FIFTEEN
***
Sarah West was damned if she was going to let a little bit of fog get to her. She was on the main street, she was only a few feet from any of a number places where she could get help in a pinch, and, most important, she was Sarah West.
And Sarah West was not someone who got screwed with. Sarah West was the one who did the screwing. She was one of those rare people who understood the truth: that being called "bitch" was what happened when people were jealous of you, and that people like her always won in the end.
The wind whipped up, flapping her small skirt against her thighs, and she shivered. She wasn't afraid, girls like her didn't get afraid for any reason. But even so...she picked up her pace as much as she could in the thick fog, trying to keep the bright - but rapidly failing - lights of the football field at her back. Finally, though, she had to resort to walking with one foot in the street just to make sure she was walking in a straight line.
She thought of Albert as she walked. Pervy little snot. How many times had she caught him filming her ass over the years? Too many to count. Not that she could blame him for trying. Asses like hers were one in a million, and definitely part of the whole package that was going to be her ticket out of this one-horse hellhole in the middle of Nowhere, Washington. She'd finish high school, then it would be off to Los Angeles for a career as a movie or TV star, or maybe she'd be a pop recording star. She hadn't decided which one she would yet, but knew that whatever one she decided on, it would happen. She was, frankly, perfect for stardom. She had long legs, muscled without losing their femininity; a nice butt; and a rack that was the closest thing to perfect that God had ever created.
And Albert thought he even had a chance at speaking to her! She couldn't help but laugh at that.
The laugh drew her up short, but as soon as the thought had fled she realized something that...disquieted her: she, Sarah West, was completely lost. She couldn't make out anything in the heavy fog, not even the powerful lights over the football field. Not that it was dark, exactly: the fog itself seemed almost to glow with a pale light. But even so, there was no visibility, and she had lost herself in her daydreams to the point that she had no way of making it home.
She sighed and dug out her cell phone. She hated calling her parents for rides: it reminded her that she should have had a car by now. God knew her parents could afford one. But every time she broached the subject they started babbling about "responsibility" and "earning privileges" and even saying such ridiculous twaddle as "you'd have to pay for your own gas." As if. Sarah West had things paid for her. She did not pay for them herself.
The cell phone was a perfect example. It was her fifth one in seven months. None of the others had broken or lost, they had simply gotten old. So when a new one came out a month or two after hers, and when the new one (inevitably) had some feature that hers lacked, or was faster, or even just cuter, she could always convince her parents to fork over the cash to get it.
She dialed home. But instead of hearing the dial tone followed by ringing, she heard...nothing. Well, that wasn't strictly true. She did hear a kind of high-pitched sound, like someone was playing a CD about a billion times too fast, reducing it to a nasty whine.
But no parents.
She clicked the disconnect button and tried again. Same result. Only this time the whine was louder, and then even louder as she listened. Then it slashed out at her like a sonic razor, making her cry out.
And at the same time, a shadow passed by in the mist. Inches away.
Sarah's breath caught in her throat. What had that been? The shadow had been huge, at least the size of a grown man, but it had definitely not been a man passing nearby in the heavy fog.
"Who is it?" she said, and her voice cracked. She coughed, then in a stronger voice said again, "Who is that? Who's out there?" After a second she added, "Tiffini, if that's you I swear to God I'm going to kill you."
If it had been Tiffini, the other cheerleader would have broken up laughing at this point. But there was no sound to be heard at all. Nothing except the high-pitched whine from her cell phone.
She turned the phone off and shivered.
Another shadow passed by. Again, it was man-sized, but Sarah could see even more clearly that whatever it was, it wasn't a man. Two arms, two legs...but its head looked as though it had horns on it.
What the hell? she thought, and began to back away from the shadow. Before she could take a single step, though, the dark patch in the fog had disappeared. She turned around in time to see another one of the shadows pass nearby before it, too, melted into the fog.
A new and unwelcome sensation touched her then: panic. She felt herself start to lose control of everything from her thoughts to her bowels as she realized that whatever was happening, it was no joke sprung on her by the more jealous of the other cheerleaders.
"Leave me alone, you freaks!" she shouted.
As if in response, another one of the strange, horned shadows appeared directly in front of her before melting into the mist as all the others had done. Sarah started to spin around, seeing shadows at every turn, but she could never focus on one for more than a second or even catch the exact moment when a shadow became one with the fog and disappeared from her view.
