touch (5 page)

Unaware of Brian’s desertion and the rapidly emptying
atrium, Clavin again glanced at Mrs. Wrightly.

So did I.  Her unwavering gaze met mine.  The realization
that she’d not once looked away from me sent a shiver through me.

I took a cautious step back angling away from both.  Clavin
grew more agitated with my move and kept talking unaware he probably no longer
spoke to Mrs. Wrightly.

“It was an accident Mrs. Wrightly.  We opened the door to
let her out, but then heard someone coming down the hall.  That’s why we closed
the door again.”

For the first time, Mrs. Wrightly looked away from me, her gaze
falling on Clavin.  “You?”

Her voice echoed oddly.  My heart picked up speed at the
proof Mrs. Wrightly was no longer herself, and I took another step back.

Clavin, thinking I meant to leave, reached out to stop me. 
Mrs. Wrightly pivoted and stepped between us.  Clavin’s hand met with Mrs.
Wrightly’s chest instead of my arm.  I continued to back away while watching
them.

Regarding his hand in absolute horror, Clavin started
stammering an apology.  While Clavin looked ready to pass out, Mrs. Wrightly’s
focus didn’t shift.  She appeared completely unconcerned with the fact Clavin
had yet to remove his hand.

“Did you bruise her?” Mrs. Wrightly asked in a deceptively
calm soft manner.

The question worried me since it’d asked just about the same
thing at lunch.

Clavin blinked at Mrs. Wrightly stupidly.  “It was an
accident,” he reiterated.

I wondered if he heard the echo in her voice.  He didn’t
seem any more disturbed than he had before, so I thought not.

Neither paid any further attention to my slow shuffling
steps back.  Like before, I saw the change.  Mrs. Wrightly relaxed slightly as
Clavin tensed, reminding me of air filling a balloon.  As it jumped, it
immediately focused on me again.  I paused, confused by the switch.

“Clavin?  What are you doing here?” she demanded looking
around for me.  She found me ten steps behind her in the nearly empty atrium. 
The remaining students talked in groups covertly trying to hear what Clavin
said next.

Clavin didn’t take his eyes from me as he answered her with
the strange echo present.  “Making amends.  Atoning for misdeeds.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.  Tensing, thinking he would
come after me now, he surprised me by turning and walking out the doors.

The conversation between Clavin and the thing possessing
Mrs. Wrightly, hadn’t taken more than five minutes.  Just enough time for the
buses to fill.  Through the glass doors, I watched the first bus pull away. 
The rest followed in a slow procession.

Clavin kept a steady pace as he walked across the large
cement quad separating the doors from the parking lane.  Dread pooled and
solidified in my stomach.  The final bus departed and student cars started
driving past.

He didn’t turn to walk on the sidewalk, but kept walking
toward the line of traffic.

“No!” I yelled running forward.  I heard Mrs. Wrightly’s
gasp as she too realized what Clavin meant to do.

As I pushed through the door, Clavin stepped off the curb in
front of a car.  The driver, busy with the radio, didn’t react in time.  The
thud of Clavin’s body hitting the hood and the squeal of tires covered my
second cry.  I didn’t stop moving.  The impact knocked Clavin back a few feet. 
He collapsed to the ground.

Skidding to a stop, I fell to my knees by his side but
didn’t touch him unsure if the thing had released Clavin yet or not.  The cold
asphalt bit into my knees as I studied him.

He calmly looked up at me without speaking, still
possessed.  Blood streamed from his head where it had connected with the
ground.  The people surrounding us began to yell for help.  Teachers poured
from the school yelling for the students to move away.

The engine of the car that hit him quieted.  I didn’t look
up.  Someone else knelt beside him and started asking questions.  Neither of us
paid any attention.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

He smiled and reached up to touch my face.  I flinched away
and he dropped his hand.

“Now that I found you, I will take care,” he said.  Clavin’s
voice was only a rasp, but the echo behind it came through strong and clear.

“Of what?” I asked, but as soon as I said the words, his
eyes rolled back in a faint.

Standing, I met the eyes of those in the small group
surrounding us slowly turning a circle searching for the thing that had just
left Clavin.  Its ability to jump from person to person terrified me.

