Eerie

by C. M McCoy

  “Fix it now!” She stamped her foot.

  “But . . .I’m on the tenth rung of this ladder . . .”

  Like a three-year-old in a tantrum, Mrs. Spitz gnashed her teeth and let out an ear-piercing screech until Hailey climbed down and headed to Reference.

  Fin followed, smirking, his shoulders silently quaking.

  “Sometimes with Mrs. Spitz, you just have to shut up and color,” he said once the librarian was out of earshot.

  “That woman is three kinds of crotchety.”

  “That happens to zombies,” Fin said nonchalantly, and Hailey froze.

  “Is she . . .?” Hailey couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “Yup. Mostly dead most of the time and all the way dead some of the time. She might be late to her funeral, but she’s never late to work.”

  “Bear Towne has a zombie librarian?”

  Fin stepped back, looking sly. “You know how hard it is to find a good librarian these days?” he asked, and Hailey shook her head. “It’s a dying profession,” he told her with a wry smile.

  Hailey threw her arm out and pointed toward the circulation desk.

  “Is she going to eat my brains?”

  He shook his head. “You watch too much TV. You still wanna go into town with me tomorrow?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Alright, we’ll hit whatever stores you need to pick up your . . . necessities. Like a razor.”

  Hailey gasped. He had noticed her tarantula legs!

  “Oops,” he said checking his watch. “Gotta go. It doesn’t look good when the team captain’s late for practice.”

  “You’re the captain of the hockey team?”

  Fink winked at her.

  “Told you I was good.”

  When Hailey got back to her room that night, she found a note on the floor just inside the door. With Fin on her mind, she grabbed it up and tore it open.

  Giselle tsk’ed loudly from behind her magazine.

  The envelope twitched. Then it bulged. And something that resembled a corpse hand emerged.

  Hailey dropped the envelope and by the time it hit the floor, an arm and part of a shoulder were crawling out of the letter too.

  Scared beyond the capacity to scream, Hailey backed away as a decomposing, hair-covered head followed. The corpse said nothing as it pushed in jerky movements with both hands on the floor, wiggling its torso and legs out of the parchment. It yanked its head up and looked Hailey dead in the eyes as it wriggled across the floor.

  “Gi—Gi—Giselle!” She finally breathed, wild-eyed and shaking as a horrible, Holly-looking carcass inched closer, scowling and oozing black juices.

  Hailey backed up against the window.

  “The ghost trap isn’t working!”

  “Not a ghost,” said Giselle uninterested from behind her magazine.

  “Wh—what is it?”

  It slapped another hand on the floor and hauled its limp body forward.

  “Ignore it, Hailey. It’ll go away.”

  But it didn’t go away. It crept closer, and Hailey pressed herself against the glass.

  “I can’t ignore it . . . It looks like my sister!” She pulled her legs up and curled into a ball on the window sill.

  Giselle got up, stepped around the monster, snatched the parchment off the floor, struck a match, lit the paper, and watched with her hand on her hip as the Holly-corpse ignited.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to open a Nasty Gram?” she scolded as Hailey watched the burning Holly-corpse through her fingers.

  The thing spun around, waving its arms wildly, flinging tiny crescents of flame in all directions. One struck the picture hanging above Hailey’s desk.

  “No!” Hailey lunged to save it, but the picture was destroyed.

  “Give it to me,” Giselle demanded snobbishly, holding out her hand as she rolled her eyes.

  “It was the only picture I had of us dancing together,” Hailey said.

  Giselle snatched the half-burned photo.

  “Don’t—” Hailey stood wide-eyed as the picture healed itself in Giselle’s hand, growing back to a whole image right before her very eyes. Giselle handed it back to Hailey and plopped onto her bed.

  Hailey stared at the photo. “What just happened?”

  “Oh, sometimes I can fix things,” Giselle said in a bored voice from behind her magazine.

