by Sara Clancy
She was, however, ready to start exploring Benton; a real live male banshee. She had a thousand questions and a million things she wanted to try. The problem was, every time he seemed to be on the verge of agreeing, she got way too excited and ended up bombarding him with too much, too fast. Overwhelmed, he would change the topic and that would be that. But not tonight.
As Benton leaned forward to, once again, search through the radio stations, Nicole took a deep sobering breath and reminded herself of the plan. She had spent some time going through her list and had arrived at a first request that would be simple and non-threatening. She wanted to try and get his banshee wail on tape. She had only ever heard it twice before, and, since they were fighting for their lives on both occasions, she hadn’t thought to record it. If she could just stick to that one request tonight, Benton would have his distraction and they would have finally taken their first step into exploring a world beyond their understanding.
She smoothed her hands over her long hair, licked her lips, and forced on her most charming smile. Benton froze instantly, hand still on the radio, and turned to face her. His normally stormy eyes looked almost silver in the dim light as they studied her face closely.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything,” she said with a whine.
“You’re giving me your Lady Frankenstein look and I’m not up for it tonight.”
“I do not have a Lady Frankenstein look,” she grumbled. “I had a simple request.”
“Nope.”
“Fine. So we’ll talk about you.”
He scrunched up his nose. “Are those my only options?”
“What options? You already made your choice. But don’t worry, I came prepared,” Nicole said.
He jerked back slightly as she flung her torso between the two front seats and began to grope along the dark back seat for her bag.
“You came prepared for a conversation?” he asked, lingering behind her as he tried to see what she was doing.
She had leaned in so far that she almost head-butted him when she swung back into her seat, hefting the bag onto her lap.
“I don’t think you realize how taxing you can be,” she said.
Ignoring how his eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he mouthed ‘me’ to himself in disbelief, she unzipped the bag and whipped out two baseball mitts. She victoriously brandished them, holding them closer to the shadows to better display the glow sticks she had taped along their seams. The effect was vaguely reminiscent of a big, cartoonish hand outlined by a multi-colored halo.
Benton blinked owlishly as she pressed one of the mitts against his chest. “What is this?”
“We’re going to play catch,” Nicole declared as she retrieved a clear ball from the bag. She tapped it against the dashboard and the globe lit up with a flurry of flashing lights that changed color in rapid succession.
“I can talk about my feelings without the crutch of sports,” Benton said. The sharp tone he was aiming for faltered as he tried to keep himself from smiling.
“I know,” she shrugged. “I just thought that it might be fun. But if you think it’s silly we can put them away.”
His fingers tightened on the mitt against his chest, the squeak of the leather giving him away. “It is stupid. But you went through so much effort.”
“Not that much,” she said, only to be ignored.
“And I don’t want to hurt your feelings …”
“Seriously, I just sticky-taped them on.”
“You owe me,” he barely got the words out before he thrust open the jeep’s door and happily fled into the crisp night air.
It was a new moon, with only the stars to see by, leaving a thick layer of darkness clinging to the world. It was possible to make out the outlines of some shapes, but they would always disappear when she tried to focus on them. Through the windows, she watched as Benton, now only a colorful mitt swirling about, shook his hands until the light bled across the air to form an unstable streak.
With a large smile, she switched over the internal light so it would work when the door was ajar and took the keys with her. By the time she had reached the back of the jeep, she had patted her jeans’ pocket at least ten times to reassure herself that the keys were still tucked safely within it. She was still a bit anxious every time she left her car unlocked. It wasn’t that long ago that she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But, after Victor stole her keys, keeping them trapped so he could hunt Benton down, she had developed a certain amount of paranoia.
“It’ll look better with the lights off,” Benton noted.
She wished that she could see him. It sounded like he was now wearing her favorite smile. The one that made him look like a giant goof. But it was too dark. She wouldn’t even be able to tell where he was if he hadn’t been holding his glowing mitt.
“Yeah, but I want to be able to find my jeep later. Plus it’ll be a good marker so we don’t run off the edge of the cliff.”
“Good point.” His voice was laced with the beginnings of unease. “How far down is this jump again?”
“Around this area?” She gave it some thought as she watched his mitt follow her further from the jeep, swinging loosely with his stride. “I’d say around thirty-six feet. So, a bit under two and a half floors into solid earth.”
They kept walking until the gravel gave way to soft tufts of grass. It wasn’t that far from the jeep, but they were already well beyond the reach of the light. She waited until she heard him punch his fist into the soft leather of his glove. When she was sure he was ready, she tapped the plastic ball against her thigh. The sudden burst of flashing color hit her like a strobe light as she tossed the ball to him. It streaked like a comet, leaving a multicolored arch across the ebony until it hit his glove. The light was all but smothered as the ball was passed from his mitt to his hand, but it exploded across the night once again as he sent it back. She made sure to give the ball a good thump every time she had it, ensuring the timer didn’t run out as she waited for him to gather his thoughts and break the silence.
“Thanks for picking me up. I couldn’t handle Oliver tonight.”
“He’s still not talking?”
