[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  "Apparently not telling people things runs in this family," I said, glaring at Natalie.

  "What?" she asked.

  "How dare you ask me what? As if you don't know what I'm talking about. We can talk privately after dinner," I told her.

  "Alexis, leave your sister alone and sit down for dinner with us," my mom said.

  "I can't believe that you're playing dumb about all of this," I hissed at Natalie as I sat down.

  "Alexis," said my dad. "Would you please act appropriately for our guest?"

  "I thought that Clara was here to experience being part of an American family," I said. "Besides, I'm sure that she's seen people argue before. I bet people stab each other in the back in England too."

  "Alexis," my mom said.

  "Fine, I'll stop. But Natalie and I will talk after dinner."

  "Thank you," she said. "I just want to be able to show Clara that we can have a nice family dinner."

  "Don't worry about me, Mrs. Ferguson," Clara said. "I have a sister too. It's not a big deal."

  After dinner, I cornered Natalie in her room and closed her door.

  "Do you mind telling me what all of this is about?" she demanded.

  "Why don't you tell me why you stabbed me in the back?"

  "How on earth did I stab you in the back? I've done nothing to you."

  "Doing nothing is just another way of stabbing someone in the back."

  "What are you talking about, Alexis? Fill me in because I'm completely lost."

  "How could you be at school all day and pretend to be clueless?" I demanded. "Or even be at the volleyball game last night and pretend to be clueless?"

  Her face went white, and she whispered, "Alexis, I wasn't at school today, and I snuck out early from the game. Whatever happened, I wasn't there. Don't tell mom and dad."

  "Telling them about you skipping school is the least of my concerns," I told her.

  "What is your concern? It must be pretty big to have you accusing me of stabbing you in the back!"

  I backed up just a little bit and said, "Last night at your game, Hailey and Emma started a rumor that Cliff took off because I gave him an STD. Everyone was talking about it, and Tanner Monroe was the only person who believed in me and tried to stop the rumor. When I was at school today, everyone treated me like a piece of trash. I even had stuff thrown at me and nobody will talk to me."

  "Alexis, that's terrible. If I were there last night, I would have tried to stop them too. I'm sorry that I wasn't there or at school today."

  "I'll be fine. I'm pretty sure that I can convince Hailey to tell people that she made it all up. What was so important that you left your game early and skipped school today?"

  She sighed. "I was with Braydon."

  "What? He's got you skipping school and practice?" I asked.

  "You're one to talk about missing school."

  "I had a perfect attendance record before that. From kindergarten to the eleventh grade, with no absences. I don't want to hear that. You're just trying to change the subject. Why did you skip? Tell me, or I'll tell Mom and Dad."

  "You wouldn't."

  "If I think that you might be in trouble, telling them would be the right thing to do," I told her.

  "Oh, you're so annoying. You may be popular, but you're still a goody-goody."

  "Just tell me what you did," I said. "There's no point in beating around the bush. I'll just read your mind later and find out if you don't tell me."

  "You are seriously the world's most annoying sister, ever. We were just hanging out."

  "Hanging out, doing what?"

  "Leave me alone, Alexis."

  "No, I won't. If he was doing anything to hurt you in any way, I'm going to hunt him down and kick his sorry butt!"

  "We were smoking. Happy now? We were smoking pot."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "Because it was fun."

  "You could put your volleyball scholarship in jeopardy. Why risk it?"

  "I'm not going to college anyway. What's the point?"

  "Why wouldn't you go to college? You want to get a good education."

  "No, Alexis. That's you. You're the one who is unnaturally obsessed with having an education. I just want to enjoy life."

  "Just leave room for the opportunity. You may change your mind and besides, playing volleyball in college would be a lot of fun. You could join a sorority and have tons of fun in college."

  She rolled her eyes at me. "I'll think about it."

  "If Braydon ever does anything to hurt you in any way ever, I want you to tell me. I will seriously make him regret it."

  "Only if I can watch." she giggled.

  "And no more skipping school. That's not the same as having a parent excuse it like I did."

  "Yeah, yeah," she said, and picked up her phone and started texting someone.

  When I got to my room, Clara was in there waiting for me. "So your friend spread some rumor about you?"

  "You were listening in?" I asked, not surprised.

  "You're not the only one with good hearing," she said with a smile.

  "For one thing, she's not my friend. She has made herself my arch enemy at school, and she wants nothing more than to bring me down. But tonight, it will be me bringing her down."

  "What's your plan?"

  "I'm going to give her the scare of her life tonight. I told her to sleep with her eyes open and she's going to wish that she had."

  "Sounds like fun." Clara winked. "Want some help?"

  "I'm going to handle this myself, but I could use an alibi just in case. Say that we were up talking and giggling or something."

  "I'll come up with something great," she said. "It's not my first time being someone's alibi."

  "That really doesn't surprise me," I smiled. "It's going to be a lot of fun having you around."

  "Do you want to discuss the plan with me so that I can make sure that there are no holes in it? I've been through a lot of plan-making, and I can help you out."

