by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
When the dishes were done, I escaped back to my room in the basement and tried to complete my homework in peace. The only problem was, now that I didn’t have the distraction of my noisy family, I was thinking about the raven and the voices that whispered in my mind.
I shook my arms out as if they had fallen asleep and turned my classical music back on, setting the volume louder than before. Perhaps I could keep the voices at bay with a piano concerto. For some reason, I felt the need to stand in the middle of my room and stare at the sliding glass door, as if some invisible force was beckoning me to look outside. It was getting dark out, and all I could see was my tall, gangly reflection staring back at me. Fearing that the raven would return, I drew the blinds and plopped back down at my desk. I needed to focus and forget about the stupid bird.
It was ten o’clock by the time I finished my homework. I quickly brushed my teeth and washed my face, then made sure my alarm was set to wake me in the morning. I left my music on a loop, hoping that the soothing violins would not only lull me to sleep, but keep the disturbing events of the day at bay.
-Four-
Illusion
To my great relief, the next several days passed by with very little drama. Adam Peders and his gang only sneered at us twice more that week, the creepy homeless man seemed to have moved on, and best of all, I hadn’t seen the raven or heard any strange voices whispering to me in the night. All in all, a great week. I was actually surprised I hadn’t seen or heard anything odd after that eventful Monday, especially considering Friday was Halloween. Historically, my symptoms always got worse during the days leading up to my birthday, so I didn’t know whether I should have been jumping for joy or terribly worried something awful was about to happen. To be safe, I walked around with my fingers crossed.
On Friday morning, I rose early and put on my costume. I loved that we were allowed to wear our costumes to school on Halloween. Tully and I had decided to be butterflies so I wore my black jeans, a black t-shirt and a pair of antennae that we had made ourselves. My wings were yellow and black striped like a swallowtail’s while Tully’s were orange and black like a monarch’s.
“Me-ghan! Breakfast!” Logan bellowed from above.
I checked myself in the mirror one more time, then grabbed my backpack in one hand and my wings in another and headed upstairs. I took the stairs two at a time, reaching the door that led into our kitchen just as my brothers pulled it open. I stumbled onto the tiled floor, too stunned to take note of the Halloween decorations hanging from the ceiling or the jack-o’-lanterns grinning from the dining room table.
“Surprise!” everyone yelled.
I squealed in irritation as Logan and Bradley attacked me with orange and black silly string. Being twelve and ten year old boys, silly string was a staple in their collection of ammo. Picking the sticky mess from my hair, I scowled when I noticed the curls coming loose. So much for cooperative hair on my birthday.
“Logan, you totally set me up for that!”
My younger brother grinned and shrugged, his sandy blonde hair still messy from sleep.
I quickly forgave them because when I bothered to look around I noticed that everyone was up and that Mom had made me a special breakfast. Aiden ran up and gave me a hug and I returned the gesture.
“So, do you feel seventeen?” Dad asked me.
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
Not only did I get French toast with raspberry syrup and whipped cream, but my parents insisted that I open my birthday presents as well. The boys had pooled together to get me a basket of my favorite candies, along with a birthday card they had made themselves. Mom and Dad got me the new jeans I had wanted for months and a few gift cards from my favorite stores.
I was grateful that Robyn was picking me up that morning, because I was running late with all of the fuss over my birthday.
“So, you are going to the dance tonight, right?” Mom asked nonchalantly as I packed my lunch.
I rolled my eyes. We had discussed this earlier that week. I really didn’t want to go. I wasn’t much of a dancer and it was really more for the preppy kids who thought high school was the apex of their lives. I really just wanted to hang out with my friends at someone’s house and tell ghost stories or watch some slasher flick or something.
“Yeah Mom, but I’m not sure what we’re doing afterwards.”
“Just be careful honey,” was all she said as she reached up and gave me a quick hug around the shoulders.
The sound of Robyn’s beat-up compact car lurching to a stop at the foot of our driveway drew my attention away from my mom.
