* * *
I managed to survive the week without encountering too many misfortunes. My science test wasn’t a complete disaster and the people in my geography group were the types who strove for good grades.
On Friday, Robyn gave Tully and I a ride home, so after my last class I gathered my books from my locker and headed out to the parking lot. We piled into her old car just before the lemmings poured out of the hallways. I always smirked when I thought of that nickname for the popular crowd and their followers. Robyn had thought of it, of course.
“They’re like lemmings! They would all follow each other off of a cliff if that was the cool thing to do. Completely mindless,” she had said in disgust. The name had stuck ever since.
They each had their own cars, every one of them much newer than any of my friends’ vehicles of course, and often cut us off as we all made a mad dash for the exit. For some reason, however, they never bothered us when Robyn drove. I couldn’t tell if it was her tendency to cut corners a little too close, or if the state of her car itself acted as a deterrent. I didn’t care. As long as they stayed away I was happy.
As we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the tree-lined highway, I caught a glimpse of someone standing just within the tree line. It was Hobo Bob. My heart lurched and the hair stood up on my arms, though I couldn’t say why. I couldn’t figure out why he bothered me so much. He hadn’t been hanging around as much as before, and it wasn’t as if he ever approached any of us or shuffled around muttering and shouting random curse words. A thought flashed through my head, not as vivid as the one last Sunday of the weird dogs, but clearer. A picture of me standing in the clearing in the swamp where my friends and I had enjoyed the bonfire on Halloween. Only, it wasn’t dark out and I was wearing jeans and an old t-shirt. Just as quickly, the thought flickered away. I shook my head. Oh well.
I made it home in time to learn that my mom had decided we were all going out together to see a movie. This was a rare occurrence, since going to an actual movie theater cost an arm and a leg these days. I went to my room to deposit my backpack and put on a warmer shirt. Even Dad was going this time, and he grumbled as he grabbed the keys to our SUV. Usually I was on Dad’s side; we always had to go see a kid’s movie because of Aiden and the twins, and I could usually argue on behalf of the both of us. But tonight I welcomed a distraction, even a ridiculous one.
The movie, of course, was terrible. The plot was shallow and the main character was a talking rodent who thought that noisy bodily functions were the height of comedy. Naturally, my brothers liked it and my mother laughed along with them. Dad had the luxury of falling asleep but I merely gritted my teeth and bore it.
By the time we got home it was dark and time for the boys to go to bed. I feigned exhaustion and headed downstairs as well. I settled in bed and picked up the remote to my old TV. After seeing tonight’s movie, I needed something substantial to drag me back from what had been equivalent to cinema trash. Just my luck, an old classic adventure was on. The movie was already halfway over but it was more than enough to revive my spirits.
I fell asleep just as the main characters were fighting their way towards freedom. Perhaps that explains the dream I had. I was running through a forest somewhere, not the one behind my home, but one that seemed more primitive, with oaks and beech trees that had to be hundreds of years old. I kept tripping on their roots as I ran, my feet bare once again, the hem of my old sweat pants loose around my ankles as I struggled to stay ahead of something. At one point, I glanced down and screamed. It wasn’t roots I was tripping over but long, skinny, stick-like arms and fingers that reached out from the brush, gripping at my ankles.
Finally, one managed a decent grasp and I fell forward, my hands skidding in mud and leaf litter. I rolled over, panting hard, my loose hair sticking to my sweaty face, and saw glowing eyes above me. These ones were red and the only other thing I could see in the dark was several pairs of long incisors, leaning down to devour me.
I woke with a start and, I’m pretty certain, a startled shout. I blinked around my room, taking deep breaths as my heart began to slow its erratic beating. I groaned and fell back onto my pillows. My sheets were soaked with sweat and my head was pounding. So much for ignoring my dreams and visions. I cracked open an eye and glanced out my sliding glass door. Just before dawn, if I was guessing right. Sighing, I flung my sheets back and marched into my bathroom. I was tired, but I hated the feeling of cold sweat, so I thought a shower would be a good idea.
The hot water and fragrant scent of my lavender soap woke me up. Once dry, I pulled on a pair of old jeans and wrapped a towel around my torso. I walked back out into my room and opened my dresser. Of course, there was only one clean t-shirt left. Guess it was time to do some laundry.
I pulled the shirt out. It was rusty orange and portrayed the emblem of some summer camp I had attended a year or two before. The color caught my attention more than anything. The vision of me standing in the swamp wearing jeans and a t-shirt came back. Yup, the t-shirt had been this exact color. My skin prickled from the strangeness again.
