S.P.I.R.I.T

by Dawn Gray

  Zander moved closer to me, sat behind me and wrapped his arms around mine to warm me up as I shivered. He pushed my damp hair away from my neck and rested his chin on my shoulder, watching the fire with steady eyes.

  “I hated it there.” I sighed. “When I was ten, I was swimming, the lake dropped out from underneath me and I couldn’t come up for air. I know I was struggling underwater, but all I remember seeing was red, as if blood distorted my view. No one knew I was out there. I remember closing my eyes, thinking that the water had won, and then there was this hand….”

  “What’s the matter?” He whispered, turning me to face him.

  “Have you ever spent the summer in northern Vermont?” I asked, and watched him shake his head.

  “I went up there to visit my cousin once.” He shrugged, and suddenly took in a deep breath.

  “What is it?”

  His mouth moved trying to find the words as his eyes flitted back and forth, as if trying to comprehend the visions he was seeing.

  “There was a girl.” His voice shook as he spoke. “Long brown hair, bright blue eyes, bright red highlights.” His eyes faded off, living in the memories. Suddenly, I could see what he was seeing, as his mind tingled against mine. “She wasn’t someone that…she seemed out of place. I remember sitting on the beach with my cousin, some of his friends and a crowd of people started gathering at the water’s edge. I got up, like something was pulling me to my feet, and I moved between them, stepped into the water and just swam. I had no idea what I was doing, no idea of where I was going, but when the pull stopped, I was in the middle of nowhere.

  “The people on the shore were screaming, something I couldn’t understand, but as I treaded there, something soft brushed my leg. I thought it was a fish, so I swatted at it, but when I touch it with my hand there was…”

  “A pulse, like a shock of electricity,” I answered, and watched as his eyes came back, the brightness returned and he was seeing my face once again.

  “I dove in, brown swirling around me, and I caught a hand. It was like fire, the heat that I felt, heat that burned me right up to my chest, and I pulled her up. Just as her face came into view, the water weaved and someone reached down and scooped her up.” Zander shook his head, as his memories faded, and he looked down at the fire, unsure of whether or not to meet my eyes. “I never saw her again, they rushed her off to the hospital, and no one even mentioned her name to me. I asked who she was, who would have just stood by and let her drown. No one had wanted to move to help. They all just froze until I jumped in.”

  “They said someone saved me,” I whispered; losing my eyes as the tear ran down my face. “They said that a boy had pulled me up so my dad could grab me from his boat, but they wouldn’t tell me who. They insisted they didn’t know.”

  I turned to look at him and watched the confusion on his face. Gently I stroked his skin, the warmth of it seeped into my icy fingers and I smiled.

  “It’s where I know you from,” I said calmly and watched as he looked up and into my eyes. “Instinctively when we met, I didn’t feel the fear, I didn’t feel alone. I felt you and the heat of you and I knew just who you were.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you how familiar you were. It was why I couldn’t stand by and let you get hurt. When I saw you from that window, I had to get to you,” he told me and placed his forehead against mine. “It doesn’t explain the powers.”

  “But it does.” I smiled, and watched his eyes open once again. “I felt the pulse when you touched my arm, so long ago, and you said you felt the heat. What was it that started them when we connected? I don’t know, but that was when they started.”

  “What about the red light? What about the visions?” He inquired.

  “Our link, maybe, the danger of you being in the attic, that creature, maybe it was what brought me here too,” I said, but shrugged at the same time. “It’s all a theory; I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, gathering me close to his warm body as the storm outside raged on, fed by the emotions in the cave. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. I knew one thing for sure, that in the back of my mind whatever had gone on that summer had triggered what was happening now. I just didn’t know how to say it, and I wasn’t sure that Zander was ready for it.

  6

  I had finally stopped shivering, and found that despite the hardness of his abdomen, Zander’s tight belly made quite a comfortable pillow. He had gathered some softer twigs and greens from outside the entrance of the cave, making a pillow for himself, and the two of us lay quietly in the cool, yielding sand in the safety of the cave.

  We had decided to wait until nightfall to move, wanting to avoid any unnecessary run in with Everett and his band of merry men, and found ourselves staying very quiet in the near darkness of the cavern.

  I reached over and ran my hand up and down his thigh, as he lay with his leg bent, and heard the quick intake of breath. Smiling, I turned and looked up at his face as he smiled, a piece of dried grass sticking out from his mouth. Slyly, he looked down at me, giving me a sneaky wink as his hand caressed my bare stomach.

  This waiting is driving me nuts, his cool voice sounded, tingling against my mind. I’ve never been good at observation exercises. The captain always made me stay behind because of my ‘bounciness’.

  Is that a technical term? I laughed and watched as his eyes flashed, and I realized that what I was seeing wasn’t a trick of light, but the way his emotions related to his powers.

  He thought that stating that I couldn’t control my bodily functions would have gotten me in trouble and kicked off the team, so he made it a technical term. Zander chuckled, brushing my skin with the back of his hand.

  What exactly do you do? It was the second time I had asked him the same question and received the same response, a guard built up within him and he sighed. Ok, so its one of those ‘if I tell you, I have to kill you’ things, but really, if you don’t tell me, than what’s to say that I won’t get hurt more by being ignorant to the situation.

