Faelorehn - Book One of the Otherworld Trilogy Read online

  * * *

  After school, I turned down Robyn’s offer of a ride home.

  “Are you sure? You’re not planning on taking out Michaela and her posse, are you?”

  I snorted. “No, I just think a long walk would do me some good. I’m going to take the trail through the swamp.”

  It was the truth. I pretended not to care about Michaela and her stupid list, but deep down it hurt. I didn’t want my friends to know about it though. They would only want to comfort me, and although I appreciated their concern, I wanted to shake the feeling off on my own.

  The wind rustled through the tall eucalyptus trees and I was practically humming as I headed across the football field and track behind the school. I found the trail that cut through the trees and ended up on a back road that led into the swamp. From there it would be easy to find the horse path that ran behind my backyard.

  It was a rather pretty afternoon, the sky clear blue and the sun warm. The weather usually stayed that way through late November. I drew in a deep breath, truly reveling in the smells of autumn. I couldn’t tell you what it was about the fall that made me like it so much. Maybe it was the idea that the year was coming to an end and soon the cycle would start all over again. Maybe it was the smell of hay and the earthy colors that accompanied the harvest that appealed to me so much. Maybe it was because my birthday arrived on the cusp of fall. Whatever it was, I liked it.

  After passing through the tall trees, I cut across a side trail that had been worn through the layers of leaf litter and stepped out onto a quiet street. I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack and popped in my headphones. I searched my music list, looking for something that would match my mood. I decided to go with some indie rock today. I twirled a strand of my dark hair with my index finger and kicked at acorns on the ground as I walked. My butterfly antennae bounced with the rhythm of the current song and the yellow in my wings caught the sun of the autumn afternoon, leaving splotches of color along the road.

  It took me half an hour to come to the end of the road. I easily climbed over the barrier that stated motor vehicles weren’t permitted any further and descended deeper into the small wilderness that rested behind my home. The thatch of willows up ahead told me that the water was near, but I wasn’t too worried about mosquitoes or getting wet. I would be through quick enough and by this time of year any significant amount of standing water was all but gone.

  It was while I was crossing the small bridge of land that stretched beneath the low canopy that I first noticed something strange. I had been so busy humming along to my music that I missed it at first. A flash of something dull green, then the jerking and swaying of the reeds and brush ahead of me forced me to stop and pull the headphones out of my ears. It was as if an army of gophers had suddenly decided to devour the shrubbery around me. I would’ve dismissed it as merely some small animals foraging for food, but there were just too many of them and now that I didn’t have music blasting in my ears, I could hear them too.

  My skin immediately began to crawl, the way it did when my mind started playing tricks on me. It almost sounded like laughter, maniacal laughter; like some demented puppet from a horror movie had been let loose in the swamp. I swallowed only to find my throat had gone dry. And then I saw one of them. The creature was small and warty like a toad, with beetle-black eyes and teeth that protruded from what I could only assume was a primitive mouth. Reddish, bedraggled hair fell from the top of its head and trailed down its back like a horse’s mane. Another one pushed the first creature out of the way, this one a little more gray than green, its hair paler. If I were to name them, I’d say they were gnomes. But they couldn’t be, because gnomes didn’t exist and I wasn’t living in some fairy tale. The past seventeen years of my life were proof to that.

  I took a deep breath and started moving once more. It was really happening again. The voices, and now I was seeing things. I guess I hadn’t kept my fingers crossed long enough. I wondered if I should tell my parents this time. But that meant more visits to the psychiatrist and more medication. I wasn’t even sure if Dr. Morgan still had her practice.

  A sudden squeal behind me made me jump. I shot a glance over my shoulder. From the thrashing of the reeds and splashing of water, I could tell some of the things had gotten into a fight. Then a few of them tumbled out onto the trail. Several more joined them a few moments later. They were all hideous, gray and green and brown with warts and those strange manes running down their backs. They were only a foot or so tall, but they had vicious looking claws at the ends of their fingers and toes, and they seemed to be strong for their size.

  I guess I stood still for too long, because one turned and spotted me. It let out one of those shrill, fingernails-scraping-a-chalkboard cries and threw itself down the trail towards me. My heart leapt into my throat, but I turned and took off, running up the sandy trail that would take me home. I might have been tall and gangly, but thank goodness I was fast. I put some distance between us, my backpack thumping painfully against my spine, my delicate butterfly wings snagging against stray branches. I never looked back, just pushed harder despite the deep sand. And I had been worried about mosquitoes.

  After a few minutes I finally made it to my house. I jumped off the trail and cut up the slope, pumping my legs hard to reach my backyard. I dug my hand into my backpack and fished out my house key. It seemed to take forever, but once I found it I jammed it into the keyhole of my sliding glass door and pulled the door open. As soon as I was in, I slammed it shut and locked it, leaning on my knees as I caught my breath. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to look out into our backyard, secretly wishing it didn’t open out onto the woods surrounding the swamp.

  There wasn’t a single creature in sight. I was confused, for I had heard them right behind me, even to the point of stepping onto the flat expanse of my yard. A flood of relief washed over me then. As real as it all had seemed, I had been imagining them. Thank goodness.

  Standing up straight, I took my hair down and walked into my bathroom. I looked like a mess. My face was all sweaty and dirty from the extra effort of running the last five minutes home, and I felt grungy. I decided on an early shower, hoping that the hot water would not only wash the dirt and sweat away, but would also cleanse away the images of those strange creatures from my mind as well.

  The dance wasn’t until eight, so as soon as I was clean, I was going to take a nice long nap and try to resettle my mind. I just hoped that my dreams wouldn’t reflect what I had just been through.

  -Five-

  Samhain

  I didn’t dream during my nap, something I was very grateful for. If I had dreamed, I’m sure it would have been full of toady little creatures with sharp claws and black eyes.

  I woke up to some Halloween themed song playing on my radio alarm. Appropriate, I thought. I threw the covers back and dragged myself to my bathroom, casting a quick glance at my sliding glass door as I went. I breathed a sigh of relief. No little monsters staring at me from beyond the glass; no scratch marks running up and down the door.

