by Sara Clancy
Benton met Nicole’s gaze, his eyes as wide as her own. She couldn’t tell which one of them was trembling as she pressed her lips into a fine line, holding her breath as she struggled to hear what was happening. The crushing silence was broken by a faint, gentle slide. She could hear a few of them, moving as one, making it impossible to tell their actual numbers. It was a familiar sound that she couldn’t quite place. Benton recognized it instantly. Her heart stammered within her chest when he helped her eyes and mouthed one word, ‘locks.' With a sharp flurry of mechanical clicks, the trunk door flung open.
Cool night air rushed in. They bolted up, limbs tangling in the blanket. Blindly, they both began scrambling back, kicking and thrashing in an attempt to hit whatever was coming in. The side doors burst out, their hinges almost coming apart as they swung wide open. The overhead light turned on. The dim bulb now burned her eyes as she pressed herself into a corner, her hands raised up to protect her head.
There was nothing. Nothing grabbed her. Nothing moved. Her heart was still within her throat as the soft sound of life came back. The call of birds roosting for the night and crickets chirping coaxed her to lower her arms and blink into the darkness. Benton was in the corner opposite her, looking just as rattled. His chest heaved as he hesitantly stretched out his legs. Nicole followed his line of sight and blinked into the darkness. She could just make out the edges of the trunk door but nothing beyond.
Benton rose onto all fours and pushed himself back into a crouch. He looked ready to spring in any direction and his eyes kept flicking back to hers. Slowly, keeping herself close to his side, she crept to the edge of the trunk. She stretched her arm out until her fingers shook with the strain but the handle of the truck door always seemed just beyond her reach. The darkness seemed like a living thing, ready to devour her whole, waiting for her to edge out just a little too far. Carefully, her eyes ever scanning the visible depths, she leaned out a bit further. Benton shifted anxiously. Her fingertips grazed the handle. And the world reeled back into silence.
Lurching forward, Nicole gabbed the handled and threw herself back. The trunk door slammed shut, hard enough to make the back window crack with the strike, as her spine collided with the back of the seats. Benton was already shoving her into motion the second she stopped moving. They both scrambled over the back of the seats and Benton pushed her towards the front of the car. Slipping into the driver’s seat, Nicole searched for her keys as Benton yanked the doors shut once more.
She fumbled in her pocket, twisting her fingers into painful angles to wrench the keys free. The metal tip scraped into the ignition as Benton pressed against the back of her seat to pull the last door closed. The light went off once more, but the engine roared to life. The steady, reliable strum kept her from panicking. She clutched the gear stick, but before she could force it into reverse, a blinding, flashing light burst into existence. It radiated out in front of them. The light danced off the hood of her car, washing their stunned faces in a constantly shifting array of color.
Benton leaned down between the two front seats as Nicole reached out with a shaking hand and turned on the driving lights. The ball hovered in mid-air, still flashing, for a moment longer. Then it dropped, plummeting down the deep cliff, tumbling unhindered until the shards of light disappeared from view. Dirt and gravel flew up in a billowing cloud as Nicole forced the jeep into reverse and pounded her foot against the accelerator a second later. She carried them a few feet, not even glancing behind, never taking her eyes off the empty patch of air that had held the ball. With a hard yank, she whirled the jeep around. The gears ground together as she forced them into place. Nicole pushed the aging jeep as fast as it could go. They barreled down the long, twisting road back towards the town, never once daring to glance behind.
Chapter 2
Benton didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. Not until they were once again on the paved highway, passing under the spatially placed streetlights and approaching the growing light and life of the small town. Fort Wayward wasn’t big enough to warrant a single stoplight, and the buildings were just a light speck of structures along one side of the narrow highway. But, within that moment, it felt as bright and lively as a capital city. A gas station and diner were the first places that met them. With a sudden burst of words that made Nicole jump, Benton insisted that she pull over. Nicole swerved into the gravel drive parking lot that stretched across both buildings and slammed on the brakes. The sudden jolt lurched him hard against the front seats, a reminder that he hadn’t moved since they had left the Jump.
Nicole stared straight ahead. She dropped one hand from the wheel but only long enough to turn the engine off. Then she put it back on the steering wheel and continued her staring contest with the diner’s front window. The neon sign buzzed as it drenched the car with a rosy red glow. He twisted and slipped through the gap of the front seats, ungracefully dumping himself into the passenger seat. His back ended up against the dashboard and it took a few extra moments to organize his gangly legs over the seat back. Nicole, mercifully, didn’t comment. Somehow, he twisted himself around and up enough that his feet hit the roof and he paused.
“It dented your roof.”
Nicole turned around to look, one hand pressing against his thigh to hold him still so she could see the damage properly. It left him in an awkward and unflattering angle but he didn’t fight it, holding still with his back crammed in the jam of the dashboard and door as she made her appraisal.
“What do paranormal creatures have against my jeep?”
He jolted at her sudden wail.
“Why are you asking me?” he snapped back.
