Girl of Nightmares

CHAPTER ELEVEN

What I’m aware of before anything else is Carmel slapping me. Then the real pain starts. My head may very well be in three or four pieces; it hurts that bad. Blood is everywhere in my mouth, all over my tongue. It tastes like old pennies, and my body has that vibration-tinged numbness that tells me I’ve just recently flown through the air and come down hard. My world is pain and dim yellow light. There are familiar voices. Carmel and Thomas.

“What happened?” I ask. “Where’s Anna?” A few blinks clear the fog from my eyeballs. The light from the camping lantern shines yellow. Carmel is kneeling beside me with dirt smudges on her face and a runner of blood leaking from her nose. Thomas is by her side. He looks dazed and knocked around, positively soaked with sweat, but there’s no blood on him.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Carmel says. “You were going to reach through. You didn’t answer me. I don’t think you could even hear me.”

“I couldn’t,” I say, and push myself up onto my elbows, careful not to jar my head too much. “The spell was strong. The smoke and the drum—Thomas, are you okay?” He nods and gives a weak ten-four salute. “Did I try to reach through? Is that what caused the blast?”

“No,” Carmel replies. “I grabbed the athame and burned your blood off of it, like Thomas told me. I didn’t know that it would be so—I didn’t know it was going to go off like a fricking block of C4. I hardly held on to it.”

“I didn’t know either,” Thomas mutters. “I never should have asked you to do that.” He presses his hand to her cheek and she lets it linger for a moment before brushing it away.

“I thought you were going to try to go through,” she says. Something presses into my palm: the athame. Thomas and Carmel each take an arm and help me to my feet. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did the right thing,” Thomas tells her. “If he’d tried, he’d have probably been turned inside out. It was just a window. Not a doorway. Or a gate.”

I look around the dirt lot that used to be Anna’s Victorian. The ground that was beneath the circle is darker than the rest, and there are swirling wind patterns cut into it, like desert dunes. The spot where I landed is about ten feet from where I was sitting.

“Is there a doorway?” I ask loudly. “Is there a gate?”

Thomas looks at me with a jolt. He’d been walking around the remains of the circle on shaky legs, picking up his scattered supplies: the drum, the drumstick, the ornamental athame.

“What are you talking about?” they both ask.

My brain feels like scrambled eggs, and my back must be bruised like a hippo’s trampoline, but I remember everything that happened. I remember what Anna said, and how she looked.

“I’m talking about a gate,” I say again. “Big enough to walk through. I’m talking about opening a gate and bringing her back.” I listen for a few minutes while they sputter and tell me it’s impossible. They say things like, “That wasn’t what the ritual was about.” They tell me I’m going to get myself killed. They might be right. I guess they probably are. But it doesn’t matter.

“Listen to me,” I say carefully, dusting off my jeans and putting the athame back in its sheath. “Anna can’t stay there.”

“Cas,” Carmel starts. “There’s no way. It’s crazy.”

“You saw her, didn’t you?” I ask, and they exchange a guilty glance.

“Cas, you knew that’s how it might be. She—” Carmel swallows. “She killed a lot of people.”

When I spin on her, Thomas takes half a step in between.

“But she saved us,” he says, and Carmel mutters, “I know.”

“He’s there too. The Obeahman. The bastard that murdered my father. And I’m not going to let him spend eternity feeding on her.” I squeeze the handle of the athame so hard my knuckles crack. “I’m going to walk through a gate. And I’m going to shove this so far down his throat that he chokes on it.”

When I say that, they both take a breath. I look at them, beaten and scuffed up as a pair of old shoes. They’re brave; they’ve been braver than I gave them credit for or had any right to expect. “If I have to do this alone, I understand. But I’m getting her out.” When I’m halfway to the car, the argument starts. I hear “suicide mission” and “doomed quest for closure,” both in Carmel’s voice. Then I’m too far down the drive to hear what they’re saying.

It’s true what they say about answers only leading to more questions. There will always be more to find out, more to learn, more to do. So now I know that Anna’s in Hell. And now I have to find a way to get her out. Sitting at my kitchen table, poking a fork at one of my mom’s mushroom omelets, it feels like I’ve been stuffed into a cannon. There’s so much to do. What the fuck am I doing here prodding a cheesy egg pouch?

“Do you want toast?”

“Not really.”

“What’s the matter with you?” My mom sits down in her bathrobe, looking worn around the edges. Last night I added a few more grays to her head, coming in with a bruised skull. She stayed awake while I slept, and shook me to consciousness every hour and a half, to make sure I didn’t have a concussion and die. Last night she didn’t ask questions. I suppose the relief of seeing me alive was enough. And maybe part of her doesn’t want to know.

