With her face half-cast in shadow and a scarlet tress curling over one eye, Evangeline looked like she stepped out of a 1940s movie screen. “I called off sick from work tonight,” she said with a pout fit for a starlet. “I didn’t want to spend the hours away from you.”
Sebastian worried when she called unexpectedly, asking him to pick her up. Now, he wondered if he’d unintentionally done something to brush her off. They had spent so much time together lately, both in school and out, and whenever he wasn’t with her, he wanted to be. That’s why he forced himself to spend this afternoon with Alex and Ben: he didn’t want to seem like a lost puppy following her around.
“I told you I’d stop in,” he said.
“I know.” Evangeline wiped away an errant raindrop that dripped down from her bangs onto the bridge of her nose. She rolled her head back against the car seat and sighed. “But I would have gone nuts knowing you were so close to me without being able to sit next to you or hold your hand. Or just look at you.”
Sebastian felt the heat of tender embarrassment prickle his cheeks. He opened his mouth and then closed it again quickly. He had no clever words to say.
She reached for him then, stroked his cheeks with her fingertips. Her psionic warmth blossomed like a hot flower, spreading its excited, feverish tendrils through his temple. He held her hand there and kissed her wrist and watched as her eyelids fluttered closed.
“We can sit next to each other somewhere else,” he told her.
“No clubs, no movies, no expies. I don’t want to go anywhere where we can’t just talk, with no one else around to listen or interrupt.” Her voice was a silky whisper. She leaned her forehead against his, her eyes still closed.
Sebastian already had a small list of places suitable for just such an encounter, and a little more besides. It was a scenario he played out often enough in his imagination, but now he felt anxious. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “What happened?”
But Evangeline smiled. “Something wonderful! This has been the best week of my life. There’s nothing wrong, except—”
“Except?”
“Except I don’t want things to go back to normal. I hate normal,” she said with fervor. “That’s what you said at the meeting, isn’t it? You said we aren’t like other people and we should stop pretending. I’ve been pretending my whole life: at school, at home, even at those stupid TTC meetings. But I don’t have to pretend around you. You’re the first person I don’t have to hide from. I want to tell you everything, Sebastian. Can’t we go somewhere private and just talk?”
He nodded. “Of course we can.”
Sebastian drove them out to the edge of Polish Hill. The trip took only about 10 minutes, but the meandering track down side streets and through the dark, wooded gaps between residential neighborhoods was bewildering to Eva, who still knew little of the city.
“Where are we going?”
Sebastian glanced at her, his amused expression looking vaguely sinister beneath the glare of the passing streetlights. “You said you wanted privacy.”
Eva chuckled nervously. “I meant a quiet spot alone, not to get eaten by cannibals.”
“We’re still well within the city, I promise you,” he told her. “We’re actually only a few blocks from the Brewhaus.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Your old man never brought you to the old Holtzrichter Brewery? You’re missing out. I’ll have to take you there sometime. They have great sausages and barbecue.”
Presently, he killed the headlights and the outside world flashed to green as the light amplification circuits in the windshield adjusted. They turned down an unpaved alleyway with a dead end. As the car skidded through the wet gravel and the roadblock came into focus, what had looked like a concrete barrier turned out to be a berm of tightly packed dirt and rocks. Skeletal tree limbs, weighed down by the rain and swaying fretfully in the wind, scraped across its surface as if their wooden hands were shoring up the wall even now.
Sebastian turned the key and the humming engine died away. He stepped outside with an umbrella and opened the door for Eva. “Watch your step. It’s muddy,” he said. Evangeline hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “We’ll be out of the rain in a minute.”
He led her to the berm and then scrambled up it, straddling the top, the umbrella in his left hand and his right held down for her to grab. She looked again at the sylvan masons scraping their branches over the berm, then back down the road they’d come down. The sole indications of civilization were the broken ruins of sidewalks and a rusting chain-link fence. There were no houses or streetlights, and the mildew-covered utility poles were missing their cables.
“Hard to believe we’re still in the city.” She took his hand and let him pull her up to the summit of the mound.
He pointed to the south. “See? That’s the monorail beyond those trees. Anyway, come on. We’re not far.”
“People live down here?” Eva asked as she skidded down the other side of the berm. She frowned as she brushed mud off of her Capris.
“Used to.” Sebastian finally flipped on a flashlight. It had a red lens, and the ruddy light accentuated the creepiness of the scene. He put his arm around Eva’s shoulder as she sidled close to him.
“We had a big flood last spring after all the snow thawed, and then the creek overflowed again in the summer after Hurricane Amy stopped by. A lot of the houses were still being repaired, and then they just gave up and moved to higher ground. I guess two floods in one year was too much for the insurance companies.”
