by Lynne Thomas
Oh God.
I’m not going to catch him. He’s going to die.
He closes his eyes.
I focus so hard and so fast that everything goes black for a second. The pressure in my head sends darts of pain along my jawbone and they drill into my teeth. I zoom towards the earth.
Tears stream from my eyes as the wind hits me full in the face. The ground looms and blurs.
If he dies, I die: I commit myself to Travis.
With one last push I catch him and, with seconds to spare, stop.
We hang.
Inches above the ground.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH”.
I throw back my head and roar.
Travis starts the second I stop.
“Jelly, thank you, thank…”
I let go and he drops, in a heap, onto the sand. Looking up into the night sky, the fire burning bright in my eyes, I see black robes rippling in the wind.
Revenge.
I take off.
Keeping my eyes trained on the hovering demon, I climb, the wind tearing at my face. My hatred has become a palpable thing; I can feel it, taste it. I savour it.
“Option one and two are out.” I shout to be heard over the wind.
Thorn raises an eyebrow.
“Oh yes?”
“One and two are out. Option three is in.”
“And option three would be…?”
“Well, I’m not going quietly and you’re not leaving here without me. Why don’t you have a wild stab in the dark at what option three is?”
“Oh.” His eyes flash.
He wants it bad. The opportunity to fight me is too much of a temptation. I knew it would be. He grins. I stare back.
sssssssssssssSLAP
He hits me. Not with his fists, but with power, and it hurts.
I feel the force of the blow in every bone in my body; my entire skeleton rattles. I imagine Humphrey at the hands of the bashrak and welcome the pain. I suck it up. When I kill this piece of filth, Humphrey’s going to be with me every step of the way.
Lightening flickers out at sea as I tumble backwards, my head spinning. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the Hunter circling to my left.
Sneaky weasel.
I spin and, reaching out my arm, send a shock wave towards him.
Caught off guard, the Hunter catches the brunt of the blow and cartwheels backwards. He stops in the air and rights himself, his lips peeling back. He runs his horrible purple tongue over a row of razor sharp teeth.
Sick. The guy needs help.
Without warning, Thorn launches himself at me, physically.
Wasn’t expecting that.
Framed by flashing lightening, he looks huge, like a monstrous, evil, leviathan, coming straight at me. His robe streams out behind him as he closes the gap between us with terrifying speed. There’s no time to prepare and, in seconds, he’s on me. His hands close around my throat, squeezing my windpipe. I claw at his hideous bony fingers as the pressure increases and try to draw some breath into my burning lungs. His nails scrape my skin.
He mutters to himself as he squeezes.
“I’ve tried the old ways, I’ve tried the new ways. I’ve tried tricking you, being your friend, threatening your friends, your family. And where has it got me?” He shakes me and stars explode behind my eyes. “I’ll tell you where it’s got me: no where! No where at all.”
I force three fingers underneath one of his and try to pull his hand from my throat. Fighting for air, my vision starts to go.
“You just refuse to lie down and die. Do you know how annoying that is? Hmm? EXTREMELY ANNOYING!”
Spit flies onto my face as he screams.
“So, I’m going to do it the human way.”
He laughs. It makes me think of a bucket of worms, slick with slime, writhing against each other.
As the storm draws nearer, I start to lose consciousness. My body is dissolving.
The Hunter chuckles as he closes my windpipe.
“Oh, that’s cute. That is so cute. You might be invisible, but I can still feel your scrawny neck under my fingers. A neck that I’m about to break. I am feeling good!”
It’s not supposed to end this way. I will it not to end this way.
Thunder booms from the clouds. Thorn jumps and his grip on my throat slips.
Gulping a ragged breath, I come back from the brink of unconsciousness.
“Jelleeeeeeeeee, Je-lleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
I hear Travis shouting my name from the beach below and something clicks in my mind. Something he said earlier, when we were hiding…
Maybe it’ll thunder. They hate the thunder.
Why do they hate the thunder? It can’t hurt them, can it?
Can it?
Something I’m missing…I can’t quite…
“Thunder,” spits Thorn, as he re-tightens his grip on my throat.
Click.
And I get it. Man oh man, do I get it.
It all comes together in one terrible, defining moment. Me, my history, my life, my birth, my planet, the bashrak; memories flood my mind and I’m saturated in them.
Oh, dear lord; the things I’m capable of. The things I can do. The things I’m about to do.
They don’t hate the thunder. They fear the lightening that comes before it. And I can call it.
Drawing strength from my core, I yank his hands from my neck. Grappling in mid air, we spin like wrestlers. The clouds flicker as my army of electric soldiers lie in wait, jostling and bristling in the dark underbelly.
Thorn senses the change. He tightens his grip on my wrists and starts to spin us around. He’s going to launch me into the sky then come after me with all he has. I can feel it.
I can feel everything.
“Never going to happen,” I whisper, twisting my wrists, grabbing him and sinking my nails deep into the pale flesh of his inner forearms. “You’re not going anywhere.”
