The Lost Boys (6 page)

“And when are you planning to tell the girl?” Miss Violet asked him.

Tristan lifted his head and there was a defiant look in his eyes.

“Tonight! I was going to tell her tonight,” he snapped.

“Joey, who …” my mom began, but I cut her off.

“Tell me what? “I asked, looking directly at Tristan. I needed to find out what the hell was going on!

“I’m so sorry, Joey. I wanted to tell you the truth, I swear! I just … I thought you wouldn’t believe me, and you’d leave. For good. I’m sorry,” Tristan pleaded, taking a step forward inside the circle, in my direction.

“Tell me what? What truth, Tris?” I asked, scared. He looked so lost.

“Joe, who are you all talking to?” my mom snapped.

“I’m talking to Tristan, Mom!” I told her.

She looked around with a confused expression. Was she blind? He was right there, in front of us!

“Where is he?” she asked, sounding puzzled.

“What are you talking about, he’s right over there!” I said impatiently.

“There’s no one there, honey,” my mom whispered, looking at me worriedly. “Just us and these ladies.”

“Of course there is. He’s right over there!” I said, pointing him out.

“She can’t see him, dear. Or hear him,” Miss Violet intervened.

“What?” I snapped.

“Only we – the occult-acquainted – can. Me, Margaret and Meg over there. And you, apparently,” she stated.

“The what? Occult what?” I said. I was at a loss.

“Well, yes, you know, those familiar with the supernatural,” she said, trying one more time.

I just stared at her. She was clearly a little crazy.

“She’s saying only we witches can see him,” Margaret elaborated. “Your boy over there, he’s a ghost, dear.”

“What? He certainly is not!” I shouted. Everybody could see him and talk to him, for God’s sake! I walked towards Tristan, upset by all the nonsense going on. “Mom, come on, stop joking around, you can see him, right?”

I stopped right in front of him and turned to look at my mother. “Mom?”

She looked at me in alarm.

“Oh my God! What is wrong with you people?” I yelled, and turned to Tristan.

He looked back at me and his eyes were filled with desperation.

“Joey, please don’t hate me. I’m so sorry …” he whispered softly to me. “I was going to tell you tonight. I lied so you wouldn’t be scared of me. And … I was just happy … being with you. Even if it was only for a little while.”

Fireworks started to explode in the sky. Hundreds of colorful fireworks dancing in the night.

The New Year had arrived.

“Are you freaking serious?” I screamed over the noise. I pushed angrily at his chest. My hand passed right through him! I stumbled forward and regained my balance, staring wildly at him.

He reached out for me, and, scared, I flinched away, staggering backwards. My foot got caught up in a tree root and I tripped, falling head first to the ground. I felt an intense, sharp pain in my head and in the palm of my hands. I heard my mom’s voice, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It was too distant, hundreds of miles away.

I opened my eyes and tried to focus. A chill wind was blowing and the candlelight flickered but didn’t go out. I could make out a dark silhouette standing far away. It wore black heavy boots. I felt the earth beneath my fingertips. And somehow I didn’t feel cold any more. Or scared.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion, like we were all submerged under water. No more loud noises, even though I could still see the fireworks dancing in the sky. Everything was silent and peaceful. It was so beautiful. Was it still midnight?

And then Tristan’s face appeared next to mine. He was lying right by my side, smiling at me.

“Don’t be afraid. You’ll be fine,” he whispered to me, wiping away tears that I didn’t even know had begun to fall. He looked so calm and ethereal.

“I’m not afraid,” I said softly. I felt calm and secure now, because he was with me. He reached out and held my hand lightly and I felt sharp pinpricks over my skin where his fingers touched mine. It felt weird, but in a good way.

“Do you hate me? For lying?” he whispered in a broken voice, so full of sadness.

“Of course not. I could never hate you, not in a thousand lifetimes,” I said to him, and though this was a really weird thing for me to say, I also knew it to be true. But then he slowly vanished from sight, engulfed by darkness that seemed to be wrapping itself around everything.

Everything was dark. Everything was silent.

Was he really gone?

Dead and gone
, something whispered ominously inside my head.