  After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I sought out my costume once again. This time, instead of black jeans and a t-shirt, I pulled out a black dress I had worn to a wedding once. It had spaghetti straps and the skirt started above my waistline and fell to just above my knees. It was a little more formal than my daytime attire and the color ensured that I could still be a butterfly for the dance. After applying more makeup than usual, I glanced up at the clock. I had an hour before the dance started, so I grabbed my bag with a change of comfortable clothes for our bonfire, then made my way upstairs to wait for Thomas. Since his parents were taking his siblings around their neighborhood in Nipomo to trick-or-treat, he got to use the van for the evening, and since it seated more than Robyn’s car, he was to be our chauffeur to and from the dance.

  I climbed my stairway only to step out into a living room alive with chaos. Appa
rently my brothers were taking their costumes a bit too seriously. Bradley, dressed as some grotesque species of alien, was chasing after Logan with a laser gun. Logan, who had the bright idea to be a cheeseburger this year, was trying, and failing, to get away. It was just too hard for him to be quick in such a bulky costume. Aiden, like me, had invented his own costume, a super hero of sorts complete with a green cape and a mask. His favorite color was green, and every year his costume had to include that color.

  My mom was trying to get the twins settled. She was dressed as a witch. Real original, I know, but she claimed it was easiest, classic and matched her personality when at work. She and my father always dressed the twins to match. This year they were a pair of sock monkeys. I had to admit, they looked pretty good.

  Dad wasn’t dressed in a costume yet. He had just come home from his job at the local power plant, but if I knew my father, he had some surprise costume hidden away. He wouldn’t dare reveal it until he was ready to take the boys out trick-or-treating.

  “Oh, look at you Meg!” Mom cried out over the ruckus.

  I shrugged and did a quick pirouette. I shouldn’t have. That drew the attention of the alien, and soon I was the target of Bradley’s wrath. Eventually, I managed to grab a quick bite to eat and get out the front door without being captured or mutilated. Suddenly remembering my strange ordeal from that afternoon, I peeked around the corner of our house towards the end of our street only a dozen feet away. No sign of creepy gnomes anywhere. I breathed a mental sigh of relief.

  I walked to Tully’s, my nerves frazzled the entire way. All throughout the neighborhood, parents were trailing after their costumed kids as they darted from door to door seeking candy. It was getting dark, but I could still see clearly enough to keep a check on the shrubs that lined the street. It wasn’t the dark I was afraid of, but what might be hiding in it. Meghan, it was just another figment of your imagination, remember? It wasn’t real, so stop being so paranoid. Oh if only I could believe what my conscience told me.

  Thomas’s van was waiting in the driveway when I arrived. He was wearing his zombie attire again, and Will had added some gel to his hair to get that sexy vampire look. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his glasses kind of cancelled out that effort. Tully had on a dress similar to mine, but the skirt and sleeves were longer. Robyn was already in the van, her dark Celtic goddess costume looking the same as it had at school earlier that day. Once we were all buckled up, Thomas popped in a Halloween mix CD and we all started singing like idiots. Robyn merely snorted and mumbled something about desecrating the Celtic New Year.

  The school was abuzz with activity when we pulled into the parking lot. We piled out of the van and headed towards the gymnasium with everyone else. It was soon clear that some people had changed their minds about what to wear that night. Many of the costumes were far more disturbing than what I’d remembered from earlier that day, some just flat out lame. A few people had tried to be clever, dressing as a cereal box killer or their interpretation of an infomercial ad. I wasn’t surprised to see most of the popular crowd wearing something I wouldn’t wear in my backyard to get a tan.

  Robyn snorted in their direction and said with no small amount of sarcasm, “Because freezing to death in a skimpy costume is so attractive.”

  I nodded my agreement, my butterfly antennae bobbing with the movement.

  The dance, just as I had thought, proved horrid. The music was too loud, the strobe light gave me a headache and if we weren’t being ignored, we were being approached by the freshmen boys who hadn’t yet learned that associating with us would ruin their reputations forever. We didn’t even stay an hour. We quickly changed in the locker rooms and ended up leaving thirty minutes after we walked through the doors, sneaking past the teachers who tried to keep us corralled like a bunch of sheep heading off for the slaughter. I had no desire to be slaughtered that night.

  We all piled into Thomas’s van and took one of the back roads into the swamp. Thomas parked on the side of the dark street and we walked down into a small clearing beyond the barrier I had jumped earlier that day. Had it only been that afternoon when I’d been chased down by imaginary gnomes? Didn’t feel like it. For several minutes I felt edgy, as if I expected those little goblin things to make an appearance again. But then I reminded myself I had only imagined them . . .

  A fire pit, most likely built by the first teenagers who lived in this area eons before, was already in place on the far end of the clearing. As we gathered firewood I kept my eyes and ears sharp for anything unusual. We got a small fire started, and then we all looked up at Robyn expectantly. After all, this was her idea and we all expected some ritualistic words to be spoken or something. Not that any of us took this seriously. We were all just really interested in hanging out.

  “Um, so I brought some information with me so you guys know what we are doing. Meghan, can you read it?”

  Robyn handed me a piece of paper with interlinking runes as a border. It looked like she had found it on some website and had merely printed it out. I shrugged, curious as to why she just didn’t read it herself, but took the paper anyway. I had to squint in order to read the words in the dim firelight.

  Furrowing my brow, I cleared my throat and began: “Samhain: The Celtic New Year.”

  Well, that explained Robyn’s grumbling on the way to the dance.

  “It’s pronounced sow-when,” Robyn interjected.

  I gave her a harsh look that I hoped said, then why don’t you read it? I bit my lip and looked back down at the paper. Sow-when; really? I shrugged. If Robyn said so . . .

  “Samhain: The Celtic New Year.” I made sure to pronounce it properly that time.

  I read the entire first paragraph, which detailed the traditions and history of the Celtic New Year. According to Robyn’s print-out, the ancient Celts claimed that the dark half of the year started during the next few days and that the veil between the Otherworld and this world became more permeable to the creatures and spirits of a supernatural nature. It was actually quite interesting, to tell the truth, and it kind of reminded me of all the other mythologies I had learned about in school. Of course, the sentence about Otherworldly creatures lurking in our world sent a tingle of fear up my spine. That particular description was a little too familiar to me with regards to my tendency to see things.

