Everyone's quiet. I don't know about James or the girls, but I'm imagining how long it takes a person to plummet so many stories, and what falling would feel like. Would it be like sticking your head out the car window, or like soaring backward on a swing?
That's far enough to take actual time, time to know you were dying before you hit the earth. I've been so scared I thought I was dying before, and I have to say the experience changes a person. It really changes a person if he's totally okay with it. I don't think I've been suicidal before, but I've been okay with dying, and I don't know how far apart those two states are.
James breaks the silence. “Two seconds of free fall,” he says.
I could hit him for being so thoughtless, but the girls don't seem offended.
Shay sits down between us. “Enough time for a quick prayer,” she says, pulling her cross up on its necklace chain and pressing it to her lips.
“I'm sorry about your brother,” I say.
“Thanks. So, what's your secret?” Shay asks me.
“He's got a good one,” James says.
Dawna speaks for the first time, saying, “Ooh, tell us.”
“I do some psychic stuff,” I say, testing the waters.
They lean in with interest, so I continue, “I've actually been contacted by the ghost of someone who was murdered. He wants me to solve his murder, but I don't know what I'm doing.”
Shay nods solemnly, the beads on her braids tinkling together. “Justice,” she says. “Did his ghost come talk to you at his funeral?”
“No. He sent a messenger,” I say. She's got me thinking, though. His funeral would be a good place to investigate. I wonder if the funeral's already happened or not, since it's only been a few days.
“What kind of a message?” Shay asks.
“A handwritten note.” I retrieve Newt's tiny letter from my pocket and hand it around. Strangely, this impresses the girls, and they ask to know more about my abilities.
“I'm afraid I don't know much about my power. And worse, I think it's broken.”
In unison, the twin girls say, “Aww,” and touch my forearms.
“My power works by touch. One of you could help test it.”
They both laugh, and Shay says, “Is this the part where I put my hand down your pants?”
“No, no, it's not like that!”
Four eyebrows arch high. “I thought your ghost story was a come-on,” Shay says. “Dark night by the lake, big crackling fire to create a real mood. You know, some guys have a twin fetish.”
James says, “Noooo. Really?”
“Ignore him,” I say, and I explain how my power works—that is, when it's working.
After some discussion, the quiet one with the hoop earrings, Dawna, agrees to test my power. She closes her eyes shyly and has me guide her finger over.
I've used my power at least a few dozen times, and most girls are enthusiastic about getting their fortunes told, but Dawna's modesty makes me aware of how intimate this thing is. Not only am I seeing into a girl's soul, but she's touching me in an intimate way, like skipping past first base and going straight to second.
Dawna's fingernails are long and decorated with tiny flowers ...
Chapter Eight
The crackle of the fire slows, flames fixing in the air. I'm spinning, whirling, the skin pulling away from my face.
I'm dying.
Panic wallops me from behind, like a rear-end collision. Now I've gone too far, and I'm being dragged down into a grave, from which I'll never escape. It's all over.
The spinning stops, and just as quickly, my panic turns to regret.
My vision solidifies around me, although with a lack of anything to see, it can hardly be called a vision. At least I'm not dead.
I guess I was overreacting there for an instant. Fear sometimes takes over, perhaps instinctively, when I disengage from the regular world and go into this other space, where time expands. To James and Shay and even Dawna, it will seem like Dawna's finger barely touched me before pulling away, but to me, as much as a minute can happen inside the vision.
So where am I? I'm somewhere else, not at the edge of the lake by a bonfire. I'm in Dawna's Secret Town, her shy, secret world, but it's murky. No, this vision is beyond murky; it's as dark as dried blood.
I hear people talking, and music, but the sounds are muffled and don't make any sense. When I try to focus on one voice, I get a cacophony of sounds, with words, but the sentences lack logic or meaning, like the ravings of a madwoman.
Nudging the time forward and then back, I think I'm controlling the vision, but the outlook's the same at every point. Murky, like water filled with ink and garbage. The air tastes of ashes and chemical, and I wonder if this isn't the end of the world, the end of us all.
Hands grasp at me, scratching with long nails. Are these Dawna's hands? They pull at my shirt and my clothing, ripping my clothes off as easily as tissue paper. I feel something on my mouth—another person's mouth—along with scratches up and down my back. I'm blind and I can't move, which only adds to the claustrophobic sensation. Unlike the real world, where the heat from the bonfire is on the front of me, there's heat all around me, coming from whoever is against me.
The heat makes me stop caring that the world is ash and destruction. My mouth in here moves, and I'm kissing the other mouth. I'll stay here. My hands reach up and finds flesh, familiar and feminine.
Something stings across my right cheek, outside the vision. Reluctantly, I surface.
* * *
Outside of my vision now, I see James with his eyes wide as he says, “Dude, what was that about?”
Dawna is standing between me and the fire, so her face is in shadow, but her hands are over her cheeks and there's enough light glinting off the shiny parts of her face that I can tell her eyes are also wide open with shock. What did I do?
“Pervert,” Dawna says. My cheek in the real world is still stinging, and I deduct she must have slapped me.
