BEWARE OF BARS BEARING JACKALOPES 4 page

Two days had passed since the dream. She kept expecting it to fade, to be chased away by waking life. But her head was still full of blood, of monsters that smelled like clay and moved like bugs. If she didn’t eat for a week, that’d be just fine.

Henry and her mother buzzed about the kitchen, talking about the day, trying not to trip over each other as they coordinated eggs and toast. A crack preceded a sizzle as an egg hit the pan. Henry inhaled hungrily.

“Mmm. They’re so much better when you fry them in the bacon grease.”

Cassandra’s stomach rolled.

“Cassie, why aren’t you eating?” Her mother motioned to the food, so she took a piece of bacon off the platter and forced her teeth to bite through it, then fed the rest to Lux when nobody was watching. The spread of food grew by the minute: Henry plunked down a pitcher of orange juice to join the platters of bacon, toast, pancakes, and cubed cantaloupe. Just one piece of bacon wasn’t going to satisfy the breakfast police. Cassandra wondered if pancakes were good for dogs. Lux certainly seemed to think so.

She was still in her pajamas, and her bare feet rested on the cold kitchen floor. The sensation felt flat, less cold than the frosty grass of the field she’d stood in two nights ago. Except she hadn’t really stood in that field. But the kitchen she sat in now felt no more or less real.

She’d seen someone die. Someone she’d known, only she wasn’t sure how. She remembered his eyes, the steady way they’d faced down the attack. He’d been confident, right up to the end. Cassandra wasn’t so brave. If she closed her eyes the creature’s face jumped up behind her lids. She heard the clicking of malformed jaws, louder than Henry and her mother’s voices. And the screams. Of the boy being killed. She swallowed hard. The dream wasn’t receding. Instead it folded over, stretching into the world where she was awake, where things like Cyclops didn’t exist.

Cyclops. Even though they weren’t anything like what she would have described if someone had asked what a Cyclops was, she knew their name. Why didn’t she know his? Was she supposed to do something? Had she been meant to save him? Could she still?

I don’t want to save him. I want him to stay away.

But she didn’t want him to die.

“Cassie. Do you want a ride to school, I said.” Henry sat beside her at the table, halfway done with his plate of food. He looked frustrated. He must’ve asked twice already.

“It’s nice out,” she replied. “I think I’m going to walk.”

* * *

It wasn’t, truly, that nice out. But the chill on the tips of her nose and fingers felt better than the claustrophobia of Henry’s front seat. And she hadn’t been in the mood to deflect his worried questions. He would have known that something was off. Anyway, in that way she had of knowing things, she knew Henry was going to hit a chunk of concrete on Meyer Road and stop to check his car for ten minutes. Annoying.

Cassandra was showered and dressed, with her hair brushed and lip gloss on, but she felt vacant, distracted, like she might walk into traffic at any moment. When she’d gotten ready, first in front of the bathroom mirror and then at her antique white vanity, it had all been on autopilot, a lucky thing that she’d done it so many times and that she never varied her makeup and rarely her hair.

Her feet stepped along the sidewalk, quick and indecisive, the walk of someone running from something without knowing where they were headed. Kincade High School was only another ten minutes away. Maybe she wouldn’t go. If she took a right on Birch she would head farther into town. Left and she’d eventually find herself on the highway, and if she followed that as it wound northwest, she’d hit the state park. There didn’t seem to be enough ground in either direction. Her feet slowed, then stopped.

This was supposed to happen. The visions changing. All the little things led up to this.

What part of her thought that? What part of her felt it? But part of her did. And if she was honest, part of her thought it made sense. Something was starting. Something was happening.

Maybe this is the point. The reason I’ve been a little bit different all this time. Maybe this is the start of whyever I was given this—

“Curse,” she whispered. Curse. She didn’t know why that word passed through her head. She’d never thought of it that way before.

When she finally walked into the school, she was fifteen minutes late. The building was always kept at what felt like several dozen degrees too hot, and it melted the frozen tips of her fingers and ears too fast, so by the time she got to her locker on the second floor her face and hands tingled and stung. Aidan was there waiting and had the locker open before she reached it.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She skinned out of her jacket and stuffed it inside.

“I was getting worried. Didn’t you get my texts?”

