Brighter, a supernatural thriller (34 page)

Ramona considered. "Maybe not," she said. "I'm not doing the ritual without you. So, if you really just want to go, then we'll go."

* * *

Ramona was realizing that it was far more difficult than she'd imagined to drive a car when boxes obscured her view. Backing out had been a nightmare. It was only about an hour after she and Heather had finished packing. They'd given the apartment a quick clean, mopping the wood floor and dusting the ceiling fan. Then, they'd decided there wasn't much point in hanging out any longer, so they'd gotten in their cars and started driving. It was early evening, but it was early summer, so it was still light outside. The sun wasn't ready to go down for some time. Heather was following her car, and she was heading up Main Street, toward the four-way stop sign. One left turn, a few blocks, and she and Heather were out of Elston. Forever. The end. No more Elston.

Ramona still felt guilty about the fact they weren't even going to attempt the ritual. But Heather was right. There was no guarantee it would work, and the monsters would probably be able to tell what they were doing. They'd come and kill both of them. Ramona didn't want to die any more than Heather did. She knew that her best friend was steering them towards the most intelligent decision. Ramona would have to make her peace with it. And she hoped that she would be able to, soon.

Ramona wished that she could have said goodbye to Mason. She'd thought about him quite frequently over the last few days. It simply wasn't fair. She was in love with Mason. He was in love with her. And they couldn't be together. In fact, her entire love life was pretty screwed up. Her last boyfriend had been murdered, probably by the guy who she was in love with. She knew that Mason really had never liked Garrett. And she never knew if she ever could have loved Garrett. This wasn't the way things were supposed to work out. In the end, she wasn't supposed to ride off into the sunset with her best friend. She was supposed to find the love of her life. She was supposed to be happy. Wasn't that the way all the stories ended? Why didn't Ramona get that? Hell, why didn't Heather get that?

And were they really riding off into the sunset, or were they just stealing away with their tails tucked between their legs? To ride into the sunset, didn't you have to be a hero? Didn't you have to vanquish evil? Ramona and Heather weren't vanquishing evil, they were just leaving it behind, letting it keep its fangs deep in the heart's blood of Elston, letting it continue to suck its evil energy from the people who lived there. She didn't really feel particularly proud of herself.

But she was elated to be leaving. For a long time, Ramona had begun to question if she'd ever leave. She stared at the buildings passing her window. She'd looked at the view of Elston from every angle for five years of her life. When she'd come to this town, she'd been a kid. She'd had no idea who she was or what she knew. And five years later, she was leaving, a completely different person. Elston had molded her into the person she had become. In some ways, it was like a god. It had created her. Ramona felt a deep twinge of sadness to be leaving. She remembered all kinds of wonderful things. Swirling bonfires on the river, the taste of a joint still on her tongue. Vomiting on the steps that led into The Brass Frog, Zane's voice laughing behind her, telling her to go ahead and get it all out. Long talks outside in the night air about philosophy or Keats or environmentalism. Would there be people in Richmond who could talk to her this way? Was there another place where she could be the person Elston had made her? Or had the town soured her on the rest of the world?

She knew for an actual fact that Elston was a magical place now. Sure, it wasn't good, happy, mushroom-dust magic. It was evil, oppressive, trapping magic. But there was actual magic. This was a place of power. And she was leaving it behind. Ramona wanted to cry. There really were so, so many things she was going to miss about this place.

But she was at the four-way stop sign now. She waited her turn and then turned onto Route 480. Ahead of her, she could see the back of the sign that faced the other direction of the road, proclaiming that visitors had entered Elston. Once she passed that sign, she would burst out of the bubble that was Elston. It was only a few feet now. Ramona couldn't help it. She held her breath in anticipation. She drew an imaginary line on the road, and as soon as she crossed it, she let out her breath.

Then her engine sputtered. And died.

Chapter Twenty-one

Ramona swore and drifted to the edge of the road. Was it her battery? What the fuck? Once stopped, she turned the key in the ignition. It caught. The car started. She put it in drive. Pressed on the gas. The engine died again.

