I'm so much busier than I used to be. All I want to do when the kids go to bed is curl up and read a book or watch Netflix. I should probably write or do a thousand pushups, but I'm tired. Last week, I worked in the Middle School front office, which allowed me some time to rewrite a chapter or two. I'll have another one for you tomorrow. That is if anyone still cares. I thought I'd plow through these revisions, but they have come as slow as molasses pours out of the bottle in wintertime.
And I'm still waiting for the edits to com back from my agent so I can sell the other book. The real one that I'm slowing losing faith in. I feel like I'm losing faith in a lot of things. But, that my gentle readers, is another blog post all together.
Warning: There be typos ahead!
Chapter 10
The next day of school
passes without me having to talk to Blake. The student body of Ravines High is
made up of about a hundred students, so he does a wonderful job of avoiding me.
In English, we start the unit on Shakespeare. To get us excited about our
homework, Mr. Long reads long excerpts from various plays, and if I wasn’t so
distracted I might look forward to reading Hamlet.
But I’m too consumed with my own screwed up life to worry about Hamlet’s
revenge plot or the fact that his mother wants to make out with him.
On the way to the cafeteria, I stop at my
locker, and I get the briefest glimpse of a boy with short blond hair and a sad
smile. I push through the crowd, trying to catch up with the Reaper just to
assure myself what I saw was real.
“Hello, Cassandra,” he says when I reach him.
Somehow everyone avoids touching him or even noticing he’s there. He leans
against the janitor’s closet and suddenly we’re inside the cramped,
broom-filled place.
“Reiner,” I say, a little out of breath.
“Reiner,” he says, correction my pronunciation.
“That’s what I said.”
“You are saying it wrong. Reiner. Rei as is in Rhine River in
Deutschland.”
“Reiner
as in the Rhine River as in Reiner the Reaper.”
He grumbles something under his breath. “Never
mind. Your accent is impossible.”
“My accent? What about yours.”
His cold, grey eyes glare at me until I drop
it. He’s just as he was on the night of my birthday, tall and blond, and
beautiful for a dead guy. In the harsh fluorescent lights of the closet,
through the opening of his shirt, I notice the knife scars covering the exposed
portion of his chest and the thick, pink line across his throat. I have the
strangest urge to run my fingertip over the marks.
“What happened to you?” I ask. I shouldn’t
care, but curiosity gets the better of me.
“Would you like to see?” he asks, but doesn’t
wait for my response. Like he did in the graveyard, he waves his hand in front
of my face.
We’re transported to a small cement room, most
likely underground by the musty smell of things. Reiner the Reaper is beside
me, but Reiner the boy is strapped to a wet wooden chair. At first I think the
floor beneath him is damp from the water dripping overhead, but then I realize
it’s blood. Reiner’s blood.
Reiner looks much the same as he does now, but
his skin has more color in it and he’s a little more muscular. He’s dirty and
bruised and his clothes are ripped, but I’m struck at the bright hue of his blue
eyes. His head turns toward me, but I soon realize he is looking at who is
coming through the locked door behind me, not seeing me at all. I jump aside to
let some scary looking guards through, realizing too late that it doesn’t
matter if I move because I’m not really here.
The one guard is huge and the other one is
bigger. They start speaking a million miles a minute in a language I don’t
recognize, but I think might be German. When Reiner doesn’t respond, one of
them punches Reiner so hard in the jaw that the chair almost tips over. The
other guard rights the wobbling legs of the chair, setting Reiner upright
again. Through a bloody mouth, Reiner smiles at him. The guard slaps Reiner
across the face, but Reiner doesn’t even flinch. He just trains those blue eyes
back on the guard and raises his eyebrows like a challenge.
This time the bigger guard kicks Reiner in the chest with such force
that the chair breaks apart as Reiner hits the ground.
The chair broke, but so did the chords around
Reiner’s hands and ankles. His injured, but still shoots to his feet with a
great deal of agility. Reiner is smaller than the guards, but he choses to rush
them both at once. He’s stronger than he looks, and manages to knock both of
the guards to the floor. Once they are both down, Reiner grabs one of their
guns, and using the butt of the handle, hits each one in the forehead. The
guards’ eyes close and the go still, both knocked out. Reiner drops the gun to
the floor, and removes a knife from a guard’s holster. Smiling down at the
blade, he spins the handle around in his hand with surprising skill.
