by Gina Ranalli
She thought back to the conversation with her mother and her annoyance with having to have Emily right now increased. The timing couldn't have been worse. She needed to think, dammit. This was not something she could do with this kid running around underfoot in addition to Josh's illness.
Emily screamed, startling Gillian so much that she almost drove off the road. "What?"
The girl pointed at a fly on the dashboard.
Cursing under her breath, Gillian waved it away. "Emily, please try to control yourself. Do you want us to crash?"
"No, but..." Emily trailed off, hugging her stuffed bunny tighter to her chest.
"Just relax. The fly is more afraid of you than you are of it." Even to Gillian, the statement sounded absurd, so when she glanced at Emily and saw a look of disbelief, she couldn't really blame her. Not after everything the kid had already been through.
"Tell you what," Gillian told her. "I have to stop off at the drugstore before we go home. I'll let you pick out a new toy, okay?"
"Okay." Emily stared straight ahead and didn't smile. "But they don't have very good toys at the drugstore. Mommy usually will let me have gum instead, but only the sugar-free kind."
"Fine. If you'd rather have gum, you can."
"Maybe they'll have Matchbox cars." The child brightened at the thought. "Daddy lets me play with his sometimes. He's had them since he was a little boy and keeps them in a shoebox in the closet."
Gillian nodded, keeping her eyes on the road, only half listening.
"Most of them are all scratched up and stuff," Emily continued. "Some of them, the wheels don't even turn. Daddy says it's 'cause he abused them, but he wished he didn't now. He told me they would have been worth a lot of money if he had kept them nice. Maybe he'd like a new one, too, right, Gillian?"
"I bet he would," she agreed, her mind wandering back to what her mother had told her when she'd picked up her cell phone up from the floor, cracked but still working. It was crazy, when she really thought about it. She couldn't believe she was going to go ahead and listen to such nonsense. But, then again, nothing much made sense anymore, did it? Her life had taken a sudden, bizarre turn she could never have imagined only a few days before. But now, here she was, driving with her boyfriend's daughter through a sunny, perfectly normal-seeming day. The world around them moved by impassively, oblivious to anything out of the ordinary. She couldn't help but marvel at the wonder of it all. The way a life-no, lives-could turn on a dime and be barely recognizable to the same people who had considered themselves perfectly average not so long ago.
Emily continued to chatter until Gillian pulled the car into a parking space near the entrance of her regular Bartell's Drug Store. Gillian took the girl's hand and together they went inside and browsed the aisles, each looking for very different things.
Once Emily had chosen a toy car from the small selection of them, they toured the rest of the store, and when Gillian came upon the item she needed and plucked it off the shelf, the girl looked up at her curiously.
"What's that?"
Gillian was hoping Emily would be too distracted by the car she was holding to notice or care whatever else they had come here for, but no such luck. The child was too inquisitive for her own good.
"Medicine," Gillian told her curtly. "Can you think of anything else you want? How about some apple juice?"
As Gillian had hoped it would, the diversion worked enough to get Emily's mind off what Gillian held. She tapped a small finger against her chin thoughtfully. "Can I get cranberry juice instead? Mom says it's good for my urinary trap."
For the first time all day, Gillian laughed. It felt good and she ruffled Emily's hair, grateful for the momentary amusement. "Yeah, you can have cranberry. Come on."
They travelled to the back of the store to get the juice, Emily's mood vastly improved from earlier when she'd first gotten in Gillian's car. The girl hummed happily, examining things as they went, but knowing not to touch anything unless she got the okay to do so.
When they reached the refrigerators, however, a fat black fly zipped back and forth and the girl instantly froze in her tracks, a small squeak of fear escaping her throat.
Irritated that the insect would ruin the one fine moment she'd had all day, Gillian pressed her lips together in a hard line, her green eyes tracking the fly as it zeroed in on her, approaching at an impossible speed.
An odd instinct came over her then, coupling with the anger and she softly hissed a single word: "No."
Abruptly, the fly reversed direction, quickly disappearing from sight.
Amazed, Gillian's face relaxed once more and Emily looked up at her with wide, wondering eyes. Gillian gave her a reassuring smile. "Let's get the juice and get home to Daddy, okay?"
Emily returned the smile, looking so much like Tess that it almost spoiled Gillian's mood.
"Okay. And then Daddy can see my car and you can take your medicine."
Gillian only missed a single beat before responding. "Yep. And I can take my medicine."
CHAPTER 25
The downtown doughnut shop thrummed with life. At least a dozen customers sat within, both at the counter and in small booths towards the back of the place, near the restrooms.
Tess saw the teenagers in one of the booths, laughing and horsing around, Dobie, the bald boy holding Mick, the bald girl, in a headlock and giving her a fierce noogie while the second girl, her back to Tess, egged him on.
It was the boy who saw Tess's approach. He immediately released his girlfriend and said, "We got company, guys."
The bald girl immediately stopped laughing and eyed Tess with interest while Speck turned in her seat, her eyes bright, even as her cheeks blushed dark pink.
"Hi," Tess said. She stopped next to the booth and fought the urge to wave the cloud of cigarette smoke out of her face. All three of them held burning butts-something Tess despised. "I made it over as fast as I could. I hope you haven't been waiting long."
