by Amanda Frame
A screech from outside made my heart skip.
Crouching so as not to hit my head on the low ceiling, I crept slowly to the tiny window set near the peak of the roof and peered out. Two Leeches stood there facing the house. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me but I ducked under the window anyway. This was odd; the only time I had even seen two this close together was when the mantis killed the lizard. I thought they were lone creatures. Both of these were small and vaguely beetle-like so I wondered if it had something to do with being similar.
I stood up the tiniest bit so I could see out the window. I didn’t see any echoes of people nearby so either they were just chilling here for no reason or they were looking for me. Judging by their spindly insect limbs, I didn’t think they would be able to get into the attic even if they got into the house, so I figured I could just wait it out.
It seemed like hours passed, and the two bugs just kept pacing back and forth in front of the house, screeching every now and then as if communicating. Now it was pretty clear it was me they were after. Why else would they just wait around? How did they know I was here? Could they smell me, sense me somehow? Did they see me go inside?
I fiddled for the switch of my flashlight to turn it off since it was getting dark and I didn’t want them to see the light through the window. It slipped out of my shaky hands and landed with a thump on the pile of photo albums, glass breaking and a huge spark jumping to the open pages.
“Oh shit!” I leapt back as the stack caught flame almost instantly, the brittle pages making the perfect kindling. I frantically glanced around for something to smother the fire, but saw nothing. With growing panic, I noticed that I was surrounded by cardboard boxes and a mound of very old newspapers. I needed to bail or I was going up in flames along with the rest of the attic. I half fell down the ladder leading down to the second floor and tried to locate a route other than the front door from which to escape, since I assumed they were still waiting for me.
I peered out a bedroom window facing the street just in time to hear the shatter of glass and see a flash of light, the result of the small attic window exploding, and ducked with a yelp. The Leeches screeched and ran away in panic.
It made sense. I couldn’t think of any other situation in which they would have experienced fire. There was no weather here that I had seen, so no lightning strikes. There were no humans to make campfires, or light a furnace. No active gas stations, cars, or anything else likely to cause an explosion.
Thank God. I ran down the stairs and out the front door, looking up to see flames shooting out of the window and the roof about to collapse. Holy shit, that was fast. I looked around in shock, not knowing what to do. I heard a vast amount of eerie screaming, squealing, and other frightened vocalizations that I couldn’t even think of a name for. Some sounded far away, others much closer.
Mouth agape, scanning the area around me, I realized two very important things. Leeches were afraid of fire, and there were more of them nearby than I originally thought. A lot more.
CHAPTER 36
ANNA
John scanned the area, only halfway over the threshold. I peered over his shoulder, anxious to get this show on the road. There was nothing out there. No cars, no people. The plant life looked shriveled from dehydration, the grass brittle and dying. The pavement was cracked and riddled with potholes, as though abandoned for decades.
It wasn’t hot anymore, which I found odd. Just a generic room temperature that gave the impression that you would be comfortable in any amount of clothing.
The physical feeling was oppressive, like the air was just slightly thicker, humid almost. Not the wet humidity that I normally associated with Florida’s springtime, something different.
“Coast is clear. I’m going to show you a few important things. Come on.” He headed down his front steps and shut the door. The sound seemed dulled, sort of like I was wearing earmuffs.
He walked with confidence down his driveway but I was scared to follow. “Wait,” I whispered-yelled, “aren’t you worried about Leeches?”
He turned around and took a few steps back toward me. “No, they’re rarely in this area.”
“Why not?” I asked. “This is a pretty busy neighborhood.”
“Well, ” he started slowly, “they’re sort of…scared of me.”
“Scared of you? Why?”
He paused. I knew this look, even on his new and younger face. He was debating whether or not to tell me the truth.
“I kill them. Efficiently and often.”
“What? Why? How?” I asked, scared of the answer but also feeling a bit soothed that he could protect us if necessary.
“That one,” he said, pointing to a house a little ways down the street, surreptitiously avoiding the question. “Let’s start there.”
I followed him with a huff, annoyed but definitely curious. We entered the house, which I remembered being fairly new. It had been built probably built about six months ago, with bright sky-blue siding and a beautiful oak front door. Here it was decrepit, gray siding rotting and cracked, holes in the roof through which I could see exposed beams. It was in the worst condition out of all the houses on the street.
“Why is that house in such bad shape? It’s a beautiful house in reality.”
John turned to me and grabbed my shoulders, startling me. “Anna, you need to realize something. This—” he gestured around us, arms open wide “—is reality. It may not be the reality you are used to, but you can be injured, even killed. Someone will find your human body, dying and empty, never knowing why or how you died. An autopsy will show nothing, and you will leave your family grieving a loss they don’t understand. Never come here by yourself, do you understand me? There are creatures here that are straight out of nightmares, and trust me, you do not want to encounter one.”
