Brimstone

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  “I can find someone to translate them,” he said with more excitement than I felt.

  “Not Dr. Dozer.”

  Justin sat back in his chair. “You can’t honestly think she might be cursing her son’s classmates.”

  “No.” I framed my suspicion obliquely. “But I know how much I pick up from my dad, just living in the same house.”

  “You didn’t even know where Mesopotamia was.”

  “I knew it was in the Middle East somewhere, smarty-pants.” I pushed out of the chair and started pacing. “It’s too much of a coincidence that Stanley is connected to all the victims and the brazier.”

  “Well, you can’t just march up to him and accuse him of cursing his classmates.”

  I paused to imagine the scenario and admitted, “Okay, I guess I can’t. Not with only circumstantial evidence, anyway.” How could I find out if he’d bought wormwood or quinine? You could get just about anything off the Internet, but unless I had either his computer or a Dozer-family credit card number, I was at an investigative dead end.

  Justin watched me, reading the thoughts on my face; I’m not exactly Ms. Impassive. “Maggie.” His eyes were sober, his tone cautious. “If it is Stanley, you should be careful not to let him know you suspect him. It would be easy for him to set the demon on you.”

  My hand crept up to clasp my necklace. “I’m not in the picture. I’m not part of the pattern.”

  “But you are. You’re behind the camera.” I blinked in shock. I hadn’t thought of that. Were we back to Karen taking my place on the diving board?

  He seemed to regret pointing out the connection I was too close to see. “I’m sorry. But I want you to be careful.”

  I tucked my hair behind my ear in a determined motion. “I’m not trying to antagonize it. But it’s hard to try and stop a thing without making it, you know, a little pissed.”

  “I realize that.” He rose and took my fidgeting hand. “I’m not trying to be overprotective. But it’s hard to know you’re in danger and not be able to do something about it.”

  How strange, that a little thing like a hand could be the center of so much feeling. The nerves on the back of it where his fingertips brushed, in the palm securely wrapped in his, fired like sparklers. The sensation rushed up my arm and alighted, fizzling, in the middle of my chest.

  “You put all those charms on my room,” I said. “You put that salt in my purse. I’m not sure I’d be here if you hadn’t. The fumes …” I broke off. I didn’t like to think about that.

  He shook his head. “But I’m just shooting in the dark. That’s why I got so angry on Saturday. I wish I knew exactly what would protect you. But I can only make my best guess.”

  I glanced at the books and papers taking up eighteen square feet of table. “I think your best guess is better than a lot of people’s certainties.”

  His smile warmed me from the inside out—crooked, rueful, and unwittingly charming. “Yeah, but it’s not the same thing as riding in on a white charger.”

  I laughed, precisely because I could picture him doing just that. Justin was a throwback to another age. A scholar knight.

  “I’m not much of a damsel in distress, though. Too mouthy.”

  “Too stubborn,” he nodded.

  He didn’t have to agree quite so quickly. Not that I wanted to be a damsel in distress, of course. “So what do we do now?”

  He looked at the books on the table and sighed. “I have to finish my paper tonight. Send me the letters you wrote down. Your dad can give it to me in class tomorrow. Meanwhile, note down everything in your dreams. And watch out for Stanley. And keep an eye on the last guy. What’s his name?”

  “Brandon.” I frowned. “I wonder why nothing has happened to him yet.”

  “If I were a guy who’d been beaten up and humiliated by someone for years, I’d definitely save the big kahuna for last.”

  “Good point.” Justin seemed to have accepted my theory of Stanley-as-puppetmaster.

  He wrote “Still in use” on a piece of notebook paper and stuck it on top of his pile of books. “I’ll walk you out to your car.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You need to get back to work.”

  “Look, I know you don’t need a white knight, but at least let me be a gentleman.”

  I gave a sheepish grimace, and agreed.

