Girl of Nightmares (11 page)

Carmel stands in the center of the circle, holding a burning stick of incense and whispering the protection incantation Thomas has taught her. Thomas is whispering it too, two beats behind hers so it sounds like a round-robin. I set the camping lantern down, inside the circle but off to the side. The chanting stops, and Thomas nods at us to sit.

The ground is cold, but at least it’s dry. Thomas kneels and sets the Lappish drum on the dirt in front of him. He’s brought a drumstick as well. It looks basically like a regular drumstick with a big, white marshmallow at the end. In the low light, you can hardly see the designs painted across the stretched leather of the drum. When I had it with me in the car ride back from Riika’s, I saw that it was covered in faded, reddish stick figures that looked like a primitive depiction of a hunting scene.

“It looks so old,” Carmel comments. “What do you think it’s made of?” She smirks at me. “Maybe dinosaur leather?”

I laugh, but Thomas clears his throat.

“The ritual is pretty simple,” he says, “but it’s also powerful. We shouldn’t go into it with too light a mood.” He’s cleaning the dirt off his athame, wiping it down with alcohol, and I know why he’s going to the trouble. He was right when he said we would need blood. And he intends to use that athame to get it from me. “Since you’re curious, though, I can tell you that Morfran suspects this drum was made from human skin.”

Carmel gasps.

“Not a murder victim or anything like that,” he goes on. “But probably from the tribe’s last shaman. Of course he doesn’t know for sure, but he said the best ones were often made from that, and Riika didn’t mess around with second-rate product. It was probably passed down through her own family.”

He talks distractedly, failing to notice the way Carmel swallows and can’t quite stop looking at the drum. I know what she’s thinking. With this new knowledge, it looks completely different than it did a few seconds ago. It may as well be a human rib cage, dried out and sitting in front of us.

“What exactly is going to happen when we do this?” Carmel asks.

“I don’t know,” Thomas replies. “If we succeed, we’ll hear her voice. A few texts have vague references to fog, or smoke. And there might be wind. All I know for sure is that I’ll be in a trance when it happens. I may or may not know what’s going on. And if something goes wrong, I won’t be much use to stop it.”

Even in the sparse light from the camping lantern, I can see most of the blood drain out of Carmel’s cheeks.

“Well, that’s just great. What are we supposed to do if something happens?”

“Don’t panic.” Thomas smiles nervously. He tosses her something that glitters. When she opens her hands, she’s holding his Zippo lighter. “This is sort of hard to explain. The drum is like a tool, to find the way to the other side. Morfran says it’s mostly about finding the right beat, like tuning in the right frequency on the radio. Once I find it, the gateway has to be channeled by blood. The blood of the seeker. Cas’s blood. You’ll have to drip it onto his athame, which we’ll place in the center of the circle.”

“What do you mean,
I’ll
have to?” Carmel asks.

“Well, he can’t do it himself, and I’ll be in a trance,” Thomas replies like it should have been obvious.

“You can do it,” I say to Carmel. “Just think of how I embarrassed you on that date. You’ll be dying to stab me.”

She doesn’t look reassured, but when Thomas holds out his athame, she takes it.

“When?” she asks.

Thomas gives a lopsided grin. “I sort of hope you’ll just know.” The grin throws me a bit. It’s the first sign of “our” Thomas that we’ve seen since we got here. Usually, when there’s spell work to be done, he’s all business, and it occurs to me now that he really has no idea what he’s doing.

“Is this dangerous? For you, I mean,” I ask him.

He shrugs and waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it. We need to know, right? Before you get driven to the nuthatch. So let’s get going. Carmel,” he says, and looks at her. “If anything goes wrong, you have to burn the blood off of Cas’s athame. Just pick it up and burn it off the blade. Okay?”

“Why does it have to be me? Why can’t Cas do it?”

“For the same reason you have to cut him. Because you’re technically outside of the ritual. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Cas, or me, once this starts.”

Carmel is shivering, despite the fact that it isn’t that cold. Second thoughts are on the tip of her tongue, so before she can say anything, I take the athame out of my back pocket, pull it from its sheath, and set it on the ground.

“It’s a beacon, like Riika said,” Thomas explains. “Let’s hope Anna can follow it to us.” He reaches into his messenger bag and produces a small handful of incense sticks, which he holds out for Carmel to light and then blows them out before pushing them into the soft dirt around him. I count seven. Scented smoke curls up in light gray spirals. He takes a deep breath.

