CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My mind eased into a slow consciousness. The heavy cloud that seemed to hang inside my skull didn’t dissipate but I found the strength to think past it. Where was I? There was nothing.
My eyes weren’t open. I had to tell myself to open them. With great pains, my left eye blinked open first, then my right. They focused on nothing, just the same blackness I had behind my eyelids. But as my thoughts became sharper, the blackness became shapes of things. It stung too much to take it all in at once but through brief glimpses I could make out a doorway, some shady things hanging from a wall.
Still, where was I?
Then it all came rushing back to me. Shan. The horse. Bird. Maximus. The fire. The coyote. The end.
Where was I?
My head snapped back and the world spun. I breathed in wildly. It smelled like hay and horses and some musty, herbaceous stuff. I couldn’t move my arms or legs.
The clouds inside my head moved and swirled into a spinning current of air. I fought against it and looked down at myself. I was sitting upright in a chair. My arms and legs were tied to it with leather straps. They didn’t cut into my skin but they were restrictive enough.
Something stirred to my left. I looked over and saw a figure standing in the doorway. There was very little light in the room but my night vision kicked slowly. It was a short figure. It didn’t move much. And near the top of it, yellow orbs glowed. I knew who it was.
Sarah.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Sensing this, perhaps, she started walking towards me, step by step, her footfalls echoing throughout the room, which I guess was a tack room in one of the barns. I could make out a few western saddles on the walls, and when I thought about it, it felt like I was tied with reins.
“You’re awake,” she said. Her voice shot across the room yet seemed to come from nothing.
I didn’t have any snappy one-liners. I was frozen in fear. I could only process what was happening here and now. If I thought far enough ahead of what could happen….
“It’s good to be in present, Perry,” she said as if she were reading my thoughts. “Too many live in the future. If you keep living in the future, in what may be, then the future gets shorter every minute.”
She inched towards me until she was only a foot away. She leaned over and stared at me.
Though her face was hazy and grainy in the dark, she looked different. Her glasses were gone. And even though her eyes were the luminescent predatory shade of yellow, I could see she had nice, almond shaped eyes.
Wait, did this mean she could always see?
“In a way, I never was blind,” she said. As if things couldn’t get any creepier and disturbing, she was seriously reading my thoughts.
She straightened up and peered down at me. “Losing my sight was the best thing that ever happened to me. It opened my real eyes. The ones I had buried. The ones in your soul.”
She tapped her chest for emphasis.
“You see, I had forgotten the way. And it was almost too late. I lost all my faith in a reckless, false God that had turned its back on me. And why not? I turned my back on him. I lost my sight, but I gained so much more. I gained what I used to have. What I used to share with Shan. Something that, later, I was taught was ‘evil.’ But how could something that could bring my eyes back, be bad? No. It was everyone else who was bad.”
“Including your husband?” I said, the words coming out of my mouth like sludge. I wondered if that earthy smell that seemed lodged in my nostrils was peyote, or something else that was used to drug me earlier.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly. “He was bad. He turned his back on the way and he made me do the same.”
You have free will, I thought, testing.
“I know I do,” she said without hesitation. “We all do. But to have someone you love turn…”
You turned.
“I did. For the better. If Will could just…see. He is the blind one. I can see everything.”
How long did you plan on torturing him this way? I thought.
“Until he gets it. You think this is all because of you? This was happening for years. These things take time.”
I really wanted to say something utterly cliché such as ‘you won’t get away with it’ but my humor wasn’t allowing it at the moment and anyway –
“I won’t be getting away with anything. There is nothing to get, except for Will.”
She started pacing back and forth, her hands behind her back. It almost seemed comical, like she was playing a part.
So many questions flooded through me. Aside from the big questions – as in what was going to happen to me, where was Dex, where was Bird and everyone else – I wanted to know how she thought she was going to resolve her own problem. As ridiculous as it seemed, I needed to know her logic. What did she want to achieve? Bird had said that some people got angry. Could it still be that simple? There was nothing simple about this situation. At all.
I braced in my seat, thinking she was going to answer that herself but she didn’t. She just kept pacing, mumbling to herself now. She was done reading my thoughts for the meantime.
