A bloodcurdling shriek – part howl, part yelp – rang out through the wood, chilling Alessa to the bone. A desperate wave of pain washed through her as she struggled to place the sound – almost human, but not quite. And the perplexing confusion she’d been feeling earlier came back, this time tumbled with grim despair.
What just happened? Fighting through the sharp jumble of emotions and physical pain assailing her body, Alessa stumbled determinedly in the direction of the wail. Clutching at the tree trunks for support, she raked the forest for the source of the cry, hoping beyond hope that she’d incapacitated who or whatever had been stalking her.
But to her dismay, all that remained was her bloodied knife abandoned on the snowy ground. She scanned the floor for a trail – drops of blood, footprints, anything – but the swirling blizzard had quickly devoured any signs of the intruder.
Gathering up her knife, Alessa prayed that she had at least scared it – and she was fairly certain now that it was indeed an “it” – off. She caught her breath against the nearest tree as the startling pain and dismay she’d felt moments earlier faded, until she realized she could finally think with some clarity again.
She didn’t understand what she was feeling, but she would have plenty of time to think about that later. If there was to be a later, she needed to get back to that shelter now.
Shaking the snow and muddled thoughts from her head, she pocketed the knife and felt her way into the clearing once more, burying her nagging worries about Isaac. First things first, she reminded herself – she was no use to Isaac dead. By this point she could barely see her own hands stretched out in front of her, but she combed the landscape searching for the warm glow of the fire burning at the edge of their shelter and made her way toward it inch by inch.
She’d almost reached the sanctuary of the lean-to when she was shaken with an overwhelming sense of not being alone. She could feel a presence behind her – the creature – and she didn’t hesitate. The blood pounding through her temples, with one swift motion she turned around and swung the knife down as hard as she could, an involuntary snarl issuing from her throat.
But she didn’t connect – the monster had caught her wrist mid-swing and held her tight. She ripped her arm from its grip and prepared to strike once more.
“Whoa there, tiger!”
Alessa dropped the knife and brought her hand to her hammering heart as he released her. “Isaac!” she gasped.
Gently cupping her shoulders, Isaac bent forward, scooting his face up under the furred edge of her hood with a grin. “I know I took longer than expected, but I didn’t think you’d be that mad.”
Still catching her breath, Alessa loosed a small giggle, her body now shaking in an almost pleasant sort of way from the aftereffects of the adrenaline. But her contentment was quickly snatched away as a thought occurred to her. “Oh my God, I didn’t – are you hurt?” she implored, frantically checking him for wounds from the knife she’d thrown.
Grabbing her arms, Isaac held her still reassuringly. “No, no, I’m completely fine. Just a little cold. What’s gotten into you, Less?”
Sighing deeply, Alessa collapsed into his arms as relief flooded her once more. Isaac was back, and it was going to be okay. “Let’s get inside and I’ll fill you in.”
3. CLATTER
Snuggling in the cozy shelter with Isaac, the storm suddenly felt far away and Alessa’s disquiet faded into the distance as she recounted what had happened that afternoon.
“I’m not sure what it was, Isaac. But something was keeping tabs on me while you were gone.”
Isaac took a moment to digest that comment, the unease evident on his face. “What do you mean, ‘something?’ What exactly did you see?”
“It’s not what I saw exactly…” She paused, eyeing him uncertainly. “I didn’t see much, just glimpses from the corner of my eye. It’s what I heard,” she clarified, “and… what I felt.”
She watched for his reaction in the tangerine glow of the firelight, wondering if she could explain this in a way that made sense. She doubted it – she couldn’t even explain it to herself.
Isaac furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
Alessa decided to start with the easier part – the howl. “At one point I threw my knife at it, and I think I hit it, because it cried out with this wail…”
“Was it an animal? Or a person?”
