An Apple for the Creature

by Harris, Charlaine

  “A good friend indeed.”

  “Yes, but . . .” My smile faded. “She left suddenly and she never said good-bye. So all my life I wondered what happened to her . . . whether she got pregnant or into some other kind of trouble? She had a bad home life, she told me, so I wondered if there was something with her parents that forced the family to leave or made her run away.” I paused, a clear image of Sally Ann coming into my brain. She was laughing as we climbed up the hill behind my house together, her black hair blowing out in the wind. Not a care in the world. And the next Monday she hadn’t shown up for school. “If only she had contacted me, I’d have wanted to help her,” I finished.

  “Tell me about the time she made you the offer to help you become popular,” Ms. Fer said.

  Suddenly I could see it clearly, almost as if a movie were playing inside my head. She is sleeping over at my house and she says, “You know, you could be really pretty and you’re smart. All you need is a little help. I could lend you some clothes that are too big for me, and help you diet and teach you how to act cool like me. In no time at all I guarantee you’d be popular.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask.

  “Trust me. It will be a cinch.”

  “I’d do anything,” I say.

  She laughs. “You mean you’d sell me your soul and your firstborn child?”

  I’m laughing, too. “And anything else you’d like. Willingly.”

  She takes a piece of paper. “We have to do this formally,” she says and she sticks a pin into my finger. “Ow,” I say as a drop of blood falls onto the paper. “Go on, sign your name,” she says, and I do it. Then she signs hers.

  I look up and realize that Ms. Fer has been watching the same scene unfold. “And what happened after that?”

  “You know,” I said, “it all happened like she said. She came to my house with these fabulous clothes and I lost weight and I really did become popular. Next year I made the cheerleading squad and then student council, and I was homecoming princess. I never looked back. I wished many times that she could have seen me and I could have thanked her.”

  “So you went from strength to strength,” Ms. Fer said quietly. “Straight A’s in college, Harvard Law School and then you got a reputation as a dynamite lawyer who would stop at nothing to win a case, not even if it meant ruining lives, wrecking companies and homes.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said, frowning. “I like to win, that’s for sure. I was being paid to win cases.”

  “What about Bradley versus that steel company? What about the Emerson case?”

  My frown deepened. “They were unfortunate, but those people were in a downward spiral anyway.” Then I looked up. “How do you know about them? Have you been following my career?”

  “Oh, I know everything about you, my dear,” she said. “Remember that piece of paper you signed? I happen to have it here.” She handed it to me. “I, Amy Weinstein, hereby give my soul and my firstborn child to my friend Sally Ann in return for learning how to become gorgeous and successful and popular.” There was my signature, written in dark brown dried blood, and under it, Accepted. S.A. TAN.

  I looked up in horror. “It says Satan.” I could hardly get the words out. “Are you trying to tell me that she—that she was the devil in disguise?”

  “What do you think?” Ms. Fer asked evenly. There was the hint of a smile on her face.

  Anger welled up inside me.

  “She tricked me. That was terrible. She got me to sign my soul away through trickery.”

  Ms. Fer shook her head. “You said you would have done anything and at that moment you would have given anything to her, even your soul.”

  “But I was a stupid kid. That’s totally unfair.”

  “Whoever said that Satan had to play by the rules?” she said. “And Satan doesn’t have to have horns and a red face. He has to appear in a form that humans find seductive, otherwise he’d have few converts. You needed a best friend—a spunky, pretty best friend.”

  I stared at her, openmouthed, as something else occurred to me. “My firstborn child,” I whispered. “Joshua. He was born perfect. Nothing wrong with him. And then a few hours later he suddenly stopped breathing for no reason. The doctors said something about underdeveloped lungs, but you should have heard him cry when he was born. He had a loud, perfect cry.”

  “Yes, he did, didn’t he,” she said. “I did hear his cry. A lovely little fellow. I actually had a glimmer of remorse about taking him. But a contract is a contract, as you yourself said many times in court.”

  For the first time I saw her name plaque on her desk. Ms. Lucy Fer.

  “Am I in hell?” The words came out as a whisper.

