The Deception Dance

by Rita Stradling

  The Deception Dance

  Rita Stradling

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Rita Stradling.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For subsidiary rights please contact the author.

  ritastradling@yahoo.com

  Cover Model Photographer: Anastasia Osipova photographer

  http://nastiaosipovastock.deviantart.com/

  Edited by Nai’a Newlight (through Chapter 13)

  Print ISBN 978-0-9887289-3-6

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition December 2012

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following brand names and products mentioned in this work of fiction: Sheraton, Antica Pesa, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Vespa, Lincoln Town Car, Jet Ski and Ferrari.

  For my sisters.

  Prologue

  Nearly Ten Years Ago

  Thick gray fog drapes the graveyard. Crosses, stones and statues poke out of the mist, like the jumbled teeth of a witch’s smile. I stick my head through the gate until the cold bars touch my cheeks; this gate is the only thing that separates Linnie and me from the field of gravestones, and the chain that locks it dangles loose enough to squeeze through.

  “This place is always so creepy,” Linnie says, clutching a black metal bar so tightly that her knuckles turn white.

  I don’t agree. The morning fog makes the graveyard beautiful, soft and sad as a voice humming a lullaby, but I don’t tell her what I think. She’d call me a weirdo.

  “I hate it here. Let’s go to the playground, Raven. Dad said we should go to the playground. I’m going back.” Linnie says, her teeth clacking together like a wooden marionette’s mouth as she speaks. She doesn’t walk away, though; she stays, grasping the bars and watching me.

  I wipe my hair off from where the dew has made it stick to my cheeks and tuck it behind each of my ears before shaking my head. As I slip through the gate’s opening my sweater and tights protect me from the familiar kiss of the cold metal.

  When I glance back at Linnie, she shuffles her feet and makes a huffing sound. I think about telling her to stay behind, but I know if she runs home, she’ll tell on me, as always. So I wait, watching her pretend to consider not following, although I know she will.

  “You know,” she says, while sucking in to squeeze through the gate, “the only reason all those birds follow Andrew around is that he feeds them. People can’t actually talk to birds. Andrew is a liar...”

  “Andrew doesn’t lie,” I say, shaking my head.

  She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a baby, Raven. Everyone lies. Besides, Dad said we shouldn’t hang out with him anymore. He says we should find normal friends, which probably means not homeless friends.”

  I shrug so she'll think I don't care what dad thinks, grab Linnie's hand and drag her down the road. Stone beds stretch out in rows on both sides of us; flowerpots sit at their feet and gravestones sprout from their pillows.

  “That’s where ghosts sleep,” Linnie whispers, in the same hushed voice she uses when she tells me ghost stories at night.

  I giggle, and then ask, “Really? Where do they go to the bathroom? In the flowerpots?”

  Linnie scrunches up her mouth, trying not to giggle, but fails, and her habitually ever-present smile makes its first appearance since we entered the graveyard.

  We skip, arms swinging between us, until I halt to point to what I've been looking for, black birds rustling their wings. “There!” I let go of her hand. “Ready, set, go!”

  We race down the line of graves to the big stone houses at the back of the graveyard. I win; I always win. Linnie crumples against the wall of a stone building; I barely need to catch my breath.

  Andrew’s here, throwing seeds to his birds.

  His hair, face and clothes are so dirty, he looks as if he’d rolled in mud, but it hasn't rained. I can barely read the words printed on his oversized shirt. I read it four days ago, "Saint Augustine's Youth Group." He told me he'd never even been part of a youth group. I doubt he has any other clothes, since he doesn't have a house, or parents. Then, I notice the biggest change in his appearance: his blackened sleeve, which shows little red burns, eating up his shoulder.

  Linnie jumps toward him, covers her mouth and shrieks, “Andrew! Your arm!”

  Not turning around, he shrugs and grumbles, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I tiptoe forward, hoping to look at his arms, but stop when he spins around. He smiles at me, and then holds out his plastic bag of seeds.

