Wraith (9 page)

I swallowed. "I’m sorry," I responded weakly,
at a loss. "How… how old were you?"

"I was ten when it happened. But I didn’t know
the truth till a couple years later, when I searched his name online. My mother
had told me he died in a bank robbery—that he was a hero."

A long silence followed. I had no idea what to say.
The sounds of the background seemed suddenly magnified: clinking glasses,
rattling plates, toddlers babbling, people laughing, the drone of the TV
monitors in the bar. There were several shadows around, both inside the
restaurant and beside the canal… I hadn’t realized they were there before.

Zane sat up suddenly, removed his glasses, and
leaned toward me. "Look, Kali, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything
while you’re in the middle of a date. I wasn’t planning to, it just sort of—"
he broke off. "Let’s forget it for now, okay?"

"I’m the one who’s sorry," I said, finding
my voice at last. "It must be awful to remember something like that. Does
it… I mean, does remembering your childhood seem to have helped…
anything?"

He stood up—a feat he could accomplish without
bothering to push back his chair. "Not that I can tell," he answered,
his tone lighter. "But seriously—don’t worry about it. Superjock won’t be
happy if he comes back to find I’ve ruined your mood. It will screw up his next
move."

"He’s not—"

"Yeah, he is," Zane interrupted, managing
a grin. "See you."

He dissolved into a blur, leaving me staring into an
empty chair. I looked around, but knew I wouldn’t find him. When Zane didn’t
want to be seen, he wasn’t. I pulled my phone away from my ear with a sigh,
absently checking the screen.

I had four waiting texts. I scrolled down to open
Kylee’s first.

So… which 1s hotter? surfer or officers son?

Followed ten minutes later by:

Answer MEEEEE!!!!! 
L

Tara was not a whole lot subtler.

How is the tour? Are you getting to see the whole
island, or just Honolulu?

Followed a whole half hour later with:

You do realize that I have no life, that half of
Cheyenne is out of town, and that living vicariously through you is my only
source of entertainment? No pressure or anything. TEXT ME!!!

Before I could answer either, Matt returned to the
table and slid into his chair. "Justin’s taking care of us," he
announced with a smile. Then, with a glance at my phone, "Oh, yeah. This
thing’s been buzzing all afternoon." He pulled his own phone out of a back
pocket and glanced at the screen. "Ten texts! Sheesh." To my
surprise, he quickly repocketed it. "They can wait."

He turned his full attention to me, along with a
winning smile. I smiled back and put my own phone away. Kylee and Tara would
understand. Eventually.

"So," he began with enthusiasm. "What
else would you like to see around Honolulu?"

The meal passed pleasantly, with Matt at no loss for
words when it came to talking about things within his—admittedly limited—sphere
of knowledge of the island. He couldn’t tell me a whole lot about tourist
destinations or local history, but he was a fount of information when it came
to the high school scene. I learned that Hickham had a pretty good social group
going, which was nice, because the base kids were spread over a lot of
different schools, both public and private. Matt had a lot of opinions on which
schools were better than others and why, and I studied him as he talked, musing
over what my friends in Cheyenne would make of him. He was no intellectual
giant, perhaps, but few of the girls would even notice that, preferring brawn
over brains anyway. Tara wouldn’t, but she would also be fair enough to admit
that, for a jock, he was sweet and uncharacteristically humble. Kylee would
swoon, period.

Oahu was treating me well.

We finished dinner by sharing a rather excellent
slice of chocolate cake, then headed back to the car for our drive over the
mountains to Honolulu. Zane was waiting for us in the parking lot, unaware that
he was standing immediately next to a particularly vivid set of shadows—a young
airman in uniform running to, and embracing, an elderly man. It was a poignant
scene, but with long-practiced will I forced my attention back to the living
and got in the car.

Zane slid smoothly into position in the rear seat,
but avoided meeting my eye. He had added a pair of earbuds to his accessories,
and I wondered vaguely if they were functional or if he was only giving me the
illusion he wasn’t eavesdropping.

