Briarcliff Read online

  “The guys are here, so I gotta go tell them what to do.”

  “Oh-okay,” she said.

  “Hey, Evie.” He peered around Moriah.

  “Hey, Kingston.” He gave me one of his staple shit-eating-grins and walked out.

  Moriah turned towards me and twisted her shirt. Liquid splattered down onto the floor, reminding me of another dark liquid and I suddenly remembered him. “How’d I get back inside?” Feeling frantic, I looked around.

  Moriah gave me a strange look and dropped her shirt back in place. “Evie, what are you talking about? Where else would you be?”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Colton?” Moriah sighed.

  “No! Not Colton,” I was nearly yelling now.

  “Who then?” asked Moriah, clearly baffled. “What are you talking about?” She frowned.

  Of course, I knew he must have left if I was in the house, but how? Was he okay? I sat up straighter and my muscles pulled painfully. “No one, okay.”

  “Ohmigod, what did you do to your face?” Moriah stepped forward.

  “I fell, okay.” I reached up and touched my sore face.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Like you need to ask,” I told her, avoiding the real answer.

  Moriah, giggled. “Right…sorry…I kind of forgot about that.”

  Yeah right, sure you did. Falling down was a common occurrence for me, since I was a textbook klutz most of the time anyway.

  “Does it hurt?” Moriah finally stopped laughing and leaned closer.

  “Duh,” I deadpanned, irritated. “What do you think?”

  Moriah frowned. “You know, you don’t have to be a bitch. I’m just worried about you, okay.”

  I wanted to say, apparently not too worried—since you left me at the haunted McMansion all night and just had a laughing fit for the past five minutes because I fell, but didn’t. “Yeah, I’m fine, just tired and…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence…miserable, would have been the word I used.

  “So what happened with Colton?” Moriah asked suddenly.

  “Nothing,” I said too quickly.

  “Seriously?” Moriah frowned, clearly not believing my bald-faced lie.

  “Seriously,” I repeated.

  “Nah…” Moriah shook her head back and forth. “I don’t believe you.” She gave me a ‘you-are-such-a-liar’ look.

  “Yes way,” I continued to lie.

  “Promise?” she asked her face deadly serious.

  That word was the problem. We made a pact with one another. If we ever used the word Promise, we would have to spill, no matter what. I exhaled. “Fine. We kissed.” I made a face. “Happy.”

  “I knew it! I knew it!” Moriah jumped up and down gleefully. “You have to tell me everything.”

  I rolled my eyes. The last person I wanted to talk about right now was Colton “Wad” Hayward. Hooking up with him had been one of those “live and learn” moments and I had certainly learned the hard way. When I saw him again, I was going to give him something all right.

  “Hey, what happened to the big-ass statue?”

  You mean the one that came alive…and tried to eat me for dinner... “What statue?”

  “I could have sworn…” Moriah broke off in mid-sentence and turned towards the door. “The guys are here.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Evie, you don’t look so good.”

  “I guess I’m just hungry,” I dumped out another lie as my stomach twisted.

  Moriah grabbed the bag of food off the floor, and handed it out to me. “I gotta go talk to them but you’re not getting off the hook…I want all the gory deets when we get back to your place, after the party,” she said. “Got it?”

  “Sure, sure…” I dumped out another lie and took the bag, even though the last thing I wanted to do right now was eat.

  “I’ll be back,” Moriah, announced doing her famed Schwarzenegger imitation from ‘The Terminator’ before she turned and headed out the door.

  I tried to laugh but nothing came out except a weak “he ehh.”

  Reaching around, I hugged myself. “Where’d you go?” I suddenly felt like crying. How could he have just left without saying anything? Was he all right? He had to be, right? I rubbed my head as my eyes slid back to where the statue had sat the night before. “And what happened to you?” I asked the empty space. A tremor flitted over me and I once again felt like someone was watching me. Leaning back, I looked up. The stairs were cast in deep shadows. Using the banister, I pulled myself up and stepped on one of the stairs. My aching muscles protested from the action. Taking a breath, I took another step. The feeling of unease intensified.

