“I’m letting him choose,” he said. “Letting you choose, too.”
Another shriek from the hallway.
Nothing there, she thought, nobody who can hurt him. It was a rationalization. Some of the dead kids had fatal seizures; one had hanged herself.
The world blurred.
“Take your seat, Miss Yuan,” Miss Marino said.
Ling wiped her nose. The Drama Queens were sagging, weary and scared. Jaz tugged her hand, silently begging her to sit. Without Xian watching over them, they looked oddly vulnerable.
All the haunts were in Detention with Eddie, Ling thought suddenly. Watching the show. Waiting for death.
“Miss Yuan!”
She shoved her way to the gym floor, sprinting for the Prettygirls. Ignoring a burst of gasps and nervous laughter, she grabbed Marianne’s purse, hauling with all her weight. The strap broke, and Ling went tumbling as she clawed for the zipper.
With a bellow, Marianne tackled her. Ling rolled, holding the purse to her chest, rooting through its contents even as she dodged Marianne’s flailing claws. Lipstick and a wallet dropped out, along with a wrapped tampon and a couple of pens. A cellphone clattered across the floor.
“Give it back!” Marianne yelled.
Eddie screamed again.
There. A silk-wrapped weight, the size of a mooncake. Ling’s fingers closed around it. Planting her foot against Marianne’s belly, she shoved hard. Marianne fell back on her ass; Ling scrambled for the fire exit.
“Miss Yuan!”
She found Eddie on the floor inside Solitary, encircled by haunts, moving in spasms. His eyes were glazed, his mouth foamy. He had his carving blade in his hand and was chopping into the wrist of his plaster cast, shredding its doodles and signatures. He’d almost reached flesh.
Haunts were crowded around him, moaning and crooning, their voices mixing in terrible ways.
“Xian,” Ling said, and the qi-lin turned to face her.
The deer’s frame had filled out. She was full-grown; her hooves and teeth were made of gold. Strong and huge, she was indisputably in charge now. Her teeth glinted and the gold and turquoise in her fur shone.
The qi-lin came to her, bumping Ling’s chest. It was a solid bump, not a mime. Ling gasped. Affection shone in the dark brown eyes. The sparks streaming upward from her hooves were bright multicoloured motes, streamers of fire that chimed like bells and didn’t burn.
“Sweet thing,” Ling crooned, putting both arms around the shaggy neck. Xian smelled of spring air and jasmine. She saw gold-lacquered doorways and crimson palaces, all the places they might explore, together . . .
All she wanted to do was stand here and hold on. But . . .
She forced herself to let go, to kneel beside Eddie and catch his flailing hands, throwing the knife away and dragging him out of Detention. The spooks followed, still whispering, hissing, moaning. The kraken headed up the pack. Marianne’s prince, less handsome now, glared at her balefully.
Eddie screamed and spasmed.
“Back off,” Ling told the spooks. “I don’t get hurt, my friends don’t get hurt. That’s the deal!”
“Ed’s not your friend,” Jake said. He was smaller than before, a bigger-than-average bird perched up on the edge of the cubicle. “You run in different crowds, Ling. Only Eddie’s protector can help him.”
She looked at the stone in her hand—then at Xian, who drummed her hooves on the floor, inviting Ling to dance.
With a sigh, Ling pressed the stone into Eddie’s hand.
Xian collapsed onto her forelegs, as if she’d been shot. She shrank to her former size, her head thrown back as if she was in pain.
Eddie’s spectral puppy grew into a massive hound. Snarling, it snapped at the other ghosts, ears flopping as it drove them back.
Eddie’s good hand lolled, the silk-wrapped stone loose in his palm. Ling closed her fingers around his, holding the stone in his grip. The dog began licking Eddie clean, healing his wounds with its tongue.
Eddie seemed taller now, more handsome. The stitched-up gash on his cheek became a mysterious twisting scar. His eyes opened. The cast fell away like a husk when he climbed to his feet.
The whole school was out in the hall.
