She Lies Twisted (6 page)

“
I...I fell.” My lips trembled, my knees shook, and like the day I discovered Boyd's body, I found myself on my knees. “I fell, I hit the rocks, my head...” I tore my sweatshirt off and threw it in a soggy mass on the wet sand. My hip, just above my jeans, my chest, just below my
breasts, both of my arms above the elbow.

More stitches.

I began to unbutton my jeans.

“
I would not do that, if I were you,” said a voice from behind me. I turned around in slow motion, like a heroine in a horror movie, arms crossed over my chest. A woman sat on the edge of a kelp covered rock, the navy and white spray of the sea soaking her from feathered head to taloned toe. Wings spread out behind her like a cloak, fluttering in the breeze and twitching with the same amusement that was pulling her black lips away from her teeth. “You never know who might be watching.” And then her wings spread even wider, blocking out the gray sky, and she launched herself into the air. I stumbled back, expecting her to dive at me, to reach for me with those gleaming claws, but she caught a current of air and began to rise in the sky above me until she was nothing but a speck among the clouds.

I rescued my sweatshirt from the sand with quivering hands.

“
I am fucking losing it,” I whispered to myself, blaming the fall and the cold for what had obviously been a figment of my imagination.

I forced my shaking legs up the single trail that wound back and forth along the cliff's edge. I couldn't believe what I'd seen but yet, when I glanced down at my wrists, there was no denying that something had happened to me.

I tried to search my brain for missing pieces that I knew weren't there. When I had seen Jessica, I had passed out. I'd forgotten. But then I'd remembered, despite my own wishes, I'd remembered every detail. The way the tips of her hair hung across her frozen face, the shiny pool of black against the white tile, the soft flannel folds of her nightgown. With my most current nightmare, there was nothing. No nagging bits of memory, no insistent pounding, no whispered, unwanted thoughts.

“
Get it together, Neil,” I said, feeling a surge of relief at the sight of the Seville. It sat untouched in the parking lot, just the way I had left it. I dug around in my sweater pocket for the keys. “Oh shit.” They weren't there. I pulled the pockets out and checked my jeans. Nothing. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I ran back down the cliff, nearly fell off (again), and forced my quivering legs to a walk. “Please be there,” I whispered to myself. “Please, please, please be there.” What was I going to tell my grandma? Hell, what was I going to tell the cops? How was I even going to get home?

A glint of silver caught my eye. I sucked in a breath. That had to be them.

I jogged across the sand, ignoring the strange itch in my belly where the stitches tugged at my flesh. I reached down and plucked the key from the sand without really looking at it. The chain snagged as if it were caught on something. I tugged at it harder and then realized with a shock that it wasn't my key. This was a rusted skeleton key on an equally rusted chain and it was attached to something. Something that was groaning.

I jerked my hand away from the jostling movement that was beginning beneath the sand and stepped back. I slammed into someone, hard, and felt a cold hand clasp over my mouth. “Don't panic.” The mound reared up like a tidal wave, sand splashing against my skin, while the rest fell away in wet clumps. I screamed against the waxy skin that was covering my lips as the thing turned and smiled at me. It
smiled
and it wasn't even alive and probably hadn't been for a very long time. “Stay here and I'll take care of it,” the person said and dropped me to my knees. I reached my hand back to my imaginary Glock. The sand monster looked nothing short of
Dawn of the Dead
fierce and if this wasn't the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, I was seriously beginning to doubt my own sanity.

“
What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted against the pull of the wind. The person with the cold hand was really just a boy and it was no wonder he was cold, he was as soaked as I was, dressed in nothing but a ratty shirt and holey jeans. I guess it never occurred to me to wonder why he was out there on the beach in the cold and why I hadn't seen him before. I was definitely losing it. “Don't touch it!” I yelled as I forced myself into a standing position and tackled him.

The sand monster swung one massive hand in an arc where the boy had been standing. Never mind the fact that he looked like he was moving in slow motion, the creep was as big as the Hulk with fists to match. “Are you insane?” I asked as I rolled away from the tangle of limbs and finally found the boy's face. “You could've gotten-” My words dissolved on the tip of my tongue.

Stitches.

I pedaled myself backwards across the sand until my spine was curved against the base of the cliff. The sand monster had turned and was finally facing towards us, shedding debris as he moved and revealing even more of the putrescent flesh that served as his skin. The bird lady had frightened me, don't get me wrong, but this thing, this thing was just
sick.

The boy was looking at me with an equal amount of surprise.

“
You tackled me,” he said and then stood up abruptly, dark eyes accusatory. “What's your problem?” My eyes however were still on the monster trudging towards us. The boy sighed and turned back towards it, face bored, his pale, stitched lips set in a thin line. He began to move forward.

“
Wait!” I called. He ignored me, hand reaching outwards. The zombie thing grinned. And then his fingers brushed its battered face and it was gone. Poof. Like it was never there. There was no light show, no burst of energy, not even a body lying in the massive footprints. I waited against the wall of rock, eyes wide, fingers twitching with shock and then I stood up and ran.

I think I got about a mile down the road before he caught up with me.

“
Maybe these are yours?” He asked, holding out one pale hand in front of my face. The keys dangled from one of his slender fingers. I snatched them away and turned on my heel. The boy followed.