I needed to think of a way out. Or maybe this was a decoy, for her to use my own thoughts against me when I thought she wasn’t listening.
She stopped pacing and faced me.
“Do you know why you are here?” she asked quietly. >
I looked her in her animal eyes and shook my head.
“You think it’s because you’re…special’?”
I wanted to shrug but it seemed too insignificant for what was going on.
“You have a way about you. It’s useful. But you think too much. You want too much. Your ability to retract from reality is useful, but…we’d prefer someone who is a bit ‘all there.’”
I wasn’t all there? Maybe not at the moment when my thoughts not only seemed like abstract objects but were being read at the same time.
“He’ll be much easier,” she said. Her tone was tinged with menace.
He?
Without thinking, my arms and legs seized in their holds like I was some crazy attack dog held back by a choke chain.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ve been looking for someone else. Rudy gave Shan everything he needed. And Dex will give the same for me.”
How dare she even say his name? I wildly fought against the straps. What were they planning on doing to him? Was it too late?
The fear and anger that coursed through me was incomparable. If this were a movie, I would have broken through the straps in a Hulk-like manner and laid waste to Sarah. But this wasn’t a movie. No matter how angry I was, how badly I wanted to break free, I was stuck. I tried to move and squirm but the chair held on to me with the entire rein’s might. Sarah didn’t even flinch. She knew how futile it was.
“He won’t feel a thing,” she said, smiling. She kept grinning. Slowly, her teeth started to shift and elongate until they were too large for her mouth. They had become fangs and the rest of her face began to follow suit in a horrific display of shapeshifting.
First her jaw jutted out into a narrow point that strained her skin until it broke into bloody rivets, then her face began to spread wider, the sound of her jaw and cheekbones cracking into place filled the room, contorting and stretching. I could almost feel her skull splitting, the substantial sound of thick bone snapping. This was no scene out of Teen Wolf. This was the real thing. As real as it could be.
I looked down at her arms. I could see ripples of fur beneath her skin, like it was being caressed by underwater reeds. Soon the rippling stopped and the reeds started to poke through the skin; a demonic Chia Pet.
And soon, Sarah was a wolf, standing awkwardly. This was the end of me.
I closed my eyes.
Nothing.
I dared to peek.
It still stood there.
Then the fur began to retreat back into the arms and the canine jaw and head contracted quickly, as if it were sinking in itself.
But as Sarah began to revert back to human form, I realized it wasn’t going to be what I thought. Even from looking at the lower half of the transformation, I noticed she had on the same pants that I was wearing. And then it hit me.
I glanced up at her face. As the wolf disappeared and melded into human flesh, as the fur turned into ivory skin and as the canine eyes moved closer to each other, and the mane of hair was replaced by black, groomed waves, I realized…it was me.
I was staring at myself.
There was nothing else to think. There I was.
‘I’ smiled at myself.
“You’re in love with him,” the skinwalker me said, my voice exactly as it sounded in recordings.
She took a few steps back.
“If you’re lucky, he may get a chance to love you back. Before it’s too late.”
And with that, the skinwalker me waltzed out of the tack room and disappeared.
On the plus side, I was still alive. She could have killed me but she didn’t. And it meant that Dex was still alive. On the negative side, I was still tied up awaiting certain fate and Dex was about to meet his, most likely by the hands of someone he trusted the most.
No wonder Bird had said not to trust me. He knew. If only the old idiot had actually put enough energy to explain why, it would have made a whole world of f*cking difference.
And then the spins came. Not just the spins that made my head wobble back and forth like I was having an out of body seizure, but the waves of paralysis that coursed through me. I went from feeling like I could rip out of the binds (which I knew I couldn’t) to feeling like I was frozen from the inside out.
Then the room started to move again in waves. But it wasn’t my head this time. It was figures and shapes coming out of the shadows. They were ghostly, transparent. Shapes in vaguely human forms. They hovered around me. I didn’t know if this was a product of going insane from the circumstances or the fact that I was drugged with peyote.
I looked at the objects. They hovered and quivered as if they were timed to an irregular heartbeat. Whether they were real or not, I didn’t have many options.
