Cassandra: And they all fall down

by Julie Hodgson

  Outside was even busier than when she left the band. They were truly pounding the speakers now, and their appeal outweighed that of Abby’s speech. In fact, the only people still inside listening to her were her very closest friends or those who had been paid to stand there and listen. Everyone else was now outside and partying hard, jumping as one to the beat as the young dude with the mic spat out a tune that they all knew and loved. Everyone else was now out there, except it would seem for Bindi, Leo, and Braydon. Cassandra moved around, in and out of the crowds, still enjoying the music, but distracted by the search for her friends. She still expected to see them talking together just passed every crowd of people through which she moved, but she was disappointed every time. This went on for at least another thirty minutes, and she was eventually forced to concede defeat. She dropped down onto a bench at the back of the crowds and decided to give it a few more minutes before she went back to the car. There was a strong possibility that they could all be there. Leo looked green enough to need a lie-down and Braydon would definitely stay with him to make sure he was okay. That was the kind of guy he was. Perhaps Bindi had reached the same conclusion and gone out to check on them. Why she would have done this without telling Cassandra was a mystery, though.

  The minutes passed quickly, with Cassandra still looking at all the faces in the crowd for her friends, and she was just about to put her plan into action and find the car, but something was seriously wrong. She was at a party – a fun thing, a great night with friends, music, dancing, good food – but in a flash, all of that morphed into a war zone that her senses could no longer tolerate. The roar of the music was icepicks and skewers to her ears, and she gripped the sides of her head to block it out. The bodies moving up and down and round to the music, arms and legs flying in all direction, was something that bled into her eyes and she slammed her eyelids shut. But the assault continued to attack her as she experienced the stink of the meat and buffet, merging together and rotting her senses, and could barely withstand the party vibrations rippling up through the ground and shaking her to her core. And then she heard it … crying. She tore her hands from her ears and opened her eyes. She thought she might be sick for a moment, such was the force of the activity around her, but she tried her hardest to focus on that one sound – on that pitiful cry. She closed her eyes again and held her breath to hear it more clearly. “Cassandra!” It was calling her this time, pleading for her help. “Cassandra!” And she almost burst into tears as the realization hit her. She knew that voice. She had heard it every day of her life since she moved to Garden City. It was Bindi.

  Cassandra leaped up and thrashed through the shrubbery to the back of the house and then pulled herself up and over the high brick wall that sealed in the teenage party and stopped them from wandering into the woods. It didn’t stop Cassandra, though. She took the drop like the athlete she was, landing on her feet, and immediately taking off in a sprint in the direction of her friend. There would be no police to call this time, and she had no idea what she would do when she got there, but it didn’t stop her running. She ran faster than she had run in her entire life and negotiated the obstacles facing her as if she had been raised in the wood, jumping logs, ducking branches, weaving in and out amongst the trees. The din and stench of the party was far behind her and had been replaced by the thrash of the leaves that whipped behind her and the pounding of her own heart, the earthy aroma of the outdoors and a smell that she tried her hardest to ignore – blood.