She glared at him, her warm brown eyes narrowed and mouth a firm line. He quickly shifted his attention back to the damage above him. Whatever had come after them had bent the metal enough that it would probably brush the tips of his spiked hair when he sat up.
“It’s not that bad,” he offered. He quickly rushed to follow up the obvious lie with, “I’m sure you can get it hammered out.”
She twisted in her seat to face him straight on. His jeans couldn’t stand against her nails as she dug them into the flesh of his thigh. “Do you have any idea how expensive it was to replace the window that stupid Leanan Sidhe broke?”
“Well, Victor broke it.”
“While under a drug-high caused by the Leanan Sidhe, so it’s still the paranormal’s fault,” she defended sharply.
“We’re not a collective community,” he shot back, hoping to move the conversation along before she remembered the mention of Victor.
They hadn’t really talked about him yet. It seemed Victor’s death was a personal loss for Nicole; something she kept separate from Benton. He didn’t want to be the one to broach the subject that she had avoided so long. Especially when he wasn’t sure if he could be as supportive as she needed.
He had only had a few limited interactions with the other teenager, and every one of them had been violent. So it hadn’t really affected him when the Leanan Sidhe had added Victor to its collection of corpses. If anything, he had actually felt a sense of relief.
But Nicole had grown up with Victor. She had known him before the Leanan Sidhe had gotten under his skin and into his mind. They had been friends, and she had loved him. The loss had destroyed something within her that hadn’t quite begun to heal, the damage only growing with the guilt that they couldn’t tell anyone where his body was. As far as Fort Wayward knew, as far as his family knew, he was a runaway. Not dead and rotting in a forgotten basement a few miles out of town. Luckily, she was too worked up to linger on the memory of him and quickly carried on with her tirade.
“Not to mention the time it took to clean up all that junk you vomited over my seats.”
“I was drugged,” he defended. “It’s not my fault that my body can’t take Leanan Sidhe venom.”
“It bleached everything! I lost my favorite jacket.”
“I apologized.”
“Apologies don’t pay th
e dry cleaning bills.”
The back of his neck was starting to cramp from the awkward angle the dashboard was forcing him into. It also made it impossible to pull off the shrug that he wanted to.
“I really don’t know what you want me to say about this, Nic.”
Finally, she let go of his leg and let him scramble fully into the passenger seat. As predicted, he could feel the roof pressing against the gelled spikes of his hair and gently scraping against his skull. Not enough to hurt. But definitely enough to be noticed. Nicole still hadn’t turned off the headlights even though they were safely within the glow wafting from the diner, and it was starting to draw the attention of the staff.
He followed Nicole’s example and offered them a wave. He felt like an idiot, especially since he still couldn’t get his legs under the dash without slamming his knees against it. But the gesture seemed to appease them and they went back to clearing tables.
“Does Oliver like horses?” she asked.
The abrupt question distracted him from his sense of victory at finally getting his feet under the dash without breaking his kneecaps.
“I’ve never really discussed it with him,” Benton replied.
She whirled around to face him so quickly that her long hair swung up and brushed against his shoulder. “Did you see a horse at the Jump?”
“No. Why are you stuck on horses?”
She jolted. “You did hear the thing circling us, right?”
“That thudding noise. Yeah,” he said before he caught on. “That’s what a horse sounds like?”
Nicole closed her eyes, her expression softening into one of forced patience. “Yes, Benton. That is what a horse sounds like. Kind of. Whatever that thing was, it sounded way too big to be any breed of horse I know.”
“I didn’t see a horse. Is that what you think was chasing you?”
She edged closer and her hand clamped down onto his forearm with an iron like grip. “You saw what was chasing me?”
She looked so hopeful that he actually felt guilty to say, “No. Sorry.”
“What about the ball?” She leaned towards him a little more, her hand tightening around him until his forearm began to throb. He could almost feel her restless energy simmering under her skin, pushing against him with the heat of a noonday sun. “When it was hovering in mid-air. What did you see? What was holding it?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“What?” she snapped.
“All I saw was the ball.”
“But you’re the one who can see ghosts!”
“Well, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he shot back.
That got her to simmer down, in a way. Her grip loosened, but he could practically hear her rolling different ideas around in her head.
“Okay, we can figure this out.” While she spoke out loud, he was sure that she wasn’t addressing him. “Maybe you can only see Oliver when he wants to be seen.”
“It wasn’t Oliver.”
Her eyebrows shot to her hairline, a spark of interest sparkling in her eyes.
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.” The moment Benton said it, he knew it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her ravenous curiosity. He sighed, the long breath allowing some of his remaining anxiety to seep out of him. While Nicole wore the perfect expression of patience, the nails digging into his arm told a different story. “It just didn’t feel like him. Oliver has a very distinctive feeling. I get it every time he’s around and I didn’t get that with whatever this was. It felt different.”
Her head cocked to the side. “How does Oliver feel?”
Benton took a moment to give the question some real thought, trying to translate something that was never supposed to be put into verbal language.
“Like pins and needles in my bone marrow.”
“And what did this feel like?” She jerked her head in the vague direction of the Jump.
