When Rose Wakes

by Christopher Golden

  “Yeah. Of course,” Jared said.

  Heart still racing, Rose stepped into his arms and kissed him quickly on the cheek, then extricated herself.

  “I’ve got to find Kylie and get going. I’ll see you in school.”

  “Get home safe,” he said.

  Rose turned and went up the steps to the deck, glancing back only once, fighting the urge to stay with him. The memory of his kiss stayed with her, lingering, and she thought it would still be with her all through the night and into the next day.

  Forging a path through the crowd on the deck, she made her way into the kitchen. Several of the older girls were there, but she was relieved to see that Courtney was nowhere in sight. Rose hoped Kylie would still be in the living room talking to Dom or someone else from school. She needed to get out of there and clear her head.

  As she squeezed between two athletic-looking guys, she caught sight of something moving out of the corner of her eye and glanced over to see a cockroach scuttling across the tile backsplash above the stove. Recoiling in revulsion, she jerked against one of the guys, who caught her as though afraid she would fall.

  “Hey, you okay?” he asked.

  Rose couldn’t even look at him. She shivered, looking all around the kitchen for signs of other cockroaches, one of her nightmares returning to her in vivid detail, the woman sculpted from the skittering creatures whispering about her death.

  But as she fled the kitchen in search of Kylie, the words that echoed in her mind came from a different dream.

  All is lost, she thought, with Jared’s kiss still on her lips.

  Rose saw the first crow as they turned onto Mount Auburn Street. It perched on the support bar of a sagging awning, and it watched her as she passed by. It’s in your head, she told herself. Stop it. Just stop. But the silence of the crow slivered under her skin and several times she glanced back to find the crow with its head cocked, still looking in her direction. The fourth time, it had vanished without so much as a flutter of wings. She knew she ought to have felt better, but somehow the bird’s absence weighed on her even more heavily than its unnerving attention.

  “You okay?” Kylie asked, hugging herself against the chilly autumn night.

  “Hmm?” Rose glanced at her. “Sorry, yes. I’m fine.”

  Kylie grinned, eyes growing large. “Good, ’cause you should be great! I mean, you like the guy, right?”

  Rose nodded quickly, scanning the area anxiously as they hurried into Harvard Square, crossing Mount Auburn and turning left, toward the T station.

  “You know I do,” she said.

  Kylie’s enthusiasm faltered. “So why aren’t you happy? I mean, obviously the feeling’s mutual, if his tongue down your throat is any indication.”

  Rose shot her a sharp look. “It wasn’t like that. It was nice. Really, really nice.”

  “Tongues can be nice,” Kylie said, her grin turning devilish, that mischievous sparkle returning to her eyes.

  A loud caw made Rose jump. She turned to see a crow sitting on the taut telephone wire that stretched across the street behind them. At first she thought it might be the same one, following her, but then it cawed again and a second crow answered from its perch on a window ledge.

  An icy chill raced through her as she grabbed Kylie’s hand and tugged the other girl along.

  “Hey!” Kylie protested, hurrying beside her. “What’s wrong, Rose?”

  “I just want to get on the train.”

  “Are you late? You think you’re going to turn into a pumpkin?”

  Rose glanced at her. “A pumpkin?”

  Kylie gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Wrong fairy tale. Seriously, what’s your hurry?”

  “Do crows come out at night?”

  “How should I know?”

  Rose pointed back at the one on the telephone line. “There’s one right there.”

  “Then I’m going to go out on a limb and say, yes, crows come out at night.”

  Traffic had lightened considerably. Rose pulled out her cell phone and checked the time—not quite half past ten. That was good. Her aunts had agreed to let Kylie sleep over and it would have been ugly and awkward if they had returned home from the party later than the midnight curfew.

  Broke your promise, she thought. And then, immediately, So what? It was just kissing. Nothing more. And even if it had turned into something, how is that their business? They’re crazy old women!

  Still, she felt guilty.

