Authors: Anne C. Petty
“I don’t think so,” he said, certain it had been the other she’d seen, because he’d felt its chilling presence along his spine. He felt her stiffen in her arms.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Neddy. I want to be with you, just like you are now.”
Ned too wanted that more than anything, but the odds, as he figured them, were about as good as a dragonfly in the path of a semi.
Chapter 18
August 6, Saturday—Present Day
Margaret, Lissa, Judy, and Tom walked in a clump along the narrow sidewalk leading back to the dorm. The streaks of a salmon pink sunset lingered against the darker backdrop of approaching night.
“Are you really gonna do it?” Margaret asked, walking beside Tom.
“Like, yeah. Nobody in their right mind would turn down a chance to sneak out after hours with Devin.” Margaret knew Tom would score major points if she pulled that off. Devin was a wicked mix of computer nerdiness and soccer-player hunkiness, plus he was almost sixteen.
Judy looked back at her. “What’re you and Devin gonna do?”
“Something you don’t know how to do yet.” Tom said this in her typical husky monotone. Tom wasn’t smiling, but Margaret could sense the smirk in her undertone. If anything, she was teasing them, making them believe she was more world wise than she might really be. That was just Tom.
Back in the dorm, they congregated in Tom and Margaret’s room with sodas and doughnuts from the dorm vending machines.
“Happy birthday,” Judy said and hugged Margaret hard.
“Yeah, hurry up and open those presents!” Lissa handed her a wrapped gift and watched with a wicked smile as she tore off the paper. It was Seize the Night, volume seven of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s erotic Dark Hunter vampire series, which received appropriate nods and nudges as it got passed around.
“See? It’s signed!” Lissa found the title page and held it up. “My brother got that at a sci-fi convention he went to.”
Margaret stared at the signature, properly in awe. “If Mom sees it’s signed by a famous writer, you think she’ll let me keep it?”
They all cracked up, and Margaret picked up Judy’s package in its red wrapping paper.
“Jude-dude!” She held up the box of chocolates. “Omigod, you are made of WIN!” She took the lid off and passed the box around.
Her mouth full of caramel crème, she opened Tom’s gift last. As the shiny black paper and silver ribbon came off, she could see that it was an anime DVD. Margaret stopped chewing.
“Descendants of Darkness! Tom-tom, this is beyond cool! I can’t believe you got me this!” Tom, whose face was normally a mask of neutral non-expression, was actually smiling.
The others crowded around. “Wow, can we watch it now?”
Margaret was grinning. “We might as well, ‘cause there’s no way I can watch this at home, especially not with Nik. He’d faint!”
The girls whooped with laughter.
“Can’t you just see it,” gasped Lissa. “The Nikster discovers yaoi!” Yaoi, the forbidden love of impossibly beautiful men for each other as expressed in Japanese anime, was only one of the things Tom had introduced them to. That would come to a halt once camp was over and Thomasina Redfern went back to her ultra-cool life in Orlando, Margaret knew. But for now, she was determined to soak up every drop of decadence camp had to offer.
“Be sure to give me your emails before we leave,” Tom said, “so I can send you links to my favorite online manga reader sites. They have all the best stuff—uncensored peens and everything."
Margaret joined in the squeals. She wasn't entirely sure what a "peen" was, but she hoped it was what she thought. Tom was nothing if not educational.
Tom popped disc one of Descendants into her computer, maximized the screen, and they all gathered around as the title segment began to play. They giggled and watched and hit Pause and Replay for over an hour until a knock at the outside hallway door brought a quick silence. Tom minimized the screen, and Margaret got up to let in their quad’s camp counselor.
“Hi, girls. Everybody accounted for?” Melissa checked off their names on her clipboard.
“Have a birthday chocolate.” Margaret held out the box.
Melissa’s hand hovered over the bonbons, dowsing for the right one. “Yum, chocolate-covered cherry. Happy fourteen, Margrits.” She gave her a hug and went to the door. “Good night, all.”
“Goodnight,” they chorused.
As soon as the door was shut, the four of them collapsed onto Tom’s bed, consumed with conspiratorial laughter.
“Okay,” said Tom. “Let’s finish this puppy off. I gotta get ready to go meet Devin.”
They watched the end of Descendants, and Margaret carefully packed it back in its box. As Judy and Lissa left to go watch Scream on Lissa’s portable TV, she gave Tom a quick smile and said, “You rule. Thanks.”
