The Coming Dark, page 3
“We can work out the details in the next few days.”
I just nodded.
“Liana,” Mrs. Bradford said, her tone of voice urgent like it had been when I was upstairs eavesdropping. “This is the best decision. It’s not really safe here for you.”
“I can handle the kids at Bay High,” I said, hoping that was what she meant. “I don’t have to transfer if that’s what you’re worried about.” It wouldn’t be fun, but I could deal with it.
“That’s not what I mean.”
A shiver crawled up my spine. Mrs. Bradford’s hair was in a messy bun and she was wearing her workout clothes. She’d been jogging after work. She looked normal, the same as always, but something was off.
“Sharon,” Mr. Bradford said, and it was a clear warning for her not to speak.
“She should know that she’s in danger, Greg.”
“I’m in danger?” I asked, shocked. “Am I sick?” But I knew that’s not what she was talking about. Dizziness overwhelmed me and I took short, sharp breaths to try to stay calm.
“Have you ever worried that whoever killed your mother might want to hurt you?”
Really? Stunned, I just stared at her for a second. Like I needed this right now? When I was little, that had been a constant paralyzing fear, but I had finally let it go a few years back. Now she wanted to bring it back?
“If they wanted to kill me, they’ve had plenty of time to do it. And it’s not like I’d be a star witness. I can’t remember anything.” As frustrating as that was, it was true. The murder case of my mother was cold thanks to me.
“There’s something that—”
Mr. Bradford cut her off. “Let Liana get some rest.”
They stared each other down. Something was going on that I didn’t understand, but then when did I ever understand? Life was filled with lies and secrets and murder and voices…
So I just turned and ran back up the stairs, my socks not even masking the harsh pounding of my feet on each wooden step as I fled to Abby’s room.
With the door shut behind me, the tears I had been fighting since we’d gotten home won the battle and dribbled down my cheeks, not a violent outpouring, but a halted uncertain trail like they too were as exhausted from the day as I was.
Chapter Six
The Dark
“That’s insane.” Abby shook her head and stared at me in horror. “That school is like lockdown.”
Great. That was reassuring. “Your parents seem to think it’s a good idea.”
Abby sat on her bed, her legs crossed, while I lounged on mine on my side, head propped up with my hand, my thick wavy hair pressed against my ear like a muff.
“No. This is stupid. Those kids there are weird. They all wear uniforms and look at me like they know something I don’t know when I’ve been there with my dad.”
“Well, I’m weird,” I told her wryly. “And it makes sense they wear uniforms. It’s a boarding school.”
“You are not weird. I hate it when you say stuff like that. And you can’t be okay with this,” she said, shaking her head, wearing a tank top and her karate pants still. She ran her hands through her dark chocolate hair, lifting it up to form a makeshift ponytail. We had similar hair, thick and uncontrollable, the only physical feature we really shared. I’d long ago given up wishing that we were sisters by blood, because regardless of origin, we were as close as sisters as I could ever hope for.
My throat felt tight. “I don’t have a choice, Abby. This is what your parents want.”
Her face fell then went mulish. “I’ll talk to them.”
Sighing, I blinked, my eyes itchy from crying. “It won’t matter. Besides, what is so awesome that I’m leaving behind at Bay? Just you. Everything else ranges from just okay to total suckfest.”
Her voice cracked. “Liana…I’ve been in class with you since kindergarten. What am I going to do without you?”
The truth was, I was a liability to her, always had been. Abby was my staunchest supporter and defender and there had been a lot of times over the years where she had ticked people off when she’d stood up for me. Without me there, she could move more easily through social circles. “We’ll be alright,” I told her in a whisper, because maybe if I said it, I’d believe it. “We’ll always be soul sisters, right?”
“Of course.” She wiped her face. “And God, I’m so lame. I should be comforting you, not worrying about how lonely I’m going to be. I’ll come visit you and you will still spend your holidays here, and maybe you’re right, maybe this will be a good thing for you. Maybe there will be cute boys in blazers.”