  We left the library, winding back through the maze, past the dedicated students with their laptops clicking and pens scratching. On the short walk to the parking lot, Justin and I talked about college, and the pleasant night, and anything other than demons and curses and gangly, vengeful nerds. We reached the Jeep too quickly, and he saw me buckled in and on my way before returning to his work. It was just a few minutes of peace in the turmoil of the week before, and it would have been perfect, if only he’d taken my hand again.

  I went to bed with both determination and dread, certain I’d meet Old Smokey in my dreams. I woke the next morning to the brain-melting beep of the alarm clock, tired and grumpy, but without any recollection of a vision or nightmare. Grumbling all the way, I schlepped into a hot shower, and stood under the spray until the cobwebs began to clear from my head and the bathroom was thick with steam.

  Turning off the water, I reached for my towel, wrapping it around myself while I grabbed another one to wipe away the fog from the mirror.

  The sweep of the cloth revealed nothing but roiling black mist and a pair of sulfurous yellow eyes, blazing out at me from the glass.

  23

  i screamed. Shrieked like the most girly, helpless damsel on the planet. I fell against the bathroom door, fumbling with the knob, whimpering and struggling like a rabbit in a snare. Steam hung in the air, stroked my skin. The demon didn’t have to touch me; I was going to give myself a heart attack. My heart beat against my ribs like a caged bird—just like I beat against the bathroom door.

  Footsteps thundered up the stairs, then the door flew open. I tumbled out, catching my towel close around me, staggering to stay on my feet.

  “Close the door! Close the door!” I yelled.

  Dad slammed the door closed. “What the Hell?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Oh my God, it was in the mirror.” I jabbered like a madwoman. “It has eyes now, and it was in the mirror.”

  “What are you talking about, Maggie? What has eyes?”

  “The thing! The smoke thing from my dream!” My pulse still pounded. I could feel it in my brain, in my vital organs. “Get away from the door!”

  He moved away, but only to get the afghan from my bed. Until he wrapped it around my shoulders, I hadn’t known how icy cold my skin was. “It sounds like you were still dreaming,” he said worriedly.

  “I didn’t dream last night.” I could not drag my eyes away from the painted wood panels of the bathroom door.

  “Mike?” Mom’s worried voice floated up the stairs. “What’s going on? Is she all right?”

  Dad gave me a look and called back in answer. “She’s okay. She says a mouse ran across her foot.”

  “That’s absurd. We don’t have mice.”

  “So I’m telling her.”

  Indignation helped chase away panic. “I’m not afraid of mice.”

  “Do you want me to tell your mother you think you saw a smoke monster in the bathroom?”

  I pictured that scene and answered, “No, I guess not.”

  He rubbed a reassuring hand over my back. “Maybe you did dream, and got in the shower still half asleep.”

  “Yeah.” That actually made some sense. More sense than Old Smokey getting past all my defenses and into the bathroom. I wrapped the afghan more tightly and shuddered, but the blind, flailing terror had abated. “Now I feel a little silly. It must have been just a dream. Sorry, Dad.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Magpie.” He hugged me in tight reassurance. “Do you want me to open the door before I go?”

  If we saw nothing, I would feel even more foolish. If something was there, I didn’t want it to see
my dad. “No. I’m good.”

  “Actually,” he looked a little sheepish, “it will make me feel better.”

  He smiled, but I saw him surreptitiously wipe sweaty palms on his trousers.

  “Okay. But wait a second.” I grabbed the canister of salt that still sat on the nightstand. Pouring a handful into my palm, I indicated with a jerk of my head that he should open the door while I stood ready to fire at whatever lurked inside.

  Dad and I had seen the same action movies, so he got into place, all very Lethal Weapon. I mouthed, “One, two, three!” and he yanked open the door so hard it banged into the wall, showering plaster onto the carpet. The crash startled me, and I flung my barrage of salt into the bathroom with a stifled squeak.

  Nothing waited inside. Only the humid blanket of air left over from my shower. The last of the condensation cleared from the mirror with the rush of air. There was no black smoke, no burning eyes. Not even a whiff of brimstone, just the clean, herbal scent of my shampoo. Well, plus the mess of salt on the floor.