  She stopped. She could hear it all clearly now. And there were new sounds: laughter, guys talking, shuffling, groaning, cheering each other, and the muffled cry of her friend. The smell of blood was now accompanied by something that she had never smelt before and could only be described as a kind of tangible despair. She held back and crept forward under cover of the woods, then reached the clearing and could see the full horror of the scene. There were three guys in plain, scarily anonymous, white masks. Two were looking on, laughing, while the third had Bindi bent over, barely clothed, violently brutalized, bleeding and crying for help. Something primal and unstoppable seized control of Cassandra. She let out a torturous roar from the depths of her soul, leaped out of hiding, and thrust her arms in the direction of the closest masked man, her fingers splaying in all directions, bracing for what would come next. The skin on the backs of her hands burst open and barbed, jet-black tendrils sprayed from the wounds faster than bullets from a gun. One powerful tentacle was a dart in the eyehole of his white mask, which was immediately turned red as the guy screamed and writhed, but couldn’t escape this violent justice. Another of the leathery tendrils was in the mouth hole, severing the vocal chords and silencing him forever before creeping down his throat and choking the life out of him. He dropped to his knees and then onto his face, and Cassandra withdrew her weapons, but they slithered and writhed on the ground as she turned her attention to the other two. She hadn’t noticed the second onlooker had escaped into the woods, but she had no problem focusing her attention on the main attacker, who now held Bindi up in front of him with his arm around her neck, using her now-unconscious body as a shield. Her tattered tie-dye dress was hanging around her waist, and her face was a garbled mess of makeup and blood. Cassandra must have looked terrifying as she prepared to attack because the rapist abandoned his plan to hide behind his victim, flung her down to the ground and turned to run, but Cassandra easily tripped his legs with a flick of the wrist and powered her tendrils towards her, dragging her prey to her feet. What happened next will always be a blur to Cassandra; there was thrashing and slashing, using her tendrils, her bare hands, and even her teeth, as she bestowed a vengeance so fierce upon these two men that their bodies were soon mutilated beyond recognition. The world had shifted into something beyond recognition and time itself no longer behaved the way it should. She was now seeing in snapshots and color, in limbs and blood, in a frenzy that would last many hours, until she was completely spent and could feel some of herself returning. Eventually, all she could do was look upon the scene she had created. The blood, so much blood. It should have made her nauseous, should have twisted her stomach into a knot of rats’ tails. There was so much of it. It should have sent her into shock, curdled her insides. But she just stood there watching the blood dribble off between her fingers and beyond, where the remains of the bodies, now unrecognizable, were a blur of red amongst the forest greens and browns, delicately illuminated by the moon that had never been so complete and bright. The only delicate thing about the scene before her was this lighting and it would mask the horror, until the morning. But her eyes were receptive to every last animal tear and slash of flesh, every discarded, skinned limb, the eyeballs and tongue, the feet and hands, the trail of intestines splayed out on the dusty woodland clearing as if a wild beast had torn at them with razor-sharp teeth. And the smell; it should have triggered her gag reflex and doubled her over, but it moved in and out of her – a swirling concoction of feces and puke – and powered her lungs as if she needed it to survive. The halting of their heartbeats had rung in her ears with every bit as much clarity as the powerful life force that had been beating through them, and now all she could hear was the absence of human sounds and the leaves gently rustling in the midnight breeze. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and sunk into peace.

  She had done this. She had done this, and now everything made sense to her. The way she experienced the world, her past, the feelings she had tried to deal with for so much of her life, which would rise up inside of her and try to force their way out of her flesh by any means possible, the nightmares – pure-red gore that had terrorized her for so much of her life – the maddening itch on the backs of her hands, the way her mother would occasionally flinch when she turned to hug her. It all made perfect sense now, and in this moment of calm, it felt as if she had found a home in this forest, in this blood, for the first time in her entire life. But it also made no sense at all. She was now a murderer and a savage one at that.

  Chapter Thir
teen

  Cassandra was unsure how long she had been listening to the monotonous beeping. It crept in and out of her mind as she crept in and out of consciousness, and it was some time before she realized what it actually was – a heart monitor machine. She was in the hospital. Now she had this realization she desperately wanted to open her eyes. She had been languishing in the dark of half-consciousness for an eternity, and now everything came back to her at once – the party, the forest, her powers, the blood, Bindi. Jesus Christ, Bindi!

  “She’s waking up,” she heard someone say and didn’t recognize the voice at first. Everything was such a blur, but when it said, “It’s okay, Cass. Take your time, sweetheart. We’re here,” she knew it was her mother, and her eyes began to slowly open. The light was painful at first, but when her eyes adjusted she could clearly see her parents, one on either side of her, each holding one of her hands.

  “What …? What’s going on …? Am I okay? What happened to me?”

