CHAPTER NINETEEN
When I came to, I was in an unfamiliar bedroom. There was a poster of Ryan Reynolds on the wall, a collage of photos and some arty framed works of Parisian landscapes. The wallpaper was yellow with tiny roses.
I blinked hard at the overhead light and slowly eased myself onto my elbows. I was lying on a single bed and was alone. I looked around the room again. The dull thud of music reverberated throughout the walls. It matched the pounding in my head. I wasn’t in pain but I could feel my heart hammering away upstairs in the thin space between my forehead and my skull.
What the hell had just happened? One minute I was talking to Jacob outside by the side of the house and the next I was in Adrianna’s bedroom. At least, that’s what it looked like from the mass of pictures on the wall, her tanned, smiling face with a gaggle of different kids I went to school with.
I rubbed at my forehead to get the pounding to stop. What had we been talking about anyway? Why had I just fainted?
Seriously, I’m quitting drugs tomorrow, I thought. At least cutting back.
I got off of the bed and vigorously rubbed my face up and down, stretching my jaw open and shaking my arms back and forth. A beer would put me right. Maybe a line if I happened to run into someone I knew.
Of course, it was more than likely that Jacob had a bit of coke somewhere. But I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. He had been creepy, he had been talking about…demons? Was it demons? And then I ended up here. No, the coke wasn’t worth it, not from him.
I opened the door and poked my head out into the hall. The sounds of the party came at me. At the end of the hallway, a couple was making out against a door. Pretty hardcore from the looks of it. The guy was getting a handjob at least; the blonde girl’s hand was well into his pants and working him back and forth. I wanted to tell them the bedroom was free if he didn’t want to make a mess in his pants but I kept it to myself and crept past them. They didn’t notice anyway.
I reached the stairs and was met with a party that showed no sign of slowing down. If anything, people were more wild than before. Someone was sitting on top of the television, the beer bong had made its way into the kitchen, everyone seemed to be dirty dancing with anything and everyone. The girls’ tops were all yanked down lower, their makeup smudged beneath their eyes. The guys were all ridiculously loud and I could see every single one of them had a boner in one form or another. Booze was spilled, smoke from pot and cigarettes filled the air. And by the door, a couple was getting into a yelling match that was eclipsed only by the music. People walked past them and took no notice. Everyone had other things on their mind. Mainly, getting fucked; in more ways than one.
I didn’t recognize anyone I knew. Not Jacob. Not Tara. Not even Adrianna or her boyfriend Angus.
I sighed and continued to walk down. I was almost at the bottom step when a strange sound caught the tip of my ear. It had come from behind me.
I turned and looked. The couple that had been heavy petting had stopped and was standing at the top of the stairs. The guy with his Linkin Park T-shirt seemed frozen on the spot, like he was in mid-embrace. But the girl, the girl with her long blonde hair, she was…growling. And unlike the guy, she was moving. She pushed him backward toward the room I came out of, and he walked backward, as if on autopilot or under a spell.
Then she changed before my eyes. Her skin fizzed like acid was poured on it. Her eyes and her nose disappeared until she was just all mouth, with jagged teeth, her skin suddenly the smooth alabaster of fine porcelain. And then she dissolved before my eyes. All that was left was this sickening growl and the guy who was being shoved backward into the bedroom by some invisible force.
This had nothing to do with drugs. This was actually happening.
I whirled around to look at the party, expecting them to all be watching what I was watching. But everyone was carrying on as usual.
I looked back at the stairs. The door was shut. I had to know what was going on. If what I saw was correct…was real. I didn’t care if I interrupted their sex session.
I walked back up the stairs and paused at the door. I couldn’t hear anything except a strange sucking sound, like a vacuum was running on high power.
I took in a deep breath and was about to enter the room when something touched my shoulder.
Before I could scream a hand was around my mouth, squelching the sound.
I was turned around to see Jacob standing there. He had a gas can in his hand.
Do you see now? he whispered. But his mouth didn’t mouth. The words just entered my head, as if he was in there.
I told you that’s where I came from. That others would be here.
“What are you?” I asked, though my voice was muffled by his hand, my lips tasting the strange, sickly sweet flavor of his hand. It was a ridiculous question to ask. But suddenly, nothing seemed ridiculous. I saw a girl disappear in front of my eyes.
I’m a ghost, he projected, the words shooting into my head as clear as day. I died a long time ago. I don’t know what happened. I killed myself and now I’m stuck. Between here and the other world. The other world is much worse. Black and white.
