Forever Freaky (23 page)

When I woke, I saw that it was night. Where I
was in the woods wasn’t completely dark; moonlight filtered through
the canopy of tree branches above, and cast an eerie pale light on
everything around me. I panicked, wondering if, maybe, I was too
late. Then I heard the voices issuing from the clearing, the happy
buzz of small talk. I got up and ventured to the tree line. I saw
how the crowds had swollen. They were shadows crawling among
shadows. More people had arrived with grills and coolers. Some were
clumped together round the picnic tables, and others round the
barbecue grills. A few couples had separated to lonely spots in the
clearing where they could lie on their backs on blankets and stare
up at the stars that were sprinkled across the inky sky. Columns of
gray smoke rose from the grills above the trees, filling the air
with the cloying aroma of sizzling meat. There was a mishmash of
music coming from a half dozen boom boxes—country stumbling over
techno, pop plowed under by punk, and somewhere in the middle of it
all Vivaldi played like the only voice of reason in a mental ward
that had been overrun with un-medicated inmates.

I crept back into the woods, and sat against
my tree, and waited. I looked but couldn’t see anything in the dim
light around me. I listened but couldn’t hear anything stir. After
a while, I wondered, for a millisecond, if maybe I’d been wrong;
maybe Amy wouldn’t show up, maybe this event hadn’t been the target
of her plan at all, maybe she was somewhere else, torching a
wedding reception or a movie theater or a bowling alley.

But then her voice came from out of the
darkness behind me.

“So you figured it out, freak,” she said. Her
voice sounded like a whisper in the woods, and for a second I
couldn’t tell if it was real or something I was imagining.

I stood slowly. I couldn’t hear anything, not
the snap of a dry twig or the rustle of a dead leaf. I waited and
listened.

“Have you regained your sanity? Or do I have
to kill you with the rest?”

She was somewhere deeper in the woods, not
far away but just inside the darkness my eyes couldn’t
penetrate.

“Have you come to help or come to
hinder?”

“You know that already,” I said, quietly
moving deeper into the woods, trying to home in on her voice.

“I do,” she said, almost sadly. “I hoped it
might be otherwise, yet I still don’t care either way. Isn’t that
strange: to have hope and still not care?”

“Might be because you’re a little
brain-whacked,” I said.

She barked a laugh. “You calling me
brain-whacked? What does that mean coming from you?” she wondered.
“You’re the one who’s lost your grip on reality. Those people out
there—you think they’re your friends? They’re not. They could never
be your friends. If they knew what you are, they’d burn you at the
stake or put you in a canvas sack with some rocks and throw you in
the lake.”

“Nobody’s a witch,” I said, reaching out with
my mind, beckoning clouds and rain.

“That’s what they would think, though,” she
said, and I remembered Jack’s grandmother pointing her crooked
finger at me. “They’re all enemies, mine and yours. They’re stupid,
weak, and useless. Just listen to them out there. Wailing like
morons. Crawling across the dead earth like maggots. They’re a
colony of ants, and I’m a magnifying glass.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” I said.

“Like hell it isn’t.”

Thick black clouds had appeared out of
nothing, and were rolling in from the west. Distant thunder
sounded.

“No,” Amy gasped.

“You’re going to have to take a rain check,”
I said.

“No, no, no,” she screeched, like a wounded
animal. There was the sound of frantic movement in the darkness, as
though a crazed bobcat was bouncing off trees. “No!”

A fireball erupted from the shadows. Glowing
orange and yellow, about the size of a basketball, it streaked at
me. I hit the ground, just in time to feel its searing heat pass
over my back. It struck a tree behind me, and exploded in a hail of
golden sparks and a billow of white smoke. Tiny licks of flames
clung to the singed tree bark.

I rolled to the side, and took cover behind
another tree.

Thunder sounded again, this time much closer.
I heard some guy in the clearing cry, “Aw, dude, this sucks!”

I pressed up against the tree for protection,
thinking, Dude, no kidding this sucks.