“The drum worked,” I say quietly. “I saw Anna. She’s in Hell.”

Her eyes light up and burn out in the space of a blink.

“Hell?” she asks. “Fire and brimstone? Little red guy with a big fork and a pointy tail?”

“Is this funny to you?”

“Of course not,” she replies. “I just never thought it actually existed.” And she doesn’t know what to say either.

“For the record, I didn’t see any pointy tail. But she’s in Hell. Or someplace like it. I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s the Hell or not.”

My mom sighs. “I suppose that decades of murder is a lot to atone for. It doesn’t feel fair to me, but—there’s nothing we can do about it, sweetheart.”

Atonement. The word makes me glare so hard that heat rays might shoot out of my eyeballs.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I say, “it was all one big fuck-up.”

“Cas.”

“And I’m going to get her out.”

Mom’s eyes fall to her plate. “You know that isn’t possible. You know that you can’t.”

“I think I can. My friends and I just opened a window between here and Hell, and I’m willing to bet that we can open a door.”

There’s a long, simmering silence. “It’s an impossible thing to do and just trying it is probably enough to kill you.”

I try to remember that she’s my mother, and it’s her job to talk to me about impossible, so I sort of nod. But she sees through it, and her feathers are up. In one breath she threatens to move my ass out of Thunder Bay, to take me far away from Thomas and his witchy ways. She even says she’s going to take the athame and send it to Gideon.

“Don’t you listen? When Gideon or I tell you something, do you listen?” Her lips form a tight, thin line. “What happened to Anna, I hate it. It’s not fair. It might be the worst case of unfair I’ve ever heard. But you’re not trying this, Cas. You’re absolutely not.”

“Yes, I will,” I growl. “And it’s not just her either. It’s him. The bastard that killed Dad. He’s there too. So I’m going to go after him and I’m going to kill him again. I’m going to kill him a thousand times.” She starts to cry, and I’m dangerously close to it myself. “You didn’t see her, Mom.” She has to get it. I can’t sit at this table and try to eat eggs when I know that she’s trapped over there. There is only one thing I should be doing and I have no idea where to start.

I love her, I almost say. What would you do if it were Dad? I almost say. But I’m wrung out. She’s wiping tears from her cheeks and I know she’s thinking about the cost, how much this has cost us. I can’t think about that anymore. I’m sorry as hell, but I can’t. Not even for her. Not when I have work to do.

My fork clatters down on my plate. Food is out. And school is out too. There are only four days left, and most of them are pep rallies. I took my last test last Thursday, and passed with a B+ average. It’s not like they’re going to expel me.

Black Labs probably shouldn’t eat peanut butter cookies. Maybe they shouldn’t drink milk either. But they sure do like both of those things. Stella’s head is lodged into my lap, and she’s heaved most of her body onto the burgundy cushions of the sofa I’m sitting on. Her seal pup eyes flicker from my face to my glass of milk, so I tip it to the side to let her big pink tongue go to work. When she’s finished, she slurps a thank-you into my palm.

“You’re welcome,” I say, and give her a scratch. I didn’t want to eat anyway. I came to the shop right after my non-breakfast to see Morfran. Apparently he and Thomas sat up most of the night talking over the ritual, because he had this broody, sympathetic expression behind his glasses, and instantly plunked me onto this couch and served me a snack. Why do people keep trying to feed me?

“Here, drink this,” Morfran says, appearing out of nowhere. He stuffs a mug of some foul, herbal blend into my face, and I recoil.

“What is it?”

“Angelica root rejuvenation potion. With a little thistle tossed in. After what that Obeah did to your liver last fall, you’ve got to take care of it.”

I look at it skeptically. It’s hot, and it smells like it was brewed with ditchwater.

“Is it safe?”

“As long as you’re not pregnant,” he snorts. “I called Thomas. He’s on his way. He went in to school this morning, thinking you’d be there. Some psychic, eh?” We sort of smile and say, “It only works some of the time,” together in Thomas’s voice. I sip at the potion tentatively. It tastes worse than it smells, bitter and for some reason almost salty.

“This is disgusting.”

“Well, the milk was supposed to coat your stomach and the cookies would’ve taken the taste out of your mouth. But you gave it all to the dog, you idiot.” He pats Stella’s rear and she lumbers off of the couch. “Listen, kid,” Morfran says, and I stop sipping at his grave tone. “Thomas told me what you’re going to try to do. I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re probably going to get yourself killed.”