“Okay, see you guys later!” I called as I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.
Tully was already in the front seat so I squeezed into the back. Like me, she didn’t have her wings on yet. I glanced at Robyn. She didn’t look much different than she normally did, only this time she wore a full black skirt and a black and silver bodice decorated with what looked like skulls. The lipstick she chose for today was a brilliant red color.
“What are you supposed to be, a gothic witch?”
Robyn snorted as she jammed the car in gear. “No, I’m the Morrigan.”
I blinked. “The what?”
Robyn sighed. “Hello! The Celtic goddess of the dead?”
I arched a brow at Tully, who had turned around to look at me. She barely fought back a smile.
“Oh, duh. Of course,” I answered with my own grin.
“So what’s the plan for tonight?” Robyn asked, as if her sacred obsession with Celtic myth hadn’t been scandalized by our ignorance.
I cringed. “My parents think I’m going to the dance.”
To my great surprise, Robyn actually nodded. “We’ll just go for an hour and watch the lemmings paw at each other, then we can ditch,” she said with her usual indignant flare.
“What are we going to do afterwards then?” I wanted to know. “My mom thinks I’m going to be at the dance ‘til ten.”
Tully was good about checking in with her parents. It made me feel guilty. My own parents trusted me too easily. Of course, I never so much as faked being sick to stay home from school, but now that I was a teenager they ought to be a little more strict. Not that I would ever do anything too scandalous.
Robyn grinned. “Hello? All Hallows’ Eve? We’re going to go down into that swamp near your house and light a bonfire. Duh.”
She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, the red glitter eye shadow she’d caked on reminding me a little of that raven.
I shivered and cast the demented bird from my thoughts and instead focused on what Robyn had just said. That’s right; another pagan festival was upon us. I wondered if Will and Thomas would join us this time. During the last ‘festival’, Will had had an allergic reaction to Robyn’s harvest cakes and Thomas had felt weird about the poem she’d recited.
“That sounds more interesting than the dance,” I said, adding my two cents.
Sure Robyn’s little ‘pagan parties’ were bizarre, but I couldn’t say they weren’t interesting. But first we had to endure the dance . . .
Ugh, I hated dances, at least at our high school. First of all, I couldn’t dance, second of all, the music they always picked out was just noise to me, and last of all, I didn’t need some freshman or sophomore boy pawing all over me and then bragging to his friends later about how he had hit it off with a junior. No thanks. I may be one of the outcasts, but that didn’t make me immune to the truly desperate.
“I’m in too,” Tully piped. “I’ll just have to let my parents know.”
Robyn laughed. “Now we just have to convince the boys.”
During our lunch break later that day, we outlined our plans for the evening to Will and Thomas, including Robyn’s idea of ending the night with a little Halloween fest down in the swamp.
“Sure, why not?” Will shrugged.
I returned to my lunch, not bothering to wait for Thomas’ response. As far as I knew, his parents were comfort
able with the idea of Halloween but not so much so with the origin of the traditions behind it. I knew he would come up with some excuse about taking his brothers and sister trick-or-treating. We all knew his family was uncomfortable with Robyn’s beliefs and we didn’t blame him. But he must have felt rude about turning down Robyn’s invitations time and time again, because he always seemed to make such an effort to politely decline.
“Do we have to wear a special costume or something?”
I nearly choked on my yogurt. Both Tully and I looked at him with wide eyes. He merely shrugged off our reaction with a rather reserved look.
“What?” he said. “I’m tired of everyone pushing me around. I’m curious to see what Robyn is always going on about. I told my parents I was going to the dance and then to Will’s afterward.”
We were all slightly shocked. So much so that Robyn, instead of laughing out right and crowing on about her obsession with the ancient Celts, mumbled a submissive, “Well, your Halloween costume should be fine.” She warily eyed his thrown-together zombie motif. “It’s just a bonfire really, nothing too freaky.”