  “What do you think?”

  “Either I’m still in a coma after that accident and this is a horribly real hallucination or . . .”

  “You’re not in a coma any longer,” she said. “You never woke up. You slipped away and I was waiting for you.”

  “But that’s not fair,” I said. “I can’t be in hell. Hell is for bad people—criminals, murderers.”

  “You’re a murderer.”

  “I am not.”

  “The auto accident that sent you to us. You plowed into a van carrying a family. A mother and her three children. One of them was a baby of three months old. The van caught fire. They were all trapped inside and died a most horrible death.”

  “But it was an accident. You said so yourself. I didn’t want to kill anybody.”

  “But you ran the red light because you were in a hurry. You didn’t want to be late, did you? So you took the risk.”

  I winced as she said the words. The full memory had come back to me now. I could see myself, gripping that steering wheel, my face consumed with anger. The bastard. The underhanded, sneaky bastard. How could he pull a trick like that?

  “I couldn’t be late. I was told at the last minute that my opponent had shown up unexpectedly at the county fair and was going to make a speech. Sneaky tactics. He knew I was scheduled to speak there that afternoon. So I had to be there when he spoke to defend myself.”

  “So you thought you could flout the law and run a red light.”

  “Look, I’m sorry it happened but that van must have jumped the light, too.”

  Ms. Fer shook her head. “On the contrary. The van could not have jumped anything. It was so old it could only creep along. It lacked the acceleration to get out of your way when it saw you coming. The family was poor, you see. The father had lost his job when your law firm put his company out of business. I believe you represented the bank in court on that one, didn’t you? And won your case yet again?”

  “I was paid to win cases,” I said. “I was good at what I did. And I worked for whomever retained us.”

  “Big business,” Ms. Fer said. “Chemical companies. Tobacco. Multinationals.”

  “They paid well.”

  “They destroyed lives. Texas Chemicals versus Rodriguez. You remember that one?”

  Funny, that had been the thought that had popped into my head once before today. I nodded.

  “Family lost three children to leukemia directly linked to outflow of toxic waste, correct?”

  “It was not proven that there was a link.”

  “YOU managed to prove that there wasn’t a link.”

  I stared at her angrily. “I was no worse than anyone else trying to make a good living. And I was running for Congress, for pete’s sake. I wanted to help my country.”

  “You wanted to fuel your ambition. That relentless, driving ambition. You had to be best, top dog, didn’t you? It’s no use, Amy Weinstein. You can’t hide anything from me. You see, I made you what you are. I saw a good brain and a desire to prove yourself and I molded you. You’ve always been my creature. Always been destined for here.”

  “So is this farce of a high school the preliminary for hell? Do I have to graduate over again? Do I get some better-looking clothes?”

  She smiled now. “Oh, no, my
dear. You don’t get it, do you? This is hell. Your hell. For ever and ever.”

  I smiled back now as a thought struck me. “Did it not occur to you that now that I know where I am, now that I know the ropes, I can survive here pretty well? I used to be a hot shot at my high school. I can become that again. I can look good and speak out against unfairness and get other kids to rally around me. I’m a natural leader, you know.”

  “You became a natural leader after you had given me your soul.”

  “So? Does it matter when I found my voice?”

  “Very much. You see, you’ve now gone back to what you were before I transformed you. From now on every morning will be a new day for you. You’ll start the day knowing nothing—lost, blundering, pathetic without your number-two pencil to take the exam—just the way you were when Sally Ann found you at your old high school.” She watched the panic growing in my eyes, and the satisfied smile spread across her face. “Every now and then you’ll have a flash of memory, just to remind you what you have lost. But as time goes on, these memories will fade until all you’ll know is that you’re the new girl at this school—the fat girl, the misfit. Every day. For the rest of eternity.”

  I stared at her. “Is there no way out?” I whispered. “No way to redeem myself? There is good in me, you know. A real desire to help. I could do good.”

  “Too late, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “Your future was sealed when you sold me your soul. Now you’d better hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late for PE class.”