  “No way.” I shook my head and stepped back down. In aggravation, I scrubbed my hands over my face and flinched. I hit one of the several sore spots scattered across my face.

  Stuffing the bag of food under one arm, I walked to the door. The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end. Nonchalantly, so as to not draw attention to what I was doing, I peered over my shoulder, and looked up into the shadows. It looked like someone was leaning on the railing. A loud bang sounded outside and I turned. It was just one of the guys dragging equipment out of a van. I turned back around but whatever I thought I saw was gone.

  “Hey, Evie,” Moriah called.

  I stepped outside and placed my unwanted food on top of one of the statues, careful not to touch it.

  “Where’s the…oh never mind,” Moriah said. “I found it.” She held up the funnel they had used the day before.

  Taking a step forward, I leaned against one of the columns. The last of the equipment was pulled from the van. Six boys stood in the drive surrounding Moriah. They all looked pretty cute but I wasn’t interested in any of them. I wanted to see the boy I met last night, the one that made me feel different…in a good way. Looking down, I realized I was in the exact spot I was standing last night.

  “Where’s the nasty ooze?” Curiosity got the better of me and I leaned down to look closer but the stairs were clean. This posed another impossible question… What happened to the grossness that had been all over the stairs? Okay fine. I could maybe believe I fell asleep, and the guy…I shook my head.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t ask his name.” I smacked my forehead and cried out in pain as everyone in the driveway turned towards me.

  “I’m good,” I told them. They slowly turned back around. The throbbing in my head that had been a dull ache earlier was growing more intense. Pressing my fingers to my forehead, I closed my eyes for a moment. There were too many questions and not enough answers.

  When I reopened my eyes, I realized the stairs weren’t really clean at all but had a light gray dusting on them that looked like ash. Bending over, I stuck the tip of my finger into it.

  “How stupid am I?” I dragged my finger over the clean part of the tiles. “Gross, gross, gross.” Once I got the gross stuff off my fingers, I stood up, and to my utter horror I had attracted an audience. My face flamed with embarrassment. Everyone looked at me with a mixture of expressions on their faces. Curious, amused, and horrified. Horrified belonged to Moriah. Amused to Kingston and curious belonged to the group of cute guys. Perfect.

  “Big ass bugs around this place,” I said, swatting faux bugs like an idiot. It only took two fake bugs swats before my audience’s curiosity waned and they turned their undivided attention back to Moriah. It might have had something to do with the fact that she looked like a winner in a wet t-shirt contest.

  I looked down at my own shirt. It was all stretched out. The little creatures that were parading across it earlier were now falling down my left boob like they were jumping off a small hill into oblivion. “Perfect.”

  19-REMNANTS

  Acting nonchalant, I walked down the stairs, past the group, and headed over to the side of the house. I wanted to retrace my steps, maybe trigger a memory I had somehow forgotten. Like him saying goodbye…

  I looked upward. Huge arches were over the windows w
ith statues, which were hanging over the sides of the balconies on higher levels. They looked like they were crawling towards me. They weren’t like the ones on the mortared columns, or even the ones flanking the sides of the front door. No, these won the butt-ass ugly prize. Long tongues hung from their mouths, like they were frozen in time right before they got to devour their latest meal. I was glad they were only statues.

  A weed sprouted out of the walkway and I kicked it in frustration. “How could he just leave me?” I felt like a heavy weight was pressing down on my chest and I felt like balling my eyes out.

  Staring at the ground, I kept walking. I was looking for the rocks that were all over the ground around him when I found him. But there were none and I started second-guessing myself as I walked a little further past the edge of the house. Several small piles of ash were on the ground like someone had a pyro problem and had started little mini bon-fires.

  The sun ducked behind a cloud, cloaking me in even more darkness. This side of the house wasn’t overly bright anyway since the house cast huge shadows across the expansive lawn. A gravel area was on my left, outside a pair of double, glass-paned doors, and then it dropped lower to a terrace with a stone balustrade that looked out over lush lawns and hidden pathways inside hedgerows that were at least seven feet tall.