  Hailey sat on the edge of her bed. “Who sent that thing to me?” she asked, dragging her sleeve under her nose and sniffing loudly.

  “Somebody that hates you, though that doesn’t narrow the pool of student suspects, does it?”

  “Kick me while I’m down, Giselle.”

  “Someone who knows your sister,” she added lazily.

  Hailey turned away, covering her face with her hands and sobbing quietly.

  “What are you doing—stop that.” Giselle threw down her magazine and jumped up.

  “Just give me a second,” Hailey said in a muffled croak between sobs. When a weight pressed the bed next to her, Hailey looked up. There sat Giselle, looking pensive as if she were balancing her tush on a bed of nails.

  With her eyes darting around the room, Giselle sat stiff as a board. She drew a loud breath, stuck her jaw out, raised the shoulder nearest Hailey, and said, “She was really pretty.” Then she stuck her hand out like a robot and mechanically patted Hailey on the back.

  “Giselle, you’re scaring me.”

  Giselle grinned as she stood up, looking wholly proud of herself.

  “Next time you get a Nasty Gram, take it to the Dead Letter Office at I-MET—they can tell you who sent it.” Giselle looked down at her roommate. “I’m sure you’ll get more.”

  “Good evening, Pádraig,” sneered a voice from shadows, as Fin trudged into his room. It’d been an arduous evening on the ice, and Fin was in no mood for Envoy lunacy.

  He flung his door shut and flipped on the lights.

  “What do you want, Cobon?” he asked, sounding drained as he dropped his duffel on the floor.

  “Reciprocation. Is that too much to ask?” Cobon scowled as he emerged from the corner. “Three thousand years I’ve endured this place. I ferried energy for billions of you ungrateful humans—I was a servant before I was imprisoned here—”

  “—try not to spit all over my room when you speak,” Fin interrupted.

  Cobon glared at him.

  “All I ask is for a little obedience.” Cobon leaned menacingly forward, but then he smiled cheerfully, straightened up, and shook his head.

  “Let’s not argue, Pádraig. I only came for a chat, you see, I was in the neighborhood delivering a personal message, when I had an epiphany.” He paused as he surveyed Fin’s room, wiping his finger across a bookshelf then rubbing it with his thumb before he continued.

  “The Envoys don’t belong here, Pádraig, you know that. They—we, I mean—have to go home, and that girl.” He extended a flat hand toward Fin’s door. “She must die.”

  “Why don’t you just find a chump to kill her, then?” Fin said, detached. “You know . . .like you did Holly . . .” He threw his keys on his dresser and grabbed the remote.

  “Didn’t you know?” Cobon answered excitedly. “I already have!” Then he sighed. “Well,” he said flippantly as he made himself comfortable on Fin’s recliner, “in a manner of speaking. My brothers have grown weary of my methods. If I were to take another life before its time, they may very well turn on me. Besides, a wicked human would never make it past Asher, he protects her, you know.”

  Cobon stood and paced thoughtfully around the room.

  “Oh, I tried a few round about ways to kill her already.” He tapped his lip. “She just won’t die.

  “But! If she were to take her own life, then . . .” Cobon held his arms w
ide and shrugged gleefully.

  “Suicide?” Fin scoffed. “Perhaps you haven’t met Hailey.”

  “Oh, but you have, slave.” He lowered his head and pointed at Fin. “You’re my chump.”

  Fin shook his head, one eyebrow raised. “So, what—are you going to kill me, Cobon? Right in front of her? Make her think I’m dead . . .?”

  “Oh, no. No-no-no . . .she’s far too resilient for that, no, this requires something far more . . .destructive.”

  Cobon stood, tenting his fingers together, walking stiffly around the room.

  “To destroy a house, you cannot simply crush it—it is too easily rebuilt. No . . .you must wreck the very foundation on which it stands. She trusts you, Pádraig. She loves you. And you know how to destroy one who loves you . . .”

  “Go to hell, Cobon.”