  Once I was finished reading my part, Robyn took her paper back and pulled out a book with a pentagram and some other strange symbols on the cover. I felt Thomas tense up next to me, so I placed a hand on his shoulder. Thankfully, Robyn had picked out a pretty mild passage, something along the lines of asking the Earth spirits to protect us from the evil ones this night. I sent up my own request that the rest of the week prove to be vision and voice free.

  “One way to keep the evil spirits away is by carving gourds or pumpkins,” Robyn said after finishing her Samhain blessing. “The Celts used to carve turnips.”

  “How do you carve a turnip?” Tully asked.

  “With a really sharp knife I guess,” Robyn shrugged.

  “How do you even know all of this?” Will added.

  Robyn lifted her shoulders again. “I saw something on TV once about it and decided to investigate. It’s amazing what you can find while surfing the internet.”

  “So,” I murmured, “do you have any turnips for us to carve?”

  We all laughed, but Robyn shook her head. I had never seen a turnip bigger than my palm, so even if Robyn had wanted to carve turnips, I didn’t think we could have made much progress. But I would probably have been the first one to start carving. Call me superstitious, but I wouldn’t mind having a miniature jack-o’-lantern guarding my door for the next week or so.

  Instead, she pulled a box of graham crackers, a bag of marshmallows and several bars of chocolate out of her bag.

  “I don’t have turnips, but I do have goodies.”

  Once we all had our own marshmallo
w roasting on the end of a stick, we started pestering Robyn for more information about Wicca and her other bizarre interests. Even Thomas took part.

  I had never really taken Robyn’s rebellious side seriously. She had a flare for the dramatic, so sometimes I wondered if her Goth look and pagan obsession was just a cry for attention, but it turned out she had done her research. Or so it seemed. I didn’t really have anything to compare it with.

  We ate several s’mores and after an hour of watching the fire die down, we decided it was best to head home. None of us was completely comfortable sitting in the middle of the woods with no one else around. We stamped out the fire and started heading back up to the car.

  We walked in silence, perhaps all of us listening for the wandering spirits of Samhain. I thought about my family, probably still out trick-or-treating, if I knew my brothers well enough. Mom had likely opted to stay home to hand out candy and catch up on grading. When you taught English Literature to high school students, you had a lot of monotonous essays to peruse through.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the rustling bushes until we came to the point where the dirt road met pavement. I froze and shushed my friends. They all turned and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “What is it?” Will lisped through his fake vampire fangs.

  I waved my arm at him and told him to be quiet. Several seconds passed and the bushes rustled again.

  “Hear that?” I whispered harshly.

  Everyone nodded. And then I heard something else. It was the same, strange grumbling I’d heard earlier that afternoon. I felt myself go pale and I looked at my friends. I wasn’t imagining it this time. They had heard it too. Maybe I hadn’t been seeing things after all.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Tully hissed.

  We started to walk briskly up the slope, the van seeming miles away. The creature grumbled again and we all screamed and started to run. We made it to the van in record time, everyone piling in and not even worrying about seatbelts until Thomas had the car started and rolling back up the street.

  “What do you think it was?” Thomas asked, his voice strained.

  “The spirits of Samhain,” Robyn said, a mystical certainty tainting her voice.

  “Robyn! Seriously?” Tully gave her an exasperated look.

  “I bet it was a raccoon. They make a weird noise when they get into fights,” Will added.

  When we all looked at him with raised eyebrows he shrugged. “What? They do.”

  As we came to the end of the road and pulled out onto the highway, I listened as my friends babbled on about what had disturbed our party. No one noticed I wasn’t talking and no one perceived how unnerved I was. I had thought I’d imagined it, I was certain. But if all my friends had heard it too . . . ?

  “I’m telling you,” Robyn insisted stubbornly, her voice only slightly tinged with amusement, “it was the spirits of the dead from the Otherworld.”

  Everyone just laughed and Tully even gave her a shove. I was the only one who didn’t laugh, because I felt strangely compelled to agree with her.

  -Six-

  Encounter

  The next day was pretty laid back in the Elam household. All my brothers were recovering from their candy hangover from the night before and my parents were still in their pajamas at noon. I spent the morning cleaning my room and trying to get ahead on my homework. I hadn’t had a party for my birthday the day before, but that night I was having Tully and Robyn over for a girls’ night in.

  My friends ended up staying late, during which time we gave each other pedicures and talked about which boys at our high school were the cutest. Too bad they never showed any interest towards us. Robyn surprised me when she fessed up to having a guy outside of our school.

  “Seriously!” Tully said, smacking her with one of my pillows.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Robyn shrugged and grinned sheepishly, a look that did battle with her dark eyeliner and lip ring. “It didn’t start out as anything serious.”

  “And now?” I pressed.

  “We have a date tomorrow night.”

  The movie we had been watching became nothing but background noise as we prodded Robyn for more information. I was happy for her, I really was. But something deep down, perhaps something instinctual, prickled with envy. I wondered if I would ever find anybody to make me feel as giddy as Robyn sounded.

  Eventually the movie ended and our night came to a close. Tully and Robyn were gone by midnight and I went straight to bed. I remembered falling instantly to sleep and waking up on the dirty streets of Los Angeles. Wonderful. That annoying dream of my past again. It was essentially the same as always, but something was different this time. I looked down at my feet. Yup, they were still bare, but for some reason the distance from my eyes to my toes seemed greater. I held my hands out in front of me. Not a child’s hands, but a young woman’s. That was odd; I was always a toddler in this dream. At least I had my pajamas on this time.

  Suddenly, without warning, the scenery changed and I was standing in my back yard. The moon was nearly full so its silver light cast long reaching shadows as it splintered through the silent trees.

  I heard the near quiet huff of an exhaled breath and I glanced up from my self-examination. A great white dog was standing on the edge of my backyard, his ears perked forward and his black eyes watching me. He was as still as the night but somehow I knew he was beckoning me. I moved towards him and he turned and descended down the steep slope that led into the swamp below.

  I knew I should have stayed put, but it was only a dream and I had absolutely no control of myself. I followed him without a second thought.

  The leaves and branches crunched beneath my feet as I tried to keep up with the specter-like dog. Thank goodness he was so huge or else I might have lost him. Had it been a moonless night, he’d be easy to spot, but his pale color nearly blended in with the white pools of light.

