The Marauder: Episode One

by Sean M. Hogan

  “Understandably her parents are very upset. They have threatened to take legal action, against the school and against you.”

  Sharon’s gaze met the crow, his mysterious bottomless eyes entrancing her, pulling her in, and dragging her down into a black void. To her, his eyes were two black suns set ablaze with phantom flames. They turned the sky amber, muting all sound, and bronzed her vision like an old sepia photograph.

  “I’m having a hard-enough time talking her parents out of assault charges as it is.”

  Sharon’s mind cleared itself of all thoughts, tuning out Principal Stone and the rest of the world. She surrendered her consciousness, her being. There was only the now.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Neither dreaming nor awake, her mind was drifting away from her body and the shackles of the real. Her consciousness lost at sea, swept away with the currents of the walkabout.

  “Sharon!”

  Like the flash of a light bulb from an old-fashioned camera Sharon snapped back to reality, as if someone shook her out of a deep sleep. Her trance broken she shifted her gaze from the crow back to Principal Stone.

  “I called your mother. I am well aware of your past, the good and the bad. I think you have underlying issues regarding the situation with your father.”

  Sharon’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of that man, her father.

  “I’m going to request that you seek some counseling.”

  Sharon’s breaths came fuming out of her lungs. Her chest expanded and contracted erratically. Her face burned bright red. “Why stop there?” she asked barely containing herself enough to form sentences. “Why not prescribe me some antidepressants? Hell, I found my US Constitution class boring. I probably need Ritalin, right?” She leaped up from her chair, the flimsy, plastic chair falling back, and stared down Principal Stone. “I’m not some problem to be fixed!”

  “I’m sorry.” Principal Stone closed the red folder. “This isn’t up for negotiations.”

  ***

  Large brown and orange leaves crunched under the force of Sharon’s feet as she stalked toward the oak tree. A voice, beyond the range of human ears, sang to her like the sirens of legend, commanding her to step forward. And when she reached the base of the tree, stepping up onto exposed roots, she gazed up. The crow gazed down, pulling her in once more with his bottomless eyes, slicing through her soul with a simple look. Sharon’s breath turned to white smoke as a cold breeze ripped past her. She huddled herself, wrapping up in her thin sweater. The crow let out a deathly caw, spread his wings, and took flight. He glided in the air above her, encircling, and calling out to her with a crow’s song. And in that moment Sharon knew what he wanted. No sixth sense required. Even if he spoke her native human tongue, he could not be clearer of his desires. He wanted her to follow.

  The crow hopped along the white picket fence. He stopped every post or so and gave a caw back Sharon’s direction, ensuring she kept pace and trailed along the chosen path he laid out for her. She continued down the sidewalk in rhythmic steps, following like a lost child ensnared in the Pied Piper’s tune. The light died and shrouded Sharon in shadow. She stopped and looked up. Monsters, devils with jagged wings, beasts with silent roars, all formed from stone and carved and chiseled to hideous perfection. Each one observed Sharon from their Gothic perches. Gargoyles guarding their master’s castle. This mansion of red brick and overgrown vines and thorns.

  The crow landed on a broken fence leading into the mysterious property. He parted his polished black beak and let go a penetrating caw. Then he glided down, disappearing into the thicket of weeds entangling the back of the yard. Sharon hesitated, the thought of trespassing popped into her mind but just for a moment. The need to follow too great. Sharon slipped through the broken fence with ease. She pushed aside a loose weathered post that dangled from one lonely nail. She brushed past the tall grass and weeds, parting them like jungle vines, and peered through the thicket.

  Two blood-red cellar doors hung open, the smell of water damaged wood and mildew leaking out, revealing the mute darkness of the basement within. The crow hopped down to the edge of the entrance—to the edge of darkness.

  Her eyes focused on the crow. Then, shifting her gaze to the entrance, she lurched forward. She strained her eyes to see beyond the void of the shadow infested basement. Her heart raced, her throat struggled to swallow, and her skin paled. Her feet moved by themselves. To her it felt like they were marching her up to her own casket at her own funeral. But she needed to know what lay inside, even if it meant her own oblivion. She was a moth beating its dusty wings in a final dance, one last fluttering duet, with the raging flame. Now it was time to fade to black.