  “Oh, why so squeamish? You’ll destroy her sooner or later, why not just get it over with?”

  Fin pushed his jaw out. “Listen, Oprah, I have no intention of hurting her. Ever. And this interview is over.”

  “ . . .fuck them and bounce . . . Isn’t that your modus operandi?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “That was last year, Pádraig, have you forgotten?”

  “That had nothing to do with me,” Fin said, his voice rising as he turned away from Cobon.

  “Really? Quite a coincidence, then, didn’t she hang herself in your room?”

  “It wasn’t my room.”

  “Oh right, it was your lab, wasn’t it? That was a nice touch, don’t you think? I remember it well, I was there. Oh, Adalwolf and I go way back. He never could get you to take a life, though, could he? Well, not one that mattered anyway, but he did eventually figure out how to make you kill.”

  Cobon paced the room with his hands folded behind his back, looking thoughtful and hopeful and completely deranged. “And all he had to do was leverage your God-given talent!”

  Cobon leaned toward Fin and raised his hand to the side of his mouth as if he were divulging a great secret. “ . . .and maybe whisper a few words of encouragement into the heads of your concubines,” he hissed.

  Fin squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Adalwolf showed me all of his little tricks and all of his little games he played with you. How many women have you sent to Hell for him? More than a dozen, I think. What’s one more? We could make quite a homicidal team, you and I.”

  “Forget it, Cobon. I’m not your slave.”

  “We never forget,” Cobon whispered through clenched teeth as he lurched forward. “She would let you, you know—she trusts you. You could very easily destroy her—drive her into despair and madness—just as you’ve done it before—drive her to . . .suicide?”

  Fin bowed his head.

  “You say, ‘no,’ but your wickedness says yes,” Cobon continued. “You dream of her. You dream of the things you’d do to her, I’ve seen it.”

  “You little pervert,” Fin said feigning incredulity. “Did you enjoy the show?”

  Cobon grabbed Fin by the neck.

  “You will obey us, Pádraig, whether you wish to or not.”

  “We’ve been here before, Cobon,” Fin grunted, rolling his eyes. “I am not your slave.”

  Cobon’s eyes flashed, and he set Fin back down on the floor.

  “Besides,” Fin coughed, “she’s in love with Asher.”

  Cobon spun around and crushed Fin’s face with powerful back fist.

  Staggering back, Fin held his mouth and nose with both hands as a torrent of blood spilled out.

  “No human could ever love an Envoy.”

  Fin grabbed a towel on his dresser and pressed it against his face.

  “The sooner she rejects him the better. For everyone. He favors her, you know, his love for her grows—he may well make her immortal, and then what?” he asked, throwing both hands up. “We’d all be trapped here . . .she becomes his slave . . .you live an eternity without her . . .without love . . . She was made for you, I’ve seen it—I’ve seen her soul—you two are mates.”

  Fin raised his head slightly.

  “Ahhh,” Cobon cooed. “You know it too—you knew it the first time you saw her, didn’t you? I couldn’t use you for Holly, because you would’ve run straight to Asher, but I’m betting you won’t be telling him about our little chat tonight, will you?” he said, watching the red as it fell from Fin’s towel into little puddles on the floor. “Because if you did, I think he’d protect the girl from you. Maybe he’d put you into permanent storage someplace . . .underground maybe—or perhaps he’d seal you inside a sarcophagus with a heavy stone lid—that would hold you. And you would live your life over and over and over again—an eternity trapped inside a coffin, does that suit you?”

  Fin made a mostly nasal gurgling noise then coughed.

  “Why don’t you sleep on it? I’ll help you, of course. Good night, Pádriag.” With that, Cobon walked toward a dark corner and vanished.

  And Fin sopped up the blood on his floor, using every second of the next twelve hours to decide if he shouldn’t leave Bear Towne University and Hailey Hartley forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Civilization Road

  “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”

  - Albert Einstein

  Fin was a no-show, and Hailey waited a whole fifteen minutes past their rendezvous time before she pounded on his door.