  I pause before scooping a handful and throwing them to the ravens.

  Linnie steps up beside us. “You should go to a doctor; I'm serious. You could die… or something.”

  Andrew glares at Linnie, looking as if he might say something but then turns away. He repeats, “I don’t want to talk about it,” tossing another handful of seeds to the birds.

  A crowd of Andrew’s ravens swarms around, pecking the ground and one another.

  His green eyes, the only dirt-free part of his face, brighten as he turns to me. “I've been waiting for hours; I didn't think you were going to come."

  I grab some more seeds and shrug.

  "I'm glad you're here," Andrew says.

  "What are we going to do?" Linnie is the one who asked the question but Andrew's attention is still on me when he says, "Do you want to break into the mausoleums?”

  “Okay,” I say, grinning back, and then I wrinkle up my nose. “Um, what’s a mausoleum?”

  He nods at the row of stone buildings behind us.

  Linnie shakes her head, bouncing from foot to foot. “No, Raven. We're going to get in trouble.”

  Andrew shrugs. “You don’t have to come with us.” He turns his bag inside out, spilling the remainder of his seeds on the grass, grabs my hand, and leads me to the buildings.

  When I peer back, I see that Linnie is following; at first she stops every few steps, but when we leave her behind, she runs to keep up.

  We check the thick metal doors that block up the buildings, they're all locked. We're about to give up, when I notice one stone building, the biggest one, hidden way in the back of the graveyard. We run down the walkway, leading to the furthest most hidden section of the graveyard.

  We reach it, and the big metal door is locked.

  “This is stupid!” Linnie kicks a pebble and sends it skittering down the stone steps of the mausoleum.

  I straighten up. “You know what we should do instead? We should peek into Mrs. Trandle’s windows.”

  "No," Linnie says, desperately, "Not Mrs. Trandle! She's totally and completely insane. Sally Hamel said she escaped from an insane asylum and she eats...”

  “Hey, you!” someone yells.

  We all turn around on the steps of the stone building. Not seeing anyone, I peek around the wall. The sun has lifted the fog, making the trees that line the back of the graveyard visible; they sway in the breeze. A tall man, wearing a browned and torn tuxedo, stands under the outstretched branches of a big green willow.

  “You! I know who you are!” he shouts.

  Andrew shoves me down the steps. “Run!”

  As I recover my balance, I look back to the man; he is charging straight for us. My fingers wrap around Linnie’s wrist, my shoes smack the pavement and we sprint down the road.

  In seconds, Andrew catches up and passes us. I look for an escape, but barbed wire shoots out from the t
op of the metal-linked fence on my right. On the left, the man blocks any escape, as he sprints across the field of graves.

  The back gate, giant and black, comes into sight, as we near the end of the fence.

  Linnie stumbles.

  I pull her forward.

  “This way!” Andrew calls, gesturing a few paces ahead, down a row of graves.

  Linnie veers toward Andrew, but she’s not fast enough and she blocks my way. I push her forward, but as I do, hands grab my shoulders and yank me back.

  Something sharp stings my neck; a hand wraps around my chin and I can't look to see. I think it’s a knife.

  “Don’t move,” the man says, his breath wet and hot on my cheek and reeking so it stings my nose. A few heavy exhalations in my ear, then he whispers, “What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? Don’t talk, girl. Don’t even breathe.”

  Linnie keeps running; her brown hair streams behind her as she leaves out of the back gate.

  Andrew doesn't leave me; he stops and spins around. His shoulders lift and fall with each heavy breath. He tilts his head down and mats of dirty hair fall over his face, leaving only one visible eye to glare out. “Let her go,” he says in a low voice.

  The man’s fingers pinch my chin, as he pulls my head up and my body against his quaking stomach. His hand lets go of me to point into Andrew’s hair-covered face. The man’s sleeve slides down, showing a squiggly knot of black lines on his wrist. He screams, “Give it back. The deal is off, or I’ll . . . or I’ll kill this kid!”