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” said Dad, making me laugh, mostly with relief. He examined the big hole the doorknob had made in the wall. “Your mom is going to kill us.”

  “I’ll move the bookshelf over until we can fix it.”

  He didn’t say anything about the empty bathroom. “I’ll have the coffee ready when you get down.” He went downstairs, and I heard Mom at the bottom ask him, “What in heaven’s name are you two doing up there?” and Dad answer placidly, “Looking for the mouse.”

  For the record, I was never afraid of mice. I was, however, worried I’d slipped a mental gear.

  When I got to English, Lisa ambushed me, dragging me back out into the hall where the noise of students hurrying to their first-period classes covered our voices.

  “What is going on with you?” Hands on her hips, she glared down at me. She wore a black-and-red blouse I hadn’t seen since her Goth days, and though she’d paired it with faded blue jeans, the severe color still made her look very pale. “I tried to call you until eleven, and you didn’t answer.”

  “I was in the college library. The reception is bad there.” I shifted my heavy backpack. She hadn’t even let me put my stuff down. “Why didn’t you leave voice mail?”

  A sophomore glanced at us curiously as she got her books out of her locker. Lisa grabbed me by the arm and pulled me a few doors down. “I heard about Brian. Why are you always around when these things happen? You have got to … I don’t know.” She pressed her fingers over her eyes. “You can’t do that anymore.”

  “There aren’t any more,” I said. “Only Brandon. He’s the last one.”

  She dropped her hands and stared at me. “The last what?”

  “The last— Man, this sounds so crazy when I say it out loud.” I whispered back, keeping our heads close together. “Remember I told you yesterday, I thought all these freaky things were connected? Well, Brandon is the last link in the chain.”

  Lisa shook her head in denial. “You have lost it. They may call me D and D Lisa, but at least I know the difference between fantasy and reality.”

  Ouch. I didn’t quite flinch. “I know it sounds wild.”

  “It sounds certifiably insane!” She didn’t bother to lower her voice now. “Paranoid and delusional.”

  I snapped back. “Maybe you could use the intercom. I don’t think the whole school heard.” She clamped her jaw in annoyance, but at least she stopped yelling.

  “Look,” I said as reasonably as I could, “it sounds crazy because you don’t know the whole story. I haven’t told you what’s been going on, because, well, I know it’s unbelievable.”

  She fell back against the lockers, folding her arms across her slim body. “You couldn’t have left me happily in the dark?”

  “Not with you getting up in my grill the second I walked in the door!” The hall was clearing; I didn’t have much time to cajole her onto my team. “I’m telling you now. The fact is, I could really use your devious brain.”

  She stared at me for a hard moment. Then the bell rang, and she was forced into a decision. “After school?”

  “Yeah. My house.”

  “There’d better be snacks.”

  I had to go out to the Jeep at lunchtime and find my chemistry lab book. Used to be, if you came to Professor Blackthorne’s class unprepared, you had to wear the Molecule Hat, an absurd thing made out of Nerf balls and Tinkertoys. But a parent had complained that this was damaging to the students’ self-esteem, so rather than be liable for a lot of expensive psychiatric therapy, the administration nixed the hat. Now unprepared students had to copy out the periodic table.

  I didn’t have the patience for charting elements, which is why I was in a mostly empty parking lot when Brandon cornered me between my Wrangler and an Explorer the size of Nebraska.

  “Heya, Quinn.” He filled the gap between the cars. To my rear, someone had parked their Mazda across two spaces, blocking any graceful exit. Bravado it was, then.

  “Hi, Biff. No backup today?”

  “Like I would need backup to talk to you.” He leaned his mammoth shoulders against the SUV. “But now that you mention it, I have noticed that my friends aren’t doing too well, lately.”

  “Oh really?” I decided to play dumb, which was an ironic reversal for any conversation with Brandon. “What could that possibly have to do with me?”