“Tristan?” I whispered. It was all so quiet, I couldn’t hear his voice any more and I missed it. I missed the warmth it brought to my heart; I missed his silvery eyes and his mesmerizing smiles. I missed
him
.
“Tristan?”
My voice wavered in the dark.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered near me, his lips brushing my ears like feathers in the air. “Even if you cannot see me, I’m always be right here, by your side.” Once again, his fingers intertwined with mine. My heart fluttered at his delicate touch. “I feel like I have always been by your side, and that I will always be. Does that make any sense?” he asked me, and his hand squeezed mine lightly. But I did know what he meant. Because I felt the same way. Like I’d known him for as long as I could remember, beyond time, even. “Wow. Joey. Can you see this?” he asked in awe.

“See what?” I asked, my voice still wavering a little. Everything was pitch black.

“You’ve … so much light coming from you, blindingly bright, covering me … so beautiful.” He let go of my hand then and my heart whimpered at the loneliness and cold his absence brought to me.

“I-I can’t see anything. I can’t feel anything.” I sensed him moving closer.

“Can you feel this?” he whispered, just a breath away from me now. Something brushed lightly against my lips, so soft I thought I was imagining it. Pinpricks of electricity spread through my whole body, making my heart beat furiously in overdrive, and then something jolted, like the earth itself was running back in time.

If I’d been drowning, I had now surfaced. Bright colorful lights burst through my eyelids like fireworks lighting up from inside. The sound of their explosions filled my ears, deafening me. I felt so dizzy, like I could faint at any second. I heard my mom speaking, along with other voices, all talking at once. Time crashed in on me, running by rapidly, claiming back its lost moments in a fury. The wind rushed back on cue, thrashing and slashing, ice cold, cutting through everything in its path, freezing my bones and my soul. Pain pierced my head, stabbing hot needles in my hands. I grunted loudly.

“Joey? Honey? Are you all right?” I heard my mom’s concerned voice and I felt her shaking me gently.

“S-stop, Mom!” I said, sitting up on the grass and holding my throbbing head. I breathed slowly, trying to control my beating heart. I looked at my hands and there were scratches on my palms from when I’d fallen.

My mom continued patting me, a relieved expression on her face now that she saw I was okay. “What’s happening?” I asked, a little disoriented. I watched as the three old ladies hunched over someone on the middle of the lawn.

“You fell down and hit your head a second ago,” my mom said, kneeling by my side, “and the next second this boy appeared right there on the lawn! He just popped up out of thin air, Joey! One second there was nothing there, the next there was a naked boy lying on the grass!” she whispered, completely freaked out.

I scrabbled to my feet, standing up too fast and feeling a little nauseous as I walked over to the three old ladies. As I got closer, I could see Miss Violet’s hands resting on a boy’s black smooth hair. He was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see his face, but he was lying on the ground, shaking spasmodically. He was totally naked. A numb fear started to rise in my chest. I knew that smooth, black hair.

It was Tristan.

Chapter Seven

Closeness

My mom took charge straight away, taking off her long black coat and handing it to Miss Violet. “Here, please, cover him up, it’s freezing cold!” I couldn’t see his face very well from where I stood but I could see that he was trembling. But how could he be here? He’d said he was a ghost and now …? Nothing made any sense!

I tried to steady myself and gather control over my churning thoughts. Now was not the time to panic.

The three old ladies were whispering intently to each other. “We need to get him out of the cold first,” Miss Violet said at last.

“What
we
need is to take Megan back home! You know she’s not well and this has taken it out of her,” Margaret hissed.

“But we can’t just leave him. Not now,” Miss Violet replied.

“Bring the girl over. She can help him!” Megan said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was melodic and very low.

All three old ladies turned to look at me. I took a step back, scared.

“Joey, come over here! Don’t be scared, dear. It’s all right, everything will be all right!” Miss Violet said reassuringly.

I looked at my mom, and she nodded in consent. I walked over to Tristan and kneeled down on the grass, watching as his beautiful pale face contorted in pain. “What can I do?” I said in a small voice, feeling useless. I reached out and took hold of his hand, like he had held mine. Or had that just been a dream? Either way, this time my hand met solid flesh rather than going straight through.

