His eyes fell on a girl named Sarah, who was glowering darkly on the sidelines of the pool. Not unusual for Sarah, but a little out of place amid the revelry surrounding her. He followed her gaze to Josh, who he was pretty sure was Sarah's boyfriend, dancing closely with another girl. Mindy, he thought, from the basketball team. He felt a jolt of sympathy for Sarah, but it quickly dissipated when she seized Terry, a small boy with thin brown curls and bad posture, and pulled his arms around her. Hm. Interesting.
Dull, ghostly light was filtering up from the splashing water, throwing shadows of the swimmers up across the house like contorting dancers. The air was hot with the last embers of summer, and it hung heavy and wet against his skin as the smell of smoke drifted into his nose. Alex closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the earthy nighttime scent.
“Hey, Alex.”
Alex turned to see Phil approaching him again, his face dappled with watery light. Alex raised an eyebrow, wondering what he wanted.
“So,” Phil said, drawing close and putting an arm around Alex, turning him so they were both surveying the party. “Got your eye on anyone, seeing that Natalie is just a friend?”
“Uh, no, not so much. Just hanging out tonight. I'll bet you do, though."
"No, no, no. I'm here for you tonight, bro. Gonna show you how to live a little."
"Is that so?" Alex had to stifle a chuckle. He'd always thought Phil something of a brute, and they had never been what he would call friends, but in this more liberated environment, he found his behavior amusing. "All right then, do your worst." He was actually morbidly curious to see who Phil thought was his match.
"Okay," said Phil. "Well…" His gaze swept the sea of figures, and he frowned a little as he tried to decide how, exactly, Alex should live a little. "All right," he declared after a moment. "There's your girl. Constance. She's smart, right? Like you." He boldly pointed straight at Constance, who was seated primly at the pool's edge, chatting to her friend Jamie in an undertone.
Alex was surprised. He'd expected a much less thoughtful match from Phil. Constance was indeed smart, and quiet, and pretty. But she was also terribly shy, even now keeping her arms close to her and talking only to Jamie. And she was a little odd, too. Alex doubted Phil had noticed, but Constance often wore tiny pentacle earrings and a leather hex bag, or something like one, around her neck. Someone like Constance was unlikely to appreciate being bothered by a guy like Phil, and Alex threw out an arm to stop Phil lurching over to her. Luckily, she was too absorbed in her conversation to notice.
"Woah, Phil." He clapped Phil companionably on the back and steered him around to face the Jacuzzi instead. "Constance is pretty great and all, but—"
"All right, all right," interrupted Phil. "Tough customer, okay. Let's see…yeah! Check out Julia!"
Julia was sitting by the Jacuzzi, a towel drawn around her shoulders, bare legs glistening with pool water. Her laugh tinkled prettily, the noise clear and carrying, but Alex detected a note of insincerity. She was clever, friendly, and beautiful, yes, but a little self-absorbed. Nothing out of the ordinary for a girl her age, he supposed, watching the practiced way she flipped a shiny lock of golden hair.
He glanced at Phil again, noticing the way his eyes lingered on Julia's legs, the way his pupils dilated ever so slightly. He smiled to himself.
"Yeah, Phil, that's more like it. I think she's perfect for you."
"For me? Nah, I'm not—"
"She's looking over here! Go on, go talk to her!"
"What? Is she really?" She actually was, to Alex’s delight. She flashed them a smile before turning back to her friends, chatting a little more animatedly than before.
"Yeah, go on, man. You got this."
Phil collected himself fairly quickly and started for Julia, but stopped mid-step, seeming to remember he was supposed to hook Alex up.
"Okay, buddy, but come on…You really are going out with the French girl, right?" He grinned widely and gave Alex what was probably meant to be a light nudge before squaring his shoulders and heading in Julia's direction. At least Julia could handle herself if she wasn't as interested as she seemed.
Alex recovered quickly from the "nudge" and, upon straightening, immediately scanned the crowd for Natalie. She’d been longer than he’d expected her to be.
