His heart beating a little faster, he pushed himself into the light and headed toward the figure lying in the middle of the field. Venturing outside of the woods had been difficult enough—it still felt a little like those dreams where you somehow wind up at school wearing only your underwear—but walking into this bubble of bright daylight in a sea of darkness was more than a little unsettling. So he trotted quickly, trying his hardest to brush off the irrational feeling that he was being watched. As he drew closer to the black thing he walked faster and faster until he was jogging, then practically running. When he finally closed the last few steps and slowed to a complete stop, the figure’s identity revealed itself to him.
A garbage bag. By the looks of it, filled with beer cans.
The tenseness melted out of him in that way that leaves your heart still racing and your muscles feeling twitchy. He gave an inward sigh and turned around. He was relaxing his shoulders when he caught a glint of movement up in the commentator’s box.
There was a short yet very horrible instant when he wondered if his oversight would leave him dead or dying in the next second, but the thought was quickly overridden by the realization that the only thing that mattered at the moment was that he moved.
Patrick darted to his right and started running as fast as he could. There was a second when he thought he might actually be running from a nighttime illusion, but that theory was thoroughly debunked when the crack of a gunshot rang in his ears and threatened to split his brain in half. His heart began to pound and panic clutched at his chest, and he tore across the field and toward the parking lot with every ounce of speed he could manage. When he was just about to pass the bleachers and exit the field, along with the line of sight of the sniper, a cop car whipped around the corner and barreled into the lot, its flashers spraying colored light in every direction like a sprinkler and its headlights glaring at him savagely. Patrick didn’t need to see the gun poking out of the passenger’s side window before he decided to alter course.
He veered to the left on impulse and nearly ran into a metal beam. He weaved around it and dove under the bleachers, running through the shadows and the food wrappers alike. Another loud crack split the air, though in his panic he couldn’t tell which direction it had come from. He came out the other side of the bleachers and left the grass, now darting across the pavement of the outdoor basketball court.
There was a dim yellow light on the side of each building, and it was difficult for Patrick to stick to the shadows while running at full speed. He began to cross the open quad when he heard another gunshot. This one came from somewhere on the other side of the school, and before he could slow his mind enough to consider where he was planning on going, Dean burst from out of the darkness, heading straight for him.
He was hardly a blurry shape moving in the dirty light, but the thought he impressed on Patrick’s mind was clear:
“OTHER WAY.”
Patrick came to a skidding halt as Dean passed him, and without another thought followed the huge wolf into the shadows of the uniform buildings. Dean led him between two classrooms then up a sloped walkway with long buildings on either side, dotted with doors every twenty feet or so. At the top they turned left and crossed once again onto the field.
“SNIPERS ON THE FIELD,” Patrick shouted mentally.
The voice in his mind responded immediately, “FRONT BLOCKED OFF.” A pause, then, “GATE AHEAD.”
In the glare of the stadium lights Patrick could see it: a break in the fence at the far end of the field—a little swinging door held by a thick chain that was for some bizarre reason long enough for practically anyone to fit through.
Another crack rang through the night and Patrick felt like he was losing his mind, running frantically across this field, expecting the sting of a bullet at any moment, the ground and death coming up to meet him in one quick instant.
When they were halfway across the field two words shot into his mind:
“VEER LEFT.” They were so loud and clear that they almost moved his body of their own power. He dug his paws into the dirt and redirected his momentum to the left in a heaving motion. Immediately after breaking stride with Dean there were several ear-splitting reports from behind. Suddenly very aware of how close he had just come to being hit and not wanting to keep in a straight line he opted to veer again, now heading back to his original destination. He could see that Dean had done the same and the two of them were once again converging onto the same path. There was one more terrible moment when Patrick could almost feel the guns trained on him, feel the searing bites of the bullets that would pepper his back at any second. Death was closing in fast and all he could do was pump his legs, praying to God that his screaming muscles would bear him the last few yards to that little opening in the gate.
Dean reached the gate first and shot through, followed closely by Patrick. The immediate threat of being shot was now gone, but the panic hardly lessened. Dean continued to run and Patrick followed obediently, certain that the guy still knew the layout of the town much better than he did.
The two of them headed up a dark alley and emerged into a small shopping center. It was immediately clear that there was at least one sniper lying in the bed of a truck parked off to the left, though when they turned and darted into the darkness of yet another pair of buildings it seemed that whoever it was had apparently lost his nerve or fallen asleep.
They emerged this time in a neighborhood, lit by only a single streetlamp and sufficiently filled with shadow. They ran down the street toward the trees at the end of the cul-de-sac, but when they were halfway there a car at the end clicked on its high beams, drenching them in piercing white light. Dean twisted suddenly to the left and crossed the street. Patrick, hardly able to see the vague shape in front of him for the blinding light in his eyes, followed what he hoped was the right path. When they left the beam Patrick could see that it had been a cop car, and there was at least one gun protruding from its windows, as he had of course expected. The next second the two of them were running in the narrow space between two fences (the existence of which, in a neighborhood consisting primarily of shared fence lines, Patrick owed exclusively to blind luck).
