Devilish (13 page)

“I don’t think I’m well,” I finally managed to say.

“You’re doing
very
well!” he said happily. “One of the best reactions I’ve ever come across. But it doesn’t surprise me one iota. Not one iota!”

“Thanks?”

“You’re very welcome!”

“Okay,” I said. “I know this isn’t happening, so I’m not going to get upset.”

“Jane, dear, this is very much happening. But there is no need to get upset. You’ve made the very best decision of your life. And I’m here to show you what awaits you.”

Crick dodged out of our way as we reached the bottom of the stairs. He trailed us halfway to the door but then backed off. The cats scrambled out of the way as we crossed the porch. Now we were out on my street. I could feel the cold a bit, but it was distant. And though I saw the trees bending hard, I felt no wind. The bedposts grew very long, and with every step, they grew a bit longer. By two blocks down, we were as high as the housetops. As the bed clip-clopped its way down the hills, the legs grew longer still.

“Here,” he said, shoving the whip into my hands. “Would you like to steer?”

“No.”

“That’s all right. It knows the way.”

We went down, deeper into town, to the rivers that separate East Providence from downtown. The bed stepped easily over the rivers—one, two—and then we were downtown, level with the tops of the very highest buildings.

“Sit tight for a moment,” he said. “This next bit can be disorienting.”

There was a cracking sound, and I felt my head jolt forward with extreme force. The moon winked out for a fraction of a second and was replaced by a gold chandelier the size of a motorcycle dangling above us. My bed had returned to its normal height and sat in the center of a long room. The walls of this room were entirely mirrored with slightly rose-tinted glass, so we saw ourselves over and over again. The floor was black-and-white check, and that too was reflected, making the room seem endless. I felt like I had seen this room before somewhere, possibly in a textbook or a documentary. It was palatial, with furniture decorated with embroidered scenes and gold leaf running along its edge. People rested on some of the furniture and turned to look at us with great interest.

“Sorry about that, my dear,” Mr. Fields said. “Claris? Give me a hand, will you?”

Claris was standing by the foot of the bed. She was dressed in a severe black suit, cut so sleekly to her frame that you could almost see her elbow joints. The front of the jacket was extremely low cut, revealing a delicate black silk shirt bound together by a series of massive silver safety pins. She walked over and stiffly extended her hand.

“Stand up,” she said.

“Be polite,” he said to her sternly. “Jane is an honored guest now.”

Claris looked reluctantly contrite.

“May I help you?” she said.

“I think I’m fine here,” I said.

She looked to Mr. Fields.

“Let her sit,” he said. “Jane doesn’t have to get up if she doesn’t want to.”

“Who are these people?” I asked.

“These,” he said sweeping his arms around, “these are
heroes
, Jane! These are your peers now. Let me make a few introductions. Over there …”

He pointed to a haughty-looking threesome, all dressed in scarlet velvet.

“The Borgia family of Rome. One of history’s greatest political dynasties. Wonderful people. Next to them, with the rather large hat, that’s King Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria. He set new standards on how to deal with your enemies. He covered an entire column with their skins. Some of the enemy soldiers he walled up while they were still alive—he put others into pillars, also while they were alive. Very, very effective. Had one of the greatest libraries in all of history. We owe him a great debt. It’s because of him that we know much about the ancient world.”

The man next to the Borgias mumbled something in what I guess was Assyrian.

“Maybe I’m having an allergic reaction to something,” I said.

“This is reality,” the man said. “You’ve always known, haven’t you, Jane? You’ve always known what you’re capable of. It was never hard for you, any of it, was it?”

I said nothing. I just sat there on my bed, with my lunatic buddy with the green glasses. But I did feel something inside me—a sense of knowing. It always
had
been easy. School. Grades. If I wanted to understand something, I did.

“Exactly,” he said. “You know. It was only a matter of alerting you to what was already inside you. We cannot go much further now, Jane. This is only a glimpse. The full view is coming. For now, goodbye.”