Doesn’t mean anything, I told myself as I pulled the shirt over my wet head.
Along with hearing voices and having bad dreams, I had often times had premonitions as a child. When I was six, I burst into my parents’ room, crying because I had seen Rugby get hit by a car. Rugby was our family cat. My parents cajoled me and told me Rugby was fine. I wasn’t convinced. But he showed up that evening for his dinner and a few games of chase-the-string with my mom. At the end of the week, however, my dad found him on the side of the highway. We buried him in the backyard and planted an azalea over him. The azalea was now full grown, but we never got another cat after that.
That wasn’t the only time. When I was twelve, I dreamt that Bradley would fall and break his arm when we were playing on the slope behind our house. It was something he had said in my dream that triggered it, and when he repeated the same words, I jumped in front of him before he could leap onto the log that was about to give way.
Little premonitions, really, but enough to make anyone else worry. For a while, I thought I might have a sixth sense, but then the premonitions went away. Now I was beginning to wonder if they were coming back, along with everything else.
I sighed and flipped on the hair dryer. Once fully dressed and my curly hair reasonably tamed, I returned to my room to make my bed. That’s when I saw him, standing outside my sliding glass door. I froze and blinked, wondering if he was real.
He stood ten feet from the glass, just on the edge of the concrete patch that served as a small patio. He was as still as a statue and looked like white marble in the dim, early morning light. I was afraid to blink again, in case he disappeared.
A name floated up from my buried thoughts. “Fergus,” I whispered, wondering where on earth that name had come from.
The great white hound opened his mouth and his tongue lolled happily as he panted. He turned and trotted away across my backyard, his loping gait easy and smooth.
I cursed, half-mesmerized and half-panicked. Something was urging me to follow him, something I couldn’t control. Something instinctual, something . . . primitive.
Without another thought, I grabbed my shoes and shoved them onto my feet. I snatched my sweatshirt off the back of my desk chair and taking one more glance at my desktop, decided to go prepared this time. Fishing into my backpack, I found the small container of pepper spray I always kept there and shoved it into my pocket.
As the sun was just cresting the eastern horizon, its rays piercing the morning fog, I made my way down the steep slope into the woods of the swamp, puffing against the cold air and wondering if it was a ghost I was chasing. Wondering if I really was crazy after all.
-Nine-
Revelation
I was halfway to the clearing when I remembered why I had avoided these woods for the past week. Last time I was walki
ng this particular path, I had been moving in the opposite direction, trying desperately to escape a herd of demented garden gnomes. At least this time I had my pepper spray, though I wasn’t so sure pepper spray would work against a hallucination.
Despite my wariness, I trudged on. The morning was cool, the fog slow to burn off. I pulled my sweatshirt on and tucked my hands under my armpits and listened for any unusual sounds. The only thing I could hear was the familiar drip-splat of the condensation falling from the leaves. Even the footfalls of the huge dog several yards in front of me were silent, eerily so. As I followed him, I wondered what had gotten into me of late. I never was the type to seek out adventure or go off on my own if I wasn’t comfortable, or familiar, with the outcome. Any minute, those freakish gnomes could show up again. No, at any moment I could start seeing things again and if anyone happened to be hiking down here and saw me running in terror from nothing, well, let’s just say my reputation didn’t need any more damage.
I sighed, the smell of eucalyptus oil and the dampness that lingered around swamps flooding my senses. I shook my head and took note of how far we had traveled down the equestrian trail; about halfway between my house and the lowest point of the swamp.
The great hound vanished around a bend guarded by a small thicket of arroyo willows.
“Hey, dog, wait up!” I called after it. Another tally to add to the ‘signs Meghan is crazy’ chart.
Of course, the dog didn’t wait up and by the time I made it to the bend in the path, he had disappeared. I grumbled and considered turning around and going home. This was ridiculous. What had enticed me out here in the first place? I would have turned around and marched right back up that tall hill, but before I had a chance to move, something flashed in the corner of my eye.
I was wound up enough to actually make a small noise of surprise. Wonderful. Delusional and dramatic. I was turning out to be your average American, garden variety basket case. And of course the thing that had startled me was the white hound, appearing out of what seemed like nowhere (probably that clump of bushes growing close to the willows) and in front of a large eucalyptus tree that had fallen over recently.
The dog merely stood and stared at me, tongue lolling, eyes twinkling as if he was laughing at me. Great. Even animals thought I was crazy now. We stared at each other, maybe only for a minute, maybe longer. It didn’t take long for my patience to run thin.
