by Rei Fletcher
Marianne watched her working at the pan with a scrub brush. She did have a reflection, after all. The bright kitchen light was bouncing back from the window, and she could stare without seeming to stare.
There wasn't much to mark her as different. The blouse and jeans clung to her curves, but nothing gothy. Her pale complexion was…stark, especially against the dark clothes. Her skin looked smooth and flawless, without moles or anything. That was weird, she supposed. And she'd been cool to the touch. She wondered if it had to do with feeding. If she was...If she wasn't really alive wouldn't it make sense? Like sharing body heat when it was cold.
Ash was watching her back. Marianne pretended to examine the spotless counters and humming fridge.
"Your house is really nice."
"Thanks. It's a fine thing to have a cozy nest to call your own. At least temporarily."
"Do you have a permanent home?"
"I've land in Ireland, where my family came from. Backwards corner of the country though, so I don't visit."
She thought of the house that she'd grown up in. The whole year after her dad died she'd tried to hold it in her mind, down to the chipped paint next to the latch on her window sill. Sometimes it'd made her feel better, and sometimes worse. It was getting hard to remember the details, lately. She'd read that it was part of grieving.
"I keep thinking I should go back to see mine. The place I grew up. It might be weird though. Someone else in the house and stuff."
"Some things are better kept as memories." Ash finished up the pan and handed it to her. "Next time your ma uses it she'll think it needs seasoning again, but she won't know about its little adventure."
"Thanks. I'm sure I would have ruined it, trying to clean it."
Ash leaned back against the counter. She had quite wide hips. Marianne thought of Charlene and her struggle to find clothes. Fashion wasn't very forgiving of curves these days unless you were a bit of a hippie. Ash's style was definitely not that. Marianne's eyes followed the movement of her hands folding around the edge of the counter. Smooth, and cool, and gentle. Marianne swallowed.
"You're sure about this?"
Marianne shook herself. "Yeah. You...It's still okay, right?" She wanted to protest that Ash had said already, but it sounded too much like whining in her head.
Ash held out her hand. Marianne felt a little weird after everything, just shaking on it, but she smiled.
"Right. Tomorrow night. I'll come by and pick you up."
"Just on the road, by the bus stop. Don't come into the park." Ash raised an eyebrow and Marianne shrugged. "Everyone gossips there."
When she got home she hid the knife between the wall and the head of her mattress. She could probably leave it there forever and her mom wouldn't find it. Marianne's room and her sheets and clothes had been left to her to take care of for years. Still, every time her eyes opened she touched it, and as soon as she woke up, she pulled it out, convinced she'd imagined all of it.
In the dim light of her room, it looked crazier than it had in Ash's house. Too exotic. Too important. Too real. She drew it, watching the reflection of her walls and the window in the steel, and thought of whatever it was that had come clawing at her window.
I bet I could do some damage now. You fuck. Just try it.
There was a list of chores on the counter for her when she finally got up. Paper-clipped to it was a job application for McDonalds. She looked at the form, feeling odd, trembling anger. It was just a job. There was nothing wrong with it. It was good, honest work. It was just…
That's what she thinks I'm worth.
She balled it up and shoved it deep into the trash, scrubbing the kitchen without mercy to work off her frustration. She could ask for more shifts at the gas station again. Or find something else. Something better.
Even as she packed the knife in her bag a part of her thought that Ash wouldn't show. She went out early, gripping the frayed nylon with white-knuckled fingers. Just after sunset, she saw the Mustang rounding the corner, but didn't let out her breath until she was buckled in.
They practiced all night in a lumber yard. Besides the solid knife that Marianne liked so much, Ash taught her how to use some of the other things in the bag. She would demonstrate with each one first while Marianne watched like she was in PE again, but understanding a lot less, she was pretty sure. It looked cool, especially when Ash used a curved knife with a loop that swivelled around her finger as she moved through stabbing and slashing motions. Bits of it were like a Jackie Chan movie or something, and Marianne could forget for a minute or two that there were real monsters and that she was supposed to fight them, even if she couldn't use moves like that.
She remembered again whenever she clumsily tried to mimic her. Occasionally she was hopeless enough that Ash would take her hand and guide her.
"You've practised a long time," she said when they took a break to sit on a pile of two-by-fours.
"I've fought a long time. Practiced in between. But it's a bit easier for me."
"I guess you're faster." Marianne gestured to their practice space. Blue-white floodlights hummed overhead, cutting razor shadows across the muddy, uneven ground. "This must be like teaching a baby to walk, for you."
"There's nothing wrong with being new to something. It isn't just speed, though. I'm harder to kill. It's easy to be fearless. You saw how fast the Unformed Beast could move. Other things are faster or have different attacks. All hunters have to watch and be careful. I have a little more leeway."
"When can I fight one?"
"So eager to get into it?" Ash didn't sound disapproving.
"I guess it's better to try so I know if I'm going to bravely turn my tail and— Sorry. That's British. You're Irish, right?"
"It's been a long time since my hate for them burned hot."
"I read that there was lots of fighting. It must have been horrible."
