The Frenzy (7 page)

Later, she came into my room without knocking and sat on my bed. I was reading a Swedish vampire book I’d ordered from Amazon.

“What are you reading?”

I closed the book. I was at the part where the zombie tries to rape the transgendered vampire child but the vampire gets away. “Nothing. Can you try knocking?”

“Sorry. I got lonely out there with your dad. I wanted my little girl’s company.”

She reached out and patted my leg and I pulled it away. I didn’t like her touching me that much anymore. I was afraid she’d start talking about depilatories. I folded my legs under me so she couldn’t reach up inside my jeans and feel the hair that had started to grow back. I hadn’t shaved yet; it was hard to keep up.

“You know, that Pace is a nice-looking fellow.” I wondered if my hairy legs had made her think of him—God forbid my boyfriend would have to touch them.

I nodded, just relieved she still hadn’t found out about Corey.

“You know, I remember what it was like when I was young.”

Here it comes, I thought.

“But it’s really important to abstain. There really isn’t another option, except getting married and I know you’re not ready for that.”

I turned my head away from her and stared at the wall. I had hung a poster of a male and female gray wolf kissing, surrounded by their fuzzy, fat pups. Their gray fur and blue eyes ringed in black reminded me of the woman in the woods.

“What about you and Dad?” I asked. They’d gotten married right after college.

“We were young and we made a mistake,” she said.

I looked back at her and she smiled. “Not that you are a mistake. We just might have done things differently.”

Yeah, right. Sometimes it felt like my whole life
was a mistake. But I hadn’t known that my mom felt her marriage was a mistake from the beginning. I wondered if she would have married my dad at all if she wasn’t pregnant; it wasn’t okay in her family to be a single mother. My parents didn’t seem to love each other anymore. Had they ever?

The thing was, as much as the whole conversation irritated me, I agreed with her about the abstinence; I knew that I wasn’t going to have sex yet. But it wasn’t for the reason she thought. And the boy she was imagining was the wrong one.

Sasha

A
fter work the next day I went to see Joe. Cooper was sleeping in the shade out front. I knelt down and let him lick my face.

“Hey, boy. Where’s Joey? Where’s Dad, huh?” His eyes shone beams into me. Dogs saw everything but if they loved you it didn’t matter.

The shop was hot, only a small fan revolving feebly. The prosthetic limbs hung from the walls. So lifelike: Joe was an artist. They gave me the creeps. One black and two ginger cats were sleeping around the fan. Joe was in the back. He came out to see me and grinned
so all his teeth showed.

“What up, dearest?”

“Hey, Joey.”

“Did you bring me some rocky road?”

“I would’ve but it would melt in five seconds.”

“Hot out, huh?” He sat on a stool and wiped his forehead with a rag. “Air’s broke and I couldn’t get the part to fix it.” He took two bottled waters out of a refrigerator and handed one to me. “Take a load off and tell me what’s on your mind.”

I slumped onto a chair with the water. Joe could always tell when something was up with me. When I was thirteen and the first thing happened, I came to him the next day. I didn’t tell him about it. I just sat with him and he rambled on about his childhood, how he used to play in the woods, make sculptures out of clay from the riverbed, how his dad lost a hand to the steel mills and that got him into the prosthetics business, how he used to drink too much until he quit. Because of his serious, gentle tone, it was like he was talking to
me about what had happened to me but using different words so I wouldn’t get scared and run away.

“Do you know anyone new to town? A woman with gray hair and blue eyes?” I asked.

I wanted to find her. Had I really seen her? It seemed like a dream now, a hallucination caused by the heat and my upset state after not being able to reach Corey.

Joe knew everyone and everyone knew him. He ran the local AA meeting and the whole town came to him with their problems. Well, not everyone. The riffraff, as Joe would say. The rich folk went to my mom and dad for help.

He scowled at me and patted his chest pocket for his cigarettes. “Why you wanna know, Livvy?”

“I saw this woman. In the woods. She was just watching me.”

“It freak you out, darling?”

“A little.”

“But you want to know more?”

