Mortal Sight

by Sandra Fernandez Rhoads

  I back away and stare down at the puffy spot on the carpet where the coffee table once sat. “You’re ashamed of me. I get it.”

  “Cera, no.” Mom reaches out, but I dodge her and swipe my bag off the chair. Her voice chokes. “Please don’t ever think that.”

  It’s too late. I head to the front door. I’ve got nothing left to say.

  “Cera, you can’t go out that door.” Mom presses her hand against her lungs and takes a deep breath. I can’t tell if she’s mustering the strength or if she’s laying the drama on super thick so I’ll feel guilty and cave.

  “What’s to stop me? I can take care of myself from now on, so go ahead and move on your own. I took a job at a gallery paying more than what you make. I could have changed things for you too. That call was the curator looking to pay for local art. I was going to bring him a sample of your sketches and surprise you with the news.” I reach into my bag.

  Mom’s mouth hardens. In fact, her whole body turns rigid. “You didn’t—”

  When I pull out the sketch, her face turns into an expression of absolute fear.

  “Is that—” Her eyes are desperate as she steps toward me. “Dear God, no. You saw it?”

  “I don’t care to.” I toss the sketch at her, but the paper floats back, landing near my feet. Despite my comment, curiosity gets the better of me. I glance down.

  It can’t be. I blink and look again. Right in front of me, drawn in violent graphite streaks, is the deformed bird from my hallucination. How is it possible? My hands shake . . . this sketch . . . it’s the same grotesque bird I saw in my attack this morning, but . . . the image isn’t the same . . . no. The picture in my hand shows the image from my first attack—ten years ago.

  “Cera, give that to me.” Mom’s panicked voice is nothing but distant noise. My hands tremble as I pick up the paper. Like looking at a photograph, the sketch from ten years ago resurrects the image in my mind as if I’d experienced this attack this morning. Except it’s different from the one I just had. This sketch has two birds, not one. The creatures’ oil-slick wings are extended, covering the sky. Their lion jaws hang open with black saliva dripping from their fangs. Falling through the air, a raggedy doll screams. She has three scratch marks raked across her leg. A smaller bird with narrow, snakelike eyes perches on a building and waits with mouth open, ready to swallow her whole.

  Fear wraps around me like a tourniquet, just like it did this morning and all those years ago. At that moment, it’s as if a cloudy film peels off my eyes. Everything seems clear. The pointed nose on the doll . . . looks like Marcy’s—the girl who died the day after I saw this image in my mind.

  “Cera, please!” Mom yanks the paper out of my hands. “We have to leave.”

  I step back. “How did you know what to draw? Why would you . . . I never gave you details about the scratch marks on the doll’s legs . . . or the birds.”

  Trembling, Mom crumples the drawing. “I will tell you everything after we leave—”

  “Tell me what? That I saw Marcy’s death play out the night before it happened? That I’m not crazy? That somehow the monsters I see during the attacks are real? Or that all these years you’ve been lying to me!”

  Mom sinks on the couch. “Cera, it’s not like that. Listen—”

  “So you can lie again?” My throat chokes with a fist-sized knot as tears push through, blurring my vision. I blink them back. “You said I imagined birds pushing my only friend off the bleachers because I was trying to cope with her death. I argued with you, telling you—begging you to believe—that I saw the image before she died. You convinced me I was wrong. But I remember the night of my first attack so clearly now. You grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. You leaned close and asked me to imagine we were looking at the scene together. Is that how you knew? Why have you never once said you understood?”

  “You were so little—”

  “You’ve had this sketch for ten years!”

  “I will show you all the drawings after we leave—”

  “All the drawings? You drew out every image from each attack I’ve ever had?” Then it hits me. “Did someone die each time?”

  Mom wipes back her tears. She presses her trembling hands to her knees and doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. The answer is written in her eyes.

  I can’t find air to breathe. This can’t be true. “Where are the other sketches?”

  Mom lowers her head. “Seeing them won’t change anything. Please, honey, we need to leave now.”

