by Tom Upton
I crept back into the woods, and sat against my tree, and waited. I looked but couldn’t see anything in the dim light around me. I listened but couldn’t hear anything stir. After a while, I wondered, for a millisecond, if maybe I’d been wrong; maybe Amy wouldn’t show up, maybe this event hadn’t been the target of her plan at all, maybe she was somewhere else, torching a wedding reception or a movie theater or a bowling alley.
But then her voice came from out of the darkness behind me.
“So you figured it out, freak,” she said. Her voice sounded like a whisper in the woods, and for a second I couldn’t tell if it was real or something I was imagining.
I stood slowly. I couldn’t hear anything, not the snap of a dry twig or the rustle of a dead leaf. I waited and listened.
“Have you regained your sanity? Or do I have to kill you with the rest?”
She was somewhere deeper in the woods, not far away but just inside the darkness my eyes couldn’t penetrate.
“Have you come to help or come to hinder?”
“You know that already,” I said, quietly moving deeper into the woods, trying to home in on her voice.
“I do,” she said, almost sadly. “I hoped it might be otherwise, yet I still don’t care either way. Isn’t that strange: to have hope and still not care?”
“Might be because you’re a little brain-whacked,” I said.
She barked a laugh. “You calling me brain-whacked? What does that mean coming from you?” she wondered. “You’re the one who’s lost your grip on reality. Those people out there—you think they’re your friends? They’re not. They could never be your friends. If they knew what you are, they’d burn you at the stake or put you in a canvas sack with some rocks and throw you in the lake.”
“Nobody’s a witch,” I said, reaching out with my mind, beckoning clouds and rain.
“That’s what they would think, though,” she said, and I remembered Jack’s grandmother pointing her crooked finger at me. “They’re all enemies, mine and yours. They’re stupid, weak, and useless. Just listen to them out there. Wailing like morons. Crawling across the dead earth like maggots. They’re a colony of ants, and I’m a magnifying glass.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” I said.
“Like hell it isn’t.”
Thick black clouds had appeared out of nothing, and were rolling in from the west. Distant thunder sounded.
“No,” Amy gasped.
“You’re going to have to take a rain check,” I said.
“No, no, no,” she screeched, like a wounded animal. There was the sound of frantic movement in the darkness, as though a crazed bobcat was bouncing off trees. “No!”
A fireball erupted from the shadows. Glowing orange and yellow, about the size of a basketball, it streaked at me. I hit the ground, just in time to feel its searing heat pass over my back. It struck a tree behind me, and exploded in a hail of golden sparks and a billow of white smoke. Tiny licks of flames clung to the singed tree bark.
I rolled to the side, and took cover behind another tree.
Thunder sounded again, this time much closer. I heard some guy in the clearing cry, “Aw, dude, this sucks!”
I pressed up against the tree for protection, thinking, Dude, no kidding this sucks.
And then another fireball struck and exploded on the opposite side of the tree that was my shield. Sparks and embers sprayed past me on either side of the tree. Somehow a couple red-hot embers landed on my arm and burned my bare skin. I shook them off fast, but the pain was so intense that all I could see in my mind was a flash of white. My focus on the sky was broken, and I knew right away that the dark clouds that had been rolling in were now dissipating back into the nothingness from which they had risen.
I just couldn’t do it—I couldn’t concentrate on the sky to make it rain and dodge fireballs at the same time.
Squatting behind the tree, holding my burnt arm, I wondered what to do. Amy seemed to know where I was, even though I hid in the shadows, but I had no clue where she was or from which direction she might attack me. How was that possible? Nobody’s night-vision was that good, not even a freak’s. Then I thought I had the answer: maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t see me any better than I could see her. Maybe she was focusing on me, the idea of me, and her fiery wrath would find me no matter where I hid in the darkness. Quickly I tried that myself; I saw her in my mind, and I willed her to stumble and fall.
About three seconds later, I heard, not far away, the rustling crash of a body hitting the ground, and an agonized grunt, as though somebody had been socked in the stomach. I took the opportunity to move deeper in the woods, my hands out in front of me, groping in the dark for another tree.
Behind me, I heard Amy scream, “Bitch! Is that the best you have? Is that really the best you have?”
Then another fireball was whizzing at me, lighting up the darkness, showing that I was standing in a small open area too far away from the nearest tree. My feet couldn’t move fast enough. My body couldn’t fall to the ground fast enough. Only my mind was fast enough to save me from becoming a human torch. There was a low-hanging tree branch that the fireball was about to pass beneath before it struck me. My mind was able to tug the branch lower, into the path of the fireball, and the fireball exploded on the branch and showered me with embers and sparks that felt like hot needles stabbing into the skin of my arms and face. I might have actually cried out in pain, which I never did, because, really, pain never seemed that bad. I fell to the ground. I could no longer see darkness, only the afterglow of the explosion, as though I had just looked into an immense flash bulb going off. I crawled on the ground blindly, groping for some kind of cover, willing my eyes to clear up, thinking, Jack, you dumbbell, you should have just let me shoot her! My fingers found thick tree roots erupting from the ground. I followed the roots to another tree trunk, behind which I hunkered down, blinking my eyes, still trying to clear my vision.