“Huh?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket but didn’t really look at it. “Yeah.” She flexed her fingers. “Cold hands. Figured I’d just see you when I got here.” Textbooks with frayed edges and laminated folders slid through her clumsy grip. The blood inside her hands hurt and felt slushy, like if you tore them open it’d look like a red ICEE.

“I shouldn’t have come.” She pressed the books back into the locker and let them drop; they boomed against the thin metal and fell in a heap of open covers and bent pages.

Aidan looked at the pile and cocked his brow. “Not up for English this morning?”

Cassandra shook her head.

“Music to my ears.” He took her jacket out and helped her back into it.

* * *

“You look better already.”

She smiled. “I don’t feel better already.” But she did, a little. With her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate and a half-moon cookie in her stomach, she felt close to okay.

Aidan sipped his coffee. “Well, maybe if we got you something besides sugar. Do you want a sandwich?”

“Not yet. Maybe in a while.” Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. A few seconds later, Aidan’s buzzed as well. Angry texts from Andie, demanding to know why they’d ditched without telling her. Cassandra sipped her cocoa and looked out onto the quiet street. The sky was gray and overcast. Everyone passing by had their necks tucked into the collars of their jackets, eyes solidly on the sidewalk or straight ahead. No stopping to admire the scenery. Cold wind reminded them that winter was coming, and they were bitter about it.

“I dreamed the other night.” She looked down into her cocoa. “Except it wasn’t a dream.”

“Tell me.”

She told him about the Cyclops, about the boy with clever eyes and shaggy brown hair. Her voice sounded like someone else’s voice, monotone, and so even it might have been prerecorded. When she was done, her lips pressed together wearily. It had only taken a few minutes to tell.

“He died?” Aidan asked.

“He was screaming.”

“But did he die?”

“I don’t know.” She swallowed. “I think so.” Thinking about it again brought a whiff of caves and old decay. She covered her cocoa with her hand. Only the warmth of Aidan’s arm around her back kept her in the booth. It still felt like she should do something. Like she should stop it; as if that were possible. Aidan sighed: a sound of relief. He kissed her temple, her ear, her neck and told her everything would be fine, the way you’d calm a child, or a crazy person.

“It won’t be all right. This isn’t normal. Not even for me. It isn’t just calling coins, or knowing when it’s going to rain. I saw you cut to ribbons by feathers. I saw a Cyclops eat someone, and I don’t even know how I know what a Cyclops is.” She kept her voice low, even though they were in the back of the café, in a corner booth. The confession felt strange. The words clung to her teeth.

“You have to trust me,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”

“You should be the one trusting me. I know things. And what I know right now is that everything is not going to be fine.”

“But it is. I’ll make sure it is. I know things too.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “Like what things?” He was looking at her so intently. His mouth opened and closed on words. Aidan never hesitated, or sputtered.

It must be really horrible to be around me sometimes. I must’ve really freaked him out.

She sighed and he squeezed her tighter.

“I know I love you,” he said. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

* * *

The hockey arena stood on the outskirts of town, an enormous structure painted a bleak, pale blue with what seemed to be a mustard yellow racing stripe along the roof. It sat beside four outdoor rinks and across from the lot where the bus garage was. The town used it for all manner of events: birthday parties, senior skate nights, and figure skating lessons, but the presence of so many yellow buses stamped it forever as being part of the school, and the specter of tests and teachers hung over it in a perpetual cloud.

Cassandra and Aidan leaned against the hood of Henry’s Mustang while Andie and Henry stood on the sidewalk and talked about pucks and passing and goalies who couldn’t get their legs closed. They’d been lucky to get a close space. Even though it was a mid-week game, the lot was jammed. Andie was in all her gear except for her skates and helmet. Her black hair was back in a ponytail, her bangs kept off her forehead with a purple bandanna. Her shoulders and ass looked enormous in the padding. It was strange that something so awkward and full of bulges could be so graceful once you strapped blades to its feet.

“I’d better go play captain,” Andie said, and motioned to Cassandra. “Want to walk me back to the locker room?”

“So you’re not mad anymore about us ditching Monday, right?” Cassandra asked as they walked down the cement steps. Andie had given her the cold shoulder for the better part of Tuesday, but by Wednesday seemed to have forgotten all about it. “It wasn’t planned or anything. I got there late. You were already in class.”