  I got up and tried desperately to think. Some way out. There was always an escape clause.

  “Wait,” I said, turning back to face her. “That contract. In the state of New York a minor cannot enter into any manner of contract without the consent of a parent and the signature of same parent. We were in the state of New York when that contract was signed. Hence it is null and void. That contract does not exist, Ms. Fer.”

  I reached across the desk, took the sheet of paper and tore it in half.

  I saw a flicker of amusement go through those narrowed eyes. “You obviously don’t read the small print, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “That statute does not apply to contracts signed in blood. The laws governing those contracts are far older than the state of New York. They go back to the dawn of humanity.”

  “I don’t agree,” I said. “A contract signed in the state of New York is governed by the laws of that state. And a contract signed under coercion or pretense can be disputed in any state.”

  “Oh, I shall enjoy having you here, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “Such an enjoyable challenge. Most poor wretches simply resign themselves to their lot.” A bell sounded in the hallway outside. “Now you had better hurry. The PE teacher is not as tolerant as I am.”

  I came out of her office into the hallway that was already swarming with students. I joined the throng but my brain was already racing. I wasn’t going to let her beat me. There was always a loophole. There had to be a celestial court to which I could appeal, and when they heard how she had tricked me, they’d judge in my favor. I had never lost an important case in my life and I wasn’t about to lose this most important one!

  I strode out now.

  “Hey, watch it,” one kid said as I bumped into him.

  “You watch it yourself,” I answered. A plan was already forming in my head. First step was to get out of these awful, ugly clothes. I’d go into the locker room and help myself to some better items while everyone was at PE. Supplement those from the lost and found. Find myself a locker to hide the stuff away, in case I found myself dressed like this tomorrow. Oh, and steal a hairbrush, too. Surely everything was fair game in hell?

  And then? I’d have to work quickly while my mind was still razor sharp. There must be other students like me, sentenced unjustly, tricked into being here. I’d find them and motivate them. We’d form a movement. It would grow until the whole school was behind me. And we’d take over the school, and I’d represent each of them in the celestial court and we’d win.

  You’re going down, Ms. Fer, I vowed to myself. I found the library and pushed open the door. I had some planning to do, and some studying. If I had to take those tests again tomorrow, I planned to ace them. I’d be prepared.

  I’d already stolen two number-two pencils, properly sharpened, from Ms. Fer’s desk.

  Callie Meet Happy

  AMBER BENSON

  Amber Benson is an actor, filmmaker, novelist, and amateur occultist who sings in the shower. Best known for her work as Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she is the author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones series for Ace Books and the middle-grade ghost story Among the Ghosts. She is also the codirector (with Adam Busch) of the feature film Drones. She can be stalked on her blog—amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com—and on Twitter and Facebook.

  Calliope Reaper-Jones felt like an idiot.

  No, that wasn’t right. Idiot was too vague a term.

  Calliope Reaper-Jones felt like . . . a dunce. Yes, that was more apropos.

  A dunce. The kind that sat in the back corner of the classroom with her face to the wall, a large conical cap affixed firmly to her head, trying not to cry as all the other kids pointed fingers and laughed uproariously at her.

  It was an odd feeling, one Callie hadn’t encountered in more than a dozen years primarily because it was a sensation uniquely specific to the elementary school experience, something about the amazing cruelness of small children and the amazing ability of adults to look the other way.

  “Miss Reaper-Jones?”

  The use of her name, out loud and in front of the whole class, made Callie jump. Eyes refocusing, she returned her attention to the problem at hand, pressing the mute button on her (really distracting) internal monologue so she could concentrate.

  “I, um, well—” she stammered, feeling the imaginary dunce cap settling farther down the crown of her head.

  “Yes, Miss Reaper-Jones? Spit it out.”

  The blood rushed to her cheeks in a florid burst.

  “I didn’t really, uh, do the reading you assigned.”

  Silence from the peanut gallery.

  If the proverbial pin had dropped, you would’ve heard the sound of it bouncing on the linoleum, twice, before rolling underneath one of the classroom’s desks where it would’ve stayed, unmolested, until some random day in the faraway future when a janitor came to sweep it away.

