Dead Spell (17 page)

The moon cast long shadows across the pink carpet. The room was small, but neat, and full of toys. The sounds of loud music and adults laughing—a party, maybe—came through the closed door.

Brea looked for the child.

“Hello,” she whispered. “Little girl?”

The heavy, rhythmic footfall of boots on hardwood echoed outside in the hall.

“Hello?” Brea repeated.

A floorboard creaked and the door knob turned.

Brea scampered across the floor and climbed into the cabinet of a large built-in bookcase. The only light was the sliver shining in from the hallway through the cabinet door’s slight opening. A little girl in footie pajamas was curled up next to her, hiding her face behind a tangled mess of dark hair.

“It’s okay.” Brea swept the hair behind the little girl’s shoulders and saw her face splattered with blood.

“Oh my God, are you hurt?” She looked all over the little girl’s head and face, but there was no obvious source of the bleeding.

“Help me.”

There was a loud
bang
, a woman crying, and another
bang
. Brea’s ears ached, taken over by a kind of magnified tinnitus that spread through her face to her eyes, blurring her vision. Her heart thudded, threatening to break through her sternum and her hands shook uncontrollably.

“Little girl? Where are you? Little girl, can you hear me?” She fought through the haze, feeling around for a child that was gone.

28
.

After the nightmare, Brea didn’t sleep. She refused Jaxon’s offer to drive her to school and went in on the bus, unshowered, dazed, and in the clothes she’d slept in.

The third period bell rang and she was momentarily lost, sitting in her seat in Algebra. It was the second noticeable memory gap in two days.

“Brea,” Mr. Marks waved a hand in front of her face, “Brea?”

She blinked and focused on his wedding band. “Sorry, what?”

“I’ve been calling your name.” He scratched the side of his considerable neck. “Are you okay?”

Mr. Marks was a heavy man, almost four hundred pounds, she guessed.

Brea looked down and saw two rings of sweat pooled under either armpit. “I’m fine.” She put her head in hands. “I’m …so…tired.”

Amanda, one of Rachael’s friends, laughed. “Nutcase is really losing it.”

 “Mr. Marks bent over to talk to her. “I can have someone help you down to the nurse if you need it.”

“I’m fine. Can we please start class?”

“Ok, then.” He shuffled up the aisle and erased the right hand side of the board. “Please open your books to page 116. We’re going to review solving mixed equations.”

He wrote out the first problem and the chalk sound was torture. Brea held her hands over her ears, trying not to be noticed. The numbers were a blur. Mr. Marks was a blur.

“Help me,” a voice whispered. “Help me.”

“Did you hear that?” Brea turned around to Amanda, her eyes wide open.

“Mr. Marks, I don’t think the school nurse is equipped to handle this kind of mental health crisis,” Amanda said.

“Brea, I asked you if you were all right. I need you to settle down.” Any other teacher would have thrown her out, but not Mr. Marks. He was a three-strikes kind of guy.

“Help me.” The voice came again and this time Brea stood and slapped both of her hands on Amanda’s desk

“Tell me you didn’t hear that.”

Amanda cowered. “Come on, Mr. Marks. She’s scaring me.”

Mr. Marks huffed and picked up a new piece of chalk. “Brea, sit down or you’re going to the office.”

“I’m sorry. I’m…” The room went out of focus and she all but fell into her chair. She tried staring at his bright red tie, hoping that would ground her. “It’s fine,” she muttered. “It’s going to be fine.”

Amanda got up and moved seats.

 “Now, first thing we have to do is what, class?” Mr. Marks turned around and Brea screamed.

The right side of his face was gone—blown away. His mouth was a half-hinged, dripping maw and the chalkboard was covered in teeth, in muscle, in tissue, in brains.

“Brea, that’s the last straw.”

His shattered tongue wagged as he talked and a few more teeth fell on the white linoleum floor splattering it with blood.

She squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to cry.

“Brea, come on. I’ll take you to the nurse myself.” Mr. Marks tried to help her out of her desk, but she slapped at him and shouted.

“Get him off me. Get him off me.”

The class broke into hysterics and the riotous laughter was deafening.

She covered her ears, hooking her legs around her chair legs, refusing to move, until a wave of pain moved through her and she blacked out.

* * * * *

Brea woke up on the hard, old cot in the school nurse’s office. She rolled over and the paper runner crinkled under her weight.

Mrs. Johnston, the nurse, was calling parents to come get the kids on the two cots next to her.

Her own mother was just walking through the door.