“
Leave me alone,” I said, walking faster. “I do not need this shit right now.” The boy blinked at me like he didn't understand. Whatever was going on, I didn't want to know. I didn't care. He stayed silent until I reached the car.

“
Give me a ride home?” He asked. I almost choked.
Did he really ask me that?
I whirled on him and opened my mouth to rant then closed it again.
God, he looks pathetic.
I thought as I studied the stitches in his bottom lip and across his pale throat.
Whatever happened to me happened to him, too.
“I-” Before I could answer, another bird woman, a white one this time, with feathers for eyebrows and yellow lips landed behind him.

“
We've much to discuss,” she cooed, her black eyes locked onto mine. My mind whirled with both the improbability of the situation and the fear of the unknown.

I opened the door in a hurry and skidded away from the parking lot without looking back.

When I got back to the house, it was dark.
Nobody noticed you were gone.
I chased that thought down with a shot of pain.
Of course they didn't. Grandma Willa wouldn't notice if she was missing her own fucking head.
I parked the car crookedly in the driveway and stomped into the house, slamming my shoes against the entry mat more aggressively than was necessary and turned on all of the lights on the first floor. I sat down at the table and ate three bowls of cereal. Then I grabbed some scissors from the drawer next to the sink and slipped the end of one of the blades beneath my stitches. I closed my eyes and squeezed.

The thread split easily beneath the metal teeth. I snatched at the ends, tugging them from my wrist. It wasn't painful but the discomfort made me gasp, like worms crawling out of my skin. I stared at the tiny, bloodless holes. It was better than having black fishing line crisscrossing my wrist like the back of some cheap corset but I still didn't like them. I tugged my sweatshirt over my hands and dragged my tired body down the hallway and into the lavender bathroom that smelt like potpourri and mothballs. Whatever had happened at the beach, I was going to forget. Life was hard enough without zombies and harpies and boys with stitches in their face.

I stepped in front of the mirror and frowned at the paleness of my own skin.
I look just like that boy,
I thought as I opened my mouth and checked my gums. They were pale, too. “It's the stress,” I told myself as I probed my skull for the rest of the offending thread. The stitches in my head were substantially more difficult to remove and I ended up with clusters of yellow gold in the sink and across the counter top like bits of blonde snow. There was even a moment where I debated cutting it all off.

I paused.

I like your hair long, Tate, it makes you look like a princess.
Jessica had told me that, back when we'd still gotten along, before she'd starting fucking boys I didn't know and locking me out of her room at night. I put the scissors on the counter and flushed the black thread down the toilet before heading upstairs to my room.

I begged sleep to take me but it refused, dancing at the edges of my brain and leaving me restless and more emotional than ever. The cold eyes of the dead crows glared at me from their perch on my windowsill and the antique clock on my dresser ticked pass the useless, unwanted seconds of my miserable life. I turned onto my side and watched my reflection in the mirror. I was a mess, in more ways than one. My hair was ratty and tangled and my eyes shone with unshed tears. I was still wearing the same set of clothes that I had changed into after removing the ones soaked with Boyd's blood over a week ago. They were crusted with sand and salt and stank like the sea. I tore them off in a rage and threw them to the floor until I was standing naked in front of the oval mirror.

“
Why am I even here?” I asked myself, hands grasping the faded white paint of the frame. “To suffer? I should just kill myself.” But I knew as soon as I said it that I wouldn't do it. I was a coward. Unlike Jessica, unlike Boyd, they had wanted something and they'd taken it. I didn't even have the heart to do that. I collapsed to the floor in a heap and crawled over to the stack of clothes I'd been wearing the day Boyd died. I hadn't had the heart to wash them yet. I pulled my hoodie to my face and breathed in the iron scent of blood. “I'm sorry,” I sobbed as I let the emotions of anger, guilt, and sadness wash over me like a tide.

Boyd is dead because you weren't good enough. Your friendship wasn't enough to keep him here. This is your fault.

“
Murderer,” I whispered to my reflection. Shafts of moonlight cut my face into stripes. I picked up one of my combat boots and used the heavy heel to smash the fragile, old glass into pieces.

I fell asleep on the floor, curled around the sweatshirt, and dreamed of demons.

The next morning, I decided that I needed a taste of normalcy, of routine. So I took a shower, put on fresh clothes, and went to school. The walk was what nearly turned me around in my tracks. There was too much time to think, to wonder, about Boyd's death, the beach, everything. I turned my headphones to a song I didn't like and tried to memorize the words. Before I knew it, the gates of the school were welcoming me back to a life I felt like I'd already outgrown. I waded through the gossip and the he-said, she-said until I found myself standing outside of my first period class.

When I saw Margaret Cedar sitting in my seat, twirling her extensions around her finger, I knew the day was only going to go from bad to worse. I made myself walk in and sit down in the back row next to a kid I didn't know. I think his name was Jack or Charlie or something like that. He was fat enough to take up two desks but I squeezed in next to him and pretended I didn't notice. His attempts at conversation were a welcome reprieve from my suffering. Everybody else ignored me which was nice and nobody had written anything new on my locker so for a while there, I almost considered myself blessed. Then third period English rolled around and I found myself in a class of jocks and cheerleaders, kids who had either failed to get into AP English or didn't care. I was of the latter and found myself regretting it. The college obsessed AP kids were at least quiet. The ones in this class never shut the hell up.