A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (15 page)

39. G.

I walked around Sam’s
new wheels. It was beautiful. Three thousand pounds of steel and chrome, rag
top and leather seats. I whistled between my teeth.

“You want to go for a
spin?” he grinned at me from the driver’s side as he swung the coupe’s long
door open and slid in.

“Yeah, man. Let’s take
this baby for a ride.” The leather felt like butter beneath my fingertips as I
ran my hand over the backrest and then put my ass in the seat. “I can’t believe
your mom let you buy this.”

“What she doesn’t know
won’t hurt her,” he said and put a tape into the cassette deck. There was
something strange about that, but I shrugged it off. Of course he had a tape
deck.

We cruised out of the
neighborhood and down the highway, building up speed as we eased into traffic.
There was a long stretch of empty road ahead of a few cars, and Sam stepped on
the gas pedal to fill it.

The sky was dark down
the road; a heavy thunderhead filled the sky from horizon to the sliver of moon
overhead. Flashes of lightning, occasional booms of thunder and not much else
filled the deserted stretch of highway. I looked around for the other cars but
they were gone – not left in the dust, but gone as if they had never been there
in the first place. I rubbed my eyes, feeling like I was missing something.

“Hey, will you fast
forward to the next song? I hate this one.”

The feminine voice
startled me, and I turned to see a slender girl with dark hair and lots of eye
makeup grinning at me from the back seat. She wasn’t wearing a shirt, only red
vinyl hearts over her nipples. I knew her, but I’d never seen her before. As
our gazes locked, she gave me a long slow blink, and then she winked.

“Sure, babe,” said
Sam, pushing the fast forward button on the tape deck.

I looked over at him,
and he was making eyes at her in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, there was a
semi-truck looming in front of us, its yellow light cutting through the dark
haze of the incoming storm. I freaked out a little and grabbed the wheel,
afraid that Sam hadn’t seen the truck.

“Not cool, man!” he
yelled, grabbing the wheel away from me and slapping at my hand. “I got it
under control.”

I didn’t think he did.
In fact, I could feel something at the edge of my consciousness, warning me
that something bad was coming. Something not just on the horizon, but something
coming from the sides, from the back, something just out of
view
.
It was dark and shadowy and slick.

A lightning bolt burst
from the sky and illuminated everything in the sudden darkness; harsh
blue-white light made the bones in Sam’s face stand out as if he were emaciated
and malnourished. I looked behind me to see Lily in the back seat and her eye
sockets were dark with only shiny pinpricks where her eyes should be. My heart
thumped and the adrenaline spread like a hot wave through my veins. Another
lightning bolt and I looked ahead again, at the vast nothingness of West Texas
desert, at the road stretched before us, blacktop with yellow lines, at a dim
line of mountains in the distance.
As that bolt came slamming
down to earth, another one rose up from the ground to meet it.

There was a tremendous
clash of thunder that made me flinch, despite my heightened state of
adrenaline. I looked wildly about, trying to assess the threat. It was then
that I noticed the glow – off in the distance – a yellowish glow low on the
horizon.

“We’re almost there,”
said Lily in my ear. “Not even a quarrel can fly this far,” she grinned slow
and sly.

“What?
Where?”
I yelled over the sound of the wind and driving rain
that had begun to slash us with its icy drops. I peered at her over my
shoulder.

“Orla,” she whispered.

I woke with a start. My heart was pumping, and my body was
sweaty. I looked around my
room,
sure that something
was there with me. There was
a darkness
in the corner,
intense and black, with a presence that could not be mistaken. There was
something there and it was watching me.

I lurched out of the bed and rushed across the room, ready
to put my
Muy
Thai to use, but when I got to the
corner, the lightning outside flashed again, and I could see that it was only
my dad’s golf clubs leaning up against the wall.

I clenched my fists and scanned the room for another moment,
but with each additional lightning flash I could see there was nothing there,
probably never had been, and the dream combined with a real-life Texas
thunderstorm had just given me a really bizarre hallucination. A chirp from
across the room sounded, and it made me jump—my phone. I picked it up and saw a
text from Sam.

Dude, you awake?

40. SAM

Hell, yes. Storm
giving me some creepy-ass dreams,
was G.’s text in reply.