It was too much. I wanted to run, to flee, but he kept his hand at my mouth.
You’re not going anywhere, Perry. You’re special. I knew it from the start. You’re the only one who can see me. And the only one who can help me stop them.
Stop who? I thought.
Stop the demons, he answered and I realized my thoughts were being read. We aren’t the same.
Overwhelmed, I shut my eyes hard until all I saw were sparks of light behind them. I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, with anyone else. I concentrated really hard, wishing I had the power to just change things. I felt the ground rumble lightly under my feet and the pictures on the hallway wall rattled. An eerie cry shot out from behind the door.
“Stop it!” Jacob yelled out loud. “You’re attracting them!”
My eyes flew open and I glared at him. I reached up with my hand, grabbed his disgusting scarred wrist and yanked it away from my mouth.
“Attracting who!?” I yelled back.
Suddenly the door opened and the blonde girl stuck her head out. She looked like a normal teenage girl again except a trail of blood dripped out of the corner of her mouth. She scanned the hall before her eyes settled on Jacob and me.
She made a move for us, but Jacob quickly threw the can of gas toward her, a gush of acrid liquid flowing out of the spout and onto her, the walls and the floor.
She screamed, more in shock than in pain or anything else.
“Perry!” Jacob yelled. “Send her back!”
He reached into his pocket and tossed a lighter at me. I caught it somehow but I wasn’t about to follow his orders.
The girl was writhing on the spot, the gasoline flowing off her toned body and staining the plush beige carpet beneath us. But she was normal. Aside from the blood, which could have been a result of rough, drunk sex or whatever, there was nothing strange about her anymore. She had eyes, heavily made up with green eye shadow, a pert nose and a normal mouth. I could see the traces of auburn lip liner beneath her lower lip.
Send her back? Did he seriously think I would light some random chick on fire?
I looked at Jacob to tell him he was crazy, that he wasn’t a ghost, that this girl wasn’t a demon, and that the beer I had earlier was probably spiked with acid, but the girl lunged forward and wrapped her hands around my neck. Her fingers felt like icy knives and they sank into my skin with startling precision. The feeling made me sick. And I couldn’t breathe.
“Do it!” Jacob yelled again and made a go for the girl. I couldn’t see what happened but her hands eventually let go and I was left breathless. I looked down to see him tackle her to the ground. He pinned her wrists down and she wriggled beneath them, hissing.
“They don’t let us leave!” he cried out. “The keep us here!”
The girl made a swift kick to Jacob’s groin. Ghost or not, it made him double over in pain. Then she fizzled again, skin bubbling, facial features disappearing until she was a hazy image above the carpet. The only thing that remained was that open, fathomless hole that was her mouth. And it came for me.
Without thinking, I flicked the lighter on and held it out in front of me as the shape collided into me.
I kept the flame going as the back of my head smashed against the wall behind me. Paintings rattled to the floor.
The girl, whatever was left of her, was suddenly outlined by the glow of the flames, like she was traced by some giant pen of golden ink. Her shape came into my vision, then turned into an actual girl again. Normal looking. She cried out in pain and fell to the ground as the sick, hungry flames consumed her, skin first.
I felt sick but couldn’t look away. The girl wriggled on the floor until she was no more. She just vanished, leaving only ash, while the fire began to move along the upstairs carpet toward the stairs, licking at the wet walls.
I looked at Jacob, who was struggling to his feet. He nodded at me, the spiky tips of his Mohawk glowing in the flames’ light.
Suddenly the door to the bedroom opened and the guy in the Linkin Park T-shirt wandered out. He froze at the sight of me, standing in the hallway, lighter in hand, gas can at my side, and the fire, which quickly ate up the crunchy carpet.
“Holy shit!” the guy cried out. I guess I should have been relieved that he was alive and that girl hadn’t killed him, but any sense of relief was taken away when he yelled. “Fire! There’s a girl up here, she started a fire!”
Then he burst past me in the hallway, leaping over the flames while screaming at the same time and ran down the stairs. I could hear the panic and commotion that resulted downstairs. People screaming, yelling, glasses breaking, drunks colliding with each other, falling down.
I looked at Jacob and then down at the lighter. The guy hadn’t seen Jacob. He didn’t know anything about the girl. It just looked like I, Perry Palomino, the fat sophomore, had tried to light Adrianna Gee’s house on fire.
It was one hell of an accident.