The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1)

by Angela Panayotopulos

  Erica wondered now, as she stood shielding herself with her camcorder, if the roadkill would stretch out a face and bite her own head right off the stalk of her slender neck if she got too close.

  I’d hit it with the camcorder, she reassured herself. It won’t get me.

  So, instead, she asked Congressman Daimon about his views on immigration and national health coverage. He smiled blandly and spouted hot air. The man’s voice was clearly his best asset, one that reminded you of movie trailers and manly commercials and Disney’s slain lion king; a voice you could trust, even when it was spewing nonsense as it so often did. He knew it—and knew how to use it. He could sell shit for gold. As he finished his spiel, he waggled a finger at his theoretical audience and leaned towards the camcorder, eye-to-eye with America. Erica frowned and peered back at the zoomed-in face on the camcorder’s display screen, wondering how the lens hadn’t broken in the face of so much thinly veiled narcissism. She watched as the red light blinked steadily in the screen’s upper corner.

  Then, before her eyes, the congressman’s face contorted.

  He continued to stare at her—at the lens—as his expression morphed from smug arrogance to disbelieving horror. He screamed, and for a second Erica thought the beast of his hair had finally taken over his bloated human body.

  That was when Congressman Daimon punched her camcorder.

  . . .

  The congressman demanded an hour with his personal therapist—the same white-haired freak he’d had since childhood—and a bottle of Chivas. Only then did he feel he’d recovered from the Sight. That’s how he thought of it: reverently and fearfully, with a capital “s”. The bodyguards had whisked him away after watching him attack an unarmed female journalist in the hall. His spokesman covered for him, explaining that the congressman had simply retired to rest after the debate. Upon Daimon’s orders, his people had detained the bewildered journalist in the federal building and confiscated her broken camcorder.

  Daimon held this broken camcorder now in his hands, pacing within his private rooms. The heavy sound of his footfalls reassured the bodyguards who waited outside his door. The therapist—communications consultant, to be exact; they’d stopped calling him a psychiatrist ever since Daimon became political—poured himself a second glass of whiskey and listened quietly.

  “I know what I saw,” Daimon spat. “I don’t care that it doesn’t show up in the recording. I’m not crazy. I’m running for President!”

  The therapist had an immature itch to respond—Crazy? President? What’s the difference?—but he bit his tongue, as he had for the past fifty-five years of his profession.

  “I know it sounds crazy.” Congressman Daimon’s face turned a dangerous shade of red as his raptor eyes narrowed to slits. The roadkill was poised to strike. “Seeing the Devil inside a camcorder lens. Tell me you believe me. Tell me I’m not insane.”

  “You’re not insane,” the therapist replied.

  “I’m not!” Daimon rebutted at once. The old man waited until the congressman’s eyes widened. “That’s what you said. So you believe me?”

  “I do.”

  The congressman collapsed onto the sofa across from his therapist. The hand holding the camcorder was limp, but he’d secured his fingers through the strap, which now cut into his flesh. Never, in all their years together, had he ever caught Old Man Lazaro lying to him. And never before, in all his years, had the therapist seen Daimon look so vulnerable.

  “It’s not like there aren’t cameras everywhere,” the congressman mused. “I’ve never had this problem before.” The therapist nodded in encouragement. “Never. But in here”—Daimon held up the camcorder, the broken lens facing in the other direction—“I know what I saw. I don’t want to see it again.”

  “That is not coincidental,” the old man said. “And I will tell you why. But let me first assure you: you are not mad. Your eyes do not deceive you. I believe you have a very rare condition. You See things that others do not.”

  Daimon picked up his whiskey glass and twisted it in his hand. There wasn’t enough space and the angle didn’t allow him to make out his own reflection. He set it down and stood up, his other hand still clutching the camcorder. He made his way to his desk, a dark mahogany goliath with its flat surface sheathed in glass. He took a deep breath to brace himself. When he leaned over the polished surface and glanced down, his face gazed back at him, his brow wrinkled and his head horned.

