Ephemeral (The Countenance) Read online

  I try to wipe it off with the back of my hand, but it doesn’t budge, just creates a honeyed layer over my skin.

  The landscape looks barren, save for a few spare students, none of them being my fair-haired roommate. I try to decipher which way Casper might have went to run the errand that will supposedly launch a thousand CSI investigations.

  I spot her shock of blond hair near the forest’s edge.

  She pauses a moment before cinching the wool coat around her waist. She darts into the necrotic woods like a distance runner at the starting block. Casper believes she’s on her way to winning the race of a lifetime, two lifetimes to be exact.

  “Casper!” The wind extinguishes my voice before it leaves my lips. “No.” I jog forward. “Don’t go in there,” I whisper, breaking into a full-blown sprint.

  A vision comes to me. Twisted arms and legs, rags of clothing dangling off an entire herd of zombie-like creatures all lunging toward her small, frail body.

  “Casper!” I scream as she evaporates into the woods with finality. The fog filters in. It comes in spurts, thick as cotton candy.

  I cut across the lawn and race down the hill toward the black of the forest. I can feel its gravitational pull drawing me in, daring me to go over—begging me to come. It lulls me into its mysterious shadows the way the ocean drinks down its victim moments before they drown.

  I halt just shy of the base and wander in slow past the first few trees. Their gnarled branches extend like fingers inviting me in.

  Evergreens as regal as soldiers stand erect, an entire infantry on patrol. They hold their weapons like secrets. But I already know about the monsters who wander these woods with their rotting flesh—their stench to match.

  The wind whispers my name like a choir, and I step out of the box trap of the forest.

  How could I go in when I know full well what lurks among those branches? What if my mysterious savior is busy sharpening his switchblades and neglects to come to my aid just when I’m in need of delivering a good pithing? Can I really thrash the brains out of a flesh-eating monster to save Casper?

  A high-pitched scream bursts from the bowels of the thicket. It sends a series of goose bumps racing over my body so violent I’m half convinced my flesh has harnessed the power to consume itself.

  Another scream—its primal distress rattles through my bones.

  That’s her.

  I snatch a branch off the ground the length of a javelin and take a deep breath.

  It’s time to thrash some zombies.

  8

  Monster Mash

  The world extinguishes all color.

  The downturned arms of the branches hold out their slivered tendrils like swords. Fog fills in the gaps, giving the forest the appearance of a negative from an old forgotten photo—some sleepy world where people still believe in monsters, boogiemen—the ungrateful dead.

  Something darts out of the pine to my left, and I let out a sharp cry.

  An owl pants and whimpers. It struggles to lift itself, agitating its inefficient wings until securing a position on a higher bow.

  “Just a bird.” I pant. “Casper?” My voice comes back to me in duplicate.

  Another cry erupts, horrific and impatient as if begging for mercy, and I speed off in that direction. The long stick I foolishly chose to brandish snags on everything in my path. It knocks sloppily into the ground, so I ditch it. There’s not a thing on my person I could use as a weapon unless you count the lip gloss in my pocket, and judging by all the loose hairs clinging to my mouth for dear life, it might prove to be great ammunition. I could be the kissing warrior. I’ll have my lips ripped off my face from sheer stupidity.

  “Casper? Where are you?” My words dwindle in volume. Something tells me losing the element of surprise in addition to being deficiently armed is not the best strategy. I have a feeling there is no strategy, no effective weaponry that could prevail against monsters like these. But then, the boy who saved me prevailed. He outright killed one, and he just so happened to be human—I think.

  I pick up my pace until it feels like the forest is closing in on me as a consistent barrage of branches attack.

  A loud growl breaks out, then two, then more than I could ever hope to count. I grab a hold of the skinny trunk of a birch to slow down my efforts.

  Another series of growls consume the forest. They rattle the floor as though it were an earthquake.

  What the hell?

  The ground pulsates. My feet bounce on solid ground as though it were about to spilt wide open and swallow me.

