Kinetics: In Search of Willow (3 page)

I dodged around some of the other
guys, dribbling fast. I faked a throw toward Jerry, but caught the
eye of Tim the center and passed it to him instead. Tim swerved
with the ball and spun in a tight half-circle around an opponent.
He threw the ball, and it spun around the rim of the net before
finally falling in.

I high-fived a couple of the
guys.

"Alright, guys!" Coach Greene clapped
his hands and blew his whistle. "Good try. Form up
again!"

When I think back on it, I don't
remember that much of the game or exactly what happened. But
between the shouts and cheers, something was being drowned
out.

One of the other guys had just scored
and the few kids sitting in the bleachers cheered. It wasn't until
we formed up to start again and the gym quieted that we heard
it.

Screams.

They weren't the shouts of spectators,
which normally accompanied our games and occasionally our
practices.

They were screams of
terror.

The other team's center stopped with
the ball in his hands and looked around. Others also stopped and
began to listen. Within seconds, everyone was looking toward the
double-doors that led into the school.

"What's happening?" Pete asked, wiping
at the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"Everyone stay back," yelled Coach
Greene as he waved us back. He peered through the doors' small
windows.

"Coach, what is it?" someone asked
from the back of the room.

Coach Greene's face paled, and his
eyes darted back and forth.

"Outside! Go outside," he yelled,
pointing to gym's back door, which led out into the parking
lot.

The others looked at each other,
waiting for someone to take charge. I sucked in a breath, not fully
sure of what to do, and ran for the back door. I slammed my hands
on the bar latch. It swung open, hitting the brick wall adjacent to
it.

I stopped in my
tracks.

About twenty feet in front
of me on the grass, a pillar of fire blasted up from the ground.
From a single point on the ground fire shot up, spread out and
began circling the school. A wall of fire now stood between us and
the outside.

I couldn't move. I wanted to get away
from the wall of fire, but my legs would not budge. In my head I
was screaming at myself to back up, close the door and hide. But
every muscle in my body was locked. I couldn't feel any heat coming
off the fire, but it didn't matter. It was too close, heat or
not.

Tim had followed me out. He shook off
his shock before I could.

"Fire!" he yelled.

He grabbed the back of my shirt and
pulled me inside, yanking the door shut behind us. I tumbled back
and hit the floor hard.

I gasped, not realizing that I had
been holding my breath, and looked down at my hands. They were
shaking violently. I pushed through the shakes and got to my feet,
deliberately not looking behind me at the door standing between us
and a raging fire.

My friends, teammates and I gathered
around Coach Greene, looking for some explanation for the chaos
rising around us. The screams from inside the school were getting
louder. We were trapped.

And then it hit me: Willow was still
in the school.

She could be in trouble.

"I have to go in there. Willow's in
there," I said.

The adrenaline that had taken over
while I stared at the wall of fire rushed back through my limbs. I
ignored the protests from my friends and sprinted for the door,
ducking under Coach Greene's hand when he tried to catch
me.

I slammed the doors open and tumbled
through. My legs locked when I saw what lay beyond the
doors.

Students and teachers alike were
writhing and screaming in pain on the floor of the hallway, blindly
lashing out at things only they could see. Screams echoed down the
hallway from every corner of the school. The ceiling lights were
flickering in and out and whole sections of hallway were doused in
darkness.

I hesitated for only a
second before I took a breath and started to job down the hall
toward the classroom where I knew Willow should have
been.

I carefully stepped over
people lying on the linoleum floors. Some were muttering under
their breaths, and others were outright screaming.

One of the janitors was
crawling across the floor shouting,
"Bodies! 
The
bodies
."

I inched around him, trying to stay
away from his grasping hands. He saw me and held out his hands.
"Save me. Save me!"

I jumped away from his grasp. He
rolled over and hugged the wall, slamming his fists into the
concrete and drawing blood.

Shaking, I crept down the hall,
careful not to step on anyone.

They were all the same. All the
students and teachers in the halls were caught in the same
hallucination, and a sinking feeling in my gut told me it was only
a matter of time before it would also happen to me.

Not before I find
Willow, 
I scolded myself.

Willow had to be safe.

I ran past a wall of windows which
should have offered a view of the schoolyard and skidded to a
halt.

The fire that we had seen from the
back door of the gym was outside these windows too, and I felt
myself start to shut down again.

Willow,
 I reminded myself. 
I have
to keep going.

The fire was at least three stories
high, but as I sprinted past the windows, I noticed that the fire
had no source other than the grass. What was feeding it? Was it
surrounding the whole school?

I looked away, determined to make it
to Willow's classroom before the fire or whatever was afflicting
the others could get to me.

Finally, I reached her classroom, but
she wasn't there.

I shouted her name over the chaos of
voices and screams. I searched the faces of people sprawled in the
hallways and into the classrooms, but I saw no sign of
her.

I began running from room to room,
kicking doors open and repeatedly shouting her name. I skidded into
the main hallway and stumbled to a stop.

Willow was standing across the expanse
of the hallway staring at another girl whose back was facing
me.

The other girl was unaffected by the
insanity around us. I couldn't see her face, but I saw messy blond
hair. Her shoulders rose and fell harshly as she
breathed.