  Sharon jumped back, breaking from her trance as a vibration jolted through her body. Was someone behind her? She made a sharp spin, scanning her surroundings. She was alone. The vibration hit her again. She reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out her cell phone. The screen lit up a vibrant green, text flashed in the middle of the screen. A five-letter word: GRACE. Her mother’s name. Sharon canceled the call and took in a deep breath. Great. Now I almost wished I had been caught trespassing. At least in jail I wouldn’t have to sit through another ‘talk’ with Mom. She headed back, ducking under the broken fence. Sharon gave the crow one last look over her shoulder. A reluctant fleeting glance before her reflection disappeared from the crow’s haunting eyes.

  Chapter Three

  The Color of Thoughts

  THE FRONT DOOR slowly cracked open. Sharon tiptoed inside. She scanned the kitchen, all empty save for a few pots and pans resting on the counter. Good. The kitchen looked untouched, exactly how she’d left it this morning, which meant her mother was still at work. She closed the door as quietly as she could—just to err on the side of caution—and scurried off to the living room. Her mother’s voice stopped her mid-stride.

  “Sharon, you need to sit down.”

  Crap! So close to the stairs, too. Sharon, with much reluctance, turned to meet her mother.

  Grace Ashcraft, a unique combination of beauty, elegance, and purity, sat at the head of the living room table. Her purple long-sleeved turtleneck sweater rested tightly against her skin. Her slender face strained with desperation. All to hold back what her brown eyes were screaming out in deafening levels: sadness, overwhelming sadness.

  “Please,” Grace said in an almost pleading tone. “We need to talk. Have a seat.”

  Sharon stepped forward but didn’t pull out the chair to sit down. Instead, she just gripped the top of the chair and squeezed the way a flogging victim bites down on a piece of wood. There was a small stack of books next to Grace on the table. Sharon read the spines. They were all parenting books. Books for the troubled teen, for the teenage mind and soul. New aged psychobabble nonsense books talking about positive emotional energies and spiritual cores. Books written by morons for the naive, thought Sharon. Books written for desperate delusional people like my mother.

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to yell,” said Grace, with a quality of softness in her voice.

  Sharon tightened her fists. “I don’t know, Mom. Maybe we should yell. Yell, scream, and fight. I mean, isn’t that what normal families do? It’s better than just pretending everything’s okay, right?”

  Grace shook her head. “You think fighting is going to solve anything? Did you think hitting one of your classmates would make things any better?”

  “No, maybe not,” Sharon fired back. “But at least I don’t run away from my problems.”

  Grace placed her glasses down and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This was supposed to be a fresh start for both of us. Moving was supposed to be a good thing.”

  “How was leaving everything and everyone I cared about a good thing?”

  “We just have to give it some time. They’ll warm up to you, I promise.” Grace reached out to touch Sharon’s hand. “These things just need time.”

  Sharon stepped b
ack and folded her arms, avoiding her mother’s touch. “You never listen.”

  “I’m just trying to do my best here, Sharon. Some parents don’t even—” Grace stopped herself.

  “Don’t even what Mom? Care? Go on. Say it. Say his name.”

  “Sharon, you know your father still loves you.”

  “Love? I swear to god, if ignorance is bliss then denial must be a freaking orgasm. He ran out on us, Mom. The word ‘deadbeat’ comes to mind.”

  “That’s enough Sharon!”

  “Why, because he might hear us? He’d have to actually be here for that. Wake up. You don’t just decide one day to pack up and leave your family. That’s not something you do out of love. Why can’t you see that? Why are you so blind?”