The cracking noise seemed to come from the inside of my head this time. Blackness for a moment. Then we were reversing our path past unlit windows and signs, jumping backward over the rivers. We got lower and lower as we hit my street, lower still as we re-scattered the cats. Then, when we reached the front door, I felt the ground give out. It was more than just a hole—it felt like matter itself was being erased from that very spot, taking my consciousness with it. I had just enough time to remember that they say that if you fall in a dream, you almost never experience the moment where you hit the ground unless you die. But how anyone would know that is hard to say because they’d have to be dead to have that information….

I smacked into something and the falling stopped.

I sat bolt upright.

I was sprawled on the living room floor with a old issue of
American Scientist
wound tight in my grip, and I was wearing one of my mother’s old winter coats. It was morning. Joan stood over me, eating a muffin and poking me with her slippered foot.

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

I released the magazine and reached up and felt my face. I seemed to be alive and sober.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why are you sleeping on the living room floor, then? In Mom’s coat? That seems kind of drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” I said, groggily pulling myself upright. “I’m just … thinking.”

“Oh.” My sister accepted that my thought processes were different from hers. “You better get dressed. Oh, and I used all the hot water. Something’s wrong with it. Sorry.”

She stepped over me and left. Crick came over and stuck his little Scottie snout in my face, licked my cheek, and then trotted off. With great effort, I managed to get to my feet and up the stairs into a shockingly cold shower. I rubbed my temples briskly, trying to wipe the dream away. My clothes had been slightly damp, and now I was cool. I’d most likely burned through a high fever during the night and now felt refreshed, alive.

As I scrubbed, I carefully preserved the poodle on my arm.

“At least that,” I told myself, “takes care of that.”

It was one of those crisp and perfect New England mornings, one of the few times that it’s actually nice to live here. All the leaves had turned a bright gold, which stood in stark contrast to the sky, which was almost electrically blue. It provided a brilliant frame for the brightly colored Victorian houses that lined my street. Tons of rotting leaves covered up rotting, lost newspapers. People ambled along with their dogs. It seemed much sunnier than it should have been at seven thirty in the morning, and the chill in the air didn’t even bother me as much as it normally would.

In short, everything was normal. Better than normal. No walking beds or Assyrian kings in sight. I had a quick shower and a bowl full of cold tuna steak with grilled limes and headed to school.

I decided to walk along Benefit Street, which is one of Providence’s jewel box streets—an incredibly tight row of old houses, each one so painfully important and historical that it’s plaqued and tagged up to the roof. Benefit sits
at the midpoint of an incredibly steep hill, walling off the drop. So, the owners of these million-dollar monuments get amazing panoramic views of the city and the river below them.

Walking down Benefit and looking over the city gave me a strange sense of … well, power. I can’t explain it any better than that. I felt juiced up, alive, like I owned the whole city, everything in sight. It was all an echo of my dream, which still felt so real.

I remembered what Mr. Fields had told me that day, about the houses being bought with slave money, that there was a darkness underneath everything … and for a moment that clouded my thoughts. But then I didn’t feel it anymore. It was just too nice a morning.

I realized that at this time next year, I’d be walking down a street in Boston, maybe on my way to class at Harvard, and that I wouldn’t be wearing a brown polyester skirt, a worn and yellowing white oxford-cloth shirt, or saddle shoes. I would be dressed like a human. The future was close. I could taste it. I even opened my mouth a bit so I could get an extra gulp of that fresh morning.

Allison was early too. She was lurking around the front gate. She seemed to be waiting for me, just like the good old days. She also seemed remarkably round-shouldered.

“Did you get my messages?” I asked.

“No. I can’t work my phone.”

“Come on,” I said. “We’re early. Time for a coffee. On me.”

We walked down to the little coffee place a few blocks away, and I bought us some cappuccinos and heated chocolate chip cookies. Allison lumped herself down at one of the tables. I noticed, as the sunlight streamed in through the window, that her face was losing some of the glow from the facial. It looked a bit sallow. She barely stirred when I presented her with her breakfast. Lanalee’s game was clearly taking its toll on her.

