Chasing Shadow (Shadow Puppeteer) (15 page)

Poor Abigail Sable. She took me in at a young age. She didn’t act like a parent and she didn’t do more than give me money from time to time, but she never hit or yelled at me. She never told me what I couldn’t do.

I started towards the linen closet when I realized they might come back. If they saw her covered they’d know I was here, but if they had a real great sense of smell, they’d know anyway. My dilemma was eating precious minutes. It was a hard call, but I knew I needed to leave her as is. I had to chance that anyone coming back into the house wouldn’t be able to smell me over the stench.

The kitchen was my next stop. I pulled several bottles of water from under the cabinet and cracked one open to rinse my mouth. I preferred cold water, but I didn’t want to risk the light in the fridge tipping anyone in the backyard of my presence. Next on my list was food, which I found in processed snacks, trail mix and a few small portion sized bags of chips. I took a few mints from the candy dish and pop one in my mouth. It combated both the nausea in my stomach and covered the taste of sickness.

I opened three drawers before finding the meat cleaver and a carving knife. The moonlight shone through the flimsy kitchen curtain, gleaming down the silver to the very tip of the blade. These would do for now. I gave both a test swing, pretending to go after a target. I was satisfied with the weight and length of the blade, though a gun would be better.

I placed both on the counter so I could throw my smaller goods in a grocery bag. Once everything was together, I hooked the bag over my arm and carried both knives. I was so high on adrenaline that it felt like I was floating. One thing remained the same, I was ready to cut the first person who touched me.

I’m not psychotic. I’m a survivor.

The stairs moaned under my weight, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable with the television roaring through late night commercials. It felt wrong creeping in a dead woman’s house when her corpse was at the foot of the stairs. I always thought I’d be long gone before Ms. Sable died. I’m not sentimental; I just didn’t want to ever see her in such a vulnerable state.

Light from her bedroom spilled into the hall. I wanted to turn the television off, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk the distance to shut her bedroom door. It was better to leave things as they were. My bedroom door was shut and I eased it open, mindful of how the shadows fell. Nothing looked out of place. It wasn’t trashed, like I expected it to be after those men forced their way into the house.

My room couldn’t bring nostalgia. The house no longer felt safe after everything that happened. I slid to the floor and pulled out the little tin box that held my extra money. It was one of the first items Miss Sable gave me.

I traced the delicate latch with my thumb. I couldn’t cry, though I wanted to. My eyes ached and I was emotionally drained. The box itself was light, but the money weighed it down. I flipped that latch and dumped the pile of mixed bills onto the bed.

A quick count gave me four hundred dollars and some change. That would last a few days if I stayed at a hotel or I could save it for food and wing it until I found a decent job. Maybe Bliss knew a place that would hire a sixteen year old girl without an address.

I folded the money and shoved it into a spare backpack with the rest of my goods. It would make it easier fighting with two knives if I didn’t have to hold onto a bag. I went to my dresser and grabbed the picture with Starr and I as children finger painting. Despite her betrayal, I wasn’t angry enough to leave Starr behind. She was the biggest part of my life. If anything, I wanted a reminder of the happier times. I shoved it into the backpack along with the picture of Rex and me.

Now I needed to find a way out of the house. I barely opened the blinds to peep out and saw a single figure sitting in the trees. Luckily, the man was looking towards the street and hadn’t seen the blinds open. I let them snap closed as I stepped back. Someone was probably watching the front too, so my escape would have to be creative.

Cold swept into the room. I released my breath and fog drew from my lips as my shadowy heart beat into action. Once, twice, and then it stopped. Something was going to happen and I didn’t want to be trapped in the house when it did.

I started towards the door when the ringing phone startled me. Instinct made me want to quiet the phone, but I knew better than to answer it. The answering machine downstairs clicked on and the crisp voice was louder than the television’s rumble.

The recorded message beeped and static rolled over the line. I started into the hallway when I heard a very faint sound through the static.

“Belen.” It was whispered, but I heard it.

That static grew louder, as if it were capable of frustration, then I heard it again.