  “I need answers, and if people died, I have to know who.” Without a second thought I race down the hall to her room. I know exactly which box to grab. I rip the top open and dump out the contents before she tries to stop me. Books thump to the floor. Two sketchpads fall, releasing a confetti bomb of yellow-tinted paper all over the brown carpet.

  As the pages settle, one sheet lands near me. It’s a sketch of a tiny frog drowning in a sea of black mist. I sink to my knees to get a better look. The deep-set eyes on the frog remind me of the boy from my third-grade class. His name was Alan. I remember because he was the only kid in that town who wanted to be my friend. I’m not sure how the details seem so clear just by looking at the sketch, but I can tell the shadow emerging from the black mist is a hand from the deformed, sallow man from my nightmares. The creature reaches up, choking the tiny frog. I never told Mom about this one and we moved right after I had the attack. At the bottom left corner of the sketch, she’s written the date. Nine years ago. And next to the date she’s written the word “confirmed.”

  I flip the page over.

  A newspaper clipping stapled to the back reads: “Boy, eight, drowns in local pond. Alan Watkins, a third-grader at . . .” My heart nearly stops beating.

  I slide another sketch in front of me. The gorilla creature, the one with the pointed tail, breathes out fire. Flames consume a thin-necked bird, a crane, with curly hair—reminding me of a girl in sixth grade.

  The words “confirmed” are scrawled at the bottom of this sketch too. Another article, stapled to the back, says: “Middle school cheerleader, Sylvia Reynolds dies in tragic house fire.”

  I turn over each page. Slumped on the floor, a stab twists in my gut as I stare at my horrific world drawn out with meticulous charcoal strokes. Did I cause this? My chest caves in. I can’t breathe. All this time, Mom moved us to keep the bodies from piling up. Gravity presses down, weighting the air. The moving boxes, now coffins surrounding me. Adding salt to the wound, Milton punctures my thoughts with the verse:

  Now conscience wakes despair

  That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory

  Of what he was, what is, and what must be

  Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.

  Worse sufferings? How can anything be worse than this?

  “Cera, I’m so sorry.” Mom leans against the doorpost. Her skin looks paler than death as tears stream down her face. “I was only trying to protect you.”

  I clutch the drawing and rise to my knees. “How can you see what’s in my head?” She stares at the carpet and doesn’t answer. “All this time you’ve known. Somehow you can see what I do, and you drew it out and kept them secret. Pretended none of this was true.”

  “You were seven, eight, nine. You wouldn’t have understood.”

  “But how could you just let people die?” Milton’s verse boomerangs back in my head: worse deeds worse sufferings. “Did I. . . kill them somehow?”

  “No.” With painful effort Mom kneels beside me. “You have visions. They’re prophetic.”

  “Who else knows about this? And why didn’t we save all these people?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not? Marcy’s accident happened less than a day after I had my attack, which means the visions come true in less than twenty-four hours, don’t they? That’s why you’re in such a rush to leave. No one would believe that I can see what I do. You’re afraid they’ll lock me up, so you’re willing to let people die?
That’s no different from killing them ourselves, Mom!” I pull away from her, nauseated.

  She removes the paper from my hand. “Don’t say such horrible things. We couldn’t stop it from happening.”

  “If you knew who it was—”

  Mom shakes her head. “I didn’t. Not until I found the articles weeks, sometimes months, after we left.” When she looks at me, I read the terror in her eyes.

  “But I can tell who it is just by looking at the sketch, like I did just now. If I had seen the drawings back then, I would have known. I could have saved them.” Then it hits me. “You drew the images from this morning, didn’t you?” I glance at her hands. Graphite is smeared in the crevasses.

  I scramble to my feet. “If the incidents from my vision happen in less than twenty-four hours, then I’m running out of time.”

  Mom stands. “Cera, there’s nothing you can do. We have to leave before—”

  “Before someone else dies?” I grab a box. “No, Mom. You talked me out of believing in my visions once before and I let a girl die, along with all the others across an entire decade. I won’t let someone else die if I can stop it.”

