The Gateway Through Which They Came (19 page)

“Thanks,” I say before heading to my room. An appetite is something I don’t have, which says a lot about me these days.

I spend most of the day catching up on trigonometry homework, though the idea of hanging with the guys sounds a thousand times better. But as it is, I need to get this done or I never will. Each math problem takes longer than the previous one. Concentration is a hard thing to find when your mind is distracted with an attempted Bleeder attack and a bolting shadow. Not to mention everything else that’s occurred over the last week.

Seriously. Could my life get any more confusing?

Day turns to night before I can process that the day has come to an end. I’ve read one page of
Hamlet
about ten times, yet the words have refused to sink in. There’s no use trying. I won’t accomplish much of anything tonight.

The tension in my muscles makes for sore limbs as I lie back on the bed and wish for sleep. I contemplate what it is Father Martin could do for me tomorrow. What he could say to make things better. Most of all, I don’t know what to tell him. How much is too much? If something already has its sights on him, it’s possible I could make him even more of a target.

If there was someone else who could help me, someone who might understand what it means to fight personal demons. I wonder if Father Raimi would be up for the challenge. These demons were far more than anyone could imagine, going way beyond my insignificant life. Maybe I could trust him. He’d lost his faith once. Can he help me find mine?

The click of a door wakes me, face-first in a book I didn’t realize I fell asleep on. From the darkness surrounding my room, I assume it was my mother shutting off the light. Have I been asleep long? The book slumps to the floor as I pull the sheets over my waist. I close my eyes and hope for more sleep, but a lurking feeling takes hold of me. Something awaits me somewhere, but I can’t make sense of the urge to stand up. I’m exhausted when I stumble from bed through the dark, tripping on a shoe in the middle of the room. The curtains are pulled back, allowing the light of the moon to guide me to the reflecting glass.

My eyes are groggy, struggling to focus as the tug keeps pulling me closer. Nothing seems different about the outside world. It’s the same as it’s always been at this late hour. Not a single person out in the street. Not even a glow of light shines from neighboring windows. So why do I feel this urge inside me to look closer?

I search the yard outside our house. The wind picks up and the rattling leaves grow loud and fierce. From the bushes lining the gate that separates our yards, a shadow emerges. It happens very little at first. It rolls like a mist from the darkness, melting into the grass. A puddle of black trickles like water, before it slowly raises itself like a strong fog seeping from the ocean, getting taller and wider as it forms.

Am I dreaming? This can’t be real. It can’t be here.

The black mass stands in my yard, watching me through my window. Daring me to come forward. Fear strikes through my chest, sending my heart pounding into my throat. I can’t deny how terrified I am, but if there’s one thing I hate it’s fear. Giving something the power to make me lose sight of myself only makes me weaker. I won’t let this thing do that to me anymore.

I bolt for my door, and with long strides, I make it to the porch without causing a sound. The shadow is no longer in plain sight, but I’m not giving up that easily. Which might not be all that smart, but it’s time I find out what it wants. And where it’s coming from. I step off the porch, the cold grass stabbing into the bottoms of my feet. The night air is freezing with no shoes or sweatshirt, and I’m regretting not putting something warm on.

Each step makes my heart beat harder and harder. A breeze bristles through my hair and tickles my scalp, urging me to turn round and round, but I stand my ground. The bush’s shadow is not as threatening as it had been seconds ago. Nothing but the moonlight glistens on the brittle leaves.

“Where are you?” My question drifts into the wind. “Come out, you son of a bitch.”

Each step takes me closer, my eyes darting right, then left. Could this be a trick? I wait for something to sneak up on me, but only dead air follows. I approach the line of bushes, attempting to peek over the rim for something hiding near the fence. Leaves rattle to the right of me and I jump back. It only takes a second for me to collect my bearings before I dart toward the sound.

“Come on!” I growl, daring it to face me.

A yelp sounds from the bush where I’ve smacked leaves aside. I’d prepared myself for something, but what I get is the thing I least expected.

“Koren?”

Koren’s hands protect her face as she lifts herself to her feet. Small abrasions redden her cheeks as if she’d gotten into a scuffle with the pokey branches. The sight of her is disturbing for so many reasons. Two of them being that she looks so fragile and broken. It’s difficult to understand how someone could change so drastically in a matter of a day. She’d always been so confident. So bright. Now she’s so far away from those things.

“Please,” she begs. “Don’t hurt me!”

“Koren,” I say again. Is she lost or something? Sleep walking? “What are you doing here?”

Several emotions collide and I can’t decide if I’m concerned or frustrated. Koren has latched herself into my Gateway world and she just doesn’t fit. Not knowing what her part is in all of this is driving me mad.

She steps out from behind the bush, gathering her coat close to her chest. Her eyes search around us, possibly looking for the very thing I’d come out here to confront.

