My brain screamed at my body to move faster, and my body screamed back that it just wasn’t possible. I wasn’t going to make it to the house. It was already catching up to me.
I felt my foot sink fast into the mud of the riverbank, holding it there while I fell forward into the water. I tried to crawl into the reeds, but a haggard hand wrapped itself around my thigh and pulled me backwards. I screamed in protest as I was dragged through the mud, only to be silenced by the shrill hiss that emerged from the creature’s mouth.
The creature pinned me on my back against the riverbank.
“Please, please, please,” I pled in desperation.
Above me, the creature became silent. It cocked its head, lowered its face to my neck, and… sniffed me. Bile rose to the back of my throat. It smelled like a rotting corpse.
It hissed sharply and placed one of its long, razor sharp nails over my pulsing stomach. In a single effortless movement, it sliced through my shirt and abdomen. I yelped in excruciating pain. It lowered its nose to the salty blood that trickled from the incision and hissed in triumph.
My body suddenly felt as if it were on fire, like I was being burned alive even though I was in water. I shrieked and thrashed wildly under its grip until I felt something inside me snap.
The creature seemed stunned and backed away for a moment so it could observe me. I felt as if my bones were breaking and rearranging themselves inside of me while my skin grew tighter and heavier. I tried to stand, but some invisible force pushed me to the ground, leaving me only able to crawl on all fours.
The creature approached me again, baring its needle-like teeth.
It was going to kill me.
Without thinking, I launched myself against it and swung my fist at its chest. To my surprise, my hand glided right through. A large gash on its abdomen opened and poured black, sticky liquid, staining its pale skin. The creature writhed about in pain before cracking then crumbling into dust. Within seconds it was gone.
I collapsed into the stream and let the water wash over my body. I moaned as the pain grew intensely stronger, then dissipated into a dull ache, then nothing. As the pain left, it took my consciousness with it.
***
This time when I opened my eyes, I knew exactly where I was. I had dragged myself away from the river onto the leaves, where I was shivering and caked in mud. I placed my hand on my stomach and traced the faint line that ran across it. The cut had been shallow and was no longer bleeding. I shuddered at the memory of the monstrous creature that had attacked me. I physically examined myself to gauge my ability to run, only to discover that most of my clothes now hung in tatters on my body. I would have to deal with that later.
I frantically groped through the dark for my bag and found it in the reeds. It was slightly damp. I must have dropped it into the mud when I fell.
I sprinted along the stream back to the house before anything else could find me. I entered the garden through an unlocked gate in the rear wall that met with the woods. Once it was securely shut, I collapsed against the ivy-strangled brick wall in fatigue. The dim glow of lights from the house burned my eyes, but they were bright enough for me to see myself.
I was a disaster, with my hair matted with mud and most of my body covered in dirt. Luckily, my necklace still hung intact around my neck. Unlike the rest of me, it had remained clean. My soggy clothes had been shredded, exposing me indecently and permitting the cold air to nip at my body. I couldn’t remember what had torn my clothes. Perhaps it had been the undergrowth when I was running. Either way, I couldn’t go into the house like this.
I fished around in my bag for my spare set of gym clothes and shrugged them on. There was nothing I could do about my filthiness, so I took a deep breath and entered through the lit backdoor.
“Hey, I’m back,” I called as I stepped into the empty living room. I threw my soiled backpack and raggedy clothes onto the coffee table.
“Amber?” Heather called from the opposite end of the house. I could hear the pitter patter of her feet as she sprinted through the hall. “Amber!” She launched herself into my arms and nearly knocked me over. “God, Amber, where were you? You look terrible.”
I held her head close to my chest and absentmindedly stroked her hair. I was so relieved to see her and too overwhelmed to speak.
“Amber, say something,” she pleaded. She tilted her head up to look at me and her eyes widened in shock. “God, Amber your eyes.”