  As she slid the phone into her pocket, it chirped twice. Crossing the street toward the Harvard Square T station entrance, she opened the phone and saw she had a text from Jared. She took a deep breath, some of the tension caused by her paranoia about the crows easing, and opened the text.

  “Dude, talk to me,” Kylie said. “It’s Jared, right?”

  Rose nodded. “He’s apologizing. He’s leaving now anyway and thinks he should have walked us to the T station.”

  “I think he wanted to walk you all the way home,” Kylie said. “Right into your bedroom.”

  Rose glanced sharply at her, then saw she was joking and laughed at her own overreaction.

  “Too bad for him I’m already having a sleepover tonight,” she said.

  Kylie linked arms with her. “Too bad for both of you. But somehow I doubt your aunts would be cool with Jared crashing on your floor.”

  “Well,” Rose said. “As long as he stayed on the floor.”

  They both laughed as they entered the T station. She texted Jared back while they rode the escalator down, letting him know she was fine and that she would look forward to seeing him on Monday. When she stepped off the escalator, finishing the text, she hit send and risked a glance back up toward the surface level.

  No sign of crows.

  She exhaled, put away her phone, and hurried to keep up with Kylie. It was definitely time to go home.

  Rose and Kylie only had to wait a few minutes for the next train. Park Street station, which opened into Boston Common, just a few blocks from the Acorn Street apartment, was four stops from Harvard Square. There were more people on the train than Rose expected, but they found two seats together at the front of the car and sat down, rocking against each other as the train jerked and shuddered out of the station.

  Outside the windows the tunnels flashed by in patterns of darkness and light. The train squealed on every turn, shaking but not slowing down until it pulled into the next station. More people shuffled out of the car than got on, and it was the same at the next stop, the number of passengers diminishing. The power in the car was unreliable and sometimes the lights would flicker into darkness. Rose didn’t feel like talking with so many people around, so she stared at the advertisements on the placards above the windows across from her.

  At the next stop, the train braked hard and she leaned hard against Kylie, who laughed and hugged her, pulling a goofy face and then arching her eyebrow at a grimly serious old man who watched her antics with disapproval.

  Rose tried to stifle a laugh, not wanting the man to think she was mocking him. Knowing that Kylie would have her cracking up in a moment, she averted her eyes, glancing down the length of the car.

  At the far end, strobed by the unreliable lighting within the car and the zoetrope flicker beyond the windows, sat a pale, raven-haired woman who stared at her with wide, wild eyes. Rose flinched, leaning into Kylie, staring at the woman a moment before tearing her gaze away.

  Kylie laughed, bumping her back, thinking it was a game.

  Rose felt frozen to her seat. She stared at the floor, thinking back to Tuesday afternoon and the woman she had seen across the road, staring at her from in front of a Newbury Street art gallery. But this couldn’t be the same woman. Or if it was, it had to be coincidence.

  By Tuesday night she had convinced herself that the woman hadn’t been watching her at all, just staring aimlessly at nothing as she waited for a bus. Or just lost in thought, because that was no bus stop. The bus that went by was a tour b
us, and it didn’t even stop there.

  She closed her eyes, trying to summon a picture of the woman from Tuesday, to really see her, remember her features. In her mind’s eye she painted the long, proud nose, the high cheekbones, the perfect neck and shoulders, the artfully tousled hair of the exotically beautiful woman who had watched her that day. Then she opened her eyes and turned to look toward the far end of the subway car.

  The woman had not vanished. She seemed not even to have moved, still staring. She almost did not appear to be breathing.

  “Park Street,” a voice came over the PA. “This stop is Park Street.”

  Rose could not look away. The train began to slow, brakes shrieking, but the woman did not sway with the changed momentum like the rest of the passengers. They barely seemed to notice her, almost as if she were not entirely there. Or… and this felt more accurate to Rose… as if the woman were somehow more there than the rest of them. Her eyes were impossibly wide and gleamed a bright gold, though Rose knew it was not possible for her to make out such a detail from this distance.

  The train stopped and the doors shushed open.

