by Alexia Purdy
“No. I don’t think my manager is in the habit of hiring known sociopaths. Or shifters, for that matter. She’s almost certainly clueless about the shifter community, as I was before all… this.” I waved my arms around, indicating nothing and everything at once. “Oblivious, like any normal person should be.” I took the top page from the file and fed it into the copier/fax machine. A fresh black and white copy popped out the other side while I continued to go through Orpah’s paperwork.
“There’s nothing useful here. She’s a model employee. Never late. No write ups or incident reports either. Squeaky clean and keeps to herself.”
“Like most psychopaths.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here before we get caught.”
Malachi nodded and waited while I replaced the files and locked the cabinet. After scanning the office to make sure nothing was out of place, I motioned toward the door. I was relieved to find the administration hall empty. I wondered if there was a holiday going on that I’d completely missed.
“What day is it?” I asked once we were on the elevator heading down to the main hospital lobby.
“Um, November second?”
“No, I mean, is it some sort of lesser-known holiday?”
“Besides Halloween? That just passed, the day I found you.”
“No, I mean any other holiday?”
“I have no idea. Hold on.” Malachi produced his cell phone and began typing away on it. “One good thing about these phones nowadays, you can look up anything in seconds. Bad thing? Everyone texts everything. Not that anyone texts me, though.”
He paused before handing me his phone. There on the tiny screen stood out the words I didn’t want to see. All Souls’ Day… Day of the Dead. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“So maybe it’s important in all this. All Souls’ Day?”
“I honestly never heard of it,” he said.
“Me neither.” I scanned the screen and swiped down the page to see what I could find out about this obscure holiday. “It says: ‘All Souls’ Day is a day commemorating the faithful departed; i.e. it serves to remember all those who have died.’”
“And Day of the Dead?”
“That’s what the holiday is called in some countries.”
“Oh.” Malachi ran his hand through his hair, looking perplexed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means we’ve run out of time. How many are petrified so far?”
“We’ve seen two, but I heard there were two others.”
My mouth dropped open. “Four already? And they’re all shifters?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“So Orpah is a shifter, and she’s the one Adam had named. That means she has to be the one who….” The pit of my stomach knotted as a suppressed memory resurfaced.
Orpah’s face. Black hair. Her eyes flashing silver. My body stiffening before I collapsed to the ground and felt my muscles seize with an excruciating pain while she screamed obscenities into the air.
“It didn’t work,” I muttered.
“What?” Malachi eyed me, baffled.
The elevator dinged, and we shuffled out into the lobby. I pulled him to the side, out of earshot of any passersby.
“I mean Orpah. She tried to turn me to stone.”
Malachi’s face turned a deep red. “What? When?”
“Right before I turned into a bird. I was the first one she tried to petrify. But for some reason, it didn’t work. I just turned into a bird and flew off. How?”
“I don’t know. You should’ve been turned to stone. And, you don’t just get turned into a shifter out of the blue. Do you think it was her that turned you, or something else?”
“I―I don’t know.” Something else resurfaced, a scene where my mother handed me a white feather. “I think one of my parents was… a shifter.”
“But why wouldn’t you know this until later? Shifters turn at an earlier age.”
I swallowed hard. I had to do something I hadn’t thought of in ages. “I think she tried to tell me before, but she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know. I have to go.”
I walked out through the hospital doors despite Malachi’s protests.
“Wait! Let me go with you.”
“I don’t even know if I’m right. It’s all a blur. I can’t remember everything. It comes in fragments. But why? Why would I forget such an important detail?”
“Maybe you’ve been tampered with.”
I gawked at him. “What?”
“I mean, it’s possible. We do have wizards here. Maybe your mother or someone else made you forget you’re a shifter. It’s plausible. I’ve never heard of anyone becoming a shifter overnight. Maybe it was so repressed, you lost the ability to morph along with the knowledge. Maybe a wizard did it to you, and Orpah’s spell fractured against the magic and broke the suppression.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“We can ask the Whitman's again, but this time have them check for suppression spells or the remnants of one which could have made you forget.”
I pondered this as we walked across the lot. I was feeling sick at the thought of my mother withholding information from me. “Maybe. But I need to check something out first.”
“What is it?”
I looked over at Malachi, trying to etch his face into my mind so I could file it away for later. Anything could happen now, and I didn’t want to forget a single detail. I thanked my lucky stars he was with me. I wouldn’t know what to do without him.
“I’m going to my mother’s storage. It’s where I put everything when I moved to a smaller place. It was all in her attic. Mostly books and knickknacks, but most importantly, her diaries. She had boxes of journals. I never went through them. It was something I always put off. It was too painful.”
Malachi nodded as he opened the truck door for me. I slipped inside and felt my heart fluttering with excitement and unintended hurt. My mother keeping such secrets from me? Was it possible?
Malachi slipped in next to me and put the key in the ignition. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Malachi
The storage room was neatly stacked with boxes, long untouched and with a thick fluff of dust lining the tops. Phoebe hadn’t been there since she’d moved them and locked the rolling door. She was already digging through one specific box she’d buried years before. A minute later she was flipping through a well-worn journal of her mother’s, filled with precise and smooth longhand writing, and she was visibly lost in her memories. It was beautiful writing, and I could tell that reading the words made Phoebe’s heart wrench.
