Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (124 page)

I had had migraines when I was younger, in the years after they found me in Los Angeles, and a few since then, so it wasn’t a complete impossibility. In order to add to the act, I pressed my arm against my forehead. Too bad I had forgotten about the scrapes.

“Meghan! What did you do to your arms?”

“Uhh,” I answered dully, “tripped in P.E. on Thursday. We were playing softball.”

The grumbling sound next to my ear told me that she chose to believe my story, for the time being at least. She helped me down the spiral staircase that descended into my room.

“You’ll kill yourself climbing down if I don’t help you,” she insisted.

Once downstairs, I sat on the edge of my bed and told her I could take it from there. She stayed for a bit longer, closing the blinds that hung from my sliding glass door while making comments under her breath about my messy room and its likely contribution to my headache. Mom liked things immaculate.

Finally she left, but only after I feigned lying down and going to sleep. I listened to her footfalls as she climbed the carpeted steps, but even after she had closed the door behind her, I stayed in bed, my forearm over my forehead and my eyes glued to the glowing stars stuck to the ceiling.

Only after my breathing evened out and I no longer felt the waves of terror flooding over me, did I allow my thoughts to wander back to my nightmare from the night before, and most likely, the reason for my current state of scraped skin and exhaustion.

-Eight-

Familiar

Of course, no answers ever came to me and after an hour of agonizing reflection, I came to the conclusion that I had simply had a nightmare the evening before and that my scrapes and bruises had been a result of a violent case of sleepwalking. Though my room remained fully intact, I knew there was no other explanation.

Despite the fact that there were still bits and pieces of my dream missing, I felt somewhat satisfied with my conclusion. After all, it wasn’t like I had never forgotten a dream I’d had before.

I joined my family for dinner, putting on my freshest face and brushing aside any concerns they voiced aloud. Of course, my mother was the only one to display any true worry. The boys had no idea I had almost fainted (they had been at the grocery story with my dad when I had first come home from Tully’s). Dad had merely given me his customary once over. As long as we had all our limbs and weren’t hemorrhaging from the head, there was absolutely nothing wrong with us.

After dinner we huddled down to watch TV before Mom and Dad started getting the twins and Aiden ready for bed. They all complained when the time arrived, but somehow my parents managed. Logan and Bradley soon followed, grumbling about how late it wasn’t and how they weren’t even tired as they yawned and rubbed their eyes. I grinned, finding something amusing in their simple, childhood woes.

Yawning, I called a goodnight to my parents. I had school in the morning, hurrah, and a test early in the week. It would do me no good to start the week out cranky and tired. I clambered down my spiral staircase, half eager for the warmth of my bed, half afraid of what would happen once I fell asleep.

The visions and voices and nightmares were returning, I could deny it no longer, but I wasn’t sure I could deal with it again. I couldn’t go back into therapy and the medication I had taken when I was younger had made me feel nauseous all the time. And the truth of it was, it never really helped. I only pretended that it did so they wouldn’t give me more of the awful medicine. Like before, I would just have to find a way to ignore my visions. If I was lucky, in a week or two everything would go back to normal once again. I pulled on my pajamas and curled into bed, counting imaginary pink and yellow butterflies visiting white flowers as I tried to keep my frightening memories at bay.

* * *

Monday morning was a riot in our house, as usual. I packed a lunch and grabbed my backpack, squeezing out the front door right before Jack and Joey started throwing cereal at one another. The morning was foggy once again, that nice thick fog that rolled in from the Pacific Ocean and nestled itself in the lower areas of the coast.

I strolled along the side of the road, making my way down to Tully’s. A group of middle school kids waited for their bus on the corner of the street. Today they stood huddled around the street sign, the older kids trying to look cool while the little kids picked up acorns and launched them at one another.

As I watched, something caught the corner of my eye. I turned and glimpsed the dark sweep of a bird’s wing disappearing into the redwood that stood behind the wide stone barrier wall that denoted our neighborhood. I stared at the spot where the wing had disappeared, thinking it was just a crow. As I watched, however, the bird edged closer to a gap between the drooping branches.

I sucked in a breath. The thing was huge, nearly as big as an eagle, and it stared, no,
glared
right at me. Not for the first time that week, an icy chill prickled up my spine.
No freaking way
. It was the raven from last week. I knew it without a doubt. Unless, of course, there happened to be huge ravens lurking about our area lately, and I highly doubted that. I cast another wary glance at the bird. It appeared to be thinking, calculating, deciding whether or not it wished to eat my eyes or my liver first.

“Meghan!”

I nearly screamed. Instead, I jumped and let out a pitiful noise that sounded closer to a Chihuahua yelping. All the kids at the bus stop turned and looked at me. Most of them started to laugh and point.

Feeling my cheeks turn pink, I turned towards Tully, who also had a big grin on her face.

“Get out much in this wide world?” she teased.

I grumbled at her and marched to her driveway where her mom’s car waited. She had the flu or something, so Tully was allowed to drive the car to school. Despite our advanced ages, we still didn’t have our own cars. Vehicles were necessary in a rural town, but they were also expensive. I understood that. My parents weren’t destitute by any means, but having all us kids took a toll on their finances. Luckily, I had friends to bum rides off of.

I threw my backpack into the back seat of the silver station wagon with Tully’s and we climbed in. As we pulled up to the stop sign, I looked back up into the redwood tree. I told myself it was to avoid eye contact with the kids I had embarrassed myself in front of, but I really wanted to know if the raven was still there. To my great relief, or perhaps disappointment (I honestly couldn’t say which), the unnerving bird was gone.

Just another hallucination,
I told myself as the car chugged along,
just another figment of your imagination.

When we pulled into the high school parking lot five minutes later, I found myself scanning the edge of our campus.

I had no idea I was doing it until Tully asked, “Whatcha looking for?”

“Nothing,” I said automatically, leaning back into the seat and basking in the warmth of the car’s heater for a bit longer. The day would warm up, once the fog wore off, but at the moment it was cold and damp.

I sighed and glanced back out the window. What
had
I been looking for? As we found a place to park, I reached into the back of the seat and grabbed my backpack. Through the rear window I could see the bench where the local public bus stopped. I froze, my hand clutching the strap of my backpack to the point where my knuckles turned white. It was then that I became aware of what I had been searching for. The homeless man was back, sitting hunched over on the bench as if he were asleep.

Why in the world had I wanted to find him? An image of a tall man dressed in a hooded trench coat flashed before my eyes. I felt my face drain of color and my palms go clammy.

“Hey Meghan, you don’t look so good. You’re not feeling sick are you?” Tully asked.

I swallowed, only to find my mouth had gone dry as well. “I’m fine,” I managed, sounding somewhat normal.

Tully shrugged and smoothed out her skirt and pulled up her neon-striped leggings. Most people would call her sense of style flashy or a bad reproduction of the Eighties, but I couldn’t imagine any other style that would reflect her personality so well.

“Hey girls, what’s up?” Robyn called from across the parking lot.

The majority of the student body made way for her. Considering they all dressed and acted like they lived inside some high end fashion catalog, I was never surprised when they got out of Robyn’s way. I grinned.

Just then, the bell rang, signaling the start of school. We all grimaced.

“Well, time to get another Monday underway!” Robyn proclaimed.

Unfortunately, I didn’t share her enthusiasm.

* * *

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.