Messenger of Fear (4 page)

There were other touches of green and black—earrings, a snake-pattern bracelet around her left wrist, fasteners down the front of her boots. And a ring on her left hand whose intricate design I could not make out.

Had Kayla seen this creature striding down the halls of her school, she would have curled into a little ball, for while Kayla was beautiful, and I liked to believe that I was at least pretty, this female creature had the beauty of cold, distant stars and silvery moonlight.

She was hypnotizing. Merely by existing, she redefined my ideas of beauty, for this was not mere physical perfection, this was seduction, this was the primordial, essential, eternal avatar of female sensuality walking nonchalantly down the empty hallway of a suburban high school.

She made me feel shrunken and small and ugly.

Her name was . . .

“Oriax,” Messenger said.

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“MESSENGER,” ORIAX SAID. SHE SPOKE WITH A voice full of silk, secrets, and slithering snakes. Like Messenger’s, her voice was too near, too intimate, but it thrilled me. I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. I had forgotten my panic, forgotten for the moment that I should not be in this place at all, that I had lost my memory, that I feared I was dead. All of that was submerged the moment I saw her. I wanted to worship her. I wanted to listen to any word that she cared to speak. I wanted to be her, to be a tiny fraction of her.

Oriax.

“Well, hello there . . . ,” she said to me, and then after a longish pause, added, “You.”

I grunted. Like a farm animal. I could not make a more complex sound.

“She’s not bad-looking, really, eh, Messenger? Daniel has done well for you. He must be feeling sorry for you, poor, pining, lovelorn Messenger.”

Part of me was hearing her words, but a larger part of me was asking why Messenger hadn’t already thrown himself at her feet. Messenger was a beautiful boy, but this . . . Oriax . . .

“Let her go, Oriax.”

Oriax winked at me. “He wants me to let you go.” She moved close to me, so close I could feel the heat of her body, so close I could smell a perfume that . . . and then, she walked around behind me and I was paralyzed with something that was both fear and desperate, unfamiliar desire.

I felt her hair brush the nape of my neck. I felt her breath on my skin. Her lips brushed the side of my neck, and my eyes rolled up in my head, and the blood left my limbs and my knees gave way.

“Susceptible little thing, isn’t she?” Oriax said.

Messenger caught me as I fell. He put a hand under my back, and another hand reached for my shoulder but missed and instead slid over the fabric of my shirt to touch my arm.

For only a second his skin and mine made contact.

And then I knew why I was not to touch Messenger, for in the few seconds of contact, flesh to flesh, I was assaulted by images I can barely bring myself to describe, for to describe them is to make the horrible real.

First, I saw a boy, maybe fifteen years old, stabbed though the belly with a sword.

Then a girl, perhaps fourteen, being lowered on the end of a chain, screaming into a vat of foul, seething liquid.

A boy, a big kid who looked older than he probably was, with both hands and both feet gone, trying to run on stumps from a pack of wild dogs.

There were other images, less lurid, but I couldn’t begin to comprehend them while dealing with these visions of helplessness and agony and utter, shrieking terror.

I cried out in pain and staggered back. Oriax threw back her head and laughed with malicious delight, and I clutched my head as though to squeeze the memories out of my brain.

These were awful violations of human bodies and minds. Such pain. Such terrible sadness and loneliness.

“What
are
you?” I asked Messenger, my voice ragged.

“I thought he was a dream,” Oriax taunted me.

I gritted my teeth. Tears had started, blurring my vision, glistening, weak, foolish emblems of my weakness. “I don’t have dreams like that. Those things . . .
Those things are not in my head!
”

Messenger looked solemn, but I thought I saw some hurt there as well. He had revealed something and was hurt by my violent reaction. He looked at me, and I could not match his gaze and lowered my eyes.

“Someday you will see the darkness inside yourself, Mara,” he said in that too-near whisper of his.

“Oh, look, you’ve hurt Messenger’s feelings,” Oriax said. “Shall I comfort you, Messenger?” She moved closer to him. “Shall I, Messenger, my pretty boy?”

“Get away from me,” he said.

And without seeming to move, she was six feet away, laughing and sticking out her tongue. “He’s no fun, our Messenger,” Oriax said to me. “You’ll see. You’ll want him, but you won’t have him. You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.”

“He’s a demon!” I said, practically spitting the word, as the images of our brief contact still churned vilely in my memory. That word,
demon
, wasn’t in my thoughts until it came out of my mouth and I realized it was true. Or realized at least that I believed it.

“A demon?” Oriax repeated, disbelieving. “Our Messenger a demon? Don’t be ridiculous. No, no, no. He’s not a demon. I know a few demons, well, what you might call demons, and sadly, our Messenger of Fear is no demon, unless demons mourn for their lost Ariadne.”

“Leave us, Oriax. You’ve had your fun.”

“Mmm, not yet, I haven’t,” she said. “But eventually.”

She was gone, and I was shaking with fear and a deep disturbance that seemed to have a physical effect: I was trembling. Trembling all over, in every part of my body, from my knees to my heart to the muscles of my face, as though each individual cell was shaking.

“I am sorry I touched you, Mara,” Messenger said. “It would have been kinder to let you fall.”

