Brighter, a supernatural thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  "Hi," she whispered. "I miss you."

  Rick pulled her closer to him. Their bodies touched. His arms went around her waist. "Hi," he said back.

  That was enough for Heather at the moment. She was with Rick again. He was holding her. She didn't think she wanted anything else on earth. She wanted to stay like this forever. She sighed happily. "I don't want to leave you," she said.

  "I can't leave," said Rick. "I'm stuck here."

  "You're gone," Heather murmured.

  "No," said Rick, more forcefully this time. He pulled back a little. "I'm not gone. I'm stuck in Elston. For the rest of time. Until the universe collapses. And it's crowded in here."

  "Crowded?" They were the only ones here. But then Heather looked around the two of them, and there were bodies everywhere, smashed into each other, smashed into the two of them. It was suffocating and sweaty. Heather struggled. She felt the way she had once when she'd accidentally got caught in a mosh pit before she really understood what being in a mosh pit was really like. She'd had to elbow her way out, and she'd felt as if her rib cage was going to snap at any second.

  "Sure you don't want to leave?" Rick asked.

  "I want us both to leave," said Heather. "I want to be with you again."

  "Can't happen," said Rick. "I'm dead."

  Heather tried to fight against the press of all the bodies, but it was no use. She wasn't strong enough. "Rick, help me."

  "No," he said. "Heather, you need to help me."

  "I can't," she said. "I'm not strong enough. I can't fight them off."

  "Get me out of here," he said.

  "What?"

  "You can get me out of here," he said. "All you have to do is perform that ritual. Set us free."

  The rest of the bodies took up the refrain. "Set us free," they intoned like Gregorian monks. "Set us free."

  "Rick, if I try to do that, the monsters are going to kill me too. Wouldn't you rather that I was alive instead of being stuck here, helpless like you?"

  "So that's it?" he asked, pleading in his eyes. "'Till death do us part.' I'm dead, so you aren't going to help me? I know things were rocky at the end. I know that we didn't part on the best of terms, Heather, but I love you. I still love you. Don't you still love me?"

  "Rick, I... I don't want to die."

  "I didn't want to die either. Please help me, Heather. Please help me."

  Heather woke up sobbing. Ramona was leaning over her. Heather couldn't stop the flood of tears. Even though Ramona was asking over and over, "What's wrong?", Heather couldn't speak, she could only cry. The image of Rick's pleading eyes was burned into her brain. She couldn't stop seeing it. She couldn't stop feeling guilty.

  "Heather," said Ramona. "What is wrong?"

  Heather sat up straight on the couch, wiping at her tears and trying to get control of her shaking body. After what seemed like hours, she finally managed to steady her breathing and stop crying. She had the hiccups. "I had a dream," she said.

  "Oh, great," said Ramona. "Another one of those weird bright dreams?"

  "Yeah," said Heather. "Another dream about Rick."

  "Oh," said Ramona in a different voice.

  "God, Ramona, he was stuck in this place, crammed against all these other bodies. They were pressing on us. We couldn't breathe, and he was begging me to help him."

  "Gosh, Heather, I'm sorry," said Ramona. "That must have been awful."

  "Yeah," said Heather. "It was."

  They were quiet for a few minutes, then Heather started wrapping glasses in newspaper again. "We've got an apartment," she told Ramona. "I said I didn't know what time we'd get there, so they're leaving the key in an envelope in the mailbox. They want us to come in Monday morning and settle up money wise. The apartment isn't going to be clean, but they're going to cut the security deposit in half, since they won't have time to get it ready for us."

  Ramona hesitated. "That's great," she said, "but don't you want to say anything else about that dream?"

  "No," bit out Heather. "I want to forget about it." She didn't know if she could, but she sure as heck was going to try. The images might plague her for months, years, but that didn't matter. After a while, she'd be able to convince herself it had just been a dream, something she imagined. Once she left Elston, she could pretend that all of this crazy stuff had been a figment of her imagination. That there were no monsters, no vortex, no trapped souls. It would just take some time, but after a while, after a while, it wouldn’t bother her nearly as much as it did now.

  "Okay," said Ramona. She looked around the apartment. "We're almost packed."

  They really were. Heather could hardly believe it. She'd never moved out of a place so quickly, but the two of them really had boxed up their entire lives in the span of a day. It was an accomplishment. It was a testament to just how badly both of them wanted out.

  "I think I'm going to start loading up the cars," said Ramona.

  "Okay," said Heather. "I'll help you as soon as I finish with the dishes."

  The two worked for another several hours. Heather finished packing the dishes and then helped Ramona carry boxes to their cars. They had some issues fitting everything in, but after making the concession that they'd just have to rely on their side mirrors more than they ever had in their lives and filling every single space in each of their cars, they finally had packed everything.

  The two were exhausted. Ramona went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette and Heather went with her, even though she didn't really like it when Ramona smoked. They sat on the balcony, looking down on the courtyard behind The Holy Grind. They didn't talk. Ramona finished one cigarette and lit another one.

  "Um, Heather," said Ramona.