  Kylie linked arms with her and stood, Rose only slightly behind in rising.

  The golden-eyed woman stood, but instead of exiting the train, she started walking toward them through the car. For another moment Rose faltered, the urge to stay almost overwhelming. What did the woman want? If she opened her mouth to speak, what would she say?

  All is lost.

  Rose thought of cockroaches.

  “Run!” she shouted, grabbing Kylie’s hand and running from the car.

  “Rose, what the hell?” Kylie snapped.

  “Just come on!” Rose said, pulling her along, weaving around people on the platform, startling a middle-aged Asian couple and a skinny graduate student.

  She glanced back and saw the woman emerging from the train, striding in determined pursuit but not running. Rose nearly tripped over the instrument case of a saxophone player performing for spare change. She ran on, pulling Kylie after her—Kylie, whose eyes were narrowed in confusion and concern, as though she feared Rose might be losing her mind. They passed a pretzel vendor and the newsstand and then hit the escalator.

  Rose started climbing, the escalator not fast enough.

  “Stop!” Kylie said, pulling back hard enough that Rose nearly tumbled into her.

  For a moment Rose did, heart racing, her breathing quick and shallow. But then she saw the woman reach the bottom of the escalator with that same purposeful stride. It should not have been possible. She walked swiftly, but Rose and Kylie had been running. How had she crossed the same amount of space only seconds behind?

  “Come on,” Rose said, beginning to climb.

  Kylie stood still, letting the escalator carry her upward. She arched an eyebrow, expecting an explanation for which Rose had no time.

  “Please?” Rose said. “Come on!”

  Kylie shook her head, smiled warily, and started after her. Below, the golden-eyed woman stood on the escalator behind the Asian couple Rose had almost knocked over, staring at her without blinking. Kylie must have noticed at last for she turned to look down as they hurried up the escalator.

  “Who is she?” Kylie asked.

  Rose felt a wave of gratitude crash into her. “You see her, too?”

  The moment the words left her mouth she realized how crazy they sounded. She had just admitted that she had doubted that Kylie would be able to see the woman, that she doubted her own sanity. A flicker of surprise crossed Kylie’s face, but she said nothing as they reached the top of the escalator.

  They careened through the station, slammed through the exit turnstiles, and fled through the propped-open doors into the gloomily lit park. Turning left, they bolted across Boston Common, leaving the concrete path for the grass and nearly colliding with a grizzled, stinking homeless man who seemed to be searching for something in the sky.

  Again and again, Rose looked back. They were fifty yards away when she saw the woman come out of the station and pause, and she wondered if they were safe there in the darkness away from the lighted path, if the moon would be bright enough to give them away.

  The woman turned and looked right at her, somehow sensing her exact position.

  Rose felt the strength go out of her. Her will to run began to ebb, but Kylie had no such hesitation. They hurtled across the park and up the incline toward the high black metal fence that separated the grass from the sidewalk. Kylie stumbled slightly as they crossed another path and Rose glanced back again. The pale woman was nowhere to be seen but she did not feel safe. They ran up the path to granite steps that took them to an arched opening in the fence and then onto the sidewalk.

  Kylie darted across Beacon Street. A car skidded to a halt, the driver laying on the horn. When Rose followed, sprinting to join her on the opposite sidewalk, the man leaned out the window and shouted obscenities at her. Kylie burst into nervous laughter, bent over, trying to catch her breath.

  “Let’s go,” Rose said, turning left toward Spruce Street.

  “Wait,” Kylie said, grabbing her arm, still laughing a little.

  “Kylie, come on!”

  “Just wait.”

  They both watched the gate across the street, waiting for the pale woman to appear. Long seconds went by with no sign of her.

  “Do you think—” Rose began.

  “Who the hell is she?” Kylie interrupted.

  Rose shook her head, still staring at the gate. “I don’t know.”

  “Is she really following us, or are you just being paranoid?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Rose said, barely listening to herself, focused completely on the park. She looked up and down the street, wondering if the woman would exit somewhere else on Beacon Street.