“It was for the best anyway. If I’d have ditched, they’d have benched me tonight, and I bet your brother twenty bucks I’d get a hat trick.”

Cassandra smiled. Going to the café with Aidan had helped, and she was glad Andie wasn’t pissed. Afterward, they’d gone back to his house and spent the day curled up together, watching movies. Or not watching movies. It had been too long since they’d done that, kissed until their lips hurt, the heat of his hands making her dizzy. After that there’d been no more visions and no more dreams. Maybe it had been a fluke, an anomaly, or a temporary bad spell, sort of like psychic food poisoning.

“And you didn’t mean what you said Friday night at the party, did you? About us not being friends after high school?”

Andie made a face and flipped her blue Gatorade into the air. “Please. Since when am I serious?” She pulled open the door of the locker room. The sounds of Velcro being stretched and adjusted, sticks rattling, and the excited voices of a dozen girls spilled out to mingle with the cold hum of the arena lights. Andie ducked inside and said, “See you after.” Then she paused. “Hey, are we going to win tonight?”

No.

Cassandra smiled. “I’ll never tell.”

She and Aidan got seats in the bleachers low along the home-side blue line. It was the best spot to watch from, and they didn’t have any trouble getting it; girls’ games weren’t as well attended as the boys’. Most of the people there were parents and older alumni with a few pockets of students in twos and threes peppered throughout.

The opening puck dropped and everyone cheered. Christy passed to Andie and she took control, weaving through defenders and getting off a shot that barely missed, ringing off the post.

“I’m going to get a hot dog.” Aidan stood. “Do you want anything? Red rope licorice?”

“And maybe a hot chocolate?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Maybe.” He edged past her and she watched Andie try to dig the puck out of the corner, apparently by elbowing a girl on the opposing team repeatedly in the face. There were shouts from the crowd, and a bark. Someone must’ve brought a dog to the game.

The ref blew the whistle for a new face-off after another missed shot let the goalie freeze the puck. The crowd quieted, except for the dog. It got louder. The bark was rough and raw.

That’s no dog.

Another bark joined it, and another, until the arena could have been filled with them. The sounds of snarling and growling came from every direction. Cassandra turned her head, hoping ridiculously to see a Labrador retriever or a husky. Maybe a team of them. But there were only people. When they opened their mouths to shout, snarls came instead.

Sweat broke out across Cassandra’s forehead and panic coursed down to her feet.

I should run.

Don’t be stupid. It’s only a vision. Nothing worse than any other.

Only it was. It was like the dream. She sat still as stone, trying to ignore the urge to fly, to jump up and run screaming through the arena, through leaves and steaming jungle.

Leaves and steaming jungle. Something was out there.

They’re already chasing me.

The mad barking took over her ears, changing to something else, losing the dog quality that made a bark familiar. This sound was feral and wild. It came from wet, hungry throats. Across razor teeth. It was a sound you ran from until blood broke into your lungs and your legs failed.

They’ll be on me as soon as I fall. So fast. They could take me any time they want, but they like it better that way. With me broken and degraded. Without the breath to scream. They’ll tear me into ribbons and gulp me down. I’ll see their necks and shoulders jerk while they do it. I’ll hear the shredding of my own skin.

Except it wasn’t her they were chasing. She knew that even as she was terrified, even as the temperature inside the arena spiked, the humidity so stifling and heavy it felt like breathing water. Leaves took over her vision, hanging heavily from branches, enormous and dark green. Strange ferns peppered the ground, curled in like alien fingers. The light was hazy, indirect. Tree trunks stood choked with vines.

It smells like dirt. Rich, black dirt. And something else. Something nauseating and sweet. Rotten.

“Cassandra?” Aidan set the food on the bleacher and knelt by her knees.

“It’s not me.”

“What? Cassandra?”

Had she said it out loud? Sweat beaded on her forehead. The jungle was incredibly animal, alive and sinister. But the sound was the worst. Rustling leaves and roots being crushed underfoot. Branches being pulled and snapped back. The sound of something giving chase.

“It’s not me they’re chasing.”