Sebastian shined the red beam of the flashlight on the wall of a nearby house. The siding must have been blue because it looked purple in the light. The whole side was crawling with vines. It looked like a scene from another world.
Evangeline halted. “You mean you’re going to break in?”
Sebastian shrugged. “They’re abandoned. It’s been a year; the owners aren’t coming back. I’m sure they don’t mind.”
She crossed her arms and stuck out her lip. His answer didn’t comfort her, but she couldn’t think of any response to it, so she scanned the scene for more reasons to object. It wasn’t hard to find them. “Look at that yard! There’s rusting metal everywhere! I’ll get lockjaw.”
Sebastian snorted, shaking his head. “You don’t get tetanus from rust. It’s fine, trust me.”
“It’s moldy! It’s crawling with disease! Girls my age don’t get an immunological symbiote, you know. It makes you infertile,” she continued to protest.
“I don’t have an ImSym either. Look, hold the umbrella, and I’ll carry you.” Before she could reply, he bent down and slung her over his shoulder.
Evangeline gave a small cry of surprise as he adjusted her body across his back, but then she bit her lip and held on tightly as he strode across the yard. Once they reached the front door, he shifted her off his shoulders and pushed the door open with one hand. “It’s not even locked,” he said.
“That’s probably because there are homeless drifters camped out in there,” she replied. “With machetes.”
Sebastian stepped halfway through the door, then turned and smirked at her. “What are you worried about? I’m a superhero.”
She shook off the umbrella and followed him inside. The interior room they entered was, so far as she could see, entirely empty. The furniture and decorations were all gone. The old wooden floor was warped in places, and there was a strong smell of mildew, but it lacked the dirty, eyeless dolls and creepy shattered picture frames she had conjured up in her imagination. There were no signs of violent drifters, no pentagrams burned into the floor, not even a swarm of angry cockroaches. She allowed herself to exhale a little.
“It’s pretty clean,” Sebastian said. “And upstairs, it’s nice and cozy. The water never made it up that far, so there’s no stink of rot and mold.” He threaded his fingers through hers and led her up the stairs, down a hallway, and then up a second flight of stairs to the attic. Midway up, he stopped and shined the light on their surroundings.
“Is… is that carpet? On the walls?” she asked.
He smiled, running his hands through the plush fibers. “See? Nice and cozy.” He took a seat on the top step and fished something out of his pocket. It was a handful of glowsticks, and he snapped them all at once and scattered them around the empty room. Soft, azure light filled the empty attic.
Evangeline still stood, marveling at the wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor carpeting. “They must have locked a crazy relative in here.”
Sebastian snickered. “My guess is they did it for sex. Keeps your body warm and reduces bruising. Harder to clean, though.”
Eva jerked her hand back from the carpeted wall, grimacing at the thought of what bodily fluids might have dried into the padding. She scowled at Sebastian. “So that’s why you brought me here?”
“Oh, don’t start that again,” he said, pulling her down gently onto his lap. “I was only joking. Besides, you started it.”
“Started what?”
“The sex talk.”
She wiggled off his lap and onto the step, hugging her knees. “How on earth?”
“You just said you don’t have an ImSym because you’re worried about fertility. It was a little unsubtle, Eva. I happen to think you’re a little young to get knocked up, but then again, I’m old-fashioned.”
Evangeline laughed at that. She leaned her head on her hand and unfolded her legs across his lap. The stairs were too narrow to really stretch out, but she enjoyed the closeness. “You’re impossible. I don’t know why I’m laughing, either. I should be smacking you in the face and running away.”
“It’s because you don’t have to pretend to be someone else around me,” he reminded her.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t know where you’ve taken me to, and it’s dark and raining outside.”
His hands glided up her leg, following the curve of her hip as he leaned over her. “Yes, there’s that, too,” he said.
Their lips brushed. Evangeline closed her eyes and hooked an arm around his neck, drawing him in. They kissed long and slow, until she lifted her head, gasping for air. Sebastian pressed on, blazing a trail across her cheek to the soft skin between her earlobe and the hinge of her jaw. There, his lips parted and the tip of his tongue traced ever-widening circles in her flesh. It tickled at first; a frail laugh rose into her throat, then died as the palm of his hand pressed against her breast and the heat of his breath set her wet skin tingling. The dying laughter became a moan from deep within her chest. Her grip tightened unconsciously, her fingernails sinking into his shoulder muscles. She heard him hiss in pain, felt his teeth close against her neck.
Somewhere inside her head was a tiny, drowning voice calling out for her to stop before it was too late.
‘Go away,’ she thought, but even as she did, her other arm had shot up against his chest and strained to push him back. He relented. Gradually. Reluctantly.