  The forest is alive with movement. The sound of deep, guttural breathing emanates from around. The shadows come to life as a group of hideous creatures emerge in a pack. This is no run-of-the-mill casket revival. These are a richer fare of demon—the kind without any human attributes at all, just devils on legs with faces that loosely resemble panthers.

  A rush of mutated creatures stream out, moving with exaggerated speed. It seems impossible, considering they’re eight feet tall with a girth as wide as a door.

  “Shit!” I put in a failed attempt to climb the nearest tree. My hands dig into the loose bark, and I make it five feet before sliding back down and cutting my palms.

  One of the creature’s growls, looks right into me with his jaundice eyes, and snaps his jaw as if alerting the rest of them to the fact I’m a meal that’s not to be shared.

  I stumble backward.

  Crap.

  Casper was probably the entrée, and now they’re betting on me for dessert.

  I pray to God she passed out at the horror of these deformed menaces. I hope she didn’t feel a thing.

  “No, no, no,” I repeat in spasms, continuing to back up as though I could ever outrun them. For a moment, I cradle the fantasy of leading them right into the administration building and causing the biggest and quite possibly most unique school massacre in Connecticut history. Then the powers that be will wish they left me to rot like a corpse—sleeping in a cemetery, tucked safe under six feet of Kansas soil.

  Cemetery—God, what if they’ve had a funeral for me? I bet Tucker was there playing the part of grieving boyfriend, and, of course, Megan Bartlett would be there to offer up her sympathy by way of her cleavage.

  An image of Lacey weeping graveside sends a hot pang of grief through me. I’ve let this go on like some death wish, and now the afterlife and all the trimmings seem like a real possibility. We had Fletch and Wesley’s caskets covered in roses, such a deep red, you’d swear they had the blood of Christ in them. They were beauty and magic rolled into one. I told Mom I’d want a dress with those black magic roses, and she said be careful what color rose you profess to be your favorite. It will haunt you to the grave.

  Without putting too much thought into it, I pick up a branch and begin whacking the hairy beasts on the side of their misshapen heads. I’m determined to show them what if feels like to have a headache follow you into your next carnation.

  “Laken!” A male voice booms from behind.

  Wes appears in the midst of the creatures, picks two of them up in tandem, and tosses them to the ground before stomping on their necks with a vigor and ferocity that would spell out death to any life form.

  I swat the next one down with the makeshift baseball bat in my hands until I’m snatched from behind and launched in the air.

  “Wesley!”

  My stomach does a soft roll as I pick up speed, heading into the atmosphere, high as the uppermost branches of the pines.

  The world blurs. The ground comes at an accelerated rate, annunciating the fact I could easily break my neck.

  An entire procession of tree limbs gaff my back. They attempt to break my fall with their needlelike appendages, stiff as a gurney. I manage to grab a hold of an errant branch. It eats into my hands as I slip slowly toward its distal tip—the ground below waits for me a good fifteen feet.

  My head explodes with pain as I contemplate what a fall from this height might do to my body. I coul
d be paralyzed. I could have eaten my last meal by way of my esophagus. They’ll be pumping protein directly into my stomach from here on out.

  If I let go right now my head will burst like a melon—like a water balloon from a second floor balcony.

  I glance down and spot Wes fending off a circle of beasts like a cage fighter. He kicks one in the gut, launching him a good ten feet back. I watch as the monster flails on the ground before hissing away to nothing, evaporating into a thin trail of smoke that blends with the morning fog.

  “Oh my God.” I cinch my eyes closed in a panic.

  That is so not natural. You cannot tell me things simply disappear, and I’m supposed to accept it—especially things that have no business existing in the first place.

  Am I going to disappear if I hit the ground just right? Maybe that’s all that ever happens to us, we just evaporate from one world and simply appear in the next.

  “I can’t hold on,” I cry, clawing at the flimsy branch.