Tom nodded. “There’s plenty more where that came from,” she said, pointing to the box of DVDs beside the computer. “Knock yourself out while I’m gone.”
“Be careful, okay? I don’t want us to get busted.”
“No worries. Devin’s good buddies with his floor warden. It’ll be cool.”
Margaret watched as Tom got dressed in full Goth gear, blew her a kiss from purple-tinted lips, and slipped out. Her exit from the main hallway door was so quiet Margaret didn’t even hear the latch close.
Sitting alone on her bed, she yawned and opened the book Lissa had given her. She’d only read a few pages into the story when a wood tick fell out of her hair onto the page. Momentarily freaked, Margaret dropped the book. Living in the rural south all her life, she’d grown up with the ubiquitous presence of ticks, but that didn’t keep her from being repulsed whenever she found one on her. She must have picked this one up during the field trip to the St. Mark’s lighthouse on the coast that afternoon. The woodland scrub surrounding the lighthouse was notoriously full of ticks and redbugs, chiggers to the locals.
She looked under the book, but couldn’t find the tiny creature. Mentally running through her vocabulary of curses, she scanned every inch of the bedspread where she’d been sitting. The effing thing had gone invisible. There was no way she was sleeping on this bed tonight until it was found, so she ran her fingers all over her pillows and sheets, but still couldn’t find it. Then she spotted the tiny black body crawling up her arm in the slow, methodical way ticks do. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger and forced it onto the surface of the computer desk.
“Die!” she said, and impaled it with the point of a pair of scissors before it could crawl away. Then she brushed it into the trash basket. Unnerved, Margaret put her book away and sat down at the computer. Reaching for the mouse, she felt something brush her hand and thought for a minute she’d glimpsed something fall onto the mouse pad, but when she looked, there was nothing to see.
“Damn tick,” she said, hoping it was the only one. Just the thought made her itchy all over.
She quickly logged onto the Internet and went to her favorite forum. Down in the forum stats, where it listed the birthdays for the day, she saw her own handle GOKU, and sure enough, Kinigar had started a “Birthday Wishes” topic for her in the Raves section. She sent him a silent kiss toward the screen. In the Miscellaneous Rants section, she started a new topic called “Ticks—we hates em!” where she described her tick execution and invited anybody else with a tick story to post. She saw that Kinigar was still online, so she pinged him. He responded immediately.
“Happy birfday, Goku! *throws cake at u*” he wrote.
“Heya! Thankees. Remember I told you my roomie here at camp took meh pic with her digital camera? Here it is, shield your eyes.” She attached the picture of herself sitting on her bunk, smiling and waving at the camera. “BTW, I’m Margaret in Florida, in the US. Is Kinigar your real name? What does it mean?” She hit SEND.
Margaret counted the seconds, and by the time she’d reached thirty, Kinigar responded.
“Bloody hell Margaret, U R hot. Got any more? Yesh, Kinigar is meh name. The parent’s big joke coz we got Aboriginals on my dad’s side. Pretty far back I think. My cousin’s great uncle is a senior man, u know what that means?”
Margaret read that last part bouncing in her chair. She wrote back as fast as she could type.
“Bloody hell Kini! I do know. Does he cast spells n stuff?”
“Dunno, mate. I never met him. I just heard my aunt talk about him once or twice. But I know a little about some of the stuff they do. My aunt and Mum told me Dreamtime stories when I was little. Ask if u want to know anything. Kinigar is Dreamtime evil cat-man. He’s got the head, body, and tail of a cat, and arms & legs of a man. In legends he was bloodthirsty and fearless and all the creatures were scared shitless of him. He was killed by the owl and the crow that tricked him with an ambush. A spark of his body went up to the Milky Way. Another spark flew out and made the native cat. Cool huh? Meh other name is Jason but I dun use it. Kini is fine by me.”
As Margaret was reading this latest message, a slight movement in her peripheral vision made her stop and look. She sat quietly, breathing in small shallow sucks of air. Now that she was looking directly at the spot, she could see that nothing was amiss.
She turned back to Kini’s message and saw an attachment. She clicked on it, and the image of a tanned teenage boy wearing rumpled khaki walking shorts and no shirt filled the screen. His feet were securely shod in heavy hiking boots with white socks showing over the laced-up tops. A little on the wiry side, he looked to be of average height, at least in relation to the truck he leaned against. He had an open, cheerful face with a shock of blondish-brownish sunstreaked hair that curled over his forehead and around the nape of his neck. Margaret stared and stared. He was too good to be true.