I forced a laugh, moving my hand and lying onto my back since my arm was going numb. “That sounds hot. Not.”
“Never underestimate those clean-cut guys,” Abby said.
“Oh, what, like you know?”
“I totally know.”
“How? You’ve dated two guys for three weeks each. And neither were clean-cut blazer-wearers.”
“I know because I’m from Planet Awesome.”
That drew a genuine laugh from me. “True that.”
She laughed too, then when we quieted down, she whispered, “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
I had to believe it.
“Just ignore that crap they’re going to try to teach you about demons and hell and whatever else.”
Alarmed, I sat up. “What do you mean?”
Studying her nails for chips in the polish, she just shrugged. “They believe in that stuff at that school, you know. God and angels and hell and the devil. You have to take classes on it. That’s why my dad loves it there. He gets to hang with people who believe that shit is real.”
So it was a religious school. Fine. Whatever. “Don’t you believe in God?” I wasn’t sure what I believed. I hadn’t seen a lot of evidence of a divine force in my life, but I wanted to think some dude in the sky was looking out for us.
“Sure.”
“But you don’t believe in demons?”
“No.”
“But if good exists, doesn’t evil?”
“Definitely, but a guy in a red suit with horns doesn’t make people do mean things. People do mean things all on their own.”
I thought I agreed with her. People made bad choices and then tried to blame someone else, or Satan himself, when all along they just did something sucky because they wanted to or because it was impulsive. “Then what does God do?”
Abby dropped her hand and frowned at me. “I don’t know. Save that question for your Saints and Demons 101 class, or whatever they call it, at St. Michaels. You can get all deep there, I’m sure they’ll love it.”
She was annoyed and I didn’t want that. “I’m not trying to be deep, it’s just that…” I wanted to tell her about the voice, but I just couldn’t admit it out loud. What if Abby thought I was crazy? What if she turned her back on me? Who would I have then?
No one.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’m just freaked out about changing schools.”
“It’s so lame. You shouldn’t have to do this. Everyone will forget about you and Wyatt in a week.” She got off her bed and went over to her computer. “I need to check which day my Geometry test is.”
It did seem like I shouldn’t have to transfer schools. Mrs. Bradford’s words came back to me. Who had killed my mother? And why hadn’t they killed me? I pulled my blanket up and over my legs. I didn’t like feeling unsafe again.
“Why were you looking up exorcisms?”
I started, feeling guilty. I didn’t want Abby to know what I had heard in the hallway, a voice coming from nothing, so I didn’t answer. I stalled. “Huh?”
“Don’t tell me you believe in that stuff.” Her skeptical stance was clear.
“No,” I lied. “Of course not.”
The truth was, I didn’t know what to believe.
That night I had the dream again. Only this time when the room tipped like I’d been picked up and I stared down at the still eyes of my mother lying in her blood, it was Wyatt’s face that popped up in front of me.
You’re not strong enough for exorcismus, he said. It’s your turn to die.
Then he laughed and laughed and laughed.
I was caught in the dream, Wyatt over me, shaking my shoulders, laughing, the smell of blood tinny in the air, my fingers twisted in the blanket, the stillness of my mother scary, her eyes wide open, staring at me as I sought her out behind Wyatt, wanting her to save me, scared. Help me, Mommy. But Mommy was dead, staring at me, empty. Liana. Her lips didn’t move but she called for me, called to me from the dead…
Jerking awake, I sucked in a panicked breath, ready to lash out at Wyatt. But it was Mr. Bradford shaking me. “Liana. Wake up.”
“Am I late?” It seemed too early for school. The room was dark still and I felt groggy, disoriented from not getting enough sleep.
“We’re leaving now. You need to pack a bag.”
Fear marched up my spine and I glanced across the room, dimly lit from the hall light. Mrs. Bradford was coaxing Abby awake. “Leaving for where?”
“St. Michaels. It’s not safe here for you.”