  “Enter,” he called, sounding dispirited, and Hailey poked her head in.

  “You alright?” she asked when she saw him sitting hunched apathetically over his guitar.

  Without looking up, he strummed a familiar tune, singing coldly.

  “His disguise is the black of night, and in your heart, he’s darkness . . .”

  He plucked a single, hard note and with his head still bowed, set his guitar aside.

  “That’s not how it goes,” Hailey said softly, though his voice was beautiful and honest, and she wished he’d sing some more.

  “For me it is.” He showed his face, and Hailey gasped.

  “What happened?” He had two black eyes and a crooked nose.

  “Rough night. I was hoping it would heal a little more before our drive. Maybe by the time we get to town, you won’t be ashamed to be seen with me.”

  Hailey rolled her eyes, smiling earnestly as Fin grabbed his wallet and keys.

  “And here I thought you were standing me up.”

  Fin offered his elbow. “Never, my dear, you’re the only thing in this world that matters to me,” he said under his breath. But Hailey definitely heard it. She froze.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “Are you alright?”

  Fin let out a curt laugh. “Right as rain, dear,” he answered in his best grumpy Pix voice.

  “I think you have a head injury,” she surmised. “Do you want me to drive?” she asked coyly, and Fin’s bruised face fell.

  “Uh—no.” He led her outside to a brand new, bright red, four-door pickup truck with big tires and decals boasting “off-road” and “4-wheel drive.”

  “What happened to your car?” Hailey asked, frowning her disappointment.

  “Convertible-go-fast car in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Sturdy-go-in-snow pickup truck in Alaska.”

  Civilization Road led out of Bear Towne University and away from The Middle of Nowhere like a stem on the four-leaf clover-shaped campus, and even traveling at warp-Fin speeds, it took more than three hours to actually reach civilization.

  “Where should we start?” Fin asked as they came into Anchorage.

  Hailey shushed him so she could concentrate on three small airplanes circling the pattern around an airfield, which she could only see out of Fin’s side window. She leaned into his lap and craned her neck.
>
  He shifted slightly, letting out a low groan.

  “Cool, huh?” He spoke down to her as she stretched across his legs.

  “They’re so tiny. They look like toys, don’t they? Oh, I bet it’s a breathtaking ride!”

  “Alright, sit up,” he said, expelling a lungful of air as he nudged her with his knee. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  As Fin pulled in to a fried chicken joint, Hailey grabbed her stomach, which was trained to growl at any mention of food.

  “ . . .and if you can hear me over that monster in your gut, I’ll take you flying in the school’s Super Cub this winter,” he offered.

  Hailey gave him a blank stare.

  “You can fly?”

  “There’s a lot I can do,” he said in his oh-so-confident way, and Hailey looked away. She could feel her cheeks burning as she all but fell out of the truck.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” he chided.

  “I wasn’t even thinking about sex with you,” she blurted before she could stop herself and in a voice so loud another couple turned to stare.

  Paralyzed by shame, Hailey wrapped her arms around her head.

  Footsteps crunched against the gravel next to her.

  “Yes you were,” said Fin.

  “No, I really—I wasn’t—I never even . . .”

  When she uncovered her head, a few tears of embarrassment sneaked out of her eyes.

  Fin wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. Oh how she missed his hugs!

  Even with a twinge of guilt pricking her heart, she didn’t want him to let go, and she closed her eyes as she breathed in his cologne.

  Then he kissed her on the head with a loud, “mwah!” and the moment was gone.

  “Let’s get some grub,” he laughed, walking with his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in tight. “You’re the biggest spaz . . .” he teased, and Hailey wiped her face.

  “You stink,” she chuckled with a sob. Jeez, not twenty-four hours had passed since her last break down, and there she was crying again. “Someone sent me a Nasty Gram yesterday,” she told him.

  Fin threw his head back and let out a groan. “Cobon.”