Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  “How not good?” Toby asked quietly.

  “Sweating-barfing-screaming-uncontrollably-psychotic-episode not good.”

  Toby blinked at her. “When?”

  “Soon …”

  “Well, that’s just marvelous,” Heather said in tones laced with disgust. “You puke on me and I’m punching you in the face, Starling.”

  “Not a problem,” Mason said through her teeth. Her fists were tight, sweat-slick knots of bone and muscle, and she couldn’t seem to make her fingers unclench. “I’m not really gonna care what you do to me if it gets to that point—”

  Suddenly there was a loud thump against the heavy double doors—as though something heavy had run into them at high speed—and even Toby jumped at the sound. In the silence that followed, Mason could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

  Then the howling started. Eerie and keening and somehow … inhuman.

  “What the hell is that?” Heather said sharply. Even in the darkness Mason knew the other girl was staring accusingly at her, as if it might somehow be her fault. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “C’mon, Heather,” Calum said. He also seemed to sense the accusation in her tone. “Mason has nothing to do with it. And it probably is a joke. Some jerk-ass freshmen are probably running around in this stupid storm, pretending they’re ninjas. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Cal’s right,” Toby said. “And anyway, nobody’s getting in here anytime soon—ninjas or not. Just like we’re not getting out. Sorry, Mase.”

  There was another loud thump on the roof, followed by a frenzy of hammer blows at the front door and the sounds of shrieking.

  In the darkness, Calum stalked over to the door and hammered back, shouting, “Knock it off, you losers! We’re stuck in here! Go make yourselves useful and get a freaking crowbar!”

  The noise stopped. They all listened for what must have been several minutes, but all they could hear were the sounds of the storm. And Mason, panting for breath. In the darkness, even with her eyes squeezed shut, all she could see was red. The back of her fencing jacket was soaked with cold sweat and her stomach was churning. Mason was pretty sure that what they’d heard had not been pranking students. But she was also starting to think that she’d be perfectly willing to take her chances outside in the storm rather than spend another five minutes locked in with no escape.

  Restlessly she retreated back into the gym and made her way carefully across the too-dark space toward the scaffolding under the tall windows set high in the wall. Originally they had been the second-story windows. The lower ones had been bricked over and, once the gym was finished, the long wall would hold athletic apparatus like a ballet barre and rigging for hanging indoor archery targets and practice fencing dummies. But for now, there was just the painter’s scaffolding, and Mason reached out a hand and grasped one of the metal bars. She had to do something to keep herself occupied or she was truly going to lose it.

  “Mase?” Calum called. “What are you doing?”

  “I just want to check on something.” She put a foot on a crossbar and pulled herself up to the first level.

  “Mason,” Toby said in a warning voice. “I’d rather not have to tell your father you broke your neck playing monkey bars in a blackout. Please consider the fact that he would probably feel obliged to break mine just to make it even.”

  “I’m being careful,” Mason said as she pulled herself up to the next platform, the one that would let her look out of the window. Mason edged over to the closest window and peered out into the storm. She could see the rain falling torrentially and could make out the dark shapes of some of the closest Columbia buildings, dark against a dark sky. But there were no lights. Anywhere. No emergency lights, no streetlights … nothing even powered by backup generators, it seemed. Mason swallowed against the constricting lump of fear in her throat. This just wasn’t normal. She glanced back down at where the others huddled in the darkness.

  “Looks like there’s a power outage everywhere,” she said.

  She thought she might have heard the distant wail of a police siren over the noise of the storm, and she turned to look back out the window. Suddenly Mason screamed in terror and threw herself instinctively backward. She shrieked as her foot slipped off the platform edge and she fell, only saving herself from plummeting fifteen feet to the floor of the gym by catching one of the scaffold struts with the crook of one elbow. She hung in midair, thrashing and kicking her feet while Toby and the boys shouted her name and reached for her. They managed to grab Mason’s legs and take her weight, and she let go of the scaffold bar. Once her feet touched the ground, Cal wrapped her in a fierce, totally unexpected embrace.