“Can you help me?” I pleaded, quietly at first, ashamed of my voice when there was no one around. I was talking to myself.
“Please? Can you help me? I need help.”
Tears pricked at my eyes and fell unaided onto my thighs. I started bawling. I couldn’t help it. I was so lost. I couldn’t do a single thing. I couldn’t even think.
I cried for a few minutes, feeling stupid and useless and a sorry excuse for a human being. The love of my life (OK, so there it was) was in grave danger and I wasn’t able to do a single thing about it.
I cried for a bit more until I noticed a change of energy in the room. I looked up through my tears. My vision was watery but I could see the figures were closer to me. I wasn’t afraid though. They didn’t mean me harm, whatever they were.
“Please,” I sobbed one last time, meaning every messy note I managed to get out.
I felt warmth around me which made me feel better. The warmth didn’t undo my straps though.
But they did make my fingers feel more agile. I started to strain my wrists behind my back, trying to loosen their casing. It worked in a sense. I worked out how I was tied to the chair. My hands were tied together but it seemed I was only connected to the chair on my right side.
I wondered if I had anything MacGyver-ish in my left pocket. I moved my hand around in that direction, still noting that the strange white figures were hovering nearby like blurbs on badly processed film.
I felt in my back pocket and my fingers reached something. It felt like a plastic bag. Was it a gum wrapper? Only MacGyver could make something out of a gum wrapper.
I coiled my fingers around it and brought it out of my back pocket. I leaned forward in my seat as far as I could, so that I was almost tipped forward and tried to look behind my shoulder. I couldn’t see what it was but it did feel like something soft and squishy had been encased in Saran Wrap.
I had no idea what it could be. And I had zero patience to slowly open the bag and figure out what it was. As soon as it was in my fingers, I ripped it apart.
I heard a faint puff of sound and felt a sprinkling of softness on my thumbs.
The white, weird figures suddenly retreated into the depths of the room and were gone. I didn’t know if that was a good sign considering they hadn’t done anything wrong but, regardless, the fact that I could the rip the bag made me realize I could reach the other hand with the other.
I concentrated as hard as I could, and even though it took a few wrong attempts, much like trying to do your hair in front of a mirror, I was finally able to get my left hand free from the straps.
I brought the hand forward and marveled at it. It was covered in a white powder, similar to talcum. I quickly made work of my other hand. I bent over and tried to untie my feet but the reins were too tight. I looked up at the wall and spied a saw hanging above the sink. I hopped awkwardly across the tack room floor, chair clanking loudly as I went. I hoped wherever Sarah and Shan were, they wouldn’t hear it.
I got the saw off of the wall and quickly put it to use against my leg binds. The supple leather snapped easily and soon I was free of the chair. I was still dizzy and disoriented but I was free and ready to go.
I stumbled across the room and into the barn. I heard the horses stirring nervously in their stalls as I ran past.
Seeing the cloudy moonlight at the end of the barn, I started sprinting for it. I entered the stormy air of outside. Nothing ever smelled as sweet. The wind was really blowing now and threw my hair behind me.
I narrowed my eyes against the flying grit and sand and tried to piece together where Dex could be. He went into the house with the sheriff, the last I saw.
They couldn’t obliterate everyone, could they? The house was the first place I would have to go.
I scampered across the dry paddock towards the Lancaster’s house, which still had the lights on. As I neared, I saw that all the cars had gone. That wasn’t a good sign.
I slowed a bit and tried to take everything into account as much as I could.
If everyone was gone, that probably meant that they were alive. Maybe taking Bird to the hospital? Would they leave without Dex though? They couldn’t, Bird wouldn’t let that happen. Unless Bird was so out of it…
I stopped a hundred yards from the house and instinctively crouched down, hiding myself.
So where was Dex? I didn’t have the luxury to examine all my options. All I knew was that –
A flashlight.
Off in the juniper woods, near the other barn, there was a light bobbing in the trees. It seemed to be searching.
I held my breath and listened. I didn’t hear anything. I started running towards the light as quickly as I could while keeping as low to the ground as possible. Given my height, it wasn’t that hard.
I was close to where the sheep paddock ended and the trees began, when I heard it. I paused.
It was me. It was my voice coming from where the flashlight was.