I nodded. “She seemed like she wanted to tell me something.”

Joe leaned forward, elbow on the knee of his grease-stained jeans, and tapped his lip with his forefinger. “I guess she wanted you to see her or she wouldn’t have let you,” he said as if he were talking to himself. Then he added, “That’s Sasha, Liv. She’s not new to town, just keeps to herself. She and her boys live in a cabin out there in the woods.”

“A cabin?” I sat up. “The wood cabin with the well?”

“So you’ve seen it, huh?”

“Once, years ago. I’ve been looking for it ever since. I thought I made it up.”

“Like I said, she wouldn’t have let you see her unless she thought you were ready.”

My head started to hurt. What was he talking about? “Joey,” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“I think it’s time for us to go talk to Sasha,” Joe said. “You got plans?”

“I’m supposed to meet Corey.”

Joe stood up and stretched his long arms above his head. “Up to you,” he said. “I close shop in a few.”

Joe and I walked for a long time among the dense growth of trees. Sunlight trickled through the greenery and sweat trickled down my neck. Birds, butterflies and squirrels seemed to linger near, drawn to Joe Ranger in some uncanny way. One bird, so blue it looked purple and with a fierce expression, even landed on his shoulder when he stopped really still and called it. When it flew away he continued on, walking ahead, his long legs taking big strides while I scurried to keep up. He didn’t look back at me much but he held the branches so that I could pass through unscratched most of the time. Under my feet the earth throbbed with life and I could smell the sap in the trees and the minerals in the mud.

I knew that forest really well but I felt confused, as if we’d been walking in circles. Then Joe stopped
suddenly and I almost bumped into him.

There was the cabin.

It looked abandoned except for the chickens squawking in the pen. There were no boots in front and the windows were shut tight. The trees had grown closer around it since the last time I’d seen it; they overhung the tin roof as if trying to protect it.

Joe walked up to the door and knocked gently. He was so tall that he had to stoop down so his head wouldn’t hit the porch.

We waited. After a while Joe said, “Looks like they’re not home. Maybe I was wrong….”

He came back to where I was waiting. I hadn’t wanted to get too close. I turned and started away. I wasn’t so sure about this idea after all, anyway.

Just then we heard a sound and the cabin door opened. The gray-haired woman stood there. Her blue eyes shone through the dim. I held my breath.

“Joe,” she said. It sounded like the way you would greet someone you had been waiting for for a long time.

“Sasha.” I’d never heard Joe’s voice like that. So serious and quiet, deeper than usual.

“You’ve come,” she said. Her tone was low and a little rough. I wanted to fall under its spell—let it lead me into a dark place where I could find who I was, but part of me did not want to know. I grew suddenly so weary, as if the forest were a dream weighing down on me, pressing me into sleep. I closed my eyes.

When I woke I was lying on a small cot in a darkened room.

I sat up. “Joey?”

There was silence. Then a woman’s voice said, “He had to go back. I told him you’d be safe here.”

She came toward me. She was wearing a floor-length silvery nightgown and her hair was the same, almost metallic in the candlelight. She had long, sinewy arms, strong arms. I looked at her hands. The middle finger stretched out beyond the others just like mine.

“I’m Sasha,” she said. “You’re Liv.”

I nodded.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

We?
Who else was there? I looked around the room. The walls were made of rough-hewn logs. There was a large, soft deerskin rug on the floor. Besides the bed there were very few furnishings. Who was “we,” where were they and why had they been waiting?

As if she heard my thought, she answered it with a similar question. “Why did you want to find me?”

There was a reason, some reason, but I couldn’t think of it.

“How do you know Joey?” I asked because I didn’t have an answer for her. A question followed by a question followed by a question.

“We’ve known each other since I moved to town.” Her blue eyes were rimmed with dark lashes; it looked as if she had elaborate eyeliner on or it could have been natural. She touched her hair gently, where the silver caught the light. “I would have had him bring
you to me sooner but it wasn’t the time yet. You’ve been doing well so far but things are going to get harder now.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. It was dark outside; my mother would worry. I patted my pocket for my cell phone and took it out. She’d called. Corey had, too, probably. I wanted to reassure them and, in doing so, to reassure myself that I was okay, that I hadn’t lost my mind.