  “Don’t scare me like that!” he said as he held her close.

  “I’m okay—”

  Suddenly Rory shoved Calum aside. He grabbed Mason by her shoulders and shook her. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he screamed in her face. “You coulda killed yourself!”

  Mason shrugged angrily out of her brother’s punishing grip as Toby dragged him back a few steps.

  “Back off, Rory,” the fencing master said as calmly as he could. “Mason, what happened?”

  “I …” Now that she was safely on her feet, the horrible image flooded back into her mind. “I saw something. Out in the storm. It was hideous—a face—all eyes and teeth and it was screaming....”

  “Bullshit,” Rory scoffed. “First you freak out and now you’re making things up. You’re always making stupid shit up—”

  “Toby said back off, Rory.” Calum stepped in front of him and put a hand on his chest. “You can’t talk to Mason like that.”

  “Screw you! She’s my sister and I’ll talk to her however I damn well want!”

  “Stow it, both of you!” Toby finally shouted.

  In the silence that followed, a sudden frenzy of sound came from overhead, like scrabbling animal claws and earsplitting keening, somewhere high up on the roof. Mason flinched and looked up, even though she couldn’t see anything in the darkness. The unearthly howling floated over the rattle of the rain.

  Toby pushed the two boys out of the way and stood peering down at Mason. He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him.

  “Mason … are you sure?” he asked. “It wasn’t just the trees moving in the wind? You saw somebody out there?”

  “Something. Eyes … and teeth,” Mason said again. She clenched her hands together when she realized she was shaking. In the darkness, she could just see Toby glance hesitantly back over his shoulder, toward the window. He thought it was her claustrophobia talking. “There was a face out there, Toby. I’m not crazy.”

  “Maybe we should break a window or something,” Calum suggested. “Get the hell out of here—”

  “No.” Toby shook his head. “Nobody is breaking any windows.”

  Which was exactly when the tree in the quad came crashing down.

  II

  As if in mockery of Toby’s proclamation, Gosforth’s ancient oak smashed through the heart of Gunnar Starling’s shining contribution to the brand-new gym—the new rainbow-glass window. The crowning branches of the venerable old tree looked like a hundred reaching arms, all ending in grasping, black-taloned hands. Sharp, glinting shards of colored glass flew through the air, and Toby and the students screamed with one voice, scattering for the far corners of the gym’s long hall.

  The tree’s huge branches tore a gaping hole in the front of the athletic center, scattering leaves and heavy, splintered limbs … and a screaming horde of nightmares came pouring through.

  Mason was the first to see them—dusky-skinned monstrosities, only vaguely human shaped, with slack, rubbery flesh. “Toby!” she shrieked in a warning. The creatures were the same as the one she’d seen outside the window, only there had to be a dozen of them at least, struggling to free themselves from the tangle of the fallen tree. Lightning flashed, illuminating the gym clear as day through the jagged opening in the roof, and the rain pou
red down in a chill deluge. Mason scrambled behind a stack of lumber in the far corner and watched as the apparitions untangled themselves from the oak.

  Did those things bring the tree down? she wondered frantically, remembering the enraged screaming and the pounding at the door. What are they? What do they want?

  The shadowy things wrenched at the branches, disentangling themselves and heaving aside debris with inhuman strength. They moved in a disconcertingly staccato fashion—arms and legs bending at odd, sharp angles—but they were fast. Bluish-purple skin, like drowned-corpse skin, stretched from bony frames, and lank hair hung from their scalps, tied back in long, ragged braids and rattails. The creatures looked like something out of a big-budget Hollywood horror movie—zombies with eyes that glowed with a sickly, milky-white light. Open mouths displayed ivory teeth bared in grimaces of madness and rage. Bloodlust.

  This isn’t happening.

  This was the psychotic episode Mason had warned Toby of earlier.

  This is it. Her mind was broken....