She became even more disoriented than she had been, a kind of vertigo seizing her, dizzying her, making her reel in place. She caught herself, taking a deep breath, and then took a large step.
Move, she thought. Don't stop. Stopping is what it wants you to do. Gotta move.
She didn't have the courage to examine - even within herself - what "it" might be.
She walked.
Then walked faster.
Then ran. The one consolation was that she seemed to be running in a straight line: her feet were coming down each time on the sidewalk she had been trudging down before this all started.
Slap, slap went her sneakers, her breath coming in short pants as she fought to outrun the shadows that even now surrounded her.
Slap, slap, slap, slap...splash.
Sarah stopped short. She felt her sneaker get wet and instantly looked down.
Only sidewalk at her feet. Not so much as a puddle. But for all that fact, her shoe was undeniably soaked, as though she had just walked into a small stream up to her calves.
She looked around, but could not see anything but fog and the ubiquitous shadows, drawing ever closer, silent and menacing.
She took two more steps.
Slap, slap...splash.
This time the other foot became wet, and suddenly Sarah was transported back in time, feeling as she had on that beautiful summer day when her parents had taken her out on a lake for some waterskiing and her line had somehow gotten fouled in the outboard motor, drawing her under the water and tangling her in a spiderweb of rope that held her down, down, down, and she felt herself drowning again, clawing for air, the only thing that saved her was her mother, who quickly jumped in with a knife and hacked at the waterskiing lines until Sarah was free.
But there was no water here. No more than three houses in all of Rising even had pools.
So how could her feet be wet?
No longer trusting her vision - what if the shadows weren't really there, either? - Sarah knelt down and felt all around her. In every direction she carefully pressed on the ground wherever she could reach it. It was dry concrete no matter where she pressed.
She stood.
Another shadow came by her, and this time it was close enough that she could almost see eyes: grossly distorted, gigantic eyes that stared not at her, but through her. As though she were an insect, or less than an insect: something to be ignored or destroyed, not cared for or pampered as Sarah deserved.
The sight of those awful eyes in the mist was too much. Sarah screamed in terror, and wheeled to run, secure in the fact that she was on solid ground, that she could run like a goddam gazelle, that nothing could happen to her because she was Sarah West, dammit, and bad things didn't happen to Sarah West.
She turned.
She put down a foot.
And fell headfirst into water.
She could see the sidewalk rushing up at her, but instead of hitting herself on the cold concrete, she felt herself fall through it, its surface suddenly as permeable as that of any pool or stream or...
Or lake.
She fell into liquid, her hands paddling with manic ferocity as she tried to claw her way up. She was disoriented, the mist didn't give her enough light to know whether she was swimming up or down. The breath burned in her lungs, she wanted to breathe, she wanted to live, to breathe, to live, she wanted so many things as she clawed there in the dark of the water that could not be there but was.
She broke the surface, gasped a thick draught of clean, misty air, then fell down again, plunging back below the impossible surface of the water that was there though it could not be. The breath was hotter in her lungs now, more insistent and urgent. Again she was clawing for life, trying to find her way to the surface of the - what? What had she fallen into?
She pulled for all she was worth. Pulled and pulled at the water that surrounded her, holding her breath as long as she could, knowing that to gasp, to try to breathe would be the end of her. But with each pull of her arms, the need to breathe grew more critical; with each kick of her feet her lungs demanded air more stridently.
She resisted, still trying to find her way up. Even the mist, the shadows, the fear that waited for her above was better than this.
She prayed, asking God to save her, a part of her marveling that God could have been asleep at the wheel long enough to allow this to happen to her in the first place.
She wanted to breathe, she wanted to breathe, she wanted to breathe.
She clawed, she fought, she struggled.
Where was the air?
She kicked her feet, the muscles in her perfectly proportioned legs pushing her strongly around as she fought for her life.
She wanted...she wanted...
She wanted to breathe.
She fought it. She denied herself. She refused, as long as she could, and then kept insistently refusing to open her mouth, to take that gasp that a part of her was convinced would be so good.
Then, at last, she wondered in the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational thought, What if this is a dream?
What if this isn't real?
Then how do I break out of it? was the next thought.
And the answer was obvious.
So though a small part of her cried out in horror, shrieked "NO!" and tried to stop her, the rest of her - the animal that she had largely become - said "yes" and smiled triumphantly.
And with that smile, Sarah West, beautiful of limb and body, intelligent of mind, perfect in nearly every possible way, opened her mouth and inhaled.
***