Amity (18 page)

The patio wrapped around the side of the house, and while I scooped up jacks halfheartedly, Luke practiced pitching a softball against the wall with maniacal zeal. He slammed the ball against a net he’d set up along the side of the house like he hoped to send it clean through the nylon. Sweaty and red-faced even in the afternoon chill, he stooped forward in an imitation of ball players he’d seen on TV. His attention was so pinpoint-precise, I abandoned all pretense at my own game.

Catch and release, catch and release …
The hissing of the ball against the net was soothing, and I could see it was lulling Luke, almost hypnotizing him. It must have been
doing the same to me, or I might have been more alert, more aware. Might have seen what was clearly to come.

As it was, we were both stunned when the reverberation built to a fever pitch, Luke pulling back, winding up, smashing the ball forward with the force of a tsunami. The net stretched back, and we turned, craning, and watched together as the ball sailed in a perfect arc over Luke’s head. We were stunned momentarily, both taken by the powerful trajectory being traced against the sky.

We were stunned, that is, until we realized—both in the same instant, I think—exactly where the ball was headed. My eyes flew open as I met Luke’s panicked gaze. At the sound of the ball shattering our neighbor’s window, Luke winced.

“You’d better go inside, Gwen,” he said darkly, shaking his head. “Before Sanderson comes out to tear my head off.”

Old Man Sanderson lived next door, in a run-down split-level with enough peeling paint to render the house an entirely different shade from its original color, which had at one point (presumably) been a dusty blue. He was, as his name suggested, old in that bearded, balding, graying way. He was also not the sort of person you wanted to spend much time with under the best of circumstances, which these were certainly not.

“He’s mean,” I said to Luke, doubtful.

He
was
mean. Mean enough that neighborhood kids didn’t even dare egg his house on Mischief Night. Mr. Sanderson was, we all suspected, the type of person to open his door to trick-or-treaters—after spiking a bushel of shiny red apples with fresh razor blades. He was the person around whom urban legends were built, a living, breathing cautionary tale for the children on our block.

“Exactly,” Luke said. His gaze was hard, but I detected a telltale flicker of fear in the set of his mouth. “So go.” He gestured again, emphatic. “Go.”

I wish I could say I refused.

Nonetheless, I did manage to support Luke, without any conscious effort, after all.

Without any conscious effort.

I did still find a way to help my brother out.

ONLY SOMEWHAT RELUCTANTLY
, I wandered inside, shuffling my feet along the ground. The relief I felt at being excused from the impending confrontation was offset by the guilt of leaving Luke outside to face Sanderson on his own. Our parents were out, off together on one weekend errand or another, and I couldn’t decide if their absence made the situation better or worse. They would have been upset, of course, to know that Luke had broken a neighbor’s window, but they would have known it was an accident. Luke wasn’t, by nature, a troublemaker.

Not then.

And even back then, even before Amity, I was no stranger to hauntings. I believed, as everyone else did, that Sanderson was to be avoided at all costs.

I peered through the side window of the living room, nose pressed against the pane. Sanderson was making his way across our yard and toward my brother with a tight, grim expression on his face. His hair was thin and greasy, limp, streaked with more salt than pepper, and his posture was stooped. Everything about him curved forward, like the arc of a tidal wave, coiled and ominous.

Once Sanderson caught up to Luke, he began to shout. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but there was no mistaking
the rising color in his cheeks, the furious pinwheeling of his arms. There was no mistaking the crease to Luke’s forehead as he shrank back, drew in upon himself.

Through the window, I observed, transfixed, as Sanderson’s gestures grew wilder, more menacing. He was irate, looming, expanding until he no longer resembled a wave so much as an exclamation point, a lightning bolt. Luke’s eyes were round and glassy, and his mouth moved in mealy mumbles. He had progressed from panic to near terror, like an animal caught in a snare. I wished I could do something for him, something about that awful, sickening look. I couldn’t imagine what, though.

I was only ten years old then, remember.

I couldn’t imagine, but it seemed I wouldn’t have to. Something was building in my core, in my center. From within, a prickling sensation bubbled and hitched, burning at the base of my throat, pressing at my rib cage urgently. And though it was the first time this feeling had arisen with such acuity, it was familiar somehow, still.

My skin felt tight, hot, itchy, as though my nerve endings were exposed wires, as though an electrical current coursed through me, setting me alight.

Then, suddenly, that shimmer, that charge, funneled out of me, streaking off into the atmosphere, leaving me dizzy, light-headed.

I rocked back with the force of all of the charged particles around me and in doing so, somehow solidified, pulling together, gathering whatever force was being built into a tightly knit ball that I could envision, just so, within my mind’s eye.

From outside, I heard the low rumble of thunder, of air
pressure shifting, gathering energy. Our windows rattled and the sky darkened in a purple, bruise-like patch, collecting like a blood clot, swirling, coming to a vortex. Settling. Just above where Luke and Sanderson stood.

I blinked, trying to understand what I was seeing, why it seemed that whatever was happening, was only happening in my own backyard. I couldn’t find a reason. But no matter; as it turned out, I didn’t have time to dwell.

As it turned out, the stones were here.

THEY CAME ALL AT ONCE
, in a pounding sheet, heavy and full, smacking against the flagstone and clicking like chattering teeth. The sound was crystallized, sharp, and bright, even through the windows, even from behind the safety of the living room walls.

As though it were coming from within my own mind.

Luke and Sanderson both stopped short, confusion etched on their faces. They tilted their heads up, shielding their eyes from the steady rain of pebbles, disbelieving. I wanted to shriek, to scream, to call out to them, to tell them—to
insist
—that it was ice, debris, anything that could be explained away.

Anything that didn’t seem
crazy
.