He spotted her as she stepped out of the house, looking a little flushed. Just as she began making her way toward the pool, he noticed something behind her that made him do a double take.
In a sea of flashy colors and swirling lights, the figure behind Natalie was almost comically different. Dressed all in gray, tattered clothes, the man stood three full hands taller than the girl he followed, who was seemingly oblivious to his presence, though she turned in his direction. His long fingers clasped and unclasped in front of him, stretching out toward her, and his chin tilted out as his papery lips moved as if to whisper. He moved slowly, hunching over and then straightening, swiveling his head back and forth.
"What the…?” Alex breathed, and jolted forward—just in time to collide with two dancing couples who swerved in front of him, blocking Natalie from view. When he searched for her again, to his surprise, she was moving toward the opposite side of the pool.
The man was still following her.
Alex surged ahead, grabbing Phil as he passed by him. “Hey, who's that weird guy following Natalie?” he asked, pulling him along.
"Uh, what?" Phil said, blinking. He looked where Alex did. "You mean Ben? He's not following her, he's just—"
Alex shook his head. Ben was following her, using the pretense of walking over to the drink stand, but that was beside the point. “Not Ben. That tall man in rags!”
“Rags?” repeated Phil, now sounding utterly confused. “I don’t see any…”
The figure was following Natalie along the side of the pool now. Nobody else seemed to be reacting to his presence.
Alex left Phil behind and continued pushing past people.
He had his answer: either nobody else could see the figure, or they were pretending they couldn't. Possible explanations flashed rapidly through his mind—it was a prank, it was a trick of the light, he'd been drugged—as he cut through the crowd, trying to keep Natalie in view. The worst-case scenario was that the girl had been in this country less than a day before managing to pick up a creepy stalker. And he'd promised to look out for her.
She was just around the pool's corner from him, just through another throng of people. He had almost reached her, but before he could push through, there came an enormous splash, followed by whoops of laughter. The crowd tightened around the pool, hollering and cheering, and he lost sight of Natalie once again. He craned his neck, but the teeming mass of people was now impossible to penetrate. Panic rose in his throat, humming there like a swarm of bees.
Suddenly, Natalie slipped through the crowd, appearing quickly at his side with a look of concern on her face.
"Natalie!" Alex sighed, trying not to appear too relieved. There was no sign of a figure in rags anywhere around her. It must have been some bizarre hallucination after all.
"That poor boy!" she exclaimed anxiously. "Did you see? The big one, right there, he just threw him in."
She gestured beside them, where a fully clothed Terry floundered pathetically, presumably dumped there by Josh. His embarrassment would be all over social media within seconds, judging by the dozens of phones aiming their bright flashes at him.
Alex bent to the pool, offering Terry his hand. "Come on, I'll help you up. Just ignore these guys."
Terry clutched at him, trembling a little, and ended up half-soaking Alex, too. He hauled the bedraggled boy out of the pool, sitting him down away from the thinning crowd.
He stood up, and while Natalie made sure Terry was okay, he found himself looking around again for the apparition to make sure it hadn’t reappeared. It hadn’t, but the experience had left a queasy feeling in Alex’s stomach he couldn’t shake. What had caused the hallucination?
; They’d been at the party for over two hours, and now that Terry had managed to soak his clothes, Alex figured he had a legitimate excuse to suggest they head back now.
He’d expected Natalie to be disappointed by the prospect, but as she turned away from Terry to face him, her face was traced with exhaustion—a stark contrast to the bright, well-rested girl he’d arrived with.
“Shall we leave now?” she suggested. “I’m tired.”
“Yes,” Alex replied, already leading her back to the house. “Let’s leave.”
Bonus Chapter 4
Natalie stayed in her room for almost the entire next day, chilling and trying to fight off jet lag, presumably. Alex’s mom thought it was a wise use of the rest of the weekend and hoped she’d feel fresh for school on Monday.
Alex slept in later than usual too, and then took the opportunity to catch up on his homework and spend some time on his business. The apparition at the party still bothered him, but he figured that, whatever it was, it was unlikely to happen again so he should just forget about it.