“I didn't do anything, and it wasn't working,” I say, which is mostly true. “Everything was blurry and dark. I couldn't see a thing.”
Shay gets closer to me on the log. The more horrified her sister Dawna gets, the more intrigued she is. Girls are even more curious than cats, I swear.
“Did you see anything?” I ask Dawna.
She doesn't answer, just picks up a stick and pokes at the bonfire, sending up a plume of sparks, like tiny fireworks in the night sky.
“I'm a little psychic myself,” Shay says, her hand now on my arm. “It might work with me. Pretty please? I'd like to feel your power. Pretty please with sugar on top?”
“Don't do it,” Dawna says to her twin sister. “He's got the demon in him. It's not right for a boy to have such power.” She crosses her fingers at me and hisses.
James is grinning now, looking back and forth between me and Dawna as though watching a tennis match. I've had some interesting reactions before, but this is the first time a girl has hissed at me.
Shay runs her hand along my thigh and gives me an alluring look. “I like power. Let me experience it.” She gestures up with her chin, and I find myself lifting my shirt obediently.
She puts her right and left index fingers together, angling her thumbs up as though making a shadow puppet, and puts both fingertips in my belly button.
* * *
This time, I'm being torn apart, limb by limb. Black jagged shapes against more black shapes pierce my skin and howl in my ears.
When everything stops moving, I'm flat on my back. Under my leg and back, something is moving, but it's not me.
Something's over my mouth—hands, maybe. Wormy fingers push their way inside my mouth, crushing my lips against my teeth when I resist. The long fingers reach down, deeper, inside me. I'm gagging, my throat full, my chest aching.
I try expanding my visual consciousness, but there's nothing to see, not even stars, just dark. I catch a breath and then another, gasping.
My throat is on
fire and what entered me through my mouth sits heavy in my stomach, expanding, punching me from the inside. The pain pushes my consciousness thin and I almost slip away to nothing. Pain. I've never felt pain like this in a vision.
Someone breathes on my face, moist and comforting. Shay. She whispers in my ear and tells me not to be scared, then she covers my body with hers.
I hold on to her.
Her mind merges with mine and I see a flash of an image, repeating itself. A man falling from the sky, over and over.
When I breathe out, it comes as a wail.
But Shay is here. She melts into me, and I'm not scared anymore. The pain is gone and in its place is bliss. The darkness is comforting.
* * *
When I come out of the vision, I'm shaking all over.
Shay looks disappointed. “Aww, nuts. Nothing happened,” she says.
I pick up my jacket from behind the log and put it on, then I stand and stomp my feet to warm up closer to the fire. Standing next to Dawna, who still has her arms crossed, I start to cough. Phlegm comes up unexpectedly, so I spit into the fire. The glowing logs don't even sizzle.
“What was it like for you?” Dawna asks Shay.
Shay says, “Nothing. Bo-ring!”
“My vision is not really working,” I say to James.
“Why not?”
Dawna takes a seat next to James, and she doesn't seem upset with me now. The three of them look at me expectantly, as though I should have an answer.
“Do you remember feeling anything?” I ask Dawna, since she must have experienced something to slap me like that.
She looks down at her manicured fingers shyly. “I felt like you were kissing both of us, but my grandfather was watching us and he didn't approve.”
“Hah!” goes Shay. “Your good-girl conscience got the best of you!”
“I guess,” Dawna says.
“How is your power not working?” James asks me. “You see nothing at all? I bet you've got a pile of lint in there again, insulating the connection.”
“Something's happening, but it's not right. I don't know. My handbook for the care and operation of my supernatural power didn't cover bouts of censored visions.”
“Censored?” James repeats.
“Dude, I don't know.”
“Let us cheer you up,” Shay says. “We have lots of food and drinks at our cabin. If you're cold, we can build a fire at the cabin and warm up there.”
“Do you have any vegan food?” James asks. “My body is a temple.”
The girls giggle in unison and Shay says she'll find him “something to nibble on.”
Something about the energy of the group shifts, and I get that party's over feeling. I wish I'd left ten minutes ago, before the visions.
I back away from the warm fire, no longer shaking or cold. “I'm going to the cabin to sleep, but don't pack in on my account.”
Dawna sticks out her lower lip and Shay says, “But it's still early.”
Those nails on my back. These girls are really hot, and nothing like the girls we go to school with, but as much as I'd like to stay and party with our new friends, my power being on the fritz has dampened my mood. Plus, my girlfriend wouldn't be too impressed. My life isn't just about me anymore; I have to think about Austin's feelings, and the rules of dating.
“You do look tired,” James says.
Shay rests her head on his shoulder. “I'm a night owl,” she says.
The three of them start making whoo-oo owl sounds.
I stop and howl at the sky like a wolf. They turn and stare at me as though I'm a weirdo. Right. They were hooting like owls, but I'm the weirdo.
I walk away shaking my head.
* * *
After leaving James in Shay and Dawna's capable hands, I explore my way through the unhelpful trees, back to the cabin. The semi-wilderness is so dark, the trail bewildering to stay on, and I keep tripping over stumps that have no business existing if I am, indeed, on a trail.