“Tell me what you see.” Aidan’s hands slid over her knees.

“Be still,” she whispered. “Don’t run.”

“Run where?”

No. Not you. Not us.

She fixed her eyes on the sheet of ice that was no longer ice but humid forest. She fixed her eyes on the girl, who was Andie but no longer Andie.

Silvery hair flew out behind her like a flag as she ran, ducking vines. It was stringy with sweat and dirt, but still had a glow, like a pale moon. She wore brown clothes, torn and streaked with dirt. Her feet were bare.

“She’s so fast,” she whispered. “She’s run for miles. She’s almost laughing. But there’s blood. So much blood on the leaves.”

Aidan squeezed her tighter. She saw it, dripping down from the shining green, a trail for the slathering tongues behind her. The dogs that weren’t dogs could smell it. They would taste it as they passed.

“Blood on the leaves,” Cassandra whispered. “And in her silver hair. They’re going to tear her apart.”

“No,” Aidan whispered back. “No.” He pressed against her and buried his face in her hair.

* * *

Cassandra spat on the asphalt of the arena parking lot, where she sat in the seat of Henry’s car, her legs out the open door so she could get air.

“My mouth tastes disgusting.” Like bitter leaves and something organic she couldn’t quite identify but that reminded her of snails.

Leaves. Leaves from a forest I’ve never been. Where a girl is running to her death.

“Here.” Andie rifled through her backpack and handed her a half-eaten Nestle Crunch. Cassandra peeled the foil and took a bite, tasting chocolate, crisp rice, and snails. It coated her mouth, like the scent of carrion and humid rot coated the inside of her nose. After a few chews she twisted and spat it out.

“Thanks anyway.”

Andie nodded. She leaned against the car, back in her street clothes except for the purple bandanna in her hair. Henry and Aidan stood farther off. They looked lost. Aidan looked worse than that. When he’d helped her out of the arena, Cassandra had felt him shaking.

She exhaled a cloud, spat again. The parking lot was shadowed and empty, lit only by three sets of large fluorescent lights. The game was still going inside, but there were a bunch of little kids skating on the outdoor rinks beside the arena. The sound of the ice shearing beneath skates and the kids’ exuberant shouts made their corner of the dark lot all the more somber.

“This is getting old,” said Cassandra.

“What is ‘this’ exactly?” Andie asked. “Tell me you’re not pregnant.”

Cassandra snorted, but Aidan didn’t seem to be listening.

“I’m not. I don’t know what ‘this’ is. I miss the days of coin tosses and weather prediction.”

“Is that gone?”

“No. You’re going to lose in there, by the way.”

“Maybe we should take you to the hospital,” Henry suggested.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“But maybe we should.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and his shoulders slumped. She felt bad, pulling him away from his friends for the second night in less than a week. But he didn’t look irritated. He looked worried and no more enthusiastic about the hospital than she was.

“Are you dizzy?” Andie asked. She held her phone in her hand, trying to WebMD it before jumping to any conclusions.

“No,” said Aidan. “No doctors. No hospitals. No Internet searches.” He was still apart from them, staring into the pavement. Something was wrong.

“Well, what are we supposed to do then?” Henry asked. “It could be a tumor, you know.”

“It’s not.”

“How do you know? She’s been seeing all this weird shit—that’s what it was again, wasn’t it?” Henry looked at Cassandra. “It was like in the park.”

“Sort of. It wasn’t the same. It was a girl this time, running, in a jungle. She was cut, or hurt, or something. She was being chased.” Cassandra paused. “And she didn’t seem human.”

“What?” Andie asked.

Cassandra blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her until then. The way that the girl ran was so effortless and so blindingly fast. No one bleeding the way she was should be able to run like that.

She shrugged. “What are you listening to me for? It was a hallucination. Maybe I really should see a doctor.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” said Andie. “I saw an old John Travolta movie once, where he got all these special powers and it turned out it was just this weird brain tumor, activating dormant brain parts.”

“So what’d they do? Did he live?”

Andie blanched. “I’m sure that’s not what it is.”

“Aidan?” Cassandra asked. He had sunk down against the cement wall with his hands between his knees. She got out of the car and walked to him.