  “You’re absolutely fine,” Ellen smiled. “Shock, the doctors said.”

  Cassandra’s mind was taken back to that moment once again, and she was filled with panic. “Bindi!” She tried to sit up, but her father stood to support her back to the pillow, and a nurse arrived at her side. She gave her a few sips of water and did some quick tests to make sure all was well.

  “I’ll get a doctor to come see her,” she told Ellen in such a warm voice, “but she should be able to go home after that.”

  “And the police?”

  “They’ll want to speak to her as soon as possible. I’ll give you a few minutes then send them in.”

  The nurse wandered away, and as warm and friendly as she was, she hadn’t addressed Cassandra at all. It was as though she was completely invisible.

  “Tell me what happened to Bindi. Is she okay?” Cassandra demanded. “Can I see her?”

  “Try and stay calm,” her dad told her. Then Ellen squeezed her hand and began to tell her the truth.

  “Bindi wasn’t quite as lucky as you, sweetheart.”

  “What do you mean? Tell me.”

  “She was pretty brutally attacked, and she’s in a coma. The doctors are hopeful that she’ll recover, but she’s not in the clear yet.”

  Cassandra sunk down onto her pillow and couldn’t breathe for a moment. It had all been for nothing. None of it mattered if Bindi didn’t make it.

  “What the hell happened?” Dad asked, trying to remain calm, but the frustration came through clearly.

  “I … I …” Cassandra had no idea how to put any of it into words and was only now registering what the nurse had said. The cops would be in in a few moments, and they would want to know the entire story. What could she tell them? The truth? She couldn’t do that. “I don’t know,” she decided to tell her dad while she thought it all over. “It all happened so quickly.”

  There was a knock on the door and then a head popped around the opening. This was followed by the full figure of a graying, tired-looking man in a suit that had once been smart, but now looked as if it had been slept in for quite a few nights. All three Joneses turned to see the man intruding upon them, and Ellen even opened her mouth to ask him what he thought he was doing and tell him he had the wrong room, but he spoke before she could.

  “I’m Captain Barnsley.” His voice sounded just as tired as his suit, but he was well-spoken and as friendly as he could be under the circumstances. “I’m sorry to intrude so soon after the incident, but we really need to speak to you, Miss Jones.” He moved to the side of the bed and shook Cassandra’s hand before shaking the hands of her parents. He smelt of cigarettes and sweat. Cassandra felt safe with him right away and truly wished she could tell him the truth. He was obviously working himself to an early grave leading this case, and she wished she had more to offer him. Taking out the details of her role in the slaying, she had nothing to offer regarding the identities of the attackers she killed or the one who got away.

  “I understand your need for answers, Captain,” Ellen told the man, “but couldn’t we do this another time? She’s been through so much.”

  Captain Barnsley was about to explain how important it was to get it all sorted as soon as possible, but then Cassandra began to talk.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I want them to catch whoever did this to Bindi and bring them to justice. I’ll do anything I can to help.” She began to recount her movements of the evening, how she had ended up alone and then she realized she had no way of explaining how she found Bindi. “It’s all a little hazy after that,” she said, and it wasn’t a total lie because none of it made much sense as she looked back on it. “I found her in a clearing, being …” She struggled with the words and tried approaching the sentence from different angles, but couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “One of them run off, I remember that. I was screaming Bindi’s name and the next thing I remember I was waking up here.”

  Ellen squeezed her hand again, and Cassandra managed to hold back the tears.

  “That’s great, Cassandra,” the tired detective told her, but the subtext of his words was a pleading for more information and frustration that she didn’t have what he needed to blow this case apart. “Anything else you can tell us, anything else at all would be great Cassandra. Did you get a look at any of them?”

  Cassandra shook her head. “They were all wearing masks.”

  “Did anyone else show up other than the three guys you saw?”

  Cassandra pretended to think then shook her head.

  “Think, Cassandra. I know this is hard, but do you remember anyone or anything else being there?”