  She started walking. “Come on, Kylie. If she is following me, I don’t want her following me home.”

  What if she already knows where you live? What if she’s planning to cut you off?

  On guard, her skin prickling with awareness, she picked up her pace. Kylie might have thought she was being paranoid—though Rose knew her friend must have seen the way the pale woman stared at her—but she also seemed extravigilant as they hurried toward Spruce Street.

  “If she was really following us,” Kylie said, “why give up? Why did she stop?”

  Rose had no idea and was about to say exactly that, when a loud cawing filled the air. She froze on the sidewalk and watched a rustling in the branches of several trees in the park near the gate they had used. Black shapes darted into the night sky.

  “What’s up with those birds?” Kylie asked.

  “Crows,” Rose said.

  “So?”

  Rose shivered and then started walking again. Kylie followed and soon they were turning up Spruce Street, and shortly they arrived in front of the apartment on Acorn Street. Before Rose unlocked the door, she glanced around. There were no birds and no sign of the pale woman, but still she felt eyes on her. She wondered if the feeling would ever go away.

  Her aunts had waited up, of course. They were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea when Rose and Kylie came through the front door. Rich, earthy, herbal scents hung in the warm air of the apartment and Rose knew that Aunt Suzette had been making more of her overpowering potpourri. In the mix of aromas she could smell apple and vanilla and cinnamon, but they were only hints beneath the stronger, less appealing odors.

  She felt embarrassed and glanced over to see Kylie wrinkling her nose at the smell. But then Aunt Fay appeared in the kitchen doorway, clad in a white T-shirt and black cotton pants that were about as relaxed as she got.

  “Wow, you’re actually early,” Aunt Fay said. The petite woman smiled, though she could never quite banish the innate sternness behind her eyes. “I guess you won’t be turning into a pumpkin tonight after all.”

  “Ha, ha,” Rose said. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that tonight.”

  Aunt Suzette appeared behin
d Aunt Fay, dwarfing the smaller woman. She wore a welcoming smile as she stirred something in a teacup and seemed about to inquire about their evening when she froze, all the good humor fleeing her face.

  “Rose DuBois,” Aunt Suzette said, color leeching from her cheeks. “What happened to your blouse?”

  Aunt Fay stared at the shirt dangling from Rose’s hand and then looked at Kylie with deep suspicion and open disapproval.

  “It’s ruined,” Rose said, holding up the shirt in both hands.

  Aunt Suzette let out a small gasp at the sight of the deep red stains, but then straightened up, calming herself.

  “That’s not blood.”

  “Blood?” Rose echoed in surprise. “Of course not. It’s punch. This one girl—I told you about Courtney—she spilled it on me on purpose. But Kylie loaned me her jacket, so it was—”

  Aunt Fay lifted the ruined shirt from Rose’s hand, put it to her nose, and smelled it. She blinked and her gaze became accusatory.

  “Rose… ?” she began.

  “Yes, people were drinking alcohol. There was rum in the punch. I didn’t drink any of it, and neither did Kylie.”

  The aunts exchanged a glance loaded with worry and suspicion and anger, and Rose could see the chances of her ever leaving the apartment unchaperoned again dwindling rapidly.

  “Look, I’m sixteen years old,” she said, letting her irritation show. “This kind of thing is going to happen. It just is. My memories are gone, but I’ve been… I don’t know, educating myself, I guess. You don’t know what it’s like to not know how to behave, to not know how to be whatever everyone expects you’ll be when they look at you. It’s like an actor learning a part. I’ve had to rehearse being a sixteen-year-old girl!”

  She flushed, embarrassed to have spoken such truths in front of Kylie.

  “Rose,” Aunt Fay said gently.

  But Rose waved her away. “The point is, if you want me to try to have a life, there are going to be parties. And some people are going to be drinking. But I didn’t. And if you don’t believe me, then the awful girl who splashed punch on me has gotten exactly what she wanted.”