The Reaping of Norah Bentley (5 page)

“Maybe we should go talk to Miss Brandes?” Rachel’s suggestion caused a change to twist itself over my ghost’s face; the blankness in her expression disappeared, replaced by a fierce agony. Dark circles took over her eyes—my eyes—and shadows fell over our face, which was suddenly lined with creases that made us look decades older.

“I think I need to leave,” I said suddenly, forcing a calmness into my voice that seemed completely inappropriate as I watched the ghost’s hair fade to thin strands of salt-and-pepper gray. I started to move, stumbling and feeling my way along the row of chairs without taking my eyes of the stage. A hand on my arm stopped me.

“You can’t just leave,” Rachel said. “We’re in the middle of class. Just sit down, I’ll go get Schulz and—”

“You don’t understand,” I said, pulling away. “I need to leave. Now. Right now.”

“Norah—”

A sudden scream drowned out Rachel’s plea. It was easily the most horrible noise I’d ever heard, like a combination of Mrs. Schulz’ writing on the chalkboard and the screech of the worn out brakes on my Camry. And I might as well have recorded the sound and listened to it while wearing headphones, with the volume turned up as loud as it would go. I didn’t just hear it. It permeated my skull, its shrillness echoing through my brain and destroying all hope of thought.

My hands flew desperately to my ears, and I fell to my knees right there in the middle of the auditorium. My eyesight started to dim, but it didn’t take my hearing with it. So those horrible screams followed me, pursued me with a terrible determination until long after I was swallowed up by darkness.

There was no light at the end of this tunnel. Only blackness. I was completely blind.

But in the absence of light, my hearing seemed to be working twice as good, and I still heard the screams with perfect clarity. They became less human as the minutes pressed by though, until eventually they sounded more like a fierce wind, howling and whipping all around me.

Then, almost like I’d slammed a window shut to drown out the storm, the screaming abruptly stopped. Except for the echo of my own breathing, everything was silent.

Without the distraction of sound, I had nothing to focus on other than the weird sensation that had taken over my body; a feeling of nothingness, like I was floating through space and my stomach and heart and lungs were all drifting aimlessly upward in the absence of gravity. I lifted my arm, which felt heavy in comparison to the weightlessness of the rest of my body, and I started to search; grasping for something to steady myself against, something to stop the spinning. My fingers treaded nothing but empty air. I was about to give up my search when somebody else found me; the touch of fingertips on my elbow sent chills up my arm.

“Open your eyes, Norah,” said a quiet voice.

“…I don’t want to see that thing again,” I heard myself mumble.

“It’s gone. It’s not coming back, not now that I’m here.”

Here.
Where was here? Suddenly I had to know. My eyes blinked open, and all my senses came flooding back at once. My nose wrinkled at the scent of gardenia potpourri, and I tried not to sneeze. Two corner lamps lent a soft-orange glow to the room; the dim lighting was an attempt to make it more comforting, I knew, as was the trickling, plastic-rock filled miniature fountain over on the desk. It wasn’t working. I’m pretty sure a jail cell would’ve been more comfortable. I stared straight ahead, not wanting to look around this awful room, or acknowledge it in any way. I could still see it all in my mind, though; the mismatched furniture, the oversized desk with the chipped off corner, the cheesy motivational posters covering nearly every inch of the wood-paneled walls.

God, I hated this place.

“Why am I in Miss Brandes’ office?” I asked.

“That boy brought you here, along with the teacher. Mrs. Schulz, I think?”

I jumped. I’d recognized his voice when he’d first spoke, but I guess I hadn’t expected him to answer me now, or expected him to actually be there when I turned my head. But there he was, in a chair he’d pulled right up next to the sofa I was laying back on, with a worried look on his face and an outstretched hand resting on the sofa cushion, just centimeters from my arm.

“Eli?” I was hoping he’d look at me, shake his head and tell me that wasn’t his name. Tell me I was crazy— we’d never met. But all he said was:

“Yes?”

A million questions tried to shove their way into my brain at once. I didn’t know which one to ask first, so I just leaned my head back against the stiff armrest of the couch, closed my eyes, and said the first thought that came to mind—

“I’m going insane.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You tried to convince me of that last time we met, too,” I said without opening my eyes.

“Because it’s the truth.”

“Then why am I hearing things, seeing things that aren’t really there?”

“They were there.”

“That makes me feel so much better. Thank you.” I laughed a humorless laugh, filled with irony and disbelief, then opened my eyes and glanced over just in time to see him shrug.

“At least you know you’re not delusional,” he said.

“So says the boy who comes and goes like a ghost himself,” I mused. “I’m beginning to think I’m imagining you, too.”

“I didn’t go anywhere last time,” he pointed out. “I’m pretty sure that was you.”

His tone was gently inquisitive, not condemning at all—but I still shrank back against the couch, wishing for a second that I could disappear from underneath his shameless gaze.

He sighed. “Besides, you can see me, can’t you?”

“Yes, but—“

“Hear me?”

“…Yes.”

He shuffled his chair even closer, so close he might as well have climbed onto the sofa with me. There was a look a fraught concentration in his eyes, or determination, maybe; like his only purpose in life was to make me believe every word he said. He lifted his hand and brushed the back of it against my cheek. I shivered.

“And you can feel my touch, right?”

“Yes.” What else was I supposed to say? I
could
feel it, just like before. Only now I didn’t really want to, because I felt like it would have been easier to dismiss whatever I’d seen on that stage if I could dismiss Eli as a hallucination, too. But when he pulled his hand away a minute later, I still felt it. My cheek still burned where he’d touched it, pulsed as if the blood vessels underneath were working for the first time ever.

