An Apple for the Creature

by Harris, Charlaine

  And if the decor was not conducive to teaching adults how to call up wormholes, then Callie could only imagine the adverse effect it would have on fidgety second graders attempting to learn fractions. No wonder kids hated to go to school—if Callie had been shunted into a classroom like this one (no matter how nice and kid-friendly the teacher had tried to make the temporary digs), she’d probably have come out of the system totally illiterate.

  “Miss Reaper-Jones?” Mrs. Gunwhale bellowed, her aggressive baritone filling Callie’s head like the thundering boom of cannon fire.

  As much as she wanted to tell Mrs. Gunwhale where she could shove her Remedial Wormhole Calling class, she knew she needed to master wormhole calling if she wanted to run Death, Inc., and not be laughed at by her employees—including the six numb nuts she was trapped in the modular trailer with for the next four nights’ worth of classes.

  Steeling herself for the worst, she took a deep breath and said:

  “I would like to stay in your class.”

  “And . . . ?”

  Mrs. Gunwhale’s dark eyes blatantly telegraphed that she would need to see a little begging from her recalcitrant pupil before she relented and let Callie stay in the class.

  Callie sighed, her hands tied. It was imperative that the head of Death, Inc., be self-sufficient and capable of traveling around the Afterlife on her own, without her Executive Assistant calling up wormholes for her like she was some kind of nincompoop. If she didn’t suck it up now and somehow master the art of wormhole calling, she was giving her enemies the advantage, allowing them the opportunity to petition the Death board to recall her from her new job.

  “Please, I would like to stay in your class?” Callie choked out, the obsequiousness of the word making her feel nauseous.

  A look of triumph spread across Mrs. Gunwhale’s face. Exultant, she lifted her sausage arms into the sky like airborne blimps—and then the ungainly woman shocked everyone by doing a graceless twirl on the linoleum floor, causing both the gill/jowl flaps around her jaw and the muumuu she had on to flutter with happiness.

  “That’s the first step, Miss Reaper-Jones,” Mrs. Gunwhale trilled. “Admit I’m the boss and that you are mine to mold and we’re getting somewhere.”

  Callie gave a mirthless chuckle, trying to appear game, but like an aggressive baby kraken, the obnoxious, juvenile part of her personality had already awoken and was now itching to start planning Mrs. Gunwhale’s disemboweling.

  “Why don’t you come up to the front of the class, Miss Reaper-Jones, and try opening a temporary hole in reality—”

  It took Callie a moment to comprehend that, against her will, she was once again being foisted into the spotlight. Actually, she realized, looking around at the smirking faces of her fellow classmates, she’d never left said spotlight since she’d begun the class two days earlier. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but she was getting the rather distinct impression the other students didn’t like her very much . . . or rather, they didn’t like that she was in charge of Death, Inc., and, for all intents and purposes, was their boss.

  And it wasn’t like she’d wanted to take the class in the first place.

  Two weeks prior, Callie had discovered that her Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had enrolled her, without her permission, into the course. He’d assumed she’d attend without too much fuss because it met in New York City, one of her most favorite places in all of the world. Of course, what he’d neglected to inform her was that it took place not in Manhattan, but in Queens—which was like telling someone she’d won a trip to Hawaii, then dropping her off in Lompoc, California.

  To make herself feel better, and to shake her growing paranoia, Callie imagined the tongue-lashing she would give Jarvis when she got back to Sea Verge, the familial mansion she shared with her sister, Clio, and their hellhound puppy, Runt—and, boy, was it gonna be a doozy.

  “We’re waiting. . . .”

  Callie looked up to find the long shadow of Mrs. Gunwhale looming over her.

  “Okay,” Callie said as she eased herself out from behind the kid-sized desk and stood up, her left leg numb from being squeezed too tightly against the metal bar that connected the chair to the desktop.

  Limping over to the front of the classroom, she stopped in front of the stained dry-erase board and waited for Mrs. Gunwhale to give her further instructions.

  “Now, if you’d done the reading I’d assigned you,” Mrs. Gunwhale said, gathering up the fabric of her muumuu and resting her generous backside against the corner of her rectangular desk, “you’d know that there are small, subatomic particles called neutrinos that appear to travel faster than the speed of light, but in reality, they are using wormholes in order to burrow in and out of the fabric of time/space—”

  Callie’s attention began to waver, her inner monologue taking over with a vengeance as Mrs. Gunwhale droned on and on about neutrinos.

  How am I supposed to pay attention when the woman is doing Science Speak? Callie grumbled to herself—and then, her mind distracted: And what the hell is with that damn mole??

  The mole in question belonged to Mrs. Gunwhale, and the more the teacher talked, the more the blackened growth on the tip of her nose began to take on an otherworldly presence. Large and irregularly shaped, it seemed to bend and stretch of its own accord, as if it were doing mole calisthenics in order to beef itself up, escape Mrs. Gunwhale’s elongated proboscis, and go in search of a more attractive host . . . like Calliope Reaper-Jones!

  Eeeek!