  “Sharon, I know you’re angry but—”

  Sharon cut her off in a burst of rage. “Angry? I’m furious!” She slammed her fist onto the counter that divided the living room and kitchen. A basket of fruit tumbled to the floor, apples and oranges spilling out and scattering. A picture frame crashed and its glass cover shattered. Tiny shards of glass sprinkled over the tiles like snowflakes. Sharon stormed off toward the stairs. When she got midway up the stairs, she glanced back at her mother. “Why aren’t you?”

  The question hung in the silent air.

  Grace stood to speak, to scold her daughter for making a mess and leaving it, but nothing came out. She just averted her eyes.

  Sharon went into her room, slamming her door with a thunderous boom.

  Grace grimaced as the force rattled her. She stood for a quiet moment before pulling out the dustpan and broom from the closet and gathering the glass shards with care, sweeping them into the dustpan. She came to the picture frame, picked it up, and stared at the picture behind a spider’s web spiral of cracked glass. A photo of Sharon as a child in a yellow-flowered blue dress. Five-years-old and smiling with all the unbridled joy of a rainbow hanging in a virgin blue sky.

  ***

  Silhouetted in the warm glow of morning sunlight, a magnificent blue butterfly stretched out its elegant wings as if it were yawning. Two large blue eyes descended on the butterfly. They widened with wonder and dilated with amazement. Five-year-old Sharon slid her tiny hands underneath the butterfly. The small winged insect crawled into her palms, tickling her skin with its spiraling feeding tube. She folded her fingers around her catch, imprisoning it in her hands and lifting it off the blueberry bush. She scurried off with a spring in her feet.

  A man in a long black coat sat on the park bench, watching the children build castles and skyscrapers in the sand, his face hidden in the blinding glare of sunlight. He turned his head to Sharon as she ran to him and parted her hands to present her prize.

  “Look, Daddy,” she said with a smile, squinting her eyes from the bright sun as she gazed up at her father. “I caught one.”

  “I can’t look, Sharon,” he said. “Grown-ups can’t see them. Only children.”

  Sharon looked down at the butterfly then back up at her father, confusion written all over her face. “Why’s that?”

  “Because they’re scared of us. Because we think bad thoughts.”

  Her face lit up with excitement. “They can read minds?”

  “Of course, our thoughts and emotions are made up of energy just like everything else.”

  Sharon could make out a slight grin on his face.

  “Each energy has its own color so it’s easy for them to see which type you’re giving off.” Her father reached down into his shirt and slid out his necklace. Two glowing crystals dangled from the silver chain. One red and one blue, each encased in a silver cross. He held them out for her, their sparkling light reflecting off her face and cheeks like the glare of a grinning jack o’ lantern. “Positive energies come in shades of blue, like the sky or the ocean.” He frowned as his fingers grazed the red encased crystal. “And negative energies burn bright red.” He dropped his necklace down his shirt and out-of-sight.

  “So why can’t I see them?” asked Sharon, her face drooping with disappointment.

  He smiled with all the warmth in his heart. “Close your eyes, Sharon.”

  Sharon closed her eyelids as hard as she could. She strained with all her might, as if she was climbing Mount Everest and had just looked down. It wasn’t long before she couldn’t help but peek, the temptation stronger than the willpower of a thousand little girls. So, her father turned her around until he was behind her and she faced outward, resting snuggly between his knees.

  He placed his hands over her eyes. “Clear your mind of all worries and doubt,” he whispered into her ear. “Focus on everything blue.”

  Sharon tried her best to concentrate.

  “The ocean...”

  Blue waves rose and crashed onto a golden pebbled beach in Sharon’s mind. The cries of seagulls overhead and the taste of salty air on her lips.

  “Blueberries...”

  She could now taste the sweet flavor of her favorite food, blueberry yogurt, on the tip of her tongue. It brought on an involuntary smile.

  “Blue flowers...”

  One of her most vivid memories came flooding in. She was in a flower nursery with a stained-glass ceiling overhead, images of angels and white doves painted above her. Hundreds of blue wildflowers surrounded her, engulfing her in their brilliant hue. The scent of moist, black soil mixed in with the fragrance of pollen carried on the breeze. Flowers of exotic shapes and designs blanketed the nursery: blue sage, bluebell, morning glory, bachelor’s button, and baby blue eyes.

