Brighter, a supernatural thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  "What if we pronounce this wrong?" she asked.

  "Follow my lead," said Heather. "I took three years of Latin in high school."

  "Really? So you can translate this?"

  "Are you kidding? You need way more than three years of Latin to actually translate it."

  Ramona tried to laugh. After all, Heather had cracked a joke. But it was as if the light went down her throat and choked off her voice before she could speak. She gulped at the air. It was so musty down here. Ramona hugged herself. She really, really, really didn't like the basement.

  "Start lighting the candles," Heather told Ramona and began busying herself with forming smudges out of the chicory and angelica.

  Ramona dug her cigarette lighter out of her purse and stooped down to begin lighting the candles. She worked her way slowly around the circle, taking care not to burn herself on the lighter, which was getting hotter and hotter. Holding the lighter made Ramona want a cigarette. She hoped the ritual wouldn't last too long. She was nicking like a junkie. As soon as she lit the last candle, all the light went out of the basement with a whoosh. The candles flickered but didn't go out. Ramona had thought the bright light was creepy, but this was worse. The darkness pooled in the corners of the basement now, and everything had turned orangey and flickery.

  "Why do you suppose that happened?" she asked softly, her voice echoing against the walls.

  "I don't know," said Heather, who looked shaken. "Give me your lighter. I need to light the smudges."

  * * *

  Mason didn't know why he was bothering to read his psychology textbook. He had about two hours and forty-five minutes left to live. And he was nervous. It was one thing to say that he was sick of being alive. It was another thing altogether to plot with someone to bring about his death. In some ways, he realized he didn't really even believe it was true. That was probably why he was reading his textbook, why he was sprawled on his couch in his trailer, like it was just a normal Friday. One Friday in a sea of Fridays, stretching back through oceans of years. There hadn't always been psychology textbooks, or couches, and his name hadn't always been Mason. But Fridays were Fridays. He knew what that was like.

  Every so often, it hit him. It was Friday. It was tonight. Ramona and Heather were doing the ritual tonight. He was going to die.

  He wasn't sure how the thought was so supposed to make him feel. It didn't make him feel good, but he didn't think it should. He was apprehensive, but he wasn't exactly frightened. And he didn't think Blair or any of the others had a clue what was happening tonight.

  His phone rang. He checked the number. Blair. Well, maybe he'd been wrong. "Hello," he answered.

  "Come to my house," said Blair.

  "I don't want to," said Mason.

  "I need to talk to you."

  What would it hurt? Maybe it would be good to see Blair again. One last time. "Fine," he said. The textbook was really boring anyway. He slammed it shut and hung up the phone. Mason took a look around his trailer. Would he be back here tonight? He kind of doubted it. He took his keys anyway and locked it up. As he walked through town to Blair's house, he wondered what it would feel like? Would it hurt? Would there be blood? How would it happen? Would it feel like being suffocated? Being strangled? Being shot? He mused that he'd killed people in almost every way there was to kill a person.

  Oh. That was weird. The library was lit up like a Christmas tree. Mason almost stopped walking and went over to investigate. He checked his watch. It was too early for Ramona and Heather to have started. He didn't go to the library, however, because he was suddenly seized with the knowledge that this was exactly why Blair wanted to talk to him. Why didn't she just go into the library? She was probably freaked out. The library had only done that maybe three times before. Lit up with all that light. Once had been after he'd killed the original Ben Helzey. Blair didn't like the light. It scared her. He remembered that. Damn it. Blair was going to be pissed at him. He wanted to turn around and go hide in his trailer, but he knew he had to try to calm her down. If he didn't, he didn't know what she'd do. And this ritual couldn't be stopped. Ramona's life depended on that.

  So Mason doubled his speed and walked the rest of the blocks to Blair's house. Almost everyone was there when he arrived. The house was crowded with people. Conversation was loud. Garrett met him at the door. "She's flipped, man," he said. "Called everyone here. Listen, don't tell her this, but I helped Heather call landlords today. She and Ramona are gone by now. There's nothing to worry about."