People shifted. The outcasts who’d joked their way into the Comedy Club fell in around Eddie. Ling was nudged back, away from the people who mattered. The hound dog stood in front of the Comedians as they gathered. Head held high, it thrust its chest out proudly, lips curling in a doggy smile.
Eddie’s eyes fell on the basketball team.
The kraken moved in front of the ball players, head weaving, teeth bared. Haunts lunged at it, testing its defences.
Andy Holmes grinned. “Payback,” he muttered, and others repeated it, almost chanting. Big Mike Shaughnessy suddenly looked afraid. “Payback, payback, payback.”
“Everyone, go back to rehearsal,” Eddie said, and though he spoke softly, everyone filed back toward the gym.
Eddie caught Ling’s hand before she could retreat. Her pulse raced. Was he going to—
He turned to Jake, holding out the stone. “What do we do with this thing? How do we stop it?”
“The stone wall around the school follows the line of rocks I’d placed to hold down the forest floor,” Jake said. “There is a piece missing.”
Eddie nodded and headed outside, leading them single-file: his spirit dog, Jake, then Ling and Xian.
“We don’t have much time,” Jake said. “The haunts still need a death today. People are confused, but the kraken’s hungry.”
“Split up?” Eddie suggested, and Ling nodded. He walked to the nearest point on the stone wall and began examining it, feeling the stones with his good hand, working with the same intensity he had when he was drawing.
Ling looked at the cartoon portrait Eddie had drawn, her and Xian caught in mid-step, in perfect synch with each other, dancing in an upward stream of sparks.
Heart heavy, she turned to Xian and did a quick mime, playing a detective with an imaginary magnifying glass. “Where’s the gap?” she asked.
The qi-lin raised her chin contemptuously. Queen Victoria.
“What am I going to do? Stay forever? Fail to graduate and hide in the basement, reading scripts?”
Xian drooped into her Sad Face pose.
“If Jake’s right, you can go back to sleep.” Tears were running down her face. “You won’t have to cope with . . . with all this anymore. We’ll both get out.”
Just not together.
Xian didn’t move right away. She stood, blinking her golden eyelashes, watchful and assessing. Finally she paced to the corner of the school grounds, out by the tennis courts where Eddie was nearly kicked to death.
Following, Ling looked over the wall. “I don’t see . . .”
Xian pawed at the ground.
“Here?” Bending, she scraped at the dirt at the base of the wall, finding a thin slot where the stone should be. Digging with a finger, she exposed a mooncake-sized gap. A sour smell belched out of the exposed opening, a mix of whiskey breath, tobacco smoke and old fish.
“It’s here,” she shouted. Then she slumped down against the wall, pulling a sleepy face. Xian lay beside her, close as she could get without actually touching. Nose to nose, they stared into each others’ eyes.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Raven lit on the wall above them.
“This is it,” Eddie said. He bent to the hole, tracing its outline with his finger once before sliding the mooncake stone into place.
A feathery shiver ran through the ground. The whiskey and fish scent thinned and the air freshened. There was a jolt, so loud Ling thought the stone wall itself had cracked.
“What’s that?” Eddie asked nervously.
“Napjerk.” With that, Raven began to sing. His voice wasn’t sweet, but he beat his wings in a thrumming rhythm, low and regular. It was a soft croon, a soothing song, a lullaby in a language Ling didn’t know.
Spirits
drifted out through the school wall, heading across the lawn. They swirled and twisted and lost their shapes, drawn through the mooncake stone and down: Marianne’s prince, the nine-tailed fox, the gargoyle, the leprechaun, the minotaur, the spider, the yeti, and—bringing up the rear, long tail lashing—the kraken.
Xian got to her feet, turning as if to run. She gave Ling one last glance, one last head-bob.
“Thank you,” Ling whispered, still crying as the qi-lin drooped and dispersed, followed by Eddie’s red-eared, white-bodied hound. When the dog was gone, Jake flapped down and pecked at the stone, wedging it in more firmly.
A long buzz—the noon bell-blatted out from the school building.
“You don’t vanish too?” Eddie’s voice was strained.