“One more thing,” he says, picking up the drumstick. “Don’t leave the circle until it’s over.” He’s got this “here goes nothing” expression, and I’d like to tell him to be careful, but my whole face feels paralyzed. Just blinking is a challenge.

He rolls his wrist and the drum starts; the sound of the beat is low and full. It has a heavy, echoey quality, and even though I’m pretty certain that Thomas has no formal drumming experience, every beat sounds planned. It sounds written. Even when he changes the tempo and the duration of the strike. Time goes by. I don’t know how much. Maybe thirty seconds, maybe ten minutes. The sound of the drum throws off my senses. The air seems thick with incense smoke and there’s a swimmy feeling sloshing around my head. I glance at Carmel. She’s blinking fast and there are a few beads of sweat on her forehead, but otherwise she looks alert.

Thomas’s breathing is slow and shallow. It sounds like part of the rhythm. The beat pauses and strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Then it starts fresh, faster this time and lower. The smoke coming from the incense wavers back and forth. It’s happening. He’s finding the way.

“Carmel,” I whisper, and hold my hand out over my athame, resting in the dirt. She grabs me by the wrist and brings Thomas’s knife up to my palm.

“Cas,” she says, and shakes her head.

“Come on, it’s okay,” I say, and she swallows hard, then bites her lip. The blade drags across the meat of my palm, first a dull pressure and then a short, hot sting. Blood drips down onto my athame, spattering onto the blade. It almost sizzles. Or maybe it really does. Something’s happening to the air; it’s moving around us like a snake and over the sound of the drum there’s a screeching of wind in my ears, only there isn’t any wind. The smoke from the incense isn’t blowing away. It just swirls continually upward.

“Is this supposed to be happening?” Carmel asks.

“Don’t worry. It’s okay,” I reply, but I have no idea. Whatever is happening, it’s working but it isn’t working. It’s happening, but too slowly. Everything inside the circle feels like a thing trying to break from a cage. The air is thick and clogged, and I wish there were a moon so it wasn’t so freaking dark. We should have left the camping lantern on.

Blood is still dripping from my hand down onto the athame. I don’t know how much I’ve lost. It can’t be that much, but my brain isn’t working right. I can hardly see through all the smoke, but I don’t remember when that happened, or understand how this much smoke is coming from seven sticks of incense. Carmel says something but I can’t hear her, even though I think she’s shouting. The athame seems to pulse. The sight of it coated in my blood is strange, almost warped. My blood on the blade. My blood inside it. The drum beats and the sound of Thomas breathing rolls through the air … or maybe it’s my breathing, and my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears.

Thick fingers of nausea crawl up my throat. I have to do something, before it takes over, or before Carmel panics and leaves the circle. My hand jerks toward the drum and presses down on the taut skin. I don’t know why. Just some strange impulse. The touch leaves behind a wet, red print. For an instant it stands out, bright and tribal. Then it sinks into the drum’s surface, disappearing like it was never there.

“Thomas, man, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” I whisper. I can barely make out the shine from his eyeglasses through the smoke. He doesn’t hear me.

A girl’s scream cuts through the air, ripping and brutal. And it wasn’t Carmel. This scream is a meat cleaver to the ears, and even before I see the first black strands of snaking hair I know that Thomas has done it. He’s found Anna’s beat.

When this started, I tried not to think ahead, to keep from expecting anything. Turns out it wasn’t necessary. The sight in front of me now, I never could have imagined.

Anna explodes into the circle, as if Thomas’s drum has pulled her out of another dimension. She breaks through the air between us like a sonic boom and strikes some unseen surface three feet off the ground. It isn’t the quiet girl in white who he’s called but the black-veined goddess, monstrous and beautiful, saturated in red. Black hair roils behind her in a cloud, and my head spins. She’s right in front of me, streaked with red, and for a second I can’t remember why, or what I was supposed to say. Blood drips from her dress but never hits the dirt, because she isn’t really where the dirt is. We’re just looking through an opened window.

“Anna,” I whisper. For an instant, she bares her teeth and her oil-black eyes go wide. But instead of answering, she shakes her head and squeezes them shut. Her fists pound against some unseen surface.

“Anna.” Louder this time.

“You’re not here,” she says, staring down, and relief floods through my chest, leaving my insides wide open and rubbery. She hears me. That’s something.