“I have to get home.”

“Yes, I know,” the woman said. Sasha. That was her name. “But there is something I need to tell you.”

I wasn’t ready; whatever it was, I wasn’t ready. I looked away.
I stood up. “I’m not sure I can find my way home.”

“My boys will take you,” Sasha said. “Later. We need to talk.” She reached out her hand and I saw the long middle finger again like an accusation. She parted her lips and I saw her small, sharp white teeth.

Suddenly I was so afraid I could hardly breathe.

I stood up and went to the door. She followed me. I heard her make a sound, a soft howling noise. The night was as silvery as her hair, an almost full moon so bright that even through the thick trees it shone. I looked at the woman with the long fingers and the sharp teeth and I started to run.

I didn’t know where I was going. I kept running, though, wanting to get out of the wood; it wasn’t a safe place anymore. It held the secret to who I was and I didn’t want it now.

As I ran I heard footsteps behind me. They grew faster. The footsteps caught up and then they were all around me. Fear slammed my chest. They would take me down, these creatures. They would eat me alive. I would be the next one dead. My father would find my eviscerated body and try to solve the case. Was the moon full? It was almost full. It would be full the next night.

But then I was running with the footsteps, not away. They did not catch me. They surrounded me
in a pack and led me on.

The footsteps belonged to men, seven young men with dark hair and pale golden eyes that flashed in the dark. A surge of freedom leaped in my chest as I kept pace with them. They were fast, like me, strong, like me. Sometimes one would look back and smile whitely at me with Sasha’s small, sharp teeth. I wondered if I was dreaming. I felt my heartbeat in my feet as if my center was low to the ground and the earth was guiding me.

We reached the edge of the forest. I heard soft laughter, the snap of branches. I stopped, bent over, panting, out of breath.

When I looked up the boys were standing there, watching me.

My brothers, I thought.

And I was relieved. And terrified.

I recognized them from before; I had seen them all before.

It was at the party where Carl Olaf kissed me. They were the boys I had seen on the road; I had never forgotten them. I had dreamed about them, too, especially the tallest one, the one who had looked back at me that night. About once a year I had a dream that he was in my bedroom, pawing through the diary I always kept by my bed. One morning I woke up to find it open, though I didn’t remember leaving it like that.

The tallest boy, the one who had looked back, came forward and held out his hand. When I extended mine tentatively he took it and kissed it. I could feel the heat of his lips even after he had moved his mouth away.

“This is Victor,” said one of them, a slightly smaller version of the first. “I am Sebastian.”

A thinner boy danced forward, grinning, and took my hand next. “Felix.”

“Hello,” I said.

Sebastian said, “Marcos,” and a broadly built
boy nodded his head at me.

Sebastian said, “Gregory and Frederick,” and identical boys also nodded.

The smallest boy, who looked a lot like a smiling Victor, shook my hand vigorously. “I’m Amorus.”

I smiled a little. Part of me wanted to pat his head.

Then Victor turned and the others turned with him, curving their spines around slowly until they faced the trees. He stopped and looked back at me. “I have been waiting for years to be formally introduced to you, Olivia,” he said. “You are a rare thing. We are at your service.” Then he was gone.

I had been mystified by this boy before, when he had seemed to read my mind on the road four years ago, mystified enough to continue dreaming about him, even though I had tried to forget him. Now he had found me, and he had remembered me, or at least it seemed that way, by what he had said about being formally introduced. But what did he mean—
rare thing
—and why was he at my service? He was beautiful
and interested in me, which should have been enough to make me want to find out more, at the very least, but instead I wished I had never seen him.

He was connected to danger.

But, as it turned out, danger was everywhere.

When I got home my father was on the porch, waiting for me. He stood slowly as I approached and I saw the black outline of his football shoulders against the yellow porch light.

“Where you been?” he asked me. His voice was deep and I could hear the liquor slurring it. My hands instinctively went to my throat. It was hard to speak.