After flipping through several diaries, she stopped at one, reading the words more carefully. Her lips moved silently as her eyes skipped across the letters. I waited, feeling useless. It was true I was being supportive right now, so maybe that was enough. She needed it. I knew the faucet works would start the moment she read anything memorable or significant. I was ready to be her rock again. I just hoped she’d still need me as much when this was all over.
“She never told me. After all this time.” She looked up from the books, dropping her arms and letting the diary dangle from her fingertips, dangerously close to slipping to the ground.
“What’s it say?”
She sniffed before holding it out so I could take it. The book was still cracked open to the page she had just read:
I know I’ll regret this, but how would I even know if I’m right or wrong in withholding this information from my daughter? I feel like I’m lying to her when she asks me about the blackouts. The wizards said there would be temporary discomfort, but I hate to fabricate the reasons why large portions of Phoebe’s memory are missing. Eventually, she’ll stop asking me, that’s what they told me, and live a long, happy and normal life. That’s all I want for her.
This shifter gene she inherited from her father was a surprise to me. When she sprouted feathers at the early age of five, I couldn’t help but panic. If her father were here, he mi
ght have been some help, but he wasn’t, and I’m human. Useless in this kind of thing. When I spoke to the doctor, I was surprised to discover there were more of them here in Woodland Creek. Shifters that is. He even referred me to a wizard who could help me suppress my daughter’s shifting and possibly permanently keep it at bay. It involved altering her memory and gene suppression therapy which would be painful and excruciating, but he promised me she wouldn’t remember it at all. It was the worst—and best—decision I ever had to make for her. I hope that if she does lapse after I’m gone, that she’ll forgive me.
The only stipulation the wizard gave me was that if anyone were to cast a spell on her who didn’t know about the suppression, it would release her from the spell withholding her transformation magic. I figured that if she is to live like a regular human being, this shouldn’t be an issue in the future. I hope and pray that I’m right.
Deep down, I’m afraid that I’ll die before I’m able to tell her the truth if the time comes to do so. Time is so limited, yet she’s too young to understand. If this works, I won’t have to tell her, but will I be doing more harm than good? Only time will tell.
I closed the book, having read enough. Her mother’s words filled me with sadness, rage and sympathy all at the same time. Phoebe sat on one of the boxes, staring at the ground like she could laser beam a hole into it. I was sure she was feeling a range of emotions after reading her mother’s words. I wished I knew what to say to her.
“Phoebe?”
“Hmm?” She flinched at the sound of her name but didn’t reemerge from the blankness now filling her features. I knelt down in front of her and placed my hands on hers. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t quite see me either. Her gaze slid over me like I wasn’t even there, lost and filled with hopelessness.
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but I know she loved you with every cell of her body. She did it because she didn’t know what else to do. I know. My father had to go through this too, with me. Even though he appeared to avoid me, and my abilities scared him, he still loved me. I didn’t know it back then, but now, after everything that life has thrown my way, I know that he did, in his own way. Sometimes people don’t deal with things the way they should. They just try to do the best they can. Good intentions can break some people, but we are not our parents. We are strong and can get through this. Just remember the love that was there and how far it got you. It got you to this moment in your life, and you can either keep going or choose to stand still. Don’t let it define you.”
I rubbed her arms, hoping to pull her out of her gloom. If only I could erase the sadness of the betrayal from her heart. I would if I could, but that wasn’t my cross to bear. She had to decide whether to let this overtake her or get back up and keep going. Life was full of shit moments, and this was one of them, but we always had the choice to grin, bear it, and show it how much it didn’t matter. We would prevail, no matter what.
“I know,” Phoebe answered. I flicked my eyes up to meet hers, and through the sheen of sadness and despondency, she smiled. “Let’s go find Orpah.”
Malachi
We thought we’d head to Orpah’s house and find her there. Turned out, we didn’t find her there. Her house was in shambles, the front door slightly ajar and the place trashed. When we were sure she wasn’t there, Phoebe was clueless on how to locate the woman. There were no emergency contacts in Orpah’s file, nor were any husband, relatives, or anyone else close to her listed. It was a dead end unless she returned home, which by the looks of her house, she wasn’t going to be returning anytime soon.
“Where could she be?” Phoebe asked, sinking to the steps in front of Orpah’s house. The place was at the end of a long, winding road in Old Town and couldn’t be seen from any other house down the street. No wonder no one had realized her house was open and a wreck. No one had come or would come to check on her for days. It was a dismal and lonely existence. How many shifters lived this way? How many humans?
“Didn’t you say she was jealous of your relationship with Phillip?” I asked.
Phoebe’s face brightened. “Yes. Oh, my God. What if she went after Phillip?”
I shook my head. “Why would she do that? He’s not a shifter. She needs another victim to petrify before the full moon, right? It has to be a shifter.”
Phoebe frowned. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m very sure. There’s always a chance I’m wrong, but he didn’t smell like an animal at all.”
