Brighter, a supernatural thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  Ramona dialed Heather and told her to head back to her apartment.

  "I don't think we should do that," said Heather. "Mason is one of them. Maybe it's a trap."

  "I don't think so. I think we can trust him," said Ramona.

  "I don't."

  "He said he was going to come over and he was going to explain everything," said Ramona. "He said they can't get through a locked door."

  "He could be lying."

  "He could be, but he did just save us."

  "Yeah, but he killed Rick. He helped anyway."

  "I know. But where else are we going to go?"

  Heather didn't have any ideas. So they turned around and headed back to Elston. Once back at Ramona's apartment, they debated whether they could bring up Heather's stuff, but decided it was probably a bad idea. Mason had told Ramona they needed to get inside, get the door locked, and hunker down. But Heather insisted on bringing as many of her books as they could carry. They brought up the books and locked themselves in the apartment.

  Ramona found she had a lot of restless energy, which she tried to distill by pacing in her apartment. Unfortunately, what with the air mattress on the floor, there wasn't a lot of space to pace in. Heather said Ramona's constant walking was making her nervous. She was sitting on Ramona's couch, looking through books and trying to tell Ramona about the things that she was finding out. Ramona tried to concentrate on what Heather was saying, but it was too hard.

  Finally, unable to handle pacing anymore, Ramona decided to cook something. She clattered around the kitchen while Heather talked, but she was barely hearing anything Heather said. She paid attention to the thing Heather had read about body snatching and auxiliary power enough to ask what angelica was.

  "It's an herb," Heather said. "In medieval times, people thought it was magical."

  Great. They were going to fight off the monsters with magical herbs? Wonderful. At least it was appropriately named, considering this whole sordid business had started with Ramona seeing the ghost of Angelica.

  "Well," Heather was saying, "the ritual really is simple enough. If we could just figure out where they were getting their power, we could do it."

  "Listen," Ramona said as she chopped up carrots. She didn't even know what it was she was cooking, but it was going to contain carrots. "That book is talking about people needing a lot of power to do that. These things aren't even people. Maybe they don't need auxiliary power or whatever."

  "Maybe not," said Heather, "but it's all we have to go on."

  Ramona got out a skillet and dropped a pat of butter in it to melt.

  "What are you making?" asked Heather.

  Ramona considered, looking at the ingredients she'd amassed on the counter. "Stir fry," she said. "With rice noodles, because we don't have any rice."

  "That sounds good," said Heather. "I should make a lot," said Ramona, "because Mason's coming over. Do you think he'll want to eat some?"

  "Do they eat?" asked Heather. "Have we ever seen one of them eating?"

  "Well..." said Ramona, "we've seen them drink alcohol."

  "That's true," said Heather. "Do we have any soy sauce?"

  They didn't. They had fish sauce, though. "It'll be like Thai stir fry," said Ramona.

  "Ramona," said Heather.

  "Yeah?"

  "How did we get into this mess?"

  "I don't know. I saw Angelica? I told you about it? I think it's my fault."

  "No way," said Heather. "It's nobody's fault. But one thing's for sure. You and I are going to be friends until we are very old ladies. There is no way I am letting them kill us."

  Ramona nodded, chopping up onions. "Hell, yeah."

  * * *

  As soon as he hung up the phone with Ramona, Mason heard a car pull up to his trailer. He went to the door, expecting to see Blair with a posse of people. He figured they'd be here to do something very unpleasant to him, probably physical violence. He might not be able to die, not really, but they could hurt him. They could put him in a lot of pain. But it was just Blair, by herself. He hadn't expected that.

  And as he opened the door to her, he realized she was crying. Her eyes were red, her nose puffy. He opened his arms to her, and she went into them. They went inside, his screen door clattering closed behind them. He stood that way for quite a while, Blair sobbing into his chest, his arms wrapped tight around her. This was familiar. This was the way it had always been before. Him and Blair. Different bodies. Different names. But it had always been the two of them. Until...

