The Rising

by Temple Mathews

  And then the terrible dreams came rushing in.

  Will and Loreli together at school, laughing, walking down the hallway. Natalie follows them, her feet sinking into the floor as though it’s made of sand. She opens her mouth to yell at Will, to somehow stop him from this madness, but no words spring forth; she is mute. Will walks Loreli to her locker. Enlarging into a demon beast, muscles bulging, he rips the locker door off its hinges for her. She’s impressed; it turns her on. She touches his face. Her tongue emerges. It’s at least six inches long. Sinking down into the quicksand floor, Natalie gazes at the locker. It is a portal to darkness. Will, now back to normal, steps inside with Loreli as Natalie cries out. Don’t go with her! Help me! I’m dying! He hears her. He turns and looks. His eyes are carbon black.

  The dream changes. Natalie is in a forest, adorned in black from head to toe, wearing thigh-high leather boots, her lips glistening with the feral red gloss, her hair windswept. She is beyond beautiful; she is transcendent. She carries one of the fighting sticks, which morphs into a snake with scarlet eyes, hissing, angry tongue flicking. Shadows emerge from the foliage and surround her. The shadows are Loreli, cloned and repeated, a hundred copies now lunging at her. Natalie, black Natalie, dressed-in-black Natalie, clenches her hand tightly around the snake, which turns into a white-hot staff, and with that staff she cuts down the advancing Lorelis like they’re so many stalks of wheat. The setting sun bleeds into the sky and Natalie surveys her victory, the carnage at her feet. She hears Will and turns as he approaches her. He is smiling proudly, extending his hand, pulling her into his arms. They kiss deeply, passionately. The moment is breathless, magnificent, and Natalie is overflowing with joy. They break apart and open their eyes. Their eyes are liquid black.

  Variations of the dreams flowed like a river through Natalie’s brain until Emily woke her a few hours later.

  Will ceased his meditation. His mind was clear, his purpose strong. He showered and shaved and got dressed. He had a plan. It was time to rally the troops and head off to school.

  Rudy and Emily were in the kitchen. Emily picked daintily at some fruit and yogurt while Rudy built a leaning tower of pancakes and spread copious amounts of butter and jam on his creation, then smothered it in syrup. When he started to eat, Emily picked up her bowl and moved to the far end of the table. She put her headphones on and tuned in to her laptop in an effort to block Rudy out. She was disgusted as he double-forked his pancake masterpiece, devouring it with a vengeance. When Emily looked up at him, he opened his mouth mid-chew.

  She shook her head. “Freak.”

  He motioned for her to take out her ear buds. She did.

  “I know you want some of these,” he said, through another mouthful.

  “Thanks but no thanks,” she said. The truth was, she did want pancakes, but she was too proud to admit it.

  Rudy went and got a plate, piled on six pancakes, fresh strawberries, whipped cream, and syrup, and set the plate down next to Emily.

  “If you think I’m eating that, you’re crazy.”

  “I never claimed to be sane.”

  Rudy went back to his leaning tower of pancakes and dug in. He closed his eyes and groaned with delight.

  Finally, Emily broke down and dug into her stack with her fork. They tasted heavenly.

  Rudy snuck a peek at her. “Not bad, huh?”

  “I’ve had better,” she lied, but then she felt bad dissing Rudy’s efforts. “Okay, they’re great. Fantastic, really.” And then she ate some more as Rudy beamed.

  Will came into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Natalie?”

  “Up in her room,” Emily said. “Won’t come out. She didn’t sleep well this morning. Neither did I.”

  She gave him a disapproving look. She wasn’t keen that she’d had to share Natalie’s nightmares about him and Loreli.

  Will frowned, and went upstairs and knocked lightly on Natalie’s door. “Natalie, it’s time for school.”

  He heard her up and moving inside and tried the door. Locked.

  “Natalie?”

  He could have easily picked the lock, or kicked it open for that matter, but he knew their conversation the night before had been rough. The least he could do was respect her space.

  “Nat? At least let me know you’re alive in there.”