“We’re leaving now?” I asked, astonished. A glance at the wall clock showed it was 2:11. The middle of the night. I had thought I would go in a few days, maybe a week or more, after records were transferred and we got a blazer for me or whatever all you needed to do when you moved into a dorm with total strangers at a boarding school. You didn’t head out at two in the morning the day you decided to transfer, and I sat up, completely freaked out.
“Yes, now come on. There isn’t a lot of time to pack. We need to be gone before he shows up.”
“Who?” I asked, pushing my covers back. But I knew who. My mother’s murderer. Something wasn’t right and I wasn’t crazy and the Bradfords knew it. I got out of bed and pulled on a sweatshirt with shaky fingers, both from interrupted sleep and fear. Was it my father? Was he after me? Did he think I could identify him? My heart started to pound like conga drums.
Mr. Bradford was pulling a rolling suitcase out of our closet. He started stripping jeans and sweaters off their hangers and stuffing them into the bag. Abby was still half-asleep, pushing her mother away.
“It’s the demon you exorcised today.”
“Oh, my God,” Abby groaned. “I am not getting out of bed for some weirdo demon talk. You guys can talk all you want tomorrow when you take Abby to boarding school. Just leave me out of it.”
The demon I’d exorcised.
The evil I’d seen in Wyatt. The way he had seemed confused, disoriented after I’d spoken, after the cold had left him.
Was that a demon? I swallowed hard, feeling sick. None of this made any sense. How could I exorcise a demon when I didn’t even know they existed?
But if I had to leave, I wanted to make sure the few things I owned went with me so I went to the quarter of the dresser I shared with Abby and opened the top drawer, panic clawing its way up my throat like the oyster I’d once tried in Bangor.
“You’re going to St. Michaels too,” Mrs. Bradford said to Abby, shocking me out of my own thoughts.
“What?” Abby sat straight up.
I paused in collecting my meager personal belongings. A picture of my parents. Twelve dollars, saved from babysitting. An iPod. “Why is Abby going too?” I asked.
“Because it’s dangerous here,” Mrs. Bradford said. “He knows you’re here and he’ll come looking for you, and Abby could wind up collateral damage. You’re both safest at school, where there are fifty hunters. We can’t protect you here alone.” Her eyes were shining with tears. Sincerity rang in her voice as she started packing up Abby’s things, shoving her laptop into her backpack, urging Abby to get dressed.
“I’m not going,” Abby insisted, her hair sticking up, her tone defiant.
Her stubbornness barely registered with me. I played back Mrs. Bradford’s words again. There was a demon after me. St. Michaels had fifty demon hunters. I was safest there. Those three statements circled over and over in my head, racing behind my eyes, demanding attention, demanding an explanation.
I had none.
“Abigail.” Mr. Bradford’s voice was like steel. It was a tone I’d never heard before, one that said he wasn’t going to be disobeyed. “You’re going and that is my final word. Over my dead body will a demon possess you, and if we don’t find protection, that may be exactly what happens. Now get some goddamn clothes on and be downstairs in three minutes or I’ll haul your butt downstairs myself.”
Abby’s face lost all its color. She didn’t say anything but she did stand up and went to the closet. Mr. and Mrs. Bradford gathered up our suitcase and bags and moved into the hallway, their urgency obvious, Mrs. Bradford’s tears as abnormal as Mr. Bradford’s cold determination.
“Dad has cracked,” Abby whispered, her voice shaky.
I hugged her to reassure her, but the truth was, I wasn’t convinced Mr. Bradford was so crazy after all. I kept seeing the red of Wyatt’s eyes and hear that voice swirling around me like a whirlpool of hatred, and it made me doubt everything.
But the one thing I was certain of was that I was scared.
What I didn’t know was that was the last day my life would have any normal in it.
The last day I wouldn’t know what it felt like to run from death.
Then again, I’d always been running from death, hadn’t I?
The drive to St. Michaels wasn’t long, less than ten minutes, and Mr. Bradford drove in silence. Mrs. Bradford scanned the streets, right and left, behind her, clearly anxious. But something in her eyes had changed. The tears were gone and while she looked worried, she looked alert, confident. Like she was anticipating a fight, and was prepared for it.