"It was. But long ago, for me, and far away."
"You travel all over the world?"
"As much as I can."
"What place was best?"
Ash was still. Her expression softened. "It isn't places, I think. It's moments. It's people. There are these moments when everyone begins to look towards something grand, and it feels like this time—this time—we won't slide back into the dark. We aren't there yet, but we can get there. This time…"
"I think I understand. A little. Like anything is possible."
"Anything is possible." It was agreement and reassurance. Her eyes were gentle. Marianne had a hard time looking away.
Finally, Ash cleared her throat. "We'll head out tomorrow night and see what we can find."
Her mom upped her game, leaving a note on her door asking about the job application, and some messages from Charlene and Bobby. She decided to ignore it all and sleep until the sun went down.
As she walked down the driveway to meet Ash she glared defiantly at the trees. It felt like they were watching all the time, now. She wasn't sure how much of it was real and how much she was just imagining. She held the knife in her hand, hidden inside the bag. Tonight she wasn't helpless.
When she saw the idling car, cherry red under the street light, she smiled and slid into the passenger seat eagerly.
"Hey there."
"Hey. Good morning?"
Ash snickered and handed her a silver chain and pendant. "I found a trail. They're already starting to hunt and feed."
The pendant was a triangle shape with a circle inside. Marianne looked at her uncertainly.
"It's charmed. It will help you see things that have been touched in some way."
"Touched." She put it on as Ash swung the car around and headed into town. "Ugh!"
Ash laughed. "Sorry. I should have warned you."
"It isn't so bad. It's like when I used to put on my dad's glasses when I was little."
The distorted vision didn't last long, and then she could see like she normally did, sort of. When her eyes travelled over the scenery there were patches o
f shimmering colour, like wisps of smoke, usually, or columns of light. Sometimes they were twined around things in the real world. Sometimes they seemed to absorb the real world into them.
"They're Thin Places."
"You can read minds?"
"You're looking quite intently at otherwise unremarkable bits of forest. And I can see them, too. As you get used to it, you'll be able to look at them without staring like a madwoman."
"You mentioned those before. These are all places he could get through?"
"No, they're where other worlds come close to ours, or they're people or things that have a power of their own, or connections to other places or things that do. There are many worlds, and most of them have nothing to do with him or us. It's like being in a crowded place without touching anyone. You might feel them in some way, but nothing more."
"Mostly."
"Sometimes there are incidents. And they may grow stronger or weaker or disappear, and nothing to do with us. Things happening on the other side, I'd guess."
She parked in the dimmest corner of a strip mall lot, gearing up from her bag in the trunk. She took off her nice leather jacket and replaced it with a kind of dull green military thing, and tucked her braid up under a cap. While she was busy Marianne touched the leather sleeve. It was soft as butter, shaped to Ash's form.
"Come, my girl."
She set off down the road, Marianne at her side. The street lights gave way to darkness. Up ahead they picked up again, clustered around a high fence.
"Are we going to the exhibition grounds?"
"What are those?"
"Like, hockey rinks and riding arenas. They have the fall fair there."
"I thought it might be horses. You can always tell horses."
She didn't explain further. They approached from the back of the park grounds. She had her knife, and Ash was armed, too, and she knew what they were going there for, and there was still a part of her that insisted it was just one of the stupid, beer-fueled wastes of time that she and her friends sometimes had. Like the miles-long walks to get to a corner store, just to have something to do. Just time and energy that was ready to fly off anywhere. At the end of this, they weren't really going to kill a monster, because nothing much ever happened at the end, except maybe a drink.
She followed Ash quietly along the back fence until it stopped like the builders just got bored, and they went in. The grounds had security lights, most half-covered by trees grown up in front of them, and plenty of shadows in between. On this side of the grounds it was all small corrals where horses dozed, and the smell of the animals and their crap permeated the air. When she and Ash passed, the horses stirred, snorting and pressing against their fences so hard that she heard the wood groan.
"They don't like us creeping around." She jumped as one horse kicked a fence, cracking the plank.
"Me, mostly."
"Do you...you know. I mean, animals instead of people?"
"Feed."
"Feed," Marianne repeated dutifully, glad that she didn't take offence.
Ash made a face. "In a pinch, I can."
They approached the riding arena. She walked close against a barn wall, eyes glued to Ash's back. The boards vibrated under her hands when another horse kicked out. She muffled a shout, making an embarrassing grunting noise instead. Thumps from hooves and squeals of protest followed them along the paths between the barns. The noises distracted her, and she missed the oily trail that crossed the end of the row until she nearly stepped into it, swallowing a wave of nausea.
The Thin Places glowed and shimmered. This path oozed, pulsing as though it were a living, breathing thing. She stopped short, staring at it in horrified fascination, while the smell of it drifted to her. Ash touched her arm, giving it a little squeeze. Marianne met her eyes and nodded. She could keep going. It would be stupid to stop now.
The trail grew stronger as they followed it around the arena toward the parking lot at the front. A pickup was idling outside one of the doors. Its taillights turned the exhaust into a red haze, partially obscuring the open driver's side door. Ash caught her arm when Marianne went to step out into the open. She stooped to pick up a rock and threw it. There was a crack and a flash.
