The Fell of Dark

by Caleb Roehrig

  “I’m done.” I don’t know if I finished, but I’ll never touch it again.

  “This is … wow.” My art teacher widens his eyes, scanning every inch of the elaborate scene on the page. “You’ve got … kind of a theme going, between this and your last. It’s a little macabre, though.” This is an understatement; I apparently just spent two hours drawing a person getting burned at the stake—tied to a post, head lolling back while flames roast their flesh like my marshmallow at Sugar Mama’s. My stomach convulses again as Mr. Strauss asks, “What inspired this, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I don’t know, it was just…” Acid scorches my throat. My heart is finally slowing, but my skin tingles all over, as if sunburned. “It was something from a dream.”

  “Must’ve been a hell of a dream.” Mr. Strauss leans back, his expression analytical. “The composition is better this time, more interesting. You’ve set the pyre off-center, which creates a dynamic energy, but it’s balanced by the placement of the crowd.” He sweeps his hand in a curve, taking in the onlookers—because, once again, I’ve drawn a mob scene. “I notice you’ve included that same group of women from your last work.”

  He phrases the statement like a question, seeking an answer, but I don’t have one to give. Watching the corpse burn is a dense group of spectators, and among them is a trio of figures in black. Something inside me flickers with recognition—except I have no idea what I’m looking at, or why I put it there. “I guess I just … thought it would look cool.”

  “The perspective might be the most compelling part of the tableau.” Mr. Strauss cocks his head. “We’re above the scene, looking down—removed, but not distant. Spectators, like the crowd, but not far enough away to escape the ugly details. It makes us complicit. A god’s-eye view.”

  “It’s not a god.” I know this much with utter conviction. Somehow, I know I drew this from the viewpoint of whoever was inside that burning body until an agonizing death cast them out. My hands are shaking. “I’m sorry—I have to go or I’ll miss the bus.”

  Shoving my things into my backpack, I sprint from the art room for the second time in as many weeks, the acrid odor of smoke still clinging to my clothes and hair.

  5

  When I get home, it’s just in time for my tutoring session. Daphne is already there, chatting with my mom and pretending not to notice the creepy, blank-eyed rag doll sitting out on the kitchen counter. It belonged to my grandma when she was a little girl, and my mom is convinced it’s a valuable antique. Once a month, she pulls it out and gives me nightmares while researching ways to clean it up without destroying it, in the hopes that she can someday get it appraised.

  Once upon a time, that doll was the scariest thing I’d ever encountered. But now? Unless Jude really did somehow work vampire magic on me, making me hallucinate all this stuff, his warning was on the level. Dreams of death? Check. Lost time? Check. Changes in my body? If my new undead-sensing ability counts, then checkity-fucking-check.

  The world as you know it, as we all know it, could be coming to an end. And you might be the only one who can stop that from happening. But how? And why?

  Daphne is patient with me as I stumble through my homework and her prepared exercises, too preoccupied by my growing fears to focus on algebra; and when we’re finishing up an hour later, I remind my parents that I’m supposed to have dinner with Adriana and her grandmother. All afternoon, I’ve been debating whether or not I really want to go. I’m too worried to eat, but Ximena Rosales is an actual factual witch. If there’s anyone who can help me figure out what’s happening to me, she might be it—if I can muster up the courage to be honest with her.

  I came out to my parents freshman year. I’d never really dated anyone, and they’d never pressured me to talk about it, letting me choose when to bring it up. They wanted to give me space to decide if and when I was ready, which was cool; and yet, somehow, all that empty space was also terrifying. It created this enormous platform, full of reverent silence, and it gave me the worst kind of stage fright.

  That’s sort of what this feels like. I can’t tell whether my fears will wreck me faster if I keep them inside, or if they’ll do even worse damage once I let them out and no longer have any control over their size, shape, and direction.

  “I just don’t think I’m comfortable with you going out tonight,” my mom says, yanking the cork out of a wine bottle like someone trying to start a lawn mower. “After what happened at the café … maybe it’s best to just stay inside.”

