Heartache High (10 page)

She
chuckles.

‘Why are you
looking at me like that Stephanie? That strange, bewildered stare!
Shouldn’t you be thanking me – and of course, my beautiful,
irresistible daughter – for helping you enrol at the wonderful
Heartache High?’

She raises a
hand to her right eye, completely covering it.

Phew!

It’s one heck of
a relief not having both probing eyes staring at me.

She pulls her
hand away; leaving behind nothing but a blank, blood-red
socket.

*

 ‘
What?’ gasps Jassy. ‘She’s pulled her
eye
out?’

‘There, see!’
Dave announces triumphantly. ‘It’s
got
to be all in your
mind!’

‘It
could
still be a flashback,’ Jassy insists, ‘with dream-like touches
added
by your mind.’

I’m not really
listening to them.

Lamia has
brought her hand up to her other eye.

When she pulls
it way, she leaves another gaping eye socket.

It’s even worse
staring back at these than it was staring back at her mesmerising
eyes.

I want to jump
back in shock.

But the me in
the room remains where I am, unperturbed by Lamia’s cool removal of
her eyes.

‘Wait,’ Jassy
says, ‘there was
something
about Lamia being able to remove
her eyes! Yes, it was a gift–’

‘A
gift
?’
Dave sounds aghast. ‘Removing your eyes is a
gift
?’

‘Something – I
can’t quite remember every detail – about it being a gift from
Zeus.’

‘Wow, remind me
not to include Zeus on
my
Christmas list, okay?’

‘No, no; it
was
a gift! She no longer had to endlessly see her children
being killed, as she’d originally been condemned to do.’

‘Oh well; that’s
all right then,’ Dave says sarcastically.

‘But why take
them out now?’ Jassy wonders. ‘Why now, when Steph felt she was
being drawn out by her probing eyes?’

‘Hmn, are we
making the mistake of trying to read too much into dreams and
visions once again?’

Despite removing
her eyes, Lamia is still standing directly opposite me, her eyeless
sockets as locked onto my own eyes as they had ever
been.

‘Yes, she’s
definitely there, Panthia,’ Lamia declares assuredly. ‘Our precious
little Stephanie is actually watching us right at this very
moment.’

*

‘Why not talk to
her?’ Dave suggests. ‘It’s your mind controlling all this,
obviously; so you should be able to say something back.’

‘I don’t think
it is; I don’t think it
is
my mind. It all seems so real. I
don’t think I have
any
control over it.’

I say it to Dave
hoping that, somehow, it comes out of my mouth in that Soho
room.

Nothing comes
out.

‘I can help you,
Stephanie.’

Lamia’s tone is
wheedling, yet somehow also untrustworthy.

‘All this is
just adding to your pain, being able to see all this, isn’t it?
Don’t you want to retreat back into your comfort zone? Didn’t you
hide away there in the first place to avoid a painful
reality?’

She brings both
hands up to her face. When she removes them, her eyes are back in
place.

They seem more
intense, brighter, than ever.

‘You’re so lucky
that we know you’re still there dear. It could have been oh so
painful for you, wouldn’t it, to watch as my gorgeous,
ravenous
Panthia slowly fed off Iain’s love for
her.’

She steps away
at last.

A sense of
relief floods through me, as if I’d been rooted to the spot under
her penetrating gaze.

‘Not to worry
though, my dear.’

Lamia moves
towards Iain, rubbing her hand through his tousled hair almost
affectionately.

‘Panthia can
ensnare another target, so it’s not so painful for you to
watch.’

She bends down,
lifts Iain’s head up by his chin.

‘As for your
precious Iain, well, he’s a good-looking man, isn’t he? Plans can
change, and we can use him in other ways.’

I can no longer
see Lamia.

Freed from her
mother’s fixating gaze, Panthia has turned around, watching as a
door at the darkened rear of the room opens.

At first, I
think I’m seeing a plume of shimmering smoke slip into the room, as
if the door opens up onto a busy kitchen.

But the misty
cloud moves closer towards us, letting the door snap shut behind
it.

It
writhes.

It snakes
sinuously through the air.

It wails
quietly.

Happily.

I sense Panthia
smiling in greeting.

As the wraith
draws closer, I realise there’s a mix of fluctuating forms to it;
part human, part serpentine, part unrecognisable beast.

It closes in and
hovers over Iain’s sleeping body.

‘Oh, Stephanie
dear,’ Lamia says, glancing Panthia’s way once more, ‘I should warn
you that you may not want to watch this.’

*

 ‘
Incubi! Succubae! That’s what we’re dealing with here!’ Jassy
exclaims excitedly, urgently grabbing me by my arm.

‘No, we’re
dealing with drea–’

‘No, no, we’re
not
!’ Jassy angrily insists, interrupting Dave’s nonchalant
dismissal of her observation.

She whirls back
on me.

‘Steph, you have
to help Iain! This
isn’t
a dream – this is happening
right
now
!’

*

‘Let him go,’
Panthia commands sternly.

‘What?’

Lamia looks up
at Panthia in surprise.

Even the wraith
halts in its whirling, eddying motion around Iain’s slumped
body.

‘I’m sorry
mother; that wasn’t me – obviously,’ Panthia says.

‘That’s right –
I
said it,’ I say, using Panthia’s mouth.

