by A. R. Kahler
“You have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to do anything.” I glanced up at him, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring into the corners of the room, one foot tapping nervously. “Here’s what I see, Chris: We took you to dinner, and rather than go to a movie after like we planned, you asked to be taken back to campus. Where I later find you in a room with a dead body and a circle like we saw before. Just like the circle around Jane’s body. Which, come to think about, you didn’t seem too surprised by when we found it. And when I find you tonight, all you can do is blabber about Kaira being taken, which is stupid, because we’re in the middle of the woods and there’s no one around to take her and she definitely didn’t sneak out that window. So, to me, unless you can explain this away, it looks like you’ve had a hand in all this. Like maybe these deaths weren’t so random or unexplained all along.”
It was a death sentence. Hearing him say it . . . God, it sounded insane. If the roles were reversed, would I believe him? If I hadn’t actually seen it with my own eyes? If I hadn’t experienced everything I had?
What if she had never been in there? What if I walked in there and saw Jonathan dead and had some sort of nervous breakdown?
What if I—
“Please,” I choked, forcing down that train of questioning. “I can’t explain what happened. But I swear it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t hurt Jonathan. I wouldn’t hurt any of them. You know me, Ethan.”
“Actually, I don’t.” Ethan’s words were like a guillotine, cutting off my rambling plea and any hope of winning him over. “I only know that you started hanging out with us when all this started happening. Which doesn’t look very good either.” He looked down to his hat then. “Jesus, Chris. What have you gotten yourself into?”
“Check with security,” I said—it sounded so close to begging. “About the day Jane died. I was on the phone. There’s a log, and my parents can tell you they were talking to me. I wasn’t there for Jane’s death, and I had no idea what I was walking into tonight. I’m just as innocent as you.”
I paused. A new thought twisted in my gut along with the fear. A different sort of nervousness.
“Wait. Why were you there?” I asked. “You were supposed to be at the movies with Oliver and Elisa.”
He looked away and shoved his hat back on his head. Like he was trying to hide.
“I didn’t feel right.” His words were small and uncertain.
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and looked back to me. “I mean, after we dropped you off, I didn’t feel right about going back out there. Thought it was a blizzard coming or something.”
“You felt it,” I whispered. “The wrongness. Something is going on and you know it.” It felt so stupid saying it, but to my relief, he didn’t laugh.
“That’s an understatement.” His expression hardened. “Why should I believe you, Chris?”
“Because Jonathan wasn’t injured. You said it yourself.” I held up my hands then pulled the collar away from my neck. “And look. No bruising. No blood. How could I have killed a grown man without getting some sort of scratch?”
“You’ve put a lot of thought into that defense.”
“Only because it’s the truth.” I slumped down. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I don’t know what’s true. But I know I didn’t hurt him. Or Jane. Or anyone else.” Then, because he still hadn’t answered my question, I turned the questions on him. “Why did you stay on campus?”
He shook his head.
“No. No, this isn’t about me. I said I felt strange. Which anyone would feel if they’d seen . . .” He actually shuddered. “They’re stupid circles, but I can’t get them out of my head. Ever since Jane. It’s like staring into the eye of Death himself.”
“Something is happening,” I pressed. “You know it. I can’t explain it any more than you can. But I’m going to figure it out, Ethan. And to do that, I need your help. We have to find Kaira. She’s”—been taken, transformed into something else—“in trouble. You know it too. And not because of me.”
He didn’t look at me when I said it, and I didn’t feel the same accusation when he finally replied.
“I’ve been worried about her. . . . You swear you had nothing to do with what happened in there?”
I nodded. “I swear on my life.”
Not that that means anything, since you’re living on borrowed time.
“I’m not saying I believe you,” Ethan admitted. “But I’m not going to report you. Not yet. Not unless you give me a reason to.”
