End Times

by Anna Schumacher

  It was easier to see in the open expanse of the track, the packed dirt features pale and spectral as an alien landscape in the wan moonlight. They walked the course silently, the only noises their quiet breath and the party’s faraway buzz, until Owen paused at the lip of the high jump.

  “It’s either stop or turn back at this point,” he said. “Unless you want to risk the jump.”

  Daphne joined him at the edge, and her stomach dropped. It was higher than the roof of the Peytons’ trailer, with nothing but air underneath. It looked so much taller from there than it did from the bleachers.

  “I think I’d rather keep my legs intact, thanks.” She sat, letting her feet dangle over the side, and Owen joined her, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his thigh through their jeans. The stars gazed down at them impassively, high and cold as ice chips in the heavens.

  “So . . .” they said at the same time. They turned to each other, surprised, and then they were laughing softly, voices clear in the vast, empty space.

  Daphne’s mind raced with all of the things she wanted to know: where he’d come from and why he’d left, how he’d gotten to Carbon County and why he’d stayed, the secrets behind his bizarre relationship with Luna and what he made of the strange events that had been occurring in town. But she didn’t know where to start.

  “Luna’s pretty talented,” she said, just to break the ice.

  Owen laughed. “She knows how to work a crowd,” he admitted.

  “How did you guys meet, anyway?” Daphne asked.

  Owen paused, and the air around them seemed to thicken.

  “It’s kind of a strange story,” he said.

  “Everything around here is kind of a strange story.”

  He studied her closely, drinking in the clean lines of her silhouette against the night, the gold flecks in her amber eyes and the arc of her legs dangling into the empty space below. As much time as they’d spent together on the rig, there was still something mysterious about her, a secret that she carried like an egg, protecting it from breaking.

  “You don’t have to explain—” Daphne backpedaled, but Owen cut her off.

  “I want to.”

  Maybe if he opened up and told her everything, the whole crazy story about the dreams and the voices and the surreal trip across country, she’d be willing to tell her story, too. The desire to know her secret burned inside him like the familiar urge to win—but he knew he’d never get it out of her if he didn’t open up first. She was too guarded for that.

  “I turned eighteen a few months ago,” he began, his arm brushing hers, “and that night I had the first dream. They always start out with fire, and that’s all I see: big, orange flames in every direction, anywhere I look. I get closer and I realize it’s not wood in the flames, but stacks of human bodies.”

  Daphne thought of the blood on his hand when he touched the oil and the dark glow of his skin the night Trey died. She shivered, wondering if they were somehow related to his dreams, but said nothing. She didn’t want to stop his story before he even began.

  “There are people dancing around,” he continued, “going in a circle to these strange, dull drumbeats, really getting into it like they’re at a ritual or a rave. I can’t see their faces: They’re all just these dark shapes against the fire, and something about them is completely terrifying.

  “But at the same time, I feel like I have to see their faces,” Owen continued, “like something even more awful will happen if I don’t. So I go closer, even though I don’t want to. I’m sweating bullets, and I’m so scared I want to throw up, but I don’t. I keep going closer, and everything smells like singed hair, and they’re dancing even harder, practically throwing themselves into the fire, but I still can’t see their faces.”

  Owen took a deep breath and gazed out over the barren landscape. Daphne could smell the fear in his sweat, the pure terror that came from even remembering the dreams. He turned to her, his strange green eyes holding hers. “That first night, I woke up before I saw any of them. Right before I came out of it, this huge growling voice whispered find the vein. I woke up tangled up in my sheets and sweating so hard I was actually scared I’d wet the bed.”

  He ducked his head, suddenly bashful. “I can’t believe I just told you that part,” he said quickly. “I mean, for what it’s worth, I didn’t.”

  “It’s okay,” Daphne laughed, glad for the small wedge of light in his strange, dark tale. His story had left her feeling cold and frightened, as if his fear was airborne and had somehow gotten into her lungs.

  “That first night I tried to write it off as just some stupid nightmare, maybe some weird coming-of-age anxiety dream about turning eighteen. But it kept happening, and before I knew it I was having the same dream every night: the bonfire full of bodies, the voice, and the dancers.”

  “Did you ever see their faces?” Daphne asked.

  “I started to, yeah. I’ve seen all of them now. They’re all different, but the weirdest thing is . . .” He broke off, unsure if he should go any further. When he discussed it with Luna, it all made a twisted kind of sense, but he had never talked about it with anyone else.

  “Is what?” she asked softly.

  Owen ducked his head. “You’re going to think this is crazy.”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath and continued. “The weird thing is, they all have my eyes.”

  Understanding dawned on her, fast and bright. “Like Luna,” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “You saw her in your dream before you guys even met?”

  He nodded, telling her about his wanderings across America and the festival where they’d met, how they’d been born on the same commune and even though he had never laid eyes on her before, he instantly knew who she was.

  “And here’s the really creepy thing,” he concluded. “It turned out, she’d been having the exact same dreams.”

  A shiver tickled its way across Daphne’s limbs, leaving a raised bed of goose bumps in its wake.