  He guessed it was normal for any couple to get bored with each other, especially when they'd been dating for thousands of years. But this experiment they'd tried, with the two of them apart for a while, well, it hadn't worked out the way either of them had really imagined it would. He hadn't expected that once he wasn't seeing Blair, she would become so petty and cruel. She hadn't imagined that he would become so...human. Hell. Something had changed. After so long, with everything staying the same, something had changed. Mason didn't know what it was. And part of him still felt guilty over the fact that he had betrayed Blair and all of his own kind. But the guilt wasn't enough to stop him from going down the path he'd gone down. So he pulled away from Blair. Slowly. Carefully. He stroked her cheek, wiped away the tears that were streaming down it. But he stepped back.

  Blair sniffled. "When did you start hating me?" she asked, her voice still full of tears.

  "I don't hate you," he said. Then he thought about it. Maybe he did hate her.

  "You don't love me anymore."

  That wasn't true. "In some ways, I'll always love you," he said.

  "What ways?" she asked, her voice bitter.

  Mason didn't know. He looked down at his feet. "Do you want to sit down?" he asked, gesturing to his couch.

  They sat down. Blair seemed to compose herself a little. Mason handed her a box of tissues. She mopped up her face. "I got your shirt wet," she muttered. "I'm sorry."

  God. Sometimes, she seemed so vulnerable. Maybe Blair had internalized more humanity than she thought she had. Maybe they were all a little tainted at this point. They'd been playing their parts so well for so long they didn't really know how to be anything other than human. "It's okay," said Mason. "My shirt will be fine."

  She tried a smile.

  "I don't like seeing you so upset," Mason said. That was true, at least. He wasn't sorry that he'd done what he'd done, and he wasn't sorry for what he was going to do, but he didn't like seeing Blair cry.

  "Why did you do it?" asked Blair.

  "I don't want anything to happen to her."

  "God! What is it with her? Why do you care about her?"

  "I don't know," said Mason. "I just do."

  "She's human. She's not even one of us."

  "Well, that was the deal, wasn't it? We were taking a break, and we weren't supposed to be with anyone else except for humans. You're the one who broke that promise when you had Owen recruited."

  "You were obsessed with Ramona. What was I supposed to do?"

  Mason shrugged. "It doesn't really matter."

  "I guess it doesn't," said Blair. She took a deep breath. "I still love you, even if you don't love me."

  She had a funny way of showing it, Mason thought, ordering him around like he was a lackey.

  "And we used to make decisions together, but since you don't want to have anything to do with us anymore, that leaves me to decide what to do. And if it were anyone else, you know what we'd do to him. So, even though I care about you, I can't let my feelings get in the way of your punishment. Because I can't tolerate the kind of behavior you just exhibited."

  "I know," said Mason. Now they would all rush in and start smashing his bones with bricks.

  "I don't want to, though," said Blair. "Can't we just pretend I dealt with you harshly? Can't you just tell them I tortured you?"

  She really did still care about him. Oddly, Mason didn't think he'd really thought that she did anymore. He reached for her, and she
was back in his arms. She tilted her face back and looked up at him from beneath her heavily lashed lids. She wanted him to do it, and he wanted to do it to her, so he did. He pressed his lips against hers. It felt...right. Perfect. Like things were back the way they were supposed to be. Blair thrust her tongue between his lips, and he opened his mouth to her. She straddled him on the couch, running her hands up and down his arms, over his chest. His hands started roaming too, cupping her breasts, stroking her back, pulling her hips closer to him. Blair's hands went lower on his chest, down, down. She unzipped his pants, eased her hand inside and stroked him.

  Mason threw his head back, closed his eyes.

  "Why can't it be like this again?" Blair whispered. "Why can't you just take her? Kill her? She's ruining you."

  And then he thought of Ramona. Ramona at eighteen, a freshman in college, acting like she knew so much, when she was really just so adorably innocent. And he couldn't help it. He wished it were Ramona in his arms, her legs wrapped around his body.

  He took hold of Blair's wrist, pulled her hand out of his pants. "I don't know why it can't be like this," he said, "but it can't."