“We need to find her,” I said. Now that the panic of him turning me in was fading, the fear of not knowing what happened to her took hold again. “Kaira. She’s—”
“Probably painting,” he interjected. “Unless you’re telling me she jumped out that window and ran off.”
“She didn’t jump. She . . .” I trailed off. He didn’t need to know she became a murder of ravens. “She was there. I swear. And I need to find her; she’ll prove it.”
“Are you on something?” he asked. He leaned in, like he was checking my pupils. “Seriously.”
I pushed him back. “I’m sober. One hundred percent. I know what I saw. She was there.”
Rather than answer, he pulled out his phone and typed in a number and held it to his ear. We sat in silence while the phone rang, my nerves on edge. Was he calling campus security? Should I be running right now? But he didn’t look like he was about to turn me in; I watched his eyebrows furrow deeper. Finally, he perked up.
“Kaira?” he asked. “Oh, sorry Elisa. I didn’t . . . Yeah, I wanted to see if she was around.”
A pause.
“Okay, thanks.”
Then he ended the call and leaned forward.
“That was Elisa; she answered Kaira’s phone,” he said. He looked me in the eyes. “You need to start thinking of a better cover story. Because according to Elisa, Kaira’s sound asleep in their bedroom.”
My chest tightened.
“That’s impossible. I saw her . . .”
He held out the phone, Kaira’s number already dialed and ready to be sent.
“You’re welcome to ask her yourself,” he said. “But let me warn you: She’s a monster when woken up.”
I didn’t make the call.
I sat there staring at Ethan while my brain tried to kick into gear. Kaira is safe. Back in her room. So . . .
So I was going crazy. That was the only rational explanation. I was going crazy and Kaira was okay and what if . . . No, I didn’t have anything to do with Jonathan’s death. I knew that much. But the rest—the birds and the screams and the falcon demanding Kaira’s life—I had no explanation for. Something had broken the window in that classroom. But what if it had been like that before? What if I really had just snapped, and Kaira had never even been in there? I’d walked in and seen Jonathan dead and . . .
“What’s happening to me?” I whispered.
“Stress?” Ethan ventured. I hadn’t actually expected him to answer. Stress didn’t explain a dead professor or seeing Kaira in a place she couldn’t have been. It couldn’t explain what I’d seen happening to her. It had either happened, or I had snapped. There was no middle ground.
I ran my hands through my hair, tried to dig out the memories of the way she’d looked at me. The way her skin had burned like ice when I’d touched her, the gristle of feathers pushing through her flesh, the biting wind of a thousand wingbeats. I could still smell it, the tar of the feathers, the tang of fear. It burned in my nose, scratched in my brain.
No. I wasn’t crazy. It was real. It had happened. But the only one who could confirm it was currently—apparently—asleep in her room.
Why would she have flown off, only to go back to her room? Why had she seemed so scared if she was returning to safety? It didn’t make sense. None of it. My pulse wouldn’t stop racing, because there was no way Kaira was just safe in her bed and it was all a hallucination. Kaira was out in the wilds
somewhere, needing to be rescued. She had to be. She couldn’t be back in her room. This couldn’t have all been a delusion.
I looked down at my hands, to the smooth palms. No cuts, no shards of glass from the broken window.
Maybe it was a delusion. Maybe . . .
“You’re sure she’s in there?” I asked. There was a desperation in my words, a heaviness. A need. “It wasn’t just some pillows under the blankets?”
“I didn’t ask Elisa to clarify,” he said, leaning back. I couldn’t tell what his expression was saying. Confused? Concerned? “But again, you’re welcome to call her if you want.”
I shook my head. If Kaira was in there . . . what did it mean?
“In the meantime,” he continued, “you need to think of a story. If there were others in there, like you said, fingers will be pointed if someone remembers seeing you on their way out. You’ll need an alibi.”
“I don’t have one. Not this time.”
I watched the muscles of his jaw tighten as his eyes looked to the corners of his studio. I knew that look; he didn’t believe what I was saying any more than security would. He needed the story to convince him as much as it would the cops.
