Forsaken (4 page)

“What do you want from me?” I asked, knowing full well she wasn’t offering her assistance out of the goodness of her wrinkled old ticker.

“What do you have to offer?” she asked and sniffed at the jar. I shrugged and shook my head, unsure as to what she was looking for as far as payment. “Are you willing to pay the price for what you ask? It will be considerable.”

That, I already knew. The woman, old and broken, confined to a motorized chair, had enough balls to coax a fat little girl from Hollywood to drag her own grandson back home so she could lop his fucking head off. She had the power to do that and she never left her chair. She never even used any fancy magic stuff to make it happen, as far as I could tell. I had a need, and she required payment.

Business is as business does.

“I’ll get you whatever you want, but I want my hocus pocus shit first,” I demanded.

She scoffed, “You think you can boss me? Ha!” She shook her head and cussed in Spanglish under her breath.

“I can’t leave this room without some kind of protection. The lives of my family could be at stake here.” I made my voice as tiny and innocent as possible. I honestly didn’t really have any family besides my mom. With Tatum gone, there wasn’t much else. I was concerned for my mom and even Mike, but it was far more likely my own ass would be the one in the sling. I figured if I could just keep them as far away from me and the bullshit I’d fallen into as humanly—or otherworldly—as possible, they’d be safe. “I know what you’re capable of. Do you think I would dine and dash that easily?” I laid it out there straight, ignoring the nagging rub of my stolen gun into my back.

She raised her good brow, eye still focused on the jar in her lap. “
Tienes razón
,” her thin lips spoke around the stump of her cigar.

I sighed heavily. “English please. My brain isn’t functioning well enough to drum up high school Spanish.”

She was quiet for a long time. “Aye, fine, fine.” She raised a withered hand and shooed at me. “Your devil’s trap failed you, eh?” She was talking to me, but she didn’t look at me. Her small, strong hands had never stopped moving between her cards and the jar.

The grandson shuffle-fucked around in the public part of the store. My butt puckered at the thought he’d discovered my thievery.
Shit.
My heart thumped. “Not exactly.” I could hear the nervousness in my own voice.

“I make you deal.”
Jeez
. “If you want protection, I can give you. If you want power, I can give you. I cannot save you from what already knows you live and breathe; I can only give you the tools to help fight it.” Her one eye met mine and I saw in her a mother. She was a stone-cold killer, but she wasn’t a monster. I could get behind that classification.

“Yeah.” I nodded repeatedly. “I’ll take it.”

“Mm.” She made that one sound mean everything. We’d made a deal. I’d signed in blood. Practically. No more welching. “Here. Drink this.”

“Say what?” I asked and looked at the old lady like she’d just asked me to eat a turd.

“Drink or don’t, but my payment is still mine.” She sure as fuck simpled things up.

I snatched the jar from her hands. “What will this do?” My eyes squinted, questioning her before we’d even begun.

“Protection comes later. Power is now. Not like Popeye with spinach.” She squinted her one good eye like the old-time sailor and pinched her cigar into the corner of her mouth. I held back the laughter. “This will open your mind to the universe around you. This will let you see the world for what it is. Knowledge
is
power.”

What she said made no sense. I didn’t care to see anything; I’d seen enough. I just wanted to be strong and not a fucking loony-toon. Standing there gripping an old jam jar filled with what smelled like liquid roses, I felt pretty damn loony.

Lupe lifted her chin toward me. It was the only warning I figured I’d get. I prayed to whatever God would listen and tilted the glass jar. What had smelled like roses tasted like funky vagina; I gagged halfway through. She pointed her finger at me. I gulped back air over and over again, trying not to puke. I felt like I was a contestant on
Fear Factor
. I took one final breath and stomached the last of it.

“Sit.” She pointed to the stained-concrete floor.

“Why?” My head swam. I felt like I was standing on the grip of a spinning top. My knees buckled and gravity answered my question for me.

