The Unseen (4 page)

“Reese!” Barb shook the girl’s shoulder. “Stop cutting yourself!”

Reese looked up at Cassidy, and the look on her face turned Cassidy’s insides to ice.  Reese wore an expression that could only be described as
true
evil.  Her blue eyes had narrowed to angry slashes.  Her nose was wrinkled in a look of disgust, nostrils flaring, the entire lower half of her face downturned in a bitter, brutal snarl, her canine teeth prominent between her pale lips.

When Reese spoke, it was not her own voice, but something like the roar of a lion, a sound far too deep and loud to come from inside Reese’s anorexic little body.  It shook the timbers in the walls and floor of Cassidy’s apartment, toppled the lamp from her nightstand, and sent a sheaf of poems and drawings sliding off her bookshelf.  The wind scattered the papers across her floor.

“You will
DIE
you fatherless
WHORE-BORN
, you dripping spawn of a stray
BITCH-CUR
!” roared a rasping voice from Reese’s open mouth, though her lips barely moved.

Reese snatched up the shattered wine glass by the stem.  Broken fragments of the bowl jutted out from it like curved, jagged little knives.

Reese leaped to her feet with inhuman speed and slashed the length of broken glass at Cassidy’s throat.

Cassidy screamed and dodged back, and the broken glass sliced open her chin.  The backs of her knees hit the edge of the mattress.  She collapsed into a sitting position on her bed.

“May you eat
FILTH
in
DARKNESS
until the end of all days, you mongrel
SHIT-BEAST
!” Reese’s voice boomed, rattling Cassidy’s bones in their sockets. 

Reese advanced on her, raising the broken glass, and Cassidy pushed herself backward against the cushions on her bed.  With the wall behind her, she could retreat no farther.  She held up her hands to protect her face.

“Leave her alone!” Barb shouted. “Don’t touch Cassidy!”

Reese’s face twisted in a look of hatred as she snarled at Barb.  The entire shape of her head changed into something monstrous, every muscle in her face wrenching far beyond its natural range.

Reese’s mouth dropped, and then kept on dropping, as though she were a snake that had unhinged its lower jaw to eat a large prey animal.  Her lips tore open on both sides as her mouth stretched.  It was suddenly, impossibly, much larger than the rest of her head, her jaws lined with two jumbled rows of dark yellow shark teeth.

From Reese’s enormous jaws emerged a howl of such intensity that Cassidy’s ears popped and she wondered whether her eardrums had been blown out.  Everything in Cassidy’s field of vision seemed to vibrate—the armchair, the walls, the laundry basket in the corner, the collection of pins and buttons on her lampshade as her lamp rolled across the floor.

The howl blasted Barb’s short brown hair away from her face and sent her staggering back against the closed door to the hall, screaming.

Cassidy looked around her cluttered room for any kind of weapon, but the closest she could find was the putt-putt club she’d won at MonkeyTime Family Fun Center on her ninth birthday, its handle topped with a plastic purple monkey.  She grabbed it up with both hands and stood shakily on her mattress.

Reese stalked toward Cassidy again.  The panting breath pouring out between Reese’s enormous open jaws was so putrid and thick Cassidy could see it like a yellow haze in the air.

When Cassidy was six years old, she’d found a dead possum in the parking lot, baking in the summer heat, its belly swollen with ripe decay.  Cassidy had poked it with a stick, and it had ruptured open, spilling maggot-ridden guts onto the blacktop.  The smell alone had sent her vomiting into the parking-lot shrubbery, her eyes watering.  The stink of Reese’s smoldering hot breath was similar, but a thousand times stronger.

Reese let out another deep, rumbling roar and lunged toward Cassidy, her enormous jaws open wide, her teeth large enough to bite through Cassidy’s skull.

Cassidy swung the golf club at Reese’s approaching jaws but missed, striking her in the upper face instead.  The heel of the club thunked into her open right eye with a moist, squishy sound that made Cassidy shudder.