Everyone looked away as soon as I made eye contact.  Where
did it go?

“Tessa!”

I turned at the sound of my name.  My grandmother stood
outside the crowd trying to get to me.  The crowd parted for me as I ran to
her, cautious and frightened faces giving me wide berth, and pulled her away
from the accident.

“We need to get out of here now,” I whispered frantically to
her, careful so no one would over hear me.  “I’ll drive.”  I held my hand out
for the keys.  They shook, badly, but she willingly surrendered them.

No one moved to stop us.  The teachers swarmed around Clavin
trying to revive him.

She hurried to her side of the car as I slid behind the
wheel.  Sweat beaded on my upper lip.  Shaking, I fumbled with the keys trying
to insert them into the ignition.

Something out there hopped from body to body, watched me and
wanted to hurt people who hurt me.  And, apparently, only I could perceive it.

I buckled as I navigated the visitor lot.  In the distance,
sirens blared, but I didn’t worry about them.  I needed to get Gran as far away
as from that thing as possible.  Whatever that thing was, it could possess
anyone.  What would it do to her?

Shaking with fear, I controlled my use of the gas pedal when
I really wanted to floor it.  Unsure how the thing traveled, I took an indirect
way home, winding through back roads until I felt certain no one followed. 
Grandma said nothing.  When I glanced over, I saw her gripping her purse straps
tightly and eased off the gas I’d begun to liberally use as we put distance
between us and whatever hurt Clavin.  At least I knew she wasn’t possessed.

Slowly, the shaking eased and the sweat dried.  With an hour
of daylight to spare, I headed home.  As soon as I skidded to a stop in a cloud
of cold dust in front of the house, the front door flew open.  My mom walked
down the steps with a scowl while I got out of the car.

“Inside,” I said without preamble, waving my mom toward the
house while I moved around the car to help Grandma.  She was out before I
reached her.

“Excuse me?”  Mom looked seriously pissed.

I didn’t stop to argue with her.  Didn’t need to.

Grandma piped up with a sharp, “In,” and beat me to the
door.

Mom trailed us both closing the door behind us.  Inside,
boxes partially covered the table and lined the wall.  Many of the cupboards
stood open in various states of emptiness.  The small things like throw
pillows, pictures, nick-knacks no longer decorated the living room.  Aunt
Danielle sat in her chair with her eyes closed.

“What on earth is going on, Tessa?  You were driving like a
maniac.  That’s the only car we have.”

“Sorry, mom,” I mumbled letting my bag slid to the floor as
I dropped into a kitchen chair.  I’d thought the shaking finished but now safe
at home it reclaimed me.  I leaned forward bracing my elbows on my quaking
knees and rested my head in my hands.

The silence cocooned me giving me a moment to think.  Inside
before dark.  Sleep until seven.  Move often.  Pick a boy before my seventeenth
birthday.  Have a baby, or babies, young.  Watch my husband die prematurely.

Gently, I felt my cheek, its steady throb finally
penetrating my shock.

What happens if I’m out after dark?  Something finds me,
starts to talk to me through other people.

My hand shook so bad I hurt my own cheek.  My mind continued
to race.

What did it want?  Could it find me here?  Why was it out during
the day?  I thought I was safe during the day.  What was the point of knocking
me out each night?

“Baby?”

I raised my head at the gentle touch on my shoulder.  My mom
stood beside me looking down with concern.

“Please.  What happened?” she asked all anger absent from
her expression.

Straightening I looked at Gran who sat nearby and Aunt Grace
who had just walked into the room.  They all waited, watching me.  Unsure of
what Gran already told them, I started with what I knew.

“When I was running for the door yesterday, it wasn’t just
because of sunset.  I heard something behind me.  Gran says you didn’t see it,
but when I turned to look back, I saw it.  It had horns on each side of its
head, dark shifting skin like black smoke and glowing green eyes.”

No one said anything, but I saw fear in each of their
faces.  I swallowed hard around my own fear.

“Today at school, something took over Mr. Jameson’s body.” 
My hand drifted to my cheek as I remembered its touch.  “It wanted to know who
bruised me.  Before I could say anything another teacher approached and it
released Mr. Jameson.  I watched for it after that, but didn’t see it again
until the end of the day when it took over Mrs. Wrightly while she walked me to
the door.  Clavin came up to us…” my voice cracked as I relived the terror.