She could see that Heather had stopped her car behind Ramona's, so Ramona got out of the car and went to Heather's car. Heather was getting out of her car as well. "What happened?" she said.

"I don't know," said Ramona. "It's the weirdest thing. I can start the car, but as soon as I try to drive anywhere, it just dies."

"Do you think it's the battery?"

"Well...the car's starting."

"Show me," said Heather.

Ramona did. She tried it three times, and each time, the car just sputtered and died. Ramona could not believe this. Her car could not have picked a worse time to break down. "What are we going to do?" she asked Heather.

Heather squared her shoulders. "Start the car again," she said in a flat voice.

"But I've already started it—"

"Try putting it in reverse," Heather said.

Ramona did. The car backed up just fine and stayed running. Ramona looked up at the "Welcome to Elston" sign. She understood.

"We should have known it wouldn't be that easy," said Heather.

* * *

They tried every way out of Elston they could think of, but they had the same results. They tried having Heather's car go first, but it didn't matter. Whichever car went first stalled out. They even tried going over the bridge to Maryland, which was the opposite direction of where they were headed. That didn’t work either. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, the girls grimly returned to Elston, parked their cars a block behind the library, and began digging the things they would need for the ritual out of their cars. This took some doing, because they hadn't packed them all together, nor had they packed them in places that were particularly easy to get to. They also hadn't purchased the candles that Heather had said they would need, so they dug out as many candles as they could possibly find. The candles varied in size, shape, and color. Heather said that might not be a good thing, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

It was dark now, but it was still three hours away from midnight. Heather said she didn't think it mattered. They needed to do the damned ritual and get the fuck out. Mason had said it would be better to do it at midnight because magical ties would be weaker, but according to Heather, that didn't mean it was impossible to do it at any other time. "Besides," she said, "if it doesn't work, we'll just do it again at midnight."

Since they didn't have anything else to do, Ramona agreed. They gathered their supplies in their arms and walked to the library. Once there, they realized that they hadn't actually considered how they were going to get inside. It was after hours, so the building was locked up tight. They set down their supplies and surveyed the building. They were standing behind the back of the library, at the back door, because they didn't want anyone to see them enter.

"I guess we should break a window or something," said Ramona. "Then we can reach inside the door and unlock it."

"Okay," said Heather. "What are we going to break the window with?"

"A rock?" suggested Ramona.

The two spent some time looking for rocks. Finally, Heather came up with one she thought would be big enough. She approached the back door and held it up to the door, ready to smash out the bottom windowpane. But before she could strike, the inside of the library lit up with white light, like someone had flicked a switch. The back door swung open slowly, creaking on its hinges. Heather and Ramona shielded their eyes against the cold light that poured out of the doorway, but they gathered their supplies and stepped inside. The door slammed shut after them. Both of them turned back to look at it.

Ramona swallowed. "I guess we're in it for the long haul now."

"Should we see if it's locked?" asked Heather.

"I don't want to know," said Ramona.

The girls moved forward into the brightness. The door to the basement of the library stood open, gaping widely at them. Ramona was reminded again of how the door looked to her like a mouth. An open mouth, ready to swallow them. The eerie white light was even brighter inside the basement. They struggled down the steps with their arms full of candles, books, and herbs.

"Well," Heather said. "At least we don't have to worry about it being too dark for us to see."

Around them, the light throbbed and hummed, an alive thing. Heather began setting down candles in a wide circle in the center of the basement. Now that it was bright in the basement, Ramona could see what it looked like. The floor was poured concrete. There was one pole in the center of the room, holding up the next floor. The walls were made from stones, gray and black, fused together with concrete or some kind of masonry. The entire room was absolutely empty. No one stored anything down here. Except for a few cobwebs, which gleamed like shining jewels in the white light, there was nothing in the basement. Ramona opened Heather's book to the page that contained the ritual they needed. She read over the incantations.

