Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  It shot another fireball at us. It collided with the metal wall behind us and burned straight through. We ran again.

  “We can’t outrun it!” Jackson yelled; his short legs trying to keep up.

  The letter’s words flashed in my mind again.

  Fool the dragon.

  “We don’t have to,” I said. I pulled him behind a small rose bush that sat in the center of another crossroads. “This is all shade, right?” I looked at him. “And we can control it?”

  “Yeah.” His breaths were quick and heavy.

  “Make this grow. Hide us. I’ve got a plan.”

  Jackson closed his eyes and held his hand out. The rose bush grew and expanded. Soon It was a hedge and then a tree; a large expansive tree with limbs that sprouted roses of every color.

  “Now look at me,” I said.

  “What are we doing?” He opened his eyes.

  “Fooling the dragon,” I smiled.

  By the time the dragon reached us; the flapping of its wings so loud that it shook the ground underfoot, I walked from behind the rose tree to meet it. I wasn’t myself though. To the dragon, I looked just like Jackson, glowing red crescent and all. I had never thought about dragons smiling until the horrible red thing’s mouth twisted into a grin; its sharp teeth snapping before me. It reared back and, just as it was about to bathe me in hot red energy, Jackson jumped out from the other side of the tree. With a bright blue dagger in his hand, he threw it. Hitting the monster in the heart, it roared, convulsed, and spit fire into the air. Finally, it crumpled onto itself and disappeared. A small flag fell from where the dragon used to be. It danced around in the air until it came to rest in Jackson’s palm.

  A trumpet sounded and the maze, in its entirety, melted around us. We were back in the garden, with all of the other students and teachers circling us, clapping and cheering our names.

  “I told you it would be fun,” Dr. Static winked as he neared me. I looked down to find that my clothes had reverted back to normal and, touching my cheek, that the strip was no longer over my eyes.

  The crowd lifted Jackson into the air and chanted “Jackson! Jackson!”

  Looks like he won’t have to wait until next year for more friends.

  “You slayed the dragon,” Dr. Static settled beside me, watching the crowd carry a laughing Jackson away. “Not bad for a greenie.”

  “Jackson slayed the dragon. I just confused it,” I answered.

  “No one ever slays the dragon,” he said.

  “Cause it goes against your prophecy?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a freaking dragon. And it’s your prophecy too, you know,” he grinned. “You have a lot of potential. I think you could be a hell of a Breaker one day.”

  I remembered what Echo said about my mom.

  She was a hell of a Breaker.

  Was that even what I wanted? I looked away, staring at the wide open field that stretched between the garden and the woods and separated Weathersby from the outside world. It was dark and the moon was crescent tonight, though not red. A glimmer in the openness caught my eye. As I stared, the world seemed to shift. A wave of something rippled across my line of sight. Where once there was nothing but trees and air, a tower now stood. It was tall and thin, made of white brick with a golden cap at its top. It was bare expect for a door at the bottom and a large arched window near the cap.

  A girl stood in the archway. Her hair, dark enough to match the night sky, came down in a crown of bangs and her skin was pale to the point of being almost colorless.

  The girl in the tower.

  “Will you excuse me? I have to….” My voice trailed off as I walked away from Dr. Static.

  I started out into the field toward the tower. Walking away from the rush of noise coming from the crowd, I realized I must be the only one who saw it. Otherwise, celebration or not, you’d think somebody would care about a tower appearing out of nowhere.

  As I reached the door, gold to accent the top, I noticed a string of symbols etched into the brick. A vine of intertwining silver and red circled the bottom with large golden roses drawn along them. If it was a decoration, it was a good one; as beautifully done as any painting I had ever seen.

  If it was an anchor, like the large red ‘W’s that strung along the whole of Weathersby, it wasn’t quite as successful; you know, since I could see it and all.

  I felt the girl’s eyes on me as I ran my hand along the drawn roses, but when I looked up, she was gone. I pushed through the unlocked door and was met with a pair of matching doors and a set of stairs that winded up in circles for what seemed like forever.

  A large golden rose was drawn on both doors. As I neared them, I heard noises from the stairs. Footsteps, then two sets of footsteps, then voices. I pulled open the left rose door, not sure how I’d explain my presence in an obviously hidden tower.

  The letter told me to do it?

  Stuffing myself inside, I found that it was an empty closet. Or, if it wasn’t, then the stuff inside was shaded so well that I couldn’t see it. Either way, I pressed my ear against the wall and listened.

  “I don’t know why you’re acting like this.” It was Echo. His words, Echo’s echo, sounded throughout the tower, but something told me that if I was even an inch outside of the building, I wouldn’t be able to hear it.

  “That’s because I’m acting reasonably; the way reasonable adults do.” The other voice belonged to Dahila. It was stern, but less cold than it had ever been when she was talking to me. She breathed heavy and I could hear the exasperation in her tone. “There’s no reason she should be here.”

  She?

  “That wasn’t my call. If you have a problem with her placement, bring it up with the Masons. It was the Council who approved it,” Echo answered.

  “And I’m sure you were completely silent on the matter,” Dahlia scoffed.

  “What does that mean?” Echo balked.

