by Sara Clancy
“Get out.”
Nicole’s cold voice thundered within the sudden silence. Gulping for air, Benton took his first look beyond the tangled mass of the stag’s antlers. The other animals hadn’t fled. Nor did they attack. Instead, the massive creatures lingered in a stunned state. They would have looked like statues if it weren’t for the way their sides heaved with every snorted breath.
Startled gasps broke the uneven silence as one by one, the deer began to rise, drawing up onto their hind legs, their forelegs danglingly limply before them. They didn’t wobble or waver or breathe. All signs of life fled from their bodies as they stood there. The world fell silent, broken only by a few shrieks when, in unison, the stags snapped their heads around to focus on a singular point.
The next arrow took out the closest deer, burrowing deep into its eye. It was dead before it hit the ground.
“Did I stutter?” Nicole bellowed. “I don’t know what the hell you are, but Benton? He’s mine. Get! Out!”
Stretching his torso, Benton caught sight of what she was talking to. The stags had ravaged the doors. What remained of the slats hung limply on the hinges, allowing small glimpses of the hallway and what lurked within it. Benton couldn’t make out its lower body but could clearly see that it wasn’t what had chased him. Its head shifted in and out of view. A buffalo skull hovering above a smear of black. Its eyes were holes and yet he could feel it staring at him. Terror worked through his veins like ice.
“Benton,” Nicole said, her voice becoming tense with anger. “Are you okay?”
Gulping hard, he nodded, remembering only a second later that she probably couldn’t see him. “Yeah.”
“If it takes one step into this room, scream.”
A crushing silence settled over them. The air grew as thick as tar, choking him as his chest swelled and tightened with the unleashed scream. It made him tremble. In the silence, the stags turned their attention onto him.
“Benton−”
Before she could finish the request, the buffalo creature sunk back and disappeared. It left without making a single sound. Seconds passed as everyone held their breath. A few startled shrieks shattered the silence as the stags lurched. They each fell forward, returning to all fours. Benton had never seen a confused deer before. Now he was faced with a dozen of them.
“Are you hurt? Don’t move, okay?” Nicole almost beat her words as she scrambled down from the stage, one of the school’s archery bows still clutched in her hand.
Life rushed back into the room at her sudden burst of movement. Screams, chatter, confusion, and demands filled the air. Nicole ignored it all as she grabbed the dead deer from behind and began to yank. Benton pushed at the same time. Between them, they were able to wiggle the antlers within the holes it had created but struggled to move it far enough to free him.
“I’m so sorry I took so long,” Nicole rushed. “I heard you. And I was on my way out when Ms. Carter took my bat off of me. Can you believe that? I had to improvise. Are you hurt?”
“I’m alright,” Benton mumbled, wide eyes flicking between her, the now empty doorway, and the dead creatures that littered the floor. “Good shot.”
She paused in her efforts to yank the stag away. “Thank you. That’s sweet.”
“Please get the deer off of me.”
“Right. Hey, Zack! Can I borrow you for a second? Please, and thank you!”
In the seconds it took for the towering teenager to work his way over, the reality of what had just happened settled within Benton’s mind. Everyone saw it. There’s proof. They’re not going to look the other way. Everyone saw! The thoughts swirled within him until he was vibrating with the need to run. A pure, primal urge to flee from whatever was coming.
“Hey,” Nicole soothed, her voice calm within the typhoon of panic surrounding them. “It’s going to be okay.”
He gulped past the lump in his throat and jumped at the chance for a distraction.
“Remember this morning? When I said we should skip school today and you insisted that we come in?”
“We both had tests, Benton,” she said. “We can’t let every little threat on our lives keep us from our education.”
“I was almost impaled.”
Her lips pulled into a tight, thin line, and curled at the edges to form more of a pout than a grimace.
“Yeah, I’m going to need you to say it,” Benton said, dropping his voice a little lower when he noticed Zack jumping down from the stage.
“You were right,” she grumbled.
Chapter 6
Music blared through Benton’s headphones, pouring the frantic, electronic beat into his skull. All of his thoughts drowned within the pulsating tide. His body moved out of pace with the song. Each shift and sway maintained the purposeful dignity that Svetlana would have demanded. Dancing was his only real escape from the mounting tension, both within the household and himself. At this point, they just kept the living room furniture pushed against the walls.
The two-week suspension had only caught Nicole by surprise. She had protested to the principle for hours that he couldn’t do it. Challenged anyone who said otherwise to explain how Benton could be responsible for getting attacked by rabid deer on school property. Or how they could punish her for killing a few of the dangerous animals. Benton had offered support when she had asked but otherwise kept his silence. It wasn’t about logic. Not really.
It was fear.
More than one teacher had opened their doors to investigate the noise and caught a glimpse of the snow-white monster. A classful of terrified students had seen the living buffalo skull staring him down. The stags had only come after him. No one knew what they had seen that day, but they knew exactly who it wanted. Serial killers, stalkers, monsters; there was really only one way people reacted to discovering Benton had a target on his back: they wanted him as far away from them as possible. Paranormal quarantine, Benton thought to himself. The thought was quickly lost again as some particularly difficult footwork demanded his focus.