For the first time in her life Robyn seemed humbled, but I kept staring at Thomas, waiting for him to fold under the pressure. But the determined look on his face never faltered. Deep down inside, I gave a little cheer. I was proud of him. Eventually I concluded that perhaps Adam’s public insult the other day was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Thomas was tired of being a doormat; to his peers and to his family. He was beginning to stand up to everyone and even though this was a small step that only we would witness, it was a giant leap for his self-confidence.
After I finished my lunch, I crumpled the paper sack into a ball and aimed for the closest recycling bin, and then I leaned back against the sycamore tree, glancing up into the few leaves that remained on its branches. We had bypassed the usual tables today, choosing to eat out on the field behind the school with the few other outcasts. Normally we could spend the lunch period in relative peace, but that wasn’t always the case and today was no exception.
We were minding our own business on the far side of the track when Michaela West, dressed in her cheerleading outfit, left the lunch tables and came sauntering over. I ignored her at first, thinking she was just headed towards the garbage can to throw something away, but when she didn’t veer to the left I started to worry.
Michaela was short and petite, with a perpetual scowl and fake eyebrows. She wore her auburn hair pulled back in a tight pony tail and had way too much makeup on. None of us were impressed with her costume. She just used Halloween as an excuse to hike up her skirt and add extra padding to her bra. Some pale foundation and two red dots drawn on her neck suggested she was trying to be some peppy version of a vampire’s victim. She closed the last few feet between us and crossed her arms.
“What do you want?” Robyn asked with sarcasm.
“Just thought you girls would like to know about this list,” she said, completely disregarding Thomas and Will.
She pulled out a piece of lined paper from a pocket and flipped it in front of us.
“It’s been circulated around the entire school.”
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to know what was written on it. It could only be something demoralizing.
Unfortunately, Tully spoke before thinking it through. “What is it?”
“Oh, a list of the girls Adam and Josh would never date even if they underwent plastic surgery.”
Robyn made a sound of outrage and Tully took a small step back. I merely glared at the awful girl.
“Oh, it gets better,” Michaela piped, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. “People voted on who would be most likely never to have a boyfriend, too.” She paused and looked up at me, her eyes bright with malice. “Do you want to know who got the most votes?”
Before she could continue, Robyn pressed forward and told Michaela she could shove her list somewhere where the sun didn’t shine and grabbed my arm to pull me away. I had no objections to this method of escape. Insults weren’t my forte, which was surprising since I’d had them thrown at me for much of my life. Apparently I was the catch and release type; I never bothered to dwell too much on what was said to me. Now I wished I’d tucked some of them away to use in situations like this. Luckily, we had Robyn. She produced insults the way a rabbit produced offspring.
Michaela shouted something nasty at us but I didn’t hear her. I was trying to forget about that note she held in her hands. I know it was stupid to be upset about it but I couldn’t help it. I knew exactly who had been voted as the least likely ever to have a boyfriend, and I knew why. It was me, and the reason was because I was so very strange. No matter how hard I tried to blend in, some part of my weirdness always seemed to seep out.
“Forget them Meg!” Robyn hissed. “They are a bunch of girls with no self-esteem and no brain cells. What do they know?”
I nodded. Robyn was right, and today was Halloween. It was my seventeenth birthday and I wasn’t going to let some stupid, fake cheerleader ruin it. We would go to the dance tonight just to make an appearance, then we would go off and have Robyn’s bonfire. Yes, it meant I was that weird kid I didn’t want to be, but at least I would be among friends.
* * *
After school, I turned down Robyn’s offer of a ride home.
“Are you sure? You’re not planning on taking out Michaela and her posse, are you?”
I snorted. “No, I just think a long walk would do me some good. I’m going to take the trail through the swamp.”
It was the truth. I pretended not to care about Michaela and her stupid list, but deep down it hurt. I didn’t want my friends to know about it though. They would only want to comfort me, and although I appreciated their concern, I wanted to shake the feeling off on my own.
