The Visitor (5 page)

I
dodged, but too slowly. Huge talons closed around me and suddenly my little feet were running in air.

The voice was in my head. I understood the words. It cut through the terror at last. I held on to that voice.

I looked down and with my dim shrew eyesight saw the shadows shooting past below.

School? Yes. I remembered school. Quite suddenly the shrew mind lost the battle for control. It was like a switch had been flipped. I was in charge. I knew what I was. I knew
who
I was.

I said.

He circled around and landed with perfect gentleness on the ground.

“You okay, Rachel?” Jake's voice.

“It's like Jake's lizard,” Cassie suggested. “He had a panic reaction, too. The other animals we morphed were all kind of big, dominant animals—gorilla, tiger. My horse was skittish, though.”

I said. That was the understatement of all time. I could still smell death and hear the thousands of feasting maggots. And to me those things still meant dinner. I was horribly hungry.

“Are you sure you're going to be able to maintain down there?” Marco asked. I saw him peering down at me from a million miles up. “You still look a little
nervous. Your tail is twitching and your little nose is sniffing like crazy.”

Before I could object, Marco reached down and scooped me into his hands. He held me up and looked into my eyes. “I've never seen you look lovelier, Rachel. Very cover girl.”

We walked down the block. Marco set me down at the bottom of the tree where Fluffer was still hiding out on a high branch.

I said.

“Not
too
far,” Jake said. “We have to be able to get between you and Fluffer fast.”

I said, joking. I guess I felt a little embarrassed about having let the shrew take control of me.

“Uh-huh,” Marco said dryly. “Cat versus mouse. Who would you bet on?”

“Haven't you ever seen
Itchy and Scratchy?”
Cassie asked. “Mouse, definitely. Besides, she's not a mouse.”

Let me tell you something: It is no fun sitting around in a shrew's tiny body, waiting to see whether a huge cat is going to decide to climb down and kill you. It is one of the least fun things I've ever done.
I had the shrew brain under control, but that didn't change the fact that the shrew was about as scared as a shrew can be. Between being snatched up by a hawk and now waiting to see if the shrew's other deadly enemy was going to attack … I mean, the shrew was definitely in a state of panic.

She was not a happy shrew.

I was so preoccupied thinking about the shrew's hunger that I missed what happened next. I didn't even notice until I heard the sound of scraping tree bark just an inch over my head. Fluffer was dropping through the air right on top of me!

I froze!

Jake and Marco did not freeze.

Marco grabbed Fluffer in mid-pounce. Fluffer rewarded him with a nasty slash of his claws. Marco yelled and almost dropped the cat. Jake grabbed Fluffer by the nape of the neck and Cassie ran up with the animal carrier.

The three of them managed to stuff the squalling, hissing, slashing Fluffer into the carrier and close the door.

I was already morphing out of the shrew body as fast as I could.

“I'm bleeding!” Marco cried.

“We're all bleeding,” Cassie said matter-of-factly.
“I told you guys: Kitties can be nasty when you get on their nerves.”

I was shooting up from the ground, regaining my normal body.

“Ugh! Ugh! I'm never doing that morph again,” I said, as soon as I had a normal tongue and lips. I looked over my shoulder to make sure I didn't still have that creepy tail. Nothing. I was me again. I was in my morphing outfit and with no shoes on, but I was human again.

I shuddered. The memory of the shrew's brain and its fear and hunger made my flesh creep. I was fighting a powerful urge to throw up. I felt sick in a way that is mostly in your head.

Jake looked at me and shook his head. “I should have done it. I should have used my lizard morph to lure the cat down from the tree.”

I shook my head. “No. That freaked you out.”

“And now you're the one who's freaked out,” Jake said. “But don't worry, you'll get over it. Mostly. At least
you
didn't eat a spider.”

“Yeah. Look, I'm just tired, okay? Let me acquire this pain-in-the-butt cat and get on with this.”

“Are you still up for it?” Cassie asked. “Acquiring two new morphs in one night?”

“I shouldn't have let you do the mouse. Shrew. Whatever,” Jake said. He was still looking guilty.