  He led me further along a trail, one I was familiar with; the same one where I was chased by a pack of warty gnomes just the day before. We walked for five or ten minutes, my spirit dog always staying twenty feet ahead and never looking back. Finally, the slowly descending trail ended and the dog took a sudden left, cutting across the small land bridge that split the lowest part of the bog. I followed him, eyeing the willows and oaks forming a dark, leafy bower overhead.

  I ended up on the other side of the marsh, very close to the place where my friends and I had had our Samhain gathering the night before. A tall mix of eucalyptus and oak trees spread off to my right and the other section of the swamp continued far into the distance. Just off the main trail I spotted the small clearing where we had gathered. In the center of the clearing sat the dog, right where our bonfire had been, waiting silently for me to approach. I moved forward, my hand outstretched. Even sitting down, his shoulders came up to my waist.

  Just as I placed my hand on his scraggly head, I woke up.

  I was standing, in my nightgown, in the middle of the swamp behind my house. At first I was confused. Was this another part of my dream? But the sharp itch of a mosquito taking advantage of my bare arm brought me to my senses. I slapped the insect away, but my confusion was quickly being replaced by panic. Did I really sleepwalk from my room down into the swamp? I must have, how else could I have gotten here, barefoot, without a jacket, and standing upright no less?

  I pulled my arms close to fight the chill and quickly darted my eyes from side to side. There is nobody here, I told myself, stay calm Meghan. But it didn’t help. I tried to tell myself that the moonlight was bright enough to light my way home, and that the only thing in the swamp that I should fear were the mosquitoes. Unfortunately, I had seen some weird things in this swamp during the last few days, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be any better at night.

  I took a tentative step forward and felt the sharp bite of a stick. Chewing my lip an
d cursing silently, I tried another, gentler step.

  A low growling sound in the bushes behind me caught my attention. I stiffened and felt my blood freeze. It didn’t sound like any dog I’d ever heard and I knew that we occasionally got black bears in the swamp. I tried hard to put that thought out of my mind. Unfortunately, in order to do that my memory decided right then and there to conjure up the images of the gnomes again. Would I be able to see them in the moonlight if they started coming after me?

  The growling intensified and the snapping of twigs and rustle of leaves told me that there was more than one of whatever it was I was hearing. I cursed for real this time, something I rarely did. I glanced over my shoulder, back into the thick brush that lined the far edge of the wetlands. That was when I completely lost it. I knew animal eyes tended to glow orange or green if they were caught by your headlights or a flashlight, but only when the light hit them. Within the dark bushes I spotted several pairs of eyes, glowing continuously in the strangest shade of violet I had ever seen. I blinked to clear my eyes, hoping it was a result of my delirium from sleepwalking and the strange silvery light of the moon. I was wrong, as usual. There really were violet eyes staring back at me, at least five pairs.

  Swallowing hard, I took a careful step backwards, seeking the soft, sandy trail that I had unconsciously followed down into the swamp. If I could only get back onto that path at least my bare feet would have a fighting chance. The animals noticed my movement and decided to leave their hiding places. Oh, how I wished the moon wasn’t so bright.

  The first one pushed its way past the undergrowth and stepped into the clearing. I tried desperately to convince myself I was still dreaming. I had to be; there was no way that what I was seeing was real. A monstrous beast, black in color and about the same size as the white dog I had followed here, stood crouched before me. The smell coming off it made my stomach turn, and that putrid odor mixed with the nervous fear that held tight to me made me nearly sick. It was horrible, as if the corpse of some giant wolf had decided to rise from the dead. From what I could see in the moonlight, great pieces of fur were missing and its muzzle looked almost skeletal. I would have given anything to have those little warty goblins back instead of these things.

  The corpse dog snarled and released a long, mournful bay, a sound that made my already icy skin prickle with goose bumps. Two more monsters joined it from the brush, then two more after that. I was far too terrified to move and because of that they quickly had me surrounded, their violet eyes and rancid stench bringing me closer and closer to fainting. I fought it with all my might, knowing that if I did faint, these zombie wolves would most likely tear me to shreds.

  I was trapped, terrified, praying that I was simply having a nightmare and that I would wake from it at any second. But the cold night air seeped into my skin and the gravel and twigs cut into my feet. The rotting stench of the corpse dogs assaulted me and the eerie silvery light of the moon only enhanced the hollows between their ribs; outlined the ridges of their spines. One of them opened its mouth and started panting, its throat glowing like a furnace, its breath pouring out in curls of black smoke.

  I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my body, even though I knew I should have been running or fighting. I waited for them to launch themselves at me, wondering what was holding them back as they snarled and growled and glared at me, always moving in a slow circle.

  A second passed, then another. But I kept my eyes shut, muttering nonsense to myself and waiting to feel the dull pain of their teeth.

  The time dragged on and suddenly there was another fierce howl, more alive than the dismal baying of the death hounds. My eyes flew open of their own volition and there, fifty feet away, stood the great white hound from my childhood dream. He threw his head back and howled again, then charged the mass of demons surrounding me. The dogs turned and faced the new threat, snapping and growling and crying in that bone-deep, mournful way they’d done just minutes before.

  I gasped as two of them leapt forward, biting into the white dog as he slammed into them with full force. The three that still stood around me were distracted for the moment, so I took advantage and turned to run away, only to trip over a fallen log I hadn’t seen before. I hit the ground hard, losing my breath and destroying any chance of escaping.

  The corpse dogs not fighting with the white hound lunged. I threw up my arm to protect my face, my heart racing faster than ever before, and screamed. A great yelp cut through the air, followed by a crashing sound. Then another yelp followed, and another. I lowered my arm and sat up, then nearly fell back down in shock.

  Someone was there in that clearing with me. Someone tall and wearing what looked like a hooded trench coat. As I sat in the dirt, my mind and my heart racing with everything that had happened that night, I watched my rescuer, hardly believing he was there. Where had he come from? Wasn’t he worried the dogs would attack him?

  The monsters rose up from wherever they had been thrown, growling and looking angrier than before. I realized that the man in the trench coat had somehow knocked them back. How he had managed to do so, I couldn’t say. The dogs had to weigh well over a hundred pounds and the man didn’t have so much as a stick to fend them off with. Turns out, I didn’t have to wait much longer to learn about his methods.