  “It’s not like Ximena’s planning a picnic in Colgate Woods, Mom.” Beholden to my nature, the opportunity for sarcasm is impossible to resist. “She’s got a whole room in her house just for eating.”

  “You know what I mean.” My mother’s eyes narrow. “Anyway, your dad’s still working, and I’ve already had a glass of wine. I can’t drive you to Ximena’s place.”

  “I can do it, Mrs. Pfeiffer,” Daphne offers politely as she shrugs into her coat.

  “Monica.” My mother’s correction is reflexive. “And I can’t ask you to do that, it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “You didn’t ask; I offered.” Daphne tousles my hair, and my glasses slip down my nose. “It’ll be, what? Five minutes out of my way? We’ll watch each other’s backs!”

  “He’d still have to get home again, and—”

  “Ximena can drive me back,” I report, holding up a text confirming the claim. I’m still not sure if I really want to go, but winning an argument against a parent is its own reward.

  My mom crosses her arms, looking conflicted, but finally sighs. “Okay, then. Just … be careful. And text me when you get there so I know you’re okay.”

  Daphne and I are silent all the way to the end of the walk, streetlights gilding the darkness, and I can’t help trying to see if I can sense a vampire. Only, I feel nothing but the crisp bite of March air on my face. Either the ability doesn’t work that way, or there are no vampires present—or I have no abilities and no idea what’s going on.

  After we’ve driven a few blocks, my tutor finally reaches over and thumps my shoulder with a fist. “So what’s going on in there, Auggie? Where’ve you been all night?”

  I shrug, having no clue how to reply. A vampire tried to convince me that the world is coming to an end, and I keep going into freaky trances, and, oh yeah, I was kind of attacked last night. I don’t know how to begin, so I skip to the end instead.

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “Reincarnation,” Daphne repeats carefully. “You mean like … past lives and stuff?”

  “Yeah.” I shift in my seat. The car is freezing. “When we die, do we come back?”

  “Well, when some people die, they come back as vampires, so…” She gives me a wry smile, but the look falls off her face when she sees how serious I am. “Jeez, Auggie, I guess I don’t really know. You’re talking about souls passing on in one form and returning in another?” When I nod, Daphne just offers up a baffled shrug.

  “But do you think it’s possible?” I press. The thing is, I’m becoming less and less convinced that this is some cosmic hand-me-down package of superpowers forwarded to me from a previously known address so I can pick up the torch where the last Chosen One dropped it. I’m not so sure anymore that my dreams of “people from historical periods I don’t recognize” are about me tapping into some common frequency shared by those of us who’ve possessed the same gift.

  They’re starting to seem like real memories.

  It’s not like I’ve never had nightmares before, but lately, they’ve been getting more intense and more frequent. Just last week, the night before my first episode of lost time, one of the deaths I dreamed about was of being burned at the stake. And I still can’t shake the feeling I had while staring at the twisted corpse on the pyre—that I was looking at someone that used to be me.

  “I don’t see why reincarnation couldn’t be possible,” Daphne allows in an upbeat way, as if she’s afraid to argue
against it. “It’s a central element in certain religions, and that has to count for something. But if you’re asking what I believe, personally? I just don’t know.” A light snow begins to fall, a few flakes catching the high beams and then scattering across the windshield. “I never really got into the metaphysical stuff deep enough to have a real opinion. Not to sound glib, but I feel like every minute you spend worrying about what happens after you die is a minute lost from making the most of the life you have now.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense,” I mumble, but I wasn’t really looking for an existential pep talk—and besides, “the life I have now” is starting to scare me.

  “Hey.” She halts the car at a stop sign, more snowflakes drifting over the windshield, and gives me a perplexed frown. “What are we actually talking about here, Auggie? You’ve been at some kind of private funeral in your head all night long, and now you’re asking about whether souls can come back?”