“It asked if he was the one who bruised me.  Clavin tried
saying it was an accident.  I saw it jump from Mrs. Wrightly to Clavin.  Then
it walked Clavin into a car after saying he needed to atone for misdeeds.”  I
took a deep breath and finished on a whisper, “I think it hurt Clavin because
Clavin hurt me.”

My mom sat heavily in a chair near mine and whispered a
denial.

“What is it?”  I asked looking at Gran.

Aunt Danielle answered, “It’s what we hide from,
obviously.”  Her peacefully closed eyes belied her awareness.

We all watched her for a moment waiting for more, but she
said nothing.

“Well, we have a lot of packing to do.”  Mom stood, wiped
her hands nervously on her faded jeans and viewed the enormity of our task
before moving toward the dishes.  She took a piece of newspaper from the pile
on the table and moved to the miss-matched glasses on the counter.  When she
reached for a glass, her fingers brushed its neighbor nudging it off the edge. 
I watched it drop to the floor.  The tinkling shatter sounded anticlimactic to
me.  Given my day, it should have been more of an explosion.

Staring at the sparkling splinters dusting the floor, I
thought of birthday candles and wondered if I’d make it another five months.

We didn’t finish the packing in one day.  The next morning
after a quick breakfast, Mom and Aunt Grace loaded the car to take the first
load to the new place.  A shallow trunk and a short back seat didn’t leave much
room, but we’d learned over the years that the breakables had a better chance
of survival in the car.  One of Aunt Grace’s co-workers who owned a pickup and
trailer would stop by after lunch for the bigger pieces.

Mom already had a house lined up in the next county, which
wasn’t far.  We talked about possibly moving further, but the cost of gas and
their current jobs just didn’t make it feasible.  And quitting their jobs to
find another place hiring two people, with comparable pay, was out of the
question.

Gran and I packed up my bedroom and then I focused on taking
apart the beds, getting them ready for the truck.  With mattresses lined up on
their side in the living room, by lunch time we lacked anywhere to sit for a
break.  I took my sandwich out to the porch.  Warm from the work inside, I didn’t
grab my jacket.  I could see my breath.  Christmas was only a few weeks away,
but snow stubbornly refused to fall and blanket the world in newness.

Sitting in Gran’s chair, watching the frozen branches sway,
I nearly choked on my bite of sandwich when Clavin’s cherry red shining car
turned onto our drive.  Yesterday, he hadn’t been himself and I wondered who
really drove down my driveway.

I set my sandwich aside and stood waiting.  He watched me
but glanced at the house too.  A good sign.  No burning fixation that I’d
noticed during a possession.  That meant I just needed to deal with his
pleading, which wasn’t such a bad thing.  Better to listen to pleading than
threats.

My face still vibrantly displayed a reminder of how far he
could go.  I studied him as he parked looking for any sign of aggression.  Despite
his apparent calm, I still hoped that Gran wouldn’t notice him.  I didn’t want
her getting hurt.

He opened his door and using the frame, struggled to
leverage himself from his seat.  His tousled hair stood out in different
directions.  The strands in front stuck up showing a bandage slightly below his
hairline wrapping around his head.  He didn’t look flushed with anger, just
pale.

With obvious effort and determination, he extracted himself
from the car.  As he rounded the hood keeping a hand planted on it the entire
time, the reason for his struggling progress became clear.  A cast covered his
leg from toe to mid-thigh… and not the walking kind.

The memory of his hitting the hood changed my self-concern
to pity.  “Are you supposed to be walking around on that?”

He stopped his approach, fingertips on the hood for balance,
to glance down at his leg.  “No.”  Then he met my eyes.  I saw fear.  “I think
I’m going crazy Tess.  When I woke up this morning, there was a note by my
bed.  It looked like I wrote it, but I don’t remember writing it.”

A chill ran through me and it had nothing to do with the
cold.  “What did it say?”

“It was about you, but I don’t understand.”  His voice
quavered.  Balancing against the hood, he reached into his pocket.  Pulling out
a crumpled piece of paper, he offered it to me with a shaking hand.