There was only one explanation. I must be dreaming. Or maybe the drug thing. I’d believe anything but what I saw. I simply had to wake up and this would all be over. But what if it wasn’t? I felt fear, real soul-crushing fear, for the first time in years.
I greedily reached for the door behind me and stumbled back into the school.
Back to Scary Carrie.
I couldn’t deal with her in that moment. Maybe not ever. I pushed past her, heading back to the janitor’s closest. I hoped to find some sort of answers there. I tried to ignore how wobbly my legs felt and how my hands had started to shake.
“Where are you going?” the girl called out. Her voice sounded hoarse. Unused. Rusty.
I walked on ignoring her.
“Hello! I’m talking to you! You won’t find anything that way except the janitor’s body!
I kept on walking. Maybe I’d seen it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t dead.
“Why don’t you stop by Principal Jones’ office while you’re at it? You’ll find him and his family in there. All dead by the way,” she called after me.
“I’m not talking to you,” I called over my shoulder.
“Well, usually I would be all for your Neanderthal antics, but I take it you looked outside. I figure we best get talking.”
“Shut up. I can’t hear myself think!”
“Mr. Jones is way worse than the janitor by the way. Much more bloody. And his wife...well, she has a gunshot wound in her head. It matches the ones her children have. Looks like he did them in before whatever finished him off.”
I was going to get sick. I walked faster. There was no way any of this could be true.
No way.
A dream.
A dream.
A dream.
Scary Carrie latched onto my arm and pulled me to a stop.
“You think this is a dream?” she asked. Had I said that aloud? It was obvious she was hoping it was a dream too. Of course she was.
“Wow. This is a dream. It’s your dream.”
Suddenly, it made sense. She was some kind of witch. Just like the Carrie I named her after. I caught a showing of Stephen King’s Carrie on one of my uncle’s movie channels when I was little. The nickname came to me the next day when this girl, whose real name I couldn’t recall, told the teacher that another student and I had pushed her down.
I never touched her.
Witch.
When I told my friends about the movie, I got major points for watching an R-rated flick. Bonus points for the nickname. It did rhyme after all. I left out the part about hiding every crucifix featured in my uncle's strangely religious-infused décor. .
“Excuse me?” Scary Carrie exclaimed, interrupting my walk down memories-that-freaking-suck lane.
“You used some spell or herb or some voodoo crap to pull me into your dream.”
This had to be it. It was just as easy, if not easier, for me to believe in some hocus-pocus crap than believe I blacked out and missed the apocalypse.
“You think when I dream that I fantasize about you? Really? The same boy who spent the first twenty minutes of health class debating with Richard if Die Hard was considered a Christmas movie or not?”
It did take place during Christmas.
She didn’t have to be so damn snarky.
I pushed the air out of my mouth through my teeth. “You can deny it all you want, sweetheart. Hell, maybe that’s part of your thing. Play hard to get and make me chase you. I don’t know. Nor do I care. I just want you to wake up. I’m not really down for being part of your 'make the boy I hate love me' fantasy.”
“Stop. You’re turning me on,” she replied, dryly.
“This isn’t funny,” I exclaimed.
It had stopped being funny the moment it began to feel real—the moment I saw my home looking like a damn set piece from some indie war flick.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
I shrugged dismissively. “You’re not really emotion girl. Hell, this is the first time I’ve seen you with your hood off in years. Maybe this is what amused looks like on the face of the heavily sedated.”
She rolled her eyes. “As much as your wit just keeps me enthralled, I’m going to find out what the hell is going on here.”
Carrie moved past me and headed towards the door. But I no longer wanted to be alone because if this wasn’t a dream I was in trouble. We both were. I didn’t need to see the decomposing body of my principal or his family to understand that.
Somehow the whole world had disappeared.
And we were stuck.
Together.
I reached out and grabbed Scary by the elbow. In the quickest of movements, she pushed me against the locker with a strength I thought impossible for a girl outside of those weird body-building infomercials that came on in the wee hours of the night.
“I don’t like being touched,” Scary growled.
Scary Carrie indeed.
“Not a problem,” I replied, holding my hands up in mock-surrender. I tried to suppress a gulp. I straightened out my jacket and pushed ahead of Scary. I looked back at her mainly to see she wasn’t about to stab me in the back—literally stab me in the back that is—when I caught her quickly pull her hoodie down over her face. I could only see the tip of her nose and mouth.
I pushed open the door with more force than I intended to use. Scary Carrie made a small noise in response. I wondered if it was possible that she could actually be scared of me?
I turned around to tell her sorry. I’m not sure why I felt the need to do so, but I did. Before I could get the words out, I watched as her mouth formed a small “o” shape. Her hand reached up and she pointed forward.
“Who the hell is that?” she whispered.
I whipped around to see a man sitting on a briefcase throwing an apple up in the air and catching it. And he was wearing the biggest smile possible.
Someone was having a good day.
Chapter 3
“Just delightful.”