  "What?" said Heather.

  "I've been thinking about your dream. I had a dream kind of like that when I was trapped in the basement. I saw all those people too. There were so many of them. And they really are all stuck there, being used as battery power for the monsters. It's well...it's evil that the monsters have done that to them."

  "It is evil. And that's what the monsters want to do to us. You do understand that, don't you? They want to put us there too. And they could, I think. We've been lucky, but they are far more powerful than anything we could even imagine."

  "Yeah. They are. But I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be able to deal with my conscience if I leave all those people—Angelica, Garrett, Rick, Olivia—stuck there in that vortex like that. Not when I could have done something to help them, you know?"

  "You'll be fine. Sure, at first, it will be tough, but after some time has passed, you won't think about it as much. And we'll be alive, Ramona. Alive. I don't want to die. I don't want..." Heather trailed off. She wished Ramona hadn't given voice to the very same plaguing thoughts she was having. And Rick was her husband. She loved Rick. How could she leave his spirit there? How could she? "Listen," she said. "We don't even know if that ritual would work."

  "Mason said it would work."

  "Yeah, but he also didn't have any idea how to stop them in the first place. He's only hoping it will work. Mason's suicidal. He can't possibly be thinking clearly."

  "I think we should do it," said Ramona. "What will it hurt if we just stay until midnight tonight?"

  "What will it hurt? It will get us killed! Killed. Dead. The end. Over. Do you want that?"

  "No." Ramona took a long drag on her cigarette. "But I don't want to live the rest of my life knowing that I could have helped this town, and I didn't because I was too worried about saving my own skin."

  "Give me a cigarette," said Heather.

  Ramona looked shocked.

  "Just give me one."

  Ramona handed Heather a cigarette and the lighter.

  Heather lit the cigarette. She took a drag. She coughed and coughed. "These are disgusting," she said.

  "It was your idea to smoke one," said Ramona.

  Heather fought the guilt inside her. She pushed it down with all her might, squished it into a tiny co
rner of herself and told herself that she wasn't going to put her life in danger. "I just want out of Elston," she said. "That's all I want. I don't want to be here anymore. And we've got to get out. This town has been the same for centuries. Do you really think that the two of us can actually change anything?"

  Ramona considered. "Maybe not," she said. "I'm not doing the ritual without you. So, if you really just want to go, then we'll go."

  * * *

  Ramona was realizing that it was far more difficult than she'd imagined to drive a car when boxes obscured her view. Backing out had been a nightmare. It was only about an hour after she and Heather had finished packing. They'd given the apartment a quick clean, mopping the wood floor and dusting the ceiling fan. Then, they'd decided there wasn't much point in hanging out any longer, so they'd gotten in their cars and started driving. It was early evening, but it was early summer, so it was still light outside. The sun wasn't ready to go down for some time. Heather was following her car, and she was heading up Main Street, toward the four-way stop sign. One left turn, a few blocks, and she and Heather were out of Elston. Forever. The end. No more Elston.

  Ramona still felt guilty about the fact they weren't even going to attempt the ritual. But Heather was right. There was no guarantee it would work, and the monsters would probably be able to tell what they were doing. They'd come and kill both of them. Ramona didn't want to die any more than Heather did. She knew that her best friend was steering them towards the most intelligent decision. Ramona would have to make her peace with it. And she hoped that she would be able to, soon.

  Ramona wished that she could have said goodbye to Mason. She'd thought about him quite frequently over the last few days. It simply wasn't fair. She was in love with Mason. He was in love with her. And they couldn't be together. In fact, her entire love life was pretty screwed up. Her last boyfriend had been murdered, probably by the guy who she was in love with. She knew that Mason really had never liked Garrett. And she never knew if she ever could have loved Garrett. This wasn't the way things were supposed to work out. In the end, she wasn't supposed to ride off into the sunset with her best friend. She was supposed to find the love of her life. She was supposed to be happy. Wasn't that the way all the stories ended? Why didn't Ramona get that? Hell, why didn't Heather get that?

  And were they really riding off into the sunset, or were they just stealing away with their tails tucked between their legs? To ride into the sunset, didn't you have to be a hero? Didn't you have to vanquish evil? Ramona and Heather weren't vanquishing evil, they were just leaving it behind, letting it keep its fangs deep in the heart's blood of Elston, letting it continue to suck its evil energy from the people who lived there. She didn't really feel particularly proud of herself.

  But she was elated to be leaving. For a long time, Ramona had begun to question if she'd ever leave. She stared at the buildings passing her window. She'd looked at the view of Elston from every angle for five years of her life. When she'd come to this town, she'd been a kid. She'd had no idea who she was or what she knew. And five years later, she was leaving, a completely different person. Elston had molded her into the person she had become. In some ways, it was like a god. It had created her. Ramona felt a deep twinge of sadness to be leaving. She remembered all kinds of wonderful things. Swirling bonfires on the river, the taste of a joint still on her tongue. Vomiting on the steps that led into The Brass Frog, Zane's voice laughing behind her, telling her to go ahead and get it all out. Long talks outside in the night air about philosophy or Keats or environmentalism. Would there be people in Richmond who could talk to her this way? Was there another place where she could be the person Elston had made her? Or had the town soured her on the rest of the world?