“Belen.”

It was more of a whine as if crying for my attention. The room grew colder and I knew I had to get out. I took a step further into the hall and the static busted loudly, but I heard my name in all that fuzz. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Starr was calling to me.

I crossed back into my room and stared at the pink phone sitting in its cradle. Something was wrong. The shadowy heart that beat over my regular heart fluttered madly. If I picked it up, the people outside might hear me, but I really wanted to know that Starr was okay.

At the corner of my vision, the closest door was pulling open. The minimal light that came through the blinds couldn’t penetrate the dark, but it didn’t have too. A ghostly figure stood in the doorway, her skin so white it had its own glow.

“Starr?”

Despite the lack of light, she looked spooky. Her skin was sickly gray and her eyes stared without focusing on me. Anything alive had a spark of light in their eyes, but hers were flat. I thought of the doppelganger.

“Yesss.” Her voice echoed over the answering machine and in front of me at the same time.

A spark of static exploded downstairs and the burst sounded as though the answering machine blew up.

“Starr, you’re really scaring me,” I said.

Her eyes snapped to me. “World Congress wants you.”

I didn’t know there was a person behind me until he moved. There was no aura to tip me off. I caught a very brief glimpse of him before the shock at my back made the world go dark.

T
here was a moment between sleep and wake where I was on the verge of being sick. Overhead, the same words were being repeated: “I’m a good citizen of World Congress. In World Congress I trust. I will report all people I suspect that are against World Congress.”

I felt hung over and my throat was so dry that it hurt to swallow. It took too much effort to move so I remained on the floor.

I was only briefly aware of the music at the forefront of my mind, but it faded quickly. There should be panic when one wakes up in a new location, but I was strangely calm. Even that shadowy thing in my chest stopped beating. A long time ago, I might have trusted a psychiatrist enough to tell what was going on with me, but now, I suspected that wouldn’t go over well.

The row of lockers painted in gold had me up on my feet. I was lying on the floor at Larmany High School. The last thing I remembered was…

The memory was right there, but I wasn’t recalling anything. My insides hurt like I spent a great deal of time vomiting. My throat was dry and my head felt stuffy. Still, I couldn’t figure out how I ended up at school.

The dimensions weren’t right.

It wasn’t a subconscious thought. It was wispy and shadowy. I lowered my shields and felt a vast emptiness, but something defiantly stirred. The presence was very light in substance, as light as fog and very small. A hand slid in mine and I turned. Starr smiled at me.

“We are wonderful citizens,” Starr said. She spoke with a bit of a lisp.

Her dull eyes held mine as her second hand clasped over our joined hands and I felt paper smash between our palms. When she pulled away, I fisted my hand so I wouldn’t drop the message. I felt in my gut that this message was important.

A bell rang and students slid into the hallway. The chatter and noise was minimal. Even the opening and closing of lockers and doors were muffled as if the walls ate all the noise. This time when I avoided direct stares, it was because of the way people smiled at me. It felt wrong.

“Morning Belen,” someone shouted and then it became an echo down the hall.

Like a prerecorded sound track.

There was a dreamlike quality to this. Starr drifted off down the hall and it clicked why this felt so wrong. Everyone was too happy. For a high school, it was pretty quiet. The energy around me wavered and I spun where I stood.

For one brief moment the lockers weren’t there. It was just a gray wall with even grayer lighting. The hall was empty. The students were gone. If it weren’t for that folded piece of paper in my hand, I would question Starr’s existence too.

It was hard holding onto this reality. A wave of exhaustion hit me and the hall warped back into a high school hallway. The students were familiar in the same sense a dream is sometimes familiar. I should know their names, but I couldn’t recall them. I stuffed my books in the locker and leaned in to unfold the note. It was folded so thoroughly that I thought I’d rip it apart before I could read it.

Raggedy, stop the music.