  “You’re cold.” Owen’s voice was husky. He decided not to share Luna’s crazy interpretation and instead shifted closer and draped his arm over her shoulders. The heat from his body was molten, like a furnace, seeping into her skin and igniting something beneath. “And I’ve been talking about myself this whole time. What about you? What’s your story, Daphne?”

  His voice was so open, so sincere, that for a moment she considered telling him everything: about her miserable life with Myra and Jim and the violent way she’d put an end to it, the trial and her escape to Carbon County. But when she opened her mouth, the words wouldn’t come. The secret had been lodged too deep inside of her, for too long. Extracting it would be as impossible as removing a ship from a bottle—and she was scared that if she tried, she might somehow break herself.

  “There’s not much to tell,” she said finally. “I’m pretty boring.”

  He drew her closer, his hand hot and firm on her shoulder. “That’s not what I keep hearing. They say there were trumpet sounds the day you arrived, and that even with all these prospectors looking for it, you’re the only one who found oil. Sounds like the opposite of boring.”

  He found her eyes and held them. “I think you know it, too. I think you’re just scared to let people know how amazing you really are.”

  She dropped her eyes, watching their feet dangle over the precipice. “Well, there is something kind of weird about me,” she confessed softly. “I don’t know if it’s special, exactly—but I don’t think it’s normal, either.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “But this is going to sound crazy.”

  “Crazier than meeting someone from your dreams who has your exact same eyes?”

  She laughed softly. “Kin
d of on that level, yeah.”

  “Tell me,” he insisted.

  She took a deep breath. “You know the tablet that they found up at Elk Mountain, the one written in ancient Aramaic?”

  He nodded. “It was on the news. Why?”

  “Here’s the crazy thing.” Even though they were completely alone at the top of the jump, she found herself lowering her voice to a hoarse whisper. “I can read it.”

  Owen sat back, his eyes wide. “How?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. She told him about seeing the tablet on the news and realizing the words made sense only to her, her solo trip up Elk Mountain in the dead of the night, and the bizarre and troubling message she had read.

  “I can’t remember all of it,” she finished. “I wish I had taken a picture. There was all this stuff about a Great Divide and a battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth, and then there were these seven signs and wonders.”

  As she listed the few she could remember, she felt Owen’s hand grow cold in hers. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, she realized, and the wind had picked up, wailing through the pines like a lost child.

  “You saw the tablet on the news, right?” she finished.

  Owen nodded, his face pale.

  “Could you read any of it?” she asked.

  “No.” He shook his head slowly. “It just looked like scribbles to me.”

  “Darn.” She felt a wry smile cut across her face. “I hoped I wasn’t the only one.”

  Owen shook off the spike of dread that had pierced him when she mentioned the Children of the Earth. He wouldn’t let his fear ruin the moment, their first real time alone together since they’d met. “There’s some pretty crazy stuff going on in this town,” he said.

  Daphne looked out over the motocross track, at the pines beyond and the dark outline of mountains far away. “Do you think it’s something about this place?” she asked. “Some reason these things keep happening and we both ended up here?”

  “I don’t know.” Owen took his hand in hers, sending a spark sizzling up her arm. “All I know is that the voice in my dreams, the one telling me to find the vein? It stopped when I got here. Now it’s telling me that the vein is here.”

  She turned to him, embers of excitement in her eyes. “So we were both drawn here,” she said. “And Luna, too. You guys had your dreams, and I just had this—well, a feeling. Like if I didn’t come here, something bad would happen. Like there wasn’t any other choice.”

  She sat back, contemplating the stars. “Maybe Pastor Ted’s right,” she mused. “Maybe there really is a great change coming, and we’re supposed to be here for it. Maybe he’s not as crazy as I used to think.”

  “You mean, like, God brought us here?” Owen bit his lip.

  His words deflated her. “God wouldn’t want anything to do with me,” she said, dropping her head.

  “Why not?” Owen leaned into her, forcing her eyes to meet his. The gold flakes in her irises stood out in the moonlight, floating on a troubled amber sea.

  She shook her head. “There’s too much bad in my past.”

  So she was still hiding a secret. It made her even more alluring, a puzzle he was always one piece away from solving. He scanned her face for clues but saw only sorrow, sorrow that ran strong and deep.

  He moved closer and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. Her eyes met his, a liquid cocktail of confusion and need, and her lips glistened in the moonlight.

  Then he was kissing her. One hand pressed against her back and the other brushed her cheek, tangling in her hair, and she was responding, finally, her lips soft and pliant under his. He knew, then, that she hadn’t just been playing hard to get, that she’d been as attracted to him all summer as he was to her, that by fighting him she was fighting her own inner demons. But waiting for her had paid off. He felt tied to her by something more than the kiss, their fates lashed together in an uncertain future.

  He broke away from her, his breath ragged. “I just want you to know,” he murmured, “that whatever happens, you don’t have to go through it on your own.”

  Daphne felt something unclench inside of her. She’d been alone, and afraid, her entire life. Now someone was here—and he was holding her, seeing her, and not letting her go.