Evangeline caught her breath and shook her head clear. She laid her index finger across his lips and pressed her forehead against his. His skin was hot to the touch and covered with sweat. She wondered if she’d burned him, but he offered no complaint.
“Take it easy.” Eva was breathless. She flashed a delirious, open-mouthed smile. “I’ll combust.”
“I’ve accepted the risk,” he said.
She sighed indulgently and sat up, pushing him back. “I’m sorry. I see I’ve been giving you bad ideas.”
“They’re not bad.”
“Yes they are.” She kissed him on the tip of the nose.
Reminded of his embarrassment in the confessional and his ‘firm purpose of amendment,’ he conceded. “Right you are. What did you want to talk about, then?”
Evangeline beamed, her little white teeth gleaming blue from the light of the glowsticks. “How good I feel, knowing I don’t have to hide this, at least with you. It’s like I didn’t even know what it was like to take a full breath before. I was suffocating, and I didn’t even know it. It’s such an enormous relief to have someone who knows and isn’t ashamed.”
Sebastian couldn’t help but smile back. Her joy was infectious. “It feels even better when you put on the mask,” he said. “Now that’s a liberating experience.” It was the first he’d brought up the idea since she’d brushed it off yesterday. Sebastian was determined to get a firm yes or no, but he was hoping for the former and didn’t want to push the subject too hard.
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “Although I think it would be incredible to go out there and really unleash this thing I’ve been told to bury! But I’m not even thinking about that. It would have been enough just to be honest with someone close to me for a change.”
“But other people knew.”
“Not really,” she said. “TTC doesn’t count. They’re strangers. I don’t even use my real name, and I rarely talk about what I can do. No one I’m close to really knew, except for my dad, who hates me because of it.”
“Your dad doesn’t hate you, Eva.”
“He does. I was always afraid to tell people because of that. It’s not an uncommon reaction. You don’t even talk about your talents, and you’re much more confident than I am!”
“That’s different. I only found out about the hydrokinesis recently, and the psychometry… well, people look at you differently if they think you can read their minds, even indirectly.”
She rolled her eyes. “They look at you differently if they’re afraid you’re going to set them on fire, too.”
Sebastian sat in silence for a while, considering it. He badly wanted to argue against the point, but he had to admit it was a good one. He had kept his abilities under wraps even before he decided to become a vigilante, before he had a secret identity to protect. He hid it instinctively, without even thinking about it, even as he mocked others for their paranoia and persecution complexes.
“It’s not everybody, of course,” Evangeline continued. “Most people do worry, though. They may not care about some celebrity talent, but if it’s one of their neighbors or their child’s friend? That’s different. And sometimes it’s jealousy instead of fear.
“Even other talents act weird. I’ve seen it at TTC and on MetaFriends. They think their own talents are perfectly natural, but someone else’s are weird and creepy. Especially if it’s something that can hurt someone, like thermokinesis. That’s another reason I don’t talk about myself.”
Sebastian nodded. “That makes sense. I never thought about it that much, but then I never felt keeping it secret was a big burden. I just thought of it as an advantage. No one made me feel bad about having it, though. I can see why that would bother you.”
“It was awful. So did you tell anyone else about your talents, besides Alex and me, I mean? Do your parents know?”
“God, no! Nobody in my family knows. If they knew, then they’d know, you know? They’d expect me to become a vigilante. I was quite vocal about it when I was a kid. The only other person that knows for sure is Alex’s younger brother, Ben. But he’s trustworthy. We agreed not to tell him about you, though. Spilling your secret identity should always be your call.”
Sebastian had this devious and superior sort of expression on his face as he said the words ‘secret identity,’ and Eva chuckled at it. Whatever his other complexities, he was no sphinx when it came to his thoughts on this subject. “I’ve never thought of it as a secret identity,” she said.
“You should. It’s life-changing.”
“Did your friends ever treat you differently because of it?” Eva asked.
Sebastian frowned and shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think so at all.”
“You’re so lucky, Sebby.”
He cringed. “Don’t call me that, for the love of God. It makes me feel like I’m three years old.”
“Sorry! What does everyone call you for short? Seb? Bastian?”
“They don’t.”
“Oh.” Evangeline looked crestfallen. “I kind of wanted to have a special nickname for you.”
“You can call me whatever you want. Except Sebby.”
“I liked Sebby.”
“Don’t fight it,” he said sourly.
“Fine,” she pouted. “You’re still lucky. All it took to teach me I shouldn’t tell other people that I was a talent was to see how my dad reacted when he found out. And believe me, I wanted to tell people, especially in the beginning when it was hard to control. I used to have these nightmares where my bed would catch fire or I’d burn the house down. I was so afraid I’d end up hurting somebody. I thought I should warn them.”
“Did you?”