  You’re smart and beautiful! I love it! Zander replied, smiling once again. “Ok, I can’t whisper like that anymore, its hurting my head.”

  I sat up and turned to face him as he lay there with his hand tucked up behind his head. “So, spill it, mister!”

  “We are the Special Paranormal Investigative Research and Intelligence Team, SPIRIT for short,” he pronounced proudly.

  “Paranormal, as in that creature that attacked you?” I questioned. “You mean he really was a shadow with bright red eyes?”

  “Yeah,” Zander sighed, and watched me shake my head, afraid that he had said too much too fast. “That thing you saw through me, that was a target. I was sent up there to scope it out, to see how many there were, it’s what I do. I’m not as susceptible to them as the others are. You see, their eyes are hypnotic, and that’s how they kill you.”

  “Like a spider and its web,” I whispered, staring down into the fire. “Do you run into a lot of them?”

  “Lately, there have been more of them. See, they’re created by spirits who haven’t crossed over. They’re basically demons, who steal the souls of those who are dying and replace them with their own.” I felt Zander watching my reaction to this, but when I gave him nothing, he continued. “The church’s long time pastor had passed not more than a month ago. Since then, there have been a lot of sightings, not to mention deaths in the small town. So they called us in.”

  “I’m going to guess that the late pastor wasn’t the nicest of people.” I shrugged.

  “Not our area. You see, we didn’t care how they came to be the way they did, we just cared how to get rid of them,” he said, glancing over into the fire. “I had been feeling strange for days, waking up from night terrors, covered in sweat. Something in the back of my mind was telling me that I was going to have a run-in with the late holy man. See, once I go in and locate him then the other boys come in and clear them out. The
way is just too technical to explain, but it’s a basic exorcism with high-frequency machines that send a bolt out and fry the sons of bitches where they stand, or float.”

  “So, being that you have to get so close to them, they let you go in alone?” I questioned, shivering at the though.

  “I’ve seen ghosts since I was a kid,” he explained and paused again, waiting for some type of reaction. “I guess I grew immunity to their powers, but now I’m thinking it was possibly because of my own powers.”

  “I know how it is to grow up different.” I sighed, playing with the bootlace. “I could hear things that others couldn’t.”

  “Voices?” He inquired and watched me nod. “Non-corporeal audio communication, it would explain why you were so sensitive to my visions, and why you developed the mental connection first.”

  “It wasn’t that fun,” I said, giving him a fake smile and then it faded as I looked at the fire. “They would scare the shit out of me at night, which was when they were more active. My father insisted on buying this large house on top of a hill. The town’s people said it was haunted when we first moved in, it took me all of a day to figure out that it wasn’t just haunted, it was a portal between our world and theirs.”

  “Wait, was it that three-story Victorian that sat up on Miller’s Point?” he whispered, as if it were a secret. I turned and looked at him, not sure of how he would know the exact location, but I nodded as my eyes filled with confusion. “It was the first place I looked into when I joined the team. Even that one summer that I spent up there was enough to convince me that something was going on. They had already investigated it twice by the time I was able to get clearance into the files. Once before you moved in…”

  “And once when my grandfather passed away,” I finished for him. Zander looked at me and nodded. “I remember that. The man who approached me after the funeral was very scary. He gave me the chills just looking at him.”

  “Sergeant Moore, he’s retired now.” Gently, he reached over and rubbed my back, purposely letting the heat spark from his fingers, sending chills over my body. “It’s all right to talk about it, you know. It’s not going to change how I feel about you.”

  I swung around to face him, shock in my eyes and he softly touched my face. How do you feel?

  Like I belong to something, to someone. The tears ran down my cheeks, even as I tried to stop them, and I turned away from him as I caught my breath. Zander’s finger brushed my chin, turning me back to face him and he smiled. “It’s not bad, you know, finding someplace that you belong.”

  “I’ve just never…” I whispered, shaking my head. “It’s always been hard to fit in.”

  “Come here.” He gestured as he pulled me towards him. His strong arms wrapped around me, holding me close to the warmth of his body, and he placed his cheek against the top of my head. “We’re going to get down to the bottom of whatever is going on, Sam, I promise.”

  “That’s the thing, the more time I spend with you, the less I want to solve anything,” I admitted, and closed my eyes afraid that my confession would get the same reaction that it always did, but I felt Zander smile.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Sam,” he said, and squeezed me gently. I could feel the tightness leave my muscles as I gave into the feeling of being so close to him.

  There was a loud clank that echoed in the back of the cave, and both of us stood to face the darkness. The sound grew louder, ricocheting off the solid rock walls before us, and Zander moved to stand in front of me, ever the protector.

  “Light it up!” He whispered, and I raised my hand chest level and concentrated on the ball of fire that swirled in my palm. With a quick flick of my wrist, I sent the fireball sailing into the blackness that stood before us.