He starts toward the exit, ready to make his
escape, but then a man, who looks a lot like an older version of Reiner,
appears in the doorway. He is dressed in a full Nazi uniform, taller, and a
little darker blond, but I instantly know he’s Reiner’s father.
“Nein!” Reiner yells. “Papa, nein.”
The man knees Reiner in the stomach, causing
him to drop the knife. Taking Reiner by the collar of his torn shirt, the man
drags him out of the room. Reiner fights against his father the whole time,
kicking and punching, but can’t get free of him. They travel down the dark
hallway until it opens up into a large, sunny field filled in a crowd of
thousands. Swastikas banners are strung everywhere and everyone is heiling
Hitler.
I knew Reiner looked like he was from the World
War II era, but it’s still shocking to realize he’s really that old. If he was
still alive today, he’d be as old as my granddaddy. I don’t want to admit it,
but I’m attracted to a senior citizen.
The crowd cheers as Reiner’s father marches him
into the center of the stage, and straps him to a table turned on its side that
looks like something out of the dungeons from the Dark Ages. His father takes
the knife Reiner had dropped earlier. He looks Reiner in the eye before
stabbing him in the chest, right over his heart.
Now if I was the one getting stabbed, I would
have screamed and cried and probably would have peed my pants, but not Reiner.
He stays stoic, with his eyes on the people cheering at his torture. The knife
plunges again and again, so many times that I can’t count. Blood rushes out of
his mouth and dribbles down his chin. His front is so red that I can’t tell
were on wound starts and the other one ends.
I think Reiner must be dead. Any normal person
would have died from the first stab, but I notice the slight rise and fall of
his chest. Reiner’s blue eyes pop open and he goes off in some German diatribe.
I have no idea what he’s saying, but even in his extreme pain, he is
passionate. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t let
that stop him. He goes on and on and the jeering crowd stills and listens.
They stay transfixed until his father comes
back to Reiner and stabs the knife into the side of his neck. Reiner spits
blood in the man’s face. Not even taking time to wipe the spit from his face,
the man, tilts Reiner’s head up and slices through Reiner’s throat.
Because I can’t watch anymore, I turn my head
away.
“Cassandra.” When Reiner says my name, I
realize we’re back at school.
“You were fighting the Nazis,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Then why were you ever sent to Purgatory?”
“Because I was a one of them.”
I don’t know what to say to this. I have a
crazy, ex-Nazi Reaper trying to kill me. This can’t turn out well.
“Who was the man who killed you?” I ask.
“My father.”
And I thought I had daddy issues. I study his
pale, haunted eyes, and for the first time since I met him, I see him as more
than a scary, yet hot Reaper. He was a boy before this, with a life I’ve read
about in history books, a life he didn’t want and was fighting against. “You were
very brave,” I say.
“No,” he says, his words heavy with accent.
“There is much more to my story that you have not seen. I did too much wrong
before I did what was right.” He sighs as he readjusts the golden sickle
attached to his belt. “Pay close attention to your dreams, Cassandra.”
“Do you know where Brittany is? Can you help
me?”
“No. You are the only one who can save her. I
am not allowed to intervene. I am not even supposed to speak with you on this
matter. ” He’s suddenly very close, his lips right next to my ear. “I will see
you soon.”
I close my eyes, but when I open them, he’s
gone and I’m standing alone inside the janitor’s closet. Nothing else exciting
happens until P.E. When I’m dressing out for gym, someone crying in the shower
stall catches my attention. The tears are hollow and echoing, so I know they
belong to the dead. I debate going in to check. I don’t want to deal with this
at school, where there might be a few people might not know about my abilities.
And to be honest, dealing with the dead is tedious and trying.
I lace up my shoes, determined not to go in,
but the pleas of the dead are hard stomach, desperate, depraved, and always
determined. They won’t give up. Like good little ghosts, they will harass you
until you do what they want.