  Mason wrinkled his brow. Ramona and Heather shouldn't be gone. They wouldn't have just left, would they? Would Ramona have gone without saying goodbye? "But Blair's freaked out?" he said.

  "Yes," said Garrett. "Extremely."

  "Take me to her," Mason said, sliding past the people who were standing at the door.

  Garrett followed. "She's in the kitchen."

  Mason fought through the crowd on his way through the living room. People greeted him; he ignored them. He needed to find Blair. He hadn't seen everyone gathered together like this in over seventy years. Blair must have some idea of what was going to happen. But how did she know? Had Ramona and Blair been sloppy? Let something slip? Obviously, Garrett didn't think there was any problem. Fuck, could it be true? Had the girls just left? If they had, he couldn't really blame them. And a tiny part of him was relieved. A tiny part of him didn't want to die tonight.

  Blair was in the kitchen alone. She was drinking wine. "About time you fucking showed up," she snarled.

  "Is this about the library?" asked Mason.

  "Being lit up? Yeah. What's up with that?"

  "I have no idea."

  "No? See, I think you're the only one who does have any idea. I think you're up to something. You've been different. And the other day, you wouldn't even—"

  She broke off as Garrett eased into the kitchen behind Mason.

  "He wouldn't even what?" asked Garrett.

  Mason knew Blair would rather he kept his mouth shut. Fuck that. He was feeling reckless. "I wouldn't fuck her," he said. "That's what pissed you off, right?"

  Garrett pressed his lips together in a firm line. Mason didn't care. Garrett and Blair, or what was residing in the forms of Garrett and Blair, hadn't been together nearly as long as he and Blair had. A few years. That was nothing.

  Blair glared at both of them. "Oh whatever," she said. "It's sickening anyway. That we even care. It's so disgustingly...human of us."

  None of them said anything for a while. Blair finished her glass of wine. Mason went to the refrigerator and got himself a Heineken. He didn't even really like Heineken, but the only other thing in the fridge was Schlitz, and the Heineken was definitely better.

  "Listen, it's just a freak thing," said Garrett finally. "The lights in the library. It's happened before."

  "It never used to happen," said Blair. "All three times have been in the past fifty years. Something's going wrong. Something's going wrong around here, and it all started going wrong after you recruited that Ben man."

  "What?" said Mason.

  "The lights, you were Ben, and you just started getting different. It's you." Blair pointed at Mason. "You. You're doing this. Whatever's going on, you're behind it, you and that human girl you care so much about, and you're going to tell me what you're doing and how to stop it."

  "Look," said Garrett, "Ramona left town. I know, because I helped her friend make a cell phone call. They really left."

  "You did what?!" Blair thundered. "If you had one of those girls, you were supposed to kill her."

  "But they're gone," said Garrett.

  "They're not gone," said Blair. "I know they're not gone." She turned to Mason. "Come on. Fess up."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Mason, calmly sipping his beer.

  Blair turned in one blur of motion and smashed her wine glass against the counter. Wine splattered against the linoleum, against the cabinets. She brandished the jagged end of the glass and dove at Ma
son, sinking the shards into his stomach.

  Mason dropped his beer and grunted. He backed up, looking down at himself. Blood was rushing out of the wound Blair had made, soaking his shirt. Blair was still close. She grabbed the stem of the glass. Twisted and pushed it deeper into Mason's body. "Tell me what it is that's going on," she said, pressing her face against his. "Tell me!" And she pushed so hard the stem shattered too, and glass was being shoved into his body in what felt like a thousand places. Mason screamed.

  * * *

  Facing each other, Ramona and Heather sat down Indian-style inside the circle of candles. They balanced the open book on their knees. The light from the candles lit the bottoms of their faces, illuminating the hollows of their eyes. Heather handed Ramona the smudge of chicory. Heather held the smudge of angelica. Smoke from the candles and the smudges rose into the ceiling of the tiny basement, clouding the air.