After nearly wiping out for the third time, I sit on a stump to get my bearings. High above, the stars are electric tonight, like bullet holes in a dark wall, letting in the light from another world.
The woods, with all their face-whipping branches, have a sound. Dry leaves scratch each other in the breeze, and the ground is alive with grasses and night-loving things crawling about. Frogs croak down by the lakeside, and something is humming. If I were in the city, I'd say it was a transformer on a power pole, but I'm in the country.
Could the humming be from bees? I know some types don't live in hives, but underground or in trees. Some bee species, such as European honey bees, live communally, in hives, but others are solitary, where every female is fertile. I've done a little research, and there are so many types around here: honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, and some other types, too many to remember.
What I do remember, however, is the term haplodiploid sex-determination system, which is not as sexy as it sounds. When the queen bee lays her eggs, she determines the sex of each batch of offspring by whether or not she lays fertilized eggs. The unfertilized ones become males, or drones. It's funny how both men and women who work in offices sometimes call themselves drones, which would mean they are male hive-worker bees.
If you see a honey bee humming around, it's probably a lady bee, because the females are the workers who go out gathering pollen and nectar from flowers, which doesn't seem like a bad life to me, except the fact they only live about a month. The queen bee can live for years. Lucky girl.
I wonder if there are bees of any type nearby, and if there are, if I could communicate with them.
Eyes shut, I try to isolate the humming sound in the woods. Bees. Black-and-yellow-striped, fuzzy little guys and girls.
I wonder what James is doing now. Oh, hell. Focus, Zan. Bees, bees, bees. Bees' knees. Beeswax. Bee barf. Bee slavery honey.
I breathe slowly, concentrating. I start to feel warm—really warm, like take-off-my-jacket warm.
Something tickles in my throat, like the onset of a cold. I cough, but the tickling doesn't go away. My throat tickles again, as though it's swelling up, which reminds me of my vision of Shay—a vision I do not want to remember.
I cough, and now there's something actually in my throat, in my windpipe.
My breathing is cut off and I'm choking.
I whack myself on the chest with one hand and cough again. The buzz fires up and something comes out of my mouth, then circles lazily in front of me in the thin starlight.
Is that a bee? Did I just cough out an actual, living bee?
I reach my hand to it. “Come here, little guy. I mean … little girl? Land on my finger, if you want.”
As the bee gracefully lands on my finger, I feel a sense of discovery, mastery, and wonder. I am the master of nature.
Pain shoots through my arm. The bee stung me!
I can't yelp, because my breathing is cut off again. I try to swallow, but I can't. I cough, and out comes another bee. And another.
My lungs shake and vibrate, and my whole body is burning out from the inside. My throat is no longer under my control.
My mouth wide open, I have a sensation similar to violently throwing up, only a thousand times worse. Tears stream down my face, and I'm powerless to do anything but hold my mouth open as bees pour out.
My brain lights up white-hot with pain, but not this throat pain. It's something new.
The bees are stinging me.
They're stinging my arms, my hands, my neck, my face.
I clamp shut my mouth and they pile up inside, stinging my tongue and my cheeks. My mouth and throat are swelling, so I do the only thing I can: I begin chewing and trying to swallow.
Somehow I get to my feet. I'm staggering toward the cabin for help, grabbing tree branches to steady myself. I chew and spit as the bees sting me and continue to pour out from between my lips. The ones already airborne swarm around my head.
I fall on my knees and vomit on the ground
. Up come bees and the hot dogs I ate for dinner, chunky and acidic.
I'm dying.
Chapter Nine
The bees continue to pour from my suffocating throat.
Stop, I think, and the crowd in my mouth seems to lessen. My throat opens up for some air. Ah, sweet oxygen.
I must control them. I have to try harder, be smarter. I start coughing again, and dry heaving.
Bees, I am your master, I think as clearly as I can.
They sting my ears furiously.
BEES, I command you to STOP everything. Drop dead, bees!
A pulse of power comes from my hands and an orb of light flashes around me.
The bees fall from the air. They're gone, vanished—as though they never existed.
I search the ground for their bodies, but there are none. Gray ashes are on my hands and in my eyelashes. I check my finger, where the first bee stung me, and my arms, to assess the damage from the stings.
The dim light of the stars may be playing tricks on my eyes. I do have red spots, welts, but they're fading even as I examine them.
I spit the taste out of my mouth and cough, the scratching sensation of them lingering in my throat. Bees. Black and yellow bodies, stingers. I'm thinking about them, possibly summoning them back. A jolt of fear liquifies my insides.
Don't think about you-know-whats, I tell myself.
The skin on my arms is smooth again, the stings just an awful memory.
Around me, the wind picks up, and the dry leaves scratch each other angrily. I don't want to be with Mother Nature anymore, I want to be inside a nice cabin with walls and glass windows and electricity.
I'm completely off the trail and I can't find a clear way, but I stagger in the direction I believe leads to the cabin. The tree branches are merciless, but my anger at them keeps my mind off the other things.
When the topic of the yellow and black insects comes to mind, I flick the idea away. Pizza, think about pizza, I tell myself.
Bees. Pizza! Pepperoni! With hot banana peppers.
Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries Page 132