A look of grim satisfaction crossed his face as he sank away from my side. “The evidence seems pretty conclusive to me.”

I bit my lip. “Fine. You’re real. But what are you doing here?” I asked. “Are you going to school here now or something?”

“I’m not a student,” Eli said. “I didn’t get the chance to explain the other day, to tell you the other reason I’m staying in town with my uncle. I go to college over near Raleigh. I’m working with Miss Brandes as part of an internship program though, so I’m here on Mondays.”

“Internship?” I considered his answer for a second. “Are you majoring in the study of crazy people?”

“Chapel Hill refers to it as ‘Psychology’ in the course catalog,” he said with a small smile. His eyes didn’t betray any hint that he might have been lying—at least none that I could see.

I sat up, took one of the bolster pillows at the foot of the couch and propped it behind me. “Chapel Hill, huh?” I said. “That’s pretty impressive.”

“I like it okay.”

“So you’re a Psych major?”

“Yes.”

“So you can diagnose me, then?”

“I told you,” he said, offhand. “There’s nothing to diagnose. You aren’t hallucinating, and you’re not crazy.”

“Right.”

“And I couldn’t possibly diagnose you without knowing your full history, anyway,” he added.

“…And here we’ve only just met.”

“Exactly.” He was distracted now, his eyes staring blankly at my book bag that rested against the edge of the couch. After a minute of silence passed between us, he reached down and plucked a book from the side pocket of the navy-plaid colored bag.

The bag had been a gift—one of the only things I ever got—from my real mom. She’d shown up on my eleventh birthday, burst in through our front door and announced she was taking me shopping. I hated shopping, much less with her, but my father insisted I go since I needed a new book bag anyway. That was five years ago. The bag was looking pretty rough now, with a hole wearing through one of the bottom corners and the seams starting to give out on the right strap, which made it sag to one side when I threw it on my back. I kept meaning to go buy another one, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

“You’re reading
Faust?
” Eli asked, flipping through the yellowed pages.

“Yeah.”

“Faust is a German word,” he said. “It means ‘fist’.”

“…I know. My English teacher is from Germany, and she’s convinced that the only literature worth reading is from there too.”

He smiled a little at the dry tone of my voice. “Debatable,” he said. He was quiet for a few seconds, and then: “You know, there’s another German word I think you should know about.” He closed the book as I stared at him, confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a German word,
Doppelgänger,”
he said.

“Don’t think I’ve heard that one.” I tried to look interested; honestly though, the best thing about my crazy passing-out spell was that I didn’t have to sit through another minute of Schulz’s fun facts about her beloved Deutschland.

“It basically means a person’s look-alike, their double,” Eli explained.

A strange uneasiness started creeping up my spine.

“That’s… fascinating.” I was forcing the uninterested tone now, wanting him to go on but stop at the same time.

“There’s more,” Eli said patiently. “A Doppelgänger’s considered bad luck. For a person to see their own double is…” The sudden focus of my gaze brought him to an abrupt silence; I was hanging on to every word now, whether I liked it or not. But, like this new attention made him nervous or something, Eli didn’t seem able to continue. His face had turned white, stark white, even in the orange glow of the lamps. Even the blue of his eyes seemed to dull for a moment. His pale pink lips, the only other interruption of color on his face, parted just slightly, but then froze.

“Is what?” I prompted before I could stop myself. “To see your own double is what?” The uneasiness had spread, encased me like a corset that made it difficult to breathe.

Before he could answer, there was a swift knock at the door. We both jumped, and the breath caught in my throat came out in a gasp. In the next instant the door was thrown open and Luke hurried in, a pile of books in one hand and my coat draped over the other.

“Brought the rest of your stuff,” he said, his loud voice reverberating around the tiny, cramped room. “And your homework assignment from Schulz.”

“Oh good,” I said. “I’d hate to miss out on that.” I managed a nervous laugh, but out of the corner of my eye, I was still watching Eli. He seemed to have regained some of his composure, but he still looked deathly pale.

Luke tilted his head directly into my line of vision and flashed his charming smile. “I wouldn’t have bothered,” he said. “But the woman practically chased me down to make sure I got it for you.”

“She would.”

“Really, when I saw her coming towards me I thought she was going to tackle me… I was so scared.”

I smiled weakly at Luke as he dropped my stuff in a messy pile at the other corner of the couch and then sat down at my feet. He looked up, towards me at first, but did a double take and his eyes fell on Eli— like he’d just noticed him for the first time. A mixture of confusion and surprise crossed his face, and for a second Eli’s face seemed to reflect the same feelings.

“Who the hell are you?” Luke asked, clasping his hands together behind his head and leaning back against the couch.

Eli hesitated a moment, then held out his hand. Luke stared at it like it was covered in a deadly mold.

“Right,” Eli said, dropping his hand. “I’m Elijah. Nice to meet you?”

Luke offered him a stiff nod. “You from around here?”

“Just visiting.”

Luke shuffled a little, his jeans squeaking against the pleather folds of the couch.

“Is this guy a friend of yours?” he asked, sparing only a quick glance towards me before turning back to Eli, who was watching him now with the same intense concentration he’d fixed on me just a few minutes ago.

‘Friend’ was probably pushing it, I thought. Eli was more like a personal stalker. The thought of describing him as such was mildly amusing—not in a funny way, but more like an oh-my-god-my-life-is-insane sort of way. Judging by the deep flush of crimson across his cheeks and the clenched fist he was resting on my shin, something told me Luke wouldn’t find it amusing in any sort of way. Which was weird, because Luke found most things amusing. He was the guy that laughed even at inappropriate things, then apologized for it while still laughing about them. But he definitely wasn’t laughing now.