Speck, blushing furiously, slid over and gestured for Tess to sit beside her.
"Can I get any of you anything first?" Tess asked, noticing that none of them had beverages. "Coffee or a doughnut, maybe?"
"Do we look like bums?" Dobie asked.
Tess blanched until Mick swatted his arm and he burst out laughing again. He pointed at her, the black polish on his fingernail chipped and dull. "You should have seen your face."
"Leave her alone," Mick scolded. To Tess she said, "I wouldn't mind a coffee."
Nodding, Tess looked at the other two. "Coffees all around?"
"Sure, if you're buying," Dobie shrugged. "What the hell."
Speck seemed unable to meet her gaze, focusing instead on a paper napkin she continually folded and unfolded. "Yeah, I'll take one, I guess," she said politely.
"Want to come to the counter with me?" Tess asked her. "I doubt I'll be able to carry four coffees by myself."
There was a moment when Tess thought the girl was going to refuse. Her cheeks blazed an even deeper shade of crimson and her eyes widened ever so slightly. Then she said, "Okay," and slid out of the booth, accompanying Tess back to the front to order the drinks.
"Black for me," Dobie called after them.
Neither of them turned around and once they were out of earshot, Tess said, "Your friend is quite a character."
"Dobie? Yeah, I guess he can be."
"He seems pretty tough."
Leaning with her elbows against the counter, Speck still refused to look Tess in the face. "It's kind of an act, I think."
"Ah. For his girlfriend?"
"For the world."
Without knowing how to respond to that, Tess waved over the woman behind the counter and ordered the coffees. While they waited for the drinks, she drummed her fingers on the glass counter top, wondering just what she should say to this kid. How does one talk to street kids? Nothing she could think of seemed like a safe subject. Obviously she couldn't ask about school-these kids didn't go to school. Families? They h
ad probably either run away or been kicked out of their homes and it didn't really matter which one was true. Both meant unhappy home lives. Should she talk about the weather? That seemed so trite, under the circumstances.
Much to Tess's relief, it was Speck who broke the awkward silence.
"How's that fly situation?"
Tess paid for the coffees before answering. "Getting worse."
They waited for the drinks and once they were handed over, they each grabbed two and made their way back to the booth, Tess taking her place beside Speck.
To Mick, Speck said, "She's says it's getting worse."
Nodding, Mick sipped her coffee before posing what, to Tess, was a very odd question indeed. "Who are your enemies?"
Tess blinked, taken aback. "I...I don't have any enemies."
"Everyone has enemies," Mick replied. "Even if they don't know it."
"Well..." Tess thought about it, then chuckled nervously. "I'm pretty sure that's not true."
The three teens stared at her. The girls wore sympathetic expressions while Dobie looked as though he were studying a particularly stupid child.
"Really," Tess insisted. "I get along with pretty much everyone."
"You're a teacher, right?" Mick asked. "Maybe one of your students?"
Dobie laughed. "Everyone hates teachers."
The more she was around him, the less Tess liked Dobie. "That is absolutely not true," she told him, her brow furrowing. "I tend to get along well with most of my students."
"Just most of them?" Mick asked. "All it would take is one."
Tess thought about it. Of course, she'd occasionally had to fail students and sometimes the students disagreed with her and became angry, but for the most part, she couldn't recall anyone being exceptionally pissed off. Certainly not enough to try and exact some sort of revenge on her. If anything, she fought with other members of the faculty more than the students and she told Mick as much.
"Are any of them into the occult?" Mick asked.
Biting back a chuckle, Tess replied, "Not to my knowledge."
Mick drank some of her coffee and turned her gaze towards the plate-glass window that looked out on a small parking lot and the busy street beyond. Her free hand ran over the short, dark stubble of hair on her head and Tess idly wondered how often the girl shaved it.
"I think I want to check it out," Mick said, her eyes still focused on the outside world.
"I beg your pardon?" Tess asked.
Finally, Mick looked back at her. "If you really want my help, then I think I have to see your house."
"Why?"
"It might give me a better idea of what you're dealing with. See if I spot anything someone may have planted there."
"Planted there?" Tess sat back. "I told you, we looked all over for the source and were unable to find anything. Even the exterminator-"
"I doubt you would notice the object. It could be something that appears perfectly ordinary."
Tess was beginning to suspect meeting these kids had been a ridiculous idea. What the hell had she been thinking? Was she really so desperate that she'd thought a street kid could be her savior from this nightmare?
Trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice, Tess said, "No, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed anything out of place."
Mick's expression was every ounce of skepticism that Tess was trying to hide, though she said nothing.
Tess glanced at Speck, who sat beside her watching the exchange with interest, but as soon as Tess looked over, the girl suddenly found the traffic passing by outside to be even more compelling.
After clearing her throat, Tess turned back to Mick, took a deep breath and asked, "What kind of 'object' could we be talking about?"
"Pretty much anything," Mick said. "I once found a cursed stone hidden under my couch. We got rid of it and the bad things stopped happening."
"Bad things?" Tess questioned. "What kind of 'bad things'?"