  We’re almost at Ximena Rosales’s house, but Daphne looks genuinely concerned, and she isn’t budging the car from this stop sign. I’m not even sure what it was I hoped she’d say, and now I feel guilty for worrying her. Before I can think better of it, I blurt, “There was a vampire attack last night. Downtown. Maybe you heard about it.”

  “No.” She sits back, brushing some hair behind her ear. “What happened?” I give her the quick version, and Daphne stiffens, reaching for my arm. “Oh shit, Auggie! Are you … did he…?”

  “I’m fine.” I don’t tell her what he said. “He didn’t hurt me. I was just … you know, crapping my pants.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been thinking about reincarnation, and what happens after you die,” Daphne concludes, starting to drive again, and I don’t correct her. “Because when a person becomes a vampire, they die; but when their body wakes up again, with all the memories and everything else intact—”

  “Is it still the same person?” I play along, grateful for the easy diversion. “Or has their soul moved out, while something totally different moves in? Because the body still uses the same brain, with all the person’s knowledge and memories. So does the victim really become a vampire, or are they just replaced by an entity that can’t tell the difference between itself and who had the brain before it?”

  To my surprise, Daphne breaks out in a gale of deep, satisfied laughter. “That is an awesome observation, and I am so mad that a sixteen-year-old kid thought of it and I didn’t. Fair warning, mister: I’m stealing all of that for my next independent essay.”

  She spends the rest of the short drive trying to make me laugh, and I do my best to oblige—but in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about the real reason I asked. What if I’m not who I think I am?

  I always figured that if reincarnation were real, it would be the kind of thing you needed a spiritual adviser to confirm for you. But the weird dreams and lost time, the “changes in my body,” and the unnerving conviction that I was that person tied to a post and set on fire? My preferred way to account for it all is the possibility that these are memories of past lives I’ve led, inexplicably waking up inside me, jarred loose by the Nexus or something.

  Because the only alternative I can think of is one I don’t even want to acknowledge. If I’m not remembering past lives, or manifesting the supernatural skills of a chosen vampire killer … then something far more serious is happening to me.

  Something I don’t recognize or understand is invading my consciousness.

  Daphne stops outside of Ximena’s house, but before I get out, she makes me look her in the eye. “Hey, listen. I’m sorry I didn’t have the answers you were hoping for about the reincarnation business, but I’m glad you asked. You can talk to me about anything, anytime, Auggie. I know what it’s like to have stuff going on that you’re not ready to share with your parents, and if you’re ever depressed, or overwhelmed, or … whatever, I’m just a phone call away.” She grins, wiggling her eyebrows. “And lucky for you, I’m a genius about life.”

  “Oh yeah?” I fold my arms. “So impress me. What’s some stuff I should know?”

  “First: You will definitely need some flip-flops you can wear in the shower when you go away to college, because people are gross.” She grimaces. “And second? Your mom’s rag doll is haunted as fuck. I swear that thing tried to steal my soul when I touched it.”

  “At least you don’t have to live with it!” I shudder involuntarily, thinking about the expressionless, floppy-necked poppet. “One time I asked my grandma what it was called, and she looked at me all serious, and went, ‘She doesn’t like it when people say her name out loud.’”

  Daphne and I both scream a little, and she shakes all over like she’s trying to get spiders off of her. “What the hell, Auggie? Why isn’t that terrifying thing buried in a lead box, or trapped in a ring of salt? Your grandma seriously used to play with it?”

  In the creepiest voice I can dredge up from the bottom of my throat, I intone, “Or perhaps the doll was playing with her!”

  Daphne screams again, and then laughs, and finally points at Ximena’s front door. “All right, get out. Go have dinner—and text your mom so she knows you’re not dead.”

  “Will do, boss.” I give her a sharp salute, but before I open the door, I say, “And, um, thanks. It’s nice having someone to talk to about stuff.”

  She points a finger-gun at me and clicks with her tongue. “Like I said: anytime.”