“Dex, help me,” it said.
I opened my mouth to scream “No!” but nothing came out. Instead, I heard my disembodied voice again coming from the trees.
“Dex, help me!” it said again, louder.
And to my horror, I heard Dex’s gruff rely, “Perry? Where are you?!”
This could not be happening. I started booking towards the trees at full throttle now, not bothering to hide myself anymore.
I entered the forest and came crashing through. I got a few yards in when my feet caught on tangled undergrowth and I went flying onto the ground. My jaw clanked against the ground and I bit my lip on impact. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
Footsteps.
I froze. From where I was lying amongst the trees, I would be hard to spot.
The footsteps were coming faster now and I saw a flashlight. Within seconds, Dex entered my view. He had the flashlight in one hand, the infrared camera in the other. That figured.
I tried to move, to yell, but before I could do anything I saw myself come out from the trees. And by myself, I mean Sarah’s skinwalker version of me.
“Dex,” it said, pausing a few feet away.
Dex shone the flashlight on the fake me’s face and ran up to it.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he started apologizing. He reached out for the fake me with his hand. Every instinct in my body told me to get up and stop them but that paralysis was seeping through my veins again. My own voice was caught in my throat, borrowed by someone else.
“Dex, I’m afraid,” it said to him. It was my voice but it sounded emotionless and robotic.
I could see him hesitate in the dark. Did he know something was up?
He aimed the flashlight in ‘my’ face. It turned away, squinting. He couldn’t see the eyes.
“I’m hurt,” it said, still flatly. She showed her hands to him. They were covered in blood. Whose blood that was, I had no idea, but I was relieved it wasn’t mine or Dex’s.
“Shit,” he swore as he kept the flashlight at the hands.
“What happened?” he asked.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were carnivorous, ravenous. An animal’s.
Before he had a chance to look into them, she reached up with her bloody hand and pulled his face towards her, closed her eyes, and kissed him.
Er, I mean I kissed him. I was awestruck and forced to watch something that should have been the most epic moment of my life. Only it wasn’t happening to me. Not really.
I was afraid she’d try and eat him. That’s what it looked like she was doing.
And Dex. Dex was kissing her back.
Wait, he was kissing me back.
My heart jutted around in my chest. Despite everything that was going on, the thought, the sight that Dex was kissing me (and getting quite into it, it seemed), made my insides feel giddy, and my stomach lurch around like I had butterflies. What was wrong with me?
I watched for a few more seconds, feeling like a Peeping Tom, or like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. It was turning me on. It was so unbelievably wrong.
But something happened to shake me out of it.
“Ow.”
It was Dex.
He pulled back from the makeout session and touched his mouth. He looked down at his hand. Had she bit him?
The skinwalker me went for him with her other hand. That hand was already a full-on wolf paw. It was going to swipe across Dex’s face. It would remove his handsome mug in one go.
Something came over me. I don’t know what. But I found the strength, or the strength found me. I bolted upright and screamed at the top of my lungs. I think I tried to say “stop!” or “duck” but it all came out in a supersonic unintelligible shriek.
But it worked. Dex looked up just in time. He ducked and did a roll on the ground as the wolf made a lunge for him. He got to his feet and scooped up the camera, forgetting about the flashlight and aimed it at the wolf which was moving raggedly away from him, its head and neck held at an awkward angle.
“Dex!” I screamed again. “Get away!”
I ran towards him. He flashed the camera in my eyes and tried to read me from the infrared viewer. He looked as confused as you could imagine.
“What the f*ck?” he said. >
I grabbed his arm and started to pull him towards the trees. “Come on, it’s you she’s after!”
At that, it was like the heavens opened up. Whatever breeze was blowing lifted the clouds away and the moon shone down on us in a straight shot. Everything was illuminated. Dex’s confused face. The wolf lurking awkwardly behind us. The crow that swooped down from the treetops and landed on the ground beside us with a squawk.
We jumped at it, knowing full well it wasn’t just a crow. But it was too late to do anything.
The crow morphed into a snake, then a deer, then a coyote, then Shan. For two seconds Dex and I were looking into the sparkling eyes of the ranch hand, Sarah’s confidante, and murdering medicine man.