  Shuddering, Callie ripped her mind away from scary-mole-contemplation-land just as Mrs. Gunwhale stopped speaking.

  “Neutrinos,” Callie said before Mrs. Gunwhale could quiz her. “I get it.”

  Even though she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  “Good,” Mrs. Gunwhale replied, rubbing her hands together expectantly. “Now show us.”

  Attempting to remember all the things Jarvis had imparted to her about wormhole calling over the past year—and the things she’d learned during the first two sessions of Mrs. Gunwhale’s boring class—she closed her eyes and tried to imagine a place, any place.

  I just want to go someplace like here, but not here, she thought. Someplace happy!

  In her imagination, she saw the modular classroom bend around her, space and time becoming as pliant as the bellows of a giant accordion while unseen hands expertly folded the gray and brown drabness of the room like a blank piece of origami paper. The hostile faces of her classmates abruptly disappeared inside the reformation, the space continuing to morph until finally even Mrs. Gunwhale’s laserlike gaze was stripped away . . . and then, for the first time ever, she felt her mind open like a lotus flower, all the free-floating strands of thought and magic and imagination coming together in a pinpoint of golden-hued light.

  I’m doing it, she thought, her heart beginning to hammer excitedly. I’m calling up a goddamned wormhole!

  It was as if a bantam sun had exploded around her, blinding her just as she opened her eyes to behold her creation. Only there was nothing to see once her irises had readjusted, the evanescent glare having left her eyeballs feeling dry and burnt.

  All around her was cold, empty night.

  —

  The stars appeared above her, blinking into existence one at a time until the universe was once again filled with their twinkling light. Callie felt the cold wetness of snow engulfing her, her breath racing in and out of her lungs in feverish bursts as she tried to collect herself.

  “Are you okay there? You hit the ground really, really hard.”

  Dragging her eyes away from the night sky, Callie saw a pale-faced young woman in a bubblegum pink wool hat and scarf standing above her, cascading blond curls of hair poufing out around her face like lemon cotton candy. Her cornflower blue eyes were filled with concern, her powdery-rose lips turning down at the corners while she considered the image of Callie lying like a bag of discarded refuse in the chilly slush of a snowbank.

/>   “I think I’m okay,” Callie said, sitting up slowly so all the blood in her head didn’t rush out in a flood, leaving her woozy. “Where am I?”

  “What did she say?” another voice chimed in and Callie turned around to see its owner, a tall brunette with a turned-up nose that bore a thick spackling of freckles across its bridge. She was standing on the far side of the snowbank wearing a dark blue hoodie pulled taut over her head and tied tightly at the base of her throat in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

  The blond girl shook her head, looking up at the brunette quizzically.

  “She wanted to know where she was,” she replied, wrinkling her pretty nose.

  “How hard did she hit her head?” the brunette asked.

  “I’m fine. My head is fine. I’m just freezing my ass off,” Callie interjected, wishing she’d had the forethought to put on a snowsuit instead of the light blue wrap dress she’d shimmied into that morning. “And when the hell did it start snowing?”

  “Um, are you kidding?” the blonde said. “It’s been snow central for like three months.”

  Callie tried to stand up, holding on to the blonde for support as she struggled not to slip in the slush, her very inappropriate footwear—a pair of Jimmy Choo peep-toe pumps—making it hard for her to keep her balance.

  “That’s not true,” Callie said, letting the blonde’s arm go as she managed to finally right herself. “There was no snow on the ground when I got here earlier tonight.”

  September had been unseasonably warm for the East Coast, with highs in the sixties and seventies, so this bit about snow being on the ground for the past three months was pure bunk. Besides, there’d been no hint of snow in the air when she’d arrived at class, let alone was it possible for that much snow to have fallen in the hour since she’d—

  Callie paused mid-thought as she realized that no matter where she set her eyeballs, there were no modular classrooms anywhere in her vicinity. In fact, no classrooms or administration buildings or gyms or anything else that might evoke the grounds of an elementary school.

  “Okay, where the hell am I?”

  The blonde blinked.

  “You’re in Queens, New York.”

  The brunette nodded her agreement.

  “But that’s not possible. Where is PS 181?”

  “What’s a PS 181?” the blonde asked curiously.

  Exasperated, Callie sighed.

  “It’s an elementary school where I was taking—”

  She paused, realizing she’d almost divulged more information than she’d intended to.

  “—um, an adult education class.”

  The two young women gave her a funny look. Then the brunette, who was proving to be far more officious than the blonde, said, “Agatha, I’m gonna go over by that tree and I want you to tell me what you sense.”

  “All right, Happy, I’ll give it the old college try, but you’re gonna have to stand pretty far away,” Agatha replied, pointing to a copse of trees that was about a hundred feet from where they were standing. “Probably over there to start with.”

  Happy—Callie had a hard time associating the name with the serious-looking brunette—nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as she left the confines of the sidewalk and began the slow trudge through the snow toward the trees. The blonde, Agatha, gave Callie a honey-sweet smile and reached out, taking one of Callie’s frozen hands in between her own warmer ones.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Agatha seemed to be concentrating on the physical connection between them, but it didn’t appear she was having much luck.