She shook her head. “I made all kinds of excuses to keep away from other kids, and eventually they stopped asking me. They thought I was weird and anti-social. I thought that’s what I wanted, but…” She shook her head. “It was crushing. I didn’t want that at all.”
“Sounds like you put yourself through a lot of unnecessary crap because of whatever hangup your dad has. A guy who spent half his professional life working with talents in the Compass Society, I might add. Look, I’ll grant you that people will be surprised or jealous, but I doubt anyone is going to worry about you burning their house down. Whatever your dad’s problem is, it’s his.”
“It wasn’t just my dad,” Eva said sheepishly.
Sebastian eyed her with interest. She waved her hand to dismiss the thought. “Just trust me.”
“No, go on. You wanted to talk.”
“It’s a stupid story. The point is…”
“Well, I definitely want to hear it now!”
Eva crossed her arms over her chest and gave a reluctant sigh. “I got scared once and blasted something in front of my friends, and it really freaked them out. They didn’t want anything to do with me after that.”
Sebastian leaned forward. “I really want to hear this story.”
“OK, well to start, it happened when we were living in Oswatomie, so close to three years ago. I was 13, and it wasn’t that long after I’d expressed, so I was still having a hard time getting a handle on thermokinesis.
“I spent the first few years of my life in Kansas, but we’d only recently moved back, and this was a whole different area. I didn’t know anybody at first, but after a few months, I made some friends. One Sunday, after church, we all got together to play kickball. We usually just played in someone’s yard, but this time they insisted we go somewhere new, this big meadow outside of town. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but they were setting me up.
“We played for a while when this kid Jamie Watson kicked the ball to third. I was covering second base—”
Sebastian grinned mischievously, his eyes flickering to her breasts. “Just like you are now.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She turned a suspicious look on him, slowly shaking her head. “I was covering second base, and it should have been a double play, but Susan, the girl on third, threw the ball way over my head. Deliberately. It wasn’t even close. It bounced down the hill and into the bushes at the edge of a knot of trees. I ran after the ball, but I couldn’t find it. Everything was wild and overgrown. The yellow grass came up past my socks.
“So it was up to your thighs,” Sebastian interrupted again.
“Pardon?”
“The grass. I mean, assuming you’ve always worn your socks pulled up to your knees.”
She scowled. “You know, they’re called knee-socks, Sebastian.”
“Hey, I like them! I just wanted to make sure. I’m trying to paint a picture of 13-year-old Eva here.”
“Well, I think at the time I had long red hair and freckles,” she said dryly. She then added, in a somewhat distressed way, “Come to think of it, I had braces, too.”
“Braces! Now here’s a scandal. All this time you led me to believe that was a natural smile.”
“Hey, you insisted that I tell this story. Do you want to listen or just blabber all the time?”
Sebastian rubbed the back of his head as if he’d just been slapped there. He was surprised by the irritation in her voice and, now that he noticed it, her tense posture. “Yikes, sorry. I won’t interrupt again.”
“So I couldn’t find the ball, but it didn’t matter because Jamie wasn’t running the bases. He was right behind me. Everyone had left the field and gathered around, staring at me expectantly.
“When I turned around, Susan said, ‘I’ll bet it went in the woods. You’d better go get it, Eva.’ There was a snotty lilt in her voice, sort of reminiscent of Genghis… ah, Vanessa.
“So I said to her, ‘You get it! You did that on purpose!’ But she started taunting me, saying that I was afraid to go into the woods. Most of the rest of them joined in, taunting and laughing. At the time, I didn’t get what the big deal was, but like I said, they were setting me up.
“ ‘Why would I be afraid to go in there? It’s just a bunch of trees,’ I said. Then they started whispering to each other, ‘She doesn’t know about Rusty.’
“Jamie Watson didn’t join in with the taunting. He just stood there, looking embarrassed for me and offering sympathetic glances.” Eva squirmed in the re-telling, and soon added what Sebastian had already figured out: “I guess you could say I had a crush on him, for whatever that’s worth as a 13-year-old. So when he came to my defense, I was thrilled, because I thought he liked me, too.”
“Ah, another hero come to your rescue,” said Sebastian. He felt a twinge of jealousy, and it crept into his voice, too.
If Evangeline noticed it, she gave no hint, but went on with the story. “So Jamie told them that of course I wouldn’t know about Rusty. How could I, having just moved here? They told me Rusty was a devil who lived in those woods, and that his body was made of rocks, and he crushed anyone or anything he caught. They said the place was littered with the bodies of animals crushed to death. Susan especially lingered on the mangled cats she claimed to have seen. God, what a nasty person! They even said that Nathan, the crippled boy from school, had his foot crushed by Rusty and only barely escaped with his soul.