  * * *

  By the time Mason showed up at her apartment, Ramona had already finished making stir-fry, and she and Heather had already eaten. There were some leftovers. Ramona had already stowed them in the refrigerator. Ramona offered them to Mason, but he declined. Instead, he just kind of stood in the middle of the apartment, looking unsure as to why he was there and what he was doing.

  "Do you want to sit down?" Ramona asked.

  "Okay," said Mason. "Okay, yeah."

  Mason, Heather, and Ramona sat down on her couch and chair in the living room portion of her studio apartment. Ramona watched Mason. He was sitting now, but he looked far from relaxed.

  "Are you in danger?" Ramona asked. "I mean, after what you did for us, are they after you now?"

  "Probably," said Mason. "I just talked to Blair. She and I..." he trailed off. "Well, it's not really important. I think if I shaped up and apologized all would be forgiven, but I don't think I'm going to do that. I... I don't know what I'm doing."

  Ramona didn't know what she was doing either. "Listen," she said, "we really weren't trying to attack them or anything. We really are just trying to move out of town."

  "We've been having a hard time," said Heather. "And we think that it might have something to do with the library. But we didn't think the library and them were really connected. At least until now, we didn't."

  "Blair overreacted," said Mason. "She's been doing a lot of that lately. She's out of control. Everything's out of control. Everything's unraveling." He shook his head. "I know you say you're just trying to move out of town, but I think that you're going to have to take them on if you want to get out. The way things have turned out, I don't think you have a lot of choices."

  "What can we really do, though?" asked Ramona. She and Heather weren't powerful. They couldn't do anything. Not really. She didn't think. They were just two girls whose lives had been ripped up and destroyed. Sure Ramona was angry, but she was also realistic. As far as she knew, it was going to be impossible to stop them.

  "Well, that's why I came here," said Mason. "I want to help you."

  "Why?" asked Heather. "Why aren't you on their side? You're one of them, aren't you?"

  Mason nodded. "I'm the king." He stopped. "Or whatever you want to call it. The leader. Or I was. I just...I got tired. I've been...doing this...living...pretending to be human for so long. Sometimes I can't really remember when it started or how. It's so strange to remember that time. I didn't think then. Not in language, exactly. So much of what I've become comes from the people I've..." He hesitated painfully. "...killed."

  "You feel guilty about that?" asked Heather.

  "Yeah." Mason shrugged. "It's funny, because I never really used to. I never felt guilty or tired. I just had this insatiable drive to survive. And it seems like the longer that I do survive, the more I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of being alive. I'm sick of killing to stay that way. I'm sick of covering my tracks. I'm sick of hiding what I am. I just want to rest. I want to die. And I want to help the two of you stop us. All of us."

  Ramona couldn't believe this. Sure Mason was always depressed, even suicidal, but she had never really taken him seriously. And she certainly didn't have any desire to play Doctor Kevorkian for Mason. "Wait. Who said anything about killing anyone?"

  "It's the only way to stop it," said Mason. "You have to kill us."

  "Can you die?" asked Ramona. "You act like you've been alive forever."

  "We can die," said Mason. "We used to be more powerful than we are now. It was a different world then. There was...magic, I guess you'd call it...in everything. In the stones and trees and mountains. And in us. And the world changed. It was like all that magic just started to drain away. I don't know why. But I remember that we were dying then. And we had to do something to keep ourselves alive, so we searched for magic, for power. And we found it here. In what I think people call the vortex. I guess you've noticed—anyone who's ever come to this town has noticed—this place isn't the same as everywhere else. Things in Elston almost hum. There's a stasis about this place. It refuses to change with the world around it. Maybe the change is what makes the power leave. I don't know. But that's why we stayed here.

