by Jeff Sampson
“So, I guess maybe I should lay out all that’s been happening here,” I said. “First, I should officially introduce myself. I’m Emily Webb, also known as the ‘other Emily’ to you and probably everyone you knew back when you went to school here. You probably remember me more like this.”
Snatching my glasses off my desk, I put them on my face, then used one hand to hold my hair back in a ponytail.
Evan squinted at me as I did all this, as though struggling to remember, then laughed as I put on the finishing touches.
“I do remember you!” he said, suddenly excited. “Only your glasses were these hideous, thick, red-rimmed things, right?”
I couldn’t help but laugh too. Letting my hair drop, I took off my glasses and said, “Yeah, that was me. I was totally fashionable as an eight-year-old.”
“So, Emily Webb,” Evan said, leaning forward on his elbows. “Tell me what’s been up the past eight years. Though maybe jump to the past month or so.”
Taking in a deep breath, I laid out the whole story. I’d been telling it so much lately that it was pretty rehearsed at that point. I noticed his eyes go wide when I talked about the werewolf transformations, but he stayed silent, listening until I reached today. It was only around the point I brought up the hybrid state that he began nodding knowingly.
“And that’s everything that’s happened until, oh, about an hour ago,” I finished.
Letting out a low whistle, Evan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his slender chest. For a moment he sat there, swiveling slightly back and forth, biting his lip and thinking.
Finally, he looked back at the camera and said, “So, I think you’re right that all those people at BioZenith are lying to you.”
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“Because if they’re anything like my mother, they’re not just scientists,” he said. “They’re not just researching these shadowmen. They call them the Akhakhu. And they worship them.”
It was my turn to go wide eyed. Talk about something I didn’t see coming. My family was never really religious, but I knew people who were, and religion had always sort of interested me—the rituals and meanings and philosophy of it all.
But this felt different from that. First, I always kind of figured science and religion were directly opposed, so a bunch of scientists worshipping anything seemed strange. Beyond that, the shadowmen weren’t holy or benevolent—not at all. They were creatures from another universe that had stalked me and kidnapped one of my friends.
Who would worship beings like that?
“Okay,” I said. “I think I’m ready to hear your story now.”
Taking a deep breath, Evan began.
“This all started about eight years ago. Everything was perfectly normal when I was a kid. Emily and I were always together because our parents were always together. But that stopped after my dad left. That was when my mom started arguing with Emily’s parents all the time.
“I didn’t really know what was going on. I mean, my dad was gone and I didn’t know why, and my mom was sometimes super clingy and sometimes really distant, and she was either always crying or always yelling. I remember her shouting at Emily’s mother that she refused to keep her faith a secret. The last time I saw Emily, my mom kept saying she wouldn’t let me be raised around my aunt and uncle. Only she called them a bunch of heretics who were denying their gods.
“Heavy stuff for a kid, but I remember it clearly because it was just so strange. My mom was never like that before, not ever. I don’t know what went down between the four of them, but something must have. And next thing I know, my mom is piling our stuff into a van and we’re driving overnight to a motel in Oregon. We stayed there for a few weeks before finally moving to a house in Portland. That’s where I live now, by the way.”
At that point he gestured his arms around his room, which looked to be half the size mine was. Though it was so neat that he probably had about the same amount of space.
Focusing the camera back on him, he continued, “Ever since then, my mother has insisted I was ‘special’ and that one day I would be chosen to lead our people to salvation, or some variation on that. I mean, nice thought and all, but I wasn’t really raised religious before that and it just seemed like some creepy cult thing. You ever see that old movie Carrie? About the girl who killed people with her mind at the prom?”
“Of course.”
“Some days my mom was like a half step away from locking me in a room and screaming about my dirty pillows, just like Carrie’s mom. Especially if I ever asked if I could, like, write Emily a letter or something. She even monitored absolutely everything I did online so if I even came close to contacting Emily, she’d know. I guess at least she’s given me some slack now that Emily…now that she’s gone.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how trapped he must have felt. “That sounds rough. I’m surprised you seem so normal.”
He barked a laugh, then winked. “I’m not exactly normal. But who is, right? I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s the Manson family up in here; I got to go to school and have friends and she didn’t drag me to sermons or anything. And her moods weren’t constant, just every few weeks or so. Still, I wished I’d been able to talk to Emily about what we were doing in school or about boys we had crushes on or whatever.”
Crushes on boys, huh? Apparently Spencer wouldn’t have to be jealous of me spending time with the new guy like he’d been of Dalton. Even though Jealous Spencer was absolutely adorable.
“What happened when you started to change?” I asked.
“Actually,” he said as he leaned in close to the cam once more, “that’s something we should talk about. Because when you started talking about werewolves, I started thinking, ‘This girl is lost in her own head, isn’t she?’ It wasn’t until you got to the whole hybrid thing that it made sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never turned into a werewolf. From day one, I was what you described as the hybrid, I guess. It did start only at night, but I can access it anytime now. I mean, my personality shifted a bit, but it just made me less shy. I was still me, only I had superpowers and could sprout claws if I needed to, and my vision could change depending on the situation.”