“I’m a mess I know,” I tried to calm her down. “Everything’s okay now, though.”
“Jesus, Amber. They’re purple.” Heather couldn’t stop staring at my face.
“What, am I bleeding?”
Heather shook her head, stunned, and wordlessly dragged me into the bathroom. “Look.”
She flipped on the light and in the mirror I saw myself, a horrible mess of leaves and grime. But once I looked past the layer of dirt, two piercing violet eyes jumped out at me.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, holding my face up to the mirror. “Are those mine?”
The icy purple eyes stared back at me. They were so glaringly bright and clear that I could see individual filaments of vivid purple spreading throughout my iris from my pupil. They looked unreal.
“What did you do?” Heather murmured. She couldn’t stop staring at my reflection.
“Nothing,” I said adamantly. “Not to my eyes.” I rubbed my eyelids to see if I could jolt my eyes back to their normal color. Nothing happened.
Heather’s phone started screeching dubstep in her pocket, diverting our attention. She picked it up.
“Hello? Matt? Amber’s back. Yeah, please come back as soon as you can. She’s… alive. Look, we’ve got to go.” Heather kept shooting worried glances at me, like she expected me to suddenly disappear or explode. “Bye.” She hung up.
“Do you know what time it is?” she asked. I shook my head. “It’s one in the morning. You left at five.” Wow, I had been unconscious for a long time.
“I didn’t mean to stay out this late. I only planned to take a quick walk by the stream, but I accidentally fell asleep in the woods. When I woke up it was dark and this… monster was beside me. It looked like what I saw in my room, but different.” I stopped.
Heather watched me carefully with knitted eyebrows. “Are you sure you were awake this time?” she asked skeptically.
“Did I dream my shredded clothes?” I pointed to my bag on the table. “It followed me through the woods, but somehow I attacked it, and it vanished into dust. But it sliced my stomach.” I held up my shirt to reveal the slash the creature had made. “Well?”
“Amber, I don’t see anything.”
I looked down. There was nothing, not even a scar. “That can’t be right,” I said in a frenzy.
Heather took a step back. She looked scared of me. “Matt and Dylan were out looking for you. You may want to take a shower before they get back.” She eyed me as if I were a stranger.
“Oh-okay,” I stammered. I was stunned. My own sister doubted me. She shut the door behind her, leaving me alone in the bathroom.
When Matt and Dylan came home, their relief to find me alive luckily seemed to overpower their rage that I had disappeared. Heather filled them in on my little mishap while I was in the shower, and Matt seemed convinced I had a concussion. Despite my objections, Matt was adamant that I go to the hospital, and Dylan tagged along. After needless MRI and CT scans, the doctor affirmed that I did not have a concussion. Although he could not explain the sudden color change in my eyes, he did feel concerned that I may have had a panic attack. So concerned, in fact, that he told a nurse to put anti-anxiety meds in my IV, so I didn’t have the option of not taking them.
When we got home, it was past three in the morning, and Dylan had to help me up the stairs because of how woozy I felt. Matt left to lock up the house and check on Heather.
“Dylan, I’m sorry about yelling at you,” I said slowly as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The drugs were af
fecting me really badly. I definitely had no intention of finishing the rest of the prescription.
“You should be sorry about running off into the woods and not coming home,” Dylan panted. Either he was really weak or I was really heavy, and I hoped it wasn’t the latter. “But I should have told you I was coming.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you here. It’s just that I don’t want to be the reason you regret leaving your old life.”
“Sometimes you meet people that you find it difficult to live without. To me, you’re that person,” Dylan explained.
“Wow, you get deep quick,” I laughed, earning me a disappointed grimace from Dylan. He hoisted me up over the last step.
I looked down the dark hallway and sucked in a deep breath. Toward the end I thought I could faintly make out two tall silhouettes.
“Do you see that?” I asked Dylan urgently. I was afraid they would disappear before he would see them.
