The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  The bell rang. Everyone started shuffling out of the room. I hurried to the exit so that Ms. Floster wouldn’t try and punish me for my tardiness and outbursts in class.

  “Ms. Derée, would you come here a moment?”

  No such luck.

  People were giving me sympathy looks as I made my way past them towards Ms. Floster.

  I stood before her, keeping my eyes down, trying to look sorry for all I did.

  I could feel Ms. Floster’s eyes boring into me. She was waiting for me to look at her.

  “Don’t think you’ve learned anything I didn’t want you to learn,” she said loudly.

  I looked up.

  What?

  Ms. Floster grabbed my arms and pulled me close so that our noses were practically touching. I was too dumbfounded to move. Ms. Floster was annoying and occasionally angry, but grabbing me like this was way out of her normal behavior. I finally looked into her eyes, and instead of the fury I thought I’d see due to her… um… attacking me!

  I only saw blankness.

  Don’t think you’ve learned anything I didn’t want you to learn.

  Elisha.

  She was controlling Ms. Floster.

  And I was talking to her directly.

  Elisha had brain-knapped poor Ms. Floster and was using her as a telephone. I needed to take advantage of the fact that after five months I could get information out of my enemy.

  I decided to go for logic. “If that were true, then why are you telling me?”

  Ms. Floster’s blank face was creepy. I was used to this in corpses, but not living people.

  Her grip tightened around my arms. I briefly thought about fighting back, but I knew I’d end up hurting Ms. Floster rather than her puppet master, Elisha. My teacher was an innocent victim in all this.

  “If Ms. Floster hadn’t slipped up a bit, you wouldn’t bother talking to me, you’d just let me gather my info and know that I was barking up the wrong tree.”

  “You still think you’re clever, don’t you? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re an idiot.”

  Yup.

  Definitely Elisha.

  “Idiot” being her favorite word to call me.

  I responded, “You obviously need me for something, or you wouldn’t bother with me. You’d be building your super-army and taking over the world or something. I’m assuming you have my power by now.”

  Which was true. I may not know about her plans, but I was sure Elisha would have performed the ceremony that gave her the power to control the dead. I shuddered to think of Elisha killing an innocent baby…

  But I also knew how the ritual worked. Elisha made me use the twins’ power to disconnect the lights from the three pregnant mothers so that their babies would be born with a power like mine. I knew she’d re-create my father’s spell to gain the power for herself. The result: the baby would have to die. Of course, when my father sacrificed himself he thought he was ridding himself of this power forever. He had no idea his spell would transfer the gift to me. But it did: I ended up seeing black swirling holes and controlling the dead just like he had been able to do.

  “Of course I have your power, and I’m awake now, so I’ll be focusing all my attention on you,” Ms. Floster/Elisha said.

  Then I thought of something.

  Elisha wasn’t the only one who could brain-knap.

  Sorry Ms. Floster, but there’s about to be a party in your head.

  I concentrated as hard as could, which was quite a struggle since Ms. Floster’s hands were clinging so tightly to my arms, but within seconds I flew inside her head.

  Blackness.

  Okay. Gain my bearings.

  “Chelsan?”

  The light turned on. And I was suddenly in…

  …Ms. Floster’s classroom.

  Uh.

  Weird.

  Being physically in the classroom and mentally in the classroom inside Ms. Floster’s head was very surreal.

  I turned around to see Ms. Floster with a terrified look on her face. “No matter what I do,” she cried breathlessly, “I can’t seem to leave this room! If I try to walk out the door or the window or the ceiling, I end up back here! We’re stuck!”

  She was starting to become unhinged and I couldn’t blame her. Elisha had apparently trapped Ms. Floster inside her own head, and what was worse, she made Ms. Floster think she was forever trapped within her own classroom.

  I went over to Ms. Floster and tried to give her a reassuring look. “I’m going to get us out of here, but you have to tell me everything you remember.”