“Jared, one of the other boys explained it: ‘You can see him in the rocks. He has faces, the way rocks sometimes do, but they change. Jamie and I went into the woods one day to look for Rusty. There’s a place with lots of rock piles. Nothing natural like a hill, but stacked there by something. That’s where people see Rusty the most, jumping from rock to rock, leering at you. His face is red, like rust.’
“They said that every one of them had tested their bravery by going into the woods and bringing out a rock from Rusty’s body.”
“The implication being that if you didn’t, you weren’t cool enough to hang out with them, of course,” Sebastian said.
“Of course. And, of course, I didn’t buy it at all. I knew it was very silly, and I laughed at them. I told them I wasn’t afraid and said something like, ‘I don’t know if I want to be friends with a bunch of superstitious scaredy cats, but I’ll prove I’m the bravest of the bunch.’ ” She chuckled sheepishly. “Well, I wish I had said that first part, anyway. I was ready to charge in, but Jamie grabbed my wrist.
“ ‘You really don’t have to do this,’ he said. ‘It’s stupid.’ And he made suspicious glances at a couple of the other kids, and glowered at them as they laughed. Susan told him he’d better let me go since I thought I was so tough. Then a couple of the boys started taunting him about liking me. I was just as embarrassed by that as he was, so I ran off into the woods, but Jamie followed right behind me. He shouted that he would have to show me the way, since I wouldn’t know where to look.
“I was really excited that he did that; I felt like he was trying to protect me. Not from Rusty, but from whatever the gang had planned to scare me. I had to go through with my initiation, but he was there to make sure it didn’t go too far, you know?
“He took me pretty deep in the woods, following the path of a dried-up gully. We talked for a while, mostly me joking about how ridiculous this was, and Jamie encouraging me in his bashful, apologetic way. But at some point, we stopped talking. It was so, so quiet; even the birds stopped chirping. There was nothing but our breathing and the crunch of our feet on the dirt. The solitude became a real thing, something actually present, you know? It started to get on my nerves, but every time I opened my mouth to talk, my breath caught in my throat. It’s really strange to say, but I really felt like I wasn’t allowed to break the silence. I felt…” Evangeline unfolded her arms and stretched out her fingers like she was literally grasping for the word. Then, with a deep exhale, she gave up. “I don’t know exactly what I felt.”
“Embarrassed.” Sebastian’s voice was a husky whisper. He said the word musingly, his head half-turned, staring beyond her into the dimly glowing gloom of the attic.
Evangeline looked up at him with widening eyes, the hard line of her mouth softening into an expression close to relief. “Yeah,” she whispered, nodding thoughtfully. “Maybe embarrassment is the closest word to it.”
She went on: “I guess it was then that I started getting scared. In the midst of this terrible quiet, the anticipation of whatever they had waiting for me was unbearable. It’s not that I believed in Rusty. It’s like when you go to a haunted house on Halloween. You know it’s all fake, but it still scares you when someone jumps out at you. You start scaring yourself just getting ready for it to happen. That’s what it felt like. So by the time we got to the rock piles, I was a wreck.
“Jamie said something to me, but I don’t think I heard him, because when I turned to look at what he was pointing at, I screamed until I was out of breath and then I screamed some more.” Evangeline smiled self-deprecatingly at her cowardice. “One of the rock towers was painted with this hideous, leering face, and it had shards of pointed rock sticking out from the middle like rust-colored teeth. From the teeth all the way down to the ground, the rocks were stained a rusty crimson, and of course, my imagination decided that this was the creature that claimed Nathan’s foot.
“Jamie grabbed my arm and yelled at me. ‘I told you not to freak out!’ Then, more quietly, he told me that it was just paint, and that he and some of the other kids had painted it, gave it teeth, and even piled more rocks on the heap to make it bigger. He told me to take one of the red rocks; that would be proof of the initiation. ‘But be careful when you take one,’ he warned, ‘those rocks aren’t very stable.’
“It took a little while to pull myself together, but with Jamie’s encouragement, I went over to grab a rock. I didn’t want to chance losing my foot in a rockslide like poor Nathan, so I took one that had already fallen off. As soon as I bent down to pick up the stone, I heard this incredibly loud, angry shout. I turned around, terrified. Jamie was crouched with his hands over his head while all these rocks whizzed around us, bouncing off the trees. And then something hit me from the side, right on the shoulder. I fell over, almost hyperventilating, and reached instinctively for what I thought was the rock that hit me. But it wasn’t a rock. It was a sneaker.”
“No!” Sebastian laughed. He couldn’t help but admire their cruelty and bad taste; that was just the sort of joke he might have played on his sister.