Looking around, I notice I’m the last girl in
the locker room. No one will see me. No one will know. I rush across the tile,
toward the low moans of misery. My shoes squeak as I stop short at the sight of
the girl sitting in the corner of a shower stall. The cuts across her wrist are
proof of her crushing life. She’s sliced so deep, I can see tendons. The black
blood trickles across the white tile. For the moment, the blood is real,
pliable, and I almost slip.
The spirit doesn’t notice me at first, but I can’t
help but be drawn to her. I know something about sadness. I kneel next to her.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond. Her head falls down, her chin hitting her
chest. This is a first, the dead ignoring me. I should be excited, but all I
can think of is how I want her to stop hurting.
“I can help,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. You can’t even save
yourself.” Then she disappears.
“Well, that was rude,” I say to no one.
After, I’m too depressed for bound ball, so I
change back into my shorts and tank top, and sit on a bench in the locker room
until the bell rings. At the end of the day, I load my backpack with books, and
head off to the parking lot to find Ruby.
“Where have you been
all day?” she asks. “You barely said two words during English class. You
abandoned me in gym. I got into a line dispute with one of those jock girls.
You should have heard her. She kept yelling, ‘in, out, in, out,” while pointing
at the line with her big, ugly Nikes. I could have used some back up when I had
to crack skulls.”
“You didn’t get into a fight,” I say.
“No. But I could have if you would have been
there.” She pauses to take a deep breath. “And worst of all you were M.I.A. at
lunch. I had to eat with the nerds at table seven! They kept talking about the
chemical properties of water vapor. I almost passed out in my mashed potatoes.”
“I have a lot on my
mind.”
“You mean you have
Blake on your mind.”
“A lot more than
that.” I stop to think about what I’m about to tell her. I know I was just
complaining about people knowing my secret, but Ruby seems different, someone I
could tell anything to and she wouldn’t judge. Besides, she’ll find out sooner
or later. People are just dying to tell everyone else my business.
I look around to make sure no one is in earshot
of us, and then I say, “You know the missing girl?” I tell her about
everything, glossing over growing up with the death everywhere. Her eyes go
wide for a moment, like she might bolt, but to Ruby’s credit she hugs me, and
prompts me to continue. I tell her about finding the purse a few days ago,
discovering Brittany
is missing, and talking to the police yesterday. I leave out the part about
Blake being Brittany’s
ex-boyfriend and a person of interest, though. Even I don’t want to look at
those facts.
“For once, the gossip
was true?”
“You knew about me?”
“Well, of course. This is Ravines and people
talk.”
“You were still my friend.”
“Duh. My best friend has super powers. Why
wouldn’t I like that?”
“I don’t have super powers.”
“Yes, you do. What did the police say? Do they
think Brittany dead?” Ruby asks.
“They’re treating the
case as a missing person.”
“Do you think she’s dead?”
“If I’m seeing her,
she’ll be dead soon.”
“You’ll tell me if you
have a vision that I’m going to die, right?”
“Of course.”
“Because if you don’t,
I’ll haunt you until you die,” she says, poking her long red fingernail into my
chest. I believe her so I promise again. I even cross my heart.
“Could these powers be like a premonition?
Could I actually be psychic?” She closes her eyes. “What am I thinking right
now?”
“I don’t know. My
abilities don’t work like that.”
“I’ll give you a hint.
It has something to do with shoes.”
“Ruby, I don’t know.”
“Fine. I was thinking
I can’t believe you wore flip flops to school. Again.” I roll my eyes at her.
“What about the lottery? Why don’t you have a dream about the numbers and we’ll
split the money. We’ll buy a beach house in Hawaii and spend all day sipping fruity
drinks out of coconuts and perfecting our tans.”
“If a person who is
going to die is also going to win the lottery, then maybe. Back to our current
problem. I’ve seen Brittany
get abducted, knocked unconscious, and tied to a bed. I have to do something to
help her, but I don’t know what.”
“We should talk to the
police again.”
“And tell them what?
They already think my entire family is nuts. Besides, I have no evidence.”
“We better get some.
It’s a good thing my mom makes me watch all those dumb cop shows with her. I’ll
crack this case!”