I tried not to move. I tried not to breathe. I waited.
Finally Amy called out in the darkness, “Hey, Jules.” She didn’t sound the least bit mad; oddly, she sounded calm, chatty, as though about to ask if I enjoyed a field trip. “Jules, are you dead?”
I started to stew inside. I hated dumb questions, and that was about the dumbest question I had ever heard. She had never had the ability to see and hear spirits, so how did she expect to hear my answer if I was dead?
My vision was clear now, for all the good it did me; instead of seeing a glowing spot, all I saw was darkness.
Anger was quickly welling up in me. I was tired, I was sore, I was burnt, and I didn’t want to be here in the first place. I felt myself losing control of that monstrous thing inside me, as I did whenever I lost my temper.
“It’s time for you to go home,” I called out to her.
“Oh, so you are alive,” she said, surprised. “What was that? Go home? Are you kidding me?”
“No sense of humor, remember?”
She tittered her demented titter.
“Run, before it’s too late,” I warned her.
But she thought I was the funniest thing in the world.
“Run!”
Then it got away from me, the big dark it inside that had been slipping away from me. I didn’t have to focus. I didn’t have to do anything. It was a shadowy monster with a mind of its own.
In quick succession, I heard a muted boom, a startled squeak like a mouse being crushed underfoot, and the patter of tiny objects striking tree leaves like a million raindrops. Then I heard the creaking moan of a falling tree.
“Run!” I yelled, stepping out from my hiding place. “Run!”
There was another boom, another spray of splinters, and another tree came crashing down.
I started walking back toward the clearing, following the sound of frantic footfalls and snapping twigs. I reached the area in the woods where moonlight broke through and spilled in a weird way over the trees and rough ground. I watched as Amy tried to es
cape, taking quick, uncertain steps. The bottom part of a tree trunk that she was passing exploded, and she lost her footing and fell. The rest of the tree seemed to hang in the air for a second, defying gravity, before it tipped and fell, crashing through the branches of other trees and then landing where Amy lay on the ground. I gasped in horror, and the monster fled into some dark recess in my mind, where it belonged. Was she dead? I wondered, not sure now whether that would be good or bad. I approached the fallen tree, and shoved aside branches, searching underneath, until I saw her. Her pixie face, framed by smaller branches, was distorted with terror. Her eyeballs were jittery, and her chin trembled.
“Oh, you’re alive,” I said, sounding a bit disappointed.
She squirmed, trying to free herself.
“Can’t you move?” I asked.
“No—no—no,” she stammered.
“Are you sure you can’t move?” I asked playfully.
Her eyes grew even wider.
“Hmmm,” I said. “Then we have an interesting situation, don’t we?”
She started shaking her head viciously.
“I really should kill you… but you’d probably haunt the crap out of me. So that’s not happening.” I paused to think things over, and something occurred to me. “Let me try something else, something a million times worse than death.”
I reached down and put my finger against her forehead. She scrunched up her face as though my finger was a gun and I was about to pull the trigger. Then I pressed my finger harder against her skin and gave it a cruel twist before I pulled it away.
“Okay, that ought to do just fine,” I said, as though I had just finished a job well done.
“Huh?” Amy said, totally confused. “What? What did you do?”
“I’m in your head now,” I lied.
“No,” she whined in horror; she was so paranoid, she’d probably believe just about anything. Soon she would start imagining that she heard my voice in her head. I was pretty sure this would work, although I still wondered if I should just kill her, which would definitely work.
I said, “If you ever try anything like this again, I’ll know—I’ll know and I’ll come after you. And next time it will be worse, much worse.”
“No, no, you can’t.”
“Can and did.”
“Take it back. Take it back. Take it back right now!” she screeched.
“Go home and be normal,” I told her.
I left her there, hidden beneath the fallen tree. I figured she’d weasel her way out sooner or later.
I walked through the woods toward the parking lot, relieved that it was over. I swore that never again would I get caught up in weird stuff—never.
As I walked an unmarked path, I thought how strange the trees here looked, with moonlight seeping down upon them. They looked so otherworldly, yet so—familiar. I was so startled at that thought that I stopped to look around. Everything looked familiar: a large crooked tree ahead of me, with a thick low-hanging branch that would be perfect for a swing; next to the tree, there was a huge gray rock that showed a patch of moss near the ground; at my feet, three white pebbles pressed into the clay formed a perfect triangle. What the hell? I wondered. Had I actually been her before? It didn’t seem likely. It must just be déjà vu, which I experienced from time to time, but nothing this vivid. Then I knew, was absolutely certain, that on my next step, I would turn my ankle and fall. I put my foot forward, concentrating hard—I will not fall; I will not fall—and when I took that step, my ankle turned and I fell anyway. I sat on the cold clammy ground, bewildered. That shouldn’t have happened. I knew that I would fall, I tried not to fall, and yet I still fell. It was fate, and if fate says you’re falling, prepare to suck ground.