“An old, wet sneaker covered in red paint,” Eva affirmed. “I threw it away, screaming as I scrambled backwards. I bumped my head and scratched my back against the rock pile, and the pain brought me to my senses. As I stood up, I saw that there were no more rocks flying, but I could see some of the other kids running up the trail behind us, laughing hysterically. I was so furious! I hurled the shoe at Jamie and threw some rocks back at them, cursing them.”
“So you don’t just swear at me.”
Eva huffed. “Anyway, I was mad. I stormed off. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t even look. The more they called after me, the farther and harder I ran. I ran until my lungs burned and legs ached, until I couldn’t hear their voices anymore.
“I was running uphill. I didn’t even notice until my legs buckled and I started to slide back down. It was too steep to walk. I had to climb over giant, bare-faced boulders that jutted out of the hillside, pulling myself up on the tangles of black roots and gnarled boughs that spread between the gaps. The trees had thinned out, but the hillside was covered in dense, thorny thickets that tore me up as I pushed through them. I can get stubborn, too, and I guess the more often the brambles stabbed me, the more determined I was to get past them.
“The whole time I’m scrambling up this hill, exhausted and dirty and bloody, I’m wondering why I never saw it before. A real hill of any sort is very odd in Kansas, where mostly everything is flat. I thought to myself that I should have been able to see this bald, rocky hill from miles around, but when I looked back in the direction I came from, the tops of the tallest trees were still way above my head. It felt like I’d been climbing forever, but it turned out, I hadn’t gotten very far at all.
“The top of the hill was completely barren and strewn with rocks. There weren’t many boulders like the ones on the hillside, just a few, half-buried by tumbles of dark, rust-colored stones. And mud. Whatever wasn’t covered in rocks was a red-tinted mud, speckled with smooth pebbles, like half-dried cement. It was soft and wet enough for my hands to leave deep impressions.
“I got it in my head that that was what the deserts of Mars were like. The thought made me shiver. I listened to the breeze whistling through the crevasses in the rock piles and that... presence of solitude returned. I started to see and hear all kinds of crazy things: groans from beneath the ground; ugly, malign expressions in the textures of the rocks; shadows and patterns that swirled into inhuman faces and seemed to jump from stone to stone as my eyes flicked across them.
“Well, I’d had enough of that place. I bolted for the path back down the hillside just as Jamie was climbing up. When I bumped into him, I was too out of breath to scream. I ran the other way, wild with panic. He shouted my name, and I guess that was enough to break through, because I spun around to face him. But when I turned, I saw something move. Loose stones tumbled from one of the rock piles like a hard, plinking waterfall, but they fell the wrong way—they went uphill, against gravity.”
There was a hitch in Evangeline’s voice as she said those last words. In the soft, blue light of the glowsticks, her eyes glistened. She blinked back the nascent tear and sniffed with fragile laughter.
“And you don’t need to say I have an overactive imagination! I know it! But the gravel moved like sand in the wind and the muddy conglomerate vibrated until it flowed like blood-colored water. In my imagination, it twisted and flowed around the rocks until it all came together in a shape like a three-clawed hand reaching out to snatch us! You know, the really, really weird thing is that I would have sworn that Jamie saw it, too.
“Well, I completely flipped out and blasted the heck out of it,” she said, clapping her hands together. “There was a big puff of smoke and dust and flying rock. I would have sworn something screamed, but in a minute, I realized it was just the boiled mud popping and the rocks sizzling.
“After that, I snapped out of it right away. I realized how ridiculous I was being. I was stupid, jumpy, completely and outrageously irrational, and I was so embarrassed by it that it took me a minute to realize that I’d just outed myself to Jamie. He was sprawled out on his butt, staring at me with this completely terrified and baffled look on his face. His cheeks were white as milk and his eyes were all pupils. I thought it was hilarious that he was so scared! I laughed so hard, I doubled over and started to cry.
“Aw, don’t look at me like that! In my defense, it really was more relief than humor. I didn’t mean it maliciously. Anyway, I walked over to him and apologized.
“ ‘Jamie, I’m so sorry! I was so worked up over this Rusty story, I started imagining things, and then I… I… Oh! I guess my secret’s out, now!’ I said.
“He gave me a blank look. ‘Secret?’
“I put my shoulders back and pointed at the sizzling rock pile. ‘That explosion. That was me. I’m a talent; I can make things hot by thinking about it. I… got scared and scorched the rocks.
“Then he just sort of stared through me. I reached my hand down to help him up, but he flinched.” Evangeline shook her head. “No, actually, recoiled is more accurate. I was just so giddy that I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought he was just stunned. It took me about a day to realize how repulsed he was.”