“Look,” I said.

I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the poodle. Her eyes lit up in instant recognition.

“Jane,” she said, “what did you do?”

“I took over for you,” I said. “I swapped places.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Jane, that’s really serious. You made a bet? What is it?”

“It’s not important.”

“Yes, it is. What is it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said dismissively.

“What is it?” It was upsetting to see how seriously she took this stuff.

“She bet me to kiss Elton at the Poodle Prom,” I said offhandedly. “Or, actually, that I have to get him to kiss me. Because we’re twelve, right?”

She stared into her coffee.

“This is my fault,” she said. “All of this.”

“Ally …” I took her hand from across the table. “I know it seemed real, but it’s not. And I’m going to prove it. You’re safe. There’s nothing Lanalee can do to you.”

She shook her head, revealing some very unflattering brownish roots under the glowing red sheen.

“I need to get out of here,” she said, pushing away her breakfast. “I need air.”

Before I could stop her, she had staggered away from the table. I followed right after her. She was walking fast, then suddenly turned into someone’s driveway. She went thermometer-headed. She held out her arms, holding me off. She staggered, holding her stomach. At the very last moment, she spun away from me. And then, out it came.

Paper. Ball after ball of paper. It was like that trick some clowns can do, where they appear to have many small balls or eggs that keep popping out of their mouths. Except this was a lot less amusing. This involved a lot of gagging and stumbling around. When she was through, Allison slumped down to the ground and spread her hands over the pile, like a model on a game show presenting the new washer and dryer that could be mine if I won this round.

I stared at the many crumpled pages on the ground. There had to be at least twenty. I don’t normally like to collect other people’s vomit, but this seemed like a good time to make an exception to that rule. I picked up one of the closest pieces. It was cool, just ever so slightly damp—but not
nearly
as damp as it should have been. I uncrumpled it to find myself looking at something that seemed very familiar, some poetry. It took me a minute to realize that it was part of my least favorite thing in all of English
literature—Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”—a three-million-page-long ode to a dead friend.

“You threw up a poem,” I said.

I collected a few more of the papers. It was more of the same poem—but what struck me was the fact that the text itself looked familiar. And then I saw on one of the pages, a small drawing of a fanged sheep—a little cartoon I used to make a lot in freshman year, especially in my English textbook.

I passed this over to her silently. She examined it.

“It’s your English book,” she said quietly.

“No, it isn’t. I destroyed that book, I hated it so much. I threw it in the Providence River on the way home after the last day of school. You were there.”

I looked at the pages again. It looked like one of my sheep. But still. That book was tossed into the river, where it sank. It slept with the fishes.

“That’s not my book,” I said again. “What is this? What kind of game are you playing?”

“I’m not playing a game,” she said weakly.

“Yes, you are,” I said. “Ally, stop it.”

But inside, deep inside, there was a tiny, uncurling sprout of something terrible. Looking at Ally, looking at the paper on the ground, I suddenly felt my stomach drop out from under me.

Lanalee had a hold on Allison that I couldn’t penetrate. She had somehow taught her how to do very strange things. And from the dream I’d had, it was clear that she’d
gotten to me as well. There was only one course of action I could take now, one that went against my every instinct—I had to go to the authorities. I had to tell someone at the school what was happening. Brother Frank, I decided. He would believe the story. He would get a psychologist involved. He would fix this. I should have gone to him from the beginning.

“Don’t go to school today,” I said. “Go home and don’t answer the phone until I call, okay? I don’t want you going anywhere near Lanalee until I get some help.”

“You can’t stop it, Jane,” she said. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“Of course I can stop it, Al,” I said. “Leave it to me.”

There was an unpleasant surprise waiting for me at school. Small red sparkly envelopes had been taped to many lockers. I walked past locker after locker and watched various people reacting to these mysterious notes. From their ecstatic reactions, I knew immediately what they were. The Poodle Club had made its choices.