Benton didn’t have to consider his response, “I felt threatened.”
“No kidding,” she said with an unimpressed lift of one eyebrow.
“Not like it just wanted to hurt me,” he said as his stomach churned. “Like it hated me. Like my very existence offended it.”
Nicole’s eyes softened and her strong hold was replaced with a soft rub, as if he would actually be offended that the creature that had traumatized them didn’t want to be his friend.
“Thanks, Nic,” he mumbled, still slightly suspicious that she was messing with him.
But Nicole offered him a sad smile before she started to work her seatbelt open. How she had managed to fasten it, while breaking every speed limit sign, was beyond him. She didn’t say anything more and she didn’t need to. They both wanted to get into someplace with a bit more light. Someplace where the shadows weren’t pressing in on all sides. Someplace that didn’t have any attachment to what had just happened.
The second they entered the diner, the tension that had twisted up each knot along his spine began to loosen.
Like a lot of Fort Wayward, the diner was old, but pleasant. Family sized vinyl booths lined the wall of windows, while one long counter with stools separated the room from the kitchen. There were a few small tables speckled around the remaining space, but none of them were able to seat more than four people.
They were too late for the evening rush, but there were still a few people winding down their night on the town. In Fort Wayward, painting the town red never went past eleven PM. But even in their more busy moments, it was pretty standard for the first booth by the door to be left untouched. It was perfectly positioned to receive gusts of air each time the door opened, exposing whoever sat there to freezing chills in the winter and humid breezes in the summer. Nicole quickly scooted into it until her shoulder pressed against the window, her attention constantly jerking back to her jeep. Benton still felt a little awkward every time they sat here. It was where he had been when Victor had attacked him the second time. It was the first time he had come at him with a knife. But at least they had finally replaced the bulb outside so the parking lot was visible. Then they had added a few more, carving out a small patch of light in the darkness. The whole town had been shaken up that night. Violence wasn’t a common occurrence for the small town and no one had known quite how to take it.
With her eyes still on her damaged car, she toyed with the beads that draped down from her choker. She seemed to have an endless supply of them and had recently been favoring any that were reminiscent of legends from her Siksika heritage. Nearly the entire population of Fort Wayward was connected in some way to a Native Canadian tribe. Like Nicole, most of them had their roots within the Blackfoot. Additionally, this was the first time he had ever lived outside of a major city. With these two factors working against him, it wasn’t uncommon for him to find himself surrounded with references and customs that he didn’t understand. But then, he supposed that this sensation would be the norm for anyone entering a small town community that wasn’t accustomed to new additions.
So he felt proud when he actually recognized the legend on the choker that she wore now. A black thunderbird stretched out across a bed of red and yellow beads. From what he understood, it was the legend that spoke of a gigantic eagle-like bird that could carry off unsuspecting people. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought at the moment. She restlessly began to brush her hand over her dark, hip length hair.
“How am I going to explain that dent to my mother?”
“We’ll think something up,” he said as he settled into the other side of the booth, making sure that he had a direct line of sight to the door.
Her eyes skirted to him. “She’s an R.C.M.P officer, remember? As in Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She’s trained to investigate. She can always tell when I’m lying.”
“Everyone can.” He quickly continued before she could refute him, “And you can just tell her the truth. It was dark and you have no idea what it was.”
Nicole nodded to the side, indicating that Rick was q
uickly approaching their table, looking bored and staring at the phone he had not so discreetly placed on his notepad. With the time they had left, Nicole leaned across the table and whispered.
“How did I not think of that?”
“Too close to the project,” he replied in the same hushed tone.
Rick reached their table and they both sank back in their seats. Despite the fact that Rick was only a year younger than Benton himself, he still hadn’t been able to kick the habit of thinking of him as a kid. It didn’t matter that Rick had twice as much bulk as Benton did. Or that he had an impressive amount of chest hair for a sixteen year-old, which was once again on proud display.
“Button up your shirt,” Nicole groaned.
“You don’t really work here,” Rick said with a wide, smug grin. “So you don’t get a say.”
Rick and Nicole had both been with Benton when Victor had attacked him. And they had both been caught up in the mix. At first, Benton had carried some guilt over that. But it was hard to hold onto it when Rick decided that the way to cope with that kind of fright was to be as obnoxious as possible in every available opportunity.
“I can tell the manager,” she noted.
“Do they make chest hair nets?” Benton asked.
She glared at him. Her patented, ‘you aren’t helping’ glare, that never had as much effect as she seemed to think it did, was showing.
“Hey,” Rick cut in. “I work for tips, and women like it.”
Benton turned to Nicole with a smile. “I didn’t know that about you.”
She strengthened her glare. It still didn’t do much good.
“Are you guys ordering or just taking up space?” Rick asked, with no trace of amusement.
“We’ll have some coffee and a banana split,” Nicole said in her most sugary sweet tone.
Benton waited until Rick had left before he cocked an eyebrow at her.
“What?” she said as she straightened her hair again. “I survived an encounter with a violent paranormal entity, so I get a treat.”