When my hand touched his, sharp, hot pinpricks jolted through my fingertips once again. Tristan moaned but he appeared to relax, his convulsions easing. I looked at Miss Violet in surprise but she just nodded, looking relieved. What had just happened here?

“Can you take him to your house?” Miss Violet asked my mom. “Until we sort this whole mess out.”

My mom nodded. “O-okay. Joey, dear, do you think you can manage to get him to walk?”

“I don’t know. I can try,” I muttered.

“Just keep him close to you, and you two should be fine!” Miss Violet advised as she turned away to help the eldest of the ladies, old Meg. She and Margaret were now supporting her, one on each side.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” I asked as they started to walk away.

“Come on, honey. Let’s get him home,” my mom said, kneeling by my side.

I put the palm of my hand flat on Tristan’s chest. My palm tingled at the contact with his skin.

“Tris, can you hear me? Do you think you can stand up? For me?” I pleaded.

He nodded, managing to half-open his heavy eyelids. My mom and I helped him up and wrapped the coat tightly around his body. I hoped no one would notice we had a naked boy inside it while we walked out of there. We managed to stumble through the cemetery lanes, Tristan leaning on both my Mom and me. As we reached the gates, people were still coming and going, but no one paid any attention to us. They were all too drunk or too distracted to notice anything anyway.

We left the cemetery as anonymously as we had entered.

A few minutes after everyone had left, a dark figure appeared on the grass circle.

He wore a heavy, dull, faded gray cloak, and it covered almost all of his pale face. He was tall, very thin and moved swiftly, his cloak billowing in the slashing wind. But he did not care about the cold. He did not feel cold. Or heat, or anything for that matter.

Those were mundane sensations, and he was far from being human and far from belonging to this world.

He looked around. He would have been intrigued, and slightly upset, if he were to have any emotion. But emotions, like sensations, were for humans. He only felt duty as his purpose. He sniffed the air. It smelled of magic.

And he was late. By only a few seconds, but late nevertheless.

He would fix it, though. He always fixed things. That was his job, the purpose of his existence: to fix things that were wrong and out of the natural order. He organized and corrected the many, many mistakes that happened all around. And there was always so much to do, so much chaos happening all the time …

He walked silently around the circle of grass. A group of young people appeared, shouting excitedly, carrying bottles in their hands. He did not worry about them; he knew they couldn’t see him.

His kind was never witnessed. Never seen. Those were the rules.

The young, drunken party passed by, completely unaware of the cloaked figure standing only a few inches away from them, observing, analyzing. Something caught his attention, something almost invisible, but not to him: a tiny, minuscule, dark speck on the grass.

He kneeled down right next to it and touched it. Dark, wet, human blood.

No wonder the air smelled of ancient, powerful magic. All magic of that kind required an offering of blood.

He sniffed the tiny smear of blood on his fingertip. This was his trail, his lead. He could follow the blood to its source. Trace it to the mistake that he needed to fix. He always found them: the “mistakes”. Found them and fixed them. It was only a matter of time.

He disappeared as silently and quickly as he had appeared, without a trace.

We finally got home. It had taken us about fifteen minutes to get there, but it felt much longer.

We half-walked, half-dragged Tristan to the couch and I slouched on to the armchair beside him. I felt like a truck had hit me.

“Well, that was a hell of a New Year’s Eve,” my mom murmured, sitting by Tristan’s side and placing the back of her hand on his forehead to feel his temperature. “Jeez, he’s burning up!”

She went to the hallway closet and brought back a towel, some sheets and a warm blanket. She was drying Tristan’s face and hair with the towel when I felt a wave of nausea hit me like a brick wall, and my stomach finally gave up. I covered my mouth and ran quickly upstairs to the bathroom. My mom appeared at my side, and held my hair while I threw up.

This scene was repeated three times. The fourth time, my mom was bypassing concern city and heading straight to freaking-out town. I don’t know how many times a person could throw up in one evening, but I’ll bet I was going for the record! I didn’t even have anything left to vomit any more; my stomach just kept contracting with empty spasms. And my head! Good God, my head felt like it was going to explode!