"Nothing too severe. Just weird, random little things. Toilets backing up for no reason, electronics freaking out. My birthday balloons popping without anyone being near them. Accidentally stabbing myself while trying to carve a pumpkin. Stuff like that. Bad luck stuff."
Though she was reluctant to say it, Tess just couldn't help herself. "So...how do you know it wasn't just bad luck all on its own? It sounds like the kind of things that could happen to anyone."
"True," Mick said. "But all these things happened in less than twenty-four hours and when I got rid of the rock, everything went back to normal."
Tess took a sip of coffee, hoping to disguise the fact that she remained unconvinced.
"Anyway," Mick went on. "That's why I think I should just take a look around your place. See if I spot anything out of the ordinary."
"There's no stone under my couch," Tess said. "Believe it or not, I looked under there when I was searching for anything that could be a source for the flies."
"It probably won't be a stone," Mick told her, matter-of-factly. "It was just a stone in my case."
No one said anything for a few moments. Even Dobie appeared to be lost in thought.
It was Speck who eventually broke the silence. "Who put the rock under your couch, Mick?"
"My step-mom. I was thirteen."
Tess continued to drink, weighing her options. How would she politely refuse to bring these kids back to her house? And, would that even be the right thing to do? What if Mick really could help her somehow? She certainly seemed informed about bizarre circumstances such as these. Maybe she should just take a chance? The kids didn't seem particularly dangerous, despite their appearances. They were, for the most part, friendly and articulate. In fact, they seemed to be even more intelligent than some of her students.
But did that mean it would be safe to bring them into her home? Where she lived with her daughter? The fact that they were intelligent may make them even more dangerous, truth be told.
The kids seemed to understand that she was having an inner debate and resumed talking to one another about some girl named Kathy that had evidently been harassing Speck.
What it boiled down to, Tess thought, was that she felt completely and utterly helpless and these street kids were the only ones she'd encountered so far who seemed to agree with her own assessment that something about this fly situation was way beyond the realms of normalcy. It was more like an episode of The X-Files than reality.
"Okay," Tess said when there was a break in their conversation. "Let's do this thing. Let's find that object, if there is one."
CHAPTER 26
Speck rode quietly in the backseat of Tess's silver Ford Taurus while Mick sat up front with Tess. Dobie had decided he didn't feel like tagging along, so he'd stayed behind in town, a decision that had seemed to annoy Mick to some degree at first, though she appeared to be in better spirits now.
It was pretty obvious to Speck that Tess was nervous, but about what, she couldn't be sure. It was either having a couple of street punks in her car and going to her house or it was her more than slightly peculiar situation.
Speck supposed that if she had been in the woman's position, she would have been plenty nervous too. If it was what Mick suspected-some kind of supernatural hocus pocus-then that would force her to have to look at everything in a whole new light. A light where nearly anything was possible. It was enough to shake up anyone.
Gazing out the car window, Speck wished she could have a smoke. They had already left the city and were cruising through a suburb that reminded her of where her parents lived. Assuming they hadn't moved.
This thought brought forth a whole new level of anxiety, which made her want a cigarette even more, but was forced to chew her fingernails instead.
What if her parents had left and she had no way of tracking them down? She supposed that, technically, it would not change anything about her life, really. So why did the thought frighten her so? She was already pretty much an orphan. What difference would it really make?
Lost in the
se thoughts, she was surprised when a few minutes later, the car pulled into a driveway and the engine was cut.
"Home, sweet home," Tess announced.
They all climbed out of the vehicle and Speck glanced around, feeling dazed.
"Nice digs," Mick said. "College professors must get hefty paychecks."
"I'm not a professor," Tess said. "I'm an instructor."
"There's a difference?" Mick smiled as she regarded the house.
Speck had to agree: it was nice. Not too fancy but well-maintained and neat, with a flagstone walkway bordered by wild flowers that led up to the front door adorned with a wooden plaque that proclaimed WELCOME in cheerful yellow paint.
Tess took a deep breath. "Let's get this over with, huh?"
The girls followed her up the walkway and entered the house behind her.
The first thing Speck noticed was the fly strips hanging all from the kitchen ceiling. There must have been a few dozen of them, all covered with dead flies.
"Jesus," she muttered.
It was creepy and she hovered by the front door while Mick boldly strode forward into the room, taking it all in with clinical interest. She examined a few of the strips closely before saying, "It looks like they're all dead."
"So?" Tess asked.
"So, maybe they're all dead. Maybe the infestation is over."
Tess snorted. "I sincerely doubt that."
Mick shrugged and resumed her inspection of the kitchen, walking around, peering closely at everything. "You checked in all the cupboards?"
"Yes," Tess said.
"The appliances?"
"Of course." Tess's voice had taken on just a tinge of impatience but if Mick heard it she paid it no mind.
"Well, I guess I should check the rest of the house," she said.
"Ok," Tess said. "The living room is right through here."
Yet more fly tape greeted them in the living room and Speck wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly shivering, but she realized it was more than just the sight of the strips and dead bugs that was giving her the willies. She couldn't say what it was, but it was definitely something.
Something bad.