  “You’re saying the things I see are real?”

  “They are.”

  “And I’m not the only one?”

  “There are others.”

  Daimon listened as the old man explained. His face grew paler with every word. If he’d caught a glimpse of the hideous creature revealed to live—to be—within him, it was only a matter of time before others did, too. It was a dangerous thing, Seeing. It was an even more dangerous thing, knowing. Congressman Daimon asked all the questions he could think to ask; the therapist answered.

  When the old man finished speaking, Daimon thanked him. He did not return to the couch; he sat down at his desk instead, quietly peering at the broken gadget still cradled in his hand. “And what of yourself?” he asked. “Do you have this capability to see such things?”

  The old man raised his eyebrows. You could, perhaps, count on one hand the number of times the congressman had asked his therapist a personal question, albeit a question shrouded in dark wisps of narcissism. “No. But my son does.”

  Daimon peered at the old man intently. “The former CIA Director?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is how you know of this curse?”

  “Not a curse, sir. With all due respect, having a richer perspective can be seen as a gift. An aptitude bringing one closer to divinity. I have tried to make my son see the truth in that. I confess that his talent disturbs him, too.”

  Congressman Daimon finally set down the camcorder. He slid open the top drawer of his desk where he kept a small pistol with a silencer. He asked if his therapist would care for any more Chivas before they called it a night. The old man shook his head, his eyes never leaving Daimon’s.

  Once summoned, the bodyguards promptly disposed of the body.

  4 / Sandman

  “I was feeling insecure

  you might not love me anymore.”

  –John Lennon

  Lexi rolled down the window and let the warm June breeze tousle her long ponytail. She let the air howl in her ears and roll over her skin. The heat didn’t bother her. She knew that Hell manifested itself in different ways.

  She gazed around at the bumper-to-bumper traffic, watching the other drivers talking on their cell phones, organizing paperwork, reapplying makeup, and snacking on sandwiches. Afternoon rush-hour extended the commute, but Virginians knew how to multitask. Lexi checked herself out in her own rearview mirror, rubbing away a stray smudge of eyeliner from last night’s party. She focused on her face, her clothes, and the cars beyond the rear window.

  Freshman year was over, exams and all. Summer had begun with a movie marathon night in the dorms that had left her exhausted but happy and high on the LOTR soundtrack. Given that campus was an hour’s drive east from her hometown of South Astoria and two hours north of El Greco, her family approved of Lexi’s decision to live on campus and save herself the daily commute. Now, however, the thought of an uninterrupted summer with her family and small town friends made her heart smile. She grinned at the sight of the blue-lettered white sign: Sycamore County Welcomes You, with the painting of a cardinal perched on a branch.

  The warbling of birds emerged from the wind-swept trees flanking the road; the swishing branches tangled together overhead like kissing tongues. Children shrieked in delight as they hopped off school buses and raced each other home. Lawn mowers purred like great mechanical cats, delighted with their dinners of shredded grass. The road unraveled through such forested neighborhoods, the kind where families host barbeques and children still ride bikes after suns
et and porches creak under the weight of seasonal decor. The kind where kidnappings are flukes and horned men are freaks of nature.

  Lexi’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel as she cleared the final slew of forest-filled hills and pulled up outside El Greco. Those within didn’t share her heat tolerance. They’d rolled up both doors, praying for a cool draft of air. Lexi jumped out and slammed the pick-up door shut behind her. She saw a couple of heads turn at the sound, and then an ink-black creature that raced through the parking lot and tackled her.

  When the wolf jumped on her, Lexi’s squeal rivaled that of a five-year-old bombarded with Halloween candy.

  Yang, along with his white-furred sister Yin, had been Pappou’s gift years ago. Yang and Yin had the stature and size of wolves, and, as far as Gabriel knew, they had enough wolf blood in them to be called that. For the sake of society, the two wolves been trained to behave—as often as possible—in a dog-like manner and were introduced to strangers as wolf-dogs with an emphasis on the dogs. Lexi and Sophia knew better; they’d been raised, in part, by wolves.

