Solidify

by Alexia Purdy

  “It’s coming from the park!”

  Phoebe

  The high-pitched screams pierced the air, chilling my blood and sending shivers up my spine. We rounded the corner and dashed across the street to find a growing crowd around what looked like… a statue? Malachi and I jogged to a stop right where the mass of people was huddled around the life-like carved stone. It was posed like someone standing still, looking peaceful and peering toward the horizon.

  “What’s going on here?” Malachi asked to no one in particular. His eyes were focused on the statue, but he looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  An older lady with hair white as snow answered him. “Annette says her husband’s been turned into a statue. It does look just like him if I should say so myself, but that woman is batshit crazy.”

  We both stared in awe at the exquisitely carved statue. Details were painstakingly etched into the stone, including his surprised expression. Had someone done this to a real human being? It could very well be an elaborate joke. We both glanced around, but no one seemed to be laughing. Everyone appeared profoundly confused, and questions fluttered through the crowd.

  “What the hell happened to Gary?” “He’s been petrified!” “I told you this place was cursed.” “He ain’t the only one end up like that. There was one yesterday down by the butcher. Rocky done turned to stone too.” “That happened to Lucy too!” “We need to get the priest!” “This is the devil’s work.”

  I leaned over to Malachi, my face full of questions. “What’s going on?”

  He pulled me close to him and bent down to whisper in my ear. “It’s Gary Knotts. He’s also a shifter. From what I hear, Lucy Norberg was turned to stone yesterday morning, and Rocky Martin last night.”

  “Were all three shifters?”

  Malachi nodded.

  I stared at Gary’s statue, wondering what the regular townsfolk who weren’t shifters were thinking about.

  “Where are the others?”

  Malachi listened to the crowd, standing taller than most of the people near us. He could hear everything from what I could tell.

  Finally, he crouched down closer. “They’re all saying the other statues were taken to the police station for evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  He shrugged. “Possible crime? I’m not sure.”

  “Step aside, step aside. Police business.” A gruff voice barked at the crowd from behind them.

  The town sheriff, T.J. Rickman shouted his way past the other townspeople, who all too willingly moved to the side from fear, creating a path for the guy. They knew the drill. He would mow down a person if they didn’t move, and no one wanted to be hit by that kind of wrath. I hadn’t seen the sheriff in ages; he looked older than the last time I had seen him and a tad bit more tired. In this unique kind of town, who wouldn’t? I wondered if he knew of the uncommon nature of the petrified people.

  Everyone could be a shifter in this town and I wouldn’t have even known it. Did the sheriff know? If he did, how did he keep things on the down-low? This place was teeming with shifters, according to Malachi. It made me eye each new person at the scene with great interest.

  “Come on.” Malachi grabbed my arm, gently tugging to lead me out of the mass of people. The crowd had grown, and the sheriff’s deputies were having quite a time moving people away from the “crime scene.”

  If there even was a crime to begin with.

  I didn’t know why I felt any doubt about that. The air was filled with magic, especially since the moon was waxing and would be full in two days. Plus I’d been turned into a fluffy white bird for goodness sake! There was no way other crazy shit wasn’t happening around here somewhere.

  “Why are we leaving? I wanted to get a closer look.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this. It’s too big of a coincidence that the same day you were attacked, there were two people turned to stone. Now another.”

  My eyes widened. “You think this is all connected?”

  He nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

  Skeptical, I gave him a pointed look. “How? It’s all crazy talk to me. What if it’s a hoax?”

  He peered over at the crowd of people milling about, hoping to get a better look at Gary Knotts.

  “I know.” He turned back to me, his eyes pained. “I think I dreamt of the person who did this not only to you but to those people.”

  “What?” I must have been hearing things. Did he just say he dreamt of the person who did this to me? And them? “What do you mean? I don’t get it.”

  “It means that something about your transformation is related to these attacks. I just have to figure it out.”

  “What did you see in your dream?”

  “I dreamt of a chick that had eyes that could turn others to stone. She had hair like a raven, and there were snakes laced throughout it, hissing at me. Then she was turning people to stone all around me, but I was immune because I was stuck in a bubble of sorts. Because I didn’t know who she was or what was going on.”

  I stared at Malachi, shocked that he hadn’t told me this sooner. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “I thought it was just a dream, honestly. I didn’t believe it had anything to do with anything.”

  “What else was in it?”

  Malachi scratched his chin, straining to remember the gory details of his dream. “Well, I remember seeing white feathers raining down from the sky. I had chalked it all up to being related to meeting you, but that was it. I don’t know what it means, but the lady with the snakes started screaming when the feathers touched her.” He flicked his eyes back to me, a look of elation passing across his face. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?” I asked, confused to all hell.

  “You’re the antidote.”

  I lifted an eyebrow while crossing my arms over my chest. He had to be tripping. There was no way I could be involved in this crap at all. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I wasn’t sure if I should feel offended or not.

