The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (2 page)

“
So
you are done with your school work,” Albert says while handing
me a water bottle, as I try to catch my breath.

“
My
finals went great, thanks for asking,” I mumble before gulping
down some water.

“
Did
you say something?” Albert asks.

When
I shake my head, Albert huffs out his nose and shakes his head back.
“I’ve planned something special for you today,” he
says. “Think of it as a welcome to summer training exercise.”

Oh,
jeez.

He
continues, “I just had my men clear out the forest behind your
school. Hayvee has planned a very special dinner for you tonight, but
you need to earn it. I have armed ten of my men with paintball guns;
you will get a five minute head start and then you need to evade them
for a full hour. Then, if you are free of paint, we’ll head to
dinner. “

I
lean back to look at Albert’s crony still sitting on the
bleacher, in the first interaction I’ve ever been able to
illicit from one of the cronies; the man raises a black eyebrow at
me. I’m really starting to regret the stinky shoes thing.

Albert
smiles at me. “Alright, let’s jog.”

With
Albert ahead and two cronies behind (one just popped out of the
bleachers, they do stuff like that), we cut through the back of the
school to the hill that leads down to the forest. One of my favorite
things about my university, about Arcata, really, is the forest that
wraps around it. Just steps away from the lecture halls, dorms and
run-down party houses, is the lush redwood forest, filled with thick,
towering, ancient trees who’s soft red bark contrast so
strongly with the blanket of ferns that cover every inch of
underbrush. The forest probably has looked close to the same for
hundreds of years; except for the squatters and stoners that evade
the campus police by camping out in the hollowed-out-redwood-trunks.

We
stop by a small crowd of men, who stand in the middle of the trail.

Albert
speaks loudly, “There is a clearly marked and guarded
perimeter, if you come to it, turn around. The area has been cleared
of people, but if you sense any danger, press the button on your
watch.”

“
My
go-go-gadget watch?” I ask. It’s possible that my lack of
normal social interaction has driven me loony-tunes. Very possible.

Albert
looks to the sky and inhales through his nose, as if he’s
trying to find the patience to deal with me, then continues, “It
is four fifteen now, at four twenty, these men will attempt to track
you down and shoot you.” He leaves off the ‘with
paintball guns,’ which I think is an important detail worth
reiterating. “Return here at five twenty, or when shot.”
He looks at his watch, “Go, now.”

I
do, I sprint down the path determined to at least get the majority of
a mile between me and the band of cronies. I should have the
advantage, as I’ve been playing in this forest since…
forever, but if they only roped off a small section, I’m
screwed. I cut into an uphill deer trail that I’m pretty sure
goes along Jolly Giant Creek, then branches off, hopefully leading me
deeper in rather than to a perimeter line. I glance at my watch,
seeing that it’s four twenty-one. Alrighty. I keep running,
leaping over root after root. I disturb some birds, sending them to
fly to a higher perch. Great, I’m sending up signals. I slow
down.

The
best idea now would be to find a safe place to hide. An ideal vantage
would be up a tree, but it’s possible (if you’re good) to
climb a redwood, getting down is a bit trickier. So basically, if I
even managed to get up, I’d be stuck. I climb up and hurry
across a downed tree, and head into the thick of the forest. It’s
hard going, but I see a hollowed out trunk that could be ideal. The
trunk is not visible from any of the main paths and if I climbed it,
it’d be a hell of a lookout spot.

I
climb into the hollow, peeking my head out to take in the forest.
Staying very still and partially obscured by the trunk, I take in my
surroundings, a few downed trees, many standing ones, and a field of
clover covering the ground until it submerges in a small swamp area.
There are a couple of rustlings, a couple of sounds, but they’re
more likely squirrels than cronies.

Then
it occurs to me: why didn’t I get a gun? This game seriously
sucks.

Then
I see a movement, but not from my surroundings. I see it inches from
my face. A seam in the bark of the tree splits, and a human eye peers
out.

I
just manage not to scream.

My
mind races:
hallowed
ground, this whole place is hallowed ground
.
Demons can’t enter here. The entire area around Arcata was
blessed by seven priests the year I was born; and blessed again after
Andras had a soul-bound desecrate a path leading to the graveyard,
and within the doubly blessed graveyard, so he could enter while I
was a child. Priests check the whole area within and surrounding
Arcata every week.

The
eye fixes on me. And another seam opens, a second eye blinks; then a
third seam and a mouth opens. I’m backing away, grabbing for
the button on my watch, when the tree-face speaks, “Wait a
moment, Raven.” The Arcata tree has an Irish accent.

The
tree bulges forward, moving as if the bark exterior is a thick
membrane covering the figure within. Undefined, featureless hands
thrust forward, stretching toward me.

I
jump back; but the hands instead reach up and dig into the eye and
mouth holes, then they stretch and rip through the bark membrane
tearing a hole in the tree. Out of the tear spills long red curls
attached to a head I recognize. Madeline.

The
volatile earth-witch who despises me with a passion, Madeline;
and…the person who I owe my life to, plus some, Madeline.

I
hear a quick patter, patter; then, the sky starts to pour.

Day
One (Continued)

“
You
owe me.” This is the first thing to come out of Madeline’s
mouth after she climbs out of her tear in the tree. The tree had
closed the minute she climbed out, knitting back together like a
healing wound on fast forward.