“Me? Was I even ever here?” Jake said, “Well, kids, don’t blame me if this doesn’t make your lives better. People your age, locked up all day with each other.”
“We’ll survive,” Eddie said.
“Crazy fucking idea . . .” Raven shook out his wings. With a bow in Ling’s direction, he flew straight up. She had a brief glimpse of green-filtered light and a very tall tree. Then she was just staring at the sky.
She scanned the schoolyard, which was filling with students and nothing else—no spooks, no spectral qi-lins. She closed one eye, then the other. Finally she opened them—both wide—and looked at Eddie.
“So,” he said. “That Friday when you came up and kissed me.”
Her cheeks warmed. “I was trying to help. I thought if you could see . . .”
“I’d hook up with a protector?” He stepped closer. “Join your club, maybe?”
She felt herself smile. “We are always short of boys.”
“I can’t act,” he said.
“Neither can Jaz,” she said.
He ran the back of his hand over her tear-smeared cheek. “What if I kissed you back?”
She put her hands on his shoulders, like before, and leaned. His mouth was ready this time, not just a surprised ‘O’. His lips tasted of tart apples, and he didn’t push her away this time, didn’t stammer “Don’t,” and then flee.
“It’ll fade,” she said. “The seeing was only ever borrowed.”
“I’m not sure I’d know the difference now.” He looked around. “Place looks normal.”
She closed and opened her left eye. “There’s always something.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just want to kiss me?”
“Maybe. We’d have to try it some more. To be sure.”
“Let’s do that,” he said, but before he could kiss her again they saw Miss Marino patrolling the school grounds, clacking around on her high heels with no cobwebs to slow her down.
“Step into my office and we’ll talk about it.” Tucking her hand into his with a smile, Ling led Eddie around to the side door of the school, heading for the privacy of the Props room.
TROUBLES
Sherry Peters
“Big day for you, Melanie, so it is,” Dr. Taylor said, walking into my hospital room.
It was about time. I’d been waiting more than an hour. “You’re late.”
“Yes, well, there have been some troubles,” Dr. Taylor said.
“Troubles?” That could be anything from mundane pickets to the more likely riots, though riots were rare in west Belfast in September. “Who is it? Protestants or Catholics?”
“Protestants, here in the neighbourhood.” He handed me my meds and watched me swallow them before sitting next to me on the edge of my bed.
How many burnt out cars had my parents had to pass on their way here? “Are my parents all right?”
“They’re fine; they’re here and they’re excited to bring you home.”
I was more than ready to get out of here. The acute care unit of Belfast Mater Infirmorum was only three kilometres from my home, but I could have been on the other side of the world, I’d been that isolated. No one had come to visit me except my parents, not even Dawn. I couldn’t blame her. She’d witnessed one of my freak-outs at school, yelling at the voices and everything. She hadn’t acted weirded-out by me but . . . maybe she just hadn’t wanted to upset me more. As long as she didn’t hate me, I’d be all right.
I stifled a yawn as I dutifully accepted several bottles of tablets and Dr. Taylor’s instructions on my new daily routine of self-medication. I smiled and nodded enthusiastically, promising to not go off my meds.
I had no intention of keeping my promise. I would’ve been happy to stay on the pills if they worked, but they didn’t. Nothing worked. Not the different types of medications, nor the increasingly higher dosages, or the extreme measures of electroconvulsive therapy they’d attempted out of desperation. The voices had become louder, clearer, after that. They became real, no longer in my head. They were outside the hospital; in the streets, humming, singing, issuing orders I couldn’t quite understand.
They were real. They were, I was certain. But they weren’t human.
I was tired of the doctors using me as a guinea pig. I didn’t belong in the psych ward. Well maybe, probably, I did, but I wasn’t dangerous and I felt perfectly fine, except for the voices.
I couldn’t blame my parents for sending me here. They’d talked about it for ages, well after my teachers told them I responded to questions no one had asked. My parents were convinced I needed help after an unfortunate outburst during my GCSE exams, when I was sure everyone was talking, and I yelled at my classmates—Dawn in particular—to quiet down.