  "Okay," Heather breathed. Neither of them wanted to speak too loudly. It just seemed too strange. "Now, I'm going to start to read this part. Then you read this part." She gestured to the page while she spoke. "Then we do this in unison. Okay?"

  "Yeah," said Ramona. "Okay." She could barely read the words on the page of the book, and to her eyes, they just looked really stupid. She wasn't sure if this was going to work.

  "Join hands," said Heather.

  Ramona reached out for Heather's hand. As their hands touched, the candles flashed brighter for a second, then returned to their normal size. Heather took a deep breath.

  "Guardians of the Spirit realm, hear and guide my plea," she said, and her voice rang out cold, clear, and strong, each word falling into the room and seeming to hang there for a moment before fading into the smoke. "Bring the power to break these bonds here and now to me."

  She nodded to Ramona. Ramona leaned forward, squinting at the page. Right. She could do this. "Magic moon burning bright," she said, but her voice was shaky, not strong like Heather's. It quivered and the candles quivered with it. "Let my will be done tonight. Answer now my Pagan Spell. Let all that's wrong be now made well."

  Ramona shot a questioning look at Heather, who shrugged. Ramona guessed Heather had never done this before either. Okay, well, so far, so good. Now for the goddamned Latin. It was kind of disturbing that neither of them actually knew what it was they were actually saying. But whatever. Both Ramona and Heather leaned forward. They looked at each other, trying to sense whether the other was ready to start speaking, and then they did speak. Almost at the same time. As they spoke, the smoke from the candles and the smudges began to swirl around them, encompassing both girls inside a whirlwind of smoke. The smoke began to move more and more rapidly, until it was whipping around them, blowing their hair into their eyes and mouths, riffling the pages of the book they read from. Ramona and Heather clasped each other's hands tightly and did the best they could to keep reading.

  * * *

  Mason collapsed onto the ground, and Blair climbed on top of him, straddling him. Mason couldn't help thinking of the last time Blair had straddled him. Frankly, that had been much more pleasant. "There's nothing to tell," he said to her. "Get off me."

  Blair responded by digging her fingers into the wound she'd created on his body. Mason wrenched her hand away from his body. With effort he started to sit up. Blair struggled to free her hand from his grip.

  He used his free hand to punch her. In the face. His fist collided with her cheekbone. Her head whipped to one side with the force of his blow. She looked back at him, stunned. She was right. They were very human. Blair was shocked, not so much by the fact that he'd punched her, but at the fact he'd just hit a girl. Hard. In the face.

  Blair screamed. "Help!"

  And then everyone was in the kitchen. And everyone was holding him down. Hands were on his shoulders, hands were grasping chunks of his hair, pulling his head back. There were feet on his legs, on his chest, on his stomach, where he was already bleeding.

  Fucking A. This wasn't going to feel good. This really wasn't going to feel good.

  "He knows shit," said Blair, holding her face. "He knows shit, and he needs to tell us what it is he knows."

  Someone's booted heel descended on his face, breaking his nose. Blood gushed out of his face. The pain blotted out all other sensations for a few seconds.

  "What do you know?" asked Blair. "Tell us what you know."

  Mason struggled to recover himself. "Well, if you keep trampling on my face, I'm not going to be able to talk. One wrong step, and you could crush my vocal chords, you know."

  The boot heel came down again. Same place. The pain was worse. Mason had forgotten about that. How pain could feel so bad that he thought he couldn't feel anything more excruciating and then there would be worse pain. Much worse pain. Pain could always get worse. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten that.

  "Talk," said another voice. Not Blair's. A male voice. Maybe Garrett. Maybe Craig. Craig liked it when shit got bloody. Always had. The bloodier it was, the more turned on Craig got.

  "Got nothing to say," Mason managed. There was so much blood on his face now that he couldn't see. It was in his eyes, and it stung. His own blood stung his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear it, but it didn't work. He just settled for shutting his eyes, then.