I slid behind an overturned table and
watched the silent, staring battle between the two girls. Willow
took a step forward. The other girl, who I vaguely recognized as a
transfer from a few weeks ago, stood her ground but clenched her
fists.

Willow took another step forward. Her
eyes never blinked, never wavered. Beads of sweat trailed down her
brow. Her expression was more intense than I'd ever
seen.

I shifted behind the table, and my
foot knocked into a jar and it rattled across the floor. The other
girl's head snapped in my direction, and fierce blue eyes found
me.

Suddenly, I wasn't in the school
anymore. Instead I was surrounded by a hurricane of fire. It roared
and hot winds circled around me, whipping my clothes.

"Stop!" I shouted, but the fire closed
in. The heat was nearly unbearable. I wanted to close my eyes but
they wouldn't close.

“
It's
all your fault, Eugene,”
 
whispered a familiar voice in
my mind, resonating through my skull and into my bones. As I heard
the words, a face protruded from the fire and a flame shot out at
me.

“
You
should never have been born
,” 
said another voice, louder
this time. Another face. Another flame.

“
You
could have killed us all,” 
shouted a third voice. A third face appeared, and the three
joined together, whispering and shouting their hatred.

The voices. They were the voices and
the faces of my mother, my father and my brother. All rolled into
one judgmental, three-headed fire beast. From the waves of flame,
licking at my heels and my face, the beast circled me, growling
angrily. My family stared down at me, their faces reflecting the
hatred in their words.

"You killed, us
Eugene,"
it said, the faces
bobbing.
"You made us die because you were
too weak."

Their voices had merged,
creating an entirely new one.

"No," I said. "No, I didn't mean to!
I'm sorry!"

I shielded my eyes against the hot
glare of the fire beast.

"TOO
LATE!"
 it screeched, and the monster
rose up like a snake preparing to strike.

I covered my head with my arms,
yelling, "I'm sorry!"

The monster struck, but when it did,
the fire exploded around me and dissipated, leaving me in total
darkness.

I spun around, reaching with my hands
to find something, anything. The darkness was so absolute that I
couldn't see my hands in front of my face. My breath sounded loudly
in the silence.

I reached down in the darkness to
touch the floor, but there was nothing there.

I was standing on air.

My heart beat faster. What if I fell?
What would I fall into?

Something sparked in the distance. A
light. I ran forward, not entirely sure that I wouldn't fall into
nothingness. I could feel a heat at my back. The fire beast was
bubbling back up from the darkness. I could hear its vicious
whispers rising.

The closer I got to the light, the
more I realized it wasn't just a light. It was a person. It was
Willow. She stood reaching her arm out toward me. She
glowed.

-Be
strong,-
 echoed her voice in my
mind. -
It's an illusion. It can't
hurt you.-

"Willow," I gasped, clasping her
outstretched hand.

The darkness evaporated, and I was in
the hallway again, standing in front of Willow and clasping her
hand.

Willow was on her knees, but she was
looking past me at the other girl. She let go of my
hand.

The girl gritted her teeth and
screamed in frustration.

"You need to stop," Willow said to
her. "You don't need to do this."

"Who are you to tell me what I need to
do?" the girl shouted. The others still stuck in illusions gasped
and screamed.

"You're hurting people, Laura!" Willow
pushed herself to her feet, never letting her gaze waver from the
girl.

The girl, Laura, sobbed.

"They hurt me first. It's my turn."
She stamped her foot, and the whole school shuddered.

Suddenly, all around us
monsters made of black slime, glistening like an oil slick, began
welling up from cracks in the floor.

They were huge
salamander-like, with bulbous limbs and dripping claws. Their teeth
and eyes were molten red, glowing with the light of a waking
volcano.

The kids on the floor began emerging
from their personal nightmares only to enter the one we were all
sharing.

Willow didn't break eye contact with
Laura, but instead reached out and grabbed my hand
again.

Her fingers were slick with sweat. I
squeezed them tightly, hoping some of the strength she had given me
would pass back to her.

"Willow, what is this?" I
whispered.

I could see tears forming at the
corners of her eyes.

"When this is all over, Eugene, I'll
explain everything. But for now, trust that I know what I'm
doing."

I had never seen her serious about
anything but her schoolwork. Everything else was a joke or a
game.

"What can I do?" I asked.

"Don't let go," she whispered,
squeezing my hand. She closed her eyes.

Cries from the slime monsters pierced
the air as they crawled out of the floor, joining the shouts and
screams of the students on the floor. The monsters filled the
entire space of the hallway within seconds.

Willow squeezed my hand, and she
suddenly began dragging me away from Laura, through an emergency
exit and out into what should have been the front lawn of the
school.

The wall of fire surrounding the
school burned even taller and brighter. It roared and reached
toward us like grasping hands. Dark smoke spilled
upwards.

Willow didn't let me stand there long
before she was dragging me toward the fire.

I screamed in protest.

"It's not real!" she shouted before
dragging me with her into the fire.

I expected heat. I expected to feel
the pain of my skin burning off.

But I felt neither.

We landed hard on the other side,
rolling across the grass. I touched my chest and hair, expecting
them to be on fire, but I was fine.