Wow, now it was my turn to be Jealous Emily. Having the hybrid state without having to work at it sounded awesome.
And actually, maybe that was why he was Vesper 0 despite being last on the list of vespers in the HAVOC files. I’d noticed when I’d looked him up that he was younger than us by a few months. Maybe he was the more perfected form of their formula? Which meant his mom was right: He was special.
“It was all pretty great until I kept slipping between worlds,” he finished.
I blinked.
Well, that was not something I expected.
“You okay?” he asked.
I shook my head, then stammered out, “I’m sorry, what? Slipping between worlds?”
He grinned. “I’m just full of surprises, huh? I saw the shadowmen too, just like you described them. Only when I wasn’t completely focusing on staying whole, I’d sometimes sort of…slide to their dimension. It’s the only way I can describe how it feels. It was scary as hell the first times, because it was always dark and alien, and because those shadowmen—the Akhakhu—at least the ones I’ve seen—look horrible. I mean, they’re sort of human shaped, but it’s like they’ve been bathing in radiation and their skin…” He visibly shuddered. “Boils. Lots of boils.”
“But they look normal here,” I said. “Well, as normal as shadows can be.”
Evan shrugged. “Maybe we’re only seeing their souls or something? I have no idea.”
Pain lanced through my temples. I placed my hand on my forehead and massaged my fingers into my skin, my eyes closed.
Just when I thought I had a bead on things, I learn that there are other events and abilities happening that I have no idea about.
But if he could go betw
een worlds at will, where Dalton was trapped, maybe…
“Oh God, Emily!” Evan’s voice was so loud it made my speakers crackle.
I opened my eyes and looked at my monitor—and saw a shadowy figure just behind Evan, standing perfectly still.
I let out a startled cry. At the same time, Evan said, “Behind you!”
That’s when I noticed, in the miniscreen in the corner of my monitor that showed the view from my camera: There was a shadowman behind me, too.
“You too!” I cried.
I spun my chair around and leaped to my feet, expecting the shadowman to grab me like it had grabbed Dalton, to start dragging me away.
But there was nothing there.
Immediately I spun to look at my monitor, just as Evan did the same. The shadowmen were no longer on either camera.
Chest heaving as he took deep breaths, Evan ran a hand through his hair and said, “Jeez!”
I leaned forward, putting both hands on my desk, willing my heart to pound slower. “No kidding.”
Evan made a sound as though he was about to talk, but a distant slam sounded through my speakers instead.
“Crap,” he muttered.
I looked at my monitor just in time to see Evan getting in close, his face taking up the entire screen. In a low, hushed voice, he quickly said, “Emily, there’s lots more. But just remember not to trust any of the people involved in making us. No matter what they tell you, it’s going to be a lie. This isn’t about science for them anymore. It’s about so much more. It’s—”
With a pop and a crack from my speakers, the screen went blank.
“Evan?” I asked, staring into the camera. “Hey, what happened? Evan!”
Pulling my chair up behind me, I sat down once more and then closed the webcam window. Evan’s name was in red on the chat program. He’d logged off.
I sat there for a long moment, tapping my fingernails against my desk, thinking.
For weeks now I’d been looking for answers. And in the past two days I’d been getting a flood of them…only they weren’t enough to paint the whole picture, to put together the entire puzzle. And this puzzle was like one of those jigsaws where the image is of the same four marbles repeated over and over and the pieces are really small.
I was getting closer, I could feel it. And the sooner I could talk to Evan again, the more blanks I could fill in.
As long as he was okay. Grabbing my phone, I typed in the number he’d given in his email and sent a text: Are you okay? Please let me know. I figured his mom had just come home and he’d needed to log off in a hurry, but after those shadowmen…
Though I guess they weren’t just “shadowmen” after all. I opened up my Things to Do file once more and added two new entries.
Find out: What are the Akhakhu?
Find out: What do they want?
I looked at my clock. It was after five p.m. Evan and I had been talking for more than an hour. Spencer would be by soon to pick me up.
Standing up, I stretched, then went to my window to look outside. It was starting to get dark, and the streetlights were turning on one by one.
For a moment, I thought I saw the reflection of someone behind me in my bedroom window. I spun around again, just as I’d done at my desk—but still there was no one there, not even when I willed my vision to that of my wolf self, which was the only part of me that could see the shadowmen—Akhakhu, whatever—when they were around.
I didn’t want to admit to myself that it hadn’t been a shadowman I’d seen in the window though.
I could have sworn it was Megan.
6
OH MY GOD, YOU TWO ARE A THING
Spencer texted me not long after I’d finished chatting with Evan to let me know he’d be outside in a few minutes. Thankfully. Waiting any longer in my room would have been torture.
Well, maybe not torture, that’s totally hyperbolic. But definitely annoying.
I put on my coat and raced downstairs. As soon as I hit the bottom step and slid on my socked feet into the living room, the front door opened. Placing a hand on the couch, I stopped myself and stood, frozen, as my dad and stepmom came in carrying groceries.