On Monday morning, Natalie was looking sprightly again. He drove her to school and guided her to the reception, where he left her to have a meeting with the school’s exchange program liaison.
Then he made his way to the classroom where his first lesson of the day—history—was due to be held, and found it empty. He sat down and pulled out a book on marketing, which he read while students trickled in, until Colin sat down next to him and started telling him about a surprise weekend camping trip his parents had taken him on.
When their teacher Mrs. Lambert arrived, she was followed by Natalie, who waved at him.
And then the gray thing in rags stepped in behind her.
Alex almost choked on his tongue.
It was the same as before. Its skin was still sickly gray beneath the bright, fluorescent glare, the rags hanging off it yellowing and frayed, fluttering in an unseen wind. Alex’s eyes bulged as the claw-like hand raked slowly through the air, reaching for Natalie, clasping for the back of her head.
This can’t be happening.
He glanced quickly around, but once again, nobody else seemed to notice anything was wrong, and the thing in rags slid into the room after Natalie. Mrs. Lambert tied her graying shoulder-length hair back in a ponytail, introduced Natalie to the class, and then grabbed a marker. Alex gaped as she calmly wrote out the day’s lesson plan on the whiteboard, then quickly looked back to see the thing shuffling along in Natalie’s wake, following her to an open desk before hunching to whisper in her ear.
Somehow, seeing this creature here, in a perfectly ordinary classroom he visited every day, right in front of Mrs. Lambert, unnerved him even more than seeing it at the party. He must be out of his mind. Hallucinating—definitely, yes, but why was his hallucination so…specific? So focused on Natalie?
Mrs. Lambert began the lesson, oblivious to the corpse-like figure whispering into her pupil’s ear. Alex, mind whirling, did his best to follow her lecture, but couldn’t refrain from shooting his eyes over to Natalie every few seconds.
The thing didn’t move much, save for its lips. It crouched now, rags spilling out around its feet like a pool of gray liquid, jagged hands grasping the sides of Natalie’s desk. It was whispering incessantly, almost feverishly, into Natalie’s ear, and caressing the desk as it spoke.
“Alex?”
Alex blinked, looking up. Mrs. Lambert was smiling at him expectantly, her marker held between two fingers.
“Yes?”
She looked a little surprised. “I was just asking,” she said, “if you could explain to the class what the Hobbesian state of nature is?”
In the corner of Alex’s eye, the thing’s lips were fluttering as it whispered, as distracting as the buzzing of a fly. He answered Mrs. Lambert absentmindedly, his attention on the apparition.
“Hobbesian…yes.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying not to look at Natalie. “Ah, philosopher Thomas Hobbes deduced in the seventeenth century that man’s natural state is one of equality, but believed this equality to take the form of…of continuous warfare. Since man is naturally pitted against his fellows, Hobbes argued in favor of embracing a strong sovereign, with absolute…power”—he cut his eyes at the ragged thing—“seeing this as the only possible way to avoid constant bloodshed and, um, civil war. Though it seems extreme, one must remember that he wrote Leviathan, in which this theory is expressed, during…during the English Civil War, a particularly bloody time in England’s history.”
Mrs. Lambert beamed. “Excellent, Alex. Very well put. Would anyone like to expand on Alex’s answer?”
Chris, a ginger-haired boy with a slash of freckles across the bridge of his nose, eagerly raised his hand. Alex glanced back to Natalie, unable to push the hallucination from his mind. He heard a bunch of girls whispering and giggling behind him, clearly thinking their conversation private. They seemed highly interested in the attention he was paying Natalie, but he ignored them, gritting his teeth, refusing to look at the hallucination again, trying to focus solely on the lesson.
Chris was just finishing his answer. “Therefore,” he said, voice whistling out through his teeth, “when lived alone, life is nasty, brutish, and short.”
Mrs. Lambert nodded, turning back to the board and writing the three words: Nasty. Brutish. Short.