  One of the dogs lunged, the speed in which it did so impossible for any living thing to accomplish. I shouted some unintelligible warning, but apparently it wasn’t necessary. The man was ready for the attack, and just as quickly as the dog had moved, he swung his arms around and grabbed it, throwing it so hard against a nearby sapling that the tree broke in half.

  I blinked and felt my jaw go slack. There was no way any of this was real. True, none of my visions or delusions had ever been this realistic, but this simply could not be happening in reality. A dream, like I had told myself before, it was just a dream and all I had to do was wait for it to wear itself out and I would wake up, safe and sound in my own bed.

  My superhuman savior quickly took care of the remaining dogs as I sat and played air hockey with my own conscience. But before I knew it the demon dogs were gone and I was sitting alone in the middle of a clearing with a stranger who could move like a comic book hero.

  The silence seemed strange, after all of the growling and yowling that had filled the air earlier. The moon shone down just as brightly as before and a slight breeze rustled through the willows growing on the edge of the swamp. I was too frightened and astounded to move, and I had no idea what to say. The man stood fifteen feet from me, gazing off into the woods that spread out beyond the clearing. He didn’t make a sound. It wasn’t until I heard the soft panting behind me that I realized I had forgotten about the white hound who had led me here to begin with.

  I turned to look at him, standing above me, his tongue lolling out. I had never really gotten a good look at him before, in those dreams I had where he acted as a guardian of sorts to my very young self. He was solid white, except for his ears. I couldn’t tell their exact color in the moonlight, but my guess was that they were light brown or even rusty colored. Or maybe that was blood from the fight. Of course, upon further inspection, I saw no other dark marks on him.

  The dog huffed out a breath and then lay down next to me. I wanted to pet him, let him know I was thankful for his help, but some movement out of the corner of my eye distracted me.

  The man in the trench coat had pulled his eyes away from the trees and moved closer. I panicked, kicking at the ground in an attempt to scoot further away, but the dog kept me still, looking at me with curious eyes.

  “Who-who are you?” I asked. My voice sounded weak and harsh.

  The man didn’t answer, but dropped into a sudden crouch, his elbows resting on his knees.

  I squeaked and pulled away, afraid he might be one of the crazy people my mom had thought lived down here. What if he had a knife? What if he was a serial killer? All of a sudden, those zo
mbie dogs didn’t seem so frightening after all.

  The man sat back on his feet, then hunched his shoulders over. His hood was still up and I couldn’t see his face, but something in his stance was familiar.

  “Hobo Bob?” I blurted.

  I immediately cringed. I had never liked that nickname but that was the first inane thought that popped into my head, and honestly, I was a bit traumatized at the moment. I had just sleepwalked into the woods in the middle of the night only to be attacked by monsters. I think I was allowed a little slip of the brain for the next few hours. Or days.

  “Sorry, I mean,” I fumbled my words, worrying that I had offended the poor man. What was he doing here? Is this where he lived when he wasn’t perched on the outskirts of the school campus? And furthermore, how on earth had he moved like that? The homeless man who had been hanging out around my school for the past few weeks was old and arthritic.

  I was surprised when the man laughed. A light, easy sound that suggested youth. “Is that the title you have awarded me?”

  I started in surprise. That wasn’t the voice of a crazy old man. There was a strange accent to it, Irish or Scottish, and like his laughter, it was the voice of a much younger man. I tried to remember if I had ever heard Hobo Bob speak before, but I couldn’t say for sure that I had.

  And like the brilliant teenager that I was for the time being, my answer to him was a bland, “Huh?”

  He laughed again, straightening up once more to his full height. I glanced up and gaped. He had to be close to six and a half feet tall, maybe taller.

  “I often heard the spoken insults of the young people attending your school, but I never paid them much attention.”

  It was at that moment he decided to lower the hood of his coat. I felt my jaw drop again. Luckily, he was glancing off to the side, so he didn’t notice my sudden gawking stupor. From what light the full moon provided, I could gather that my rescuer was a very good looking young man and all the names of the boys Tully, Robyn and I had listed off earlier that night seemed like ugly ducklings in comparison. His hair was dark and his face well-sculpted. I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but I could tell that they were dark, calculating even as he considered a stray stone on the ground beside his foot.

  The light wind from earlier picked up once again and my body felt suddenly chilly. I looked down, only to discover that my night gown was hiked practically up to my waist, showing off my pink, polka-dot underwear. Flushing with embarrassment, I quickly pulled it down and wrapped my arms around my torso once again. I suddenly felt very vulnerable.

  My movements caught the young man’s attention and he glanced back at me. His sudden gaze made me blush even more. I hoped he couldn’t see my red face in the moonlight.

  “Forgive me,” he said in a serious tone, “you must be very cold.”

  Before I could so much as blink, he had unbuttoned his trench coat and had thrown it over my shoulders, pulling it closed in front of me. His touch was light and careful, the opposite of what I had seen him do with those dogs. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, I tried to study him a bit more now that he was closer, but all I could make out in the moonlight was what he was wearing: jeans, a designer t-shirt, and what looked like utility boots, the kind my dad often wore to work, the ones with steel toes.

  After draping his coat over me, he backed away. I caught a glimpse of something metallic around his neck, but it was only a glimpse. I had no idea what it might be. For a while, I simply breathed and enjoyed the warmth of his coat. It smelled strange, not in a bad way, but like something vaguely familiar that I hadn’t smelled in years. I read somewhere once that scent was one of the strongest senses in recalling memory, but for now I couldn’t place those memories. I only wrinkled my nose, thinking of these woods after a rainstorm.

  At some point in time I managed to find my voice again. Clearing my throat, I said, “What were those things, those dogs?”

  The young man grimaced and glanced off into the trees again. “Cumorrig,” he answered, “hounds of the Morrigan.”

  “What?” The Morrigan? Like the Celtic goddess Robyn had dressed as for Halloween?

  He ignored my question. “Most modern day folklorists would call them hellhounds.”

  “Hellhounds?” I’d heard of those before. In one of my literature classes last year we had read some stories of mythology. I vaguely remembered a mention of hellhounds but I couldn’t describe them. Guess I didn’t really need to anymore.