Lamia’s mouth
briefly hangs open in surprise.

Then she
laughs.

‘Remarkable!
Truly remarkable!’ she exclaims happily, moving closer towards me,
her eyes locked on mine once more.

A shiver runs
down through my entire body.

‘How strange!
I’ve never seen
this
before!’

‘Let him go,’ I
say. ‘You’ve already got me.’

‘Hmn, have we
now?’

She draws back a
little, swiftly running her eyes up and down my body.

‘Panthia; I take
it you’re still in control of everything else?’

‘Of course!’
Panthia declares. ‘I could regain full control if you wish; stop
her using my mouth like this!’

‘My
mouth
actually.’

‘Yes, yes;
your
mouth,’ Lamia says. ‘But that’s all you’re controlling,
I think you’ll find.’

I try to prove
her wrong by slapping her face.

My arm doesn’t
move.

‘Panthia’s a
succubus; she’s taken over your body,’ Jassy hisses. ‘That thing
hovering over Iain is an incubus; the male equivalent.’

This time, Dave
keeps quiet. He’s awestruck.

Both Lamia and
Panthia laugh derisively, as if they’re fully aware of my futile
attempt to wrest some form of control back.

‘As you can see,
my dear Stephanie, whenever anyone comes here for my help, I can’t
bear to see such gorgeous young bodies going to waste when my
hungry sons and daughters can make so much better use of them. It’s
so much more efficient than working through dreams, as we used to.
Not that we’re so cruel as to completely eradicate you, of course;
we just complete the process of helping you move into that little
compartment of your mind you’d withdraw into to live a life of
wishful thinking.’

 ‘
You trapped me here?’ I say.

‘Oh no, not
me
– my dear Panthia really deserves the credit for that,
when she so easily accomplished what you’d struggled so long to
achieve. Your
wish
had been realised,
you
weren’t
required anymore; you were free to take up permanent residence
where you’d always retired to whenever you’d felt hurt by life’s
unfairness.’

‘It wasn’t my
wish
to live like
this
!’

She
shrugs.

‘Lovers! Are
they
never
satisfied?’

*

The incubus
writhes.

It curls around
Iain.

It’s thickening,
gaining in substance.

I can’t
move.

I can’t help
him.

All Panthia is
allowing me to do is to watch.

*

All this is
happening because
I’d
withdrawn from the life around
me.

I’d more or less
ignored my friends, Cherry and Mary, preferring to spend most of my
time dreaming of or pining over Iain.

Even at home, I
was a misery, going about the house as if in a debilitating
daze.

Cherry and Mary
were both such great friends too.

Fun to be
with.

Girls with a
very similar mind to mine. Chatting and laughing over everything
from movies we
used
to go and see to music we
used
to
listen together.

 
Mum and dad, too, were wonderful, in their over-bearing,
over-caring way.

Every effort
they’d made to help me get over Iain, I’d shrugged off. Saying they
didn’t understand. Saying they were too old to know what I was
going through.

Yeah, like
they’d never, ever been young, right?

They’d never,
ever suffered unrequited love like me, yeah?

‘Steph, I don’t
know what it is you’re doing; but
keep
doing it!’

What?

What’s Dave
mean?

Keep doing
what?

‘You’re opening
up your mind!’ Jassy explains. ‘You’re breaking out of the little
compartment you’d retreated into.’

How?

How do you
know?

‘Because you’ll
never guess who we’ve got here with us!’

I drop out of my
reverie.

While I’ve been
giving Jassy and Dave a running commentary of my meeting with
Lamia, other intrigued students have gathered around us on the
lawn.

And amongst them
all, struggling to break free of their many scrabbling, clinging
arms and hands, is a stunningly beautiful, incredibly angry
girl.

‘Who’s she?’ I
ask.

Jassy smiles up
at me triumphantly.

‘We reckon she’s
the delightful Panthia.’

*

‘How’s that
possible?’ I ask, bewildered. ‘What’s she doing here?’

‘Well, we’re
getting some idea of how all this Heartache High thing works now,
thanks to you!’

Jassy says it
like she’s figured out an easy way to sneak into the movies for
free, rather than sitting amongst a group of boys and girls
struggling to hold down a wailing banshee of a woman who’s wildly
lashing out at anyone nearby.

‘See, we’re each
trapped in a little corner of our minds left to us by an occupying
succubus.’

‘But we’re all
emotionally the same,’ Dave says excitedly, ‘all focused on
thinking about nothing but the same thing; so we’ve created an
incredibly strong, sort of telepathic connection.’

‘When you
started breaking out of your little compartment though, Steph, you
were spreading into areas of your mind Panthia had believed were
hers for the keeping.’

‘You forced
enough of her out of those areas so that a part of her was briefly
visible here; just alongside you, though you didn’t know it. So we
made a grab for her, and dragged her in here with us!’

‘Is that
possible?’ It still doesn’t make any sense to me. ‘For her to be in
here?’

‘No, of course
it isn’t!’

‘What do you
mean? But she
is
here!’

‘Well, even the
you
standing here, Steph,’ Jassy explains, ‘isn’t the
complete
you, is it?’

‘Your body’s
still out there, for instance,’ Dave adds helpfully. ‘But what’s
here is just enough of you to fully represent the whole
you.’