  A black bird glides down from the sky, settling into the grass between us and Andrew. It stops, rustles its wings, lifts up its head and fixes me with its gaze. And for a moment, there is no graveyard, no stinging smell of sweat and sour breath, no Andrew, no wind, no warming day, just me and the black eyes of the raven, fixed on each other.

  Then, as if from nowhere, or maybe everywhere, hundreds of ravens soar down, showering like giant inky raindrops. Their flapping wings make a hush, hush, hush sound, and claws scrape, scrape, scrape the gravestones and pavement as they land. They perch on every stone and litter the road, all their beady eyes fixed on me.

  “Stop!” the man screams.

  It doesn’t stop. The downpour of wings turns into a black tornado, with us at the center.

  The wind is too much; the beady stares are too much. I hear Andrew’s voice, as if from nowhere. “Raven, close your eyes.” I squeeze my eyelids shut.

  Andrew’s voice screams out a word I’ve never heard before: “Ratsakh!”

  Wind sweeps round me, as a hundred caws screech out.

  I don’t open my eyes.

  “No, wait!” the man screams. His fingers clench my shoulder and then release it. The sharp object at my neck jerks back, and his chest drops away from my back.

  I stumble forward and start to fall, but thin arms catch and wrap around me.

  The man screams again. I hear his cries, screams, gurgles, and then, silence.

  “Don’t look,” Andrew whispers as his fingers comb through my hair.

  For some reason I can’t breathe in enough air. I gasp and gasp and gasp. When I finally catch my breath, I’m exhausted and my eyelids slide shut. My head rests on Andrew's earthy, sweaty, body-odor-smelling shoulder.

  Minutes pass; I don’t break away. Andrew holds me up and I keep my eyelids squeezed closed.

  I hear someone running toward us; I don't move.

  “Raven,” my dad whispers hoarsely from somewhere beside us. I don't move.

  Andrew’s head jerks away from mine; he still holds me tight. I don’t look up, and I don’t let go of Andrew.

  Dad gasps, “Oh, my God!” Then he makes a hacking and violent retching sound.

  Birds caw, shriek and rustle.

  I hear my Dad clear his throat. “Are you Andrew? Wh -- what happened?”

  I don’t say anything and Andrew doesn’t respond either.

  “Andrew, let go of Raven, and one of you, please, tell me what happened to that that...” he makes the retching sound again.

  Andrew squeezes me tighter. He makes a strange sound that is almost a growl.

  “Get your hands off her!" Dad yells, as I hear him move toward us.

  Sirens blare over the chorus of bird screeches.

  Andrew’s arms yank away.

  I fall forward and scrape my palms, catching myself from slamming into the pavement.

  Dad scoops me off the road; he smells like sawdust and paint.

  I whisper, "It wasn't Andrew, daddy. It was the birds, the birds did it."

  “From now on, you leave my girls alone, Andrew!” Dad yells. “You hear me? Leave Raven alone!”

  The bird's caws and screeches cease for a moment and the graveyard stands silent.

  I open my eyes.

  Andrew has stopped a few paces away, where he glares at my dad. “You can't keep me from her.” His voice changes, goes deeper, louder. “Nothing will keep me from Raven. Nothing.”

  Like a giant, awakened from sleep, the ground groans and shudders.

  My dad’s arms tighten around me and I feel him backing away.

  Then, suddenly, the ground starts bouncing beneath us. As if floating on the sea, the graves separate, then buckle closer together. As fast as they began to move, the graves and ground fall still.

  Andrew watches us for one more instant, then turns and sprints for the tree line.

  Dad swallows, then he shouts in a high-pitched voice, “You wanna bet, you creepy kid? You leave my daughter alone. You hear me? Don’t you ever try to see her again!”

  I doubt Andrew hears him, because he is already gone.