“What about the kids who left?” he asked. “Do you remember who they were? Maybe they’d speak up. If we can get them to corroborate, maybe we don’t have to worry about any of this.”
“Maybe,” I muttered. He gave me a look, like that answer was unacceptable. “What? I wasn’t focused on anyone else, Ethan. If you’d have been there, you wouldn’t have been either.” I closed my eyes, tried to trace my footsteps back. Who had run out of the room screaming? “Erik,” I whispered, pressing my hands to my eyes. I felt the edge of a headache approaching, one I doubted meds or caffeine would help. “And Tina. I don’t really remember any of the others. And I don’t know if they’d admit to being there.”
“Do you think they did it?”
I knew he meant killing Jonathan. He wanted a scapegoat, someone who wasn’t me. It was easier to point the finger at something rational than the truth I wanted to feed him. Jonathan hadn’t died from a mortal blow. He hadn’t just dropped dead, either. Those kids had summoned something, something I was positive Kaira was trying to fight. Whatever they had brought into this world, that had been what killed Jonathan. Just as it had killed Jane and Mandy. And that was something Ethan would never believe.
The fact that I even considered that made me wonder if maybe I had snapped. This was real life. Kids couldn’t summon things.
And kids don’t get brought back to life when they’re killed.
“They had to. I mean, I don’t know. It looked fairly ritualistic, you know? What if that’s what this was all about? Human sacrifice or something?”
“There weren’t any marks on him,” Ethan reminded me. “So . . . was he alive when you ran in there?”
“Yes. I mean, I think so.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. All I came up with was screaming and ravens and Kaira’s haunted violet gaze.
“Great,” he muttered.
“What?”
“If Jonathan was alive when you came in, they’ll remember that. They’ll remember leaving. Which means you were the last person to see Jonathan alive. They’ll just say you killed him when he was alone.”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“But they’d think that. It’s the only logical explanation. It’s not like they’re going to think he just dropped dead of natural causes in some painted circle. Not when this is the third time it’s happened. They’re going to know something’s up. If you’re tagged as having been there, you’re screwed. I just wish you had a better alibi. Or any alibi, really. Because no one was in the room when Jonathan died. Except you.”
And Kaira. But I didn’t say it. Partly because he wouldn’t believe it. Partly because I was beginning to question it myself.
“We’ll need to go somewhere visible,” he continued. “Let people see us to make it all plausible.”
For a moment I could only sit there, staring at him in shock. How had he gone from wanting to turn me in to wanting to help me out? I wanted to be grateful, but a small part of me was suspicious.
“You’d do that? You’d lie for me?”
“For now. Until I have reason to do otherwise. You’re my friend, even if you are crazy.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Don’t thank me. If it turns out you had a hand in this, I’m turning you in. Though, if you were guilty, you’d have probably tried to kill me by now since I’m suspicious of you.”
We sat there in silence for a few long minutes, Ethan clearly wondering if he’d made the right choice in taking my side. And me, wondering what was worse: the thought that I’d made this all up, or the fear that something darker was happening. Something I couldn’t explain. Something I didn’t want explained.
“Come on,” he said, sliding off the desk. “Let’s go to the painting studio.”
“I’ve already done the homework.”
“And I don’t give a shit. Alibi, remember?”
I nodded dumbly.
Part of me wanted to call Kaira, demand she tell me what she knew. If anything. The rest of me wanted to wait, to delay the inevitable. It was one thing to have Ethan thinking I was crazy. It would be another to hear the same doubt in Kaira’s voice.
She’ll believe you, I tried to convince myself. But if I was able to convince myself I’d seen her burst into birds, who was to say I’d made up that entire previous exchange? What if we never spoke of anything supernatural, and I was just walking in one grand delusion?
My head ached as I stood and followed Ethan down the hall to the painting studio. Every time we passed by an open door, I expected a cop to jump out and arrest me. Every time we heard conversation from a studio, my heart leaped into my chest.