“Nope. Just being creepy and completely disregarding well-established laws of personal space. I’m used to the nightmares, as much as I can be, but I don’t know what to do with a ghost.”
“How is it that you have never been haunted before?” she asked as she caught the ball again. “Honestly, you’re a banshee. You literally see death. I would have thought you’d be ghost-bait.”
“Thanks for that image. That’s just buddies right there,” Benton snipped.
She let the ball pass between them a few times before she tried to approach the conversation again.
“Maybe you’re getting stronger.” she suggested.
“I have been eating my vegetables.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “You told me that you had never screamed like that before. You know … your banshee wail.”
“Yeah, well, I had never been cornered by a serial-killer demon before.”
“Well, what if the scream wasn’t an adrenaline rush kind of situation, but a natural next step?”
“Sorry?”
“Not many multi-celled organisms only have two stages of development, so there has to be other steps as well, right? I’m still looking, but I can’t find anything on banshee puberty.”
“Banshee puberty?” he said with a note of annoyance.
“You have a better name for it? I’m willing to use your terminology but, until you drop a name, I’m calling it ‘banshee puberty.’ And the point is, this might be a normal stage of your development. You get hair where there wasn’t hair before, your voice deepens, and now you see ghosts.”
“I’m getting really uncomfortable having this conversation with you.”
“Nonsense. It’s all the natural wonders of your growing body.”
“Stop.”
“I’m still trying to fin
d out why you’re not a girl. That sounds a bit discriminatory. What I mean is that I can’t find one mention of another male banshee. Even according to legends, you don’t exist. Unless it’s like what I’ve heard some fish can do, and you’ll grow into a female later on when it’s time for breeding.”
Benton thumped the ball in the mitt and hurled it again. It deliberately went wide and bounced its way into the darkness.
“You better find that before it goes off,” he remarked, his voice adopting that soft lilt it always got when he was embarrassed and annoyed at the same time.
Nicole rolled her eyes. Benton had a petty streak a mile wide, but she enjoyed dealing with it a lot more than him being scared. So she flung her arms out, just so he would see the movement, and jogged after the still flashing light. The grass grew higher every few feet, but the ball never seemed to get any closer.
“How hard did you throw it?” Nicole muttered under her breath as she picked up her pace.
She couldn’t remember how long the timer sensor ran for, but it was going to be impossible to find it in the darkness and grass if it ran out. As if on cue, the flashing beacon staggered and died, leaving her eyes to adjust to the impenetrable wall of the night. She was still drawing in her breath to heave the large sigh this situation deserved when the flashing suddenly continued.
“Were you double timed?”
She had the sanity to know that the ball wasn’t going to reply, but it didn’t stop her from asking. At a slower pace, she edged towards the ball, but it still never got any closer. It took a moment for her brain to work through her growing anxiety and remind her that she was currently on a hill.
“Great, it found a slope,” Nicole mumbled and broke into a jog again, hurrying to catch it until she was forced to run down the entire hillside.
A few more feet and the niggling feeling in the back of her brain returned. She couldn’t place why but it continued to grow, transforming into a flutter in the pit of her gut, demanding her attention. The grass rustled under her boot as she slowly moved forward. Then it hit her. Every step she took was on flat earth. They weren’t near the slope. There was no reason the ball should have travelled this far. And it was still flashing. Nicole stopped moving altogether and glanced back over her shoulder. The dim light of the jeep was a thin dot on the horizon, barely a speck. She couldn’t catch sight of Benton. Or the stars above her or the town lights in the horizon. There were only the three patches of existence within the world; the jeep light, the ball before her, and the mitt on her hand. Everything else had been taken by the night.
Her stomach flipped and crushed as she turned to look back at the ball. It wasn’t moving. It had stopped when she stopped following. Each flash of shifting color lit up the night around it and she strained to use the flickering glimmer to search the shadows. It didn’t work. The sick feeling inside her grew sharper as she realized how silent it was. No insects, no birds, no hint of Benton shuffling somewhere behind her. It was quiet enough that she could actually hear the mechanics of the ball clicking.
Wetting her suddenly too dry lips, Nicole began to shuffle backwards. Her eyes remained trained on the little ball, certain that at some point the colors would illuminate a demonic face. With each uneasy step, a thought clarified within her mind. The jeep is gone. She fought back the notion, but it was no use. It just felt like a certainty. She could perfectly imagine herself sprinting for its safety only to find the area vacant. Unable to help herself, she shot a quick glance over her shoulder. The jeep was still there. Benton still wasn’t. Then the light of the ball clicked off.
Darkness rushed over her like a tidal wave, too thick for the glow of her glove to compete with. Soft shades of blue and pink barely survived an inch beyond their plastic containers. She lifted the mitt anyway, hoping to use it as a flashlight and wishing that she had brought her phone.
