Harbinger (4 page)

But I was picky. Only perfect vertebrae. Curved ribs. Fragile wing bones. I cradled them in my hands, meticulously drawing them in my notebook, and then hid them away with the others.

One day in junior high, I came home from school and heard voices coming from my room. I crept upstairs, listening. Mom and Dad were talking in the same careful tones they’d used when my grandfather had died. My throat ratcheted so tight, I couldn’t breathe. I forced myself to turn the corner and I saw my parents sitting on the floor surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of skulls and femurs and tiny skeletons. A gleaming sea of white.

When Mom saw me standing in the doorway, she was startled into looking at me. She stared right into my eyes and shuddered. I didn’t imagine it. She actually shuddered, and her obvious disgust shivered through me too.

Before that moment, I’d only ever sensed strong emotions emanating from people. But that day my mother’s repulsion was so strong that for the first time, a clear word emerged from the murky surface of her thoughts:
“Abomination.”

That word rang out again and again inside my head. It was the last time I looked my mom in the eye. In fact, I was careful with everyone after that. Afraid I’d see her verdict confirmed. A couple of weeks later, the first of the Holbrook Academy brochures had shown up.

I dropped the bone.
I have to get out of here.
From behind the log, my eyes scoured the fence for any way out. A tree branch that reached over the barbed wire. A tiny hole in the chain link. Anything.
Even if I have to tunnel out with a cafeteria spoon.

But the fence was immaculate. The trees had been cut away from this side of the barrier, and there was nothing but stumps on the other side. Layers of sparkling razor wire vined through the wire mesh. There was no going up or over this thing.

“Fa-aye!” Freddy paused, muscles braced for the slightest sound, like we were playing a sick game of hide-and-seek. He was so close, I could see the trickle of sweat running down his thick neck now. The shadow of stubble on his chin.

Cicadas shrieked, their pulsing song filling the woods.
The other way. Please, go the other way.

Freddy shrugged and swung away from me, moving back toward the drive.

I forced myself to take a deep breath, the humid air heavy in my lungs. Pulling myself up, my mind buzzed, searching for a way to get out of here. I kept low, tiptoeing over fallen branches until I couldn’t stand it anymore and made a run for it.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Freddy’s voice came from right ahead of me now, sounding relaxed, almost playful.
Did I get turned around or did he double back?

Changing directions again, I sprinted up a hill. I gained speed, ignoring the cramp squeezing at my lungs. Then, suddenly, I hit the end of the forest. The end of the fence. The end of everything. I slid to a stop just before the ground dropped away, forty feet down, to a nasty finish of sharp rocks and rabid waves.

And beyond those frothing teeth were more waves. And more. All the way out to the smoggy, puce horizon. The hypnotic eternity of ocean was broken by squalling seagulls, generator buoys, a few lumps of islands, and the barrage of tankers teeming around the oil rigs.

Of course, Freddy was relaxed. He didn’t have to race after me. I had nowhere to go.

I looked down into the waves, that hunger growing in me again. Pulling me to it.

No.
I thought of Nami and backed away from the roaring ocean and the bare, lichen-covered cliff. She’d run, not because she thought she could escape, but because she didn’t want to make it easy for them.
Well, me either
.

I pushed deeper into the trees where it was darker. My dread of getting lost among these monsters warred with my dread of getting caught. The forest grew denser and I ran blindly, trying to keep myself from sprawling on the ground.

I almost crashed straight into her. She’d blended right into the trees. The girl, frozen in mid-scream, panic engraved into her metal face.

Her weathered bronze hands were thrown up in front of her. Her eyes hysterical and huge. The girl reminded me of those statues cast from the ruins of Pompeii. People stuck, for all of eternity, watching everything they loved be consumed by the fires of hell.

Her pain was too much. Too private. I looked away and saw another statue. And another. And another. Black shapes stark on the hill. All that was missing was the bonfire.