But I couldn’t bring myself to.

Because crazy or not, I knew: the rocks. Were
real
.

And they were mine.

LUKE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING
when he came back inside.

As the stones came down, I’d slithered along the living room wall into a crouch on the carpet, hugging my knees to my chest and biting down on my lip so hard I tasted the thin tang of blood. I heard the front door swing shut with a bang, heard Luke’s footsteps, hard and heavy, moving with purpose toward the living room. I looked up at him as he crossed to the window above me, briefly resting a hand on my head. He frowned as he gazed out the window, alert and worried.

From outside, I heard a final, crashing boom, a clap, and a quick, heavy rain of pellets that sounded concentrated, thick. The stones had gathered, were rushing down with a final burst of force.

After another heartbeat or two, stillness fell, cool and lush. I felt it drape against my skin, velvety and dense, as much as I sensed it in the surrounding atmosphere.

The stones had come and gone.

My head felt clear now. All that remained was a dull throb, suggesting a hailstorm, a rain of something heavy and solid.

Suggesting the stones. Insisting that what had happened should not be dismissed.

Insisting that what had happened, happened because of me.

THE CALM, QUIET AIR WAS ALMOST
as full, as pressing, as the stones had been.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice wavering.

Luke looked at me. “You tell me.”

I swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

But that wasn’t quite true. Because this wasn’t the first time, not exactly, that the laws of science, of physics, of gravity, of the typical movement of mass and energy—it wasn’t
quite
the first time that these laws had rearranged themselves in my presence. It wasn’t quite the first time that a prickle beneath my skin had gathered, bending the atmosphere around me, inverting it to my will.

Was
it?

Now that the stones had gone and my breathing had slowed again, images began to replay themselves in my mind: fragmented moments, seemingly innocuous, easy to dismiss.

A glass vase tumbling from the mantel the instant my mother scolded me for playing in her jewelry case
.

A pot boiling over on the burner as my parents’ argument built to a fever pitch
.

A lightbulb popping and burning out the moment Luke surprised me during an impromptu game of hide-and-seek, the charred, smoky smell lingering between us
.

Fragmented moments, memories. Seemingly innocuous. Easy to dismiss. And so I had dismissed them. But between Luke and me, suspicion had always remained, suspended like a spiderweb, sticky and fragile as cotton candy.

Suspicion, and an unspoken agreement.

“I don’t know.” That was more honest. The stones were something new, something greater, and possibly un-ignorable. The stones were possibly too much for Luke and me to bear in secret.

Luke knelt down next to me, breathing hard. “Gwen—”

“What’s it like out there?” I squeaked, cutting him off. My throat felt thick and rusty. Some inner warning bell was blaring now, telling me that whatever Luke was about to say might confirm our long-standing suspicion. Might bring it out into the open.

I wasn’t ready for that.

Go away, crazy
. The words danced in the air.

Luke made a hissing sound, sharp, through his teeth. “You’d almost never know. The only thing wrecked is
our
house. Our patio, I mean. And some … divots in the lawn, it looks like.”

“But nowhere else.”
Nowhere else
. I’d already known that, hadn’t I?

“The stones only fell over our house, Gwen,” Luke said.

The unspoken corollary hung between us:

Because that’s where you wanted them to fall
.

“Do you think anyone saw?”
And, if so, what will they think? What will they say?

There were rumors and whispers enough as it was. Proof
of anything about me that went beyond “strange” or “fragile,” anything beyond the rational realm …

Well, I guessed others wouldn’t be so accepting of that. Those who’d never been privy to my flashes, my moments … they still weren’t convinced that I was wholly normal.

Sane.

Luke shrugged. “Can’t say. Nobody came outside. Nobody was looking out the window when I checked.”

“Sanderson?”

“He was pretty spooked,” Luke said. “I can’t see him going out of his way to talk this up to people. What would he even say?”

Spooked
. “Right.” What would
we
say?

“So,” Luke said, turning to me at last, his voice hardening with his expression, “I think this is probably something that we should try to keep to ourselves. As best as we can anyway.”

I nodded, relieved. The warning bell calmed. Luke and I were coming to an agreement, then. I didn’t understand what had happened, certainly couldn’t explain it, so keeping it to ourselves made sense to me. I wouldn’t even have known how to begin to describe what had taken place if I’d wanted to.

And I absolutely didn’t want to.

ALWAYS

HERE

Here lies a plot of land, boundaries, borders bleeding outward, spilling soil, spoil, spreading a legacy of poison, a long, lethal history of bleak, black power; dangerous, venomous earth inching in every direction, seeding the landscape with danger, darkness, decay
.

Here lies a collective of the forlorn, the forgotten, the forsaken. A tribe, taken, tormented, tortured. Left for dead and layered, levels deep, buried, bone against bone against bone
.

Here lies the former site of a failed premise, a feigned promise, a pact as broken as the bodies that lay beneath, between, beyond. Here lies the hope of a haven, a safe house, a sacred space for magic users, shamans, and those who exist in the peripheral places of our world
.

Here lies an in-between land, one which played host to a rotating, ever-evolving cast of struggling, searching hordes
.

Here lies the legacy of ancient legends, lore long dismissed. Force, power, soft and dormant. Dwelling silently, gathering, funneling with the rage of a typhoon
.

Here lies the apex, the access point to alternate planes, to worlds beyond, to a forever of never and everything other and dank
.

Here lies Amity
.

Now a house
.

But always, ever
,

all unspeakable things
.

Always awaiting
.

Always amassing, absorbing
,

reflecting sinister intent
.

Always ready to snake its way under the flesh
.

Always unsafe
.

Not sane
.

Always sentient
.

Here lies Amity
.

Always anger
.