The tiny light source did little good. Her instincts screamed at her to get out of there and she listened, spinning around to hurriedly walk towards the comforting light of the jeep. If something was there, she didn’t want to startle it, didn’t want to provoke any impulse it might have to attack. A cold chill swept up her spine. She shivered and walked a bit faster. Not too fast, the little part of herself that clung to the hope that it was only an animal, whispered. Don’t run. Don’t run. Her mouth became painfully dry when she heard the grass crunch behind her, from somewhere deep out of sight. Something was following her and it sounded heavy. The crunch repeated. One after the other. Closer each time, it sounded like trotting hooves. She glanced around, trying to find the source of the noise, but was only met with a blanket of darkness. The hoof sounds didn’t stop edging closer.
Breath catching in her throat, Nicole looked over her shoulder, back towards the ball. With the sharp, snorted grunt, twin floating flames burst into existence. They crackled and sparked with embers as they hovered at least a foot above her head. Ice flooded though Nicole’s veins as she watched the flames dance and heard a horse snort and snarl. The flames barreled towards her, bringing with them the thunderous roar of the hooves smashing the earth and shattering stone.
The mitt slipped from her hand as she bolted for her jeep. Her legs strained to move as fast as she urged them to, her lungs burned, the sole of her boots slammed down on the thick layer of grass with a slick squish. She wasn’t fast enough. The rhythm of the horse changed, drawing closer, faster, shifting into a steady gallop. Its every breath was a grunt that snapped and hissed like dying flames. The earth shook as it drew closer behind her, making her lose balance, forcing her to go slower as she tried to keep upright. The stench of rot filled her lungs. She heaved it in, desperate for air, and almost gagged. Without breaking stride, she risked a glance behind. Nothing followed her. Nothing but the twin flames that now hovered just an arm’s length behind.
“Benton!”
She snapped her face back around to see him standing next to the passenger side door, the weak light turning his blonde hair into a ring of silver.
“Get in!” she screamed.
Benton didn’t hesitate to follow her command and flung himself inside. The door slammed shut behind him. A spark of relief twisted up through her core as she heard the tell-tale clack of the trunk being popped open. She hooked her fingers around the edge of the metal and swung it open just enough for her to leap through. The cool metal of the trunk smacked against her stomach as she landed inside. Instantly, she scrambled up and whirled around. In the dim light, she easily found the truck door and slammed it shut with a resounding whack. Her hands fumbling to engage the lock. Seconds later, Benton closed the driver’s side door and the overhead light went off, casting them into darkness. The silence was broken only by Benton clicking the locks on the doors, and her panted breaths.
The galloping noise continued and Nicole reached over the back seat, stretching until her hands found Benton’s arm. With a few hard yanks, and a couple of painful collisions, she managed to pull him over the back seat and into the open space of the trunk. He didn’t fight her. But shock and odd angles made it hard to organize his long limbs with any kind of dignity. He landed hard beside her with a painful gasp. She could feel him rolling onto his stomach as she searched for the picnic blanket that was always kept nicely folded in the corner.
It was near impossible to tell if her hurried jerks of the blanket had managed to cover them both. In such darkness, it was just as likely that they were both still exposed. Or that the creature was already outside, watching them through the thin layer of glass that was the window. She tried not to think about that as she pulled Benton closer. Her stomach plummeted as their tiny makeshift shelter warmed with a soft glow. Benton’s mitt was still on his hand, glow sticks perfectly in place, signaling their hiding place like a search beacon.
Shadows clung to Benton’s face, stubbornly remaining even as the soft multi-colored light played within the space. Slowly, careful not to make any large movements, he pulled the glove from his hand and tucked it under his chest.
It didn’t fully smother the glow. In the play of shadows, his eyes became silver disks, almost with a light of their own.
“What is going–”
She shushed him, her hand trembling as she pressed it over his mouth. He fell silent, but his eyes never stopped asking her questions she couldn’t answer. The solid thud of the hoof steps made them both freeze. Its breath sounded like a growl as it panted against the windows inches above their heads. There was something inherent within the sound that pushed every nerve in her body on edge; something that made the more primal part of her brain cower.
Beside her, Benton had the same reaction. She could see it in the widening of his eyes. Hear it in his hushed gasp. His hand clamped over her own and he inched it from his mouth. His breath, hot and fast, flushed over her fingertips as they both waited. The creature snorted, loud and savage. Still, it was impossible to tell exactly where the sound had come from. Neither willing to move, they twisted their heads as much as they could, listening for the slightest hint that would give it away.
The massive beast of a horse slowly began to circle the jeep. The vehicle jolted with every step, the suspension squealing as it rocked. Nicole had been around horses her whole life, but she couldn’t fathom one ever being large enough to provoke that kind of reaction. Benton’s hand tightened around her own with every monstrous thud.
The jeep trembled violently as something unseen landed on top of its metal roof. They both flinched, clenching their jaws to keep down their startled cries. Nicole’s teeth ached with the effort. She couldn’t help but flinch as thump after thump echoed through the cab. The metal groaned and popped with the heavy footsteps that crossed over the top of them. Cold shock clawed the inside of her ribs when she realized that stride sounded human. Then it stopped.
Silence curled up around them, thick and smothering. Her muscles twitched, unsure if they should be ready for a fight, or slacken with relief. There had been no retreating steps. Either the monstrosity of a horse and its rider were gone, or they were still out there, just above them, beside them, with only a few inches and some steel keeping them away.