  Natalie stood in front of the door but didn’t open it. She was wearing a T-shirt and boxers and was nowhere near ready for school. Her head was still fuzzy and she was having trouble shaking off the residue of her nightmares. The harder she fought them, the more the bad thoughts lingered. She couldn’t face the world. Couldn’t face school. Couldn’t face Will.

  “I’m not going,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I think I’ve got the flu. Don’t worry, I’ll live.”

  “Let me see you.”

  “Geez, Will, I said I’m okay.” Her words sounded harsher than she’d meant them to. But she needed him to leave her alone until she could get her head back together.

  Will wasn’t sure what to do. Was she really sick, or just unwilling to face him? Given his plan of action for the day, he decided it might be best to let her stay home.

  “Okay. I’ll call you later. I’ll have some chicken soup delivered.”

  He waited, hoping for some morsel of acknowledgment. He wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say, but he wanted her to say something, anything. Silence. He frowned.

  “Okay, I’m gonna go now,” he said, and turned to go.

  As soon as she heard him hit the steps, she slid to the floor. He was headed off to school, where Loreli was, while she was here at home, alone. Suddenly she wanted to change her mind, to make them wait for her to get dressed so she could go with them, so at least she could keep an eye on Loreli and Will. But when she pictured seeing them together, she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. What was wrong with her brain? Why was she so angry, confused, and paranoid? She felt like she’d followed Alice down the rabbit hole.

  She heard the garage door open, and went back to bed.

  DEER PARK, IDAHO

  In the small Idaho town of Deer Park, it was another quiet evening. Jackson Computers had closed for the day, along with Wally’s Tire Center and the Discount Mart. The all-hours FoodMart stayed open, and Pete’s Dragon, the local watering hole, was just starting to show some signs of life. On Main Street, Maria Wells was walking her dog, Toto. She still carried the guilt of stealing Toto from his owner’s car over in Spokane. The car had been hot, she told herself; she was doing a good thing, saving a little life. But she’d kept Toto’s original collar and today she’d made up her mind. It was time to finally do the right thing, the moral thing. She was going to call the owner, ’fess up to her crime, and return the dog.

  Also on Main Street, Jerry Browing was jogging, listening to Rihanna on his iPod and thinking about his best friend’s sister, Judy. She was young and impressionable, and Jerry had taken advantage of her. Sometimes he felt so bad about it, he lay awake at night rehearsing apology speeches: to her, and to her brother. Jerry jogged past an old man, Max Magar, coming out of Patton’s Pharmacy. Max had his prescription for Viagra and was planning on having a sensual evening at home surfing for porn on the Internet while his wife was out at her book club. Max had stopping having romantic feelings for his wife years ago. He told himself what he was doing wasn’t wrong. But then his heart spoke to him and he wondered if maybe there was some way he could rekindle his affection for his wife. Maybe it was time to start being a good husband again.

  At exactly the same moment, all three denizens of Deer Park—basically good souls who had just now, in this fateful moment, decided to do the right thing—paused and looked up. The sky quickened, the clouds above growing thick and swarthy and dark. The day had been a windy one, but now the air was thin and cool and the whole of Deer Park was eerily quiet. No dogs barked. No birds chirped. Not even the crickets dared break the silence.

  Max squinted as thunderclaps rat
tled the pharmacy windows and the skies opened up. At first he thought it was snowing, as the sky was filled with white. But it wasn’t snow. It was hail. It doesn’t seem nearly cold enough for hail, thought Max. The hail came down harder. Jerry kept on jogging, smiling at the sensation of the hail pellets showering him. Maria didn’t like the hail one bit, but there was no building to take refuge in so she found comfort under the branches of a sprawling Western hemlock by the park.

  People in the FoodMart were startled at the sound of the hail hitting the roofs of parked cars. A couple of teenagers ventured out to dance as the white pellets hammered down in a staccato drumbeat. The teens waved to Max as he shuffled quickly to his car. He looked up into the sky one final time. His last thought was disbelief—he was about to be hit by a hailstone the size of a microwave oven. All hundred pounds of the giant hailstone struck Max Magar on the head, crushing his skull, breaking his neck, and shattering his spine. And then he was dead.

