The Reaping (36 page)

“Get where?”  I’d forgotten that Leah was there.

“Oh, uh, nowhere.  I was just thinking.”

Leah tipped her head to the side.  “Car-son,” she said warningly.  “Spill.”

“I just, um, I, uh—”

“Stop trying to lie without lying,” she interrupted.  “Just tell me the truth.  Aren’t we kind of past keeping secrets by now anyway?”

She had a valid point.  It’s not like I hadn’t just told her all the gory details about my insane life anyway.  What was I afraid of?  What was I hiding?

I told Leah what I’d seen (foregoing most of the detail) and then explained my dilemma.  Leave it to Leah to see the logic.

“If you’ve been dreaming of the house and Derek knows about it, it’s probably not
over here,”
she reasoned.  “Maybe you should start with the clearing.  Seems like the woods are where all sorts of bad things happen anyway.”  She said the last under her breath and with no small amount of bitterness.

I couldn’t fully agree, considering all the good times Derek and I had shared in the woods, but Leah didn’t have to know that so I didn’t argue with her.

“You may have a point,” I conceded, still trying to think of another way, one that didn’t involve going to the clearing.

“What exactly is your plan anyway?”

I looked at Leah, puzzled.  “What do you mean?  I’m going to save her.  What do you
think
my plan is?”

“Save her?”  Leah sounded skeptical, which was odd since she’d very recently benefited from just such a plan.

“Yes.  Is there a problem with that?”  Leah’s attitude rubbed me the wrong way, aggravating me.

“No,” she said, looking away, but her body language and expression clearly said there was.

“Alright, Leah.  Out with it.”

“Nothing,” she maintained then, after a moment, reconsidered.  When she lifted her eyes to mine, anger simmered in their sable depths.  “Well, look at me.  It’s not like your rescue of me worked out so perfectly, you know?”

I was speechless.  Did she really feel like this was somehow
my fault? 

“Well, excuse me for saving your life.  Maybe I should’ve thought of the pros and cons first, asked around a little bit even.  Oh wait,” I snapped.  “I was too busy
saving your life.”

Leah opened her mouth to rebut, but I wasn’t interested in anything she had to say.  I turned on my heel and stalked out of the living room.  I grabbed my jacket and the keys then walked out to the garage. 

On the short drive to the forks, I seethed over Leah’s audacity, the conversation playing over and over in my head.  Then, unbidden, a cryptic warning Fahl had given me popped into my mind.  I hadn’t known how to make sense of it at the time, but now…

…as long as you don’t try anything reckless, Leah will be enjoying her cookies by Christmas.

Was this what he’d meant?  Had I
really
somehow caused what had befallen Leah?

I pushed that disturbing thought to the back of my mind as I had arrived at the forks.  I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, got out and headed for the forest. 

I jogged through the woods, toward the clearing, eager to get in and get out.  When I arrived, Fahl was already there, in his tall, blond form, waiting for me.

“Good.  You’re here,” he said in a deep voice with traces of a Swedish or German accent.  It was strange to be standing face to face with the man that had been spying on me and Derek at the beach.  His long hair glistened in the moonlight and a satisfied smile graced his handsome face.  “Three things.  First, picture the black house.  Can you see it?”

When he jumped right in like that, it took me a minute to catch up.  I shook my head, as always too distracted by him to think very clearly.

“Close your eyes and concentrate,” he said more slowly, his voice becoming soft and hypnotic.  I did as he said.  “Can you see it?” I could hear the leaves crackle under his weight as he approached me.

Focusing, I conjured up the image from my dream, just as haunting and intimidating as it had been while I was asleep.  “Yes.”

“Good.  Now, think of the symbol on the girl.  That’s the door you’ll use.”

I nodded, eyes still closed so I wouldn’t lose the image. 

“And, Carson,” he whispered, his voice right at my ear.  “Don’t forget our deal.”

I got that cold spider web sensation again and then a terrible taste invaded my mouth.  I opened my eyes just in time to see Fahl start to move past me, through me.  His body began to shake and shimmer and then he was gone, his odor the only sign that he’d been there at all.

Closing my eyes once more, I pictured the black house.  I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to do that so I kept my focus on the image. 

The first things I noticed were changes in ambient noises.  There was absolute silence, an eerie stillness that speaks of an inherent lack of life and all things living.  Then I started to feel dizzy.  When my feet began to feel wet, I opened my eyes to see what was going on. 

I looked down.  I was standing in water up to my knees.  I looked up and around.  Up ahead, I could see the black house hovering on the moonlit horizon.  I was in the pond that I’d seen my father floating in. 

With a shriek, I started running, which was a slow, wet process in any amount of water.

When I reached the shore, I walked toward the black house.  In my peripheral vision, I could see shapes moving inside the shadow, just like in my dreams, but I kept my focus on the task (and the house) at hand. 

I moved cautiously up the steps and stood in front of the narrow front door.   I looked back and, just like before, the pond was gone.  Only the crisp field remained. 