As we spin, the energy field swells. It’s happening.
“Come on, come on…”
I call to the night sky as the Hunter struggles. He sees the sparks shooting from my fingers; he feels them burning against his skin. His nostrils flare as they fill with the smell of his own burning flesh.
My body jerks as the sky warps with energy. Energy that I can harness.
The power inside me is so strong; it’s beautiful and terrible. As I nurture the storm, the last pieces of the puzzle slot into place.
Then…nothing.
Just deadly calm. No thunder, no lightning, no wind; just me.
Thorn grins his wicked grin.
Idiot. Next time, they had better send someone with a brain.
Letting go of his arms, I grab him by the collar and yank his face to within an inch of my own.
“It’s over.”
“I don’t think so.”
I clasp the violated body of Gregory Thorn, whom I would have liked, to my chest and whisper to the evil inside.
“You are going to hell, bashrak, but you won’t be lonely for long. I’ll send some friends your way real soon.”
I let go.
We hang in the air, side by side.
With a horrible, vengeful grin, I glance up at the clouds, then back at Thorn.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty…”
I reach out my hand.
A bolt of lightening unleashes itself from the clouds and strikes the Hunter with stunning accuracy.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
His cry of pain should make my stomach churn, but it doesn’t and I don’t look away. I watch, closely, as the lightening holds him in its coils, charging his body with hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity. The air becomes singed and rank with the smell of burning bashrak flesh.
Again and again the lightening hits his body; Thorn’s body.
Enough.
It stops.
The lightening recoils into the clouds. Released from its grip, t
he Hunter drops like a stone. He hits the water with a splash.
I float back down to earth, where Travis waits for me.
“Is he…?”
I look to the shoreline. The Hunter’s body lies face down in the surf.
“I don’t know. Let’s go check.”
We wade through the shallows and, taking an arm each, drag the body up the beach. Travis nudges him over with the toe of his trainer.
I crouch over the corpse and put my fingers to his neck. I listen to his chest, just catching Travis’ wince as I lower my head. Red marks circle my throat; imprints of the bashrak’s hands. Travis looks away.
I kneel there for endless seconds. I have to be sure. Finally, I look up at Travis.
“Well?”
My face crumples.
“It’s over.”
Travis kneels beside me and holds me in his arms. Great, hulking, sobs shake my body and he tightens his grip.
“I heard about Agatha, and Humphrey. I couldn’t move, but I could hear…”
He strokes my hair, just like Humphrey did not so long ago.
“I’m so, so sorry Jelly.”
Travis whispers soothing nonsense words, just so that I will hear his voice and know that it’s over, that I’m safe. He holds me for a long time, until, exhausted, I stop. Standing on shaking legs, I stumble over to my family.
I force myself to bend over Molly and place two fingers to the base of her neck. I note the pallid cheeks. The complete stillness. The weak pulse.
Faint with relief, I hurry to check my mum and dad. They’re unconscious, but alive.
Travis is at my side.
“We’d better go, Jay. We need to get them home.”
We undo their bonds and lower them to the sand. I reach and wrap them in silver tentacles, lifting them high into the air. Closing my eyes, I elevate us to the same height. Tears of sorrow and relief leak from beneath my lashes and mix on my cheeks. Making no attempt to blink them back, I fly us across the water, over the village rooftops and into our back garden. With Travis’ help, I guide each member of my family through the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs and into bed.
I hope they don’t remember. I hope they never know what I’ve become.
Chapter Twenty
I sit with Travis in the kitchen. We don’t speak. The clock above the door ticks on, but to me, time is irrelevant. You can’t turn it back and get the chance to do things differently.
If I’d known what I could do – what I can do – back in Thorn’s room, he’d be dead and they’d be here. Alive.
Travis clears his throat.
“So…um, Jelly. Do you think that your parents will be OK?”
My voice doesn’t work. My throat is sore and dry and when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. I try again.
“They’ll be OK,” I croak. “Whatever he did to them is wearing off; they should be fine by morning.”
“How do you know?”
Staring at the table top, I shrug.
The ticking of the clock grows louder. Travis takes a deep breath.
“When I was eight years old, our cat, Bootsy, went missing.”
I can’t do this right now.
Travis grabs my cold hand and strokes it. He doesn’t realise that I’m going to fall apart any minute and he’s making it worse.
“My older sister, Jenny, was devastated. Bootsy was her pet and had been with the family for most of Jenny’s life. The whole family searched for hours for Bootsy, but no one could find him. Jenny was a mess. Jelly? JELLY! You with me?”
A tear trickles down my cheek and he wipes it away.
“It was getting dark and there was still no sign of Bootsy. Jenny started crying and I realised that I knew exactly where he was. I grabbed my dad from the back yard and convinced him that I’d heard mewing coming from the empty house two doors down from us. We snuck in through a back window and found Bootsy stuck in the spare bedroom, where I knew she would be.”
He stops and lifts my chin. He looks into my eyes. He wants me to respond, to show some life, some interest, but I can’t.