  On his hind legs, Yang’s snout was nearly level with Lexi’s face. He now took full advantage of the fact, planting his front paws on her chest and slobbering all over her chin. She hugged him before pushing him off to grab her things from the passenger’s seat of the pick-up. She laughed as the wolf sniffed her all the way up the driveway.

  Jerry beamed as his favorite little rebel walked in. He was the youngest on the team, a chemist just a few years older than Lexi; he’d always been one to cheer her on despite the accidents she’d incited at El Greco and had been the happiest when she’d returned. He had a reputation for being smart-alecky; he also had a heart of gold and gave away chunks of it liberally. “No longer a Freshie, eh?” He winked a dark green eye and thrust a blowpipe into a crucible of glass, molten and viscous. They both watched as it gathered around the pipe’s end like an iridescent spool of yarn.

  “Have you been behaving?”

  “I was. Go on, scat. I’m supposed to be marvering, not flirting.” Jerry’s eyes fell on the six coffees that Lexi one-handedly balanced in a Starbucks cup-holder. “I mean—my God, have I told you how very pretty you look today?”

  She grinned and set down his mocha on the nearest bench.

  A few yards away, Farhad looked up from the second furnace. His thick-skinned hands, tough as a catcher’s mitt, rolled the metal stick into the fire, a scorching box of glass speared on the stick’s tip like a mammoth marshmallow. Those hands had wrung chicken necks, resurrected cars from junkyards, and had once strangled a man who’d attempted to rape his sister. Farhad wobbled his curly-haired head in thanks as Lexi dropped off his coffee. “Lexiiii,” he yowled playfully until she laughed. This one was half Kurdish, half Armenian, and full fruitcake.

  Adam and Marc smiled at her from the third furnace, their heads—one dark and one fair, though people usually mixed up which one was Greek and which Jordanian—bent over the cooling glass. The artisans took a break to savor their coffees, Marc crowing in delight when he noticed that his was full of foamy bubbles; in Greek tradition, this was symbolic that he’d be winning money. True to his nature, Adam switched their cups—Marc’s sweet, his own bitter—as soon as Marc looked away. He and Lexi watched, poker faced, as Marc turned, sipped the wrong coffee, and spat it out.

  And then there was Evy, her hair tied up in a kerchief and smudges of soot all over her lovely face. She didn’t look like the most talented blacksmith in Sycamore and she preferred it that way. Like Lexi, Evy enjoyed surprising people after they’d underestimated her; she’d been Lexi’s role model for forever. She untied her apron and pried it away from her bulging belly, using the cloth to wipe the sweat from her face and neck.

  “Man-babies. They make me think twice about bringing my son into the world,” she muttered, accepting Lexi’s offer of ice tea and fishing out her car keys from her pocket before giving her a quick hug. “My shift’s done. Good luck with the hooligans, darling.”

  Lexi grinned and continued behind the display shelves until she reached her corner desk. A glistening mountain of work stared up at her, waiting to be grozed and painted. They’d been expecting her. She took a good swig of coffee and sat down to work. A moment later, Yang sprawled at her feet, his inky tail thumping against the chair legs. Lexi’s toes soon grew numb from his weight. She ignored the sensation; she didn’t have the heart to shoo him away.

  Still, she felt it when the wolf tensed. His growl, low enough to be felt more than heard, thrummed through her body as his torso pressed against her leg. Then he scrambled to his paws, ears cocked and statue-still, facing the front entrance of the factory.

  Lexi stood up slowly, careful not to spook him further, her feet pricked by needles as the blood began to recirculate. “Yang?”

  Yang’s tail twitched at her voice. His black lips began to curl. Lexi stroked the fur on his nape, now as stiff as it was soft.