  “I’m coming.” He grunts out the words like he’s not—like he’s incapacitated by some not-so-friendly felines that want to twist our heads off just for the hell of it. “Drop.” Wesley’s voice roars across acres of woodland, vibrating the needles on the pines around me.

  I don’t bother looking down to confirm he’s indeed speaking to me or to see if I could manipulate my landing and fall safe in his waiting arms. Instead, my fingers use his command as the excuse they needed to abandon the effort, and I free fall through the short expanse, hard like a stone.

  I land with a soft thud in Wesley’s hungry arms. Without evaluating the moral issues at stake or even taking a head count of the grizzly beasts roaming free in the forest, I push into the warmth of his neck and give a soft tender kiss.

  “Thank you,” I breathe.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He places me down and takes up my hand. Wes leads us out of the dense preserve with a skill and precision that alerts me to the fact this isn’t his first dance through these haunted woods. Judging by the way he navigates the forest at a hundred miles an hour, it lets me know he could map this place out in his sleep if he had to.

  “Casper’s back there.” I give a tug trying to slow him down.

  He pauses to look over my shoulder.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She is. I saw her come in—I heard her scream.”

  “Trust me, Laken.” He picks up his pace, faster than before. “If she was—she’s not anymore.”

  “Where is she?” I shout over my panting.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  9

  The Break Up

  Wesley Parker is wrong.

  I do want to know—badly I want to know what the hell just happened, but he takes me by the hand and escorts me back to Austen House, deflecting my questions with his missile shield of a mouth—perfect mouth, but still.

  “Look,” I say as we head upstairs. The air holds the scent of expensive perfume mixed with maple oatmeal. “I saw her go into the forest with my own eyes.” I know I sound like a big lunatic to Wes, but her life is in danger, and if those beasts did anything to Casper at all, her life may be long over.

  “It’s foggy and windy.” Wes presses out a sad impression of a smile as we pause on the stairwell. “Weather like this messes with your head. Makes you see things that aren’t really there. I bet you saw someone walking along the ridge—people are always doing that.” His eyes wash over me with a grief that suggests he’s simply spinning words to appease me. “Look, she’s probably upstairs in the room right now.” He wiggles my hand for me to continue on up.

  “When we were running out of the forest, you said I wouldn’t want to know where she was.”

  “Because she’s probably with some guy.” His brow arches and falls.

  It’s fascinating to see Wes standing against the dark backdrop of Austen House. There’s something theatrical produced in the effect. Wes holds the stage like a king. He’s unknowingly pulled me into his world, and now we’re both fodder for some invisible audience.

  I glance down at his fingers intertwined with mine. It feels natural, organic as if we were one species, as if we have been all along. Wes and I held hands as soon as we could walk. We never let go. You can bury a person, erase their memories, create a whole new being out of them, but you could never entomb love.

  His eyes widen, and he gives a shy smile as if I had said those words out loud.

  “Well good fucking morning.” Kresley descends with lethargic agitation. She’s sporting knee-high socks pulled over her long slender legs. She has on shorts with a T-shirt that reads 08, a heavy satin jacket over that. A pair of ice-blue canvassed tennis shoes glow against the navy carpet, the right one encased with fresh mud along the rim.

  I glance up at her with surprise. Looks like someone’s already been out.

  The brick path—the lawn, neither could offer her a welt of soil an inch thick, unless of course, she went off the beaten path, also known as the forest.

  She swings a racket over the top of Wesley’s head in a not-so-playful manner. It’s only then I figure out what sport she’s geared up for.

  “So,” she begins, rife with sarcasm, “I guess taking a break qualifies me to sneak into Henderson and head upstairs with the first piece of trash I see.”

  I’ve never been in a fight, never so much as socked anyone except Fletcher, but I have the distinct feeling today is a wonderful day to rectify that. I’d love to be the reason Kresley is in need of emergency orthodontics. I’m sure a new set of veneers will only enhance her burgeoning acting career.

  “I hear you prefer Melville,” I say, toying with the idea of pushing her over the railing. “And who exactly are you calling trash?”