“Kini-kun, is that u? XD!! *pounces on u*” she wrote back.
“Hehe, yesh, that’s me next to my dad’s truck. Glad u like it. Meh dad’s a schoolteacher. It drives him crazy mad cuz I can’t spell fer fuk heh heh. It’s just me and Dad, since Mum moved out. Dad’s girlfriend sometimes stays with us but I dun like her much. Long story, won’t bore you. What color are ur eyes? They look black. Mine are brown. Can I call u Mar-chan?”
Margaret was getting all warm and fuzzy inside. The addition of the Japanese name suffix “chan” was the female equivalent of “kun,” which she had brazenly appended to the shortened form of his name. Both indicated a playful familiarity with a close friend, but they could also mean endearment, especially when attached to a shortened first name. Were they inching toward a virtual relationship? Margaret felt tingly all over. Something tickled her cheek, and she absently brushed her hair away from her face, reading Kini’s message again and soaking up his picture. She would have to get Tom to copy it off on a CD or e-mail it to her so she didn’t lose it when Tom went home after camp.
Margaret wrote back: “Kini-kun, what do u know about Quinkans? I want a spell to banish one. Dunt laff, ‘K?”
She hit SEND and waited. Behind her, something clearly went bump. She whipped around in her chair, but saw nothing. Margaret held her breath and stared at the back of the room where the closets were. She was starting to get that anxious, hunted feeling she’d had in that dream back in the hotel room in Miami. Checking the time on the computer clock, she saw it was just after midnight. Maybe Tom would come back soon. Tom was so totally unafraid and self-confident, Margaret couldn’t imagine her ever getting spooked by strange noises in an empty dorm room.
She glanced back at the computer screen and saw a new message from Kinigar scrolling down the IM window.
“Mar-chan, Quinkans are evil spirits, they lure kidz away from their parents and eat em so they can make more Quinkans. They can sound like the voices of the kidz moms and dads, they can pretend to be anything they want and u cant tell the difference. I heard about em from my Mum when I was a kid, prolly to keep me from wandering away from the house. Seriousleh, they r bad news!”
She typed: “How do u get rid of one?”
“You got to be a shaman to do that,” he wrote back. “I bet my cousin’s uncle dude could. I could never be a shaman cuz therz no way I’m having me front teeth knocked out or my dick cut on, ya know? No fukkin way! That would really suck. I can't think of anything else at the mo but can ask around if u want.”
“Kini, I think there’s something in the room with me.”
“Mar-chan, r u by yerself? What time is it over there?” She saw he’d appended a question-mark smiley to the message.
Something fell over near the closet on Tom’s side of the room. Margaret stood up. This time, she could see that Tom’s tennis racket, which had been leaning against the wall, was lying flat on the floor along with the oversized T-shirt she slept in, which had been hanging on the closet door handle.
“What’s going on?” Margaret said out loud, not that there was anyone to hear. She walked over to the closets and put the racket back against the wall where it had been, and hung Tom’s nightshirt back on the door handle. Her heart was thudding as she touched the handle, but nothing jumped out at her. She went back to the computer.
“Kini-kun, something just made some stuff fall over but when I looked there wasn’t anything there. I’m a little spooked. *shudders* wish u were here right now.”
Kinigar’s response was instant. “u got a cell phone? What’s ur number, I’ll call u. Was that story u posted about Quinkans for true? Mar-chan i wish i was there with u.”
But Margaret didn’t read his last message. Instead, she heard the bump again, and this time when she turned around, a shiny black bug-like creature occupied the middle of the room. With revulsion, she realized that it was a tick the size of a mastiff.
It had four pairs of jointed legs, with spurs on the second, third, and fourth pairs. A tough black skin covered its oval mite-like body. The mouthparts consisted of paired anchoring organs, covered with backward-curving hooks like the ones Margaret had seen on large spiders, plus a pair of sharp mandibles for biting and sucking. Its clawed feet scratched over the floor as it slowly and deliberately stalked her, following the scent trail of her exhaled breath and body heat. Margaret scrambled up onto her bed. The arachnid was between her and the door, so making a run for it was out of the question.