  I rip open the top, tossing out musty shoes and yanking out sweaters smelling of lavender. I tear the next cardboard box apart. “All these years you let me believe I was crazy.” I take another carton and dump out shampoo, hairbrushes, makeup, and her entire bathroom drawer. “You lied. Again and again. Made me feel alone when all along you knew.”

  “Cera, stop!” Mom grabs my arm, sobbing, begging as she gasps for breath.

  I pull away from her and tear open a box filled with art books. I whip each one out and hold it in the air before hurtling it on the floor. “You pretended none of this was true.” I toss a book against the wall. “People died needlessly.” I send another book hurling against the bed. “More people will die unless you tell me where the last sketch is!” I grip the final book from the box, ready to throw it across the room. Mom’s eyes grow wide. I’m holding another sketchbook. It’s the one I gave her for her birthday that she uses for to-do lists.

  “Cera, give that to me.” She tries to grab the notebook. “Trust me when I say you can’t stop it from happening.”

  More than half my life she’s kept secrets, and now she’s asking me to trust her? I turn my back, moving away, and flip through the pages of scratched-out lists. No drawings. I try to recall the pictures from my mind. There was a green kite, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what a green kite means. Papers flying? No that’s not right. Once I see the image drawn out, I’ll know. I’m sure of it. I flip through the last few pages. Then I see it.

  “Cera!” Mom grips the edge of her bed and stumbles my way.

  I ignore her and focus on the sketch. In light strokes, almost invisible, is that same deformed bird. My skin turns cold. She’s drawn him with a greedy look of death in his eye. His talons are extended. Sceptered claws “besmeared with blood / Of human sacrifice and parents’ tears.” It’s the demon, Moloch, in Paradise Lost. The way he puffs out his chest, as if waging “open war” is just as Milton describes. And the small mouse running across the road . . . it’s Jess. The braided tail flapping in the wind, the two teeth missing on the mouse as she screams while she’s being sliced open. The green kite is a dollar flying in the air. Jess is going to die, and it’s all my fault. I gave her money to buy those pencils. I begin to shake.

  “No matter what you think you see, you can’t do anything to stop it from happening.”

  “I have to try!” I drop the sketchbook and race out of the room.

  “Cera, don’t! They’ll find you,” she pleads through her tears as I run out the front door.

  I sprint down the shabby patch of crabgrass and race down the street, toward the row of bushes. My breath streams out in front of me as I search for Jess down streets tunneled with oak trees, and then the woods. Icy wind blows cold against my cheeks as I take the reverse path from her school to the gift shop, hoping to intercept her on the way. My eyes water but I keep looking for Jess’s messy braid. She isn’t anywhere in sight. My frozen lungs scream, pleading me to stop, but I have to press on.

  Random drops of cold rain pelt my face as a large shadow moves across the road. I push against time and race over the buckled pavement. I turn corners and weave through parked cars. I dodge irritated shoppers. “Jess!” I cry out, hoping my cracked voice will carry on the arctic wind and find her before my vision comes true. A gust of wind pushes against me, freezing my lips. Steel-blue clouds creep across the sky, snuffing out the sun’s rays. Thunder rumbles.

  Then I hear a sound that makes my skin prickle: a shrill cry, like a pig squealing for mercy in a slaughterhouse, only ten times louder. Even over the pulse pounding in my ears, that shriek is undeniable. I’d know it anywhere.

  It’s the horrific call of that demon bird.

  “Jess!” I scream and dash around blocked-off areas of road construction. I had the vision less than nine hours ago, but don’t know if that’s enough time to keep it from coming true. I push myself harder to reach the main road in time. Please let her be alive. Let me see her flash that toothless smile when I run around the corner. Let her be walking safely down the sidewalk. Please don’t let her be dead.

  I turn the corner and skid to a stop. It’s not Jess I see, but the predator bird, Moloch. He dips out of the clouds and flies over the open road. My heart slams hard against my lungs. The beast that only lived in my head is alive, right in front of me. He’s not drawn on paper or flashed in snippets from an image. The massive creature is soaring a good three stories above me. The black beast—with the body of a raven and six razor-sharp talons on each finger-like toe—is the size of a grizzly bear. His terrifying head has fangs and the slit yellow eyes of a rabid lion. This isn’t a hallucination. That horrifying creature is real; and somehow he will kill Jess, even though everyone around me acts oblivious to his hideous existence.

