Cursefell (2 page)

CURSEFELL

CHAPTER TWO

     "Your veins are very small, Nathera," the nurse said after her second attempt to draw blood.  "Skin is a little tough too.  It makes it hard to get a good straight puncture.  You should use some moisturizer after bathing."
     It wasn't a surprise to me.  I heard this every time I had to have blood drawn.  Well, not the part about my skin.  That was just rude.  At least I was conditioned not to pass out after the first two times they jabbed me with the syringe anymore.
     "There we go," she proclaimed when the needle slid into the vein on the third attempt.  The middle aged woman pushed back her greasy dark nest of hair as if she were the one having to endure the sharp prick over and over.  "I thought we would have to call the doctor back in for a second there."
     "You did great." I told her.  I had already talked with the doctor and had no desire to see him again.
     "Your mother is here.  Once we get the vial all done you can go," she said, picking out a long glass tube with a purple tipped top.  "I bet you can't wait to get home."
     Actually I could.  Although it did beat staying at the hospital.  The smell of sanitized walls and its rubbing alcohol and beeping monitors brought back memories I would just as soon forget.
     "You bet." I mumbled without a trace of enthusiasm.
     My clothes couldn't be thrown on fast enough when the nurse had finished.  I practically sprinted past my mother in my haste to leave.  She called out, but I didn't stop, only slowing for the automatic door to open enough for me to squeeze past.
     The hospital parking lot was nearly empty at the early evening hour I was released, so it wasn't hard to spot my mother's not nearly new car close to the visitor entrance.  My mother's steps clapped off the pavement as she hurried to catch up to me, but I refused to break stride before reaching the escape the car promised.  Its lights flashed twice, just as I reached the passenger door.  She must have pressed the unlock button on the key while power walking to keep pace.  I yanked the door open to flop into a seat, slamming the door closed so hard that I felt a small sting run up my arm.
     Diana, my mother, sat down behind the wheel.  She reached across the distance to hug me, asking if I was okay.  I assured her I was.
     "Good," she responded, starting the car and cranking up the heat.  She knew I easily felt the chill, despite what the nurse had said about my skin.  In that regard we were similar.  The engine purred as we pulled out and started down the road toward home.  I hoped we would make it there before the last weak rays of light faded and the sun closed its eye under the lid of night.
     Driving down the highway from the hospital towards home, my mother asked robotic questions about the incident aboard the boat and how I was feeling.  My answers were short and succinct.  This was how all our conversations had been lately.  Neither of us was very good at making small talk with each other anymore.
     As we drove down the twisting road night had crept up on us.  The big sand dollar coastal moon cast eerie shadows through the tops of the towering trees standing their lonely vigil along the road side.  I imagined that unnatural form peeking out from behind the dark trunks, leering at me, following me back home.  I wanted to tell my mother to drive faster and leave any hiding places for the creature far behind us in the rearview mirror.  But we were almost to the outskirts of town and I had other things I wanted to say while we were confined together in the car.  Nowhere for either of us to retreat to.  Nowhere for either of us to hide.
     "I saw Dad."
     "What?" she asked, snapping her head around.
     "When I passed out.  I saw him and we talked."
     "Oh Thera, it was just a dream." She refocused on the road.  "It has been a hard year.  For both of us."
     "It wasn't a dream, Mom.  Not a normal dream," I mumbled.  "He said you were right and he was wrong."
     The car swerved and for a minute I thought we would run off the road and crash right into one of those old trees.  But she corrected our course and blamed it on a squirrel I hadn't seen.  She had lied about that.  What I had said meant something to her.  I could read it in the way she pursed her lips together and the grinding grip she had on the wheel.  And in her eyes when they flicked in my direction.  I could see the truth in her eyes.
     "What did he mean, Mom?  And don't tell me it was just a dream.  Even if it was a dream you always say dreams can hold the truth we do not want to see."
     "Sometimes," she replied cautiously.  "But sometimes dreams are just an outlet for our imagination.  I can only imagine he was talking about moving here.  It was something I wanted us to do long ago.  Your father didn't.  If it was more than just a hallucination or a dream, which I doubt."
     She was telling the truth.  Partially.  Her voice was hiding something behind the words however.  She would not be moved from what she had said without more.  I had to know.
     "He said you would protect me.  You would see me through what is coming."