The wind rustled through the tall eucalyptus trees and I was practically humming as I headed across the football field and track behind the school. I found the trail that cut through the trees and ended up on a back road that led into the swamp. From there it would be easy to find the horse path that ran behind my backyard.
It was a rather pretty afternoon, the sky clear blue and the sun warm. The weather usually stayed that way through late November. I drew in a deep breath, truly reveling in the smells of autumn. I couldn’t tell you what it was about the fall that made me like it so much. Maybe it was the idea that the year was coming to an end and soon the cycle would start all over again. Maybe it was the smell of hay and the earthy colors that accompanied the harvest that appealed to me so much. Maybe it was because my birthday arrived on the cusp of fall. Whatever it was, I liked it.
After passing through the tall trees, I cut across a side trail that had been worn through the layers of leaf litter and stepped out onto a quiet street. I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack and popped in my headphones. I searched my music list, looking for something that would match my mood. I decided to go with some indie rock today. I twirled a strand of my dark hair with my index finger and kicked at acorns on the ground as I walked. My butterfly antennae bounced with the rhythm of the current song and the yellow in my wings caught the sun of the autumn afternoon, leaving splotches of color along the road.
It took me half an hour to come to the end of the road. I easily climbed over the barrier that stated motor vehicles weren’t permitted any further and descended deeper into the small wilderness that rested behind my home. The thatch of willows up ahead told me that the water was near, but I wasn’t too worried about mosquitoes or getting wet. I would be through quick enough and by this time of year any significant amount of standing water was all but gone.
It was while I was crossing the small bridge of land that stretched beneath the low canopy that I first noticed something strange. I had been so busy humming along to my music that I missed it at first. A flash of something dull green, then the jerking and swaying of the reeds and brush ahead of me forced me to stop and pull the headphones out of my ears. It was as if a
n army of gophers had suddenly decided to devour the shrubbery around me. I would’ve dismissed it as merely some small animals foraging for food, but there were just too many of them and now that I didn’t have music blasting in my ears, I could hear them too.
My skin immediately began to crawl, the way it did when my mind started playing tricks on me. It almost sounded like laughter, maniacal laughter; like some demented puppet from a horror movie had been let loose in the swamp. I swallowed only to find my throat had gone dry. And then I saw one of them. The creature was small and warty like a toad, with beetle-black eyes and teeth that protruded from what I could only assume was a primitive mouth. Reddish, bedraggled hair fell from the top of its head and trailed down its back like a horse’s mane. Another one pushed the first creature out of the way, this one a little more gray than green, its hair paler. If I were to name them, I’d say they were gnomes. But they couldn’t be, because gnomes didn’t exist and I wasn’t living in some fairy tale. The past seventeen years of my life were proof to that.
I took a deep breath and started moving once more. It was really happening again. The voices, and now I was seeing things. I guess I hadn’t kept my fingers crossed long enough. I wondered if I should tell my parents this time. But that meant more visits to the psychiatrist and more medication. I wasn’t even sure if Dr. Morgan still had her practice.
A sudden squeal behind me made me jump. I shot a glance over my shoulder. From the thrashing of the reeds and splashing of water, I could tell some of the things had gotten into a fight. Then a few of them tumbled out onto the trail. Several more joined them a few moments later. They were all hideous, gray and green and brown with warts and those strange manes running down their backs. They were only a foot or so tall, but they had vicious looking claws at the ends of their fingers and toes, and they seemed to be strong for their size.
I guess I stood still for too long, because one turned and spotted me. It let out one of those shrill, fingernails-scraping-a-chalkboard cries and threw itself down the trail towards me. My heart leapt into my throat, but I turned and took off, running up the sandy trail that would take me home. I might have been tall and gangly, but thank goodness I was fast. I put some distance between us, my backpack thumping painfully against my spine, my delicate butterfly wings snagging against stray branches. I never looked back, just pushed harder despite the deep sand. And I had been worried about mosquitoes.