Nicole was just collateral damage. He would have never asked for her to be, but he couldn’t deny that, deep down, he was grateful. They were a packaged deal. Wherever one of them was, the other was sure to show up sooner or later. It was something he had come to rely on, and wasn’t about to give it up. Especially when he didn’t know how much time he had left.
Danny and Meg had taken to bringing over homework and assignments after school. Zack showed up more for gossip. They all knew from the beginning that Nicole was going to have rapidly dwindling interest in either. She had a mystery. And the school board had given her all the time she needed to climb down that rabbit hole.
They were almost a week in at this point as the vast majority of the living room wall was now devoted to her ‘stalker wall’. Printouts of legends, historical photographs, urban legends, and a few crime scene photographs, that Dorothy herself had provided, were all pinned in neat disarray. They were connected by different colored threads of tinsel because Nicole still wanted it to be pretty.
Coming out of a spin, Benton arched his back, draping down until his fingertips grazed the floorboards. He had to admit; It didn’t look that bad. Obsessive, strange, and creepy, but in an almost festive way. She’s getting way too good at this. Drawing himself back up, he crossed the living room, his toes barely making a sound as they tapped the floor. He closed his eyes, trying to quiet his mind, to narrow his reality to nothing beyond the music in his ears and the air in his lungs.
Each day made it a little harder to pull off the feat. There was always something new to discover in the morning snow. Undefinable tracks circled the house, clustering at windows and pacing in front of the doors. The tree trunks had been slashed along with the car tires. A murder of crows had settled within the neighbor’s fir tree, held off from the pines around the Rider home by the sudden increase in territorial great horned owls. And night never came without the yard being filled with glowing eyes.
In a town this small,
everyone knew everyone. It didn’t take long for Logan to be roped into helping animal control when the deer and coyote population had started to become a problem. It was now a near-constant battle to keep them outside of the town properly. An annoyance for many, a concern for few, and a curiosity that had the few tourists they got lingering a few days longer. For Benton, it was proof that he hadn’t misinterpreted Mic’s warning. He was going to die soon. And perhaps rise again as a reaper, just like her.
The thought invaded his mind, burning him inside like a branding iron. He pushed his body harder, trying to hide from the truth within the haze of muscle memory and blissful oblivion. While he could push it from the forefront of his mind, it was always there, lurking on the edges, ready to strike again. His exhausted body trembled as the music reduced to a single, lingering note, then cut off into silence. Without it, he almost dropped into a sweaty, terrified heap.
I don’t want to die.
Nicole’s enthusiastic clapping made him lurch back into reality. Panting hard and plucking his earphone out, Benton flopped down on his side of the sofa. A half-dozen items instantly dug into his back. Squirming, he struggled to retrieve the cluster of pens and highlighters from under the knitted blanket. Both of them were painfully aware of his stalker. Instead of mentioning it, Nicole had just decided to be his shadow. The sofa had become her ‘neurotic-nest’. Used coffee mugs and bowls of snacks filled the few spaces not taken up by books, binders, and loose sheets of colorful paper.
“Hey, you’re going to mess up my system,” she protested as he continued to pull items out from under his back.
“This side of the sofa is mine,” he retorted.
“I know.”
“Then why is it covered with your stuff?” A collection of glitter pens served as his evidence.
She snatched them off of him. “It’s not my fault that you’re in their natural migration path.”
In retaliation, he began a battle over his portion of the knitted blanket. She struggled to balance her laptop on her knees and fight him off at the same time.
“Stop it. You’re all sweaty.”
Deciding that he had annoyed her enough, he released the blanket and claimed her nearby glass of water.
“You’re getting really good at that,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the living room at large.
“I am really good at it,” Benton scoffed, suddenly struck with the knowledge that he had something else to brag about. “I could have made a living out of it.”
Dark eyes studied him carefully. She jerked. “You’re not joking, are you?”
Everything about her screamed that she was about to start obsessing over this new bit of information. So, of course, he had to frustrate her to no end by changing the subject.
“Okay, I have to ask. The outfit. Is that an act of defiance or a sign of depression?”
Around the third day of their confinement, Nicole had started wearing a selection of footed pajamas instead of her regular outfits. She pressed a hand protectively over the pink fleece.
“I’m comfortable.”
“But at what cost?”
“First of all, you have the wardrobe variety of a Scooby Doo character. Secondly, I look adorable in anything.”
“Debatable,” he shrugged.
She rolled her eyes and returned to whatever she was working on.
“My six-year reign as Little Miss Buffalo Princess begs to differ.”
Benton blinked at her. “You’re a beauty queen?”
That earned him a scowl. “It’s not just a beauty contest. If you want to win, you also have to have talent, composure, intelligence, and display upstanding character throughout the entire rigorous competition. And yes, I won. A lot.”
“Not surprised,” he said. Watching her fingers fly over the keyboard, he asked, “You haven’t got a title now?”
She refused to look up from her laptop. “I retired when I was seven.”
A smile stretched his lips. “You got way too competitive and your parents pulled the plug, huh?”
“It was a competition!” she shrieked, her outraged voice carrying over his laughter. “If you’re not playing to win, why even try?”
