Malia Read online

  “Well, you know how it is, don’t get drunk, then you won’t sleep with the wrong person. At the very least you could hide it better, if you have a clear head.” She sounded nasty about it, so tried to cover with a sudden grin. Then she shook her head and touched her cheek again.

  There was no use going on about the flashbacks, if that’s what they were going to keep calling the things. Her mother didn’t ask, either. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the signs. Her daughter being a bitch to her, then grabbing at her cheek like that might as well have been a postcard claiming that it was that time of the week again.

  Instead her mother laughed, as if she’d actually been funny.

  “See, now if only your father were that understanding. But no, with him it’s always monogamy this, marriage vows that…” Her delivery was actually good. Instead of seeming like a real thing, there was an undertone of joking to it.

  Which had Jess actually smiling. Both her parents actually managed funny pretty well. A lot better than she did, most days. She had sarcastic darkness down pretty well, though. It was close to being her main thing.

  “That could be worse. I hear the new thing is guys that want their wives to cheat on them? That… I mean, what’s the point of being married, in that case? You should at least have to lie to each other about all the cheating and carrying on. Having the guy film it… well, what’s with that, right?”

  There was a snort from across the room then.

  “Don’t ask me. Anyway, cookie? They’re chocolate chunk with macadamia nuts…”

  She shrugged then shook her head.

  “Maybe later? I need to get in the shower.” She nearly didn’t mention it, then shrugged. “I was standing around in the rain for several minutes. About twenty. You know, I really, really hate that part of things. Why can’t I just have regular girl problems? You know, birth control, studying for tests. Herpes scares.”

  She shrugged again, her face trying to light up.

  “On the good side, I do have one of those to study for. Community college actually has that going for it. Lots of tests. History, in this case.”

  Her mom nodded.

  “Well, as long as they have that going for them. You know that we can afford to pay for a real school, right?” It wasn’t a new conversation.

  Both of her parents had flat out told her that she could go to any school that would take her. It was a thing that had always been part of their plans. They’d even saved for it, before her father had really started doing well at work. Now he made enough that they didn’t have to live in Elroy, in particular. They still did though, since they already had the house. It was nice enough, really. A mansion, basically, if a mid-sized one. It was probably the best place in town by a few times.

  The whole place was nice, even if Jess hated a lot of the people there. That was down to her being a pain in the behind, most of the time, no doubt. Weird and strange seeming enough to push everyone else away from her. After walking around depressed seeming and brooding for long enough, people started to act like you were different, of course.

  Which made going away to college a sensible thing to do. Getting out into the world, in a new place, where the boys and men didn’t know they were supposed to ignore her, and the other girls just hated her for being prettier than they were, while secretly wanting to finger bang her in the dorm room at night.

  The truth was, she just didn’t know what she wanted to study yet. Taking two years in a local program while she worked that out made more sense than doing it at a place she might have to transfer away from later, anyway. Not that she wasn’t running out of time. She was going to be graduating from Bollington Community in the spring.

  So she nodded.

  “Next fall, probably. I’m thinking of majoring in one of the sciences. I have the grades for it. Physics, maybe?” That part was true. She didn’t go out, didn’t watch much television as a rule and liked to study well enough that she used it to pass the time. That meant she was doing decently well as far as school went. She always had. That she was smart didn’t hurt, either. She didn’t look like a bookworm, so a lot of people missed that part about her.

  Her mother lit up then.

  “Really? That’s great, honey! Do you know where you want to apply?”

  She didn’t. Instead of whining about there always being another question, she made a silly face. She didn’t mean it, but you either put the effort in to seem like an eccentric goon or you didn’t.

  “Somewhere far away from Elroy? Maybe in California? I can join a feminist group and dye my hair purple.” She screwed her face up again. “Not that I can’t do that now. I probably should. For Halloween. Do you and dad have plans for that?” Changing the subject was a time-honored tradition in the Clopper household, so her mom just ran with the new thread.

  Probably not even realizing that it was taking place.

  “Oh, you know us. We’ll be out on the porch, passing out candy and standing by to fight off any drive-bys that come in. Not that we’ve been hit since we started giving out full sized candy bars. That’s been, what? Nearly five years?”