  “What’s this about, Captain?” John leaped in, defensively. “She’s told you everything she knows.”

  “Anything at all, Cassandra,” he asked again, but Cassandra had nothing to add. “I’m sorry,” he said, now addressing her parents. “I guess you’ll find out sooner or later. Cassandra and Bindi are lucky to be alive.”

  “We know that, Captain.”

  “I mean the guys in the masks were not the only predators in the woods tonight. We found the bodies of two guys, now confirmed by Cassandra as Bindi’s attackers. They were torn apart in a way that we’ve never seen before, in the way that only a wild beast could have done. It’s a real mess. It’s sheer luck that it took the men and not Cassandra and Bindi.”

  “A wild beast? What kind of beast? A wolf or something?”

  “That’s just it, Mr. Jones. We have absolutely no idea. Forensics are working on it now, but we have never encountered the kind of beast that can do this kind of damage.” He turned to Cassandra again. “Anything at all that can help us with this would be appreciated, Cassandra.”

  Again, Cassandra looked as if she was thinking and then shook her head.

  “Do you remember how you injured your hands?” he asked. “The doctor said you have nasty wounds on the backs of both hands? Were you attacked?”

  At the mention of the backs of her hands, Cassandra felt her mother’s eyeballs boring into her, but she tried her hardest not to meet them. Ellen could read her so well, and she was the last person Cassandra wanted to find out about her part in any of this. Cassandra made a show of inspecting both bandaged hands and shaking her head. “I have no idea,” she told the Captain, as if she were only just noticing them, and then began to poke them to see if they hurt. They didn’t.

  “I know this is hard, and I know this might come as a shock to you, but you were covered in the blood of the two guys and – not to put too fine a point on it – fragments of the insides of them. It looked as if their bodies exploded onto you, but that makes no sense at all.”

  Cassandra feigned a look of horror and began inspecting herself, again for the benefit of the cop and again without meeting her mother’s eyes.

  “It’s okay. You were cleaned up as soon as they brought you in, love,” her father told her.

  “Anything at all you can tell me, Cassandra?”

  Cassandra took a final, long think then shook her h
ead and then the tears began to fall, and she wasn’t faking this. She could have cried all night. She felt both of her parents squeezing her hand, and they both turned to the cop with an expression that said, ‘Don’t you think she’s been through enough?’

  “Okay,” Captain Barnsley said, “we’ll need to speak again, for you to make a formal statement, and I’m going to give you this.” He handed her his card, which included not only his phone number, but an accessible instant chat link, email address, and other social media outlets. They had all their bases covered. “Get in touch, day or night, if you have anything to add,” he smiled, and Cassandra could see he was probably younger than he looked under all that sleeplessness and overwork. It was reassuring to know that such a dedicated officer was on the case, but a little worrying that he might be a little too good at his job.

  A week passed, and Bindi remained unconscious. Cassandra was surprised at first that time could carry on after such an experience, but it ticked on and on, and she was surprised by how good she felt. Her mind was clear; she felt none of the confusion and chaos that had plagued her since she stopped taking her medication. She felt better than she had felt in her entire life, which made her feel terrible because Bindi was lying unconscious and there was a chance that she might never wake up.

  Cassandra was allowed to stay home from school and visited her every day. She tried to sound jolly around Bindi as she told her gossip and read the astrology magazines her parents had brought to the hospital, but there was no shaking the devastation of what had happened and how Bindi embodied that. Cassandra was shocked every single time she saw her. It just didn’t get any easier. Her eyes were swollen shut and tubes down her throat were helping her to breathe. Every inch of her was either bandaged, stitched or bruised and then there was what was going on inside. If she recovered from this, it would be just the beginning. How could she possibly recover from the memory of that night? She was well-rounded and positive, but it would take more than happy thoughts to pull through what she had endured. If she ever managed to open her eyes, there was a very real possibility that she would never be the same happy-go-lucky Bindi again. They had ruined her forever.