When the bell rang for lunch, I approached the cafeteria with caution. Beatriz caught up with me in line and we chatted about our English assignment.
Covertly, I watched everyone around me trying to spot it. Beatriz sat next to me. Jess seemed to consider joining us, but at the last minute changed his mind. Probably for the best. With him, I would have four kids in three years. One set of twins. He would die in a car accident, leaving me heart broken. I saw I would truly come to care for him and that, along with leaving me with four kids, scared me. None of the existing branches showed four. Three topped it. The life expectancy of our men and the gestation period made more impossible.
Since it was just the two of us, I watched Beatriz closely. It didn’t disappoint. As soon as she took her last bite, it took over.
“You look well today,” it noted with an indecipherable look.
Maybe because I’d been expecting it, or maybe because I’d already spoken to it several times, I didn’t feel the usual spike of numbing fear. Oh, I still scared me, just not enough to paralyze me.
“Thank you. Not to be rude, but what are you?”
It quirked a smile at me. “A creature created long ago when nature was corrupt with other influences.”
That told me nothing. I toyed with my fork, thinking, trying to gain the courage I needed to be direct. Given how quickly it tended to disappear, I didn’t want to let this chance to get an answer, a meaningful one, slip by.
With a calming breath, I asked, “What bargain were you referring to?”
It reached over and removed the fork from my hands, a small smile playing on its lips. Setting the fork on its own tray, it leaned toward me and explained, “Belinda grew up without a mother. Her father, who loved her very much, worked hard to provide for them both, but could never earn enough to improve their circumstance. He worried about what would happen to Belinda if something should happen to him. He tried to arrange a match for her, but she didn’t like her options. To be honest, I don’t think her father did either, but with so little money, back then, there wasn’t much choice. So he called on me. He asked for …”
I interrupted him. The story sounded a lot like a fairy tale I once read. “Wait… he called on you? What does that mean? Did he know you?” It shook Beatriz’s head. “Then how did he call on you?”
“Let’s save that for another time. We’re running out of time.”
I looked around, noted the emptying cafeteria, and nodded.
It gazed thoughtfully at me, which made me wary, and then continued its story. “He asked for money. Just enough to secure a future for Belinda.” At my puzzled look, it explained before I could interrupt again. “I can make deals. Pacts. I have the power to grant requests, but there’s always a price. The price was Belinda.”
My mouth popped open. No wonder she’d been hiding. But why leave a book saying we needed to hide too if she was the price?
“I wanted a companion. Someone to talk to. In my mind, I could provide her with security no human could. I had little exposure to humans and didn’t fully understand… well, I didn’t understand much, but I did want a companion who would come to me by choice.
“We struck a deal. I could spend time with Belinda to present myself to her as a choice. Because I’m not very patient, I set a limit to the amount of time she had to decide. By her seventeenth birthday. In the event that she didn’t choose me, I added a clause allowing me to present myself to any of her line under the same conditions until someone does choose me.”
The bell rang startling me. I looked around. The cleaning crew began making their way along the tables. Voices from the steady stream of students in the hallway drifted in. When I looked back, Beatriz stood and grabbed her tray.
“Tomorrow.”
After that word, it left. And I still didn’t know what it was. Could I trust what it said? It seemed to fit. It explained why Belinda left the book. She’d made her choice and left the rest of us to suffer the consequence.
After school, I headed to the library to do some research. When I started looking up possession, everything pointed to demonic with a few references to mental illness. I ruled out mental illness right away. No way could so many people fall victim of spontaneous temporary mental illness. It would be too much of a coincidence. A thought occurred to me. What if they weren’t the ill ones? The common factor in all of the occurrences was me. I’d remained the only one to see it. And for all of the people it’s possessed, I’d been the only one to hear it. My ability to glimpse my future, coupled with the sleep thing, wasn’t normal. Growing up I’d been told repeatedly to keep that part of who I was to myself. What if they just wanted to protect me from myself and this was all in my head?