“You’re not here either,” I say. The sight of her. The magnitude. I hadn’t forgotten, but seeing it again blows me away. She’s crouched, on the defensive like a hissing cat.

“You’re just my imagination,” she counters. She sounds like me, just like me. I glance at Thomas, holding the beat on the drum, keeping his breathing steady. A dark ring of sweat has spread around the collar of his t-shirt; rivulets are running down his face from the effort. We might not have much time.

“That’s what I thought,” I say. “When you first showed up at my house. That’s what I tried to tell myself when you’d put yourself into a furnace or throw yourself out my window.”

Anna’s face twitches, I think, with cautious hope. It’s sort of hard to tell, hard to read emotions through black veins.

“Was it really you?” I ask.

“I didn’t throw,” she mutters to no one in particular. “I was thrown. Down, onto the stones. I was pulled. Pulled inside to be burned.” She shudders, maybe at the memory, and so do I. But I have to get her on track.

“The girl we’re looking at now, is it you?” There isn’t time, but I don’t know what to say. She seems so confused. Was it really her? Was she asking for my help?

“You can see me?” she asks, and before I can answer, the dark goddess melts away. Black veins recede into pale skin, and her hair stills and turns brown, hanging limp over her shoulders. When she pushes back onto her knees, the familiar white dress crumples around her legs. It’s streaked with black stains. Her hands flutter in her lap, and those eyes, those dark, fierce eyes are still unsure. They flicker back and forth. “I can’t see you. It’s just dark.” Regret makes her words halting and quiet. I don’t know what to say. There are fresh scabs on her knuckles, and her arms are bruised purple. Narrow scars crisscross her shoulders. This can’t be.

“Why can’t I see you?”

“I don’t know,” I say quickly. Smoke swirls up between us and I’m relieved to look away, to blink. There’s a choking feeling in the back of my throat. “This is only a window that Thomas was able to open,” I say. This is all wrong. Wherever she is, it isn’t where she’s supposed to be. The scars on her arms. The bruises.

“What happened to you? Where did you get those scars?”

She looks down at herself, sort of surprised, like she’s just now realizing they’re there. “I knew you were safe,” she says softly. “After we crossed over. I knew.” She smiles, but there isn’t any real feeling in it. We don’t have time for this.

I swallow hard. “Where are you?”

Her hair hangs across her cheeks and she stares into nothing. I don’t even know if she really believes we’re having this conversation.

“In Hell,” she whispers like it’s a matter of course. “I’m in Hell.”

No. No, that’s not where she belongs. It wasn’t where she was supposed to go. She was supposed to be at rest. She was— I stop, because what the fuck do I know? These aren’t decisions that I make. That’s just what I wanted, and what I tried to believe.

“You’re asking for my help, is that it? Is that why you showed me these things?”

Her head shakes. “No. I didn’t think you could really see. I didn’t think it was real. I just imagined you. It was easier, if I could see your face.” She shakes her head again. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to see.”

There’s a puckered, healing cut along the curve of her shoulder. It isn’t right. I don’t know who or what decides, but now I’m going to. It can’t stand this way.

“Anna, listen. I’m going to bring you back. I’m going to find a way to bring you home. Do you understand?”

Her head jerks to the right, and she goes still and tense like a prey animal hiding from a wolf. Instinctually I stay silent and watch the rapid rise and fall of her rib cage. After a few long seconds, she relaxes.

“You should go,” she says. “He’ll find me here. He’ll hear you.”

“Who?” I ask. “Who will find you?”

“He always finds me,” she goes on like she hasn’t heard. “And then he burns. And cuts. And kills. I can’t fight him here. I can’t win.” Black tendrils of hair are beginning to shoot through the brown. There’s a faraway tone in her voice. She’s hanging by a thread.

“You can fight anyone,” I whisper.

“This is his world. His rules.” She’s talking to no one now, crouched back down. Blood is starting to seep through the white fabric. Her hair twitches and turns black.

What the hell was I thinking, doing this? It’s a million times worse, seeing her in front of me and still a world away. My hands curl into fists to keep from reaching out to her. The energy rolling in the smoke between us is running at a hundred thousand volts. She’s not really close enough to touch. It’s only magic. An illusion made somehow possible by a drum of human skin, by my blood sliding over my athame. Somewhere to my right, Carmel says something, but I can’t hear and it’s impossible to see through the smoke.