“Okay dog, I don’t know why you led me down here, but if it was to make a fool out of me, you succeeded. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll walk back home and maybe go back to sleep or get some homework done.”
I turned slowly, my head hanging low, muttering to myself as I hunched over against the early morning chill.
“He didn’t lead you down here to make a fool out of you,” someone said.
Once, when I was twelve or thirteen, my little brothers thought it would be funny to sneak up on me while I was watching a scary movie with my friends during a sleep-over. They waited until the movie was over and we were downstairs discussing the likelihood that some mutated alien would come crashing through my door in the middle of the night to slaughter us all. We ran out of popcorn, and seeing as it was my house, I was volunteered to go upstairs to make more. I expected my brothers to leap out at me once I reached the top of the staircase, and then maybe somewhere else just inside the kitchen when I made it past the staircase unscathed. What I hadn’t expected was for my brothers to dress up as aliens and to hide in the pantry. I almost knocked one of Bradley’s teeth out and came trainer diapers close to peeing my pants. That was nothing compared to my reaction now.
Obviously, I wasn’t expecting the dog to answer me so if I screamed I had good reason to. I just hoped I hadn’t woken anybody up in the houses surrounding the swamp. The last thing I needed was for the fire department to show up to rescue the potential murder victim who was just some hysterical high school girl who heard voices. Yes, my classmates would love to sink their teeth into that information . . .
When my wits returned (well, most of them at least), I shot my head up, grasping my pepper spray so tight I was surprised I didn’t accidentally spray myself. There, leaning against a tree, was a young man. He hadn’t been there before. I may have a tendency to hallucinate, but I would have noticed him when I first arrived.
He looked relaxed, his arms linked over his broad chest and his legs casually crossed at the ankles. His hair was a dark reddish-brown color and from this distance, his eyes took on a strange, dark shade of green. I had never seen anyone like him in my life. Yet, he was uncomfortably familiar; as if he were one of those people you bump into everywhere but have never officially met.
As soon as my sense of self-awareness returned, my eyes darted around and I swallowed hard. Who was this person? Where had he come from? Did he have anything to do with those crazy gnome things from the other day? Should I run screaming for my life?
“Don’t worry, I’ve taken care of them.”
I gaped. Huh? Who are you?! “Taken care of them?” was what I said instead, as if that were the most important issue at the moment.
“The faelah. They’re all gone.”
“Faelah?”
The young man grinned and shook his head sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He looked tired and I wondered what had caused it.
“The small creatures that chased you last week. Humans might call them goblins or trolls.”
“Or gnomes?” I offered, and then started in surprise. What was I doing? Taking part in this conversation as if it were normal to stand around on a Saturday morning and chat about imaginary creatures as if they were real. With a strange, albeit, good-looking guy.
“Yes,” he said carefully, “or gnomes.”
I forgot my timidity and whispered, “You saw them too?”
He nodded. Something about the look he gave me seemed familiar, and once again a snippet of a dream or memory flashed across my mind: this same person, standing before me in the light of the full moon wearing a hooded trench coat.
“Have we met before?” I braved.
He only nodded. “Yes, under unfortunate circumstances.”
I waited for him to continue, my fingers all too aware of the small canister of pepper spray in my hand. This was just getting to be too weird.
“You were lured here a week ago, in the middle of the night, and I had to, uh, dispatch a threat.”
I felt my knees go weak. That nightmare I couldn’t quite remember; the one with the dogs . . . That had actually happened?
At some point I found my voice. “Who are you?”
“I am called Cade.” He grinned, but kept his distance.
That struck me as something odd to say. I am called Cade. Not, my name is Cade. But the name seemed familiar too. “And do you have a last name, Cade?”
He shrugged. “Not one I find much use for.”
What on earth did that mean? “Well, I would like to know it anyway.”
“MacRoich, Cade MacRoich.”
No, I didn’t know any Cade MacRoichs. Suddenly another thought hit me. “If I was lured down here last weekend, and all that about those corpse dogs-”
“Cumorrig,” he interrupted.
“Okay,” I said, not really caring what fancy name he wanted to give them, “If I wasn’t dreaming, why did I wake up in my room?”
Cade grimaced. “I don’t think you’ll like my answer.”
I gestured for him to continue. I didn’t think I would like it either, but it seemed important that I know.
“I carried you.”
“Okay, thanks for clearing that all up, but I think I’ll get back home now.”
The last thing I needed was some creepy stalker who broke into my house in the middle of the night, no matter how kind the gesture or how attractive he was.
“Meghan, wait.”