Ruby drives us to my house, parks in the
driveway, and follows me up the walk. “What are we doing here?” Ruby asks. “I
thought we were on the search for evidence.”
“I need some real food. I haven’t had anything
to eat today besides Snowballs from the vending machine at school.”
“You mean those pink marshmallow things? I
didn’t think anyone ate those but me.”
“I love them. But right now I need a
salad. I figure if I eat something
healthy, the Snowballs will cancel themselves out.”
“Girl, I like the way you think.”
When we enter the house, we are engulfed in
noise. Anna, wearing just a cowboy hat and boots, streaks through the kitchen
with Mom on her heels.
“Your mom has style,” Ruby says, noticing Mom’s
plum warm-up suit and tennis shoes. Where do you even get purple running shoes?
“Or she’s insane,” I whisper.
“She just has a signature style like Ruby.”
Mom scopes Anna up, and stops in front of us.
“Hello. I don’t think we met. I’m Judy.”
“Ruby. Love your outfit.”
“Love yours.” Ruby is stuffed into a short blue
skirt and a matching glittery halter top. After mom leaves, Ruby says, “Girl,
you didn’t tell me your mom was such a fashion diva. I should go shopping with
her.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Whatever you do, don’t
encourage her.”
“Are you dissin’ my outfits?” She plants a fist
on her rounded hip.
I’m a good liar and I use the skill to my
ability, because I know not to ever tell Ruby what I think of her style. “No.
Your clothes are amazing. I could never pull off the outfits you do. I just
think my mom needs to diversify a bit more.”
Ruby goes to the pantry, she says in search of
rice cakes. “What are all these little bottles?” she asks. “It’s like a spice
rack exploded and then had some babies.” She picks up a glass vile. “Wolfsbane?
Is this to ward off werewolves?”
“No, werewolves don’t exist. It’s used for
healing injuries from ghost attacks.”
She nods, accepting my explanation. “What are these?” She picks up one
of Mom’s leather conjure bags.
When she goes for the chord keeping the bag
closed I say, “Don’t open it.”
“What’s inside?”
“Clippings of hair. A ring. A pencil eraser.
Belongings of someone we love who is dead. We have the conjure bag to keep a
part of them with us, and in case we need to get a hold of them after they’re
dead. It’s like a direct line to the Afterworld.”
“And you just keep these bags in the pantry?”
“Better than in the living room where Anna
might play with them like they’re bean bags.”
She picks up another vile. “Ghost water? What
the heck is ghost water?”
“Spring water you leave on a gravestone at
midnight, during a full moon.” It sounds so ridiculous when explained to
someone who isn’t familiar with my world. “It’s sometimes used to raise the
dead.”
“Are you sure you’re not a witch? Not that
there’s anything wrong with that,” she adds, like she’s afraid she has offended
me.
“I’m positive I’m not a witch.” But I’m not
positive at all. I haven’t exploded anymore lights, but I can still feel a new
found power, buzzing just below the surface, working its way into my veins. I
should talk to Gran, see if I’m really a witch, but it’ll have to wait until
after I find Brittany and deal with the Reaper.
“Too bad because I would love to hex my
ex-boyfriend,” she says.
“If I was a witch, I would have hexed Blake by
now.”
“What did he do?” she asks. “I thought y’all
were happy and in love.”
“We’re not in love. And we got into a fight. I
think I hurt his feelings by accusing him of kidnapping Brittany and possibly
murdering her.”
“Ouch,” Ruby says. “Do you really think he had
anything to do with her disappearance?”
I ponder that for a moment. I have my
suspensions, but like he said, I know Blake. He’s coincided and sometimes
selfish, but he’s not a murderer. “No, I don’t think it’s him. Not really. I
just have a feeling that whoever has Brittany is her boyfriend, and Blake was
her boyfriend.”
“But they’re broken up now. He’s with you.”
“They very recently broke up,” I say. “They
were still dating when we got together and when we kissed last year.”
“You’ve kissed him before?” she asks.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply. In
the fridge I find donuts, cheesecake, and carrots. I take the carrots and Ruby
takes the cheesecake.