  The sound of rushing water drew me down the stairs cut directly into the landscape—I felt like I was being pulled toward the tree line. Of course, I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to go in that direction. Since when did I give a shit about running water? Heck, I lived next to the ocean my entire life and had only gone there a handful of times. Investigating wasn’t my thing either—it was Moriah’s. Moriah was the adventurer, always wanting to peek into the unknown.

  I never wanted to investigate. It was probably because I watched too many horror movies and the ones that went off alone always got taken out first.

  The wind got louder. It sounded like it was screaming. I froze, dead in my tracks, not knowing for sure if it was the wind making that sound or something altogether different. And yet, I couldn’t not, keep going. “When did I get a set?” I had to wonder. “Better question to self, who’s set did I steal?” I gave up trying to figure out why I was doing what I was doing and just kept walking.

  Over to my right there was an opening in the hedgerow. A trail of crushed gravel disappeared between. My skin prickled. I had a strange feeling that something was about to happen. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be good or bad.

  “Evie…” It sounded like the wind whispered my name and my heart pounded into double-time. I took another step forward.

  “Evie…”

  There it was again.

  Someone was definitely calling me from the house.

  Uncertain, I looked back at the hedgerow. Apparently, there was a time limit on my borrowed set, because in that instant, they evaporated into thin air. Not wasting a second more, I turned and bolted back the way I had come as quickly as my Chuck’s would carry me.

  20-PAYBACK

  A smattering of people walked back and forth, getting stuff ready for the party while I waited for either Barnaby to get back with my car or for Moriah to find me another ride since she came here with Kingston. When I asked if her if he could take me home she said he had to stay to supervise everything. The only thing he seemed to be supervising was how much alcohol he could shove down his throat with the beer bong.

  So now I was doing nothing but standing under a big ass tree, waiting. I lifted my face to the sky. The bright golden rays of the late afternoon sun darted down through the branches and warmed my chilled skin. The air was fresh, crisp, and full of the distinct scents of fall. I unscrewed the cap off the bottle I was holding and took a long pull of water. This is what I had been doing most of the day. Standing or sitting under a tree, trying to rationalize what part of last night was real and what part was not.

  Not to mention what affect the loaded-cherries, laced with some drug Barnaby had probably/definitely dumped in my drink, along with my food deprivation, which I was sure they all played a large role in what I thought happened and what really happened the evening before. There really was no other reasonable explanation for any of it, especially the statue coming to life. Now, that was probably a hallucination.

  However, I was having a hard time explaining away my bumps and bruises from said fight with the unknown imaginary beast. Still, I guessed, grasping for straws, on some out-there level it could have just been some weird head-split ‘Fight Club’ movie thing brought on by whatever drug Barnaby had slipped into my drink.

  Now, in the light of day, I could rationalize just about everything that happened or didn’t, with the exception of his presence and of course my crazy connection/attraction to him. Lost in my thoughts, I kicked a stone back and forth with my shoe.

  “Where did he go…back to the mother ship?” I laughed at the absurdity of it all. Now I sounded like Hanna and Aaron.

  “Hey, are you talking to me?”

  I spun around and my pounding heart abruptly skidded to a halt. “Ah, no, I was just…never mind.”

  A ripped jean, t-shirt clad, crazy-buff guy held a huge piece of black stage in his arms. I remembered seeing him earlier after my stair debacle.

  He gave me a strange look. “Well, can you move?” he asked. “I don’t want to hit you.”

  “Sure.” Feeling like an idiot, I quickly jumped out of the way.

  “Thanks,” he said and walked by.

  Another guy was standing off to the side with a tool to hook the stage together. He was staring at me with a strange look on his face too. Self-consciously, I looked down at the front of my clothes.

  Oh great. No wonder everyone was looking at me like I was a pod person. I looked like rolled around in the dirt and who knew what my face, and hair looked like. Thanks to Moriah I was stuck here until Barnaby came back with my car. I took another step back and hit someone. “Oooh sorry,” I said, embarrassed as I moved out of the way.