  “You’re such a fool,” I heard Elisha’s voice coming through the classroom’s overhead speaker like she was the principal making an announcement. “You really think you can catch me in here? I’m so much better at this than you,” she giggled.

  Her voice sounded different, deeper…

  “Who is that? Is she the one keeping me here?!” Ms. Floster seemed just about ready to scream.

  I placed my finger over my mouth to motion for her silence, then nodded to tell her that Elisha was definitely the culprit. Then I whispered, “I’ll take care of her.”

  Ms. Floster had no reason to trust me, but she nodded her acquiesce all the same.

  Little did Elisha know…

  …I had been practicing.

  Elisha had been in my head so many times that I knew her signature like I knew my own. I could see and feel her presence jumping around Ms. Floster’s head like a bouncing ball. I was assuming that this was Elisha’s way of preventing herself from being tracked, but it didn’t fool me.

  I closed my eyes.

  I stood under the Eiffel Tower. The courtyard was empty with the giant latticed structure looming over my head.

  NOW!

  I screamed in my head.

  WHOOSH!

  Standing in front of me was Elisha, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “How did you…?” she stammered.

  “I’m better than you think.” I tried not to relish in the genuine surprise on her face.

  Elisha was still stunning to look at. Aside from her outfit of t-shirt and jeans she was like a porcelain doll reincarnate, with pale ivory skin, giant purple eyes and long black hair. Elisha looked about seven years old, but I knew she was almost a hundred. The girl was seriously creepy.

  Elisha was still spooked until she looked down at herself. A slow smile spread across her delicate features. “I see you remember me with fondness.”

  I had no idea what she meant. She looked just like she always did. A sociopathic child.

  “One of your many faults,” Elisha sneered.

  Before she could get the upper hand I reached out and grabbed Elisha’s hair.

  Yes, very “cat fight” of me, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

  And more importantly, it kept her there with me, as opposed to disappearing somewhere into my Biochem teacher’s head!

  I pulled her head back by tugging on her hair.

  Elisha was smiling at me.

  She was amused by all this. It meant she knew something I didn’t.

  I hated that.

  “You’re going to leave Ms. Floster’s head as soon as you tell me what you’re up to,” I said with as much intensity as I could. “What did you mean, you just woke up?” One question at a time.

  Elisha didn’t even look fazed by my grip on her hair. She raised her eyebrow and stared at me with her violet eyes. “It means, I just woke up, and to be honest, I could use another nap after this.” She grinned at me triumphantly.

  I wanted to punch her scrawny little face, but I also knew that neither one of us were really here under the Eiffel Tower and that if anyone walked in to Biochem, they’d be looking at two comatose people staring at each other. One: Ms. Floster, grabbing her student: me.

  Yeah, not good.

  “I’m going to figure out what you’re up to, and if I can’t, Ryan will. Remember the boy who outsmarted the supposedly brilliant Elisha Stearne? H
e played you like a fiddle and he’ll do it again.” I tried to press any button I could to get Elisha to slip up.

  It worked.

  Elisha was pissed.

  “I won’t be fooled again by your boyfriend,” she snarled.

  Then Elisha smiled once more.

  Again with the knowledge, and me not knowing it.

  “How are his little headaches anyway? Getting worse?” Elisha snickered.

  That did it.

  I snapped her neck.

  Elisha disappeared instantly.

  I remembered from Grams that when you killed someone in astral form it bumped them out of whoever’s brain they were in. At the time it had been my head, but Ms. Floster needed to be rid of the brain tumor known as Elisha.

  I jumped out of Ms. Floster’s head.

  And I was back in the classroom.

  Ms. Floster still had her hands clasped to my arms, but her eyes suddenly cleared and she looked extremely confused.

  “Chelsan?” she asked groggily.

  “You should sit down. You don’t look so good,” I said, ushering her to the chair behind her desk.

  Ms. Floster didn’t argue. She allowed me to lead her to a sitting position. “What happened? Where’s the class?”