And then another fireball struck and exploded
on the opposite side of the tree that was my shield. Sparks and
embers sprayed past me on either side of the tree. Somehow a couple
red-hot embers landed on my arm and burned my bare skin. I shook
them off fast, but the pain was so intense that all I could see in
my mind was a flash of white. My focus on the sky was broken, and I
knew right away that the dark clouds that had been rolling in were
now dissipating back into the nothingness from which they had
risen.

I just couldn’t do it—I couldn’t concentrate
on the sky to make it rain and dodge fireballs at the same
time.

Squatting behind the tree, holding my burnt
arm, I wondered what to do. Amy seemed to know where I was, even
though I hid in the shadows, but I had no clue where she was or
from which direction she might attack me. How was that possible?
Nobody’s night-vision was that good, not even a freak’s. Then I
thought I had the answer: maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t see me
any better than I could see her. Maybe she was focusing on me, the
idea of me, and her fiery wrath would find me no matter where I hid
in the darkness. Quickly I tried that myself; I saw her in my mind,
and I willed her to stumble and fall.

About three seconds later, I heard, not far
away, the rustling crash of a body hitting the ground, and an
agonized grunt, as though somebody had been socked in the stomach.
I took the opportunity to move deeper in the woods, my hands out in
front of me, groping in the dark for another tree.

Behind me, I heard Amy scream, “Bitch! Is
that the best you have? Is that really the best you have?”

Then another fireball was whizzing at me,
lighting up the darkness, showing that I was standing in a small
open area too far away from the nearest tree. My feet couldn’t move
fast enough. My body couldn’t fall to the ground fast enough. Only
my mind was fast enough to save me from becoming a human torch.
There was a low-hanging tree branch that the fireball was about to
pass beneath before it struck me. My mind was able to tug the
branch lower, into the path of the fireball, and the fireball
exploded on the branch and showered me with embers and sparks that
felt like hot needles stabbing into the skin of my arms and face. I
might have actually cried out in pain, which I never did, because,
really, pain never seemed that bad. I fell to the ground. I could
no longer see darkness, only the afterglow of the explosion, as
though I had just looked into an immense flash bulb going off. I
crawled on the ground blindly, groping for some kind of cover,
willing my eyes to clear up, thinking, Jack, you dumbbell, you
should have just let me shoot her! My fingers found thick tree
roots erupting from the ground. I followed the roots to another
tree trunk, behind which I hunkered down, blinking my eyes, still
trying to clear my vision.

I tried not to move. I tried not to breathe.
I waited.

Finally Amy called out in the darkness, “Hey,
Jules.” She didn’t sound the least bit mad; oddly, she sounded
calm, chatty, as though about to ask if I enjoyed a field trip.
“Jules, are you dead?”

I started to stew inside. I hated dumb
questions, and that was about the dumbest question I had ever
heard. She had never had the ability to see and hear spirits, so
how did she expect to hear my answer if I was dead?

My vision was clear now, for all the good it
did me; instead of seeing a glowing spot, all I saw was
darkness.

Anger was quickly welling up in me. I was
tired, I was sore, I was burnt, and I didn’t want to be here in the
first place. I felt myself losing control of that monstrous thing
inside me, as I did whenever I lost my temper.

“It’s time for you to go home,” I called out
to her.

“Oh, so you are alive,” she said, surprised.
“What was that? Go home? Are you kidding me?”

“No sense of humor, remember?”

She tittered her demented titter.

“Run, before it’s too late,” I warned
her.

But she thought I was the funniest thing in
the world.

“Run!”

Then it got away from me, the big dark it
inside that had been slipping away from me. I didn’t have to focus.
I didn’t have to do anything. It was a shadowy monster with a mind
of its own.

In quick succession, I heard a muted boom, a
startled squeak like a mouse being crushed underfoot, and the
patter of tiny objects striking tree leaves like a million
raindrops. Then I heard the creaking moan of a falling tree.

“Run!” I yelled, stepping out from my hiding
place. “Run!”

There was another boom, another spray of
splinters, and another tree came crashing down.