Someone was having a really good day. And for some reason the sight of Scary Carrie and me seemed to make his day even better. The man was dressed in an impeccable black suit, and I assumed most girls would find him attractive. He looked like he’d stepped off the set of Mad Men, a show my uncle was obsessed with. Not that I ever watched it. The most I knew about the show was that it starred that guy who had hooks for hands on 30 Rock.
I glanced back at Carrie. She didn’t seem too impressed. In fact, she took a step so she was behind me.
“It sure took you two long enough,” the man chirped, still wearing his smile. Everything about him seemed off. Who was he? Why was he wearing a suit? How was not a single strand of his hair out a place? How could he wear a smile amidst the destruction that surrounded us?
“Excuse me?” I mumbled.
The man laughed. “Sorry. This is all probably a bit confusing.” The man stood up and walked over to us, offering me his hand to shake.
I looked back at Carrie who now had her hoodie pushed back further down on her head, just enough so her eyes peeked through. She was staring at the apple. The man noticed as well. He pushed the apple towards us. “Hungry?”
“No. We’re not hungry,” she said lowly.
Of course I was hungry. I’m a teenage boy. But I agreed with Carrie; somehow the whole don’t take candy from strangers seemed to apply now to produce as well.
The man shrugged and stuck the apple inside his coat pocket.
“I guess we should get started then,” he said, breaking a silence that seemed to still everything.
“Started?” I asked.
The man nodded. “I’m sure you have a ton of questions, and there are a lot of rules you must understand.”
“Rules? Rules for what?” I asked.
“Logan, maybe we should go and look around,” Carrie whispered to me. I looked back to see her bouncing up and down, a nervous energy making her whole body come alive.
“I wouldn’t do that. Nope. No
t a good idea. There’s all kinds of trouble around here. Don’t want to see anything happen to two of our stars.”
Did the man ever stop smiling?
I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. It wasn’t used to working this hard.
A trickle of blood began to seep from the man’s nose. For the briefest of moments, I saw the man’s smile begin to falter. He quickly reached up and wiped away the blood, holding tight onto his smile.
“All right QB1, how about you and Ms. Lambert follow me,” the man said, slapping me on the arm as if we were best buds.
“How...how did you know I’m the quarterback?”
“Well, because I know everything about you, Logan. Of course I do. You two are shifters, and I’m your orientation leader. I’ve been studying you for years. We make sure to watch all of our shifters. And when the time comes, we activate them.”
“What the what?” Carrie...er...Ms. Lambert sputtered.
The man sighed. Well, sort of sighed. It was such a fake sounding sigh that I was beginning to think the man didn’t care if we believed anything he said. He seemed to enjoy our confusion. With every question we asked, his smile got brighter.
“Right. You two don’t know anything yet. Shifters are those selected to travel through time. I mean this obviously isn’t your present. Well, it is your present, but not the present you’re used to living in. I mean, you’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”
“Great. Clichés. That’s helpful” Carrie mumbled.
“Time travel? Really? Even I’m not dense enough to fall for that one. Even if that’s possible, you think I’d believe some teenager from Virginia Beach would be selected? Why not choose some Navy Seal or some rocket scientist? I’ve seen enough movies to know those are the time travel go-to guys,” I replied. “I don’t even own a pair of fake-hipster glasses. Glasses are a must for any time traveler,” I joked lamely.
The man let free another laugh and scratched the back of his head. “I know it seems unlikely, Logan, but trust me. You have no idea what you’re capable of, or who you even are. Besides, I didn’t pick you. But you were chosen, and we both must deal with that.”
“Dude. Neither of us believes you,” I snapped, my frustration slipping out. “ So, just tell us what’s really going on! Is this some weird psych experiment? Are we on some hidden camera show? Just tell us, and get it over with.” I was close to losing it.
I just wanted to go back to Hamlet.
The man’s smile finally left his face. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “A TV show? I’m going to need that talk to stop this very moment. Do you understand me? Everyone you two know and love is dead. And if you two don’t start listening to me, we won’t be able to stop it. We chose to bring you to this moment, this time. We need you to understand what is going to happen. In time, you’ll find out why you have been selected. But you are important to the mission. You. And her. And everyone else selected. You cannot be replaced. It can only be those selected. So, its time you stepped up, Logan. Otherwise, this world you love and all the people in it will end.”
“You’re lying,” I growled.
Why didn’t it feel like a lie?
Chapter 4
“End?” The word sat in my throat, melding with me, sinking into me. Somehow the word finally made everything seem real. I didn’t feel scared or empty, or any of those things the poets and writers waxed on and on about in English class; I felt an unsustainable amount of energy hum inside of my body.
I had to do something. My body demanded action. It had been called into a war it didn’t know existed. Without reason or explanation from the creeptastic man in front of me, I believed. My body believed and that was enough for me.
“End,” I growled again.
The man nodded. “This is why it’s so important to listen to me. Everyone you ever loved is dead, but we can stop it from happening.”
Screw that. I’m not sure if something on my face alerted the man to my thoughts, or if his instincts seemed to be as good as mine, but he took a step towards me. “Now remain calm, Logan. Freaking out isn’t going to help any of us.”
I took a step back bumping into Carrie. She grabbed onto my arm to steady me. I looked back at her. Her eyes met mine and I saw my horror matched in hers.