  Surveying the crowd and trying not to let their hostile stares sting, Callie decided there was actually nothing peanut-y about the assortment of oddities and misfits who had somehow, over the course of their service to Death, Inc., never learned to call up a wormhole and were, thusly, stuck in the same Remedial Wormhole Calling class as Callie.

  How to describe her peers?

  Angry was a good descriptive word. Annoyed was another. Peeved could also be added to the list. The group fell short of the index-finger-pointing (and elementary school laughter) Callie’s brain had conjured up earlier . . . but just barely.

  “I don’t understand your inability to do your homework, Miss Reaper-Jones,” the teacher said, shaking her head.

  A tall, shaggy-haired Asian woman with a beaked nose and fleshy jowls that fluttered like gills whenever she spoke, Mrs. Gunwhale—as she’d asked the class to call her—was partial to bruise-colored, diaphanous muumuus that made her bloated appendages appear larger and rounder than they actually were.

  “You’re a grown woman—and one in a leadership position, no less,” Mrs. Gunwhale continued, the frown she wore speaking volumes about the hostility she’d engendered toward Callie, a student she’d decidedly labeled “indolent.”

  While Mrs. Gunwhale may have been sorely mistaken about most things, she wasn’t wrong about the many leadership responsibilities Callie had to shoulder in order to run Death. Since her dad had been murdered and she’d inherited the presidency of Death, Inc.—who’d have thunk Death would be run like a corporation—Callie’s world had done a one-eighty. There wasn’t time in her rigorous
schedule for indolence these days. Overseeing Death, Inc., and being the de facto “Not So Grim Reaper” was running her ragged, keeping her so damn busy she was having a hard time focusing on anything that wasn’t directly work-related.

  Like homework.

  “Well, that’s why I didn’t do it,” Callie said, aware that the whine in her voice would make her no friends. “There was a Death board meeting and then I had to go to Hell, talk to Cerberus—”

  “Everyone here is a commuter student.” Mrs. Gunwhale breathed. “They all hold full-time jobs and, yet, they still find time to do their homework.”

  “That’s right,” a girlish falsetto chimed in from the front row.

  Callie glared at the owner of the voice, a wispy woman with a halo of bright orange, dandruff-laden hair, and found herself wishing she could use her Death powers to give the woman—the teacher’s pet, of course—a little kick in the direction of an early grave.

  Stop that right now, Callie thought as she mentally scolded herself for thinking such horrible thoughts. Bad, bad, bad, bad Death!

  Part of the responsibility of possessing special powers—like the power of bestowing life and death—was learning to be judicious about how you applied them. You weren’t supposed to just lay waste to every Tom, Dick, or Harry (or teacher’s pet) that got on your nerves. You were supposed to be wise like King Solomon and split the baby in half—

  She paused, realizing she’d gotten the stupid analogy wrong.

  “Cutting the baby in half is never the intended outcome—” Callie mumbled to herself.

  “Miss Reaper-Jones, stop mumbling. I’m trying to have a pertinent conversation with you!”

  “Pertinent?”

  “Yes, pertinent,” Mrs. Gunwhale said, enunciating every word. “Pertinent as to whether you continue in my class or not.”

  Where there was once silence, now came a snicker from the aforementioned peanut gallery. Callie turned her head, trying to catch the culprit in the act, but only encountered a wall of stony faces, their slack jaws and dead eyes as bland as the faux wood-grain paneling that decorated the four walls of the modular classroom. The class was meeting in a “temporary” trailer that normally housed a second-grade class in a Jamaica, Queens, elementary school (it’d been on-site since 2001, so the “temporary” part was a joke), but at night it was leased out—for an undisclosed sum—to the University of Supernatural Studies Extension Program. Though it was nice to be back in the tri-borough area (it was almost Manhattan!), the gray on gray on brown—ash-colored linoleum-tiled floors, brown fake wood-grain Formica desks two sizes too small for any adult bottom to command, dirty-gray dry-erase boards lining the washed-out, smoky walls—was pretty damn depressing.