Which I guess she was, given she had a butcher knife in her lap.
Why did it have to be a knife?
I had an irrational fear of them. I couldn’t chop vegetables like the chefs did on Food Network with sharp downward movements, zipping along the length of a cucumber. I sawed with a dull knife, tentative, fingers far out of range. As I sat in the back seat, I kept waiting for Mr. Bradford to hit the brakes and somehow Mrs. Bradford to accidentally stab herself in the gut with that massive steel knife.
Abby had her eyes closed, her headphones on. She was ignoring everyone, more obstinate than fearful.
Like Mrs. Bradford, I was scanning the streets of Bay Point as we drove, wanting to ask questions, but knowing this wasn’t the time. They wouldn’t give me answers until we got to the school. Until they believed we were out of danger.
The street was two lanes, but normally busy for a small town. It was the road that cut between the woods and the residential areas of town. Farther south on the other side of town was the coast, with its bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and poky gift shops. St. Michaels sat on the edge of town and nothing, holding its place in a row of parks and houses that lined the north side of the street. Behind it was the woods. At night it was quiet in the area, car traffic dropping off dramatically, porch lights flipping off at ten.
The street was lit by sporadic overhead lights that flung an orange glow over the street. Near the entrance of the school, there was a traffic light that flashed caution twenty-four/seven and it went on, off, on, off in its silent rhythm as we drove, assessing our surroundings. From what I could see of the street, there was no one around. There was no movement anywhere, not even a cat out prowling. Mrs. Bradford opened her window a few inches, listening.
Any kid who grows up in Maine is as used to the quiet as they are to chowder and blueberry crumb. The silence actually reassured me. It was calm except for the wind, the normal sound of leaves kicking up off the asphalt as familiar to me as my gram’s voice.
The stillness had the opposite effect on Mrs. Bradford. Her hand gripped the knife tighter as she scanned left and right. “It’s too quiet,” she murmured. “I don’t like it. Calm before the storm.”
All I could hear were the strains of thrashing punk music from Abby’s ear buds, faint but prominent in the silence. Then a soft exclamation from Mrs. Bradford.
“Slow down, Greg,” she said, her voice going low. “There he is, right in front of the school.”
For a second, I thought I was going to throw up. Torn between wanting to crawl under a seat and see who it was, see what was waiting for me, curiosity won. I peered past Abby and saw a man leaning against the school sign. St. Michaels. A School of Supplication.
“So he wants to play with us,” Mr. Bradford said.
“Don’t they always?”
He looked like a very ordinary middle-aged man, dressed in a black overcoat, a scarf around his neck. Short, trim hair. Jeans. Was this the man who had killed my mother? I wasn’t sure what I should feel, but it wasn’t recognition. He just looked like a…guy. An accountant. A soccer dad. No one unusual or even interesting. Shouldn’t I feel something? A flicker of knowledge? But there was nothing.
With a wave, like he’d been expecting us, he stepped into the road.
Where Mr. Bradford hit him.
Dropping his foot on the gas hard, without any hesitation, before I even understood what was happening. The car leaped forward and we hit him with a sickening thump, my head jerking at the sudden stop at impact, his body slamming into the windshield, before dropping out of view, my shoulder clipping the driver’s seat.
I screamed, the sound bursting out with sheer hysteria as the horror of what was happening registered. We’d hit a man with our four-door SUV intentionally. Had sent him flying to the asphalt.
“Run him over again,” Mrs. Bradford said. “Then it should be safe to get out and finish him off.”
Run him over again. Finish him off.
The words were cold, spoken with zero emotion, maybe even a little tinge of excitement. From Mrs. Bradford. The woman who jogged and corrected our homework and baked goddamn chocolate chip cookies with extra chips.
Tears clouded my eyes and I swiped them away, terrified that I wouldn’t be able to see everything. Terrified that I could.