He cocked his head sideways at us but didn’t say anything. Dex pushed me behind him and held me there with his arms, shielding me.
The wolf slowly crept over to Shan. Shan raised his hand at it. It stayed still and sat back on its haunches like a dog. Like a hunting dog.
“If you had just left things alone…things didn’t need to turn out this way,” Shan said carefully. I wasn’t sure if Dex had gotten the memo of what exactly was going on but it didn’t seem to matter.
“You killed Rudy. No one had to die for your f*cked up cause,” Dex said.
Shan laughed. “Cause? You are misinformed, young man.”
He looked over at the wolf and pointed at Dex. “You sure this is the one you want? She seems to have more brains.”
The wolf didn’t say anything, though it wouldn’t have been weird at this point if it had. Shan turned back to us and took in a deep, narrow breath through pursed lips before speaking.
“I’ll give you both credit, though. You’re some of the most able white kids I’ve come across. It’s too bad we couldn’t have made this work out some other way.”
Shan took a step backward. We knew what was coming but we didn’t know how.
And then it happened. Before our eyes he turned into a bear. His bones stretched and cracked, creaked and crackled like a roaring fire, as they expanded to make room for his changing body. Fur spat out of his pores until he was covered from head to toe. Which, in itself, was about eight feet tall.
I know I had just seen it with Sarah but I still couldn’t get over it. How could I? How could this be happening?
Dex was obviously dumbfounded too. His body tensed, his hand gripped my forearm tightly. The fact that he was not filming this part, of all things, briefly (and shamefully) crossed my mind but I let it pass. What did it matter right now? What could we do to get out alive?
We were facing a f*cking grizzly bear that had the mind of a demented and merciless human being. This had to be the most dangerous animal in the course of history.
There was a growl from beside it. Oh right, the wolf. That would make things easier.
Whether they wanted Dex or not, I doubted we were making it out of the forest alive. But it didn’t mean we would just give up. I knew I wouldn’t.
As the grizzly stood on its legs, it made a swipe at us. But like Sarah had shown before, Shan was not used to the bear body. He fell over and landed on the ground with an earth-shattering rumble. The wolf looked at the bear, concerned, or something like that.
This was our moment.
“The tree!” I yelled at Dex.
We turned on our heels and headed for the closest tree. Dex threw the camera on the ground, aiming it at the bear and wolf, and grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me up until I caught onto the first few branches. They were heavy enough to support myself and I pulled myself up, straining my muscles, cutting every inch of me on the scraping branches as I rose.
It didn’t matter. I grabbed and grabbed and climbed and climbed and felt Dex coming up behind me. I also heard a vicious bark and a scampering sound.
The wolf was making a run for the tree.
I couldn’t get out of Dex’s upward path fast enough but he managed to swing his legs up just as the frenzied, snapping jaw of the wolf came within inches of latching onto him. He grabbed onto the branches next to me and climbed up beside me. This was about as far as we could go. Anymore and the tree would start to bend over from our weight.
It was too high for Sarah to reach us, no matter how hard she threw her wolf body into the air. But it wasn’t high enough to escape the tallest reaches of the bear.
“Can bears climb trees?” Dex asked. I spied his frantic peepers between the branches.
“I think these bears can do anything,” I said sadly.
He nodded and swallowed hard. I did the same.
“I know I already said this, but I guess it was to the wrong girl. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. It didn’t.
“When we got to the house…I thought you were right behind me. I…promised to protect you and I failed.”
“We both failed, Dex,” I sighed, so bloody conscious of the grinding teeth just feet below us and the impending threat of the bear. The impending threat of death.
“I didn’t think I’d go like this,” he said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Death by a grizzly bear? Me neither.”
“No, I meant just…alive.”
I was puzzled. It was welcoming.
He looked below him at the wolf. The tree shook slightly as if the ground beneath was moving. I think the bear was stirring.
He looked at me and smiled, it was shady in the scattered moonlight.
“For once, I can feel everything. Every emotion, every feeling, every sense. I’ve never felt so alive. How ironic.”
I sniffed. This was sad. I always thought the horror of death would have overridden any sadness, but there it was, kneading my heart until it hurt.