“I need more calcium in my diet,” she says. “I
need strong bones if we are going to find and fight this lousy kidnapper.”
After we eat our afternoon snack, I show Ruby
out the door, and we make our way through the dense woods to where I found the
purse.
“What are we looking for?” she asks.
“A clue.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just hoping something pops
out at me.”
What I’m hoping to find is the kidnapper’s
driver’s license, directions to his house, and a photo of him abducting
Brittany. That is what I will need to get Sheriff Michaels to listen to me.
To cover more ground, Ruby and I separate at the drainage ditch. I kick
around leaves, but come up with nothing more than dirt. I start to think about
Blake and how I wished things between us wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up
already. But our fake relationship is the last thing I should be worrying about
right now.
I close my eyes as I try to imagine Blake and
Brittany together, hoping to latch on to some memory shared between the two of
them, something to clear Blake, but I see nothing. A scream startles me out of
my forced daydream, and a second later, Ruby, with her long, thick legs
pumping, rushes toward me.
“Red and yellow kill a
fellow! Red and yellow kill a fellow!” Ruby yells, running away from the creek.
“Good Lord Almighty! A snake! A snake!” Ruby stops running and leans against a
tree. She places her head between her knees and takes in deep, gulping breaths.
“What is wrong with this place? It’s like the jungle.”
“It’s like Blake’s
backyard, Ruby.”
“I tell you, the snake was out to get me. It
was fifty feet long!”
“Ruby, it was just a snake. This is Florida, not the
Anaconda.”
“That was not just a
snake. It looked like at the devil himself. You remember the part from the
Bible about the Garden of Eden? The devil came in the form of a snake. So I
don’t trust snakes. If I see one, I
run.” A fine sheen of sweat coats her body and her breathing is still labored.
“Didn’t you grow up in
Atlanta? Don’t
they have snakes there?”
“Not in the apartment
we lived in. The only snakes we have there are the men-kind. Have you had
enough evidence hunting for one day?” she asks. “If there are snakes out here,
then I’m done with this.”
“I think so. I haven’t felt anything, and I’m
quite sure our detective skills are lacking.”
“What
now?” Ruby asks.
“I don’t know. It’s
about to rain. There’s not much else we can do.”
“We’ll just wait for
you to have another dream.”
“You’re really okay
with the fact that I see things? With the witch’s brew in the pantry?”
“My crazy Aunt Pearl
practices voodoo. She throws around chicken bones and sees people’s future. Why
can’t you see things, too? At least your skills don’t involve dead birds.”
“Guess there’s an upside.” I won’t mention the jar of crushed dove bones
on the top shelf of the pantry. I adjust my ponytail, moving the heavy hair
away from my damp neck.
“How do you do raise the dead besides the
herbal remedies? Blood ritual? Sacrificial lambs?”
“When I need to call the dead, yes, I offer
blood. But I don’t usually have to call them. They find me.”
“Sounds gloomy,” she observes. She has no idea
how right she is. She checks her watch. “I better go. My mamma has got to be
wondering where I am by now. Let me know if you see anything else. Or Blake the
Jerk calls.”
After Ruby drives
away, I go back to the house and eat more carrots. I wipe down the kitchen, but
I pause when I see The Book of the Dead. I swear the book moans every time I
open the cover. A part of me wants to chuck the big, fat thing in the garbage.
The other side is intrigued. I often wonder how I would feel about the sprits,
if this gift hadn’t be pushed on me but if I had chosen it.
I flip through the pages, hoping that part of
the prophecy about me loving and hating the Reaper will reappear, but it
doesn’t. I close the book with a thud from the heavy lid, and put it back into
the pantry.
The house phone rings, but I let the answering
machine pick up.
“Cass, hey. It’s Sheriff Michaels.” He waits a
beat, probably hoping I’ll answer. When I don’t, he continues. “I convinced
Agent Travis to allow the police department to start searching for Brittany.
She’s been gone too long.” He pauses again. “We’re meeting at first light
tomorrow morning. If you can come, I could use your help. Meet us where you
found the purse.”
He hangs up, and I stare at the silent phone
for an hour, shocked that he actually believes me.