Six statues stood in a circle, their mouths stretched in horror. One was turning to run. Another was howling up at the early-morning sky. Each of them in silent agony, trapped in some never-ending nightmare. And I was trapped with them.

5

I LOOKED FOR SIGNS
of the fire, but there weren’t any. There was no burned patch on the ground. No charcoal. No ash.

Was it the drugs, then? Did I imagine it?
The flames? The music? My chest squeezed as I realized something else.

I counted again. Last night there’d been seven figures around the fire. Now there were only six.

“Sometimes, I think I can hear them screaming.” A soft voice came from right over my shoulder.

I spun around, ready to run. A girl, a real one this time, stared past me at the statues. She wore a white sundress, and her hair was pulled into a long, blond braid running down her back. I guessed that she was my age, maybe a little older. Another student trapped at Holbrook.

“What are they?” I kept my voice quiet, thinking of Freddy still in the woods somewhere.

“The Screamers. Can you hear them too?” Then her gaze shifted toward me, and I saw there was something a little off about her. Even though she was facing me, the girl’s eyes were wild and unfocused.

I just shook my head, afraid to startle this odd girl. On the other side of the clearing, tree branches smashed and Freddy’s swearing traveled through the woods. But the girl just stood there, her expression far away, as if she didn’t hear any of it. It was unnerving.

And yet, with guards crawling all over Holbrook, here she was. Wandering around free. This girl might be in her own little crazy-world, but maybe she could help me. The barest shadow of hope traced itself in my mind. “Do you know how to get out of here?”

Her face pulled tight across her cheekbones, her forehead wrinkling in thought. As she looked out over the sea, the early-morning light etched lines across her almost transparent skin and circles under her eyes. “The path is here. Only I can’t seem to find it . . .”

Her words faded to barely a whisper. “I’m lost myself.”

Freddy was getting closer now. “Fa-aye, Faye!”

His shouting finally caught her attention and the girl glanced in my direction. She didn’t shy away from my gaze, but the eyes that met mine were vacant and clouded. She smiled and held out her hand. “Are you Faye, then? I’m Rita. How nice to meet you.”

Yep. Crazy.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation.
Some thug was after me and she was making proper introductions? But what did I expect, I was at Holbrook after all.

Then Rita’s face creased again in concern. “Be careful. The path is hard to follow.”

There was a crash and I whipped around to see Freddy break through the trees. A terrifying grin on his face.

“Please! What path?” I turned back to her, begging. But she was gone.

“Got her, up here by the sculpture garden,” Freddy bragged into his earpiece. “I’m handling it.”

I just stood there petrified. Like one of the blackened, bronze statues.

He paused, listening to the response in his ear. Anger twisting his mouth.

“Uh-huh.”

His face went from medium rare to bloody.

“Uh-huh.”

Not a man of many words.

“Said I’m handling it.” And he started for me.

Freddy clutched his pepper spray and edged closer. His eyes were everywhere, checking out the area around us, evaluating my movements. Then he looked straight at me, and I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes before he looked away. Like I was an escaped tiger who might attack at any second. I had the urge to do just that. To rave and scream and claw. But my sense of defeat overwhelmed everything else.

Sweat slipped down my forehead, stinging my eyes. I touched my back pocket, wishing my sketchbook were there. I’d draw myself into someplace safe. Without possessed statues or sadistic schools. I’d make my life make sense again.

Freddy was feet from me, inches now. This wasn’t gonna be pretty. I’d seen what they’d done to Nami. His fat hand twitched, eagerly, and I braced myself.

Then his radio beeped again. He paused, listening to his earpiece.

“Crap. Another one.” Freddy’s watery eyes filled with regret. “I don’t have time to teach you a lesson right now. But I promise, I’ll get to it soon enough. And I’m a man of my word.”

Freddy grabbed my sore arm and dragged me back into the trees. The branches bent low, tangling in my hair. Ripping it out as Freddy pulled me along.

I wished I were back out under the open sky of the clearing, even if it meant being near those creepy statues. Or listening to Rita.