I felt deeply unsettled. The vivid memories of that touch had begun to fade and I was glad of it. The memory of Oriax, too, seemed to lose some of its sharp detail, and for that I was sorry because I had never seen or imagined anyone quite like her. I wanted to hold that image in my mind until I had come to grips with it and decided just how. . . .

Let her go, Oriax.

What did Messenger mean by that? How had she “had” me that she needed to let me go?

I recalled a sense of being released, and of that release filling me however briefly with a sense of loss but also a sense of relief. I had fallen when she released me, but she had never laid a finger on me.

Too much. Too much now crowded my brain. Too many feelings, too many wild emotions, too much fear, and . . . and something that was like fear but also held within it seeds of pleasure. I found that part of me wanted Oriax to come back. Even more of me wanted Messenger to speak to me, to explain, but also just to speak.

You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.

No, that at least would never be true. I had touched that hot stove and did not need a second reminder that Messenger was not to be touched.

But did I still want him to explain? Did I want him to reveal? Yes. “Why is my memory all fuzzy?” I asked him.

He considered me for a moment and reached some kind of decision. He drew a deep breath, and this simple biological act lessened my fear somewhat, for I had begun to believe my own blurted remark that he was a demon, or if not a demon, then some other nameless supernatural horror.

Did demons breathe in that particularly weary way? Did sadness and loss reveal themselves in demons’ eyes?

I was confused. My feelings were all astray, rifled, and tossed like a room that’s been burglarized. My memory, my emotions, all of it was too much, but I had already fainted once and would not allow myself to do so again. Whatever else this was, it was a test of my strength, my will. I would not be weak.

“Your memory has been disturbed by the transition.”

“Well, I need my memory.”

“Do you?” He tilted his head and looked at me as if my image was evoking something from another time and place. He wasn’t looking at me, Mara; he was looking at something I reminded him of.

“Look, Messenger,” I said, trying to sound determined, “I don’t know what you want of me, but I won’t cooperate unless I know who I am and . . .” I hesitated there, for the next words would perhaps reveal too much of the vulnerability I felt. Then, with a sigh that fluttered in my chest, I finished, “And
what
I am.”

I swear that then he almost smiled. It was nothing that I could see, but the slight lessening in the rigidity of his features allowed me to think that he was possibly smiling.

“Yes. Memory,” he said.

And then, I remembered.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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I SAW WHAT I LOOKED LIKE. I SAW MY FACE. MY body. And with it, memories of earlier stages of my life. Me a year ago. Me three years ago. Me as a little girl taking gymnastics.

My locker combination was 13-36-9.

My grade point average was 4.0.

I was five feet, five inches tall and hoped against all odds to grow taller.

I weighed 121 pounds.

I knew my social security number.

I knew my student ID number.

I knew my driver’s license number, which surprised me because I didn’t think I’d ever memorized that.

It was as if every number I’d ever known was coming bubbling up into my brain. My home was at number 72. My birthday was July 26. My phone number . . .

“That’s not what matters,” I said.

“I thought you wanted to see your memories,” Messenger said.

“Those aren’t the memories. Those aren’t what I need. Did you do that to me? Can you turn my memory on and off?”

He surprised me by giving me a direct answer. “Yes.”

“That’s not fair!” The words were out of my mouth before I’d even begun to think about them.

“Fair.” He said the word with something like reverence. Like the word had deep significance to him. “I’m sorry you find me unfair, but I think you are mistaken. You don’t yet understand, and whether it is fair or not in your judgment, I will hold your memories. I will hold them back.”

“What? Who says? I mean, what?”

“It’s part of the deal you made,” Messenger said.

I froze.

“What?”

He did not repeat himself. So I did.

“What? What do you mean, it’s the deal I made?”

“You must trust me, Mara.”

“Trust you? I don’t even know your name. I don’t even know what you are. I don’t know where we are or why. Trust you?”

“Yes, Mara. You must trust me.”

I stared at him, and this time I did not lower my eyes but met his gaze. “What is this about?” I asked.

He could have easily sidestepped such a poorly phrased question. But he did not. Instead he chose to answer, emphasis always on “chose” because though I didn’t yet know it, I was entirely in his power. At that moment, and for a long while after as well, I belonged to Messenger. I was his to control.

“This,” he said without the least drama or emphasis, “is about true and false. Right and wrong. Good and evil. And justice, Mara. This is about justice. And balance. And . . .” He nodded as if to himself rather than to me. “. . . and redemption.”

I said nothing. What is there to be said after such a speech?

He seemed vaguely amused that he had silenced me. And he took the opportunity to point a finger and invite my gaze to turn in the direction he indicated.

“It is also, at this moment, about Samantha Early.”

And there she was, Samantha Early, no longer at school but at her laptop computer in a Starbucks. She was chewing on her upper lip, concentrating, typing in stops and starts. Pause, then a sudden flurry. Pause, then a sudden flurry.

“What is she writing?” I asked.

“She’d already written it when she died,” Messenger said. “As to what she wrote, go and look.”

We were outside the Starbucks, looking in through the window. I went for the door, reached for it with my hand, and found that it seemed to slip away. I thought at first I had just missed, but a second attempt had the same result. On a third attempt I watched carefully and moved my hand slowly. I expected to see my hand pass in a ghostly way through the solid object. And what does it reveal about my state of mind that I expected that?