  The girl didn’t say “not a problem” or even a grunt in my direction but instead gave me a weirder look than the two guys had.

  What was with all the funky looks? Did I look that bad? On a normal day, I would have at least given the girl a dirty look in return. But not today. Today I took it as another mortal blow to my already disintegrating ego. First Colton—wad. Then the guy…the one I kissed for a breathless moment …who ditched me too. Just thinking about him made me want to cry. And now I was getting the hairy-eyeball from some girl.

  Okay fine—it wasn’t like she was just any girl. That probably wouldn’t have bothered me. But this girl looked seriously cool. She had long jet-black hair, shaved on one side, with feathers intertwined into the length that hung down over her bare shoulder. Multiple earrings dangled from one of her ears and she had a small hoop in her bottom lip. The jean skirt she wore was similar to my own, with one exception. Fine. Two exceptions, I amended. Hers was frayed at the bottom and she looked really, really good in it.

  Fidgeting with the cap on my bottle, I tried not to stare as the girl pulled a bunch of cords across the front of the stage. It was hard though—she looked really effortless and so put-together. She was wearing a sweet pair of lace-up combat boots, paired with black and white striped thigh highs’, and a torn half-t-shirt that fell off one of her buff, tattooed shoulders.

  Lifting my bottle, I tilted it back, and ended up dumping it down the side of my face. Sputtering, I wiped the water away with my hand, which was pretty humiliating. However, apparently my humiliation wasn’t yet at an end, cuz just then another guy walked past me and he too gave me an odd look.

  What the hell was this…a fucking parade? I didn’t think my ego could take many more weird looks. I was at my limit. Glancing back over my shoulder at the tree-line I wondered if maybe I should just slip into the woods until everyone left.

  “How’s it going,” another male voice said. I turned back around, prepared to give him a snarky look, but this one, at least, was a
ctually smiling at me and it wasn’t a crappy, you’re-a-freak smile, either. It looked almost, that is, if I wasn’t mistaken, like he may have thought I was kind-of-cute. Some of my tension eased as I gave him a half-hearted smile.

  “Good, I’m doin good,” I answered and smoothed my hair.

  A rubber mat thwapped loudly on the ground as he dropped it. Kneeling down, he pulled off a strip of duct tape, the length fluttered in the wind as he pressed it down onto the seam of the mat. He stood up and walked over to me. “So,” he said and brushed the dirt off his jeans. “You know where Kingston’s at?”

  “Um…no. Not really. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He looked around. “If you happen to see him before me, can you let him know Darren is looking for him?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  He held up the duct tape in his hand. “I guess I better go finish this.”

  “You want some help?”

  He looked startled. “No,” he said. “I’ve just about finished.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Thanks. See you.” He gave me a wink before moving on.

  “Yeah, see you,” I called after him. He turned and gave me a small smile that bolstered my smashed ego considerably. Maybe I wasn’t a pariah after all. I was starting to think the underside of a rock would be a great place to hide for like…ever.

  “Check, check—one—two–check,” rang out loud and clear as someone tested the sound. The brisk breeze seized hold of leaves and ripped them from the branches above. They spun out of control, tumbling and whirling in the air in a blur of bright colors. Another loud thud vibrated over to my left as another piece of the stage was slammed together.

  Moriah said the guys decided to set everything up outside since the vocals would sound better. That was where all the bands would be playing. Apparently the carload of guys that showed up earlier were roadies for some of the bands Kingston had hired.

  Behind me, I heard a rattling noise and I turned. Barnaby’s thick black curls, bounced up and down as he trotted down the drive. The big-wheeled cart he pulled wobbled back and forth unsteadily as he pulled it over the rocks. The bottles inside clanked together loudly. He looked wide-eyed and fresh-faced. Clearly, he was ready for the night, which irked me since I still needed to change and take a shower. But first, I needed to talk to him. I stalked over across the drive and stopped directly in front of him.