“Okay…” I started, shocked at his sudden outburst. “It’s not like I would…”
“Do you see this?” he interrupted, lifting up his pant leg. “This is the result of one of the closest calls I have ever had here. It was absolute sheer luck that I managed to escape the thing that did it, and the injury itself nearly killed me afterward anyway.”
I looked at his leg, speechless. A raised gray scar dominated most of his thigh, about a foot long and two inches wide. It was huge.
“The same incident where I almost became a human kabob, I got trapped in a fire.” He pulled the neck of his shirt over and I could see a large splotchy patch of silvery skin. “I almost burned to death alongside a Leech. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve gotten lucky more times than I can count. I am absolutely shocked I lasted for so long, considering what I had to do to survive.”
“What did you have to do?” I asked quietly, fascinated and horrified by his accounts. Instead of answering, he broke eye contact and turned away.
“Come on,” he said, and started walking briskly towards the decaying house, leaving me to jog to catch up.
“But why does it look like that? It’s the newest house on the block.” I said, falling in line next to him.
“That’s exactly why. The newer and more used something is, the weaker it echoes.”
“But…that makes no sense.”
“Nope, but a lot of things here don’t,” he said matter-of-factly.
We entered the rundown house, which didn’t even have a door, and crept carefully up the rickety stairs. The entire house was empty but I didn’t bother asking what the hell we were doing here.
He led me to a room with an empty window frame facing the back of the house. In front of it sat a telescope.
“That looks new, though,” I said confused. “How did it get here?”
“Oh, I brought it from somewhere else. It didn’t echo through this house,” he said. I was glad I was starting to pick up on his terminology, because some of the things he said would sound ridiculous otherwise. He peered through the telescope and adjusted it a few times until he was satisfied. He stepped bac
k and ushered me over.
“Take a look.”
I looked through the lens and saw two creatures near a sand trap in the golf course, spindly limbs and knobby joints moving in spurts and jolts as they stalked around. They walked on two legs and looked vaguely similar to mummies you might see in a museum. Emaciated, papery skin, exposed teeth. I let out a small gasp when I saw that the tops of their skulls were missing starting right below where their eyes would be. I could see black, pulsing brains exposed to the air.
Pulling back from the telescope, I looked up at John, wide-eyed and feeling the blood drain from my face. There was a very real possibility I was about to throw up.
“Those…those are Leeches?” I stammered, fighting the urge to vomit. “They look nothing like the one I saw.”
“They’re all different. Well, not all of them, but I’ve seen hundreds of them, so different that I can’t make sense of it. Those down there pale in comparison to others I’ve seen.”
“So…why…why are you showing me this?” I asked shakily.
“You need to know, Anna. You need to have a realistic idea of what you might encounter. Like you said, you want to know what you’re getting into before you agree to help, and I respect that, so I’m showing you an example of what we might—what we will—come across. I’m going to keep you as safe as I can but I’m also going to show you some places to hide out if we get separated, and how to get back into your body on your own.”
I was shaking, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. I needed to build up some courage and fast. This was more than I could mentally handle right now and I needed to get my shit together.
“So what’s the plan? How are we going to get rid of Brian’s Leech?” I asked hesitantly.
John turned to me and took a deep breath. It was so weird seeing him in this form. He looked so different, and yet very familiar at the same time. It was hard to wrap my mind around.
“I have a few ideas, all of which have flaws. The first couple are built on the assumption that the Leech’s physical body is still alive and it is tethered to it. My first idea is that we kill its body in the Void, and hope that its astral, which is caught in the human plane, dies with it.”
“But isn’t that essentially what happened to you?” I asked. “And you didn’t die.”
“Yes,” he sighed, “so if the same rules apply, then it won’t die, but maybe it would be more vulnerable. Or maybe cutting its ties to the Void would give it free range in the human plane and we’re in a worse situation than we were before.”
“Okay, so I’m not really feeling that one. Any other ideas?” I was worried that if he started off with an idea this sketchy, then his others might not be any better.
“We lure it back to its body, then kill it when it’s back in the Void if necessary. This unfortunately means getting Brian to cooperate with us.”
I groaned. “He hates me. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
“It actually might not be that difficult. The Leech crossed over in your school’s library, right?” I nodded. “So its body might still be there. If we get it close to its body, it will be drawn to it and might just go back on its own.”
“Wow,” I said cheerfully, “that doesn’t sound bad at all.”
“Not so fast. There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in that scenario.” He leaned against the wall with a sigh and a small chunk of plaster cracked free, falling to the floor in a cloud of dust. He brushed it absently with his foot. He began ticking off on his fingers. “It will only work if Brian agrees to go there, if we get the Leech to follow him, if its body is still there, and if it willingly goes back to the Void and just leaves us alone. Its body might not even be alive anymore in which case, I’m approaching this from a totally wrong direction altogether. So much can go wrong. Your school is crawling with Leeches. Especially at the end of the school year since all the kids are stressed out about finals and college and whatnot.”
Yeah, I should have been freaking out about that along with them. I’d barely studied for finals and they were next week. I hadn’t found a job, either.