“It’s not a tumor,” he said quietly. “And it wasn’t a hallucination.” He took Cassandra by the hand. “The girl you saw in that jungle. I think she was my twin sister.”

* * *

Twin sister. Aidan didn’t have any sisters. Or at least he’d never mentioned one.

After the initial confusion and flurry of questions, he’d refused to say any more in the ice arena parking lot, so they drove to Andie’s house, which was empty on Wednesday nights when her mom worked the night shift at the county hospital.

“What do you mean it was your twin sister?” Cassandra asked. “You have a sister?” Aidan closed his eyes and shook his head. But it didn’t mean no. He was stalling. Whatever it was he needed to say, he couldn’t figure out how to say it.

“Maybe you should sit down.”

Cassandra looked at Andie and Henry. Who was he talking to? They were all standing: Henry by the sink, and Cassandra across from Aidan. Andie lingered near the refrigerator like she was trying to decide whether she should offer them something to drink.

“Cassandra. Maybe you should sit.”

“Don’t worry about me.” She felt fine. The vision of the jungle had shattered and been shaken off. Aidan looked like hell. Like he might be sick, and it scared her. She wished she knew what he was going to say; she tried to will the knowledge into the dark space in her mind. But it never worked like that. It never worked the way she wanted it to.

“I don’t know how to tell you this.” He looked at them from under his brows. Gold hair obscured his eyes almost completely. “It’s going to sound crazy.”

Cassandra nodded. What right did she have to not believe? Whatever he said, she would take it. She would take him at his word, like he’d always taken her. Blood pounded in her ears alongside the ticking of the wall clock. Her eyes strained in the shoddy light cast from the fixture above the sink, the only one they’d turned on when they got to the house.

“I never wanted to tell you,” he said, and stopped. “That’s not true. I always wanted to tell you. I just never wanted to have to.” He looked at her. “I’m not who— I’m not what you think I am.”

Not what?

“The girl. You said she didn’t seem human. And she isn’t. And neither am I, exactly.”

Three seconds ticked off the clock before Andie and Henry started to laugh.

“God, you really scared us,” said Andie. The laughter stopped slowly, awkwardly, when neither Cassandra nor Aidan joined them.

“You’re serious. Cassandra, he can’t be serious.”

Except he was. She’d never seen him look the way he did now, so somber and scared, and—

And regretful.

He took a deep breath and pushed away from the chair.

“I didn’t expect you to believe it at first. I figured on having to prove it.” He looked at Cassandra’s hands like he wanted to touch them, but he didn’t. “Follow me.”

He led them to the second level and up to the sparsely furnished loft space where Andie and Cassandra used to have slumber parties, hanging out on beanbag chairs, reading magazines and eating popcorn.

“What’re we doing up here?” Andie asked. Aidan didn’t answer. He walked to the window. It overlooked the walkway of paving stones and the small front yard. It took him a moment to get it open; the locks were sticky, and when he jiggled them the glass rattled in protest. Winter air rushed into the loft as he pushed the pane wide. It bit at their necks and made them blink against the cold.

Away we go, into the dark.

He didn’t look back before he stepped into the window and dove out headfirst.

“Aidan!”

Andie screamed and Henry did too; they almost knocked Cassandra over rushing to look down, expecting to see their friend’s head burst like a pumpkin on the walkway. The front door opened and closed. Footsteps came up the stairs, and there he was, unhurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

* * *

He was a god, he said, and always had been. Or at least, that was what they used to be called. What they were now, he didn’t know. It seemed like the wrong word when he was so limited, so much less than he’d been before. But there were still things he could do, the extent of which he wasn’t quite sure. It had been too long since he’d pushed himself, or since he’d been pushed. He’d lived as Aidan for a long time. He was Aidan. But he used to be called Apollo.

Apollo. God of the sun, and of prophecy.

Cassandra lifted her eyes.

“And the girl? Your twin?” Andie asked. They were downstairs again, sitting at the kitchen table. Talking about it like it was normal. Andie and Henry looked like they expected to wake up at any minute.

“Artemis. Goddess of the moon and of the hunt.” Aidan squeezed Cassandra’s hand, folded in his. She hadn’t run or slapped him. She hadn’t even shouted. But her fingers were as cold as a corpse.

The way he talks, when he says those words. His voice isn’t even his voice.

