Experiment in Terror 05 On Demon Wings (36 page)

my lap in a sickening heap.

Ada screamed. I heaved and heaved, unable to get them

al out of me.

And Dex was deathly al ergic to wasps. It was he who

panicked first. I couldn’t blame him. He yel ed and flailed

and tried to drive but it was too much.

In slow motion, like a scene from a movie, the car

careened off the highway.

We bounced down an embankment, the sound of tires

grinding asphalt, then gravel, then grass, and we coasted

along flatness for a few seconds; time that slowed us down.

A tree appeared in the headlights, fol owed by a

magnificent
crunch
.

There were screams.

Bodies flying forward.

Wasps.

Blood.

Then it was over.

When I came to, I was as far away from a car accident as

one could be. I gained consciousness while I was walking

through a dark forest grove, punctuated by the blue-green

glow of fireflies that darted in and out amongst the trees. It

was just like my dream only it was real now. Or as close to

real as anything could be.

I stopped by a tal , earthy-smel ing pine and peered at

myself, the moonlight peeking through the spaced-out

branches. The duct tape stil clung to my arms and legs in

places but had been torn down the middle, ripped apart.

There was blood spattered across my pajama top and I

didn’t know who it belonged to, or how it got there.

Ada!
I thought as everything shifted into shape.
Dex!

The cloud in my head began to lift. Where was I? Where

were they?

“Ada!” I yel ed into the night. My voice was immediately

swal owed up by the layers of bark and rock around me.

“Can anyone hear me? Dex?!”

I paused, holding my breath, listening. The fireflies made

little buzzing noises and the branches scraped against

each other in the breeze. I heard nothing else except my

own heartbeat and was met with my deepest fear yet.

What if something happened to them? What if they had

died from the car crash? What if
I
had kil ed them?

I scanned the forest but saw nothing but dark shadows

and mountainous boulders that reflected the light of the

moon. It was deathly cold and I was stil barefoot and only in

my sleeping attire. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything but

panic.

I started walking first, pushing the rough branches past

me, trying to find a path in the maze of trunks. Then, as my

thoughts swarmed, I ran, not minding the scattered stones

and twigs that dug into the soft undersides of my feet, not

noticing the pine needles whipping my eyes.

The wasps! My God, the wasps. If Dex had survived the

crash, survived me, there’s no way he’d survive
that
.

I ran and ran in an endless loop, pushing my body to the

limit. I was weak from lack of food and water and my

muscles ached with each stride, soft from being stretched

and immobile for so long.

I ran and then...

Suddenly I was standing before a clearing where rough

grass grew silver white in the moonlight. The moon that was

on the wrong side of me. A moon that was a smidge lower

in the sky.

I had gotten turned around. At some point, while I was

running, the thing had taken over and directed me in the

opposite direction. Now I was conscious and able but more

lost than ever. It was hard to know where I was when I never

knew where I started.

That was frightening. I never even felt it come in.

Somewhere in the forest, a baby cried.

I swal owed hard and tried to soothe my heart as it

pulsed madly in my veins.

The baby cried again.

“No,” I said out loud.
There is no baby. That was a

dream. This is real. You’re remembering your dreams.

You’re remembering your dreams, you’re remembering

your dreams.

Somewhere in the forest, a few branches cracked.

I imagined tiny, flightless demons fal ing out of a nest and

running toward me, thinking I was their mother.

I threw my head back at the sky and screamed.

I screamed and screamed, letting it al out, letting my

cries carry through the clearing and above the trees, high

into the mountains, whose shadows rose ominously in the

distance. If anyone heard me, it would be al for the better.

The madness was too much for one person to bear.

“Perry?”

It was Dex’s voice. It cut my screams off at the source

and I whipped around.

He was standing a few yards behind me. His shirt was

torn and wet in places and he stood at such an angle that it

was almost impossible to be upright. Half his face was

covered with blood that pooled out of a dark wound at his

widow’s peak. His eyes regarded me like I was a stranger,

someone he wasn’t sure if he could trust. Maybe I looked

like a ghost myself.

“Hi,” I said softly. I tried not to smile. My arms and legs

started tingling from final y feeling the cold. “You’re alive.”

He nodded, wincing. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?”

“I’m OK, considering I’m also very
not
OK.”

He nodded, then gasped for breath and started to lean a

bit to the side.

I scampered over and got him under his arm just before

he keeled over.

“I’m fine,” he said, grinding his jaw. Once a liar, always a

liar.

“No, you’re not; your head...” I tried to touch the wound

but he yanked his head out of the way. That brought another

grimace to his face and he fought through the pain, a pain

that tensed al of his muscles into hard lines.

“It’s fine, I’m fine.”

“Where’s Ada?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

“She’s fine. She’s at the car.”

He let out a deep breath and attempted to take a step. I

went with him.

“What happened? Were you stung?”

He nodded, careful y this time. “More than once. But I

had two Epi-Pens in the glove box. Your sister found some

pretty creative places to stab me.”

“We’ve got to take you to a hospital,” I insisted as I

helped him navigate over a fal en log.

“I’m fine.”

“Dex, you’re not,” I said, and stopped, pressing my hand

back into his chest.

He looked down at me and smiled painful y. “Kiddo,

we’re not going anywhere except straight to Roman’s.”