“And, can anyone tell me the Latin phrase Hobbes used to describe this? Alex, I’m sure you know it; go ahead.”
Alex paused a moment. Natalie was starting to lean listlessly to the side, head drooping toward the figure beside her. It tensed, flexing its long, pale fingers.
“Bellum omnium contra omnes,” he answered, not taking his eyes from Natalie.
Mrs. Lambert made some exclamation of praise, but Alex wasn’t listening. He knew the figure wasn’t real, wasn’t anything, but he felt chilled to the bone nonetheless. It was cradling her head now, pulling her close to its chest, running its hands over her as if excited.
Natalie raised a limp hand. “Excuse me, I…I don’t think I’m feeling well,” she said, her voice oddly toneless. “Is there a nurse?”
“Why, yes, Natalie,” Mrs. Lambert replied, looking concerned. “You do look a bit unwell. Her office is just at the end of this hallway—turn left and it’s only six doors along.”
Alex shot to his feet, shoving his books into his bag and saying, “Mrs. Lambert, I should probably go with her.”
“Oh, I think Natalie can find her way,” the teacher replied with a knowing smile, and Alex stopped.
He stared as Natalie left without glancing back at him, and the dread hallucination trailed after her, still whispering, its hands now at her forehead, stroking down her spine.
The giggles that broke out behind him sounded manic in comparison, making the scene even more surreal.
Of course, he told himself firmly, Natalie didn’t need help finding the nurse’s office. She was probably just still tired, her body adjusting to the new environment. Maybe she’d even caught a mild bug. There was nothing to worry about.
And, for some reason, I’m just still hallucinating.
He set his bag down and dropped back into his seat, watching as the door closed through the end of the thing’s rags. Class continued as normal, though without further involvement from him.
Bonus Chapter 5
Alex made his way quickly between the rows of lockers that made up the halls of Middledale High. The other students bustled around him, chattering loudly as they grabbed books from their lockers and made their way to their next classes.
But Alex had no intention of going to his next class. He was heading straight to the nurse’s office to see if Natalie was still there. It was an irrational thing to do, checking on Natalie. He was obviously having profound mental issues, and it could prove drastic to involve someone else.
But as much as he’d tried to reassure himself that this was all in his head, he just couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that something horrible was happening
to her, right now. Mrs. Lambert had seen Natalie was unwell too, when earlier this morning she’d looked fine. That wasn’t just his imagination.
He found himself speeding to a trot, and soon approached the door to the nurse’s office, which was shut. He remembered just in time that he should knock, and rapped quickly before bursting into the small room.
The creature in rags was standing less than two feet from him, with one hand at the small of Natalie’s back. Alex sucked in a sharp breath, and with it came the vague taste of dirt, and something wet. He almost gagged, staring. He’d never been this close to the thing before. Seeing it now, he could tell just how dilapidated its clothes were. They weren’t just tattered, but filthy. Streaks of dirt, and something dark and red, slashed along the back, and the loose sleeves were heavy with rot. Blue veins wrapped around the tendons in its wrists, standing out starkly through its papery skin, and it kept up an incessant, hissing whisper.
It was extraordinarily visceral for a hallucination.
Natalie didn’t even seem to have noticed him enter the room, sitting in the nurse’s chair with her head buried in her hands. Her glossy black hair spilled out between her fingers, cascading down about her knees. The thing stood as still as death, its torn gray clothes fluttering lightly around it.
“Natalie?”
Her head jerked up, eyes wide and staring, and she forced a weak smile.
“Hi. Alex.” Her voice sounded remote.
“I just wanted to check on you,” he said uncertainly. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh. Not well. I…can’t be…here anymore.” Her speech was oddly staggered, coming out in short bursts. Very unlike the exuberant, talkative girl he knew her to be.
If he had hoped seeing her would reassure him, he was sorely disappointed. She seemed worse than ever, worn down, drained of all personality. At her side, the thing turned in Alex’s direction and shifted slightly beneath its rags.
“Do you think you’re sick?” Alex pressed, keeping an eye on the hallucination.