  “Let’s see, genius…” She tilts her head, soaking in the irony. “You would be the one luring him upstairs, so I guess if the shoe fits—”

  “Enough.” Wes sounds weary, tired of Kresley in every single way. “Laken scraped her knee, and I wanted to make sure she was okay.” He pulls me up a few more steps. “But now that you mentioned it, I think maybe our break should be over.”

  “Thank you.” Her eyes slit in my direction as she offers a victorious scowl.

  “He’s breaking up with you, genius,” I say. God, I hope he’s breaking up with her, or I might be moved to push them both over the railing.

  “Are you breaking up with me?” Her face glazes over at the impossibility.

  “If the shoe fits.” Wes doesn’t bother waiting for a response, just tugs me up the rest of the way.

  A surge of adrenaline pulsates through me.

  Even if he won’t admit it, deep down inside, Wesley Parker still loves me.

  I haul Wes up the rest of the way to my room and kick the door shut behind us.

  “Victory,” I whisper with a sly smile. I have the distinct feeling any alone time we have in the future will be just that, a hard won victory. That’s okay. I’m up for a ninja-worthy battle. I’ll keep a pocketful of throwing stars at the ready. Wesley is definitely worth the fight.

  A blue piece of paper sits on the desk that supposedly belongs to me. The note wasn’t there when I left.

  I go over and examine the loopy handwriting. A cell phone sits nestled underneath. I pick up the phone and fondle it, let it slip in my hand, still new from the factory.

  Laken, Found this. You must have dropped it. - Casper

  I stare at it a moment.

  “I think I just got a new phone,” I announce. Although, I’m skeptical the memo came from Casper.

  “There you go.” He flicks a finger at the note. “Casper was here. She must have come back while you were out. There’s no way she would have gone in that forest.” He falls back on my bed and closes his eyes a moment.

  Wes stretches out. He extends his arms as if beckoning me over. Wes is sublime in every way—a perfect work of art. It looks as if he’s reenacting Caravaggio’s agonizing portrait, The Conversion of St. Paul.
r />   Wes and I used to comb through old art books from the library. We held to the premise that each painting, sculpture, fresco, was somehow cluing us in on a bigger mystery, one that lurked over our shoulders like a shadow waiting to swallow us when we least expected it. And it did. We were the detectives on the verge of decoding something tremendous and frightening. And now, here we were, locked in our worst nightmare.

  He leans up on his elbows and lingers over me with a heavy gaze as if he weren’t sure what to do with me.

  I shudder for a moment. Something about Wes is hauntingly disturbing. It’s like he doesn’t want to talk about what happened in the forest. As if he wished the creatures and all mention of them would simply go away.

  Nevertheless, I’m done harping over the fact I saw Casper—that I heard her scream. I’m sure in this delusionary world, she’ll come home safe at some point in the day with armfuls of shopping bags. Maybe the only thing that had Casper running and screaming was a sample sale. And if she did meet up with another unfortunate demise, I probably shouldn’t lose sleep over that either. This is clearly a place where the dead don’t understand their role in that whole circle of life thing. No, this is a place where people scream and fend off demons in the woods because it’s expected of them, where the impossible simply inverts itself and becomes permissible, banal—mediocre even.

  The only thing I’d really like to focus on right now is the fact a newly single Wesley Parker is sprawled out on my bed.

  Wes glances down at the phone still cradled in my hand. “Who you gonna call?” His cheek slides up on one side.

  “Monster-busters.” It comes out maudlin, less enthusiastic than it ever should have to, partially because I happen to wish I could.

  I decide to profit off my conflicted feelings over whether or not I really happen to be suffering from the aftereffects of rotten floorboards and call home. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t have Mom or Lacey’s cell memorized, just the house.

  There are two good reasons that solidify the fact I’ve never seen this cell phone before. One, I happen to be the owner of a hot pink flip phone complete with enough rhinestone adhesives to outfit a prostitute, and two, I would never have a picture of a Minotaur as my wallpaper.