     The brakes screamed with the heavy foot slammed down on the pedal.  The car skidded nearly sideways on the deserted highway before jerking to a stop.  Beyond us the trees opened up to the abandoned hills of the original Stonecrest settlers.  Next to my side the old unused lighthouse sat a short ways off in the distance, its bottom half swallowed by the slowly spreading blanket of marine fog.
     "Tell me everything about what happened today."
     I had only driven this way a few times during my short stay in Stonecrest.  It had always been during daylight.  I didn't like it then and I absolutely hated it by night.  The area felt wrong.  Cold and haunted.  I wanted to drive away, to get back to the city proper right now.  But my Mother stared at me with the familiar emerald eyes I had inherited from her, framed by the same blonde hair that crowned my head.  Well nearly the same.  Her hair lacked the natural ringlet curl that lately afflicted my ends.  I knew we would not be going anywhere until she had an answer.
     The words tumbled out in the most serious tone I could manage.  I wanted to be believed.  I wanted her to give me some kernel of the parental comfort I had lacked for the past few months.  And I wanted to be gone from the vulnerable position surrounded by fog, hills, trees, and sea.  I don't think I had said so much to my Mother for many months before today.  Nor had she paid me so much attention as she did now.
     When I had finished telling her my story, she had eyes full of unshed tears.  She blinked them away before remembering we sat in the middle of the road with our engine running and the fog making us invisible to the lonely driver as it swallowed everything from view.  There would be few other vehicles this time of night most likely, but why press fate.
     "It was only a dream, Thera." She spoke flatly and threw the car back into drive.  "Don't let it trouble you any further, dearheart."
     We drove the rest of the way home in silence.  I didn't believe a word she said.  So there was nothing left for us to say.
     I shut down after that.  The landscape gave way to a few outer homes, which gave way to the slowly expanding downtown, still trying to look quaint in the face of modernity.  We drove past the new clothing store that had just opened, past my favorite hangout, Leary's Lair, home of the best pizza I had ever had.  We passed the street leading down to the wharf and headed toward the residential neighborhood and our rented home.  All of it passed like blurry backdrops to my own unfocused thoughts.
     Lily would want to check up on me.  Anna and Evony too.  My best friends.  My only friends if I was honest with myself.  I would have to watch what I said to them about what had happened to me.  At least until I had a chance to talk with the guy who had saved me.
     I needed some solace from him.  He needed to tell me the truth of what had lain beneath the ocean.  We did not get a chance to talk afterwards, not on the boat or at the hospital.  I needed someone to tell me I hadn't imagined it despite the burning scratches on my leg that said it was all too true.  I needed the Irishman, Ryan Galead, because he held my answers.

*

     The week following our famously failed field trip was tedious.  I had no shortage of visitors as not only my friends stopped by to check on me, but some classmates and even teachers too.  Those who knew my mother from her work also made appearances.  They were thankful I was resting and recovering at home per the doctor's insistence, but they were also concerned for my mother's well being.  What a horrible thing to have lost a husband and almost lose her only child too.  I could almost hear them thinking: poor Diana, we hope this doesn't push you over the edge.  It only proved that they didn't really know her.
     Truth be told, it was good for my mother to have so much attention.  We had both withdrawn from social engagements since Dad's passing.  Anything beyond the superficial exchange or small talk forced upon us had been and remained, to some degree, beyond our current state.  Not that I hadn't at least tried.  That was how Walt and I started dating.  It's also why we broke up.  Well, that and Sally Mercer.  I hadn't been able to handle her flirting with my guy.  Her bubbly voice and short skirts and hovering, which was silly.  He wasn't my guy, just a guy.  Just like the guy who had saved my life.
     When the doctor at Stonecrest Memorial questioned me about the incident, as he put it, I knew the prudent thing to do was just play dumb.  Of course when you experience something unexplainable, something that frightens you too deeply, then that becomes impossible.  I blurted out the whole crazy story to him, leaving out the part about my Dad.  That part was private and just for me.  The doctor chuckled when I described the creature.  He told me in his southern drawl:
     "I'm sure you saw whatever it is you think you saw, Miss Currey.  A little knock to the head and disorientation in a scary situation will do that.  Add in oxygen deprivation and a shark and then I would say it's perfectly normal to hallucinate things.  Don't you worry none.  I tell you these scratches are shark related.  Same as the young man who went in after you.  You are both very lucky."