  Jerry Browing had just decided to get out of the hail and was running fast toward the FoodMart when he was crushed by a similarly huge stone. Maria saw the massive hailstones hitting the ground around her and reached down to pull little Toto up into her arms. Fortunately for Toto, she did not succeed as she, too, was crushed. She lived just long enough to gaze up into the sky, where she saw the face of the Devil. Toto yelped, tugged his broken leash away from Maria’s death grip, and then pattered down the street, stopping to sniff at the body of an unfortunate teenager that lay mangled under another massive hailstone.

  The hailstorm that hit Deer Park, Idaho, was brief but deadly, lasting exactly one minute and six point six seconds, and killing seven people.

  Chapter Sixteen: The Under City

  Will, Rudy, and Emily arrived at LBJ High just in time for the class change between third and fourth periods, and Will took advantage of the opportunity to prowl the hallways, looking into faces, trying to read eyes. Since he carried his own smoldering intensity, most kids shifted their gaze away the moment he made eye contact. Just like every school Will had ever attended, LBJ High had its share of jocks and hippies and punks and bikers. Everybody wanted to wear a uniform. The problem was, you could never tell what kind of uniform a demonteen would wear. The clean-cut glee club guys in pastel polo shirts, the lumbering, leather-clad tattooed skinheads, the tie-dyed group in their bell-bottoms—any of them could be infected. The old saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” was true for demonteens too. Even with everything he knew about them, Will was coming up empty; the demonteens were pretty deep undercover. But they were here. He could feel them. He would just have to keep looking in between classes.

  Back home, Natalie was starting to feel better. The chicken soup that Will had promised to have delivered arrived, and the fact he remembered made her wonder if she’d overreacted that morning. She opened her drapes and windows, and mentally pushed last night’s horrific dreams outside. Go away! She went into the bathroom, washed her face and brushed her hair, and drank a glass of water. She stared at the tube of lip-gloss, and decided not to bother with it. Then she got dressed, snagged her backpack, went downstairs, and grabbed an apple on her way out. She caught a bus heading toward school. She’d talk to Will again, and this time she’d be strong and secure and reasonable. He hadn’t answered her question about Loreli, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything was going on. She’d seen them hug, but she hugged Rudy sometimes. No big deal. She would find Will at school and get a ride home with him afterward. She promised herself she’d be calm and cordial, to prove that she was strong and that she trusted him, trusted in him. She was feeling good. Even though the skies were gray, nothing was going to rain on her parade. Not today. Today was a rebirth.

  Will sat in the lunchroom finishing his turkey sandwich as he watched red projectiles zinging back and forth. It was the same in every school. Food fights always broke out more frequently when cherry tomatoes—or “cherry bombs”—were served. He ducked out without getting hit. As he was passing the woodworking classroom, he heard a muted cry and decided to investigate. Inside he found a couple of juniors, Rita Winston and her friend Cindy Becker, tormenting a freshman girl. Rita had the girl up on the workbench with her ankle in the vise and was slowly tightening it while Cindy tore through the girl’s purse, taking her cash and what looked like a baggie of pot. Will smiled at his good fortune. His whole plan for tonight hinged on finding a shedemon and tagging her with a subcutaneous tracking chip so she could lead him to the Under City, and it looked like he’d just found some.

  But when he entered the room, ready to fight, instead of offering resistance Rita and Cindy crumpled in fear.

  “Hey, sorry, we messed up,” said Rita, immediately releasing the frosh from the vise.

  “You want this?” asked Cindy, holding up the cash and dope. “It’s yours!” She tossed it at Will as she and Rita ran for the door. Will grabbed them by their wrists. They didn’t act like shedemons, but he had to check, just in case. He did Cindy first, thumbing her temples.

  “Ow!” she shrieked.

  She was clean. Same for Rita. He let them go.