“That sucks,” Sebastian said. He took her hand and rubbed his thumb across her palm. He understood now why Eva had been so insecure; if he had gotten such an awful reaction from her, he probably would have felt the same way. “I guess Jamie told everyone?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know that he ever told anyone. He just… kept away from me. I doubt he spoke more than five words to me until the day I moved.”
“I’m sorry." But of course he wasn't at all.
“Thank you,” Evangeline whispered. Suddenly, she smiled and looked at him mischievously. “I did get a piece of ‘Rusty’ out of it, though. I marched over to the rubble and had a look at my handiwork. There were no more ‘faces’ on them, but my heat pulse had left some pretty impressive scorch marks on some of the stones. I dug around a bit until I found a smooth piece that still had that glittery rust color to it and kept it as a memento of my first victory over the forces of darkness!”
Sebastian laughed. “Well done! Every champion must have his trophies.”
Eva pulled her shoulders together and cringed with embarrassment. “I feel like such an ass having told you that story! You probably think I’m an empty-headed, superstitious lunatic who’s afraid of her own shadow.”
Sebastian snorted. “I know it’s almost impossible to believe, but I’ve been scared before, Eva. And I have quite an imagination.”
“I know you don’t believe in the supernatural. You’re skeptical of everything.”
Knowing the things he knew of himself, things he had not yet told to her, Sebastian thought the assertion odd. “Only in the original sense of the word. I’m usually doubtful of specific claims, but I’m not a knee-jerk scoffer. That’s what a lot of people really mean when they say ‘skeptic.’”
He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t discount the supernatural. What are we? Setting fires and hurling water with our minds. That’s supernatural.”
Evangeline was unimpressed. “Is it, though? Scientists can measure psychic fields with gadgets. We know how this works.”
“No, we don’t. Not really. We know that it works, and what happens under certain conditions, but really, it’s just a lot of supposition. Some physicist saw a guy throwing boxes around a room without lifting his arms, and he said, ‘That’s impossible. The energy had to come from somewhere.’ ”
“But they were right, weren't they?”
“Maybe they only found that because that’s what they were looking for. Do you know what I mean?”
Eva tilted her head thoughtfully. “No, not really.”
“I mean it’s circular, and a bit ad hoc. They observed that a psychic can run out of gas, so to speak, so they assumed there was this big field of potential energy floating around that doesn’t interact with anything except talents and psychotrons.
They built the model first and then went looking to prove it; it’s the scientific method in reverse. They find some evidence that supports their model and they say, ‘Hey, we were right.’ But maybe if their eyes were open a little wider, they’d have found different evidence that didn’t fit. Maybe they did find that evidence, but those facts were ignored or explained away because they didn’t fit the model.
“And there’s something else, too. These men in their lab coats with their psiometers see some guy light a match just by thinking about it, they see a showgirl blow a wad of ectoplasm out of her nose and turn it into a walking, talking apparition just by thinking about it, and none of them say, ‘Maybe we created this psychic field thing just by thinking about it.’ ”
There was a long pause before Eva spoke. “That’s intriguing,” she said. But the word she was really looking for was ‘unsettling.’
“It’s the pretense of knowledge,” he went on. “We live in a post-Enlightenment age now, so everything has to be understood and quantified, or else we ignore it. People can take it for granted because they see it every other day; you and I can take it for granted because we live it. But 150 years ago, it was new. It wasn’t expected, and people struggled to integrate it into this new reality they’d built for themselves. Two and three hundred years before that, people probably would’ve accepted it more easily, only they’d have called us sorcerers and witches.”
Evangeline thought back to a minor scolding she’d received a few weeks ago from their head preceptor. “Father Walsh says Catholics aren’t superstitious.”
“Baloney! Catholics are superstitious. People are superstitious,” Sebastian replied. “Next time Father Walsh says that to you, ask him why he touches the tip of his nose to the barrel of the bat three times before he steps up to the plate! Ask anybody on the team, they’ll tell you it’s true.”
Eva chuckled. “I didn’t know he played baseball.”
“Yeah, he used to coach us. Still got a sweet stroke. Runs like a broken-down truck, though. He was a catcher.”
“Anyway, I think there’s a difference between being superstitious and believing in the supernatural, and that’s what I told him.” Eva continued. “One ascribes every little thing that happens to secret powers, the other just… doesn’t try to rationalize away the inexplicable.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He basically said they’re one in the same.”
Sebastian looked incredulous. “Hell of a position for a man who presides over the Mass.”
“Well, OK, he meant besides miracles. He said the only really supernatural things are those the Church teaches about, the Eucharist, the Resurrection, apparitions. The rest is just people not understanding the natural world, wishful thinking, or… you know.” Perhaps because she was sitting in the cold attic of an abandoned house in the gloom of a rainy evening, she did not finish the sentence.
“The demonic,” offered Sebastian.