“It’s OK, Jelly,” he whispers as my lips start to tremble. “Two years later, I found a little girl who’d fallen down a well. The police had been searching for her for thirty-six hours with no luck. I didn’t even know that anyone had gone missing; I just had to go there. I knew that I had to hurry - that someone needed my help.” He shrugs.
Because I know he wants me to, I manage to ask.
“Did you get there in time?”
Travis smiles and my breath hitches in my throat.
“Yeah, I found her and raised the alarm. She was as hungry as hell, but otherwise OK. The year after that was a busy time: I found another missing person and saved a seventy-year-old grandfather who was about to kill himself.”
I look up.
“Dodgy heater, carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Travis stalls, his smile gone.
“The year after that I helped five people,” he says quietly. “Not all of them needed physical saving, but all five needed help in some way and I was being driven to give it to them.”
Travis looks away. His shoulders droop and he hangs his head.
“The year after that was worse…I had visions, flashes from people’s lives. I started to feel resentful: angry that this thing kept happening to me. It could strike at any time, anywhere, and I would be forced to follow my instincts wherever they took me. My life was being constantly disrupted; I was at the beck and call of this thing, whatever it was, and it was ruining my whole life.”
He turns to me.
“I couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork or homework, my friends and family started to notice that something was wrong and started to treat me differently; it was all falling apart.”
I reach out and touch his arm. “Calm down, it’s OK.”
Travis laughs. “OK? You think so? I was thirteen years old and my life was over. There I was helping people left right and centre and bit by bit I was growing to be the person who needed help.”
“So what did you do?”
Travis rakes a hand across his face.
“One day, it must have been June or July the weather was so good, I had a vision. I saw a woman’s face. She was crying; there were mascara streaks down her cheeks. I was on my way to a big football match. I’d been chosen as captain for the very first time and I was buzzing. When the vision hit me, I was so angry. One of the most important days of the year and it was being taken away from me. I had no choice, no say in it; no say in my own life.”
The wind picks up. It shakes the window panes in their frames.
“So,” Travis whispers, “I ignored it…I pushed the vision to the back of my mind and I went to play football.” He closes his eyes, his voice thick with disgust. “We won the game four to one. I was voted man of the match, had a trophy and everything, and when I got home that evening, I didn’t give the woman in my vision a second thought.”
I know what’s coming and I don’t want to hear it.
“She committed suicide. Took a bunch of pills right about the time I was being awarded my trophy.”
“I know you’re trying to distract me, Travis; keep me occupied. It’s OK. You don’t have to do this.”
He acts like he hasn’t heard me.
“She died because of me; because I wanted to play football.”
“That’s not true. She died for some personal reason that we’ll never know. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know that she was going to kill herself.”
“I knew that something bad was going to happen, though.”
“Travis, you were thirteen years old.”
He sighs, shaking his head. “After that, things were different. I welcomed the visions, the chance to help people…to even the score. I became the perfect vessel for whatever force was guiding me and I’ve got a 100% track record.”
He stares at me in that intense way of his.
I wish he wouldn’t look at me l
ike that.
“I had to help you, Jelly: I had no choice. Just like you had no choice tonight. What happened wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could and you saved me and your family.”
But I didn’t save them. I let them die.
“Travis…I think that I’m going to leave Seabrook.” I look at him, really see him this time. “I can’t stay here anymore.”
He reaches out and takes my hand.
“Jelly, I know it hurts, but they wouldn’t want you to leave your family, your home.”
I start to cry. “Travis, don’t. Please.”
With an almighty crash, the back door bursts open.
I leap from my seat, Travis seconds behind me. Something warm, loud and very alive catapults itself into the room and careers into me with the force of a charging rhinoceros. Screeching, Agatha launches herself into my arms, knocking us both off our feet. Sprawled on the floor, she squeezes me until I can hardly breathe.
“Humphrey,” Agatha shouts, right in my ear, “HUMPHREY, get in here – she’s HERE.”
Humphrey staggers into the kitchen, bright red and puffing. Excited hands drag me to my feet.
“I thought you guys were dead,” I whisper. “He told me you were dead.”
Agatha and Humphrey exchange glances.
“It was close.” says Humphrey.
Agatha looks at me with that signature look of hers. The one that doesn’t miss much.
I adore that look.
“Is he gone?”
“Yep. He’s gone.” A ripple of fear dims my happy glow. I look around the kitchen. “Where’s Rhiannon?”
Agatha winks and I know it’s OK. “For a cheerleader, she is one unfit lady.”
“I most certainly am not.”
Rhiannon sways in the doorway, her skin pale, the angry lump on the side of her head already turning purple.
“For your information,” she says, bristling with indignation, “I have a concussion.”
I wrestle myself free of Humphrey and rush over to Rhiannon.
“Hi,” she says, gripping the kitchen counter.
“I have never been so glad to see you in my whole life.”
I throw my arms around my favouritest pompom head in the whole wide world and hug her to me.
“Like, OW!”