"I thought we’d take the Pali Highway and stop
at the lookout," Matt said enthusiastically. "It’s an awesome view
from the mountains—you’ll love it. Sound good?" He reached his hand
casually across the car, grasped my own hand, and gave it a friendly squeeze.

"Sounds great," I answered, avoiding the
temptation to throw a glance over my shoulder at Zane. The surfer had been
right, after all. Matt had crossed over the "I just want to be friends, so
don’t get any ideas" line pretty fearlessly about halfway through dinner,
and was now well into the "I’m up for whatever, if you are" zone. For
the undisputed gal pal of Cheyenne, this was brave new territory, and I had to
admit I wasn’t hating it.

The drive up into the mountains was beyond
beautiful. Since I knew that Hawaii kept pretty much the same temperature all
year round, I wasn’t expecting March to feel like spring. But everywhere around
us the foliage was green, fresh, and bright, with the hint of a rain
shower—either just passed or still on its way—around every corner. As we
climbed upwards in altitude it appeared as though we were driving into a cloud;
the air grew heavy with mist, and increasing winds buffeted against the sedan’s
now-closed windows. By the time we reached the turnoff to Pali Lookout, the sky
had turned uniformly gray. But as we drew near to the site itself, the
atmosphere became suddenly, drastically darker... as if some unseen, malevolent
hand had surreptitiously drawn down a shade.

My heart beat faster; my shoulders shivered. I told
myself it was nothing. Just a trick of the light.

I didn’t believe me.

Matt parked his car in the designated lot and pulled
out his wallet. "You have to pay to park here," he explained,
"which is a kind of a rip-off, since there’s no where else you can
possibly park, but that’s okay. I’ll go pay. You can head on up to the point if
you want; I’ll catch up with you."

It was noisy here. So noisy. Like thunder, but not.

We got out of the car, and as soon as my door was
locked Matt headed for the kiosk, where a line had formed behind a befuddled
middle-aged woman who was obviously having trouble with the ticket machine.

I moved forward on my own, slowly.

I had to force myself to move at all. 

Shadows were everywhere. Half-naked bodies. All men.
Shoulder to shoulder, a writhing mass teeming with sweat-soaked skin, blunt
cudgels, and puncturing spears. They surrounded me; I could not take a step
without moving straight through them. There were hundreds of them. Thousands.

"Zane?" I heard the voice as though it
were someone else’s. Weak, far away.

"Yes?" He was beside me in an instant,
oblivious to all the shorter, darker skinned men who occupied the exact same
space.

My steps halted. My pulse pounded in my ears.
"I don’t think I can do this."

"Do what?"

His puzzled voice was muffled by the shouting. The
groaning. The distant screaming. The incessant roaring, above it all, of a
wicked mountain wind.

A sharp chill whipped through me like lightning. A
cold sweat broke out on my skin. 

"Something happened here," I whispered, in
a voice I could barely hear myself. "Something horrible."

I could not explain to him—to anyone—how much more
surrounded me than what I was seeing and hearing. I could be blindfolded with
earplugs; it wouldn’t matter. I could
feel
what was happening, in every
fiber of my being, weighing me down like a giant boulder sinking ever deeper
into the darkest and coldest of oceans. It was fear. Gut-wrenching fear. So
real, so palpable, it was sickening. There was anger, there was rage, there was
determination. But above them all, the putrid, sickly fear rose high and biting
and merciless… and infinite.

"Stay here a minute," Zane answered
firmly. "Don’t move."

I could not if I tried. I raised my eyes toward the
place where the live humans clustered; a concrete platform, a metal railing…
what must undoubtedly be a gorgeous view beyond. The mountains were split by a
natural gap here, offering what from this height must be a sweeping eyeful of
the windward coast. But I could move no closer. Up ahead… the edge of the
cliff… it was worse, there. The bodies were facing away from it but moving
toward it, moving backward—against their will. They were fighting the
relentless flow, the sea of other bodies, with everything they had. Desperate.
Terrified. As one, hundreds of them—before me, behind me, through me—pushed
outward, toward the parking lot.

As one, they were pushed back toward the edge.

"Kali?" Zane stood before me now, blocking
my view of the platform. "You’re right. Something did happen here. There
was a battle."