“Has there ever been a shifter you weren’t able to smell?”
I shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
“But it’s a possibility, right?”
“I honestly couldn’t answer that for sure, but I guess so.”
“Let’s go. If Phillip’s in danger, we owe it to him to be there and help him.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” I groaned as I followed her down the steps and back to my truck. She ignored my comment and instead began giving me directions to Phillip’s house, the last place on earth I wanted to be.
By the time we got there, I was getting quite sick of seeing isolated houses. His was no exception. Didn’t anyone live close to other people in this town? His place was as secluded as mine, and the parallels of our lives did not escape me. His door wasn’t ajar, though, and I cautioned Phoebe to stay close as we approached the front and knocked.
“Phillip?” Phoebe called out, but there was no answer. I turned the knob. It was locked tight. “Do you think he’s here?” She looked at me for an answer I didn’t have.
“Let’s look out back,” I suggested.
We walked the long wraparound porch toward the back yard where we found someone standing alone in the back yard facing away from us.
Phillip.
He stood at the edge of the forest, as still as a statue. I almost thought he was frozen until Phoebe called out to him.
“Phillip?”
He turned around, looking perplexed, but smiled when he saw Phoebe.
“Hey! What are you doing here? Orpah’s here too. She said she had something to tell me concerning you and then walked out there.” He pointed toward the trees. “I told her I wasn’t going into the forest this close to dark, but I guess she didn’t hear me.” He turned back to the forest and called out. “Hey, Orpah! Phoebe’s here!”
“No!” Phoebe ran toward him, reaching out. “Stay away from her!”
He looked even more confused. “What?”
My heart cracked just a bit to see her overt concern for her friend, but I tried to make sure it didn’t get to me. He’d been her friend for a long time. Of course she had some feelings for him, right?
“I knew you’d come.” A voice echoed across the yard, and we both halted in our steps. Orpah emerged from behind a tree, looking perfectly human. She hadn’t morphed, but if she decided to do so, we had to be prepared to fight her without looking her in the eyes. It amazed me how such a short, rail-thin woman could be such a threat.
“You did this. You turned those people to stone!” Phoebe yelled at Orpah across the yard, her skin turning a dark red and her eyes puffy with angry tears. She started to march toward her co-worker, but I ran to reach her and took hold of her arm.
“Don’t,” I said, holding her back. “Be careful. If she morphs, we can’t look her in her eyes. She’ll petrify us.”
“What’s going on?” Phillip eyed us both, me more with anger than anything else. Then he turned to look at Orpah, back at me, and finally landed his eyes on Phoebe. “Why’d you bring him here?”
Orpah beamed a wicked smile our direction. “Ah, you guys finally figured it out. I never thought this curse would return, but you….” She glared at Phoebe. “You did this to me. You awoke the monster, and now you’ll pay for that. You ruined my life. First you stole Phillip from me, then you made the darkness return. How dare you?”
“You’re insane,” Phoebe scoffed. “I never did a thing to you. You turned me into a bird and turned those people to stone! Leav
e Phillip alone. He’s not a shifter and isn’t involved in any of this. Stop what you’re doing.”
Orpah chuckled, laughing harder as she stepped forward, inching closer. “You pathetic human. I never turned you into a bird. Why I didn’t know you already were one doesn’t matter. He won’t want you anymore either. It’s all your fault. You did this to them. All of them. Not me. You’re to blame!” Her face darkened, and I sucked in a breath, averting my eyes and praying that Phoebe did too.
“Don’t look at her eyes, Phoebe. Focus on her chest or arm. Anything but her face.”
“See, Malachi? She didn’t turn me into a bird. Her spell just woke up my magic. Why, Orpah? Why would you do this? I thought you loved Phillip. Why are you endangering him by involving him in this?”
Phoebe’s confusion swirled on her face as Orpah fought to stay human. She was obviously painfully aware that she could not control her shifter side yet, just like Phoebe. Her features morphed from her pixie human face to her darkened Gorgon visage and back, the two sides fighting in a grotesque battle.
“You stole him from me! He’s a shifter too and only rejected me because he thought you were human. He didn’t want anything to do with anyone who reminded him of what he was. You made him reject me for what I am when you’re one too! Hypocrites, all of you! I loved him!”
Orpah’s anger did nothing to help her control the change. In fact, I could tell she was losing her battle. Phoebe was struggling with her own morph as her face flashed different colors of red, purple and pale gray. I hoped she didn’t choose this moment to morph. I’d have to chase her with a Gorgon on my trail. Not exactly my definition of a good time.
“If you loved him, you would have let him go. You wouldn’t have come here.” Phoebe’s flat voice was icy, and I had to peer at her to make sure she was still holding it together. Her rage had calmed, and she stood still, holding back her anger toward Orpah while controlling her morph with expert ease. I was definitely impressed.
“You know nothing of this curse. I have to turn five shifters to stone or I die because of you and your crazy bird magic. You started this. Now it’s time for both of you to die.” Orpah let out a hiss, and her tongue turning a deep obsidian to match her hair, which was now slowly moving and curling into the shape of snakes. I focused on her shoulders, knowing that to look farther up would bring death.