  Chapter One

  Day One

  I jolt upright, pulling my seat belt taut and then slink back down. I press my fingers into my eyelids and yawn. As I pull my hands away, my surroundings emerge in a blurry, pixilated mess: an airplane cabin, a flight attendant in blue and white moving up the aisle, a girl sleeping beside me.

  Jeez… I haven’t dreamt about that day in the graveyard in years. I yawn, shake the sleep from my head, and rub a cramp in my neck.

  I usually love flying, ‘usually’ being the operative word. And, thanks to the ticket upgrades I got for a high school graduation present from my uncle, the plush seats, dim cabin, even the airplane food (lobster bisque and garlic bread), have made for the most lavish plane ride of my life. Also, the little eye pillows fill the cabin with the scent of lavender: a lot better than the coach aroma of recycled air, bad breath and body odor.

  The entire reason this plane ride sucks, snores in the seat beside me: Chauncey.

  Chauncey looks as if she could be the model in an ad for airplane seats, if such a thing existed; she’s posed with perfect golden ringlets framing her sun-kissed face and cascading down a lacy shirt she probably handpicked straight off the runway. That isn’t even her seat. If I nudged her in just the right way, she’d topple right into the aisle; I doubt she’d even wake up. She is sleeping off the two pills and three glasses of champagne she gulped down this morning.

  The seat Chauncey lounges across belonged to my sister, Linnie. When we boarded in business class this morning, Chauncey glanced at the forty-something year-old businesswoman, who sat in the seat next to hers, and she slipped into Linnie’s seat, a couple rows back.

  I gave Linnie a desperate look that Chauncey might have caught, because she showed me her teeth in what could be considered a smile, maybe, and whispered, “I don’t like sitting next to strangers."

  I thought about telling her I didn’t care, telling her I had been looking forward to sitting next to my sister on this plane ride since we made the reservation a year ago. But Linnie said, “No problem, I like talking to people I don’t know,” and took Chauncey’s seat.

  Before the plane left the ground, Chauncey took her pills, drank her champagne and had been snoring ever since.

  With a sigh, I stuff my fingers under my thighs. I promised myself I would make an effort to like my sister’s coll
ege roommate, Chauncey; even if she did just, spur-of-the-moment, buy a ticket and intrude on the trip that Linnie and I have been planning for a year.

  Linnie’s laugh rings out from where she sits, a few rows up. I bet she’s telling that random businesswoman all about her first year of college, all the stories I want to hear about. Deciding to ignore the excited tones of Linnie’s muffled voice, I dig into my carry-on and pull out three books: a horror novel, another horror novel and (drum-roll please) . . . another horror novel. Three guesses on what kind of books I like!

  Staring down at the book covers, I see the images of my dream resurface: the birds dropping as if they were giant inky raindrops, the screamed word that made them attack the man who threatened to kill me, the mangled corpse I never looked at, but imagined many times, and the boy, Andrew; I never saw him again. I look back at my books; my school counselor would have made a connection, here.

  I open one of the novels, but read only a few pages before slipping a bookmark into the book and stuffing it back into my bag.

  As I shove the other books back, the corner of something jabs into my finger and, with a muttered "ouch," I pull out the culprit: a letter found on my nightstand. To save my dad from embarrassment, I forced myself to pack, rather than read the letter while I was still with him. Now is a perfect time.

  I turn the envelope over. My name, written across the front, is shaky, the handwriting odd. My dad must have been really emotional, writing it.

  I carefully open the envelope, unfold the letter and stare; it’s not from my dad. Several handwritten sentences scrawl across the page in cursive:

  “Dear Raven Smith,

  I apologize in advance for the way I will deliver this letter. My intention is to enter your home and leave this note in your room. I know this is an invasion of your and your family's privacy, but it is necessary that no one (but you) knows of the letter's existence for two reasons: first, my lord ordered me not to give you this warning, and second, if his enemies learn that I warned you, I will be killed. But, I cannot let you, who are innocent and virginal, go unwarned into the arms of those who would drag you into Hell.