“Sit and wait,” she said. “Just wait.”

I sat. I didn’t have a choice, and since I was already there, I waited. Lupe cleared off her lap and brushed away any leftover ashes and imaginary crumbs apparently only she could see. “I don’t know what is supposed to be happening, but so far all I’ve done is fall on my ass. Since you’re new, I should inform you this is a regular occurrence and I’m not impressed.”

“Do you ever shut up?” She shook her head and her wrinkled jowls quivered.

I opened my mouth to rebut dryly, but instead, out flopped my tongue and gibberish followed. My head knew what it wanted to say, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. It wasn’t the lack of control I’d faced when Azelie stole my body; more like a nice hefty dose of Demerol. I jabbered on for at least a minute before I finally got out, “Don’t let me die.”

Lupe talked at warp speed in Spanish while she shuffled her deck of cards. Then, from left field, she said in English, “See you soon.”

My head swam. I couldn’t hold my body up anymore and let it flop to the concrete floor. The wild patterns of the drapes and rugs, which hung on the walls in the tiny space, wriggled and waved. The floor was cold, but it helped keep me grounded in the chaos. If I’d had my right mind, I’d have requested someone play Jefferson Airplane.

In the seconds that passed, my vision of reality left me and all I saw was a never-ending white passage. Bright and sterile and with no obvious light source, the long stretch of nothingness seemed a prison instead of a path which led anywhere like a passage should.

“Lupe?” I called out, but only my own voice echoed back. “What the fuck is happening?” I asked, but again got nothing back but my own voice. My words came normally, but I wondered if I was actually saying them aloud like it seemed, if Lupe could even understand what I was saying, or, shit, even if I was in the same room as the wrinkled old lady anymore.

I let my feet move me forward and noticed my black Converse were gone as my bare feet slapped the white floor. The sound was the only way I knew I was walking on something tangible and not Wile E. Coyote-ing in midair. Otherwise, there was no way to discern what was floor and what was wall, or ceiling for that matter. All I had on my side was a sense of up and down, and of course left and right, but only because of the reference of my own hands. Each appendage seemed to glow in the luminescent lighting.

I watched my feet slowly padding along the floor of unknown material. My legs were covered in soft cotton pants that matched the shirt covering my body: both white, both just as stark and sterile as the space I occupied. If there’d been doors lining the walls or an exit sign glowing at the end of the long, narrow space, I’d have said I was in a hospital.

What I thought would be an acid trip from Hell was beginning to seem more like a trip to the nuthouse. Neither of which were out of the question judging by my current life choices. “Hello?” I called out. My echo was gone. My voice hit the air like a bowling ball, one loud
thunk
.

Something scooted around behind me. I spun to see what was in there with me. Nothing. Only a space just as void as what was in front of me.
Blank
.

“Blank,” I said. The shuffling started again. I stuck my hand out and touched the wall; it was solid and a bit cold. “Like a canvas.” I knew I’d said it. My mouth moved, but I heard my own voice like it was coming from far down the hall.

Fear gripped my gut. I was standing in a place I didn’t know, hearing shit I shouldn’t, and beginning to feel a little on the paranoid side. Of all the horrors I’d faced in my quest for the truth behind the fangs, the idea of permanently losing my mind scared me most of all.

Aside from the incident at Embrace, I’d only experienced the effects of hallucinogens once, in high school, and I had Tatum there with me. She was high, too, but that really didn’t matter when I was seventeen. I tripped; she tripped. We ate seven cans of tuna and drank a pitcher of ten-year-old Tang and sink water. We had a blast. I wasn’t scared; I had my friend and no sense of fear. At nearly thirty, the idea of a bad trip made me want to curl into a ball and wait for my mommy to find me.

“Where the fuck is that girl when you need her?” I wanted Tatum.

“Not far now,” a familiar voice echoed behind me.