That almost made me laugh, except I had a creepy-ass dream
of my own and he
was
in it.
Coincidence?

Me,
too.
You were in mine. We were
driving down the highway in a retro convertible.

There was a really long pause before I got a return text.
Calling you
was all it said.

The phone rang and I answered. G. was freaking out.

“How the hell do you know what I dreamed?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t mess with me, man. How did you know I dreamt about us
riding around in your new car with Lily in the back seat?”

“I – what?”
My mind raced over the
visuals of the dream I’d just woken from and then rewound and fast-forwarded
again. There was no Lily in my dream. “I had the same dream – only mine didn’t
have Lily in it. It had Melody.”

“Oh, as if us both dreaming about each other at the same
time isn’t weird enough, you expect me to feel happy that some little detail
was different? Like that makes this any less freaky?” His voice cracked on the
last word.

“Wait, tell me your dream. Tell me what happened, what was
in it,” I said, feeling that ball of dread form in my stomach.

“You, me, some retro convertible with Italian leather seats
that you could never afford.
Driving down the highway at
night, really fast, a thunderstorm in the distance.
Lily in the back
seat wearing pasties and telling you to change the music to a song she liked.”

“What song was playing?”

“That old one…
Tainted Love
?”

I tallied it together – it was indeed similar enough to be
freaky. “Mine was almost exactly the same, except Melody was in the back seat
instead of Lily, and she was asleep and wouldn’t wake up. I tried to wake her,
and you grabbed the steering wheel from me so that we wouldn’t go off the
road.”

“Man – in mine, I grabbed the steering wheel from you so we
wouldn’t hit a semi–the lights were so bright, we could barely see.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“When I have dreams like this, they have this sort of
quality to them that makes me pay attention – because…” I tailed off, not sure
I wanted to admit this to anyone other than Melody.

“Because what?”

“Because sometimes they come true.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said. But they’re different… yours
with Lily, mine with Melody. And it’s kind of like the other ones I’ve had of
her recently.”

“What do you mean?” The tension in G.’s voice was palpable.
I think he could sense something too.

“The others all had these inky black tentacles and they were
trying to pull Mel down and suffocate her, or take her away or …”

“Hang up with me. Call her.
Now.”

“I think I should.”

“Dude,
now
. I
don’t have a good feeling.”

I hung up and called Melody. Usually I would just text her,
but there was something that made me just push the talk button. The phone rang.
And rang.
It went to voicemail. I dialed it again.

On the third attempt, I was pulling on my pants and shoes,
the phone wedged into my shoulder. There was a rap at the bedroom window, and I
jumped, nearly dropping the phone. A dark shadow loomed outside. It was G. He
must have run straight over. I waved to him and met him at the front door.

“How far does she live from here?”

“About six blocks, toward the back of the neighborhood.”

“Let’s go.”

And he took off like a freaking track star. I did my best to
keep up, but it was really no contest. G. was taller and in better shape. Maybe
it wasn’t like that the first time we met, but it was now. Damn, could he
move
.

G. was already at the front door, banging on it and ringing
the doorbell. I just hoofed it around back to where her bedroom window was; I
would just hoist myself up and crawl in.

When I got there though, I pulled up short. There was a dim
light on in Melody’s room, but she wasn’t in her bed. I finally saw her on the
floor, huddled in the farthest corner, staring up at the ceiling. She looked
terrified. I followed her gaze and felt a wave of cold flow over me. There was
a dark mass above her; writhing tentacles and claws, eyes and beaks, ichor and
gore. I had never seen anything so evil, but I knew that’s what it was. It was
evil made flesh. And I had to get her out of there.

I jimmied the window but couldn’t get it open. The damned
thing was stuck and Melody was about to be… be eaten alive and I couldn’t get
the goddamned window open! I looked around, frantic, looking for anything that
would help me get into the house and saw a big, fat, chunk of Texas Limestone.
It would do.

41. MELODY

Why can’t I move?

I could see them swarming above me. They were in the dream,
and in the dream I couldn’t move either. I was paralyzed. I fought to move, to
scream, to shout but I could do nothing but lie there.