  I looked back up at the tall stranger, and feeling one of us needed to say something, I took a breath and said, “Thank you for helping me, and I am very grateful, but who exactly are you?”

  He smiled, forcing the corners of his eyes to crinkle. I had to look away. Why couldn’t the boys at school be this attractive? It might make their taunts more bearable.

  “You were right in guessing who I was earlier,” he said, standing up once again.

  I had to crane my neck to keep an eye on his face. Even though he had the charm of a well-versed movie star, there was no way I was going to trust him. To wake up from a dream and find myself in the middle of the forest, surrounded by the living corpses of dogs, then to have him appear out of nowhere and chase them off with superhuman speed? Yeah, that was normal. Right.

  He took a deep breath then ran both hands through his thick hair. I watched him carefully, not sure what his next move would be.

  “Meghan, I’m afraid we’ve met under unsavory circumstances.”

  He glanced down at me with those dark eyes. “Our first meeting wasn’t supposed to go this way. Those hounds,” he paused and grimaced, “let’s just say it was my job to take care of them earlier, and they slipped past me.”

  I blinked, feeling myself return to my previous stupor. What was he talking about? He knew about those horrible dogs? It was his job to take care of them? What did that mean? And most importantly, how did he know my name?

  I felt ill, as if I were going to throw up. I tried to stand, letting the trench coat slip off of me. All of a sudden it felt like a net meant to trap me like a bird.

  “Meghan,” he said, reaching out.

  But I cringed away from him, and offered him his coat with a shaky hand.

  “Thank you again, but I really should get back home.”

  “Not on your own Meghan, not with those hounds still lurking around these trees somewhere.”

  His voice had deepened and that only made my stomach churn more.

  “Please,” I whispered, feeling the first prickle of tears at the corners of my eyes, “please, I just want to get home.”

  Suddenly he stiffened and his gaze intensified. “You are afraid of me.”

  It was a statement, not a question. I knew I was doomed then. Wasn’t it true that if a victim revealed to her attacker just how terrified she was, then she had already lost the game? Sure, he had chased off those dogs, but maybe only to keep me whole so he could take me off to some bomb shelter somewhere to torture me slowly. I shivered both from the return of the autumn cold and from the knowledge that I was completely at his mercy at this point.

  The man merely sighed deeply and said, “I fouled this up completely, but I’ll make it up to you somehow. Right now, however, I think it is best if you forget most of this.”

  He held up his right arm, palm out, as if he was planning to hit me with some kung fu move.

  “What are you doing?” The panic in my voice matched the racing of my heart.

  “Tomorrow, this will seem like a dream, but in a week’s time I will send Fergus to you. Follow him, and I will introduce myself properly, at a more reasonable time of day. Then I’ll explain everything.”

  I stared at his hand as he moved closer, wondering if I should try and fight him off if he reached for me. My mind seemed to grow fuzzy, my vision blurred.

  Just before I passed out, I managed a barely audible, “Who are you?”

  “You can call
me Cade, but you won’t remember this, so it doesn’t matter.”

  And then I was swallowed by darkness.

  -Seven-

  Evidence

  Sunday morning brought with it a pounding headache and the restless feeling of leaving a bad dream behind. I blinked around my room as soon as I woke up. Everything was in its place; my old TV with the crack in the corner of the screen, my neon purple lava lamp, my posters featuring the paintings of various artists and musicians I liked. And the old desk my mother and I had found while browsing a local thrift shop, the top, as usual, littered with the contents of my backpack.

  The sun was streaming in through the sliding glass door, reflecting off of the small droplets of dew sprinkled over the lawn. For once it wasn’t a foggy morning. Despite the normalcy of the day, something didn’t feel right, as if my mind were trying to recall the dream I’d had last night. That wasn’t unusual for me, but something didn’t add up in my mind.

  I turned my head to the side, slowly so the headache wouldn’t escalate. A large blue and white speckled bowl holding the remains of a few bags of popcorn sat on the floor, next to several other dishes containing a variety of candy. Just the leftovers of a typical night of overdosing on junk food and scary movies. Nothing out of the ordinary really.

  After struggling with the strange, uneasy feeling for several more seconds, I gave up. It was pointless to try and remember a dream that wished to stay hidden. It would come to me eventually, as all my dreams did.

  I got myself ready for the day, flipping my radio on to the local classic rock station and slipping into my bathroom to brush my hair and wash my face.

  I was halfway through my routine before I noticed the scrapes and cuts. I stopped and glanced at the scratches down my arms. In the mirror, my eyes peered back at me, looking more green than hazel just then. As usual, I wondered why. They weren’t like a mood ring where each color corresponds with what mood you’re in. Blue means relaxed, red means excited . . . Nope, mine just change color as my moods do, or even when I’m not aware my mood has changed. More likely than not, the change in color triggered my response.

  I decided that my current mood was a mixture of curiosity and dread. How did I get those scrapes? I thought back to the week before, and then it dawned upon me. I had gotten into a confrontation with Michaela on the field behind school. On Halloween. On my birthday. She had wanted to show me a list. I had tried to get away from her. Only problem was, I hadn’t noticed the chain that acted as a fence separating the track from the football field. I had walked right into it and fallen over, my books sprawling everywhere. I had obviously used my hands and arms to break my fall.

  I rubbed the scrapes now, my face reddening from the memory. But there was something odd about it, as if it were a memory from several years ago and not a few days. An old memory.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to forget about the incident. I really hated Michaela and I made a special point not to hate anyone. But that mantra was kind of hard to stick to when you had people like Adam Peders, Josh Turner, Michaela West and all their shallow friends to deal with. They had been making my life a living hell since my first day at school when we were freshmen. And in Adam’s case, even before then.

  A noise grabbed my attention and I turned to find Aiden standing in the doorway of my bathroom, gazing up at me with those bright blue eyes of his. He startled me but I relaxed when I realized it was him. My brothers were always trying to break into my room, but they were always too noisy to be successful. Aiden was the only one I never heard climb down the stairs.

  “Aiden? What are you doing down here?”

  “Cartoo,” was all he said.