Dylan squinted into the darkness. “What?” He moved his hand to turn on the light.
“No, don’t,” I said. I didn’t want them to vanish. I cautiously walked toward them into the darkness.
They seemed to be billowing, as if they were enshrouded in thin, smoky fabric. I realized they had faces identical to the face I had seen above my bed that one terrifying night. They were suspended in the air slightly above the ground, but didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
I approached the one that was closest to me and examined it from a distance. It tilted its face down to mine in a sudden movement. I scrutinized its soulless eyes and mouth, still twisted into a silent scream. In the back of my mind, I realized that it actually looked sad.
Strangely, this time I didn’t feel frightened by them at all. In fact, I was oddly relaxed. The creatures weren’t like the monster I had seen in the forest. They didn’t seem as if they intended to hurt me.
I felt Dylan’s presence behind me.
“What do you think they are?” I asked him.
“What do I think what are?”
“These things.” I turned to face him.
He looked at me blankly, like he had no idea what I was talking about.
“You can’t see them,” I sighed.
“Hallucinations are a side effect of the medicine,” Dylan pointed out.
I reached out a trembling hand to catch a piece of the shroud that drifted limply away from the creature. I could feel the creature’s eyes on me as I took the delicate fabric between my fingers. It sure didn’t feel like a product of a hallucination.
I laughed lightly under my breath. I was going insane.
I let Dylan lead me to my room. I was fine with leaving the two creatures in the hallway. They didn’t seem as if they were making any trouble for anyone other than me.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked him as we passed through the door.
“Your brother thinks you’re having panic attacks,” Dylan answered equivocally.
I scoffed. “They’re not panic attacks. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to believe me, and the more I deny it, the more likely I am to be carried away to a psychiatric ward.”
“I believe you,” Dylan said honestly. “I mean, I believe you’re seeing things. Maybe what you saw in the hallway was a drug-induced hallucination, but I don’t think you’re crazy. You have the greatest intolerance for nonsense of anyone I know. If you say you’ve been a witness to enigmatic occurrences, I believe you.”
“Really?” I asked with skepticism.
“Really. I believe there are things in this world that we can’t understand. I think the world is often too fast to assume the madness of individuals who notice what others can’t.”
“I didn’t know you bought into that spiritual paranormal crap,” I muttered. “Because I didn’t, although now I’m not so sure what’s real and what’s not.”
Dylan leaned against the doorway and shrugged. “I like to keep an open mind, even to crap.”
Chapter Twelve
The next morning Dylan and I didn’t arrive at school until around eleven. We mutually concluded that we might as well sleep in, as there was no point in going to school if we were just going to feel like sleep-deprived zombies. But mostly I was dreading walking into school with glaring, abnormal purple eyes. I hated attracting attention to myself, and my eyes were so frustratingly impossible to ignore that I knew everyone would be staring at me wherever I went.
Dylan suggested I wear sunglasses, which I immediately refused. Sunglasses would encourage even more whispers than would my eyes, and they were against school policy anyway.
It had been raining heavily all morning, and we left dangerously slippery puddles in the bustling halls as we rushed to pre-calculus. I kept my eyes down while we walked. We had timed our arrival so that we would be able to get to class before it began.
“Now, remember,” I warned Dylan outside the door. “Ms. Garner hates me, so unavoidably she’s going to hate you. Just try to say as little as possible and don’t let her get the best of you.”
“She’s really that bad?”
“No. She’s worse.” I gathered my courage and pushed open the door.
Ms. Garner usually left the room during the passing period, so I didn’t have to deal with her immediately. Dylan and I took nondescript seats in the back and waited for class to start.
Of course, Cecelia always had to find a way to ruin everything, and as soon as she saw me come in, she turned around in her seat to make me miserable.
“Hey look, Amber’s back,” she trilled to her entourage, who marveled at her unsurpassable talent for pointing out the obvious.
