I leaned down so my face was mere inches from his. “If you ever even look at me again, what happened here today will only be the beginning.”
He nodded.
I reached into his front pocket and yanked out a twenty-dollar bill. I shoved it in my pocket on my way out the door. There was a crowd in the hall and they all stared at me when I came out. Suddenly, I was shocked at what I had done. I had never acted like that before.
I couldn’t deny that it had felt good.
That thought scared me more than anything.
I turned away from the stares and whispers and ran.
* * *
When I finally walked through the front door that night, the sun was setting and I was starving, tired, and more confused than ever. I didn’t make it past the living room because that’s where both my parents sat. Dad was wearing a disappointed frown with sparks of anger in his eyes and Mom… well, her eyes were swollen from crying and there was a tissue in her hand.
Sorrow filled me when I looked at her. To lose one son and now another… I knew that after Sam left, I was the only thing that kept her going. Maybe she would fight for me. Maybe she would stand between me and Dad, and maybe together we could find a way to make this hellhound go away.
Dad cleared his throat. “Where the hell have you been?”
I shrugged. “Around.” Actually, I was at the arcade across town spending Brent’s twenty bucks, but I didn’t think that would go over very well.
“The school called,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you were being bullied at school?” Mom asked.
I felt like someone slapped me. But really, why should I be surprised? “Like you didn’t know,” I said, looking at her. “Like you didn’t see the bruises I came home with, or feed me on the days I was starved because someone else ate my lunch.”
She seemed to wilt beneath my words. “You always had an explanation,” Mom said.
I snorted.
“Don’t take that tone with your mother,” Dad snapped.
My eyes shot to him, then back to her. “You’re right. I always had an excuse. Because coming home and admitting that I was getting beat up at school was unacceptable. Just like bringing home anything lower than a ‘B+.’”
“We expect you to be successful,” my dad said.
My shoulders slumped. “No, you expect me to be better than him. To make up for what you lost.”
Mom started crying and stood to give me a hug. “We don’t want you to be anything other than what you are,” she said between her tears.
“Yeah? Well I am a lot more like Sam than you both hoped for.”
Mom gasped and stumbled back, whether it was because I said the forbidden name or because she figured out what I was trying to say.
Dad let out a roar and jumped up from the couch. “No son of mine,” he began, but I cut him off.
“Actually, two sons of yours.”
That vein in his head was popping out again. Both my parents stared at me with horror drawn across their faces. “When?” Dad asked, his voice hoarse. “When did… did you shift?”
“I haven’t shifted.”
Relief was clear on both their faces. “Then why would you think that you are… like him?”
“I can just tell, okay?” I shouted. This conversation was making me angry. “Don’t you think I would know?”
“Look, you’ve been sick. Those jocks at school have been picking on you. You’re just confused, you aren’t a… a…” Dad’s voice trailed away.
“A hellhound,” I finished for him.
“You aren’t,” Dad said firmly as if claiming it would make it true. “We’ll forget about what happened at school today. Those guys deserved what you gave them. That’s the way to take up for yourself, son.”
Yeah, he’s forgiving me ‘cause he’d rather have a bully for a son than a hellhound. He didn’t stop to think about how suddenly I seemed able to take up for myself when I hadn’t been capable for months.
I glanced at Mom, who was wiping her eyes with a tissue. “I’m so sorry I let you down. I never wanted to.”
“I know, Mom.” It hurt me to see her so upset. She just hadn’t been the same since Sam left. It broke something inside her. I didn’t want to make it worse. “Can I go to my room now?”
“I’ll call you for dinner.”
We ate dinner that night in silence. All of us pretended that nothing was wrong—all of us knowing that there was. When I was in bed and staring at the ceiling, Dad opened the door and came in. He stood over my bed, staring down at me through the dark. Finally, he spoke. “Whatever this phase is that you’re going through stops now. I expect you to be strong enough to handle yourself, to know who you really are.”
My stomach clenched and I said nothing.
He cleared his throat. “Do you understand me, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
He left without another word.
I lay there, processing his words, hearing what he didn’t say. I wondered if he ever went into Sam’s room and told him to just not be a hellhound. I didn’t think so, because with Sam, there was no denying what he was. We all saw him shift—even when he tried to hide it. Dad thought I was acting out; he thought since he hadn’t seen me change that I couldn’t really be one, that I had some control over it.
I wished he was right.
I knew that he wasn’t.
* * *
Everyone whispered at school. Everyone went out of their way to give me space. The teachers eyed me warily and the jocks avoided eye contact. I didn’t really mind being treated like a freak; in fact, deep down, a part of me liked it. It made me feel powerful.