I turned back toward the house and looked down at the door knob.  It, too, was just as I remembered—silver with an intricate design etched onto its surface.  I bent to get a better look. 

Best I could tell in the dark was that the knob was divided into four quadrants.  In each quadrant was a different design.  I recognized two of them.  One had vines with tiny leaves and delicate flowers.  The other was flames, just like the ones on my back. 

The other two were unfamiliar to me, but I thought I knew what they meant.  One looked like waves in a tumultuous sea, the other swirls of silver.  If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say water and wind, the other two of the four elements.  The two I suspected that my sister could control.

I reached for the doorknob and the instant my skin made contact, my insides caught fire.  Never in my life had I felt such an intense, indescribably horrific pain.  I gasped, filling my lungs with burning air.  I let it out on a blood-curdling scream that I thought surely echoed into the other world.  When my chest was empty of both fire and air and I could scream no more, I listened as other sounds began to fill the dead silence.  Shuffling, dragging, moaning, gurgling. 

I pushed through the pain and turned my head to the right as much as I could.  And I saw them.  The dead were all around me, closing in on me where I stood on the stoop.   

With every ounce of strength I had, I twisted the doorknob.  Luckily, it turned easily and I all but fell inside.  I lay on the floor, immobilized by the excruciating pain.  I could see the door from my position, and the dead just outside it.  I knew in my current state I wouldn’t be able to defend myself and, as my mind raced with thoughts of what they might do to me, my heart raced with terror.

The dead mounted the steps slowly, dragging dangling limbs and wobbling on broken legs, bumping into one another.  A man made it to the top first.  He wore only a grungy dress shirt that hung in tatters from his bloody shoulders.  I could see teeth marks on nearly every visible inch of skin.  There were even chunks of skin missing from his cheeks and chin.  And one eye socket was a gaping black hole in his head.

I watched, terrified, as he stepped to the door.  I tried to get my legs to move, but I was still in too much pain.

As he took the next step, the step that would bring him into the house and within inches of my foot, he stopped with his foot in midair.  He set his foot down and looked at the doorway.  He raised his leg to take that step again, but once more he stopped. 

Anger contorted his mangled features and he raised his hand toward the doorway.  I could see the palm flatten as if it were pressed against an invisible barrier.  He tightened his fingers into a fist and beat at the doorway, but still he couldn’t pass through it. 

Relief flooded me and as I watched the others approach the door and try to get in, unable to.  And, slowly, my pain began to subside. 

When it had lessened to something more like menstrual cramps (only in every muscle of my entire body), I sat up. 

And I saw that I had no legs.

Panic erupted from the churning pit of my stomach and I felt the blood drain from my face.  I reached down to touch the empty space where my flesh should’ve been and I felt…my legs.  I flexed the muscles in my right thigh and felt them contract under my fingers.   Puzzled, I wiggled my toes.  I felt the material of my socks and the rigid toe of my shoes.  I bent my legs at the knee, preparing to stand—or try to anyway—and that’s when I saw the hint of an outline, an outline that looked like my legs. 

As I moved them, I could see the hardwoods
through
them,
through
my legs.  They shimmered and danced like I was seeing them through heat waves.  I thought of the way Fahl shimmered when he walked through me and realized it must have something to do with traveling through the Darkness.

Then, right before my eyes, my arms began to fade.  I pushed myself onto my feet and looked down at my body.  My trunk was fading as well.  I could just barely see the faint lines of where my body stopped and thin air began.  To the untrained eye, there would probably be no difference.  To most people, I’d be invisible.

A familiar voice interrupted the unhealthy escalation of my emotions.  I recognized her words as well.  It was the girl from my living room floor, the girl that would soon be dead if I didn’t find her in time.  And, though she might be anyway, I was determined to do everything within my power to prevent it.

Pushing my transparency and implications thereof out of my immediate thoughts, I turned in a circle, examining the halls that sprouted off in different directions from the hub in which I stood. 

Now, think of the symbol on the girl.  That’s the door you’ll use,
Fahl had said.

“But which hall is it in?”  I said to the empty room.  It was no surprise when no answer came.  Knowing time was quickly running out, I tried to imagine which direction the voice had come from.  I decided it was definitely from my left so I chose the hall closest to me, on the left, and I took off down its dark length.

I stopped in front of the first door, straining to see the symbol etched onto its front.  It was too triangular to be the right one so I moved on.  The next one I came to was similar, but still not right.  It had too many horizontal lines.  Next. 

I performed this same examination on every door down that hall.  I was beginning to think I’d chosen the wrong hall when I was down to the last three doors.  Door number three was all wrong.  Its symbol was circular, not at all what I was searching for.  Door number two looked close, but it was missing a vertical piece that I was pretty sure I’d seen.  I was beginning to walk on to the last door when I saw another stroke appear. 

It was as if the symbol was forming as I stood there.  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I could see the vertical piece that it lacked, as well as the final horizontal line, come into view as I watched.  When the last line was drawn, forming the symbol I sought, it shone brilliantly for about three seconds then started to blacken, as if it were tarnishing, fading right before my eyes.