My parents only wanted the best for me, but I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
I didn’t know better then. Since being here, I’d learned what to say and do, to keep from raising suspicions. I would be fine, as long as I didn’t respond to the voices. They usually talked to each other, not me, anyway.
Once Dr. Taylor finished his instructions, I gathered my things and he walked me to Admitting where my parents waited. I waved good-bye to my fellow patients who were mostly gathered in the common room watching Hollyoaks on the telly. Everyone on my ward was either chronically depressed, bi-polar, or an emerging schizophrenic like me. All our conditions were easily managed with medication. Except for mine. But I wasn’t going to tell anyone they’d failed to cure me.
It made me think schizophrenia wasn’t a fitting diagnosis.
True, the voices were many, in my head and all around me, but I didn’t see who was talking and they weren’t talking directly to me. Of course, if that wasn’t what was wrong with me, I didn’t think I wanted to know what was.
“Melanie, Love,” Mum said, hugging me. “You look exhausted. Are you still not sleeping?” She looked at Dr. Taylor, ready to send me back to the ward.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Excited about coming home, that’s all.” And anxious about seeing Dawn.
“Melanie has made some very good progress, Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay,” Dr. Taylor said. “She has her instructions and her routine. Keep an eye on her, but as long as she’s taking her medication regularly, she will be fine. Give her a bit of time to adjust back to home life. Melanie, take it easy for a few days. Enjoy being home with your family. All being well, I will see you in a few months for a check-up.”
“Thank you, Dr. Taylor,” I said. I smiled and extended my hand to shake his. I was getting good at pretending to be normal.
I lay in bed, curled up under my blankets thinking about the crowds we’d seen gathering at the corner of Tennent and Crumlin Road on our way home from the Mater. Some were wee ones as young as five, getting ready to riot. Flash-riot by text. That was usually how people heard about them these days. Our car had barely driven through the converging mob when police lines formed behind us. The Good Friday Agreement had been seven years ago; that was supposed to mean the worst of the violence was over. I was only a kid then, but even I could tell not much had really changed. Political tension was as high as ever, and riots were all too common.
Shouting started up outside my window, making me jump. By the sound, a crowd m
ust have filled up the street like a big block party. Their words, though, were anything but party-like. They were bleak, full of hate and reminders of wrongs done. The people sounded like the hard men of the paramilitaries, except their voices weren’t quite normal. They were singing or whispering at the same time they were shouting. These were not the paramilitary leaders; these were the voices, and they were the loudest I’d heard them on any night other than July 11: bonfire night, the night we celebrated King Billy and the Glorious Revolution, the night before Protestant Northern Ireland marched to celebrate British rule.
I got out of bed. I’d looked out into the streets many times before, believing I could see who was talking. I’d been unsuccessful then, so I didn’t know what made me think I would be successful now. Maybe it was because there were so many of them, they were so loud, so clear. They had to be real. Maybe that was it. I needed them to be real so I could justify leaving the hospital and telling everyone that I was fine now.
I pulled back my curtains.
There were men out there! Real men! Were they the voices?
I blinked a few times. Why was this time different?
I thought back to one of my last electroconvulsive therapy treatments. It had felt like something in my brain had clicked together, like puzzle pieces had been rubbing against each other before snapping into place. Dr. Taylor had said that was the relief I was supposed to have from my illness. That had been the moment the voices left my head completely and were more real than ever. I’d looked once or twice out my hospital-room window, but I’d only ever seen the brick wall of the neighbouring building.
I wasn’t at the Mater now. I was at home, and I could clearly see there were men out there, though they were blurry, only half-solid. Around a dozen of these men hovered outside the bedroom windows of the brick semi-detached two-up-two-down houses on my street.
Hovered.
They had wings.
Big black wings made of some kind of webbing that shimmered in the light of the streetlamps. They looked like giant, man-sized, black butterflies.
That couldn’t be.
I stepped back from my window and rubbed my eyes. Had I imagined the wings?
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