  I smiled. The medication for his autism seemed to be helping, but he still had a hard time communicating. For some reason, he had fixated on me as the most important person in his life and there was no way I was going to let him down.

  “Alright buddy, is no one awake upstairs?”

  He didn’t answer. Sometimes he’d go a whole day without saying anything to us. I was used to it though. I carried him back upstairs and plopped him down onto the great stuffed couch in our living room and fished the remote out from between the cushions. I tried to convince myself that the sticky residue gluing my fingers together wasn’t something the twins might have dropped in there the week before.

  I surfed around until I found the station playing Aiden’s favorite cartoon. His eyes lit up and he was hooked. When I thought it was safe to return to my room, I dropped a kiss on the top of his head and crossed back to the spiral staircase leading downstairs, passing Logan and Bradley on the way.

  “Don’t change the channel. Aiden wants to watch cartoons,” I called over my shoulder to them.

  They zipped past me, still dressed in their pajamas, their blond hair tousled and their eyes still droopy.

  “What else is new?” Logan piped.

  Luckily, his tone was cheerful and not spiteful. It was hard having Aiden in our family, especially since everyone else was so normal. Well, everyone but me of course. I think my brothers were pretty well adjusted, though. I glanced once more over the kitchen counter to find Logan and Bradley on either side of Aiden, all three of them singing the theme song to the cartoon at the top of their lungs.

  I smiled widely, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until my parents and the twins were up.

  I descended my staircase to the sound of an electric guitar solo blaring from my stereo. I glanced at the clock. Just after eight. Why had I woken up so early on a Sunday morning? Oh yeah, the unremarkable dream that wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Sighing, I found a pair of semi-clean jeans among the pile of clothes on my floor. I grabbed an old t-shirt from my drawer and pulled that over my head. I promised Tully last week that I would help her with her English paper, but only if she would help me with science. We had a system, Tully and I. She helped me with my trouble subjects and I helped her. You see, I was a dreamer, head in the clouds, big imagination. I had an ‘analyze poetry’ type of personality. Tully was very scientifically minded; thought mostly in black and white. Of course, we both appreciated each other’s talents, but I probably couldn’t tell the difference between a DNA sequence and the number of chromosomes I had if my life depended on it.

  By the time I made it back upstairs with my backpack and my books, the rest of my family had joined the fray on the couch.

  “Where are you going so early?” Mom asked, a towel thrown over her shoulder as she mixed pancake batter in a bowl.

  “Tully’s,” I said, grabbing an apple and a muffin. “Science test on Tuesday and English paper due Thursday.”

  My mom merely raised her eyebrows and nodded. She knew our system as well.

  “Hey Dad,” I said as I walked past his favorite recliner. How he could read his magazine while the boys watched unrealistic cartoon characters bash each other to bits was beyond me.

  “Mornin’ Meggy,” he answered, his eyes never leaving the story he was reading.

  I glanced at the article on my way to the front door. It was an exclusive on Stonehenge. My dad had a penchant for scientific and archaeological magazines.

  “Well, see you around lunch time I guess,” I said as I pulled the door open.

  As the front door snapped closed, shutting off the sound of arguing boys and the clang of Mom moving dishes around in the kitchen, I threw my head back and took in a deep breath. The sickle-shaped, silvery leaves of the eucalyptus trees rustled in the breeze. For a minute, I thought I heard voices again: dreams, full moon, memory . . . they seemed to whisper.

  I shivered, despite the warm autumn morning. That was the thing about the Central Coast; our best weather was in the fall. Sure, we had our fair share of foggy mornings, but on many occasions I had even walked on the beach in shorts and a tank top as late in the season as Christmas Day.

  A heftier gust of wind pushed through the branches above my head, parting them like
a curtain, and just as quickly as I thought I’d heard them, the voices were gone. Shaking off the weird chill and pushing the voices to the back of my mind, I hiked my backpack further up my shoulder and made my way down the road. I passed our neighbors’ houses, their sprawling front lawns either enjoying a shower of morning sprinklers or lazing in the shadow of the tall shade trees. I loved our street.

  I rounded the final curve in the road and headed towards the blue, tidy two-storey house on the corner. Bypassing the front door, I stepped right out onto the front lawn, shading my eyes against the sun as I glanced up at Tully’s window. I smiled to myself, and then took out the tennis ball I kept in my backpack for just this purpose. I wound back my arm, took aim, and launched the neon green ball right through her open window. Less than a minute later, the tennis ball came whizzing back at me. I caught it and stowed it back in my backpack just as Tully poked her blond head through the window.

  “I’ll let you in through the back,” she said as loudly as she dared, “Mom and Dad are still in bed and they want to sleep in.”

  Both her parents were professors at the local college. On Saturday nights they often ventured into San Luis Obispo to have a night on the town. Tully had once said that they were in denial about growing old. Of course, the fact that they had to sleep in until noon the next day did more to point out their advanced age than going to bars did to enhance their formative years.

  Once Tully unlocked the door and led me upstairs, we started pulling out our books and notes. We chatted a little bit about the latest school gossip, but neither of us decided anything was all that new or important. Besides, we weren’t privy to the good gossip anyway. Yet it still baffled me that for a high school consisting of just under six hundred students, we sure had a lot of drama that took place.

  Sighing, I grabbed my notes on the latest English tragedy novella we were reading in our literature class and made myself comfortable as Tully grabbed her desk chair and moved it closer to me.

  Only after I sat down on Tully’s bed did it occur to me just how tired I was. I tended to be an early riser, so it wasn’t like my schedule was any different than usual. But today I felt as if I’d joined Mr. and Mrs. Gordon on their club fest last night.

  “Meg, what happened to your arms?” Tully asked, grabbing my hands and pulling my arms out to examine them.

  “Oh,” I said as I blinked away my sudden weariness, “the thing that happened with Michaela the other day, remember? When I tripped over the guard chain?”

  Tully gave me a look. I knew that look. It was the same look I always got from other adults right before my parents decided it was time to take me to a new psychiatrist.

  “You didn’t trip over anything.”

  “Yes, I did, you were there, remember?” Why did I always have to be the crazy one? “She wanted to show me the list of girls Adam Peders would never date in a million years? She hinted that you were on the list as well, or don’t you remember that either?”