She
stares at me, water dripping down to streak the dirt and tree matter
hanging off her face and hair. The tree spat her out fully
clothed—thank Mother Nature for small favors, but her clothes
are soaked within seconds in the rain “You owe me,” She
repeats, staring hard into my eyes.

“
Yeah,
I know,” I say, after ducking into the hollow in the tree,
because, I think she’s waiting for a response.

“
Good,”
she says, and then she visibly relaxes. She climbs into the hollow
and sits in the dirt, stretching out her legs and arms.

“
Cramped
journey?” I say, because, for whatever reason possibly because
she just climbed out of a tree, and now we’re huddled together
in the small confines of said tree, our silence feels awkward.

“
You
have no idea,” she says, rolling back her shoulders. “I
have been trying to contact you for a week. You’re a difficult
person to get to.”

“
I
guess that’s a good thing,” I say. “You have some
stuff… on your face.” I add because the large hunk of
tree hanging from her cheek really bugs me, but even after I tell her
she doesn’t rush to wipe it off.

Madeline
straightens up and sits cross legged. “I’m here to call
in your life debt, Raven.” Her words sound strange, layered, as
if her voice is three simultaneous voices.

Somehow
I know that her words hold a sort of magic. I know I should stop her
talking, I know I should cut off what she says before it becomes
binding, or something.

I
look up into her eyes and—I can’t do it. She didn’t
just save my life. She went against who she was, her beliefs, her
morals, to bring me back to life—to recompose my corpse. She
sacrificed trees and five of her friends to do it. It’s the
kind of debt you never pay off. Unfortunately, I have a lot of those
debts out there.

I
could be callous, I could say, screw you—I didn’t ask you
to save me. I didn’t ask for any of this. The mistakes I made
weren’t even in this lifetime. Maybe, I messed up in a past
life, fell for the wrong guy, but I’ve paid the price for that;
I’ll never stop paying the price for that. When I follow this
line of thinking— ‘the leave me alone, it’s not my
fault’ line of thinking—part of me feels right with it,
but that same part starts to feel a familiar feeling, a vast
emptiness inside. This feeling, the emptiness, scares me more than
anything that Madeline could ask me to do.

So
I stare into Madeline’s eyes, and say nothing.

“
I
hereby call the life debt between us. I hereby call the life debt
between us. Thrice said, and thrice struck between us. The great task
I lay upon you will fulfill this debt, only upon its completion. I
lay upon you the task of findin’ Stephen Tapper, and insurin’
his life and safety. I lay upon you the task of returning him to me’
side before three days of three past midsummer.” Though I’m
pretty sure that there shouldn’t be an echo in this confined
space, her words echo around me. I imagine them, bouncing around
until they find me, and then sinking into my skin. Though I’m
pretty sure I’m only imagining it, I feel tingles run through
my whole body.

“
Wait,
what?” I say. “What happened to Stephen? What’s
going on?”

She
sighs and finally wipes off the moss, or whatever, that’s
hanging from her cheek. When she looks up at me again, I notice how
red the areas around her eyes are—and I notice also that she’s
not giving me the usual look of loathing I get from her. Instead, the
tension around her mouth, the wideness of her eyes, speaks of
something closer to guilt or regret, maybe even remorse. She sighs
again, heavily, as if she had done her magic in a rush, like she had
to get it off her chest and now she is completely deflated.

But,
then she straightens up and the expression falls from her face and
again I see the self-righteous, angry Madeline, I kind of know.

“
I
have a small plane in the Arcata airport. Tomorrow at one p.m. meet
me at the Jumpin’ Bean Coffee Shop. We need to lose your
nannies.”

Thanks
,
that’s not demeaning. I repeat, “What happened to
Stephen?”

Madeline
stands, she has dirt caked all over her and for whatever reason it
bugs me that she’s not wiping it off. But not as much as it
bugs me that she’s not telling me what happened to Stephen.
Madeline nods, then runs out of our little tree hollow nook and dives
into the small clover marsh. Even though my guess it that the pond is
at most a foot deep and studded with clovers poking out of the mud,
it sucks her up in seconds, and she’s gone.

Holy
shish-kabob.

I
step out of the hollow and just stare at where Madeline disappeared
into the mud. The rain either slowed or stopped altogether, but
substantial drops still fall from the high branches of the trees. One
drop hits and runs down my cheek, but I don’t move.

“
What
just
happened
?”
I whisper, without meaning to I say the words out loud. Something
clearly happened to Stephen.

Stephen.

I’ve
thought about him so much this past year. I’ve even written him
letters—that I promptly destroyed. Stephen is the only person
in the world who knows what really happened between Andras and me
during our big showdown. He’s the one who told me to tell no
one what actually happened. And, truly, Stephen is the only person
that I would ever want to know what happened.

Honestly,
what I want more than anything in the world is to have one, good,
long conversation with Stephen. There are so many possibilities, so
many factors, so many things I need to know—and Stephen is
probably the only person in the world who could or would sort out
anything resembling the truth. But as long as Albert is my keeper,
I’ll never have a good, long, conversation with anyone.

The
facts are these: there are thousands of soul-bound out in the world.
All the Soul-bound, people who have sold their souls and are bound to
Hell as soon as they die, have been offered a deal: if they kill me,
their soul will be ‘unbound.’ If they kill me their ‘mark
of the beast,’ a swirly design every soul-bound has marked on
their wrist, will be removed.

If
I leave my protectors, the soul-bound will more than likely kill me.
If I am killed then Andras, the Grand Marquis of Hell (and
gatekeeper), will open the Gates of Hell.