Evangeline fought a shiver and quickly shifted the subject. “He said that people like to pretend there are ways to cheat at life, and that it’s sinful because it reveals a lack of trust in God and a desire to control other people.”
“Yes, that’s the standard catechism,” he said. “Although I never thought that was a really fair assessment of motives. There ought to be room for honest curiosity.”
“Anyway, I don’t think of myself as superstitious,” Eva said. “I don’t really know how much credibility I place in the supernatural in general. But I also don’t think that everything that’s miraculous —I mean, if there really is such a thing— has been revealed through the Church or the Bible. Of course, I didn’t say that to him. But don’t you think it would be stranger if things like that just stopped happening all of a sudden?” Her voice sounded defensive, but on this subject, and with Sebastian, it needed not.
“You mean the question of whether or not revelation continues,” he mused.
“Yes. I mean, not just revelation, but that, too. Maybe living among Mormons left me more open to that thought.”
“It is interesting,” he said, uncertainly. He looked perturbed. “But I don’t know. Intuitively, it seems plausible, even probable, but I feel guilty about saying even that much.”
Evangeline was surprised; she had figured that he had a firm opinion on everything. It was a bit of a relief, but she didn’t say that either.
“I know what you mean,” she said, and laid her hand over his.
“So can I see it?”
She stared at him blankly. “See what?”
“The piece of Rusty,” Sebastian answered. “You said you hung onto it.”
Eva laughed. “Oh, of course! I actually use him as a key chain.” After some digging in her jacket pocket, she handed him over.
“That’s a good use for a defeated silica demon.” Sebastian smirked as he took hold of her keys. He flipped the flashlight on again and leaned in to take a close look at the rock as it dangled. It was appropriately rust-colored, and thin and triangular, like the flinty eye-tooth of some giant. It was chipped at the edges but polished to a glossy sheen on its face. The really striking thing about it, though, was the distinctive pattern of whorls that covered it. They showed darkest black even under the red lens of the flashlight, each tapering to a sparkling point of banded gold. The spirals all ran counter-clockwise. It certainly didn’t look natural. He wondered if it had something to do with Eva blasting it, but couldn’t imagine how that would work, or why the exact pattern would be repeated in different sizes. He squinted at it, baffled.
“Wow. I’ve never seen a rock that looks like that before,” he admitted.
“So weird, right?”
“Maybe they’re markings. You said it was on a cairn—a big rock pile, right? They were used as markers.”
Eva shrugged. “More a tumble than a pile.”
On a whim, he set the flashlight down and let the key chain drop into the palm of his hand, rubbing his thumb over the smooth surface. Suddenly, he heard someone talking, low and guttural.
“Shh! Someone’s here,” he said.
Eva froze, straining her ears. After a long pause, she relaxed a little and whispered. “I don’t hear anything.”
But Sebastian still heard the voice. He understood that the repeated sounds must be words, but he couldn’t make sense of them. Then, all at once, he knew. His gaze slowly descended to the little, rocky triangle in the palm of his hand.
Evangeline followed his glance. For a brief moment, her mouth dropped open and her eyelids peeled back, but she quickly regained her composure. “You’re trying to scare me, but it’s not going to work.”
Sebastian’s eyes flicked up to her, and for an instant he looked through her into a funnel cloud of dust and cold, damp earth.
He heard the grinding of rocks like the groan of an angry man roused too early from slumber. Then came the heat: scalding, searing heat. The hard bones of the earth ran like water and the groan transformed into a shriek that was quickly cut off.
Sebastian dropped the keys and stared at Eva. His heart thudded, and his breaths came short and heavy. His forehead was cold with perspiration.
“Sebastian?” she whispered. At first, her voice was concerned, but when he didn’t answer and she noticed how pale he’d become, noticed the way he kept looking through her, her fear mounted into a barely contained fury. “Sebastian! Stop it right now!”
She kicked him in the thigh. That proved enough to break his reverie. “That hurt!”
She was already on her feet and stalking down the staircase. “You’re such a jerk. I didn’t tell you that story so you could make fun of me!”
Sebastian stood, leaning awkwardly on the railing as he rubbed his sore leg. “I-I wasn’t,” he rasped. “The rock—”
Eva fixed her desperate, glistening eyes on him. “Stop it! Stop making fun of me,” she yelled. She put a peculiar, pleading emphasis on the accusation.
He understood immediately. ‘You are making fun of me. You are trying to trick me, because I cannot handle thinking that you actually saw what I had convinced myself I didn’t see in those Kansas woods.’ He nodded, licked his dry lips. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her voice softer, but trembling. “Can we go? I don’t want to stay in this house anymore.”
He put his hand on the small of her back. “Sure. Let’s go.”
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