“But your head, and the stings, your al ergy wil -”

“Wil be taken care of when I get a chance to take care

of it. My wounds aren’t vital. Yours are.”

“But the car. We’ve got to cal for help. Get a tow truck or

Triple A or something.”

“The car is fine. She’s a trooper. She’l take us where we

need to go. She may not look pretty anymore, but none of

us do. I even started her engine before I set out to find you,

thinking you might hear it. She purrs like a cat. A retarded

cat, but a cat.”

I stil didn’t like it. He grew silent as we hobbled together

through the forest.

I had to ask, “Where did I go?”

“Huh?”

“Just now. After the accident.”

“I don’t know.” His voice became yielding, pliable. “I

came to with my head indented on the steering wheel. The

wasps were gone. Ada was shaking me awake. She had

her seatbelt on, thank fuck, so she was fine. Maybe some

whiplash. And you were gone. I don’t even know how you

got out of your seatbelt. You’ve not only turned into the Hulk,

but Houdini as wel . ”

I was so ashamed and so furious with myself for leaving

the accident. And causing the accident, when it came right

down to it. They were my wasps, weren’t they?

“You should have left me here,” I growled.

He stopped. I could see a single beam of light in the

distance, probably the car. It made the sticky blood on his

face shine like a frozen pond.

“Perry,” he said. His voice came out thick and raspy.

“You have to accept that this isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask

for this.”

“How do you know?” I cried out. He was sparking some

nerves just beneath my shel . “How do you know what I

asked for?! Do you know what it’s been like to be me for

the past few months? Do you have any idea what I’ve gone

through!? Do you?!”

The non-bloodied skin on his face went an extra shade

of white to match the moon. His eyebrows lowered, eyes

dropped briefly to the ground. Then he brought them to

meet mine and they softened like liquid honey.

“I don’t think I’l ever be able to tel you how sorry I am. It

doesn’t mean I won’t try, because you, Perry, you deserve a

lifetime of servitude. Eons of groveling. Even then, I don’t

think I can show enough, do enough to let you see. And

that’s OK. You have every right to hate me for this lifetime

and many others. You have every right to never see me

again. To spit on my grave. But tonight, now, I’m not going

to give up on you. I’m going to fix you or,” his voice fel with

weight, “die trying.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I opened my mouth and

closed it again, letting the gravity of his words sink in. I

couldn’t forgive him. I couldn’t let him die on account of me,

either. He needed to go to the hospital. I needed to go to a

hospital. But we both carried on in our stubborn little ways,

protesting together but apart.

Dex let out a puff of breath and pointed at the light in the

distance.

“Just one headlight left. Let’s hope we make it til dawn

before seeing any cops. I don’t think they’d believe our

story for a second. Especial y since your jol y old father

probably has a wanted poster of me down at the station

already.”

A minute later we arrived at the car. Ada looked fine

except for a bruise on her elbow. She wrapped her arms

around me in a lavish, squeezing hug, thinking she might

never see me again. I foolishly told her it would be the last

time we’d be apart.

Then she started wrapping me up in duct tape. Even in

the middle of a car accident, I was stil public enemy

number one.

We got in the car and after I was careful y belted in, Dex

managed to reverse it up the embankment. Luckily, it

wasn’t as steep as it looked when we went bounding down

it. The Highlander shuddered and smoked a bit but she

worked and we were soon roaring down the highway again.

The night sky was clear as we left the mountains and

entered the softly rol ing hil s, and far off in the distance you

could see the sky easing black to blue. The horizon looked

fresh and clean and the dying stars twinkled brightest

before they faded. Dawn was coming.

Time was ticking.

It was near eight in the morning, when the landscape

was sunny, dusty and squint-worthy bright, that I felt a cloak

of blackness settle over me like opaque net. It had been

waiting to drop al night. I had been waiting to receive it. A

net of indescribable evil.

A voice spoke out deep inside my head. That voice from

the bowels of creation, one that encapsulated al pain and

suffering the world has ever known - and relished it.

Give up
, it said.
To resist is to bring pain. Pain to your

loved ones. Pain to yourself. Give up and you’ll be

spared. You’ll be free.

Try me,
I thought.

I raised my chin and looked at Dex and Ada, who were

lost in their own thoughts, watching the flat farmlands rol

past.

“Guys,” I said, my voice shaking out of my chest. “I don’t

have much time left.”

Dex stepped harder on the gas. I didn’t know if it would

be enough.

~~~

When we arrived outside the smal , reservation town of

Lapwai, I was a complete write-off. There was no hope left

for me. I pushed and tried and projected and did what I

could to get control back but I was too tired and too weak to

be any threat. I spent the entire car ride trapped in my body

and under the demon’s rule. I spoke in tongues, I writhed

and screamed and tried to bite Ada and Dex until she was

stealth enough to put a piece of duct tape over my mouth.

She then proceeded to tape me down to the actual seat,

using al three rol s of the tape they’d purchased from the

gas station.

It was good timing that as soon as Dex navigated the

Highlander up to a desolate rancher on the sage-brushed

outskirts, the tape began to come loose from the seat and

my thrashing was at an al -time high. Any longer and the

thing would have propel ed me into Dex and taken the car

off the road again, for the final time. You only get to cheat