“Chances are its body isn’t in the same place. It could have been dragged away by something else. It might not want to or even realize how to get back in its body.”
“It seemed scared when I saw it last, though,” I remembered. It had been cowering defensively, hanging out in the corner of Brian’s room, looking trapped. “It probably wants to go home.”
“Maybe,” said John, running his fingers through his dark hair. I recognized now why he did that all the time over his bald head in his physical body. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”
“Well, even if it doesn’t willingly go back into its body, that doesn’t seem like a very dangerous plan. We try it, if it doesn’t work, oh well, right? We don’t have to be in the Void when it crosses back over, and it doesn’t seem like it can hurt us here in this world.” I shrugged.
“It’s hurting Brian, so it can hurt us, albeit probably slowly. I know the plan seems simple, but I have a feeling something’s going to go horribly wrong. I feel like I’m missing a key piece of the puzzle but don’t know what it looks like. It just feels too easy. I still don’t even entirely understand the situation. The Leech obviously isn’t completely in the human plane. No one but people with a connection to the Void can see it or interact with it. But it isn’t completely in the Void either.” He kicked the piece of plaster and it landed near my uninjured foot.
“I think you’re just being paranoid,” I said, trying to reassure both of us. “You’ve been dealing with this bullshit for too long and you expect the worst because of it.” I kicked the drywall back at him and it hit him in the shin. He didn’t notice.
“You got that right,” he snorted. “Come on, let’s head back, we can’t have your parents wondering where you are only to break in and find you unconscious in the middle of my living room on a mattress. I have a feeling they wouldn’t let you come over anymore.
I laughed. “Yeah that seems like an accurate assumption.”
We made our way back to John’s house. His brief explanation of how to get back into our bodies sounded surprisingly easy. When I got inside, I felt an uncomfortable pulling in my chest that only got stronger the closer I got to my form lying on the floor. All I had to do was touch it.
I knelt on the floor and paused with my fingertips inches from my skin, just realizing something.
“John, wait.”
He came out from the bedroom, still in his younger form. “Yeah?”
“Why are our bodies here? I thought we left them back in the human plane.”
“They aren’t here. You just see its reflection. See?” He knelt down next to me and went to touch my arm. His fingers passed through even though I looked completely solid. He stood back up and I looked up at him.
“When we cross over, our astrals are still inside our physical form, so the position of our body in our world and the position of our astrals in the Void are the same. But you need to pull yourself out of your body to travel any deeper into the Void. That’s why that—” he gestured to my drunkenly sprawled-out body on the floor “—happens. I’ve practiced enough to be able to leave my body much more easily, hence old Albert lying nicely on the bed over there,” he said, pointing back toward the bedroom. I was reminded again that he was using a body not his own. “Hopefully I can teach you to do the same, because that air mattress is a pain in the ass.”
“But that doesn’t answer the question of why we can see them,” I said, frustrated.
“I’m not totally sure, but I think it’s because they’re strongly tethered to us. I have a theory that when we’re far away they fade, but I have no way of knowing.” He nodded absently, deep in thought, then suddenly slapped himself in the forehead.
“I’m such an idiot! Now I do! Stay here!” He got up and jogged out the door.
“What are you doing?” I yelled after him.
“Go watch my body!” he yelled over his shoulder.
I went in the bedroom and sure enough, the image of his body was slowly fading, becoming more and more transparent the further away he got.
He came back, out of breath, and stopped with his hands on his hips. “Well?”
“Yeah, you started…fading.”
“Okay, so then I think I’m right. I think we see a reflection of our body. Kind of like seeing your reflection in a pond. The closer you get, the clearer the image becomes.”
“Ah. Okay, that makes sense. Well, I mean the analogy is good, but whatever this is—” I pointed to my body “—is just ridiculous.”
“Yeah, okay, I know, nothing is logical here, but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.”
I gave him a skeptical look.
“Just get back in your body!” he said with a huff, and walked away. Definitely one of the weirdest instructions I’d gotten in my life.
I crouched down and reached out to the image of my arm. I felt a rush, like I was rocketing up from the bottom of a deep pool, the pressure releasing from my ears. I gripped the floor and waited for the spinning to stop. Feeling the squeaky plastic of the air mattress under my cheek, I opened my eyes one at a time and brushed my hair out of my face, sitting up slowly.
There was John, the old John, the one I knew, standing over me. Arms crossed, with a small grin painting his face.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Dizzy, a little nauseous. Everything is so…loud. And bright.” I groaned and squinted my eyes. He threw back his head and laughed, catching me by surprise.
“Really? After less than an hour?” He chuckled again, shaking his head. I glared at him, my cheeks flushed even though I didn’t know what I was supposed to be embarrassed about. He held out his bony hand and helped me to my feet.
“You should go home and get some rest. Focus on school for a while. I’ve thrown a lot at you all at once and you need a mental break.” He hit the nail on the head with that one.