I froze an
d got my pepper spray ready, all the while trying to convince the little hairs on the back of my neck to calm down. I turned, my eyes narrowing even as my heart sped up.
“And just how is it that you know my name?”
He didn’t answer. He only stood still as a statue, his dark green eyes studying me carefully. It should have creeped me out even more but it didn’t. I worked up my courage.
“And how did you get into my room without waking up the entire house?”
“You left the door open when you sleepwalked into the swamp.”
Fair enough. “But how did you know where I lived?”
“Fergus showed me.”
I glanced over at the grayish-white wolfhound. He had an intelligence about his gaze, but I never heard of a dog who could lead someone to an exact location that wasn’t his own home.
I took a breath and relaxed, but only a little. “Listen, I appreciate you helping me the other night, I really do. But this is getting a little too weird for me, and I have too much weird in my life as it is.”
I turned to walk away.
“Meghan, did you hear voices growing up?”
I froze. I forgot about why it worried me that he knew my name or where I lived. He could have figured that all out in the past few days by simply paying attention. But to know about my childhood? That was some serious stalking.
“Especially around trees. Did you think they spoke to you?”
His voice was gentle, and even though he moved slowly and carefully towards me, I felt like a rabbit about to spring away from a fox. How could he know this? The sound of the wailing voices and the image of the trees cracking at their bases flooded back to me, the memory blurred at the edges like a water-stained document.
I cried out and stepped back. “Stay away from me,” I hissed, the emotion in my voice thick.
“I already know you’ve seen strange things. Gnomes you called them, and the Cumorrig. Do you often have nightmares or have visions of things before they happen?”
My head was spinning and it felt like I couldn’t pull enough oxygen into my lungs. I stumbled as I took a step back. The golden light of dawn pierced through the trees the way water flowed through a sieve. I didn’t care about how beautiful it was. Right then it seemed as if the split sunlight were a thousand probes, searching me out and prying into my mind. Who are you Meghan Elam? What are you? they seemed to taunt as Cade’s questions hit more and more closely to home.
I hadn’t realized he had moved closer, and his voice, now a whisper, made me jump.
“And your eyes . . . what color are they?”
I looked up into his, frightened and overwhelmed and enchanted all in the same breath. I could hear his strong heartbeat, though he was careful to keep his distance. His own eyes, I had once decided were a very dark green were now paler, more golden than before. It hadn’t been a trick of the light, it hadn’t been my miscalculation. They had changed, just as mine changed.
“You see, they were silver when I first met you, but that could have been a result of the moonlight. They were hazel when you arrived fifteen minutes ago, but now they are almost blue. Your eyes change color, of their own accord, don’t they?”
And just like that, the spell he had me under snapped. I felt suddenly angry, and terrified. I pushed at his chest and realized it was like trying to move a mountain. Somehow I managed to shove him away, and then I took advantage of his slight surprise and put distance between us.
“Leave me alone!” I shrieked. “You come near me again, you freak, and I’ll call the cops!”
I bolted, sprinting up the horse path as fast as I could. I still clutched the pepper spray, and I couldn’t say why I hadn’t used it. That would have slowed him down, surely.
I never heard him come after me and even as I climbed the slope and stumbled onto our shaded back lawn, I didn’t look back. It was like the day the gnomes chased me all over again, but this time I was not escaping some horrible little creatures, I was fleeing from an incredibly good-looking guy who could very well understand me completely. I was either saving myself from that serial killer I always imagined lived down in the swamp, or I had finally gone over the deep end.
-Ten-
Message
For two weeks I ignored what had happened the morning I met Cade for the second time. I never saw him at school posing as the homeless man. It had dawned upon me later that day, once I was safely and securely locked away in my room, that all this time it was him who had been lingering outside my high school. Well, that and the fact that the memories from the night I had wandered into the swamp started surfacing in my mind, like bubbles of wax in my lava lamp. I never ventured outside my house, and I never saw his dog Fergus. It was hard forgetting about what he had said, though. If I had been completely honest, I would have answered yes to each of his questions. I did hear voices, I did see things, and my eyes did change color. But so had his, I was certain of it.
My friends at school noticed my behavior too. Thomas asked me that first week if I had gotten into a fight with my parents. I had looked at him as if he had gone nuts, but he just shrugged and said I seemed even more introverted than usual. After that I tried to act more normal. Well, normal for me at least.