  There was more kicking. More crushing. He thought maybe they had snapped several of his ribs, one of his arms maybe. He didn't know. The pain was making it hard to think. And Blair's voice was still out, above all of it, screaming at him to talk, to tell him what he knew, to tell them what was happening. Mason hardly knew anymore. He knew there was something he wasn't supposed to talk about. Something that they shouldn't know. But he couldn't quite remember what it was. That was good, he thought. If he couldn't remember, he couldn't tell them.

  But he was still struggling to remember it, as much as he didn't want to. Because part of him was so concerned with how much everything hurt, and that part of him knew if he could just dredge up whatever it was and tell them, the hurt would stop.

  Blair was straddling him again. He thought it was Blair. He couldn't see. He felt cool water on his face, on his eyes. She was washing his face. Why was she being nice to him? He opened his eyes. He could see. Blair had a bloody paper towel in her hand. The blood on it was his.

  Then he understood why she'd done it. She wanted him to be able to see. He looked down at the ruin of his body. It was collapsed in places it shouldn't. Parts of him bent wildly out of place. He should be dead. If he were human, he'd be dead.

  Blair was holding a huge kitchen knife. She pressed it against his sternum. The knife slid into his skin, but it hardly hurt. There was too much pain everywhere else. "Tell me what you're planning," she said.

  "No," moaned Mason, but he didn't know if he meant, "No, I won't tell you," or, "No, don't do whatever you're going to do with that knife."

  Blair pulled the knife out, mercifully. But she raised it high above her head, grabbing the handle with both hands.

  Mason whimpered, closing his eyes.

  "Open his eyes," Blair demanded, and fingers forced his eyelids open.

  The knife came down. Into his chest, penetrating bone, flesh. More blood spurted. Mason wanted to look away, but he couldn't. His head was being held up so that he could see. His eyes were being forced open. Blair pulled the knife down in one fluid movement. Ripping through his chest. Splaying him. Bisecting him. The skin on his chest peeled back from his insides, displaying guts and muscle, glistening under the lights of the kitchen. Mason could see his heart, pumping blood, even though it was severed nearly in two. His intestines were slithering out of his body, no longer held in place by his skin.

  "Tell me," said Blair.

  Mason told her everything.

  * * *

  Ramona and Heather clutched each other's hands, clutched smudges, rested their hands heavily on the pages of the book they were reading. The smoke funneled around them like a tornado. There was so much strength to its motion, it threatened to tear their voices from
their throats. Ramona was having a very hard time breathing. How long could this Latin passage possibly be? It felt like they'd been chanting for hours, and there were still paragraphs and paragraphs left. Her hair was blowing into her mouth, but she didn't have a free hand to brush it back. She wished they'd known this before they started. She would have pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

  There was a crash upstairs—a sound like shattering glass. Heather and Ramona glanced at each other, alarmed. They tried to go back to chanting, but the whirlwind of smoke around them settled immediately, as if it had never been. And they weren't speaking at the same time. Heather was a few words ahead of Ramona.

  It almost didn't matter, because seconds after the crash, there were people pounding down the stairs, at least fifteen of them. Blair led the charge, followed by Garrett.

  Ramona and Heather stood up, but the monsters stormed them, knocking over candles and crying obscenities at them. The monsters tackled Ramona and Heather, and their bodies thudded against the floor, buried under so many people.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ramona was crushed under about seven bodies. It hurt. She hated it. Most of all, it was suffocating. She couldn’t breathe. With a cry of rage, Ramona drove the smudge she was holding into the face of the person who was on her. The monster screamed and pushed up, off of her, knocking the rest of the bodies off onto the ground. There were howls of pain, of anger. Heather had a candle in her hand and was bashing it against the monster on top of her. She yelled to Ramona, "Run!"

  Ramona hesitated, because she wasn't about to leave her best friend alone here, but then thought that maybe she could bring back help of some kind and started up the stairs.