to myself when the person in the shower next to my stall let out an exasperated groan.

  “Phe. Pleeease stop that,” Adriana whined.

  “How could you tell it was me?” I asked the tile wall in puzzlement.

  “I don’t know,” Adriana’s voice floated back to me. “Maybe because you are humming the same song that was blaring in your room earlier. In case you forgot, we do share one very thin wall.”

  I washed the conditioner out, then turned off the water. Wrapping the towel around myself, I stepped out of the shower. Adriana was standing there, one hand on her bathrobed hip.

  “Sorry. Geez.” I rolled my eyes and walked over to the sinks to brush my teeth.

  “It’s fine,” Adriana relented grumpily. “I just have a bit of a brain-splitting headache this morning.”

  No surprise there.

  “So how was the party after we left?” I asked.

  She tilted her head to one side, thinking, then said in a faintly surprised tone, “Actually, it was fun. Brody’s kind of cool.” Adriana’s smile was enough to make me wonder if she had a crush. “I don’t know that many guys who can drink me under the table, but he was sure keeping pace last night. Plus, I didn’t hate kicking his ass at dominoes.”

  Breakfast hours would have been long over by the time we were dressed if it had been a weekday, but luckily for Adriana and me, the cafeteria served brunch until the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. After we finished eating, Adriana went to tennis practice, and I took a stroll around the campus, trying to decide what to do with my day. I wasn’t going to study until this evening, and I wanted to relax. It was a beautiful day, with just a nip of coolness in the air.

  I was getting used to the softer sunshine in Shadow Hills, and I found I kind of liked it. In L.A. the sidewalks were blinding by midafternoon, but the gray slate walkways that led past the teachers’ cottages were pretty, the rocks faintly sparkling in the light.

  I started walking in the direction of the hospital. The book had been useless, but I was still determined to find out what was going on with the dreams Athena had and the ones I was experiencing now. Maybe there was a reason I was so drawn to the graveyard. There could be something there that would help me. At worst, I’d get a little exercise.

  I hiked up the hill to the hospital and curved around toward the cemetery, then walked through the trees and stopped. The eerie aura of the place still caught me a little off guard.

  I gave myself a shake. Following the rows, I carefully inspected the headstones. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. It seemed unlikely that I’d find an ancient decoder ring for my book.

  As I went farther and farther back, the plots became more crowded. They had been running out of space. Images of disease-ravaged men, women, and children lying all packed together in the old almshouse flashed through my mind. I could smell the sour note of death, like wilting roses. I tried to focus on the moss-covered stones in front of me, but it was hard with my imagination running rampant.

  “Oww!” My right foot came crashing into a rock. “Shit!”

  I sat down on the ground, applying pressure to my big toe as it throbbed fiercely. My flats were about as protective as a pair of socks. The rock I had walked into was masked by a matted tangle of green vines. I crawled a little closer. It appeared to be a well-hidden gravestone. It’s so far away, though. The back row of graves was about fifteen feet from here. The headstone was strangely tucked under a large tree, the roots of which grew up on both sides of the stone, encircling it in a shielding way. Pushing the crawling vines to one side, I looked down at the inscription.

  Lichen almost obscured the crude engraving, but I was able to make it out. This was Rebekah Sampson’s grave. Air whooshed out of my lungs as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I felt light-headed and nauseated. The edges of my vision went dark, like a storm cloud rolling in, obscuring my mind.

  My arms crumpled, and a second later my head hit the tightly packed earth.

  I was in an unfamiliar room, lit only by the sunshine leaking in
around the heavy drapes that covered the windows. My eyes swept across the large glass-doored bookcases filled with leather-bound books. This looked like some old guy’s home office. In the middle of the room sat an imposing mahogany desk with two leather tub chairs in front of it and a traditional wing-back one behind it. I walked around the desk and sank into the buttery-soft armchair.

  The air in the office was soft and thick, like I was submerged in invisible quicksand. I reached out and opened a drawer, my arm moving in slow motion. The drawer was full of files, and I flipped through them until I saw one labeled BVA BANISHMENT DOCUMENTS. Like the Articles of Banishment I found in the secret archives room.