They had started out just as shadows, but as my fear grew so
did their forms, as if they were feeding off of my fear, off my energy. There
was a dim light in the room, over near the wall, I couldn’t see what made the
light since I couldn’t move my head, but the entities gave it a wide berth. And
then I realized what it was that made the light… the positive orgone generator
that Esme had given me – it was there on the floor, where I had thrown it right
before I went to bed.

Hope flared in me, tiny and bright, and this made the
creatures chitter and snarl and loom closer to frighten the hope away. If I
could somehow get myself to move, get to the pog, I could hold it, wear it, use
it to protect myself. Maybe I could even get the creatures to leave.

Having some goal to focus on gave me purpose, and purpose
gave me strength. I struggled, willing myself to lunge from the bed and grab
the pog, and finally I felt a snap and a staticky zap that started in my brain
and cascaded through my body as if I had been blanketed with a net of
electricity. I could move again; it was uncomfortable and I was still
terrified, but I could move. I flopped off the bed, onto the floor, and army
crawled over to the wall where the pog still
lay
,
chain wrapped around it in a small pile. I reached my right hand out to grab
it, and I felt the warm buzz envelop my hand and shoot up my arm. The creatures
retreated
the smallest amount. It wasn’t far enough
for my taste, but at least their beaks weren’t threatening to pick my brains
out through my eye sockets anymore. That tiny kernel of hope fluttered in my
chest. What was it Esme had said? Was it about hope?
No…
something about joy.
They cannot
tolerate joy
. How on earth was I supposed to be joyful at a time like this?

I heard a sharp rap on my window. Sam was outside, trying to
get in. But there was a hiss overhead as one of the larger creatures lunged at
me, causing my heartbeat to skip and my stomach to plunge to my knees. It
seemed to grin as it lapped up my fear. Its tentacles extended toward me and
this made the rest of the creatures even
more bold
.

I slipped the pog over my finger and waved my hand through
the air, hoping that it’s meager light would cause the parasites to disperse,
and although they avoided it, there were too many of them and my fear was too
great. They began to close in, and a sob welled up from the base of my throat.
They force-fed me wave after wave of menace, and I repaid them with the fear
they were after. I clenched my fist and tried to concentrate on Sam. Sam was here.
Sam knew I was in trouble. Sam was going to save me.

And then the door to my room burst open, G. charging through
like a linebacker, turning from one side to the other looking for the threat.
Then he saw me, our eyes met, and I looked up to mass on the ceiling. He
followed my gaze. And then he roared.

It wasn’t a roar a boy makes when he’s playing games with
his friends. It wasn’t the roar a ball player makes when he’s going out onto
the field. It wasn’t even the roar of one beast challenging another. This was
deep, it was primal, and it was the roar of a warrior descending into battle. I
had never heard such a sound before, but I knew what it was. It was
unmistakable.

The creatures knew what it was too, and suddenly they
swirled and curdled on the ceiling above, rearranging so that the fiercest
could turn to face their attacker. And then as a unit, they lunged, swarming G.
like a school of piranha.

And that wail that was building in the pit of my stomach, it
finally came up out of my mouth. I screamed.

The bedroom window burst, shards of glass flying inward and
peppering the carpet, my desk. I thought that my scream had done it, but then
Sam was there, pulling me up by the hand and pulling me close. He protected me
with his body, but it wasn’t necessary. The creatures were not after me anymore
– they had fresh meat.

I huddled against Sam. On the other side of the room, I
couldn’t even see G. anymore, buried under that writhing mass.

But then he tore himself free and roared again, his right
arm coming up as if to strike the nearest parasite. A force seemed to extend
from his arm, and the parasites flew back. So many shadowy bowling pins, they
fled to the far corners of the room.

G. staggered, spent. I tried to reach out to him, but Sam
would not let me go and G. caught himself from stumbling by grabbing my
dresser. The creatures could sense his weakness and began moving in again…

Until a burst of light shone forth from
the bedroom door.
Gram appeared, carrying a handful of hockey-puck sized
pogs that she tossed into the corners of the room. As each one landed, it shone
a line of light that connected it to the one before, until all four corners of
the room were connected – a barrier of light that the creatures could not
abide. They faded, and fizzled, each of them, like plastic wrappers thrown on a
flame, and finally Sam let me go.

I fell to the floor, too numb to weep.