     "But I saw it!  He did too.  He fought it off I think.  I dunno, but he got it to let me go."
     "I know it seems that way, young lady.  You remember it that way.  But not all memories can be trusted.  Sometimes our minds make up their own stories to protect themselves.  Besides, your young hero," said he with a chuckle, patting my hand like an old country doctor out of some movie, "he said it was a small shark.  A mite young probably.  You kicked it away while he helped you swim to the surface."
     I started to argue again, but once he began to wonder if maybe I had lingering trauma to my head and maybe an overnight stay was in order, I hastily shut my mouth.  I needed to get away from the hospital, get back home, and talk with Galead.  Just what had happened down there was, apparently, better not talked about with anyone but him.
     But between all the visitors, the one person I wanted to talk to the most didn't show up.  Ryan Galead was avoiding me, I was sure of it.  He was hiding from the truth as much as I was seeking it out.  It was the one thought that looped through my mind as I lay under the warm down comforter, knowing he would be at school the next day, the day of my return to class.  I waited restlessly for the dawn to rise.

CURSEFELL

CHAPTER THREE

     The high school parking lot was nearly full when I pulled in.  Not surprising really.  The lot was small and the student body had grown since it had been built some forty years ago.  Back then there had been nearly a hundred students.  Now it boasted a bit over double that.
     Pulling into a narrow spot made even tighter by the careless parking of a grey four door on one side and the girth of an old pickup truck on the other, I noticed the banner for the first time.  It covered the cracking paint that proclaimed our school Home of Aegeans.  The new and I hoped one day sign shouted out in big bold emerald lettering: Welcome Back Nathaira!
     Great.  Just what I needed.  A reminder to everyone that I had fallen overboard and nearly drowned.  I didn't need the attention, didn't want it at all.  And they had spelled my name wrong too.  Really?!?
     As I hiked up the hill to the quad everything appeared somewhat normal.  Most of the students took the well worn stairs, but a few of us preferred the sloping feel of the gentle grass crushing under foot rather than the cold cut concrete without the cushion of life in it.  That was my mother's early influence on me, maybe the others had similar nature tuned parents as well.  Whatever it was, the groupings of kids that typically hung out before class were all there.  Many of them ignored anyone not connected to their group, including me.  I liked it that way.  One notable exception were the six girls standing about in their pre-class circle.
     Bundled against the salty morning chill, they waved when I passed.  Nicole, the shortest girl with a big smile, held up an overstuffed black gym bag with the school logo (a long Grecian ship with an unblinking red eye stitched into its sail).  It was their way of reminding me that a spot remained on the gymnasts' team if I ever wanted to join them.  As much as I had enjoyed competing at my old school, as much as I missed the powerful elegance gymnastics contained, my passion had faded along with my father's light in this world.  Maybe one day it would return, I kept telling myself, but I couldn't find a way to bring it back.  I returned the wave rather sheepishly, trying to give them my own warm smile, but I was pretty sure I had failed.
     When I reached my locker I found a card taped to the outside of it.  The writing was scrawled in what I could only call chicken scratch.  That could only be Walt's handwriting and I wasn't in the mood to read it.  Deciding to read it later, I tossed the note into my bag.  Keeping my head down so my hair fell forward to shield my face in a silky veil, I had to pull hard to get the rusty hinges to release and open.  A startled squeak escaped my lips as a bright red balloon floated past my face.  The squeak, I couldn't really call it a shout or a proper scream, echoed down the hallway as the balloon floated lazily in its wake.  Concerned looks from my classmates who cared to notice turned to annoyed glares when Anna and Lily came out of hiding, laughing and hugging me at the same time.
     "Welcome back, Thera!" Anna laughed.
     "Gee, thanks?" I responded, grinning despite myself.  "How did you get that in there?"
     "Oh, that was Lily," Anna told me, giving a friendly push to our smirking friend.
     "I can't help it if I'm a good with locks and things," Lily defended herself.
     Those things included lock picking apparently.  I wondered what else she had learned, this girl with dexterous fingers.  Lily was shorter than either Anna or me.  She held the air of a dancer in the way she moved, all flowing silk beneath the gentle breeze.  It was not hard to imagine her hands moving in the same way, deftly unlocking the pins and tumblers to secrets sacrificed to the dark.  Lithe and spritely I would describe her.  Lily swore she wasn't, although she did admit to being addicted to any dancing competitions she could watch on television.