  Curiously, I lifted out the set of papers. The first page was the same as the one I’d already seen: a list of people who had been banished from Shadow Hills. But the page behind it was the Brevis Vita Canon of Ethics, and stapled to it were notes on what rules each of the Banished had violated. I scanned the rest of the pages, attempting to concentrate. Something was wrenching my mind away, tearing at my thoughts. I gritted my teeth and tried harder to read, but my eyesight was swimming. All I could make out was a picture of a man with dark brown hair and a full beard. His face was gaunt, bony like a skeleton, and his eyes were the blackest eyes I had ever seen. Their darkness wasn’t a color; it was harshness and hatred, the very soullessness of evil. Those eyes filled me with terror and revulsion even as they pulled me in. Like I was falling into a pit, an endless well of despair.

  And a moment later I was back. Lying in the graveyard, looking up into the branches of a tree, my head and foot both pulsing with pain. I was flat on my back six feet above Rebekah Sampson’s coffin.

  I sat up, trying to clear my head. Had I actually been led here? I’d literally stumbled over Rebekah Sampson’s grave—could the stuff I’d read about Hekate guiding people be true?

  As usual, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to learn from this vision. I’d never seen that room before, and the insanely creepy-looking guy wasn’t familiar either. And what was it about these Banished people? This was the third reference I’d found to them, but they hadn’t lived in Shadow Hills for more than forty years. Was I supposed to do something about the Banished? The only thing I felt capable of doing right now was freaking out.

  It seemed impossible that Rebekah Sampson could be buried here. I had gotten the impression from Sarah that Rebekah Sampson was away somewhere, not dead. I wished I could remember exactly what Sarah had said about her. Was it that she hadn’t been here for a while? That she was gone? Maybe I had interpreted her words wrong; perhaps she’d used some euphemism, like the way my grandmother would say a person had “passed” instead of died.

  I was pretty sure, though, that Sarah had said that she’d known Rebekah Sampson. And while Sarah was obviously extremely old—much older looking, I realized as I thought about it, than any of the people I’d seen in the Shadow Hills nursing home—surely someone she knew would have died in the last half of the twentieth century, at least. So what was Rebekah Sampson’s grave doing in this ancient cemetery? All the other graves in the place were from 1736 and earlier.

  I crept closer to the rough gravestone, leaning in to examine it carefully. I traced my fingers over the letters of her name. Like many of the other markers in this graveyard, the carving did not look professionally done. Some letters were deeper than others, some uneven. The engraving in the bottom right-hand corner had been all but obscured by the moss.

  I picked up a twig from nearby and scratched gently at the growth. I couldn’t make out the month or date, but the year was legible: 1735.

  I sat back with a thump: 1735? That was before the epidemic struck Shadow Hills. Sarah had been given a book meant for me by someone who had died more than 250 years ago?

  On the weekend, the buses ran into town every two hours, presumably so that the students would have a chance to spend some time off campus. I checked my cell; I had twenty minutes before the next bus left. I managed to make it home, grab my purse, sign out at Ms. Moore’s door, and run over to the Admin Building just in time to catch it.

  During the ride over, I tried to organize my thoughts, but by the time I got off at the square, I had so many questions and frustrations bubbling up inside of me that I felt like a shook-up soda bottle. I marched up the block to Sarah’s Boutique, pulling the door open with a force that threatened to knock the bell off its perch.

  Sarah, behind the counter as usual, glanced up, startled by my entrance. I was struck again by the realization of how much older she looked than any of the people in this town. She was dried and gnarled, with wrinkles upon wrinkles, and her hair was perfectly white. Was she not a native of Shadow Hills? Had her ancestors not been among the survivors of the epidemic? Or was she an anomaly, a BV who had managed to outlive all the others?

  “How can I help you, dear?” she asked. Either Sarah didn’t sense the anger rising off my body like steam, or she was pretending not to notice.

  “You could start by telling me the truth. Like who is Rebekah Sampson? Why did you tell me that she gave you that book? Why am I having these dreams—these visions?” I spit out my questions rapid fire, not really caring if she could keep up.

  “I told you the truth. I gave you Rebekah’s book to help you on your path.”