  Then, for a moment—a frozen instant in the chaos—Mason saw what she thought, at first, was an angel. A winged figure appeared in the darkness, outlined in coruscating, iridescent light, an ethereally beautiful woman with long silvery hair and blazing eyes. She hovered in the air, high above the gymnasium floor, limned with eldritch fire, and pointed some kind of spear or staff at something Mason could only half make out in the storm: a pale tangle of lean-muscled limbs, splayed among the tree’s grasping branches....

  The dark, horrible creatures writhed and skreeled and drew back, scattering. But just as suddenly as the star-bright apparition had appeared, she was gone—taking the light with her—and the monsters regrouped and advanced again. And Mason saw that they had weapons, dark iron blades with battered, battle-worn edges and wicked sharp points.

  Toby shouted, waving his arms to draw their attention, and one of the things sprang at him. He snatched up a spare piece of scaffolding pipe and wielded it like a broadsword, smashing one of the creatures in the side of the head, and there was a sickening sound of breaking open an overripe pumpkin.

  The creatures howled in outrage and advanced on the fencing master. Until one of them swung its head in her direction … and Mason suddenly found herself locked in the beam of its baleful gaze. The creature’s lips peeled back from its teeth in a horrible grin, and it barked out what sounded like some kind of command to the others. The things abandoned Toby and started to move toward Mason in a loose circle.

  She backed farther into the corner, almost whimpering in terror.

  Suddenly a full-throated roar of rage cut through the din of the storm. As wide as Mason’s eyes were already, they got even wider. The pale shape she had seen earlier in the tangle of the oak wasn’t another monster. It was a man—a young man—rising from the wreckage in between her and the shambling, gray-skinned apparitions … and he was stark naked.

  As naked as the shining blade he held in his fist.

  He thrust out his free hand at Mason, warning her to stay back, and then turned and lifted his blade to defend as the creatures attacked again. Mason didn’t move. She couldn’t. Even in the depths of blind panic, she couldn’t help but watch in amazement as the strange young man turned and ran straight for one of the gray-skinned apparitions, sword held high over his head. He brought the blade down in a vicious arc and severed the arm of one of the creatures as if he were no more than chopping wood for a fire. Black, stinking blood erupted in a geyser from the terrible wound, painting an arc of darkness on the gymnasium wall. Another slash of the blade, and the horrible thing’s head toppled from its shoulders.

  Heather screamed, and Toby and Cal suddenly sprang to life, closing ranks behind the young man so that the monstrous attackers couldn’t flank him. Cal, Mason saw, had a death grip on a two-by-four, and Toby hewed about with the length of pipe, striking blows—mostly glancing ones—and keeping the creatures at a distance.

  But they just kept coming.

  In the darkness, it was almost impossible to keep track of the things. Mason heard Rory cry out and Heather was screaming in terror. Toby shot a glance at the stranger, who nodded tersely at him and snarled, “Go!”

  The fencing master whacked one of the shambling creatures out of his way and charged over to Rory and Heather, over by the heavy bag that Rory had earlier been halfheartedly trying out his sparring skills on. Mason noticed, with the kind of detachment that was probably brought on by shock, that Rory was rather impressively holding his own against one of the monsters. He’d picked up an aerobics stacking step and was using it alternately like a shield to fend the thing off or to slam the creature repeatedly over the head with the hard plastic.

  Mason felt useless just standing there. She looked around and saw a length of two-by-four stacked with the construction materials. She lunged for it. But the second she did, one of the monsters darted forward and made a grab for her arm. Lightning arced—flash after blinding flash, waves of white light rolling over each other like pounding surf—and Mason saw everything play out as if in a series of overexposed photographs.

  The stranger and Cal leaped to tackle the creature that was on her heels.

  Cal got to it first, bodychecking the thing away from her.

  The blond guy shoved her behind him, snarling, “Stay back!”

