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Authors: Gwen Hayes

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories

Falling Under (37 page)

BOOK: Falling Under
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I
was already sitting at the table when Varnie got up the next morning.
“You’re up early,” he said, getting his favorite mug out of the cupboard. He liked to hit the beach near sunrise on weekends.
I’d been staring into my coffee, long grown cold, trying to make sense of the séance, my dream that hadn’t felt like a dream, and the fact that my girlfriend had tried to eat my soul last night.
“What’s wrong?” Varnie asked, noticing my mood.
“Theia was here.”
“Here? As in, she came here and you didn’t go there?” He sat across from me. “Are you sure?”
I met his eyes across the table. “I think she was going to feed on me.” Saying the words turned my blood cold. I wanted to panic, to explode in rage, to do
something
. Anything.
Varnie looked into his cup to avoid my eyes any longer. “Sorry, dude. That’s not cool.”
“Cool?” I echoed. “Varnie, we need to get her out of there. I need my memories back
now
. She stopped herself last night, but what if she can’t the next time? She’ll hate herself.”
And next time
, I thought but didn’t say,
what if it isn’t me she goes after
?
“What do you suggest?”
I tunneled my fingers through my hair, the frustration a nagging ache. “I don’t know. Can you hypnotize me or something?”
“I don’t know how to hypnotize people.” He left the table and came back with a cold slice from a pizza at least four days old.
“What about past-life regression or something?”
“Look, the best I can do is lead you into a very deep meditative state. But I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” He paused. “Of course, nobody ever listens to me when I say it’s not a good idea, so I don’t suppose you’ll be any different.”
“I can’t do anything for her like this, Varn. If I could remember what I knew when I was a demon, maybe I could save her.”
“Haden …”
“Please.”
He nodded. “Fine. But when the world blows up in our faces again, I’d like it if at least one time somebody says, ‘We should have listened to Varnie.’”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding too long. “How do we do this?”
“Sit back in your chair and relax.”
Right. I did what he asked, but I didn’t think I’d be relaxing anytime soon. I was too keyed up—my nerves were bouncing around like a sphere in a pinball machine.
“Deep breaths. Think about the air traveling into your nose and follow it down the length of your body. Visualize it being pulled all the way to your feet, to your toes, and then, exhale from your toes up again.” And then he repeated it.
I did what he said, only I realized I was visualizing my body as completely empty except for the air because that was how I felt. I was a shell, devoid of life. Except that now I was a balloon.
Varnie kept telling me to look at things—stars in the sky again, blades of grass in a meadow, grains of sand on a beach. I was about to tell him it wasn’t working, I wasn’t relaxing, when I noticed I was in a graveyard of very old headstones.
The cemetery wasn’t frightening or especially morbid. It also didn’t feel like Under, but I was definitely lucid. I stopped at one stone surrounded by bushes of black roses and felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck stir to attention.
JENNIFER ANNE ALDERSON
 
