The Children on the Hill(68)

“First things first, monsters are real. So real they can reach out and touch you.” Iris pressed a finger into Vi’s chest, and Vi let out a racking sob.

“There are monsters walking among us.” She stalked in a circle around Vi, like a predator sizing up her prey.

Vi was scared. Not scared of Iris, but scared for Iris. Scared for both of them. Scared of whatever might come next.

“Sometimes a monster doesn’t know that it’s a monster”—Iris leaned in, whispered in Vi’s ear—“but when it learns the truth, everything makes sense suddenly. At first I didn’t want to believe, but at the same time, it was like some part of me already knew.”

“No,” Vi said, gulping at the air between her own sobs.

“Monsters will always be monsters, and they are always dangerous,” Iris said, quoting Vi’s own words, the ones she’d carefully written down in their book.

“It’s just make-believe,” Vi sobbed. “Just stupid words I wrote.”

Iris raised her right arm, flexing all her muscles, her hand clenched into a tight fist, like she was going to hit Vi, but Vi grabbed her arm, twisted it behind Iris’s back, shoved her up against the wall hard and fast with a strength she didn’t know she had. The whole building seemed to shake: the walls, the floor; Vi worried the roof might come crashing down. Iris let out a little oomph as her head hit the wall, her eyes flashing a look of complete surprise and disbelief. A look that seemed to say, Who are you and where did you come from?

“Enough!” Vi yelled, her face right up against Iris’s, her spit flying, landing on Iris’s cheeks, mingling with Iris’s tears. “Stop it!” she bellowed, afraid that maybe her voice alone could make the whole building crush them alive.

Just then, she felt like the dangerous one. A roaring rushed in her ears, like all the gods were talking at once, screaming inside her. She was filled with fury, fury at what had been done to Iris, fury that her grandmother could be so wicked and cruel, fury at herself for not being able to fix any of it.

“You’re hurting me,” Iris said.

But Vi did not let her go.

Her body didn’t feel like her own. She’d lost control of it to something else, something that had been sleeping deep inside her.

A current was running through her, and running through Iris too, she was sure: the pull and push of a magnetic field; the motion of electric charges spinning, being drawn together and creating a power greater than anything either of them could produce on their own.

She felt herself pulled forward, her breath on Iris’s cheek, her lips moving to find Iris’s lips. Their mouths pressed hard against each other, teeth banging together. Vi had never kissed anyone, other than Gran on the cheek at night. And she knew it was wrong—girls weren’t supposed to kiss girls, not like this, not like men and women did in movies—but it felt as if everything inside her was pulling her to Iris, and she couldn’t stop it if she tried. She kissed Iris desperately, hungrily, as if her kiss alone could save Iris, could pull her back, take away all that had happened; as if her kiss could banish the monsters.

Iris pushed Vi away, her eyes huge with fear.

Vi staggered backward, started to speak: “I—”

She was breathless, heart hammering, unsure just what she was going to say, what words were going to come tumbling out like a random roll of the dice:

I’m sorry.

I love you.

Let’s forget this ever happened.

Iris raised her arm, pointed to the window. “There’s someone—” she said, and Vi looked in time to see a pale face turn away from just outside the window, a hood over the figure’s head.

“The Ghoul,” Iris whispered, voice breaking, terrified.





Lizzy

August 21, 2019




THE BANGING WAS loud, insistent.

“Miss Shelley?” a voice called.

The voice of God, perhaps.

One of the old gods maybe.

The God of Time that’s run out.

I opened my eyes.

I was in my van.

“Miss Shelley?” called a voice from outside. “I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s Steve. From the office. You’ve got a phone call.”

I jumped out of bed, opened the door. “A call?” I blinked at the bright morning light, then down at my watch. It was nearly ten. I’d slept in.

“Yes, a woman. She said it’s very important she reach you. Do you want to ride over to the office with me?” he asked. My solar panels were hooked up, the wheels were chocked. It would be faster to go with him than to disconnect.

I slid on my shoes, didn’t bother to brush my hair, just jumped in the four-wheeler next to Steve in my rumpled T-shirt and sweatpants.

Could it be?

Could it be my once-upon-a-time sister?

When we pulled up, I jumped out and nearly ran to the phone, beating Steve into his own office.

“Hello?”

I listened. Turned to Steve, holding the phone out. “No one’s there.”

He frowned at the phone. “Well, there was. It took me a bit to get you, maybe she gave up. Why don’t you sit a minute, have a cuppa coffee? I just made a fresh pot. If it’s important, she’ll call back.”

“Did she give a name? What exactly did she say?”