  "We found a way to use the vortex here for our own purposes," Mason continued. "And at the same time, we could use it to blend in here. The vortex is power in and of itself. Like I said, it's a sort of power of sameness. We found that we could trap things in it. Souls. Essences. Spirits. Whatever you want to call them. We could keep them in the vortex after we killed them. Stop them from moving on to wherever spirits move on. The more souls trapped, the more power we had. And we could draw on that power and that trapped essence to appear to be the person we had killed. We could put on their bodies like a suit and take on their personality like putting on accessories."

  "And the vortex is under the library, isn't it?" asked Heather.

  "Yeah," said Mason. "That's its focus."

  "So," said Ramona slowly, "when I had that dream in the basement of the library, it wasn't really a dream, was it?" She remembered the hoards of people crowding into her, dressed in various clothes from different centuries, begging her for her help. That had been trapped spirits she'd seen. And the dream about Mason and Blair. That had been the real Mason and Blair. Their spirits, which were trapped in the vortex beneath the library.

  "I knew the dream I had about Rick was a kind of communication," said Heather. "And I guess I can see how the monsters—oh, sorry."

  "No, that's okay. I guess that's about right," Mason said.

  "Why they can use the vortex to do what they do," Heather finished. "But I still don't see what that has to do with us not being able to leave town."

  "The vortex's power is to keep things the same," said Mason. "The more powerful it gets, the better it is at doing that. People leaving changes things. It doesn't like to let people leave."

  "I don't know," said Ramona. "In one of the dreams I had, the spirits told me that I wasn't allowed to leave, because they weren't allowed to leave. I think they might trap people because they're trapped."

  "Maybe," said Mason.

  "Kind of gives a whole new meaning to being stuck in a small town, doesn't it?" said Heather.

  Ramona laughed. It did. They were literally stuck here. "So," she said. "We would have to dismantle the vortex to leave. Is that what you're saying?"

  Mason nodded. "Yes," he said.

  "How do we do that?" asked Heather.

  Mason shook his head. "I'm not really sure. Blair says it can be done. She said the magic that held it all together was flimsy."

  "I found the passage in that book about it," Heather said. "There's a ritual we can do."

  "I don't know," said Ramona. "You really want to go the basement of the library and burn herbs and chant magic words? You really think that's going to work?"
/>   "Can I see the ritual you're talking about?" asked Mason.

  "Maybe," said Heather. "I know Ramona just buys everything you say hook, line, and sinker, Mason, but I don't know you very well. And you are one of them. And you say you want to help us. But I don't know if I believe that the reason you want to help us is because you want to die. Sorry, but to me, that sounds kind of flimsy."

  "You think I'm setting you up?" Mason asked.

  Heather shrugged. "The thought's crossed my mind."

  "Well," said Mason, "I guess you're right. I do want to die. I do feel guilty being what I am and doing what I do. And I do want all of that to stop. But I also don't want anything to happen to Ramona. If we don't kill them, they will kill both of you. You know too much, and you're too dangerous. So, I feel like I have to help you go on the offensive if I want to help keep her safe."

  "Why do you care so much about Ramona?" asked Heather.

  Ramona glared at Heather. That had been kind of touching. Maybe Mason just liked her. Was that so impossible to believe? That a guy could just like her?

  "I..." Mason trailed off. "We never really were allowed to be really involved with humans. We mostly kept to ourselves, mingling where we could, just to blend in, to keep from looking suspicious. But mostly, when we started dating a human, it was so we could recruit them. Like when Dawn started dating Mason, it was so I could take him. But, like I said, things have been unraveling for a few years. Things just started to go downhill. And Blair and I tried an experiment. We decided to date humans. And that's when I fell for Ramona."

  "But you and I never dated," said Ramona.

  "We did, actually," said Mason. "But not when I was Mason."

  Ramona put her hand over her mouth as certain things started to occur to her. If Ben had been a monster, and she knew he had been, then when he left town, he really just stayed in town. And right after Ben "left town," she'd had that conversation with Mason in the back seat of his car. "You're Ben," she said softly.

  Mason nodded. "Yeah."

  "Fuck," said Ramona. Suddenly, she was angry. "You left. But you didn't really leave. You were still here, and I thought you were gone. And how could you have...? Why didn't you...?"