Yes, a battle. Senseless, needless. Brutal, bloody.

"The sign says that in 1795 Oahu was invaded by
an army from the big island, and that the defenders were driven here."

They knew what was happening. They could see it.
They could hear it. Behind them, their own brothers were vanishing into thin
air. In screams and shouts and groans of anguish, they were here one minute,
gone the next. Not by bullet, or arrow, or blade… those would be an honorable
way to die.

Instead, they were falling.

Tumbling hundreds of feet, propelled through space.

Their bodies smashed to death upon the rocks.

I closed my eyes. It didn’t help. My skin was bathed
with clammy sweat. My hands trembled violently inside my pockets, and my
crossed arms wrapped my jacket so tightly around me I could barely breathe.

"Kali, look at me," Zane urged. "A
lot of people died here. They were forced off that cliff to their deaths. That
must be what you’re seeing. I’m sorry… it must be horrifying."

They knew what was happening. That was the worst of
it. They knew they had to press forward, but they couldn’t. They were forced
back. Farther and farther, closer to the cliff edge. Every step brought more
screams from behind, more muffled thumps of shattered body on rock, body on top
of body. They couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t fight it. They couldn’t do
anything.

They were going to die.

"Do you want to go?"

My nod was mechanical, my movement controlled. I
forced myself to look in the direction of the kiosk, where on other side of
hundreds of milling shadows Matt had chivalrously stepped forward to help the
woman at the front of line with the machine. It seemed impossible that neither
group could be aware of the other; impossible that such normalcy and such
hideous suffering could coexist at all. 

"I can’t just leave," I squeaked, bucking
myself up with every ounce of strength still in me, which felt like virtually
none. "He’ll think I’m a nutcase."

And I am
not
a nutcase
, I repeated to
myself. It was the point that had always helped me keep the shadows at bay. I
had conquered them before. I could do it again. 

"I have to stay," I proclaimed, swallowing
hard and moving determinedly toward the platform. "I can do it."

With every step, the weight on my soul crushed
heavier. Their fear pierced through me, consumed me. I could not block it out.
The closer I got to the edge of the cliff, the more force their emotions
exerted on me. I could
feel
them, all of them, at once. The straining
effort, the sting of failure, the disbelief, the stunning knowledge of
nothingness behind… and then, in a heartbeat, nothing underfoot. The anguish of
pulling at, reaching for friends, fellows, the guilt of knowing that by trying
to save themselves, they only moved each other closer to death…

"Kali?" Zane repeated gently. His face was
inches from mine; his expression a mask of concern. "You’re shaking like a
leaf. Go back to the car."

"I can’t," I protested, even as the ground
beneath me seemed to sway—a seething floor of noise and blood.

Get a hold of yourself!

"Superjock will understand," Zane
protested. "Just tell him you’re sick. It’s not a lie, you’re completely
green—you look like you’re about to throw up or pass out… or both."

The horizon swam.

Shouts. Screams. Spattering.

Fight it!

"I can’t act sick," I argued, thanking God
for my inborn streak of stubbornness—one trait that had never yet failed me.
"He’ll think his friend at the restaurant poisoned me. He’ll feel awful…
he’ll take me straight home."

"Then tell him you’re afraid of heights,"
Zane said quickly. "You have all the symptoms. Cold sweat, shaking,
vertigo. He’ll buy it."

Crush of bone. Wails of agony. Louder now, and
louder still…

"You have to go back to the car!" Zane
said firmly, shooting out a useless, vaporous arm in a vain attempt to steady
me as my top half swayed dangerously to the right. His arm passed through me,
and once again I felt the slightest buzz of vibration—just enough to focus my
attention and regain my balance. "Kali, trust me," he cajoled.
"Matt is the type that likes to take care of delicate females. Just lean
on one of those beefy arms of his and tell him you need him—he’ll be thrilled.
Get your story ready—he’s coming now."

No way to stop it. No way out. Nothing to do except
fight, push. Frantic, hysterical, flying, falling, striking…

"You didn’t get too far!" Matt teased,
throwing a careless arm around my shoulders and propelling me closer to death.