I started walking back toward the clearing,
following the sound of frantic footfalls and snapping twigs. I
reached the area in the woods where moonlight broke through and
spilled in a weird way over the trees and rough ground. I watched
as Amy tried to escape, taking quick, uncertain steps. The bottom
part of a tree trunk that she was passing exploded, and she lost
her footing and fell. The rest of the tree seemed to hang in the
air for a second, defying gravity, before it tipped and fell,
crashing through the branches of other trees and then landing where
Amy lay on the ground. I gasped in horror, and the monster fled
into some dark recess in my mind, where it belonged. Was she dead?
I wondered, not sure now whether that would be good or bad. I
approached the fallen tree, and shoved aside branches, searching
underneath, until I saw her. Her pixie face, framed by smaller
branches, was distorted with terror. Her eyeballs were jittery, and
her chin trembled.

“Oh, you’re alive,” I said, sounding a bit
disappointed.

She squirmed, trying to free herself.

“Can’t you move?” I asked.

“No—no—no,” she stammered.

“Are you sure you can’t move?” I asked
playfully.

Her eyes grew even wider.

“Hmmm,” I said. “Then we have an interesting
situation, don’t we?”

She started shaking her head viciously.

“I really should kill you… but you’d probably
haunt the crap out of me. So that’s not happening.” I paused to
think things over, and something occurred to me. “Let me try
something else, something a million times worse than death.”

I reached down and put my finger against her
forehead. She scrunched up her face as though my finger was a gun
and I was about to pull the trigger. Then I pressed my finger
harder against her skin and gave it a cruel twist before I pulled
it away.

“Okay, that ought to do just fine,” I said,
as though I had just finished a job well done.

“Huh?” Amy said, totally confused. “What?
What did you do?”

“I’m in your head now,” I lied.

“No,” she whined in horror; she was so
paranoid, she’d probably believe just about anything. Soon she
would start imagining that she heard my voice in her head. I was
pretty sure this would work, although I still wondered if I should
just kill her, which would definitely work.

I said, “If you ever try anything like this
again, I’ll know—I’ll know and I’ll come after you. And next time
it will be worse, much worse.”

“No, no, you can’t.”

“Can and did.”

“Take it back. Take it back. Take it back
right now!” she screeched.

“Go home and be normal,” I told her.

I left her there, hidden beneath the fallen
tree. I figured she’d weasel her way out sooner or later.

I walked through the woods toward the parking
lot, relieved that it was over. I swore that never again would I
get caught up in weird stuff—never.

As I walked an unmarked path, I thought how
strange the trees here looked, with moonlight seeping down upon
them. They looked so otherworldly, yet so—familiar. I was so
startled at that thought that I stopped to look around. Everything
looked familiar: a large crooked tree ahead of me, with a thick
low-hanging branch that would be perfect for a swing; next to the
tree, there was a huge gray rock that showed a patch of moss near
the ground; at my feet, three white pebbles pressed into the clay
formed a perfect triangle. What the hell? I wondered. Had I
actually been her before? It didn’t seem likely. It must just be
déjà vu, which I experienced from time to time, but nothing this
vivid. Then I knew, was absolutely certain, that on my next step, I
would turn my ankle and fall. I put my foot forward, concentrating
hard—I will not fall; I will not fall—and when I took that step, my
ankle turned and I fell anyway. I sat on the cold clammy ground,
bewildered. That shouldn’t have happened. I knew that I would fall,
I tried not to fall, and yet I still fell. It was fate, and if fate
says you’re falling, prepare to suck ground.

As soon as I was back on my feet, I heard a
crunching sound coming from deep in the woods. The sound, too,
seemed familiar, the sound of something large and ominous stealing
through the darkness.

I took a couple uncertain steps, looking over
my shoulder toward the darkest part of the woods. Then I realized:
my dream. In that split second, I wondered, If one of my dreams was
coming true, why couldn’t it be the one with the Ferris wheel? And
I started to run.

Something was pursuing me, crashing through
the brush, getting closer. I zigzagged through trees, running
pretty well on the uneven ground, yet whatever was chasing me was
gaining ground. I heard its horrible panting breath. It was too
close. I was certain if I stopped and turned, it would be on me
before I could even figure out what it was. Still I didn’t have
much of a choice. If I kept running, it would catch up and pounce
on my back. I had to turn and try to face it, so that I could focus
on it and drive it away with my mind. I had to do that soon.