Spree (YA Paranormal) (6 page)

Somewhere across town another casket was made ready for a funeral that would happen only hours after mine. This was where more cameras were set up, where the mayor had to be as he bade my mother goodbye. This would be the funeral for Steph’s mom. A good number of kids planned to attend both funerals, but not all. Not my friends.

My mother looked as the kids started heading out, saw the small photo at her feet.

“I wonder how this got here,” she said, reaching down, picking up the photo.

She saw the message and through her tears I saw a faint smile.

It was the one smile that made all the pictures of all the events I ever attended worth it.

* * *

I watched as the people left me there, as it was just my casket and me. Only the tail ends of sad auras remained behind.

“It’s funny how quickly people move on,” I said. “I died less than a week ago, and already some kids have forgotten me.”

“But others never will,” Belinda replied.

I thought back; it was true. Some girls in our class never were the same after Belinda’s death.

“I hope they do,” I said.

“I hope not,” Belinda said, “because if you are forgotten, it will be because a greater tragedy takes hold of the town.”

I felt myself flying, moving through time, space, objects at light speed. The entire town became jumbled images until I saw myself walking down a winding patch of White Mountain Road.

“What is this?” I asked Belinda.

Ghouls seemed to be simply appearing out of these portals as if this was a massive undead airport. They looked around. Some had black faces or eyes, like Crazy T, the tell-tale sign of a Taker. Others had light outlining their body, glowing through their eyes, the sure sign of a Keeper. There must have been at least fifty spirits appearing right on White Mountain Road, as runners jogged through them, cars whipped by, and the trees blew in the only sign of the natural world that something out of the ordinary was afoot. Most never even acknowledged my presence.

“This is going to be the most spiritually active place on earth in three days,” Belinda told me, “as the forces of Spree fight for control over what may turn out to be the biggest school shooting in history.”

“Why do they care?” I asked, simply enough.

“To be a Keeper is to care. It’s how the souls of children and teens grow enough to see the full merits of heaven,” she told me. “After this event, whatever happens, some Keepers will move on into eternity.”

“But the Takers. Why try to kill? Why care?”

“Takers can’t kill,” Belinda told me, “only take dark souls to Spree and influence souls and events with their dark energy. Once they grow dark enough, they’ll disappear into hell, but to gain favor in hell, they’ll take as many kids with them as they can.”

I watched as the Takers and Keepers kept pouring in, so much so there was a spirit floating around every other foot or so.

“I have to stop them,” I said.

“You can stop nothing,” Belinda said. “You can only influence. Every soul has autonomy in Spree.”

“Can I at least see Spree before the end?” I asked, “as part of my education. We all know where I’m going, anyway.”

I heard just a note from Spree, a chiming of ocean waters, wind, and sands and felt myself standing on the sea. I looked around me and swore I saw this giant golden tree that I thought of as the Tree of Life. I knew that every soul came from here, that every soul would come back through here on its way to eternity. I felt enveloped by waters that reached up and wrapped themselves in light around me. Flowers sang, music engrossed the air, which was as elemental in its beauty as the earth. My thoughts gravitated towards one figure in light: Alex. I pictured Alex and me hugging, standing on the ocean, by the great tree, the light of our souls intertwining and mixing as if we were one soul. But just as quickly as the image was shaped, it was gone.

I saw another figure standing on the water, wrapped completely in light. She had a graceful, sloping cheekbone, eyes of perfect blue, and hair that was a light, burning fire. She had just come from heaven. I knew immediately who she was.I opened my lips to apologize, but I heard, rather than saw, her speak.

“Save my daughter’s life,” her voice said to me.

And with that, my vision of Spree was gone.

A vision of Zipper standing over Steph, blood still dripping from her skull, haunted me instead.

“Help me,” I said to Belinda.

“You’ve just had your most important lesson,” she told me.

The image of Steph extended until I saw the entire school flooding with blood, Takers everywhere, at least fifty kids shot dead. I saw the bodies piled up, the shooter hanging on the same tree Crazy T killed himself on years back. Parents lined the parking lot, blocked off by police as they cried out to find out whether their children were among the living or the dead.