Be careful. The path is hard to follow.
There’d been something in her voice, an urgency, that made it hard for me to just shrug her off. But Rita and her path vanished from my thoughts as soon as I saw Dr. Mordoch waiting outside the Compass Rose with her satisfied little smile.

“Thank you, Caretaker. I assume she wasn’t too much trouble.”

“Oh no, Dr. Mordoch. We can handle the students. Firmness and restraint. Just like it says in the handbook.” Behind Freddy’s smile was a glint of spitefulness, but Dr. Mordoch didn’t react. She sent Freddy off toward the next “incident” and turned to me.

“I’m glad this happened before we officially started our semester.” Dr. Mordoch motioned for me to follow her back up the hill, in the opposite direction from the dorms. A breeze swatted uselessly at the stagnant air. We skirted around the other house I’d seen from the roof that morning. Its wooden porch sagged and the paint was faded and chipped. A brass plaque gleamed incongruously on the weathered door, reading
Knowledge Annex
. Next to the house was a wide, empty corral, big enough for cows or horses.
Some sort of barnyard therapy?

“It allows me to be lenient. I’ll give you this chance before we begin our term to decide whether you’re going to allow Holbrook to help you. Perhaps, if I give you some time to think it over, you’ll come around.” She beamed at me as she led me up a dirt trail through the oppressive woods. “Meditation can work wonders.”

We came to a small skinny building that looked a little like an old rest-stop bathroom. Only a row of metal ventilation pipes on the roof kept the place from blending into the trees completely. Five doors evenly divided the wooden building, each with a stick-on silver number labeling them one through five.

“The monks used this building for contemplation.” Dr. Mordoch unlocked the fence that circled the building. No razor wire here. “The Meditation Center serves the same purpose for us at the Academy. At every turn, I’ve tried to incorporate the values of self-reflection and discipline when designing this school. The outside world can be such a distraction from . . .”

I stopped listening to her lecture. Dust clogged the air as we crossed the barren yard. Hundreds of resistant feet had obviously beat any grass into submission. My translator finally kicked in as she unlocked door number three. Meditation Center = solitary confinement.

Dr. Mordoch guided me into the closet of a room. It was sweltering and reeked of sweat. My chest squeezed tight with anxiety. I wanted to bolt, but I already knew there was no place to go. Plus, Dr. Mordoch was blocking the only exit.

I took it in quickly. Six feet wide and eight feet long. Cement floor. A wooden platform stuck a couple of feet out of the back wall. A large metal ring was mounted near the floor.
I don’t even want to know
.

“Swami Sivananda once said, ‘Meditation is painful in the beginning but it bestows immortal Bliss and supreme joy in the end.’ Faye, sometimes pain is the only way.” She gave me a benign smile and shut the door.

Then I was alone in the blackness. I tried to push down the panic. But the adrenaline rush from this morning had gone clean through my body, making me feel washed out and weak. There was no inside doorknob, but I shoved my shoulder into the door anyway. Hoping.

The lock held and fire ripped down my already bruised arm. A low animal moan escaped my throat.

“Fear is an illusion. I’m in control of my own reality.” My words sounded muffled in the walled-off space, making me feel even smaller.

How did I end up here?
It’d just started out as bad dreams. Night terrors, the doctor had called them. Always the blue waves rushing at me. Pulling me down. But the nightmares of drowning were less terrifying than the kids who cried just because I looked at them. Or the teachers who called me a liar and a bully.

Doctors checked my eyes, my ears, my brain, searching for a reason for my strangeness. They tested me for ADHD and dyslexia. By junior high I’d been poked and prodded and screened for everything in the book, and they still had nothing to blame it on. But by then I’d figured out how to hide it. At night, I took refuge in the empty streets of the Cooperative. Out under the dark sky, there were no lies to tiptoe around. No eyes to avoid. There was no one to hear my screams.