  The source of the wolf’s discomfort appeared seconds later, topping the hill. A black jeep Cherokee barreled down to the parking lot and braked a few yards from the building. The tires screamed against the asphalt as the jeep drifted, vomiting clouds of smoke. It screeched to a halt, perfectly parallel to the building. Lexi’s hand clenched around Yang’s fur. The wolf pressed against her, reassuring her of his presence.

  The jeep door opened.

  A black boot appeared, extending towards the ground. Then the rest of the body jerked out from the car, a man like a marionette with strings extending to the clouds. Black sunglasses hid his eyes from the glare of the sun. The lenses, twin black holes, swallowed the light. They were not the reflective type.

  Their owner wasn’t either.

  The men stopped working. They stared out through the doors at the visitor. Tension spread through the factory, as palpable as smog. Lexi’s cousin took a step away from his jeep. One hand lifted to readjust his sunglasses. The other appeared from behind his back, brandishing a shotgun.

  They watched him cock it.

  Lexi’s hand squeezed Yang’s nape, forbidding him to move or snarl. For a long moment, no one moved. Then two of the men—Jerry and Farhad—ambled over towards the visitor, acknowledging him, armed with the conviction that he didn’t hate them. They weren’t many years older than Lexi, but they were wiser. They knew what neglected creatures hungered for. They followed him as he marched through the threshold of the factory. They watched him as he showed off his new toy. They stood there and fed him attention. It should have been easy. He was merely twenty-one, but insecurity could make puberty pimples fester on anyone’s cheeks.

  “How’s it going, Greg?” Jerry asked.

  “Geared for hunting season,” praised Farhad. “We could go scouting for deer with that thing. Or a bear.”

  Greg laughed and told them how he’d storm Congress and kill all the bastards who made the fucking laws that made Paul, his father, pay fucking alimony to Pandora, his mother, even though they were both fucking other people. The men chuckled uneasily. Greg asked them if their fucking balls had dried up and shrunk due to the heat or if they’d been born that way.

  From the opposite end of the building, on the other side of the shelves, Lexi looked up and watched her cousin reflected in the mirrors. For years, Lexi had retained her sanity in a madhouse of reflections by blinding the sixth sense. No horns. No halos. No hauntings. It didn’t mean these truths did not exist. She didn’t want to see them, so she’d simply pretended they weren’t there, reveling in blissful ignorance. Now, for the first time in years, she strained to retrieve them.

  She watched as Greg’s horns unraveled within the ceiling mirror. They spiraled up inch by inch. The sandpaper of Greg’s laugh fascinated Lexi as much as it frightened her. It was why she had always thought of him as the Sandman, an interpretation not as sinister as E. T. A. Hoffman’s but one that seemed to match, suddenly, in its role as a harbinger of death. Greg’s voice rebounded around the building, dry and abrasive. Mirthless l
aughter is one of mankind’s trademark noises. It’s been used to mask pain for centuries.

  Lexi’s father jogged up the stairs from the basement storage rooms, light-footed as a child, disturbed by the yelling. Elias was a man who walked and thought fast. At the sight of his nephew, his face and eyes hardened. The lines on his face deepened. For the first time, Lexi caught a glimpse of her father as an old man. The preview unsettled her almost as much as Greg’s arrival.

  She cursed and glanced around, grabbing a knife from her table. A blowpipe would have been better. Or a furnace that she could just shove Greg into, if only she could summon superhuman powers for a minute. Knife versus gun—she didn’t bother playing that scene through in her head.

  But she’d be damned if she didn’t try something.

  Her father, of course, held nothing scarier than a stack of papers. “Markos!” Elias barked suddenly. “What did I tell you about regulating this oven’s temperature?” Marc glanced over at the Lehr oven, shaking his yellow hair out of his eyes. He grimaced, his eyes flitting between his employer, his employer’s nephew, and the crackling fire in the furnace. He knew the boss was picky with cracked glass.

  Lexi tensed. Her father had seen Greg, hadn’t he? Was he purposefully ignoring him, hoping he’d go away? That wasn’t Greg’s plan, apparently.