“That’s the Takers’ vision,” she told me. “It threatens to swallow Spree whole.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said.

Belinda looked at me, no longer the cancer-stricken girl I remembered, but the confident young woman she would have become.

“Remember that when the time comes,” she told me. “The Takers are coming for you. Be strong.”

She waved her hands and I was gone, drawn towards the hospital, where two Takers were gambling for the lives of my friends.

Chapter 5

“Time’s run out,” Rope Man, one of the darkest Takers, taunted.

Preggers was over on a white bed, with only the faintest hints of respiration. Aliya didn’t look much better. I reached over and touched Preggers’s hand. I could feel her soul rising and standing beside me. It was a misty black, not unlike mine.

“Where am I?” Preggers asked me.

The other Taker, Burn Girl, taunted me as well, telling Preggers: “With the girl who took your life.”

I attempted to ask Belinda for guidance in communicating with the living, but I couldn’t feel her presence, her protection. It was just two Takers and me, surrounded as we were by darkness.

“I can’t see anyone, anything,” Preggers said.

I saw the blackness eating at the light of her aura. She panicked, as I had done.

“Because you’re not dead,” I told her.

She stared at me, at the blackness that was my body, at my decapitated head, weighing me.

“Fay?” she asked. “Is that you?”

I felt her fear as she looked at what was left of the face of an old friend.

“I’m dead,” I told her. “The accident killed me.”

Preggers started crying, bawling, feeling guilty, prattling on about how she should’ve driven her own jeep.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her. “It’s mine.”

“Believe her,” Burn Girl said. “If you’d been driving, you’d all still be alive.”

“Don’t listen to them,” I told Preggers. “They aren’t your friends.”

“And you are?” Preggers asked me. “Look at me!”

She looked at her lifeless, pale skin, at her limp black hair, at the black mist around her, unable to reconcile what she was seeing now with what she saw on the bed.

“How could you do this to me?” she asked. “I trusted you. You were my best friend.”

“There’s more,” Rope Man said to her, “much more.”

Burn Girl came forward, a spiral of red, jagged burn marks wrapped up in blackness.

“You know Tom, your first,” Burn Girl told her. She smiled a bloody smile as she spoke. “You have his child inside you.”

“No,” Preggers said.

She thought back. Apparently, they had had sex. With the darkness so near me, the Taker in me could see her thoughts before me. She realized that she hadn’t taken anything before the accident. The child had been detected by doctors, had been growing inside of her all of these weeks.

She looked at me the way a child does at a betrayer.

“Listen to me,” I told her.

“How could you do this to me?” she asked.

“Tom, the whole school—they’re all in danger,” I told her. “If you help me—”

“Help you?!”

“Don’t listen to her,” Burn Girl said. “What good did she ever do you? Listen to us. We’re offering you a way out, a way of togetherness, a new life.”

Burn Girl waved her hand and a vision of parties, of sensuality, of fast cars, of no consequences, emerged before her. Tom was in the center, more handsome than others. Even Alex was there, all doting on her. I winced at the sight, but realized it too was a lie.

“These Takers mean to drag you straight to hell,” I screamed. “Preggers! Cindy! Listen to me! Think of your baby!”

She was lost to me, wrapped up in their lies, in the blackness that surrounded them, invisible even to my undead eyes.

“It’s still not too late,” a third voice said to me.

It was Crazy T, emerging as he did from the blackness shared between Burn Girl and Rope Man.

“You can’t deny yourself forever,” Burn Girl said.

“But I can deny you,” I told her. “I won’t let you take me or my friends.”

“Try and stop us,” Crazy T challenged.

I thought to call up an image of Spree, of love, of the one thing I thought might drive away these Takers from my friends. Burn Girl just laughed, calling up supernatural fire and thrusting it at me. I felt the burn, the scorching, the melting even, of my skin. I curled up, wailing, trying to protect myself. I called out for Belinda, for a Keeper anywhere, but no one came. It then occurred to me, in all that pain: the fire had control only if I let it. It was Burn Girl’s plague, not mine.