  I was suddenly angry for some reason and it wasn’t even at the insult the list had caused. I was angry because I suspected Tully was right. The argument had been real, I know that for a fact, but something about tripping over the chain wasn’t quite right. Yes, it surfaced along with the memory of Michaela’s pinched face but it seemed misplaced, contrived even. Like when you were a toddler and you were trying to figure out how to piece together a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in your life. Although the pieces don’t quite fit, you tried to force them together anyway.

  Tully glanced up at me with her clear green eyes. I normally towered over her, but at that moment she made me feel as small as my twin brothers.

  “I remember you tripping over a chain fence,” she whispered, “but that was in third grade when Marissa Campos told us she knew how to make our freckles multiply.”

  Both of us released a laugh at the memory, and the tension that had been building up melted a little bit.

  “I, I’m sorry Tully,” I whispered, hiding my arms and the scratches covering them from her view. “Do you promise not to freak out if I tell you the truth?”

  Tully raised her right hand and crossed her heart with her index finger.

  “I don’t know how I got these scrapes.” I held my arms out in front of me again, as if looking at them would give me the answer.

  “How can you not remember?” Tully insisted. “They look pretty new. Are there any others, I mean, not just on your arms?”

  “Yeah, my knees actually, and I feel like I’m going to be finding bruises all over the place in a day or two.”

  “Did you fall down yesterday, maybe playing basketball with your brothers?” Tully asked.

  I actually considered it, and to tell the truth, I couldn’t remember much of what had happened yesterday, not much at all. When I told Tully this she furrowed her brow and sighed. “It’s like someone has erased your memory.”

  As if Tully’s words were the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers, part of my dream from the night before surfaced in my mind. An image of a white dog and trees standing stark against the light of the near-full moon flashed across my vision. Unfortunately, it was gone before I could get a good hold of it.

  I sighed again.

  “Maybe you hit your head when you got hurt, and are suffering from amnesia.”

  I shrugged, then suggested we drop the subject altogether and focus on our homework. Tully readily agreed with me. I think deep down we were both a little rattled by the whole thing, and right then and there I had no answers to offer.

  When I got home later that day, I decided I needed a nap. Mom thought I might be getting sick, but I just waved her off and said that studying for science often made me brain dead for an hour or two anyway. As I crossed the living room I saw Dad’s magazine sitting askew atop the coffee table. A familiar image of Stonehenge dominated the cover and for some strange reason I recalled noticing that before, when I had left that morning.

  A terrifying image shot through my mind then, of a dark forest scene crowded with the rotting corpses of dogs, a moonlit meadow and something else I couldn’t quite see . . . I gasped, the burning image of glowing, violet eyes piercing my skull.

  My mom was at my side before I completely lost my composure.

  “Meghan! Meghan, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay Mom,” I mumbled as I clutched my head. It didn’t really hurt, my head, but the sudden return of details from what must have been my dream from the night before had shocked me that much.

  “What’s the matter?” she pressed, using her petit frame to keep me on my feet.

  I thought lying was the best choice in this situation. “Headache,” I grumbled.

  I had had migraines when I was younger, in the years after they found me in Los Angeles, and a few since then, so it wasn’t a complete impossibility. In order to add to the act, I pressed my arm against my forehead. Too bad I had forgotten about the scrapes.

  “Meghan! What did you do to your arms?”

  “Uhh,” I answered dully, “tripped in P.E. on Thursday. We were playing softball.”

  The grumbling sound next to my ear told me that she chose to believe my story, for the time being at least. She helped me down the spiral staircase that descended into my room.

  “You’ll kill yourself climbing down if I don’t help you,” she insisted.

  Once downstairs, I sat on the edge of my bed and told her I could take it from there. She stayed for a bit longer, closing the blinds that hung from my sliding glass door while making comments under her breath about my messy room and its likely contribution to my headache. Mom liked things immaculate.

  Finally she left, but only after I feigned lying down and going to sleep. I listened to her footfalls as she climbed the carpeted steps, but even after she had closed the door behind her, I stayed in bed, my forearm over my forehead and my eyes glued to the glowing stars stuck to the ceiling.

  Only after my breathing evened out and I
no longer felt the waves of terror flooding over me, did I allow my thoughts to wander back to my nightmare from the night before, and most likely, the reason for my current state of scraped skin and exhaustion.

  -Eight-

  Familiar

  Of course, no answers ever came to me and after an hour of agonizing reflection, I came to the conclusion that I had simply had a nightmare the evening before and that my scrapes and bruises had been a result of a violent case of sleepwalking. Though my room remained fully intact, I knew there was no other explanation.

  Despite the fact that there were still bits and pieces of my dream missing, I felt somewhat satisfied with my conclusion. After all, it wasn’t like I had never forgotten a dream I’d had before.

  I joined my family for dinner, putting on my freshest face and brushing aside any concerns they voiced aloud. Of course, my mother was the only one to display any true worry. The boys had no idea I had almost fainted (they had been at the grocery story with my dad when I had first come home from Tully’s). Dad had merely given me his customary once over. As long as we had all our limbs and weren’t hemorrhaging from the head, there was absolutely nothing wrong with us.

  After dinner we huddled down to watch TV before Mom and Dad started getting the twins and Aiden ready for bed. They all complained when the time arrived, but somehow my parents managed. Logan and Bradley soon followed, grumbling about how late it wasn’t and how they weren’t even tired as they yawned and rubbed their eyes. I grinned, finding something amusing in their simple, childhood woes.

  Yawning, I called a goodnight to my parents. I had school in the morning, hurrah, and a test early in the week. It would do me no good to start the week out cranky and tired. I clambered down my spiral staircase, half eager for the warmth of my bed, half afraid of what would happen once I fell asleep.

  The visions and voices and nightmares were returning, I could deny it no longer, but I wasn’t sure I could deal with it again. I couldn’t go back into therapy and the medication I had taken when I was younger had made me feel nauseous all the time. And the truth of it was, it never really helped. I only pretended that it did so they wouldn’t give me more of the awful medicine. Like before, I would just have to find a way to ignore my visions. If I was lucky, in a week or two everything would go back to normal once again. I pulled on my pajamas and curled into bed, counting imaginary pink and yellow butterflies visiting white flowers as I tried to keep my frightening memories at bay.