Joan’s heels clacked on the tile floor and she was dressed in a conservative, gray skirt suit. She had been at a town planning breakfast with Mitchell, Jaxon’s father, all morning; a fact she reminded Brea of several times as if she was fishing for what Jaxon might have told him about the dinner at their house. Joan walked past Mrs. Johnston with a wave and approached Brea coolly.

“Come on, Brea. I’m taking you home.” She squat down next to her the best she could in a pencil-length skirt and spoke softly. “I made you an appointment to deal with this.”

Brea sighed, still a little groggy from class. She knew the appointment was with Dr. Frankel, the shrink her mother took her to when her father left. Brea had no doubt that her mother needed it a lot more than she did.

She rolled up to sit on the cot and a deep
wooshing
noise filled her ears. The room momentarily pixilated in shades of gray and then came into focus. She reached out for help standing and her mother ignored it.

“Where do I sign her out?” She asked Mrs. Johston.

“Right here, Mrs. Miller.”

Joan signed the logbook and waited impatiently in the doorway.

Brea stood and her head felt split open. A remembered flash of Mr. Mark’s face blasted apart made her tense and nauseous.

“Are you coming?”

Brea held it together long enough to get to the car.

“I saw Mitchell this morning,” Joan said. “I asked how Jaxon was feeling. He said he didn’t know he was sick, but that he was a little down about something going on with you two.”

“Mom, please, my head is killing me.”

“He’s a good boy, Brea. He’s the kind of person you should have been hanging out with all along.”

“Mom!” Shouting made the pain worse.

“I know you’re going through some stuff now, but it’ll all be for the better. I know you don’t believe that, but it will. Harmony was a bad influence. Her family…”

Brea started to cry. “You’re such a heartless bitch. No wonder Dad left.”

“I warned you about your language.” She gave Brea a stern look of warning. “And there’s a lot more to that story than you’ll ever know.”

“More riddles. Always the riddles. You hated Harmony and her family and you’re glad she’s gone, I get that.” Her head was pounding. “But here’s a question for you. What’s 6 Maple?” I saw your face when I said it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She denied it, but looked shaken.

“If you don’t know, why did you call Dad that night? I heard you talking to him.”

“I…” She pulled into the garage without answering. She was flustered and angry. “Go to your room, Brea. No T.V., no iPod, nothing, got me?”

“Fine.”

Brea ran off to her bedroom before her mother asked for her cell phone.

29
.

Tired and wanting to avoid her mother, Brea slept off the first several hours of her grounding with her cell phone in her pocket. It vibrated late in the night and woke her up.

“Hello?” She whispered, listening in total darkness for any sign that her mother was still awake.

“Brea, I need you to come with me.” It was Adam and the urgency in his voice set her immediately on-edge.

She sat up in bed, fully awake. “What time is it?” She hadn’t looked before answering her phone and her alarm clock was unplugged.

“3:00. I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to call.” He sounded desperate. “Please come outside.”

His monstrosity of a truck was parked a couple doors down.

“I’ll be right out.”

Brea brushed her teeth, put an oversized teddy bear under her comforter as a decoy, and shimmied down the tree out front. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

She hadn’t even asked what the emergency was that he needed her for.

He went around and opened her door. “I really am sorry it’s so late.”

“What’s going on?” Frozen leaves stuck to her shoes and pant legs and the melting frost soaked through her white canvas sneakers. She tried to scrape them off on the running board.

“Charity’s in trouble.”

The closing door echoed down the empty street. The neighboring houses were dark except for the widow Johnson’s house which was always lit up for security.

Brea wrestled the tangled seat belt. “Charity’s always in trouble. As far I’m concerned, she can crawl in a hole and die for what she did to Harmony.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was riding the medication see-saw. She needs help.”

 “What’ll she do if we don’t go?”

“Not going, for me, is not an option.”

He picked up speed, careening a little recklessly down the gravel back roads to the most desolate part of Reston. By the time they pulled up to the broken down house, she was completely lost.

The modest ranch was all but devoured by a row of overgrown oak and pine trees. The entranceway was barely visible. An inverted six like a misshapen nine hung from a nail on the door trim. Brea gasped when she saw it.

“What street is this on?”

“Maple, why?”

“6 Maple.” It was an address.

“Whose house is this?” Brea moved into the truck’s beaming headlights and kicked her leg free of the creeping vine wrapped around it.

All but one of the house’s windows were smashed and a tent of splintered boards rose from a hole in the roof’s middle.