Cassidy had time to think
Oh God I blinded her I crushed her eyeball
before Reese snatched the club away.  It pulled free of her eye socket with a soft kissing sound, and Cassidy had a glimpse of the shapeless mass of gore where her pretty blue eye had been. 

Reese’s upper and lower eyelids clomped together like the lips of a toothless mouth.  Reese cried blood from beneath the sunken lid.

Reese sniffed the bloody head of the club like a dog, then flung it out through the open balcony door.  The club sailed over the railing and vanished into the heavy rain.

Barb, looking terrified, snatched up the lamp from the floor and bashed it into the back of Reese’s head.  The base of the lamp dug a bloody furrow into Reese’s scalp, and Cassidy half-expected the girl to drop dead, but Reese just snarled and swiped at the lamp as though it were an annoying fly.

Reese spun around and slapped Barb hard enough to lift her off her feet.  Barb spun through the air and slammed into Cassidy’s dresser, then crashed to the floor, moaning in pain.

Tamila had been standing next to the dresser, by the burning, peach-scented nub of the last candle, watching the scene unfold with her mouth open in horror, but Barb’s impact against the dresser seemed to startle her into action.

Tamila darted to the center of the room and picked up the homemade Ouija board, spilling a pile of bloody glass shards onto the carpet.  She dipped a corner of the board into the one remaining candle.

The fire quickly ate its way up the board, making Reese’s bloody handprints hiss and steam.  A sulfurous stink filled the room.

“I’m burning!” Reese screamed.  She’d instantly reverted to her normal self—no giant jaws, her head shrunk back to its usual shape.  Blood streamed from her sunken right eyelid, and one trickle of it ran down the side of her nose to fall, drop by drop, from her golden nose ring.

Tamila gaped at Reese while she held the poster board aloft like a blazing torch, the flames scorching an ugly brown stain into Cassidy’s cheap plaster ceiling.  Barb groaned helplessly on the floor.

“I’m on fire!  Help me!” Reese shrieked, holding out her arms toward Cassidy in a pleading gesture, terror in her remaining blue eye.  Patches of her skin blistered and darkened on her neck, arms, stomach, and legs.  Smoldering holes opened in her bra top and low-slung denim shorts.

Cassidy jumped off the bed and snatched the burning board from Tamila’s hand, screaming in pain as the fire scorched her fingertips.  She flung open her door and ran across the hall to the narrow, dingy bathroom she shared with her little brother, where she hurled the burning board into the chipped tub.

Cassidy cranked on the cold water, soaking the board and extinguishing the flames.  She grabbed the remaining chunk of poster board and ripped it with her hands.  She stopped when nothing remained but a skin of white shreds, black ash, and red glitter floating on the rising surface of the water.  Much later, it would occur to her that she could have simply thrown it into the rain outside.

She darted back to her room.  Barb lay in front of the dresser, wincing and touching her side gingerly, keeping her wary eyes on Reese.

Reese knelt on the carpet, sobbing and shrieking in pain, her eyes squeezed shut, blood still leaking from her ruined eye socket.  Her hand was wide open, the glass shards still stuck in her fingers and palm.  Tamila knelt beside her, her arm around the girl’s shoulder, trying to comfort her even though she’d been something monstrous and inhuman only moments earlier.

“
Reese?” Cassidy whispered, confused and frightened.  She wasn’t sure what else to say or do, so she just whispered the name uselessly again: “Reese?  Reese?”

“
Is it over?” Barb asked.

Lightning flashed outside the window and thunder shook the floor.  A booming, pounding sound echoed through the apartment.  A frightened look passed among Cassidy, Barb, and Tamila—Reese was too lost in her own pain and confusion to respond.

“It sounds like someone’s at the front door,” Cassidy whispered.

“
Who knocks like that?  Cops?” Barb asked.

“
It could be the demon,” Tamila whispered. “Don’t open that door, Cassidy.”

“
Why would it knock on the door?” Cassidy asked.

“
Cassidy, you haven’t listened to me once tonight!” Tamila snapped. “Just trust me this time.  Don’t open it.”