     "So, this was your idea?" I asked of her.
     Lily just beamed with a mischievous grin.  That smile was the essence of beauty.  It lit up her face and crinkled her eyes in a radiance that true warmth radiated from.  It went along perfectly with those soft caramel curls framing that oval face.  She was always happy, always welcoming.  That was how we had become lunch friendsies on my second day at the new school.  And then, more recently, true friends.
     "You know that banner out front was a bit much," I told them.
     "That wasn't us, Thera," Anna claimed.
     "Really?" They shook their heads in vigorous unison, the way friends sometimes do.  "Then who?"
     Before they could answer, a gaggle of loud high pitched voices carried down the hall.  The five girls in freshly done pedicures and brightly colored nails walked past us.  Sally Mercer walked at the center of course.  I had never been the jealous type, well no more than anyone else, and I wasn't going to start now.  Admittedly, Walt had been my first real boyfriend.  He had made the first move, which made me feel good about myself for the first time in a long while, but I had broke it off.  Yeah, maybe Sally had something to do with it.  Then again, maybe she didn't.  I had my own neurosis, the anxiety and insecurity everyone hid inside themselves, and which might have decided the matter too.  Perhaps it was just not, as the romance writers would say, meant to be.
     Sally threw a pucker faced stare in our direction.  She looked like some sort of cartoonish bird with that expression frozen on her face.  A penguin or maybe a tweeting canary.  The skirt she wore barely reached her thighs, doing nothing but making her expression that much more comical.  I had to work hard to hold back the laughter bubbling up inside.
     "Thera, I'll give you one hint about the banner," whispered Anna.  She jerked her hand in Sally's direction.
     Had Sally really done that for me?  Why?
     Then I saw my friends laughing at my perplexion.  I knew.  I knew why Sally had not just ignored me as she always did and had thrown me a glare today.  There was only one reason she would have even acknowledged me.
     "Walt," I said, maybe not as enthusiastically as I should have.  After all, we were still friendly with each other and he had helped me once I was back aboard the boat.  I knew he wanted to get back together, but that was not what I wanted within the chambers of my heart.  That was saved for my father and even my mother despite our recent distance.  But it filled mostly with darkness now since my father's passing.  Maybe one day it would hold more.
     We parted with the ringing of the bell.  I thanked them again as we hurried in opposite directions.  Walt would want a thank you too.  And he deserved it.  It was the unspoken parts that filled me full of dread.  It was always the unvoiced words that would cause pain and regret, the tormenting fear they inspire.  It was a truth I had learned when my father died.  A lesson I learn daily from my mother.
     Rushing into first period, the anxiousness cresting as I took my seat behind Walt and his beaming smile, I expected this would be a rough start to my day.
     It turned out to not be as bad as I thought.  Walt crowed a bit about pulling off the banner stunt of course.  I thanked him for the thought and again for saving me on our trip, and I meant it.  He said he was seriously glad to have been there.  His eyes reflected the sincerity the words held and I was grateful for that.
     Heading to the next class feeling both relieved and like the worst person ever to walk on this world, I prepared to walk into Mr. Lir's class with more than a little trepidation.  This would be the first time I was going to be with everyone from the field trip at one time since the accident.  I hoped I could just slip inside unnoticed.
     Biology was full, which was surprising.  Usually at least one or two students would ditch the lecture on any given day.  But today was special.  It was the day the two heroes, Walt and Galead, would be reunited with the damsel in distress.  Yeah right.
     The applause started as soon as I walked through the door.  My neck was prickly with heat that spread all the way to the roots of my hair.  I was sure to be blushing with all the unwanted attention.  Muttering thanks that not even the closest classmate could hear, I sank into the hard plastic seat at my old lab station and tried to smile.
     "Hey, come on, sweetie," Lily whispered from her seat next to mine.  We shared a station this semester.  "Smile bigger.  You are acting like it's a wake.  Oh, sorry.  I didn't mean that."
     "It's okay," I whispered back.
     I showed more teeth to make everyone happy, but Lily's comment brought back the sting of memory.  My mother had arranged for a small gathering for my father's friends and associates in a private remembrance.  It was hosted at Minerva's, his favorite Greek restaurant.  My father had loved the food there, loved Greek culture in general.  It was a nice gesture, a good way to remember and celebrate the man he had been.  I hadn't appreciated just what it meant then, but I had more recently.