  “Whoever is doing this to people is your arch enemy. You’re the cure to this mess, the way to defeat them. The yin to their yang. The day to their night. You’re it.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “We have to find out more about this. What legend reminds you of a woman who has snakes for hair?”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, knowing what he was on to now. “Medusa.”

  “So let's find out all we can about Medusa and see if there’s something there we can use against her.”

  “Okay. I know Perseus killed her by chopping her head off. I studied mythology in school. Her blood was like acid and melted everything, but her blood also gave birth to monsters. At least that’s how the movie went.” I wrinkled my nose. “I might be confusing the two together.”

  “Well, that’s something. What else kills Medusa? Or anything, for that matter?”

  I shrugged. “An opposite, you mean? Someone who cancels out all her power? But did that even exist in the legends?”

  “No, but this is real life, not a legend. Shifter ‘monsters’ live by a different set of rules, not all necessarily from mythology and legends.” He grinned at me, the twinkle in his eyes shining brightly under the midday sun as his ideas flourished. “Yes. An opposite who has the power to cancel out her magic. You. You have to be it.”

  “I still don’t get it. Not sure how I could be so important.” I didn’t feel confident in his assessment of my newfound powers, but it could explain what was going on.

  “Let’s go.” He reached out and grabbed my hand, tugging me along again with a fevered determination. His enthusiasm was contagious and almost did the job of eclipsing my anxiety about the whole thing.

  Almost. But not quite.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. I pulled back, making him practically drag me down the way.

  “To the library.”

  Phoebe

  The library’s collection was large for a town of this size. It was housed in a
two-story bungalow-type house which was considered historic and was situated across the street from the town hall. Inside, the stacks upon dusty stacks appeared messy and out of control. I hoped there was some sort of organized chaos to the place or we’d be coming up short very fast.

  “Do you know the librarian?” I whispered to Malachi. Just being in that place made me want to speak quietly, like not doing so would wake the dead from the stacks of paper.

  “Not personally. I’ve slacked off on returning my overdue books.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. “You like to read?”

  “Yeah.” He gave me a puzzled look. “What? You think a person like me wouldn’t like to read?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just didn’t pin you as the reader type.”

  He scoffed. “I love to read. I’m just extra slow at it. Savoring a story is a must. You have to take in every word and detail. It usually takes me months to get through a book.”

  “That’s great.” I smiled at him, but I could tell he’d been offended by my earlier remark. “I can read a book a day if I have nothing else to do.”

  “Show off.”

  I laughed but stopped when a bug-eyed older woman with her salt and pepper hair appeared. It was sloppily braided and ran down the middle of her back.

  “Can I help you two find something?” She eyed us with tiny pinprick eyes haloed with the start of some milky white cataracts.

  “We need all the Greek mythology you can throw at us,” Malachi said. “Anything related to that and modernized mythology too.”

  She scrutinized both of us, shoving her tiny reading glasses up her nose before motioning us forward. The glasses slid right back to their original position once she began walking. The dents in the sides of her nose proved they rarely stayed in any other place.

  “Up the stairs, the last two stacks on the right. You’ll find everything falling under Greek mythology and then some up there. Please do not return any books you pull from the stacks. They always get out of order. Just leave them on the cart at the end of every other stack. Don’t make me regret letting you up there.”

  Her sordid remark earned a sickeningly sweet smile from Malachi. “Yes, ma’am. Oh, and thank you so much.”

  The librarian eyed us a moment longer before creeping off into the oblivion of her own book downstairs. I was relieved she’d decided to leave us to ourselves.

  “She’s odd.”

  “She’s a shifter too.”

  I gave him a doubting glance. “Really? Old Lady Sue? What the heck would she transform into?”

  “I don’t really know, but she smells like a raccoon. One that’s bathed in dusty books.”

  I chuckled, clamping my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound. “Really?”

  He winked and began perusing the shelves. I had to admit, watching Malachi in a library checking out books was beyond sexy. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment, admiring his muscles moving underneath his fitted shirt. The way he’d held me in bed the night before flashed through my mind, and a swift, warm honey feeling fluttered within my belly.

  My face heated, and I barely escaped being caught staring at him by quickly bolting around the stack so I could search through the books on the other side. As much as I hated to admit it, I was enjoying spending time with Malachi. I wished we had met before all of this, a long time ago. He was fun, yet kept to himself and was unlike any man I’d ever dated. I couldn’t lie, he wasn’t exactly my type. I liked the thinner tattooed bad boys who couldn’t care less about books. Maybe I should have gone for someone like Malachi. Maybe it would have spared us both a shitload of loneliness and heartbreak.

  My ex-boyfriend, Harvey, had been anything but a book reader. His aloofness and lack of sensitivity had set me on a crash course to singlehood in no time. The last time I’d seen him was when he was riding off into the distance toward Daytona for some motorcycle festival. I’d chalked it up to him needing to find himself, but he never called me after that, and then he never came back.

  He’d taken my heart with him and had probably chucked it onto the asphalt like fresh roadkill. I’d been sucker punched with his love, and I had let it happen. Sometimes the heart wants whatever the hell it wants, regardless if it’s right or wrong.