"Security camera."
"You should play baseball."
There was a lumpen shape in the bed of the pickup. She thought it was a trash bag until she was close enough to see that it was a person.
Had been. She stopped, slapping her hand over her mouth. Ash patted her arm again and went forward herself to investigate.
If you can't even look then you aren't much help.
She edged forward. It looked like he'd been smushed. Crushed. Whatever. His normal person-shape was distorted, flattened, hollowed. The stench of the Unformed Beast mingled with blood. There were other things, too, other smells, that she decided not to think about. His overalls had been blue. She stared at the oval name patch just barely visible. Dave? Dave. She'd killed Dave.
"Can you see the trail?"
Ash's voice was deliberately calm. Marianne closed her eyes. When she opened them there was a body in the back of a truck and that was all. A line of writhing ooze led to the trees along the side of the park. Part of the fence there was crumpled.
"I think it's going back up the hill out of town."
Ash eyed the painfully long slope. Marianne had run it, once. Once. Her legs protested even the memory.
They started off at a jog. Marianne slid into her marathon pace. It'd been a while. As her body remembered and her muscles warmed up, she started to feel like herself, even if her clothes weren't exactly race-appropriate. Things were always so clear when she ran, and as they hit the corner to start up the hill, her nerve steadied.
A wave of stench hit her. She flung herself out of the way a moment before the walrus-grunting. It lurched out of the trees above them, crashing down the hillside at the edge of the road. Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled the knife out of her bag and ran at it.
A swipe of its tail caught her in her side and sent her spinning away. She landed hard on the ground, all the air knocked out of her. A second later the pain hit.
There was a deep, rumbling growl. The Unformed Beast grunted and started to crawl away, searching for shelter. She heard a rush, like the wind; Ash was nothing more than a pale blur. The Unformed Beast squealed. Small trees bent and snapped, torn from the skyline. Marianne glimpsed Ash clinging to it. There was a ripping sound, then a wet pattering on the leaves. The entwined forms twitched. Had it hurt Ash? Then she saw her let it go and back away. When the beast didn't offer any danger, Ash turned toward her. Marianne realised why she wore dark clothes, at least. It was really hard to see the gore.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Drawing breath enough to say anything was painful. Sitting up was worse. "Goddamn fucking tail again."
"Broken?" Ash crouched down and Marianne watched her wipe her hands on her jeans and then carefully inspect her side. She braced for pain that didn't really come, only gentle touches that made her shiver. "Ah, nope." Ash smiled. "Nothing broken."
"Got lucky."
"So you did." Ash helped her stand. "I wasn't expecting you to run at it."
She cringed with embarrassment. "Element of surprise?"
"Well, now we know that doesn't work."
"Cool."
"How did you know it was there? Did you hear it?"
"The thing reeks."
"You can smell it?"
"Can't...Is that weird?"
Ash shrugged. "If it helps us, I'll take it."
"It really stinks. Do you think all the things from there smell?"
"We'll find out."
"I hope not."
Ash stretched, tilting her head back. Her face and throat were a pale, perfect profile against the dark. "That was a good hunt. Good enough for tonight. Let's go celebrate."
She tried not to smile stupidly. "Sure."
Ash walked off. "Don't forget your knife."
"Shit." She scrambled through the weeds to find it.
They didn't go back to the exhibition grounds. Marianne looked over her shoulder at the glow of it above the trees.
"What about D...the guy?"
"Security might find him, or a manager. That kind of thing."
"You don't—"
"I'm a vampire, not a zombie."
"Sorry."
"I took no offence."
"Shouldn't we do something? Won't they wonder what happened?"
"Do you have a story to offer, to make sense of it?"
"Oh. I guess not."
"People make up stories all the time to explain the inexplicable. They'll figure out something that seems to make sense and call it done. A few folk might make a mystery of it. Maybe a conspiracy. We squeak by on that a little too often, if you want my opinion."
"We?"
"Odd beasties of various types."
"Like…dwarves?"
She knew Ash was trying not to laugh.
"How'm I supposed to know?"
"Okay, okay. True talk, then. There are folk like them, and wee little things with wings."
"Zombies?"
"An outbreak or two. There used to be a few mythical beasts. I haven't seen one in a long time. They weren't found, though, like those strange animals in Madagascar that have always been around, just hiding. They were constructs. People were near places of power and thought clearly enough to dream things into being."
"Gryphons and stuff?"
Ash nodded. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm something similar. If we all are. I try not to dwell on it. It gets a little too existential."
"Bobby talks about that kind of thing. Existence and the meaning of life and stuff."
They came to the car. Ash opened the trunk, and in the shadows stripped out of her jacket and shirt. Marianne found herself staring at the contrast of her pale flesh against her dark bra and jeans. She was beautiful, really. Curvy, but still oddly spare.
"Is Bobby your lad?" She pulled on a blouse and Marianne leaned against the car, scuffing the toe of her boot over the reflective paint marking off the parking spots.
"I guess. We've been dating for a few years."