“Leelee,” my dad said tepidly as he caught sight of me.
My stepmom, Katherine, was much more chipper. As she set the bags she was carrying on the dining room table, she said, “Emily! I feel like I haven’t seen you in days. Are you heading out again?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, pointedly avoiding my dad’s attempts to meet my eyes. “Spencer and I are going to the football game tonight.”
Katherine raised her eyebrows at me over her large-lensed glasses. “Oh really,” she said teasingly. “You two have been seeing a lot of each other lately. Has he kissed you yet?”
Despite the rush of anger and sadness I’d felt seeing my dad, I couldn’t keep the embarrassed blush from heating up my cheeks. I kicked at the rug beneath the couch and said, “No, nothing like that, we’re still just…hanging out.”
Giving me a knowing look, Katherine smiled and said, “Mm-hmm.” She came and gave me a quick hug—her giant sweatshirt with the embroidered fall leaves on it was super warm—then grabbed the bags she’d put on the dining room table and carried them into the kitchen.
As soon as she was out of view, I dropped the smile I was faking, lowered my head, and headed toward the door.
“Hey,” my dad said softly, gently taking my arm in his hand. “I—”
Yanking my arm free, I snapped my head to look up directly in his eye. I could feel the stupid tears welling up again, but the anger was stronger—especially from the Nighttime side of me. I let Daytime slip away, and for just a moment I was free to be furiously righteous.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say right now. You can make your excuses tomorrow at BioZenith with all the other liars we called our parents.”
Not waiting for a response, I shoved my feet into my shoes and, without bothering to tie them, stormed out the front door and down the front path to the street. Spencer was already there in the minivan, engine idling.
I could tell my dad was watching me from the door I’d left wide open behind me. As I let Nighttime’s fearlessness recede so I could be more my usual self, I could see what his face must have looked like, and I felt an involuntary wince deep in my chest.
“Everything okay?” Spencer asked as I climbed into the minivan and slammed the door shut.
“No, but I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Let’s go.”
As we drove, I gave Spencer a quick update about Evan. We didn’t have much time to discuss him, though, since we were soon at our first stop: Tracie’s house.
It was a single-story rambler painted yellow with purple trim—probably thanks to her artist mom, though with the bold colors Tracie liked to wear maybe she picked out the paint. I wouldn’t put it past her to update the paint job every few years to keep the house at competitive market price.
Unlike my house or Spencer’s, Tracie’s was separated from her neighbors’ by dense trees on the sides and in the back. Last time I’d been here was when I’d chased Dalton into her backyard, and in the darkness and in the werewolfness of the situation, the place had seemed sort of sinister. In no small part due to seeing Tracie, in werewolf form, chained to her bedposts while a shadowman looked over her, and Dalton tried to bust down her window.
But by the fading daylight, the place was lovely, with a neatly tended garden and impeccable lawn. Everything organized and perfect, just like the girl who lived there.
True to form, she was ready and waiting on the porch the moment we parked on the street. I was surprised to see that she’d chosen a pair of jeans and a black sweater over one of her prim, paisley dresses. But I suppose most people were probably surprised to see me wearing similar clothes when I used to be all dowdy in oversize hoodies and crooked glasses.
Tracie climbed into the backseat, and I turned so we could talk. After she buckled her seat belt, sh
e produced a notebook and a pink pen, then looked at me expectantly.
“Hi,” I said and smiled. “Hope we didn’t keep you waiting long.”
She shrugged. “I was waiting on the porch for about forty-seven minutes, give or take, but I was just anxious to finally learn this hybrid thing.”
“Forty-seven minutes?” Spencer asked as he pulled the minivan into the street and started driving toward school. “Just a guesstimate, right?” He grinned at her in the rearview mirror.
Tracie rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I went into seconds.” To me, she asked, “So how do I do this? I’ve only got three hours until I’m covered in fur, and that might be a bit of a distraction at a football game.”
“Ready to write?” I asked her.
She put pen to paper and nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Listen close. And we’re probably going to need to practice.”
I went over all that I’d figured out between Spencer and my training sessions. How it starts with focusing on the emotions I equate with each state. How to control my breathing and thoughts to hyper focus on what, exactly, I wanted to change. And the most important part: Making peace with the fact that these other forms weren’t alien to me, but were a part of who I was.
At that, Tracie stopped writing and shot her head up to meet my eye.
“That insane person who I become,” she said slowly, “is not a part of who I am. The way the world looks when I’m her is unnatural.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe she wouldn’t exist at all if you hadn’t been made this way. But she does exist, Tracie, and if you don’t learn to accept that you may not be able to control this or access the parts of her that you need.”
“All I need from her is the strength, the stamina, and the superior senses,” she said. “I’m perfectly fine accepting that as a part of me.”
Spencer cranked the wheel, turning us down a side street. As he did, he looked at Tracie once more through the rearview mirror.
“There must be something cool about your Nighttime self,” he said. “I mean, I get super focused to the point where I can become obsessed with stupid minor things that distract me for hours, but that focus also lets me get things done that I’d never have finished before.”