They exited the dark passage and were finally met by the woods. The trees swallowed them and the world went black, but Dean kept running and Patrick was in no mood to stop. There were houses here and there, but all of them were completely silent and without light. They ran a seemingly random course through the trees, the adrenaline in Patrick’s body wearing off and his lungs becoming more and more reluctant to draw breath.
Just when Patrick thought his legs might give out at any moment, Dean slowed down. The two of them came to a stop in front of a house so dark and ancient-looking that it might have been abandoned. They panted with their heads hung low, and Patrick felt like he might never take a decent breath again. His lungs burned and it was all he could do to keep himself from falling over.
Patrick looked over Dean to the porch of the decrepit old house that stood in the center of the clearing. It was even blacker than the trees, sheltered even from the scant light of the moon, and he could just barely make out some patio furniture and a railing on its porch. His heart was still hammering and the shapes seemed to blur and swim in his vision, but he almost thought there was something lumped into one of the chairs…
That was when a single point of light bloomed in the darkness.
The fur on his back began to crawl as he smelled the harsh stink of smoke and saw a glint of light, as if on some shiny surface.
“MOVE!” Patrick screamed with his mind, heaving his body forward once more and nearly knocking Dean over in the process. No sooner did the two of them start moving again than the crack of a gun rang through the trees, assaulting Patrick’s already ringing ears. It was so loud that at first he couldn’t hear anything at all and wondered whether Dean had been hit, but after another second he could hear the wolf’s footsteps pu
mping beside his.
The two of them ran for another several minutes until all they could see in any direction was trees. They stopped and Patrick immediately fell to the ground, holding his chest. He looked down and could see the faint outline of his hand clutching at his shirt as he gasped and struggled to fill his lungs with air. He had barely even noticed changing.
When Dean stopped he merely sat down, remaining in his wolf form. He panted heavily and saliva dripped from his open mouth, but he didn’t seem to be nearly as winded as Patrick. He may have been imagining it, but Patrick thought he could sense a huge amount of anger—actually sense it—coming off of the hulking wolf.
After a few moments Dean gave something between a grunt and a growl and walked off into the woods.
Patrick wanted to know where he was going, or what they should do next, but it was several minutes before he could breath comfortably, much less stand up.
*****
“I’m telling you, Patrick, you must have been out.” His father reached to the center of the table and hefted a scoop of spaghetti onto his plate. “There must have been a dozen gunshots in the course of five minutes.”
Patrick tried to smile, but couldn’t seem to get his mouth to move. He got the same result whenever he tried to take a bite of his food.
“It was crazy,” his father continued excitedly, “I’ll bet the whole neighborhood woke up.”
Up until tonight Patrick’s parents had been allowing him to take his dinner up to his room (at least on the rare occasions that he felt like eating anything). But this time when he got home and tried to sneak upstairs his mother had stopped him and asked if he could join them tonight. He wanted nothing more than to grab a few extra hours of rest, but he went without a fight; he figured it meant a lot to her if it were important enough to ask. And in some small way he thought that maybe he owed it to them; all he ever did anymore was sulk in his room, and in the words of his mother “sleep an abnormal amount”.
Patrick grimaced inwardly at his father’s overreaction to his “very deep sleep,” which was an obvious attempt to lighten the mood. He had apparently poked his head into his son’s room just to “see if it had woken him up too,” and was surprised to see the lump on the bed completely unmoving.
“Boy, I just about poked you to see if you were still alive!”
At that, a wave of unease washed over Patrick, and when considering how shoddy his “perfect insurance” had actually been, he felt much like he had the previous night after hearing a gunshot and considering how the bullet could have just as easily hit its mark. He needed to be more careful; the thought of how close he had come to either dying or being grounded for eternity filled him with a certain dread, very much like nausea. In fact, he was quite certain that the remainder of his spaghetti would go uneaten, at least for the time being (no one could ever say just how hungry his father would be at the start of each meal).
And on top of everything he was bone-tired, his muscles aching from both the chase the night before and the overall lack of sleep that had been steadily gaining on him. He had been following a regime in which he went to bed as early as possible, searched with Dean around one o’clock, and got in a few more hours of shuteye before the sun came up. He could only last so long on such a schedule, however; failing to procure the first segment of sleep due to a simple inability to shut off his frazzled mind was all too easy, considering his recent experiences. And once he finally got to sleep somewhere around four or five o’clock in the morning it was nearly impossible to pull himself out of bed when the alarm went off so soon after. The lack of sleep left his muscles unable to repair themselves, and simple acts such as climbing the stairs or walking to school were becoming increasingly difficult. As a wolf things were generally easier physically, but even such a perfect, energy-efficient animal had its limits.