  “It means you fought to keep her here.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “You know why.” Dahlia’s voice was quiet, almost downtrodden.

  “Don’t start this again,” Echo warned.

  “Ash’s daughter shows up in the middle of the night, the first unknown Breaker in 100 years, and the Council just lets you keep her here, no questions asked? Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  Me. They were talking about me.

  “I expect you to trust me,” Echo answered. “This is a unique situation, and as such-“

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your students! This has nothing to do with how rare she might be.”

  “Dahlia, don’t!” His voice cut through the place like a knife, but if it affected her, she didn’t let it show.

  “This is about her! Like everything else in our entire lives, this is about Ash. Go ahead, try to deny it. Tell me the fact that this girl is the daughter of your ex-wife has nothing to do with the way you’re acting. ”

  Things were silent for a while. Just when I was about to push the door open and see if they’d left, Dahlia spoke again.

  “We don’t know who’s after her. We don’t know what Ash had been up to for the last fifteen years. I mean, she obviously kept tabs on you. She knew just where to send her little girl once whatever trouble she was causing proved too much.”

  A flash of anger rose in my gut, but I stayed silent, stayed still.

  “Yes. The fact that this girl who I didn’t know existed is the daughter of my wife who I thought was dead did occur to me. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “Your ex-wife,” she corrected. “Ash is your ex-wife. Though, you’ve always had trouble remembering that. And the fact of the matter is, whether you want to believe it or not, Cresta is dangerous. She’s an untrained Breaker and trouble is nipping at her heels.”

  “Would you rather I turn her out, let the big bad whoever have her?” Echo asked.

  “I would rather if you followed protocol and sent her to the Hourglass, where she’d
be safe.”

  “Please! Until two days ago she didn’t even know what she was. The Hourglass would eat her alive. This is the best place for her. The Council understands that.”

  “And it doesn’t hurt that she’s a walking reminder of your first love,” Dahlia sighed.

  “Dahlia, I don’t know when this is going to stop with you. You and I have done the greatest thing two people could ever do together. We gave birth to a Seer. There is no better fit for me. None. Sure, maybe I talked about Ash a little too much. Maybe she held a certain place in my heart, but that was when I thought she had died doing her job; when she was a martyr and not some turncoat. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Morgan, the girl is a Capricorn.”

  “She isn’t!” He said it so loudly that I wondered why it mattered so much. “I accessed the records at the hospital in Chicago where she was born. Her birthday is in March.”

  “Stop it. That girl drips Capricorn. Even a youngling could see that. You-“

  That’s enough!” I heard a loud clanging, like Echo had punched the wall or something. Instinctively, I jerked away from the door. ”I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  “Then maybe I should just say it.” I could hear the tears in Dahlia’s voice, even though, try as I might, I couldn’t actually picture someone like her crying. “It takes two Breakers to have a Breaker baby. Did you really think Ash just ran away and happened to find a husband who had those inherent traits; those exceedingly rare traits? You know better than that. That girl is a Capricorn. Ash was pregnant when she faked her death.”

  The breath caught in my throat, and not because of asthma.

  “You’re keeping Cresta here for the same reason you don’t want to have this conversation; because you know there’s a chance that she’s your daughter.”

  Chapter 11

  Why Nine Year Olds Don’t Get Tattoos

  DAHLIA RAN OUT of the tower after she dropped the bombshell. Echo went t after her. It was for the best because, if they hadn’t, I’m sure I would have burst out of that closet with my mouth open asking for an explanation.

  Echo could be my father. The thought rolled around in my head, wrecking whatever serenity had managed to survive the last few days. I spit the idea out as I exited the closet and the tower. This wasn’t something I was even going to entertain. Sure, my whole world had upended. I was a closet freak with superpowers I still hadn’t begun to broach, and my mother was a runaway from a secret cult. But I knew my father. I knew him in my bones, in my DNA. He was there when I was born, and I was there when he died. No one was going to take him from me.

  But was Dahlia right? If it took two people with Breaker DNA to give birth to a Breaker, then my dad must have had the DNA. But, if he had, why wasn’t he in the Hourglass with the other Breakers? Did my mom know my dad had special DNA? Is that why she settled down with him?

  I shook my head hard, trying to clear it. There were too many questions I couldn’t answer, too many moving parts to my life that I had no idea about. I stumbled back toward the main building. Echo and Dahlia were gone, which was fine with me. If I had seen them, I’d have probably started screaming or crying or something.

  I turned back to the tower, but it too had disappeared, taking the girl with the pale skin with it. She had brought me here. The thought slammed into my mind like a semi-truck. She wanted me to hear what Dahlia said about my mother, but why?

  And who was she anyway? Who was the girl in the tower?

  As I made my way back into the common area, blackened and still empty, I remembered what Dr. Static had said when I asked about her.

  A seer’s tower?

  Is that what that was? Was the girl watching me from the window a seer? Another piece of tonight solidified in my mind. It was what Echo said to Dahlia in the heat of their argument.

  You and I have done the greatest thing two people could ever do together. We gave birth to a Seer.

  The seer was their daughter. Is that why she was here, hidden away from everyone? But what kind of people kept their daughter in a tower?