“Run,” she said, looking directly at me.
I didn’t hesitate. I spun around and ran as fast as I could down Kempsville Rd. Or what used to be Kempsville Rd. Every time I felt myself sucked in by the darkness, the ruin of my once life, I pushed myself harder. It was probably the fastest I had ever run. Never in a game had I sought something that meant so much to me.
I had one place I needed to go.
One place that meant more to me than some damn football game, and my body knew it too.
Jenna. God, Jenna.
I tried in vain to ignore how my chest burned and my eyes stung as I ran through her neighborhood. She lived close to the school. Freshman year I started to ride my bike to her house every morning so I could walk with her. I got a lot of hell from my friends for that, but I didn’t care. She was beautiful and kind, and I wanted her.
She made me work for it. She wasn’t going to go out with me just because my uncle was some hotshot lawyer, or because I was a star on the JV football team. She wasn’t impressed with any of that, and it made me like her more. Sure, I loved the attention I got because of who I was, but I wanted to be liked for the parts of me others didn’t think were important.
I wanted to convince myself that I was more than that.
I skidded to a stop in front of what once was Jenna’s house. It looked as if a tornado or hurricane or something had touched down and forever claimed her house. There was no going back from this. This was complete and utter destruction. Door torn off its hinges. Mrs. Maples’ JCPenney designer curtains ripped from their rods. Jenna and I spent three hours at the mall while her mom picked out just the right shade of blue.
That’s what this was—a complete and utter raping of every good memory I had in this place. The best memories I could ever wish to have. These memories had no place in the house I shared with my uncle. They belonged with Jenna and the family I liked to pretend that I belonged to.
Gone was the porch swing where I shared my first kiss with Jenna. I remembered sweating an ungodly amount during those frightful moments when I wondered if she would accept my kiss. The swing now lay broken in the yard. The big bay window I had smashed last summer when I attempted to teach Jenna’s cousin how to throw a baseball.
Destroyed.
I took a deep breath and bounded up the steps. Before I reached the door, my foot fell through a hole in the top step. I lost my balance and fell to my knees. Maybe it was from pure physical exhaustion, or maybe it resulted from a growing sense of loss that I had yet to experience in my seventeen years of life, either way I vomited right there on the steps. I dragged my hand across my mouth and was surprised to feel tears falling down my cheeks.
When did my body give up? Only minutes ago it pushed me with an energy I thought impossible. Now it seemed to accept something my mind couldn’t quite grasp. With a heavy grunt, I pulled myself to my feet and entered the house.
I almost vomited again when the stench filled my nostrils. It smelled like the time I had forgotten about the bottle of milk in the back of the fridge. It had been expired for about two weeks before I discovered it attempting to make some Mac-n-Cheese for dinner. I never thought something could smell so bad.
I was wrong. The putrid smell of rot filled the Maples household. I plugged my nose with my hand and ventured further into the mess. Tables and furniture were overturned. Cockroaches crawled all over Mrs. Maples’ brand new carpet.
Jenna’s mom freaked out when you set a soda down on the coffee table without a coaster. What would she say about this?
She would say nothing. She would say nothing because she was dead. How surreal it was to see a dead body. I had never seen one outside of television or movies. And it was the secon
d dead body I had seen in less than an hour. I didn’t scream or run away. I just stared. I couldn’t stop staring. How was something like this possible? How were her limbs and eyes filled with life one moment and empty the next? Was this the same woman who made sure I had a cake for my birthday, knowing my uncle would forget? Where was her kindness and empathy? It certainly no longer lived in this carcass on the floor, this rotting, decaying waste of skin and bones.
She lay in the center of the floor as if she had dropped dead in the middle of cleaning the living room. Her skin was pulled tight against her face, and her eyes bulged from their sockets. Her arms were covered in pestering, oozed filled sores.
And then there were the maggots.
They twisted and curled along her long limbs, creating a ballet of death and destruction, a mockery of the life this woman once led.
I couldn’t stop staring.
Stop staring.
Stop.
STOP!
I stumbled to Jenna’s room. I knew what I would find. I knew the man in the suit hadn’t lied to me. Maybe he hadn’t been completely forthcoming about who he was or his purpose, but he didn’t lie about the death. Everyone I loved was dead.
Including the girl I loved most in the world.
Jenna lay curled on her bed. Her hands covered her face. When I removed them from her face, I was eternally thankful her eyes were closed. A small, acidic blessing. I could see the same wounds mark her beautiful skin. I carefully sat on the bed next to her. For some reason I didn’t want to disturb her. Like that was possible. I meticulously picked every maggot off of her body. I gently undressed her and got rid of the maggots that hid under her clothes. I couldn’t stand the thought of them having any part of her.
After I found some clean clothes, I dressed her. I just sat there waiting to feel the things I was supposed to feel. But I didn’t feel anything. I reached out my hand to push her hair from her forehead. I felt something give way. When I pulled my hand from her forehead a chunk of hair and skin came off in my hand.
I started to scream.
Because You Exist (Light in the Dark #1) Page 2