At the risk of sounding insane, I ask, “Did you see it?”

Her head swivels just enough to check her surroundings, but she plays it off with a shrug. She knows, but it’s clear she refuses to answer. The frightened look on her face says as much.

“What was it, Koren? Where did it go?” Suddenly the idea that she is here, in my front yard, isn’t nearly as important as whatever the hell that thing was. Koren is something I can deal with, but that thing? Just what the hell
is
it?

She can’t keep still. Her head shakes back and forth, and her hands tug at the dangling strands of her hair. “I… I don’t know. I… I followed it. It led me here.”

“You need to calm down.” I grab her hands, and grip them tight to steady her. “Tell me what it is. Where did it come from?” It’s difficult keeping my voice as such a low whisper. In reality, I want to yell it out, to call whatever it was from its hiding place.

Koren is so distraught, I don’t know what to do. I wish she would speak whatever it is she’s holding back. She knows something. She has to. But the way she’s holding herself, shock written all over her face, there’s no way I’ll find out tonight.

“You’re freezing. I need to drive you home. Okay?” What else am I supposed to do with her? She’s hysterical. If my mother knew who stood outside our house at such a late hour, she’d freak.

I’m sure she’s heard the news that Koren’s back, but that doesn’t mean anything else has changed. Her parents have yet to make an appearance at church, or anywhere for all I know. I wonder if my mom’s heard from them. I have to remind myself to ask her. How could they let their daughter wander off like this? Where the hell are they?

I shake the thought from my mind, because right about now, as I watch Koren crumble in my arms, I’m not so sure I know anything about this girl standing in front of me anymore. One moment she was the girl who watched cheesy horror films with me while snuggled on the couch. A Friday night routine that began in sixth grade, when Mom decided we were old enough to watch them. And now, here in the dark, Koren’s more like a stranger than anything else.

She follows as I pull her toward the front porch. I quickly consider how I’m going to grab my keys fast enough without waking my mother, and without leaving Koren on her own for too long. It could still be out here for all I know. I can’t leave her alone.

She speaks softly to herself now and all I can catch is:
“You can’t go back there. You can’t go back.”

“Where, Koren? Where can’t I go?” I ask.

We stand at the bottom of the porch, the air around us quiet and still. She clings to me and stares directly in my eyes. Her body is no longer shaking and her voice is steady and clear.

“You can’t go back to the church, Aiden. Promise me. Promise you won’t go back.”

“How did you know—?”

“Promise me, Aiden!”

I hush her, looking back toward the house. My mother could wake at any moment, but I have to know what she’s asking of me.

“I can’t promise that. Not unless you tell me why.”

She shakes her head once. The movement is slow and robotic. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Seeing her like this gives me chills. Everything about her is so unnatural, so disconnected. She’s not Koren anymore when she acts this way. The thing haunting her is doing this, changing her.
It led me here,
she’d said.

The shadow is doing more than following my every move. It’s terrorizing her, because of
me
. Whatever this is, I have to stop it.

“Please let me help you,” I beg her.

Her voice is empty when she says, “You can’t help me, Aiden. No one can.”

y the time I come back downstairs with the keys, she’s gone. Despite the cold, I manage to run around the block once or twice in search of her, but come up empty.

I can’t get back to sleep after that. I’m afraid for Koren, afraid of what might have happened to her. It was stupid of me to leave her there alone. Maybe it got her. She could be dead. I call her old cell number and in return get nothing. The phone number has been unavailable for God knows how long. And like before, I’m haunted with images of Koren’s dead body, alone in the woods somewhere. Only this time, it would be my fault.

I’m in Izzie and coasting silently down the driveway before Mom wakes. She’ll be up for church soon, and I only have twenty minutes at best to get to Koren’s house before she notices my absence. On the way there, I consider what I’ll say to her parents if they answer. Two people I haven’t seen in over a year. People who had been like second parents to me once. And with all the secrets happening behind closed doors, it’s hard to comprehend what had become of them. Or what they did to Koren to make her so, well, strange.

I roll Izzie through the stop sign at the corner of her street, and let off the gas just enough to whip into the turn without losing control.

Koren’s house is exactly the same. The lawn is cared for, the flowers barely pulling through the winter. A welcome mat at the foot of the door is the only new fixture, aside from the red minivan in the driveway. I’m pretty sure her parents owned sedans. Did it really matter?

I hurry to the door, forgetting the early hour. Raising my fist, I knock gently at first. When no one answers after a good twenty seconds, I bang a little harder.

This time someone opens the door. I’m taken aback.

“Can I help you?”

The man is old. Like old-old with an even older-looking woman cowering behind him in her robe. They’re both wearing sleepy expressions filled with alarm from a kid beating down their door before the sun is even up.