Control feels good. Other people’s fear tastes good. Power is yours for the taking, the voice in my head told me.
Sometimes, I deliberately walked down the hall and bumped into Brent. The satisfaction I felt when he skittered out of the way made me smile. I liked that he was afraid of me. I wanted him to be.
At home Dad pretty much ignored me. He no longer asked what my grades were. We didn’t watch sports together. I listened to Mom cry herself to sleep every night and then she was back to pretending in the morning.
But that wasn’t the worst thing.
The worst thing was the rage.
Sometimes, I felt like a switch inside me had been flipped and all of a sudden, I was ripping things apart. One evening, I was doing my homework and it overcame me. I ripped apart my math book, ripping the hardback cover completely off and tearing the pages to shreds. I didn’t know what to do, so I stuffed it all in a trash bag and threw it in a dumpster on my way to school.
I told myself I was just tired of doing homework, tired of working so hard for excellent grades.
After school a few days later, I was leaving when I passed Brent and his crew. They fell silent, avoiding eye contact. I should have kept going. I didn’t. Instead, I shoved Brent up against the lockers and dumped the contents of his book bag all over the floor. When he lunged at me, I decked him in the jaw and proceeded to destroy all his notebooks and books. When I was done, torn paper littered the ground and people stood, staring at me in shock.
I told myself that I just had a bunch of pent up anger because he bullied me for so long.
Another night, I was taking a shower when I ripped the shower curtain and rod out of the wall and sent it crashing to the floor. I threw a bottle of shampoo at the mirror and it shattered all over the sink and floor. Mom came running, trying to hide the cold fear in her eyes.
I told myself that I was just tired of pretending.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating steak and potatoes. Dad was doing his best to pretend I wasn’t there. Mom was trying to wring every detail of my day out of me and rain was falling in heavy sheets outside the window. Suddenly, pain lanced through my body. My fork clattered onto the plate and everyone looked up.
Oh my God, the pain. I had never felt such mind-numbing pain before. Every single
cell in my body screamed and burned. I swear the bones in my body began to shatter, one at a time. My back arched and I pushed up out of the chair and fell onto the cold tile floor.
Mom’s mouth was moving, yelling my name. But all I heard was the rushing of my blood in my veins. My body began to shake and I bit my tongue, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. I curled into a ball, trying to make the pain stop, but there was no stopping what was happening to my body.
I screamed. And screamed and screamed. Tears leaked from my eyes as my body convulsed. There was a popping sound as my shoulders fell from their sockets and my knees left their joints. My body was twisting, doing things that it shouldn’t be doing.
It felt like something was trying to get out. My skin stretched, feeling like there wasn’t enough space beneath it for the monster that I had become. I waited for it to rip open, for blood to spill from my veins and everything to turn red.
I waited to die. I begged to die. I wanted the pain to stop.
Then my body started putting itself back together again. Except the bones weren’t realigning right. They were elongating, growing and twisting. I felt my skull swell and push against my scalp and I screamed. I managed to struggle to my knees and when I opened my eyes, my hands were no longer hands.
They were paws.
They were covered in black fur.
Welcome to Hell.
I pushed to my feet, all four of them, and stretched. Stretching out the pain, ridding it from my body. I felt awkward and sore. This didn’t feel right—it felt unnatural.
A sob broke from my throat, but it wasn’t a sob at all. It was a growl.
Both my parents stood there, pushed against the wall, their faces stark white and their eyes huge. I stared at my dad. He shook his head, disappointed in my weakness.
I had to get out.
I took off through the kitchen, falling and skidding because I didn’t know how to use this body. When I reached the back door, I realized I had no hands to open it. I crashed through, ripping it from its hinges.
Rain pelted me, pounded against my back. I willed it to rain harder, to somehow beat this thing out of me, to make it go away.
But it wasn’t going away.
No one could pretend anymore.
* * *
Dad was in the other room yelling, taking out his rage that, until now, he had held in. How could his sons have such weak genes? Why couldn’t they deny that part of themselves?
Mom was crying, sobbing about her babies. Dad said I had to go. Mom wanted me to stay. She said she couldn’t cast another child out of her house. She told Dad that this was his fault. He never should have fathered children, knowing this was in his genes. She said he never should have lied.
The smack echoed through the entire house; then silence reigned. I tore the covers away and stormed from the room. They were in their bedroom. Mom was on the bed, holding her cheek, and Dad looked like he might murder her.
“Did you hit her?” I asked quietly, calmly.