The pounding struck again, even louder and more insistent, like a giant creature trying to kick its way inside.

“I’ll just look through the peephole,” Cassidy whispered. “Everybody stay quiet.”

“
No!” Tamila whispered, but Cassidy left the room.  She tiptoed through the small, dark living room, then reached over the breakfast bar into the kitchen and lifted the butcher knife from the chopping block, its sharp edge wet with congealed tomato sauce and mozzarella blobs from the pizza they’d baked earlier.

Gripping the knife in one hand, Cassidy approached the door.  It shuddered again with another series of loud knocks.

Her heart thumping, she leaned down to peer through the tiny lens. 

Outside stood two boys—Dex McKenna, a long-haired muscular boy in a black tank top, the boy Reese had been so eager to screw, accompanied by his little minion, Kyle Bowers, who had a few hairs around his mouth that he probably believed constituted a goatee.  Kyle’s T-shirt depicted what looked like a Barbie doll stuck on the prongs of a red horseshoe, and the caption read CHICK MAGNET.

Kyle pounded again, loudly and obnoxiously, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Open up, ladies!”

“
Stop yelling!” Dex punched him in the arm.

Reese unlocked and opened the door.

“What’s up what’s up, big Amazon chick?” Kyle asked.  He was four inches shorter than Cassidy.  His eyes went from low-lidded and cocky to wide and shocked when he saw the bleeding cut on her chin and the butcher knife with tomato sauce in her hand. “Whoa, who did you kill?”

“
It’s just Dex and Kyle!” Cassidy called toward her bedroom. “Bring Reese out.”

“
Oh, yeah, bring her out.” Dex winked at Cassidy as he stepped through the door.

“
Are you bringing out a chick for me, too?” Kyle asked.

“
Shut up, Kyle,” Dex told him.

Barb and Tamila emerged from the hallway with Reese slumped between them, her arms supported by their shoulders.  Her clothes were singed, glass shards jutted from her bleeding hand, blood trickled down from her ruined eye.  Her one good eye was closed, and she was still sobbing.

“Holy shit, she’s all fucked up!” Dex said.  He looked at the butcher knife in Cassidy’s hand. “What happened?”

“
Looks like this part-aaay got cra-zaaay!” Kyle said.

“
Shut up, Kyle,” Dex said.

“
It was an accident,” Cassidy said. “You have to take her to the emergency room, Dex.”

“
Whoa, whoa, why me?” Dex asked, holding out his hands. “I just got here.”

“
You’ve got a car,” Cassidy said.

“
Yeah, but Reese’s got a car—”

“
She can’t drive right now!” Cassidy snapped.

“
Yeah, but one of you could—”

“
Look, Dex!” Barb scowled at him.  Her shirt was spattered with blood from Reese’s hand. “You came here planning to fuck her, right?”

“
Uh...I mean, well...” Dex looked away.

“
If you’re ready to have sex with someone, you should be ready to take them to the hospital,” Barb told him. “Unless you’re a complete asshole.  Right?”

“
Uh...yeah.” Dex scratched his head. “Shit, if I’m taking her, we need to go.  She’s all fucked up.”

“
Can you walk, Reese?” Tamila asked gently.

Reese kept sobbing and didn’t respond.

“You’ll have to carry her,” Barb told Dex.

“
Damn it!” Dex sighed and walked to Reese, rolling his eyes.  Tamila looked worried as she saw him scoop up Reese in his arms and carry her out over the threshold.  He paused on the concrete walkway outside, looking back.

Kyle Bowers leaned against the door frame and cracked open a tall can of beer.

“Looks like it’s just me and the ladies tonight. So what’s up, Barb?” Kyle raised a suggestive eyebrow at her.

“
You’re going with Dex,” Cassidy told him quickly.

“
Wha-aat?  Why do I have to go?”

“
Because we told you to!” Barb snapped. “Now get the fuck out of here before I throw you over the railing out there.”

“
Hey, hey, so hostile.” Kyle took a swig of beer, then shrugged and joined Dex out on the walkway.