“Look, it was my idea, right? Besides, since when do you
let
me do things? What are you, my master? I don't think so. Come on.” I squared my shoulders and put on a brave smile. “Let me see how Fluffer likes me, now that I'm bigger than he is.”

I guess Fluffer was tired of causing trouble. He was actually asleep in the cat carrier. Sleeping like nothing at all was going on. A typical cat. He even purred as I acquired him.

When I was done, I noticed Cassie smiling at me.

“What?” I asked her.

“I was just thinking how you look like the same old Rachel, but now you also have an elephant, a shrew, an eagle, and a cat inside you. That's four morphs. That's more than any of us.” She looked thoughtful. “We don't really know very much about this morphing thing still. I wonder if there is a limit to how many morphs you can do.”

“I guess we'll find out,” Marco said darkly. “Probably at the worst possible time.”

I wondered if they were right. It was definitely a strange, powerful feeling, knowing that I could become four very different animals. Strange and powerful and disturbing. Inside of me I had animals that ate one another. It wasn't a good image.

Suddenly I felt exhausted. “Look, guys … I've acquired Fluffer now. But maybe we should do the
rest of this tomorrow night. I'm … I don't know if I'm at my best right now.”

“Another night,” Jake agreed. He looked relieved. I think he was worried about me. That's the way Jake is.

“I guess we can let Fluffer go now,” Cassie said. She opened the carrier and the cat climbed out cautiously.

I watched him run off into the night. “Probably going off to kill your shrew,” Marco speculated.

The idea made me shudder all over again.

A
aaaaahhh! Aaaaah! Aaaaaah!”

“Wake up. Rachel, wake up!”

“Aaah!
Oh. Oh. Oh.” I sat up. I was gasping for air. It was dark, but I could just make out Jordan's face. She was shaking me awake.

I felt my face. Lips. Eyes. Nose.

I patted myself down frantically. Human. I was human. No fur. No tail. Human.

The details of the dream came rushing up to my consciousness.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. I threw back the covers and stumbled to my feet. I staggered toward the bathroom
door. The bathroom connects my room and the room Jordan and Sara share. I tried to turn on the light but missed the switch. I dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and threw up.

Jordan kept saying, “Are you all right, Rachel? Are you all right? I better get Mom.”

“No,” I said, as soon as I could talk. “No, I'm fine. Don't wake Mom up.” Fortunately, little Sara can sleep through anything.

I brushed my teeth and drank some water. I looked sheepishly at Jordan. She looks nothing like me. I guess I look more like my dad, and Jordan is like this smaller version of my mom: dark hair and dark eyes. She looked pretty scared.

“I'm okay,” I said again. “Just a bad dream. I guess it made me kind of sick, is all. But I'm fine now.”

Jordan relaxed a little. “Must have been
some
dream.”

“I guess so. I can't even remember it now. You know how it is. Dreams fade away so you can't even remember them.”

“I can't believe you would just forget a dream that made you scream
and
hurl.”

I shrugged. “I've never been very good at remembering dreams. You better get back to bed.”

She looked at me solemnly. “I know I'm just your little sister by two years, but you would tell me if
something bad was happening to you, right? I mean, I wouldn't tell Mom or anyone. You could trust me.”

I smiled and drew her into a hug. “I know I can trust you. If anything bad was going on, I'd tell you.” It was a lie, of course, and the lie made me feel even worse. I trusted Jordan. I knew in my heart that she was not a Controller.

Of course, that's just what Jake had said about Tom.

I hugged my sister a little closer. I hated the way suspicion had crept into every part of my mind. I hated the way I wasn't sure, not really, totally sure, that I could trust her.

“Good night,” I said. “Thanks for rescuing me from that nightmare. Whatever it was.”

She started to walk away. Then she turned, lit from behind by the garish bathroom light. “Before you started screaming, you were yelling something.”

“What?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

She looked puzzled. “I think it was ‘maggots.' Something like that.”

I forced a shaky smile. “Good night, Jordan.”

I crawled back into my bed. The pillow was soaked with sweat. The sheets were clammy.

Maggots. Squirming, crawling, busy little white maggots. They were all over a piece of rotting meat and fur. In my dream it was a dead cat. A dead
cat covered with vermin eating the decayed flesh.