But, last year, the nightmares had found their way into the daylight and everything had fallen apart. My parents realized I would never be like everybody else. And I realized I didn’t want to be.

So here I was. Locked away in a place where I couldn’t pretend even if I wanted to.

Pacing, my boots thumped out a steady rhythm on the cement floor. Blood pounded in my ears, keeping time.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh
. My shins hit the platform at the end of the room.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
I ran into the door.

The drumbeat from last night came back to me.
It’s time.
The song pulsed in my veins.
For you.
It throbbed through my head until it hurt to move. I leaned against the door, letting it hold me up.

Fresh air wisped through the spaces between the close-fitting boards. As I breathed in the sweet smell of pine sap, something stirred inside me.

Under the insistent drumbeat and the whooshing in my head, I could hear the creaking of the branches. I imagined swaying in the breeze. The sound of the wind rustling through leaves.

I clung to that sensation of being outside. I pressed my hand into the wood, trying to share its solidness as the music hammered at me. My feet rooted to the floor, even as my head spun.

I didn’t want to lose myself here in the dark. “Please.”

Something shattered inside me when I heard my feeble voice pleading with a locked door. Throwing my head back, I screamed. I screamed at my father, who’d left me here. At my mother, who was too big a coward to even come. At Dr. Mordoch, who thought she had some special right to drug and imprison me.

I threw my body into the door and pain thrilled through me. I used it, adding it to the rage. I kicked the door, slamming my sole into the wood. Striking that rhythm again and again.

I slammed my palms against the boards, pushing back against the drumbeat, against everything. “No! Fear is an illusion!”

Splinters cut my hands. But I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t control the deep, welling rage, even if it was about to swallow me up.

The boards gave a little. I was stronger than all of them. Stronger than the door. The flats of my hands pummeled the wood harder. And with a crack, a board loosened, letting in a tiny rift of light. I stood blinking in the yellow beam and shouted, “I’m in control of my own reality!”

A scraping sound came from the other side of the door and it swung open. A figure was silhouetted by blinding sunlight. She stepped inside and I saw it was Dr. Mordoch. Relief flooded through me. She would help me. She would save me from myself.

“Faye, you need to try harder. How can we help you if you fight us like this?” Dr. Mordoch touched the crack I’d made in the boards, testing it. But the wood held solid now.

I blinked, my eyes straining to adjust to the sunlight. As Dr. Mordoch ran her hand over the crack again, lines pulled down her mouth and crinkled her forehead, her face a mix of surprise and worry.

“I w-want to come out.” My voice was weak.

“I know you do, but we can’t always have everything we want. Until you can settle down, until you can be quiet and show us that you’re ready to accept our help, I can’t let you out. It would hurt your recovery.” Dr. Mordoch grabbed my hand, her rough fingers closing around mine. For the first time she really looked at me. “Faye, I don’t want to hurt you.”

I couldn’t answer, because the world was dissolving around me. The sunlight faded into darkness and the tiny room had been replaced by icy waves. Dr. Mordoch and I were the only things still the same.

We were standing in the ocean, the full moon shone a deep crimson, and the stars burned bright without smog. Dr. Mordoch still gripped my hand, but somehow everything had gotten flipped around backward. I was seeing from inside Dr. Mordoch. One of her muddy hands was fighting against the oncoming tide, the other holding on to my own tiny hand. The hand of a half-drowned six-year-old Faye, standing in the tumbling waves.

“Faye, I don’t want to hurt you.” I felt myself saying the words, but they were Dr. Mordoch’s words. Dr. Mordoch’s voice.

Six-year-old Faye pulled against my hand, trying to wade deeper into the waves. Her hand slipped out of mine just as a tall wave crashed over us.

“Faye!” I screamed at her in Dr. Mordoch’s voice. But it was like she didn’t hear me. Spitting out salt water, she tilted her head back and started singing. It was the same eerie melody that’d been haunting me since last night. And for a second I just stood there, stunned, rooted to the spot as she moved farther and farther away from me.