  A sickening thought came to me. If she was their daughter, and there was a chance that Echo was my father, did that mean I had a sister?

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  I jumped. Turning, I saw Owen sitting cross-legged on the couch. My mind had been running so frantically that I hadn’t noticed him there, or the Wonder Knife infomercial playing on the television in front of him.

  It slices. It dices. It even cuts through stainless steel!

  His face was less puffy, but still bruised. His nose was swollen and there were gashes above his left eyebrow and on his left arm. Part of me wanted to run to him, to wrap my arms around him, and tell him everything that was going on; like we were back in Crestview and he was listening to me complain about the way everything closes at 9 o’clock, even on the weekends. But we weren’t back in Crestview, and Owen wasn’t the person I could talk about stuff with anymore. Maybe he never had been.

  I stopped, frozen where I stood. Careful not to meet his eyes, I said, “It’s really none of your business.”

  Watch the Wonder Knife cut through a steel pipe with ease!

  He stood, slowly like he was in a lot of pain, but didn’t come any closer. “I guess I deserve that.” He ran a hand through his hair and let it rest at the nape of his neck, where his dark hair curled up in ringlets. Given the position of his arm, I could see a huge bruise that had been hidden before. I tried not to bristle, but I mustn’t have done a good job, because he answered my expression. “I’m okay. Really I am.”

  “I didn’t ask.” I regretted the sharpness in my tone as soon as the words came out, but the wince that settled between his eyes told me it was too late to take it back.

  “I know,” he answered in a small voice. “Look, there are things we need to talk about, things I want to explain.”

  It’s so sharp it even cuts through brillo pads with ease!

  “There really isn’t,” I held my hands out in front of me, telling him to stop. “I saw it all. I watched that weird movie disc that Echo pulled out of your head. I know what happened.”

  The news seemed to stun him. He lowered back down onto the couch and stared at me for a second with his hands wrapped around his shoulders like I had just seen him naked or something.

  “Okay,” he finally said, shaking his head. “So you know now. You know that I didn’t know what was going to happen. You know that I would have never ever intentionally done something that would have hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?” Now the sharpness in my voice was intentional. “You lied to me for two years. You sold yourself as someone you’re not. You passed yourself off as my friend. You made me feel things that-“

  I turned my back to him, suddenly feeling like I was naked too. “Look,” I said, closing my hand into a ball. “I know you pulled me out of that fire, I know you tried to save my mother, and I appreciate that. But I don’t know you. I never really did. And, whether you meant to or not, everything that happened was your fault. If not for the things you did, my mom would still be alive.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? This is killing me. If I could take it back, if I could trade places with her and bring her back to you, I swear to God, I swear on fate, that I would. You have to believe me.”

  His voice grew closer now. He was off the couch, walking toward me. He touched my arm lightly, letting his fingers rest at my elbow. “Please look at me, Cress.”

  There had been so many times that his touch, that those fingers had lit me up; so many times that I had lay awake at night, thinking about him accidentally grazing my shoulder or brushing the hair out of my eyes with his thumb. Those nights, in my bed, I thought that touch could fix everything. But now, now I didn’t know what to think.

  “No,” I said through clenched teeth, tears flowing hot down my raw tired cheeks. “I don’t have to believe you. I don’t have to do anything for you, because I don’t know you!”
I turned to him, though I don’t think the growing rage in my eyes was what he expected when he asked me to look at him. “You’re not Owen. You’re not even real. You’re some weird half person cult baby who thinks it’s okay to screw with people’s lives. I’m sick of being lied to and I’m sick of lairs. Whoever you are, I’m not interested. Whatever you think there is between us, there isn’t. “

  He reared away from me, like my words were bullets or the Wonder Knife and he were that poor brillo pad, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t; not now.

  “I don’t know what my life is going to look like Owen, and don’t even know what I am anymore.”

  It slices!

  “But I do know one thing. Whatever I do, whoever I become; you won’t be a part of it.”

  It dices!

  “And don’t call me Cress,” I said, turning away from him. “Only my friends get to call me Cress.”

  It breaks your heart.

  When I got back to my room, I found another note sitting on my bed. Opening it, I found it was in a code similar to the last one. Once again, the letters reached out to me, begging me to read them.

  Destroy the clover, mourn the flicker, mind the ring.

  The Girl in the Tower.

  Sighing,I crumpled it up, and threw it away.

  The next week went by as a sort of dance between the strange and mundane. I started taking classes at Weathersby. Some, like Advanced Algebra, were almost page for page the sort of thing I left back at DeSoto. Others, Dr. Static’s Implementation of Prophecy for example, were things that no one back in Crestview could have ever dreamt up.

  Dr. Static taught us about seers; how they were like the top of the Breaker food chain; how, because they’re so evolved, they’re by far the rarest type of Breaker to be born, and that, without seers, the other Breakers wouldn’t be able to do their jobs and the world would sink into utter chaos.

  It was a cheery class.

  There had only been two times since the beginning of recorded history that the world had went without seers, Dr. Static told us. Those times became known as The Dark Ages and World War 2. So, you know, I guess he made his point.