I leaned back and eyed her warily. She seemed legitimately taken aback when she saw my new eyes.
“Apparently she spent the whole morning picking up her contacts,” Cecelia remarked dryly. She kept shooting curious glances at me. I could hear her friends whispering amongst themselves.
“Whoa, cool contacts,” Spencer said in awe as he and Alexis walked in. “They look good.”
“I want some,” Alexis said wishfully. “Where did you get them?”
I fumbled for words. Where would people get contacts like mine? Definitely not at Walgreens.
“Online,” Dylan interjected, saving me. Thank goodness for his conveniently timed vague responses.
Spencer turned toward Dylan disappointedly and stared at him as if to say, “Well unfortunately you’re still here.”
“Places, places,” Ms. Garner chanted, strutting into the room from either a coffee or a bathroom break. Ms. Garner whipped around at the front of the class and looked intently at me. For a split second she looked slightly perplexed. “Amber, I’ve been informed that you missed your first two classes. Nice to see that you had enough sense to end your little game of hooky just in time for my class.” Any opportunity to humiliate me always delighted her. “And, what’s this? You brought a friend? What’s your name?”
“Dylan Winters,” he answered curtly.
“Ah, the new student.” Ms. Garner waved her hand dismissively. “I advise you to exercise prudence when choosing your companions here at Pierce.” She looked directly at me. “Some students can become a negative influence on others.”
“I actually think Amber is really helping with my transition,” Dylan insisted. As nice as it felt to be defended, I wanted to slap my hand over his mouth.
Ms. Garner inhaled sharply. “And yet you were both tardy to school this morning by several hours. I expect assiduity and punctuality from my students…” Ms. Garner scrutinized Dylan’s stony expression, as if to determine how far she could go. “Not indolence and insolence.”
Dylan responded with a “humph” and became silent.
Ms. Garner’s lips curved up in celebration of her little victory.
***
Although it wasn’t unusual for people to wear colored contacts, it was definitely unusual for eyes, colored or not, to look as abnormal as mine. I might as well have been screaming, “Hey, everyone! My eyes glow, l
ook at me, I’m different!”
Dylan couldn’t walk home with me that afternoon, because he had an appointment with one of our teachers after school, so I walked home alone like I had been doing for the last half month.
A slight mist hung in the air as residue from the morning rain. The sky was still cloudy and gray, and I shuddered at the possibility of another thunderstorm. I wasn’t sure if I could tolerate another sleepless night.
As I neared the house, I noticed a dark-haired boy perched upon the brick column of our gate. His dark hair looked messier than usual and slightly damp from the mist. He was leaning over a book, and didn’t seem to notice me. I hadn’t seen him in days.
My heart sputtered slightly, making me frown at myself. I tried to convince myself that I was only concerned about his safety, what with him sitting nine feet off the ground.
“Up there to show off?” I called from halfway down the street.
Adrian looked up, surprised. He closed his book with a snap. I was startled by how tired he looked.
“Not exactly,” he said pleasantly. “I just needed a place where you wouldn’t be able to slip by me while I read.”
“Read what?” I was below him now, right up against the gate.
“Lord of the Flies,” he answered. He held the book up curiously. “I didn’t know human children could be so violent.” He said the word “human” as if he were tasting something sour.
“Some would say that civilization is the deciding point between our humanity and savagery.”
“You’ve read it?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course, it’s a classic.”
“And do you believe that? That civilization is the only thing that keeps humans from becoming animals?” He sat up straight and waited for my answer.
I paused to think. “No, the law can always deteriorate into anarchy. But I wouldn’t want to live in a world without order. I think that without organization, we would not be as human as we are today.” I looked up at Adrian. “And you?”
Adrian narrowed his eyes at the darkening sky. “I believe that a civilization that celebrates barbarism is worse than no civilization at all.” He directed his attention back to me. “We should probably go in. It looks like it might rain.”
Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) Page 7