“Well, I hope I make the best company you’ve ever had,” I whispered.
“You are the best,” he said sweetly.
He put his hand through the branches and stroked my face. I closed my eyes at his touch and a tear rolled down my cheek. I heard the roar of the bear approaching, its deafening sound rolling through us. I cursed Sarah for getting to kiss the man I loved while I didn’t get the chance.
Dex took his legs and swung them up around a branch and twisted his body underneath the one he was holding onto so that we were both between the same set of branches, our bodies close together.
He leaned in close, his eyes searching mine. They sparkled in the moonlight and reflected my own heartbroken face. Then he kissed me.
His moustache tickled. His lips were warm. It was wet and sweet. He tasted good. I felt like crying and laughing and screaming all at once. My body felt as light as air. A million symphonies played in my head. If I was going to die, I was going to die happy. That was something.
He pulled away. I wanted to cry. I did cry. It wasn’t fair. Whatever it was, I only knew it for such a brief time. Another tear ran down my cheek. He gently wiped it away with his hand and tilted my chin up at me. If other things were going on at the same time, I wasn’t aware of it.
I managed a small smile.
“How was that compared to the other me?”
“Less dog breath,” he deadpanned.
And then everything wonderful was over.
The tree shook violently. The bear was below us and shaking it with its large limbs. Though it wouldn’t support us, we had no choice but to climb up to the top of the tree. We moved our feet quickly, but already the tree started to tip over, like a heavy star on top of a Christmas tree. Between the fact that we were slowly getting closer to the ground, and the shaking, we didn’t have long until our options were out. I guess our options had run out a long time ago.
My hands began losing their grip on the branches. I was going to fall.
I looked at Dex, eyes wide. He quickly grabbed my arms but I only brought him down with me.
We fell out of the tree and landed on the ground in a painless THUNK. I rolled over slowly in the opposite direction of the bear. I didn’t want to see this. I focused on the trees in the glen, the moonlight, the soft breeze.
I felt Dex roll over on top of my body and cover me. It was touching. It was useless. But at least I knew he’d do anything to protect me. Even when all hope was lost.
I heard the roar and the growl and the ground rumbled beneath us.
I was about to close my eyes to it all. It was time to go. Time to say goodbye.
“Nooooo!” someone yelled in full panic.
I moved my head and saw two figures running towards us. One had a shotgun aimed beyond us. The other was making a move to stop him.
The shotgun blasted out in a fiery explosion that lit up the base of the surrounding trees. I heard an otherworldly roar.
The second figure, who I now recognized as Will, tried to attack the shooter, but his tall frame was too much for him. He shrugged him off and fired again, maybe at the wolf. Maybe at Will’s wife.
It was Maximus. The real Maximus. He lowered the shotgun. I could see the black shapes of the bear and wolf run off into the trees and disappear.
Will fell to his knees and covered his face. Maximus left him and ran over to us, stooping in front of me.
“Are y’all OK?”
“Hey man, nice shot,” Dex said from on top of me. He rolled off and got to his feet, then together both he and Maximus hoisted me up so I was on my own two legs.
I looked around. The tree looked partly demolished. The wolf and the bear were gone. Will was crying a few feet away. I guess he believed enough to know what Sarah was capable of. I felt a tinge of pity for him, he was the real victim in all of this, but most of all I just felt utter exhaustion. It was as if all my feelings had been used up in the last five minutes. There was nothing left in me.
“I got here as soon as I could,” Maximus said, squeezing my shoulder.
I nodded, trying to convey the gratitude I felt.
“Thank you,” I said meekly. “You did good.”
Maximus shook his head. “I don’t reckon there is anything good coming out of this.”
A bunch of voices came out from the brush and a few more people came running out, big searchlights in hand. It was the sheriff, Miguel, and two other people I didn’t recognize.
Maximus sighed. “Now it’s the time to explain the f*ck out of this thing.”
I looked at Dex. He looked as drained as I did. He put his arm around me and pulled me in slightly.
“Let’s get it over with,” he said. I just wanted to crawl into his car and drive away, but I suppose with the police and who else knows involved, someone had to answer to something. Even if that someone was me.