Alessa considered. “It didn’t really sound… like either. Or I guess it was almost like both. I don’t know, Isaac. It was inhuman, that much I’m sure of – like a cross between a howl and a shriek, but raspy almost,” she shook her head. “It’s hard to describe. But I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“Maybe it was a wolf? Or a mountain lion or something? One time when I was little I accidentally closed my cat in a door – the scream that came out of him was like a banshee. Animals can make some strange noises when they’re hurt…”
“It didn’t –” Alessa hesitated before responding. This was going to be the difficult part. “– feel like an animal, though. It felt vaguely… human.”
The wind howled outside as Alessa waited for Isaac to reply. The moment dragged as he visibly considered how to respond to this revelation.
“You felt it?” Isaac raised his eyebrows.
Alessa shrugged, a slight grimace crossing her face. “I can’t really explain it – and I know that doesn’t help – but the closest thing I can think of is when I used to see you, as a ghost, when we were back on the drama. I would get flooded with all these weird emotions, which I later figured out were feelings that I associated with seeing you, but for a while I wondered if they weren’t some sort of projection from the ‘ghost.’ It was kind of like that.”
“So you think you somehow telepathically got a whiff of this thing’s feelings?”
Alessa could tell he was trying to be supportive, but the expression on his face betrayed his skepticism. It was frustrating, of course, but then again, what she was telling him was pretty incredulous. After all, it’s one thing to have paranormal experiences when you’re secretly trapped on a TV show where the producers are subjecting you to whatever comes next in their twisted storyline. It’s a whole other thing to experience it in real life…
“Are you sure you weren’t just disoriented from the snow? Maybe having a mild panic attack? We’re both hungry, it’s cold – it can happen,” he soothed.
Alessa shook her head. It was times like these she wished she had her sister to confide in. Isaac tried, but he was still such a guy – he was always looking for the logical explanation, for a practical solution. But sometimes she just needed to talk to someone who would believe what she was saying, no matter how crazy or irrational it sounded.
Alessa understood why Janie had hung back on the drama and not blown her cover with the producers – after all, the rebels had very few people left on the inside to keep an eye on the Ruling Class, and it seemed Regina, the rebel leader, was relying heavily on Janie’s assistance – but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel Janie’s absence acutely. It was like a constant pang in her side, and a situation like this only intensified her longing.
“I know it sounds crazy, Isaac. But I know what I felt.”
Isaac held her hand tightly, an apology in his eyes. “I just don’t understand, Alessa.”
She smiled softly. “Neither do I. I thought the same thing as you at first – that maybe I was just freaking out – but then when the knife connected, I got a distinct surge of physical pain, even though nothing had hurt me. And I felt confusion, and fear, and sadness… all human emotions. But there was something primitive about them, too. Something… off.”
Isaac nodded and brought her chilly fingers to his lips before continuing. “I believe you, Less. I just wish I could tell you what it was.”
“I know,” she whispered.
They lay beside each other in silence for a few moments, draped in each other’s limbs as they turned the day’s events over in their minds,
the storm still raging outside. Alessa concentrated on the rhythm of Isaac’s breathing and tried to relax, taking comfort in the fact that whatever had been stalking her was long gone.
Isaac turned toward Alessa. His blue eyes shone in the light of the fire as he lay propped on his side, his long lean body mirroring hers, a soft piece of tawny hair that had dropped forward on his forehead casting flickering shadows on his face. Alessa swept the strands from his eyes and trailed her fingers down the side of his jaw. Bringing her mouth to his soft warm lips, she closed her eyes and let the day’s tensions melt away in the heat of his body.
He kissed her back with intensity, sliding his hands down the small of her back and pulling her close, the electricity buzzing between them. Alessa gasped at the feel of his body against hers, releasing a soft moan as he traced the line of her chin and then her neck with kisses. Her body shivered with anticipation.
Holding his face in her hands, she gazed deep into the sparkling oceans of his eyes, the ravages of the storm outside utterly forgotten. “I missed you, Isaac Mason,” she murmured.