  As he flaps his wings, the wind whips, kicking up whirling dust tornados on the road. Everything inside me is screaming to run, but I’m rooted in the sidewalk, unable to move.

  The beast circles around. I get the feeling this has all happened before—that I’ve been here, watching every detail play out—but I know I haven’t. It’s all been in my head. But now the creature puffs out his chest and spreads his wings, casting a dark shadow over the sloping road. He prowls the cloudy sky ready for attack. But where’s Jess?

  Moloch swoops down over the road. His head smoothly tilts from side to side, but he doesn’t see me because his beady eyes are locked on a truck coming down the road. This truck has slanted metal bars—or ladders—strapped on both sides. There wasn’t a truck in my vision or the drawing. Was I wrong?

  The truck gets closer. Those aren’t ladders. The silver frame is a thin metal crate that carries giant sheets of frosted glass. I weave around a parked car. Moloch circles above the buildings before swooping down. Digging his talons into the top of the truck, he jerks the vehicle back like some play toy. The driver slams on the brakes to get control. A silent scream gets caught in my chest. Moloch spins the truck faster. Black smoke rises from the tires. The smell of burnt rubber invades the air.

  Why is Moloch attacking the truck? And where is Jess? I still don’t see her. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Maybe the driver is the one in trouble. Regardless, how do I keep anyone from getting hurt? I don’t know what will work; I only know I have to do something.

  The beast shrieks, sounding delighted, as he bangs his oversized wings against the crates. It only takes one hit before cracks spread through the glass and pieces start to wiggle loose. If Moloch doesn’t stop battering the truck, those pieces of glass will start flying all over the road.

  Sliced open. So that’s what he’s doing. My image, or at least what I deciphered from Mom’s sketch, showed Jess cut open on the road. If Moloch cracks the sheets of glass and spins the truck so the shards break free and find their target, then Jess has to be close by.


  I scan the area. There, several blocks down, Jess darts into the road. My heart practically stops. She is chasing something caught in a violent wind. A dollar bill.

  I run into the street. A car honks. Another screeches. Someone shouts at me. I ignore them and push fast in her direction.

  “Leave it, Jess!” She’s wearing the earmuffs and doesn’t hear me. She tackles the dollar to the ground in the middle of the street, caging the flapping paper between her oversized gloves.

  I force every fiber of my being to propel me faster down the road. Moloch launches the truck closer to Jess. The vision flashes in my mind: the little mouse screams. My heart feels ready to explode. I’m still too far away.

  I shout helplessly. My voice is smothered by the sound of cracking thunder and shattered glass. Jess rises to her knees as glass blades sail through the air. Jess lets out a piercing scream and shields her face with her arms.

  I’m so close. I can make it. I can save her.

  I’m one body length away. I leap and reach out. My fingertips scrape the hem of her sleeve and grab—nothing but a fistful of air. Jagged glass stabs her in the chest, knocking her away. Her terrified scream turns silent.

  I land hard on the asphalt. My stomach, elbows, and hands scrape against the gritty road as glass spears rain down. I shield my head, but get nicked on my left side below my ribs.

  For a moment, everything is eerily quiet. Tires stop squealing. The mangled truck creaks to a stop in the middle of the intersection. Jess is crumpled on the pavement several feet away.

  I crawl toward her, my hands and elbows scraping over glass shards, but I don’t feel the pain. “Jess.” Her name gets caught in my throat. “Can you hear me?” Her usually vibrant eyes are vacant, staring past the thick clouds. Her chapped lips turn blue and her mouth hangs open with her abandoned cry. “Jess, I’m here. It’s me, Cera.” She doesn’t answer. When I grab her hand, two sparkling pencils roll out of those oversized gloves. One is pink. The other is honey yellow. One of the dollars I should never have given her lays at her side, steeped in blood.