Patrick put his elbow on the table and rubbed his temple. A dull ache was forming there.
He wouldn’t be searching tonight.
After dinner Patrick lugged himself upstairs. He tried to sleep, but despite the weariness in his body that was so deep it was painful, it was the classic case of Train Brain; his thought process was traveling a mile-a-minute and he would give anything for it to only slow down long enough for him to jump off.
When he couldn’t manage to shut off the flow of thoughts and fears even after five, ten, fifteen minutes, he sat up in his bed and looked outside. His family had eaten a relatively early dinner; there was still plenty of daylight left. The thought of going for a walk wasn’t a very pleasant one, but it was better than lying in bed and going mad, and certainly better than going downstairs and acting awkward and guilty around his family.
Just a little more physical exhaustion should do the trick, he thought dryly.
Despite the screaming protest of his legs, he got out of bed and went downstairs. He found his father in the dining room, reading an electronics magazine at the table which had now been cleared of food. He looked up as Patrick entered the room.
“Hey, Pat,” he said almost suspiciously, obviously not used to seeing his son at all after dinner. “What’cha up to?”
“Can I go for a quick walk?” Patrick asked quietly, hoping that his mother wasn’t close enough to hear his request and issue her own concern. “I really need to clear my head. I promise I’ll be back before the sun goes down.” Speaking to one of his parents without lying or withholding information was a refreshing change of pace, and that fact in itself was a little depressing.
His father took a second to consider, then said, “Isn’t it dangerous to walk anywhere alone?”
“Only at night,” Patrick insisted in a way that might have been a little too defensive. He attempted to make his voice more casual: “All the attacks have been at night. I don’t think it ever comes out during the day.”
His father lowered his magazine and considered this for an uncharacteristically long moment, looking at Patrick in a way that was oddly probing for the man who had thought the name “Aralaysia” sounded like a farting disease.
Finally, he said, “Alright, as long as you stay in town, never out of sight of people.”
“I will, I promise.”
And there was the lie.
That’s more like it, he thought.
*****
Patrick had immediately dismissed the idea of visiting the deserted playground, but he found himself drifting into town, behind Sunset Market, and up the sloping road into the trees regardless.
It was late in the day and the sun was well on its way down to the mountains, but Patrick figured he had at least an hour before it would be dark enough to warrant heading home.
It was just as barren and quiet as before; the old building still stood dark and untouched and the playground equipment sat about the scattered, dirty woodchips, as lonely and childless as ever. Patrick stepped over the little wooden divider and plopped himself down on the swing he had used the other day.
For several minutes he sat, the train still chugging along, its cargo consisting of uncertainties and questions, with not a single answer or bit of comfort to be found in its holds. Image after image flashed across his mind and he closed his eyes in an attempt to shut them out: a flurry of leaves, Dean’s teeth digging into the flesh on his neck, a wolf staring up at him from outside his window, Mr. Vincent’s tired face, a sharp point of light followed by a glint off the barrel of a gun, Rachel sitting beside him on the swing, smiling softly—and suddenly every fiber of his being cried for this image to be true, for his eyes to open and see that it wasn’t a product of his mind after all, that it was real, that Rachel was right there on the other swing as she had been that magical day…
Patrick opened his eyes.
“Hello,” Rachel said softly.
Chapter 21
Rachel’s face was touched with the faintest smile, and she clutched at the chains of the swing with her small hands. She was regarding Patrick with eyes that were friendly
and welcoming.
But it wasn’t Rachel at all, Patrick thought. In the same way he had sensed it in the woods he knew that the girl sitting next to him was someone else. Someone who didn’t belong.
He only stared in shock for several moments, and the thing inside of Rachel waited patiently for him to speak.
“Who are you?” he asked when he could find the nerve to do so.
It considered this for moment, then said, “I am one, and I am many, as is so with every creature.” It paused, looking out at the trees. “There was a time when my mother called me Grace, though when I broke my earthly ties I took my true name: Ramildienne. It was what the wind called me…”
Patrick didn’t know what to do or say. There was a moment when he wondered if he might be in immediate danger, but he ultimately decided that he couldn’t care less at the moment. He could only stare into the eyes of the friend he once knew, baffled as to how they could be right in front of his own and yet so far away. His heartbeat was incredibly heavy and fast, and he thought that if life was possible after this most bizarre and horrible dream he might have a massive coronary.
“Why are you here?” His voice sounded so sad and quiet in his ears.
Ramildienne looked back at him through Rachel’s bright eyes, then again to the trees. She gave a sigh through her nose, then began talking.
“I understand that I have taken something from you. It is because of you that I am here now, so I owe it to you at least to explain myself.” She paused for what felt like minutes, gazing up at all the leaves that were just beginning to turn yellow, considering. (She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the trees, Patrick noticed.) Then she continued.