  “Still too close,” she murmured under her breath just as Happy arrived at the predetermined spot.

  “Keep going?” Happy called out from beneath the wide shadow of the tree line.

  “Yep, keep going!” Agatha replied, eyes still closed, pink mouth in a firm line.

  Callie watched as Happy shook her head, then turned around and started crunching through the snow again, passing the snow-topped pines and heading farther out into the woods.

  Woods? What woods were there in Jamaica, New York? The place was a veritable concrete jungle—Starbucks and bodegas on every corner, houses and apartments taking up whole city blocks. Yet, as far as the eye could see, she found nothing but trees and a thin line of a freshly cleared road beside the snow-covered sidewalk they were standing on.

  “What are you doing?” Callie asked after a few more seconds of protracted silence, but Agatha only shook her head.

  “Just give me one more minute.”

  Callie stood there, shivering in the pitch-black night, her teeth chattering in double time as she tried not to lose her patience. She wanted to know where in the heck the wormhole had taken her, but she was starting to get the horrible feeling it wasn’t so much a “where?” as it was a “what?” kind of a question.

  “Um, so I’m starting to get the feeling that—”

  “Shh!” Agatha shushed her, then she squeezed Callie’s fingers so tightly it felt like the meaty bits of muscle might burst through their fleshy casings like overcooked sausages.

  “Anything?” Happy cried from another spot a few yards away from the original stand of pine trees.

  Agatha didn’t answer, but her eyelids fluttered.

  “No way!” she breathed, eyes flying open to look at Callie—to really look at her, almost as if she were some alien specimen trapped inside a bottle of formaldehyde.

  “What did you say?” Happy yelled, but Agatha’s rigid stance had piqued her interest, and she was already making her way back toward them through the snow, the crunching of her boots a riot of sound in the muted hush of the wind and the flickering buzz of the streetlights.

  “Who are you?” Agatha breathed, the look of wonderment on her face disconcerting.

  “I’m Calliope Reaper-Jones,” Callie said to peals of Agatha’s laughter.

  “No, silly,” the other girl said, playfully punching Callie in the arm. “Who are you really?”

  Well, that’s a loaded question, Callie thought.

  “I mean, your aura is on fire,” Agatha continued. “You have the craziest vibrations I’ve ever seen.”

  No shit, Callie thought, wondering just how much Agatha was able to sense about her—and if she’d been able to pick up Callie’s connection to Death, Inc.

  “And what are you really?” Callie asked, turning the mock interrogation on its head. “One of those crazy psychic ladies who goes around giving people annoying psychic readings that they don’t want?”

  “Agatha’s no Cassandra.” Happy snorted, having reached them just in time to overhear Callie’s last comment. “She’s an aura reader . . . and a pretty damn effective one, too.”

  “This gal’s full of psychic ability,” Agatha said, turning to Happy. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose aura was so fully charged—”

  “Look, I’m not psychic, but, you know what, I am freezing,” Callie interrupted, the real fear of becoming hypothermic making her cranky. “Is there somewhere warm we can go?”

  “Well, we were on our way to a very exclusive acting master class,” Agatha began, but Happy cleared her throat loudly.

  “No, you were going to a master class. I was only going to watch you take it.”

  Agatha pouted, her large heart-shaped lips turning down at the corners again.

  “But you said you’d participate!”

  “I did not,” Happy sputtered, looking put upon. “There is no way in hell I’m taking that class. No way, no how.”

  “As cute as the witty banter is, ladies,” Callie said, the cold making it hard to feel her face. “I need to get somewhere warm before I turn into a Popsicle.”

  The two girls gave each other an inscrutable look, then Happy nodded. “Okay, we’ll take you with us, but on one condition.”

  Callie nodded.

  “Okay, whatever you want. Just get me to a fire.”

  “You have to tell us what you are!” Agatha chirped, unable to wait for H
appy to get the words out. “You’re like Pat Boone or something, dropping out of the sky like he did in that movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

  Pat Boone? Callie thought, shuddering on the inside. I think someone is in dire need of a pop culture tutorial.

  “No, if I were David Bowie, I wouldn’t be in this situation.” Callie sighed, daring either one of them to contradict her. “But I think I’ll save any and all explanations until we’re out of the snow.”

  “Then follow us,” Happy said, crawling over the snowbank so she could join them on the sidewalk. “It’s just down the street.”

  —

  Down the street was a relative term, especially when you were hobbling around in a pair of peep-toe pumps in the snow.

  After ten minutes of walking, and freezing, they left the darkened woodland landscape behind them and stepped out into a better-lit suburban street. Only there were no tract homes here, no cookie-cutter little boxes or white-picket fences neatly arranged in a row along the curve of the street. Instead, there was a sprinkling of older Victorian homes, all decorative curlicues and clapboard siding in a myriad of pastel colors.

  Interstitial bits of broken Gothic wrought-iron gating separated the lots, which were large and overgrown, and deciduous trees, denuded of their autumnal skins, giddily waved their skeletal branches back and forth in a hobgoblinlike greeting.