It felt good to laugh. He didn’t try to hold back as she continued to protest her innocence, all frantic arm-waving and big doe eyes. By the time she gave up, his sides had begun to hurt.
“You are terrifying.”
She huffed, and he nudged her with his foot.
“But adorably so.”
That appeased her somewhat, and she went back to her work. Strengthened by his mirth, he gestured to the laptop and asked the question he had been avoiding all morning.
“So . . . any breakthroughs?”
“No,” she said bitterly.
“Really?”
Her dark eyes narrowed on him. “Yeah.”
“Sorry. It’s just, well, you normally have something by now. The last one only took you a couple of hours.”
“The other ones had a sense of decency!”
He didn’t have time to backpedal before the flood gates opened and the tidal wave of her rant crushed down on him.
“They hid themselves, being all secretive and lurk-y. It makes sure that the few things you learn about them are significant. Important things that I can use to narrow down the suspect list. But this−” Not having anything to call it, she substituted it with a clench-jawed scream. “It doesn’t care who sees it. So, what are the important parts? The defining features? How does it change physical form? Manipulate animals? The way it’s become fixated on you, or how brazenly it attacks during the day? And in public, no less. Do you know how few creatures do that? Oh, and what about the fact that it has no problem chasing you around a public building, but apparently can’t get through our front door? Can it come into a private residence without an invitation, or is it just oddly polite?” She paused. “Well?”
“Oh, I thought all of that was rhetorical.”
The words had barely passed his lips before she had started up again.
“I have too much information, Benton! I need a memo, and he’s buried me in paperwork!” She snatched up a fistful of the sheets, waving them in his face as if he had needed the proof. “He fits into too many categories! Is he a Vampire? Witch? Wendigo? Gorgon? Ljiraq? Adlet? Bokkenrijders?”
“I swear you made those last few up.”
She waved the sheets with renewed fury. “How am I supposed to sift through all of this? I hate this guy!”
The following silence left his ears ringing. At some point, he had pressed his spine to the armrest, his hands coming up as if to fend her off.
“You’ve been holding that in for a while, huh?”
Her eyes were full of venom and rage. Unfortunately, the scrunch of her mouth gave the overall aesthetic of a petulant child.
“I hate him,” she said on a grunt.
Benton fought back an amused smirk. “Me too. More because he tried to murder me, but this is also bad.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “Why can’t he just tell me how to kill him? I’m not asking for a lot.”
“He’s a jerk.”
A frustrated sigh of annoyance deflated her, melting her against the sofa, as she muttered under her breath how much she hated this thing, and made vows of vengeance for her wounded pride.
“Didn’t mean to hit a sore spot,” Benton assured. “And I’m grateful that you’re doing this. If there’s any way I can help.”
“Aw, Benton, that’s sweet.” She snatched up a book before he could reach it. “But please don’t touch anything.”
“I’m that bad at research?”
Her free hand found one of his. She held it with tender care and offered him the sweetest smile he had ever seen.
“Yeah, you are. Just watching you try makes me want to weep.”
Benton’s brow furrowed. “Ow. My feelings.”
Squeezing his hand, she looked at him with complete serenity as she told him to ‘walk it
off’. With that, she began to gather her information nest protectively closer.
“Well, can I do anything at all?” he asked.
“You could have a shower,” she said over the rim of a book. “You’re still all sweaty. It’s kind of gross.”
“Wow. You’re mean when you’re mildly inconvenienced.”
The good humor died in an instant. The intensity in her gaze let him know that he had messed up. He fed into yet another one of her obsessions.
“Being stalked is a minor inconvenience to you?” she asked.
He pulled his hands through his hair, the scars that marred one palm scraping against his forehead.
“You don’t have to dance around it. Just ask.”
“Who stalked you?”
A small smirk tugged at one side of his mouth. “You’ve accessed my police record. Doesn’t it have a footnote?”
“A footnote sealed by court order.”
“Ah. Well, there’s not much to tell. After the…” He licked his lips and glanced down at his hands. “Incident at the bowling alley, I was in pretty bad shape. Doctors actually thought I wouldn’t walk again. Through rehab, I was turned onto dance and met Svetlana. She took me into the dance academy.”
“Okay,” she said as he fell into silence.
Scratching at his scalp again, he blurted out the rest, trying to race his growing anger to the finish.
“Yeah, well, you’ve seen photos of what I looked like back then. Apparently, when I dance, I’m really pretty. Svetlana called it hypnotic. Hachiro used far more sexualized terms. After getting rejected by every girl at the academy, he decided that I was ‘close enough.’ It all went downhill after that.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not intentionally. He just didn’t think someone as small as me would fight so hard not to get pulled into a car.”
“He tried to kidnap you?”
“And broke into my dorm room more than once.”
“You went to the police, though?”
Benton nodded. “Stalking is a hell of a thing to try and prove. Really, it’s just your word against theirs. You have to prove intent. Eventually, my parents caught word of it. Then they came back and decided that we had to move again. That’s how they handle everything. Run. I mean, yeah, the other times didn’t work out that great, but I was happy with Svetlana. I didn’t do anything wrong, but−”