I look down into the brown-green liquid. A smart remark is creeping up on my tongue, something about how his potions are going to kill me first, and I swallow hard to keep quiet.

“But,” he sighs. “I’m also not going to tell you that you don’t have a chance. You’ve got the stuff, power rolling off you in waves I’ve never heard before. And they’re not just coming from that backpack.” He jerks a finger toward my bag, next to me on the sofa. Then he sits down, on the arm of the chair opposite, and runs his hand across his beard. Whatever it is he needs to say isn’t easy. “Thomas is going to go with you on this thing,” he says. “I couldn’t stop him if I tried.”

“I won’t let anything happen to him, Morfran.”

“That’s a promise you can’t make,” he says, his voice harsh. “You think you’re just up against the forces of the other side? That shadowy, dreadlocked dude who wants to finish digesting you from the inside out? You should be so lucky.”

I sip the potion. He’s talking about the storm again. The thing that he senses, coming at me, or pulling me, or tripping me, or whatever the hell he said in that vague, useless way of his.

“But you’re not going to tell me to stop,” I say.

“I don’t know if it can be stopped. I think maybe you’ve got to go through it. Maybe you’ll come out the other side. Maybe you’ll come out the other side looking like a spit-up owl pellet.” He rubs his beard, having gotten off track. “Look. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. But if my grandson gets hurt, or worse—” He looks me in the eye. “You’ll have made an enemy of me. Do you understand?”

Over these months, Morfran has become sort of a grandfather to me too. Becoming his enemy is the last thing I want.

“I understand.”

He grabs me, his hand striking like a snake and holding mine fast. In the quarter second before a shot of energy makes my blood jump under my skin, I notice his ring: a small circle of carved skulls. I’ve never seen it on his hand before, but I know what it is, and what it means. It means that I won’t just have made an enemy of Morfran, but of voodoo itself.

“Be sure that you do,” he says, and lets go. Whatever it was that ran through me made sweat stand out on my forehead. Even on my palms.

The door to the shop jingles and Stella trots over to meet Thomas, her toenails clicking. At his entrance, the tension dissipates and Morfran and I take a deep breath. I hope Thomas’s psychic thing isn’t working right now, and that he isn’t particularly observant, or he’s going to ask why we look so uncomfortable and embarrassed.

“No Carmel today?” I ask.

“She stayed home with a headache,” he replies. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was thrown twelve feet through the air and landed on second-degree burns. You?”

“Groggy, and weak as a wet noodle. Plus, I think I may have forgotten a letter from the alphabet. If I hadn’t asked to leave, Mrs. Snyder would have sent me home anyway. Said I looked pale. Thought I might have mono.” He grins. I grin back, and we sit in silence. It’s strange and filled with tension, but it’s also kind of nice. It’s nice to linger here, to hold ourselves back and not barrel through this moment. Because whatever we say next is going to catapult us into something dangerous, and I don’t think either one of us really knows where it might lead.

“So, I guess you’re really going to try this,” he says. I wish he wouldn’t sound so hesitant, so skeptical. The quest might be doomed, but there’s no reason to paint it that way from the get-go.

“I guess I am.”

He smiles, lopsided. “Want some help?”

Thomas. He’s my best friend and sometimes he still makes it sound like he’s a tagalong. Of course I want his help. More than that: I need it.

“You don’t have to,” I say.

“But I will,” he replies. “Do you have any idea where to start?”

I run my hand through my hair. “Not really. There’s just an urge to get moving, like there’s a clock ticking somewhere that I can barely hear.”

Thomas shrugs. “It’s possible that there is. Figuratively speaking. The longer that Anna stays where she is, the harder it might be for her to cross over to somewhere else. She might become embedded in it. Of course that’s just conjecture.”

Conjecture. Honestly, half-cocked guesses about worst-case scenarios aren’t what I need right now.

“Let’s just hope it’s not a real clock,” I say. “She’s already been there too long, Thomas. One second is too long, after what she did for us.”

Thoughts about what she did to all of the runaways in her basement—all the teens who wound up in the wrong place and the wanderers stuck in her web—flutter over his features. Other people might judge Anna’s fate as a proper punishment. Maybe lots of people. But not me. Anna’s hands were tied by the curse put on her when she was murdered. Every one of her victims was a casualty of the curse, not the girl. That’s what I say. I’m well aware that none of the people she tore apart would be likely to say the same thing.

“We can’t rush this, Cas,” Thomas says, and I agree. But we can’t keep treading water, either.