I spun around to find a leggy blonde wearing nothing but a smile and a bracelet. “Oh, fuck!” I yelled, and again my voice was one loud thud. “I can see you,” I muttered.

“Your eyes are open, aren’t they?” she asked just as cryptically as she had for days.

“Can we cool it with the cryptic? And why are you naked?”

She shrugged and her perky boobs jiggled about. She didn’t specify which question the jiggling shrug was for, and in a way, it didn’t really matter. She stood in front of me in the flesh. Literally.

“Where are we?” I looked around at nothing, expecting to see contrast in my surroundings.

“You’re right here,” she said sarcastically.

“Where is here?” She stepped closer to me. “If I’m
here
, where the fuck do you think you are?”

“In your head, fucking dunce. Jeez.” She scrunched her face and shoved past me, further down the hallway.

One slender arm stuck out to her side, touching the tips of her fingers to the wall while she moved down the hall and away from me. Where her fingers touched, the wall darkened from luminescent to dingy, aged white. As she moved slowly, foot by foot, the space changed. Walls and floor became discernable; black scuffs along the floor and chips in the paint along the wall. The hallway darkened until a few yards ahead was pitch black.

“Where are you going?” I asked and followed behind her, scared to be alone in the changing space.

“I’m not going anywhere.” A dense, black shadow flittered across the hall in front of her. A scurrying sound followed quickly behind. “I never get to go anywhere.” She sighed like a whiny teenager.

The scurrying sound echoed from above my head. I searched the murky ceiling for the culprit of the clicking and ticking which followed me. Nothing. “Do you hear that?” Watching above me, waiting for something to move, I took my eyes off Tatum for a long minute. “You’re not hearing this?” I asked and looked at her.

A long line of deep, red blood streamed down her back. The black shadow scurried up the wall nearest her fingers and crouched along the ceiling above her head. The sound it made while it moved made my stomach turn. She never stopped moving forward or acknowledged the presence right above her.

As she moved closer to the blackness ahead, I couldn’t help but wonder where the blood had come from and why she was so Hell-bent on walking away from me.

“What’s down there?” Asking the only question my head could make my mouth form, I lifted my arm and pointed one finger ominously down the hall in the direction she was headed, noticing the matching plastic bracelet on my own wrist as I did. She didn’t turn to look at me right away, but stopped walking for a moment. Another thick strip of blood flowed down her back and over one plump cheek.

She turned her head slowly to look over her shoulder at me. Every inch she moved pushed another ooze of blood down her back. When her eyes finally met mine, a thick fall of gloopy red stuff glugged over her shoulders like some kind of horrific cape. “
I’m
down there.” Her fingers tapped the wall lightly while her pretty head slid slowly off her shoulders.

In a slopping mess, Tatum’s head splattered to the now-linoleum floor. In an instant, the dim walls and floor flashed white and the self-illuminated space returned. In the center of the nearly glowing space, Tatum’s body collapsed. Her shoulders hit the floor, sending a thick spurt of blood from her stumped neck. My hands clamped over my mouth to cover a scream, which caught in my chest. The spray of blood splattered across my arms and stained the stark walls in a way eerily more terrifying than the aged scene we’d been in moments before.

Blood glugged from her neck and pooled under her naked body. I stood in shock; unable to do anything but breathe, even that was a challenge. Thick, red goop flowed from her body toward me. I watched with wide eyes as the liquid reached the tips of my bare toes. The red of my polish nearly matched my best friend’s blood.

I shook my head back and forth. “No,” I said and dropped my hands to my sides. The ticking scurry, which had followed the shadow moving about the space, crackled behind my head. I stopped breathing. The thing that had haunted Tatum moments before she lost her head was right behind me.

Tatum’s warm blood slid under my feet. I swallowed back fear and spun around. A grinning, toothy, nearly-black figure dangled from the ceiling above; not completely human, and yet like no animal I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stop the scream that came next. It was long and loud, and brought a wider grin from the beast that hung above me.