  "That doesn't surprise me either." I laughed. "I'd love your help."

  I quickly shut my alarm off and sat up. It was three in the morning, and I was going to go pay Hailey a visit. I was already dressed in the black outfit that I had picked out, and I was eager to get going.

  I jumped out of bed silently and stepped around Clara who was sleeping on the floor. I leaned against my wall, and within seconds was sitting in the tree outside my room. I could feel the cold breeze, but it didn't bother me. I had no coat and didn't need one. The one I used during the day was only for show, so that nobody would suspect anything.

  I landed on the ground effortlessly and ran the few miles to Hailey's house in a matter of seconds. At the edge of the property, I found the power box and shut it off, hoping that would kill any security system that they had. I had on a black cotton ski mask just in case, only my eyes and mouth were exposed.

  I ran around to the back of the house where the bedrooms would be. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness even before I had reached the house, so I easily spotted the pink curtains that announced the location of her room. I knew that she only had brothers, so that was definitely her room.

  Looking at the side of the house, I saw that there was not much in the way of things to climb. I had not practiced jumping up, but I decided to see how well that would work for me. I crouched down and imagined myself jumping to the ledge of her window. I jumped and seemed to glide through the air, and I easily grabbed the ledge and went through the wall.

  I quickly looked around the room. It was pitch black, indicating no power or security camera. I saw her sleeping in her bed and took a deep breath. I thought back to the rumor that she started about me and how everyone had treated me as a result.

  I was next to her bed in a split second. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her out of bed and shoved her against the wall.

  She shook her head and blinked her eyes. "What? What's going on? Connor, is that you?" she murmured.

  "So
you think it's funny to ruin people's lives?" I hissed.

  Her eyes popped wide open. "Who are you?" she demanded.

  "I'm your worst nightmare," I told her. "Only you can't wake up from this."

  She started to open her mouth, and I could hear her voice box prepare to scream. I quickly covered her mouth with my hand. "If you scream, I guarantee it will be your last."

  Her heart rate increased significantly, and I could smell her fear. It smelled delicious.

  "Why is it that you think you can ruin people's lives without any recourse?" I asked, doubting that she even knew what recourse meant.

  "Is that you, Alexis? How did you get in here? Let go of me." She struggled to get free, and I used my strength to pin her to the wall with only one arm. "How are you so strong?" she grunted as she continued to struggle against me.

  "To take care of the scum of the earth. You can fight me all you want, but you will get tired and I won't. I have a message for you, and I want you to listen very carefully. Do you understand me?"

  She didn't answer.

  "I asked you a question. Do you understand me?"

  "Fine, I'll listen, but I'm not doing anything that you say."

  "I've shown you that I'm much stronger than you, and you refuse to do what I say?" My anger was really starting to rise. I used the force of my one arm to pin her to the wall even more tightly.

  She gasped a little but didn't get any words out.

  "That's what I thought," I said. "Now listen to me very carefully. When you get back to school, you are going to tell everyone that you made what you said about me. You're going to tell them that there is no truth behind the story that you made up. A public apology would be nice…but not necessary. Just fix my reputation and make sure that everyone knows what a liar you are."

  "Are you kidding me?"

  "Does it seem like I'm kidding you? Would I really go to all the effort of coming over here just to play games?"

  She straightened up and said, "There's no way that I'm going to tell everyone that I lied. I would never live that down!"

  "Maybe you should have thought about that before you spread vicious lies!" I bit into her neck just enough to draw a tiny bit of blood.

  "What the heck?"

  "A little warning to do what I say."

  "You're crazy," she said, wiping at her blood.

  "You still won't agree to fix what you ruined?" I asked.

  "No way. I told you that I'm not telling everyone that I lied."

  "But you did lie. You didn't just tell a little white lie to get yourself out of trouble. No, you went to a volleyball game where you knew a lot of people would be, and you purposefully started a lie about someone who wasn't even there to defend herself. Even when someone tried to stop you, you refused. Then you gloated when everyone treated me horribly because of the lie that you started. You started this, and you need to fix it."

  "You are freaking crazy." Her heart was pounding, and I could still smell the fear despite her show of confidence.

  I bit into her again and this time, I drank up some blood. She tried to fight me, but I was able to hold down her hands with mine very easily.

  "Will you fix the situation now?"

  "I didn't do anything wrong," she hissed. "You stole my crown. I have worked very hard to become and stay popular and you, you little bookworm, just came in like you owned the place and stole it from me."

  "Really?" I asked. "I stole it? Isn't the truth that our classmates voted for me over you? I didn't even want it."

  "Whatever. I don't care how it happened. It was rightfully mine. You have to pay for that. You didn't work for it like I did."

  I bit into her again and drank up more blood until the flow started to slow. "What do you think, Hailey? Do we have a deal?"

  "Go to hell."

  I leaned down and drank even more blood. Her heart continued to pound, and the fear become stronger. "Do we have a deal now?"

  "Why…are you doing this…to me?" She was starting to get weak.