But the truth was, as hard as I tried, I simply could not erase that meeting with Cade MacRoich from my memory. If that was his real name. Who on earth was he? A local college student looking for a little thrill in his life? Some ex-convict with spare time on his hands? And how could he have known about all my little eccentricities? Even my best friends weren’t privy to all my secrets. And why was he so interested in me? I was no one special. It was too puzzling, but I was determined to let it go. I had enough drama in my life.
It was during Thanksgiving weekend that I found the note taped to my sliding glass door. I had kept it locked around the clock and never used it since returning from the strange meeting with Cade. I feared he might try to sneak in and kill me.
At first I thought it was a message from Tully or Robyn, but when I unlocked the door and peeled the note off, I realized the paper was far too ornate to belong to either of them. It was expensive paper, I could tell, and falling victim to my curiosity, I flipped it over. There was an actual wax seal keeping the folded edges shut. I studied the design. An ornate Celtic knot with an eagle in the center. Intrigued, I walked to my desk and fished out my pocket knife, carefully loosening the seal so it wouldn’t break. I opened up the letter to find it addressed to me. The writing was impeccable, but not overly ornate. It made me think of a love note that’d been written during England’s Georgian period. Hah. Me get a love letter? That would be stranger than fiction.
I began to read and immediately I knew it was from Cade. I had vowed to forget what had happened, but apparently, he hadn’t. I should have crumpled it up and thrown it away, right then and there. Or, better yet, I should have taken it straight to my parents and insisted they call the police. Who would have thought that I would ever have a stalker? But deep down, I wanted this mystery cleared up, and the only way to do that was to start by reading the note. Sighing and trying to convince myself nothing bad would come of reading a simple letter, I continued on:
Dear Meghan,
I want to start this letter by apologizing for our last two meetings. As you can tell, I am not at all adept at making proper introductions. Forgive me for not contacting you sooner, but I thought it best to give you some time to let everything settle in. I wish only to make you aware of two things: who it is you really are, and where it is you come from. I will not go into detail in this letter, for these are not topics which should be discussed in such an impersonal manner. Do allow me, however, to explain our first meeting. You were lured into the swamp, not by myself, but by another who knew of you and who wished to learn more about you. I cannot remember if I explained my presence in the first place, but it was my duty to clear the area around your home of the faelah,
and I was unable to finish my job before you arrived. I can only apologize to you again and hope that you might come to forgive me.
Another matter that seemed to disturb you was the fact that I did indeed return you to your residence after you became unconscious after the whole incident. Please believe me when I say that nothing ungentlemanly occurred; I merely wished to see you safe at home, and though you may not believe it, Fergus is a rather clever hound and he did lead the way. On the matter of knowing your name, I must postpone that information until we meet again. I realize this is all shocking to you, but if you try to contact the police, they will not find me. I would not blame you if you did, but you must trust me on this matter.
I will not approach you or seek you out. I shall simply wait until you are ready to learn more. When you are prepared to meet with me again, leave me a note in the hollow knothole of the oak tree along the swamp trail, the tree that is closest to your home. In the mean time, should you find your curiosity unquenchable, I suggest you learn as much about the ancient Celts as you can.
Most sincerely,
Cade MacRoich
I finished the letter and dropped it into my lap, and after a moment I picked it up and read it again. Who wrote letters like that anymore? The language was so, antiquated. When I gave it some thought, it dawned upon me that when he had spoken to me in the swamp, he hadn’t sounded like he was from this decade, or even this century. It was extremely odd, but then again, I attracted odd the way flowers attract bees.
I glanced up at the blank screen of what used to be my dad’s old work computer. So much for forgetting about all that had happened in the past few weeks. I didn’t know how long I stared, numb and scared, at that old monitor but at some point in time, three things clicked in my head.
First, whether all this was a hallucination or not, it was happening and I had to address it. No more pushing it aside and hoping it would go away.
Secondly, I had another option. My whole life my only choices with regards to my issues had been therapy and medication. Cade offered a third possibility; that all this was real and that he could explain it all to me. Unlikely and crazy as it seemed, I shouldn’t shun it simply because modern society would label me mentally unstable. News flash: I was halfway there already.
And last but not least, I was curious. There, I admitted it. I was one hundred percent, flat out fascinated with what Cade MacRoich had presented to me. Of course, I was terrified as well, but I had always been the type to tackle a good mystery and I was never satisfied with a cover-up story if I felt all the clues hadn’t added up.
So, taking a deep breath, I pulled out my binder, flipped to a blank sheet of paper and jotted down the words faelah and ancient Celts. I was curious, yes, but I was going to go about this the right way. Before meeting with Cade again, I was going to do my research; see how much I could find out on my own. Perhaps I would learn he was the crazy one after all.