  Mason landed on her shoulder against the stacked lumber, fear and rage sparking behind her eyes. She sprang back up to her feet and charged forward again, determined to enter the fray, but she froze when she heard Calum shout a warning. She saw him pointing at the ceiling as one of the creatures dropped from the rafters, straight toward her. If she’d still been standing there, it probably would have broken her spine. But instead, another sharp shove sent her sprawling, and the blond guy took her place. The creature hammered him to his knees, and Mason heard the whuff! of air as all the breath was driven from the young man’s lungs and she saw his head smash into the floor. The sword flew spinning from his grasp, and he sprawled, dazed, in the middle of the gymnasium.

  The creature threw back its head in a howl of glee, ropy arms thrown wide in a triumphant gesture that left its flank wide-open.

  Diving for the dropped weapon, Mason scooped it up and ran forward, the blade held out in front of her like a lance. She was screaming in terror and, distracted, the creature rounded on her with vicious speed—only to drive itself accidentally onto the point of the blond warrior’s sword in Mason’s hand. The blade was so sharp it slid deep into the creature’s flesh, and the thing writhed and screamed on the point of the blade, reaching to tear at Mason’s face and hands even as it died. The screams stuck in Mason’s throat as she saw the stranger rise up behind the thing to grab its malformed head with both hands. A sharp twist, a snapping sound, and the thing slumped to the floor, dead weight, sliding off the end of the blade in her hand.

  Mason heard Cal’s scream again—only this time, it wasn’t a warning.

  She heard Heather cry out, “Cal!” and Mason turned to see him caught in the gnarl-fingered grip of one of the creatures about five feet from where she stood. Mason dropped into a ready stance, looking for an opening, but the monstrous thing had Cal by the throat. Its sickly white moon-glow eyes locked with hers, and it grinned hideously, cruelly.

  It hissed at her through jagged teeth—a single word that echoed in her mind. She didn’t understand it. Couldn’t hear it properly over the raging storm. But it somehow still terrified her to her very core.

  The sword in her hand wavered.

  She stood there, frozen, as the creature’s ropy arm rose and then slashed down through the air, its talons tearing through Cal’s flesh. His face and chest suddenly bloomed crimson as Mason watched, horrified.

  Cal’s howl of pain blotted out the sound of the phantom word locking up her brain and freed her muscles to move once again. The creature looked as though it was moving in for the kill on Cal, but before it could sink teeth or claws or blade into him, Mason reared back with the
sword and charged forward again, yelling incomprehensibly as she swung hard at the exposed flank of the monster. She felt a fierce moment of savage elation as the edge of the blade bit deep into the horrid thing’s withered flesh. The creature hissed wetly in pain and scrambled back into the darkness as another of its kind advanced from behind Mason. The momentum of her first blow carried Mason around, and she struck out wildly again—a glancing blow this time, but enough to make her assailant skitter back into the ink-black shadows beneath the fallen oak tree.

  “Sword!” the stranger shouted, having regained his feet. Without thinking, Mason tossed it to him. He caught the heavy blade one-handed and swung it up and over his head. Then he proceeded to give the terrified fencing students and their teacher a master class in swordplay.

  Mason grabbed for Cal’s arm and struggled to haul him out of harm’s way.

  “Run for the cellar storage!” Toby croaked, appearing at Mason’s side out of the darkness.

  “You mean … underground?” Mason’s stomach lurched.

  “Now, Mason,” Toby barked. “While he’s got those things occupied!”

  Following at Toby’s heels, Rory didn’t have to be told twice. Still clutching his gym bag like it was some sort of security blanket, he sprinted across the gym. Mason and Heather ran after him, and Toby followed, half dragging Cal, who was doubled over in pain. Rory grasped a metal ring recessed into the gymnasium floor in front of the stage and heaved open the trapdoor, which led down to what used to be an old cellar but now served as storage for stacking chairs and old gym equipment. As the others ran past her and descended into the darkness, Mason hesitated, her claustrophobia threatening to overwhelm her fear of their attackers. She glanced back at where the young man stood poised to defend against the next surge. She could barely see him in the gloom, but she knew when he’d turned his head and was looking directly at her. She knew in that moment that his eyes were ice blue.