  “Class is over, Ms. Floster.”

  I could see alarm rising up in her eyes, so I quickly tried to make light of the situation.

  “I bet you were sleep walking. My stepfather used to do that all the time. You wouldn’t even know he was sleeping.” Or dead, since I was the one controlling his corpse my entire childhood, but she didn’t have to know that.

  “Sleep walking?” Ms. Floster was still out of it. “I haven’t done that in years.”

  “Well, you gave a whole lecture on John Fortski. You said your dad used to work for him and that he had been working on some kind of healing drug.” I wanted to see if Elisha had jumped in at the end of the lecture or was responsible for the whole thing. I still believed that Elisha was worried that Ms. Floster said something she didn’t want me to hear. Maybe if I prodded a little more…

  “I said all that?” Ms. Floster rubbed her face as if this would wake her up.

  “Was it true? Or were you just dreaming and making it up?” I asked.

  “Oh no, it’s true. I remember finishing the whole lecture, then right before the bell rang… nothing.” Ms. Floster took a deep breath, finally waking out of her grogginess. “Oh my, Chelsan, thank you for helping me. I feel so foolish. I guess it’s time to see a doctor.”

  Okay. Ms. Floster had given the entire lecture, which meant Elisha hadn’t jumped into her head until after. So, Ms. Floster obviously said something that Elisha didn’t want me to hear. I wished I had recorded class! Jason and I could have picked it apart.

  Ms. Floster patted my hand affectionately.

  Which was really weird. Ms. Floster was the opposite of a warm fuzzy.

  Awkward.

  I knew she didn’t actually need to see a doctor so I said, “Or maybe you just need to rest.”

  “Yes, good call.” Ms. Floster stood up. “I’m going to go home.” She grabbed her purse from underneath her desk. “I didn’t assign any homework did I?”

  “Nope,” I said cheerfully. If Elisha had been thinking about it she could have been particularly cruel and assigned us a bunch of homework, but luckily she was too focused on me.

  “Well, that’s good at least.” Ms. Floster turned to me as if just now realizing she’d been so casually nice to a student. She cleared her throat as she glanced up at the clock. “Ms. Derée, you’re going to be late for your next class.”

  I smiled and she smiled back.

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Like a pill that blocks seven-year-old psychos from entering your brain!

  “No, I’m fine, thank you,” she answered kindly. “Now off to class.”

  I didn’t argue. I hurried out the door and into the empty hallway.

  I kept my eyes open this time, though. I didn’t want to get side-swiped by Eva again.

  I made it to Calculus and couldn’t pay attention to a word Mr. Gray said. I played over everything I could remember Ms. Floster saying during Biochem. I really wished I had paid more attention. I felt like, whether or not the healing drugs were real, Elisha didn’t care one iota if I knew about them or not. That didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t trying to get Fortski to invent them, but it wasn’t what she was worried about me knowing.

  One thing I was almost a hundred percent certain of: Elisha was behind the John Fortski kidnapping.

  There was no other explanation.

  Before I knew it, the bell had rung and it was lunchtime.

  The rest of the day went off without a hitch, aside from receiving an earful from Jill on how Max stood her up at lunch. I tried not to make eye contact with her, as I was pretty sure that I was the reason for Max’s absence. Bill ate lunch with Eva, far away from us and I came very close to going over to their table and telling him what a loony she was. But, no, I figured I’d take the high road and find out first what Max had to say when we met after school.

  Ryan seemed to be in better spirits as the day went on. No sign of any headaches, which was a huge sigh of relief. Elisha definitely knew about Ryan’s predicament, though, and I was terrified she was responsible for it. I just hoped Turner would send one of his specialist doctors over soon so we could figure out how to help Ryan.

  After my last class, I headed for the hover-car parking lot. The halls were packed and I could barely move forward. The last school was crowded enough, but this new building was ten times worse. I literally shuffled toward the exit, trying not to feel claustrophobic. I never used to feel that way but, ever since my buried alive ordeal, I tended to get a little panicky when I felt closed in. More psychological issues for me. Yay.