And every time there was a flicker of light, the passing of a shadow, I heard a voice inside my head.
No. Not a voice. Laughter.
The falcon, drifting in and out on rays of consciousness, laughing at my plight.
• • •
It didn’t take long for news of Jonathan’s death to spread.
We had been in the studio for maybe thirty minutes. The only other kid in there was Tamora, who—probably at the insistence of the entire arts faculty—was painting fully clothed. And, as per usual, she didn’t say a thing to us the entire time, just hummed along to the music in her headphones. The silence and her humming were driving me insane. My painting was finished and I had nothing to do but tweak small pieces, rework shading, and I wanted to scream at her to shut up or sing louder to drown out my thoughts. I kept looking into the shadows, waiting to see Kaira or the ravens or the damned falcon that didn’t seem to quiet in my brain. I kept staring at my knuckles as they gripped my trembling paintbrush, wondering about the smooth, unbroken flesh on my palms. How had the cuts healed? Was it proof that I wasn’t insane? Or had I imagined clutching the shattered windowsill along with everything else?
It is not right that you should bleed for her, the falcon had said. When her blood is yours to spill.
What the hell did he mean by that? I wasn’t about to hurt Kaira. He had to mean something else. It couldn’t be the thought that made my heart twist, the thought that maybe I’d slipped up, had done something terrible my brain refused to let me remember. I had nothing to do with any of this . . . right?
And then the door opened.
“Hi, sorry,” said the security guard. I’d seen her around campus a few times, said hello in passing because everyone was generally friendly here. But tonight I felt like I was being cornered in an alley. My pulse started racing again. “Um, hello?”
She directed the last bit to Tamora, who finally caught the exchange and pulled out an earbud.
“Sorry,” the guard repeated. “But . . . you guys need to head back to your dorms.”
I tried to look confused. Blood continued to pump through my veins, a fire that made my heart stutter.
Don’t look suspicious, don’t look suspicious, she already knows, oh shit, she already knows and she’s going to—
“What’s going on?” Ethan asked. He was smooth. He actually looked like this was a surprise. Maybe he’d taken an acting class or two.
“There’s been another death. A faculty member. They want everyone to return to their dorms.”
“Jesus,” Tamora said, and exhaled. She set down her paintbrush with a thud. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I just know they want everyone back. Sorry. Hope you were at a good stopping point.”
Then, as though realizing that was a really inappropriate thing to say, she blushed and turned from the room.
We all just sat there, staring at the door. She knows. You can’t run from this. She’s waiting out there to arrest you and you’ll rot for a murder you never committed, and Kaira . . .
I glanced down at my smooth hands. Tried to ignore the laughter that still echoed in the distance like a bird’s cry.
Maybe that was for the best. If I was going insane, maybe I should be behind bars.
“They’re dropping like flies, aren’t they?” Tamora said.
“That’s horrible,” Ethan replied. He was already standing, and paused from gathering his things to glare at her. “Why would you say that?”
“Just saying what you’re thinking,” she said. She stretched and began putting her things away, like this was the most normal thing in the world. To have campus security come in and say someone died, to stop painting for a death. “What you wanna bet? Suicide or murder?”
“I’m not talking about this,” Ethan said.
She looked to me, her gaze a lance. Cold sweat broke over my skin as she stared, head tilted slightly, like she was dissecting a painting for Freudian references.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your bet?”
The words caught in my throat. But then I realized we were here to have an alibi. I’d play along as much as I could.
“Suicide,” I muttered. I slid into my coat. “Place is too small for murder.”
I could feel Ethan’s glare on the back of my neck. But I was too focused on trying to keep my breathing steady, on playing it cool and acting only mildly concerned. I didn’t want Tamora to read anything in my expression. Not when she’s often accurately read through the layers of my paintings. When she finally looked away, I nearly crumpled to the stool in relief.