  I snorted. “You gave me a book I couldn’t read! It’s not even written in a foreign language. It’s written in code!”

  “I cannot read it. But you will be able to understand it,” she replied. “When the time is right.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Yoda. You could have at least told me. I lugged that stupid thing over to the Greek teacher, thinking it was something she could translate.”

  Sarah just nodded.

  “Do you understand what’s going on?” I asked her, irritated. “I keep having these dreams, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what they mean. I’ve dreamed of Rebekah’s grave. Only sometimes it’s my grave. Sometimes my sister is there, and I feel like I need to do something for her. And then this other woman appears. And she looks a lot like my sister, only she isn’t.”

  Sarah continued to nod, as if what I was saying made some kind of sense. She smiled a little tremulously, and I would have sworn that there was the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “That is Rebekah. She comes to help you.”

  “I wish she’d be a little clearer about it.” My voice was sharp with bitterness.

  “It is hard for us to understand their ways. But you must trust. You must open yourself to her guidance. That is how you will find your destiny. You are a daughter of Hekate, just as Rebekah was. Your power is already immense, maybe even greater than Rebekah’s. But understanding it, learning to control it, takes longer.”

  “What does that mean—a daughter of Hekate? You’re talking about a mythological figure.”

  “I am talking about the Goddess. The queen of the underworld.”

  “I know, I know.” I held up a hand to halt a recital of all the names I had read the other night. “But it doesn’t make any sense. How do you know I’m one of these daughters? How do you know I’m supposed to have this book? And what in the world am I supposed to do with it?”

  “I know because Rebekah told me.”

  I stared at her. After a moment, I said carefully, “You mean you see her in dreams, too?”

  “Now and then I have done so,” Sarah said, smiling that odd little smile again. “Especially in the beginning, not long after she died. But she told me before that, too. When she was still alive.”

  I stared at her. “But she died over two hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But that’s not possible.” I wasn’t sure who was crazier—Sarah, for what she seemed to be suggesting, or me, for trying to get answers from this woman who thought she’d been alive for almost three centuries.

  “It shouldn’t be possible, should it?” Sarah’s smile was watery and thin. “Sometimes I wish it wasn’t. But here I stay, slowly aging, falling apart p
iece by piece, but never dying.”

  “I … I need to sit down.” My head was spinning.

  Sarah motioned to her chair, offering it to me. I may have been shook up, but I wasn’t stealing a seat from someone with a bum leg who claimed to be more than 250 years old.

  “Okay. Let’s say I choose to believe you.” It was getting to the point where I couldn’t just assume someone was lying because things didn’t make sense, not when I was having visions and growing mystical symbols on my body. “How did this happen? Why are you still alive?”

  “Back in 1735, Rebekah sensed the darkness coming to Shadow Hills. She told me to leave, to take her daughters with me and keep them safe. So my husband and I moved to Boston with the girls. But not before Rebekah protected me.”

  “How?” I wasn’t sure any answer could convince me.

  “It was simple, really; she laid a hand on my head and stated, ‘Be ye forever and always protected.’ And except for the polio in my leg and the occasional cold, nothing has harmed me since.” Sarah’s sadness was thickly worn behind her eyes.

  “That’s it? Why couldn’t she protect herself, too? Why didn’t she leave?” Why would Rebekah have stayed here to die?

  “She knew she was sick already, before I left. Besides, she could not leave. People hunted witches back then, and they regarded Rebekah, with her power and her visions, as in league with Satan.”

  “The basement.” My stomach knotted. I thought of my dream, of the dread that had rolled through me when I looked at the old stone walls of the hospital basement. “That cell.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “She was locked in with the insane. But that was later; at first the almshouse staff worked her like a dog just like they did to everyone unfortunate enough to end up there. I was the only one who seemed to feel sympathy for the poor girl. Her family had been killed during the Indian wars.” Sarah shook her head slowly. “She was an orphan when she came to our town looking for someplace that would take her in. Years later, when the director of the almshouse had her committed to the basement, I tried to help her escape. I worked there, had a key to her cell. But we were caught, and I was stripped of my duties.”