  I tried not to focus on the fact that I was stuck in this pack of people. It was hard to breathe. I started to grow a little light-headed. I practiced some breathing methods I’d learned from Jill of all people. She apparently had been dealing with anxiety attacks since her father died. Of course, she didn’t actually know he died the first time since my grandfather puppeteer’d him. All Jill knew was that she woke up one day and her dad was different. He was. He was dead. But she didn’t know that then. And it scarred her, making her highly anxious. Jill had all sorts of tricks for me, like breathing methods, distraction techniques, and pacing.

  Unfortunately, my brain was getting the best of me and the breathing tricks weren’t working.

  I needed to move away from this crowd. I shoved my way through a lot of “HEYS!” and “WATCH IT’S!” until I managed to escape into an empty classroom. I took a few deep breaths and paced a little, calming myself.

  It kind of annoyed me that I could handle almost being murdered (a million times), but I couldn’t handle a crowded hallway at school. My fight or flight mode was all off whack.

  That wasn’t all that was off whack.

  One of the wood beams on the ceiling was amassing a cluster of swirling black holes that were moving.

  And I wasn’t controlling them.

  What the…?

  SNAP!

  The beam suddenly broke and swung at my head with frightening speed.

  I dove to the ground, smacking my forehead on a desk, but the wooden beam missed me.

  Did I do that?

  And ouch.

  I slowly rose to my feet and examined the black swirling holes on the fallen beam. Dead termites. They weren’t moving anymore. They were just dead again.

  Could Elisha be here? At school?

  I ran outside the room to see if I could catch a glimpse of her, if she was here.

  The halls were still crowded, but thinning out.

  No Elisha.

  But…

  Eva was at the end of the hallway.

  She turned to me and smiled.

  Did Eva have the same power as me?

  I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that. No
. I was being paranoid.

  But if not Eva, then who? It had to be her.

  I needed to talk to the gang without Bill. He’d just be defensive. Besides, if I was wrong I’d look like a jerk. I still wasn’t even sure if I was going to tell him about Eva attacking me. I hadn’t told Nancy or Ryan yet. I figured they’d go straight for Eva’s jugular and I didn’t want to do that to Bill. I could care less about Eva, but Bill didn’t deserve to be hurt.

  I had the sinking feeling that no matter how hard I tried to spare Bill’s feelings, they were going to get demolished. I had to be honest with myself, something was seriously off with Eva and I needed to figure out exactly what it was.

  Making my way out to the parking lot, Ryan grabbed me from behind and pulled me around for a kiss.

  “Hello, my lovely,” he whispered in my ear.

  Sigh.

  “You’re feeling better.” I smiled up at his stunningly gorgeous face.

  “Whatever the nurse gave me seemed to do the trick,” Ryan said, clasping my hand and heading me over toward Bill’s hover.

  We had a moment alone. I was about to tell him about my encounter with Eva and then with Elisha and then again with Eva, but Bill arrived with Eva on his arm.

  Bill smiled sloppily like he’d just eaten all the cookies in the cookie jar. From the slight remnants of lipstick on his mouth, I could only guess that the two of them had been making out.

  Eew.

  “You think Eva can squish in the back with you guys?” Bill asked, though he wasn’t really asking, he was telling us that Eva was coming whether we wanted her to or not.

  “You know what? We’ll take the shuttle,” I said before I could stop myself.

  My polite nature normally would have me saying, “sure, no problem” despite the giant neon sign above Eva’s head that said “BAD GUY!” But this time my instincts had won out and my mouth followed.

  Ryan looked more taken aback than Bill did, but not by much.

  Eva pretended to be hurt. (And I know she was pretending, because I could tell by her stupid face.)

  Okay, that was caddy, but the girl had tackled me! And I was pretty darn sure she had somehow controlled those dead termites and almost tried to kill me!