"What if we pronounce this wrong?" she asked.

"Follow my lead," said Heather. "I took three years of Latin in high school."

"Really? So you can translate this?"

"Are you kidding? You need way more than three years of Latin to actually translate it."

Ramona tried to laugh. After all, Heather had cracked a joke. But it was as if the light went down her throat and choked off her voice before she could speak. She gulped at the air. It was so musty down here. Ramona hugged herself. She really, really, really didn't like the basement.

"Start lighting the candles," Heather told Ramona and began busying herself with forming smudges out of the chicory and angelica.

Ramona dug her cigarette lighter out of her purse and stooped down to begin lighting the candles. She worked her way slowly around the circle, taking care not to burn herself on the lighter, which was getting hotter and hotter. Holding the lighter made Ramona want a cigarette. She hoped the ritual wouldn't last too long. She was nicking like a junkie. As soon as she lit the last candle, all the light went out of the basement with a whoosh. The candles flickered but didn't go out. Ramona had thought the bright light was creepy, but this was worse. The darkness pooled in the corners of the basement now, and everything had turned orangey and flickery.

"Why do you suppose that happened?" she asked softly, her voice echoing against the walls.

"I don't know," said Heather, who looked shaken. "Give me your lighter. I need to light the smudges."

* * *

Mason didn't know why he was bothering to read his psychology textbook. He had about two hours and forty-five minutes left to live. And he was nervous. It was one thing to say that he was sick of being alive. It was another thing altogether to plot with someone to bring about his death. In some ways, he realized he didn't really even believe it was true. That was probably why he was reading his textbook, why he was sprawled on his couch in his trailer, like it was just a normal Friday. One Friday in a sea of Fridays, stretching back through oceans of years. There hadn't always been psychology textbooks, or couches, and his name hadn't always been Mason. But Fridays were Fridays. He knew what that was like.

Every so often, it hit him. It was Friday. It was tonight. Ramona and Heather were doing the ritual tonight. He was going to die.

He wasn't sure how the thought was so supposed to make him feel. It didn't make him feel good, but he didn't think it should. He was apprehensive, but he wasn't exactly frightened. And he didn't think Blair or any of the others had a clue what was happening tonight.

His phone rang. He checked the number. Blair. Well, maybe he'd been wrong. "Hello," he answered.

"Come to my house," said Blair.

"I don't want to," said Mason.

"I need to talk to you."

What would it hurt? Maybe it would be good to see Blair again. One last time. "Fine," he said. The textbook was really boring anyway. He slammed it shut and hung up the phone. Mason took a look around his trailer. Would he be back here tonight? He kind of doubted it. He took his keys anyway and locked it up. As he walked through town to Blair's house, he wondered what it would feel like? Would it hurt? Would there be blood? How would it happen? Would it feel like being suffocated? Being strangled? Being shot? He mused that he'd killed people in almost every way there was to kill a person.

Oh. That was weird. The library was lit up like a Christmas tree. Mason almost stopped walking and went over to investigate. He checked his watch. It was too early for Ramona and Heather to have started. He didn't go to the library, however, because he was suddenly seized with the knowledge that this was exactly why Blair wanted to talk to him. Why didn't she just go into the library? She was probably freaked out. The library had only done that maybe three times before. Lit up with all that light. Once had been after he'd killed the original Ben Helzey. Blair didn't like the light. It scared her. He remembered that. Damn it. Blair was going to be pissed at him. He wanted to turn around and go hide in his trailer, but he knew he had to try to calm her down. If he didn't, he didn't know what she'd do. And this ritual couldn't be stopped. Ramona's life depended on that.

So Mason doubled his speed and walked the rest of the blocks to Blair's house. Almost everyone was there when he arrived. The house was crowded with people. Conversation was loud. Garrett met him at the door. "She's flipped, man," he said. "Called everyone here. Listen, don't tell her this, but I helped Heather call landlords today. She and Ramona are gone by now. There's nothing to worry about."