Isaac rolled over suddenly, pinning her beneath him as she pulled her legs tight around his waist. The reflection of the flames danced in his eyes as if he were lit from within. He grinned wickedly.
“Oh, Less,” he growled. “I haven’t even begun to remind you what you’ve been missing.”
The next morning Alessa woke feeling contented and at ease. The warm press of sunlight caressed her shuttered eyelids through the opening of the shelter, the delicious aroma of roasting food mingling with the faint scent of wood smoke. She breathed deeply and fluttered her eyes open to find Isaac huddled over the fire.
“Hungry? I’ve been boiling these acorns for a half-hour and I think I finally got the bitterness out.”
“Acorns? That’s what smells so good?” She sat up to take a closer look at a large can sitting on the edge of the flames.
Isaac laughed. “No, those are the onions you’re smelling – I found a whole patch of them yesterday. They’re small, but very flavorful once you roast ’em up. Here, try.”
Isaac used a smooth piece of bark to scoop her up some food from the containers in front of him, which she gratefully consumed in one ravenous bite. She never imagined she’d be so happy to start the day with wild onions and acorns, but Isaac’s cooking was certainly hitting the spot. “Mmmmm.”
He smiled brightly. “You like?”
“Very much so,” she nodded.
“Didn’t realize I was a man of so many talents, did you?”
Thinking back to the night before, she had to admit she agreed. She knew Isaac was kind and smart and funny – and, as he’d proven last night, gifted in other ways as well – but she didn’t know he could cook. It hadn’t even been a week yet since they’d left Paragon, and thus far they’d been subsisting on the cold rations that Regina had packed in their supply kits. But the food was running out, which is why Isaac had gone off to scavenge the previous afternoon while Alessa built their shelter from the impending storm.
The frosty ground sparkled in the sunlight as Alessa wolfed down her breakfast, then she packed up their blankets and provisions while Isaac finished off the remains of the meal.
Isaac moaned suggestively, drawing Alessa’s attention. “Mmm, I forgot how good it feels to have a hot meal.”
Alessa laughed. Food, of course – her mother had always said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Or had she? Sometimes it was difficult for Alessa to distinguish her real memories of her mother from the ones the producers had planted in her mind with the stitch, as part of the backstory for her character on the drama. She wondered if Isaac had the same problem after his role as a wealthy landowner from 1917.
“You’re not planning on running back to that farm on me, are you?” she teased.
Isaac raised his eyebrows. “Please – I almost went stir-crazy. Though we did have some excellent breakfasts…”
Alessa thought back to all the meals she’d shared with Janie in the cafeteria at Eastern State University, the fake early 21st century college that her character on the drama had attended, back when she’d thought that Janie was just her best friend, and the fact that the year was actually 2114 had somehow slipped her mind. She shook her head.
“It’s still just so unbelievable to me that they were able to mess with our heads so much and us not even realize it,” she mused. “How could I not recognize my own sister?”
Isaac shrugged. “How could I let them replace my older brother with a little girl and not notice? I wonder what’s become of that poor kid,” he sighed. He shook his head in disgust. “Whatever technology they’re using to do this is dangerous, Alessa. That’s why we’re fighting, right? They need to be stopped.”
Alessa was still a little wary about the fighting part, but she agreed wholeheartedly that they needed to be stopped – she’d lost a year of her life to the machinations of the Ruling Class, and she still didn’t fully understand what they were up to. And neither, she suspected, did the people of Paragon, most of whom didn’t even know about the Ruling Class’s existence.
“I think the harder part,” she explained, “is going to be getting all the citizens on board once we do have a plan to stop them. Remember that their food is still being poisoned daily with those drugs, so between their work schedules and the nightly dramas, they generally don’t have any will left to look deeper at their lives. That’s kind of the point, I guess – to keep everyone in a mild state of pleasant distraction so no one notices they’re being played.”