  The snow is falling heavier when I get out of the car, flakes cartwheeling on a sharp wind, and the neighborhood looks deserted. I hurry to the front door, and Daphne watches from behind the wheel as I ring the bell. Her presence is comforting—because as I stand there, all alone on the porch, an eerie, whispering sensation steals up my spine. It’s exactly what I felt when that vampire entered Sugar Mama’s, and I freeze, my skin tightening like a noose.

  Maybe the neighborhood isn’t deserted after all.

  6

  Daphne’s car chugs away at the curb, exhaust piling into the air, and the feeling builds from a whisper to an itch. It tugs at my gut—and I look up. Above, an overhang protects the porch from snow; but one story higher, on the slope of the roof, crouched in the dark beneath a sky robbed of stars … I feel it. I feel him.

  I don’t know how I know it’s a “him,” but I do—and I know that he’s moving, a shadow crawling among shadows, descending. It’s uncanny the way I can sense this, the hair on my neck rising and shifting as he comes closer, looking for a way down. He knows I’m here, too. He was waiting for me.

  Stabbing at the doorbell, heart thudding, I swivel toward the street. Daphne is still watching, and it’s clear she knows something is wrong, even if she can’t see what’s waiting where the moon and streetlights can’t reach. If I run, the creature will pounce; I won’t even make it to the sidewalk. But maybe—

  “Auggie?” Adriana’s voice spins me back around, the front door opening, and I practically knock her down as I barge into the house. “Uh, it’s nice to see you, too?”

  “Shut the door,” I gasp, even though it isn’t strictly necessary. We’re inside a private residence now, and whatever’s out there can’t come in—but Adriana does it anyway, her face turning white in an instant.

  “What is it, what’s going on? Is one of them out there?”

  We both look through the window, but all we see are Daphne’s taillights disappearing up the street. The feeling is gone, too, and maybe it was never there in the first place. “I don’t … I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Adriana lets out a breath and smiles. “I get it. I almost killed Abuela’s bathrobe earlier because I thought it was a vampire.”

  The day we met, in third grade, I was quietly having a panic attack in the middle of class because our teacher told us—very casually—that one day the sun would explode and devour Earth, and Adriana reached over, put her hand on top of mine, and gave me this same look. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. Where
no one else had seen my distress, she had, and she wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.

  “Is that Auggie?” a brassy voice yells from across the house. “Come into the kitchen, mijito. I need a hug!”

  If there’s one thing I don’t like about my family, it’s that Ximena Rosales is not technically part of it. Just like Adriana, she welcomed me with open arms from day one. When I came out, my best friend was the first person I told; Ximena was the second. Tonight, I find her at the stove, tending to a pan of sizzling vegetables, the air thick as velvet with the scents of garlic, cumin, and oregano.

  Adriana’s grandmother hugs me hard enough to crack my thoracic vertebrae, and then immediately shoos me away from the range. “I’m in the middle of something here,” she says, indicating the stove. “This is gonna blow your mind, kid. Chiles rellenos, champiñones al ajillo, and my famous rice!”

  “Guacamole, too, right?” I try not to sound demanding, but it’s hard, because I’m being demanding. There are shallots and jalapeños on the counter, and a bowl of avocados is perched atop the fridge. “If you’re busy, I can help. Just tell me the recipe, and—”

  “Not a chance, cabron.” Ximena fixes me with The Eye. She’s sixty-five, in a beige turtleneck and wire-framed glasses, but only a fool would assume she’s harmless. “You’re gonna have to wait until I’m dead to learn that recipe—and I left instructions for my lawyer to destroy it if I die under suspicious circumstances, entiendes?”

  I pretend to wheedle, begging to know the secret, and she pretends to be stern—but really we’re both having fun. Truth is, I kind of enjoy imagining that her secret ingredient is actual magic—like she mutters a few words and zaps the bowl with lightning from her fingers—and I’d probably be disappointed if I found out that it’s really been ancho chile powder and pink peppercorn all this time.