“What was happening to her?” Cassandra asked.

“She’s dying,” he replied. “She’ll run until she can’t run anymore, or until whatever you heard behind her catches up.” He ran his hand across his face, over his eyes. “You said she’s almost laughing. Did she seem insane? Crazy?”

“I don’t know.”

But you hope so. You hope she’s so mad that she won’t understand it when the teeth tear into her skin. That she won’t feel it.

She wanted to reach out, hold him closer. It was strange to hurt so much for someone she wasn’t even sure she knew.

“I haven’t seen her in eight hundred years. My sister. She went deeper and deeper into the wild. Away from men and machines. And I never followed. She belonged there, I thought. Where no one could touch her.”

“I don’t understand.” Cassandra’s hand in his felt like stone. “What’s happening to her?”

“She’s dying. I think they’re all dying. In different ways.”

“I thought gods didn’t die,” Henry muttered. “That they were … immortal.”

“We are. I don’t know what’s happening to them. Something’s changing.”

“What about you? Is that what I saw? Those feathers?”

Aidan squeezed her hand. “No. I’m all right. I think those feathers belong to another sister.”

Another sister.

“Do we need to find her? Artemis?” Cassandra swallowed. The name felt clumsy coming out of her mouth. “Can we help her?”

“No.” Aidan shook his head. “No. If we go, they’ll find you. I think they’re looking for you already. And I don’t think she can be saved.”

“What do you mean, they’ll find her?” Andie asked. “Who’s looking?”

“I don’t know. Others who are dying. I think that’s what the dreams mean, and the visions. I think it means they’re coming for you.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked. But she knew. It was something about the visions, and the way she knew things. It was changing, and they could feel it, like a beacon. They’d use her however they could. They’d squeeze the contents of her head out into a glass.

“What are we going to do?” Henry asked. He hung back in the shadows, his broad shoulders slumped, arms crossed. The question sat awkwardly on him. Cassandra was surprised he hadn’t left. Henry was always so logical.

“Your hands are cold,” said Aidan, and Cassandra felt them start to warm, heat radiating from him into her fingers. It was sweet comfort. And it was an invasion.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We’re going to do nothing,” said Aidan. “We’re going to hide, for as long as we can.”

* * *

“You’ve put too much phenolphthalein in it.”

“Huh?” asked Andie. Sam nudged her out of the way to examine the titration vials. Pink liquid danced inside the delicate clear tube. Dark pink liquid. He pushed his stocking cap farther back on his head like he could get a better view.

“You put in way too much,” said Sam.

Andie and Cassandra looked at each other vacantly. Poor Sam. Andie wasn’t much use as a lab partner on a good day. On a distracted day, she was a walking booby trap. Cassandra’s partner was luckier: Jeff Larson, a brainy kid who preferred she not do anything anyway. The pink in their liquid was barely visible, just a scant tint, like the rose coating on a pair of sunglasses Cassandra had owned as a child.

They were doing acid-base titration, ten lab teams of students neutralizing the pH of an unknown acid while Miss Mackay looked on, walking behind the stations in her rather unnecessary white lab coat. Cassandra sighed. She and Andie weren’t partners so much as assistants. They handed things to Sam and Jeff when asked, but mostly stayed out of the way. Cassandra kept her eyes on her station, trying to avoid eye contact with Andie. Whenever their eyes met it was there on the tips of their tongues; they had to clench their teeth to keep from screaming it. Aidan was a god.

The words were underneath everything else as Cassandra walked through the day, a day that felt stiflingly normal. At Andie’s locker that morning, her team had gathered around to talk about the game and Cassandra’s head had almost exploded. And when Casey seethed about Misty and Matt, Andie’s eyes bulged dangerously from their sockets.

Talking about anything else felt ridiculous, like talking about what to have for lunch back and forth across a black hole.

“Can you get me the handout?” Jeff asked.

“Sure.” Cassandra reached for it and her arm almost knocked the flask of base off the table. He looked at her irritably.

Aidan watched from across the room, standing with his own lab partner. He smiled. They’d seen him go headfirst out a window. She’d felt the inhuman heat of his hands and wondered why she’d never noticed it before. But she still loved him. He was still Aidan.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 604