  “Your mother’s blue dress.”

  Another memory bled in like ink spilling on paper. This one of her mother dancing with her father in the living room. Grace’s radiant blue dress swayed back and forth as she stepped in rhythm. His hands resting on her hips. Her hands wrapped around his neck and her cheek pressed against his chest. His chin nestled atop her head. Sharon watched them in her pajamas from the top of the stairs, peeking out between the posts. She added her own hum in place of the missing music.

  Her father removed his hands from Sharon’s eyes. He leaned in, his lips to her ear, and whispered. “Now open your eyes.”

  Sharon did as he bid her, struggling not to blink as her pupils adjusted to the light. She squinted down at her hands and parted them like the blossoming of a rose. Her fingers peeled back to reveal a vibrant glow of blue. The light emanated with such a force it was as if Sharon had plucked a shooting star from the night sky and now the star slept in the heart of her palms while she waited to make her wish.

  Sharon’s eyes widened as she glimpsed something strange. There was movement. The light was alive. Her breath was stolen from her lungs. A small impish creature emerged, birthed from starlight, stretching out its tiny butterfly wings and gazing up at Sharon with bug eyes. It blinked at her before cracking a smile. Sharon smiled back at the fairy, her disbelief swallowed up by her delight.

  ***

  Sharon looked on with disdain at the blue teddy bear with fairy wings and black button eyes. Lying back against her pillow, she held it up to the light, examining its knitted yarn smile and heart-shaped nose. This furry creature had been the last gift her father had given her before he left. Without a word, without a note, without justification, without even a simple wave good-bye. Sharon tossed the stuffed animal to the floor. She had spent far more nights than she cared to remember squeezing the life out of that teddy bear, all teary-eyed and sobbing wet from crying for her father to return. He never did. That first Christmas without him had been the worst. All Christmas Eve she prayed and wished with every ounce of her heart. To God, to Santa, to anyone who was listening to show her mercy and grant her one and only desire—to bring her father home for Christmas. All she got was a stocking full of broken hearts. She had looked up to him. He had looked straight through her. He was her rock, her world entire. She was sand slipping between the cracks of his fingers, a speck in his ever expanding and indifferent universe. Sharon was sev
enteen now and no longer naive. There was no such thing as magic and fairies didn’t exist, except in little girls’ imaginations.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Sarah Herman said, her voice distorting over the live video chat feed on Sharon’s laptop. “A crow wanted you to follow it into some old creepy basement?” Sarah forked up a bite of lemon meringue pie from a slice sitting on a small white dish in the space between her crossed legs. “And you’re sure it wasn’t just trained? Some old perverted man’s way of luring naive little underage girls into his creepy pedophile dungeon?”

  Sharon couldn’t hold back her smile. “I know, Sarah, it sounds bizarre, another in a long laundry list of crap that keeps happening to me since I moved.” Sharon’s smile disappeared as her mind wandered off. Memories of that crow and its hypnotic ghost eyes raked through her thoughts. “It’s hard to describe the feeling when I looked into its eyes. As if I was being pulled into nothingness. And worse yet, I wanted to go. To fill it up.”

  “Uh-huh...” Sarah swallowed a mouthful of pie as she studied Sharon’s uneasy expression. After a moment of careful thought, she let a grin break free. “Wait, dost thou hear that rapping at your chamber door?” she said, tapping the camera lens on her laptop. “Perhaps it’s your new boyfriend come to pay a visit to your Plutonian shore, my little Miss Lenore. Quoth the raven give-me-some-more.”

  Sharon smirked. Sarah’s lame jokes never failed on Sharon no matter how bad they were. Maybe that’s why they were friends. Who else would laugh at Sarah’s weird stand-up? “Thanks for the poem, Poe, but my lover’s a crow not a raven.”

  Sarah shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

  “Ravens are intelligent scavengers that live in the woods. Crows rummage through dumpsters for leftover hamburgers,” Sharon corrected her.