  “You tell me.” He walked forward, tall and muscular, a lot bigger than me. But even more unnerving was his confidence, his certainty that he could get away with things that ordinary people couldn’t.

  “You interviewed Jessica for the paper,” he said, “and then she lost her voice right before the play. You fought with Jess on Friday, and Saturday she got caught shoplifting. You were around before Jeff crashed the Mustang and you were there when Jessica got taken to the nuthouse. And now Brian.”

  “That’s a fascinating recap, Brandon.” The book retrieved, I swung my heavy backpack onto my shoulder with a whump. “You could write for Paranoia Digest, if there was such a thing and it wouldn’t require some literacy.” I stepped toward the exit, willing him to get out of my way. “There’s no way I could be responsible for those things happening to your friends.”

  “Well, I was thinking about what Jess said that night of the play.” He didn’t budge, just folded his arms, making his broad chest look even more impassable. “Maybe you are a witch.”

  Laughing was probably not my smartest move. It really pissed him off. Go figure.

  He moved fast, pushing me up against the SUV, his arms trapping me on either side, blocking escape.

  I stopped laughing, and got pissed, too. “Get off me, asshole.”

  “Make me, Quinn.”

  “If I am a witch, what’s to stop me from shriveling your testicles into raisins with my evil eye?”

  His beefy forearms braced against my shoulders. I could smell his deodorant, see the flecks in his irises as he leaned down to look me in the eye. A dominance ploy. If I squirmed, he would win.

  “I don’t believe any of that magical bullshit,” he said. “But there’s nut jobs that’ll buy any rumor that goes around. It doesn’t have to be true to royally screw up your life.”

  My stomach knotted. Witch hunts scared me. Not for the obvious reasons, but because they were so irrational that there was no defense against them. But I couldn’t actually be hanged for a witch. Could I? I wouldn’t put anything past the Republicans.

  “What do you want, Brandon?” I bit the words out.

  “I want those pictures to disappear. The ones you took of me and Dozer.”

  “Is that all?” A smart guy would have demanded to know what was happening to his friends, or worried he might be next. But you don’t have to be smart to be a bully. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “And if they show up in anyone’s e-mail—”

  “It’s a stalemate. I get it.” He still had me cornered against the Explorer, and didn’t look ready to move. “A
re we done?”

  His eyes narrowed, summing me up, and I realized we weren’t done, because what he really wanted wasn’t for those pictures to vanish, but for me to be scared of him.

  “Well,” he began, leaning in closer, “I’d like to know why Brian has been panting after you all of a sudden.” Elbows against the car, he pinned me with his weight. “You got some hidden talent, Quinn?”

  I dropped my fifty-pound backpack on his foot. When he bent over, cursing, I slammed my knee up into his gut. He was lucky, because I was aiming for the place where he kept his brain.

  “You bitch!” he wheezed, the wind knocked out of him.

  “Oh, I’m the dog?” I yelled, because I was scared of him, and I was furious with him for making me feel that way. “I thought you were just a bully, Brandon, not an oversexed sociopath.”

  “What’s going on here?” That ringing voice could only mean Halloran. Oh, yeah. The screwing continues.

  “Nothing, Mr. Halloran,” said Brandon, trying to stand up straight.

  “Nothing except sexual harassment,” I said, still livid. “Maybe even assault.”

  “Now, Margaret. I’m sure there’s just been a misunderstanding.” The assistant principal made a placating gesture. “These mix-ups can happen between young men and women.”

  I stood trapped between him and Biff, and I didn’t like the symbolism any more than the fact. “I don’t think so, Mr. Halloran.”

  “And now you’ve gone and overreacted.” He oozed soothing condescension. Brandon didn’t even bother to fake innocence; he just smirked. Sure, I’d hit him, but not before he’d seen my fear.

  “I’m going to overreact all the way to the school board if you don’t get out of my way.”

  “There’s no need for that,” said Halloran, still trying to convince me we were all good friends.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and marched forward. He moved aside, proving he was at least a fraction of a point smarter than Brandon.

  24