  The freshman girl smiled at him. My hero! Will turned and left. The girl was disappointed. She’d already run the movie through her mind of Will falling in love with her and the two of them getting married. At least she’d gotten her stuff back. She picked up her cash and the dope, stuffed them in her purse, and rubbed her ankle.

  Out in the crowded hallway, Will spotted Loreli coming at him. He hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her yet, so when she grabbed his elbow and herded him around the corner to her locker, he complied.

  “About tonight,” he started, but then she threw her arms around him and started giggling and shaking her amazing hair. Will was confused. Had she somehow lost her mind in the last few hours? She was acting like a girlfriend, not a sister, and it was creeping him out.

  Then he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was Rocco Manelli, striding all King Shit down the hallway with his posse. So this is for his benefit, thought Will. When Loreli grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him, he kept his mouth closed like she did, but she made it look good, getting all breathless and flushed. Then she broke away and tossed a scathing look in Rocco’s direction, as if to say, Take that, Alpha dude. Rocco took the bait. He was next to them in a flash, his buddies not far behind, and pounded his fist into Loreli’s locker, denting it.

  “Having fun, kids?” Rocco growled.

  “Like you can’t even imagine,” said Loreli.

  Rocco glared at Will. “Who are you?”

  “Nobody,” said Will. Best not to antagonize him here in the hallway where other people could get hurt. And maybe he could use Rocco. Will had wanted a shedemon, but he figured Rocco would do. He started planning how he was going to tag him.

  “You got that right,” said Rocco with a sneer. “A nobody. Come over here, Loreli.”

  Rocco grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her across the hall. Will started to follow but let Rocco’s goon squad hold him back. That’s right, I’m just a regular guy, a nobody. With his back to Will, Rocco pulled something out of his jacket and did something to Loreli’s wrist. Then he looked at Will and put one of his huge paws behind Loreli’s neck. Then he pulled her face into his, licking her from jaw to hairline, his eyes never leaving Will’s. Take that, nobody. Then Rocco released Loreli, his goons let go of Will, and they marched off, another victory under their belts.

  Loreli rejoined Will.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  Loreli was smiling. She held out her hand, and then turned it over.

  “He double-marked me.” She had two small blue symbols stamped on the inside of her wrist. They were five-pointed goats’ heads. Typical lame Satan crap, thought Will.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means we’re in. I don’t have to crash the party tonight, I can walk right in.”

  “What about me?”

  “He thin
ks he’s going to turn me into one of them. So he double-stamped me, which means I can bring a guest. It’s the typical initiation. He gets a girl down there with her boyfriend, best friend, whatever, then infects her with the help of you know who, and then she’s ordered to kill her ‘guest.’ Nice, huh? My guess is he can’t wait to see me morph into a shedemon and waste you.”

  “Charming.”

  “Come on, bro, I told you we met for a reason. This is all going down like it’s supposed to. We’re both going to get what we want,” she said, hugging him.

  Will thought about it. This changed everything, and he began to alter his plans accordingly. He wouldn’t have to find a shedemon or figure out how to tag Rocco. Loreli’s way was faster. He let her hug him.

  At the other end of the hallway, Natalie stood frozen, grief clutching her heart. She’d seen everything, and her interpretation of the events—the males clashing over Loreli, the close, hushed conversations, the kiss—all added up to one thing: There was definitely something going on between Will and Loreli. He’s practically glued to her, thought Natalie. The bell rang. Trembling, she stood waiting for Will to turn and see that she knew—one one thousand, two one thousand, she waited—and then, deciding she couldn’t bear to look at him right now, she walked away. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

  Will turned around and looked in her direction. But all he saw was an empty hallway.

  When Emily came home from school and Natalie wasn’t there, she began to worry. She waited, doing homework, avoiding Rudy as best she could. He always seemed to find a way to wander over to wherever she happened to be. He was seriously getting on her nerves. Not just because he was an ex-demon, or former demon, or part demon, or whatever, but because as much as she wanted to dislike him, she was starting to get used to him. In fact, she was finding little things about him that were even kind of . . . cute.