  “I know,” she murmured, leaning in for another kiss.

  THEY didn’t say anything else. They didn’t need to. Their lips had finished talking and were busy discovering each other, his hands warm on her back and her arms around him, grasping his shoulders and running up and down the ridges of his spine.

  Being this close to someone had always seemed strange and frightening, the very opposite of Daphne’s instinct to cower and run whenever a guy approached. But Owen had unlocked something inside of her. She was consumed with desire, aching for his lips and tongue, the soft stubble on his cheek and the heady scent of motor oil and shampoo and the musky tang beneath all of it that must have been simply him, his own need responding to hers.

  “I’ve wanted you,” he whispered in her ear, kissing her cheeks, her neck.

  She planted a hand on either side of his face and dragged his lips back to hers.

  She wanted to kiss him all night, forever. She lost all sense of time, was on top of the world and deep in the ground, floating in the heavens and digging to the center of the earth, far below where the oil sluiced and bubbled.

  And then they heard the scream. It was wild and haunting, a silver arrow piercing the night.

  Daphne shot upright, her hair loose around her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her clothes askew.

  “What was that?” Owen joined her, a steadying hand on her back.

  The scream came again, louder, terrified.

  Daphne leapt to her feet, the beautiful warm haze of the kiss in tatters. She knew that voice.

  “Janie,” she breathed. “I have to go.”

  Blades of cold air slashed her face as she raced back down the jump, stumbling on the rough terrain of the track and righting herself and stumbling again. She dimly sensed footsteps a few paces behind her and knew that Owen was following, but she couldn’t afford to wait.

  Something had happened to Janie, something horrible. Another scream came, agonized and full of fear and pain. What if she’d fallen somehow, or burned herself on an ember from the fire? What if Doug had lost control and was hurting her, savagely shoving aside anyone who tried to intervene?

  I never should have left her alone, Daphne cursed herself as she dashed up the trail, dew from the overhanging trees falling in rivulets down her face. She burst into the parking lot, calling her cousin’s name.

  “There you are!” Hilary grabbed Daphne’s arm as soon as she emerged into the firelight. She dragged her through a circle of onlookers, elbowing them out of the way. They parted like strands of hair, shuffling with nervous coughs and murmured apologies, letting them pass.

  Janie lay in the center of the circle, on a bald patch of earth. She clutched the ground with one hand and her belly with another, her face streaked with dirt and makeup and slick with sweat. A steady trickle of moans poured from her mouth, ululating through the quiet night, and for one terrible moment Daphne wondered if she was possessed, if by somehow finally finding her own faith she had unleashed the devil on her cousin.

  Then Janie’s eyes met hers, and they were still Janie’s: big and blue, surrounded by thick, dark, eyeliner, and utterly terrified.

  “What’s wrong?” Daphne rushed to her side. Kneeling in the dirt, she put an arm around her cousin’s trembling back.

  “Ggggguuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnghhhhhh!” Janie howled. The circle of partygoers took a hurried step back. Daphne noticed Doug in the front row, an empty beer can crushed and forgotten in his hand, eyes bulging with horror as he gazed, paralyzed, at his wife.

  Janie clung to her belly, panting and sobb
ing. A puddle of water began to form beneath them, seeping into the ground and spreading in a radius of sopping tendrils. A terrible thought dawned on Daphne as she watched it.

  “Janie.” She cupped her cousin’s chin and gently forced her to eye level. “Is it the baby?”

  “I think so,” Janie whimpered. “I think . . . he’s coming.”

  Daphne glanced from the growing puddle on the ground to the clammy sheen of Janie’s face to the crowd still huddled around them like extras in a movie scene gone wrong.

  “Did anyone call an ambulance?” She whipped around to face the partygoers. They shook their heads, bashful and reticent.

  “They’ll bring the cops,” someone said.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Daphne screamed. “She’s going into labor five weeks early, and you’re worried about your stupid party getting busted? Someone call an ambulance now!”

  “They said they’d shut down the track if—”

  “Now!” Daphne repeated.

  “I got it,” a voice beside her said. She turned to see Owen standing apart from the crowd, already punching the numbers into his phone, and a horrible déjà vu swept over her. She could almost see Trey’s charred remains silhouetted in the firelight.

  The only sounds as Owen spoke to the operator were the bonfire crackling and the wind whispering and Janie’s jagged, panting breaths.

  “They’re on their way,” he said, hanging up the phone.

  The words dropped on the party like a bomb, everyone exploding like shrapnel toward their cars. Feet pounded by them, people running in all directions, barking hurried instructions and frantically calling for their friends in the confusion. A howl of feedback ripped through the speakers as someone’s music player was hastily unplugged, and a half-empty beer can rolled clumsily toward them, kicked over in its owner’s hurry to split the scene.

  Truck engines roared to life one after another, headlights throwing cones of illumination through the swirling dust. They drove away like wasps being smoked out of their nest, the buzz of their motors angry and urgent. One sped by close enough to kick a clump of dirt into Daphne’s face. Dust and gravel whirled around them, stinging their eyes.