  "Because you are a liar who enjoys destroying the lives of others." I looked into her eyes, "You will tell everyone at school that you lied."

  She glared at me.

  "Got it?"

  She spit in my face, and I immediately went in for her neck taking in as much blood as I could. I could feel her pulse weaken, and I stopped. She appeared to have passed out, but I wasn't going to make any assumptions. It was still possible that she was faking to catch me off guard. I took her pulse and could tell that she'd be fine, albeit a little weak. All of my training from the CSI club was going to come in handier than I ever thought before. I laid her on her bed.

  I looked at all of the marks on her neck and knew I'd have to lick them to get them to heal and remove the evidence. I licked them quickly and watched them heal before my eyes.

  I hoped that she would still be scared when she woke up, so that she would go to school and tell everyone what a liar she was.

  I slipped through the wall, sat against the ledge under the window and then jumped down to the ground. I ran to the edge of the property to turn the power back on and then ran back home to my bedroom.

  As I was climbing into my own bed, Clara rolled over and asked, "How did it go?"

  "I was in and out undetected, but I don't know if she'll make things right or not. She refused to tell the truth right up until she passed out."

  "Really?" Clara asked. "It sounds like she might be a tough nut to crack. You might need my help, after all."

  "I might, but hopefully I got through to her."

  When I got to school, I didn't expect that Hailey would have had the time to spread the word already, so I braced myself for more immature and hurtful behavior. But I hoped that by the end of the day, things would be different.

  When I walked in, people stared at me and pointed. I pretended that I didn't notice and walked to my locker with my head held high.

  After I got the books that I needed out of my locker, I started walking towards my first class, and I felt something hard hit my head. I resisted the temptation to turn around to see who had thrown it.

  I felt something else hit the back of my head. This time it felt like a quarter, and I was pretty sure that it would leave a mark. I picked up my pace, eager to get to my class and grateful that the honors kids didn't care about stupid rumors.

  "Hey whore," someone called out.

  "Did you find someone new to infect?" someone else shouted.

  Anger and humiliation began to rise from the pit of my stomach all the way up to my head. Part of me wanted to run and hide, while the other part wanted to attack. I felt my fangs grow.

  "Won't you even stand up for yourself? Or is everything true?"

  I turned around. "Of course it's not true. It's all lies."

  The hallway erupted in laughter and my face flushed.

  "Aren't you the same people who would whisper that I was virgin?" I exclaimed.

  "Virgin whore," someone called.

  Everyone laughed again.

  "Virgin whore," someone else shouted.

  "Are you people really this ignorant?" I asked in disbelief.

  "Virgin whore," several people shouted while everyone else laughed.

  I could see that this was going absolutely nowhere except downhill. I started running as fast as I could, while still appearing human. I wished that I could run at full speed.

  Once in my seat, I slouched down as low as I could. I was trying desperately not to cry. I wanted to be able to turn my feelings off, but the transformation only made them magnified.

  In the past, when people had picked on me, I usually felt some degree of hurt, but not like I was feeling right then. My desire to climb back into my bed for two weeks was back, and I didn't know how much longer I could keep the tears at bay.

  By the time that lunch came around, I had been hit by several more objects and called other names. I tried to sneak out to my car unnoticed, but I could sense someone following me.

&nb
sp; I sighed and braced myself when I stopped to open the door.

  "Are you leaving?"

  I turned around ready to say something harsh, but felt better when I saw Tanner walking towards me.

  "You look like you could use a friend," he said.

  The tears spilled out and wouldn't stop. I was grateful that Brooke had told me to always use waterproof makeup in the cold months, because you never knew when it was going to rain.

  He wrapped his arms around me, and I sobbed into his chest.

  "Those people are cruel," he said. "I heard what they were saying. I told them that Hailey is nothing more than a jealous liar, but all they want to hear is something juicier than that."

  "Why are they so mean?" I asked, still crying. "I didn't do anything to them."

  "You don't have to. I didn't have to. They feel more powerful when they can pick on someone else."

  "How do you know all of this? How they feel and everything, I mean."

  He sighed. "I've been to some counseling, and my counselor helped me to understand their mentality."

  I looked up at him. "They were so mean to you that you had to go to counseling?"

  "Oh no, it was nothing like that. I was in there because I was having a hard time with my dad taking off. I blamed myself, and my mom was worried about me. I just happened to be in counseling when those rumors went around about me."

  "That's awful about your dad. I can't even imagine."

  "I'm fine now and we're actually better off without him around. It just took me a while to figure it out. Enough about me. Were you planning on skipping school?"

  "I wish," I said. "I can't miss another class or I'll be in trouble."

  "That's right, I almost forgot about your vacation. Were you just going to sit in your car to get away from everyone?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Let's sit in there then. It's getting cold standing out here. Not that I'm complaining about having you in my arms," he said with a smile.

  "I hadn't noticed the cold, and I left my coat in my locker. Let's climb in so that you don't get cold."

  Once inside the car, I started it so that he could have the heat.