Alessa liked to think she was sharper than most people, and it’d even taken her years to notice that anything was amiss. Like most of Paragon’s citizens, she’d just been happy to have escaped the scourge of the viral outbreak that had ravaged the planet, claiming everyone she knew except Janie.
“Yeah, but as soon as you realized what was going on, once you saw what they did to Joe –”
Alessa shook off the painful memory of her friend and old flame – and Isaac’s brother – being brutally murdered at the hands of Paragon’s secret guards, for the minor infraction of stealing food, no less.
“– you took a stand. I’m sure everyone else will do the same once we get them off the drugs long enough for their minds to clear.”
“I don’t know. Even once I found out about the Ruling Class, it took me a while to come to terms with what was going on, remember?” And, if she was being honest, she was still struggling to maintain the courage to take on their faceless enemies – she certainly didn’t want to end up back in Paragon’s nightmarish prison, or on another drama for that matter. “Before Joe died, I stood on the sidelines watching him – and you – fight back for half a year almost. I was in denial. I kept thinking that the rebels must have it wrong, that we needed someone to figure out how to run our society so we didn’t make the same mistakes that got us here, and if the Ruling Class was doing that for us, maybe we should just let them.”
“But you didn’t realize then how bad it was – how corrupt they’d become. Or how many atrocities they’d committed along the way.”
“That’s true. Once I started training with you and saw it firsthand, I couldn’t deny it any longer. I guess we’ll just need to make sure we have proof, to convince everyone that we’re the good guys here, the ones that are trying to protect them.”
“Definitely,” Isaac agreed. “But first things first – we can’t do any of this while hiding in Paragon’s shadow. We need our own base – somewhere outside of Paragon’s control – where Regina and the rebel leaders can come up with a plan to confront the Ruling Class head on. And we’re gonna find them one, right?” He took Alessa’s hand, pairing his firm squeeze with a comforting grin.
Alessa returned his sentiment then turned back to gathering their things. When Isaac wasn’t paying attention, she let out a long sigh. Yes, they’d find a site for the command center and report back to Regina, as long as the cold or the hunger or the virus –
or whatever was following her – didn’t get them first.
After hours of hiking, the sun lingered over the horizon, the sky rapidly darkening from blue to graphite in its wake. Isaac fished the compass out of his bag and took note of the direction they’d come from, making sure to point their path directly away from Paragon.
“We’ll probably need to settle in soon – in a few minutes it’ll be too dark to navigate securely.”
“No complaints here,” Alessa replied, stretching her calves. “We must have walked, what, twenty miles today?”
“Yeah, great progress. Just wish I knew what we were looking for – nothing out here but trees.”
Alessa did her best to reassure him. “I’m sure we’ll find something once we get a little closer to the city.”
“You think we’re headed the right way – towards the city, I mean? I was only a teenager when we came to Paragon, back when it was a government quarantine zone. I don’t really remember how we got there,” he shrugged. “I think I spent most of the trip in shock over my parents – Joe handled the actual getting there part.”
Alessa nodded in understanding – Isaac had only been 16 when he’d watched his parents succumb to the horrific virus. She’d been 18 when her family arrived at the quarantine zone a few weeks after Isaac and Joe, but her parents had navigated the journey. She hadn’t paid much attention to their route because she hadn’t foreseen a future in which they wouldn’t be around to guide her. She’d been too preoccupied at the time trying to keep up Janie’s spirits and comfort her little brother, who had fallen ill in their travels. The thought of him – and her parents – being wrenched from her and Janie at the gates stabbed at her heart. It’d been eight years since she lost them, but it still felt like yesterday.
Blinking back tears, Alessa pressed on, Isaac guiding her from behind as she picked her way through the gloom. After a few moments, Isaac spoke up again, an unexpected note of hope in his voice.
“I know this hasn’t been easy on either of us, but I do really feel like every step we’re taking is heading in the right direction. I never really believed in fate, you know? But it’s starting to feel like everything that happened with my parents, with Joe, was for a reason – to bring me here, so I can finally do something to help.”
Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) Page 2