  She knew for an actual fact that Elston was a magical place now. Sure, it wasn't good, happy, mushroom-dust magic. It was evil, oppressive, trapping magic. But there was actual magic. This was a place of power. And she was leaving it behind. Ramona wanted to cry. There really were so, so many things she was going to miss about this place.

  But she was at the four-way stop sign now. She waited her turn and then turned onto Route 480. Ahead of her, she could see the back of the sign that faced the other direction of the road, proclaiming that visitors had entered Elston. Once she passed that sign, she would burst out of the bubble that was Elston. It was only a few feet now. Ramona couldn't help it. She held her breath in anticipation. She drew an imaginary line on the road, and as soon as she crossed it, she let out her breath.

  Then her engine sputtered. And died.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ramona swore and drifted to the edge of the road. Was it her battery? What the fuck? Once stopped, she turned the key in the ignition. It caught. The car started. She put it in drive. Pressed on the gas. The engine died again.

  She could see that Heather had stopped her car behind Ramona's, so Ramona got out of the car and went to Heather's car. Heather was getting out of her car as well. "What happened?" she said.

  "I don't know," said Ramona. "It's the weirdest thing. I can start the car, but as soon as I try to drive anywhere, it just dies."

  "Do you think it's the battery?"

  "Well...the car's starting."

  "Show me," said Heather.

  Ramona did. She tried it three times, and each time, the car just sputtered and died. Ramona could not believe this. Her car could not have picked a worse time to break down. "What are we going to do?" she asked Heather.

  Heather squared her shoulders. "Start the car again," she said in a flat voice.

  "But I've already started it—"

  "Try putting it in reverse," Heather said.

  Ramona did. The car backed up just fine and stayed running. Ramona looked up at the "Welcome to Elston" sign. She understood.

  "We should have known it wouldn't be that easy," said Heather.

  * * *

  They tried every way out of Elston they could think of, but they had the same results. They tried having Heather's car go first, but it didn't matter. Whichever car went first stalled out. They even tried going over the bridge to Maryland, which was the opposite direction of where they were headed. That didn’t work either. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, the girls grimly returned to Elston, parked their cars a block behind the library, and began digging the things they would need for the ritual out of their cars. This took some doing, because they hadn't packed them all together, nor had they packed them in places that were particularly easy to get to. They also hadn't purchased the candles that Heather had said they would need, so they dug out as many candles as they could possibly find. The candles varied in size, shape, and color. Heather said that might not be a good thing, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

  It was dark now, but it was still three hours away from midnight. Heather said she didn't think it mattered. They needed to do the damned ritual and get the fuck out. Mason had said it would be better to do it at midnight because magical ties would be weaker, but according to Heather, that didn't mean it was impossible to do it at any other time. "Besides," she said, "if it doesn't work, we'll just do it again at midnight."

  Since they didn't have anything else to do, Ramona agreed. They gathered their supplies in their arms and walked to the library. Once there, they realized that they hadn't actually considered how they were going to get inside. It was after hours, so the building was locked up tight. They set down their supplies and surveyed the building. They were standing behind the back of the library, at the back door, because they didn't want anyone to see them enter.

  "I guess we should break a window or something," said Ramona. "Then we can reach inside the door and unlock it."

  "Okay," said Heather. "What are we going to break the window with?"

  "A rock?" suggested Ramona.

  The two spent some time looking for rocks. Finally, Heather came up with one she thought would be big enough. She approached the back door and held it up to the door, ready to smash out the bottom windowp
ane. But before she could strike, the inside of the library lit up with white light, like someone had flicked a switch. The back door swung open slowly, creaking on its hinges. Heather and Ramona shielded their eyes against the cold light that poured out of the doorway, but they gathered their supplies and stepped inside. The door slammed shut after them. Both of them turned back to look at it.

  Ramona swallowed. "I guess we're in it for the long haul now."

  "Should we see if it's locked?" asked Heather.

  "I don't want to know," said Ramona.

  The girls moved forward into the brightness. The door to the basement of the library stood open, gaping widely at them. Ramona was reminded again of how the door looked to her like a mouth. An open mouth, ready to swallow them. The eerie white light was even brighter inside the basement. They struggled down the steps with their arms full of candles, books, and herbs.

  "Well," Heather said. "At least we don't have to worry about it being too dark for us to see."

  Around them, the light throbbed and hummed, an alive thing. Heather began setting down candles in a wide circle in the center of the basement. Now that it was bright in the basement, Ramona could see what it looked like. The floor was poured concrete. There was one pole in the center of the room, holding up the next floor. The walls were made from stones, gray and black, fused together with concrete or some kind of masonry. The entire room was absolutely empty. No one stored anything down here. Except for a few cobwebs, which gleamed like shining jewels in the white light, there was nothing in the basement. Ramona opened Heather's book to the page that contained the ritual they needed. She read over the incantations.