  Fucking heart. Good for nothing but suffering.

  Now, for the first time in ages, I had some eye candy I could admire from up close. In his room, alone together in the dark, his arms had held me tight, and I’d never felt so comforted before in my life. Now looking through the dusty stacks, I felt a glimmer of a possible future with someone who got me for once. Strange how it had taken a supernatural event to get to this point.

  Stupid fate.

  “Found something.” Malachi’s voice passed through the slits between the books on the shelves. I returned to where he was standing and peered over his shoulder to read a passage in the massive volume he was now propping on his forearms: Classic and Modern Myths, Legends, and Monsters: How They Live, Breathe and Die.

  “What’s it say?”

  “It says, ‘Gorgons are female creatures who can turn people to stone. The earliest examples in Greek literature refer to any of three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying talent that turned those who beheld their visage to stone. The most well-known of the sisters was named Medusa and was slain by Perseus. The other two sisters were supposedly immortal and could not be killed.”

  “Do you think whoever is turning people to stone is the Medusa from these myths?”

  Malachi shook his head, his frown deepening as he kept reading. “No. I don’t think she matches this exactly. I bet the person who is doing this is mortal and a shifter who happens to turn into a Gorgon. Shifters who turn into mythical creatures are rare, but not unheard of. They do exist.”

  “What?” I gawked at him, shocked again. “You mean I don’t just have to deal with animal shifters lurking about this town but made up monsters too? Like what sort of creatures?”

  “Oh, you know… dragons, krakens, and unicorns… oh, my?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “I seriously wish I was.”

  Groaning, I slumped against the bookcase, feeling lightheaded. “How could I have lived here all this time and not have known any of this? How do they all hide it?”

  “We’re a secretive lot.” He clicked his tongue and gave me a goofy smile. It failed to lift my mood.

  “You don’t say.”

  He shrugged, flipping past a page or two before stopping and gawking at another paragraph. His eyes widened, and the surprise on his face did nothing but elevate my anxiety.

  “What is it?” I asked. Damn him for doing that to me.

  “It says that there’s a legend about a Caladrius, a snow white bird and its encounter with a Gorgon here.”

  I gasped. “What? What’s it say?”

  He cleared his throat. “In the darkest regions of the American Northwest, where the forests meet, is a prophecy of the Gorgon and the Caladrius, two arch-nemeses who represent the evil and the righteousness of all mankind. An ancient curse brings both creatures together on the same day once the cursed Gorgon chooses her opposite. The cursed one then no longer turns into the creature of her origins but instead turns into a Gorgon and must wreak havoc upon the territory she inhabits for five days until the moon emerges full and the opposite she’s chosen to challenge dies to break the spell. During these five days, persons with supernatural talents will be petrified and held for all eternity, encased in stone until the chosen ascends.”

  “That’s crazy! Does it say how to stop the Gorgon?” I asked. Malachi gave me a pointed look for interrupting him, but I paid it no mind and motioned for him to keep going.

  He blew out a breath. “If the opposite, the Caladrius, cannot kill the Gorgon within the five days before the moon is full, all those who were petrified will stay that way, and the Gorgon will earn eternal life when she kills the Caladrius. Only then will her powers beco
me permanent, to ravage the earth with death and destruction. If the Caladrius kills the Gorgon, the petrified will be freed, and the dark magic will dissipate into nothingness.”

  We stood in silence, rereading the passage with a forlorn air surrounding us. This had to be a mistake. It had to be, right?

  “I have to kill her?” I whispered. I slid down to the floor, bringing my knees to my chest, hugging them as I began to rock gently. “I can’t kill anyone. I’m a nurse. We help people.”

  Malachi knelt down next to me, rubbing my shoulder as he placed the book on the floor.

  “This could be all crap for all we know. Don’t worry. You won’t be killing anyone.”

  “But it said here that I have to do it, or we all die.”

  “We all die eventually.”

  I glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

  “Look. This could be insane, but it’s pretty amazing that we’d find such a story here, in the Woodland Creek library, of all the places we could have looked. It could be a crazy coincidence. Plus, I don’t know how to find the Gorgon in the first place. She could be your co-worker Orpah or she might not be. We just have to take it with a grain of salt. At least we know part of it’s true. Someone is turning people to stone. Someone cursed you into becoming a bird, a snow white one at that. We have to stop this somehow. We’ll figure it out. I promise I’ll help you. No matter what.”

  His promise lightened my fear, but it couldn’t vanquish it completely.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing else in there about killing a Gorgon?” My voice quivered as I spoke. It was pathetic; I sounded like a sniveling coward.

  “Well, let’s see.” He read down the page and definitely tapped on a paragraph. “Here.” He held the book up for me to see what he was referring to. “It says Gorgons can be killed by either decapitation, like Medusa, or by their opposite’s self-sacrifice for the good of others.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Malachi gave me a sympathetic look without answering my question.

  “Oh my God,” I choked, “I have to die to kill her. If I die saving someone else, she dies too. If she kills me, it kills only me and she becomes immortal. Is that right?”