He glared at me. “Go to your room.”
I leapt forward, shoving him back against the wall, enjoying the sick thud his head made when it hit. I pulled back my fist, anticipating the blow, but Mom stepped between us. “Stop it! You won’t treat your father this way.”
“He hit you!” I cried.
“What goes on between me and your father is not your concern. Everything’s fine. Go back to bed.”
So she was going to take his side. She might want me in this house, but he didn’t. He would have to let me stay a few years like he did Sam, but then he would toss me out, too. Mom might fight for me; she just had and it cost her. I looked at the angry, red mark on her cheek and I felt all the anger drain away.
I was tired. So incredibly tired. I didn’t know who I was and no one wanted me.
There was only one other person who might understand and I didn’t know where he was.
I left the room without looking back at them. In my room, I threw some stuff in my book bag and I waited until the house was quiet and both my parents were asleep. Then I crept into my parent’s bathroom and cleaned out all the cash in Dad’s wallet. I found Mom’s purse and did the same. In the kitchen I pulled the cookie jar down that Mom kept her grocery money in and took all of that, too.
I silently went out the back door into the night.
* * *
I stayed around town for a while. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I watched my house; I wanted to see if they would look for me. If they missed me.
I hoped they would come looking, that they might call the police for help.
They didn’t.
One day, I followed Mom and she went to the school… I stood beneath the principal’s window and listened to her lie—to pretend that everything was just fine. Apparently, I was off visiting my grandparents for the rest of the year.
You don’t need them anyway, the voice whispered. You have better places to be.
That’s the day I left town. I went to the place I knew Dad took Sam to, and I watched the new tenant come and go for days until I finally admitted that Sam wasn’t there. To be sure, I waited until no one was home and broke in, hoping to find some sign of my big brother.
There wasn’t one.
Before I left, I trashed the place.
I don’t know how much time passed as I wandered from place to place, town to town. Sometimes, I slept in the park beneath trees or in parked cars that I found unlocked. Other nights, I woke up in places I hadn’t been in the night before, not remembering how I had gotten there. I would walk by a newspaper, realizing that days had passed and I hadn’t marked their time. I stole, I hid, and I hated the part of me that forced me onto the streets. I hated the hellhound. I wanted him gone.
Eventually, I started pretending. The very thing I hated. But pretending was easier than being something you couldn’t stand.
I wanted Sam. He was the only one who would get me. He was the only one who could make this better. Where was he?
Find him. I was getting used to hearing the voice. I pretended it was Sam, watching out for me.
I didn’t know where to look. I prayed he hadn’t left the state, because if he had, I would never find him. Portland. The word whispered through my head. Sam was telling me where he was. He was helping me find him. Of course! Portland would be the perfect place to blend in!
I didn’t know how long it would take me to get there and I wished I had a car. I wished that I could drive because things would be so much easier. I found myself walking down an empty train track, knowing that following it would lead me toward the city… at least, I hoped it would.
The sun was setting and the sky wasn’t dark yet, but it wasn’t still light, either… it was that strange in-between hour when day bled into night. The night was cool and I considered stopping to pull on the hoodie in my bag, but I decided against it, not wanting to stop even for a second.
In the distance I heard the rumble of a train, but I ignored it. It wouldn’t be close for a while so I kept walking, staring down at the tracks as they passed beneath my feet. Soon, everything around me fell into shadows and my skin prickled with cold. Behind me, the harsh, bright light of the train pierced the dark. Everything in its path was illuminated, including me. I looked over my shoulder at the train, a little startled that it was getting so close.
Now would be a good time to step off the track and grab my hoodie. Except when I tried to step off the track… my body wouldn’t cooperate. A second of panic seared me and I shook it off. No reason to be afraid, this was my body and it would do what I wanted. Again, I tried to step off the track.
My feet moved, but not in the direction that I intended. My body performed an about-face, staring up at the oncoming train. I jerked away, trying to leap from the track, but once again, I was frozen. It was like something was holding my body where it stood and wouldn’t let go.
Meanwhile, the massive steel train was barreling toward me at a speed that couldn’t be matche
d. The circular light on the front blinded me and I threw up an arm to shield my eyes. I had to get off this track! It wasn’t slowing down; the driver probably couldn’t see me.
I struggled to jump off to the side, and once again, my body would not obey. What was wrong with it—with me? Why wouldn’t it do what I wanted?! As a hellhound I was supposed to have lightning-fast reflexes and unparalleled senses. Couldn’t the hound in me sense that I was about to be torn apart by this train?
Heven & Hell Anthology (Heven and Hell) Page 4