Theia’s mother. Just under my Adam’s apple, the talisman vibrated slightly. What did Mrs. Alderson have to do with getting back my memories? The only connection I could think of was that Theia had chosen her mother’s necklace as the talisman that I now wore.
A talisman that had done little to protect her from me.
“Hello, Haden.”
I whirled around towards the voice. A woman in a white gown appeared in the mist. Her long, dark hair contrasted with the paleness of her skin, and her lips seemed redder than they should be.
“Hello?” I answered. I didn’t recognize her, but then, I didn’t recognize a lot of people.
She moved with an unnatural grace, and the mist billowed around her as she walked towards me. There was an ethereal quality about her, and I couldn’t look away from her.
“I’m very worried about my daughter.” She spoke slowly with a slight lilt. “She’s in grave danger.”
“Your daughter?” I looked back at the headstone. “You’re Theia’s mom?”
“Call me Jenny,” she told me in a soothing voice.
Talking to a ghost was something I should have been used to after all the séances at Varnie’s, but talking to the ghost of Theia’s mother was a new level of strangeness. The spirits we’d reached had never seemed so real. They were transparent if you could see them at all. Theia’s mother sort of shimmered, but she was corporeal.
“Why are you here?” I asked with no manners. This was supposed to be my subconscious, and yet there she was.
“My daughter is in a lot of trouble. She doesn’t belong where she is.”
My guilt overwhelmed me. “Mrs. Alderson, you have to know I never wanted this to happen to her. If I could switch places with her I would.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that. What a fine young man you are.” She smiled. “And, please, I meant it. Call me Jenny.”
Jenny didn’t resemble Theia in any way. Her cheekbones were too sculpted, her hair too dark, and her mouth was all wrong. It was her lips, maybe, that weren’t right. Theia’s lips were plump and shaped like a bow, but Jenny’s were thin and her mouth was wide.
Still, despite the differences, there was something very calming about her. I relaxed for the first time in what seemed like a very long time. Perhaps she was more than a ghost—maybe a guardian angel of some kind, because her presence was so peaceful to me. My muscles, my whole body, began to feel languid. Everything was going to be okay now. Jenny would fix it.
Jenny walked around me and sighed as she ran her hand over the headstone that marked her final resting place. “Poor Theia, trapped in that nightmare realm.” She shook her head, her face a mask of worry.
“Can we get her out?”
“No, we can’t.” She looked at me like she was looking through me. “But
you
can.”
The way she inflected her words filled me with a sense of calm purpose.
I
could save Theia. Suddenly, I felt like I was in a spotlight of warmth. Jenny looked at me like I could do anything. And I began to believe her.
Since waking up in the cabin, I’d felt unsure of myself. To be filled with such overwhelming confidence and peace was amazing.
“You can be her champion, Haden. You’re the only one who can save Theia now.”
Waves of courage coursed through me. She was right. I
was
the only one. “What must I do?” Whatever it was, whatever she asked of me, I would do it.
Jenny smiled, and it occurred to me again how different she and Theia were. Jenny’s hair was almost black and Theia’s curls were … and then the heated spotlight suddenly felt like a splash of ice-cold water.
Theia’s curls were inherited from her
mother
.
Jenny’s hair was straight as a pin.
Donny had told me all about how Theia used to hate her hair because it was so wild. She’d said she never wore it down until I came along. That I had somehow helped Theia make peace with her mom and the things about herself that were different from her father.
It was unlikely that a ghost spent an hour with a hair straightener before meeting me in a cemetery. This woman wasn’t Jenny.
She was Mara.
I don’t know how I knew it, but the clarity I felt seemed to shrug off the sense of purpose I’d had only seconds before. The calming, encouraging vibes were most likely manufactured by Mara to manipulate me. As soon as I recognized that, they were gone and I was left with only a knot of cold dread.
I swallowed hard and tried not show my fear. It was best if she thought I still believed her.
Mara blinked prettily at me, playing up her role as some kind of benevolent guardian sent to aid against evil. Only she
was
the evil. I didn’t know how I’d missed it earlier. She was caked in impurity, visible only when you saw past her facade.
“I can help you remember, but first I need you to give me the necklace.”
My hand went to it automatically. “Why?” Despite all reason, I felt safer with the protection of it against my skin, even though the talisman had not proven to be very useful.
“It’s a symbol. Magic requires it.”
My eyes darted around for an escape route. But was I really there or still at the kitchen table with Varnie? “What will you do to it?” I asked. “How will it return my memories?”
As I glanced around us, the rest of the graveyard disappeared. We were left on what appeared to be the summit of a mountain—just Mara, Jenny’s headstone, and me.
“Haden, give me the necklace,” she demanded, her voice no longer lilting and calm.
“Why do you want it so badly, Mother?”
Mara chuckled. “That’s my boy. Even with no memory, you still recognize your own kind. It’s time for you to come home, Son.”
“I’m not a demon anymore. I’m not your kind.”
Mara’s pupils darkened. “We can fix that. Come home.”
“Let Theia go.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m half tempted. Honestly, she’s even more annoying than you were. Haden—” Mara pouted. “Come back.”
There was nowhere to go at that moment, unless I felt like cliff diving, so I humored her, hoping she didn’t want to kill me or eat my soul. How maternal were demons? I looked at the headstone again and wondered if my mother loved me. “What happens if I come back with you?”
Mara cocked her head, intrigued by my interest. “You get your memories.”
“And Theia?”
“You get to keep Theia too.” The venom was coated in sugar, but it was there.
I closed my eyes. “Let her go.”
“You’re getting tiresome, Haden. We all know how this is going to go. You and your friends are not powerful enough to stop me. Theia has made her choice, she promised herself to me, and now my blood runs in her veins. Trust me, everyone is much better off with her in Under.”
“Why do you want the talisman?” I asked again.
“I told you. It’s a symbol.”
It had to be more than that. “How do I get my memories?”
She crossed her arms and arched her brow. When I blinked, I thought I saw her cheekbones protruding from her skin, but then her face was normal again. “Don’t you find your human body limiting, Son?” Mara didn’t wait for an answer. “You could have it all, you know. As a demon, you had more power than you can imagine right now.”
The only power I wanted was the ability to save Theia, but I didn’t dare voice my desire.
“You used to be special, Haden. Don’t you miss that?”
It was as if Mara had plunged a knife into me and begun twisting it with each word. Yes, I did miss being special. I didn’t remember what it was like, exactly, but I knew I used to be more. What I wouldn’t have given just to be more useful to everyone.
“When you embraced who you were, you were stronger. Your friends would envy your speed and strength. They would be amazed at all the things you could do.” She walked around me in a slow circle. “But instead you want to be a nobody. I don’t understand it. You could rule this realm and your own, but you cower in obscurity and mope about a girl who will never be good enough for you.”
My heart beat so erratically, I thought it might pound its way out of my chest. “If she’s no good to you, why don’t you let her go?”
“I made a promise to her just as much as she made a promise to me. I have to honor that, don’t I? Besides, what on earth would you do with her now? You can’t possibly control her, not in the unfortunate condition you’re in. You’ll need your other half or she’ll eat you alive. Literally.”
I looked down at my legs as vines circled their way up them. Picking up my feet did nothing to disengage the barbed stems. And then I couldn’t pick up my feet anymore anyway. I was trapped, anchored to the ground with the mother of nightmares circling me like a predator.
“You’re beginning to bore me, pussycat.”
I tried not to panic, but I hated being immobile. “Where did the demon go?” I asked. “After they exorcised it?”
“It doesn’t matter where it went, only where it is now.” Mara pulled a necklace from her bodice. It matched the one Theia had given me. She smiled at my reaction as she dangled the twin talisman. “I’m a fan of symmetry.”
I didn’t know what she had planned to do. Maybe if I’d still thought she was Jenny, I would have given her the one I wore when she asked for it and somehow she would have switched them without my knowing.
“So, you’re going to put that on me and I’ll be a demon again,” I said, even as I struggled against the vines that held my legs in place.
BOOK: Falling Under
11.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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