     Lamb, olives, and wine were stacked in abundance on silver platters atop blue and white checkered vinyl tables.  Some of the people I recognized, a few were no more than strangers I wondered at.  I didn't eat much, having long since lost my taste for the Old World cuisine my parents had given up on trying to force into my diet as I grew up.  I was allowed a sip of wine when we toasted his memory, which I did not refuse.
     A group of wizened women pulled my mother aside to talk in a dimly lit alcove while I sat beside a wall decorated with a dozen framed memories of him and our family.  The man with a bald head and an impossibly bushy mustache that could have been dyed in ink was a stranger.  He sat beside me stroking the waxy facial hair without saying a word.  I had never seen him before that day or after.  When the restaurant door opened to admit the shadow of a large figure standing before the outside light, my silent companion shoved his chair away.  The loud scratching sound turned everyone around, silenced all the guests.  My companion dipped a hand inside his coat as he strode to intercept this newcomer.  They spoke in a language I didn't understand, too loud to be friendly, as he guided the interloper from the restaurant.  That was the last I saw of my silent sitter.
     Alone again, there was nothing else for me to do, nothing else I would rather do, than to relive those fond memories found in his pictures.  His face smiled out from those snapshots in the frozen beauty of better days.  A face strong with caring and beautiful in its fatherly way.  Just as beautiful as each memory of joy and perfection the remembering brings.
     Why can't the beauty chiseled from living forever remain?
     The sudden spearing jolt that accompanied the thought ran down the length of my leg.  I involuntarily reached down to rub the flashpoint where the pain felt sharpest.  The same area where three angry scratches that resembled a trident's prongs were etched in my slowly healing skin.
     "Are you okay?" Lily asked with concern painted across her face.
     "Yeah.  Just a cramp.  I guess I'm not used to walking around campus anymore."
     She gave me a skeptical look, but we all turned to the front as Mr. Lir quieted everyone down.  He welcomed me back and said some really nice kind words to me and about Walt and Galead.  He reminded us that none of this excused us from the final however.  Everyone laughed as they opened their books to the instructed page.
     Covertly continuing to rub my throbbing thigh, I felt as if eyes were still staring at me.  I don't know how I knew, but the back of my neck began an irritating tingling and my eyes itched with the need to find the observer.  Everyone to either side of me or seated in the front rows were face down with eyes planted to the text.  That left only two rows with two sections behind my own row.  Eight classmates and one suspect.  For Ryan Galead sat in the back row.
     Against all good reason I held within me, my head slowly swiveled in a half circle.  My gaze went directly to Galead, my main suspect.  Those blue eyes stared back.  Grey flecks floated within the blue like wispy sprays of mist.  Unusual eyes filled with promise and secrets and deception.  Mystery swirled within those eyes.  A mystery he had no intention of explaining I guessed.  I determined that he would unravel it for me, he would have no choice.
     "Eyes front please, Thera," Mr. Lir called out, back to teacher mode now.  That meant you paid attention.  Turning back to the front I couldn't help hearing an amused chuckle behind me.
     That chuckle echoed in my mind throughout the fifty minutes of class.  It was as teasing sound that stoked an angry flame inside me the longer I had to wait to confront Galead.  The clock on the wall moved agonizingly slow, its silent tick tock drawing my attention from the type set lines detailing the communal behaviors of the great apes.  I silently slipped my book away with a minute to go.  Galead would bolt, be the first one out the door I was sure.  He was not going to get away without talking to me, even if I had to force the issue.
     The minute hand flicked to the number ten.  The bell rang a few seconds after.  Lily started to say something, but I was already rushing to the heavy wooden door.  I had guessed right, Galead was already gone.  Catching the door before it latched, I gave it a shove, throwing all my weight behind it in my haste.  Maybe too much weight, I thought, because it shot back and slammed against the metal floor stopper on the other side.  The force was too much to allow it to catch, and the door bounced back at me.  If Lily hadn't been there, straight arming it and stopping it just an inch from my face, it would have flattened my nose.
     Ignoring everything else, I slid out of the room.  But it was too late.  Galead was hidden behind the knot of intertwining students rushing about the hall.  He had dodged me again and it left me wondering why.  I felt sure it was on purpose.  I didn't have another class with him today, but I knew someone who did.