A shrew was getting in on the feast, eating the dead flesh and the living maggots with equal enjoyment.

In my dream I knew: I
was
that shrew.

“You look tired,” Jake said the next morning. We took the same bus to school.

“Thanks,” I said grumpily.

“Didn't get enough sleep last night?”

“I guess not, if I look as bad as you say.”

“I didn't say you looked bad, I just said you looked tired.” He hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder, checking to see whether anyone was listening. Fortunately, the noise level was pretty high in the bus. Jake lowered his voice and leaned close to my ear. “You didn't get creeped out by the shrew, did you?”

“Why? Just because I'm a girl, you think the shrew bothered me more than it would have bothered you or Marco?”

“No, that's not it at all,” he said earnestly. “It's just … see, when I did the lizard morph, that bothered me. I had nightmares —”

“Nightmares?” I said it too loudly. Then I lowered my voice back to a whisper. “Nightmares?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. When I morphed the tiger I had dreams, too, but not nightmares.”

“What kind of dreams?”

He smiled. “Kind of cool, really. Stalking through a dark forest at night. I was hunting something. It was like I wanted to catch it, but at the same time it was like if I didn't catch it that would be okay, too. Because just running and creeping and then running some more through the woods was the best thing in the world.”

I nodded. “I felt like that after the elephant morph. It was this incredible feeling of being huge and invincible. Like I could never even possibly be afraid of anything.”

“But the shrew was different, wasn't it? Same with the lizard.”

“I guess it's the different characters of the animals. Maybe some are good matches for our human brains. Maybe others aren't.” I looked out the window for a while. Then I said, “You know what scares me?”

To my surprise, Jake nodded. “Yeah. You're afraid that someday we might have to morph into bugs.”

I shuddered. “I don't think I'll be willing to do that. I think that may be too much.”

“Well, your next assignment is a cat. Tobias was a cat. He said it was amazingly cool. He liked it. Just like I really enjoy being a dog. Sometimes when I'm feeling depressed, I really wish I could just morph. Dogs know how to have fun.”

The bus pulled up in front of the school. “Another day of school. Normal life.” I looked over the crowd of kids milling around on the lawn and on the steps. I spotted Melissa.

“See you later, Jake,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No problem. We're all in this together.”

I made my way down the bus aisle and ran to catch up to Melissa. But when I got close I saw that her eyes were red and swollen. She'd been crying.

I didn't know what to do. In the old days I would have just run right up to her and asked what was the matter.

“Hey, Melissa, how's it going?”

She looked at me, confused. “What?”

“I said, how's it going?”

She shook her head slowly, like she couldn't believe I was even talking to her. “What do you care?”

“Melissa. Of course I care. What's wrong?”

Her eyes went kind of blank. She seemed to be looking at nothing but the air right in front of her face. “What's wrong? Everything is wrong. And nothing is wrong. But just the same, everything is wrong.”

“Melissa, what are you talking about?”

“Forget it,” she said. She started to walk away.

I grabbed her arm. “Look, you can talk to me. I'm still your friend. Nothing has changed.”

“Leave me alone,” she said grimly. “Everything has changed. Every
one
has changed. You stopped being my friend. And my mom and dad …”

“What?” I pressed her.

The bell rang loud and shrill.

“I have to go.” She pulled her arm away.

What could I do? I let her go. I wondered what she had started to say about her father. Had she discovered what her father was? What her father had become?

I walked up the steps of the school with my head lowered in thought. As I opened the school door, I ran right into someone.

“Hey, hey, watch where you're going, young lady.”

“Mr. Chapman!” I recoiled in fear.

See, you have to realize that this was the man who had once directed a Hork-Bajir soldier to kill us all if he caught us. Kill us and save only our heads for identification.

That kind of thing sticks in your mind.

He peered at me. “What's the matter with you, Rachel? A little jumpy this morning?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. I guess I didn't sleep too well.”

“Bad dreams?” he asked. My mouth was dry. “I guess so, Mr. Chapman.” He smiled. A normal, human smile. His eyes even crinkled up a little as he grinned down at me. “Well, shake it off. Nightmares aren't real, you know.” “At least not most of the time,” I said to myself.