As soon as I was back on my feet, I heard a crunching sound coming from deep in the woods. The sound, too, seemed familiar, the sound of something large and ominous stealing through the darkness.
I took a couple uncertain steps, looking over my shoulder toward the darkest part of the woods. Then I realized: my dream. In that split second, I wondered, If one of my dreams was coming true, why couldn’t it be the one with the Ferris wheel? And I started to run.
Something was pursuing me, crashing through the brush, getting closer. I zigzagged through trees, running pretty well on the uneven ground, yet whatever was chasing me was gaining ground. I heard its horrible panting breath. It was too close. I was certain if I stopped and turned, it would be on me before I could even figure out what it was. Still I didn’t have much of a choice. If I kept running, it would catch up and pounce on my back. I had to turn and try to face it, so that I could focus on it and drive it away with my mind. I had to do that soon.
I stopped suddenly, my feet slipping on the damp leaves that covered the ground. I turned, but it was already too late. It had already planted its hind paws, ready to leap on me. All I saw in that second were its glowing red eyes and yellow fangs that were oddly long, like the fangs in sketches of a saber tooth tiger. I fell back on the cold ground and watched as it jumped toward me.
Then I glimpsed something small flash through the dimness, striking the side of the beast with a tiny pop that sent a splash of liquid through the air. The thing let out a painful yelp. White smoke bloomed out of the matted fur of its side, and in mid-air, it seemed to crumple. It landed short of where I lay. It dodged to the side and retreated back into the darkness of the deep woods.
I push myself up and sat there, staring at the shadows into which the creature escaped.
Then, when I heard something stir to the other side of me, I jumped to my feet. Now what? I wondered, until I could discern a most harmless figure approaching me, bouncing in one hand something round—a water balloon?
“Hey,” Jack said.
I was instantly furious. “You promised not to come here.”
“Yeah, well, you’re welcome.”
“You promised.” Okay, I was an ungrateful bitch; I didn’t know exactly what had just happened, but I knew he had saved me from something terrible.
He shrugged. “I lied. You know about lying.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I let the subject drop.
“What was that thing?” I asked.
“No wolves around here,” he said. “Way too big for a coyote. Its eyes were glowing. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a hellhound.”
“A hellhound?” I could hardly believe that.
“I’m just guessing.”
“You think it was something Amy conjured up?”
“I’m thinking no.”
“And you hit it with what? A water balloon?” I asked.
“Filled with holy water, of course.”
I stared a question at him.
“I got it from Saint Vincent’s,” he explained. “I figured it might work on Amy.”
“You stole holy water from a church?” I asked, astounded. Maybe there was hope for him after all.
“It’s not stealing. They want people to take it,” he said. “Really, they do.”
“Ah hah. Well, if you get struck by lightning, it won’t be by me.”
We walked back to the clearing and stopped just outside the tree line, and checked out the party. Food was still grilling. Music was still playing. Couples still gazed up at the stars. It was amazing. In the woods, not far away, fireballs had flown, trees had exploded and fallen, a hellhound had attacked, and nobody had noticed a thing.
“They are so oblivious,” I commented.
“Most people are. They only see what’s in front of their noses. Right now, they’re just trying to have fun,” he said.
“They’re idiots.”
“And you saved them.”
I snorted. “Don’t remind me.”
“It’s not a bad thing, you know.”
“I don’t understand bad or good,” I confessed. “Things always seem so jumbled.”
“That’s the way life is for everybody, not just for you.”
“Next thing I know, you’ll be tryi
ng to tell me I’m normal.”
“You’re more normal than you realize.”
“Yeah, right,” I grunted.
For a moment, we looked across the clearing. Pretty soon the cops would come and clear everybody out. And afterward, this party would be a memory. And what exactly were memories, but a whole lot of nothing? Really, I didn’t understand why anybody bothered.
“You want to go down there?” Jack asked.
I frowned at him. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Come on.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired. I’m dirty. I smell bad. Aside from that, I just don’t much like people. Actually I’d rather go back into the woods and play fetch with the hellhound. If you want to stay, then stay. Me—I’m going home and trying to forget this night ever happened.”
Jack walked me back to my car. He watched me climb behind the wheel, and slam shut the door. When I rolled down the window, he leaned over and asked, “You sure you don’t want to try?”
“Jack, really, what’s the point?”
He sighed. He reached into the car and set the water balloon on the dashboard.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Just in case,” he said.
I watched him walked away, heading toward the people clustered in the clearing.
After he was gone, I sat there for a long time. For a brief moment, I felt like following him. Maybe if I tried something different, my life would become different. Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was sure I didn’t want a freak show of a life.
Then I noticed two glowing eyes peering at me from within the woods, as though reminding me something that I had always know: Life is never about what you want; Life is about what it wants for you.