Raggedy hit a nerve. Raggedy, that’s what everyone called me. I wasn’t popular at school. Not like I was here. Something was definitely wrong. I glanced back at the hallway in its perpetual gloom and blinked my eyes a few times to adjust. For the briefest moment, I heard the music, but it was quick to fade. When I opened my eyes again, the lights were once again as bright as the smiling, happy faces that greeted me. My hackles rose.

…stop the music…

At the moment, I couldn’t hear the music. I couldn’t even hear the recording that kept repeating the same spiel about being a World Congress citizen. I crumbled the paper and made my way to the first classroom. The room was very bright with pastel yellow walls and a huge window that let in surprisingly sharp light for how cloudy Ardent usually was.

Every head was turned to the front. Not one person passed a letter or doodled in their notebooks. This was what World Congress wanted. It was what I wanted, order in my life. I took a seat and folded my hands, listening.

Trust in World Congress…

Turn in those who betray World Congress…

Follow the rules of World Congress…

Something important happened last night and I needed to remember. My mind was drawing a blank, but images were flashing. I saw faces, but the only one I remembered was Starr.

Stop the music.

I couldn’t hear the music. I heard the teacher and she was speaking about being the perfect citizen. My thoughts drifted back to last night.

There was someone I was supposed to meet and there was someone I was supposed to be hiding from. The music was there again and darkness hedged the edge of my vision. I twisted in my seat expecting it to fade, but it didn’t. Tiny pieces of shadow crawled like worms across the pale wall and curled into a single word.

Run.

The shadow evaporated.

I stared at the wall until the back of my eye sockets ached. Something shadowy in my chest beat alongside my heart. The teacher kept talking, the sun kept shinning and the students kept listening.

I was going out of my mind.

The music was twice as strong now. I jerked from my chair and bumped into the desk next to me. The student fell from it like an upturned doll. She didn’t move and I realized she wasn’t breathing. I bent down to touch her and stopped. It was a doll. Every student sitting in a chair was a doll, but they felt so real. Free-String Walkers.

Everything that surrounded me was an illusion and the high pitch frequencies had something to do with that. There was no ceiling overhead. The lights hung over the edge of a catwalk that stretched a good length, but with only half the lights on, I couldn’t tell how far the building went.

I was in some kind of box and the wall was extremely high. Even if I piled a desk and chair up against the wall, I couldn’t reach the top. I’d have to stack chairs. That was one option, but I would still be inside the larger building.

The illusion wavered. I moved into the hall as grief rushed the forefront of my mind. How could I forget about Sable?

I was definitely in assimilation. What would they do to me when they realized this wasn’t working?

As if in answer to my unspoken question, shadows danced along the walls just ahead of me. The room was too bright for there to be shadows, yet it didn’t stop them from forming. They were solemn figures swaying as if there were a wind.

Goosebumps crawled along my flesh as that shadowy thing in my chest started beating. It was slow at first and didn’t stop the fog from stretching over my mind. The world wavered between a hall with just walls and a hall with lockers. Even the music was starting to fade. In the surrounding rooms, I heard teachers talking. It was a jumble of different speeches, but they all had the same topic: World Congress.

It was bad to be in the hallway when school was in session. I was a proper World Congress citizen.

I reached for the doorknob that would allow me back into my classroom when I was pushed full force into the door. My face slammed against the wood and the pain ebbed through my body with surprising clarity. It helped clear the fog enough to hear the metallic grind and stomp of heavy machinery working a product line. High pitched music accompanied it and on top of all that was the voice repeating itself.

“World Congress is good. World Congress is your protector. You are a World Congress citizen. It is your duty to inform the patrollers when there is suspicious activity in your area.”

The fog tried to bully its way into my head, but the pain kept it out. Tired and cautious, I raised a hand just under my nostril and it came away wet. Great, another bloody nose. I’d be lucky if I didn’t break it soon.

First, I needed to see what I was dealing with and that meant lowering my shields, which were weaker than normal. Without my shields, the world always felt grimy. I had no better way of explaining it, but the very air felt thick and dirty. There were many small things here that scurried like rodents in the fabric between our world and the next. I recognized very few of those shadowy essences as humans. I had no name for that other world. I saw enough to know that it existed.