  My eyes widened at the sight of the grotesque creature whose image was burnt into my memory. Its skin was taunt and gray, pulled over deteriorating muscles and exposed bones. Its eyes, balls of white and red, sat in hallowed sockets and teeth snarled from under transparent lips. It growled loudly, a sound that I had expected but Zander covered his ears to drown out the noise as it shook the cave.

  Get out! Get OUT! GET OUT! The mental onslaught of the creatures screaming voice made me wince with pain, but Zander doubled over as it struck his nervous system.

  I watched through eyes that were not my own as the walking corpse moved at us. Zander’s unique vision made it possible to see in the dark and I was terrified as it approached. The pain behind my eyes grew as the visions faltered and I realized that Zander’s pain was much more intense than mine was. He was hearing the ghoul, for the first time, and it had targeted Zander for that weakness.

  I concentrated on throwing up some sort of block, to keep Zander out and keep the demon from getting in. Once I saw him lower his hands, his head still throbbing from the attack, I raised up my own. I drew on the power that I had been given and placed a firewall between us and the oncoming enemy.

  “We have to move!” I yelled above the roar of the fire as it spread over the dried foliage that littered the cavern floor, and reached down to grab his arm. Zander stood, shaking off the last remaining effects and took my hand. We waded across the water, which at its highest point was mid-thigh, and stopped on the rocks on the other side. Zander slumped against them, his hands pressed to his eyes, and I moved quickly to tend to him. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot about the connection. I didn’t mean for him to hurt you.”

  “Sam,” he whispered, looking up at me with red eyes, but I placed my hands on his cheeks, feeling for any outward injuries. “Sam!” His voice boomed with authority, catching my attention and I stopped playing with his hair as he gently took my wrist. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Oh my God!” I whispered, the strength going out of my legs as I sat down on the ground in front of him. “I’ve never seen one of them, how is it that you don’t have nightmares from them?”

  Zander smiled, sliding down to meet me on the hard packed dirt. “I’m used to the way they look, just like you are used to the way they sound. Thank you for blocking him. It felt like a drill inside my head.”

  “Your eyes, do they always see that clearly in the dark?” I asked softly, reaching up to touch his cheek. Zander took my hand and kissed the palm, still warm from the power I had sent out.

  “More so when they are around.” He closed his eyes and let out his breath, relaxing enough to make his heart rate slow. “We need to move. Obviously we’re still in the zone; otherwise he wouldn’t have been so powerful.”

  “What zone?” I started and then shook my head. “You know what, never mind. Let’s just go, I’m sure the answers will come in due time.”

  “Sam, don’t worry about the questions.” Zander looked at me; his brown eyes flickered with light as he looked over my face. “I would be asking a million of them right about now if I was in your place, so don’t ever feel that you can’t question your sanity or what you are experiencing.”

  “All right,” I answered, still unsure of what would happen next. “It’s almost dark, we should move.”

  “I agree.” He stood, pulling me to my feet and the two of us made our way up and around the side of the cliff, taking an overgrown path that followed the inlet stream.

  Neither of us talked as we moved upwards, but as he took my hand, helping me up some of the steeper parts, I realized that we didn’t have to speak to know what was going on in the mind of the other. I knew he was concerned for me, for how well I would take all of this excitement and whether or not I would be there when it all ended, if it ever did. He knew that I was terrified of that was to happen next, but he also knew that he was more connected to me than anyone in my past, and that I felt safe with him.

  When we rounded the top of the cliff, Zander stopped and stood breathless as he looked over the valley below that held the small town in is protection. I gasped at the similarity of it all.

  “There can’t be two of them, can there?” I whispered, and stepped closer to the town, leav
ing Zander to stand behind me. “How can there be two of them exactly alike in every way?”

  “This isn’t Vermont, Sam,” he replied, knowing just what I was talking about.

  “But everything, including the sight that the church was on, is exactly how Wilton is. I thought I was there when I first arrived, I thought how could I have gotten three hundred miles from home, only to find out I was so much more further away.” I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. “Miller’s Point.”

  “What about it?” he asked, as I turned to look at him.

  “That’s got to be it. Everything here is the same as Wilton, so there has to be a Miller’s Point and a house just like the one my dad…owns.”

  He noticed the pause as I turned and looked back at the glowing township. I rubbed my chin, feeling the cobwebs of nervousness creeping up on my face, and Zander stepped forward, catching my wrists, holding me captive in his warmth. The pulse of his body skimmed over mine, and the creeping feeling dissolved as he moved closer, kissing my lips gently with his.

  “I’m not home,” I murmured shaking against him, the tears of a frightening childhood streamed down my face. “I can’t be home, Zander. Not here, any place but here.”

  “Sam,” he mumbled, his lips against the flesh of my neck. “You’re safe, Sam. I’m here with you. No one is going to hurt you.”

  “You don’t understand.” I replied, holding him tighter. “I was never safe here.”

  7

  It had taken several minutes to convince myself to ease the hold I had on Zander’s neck. The man had to breathe, after all, but he kept his arms wrapped firmly around me as he stood looking into my eyes. The electricity flashed over the deep pools before me and I felt his fingers tighten on my shirt. It was almost torture to be so close to him and still have clothes between us, but I wasn’t going to chance stripping down in the middle of the evening just to calm my nerves.