“How did it feel?” I asked her, rising to my feet. I felt my Taker energies. I used them. “How did it feel when your own fire surrounded you,” I asked, “the moment you knew you were about to die, that no one would save you, that no one wanted to?”

Burn Girl’s fire recoiled, tangled itself around her, but it did not burn her.

“Your friends will find out,” she answered.

“We all mean to finish the job we started,” Rope Man added.

“And when your other friend comes around enough to emerge, we’ll take her too,” Crazy T promised.

I could feel my anger. Anything loud, fast, uncontrollable felt subject to my whims. Suddenly, I felt like I had a budding control over objects after all. Like a little poltergeist, I thrust the metal knives in the room towards the three Takers. The metal went through them. They stood unphased.

“You’re learning,” Burn Girl told me. “Soon you’ll be with us, right in time for the shooting, right in time for all of us to go to hell together.”

The image of me walking forward, head in hand, again stood there, mocking me.

I tried to cover Aliya, to protect her, but the black and red mists that were these lost souls only circled around and disappeared before I realized that doctors were rushing in, through me, fighting to save Preggers. As I looked on, helpless, Preggers flatlined.

* * *

I fought to control my thoughts, to stand guard over Aliya, to warn her, but I felt pulled, almost against my control, to school, where the darkest energies in town began congregating. I felt so uncontrollably angry, I wanted to torment every Taker I came on then and there.

“Easy,” Belinda’s voice told me.

She was so light I couldn’t see her through my darkness, only feel a little more composure and hear her sweet, still childlike voice ringing in my ears.

“They took Preggers,” I told her. “How could you stand by and do nothing?”

“Cindy made her choice,” she told me. “She always was a Taker.”

“Tell me how to grow stronger, how to get Preggers back,” I insisted.

“You can’t,” she said. “They’re about to announce her passing over the intercom.”

“So why am I here?”

“To save the school from a Taker invasion,” she told me. “First, you have to see what they’re going to do to this school if they get their way.”

The announcement over the intercom, right in the middle of lunch announcements, may not have been the best way to handle Preggers’s passing. Kids who just had to cope with the ordeal of one kid and one parent passing put their heads on their desks, silently crying. Others, fueled by their anger, started making careless remarks. One of the angry girls was Steph, fresh off her mother’s funeral. I saw how expressionless her face was the moment Preggers’s death was announced. She waited until she was in the lunch line between classes. Two of the girls in my circle of friends were behind her.

“At least two of the girls got justice,” she said, loud enough for Sue and Jessica to hear her.

Sue was closer to Preggers than she was to me, and I could tell she became Steph’s target in the absence of any other whipping girls.

Sue stood for a moment and then said: “Say another word, and it will be your last.”

Steph stopped, tray in hand. “Going to finish what your drunk friends started?” she asked. “Careful. You’ll have to walk in a straight line to get to me.”

Sue smacked Steph across the face. Steph grabbed some hot sauce and splashed it across Sue’s face, wetting her makeup and smudging it that much more.

“What’s the matter?” Steph asked, smushing more sauce into Sue’s face. “Can’t keep anything down without some boos? Don’t worry. You can throw it up later. Isn’t that what you do?”

Sue pushed back, knocking Steph out of the line, just into the cafeteria. The kids got a good, quick look before the girls were on the ground, pounding away at each other. Throngs of Takers surrounded the girls, suggesting punches to throw, fueling the anger of the girls that much more.

Friends of both girls jumped in to pull them off, but the girls took a few punches themselves and before I knew it brawls were breaking out across the cafeteria. Anything from mashed potatoes to spaghetti was flying from wall to wall. I’d never seen kids go from grieving to angry in just moments, but the fight proved that the old cliques still existed in our school.

In one small corner of the fight stood Zipper, expressionless as someone’s chicken pot pie smashed him in his face. A few kids laughed, inappropriate as it was with everything going down. Zipper just watched them. The moment they turned to the next carnival sideshow in the food fight, Zipper came up behind one of the guys and stabbed him with a fork. I saw Crazy T appear to Zipper, egg him on. Zipper stabbed so fast I didn’t even catch it. The kid, a friend of Alex’s, turned around, stunned, but did not see Zipper there, only the fork in his leg.