  That was about right, of course. That being the last time that she’d snuck up to hit the house with eggs. She hadn’t always gotten along with her mother that well. Which was strange, since that was all her and she knew it. Her parents were both wonderful people, really. Not perfect, but good and loving.

  Jessica was just too broken to really help.

  Not that she wasn’t making an effort to do better. She had been, for a while. Years. It wasn’t totally working yet, but that didn’t mean she could just coast on her good looks. Not that she didn’t have them. Really, she started the day as an eight or so, or would have without the four-inch scar on her right cheek. That knocked her down a lot. Then she made up for it with makeup. True that didn’t mean she was the prettiest girl in school or anything, but it was close enough that she didn’t have to suffer in low self-esteem hell over it.

  She waved again, the damp clothing threatening to drip on the carpet. To drip more, from the wet spot she was leaving.

  “Shower. I’m starting to shiver, again.” That was true, even if it wasn’t a thing she was consciously aware of. Looking down she noticed that she had goosebumps on her arms and the fine hair there was standing up almost straight.

  Her mom seemed to get that part. She didn’t even stare at the floor, which Jess would have in her place. After all, it was getting wet as she stood there yammering about things no one cared about. That part, the not caring, might have just been her, naturally. Going off to school was probably a big deal for most nineteen-year-old girls. To her it was almost as if her parents wanted to get rid of her, by sending her away. Out of state.

  Which was totally fair of them, even if it also hurt a bit to think of. Then, they might have actually just wanted what was best for her. That was pretty much how they lived, day to day. They had their own lives, but made time for her, regularly enough. They asked about her day, what she was going through and tried to help. It didn’t do much, but the effort was appreciated. It probably meant that, even if they were different, they were good parents or something.

  Even if her mother was a bit too free with talk about playing around, like she was. Jess kind of wanted to do that as well. To have a few men and maybe a girl or two she could spend time with. Even if it was just to fuck. So far that had never panned out for her. She would have asked people out, except that most of them refused to get close enough to her for long enough for that to even be an option.

  Jogging a bit, she hit her bedroom first, the nice four poster bed on the far side made, even if she hadn’t left it that way. Her mother worked, but only part time. Mainly for entertainment, since they didn’t need the money. The rest of the time she did things like cook and clean, as if that was going to lead to them having a healthy, happy family someday. So far it hadn’t worked, but it was better to try than not.

  Smirking a bit, Jessica stripped off the scant clothing she
had on and used the shower attached to her bathroom. The warm water felt nice. At first. Then, as she stood there, getting warm, she noticed that her hair was still standing on end. Rubbing at her arms didn’t help either.

  She glanced at her chest, but her nipples weren’t standing at attention or anything, which they would be if it was just about being cold. No, this was something different. Plus, her flesh, when she touched it, was already hot. That was probably just the warm water. Vapor wafted into the room from it, which it shouldn’t have at all. The house was always kept warm, making that impossible.

  Worse, when she thought about it, Jess had a strange feeling that, even if it was impossible, being behind the smoked glass shower wall, that she was being watched.

  Feeling uneasy, she hurried, after that.

  Chapter two: A New Friend

  Waking at midnight wasn’t a common thing for Jess to do. At first, she thought that she was just cold, as if the window was opened or something like that. She was shivering, with a thin layer of perspiration over her body. Across the room, the window was well and truly closed, of course. The central heating was on as well. The hum of it was in the background. A thing she normally ignored, well enough. She tried not to be paranoid, as a rule, but it was October and raining hard enough that she could hear it on the roof. That meant it was cool out, if not actually cold yet. Plus, even in the summer, leaving a window open was, in potential, inviting people, or even things, to come in. A closed window, like a closed door, was safer that way.

  Thankfully there wouldn’t be snow for a while. She hated snow. It got everywhere and being damp was only made worse by being damp and freezing. She wore far too little clothing as a rule for that kind of thing to be comfortable for her.

  Still, like had happened in the shower earlier, her hair was standing up again. Shivering was taking place as well. The real kind. Actual shaking, that covered her entire body. Her stomach muscles spasmed hard enough that there was no way for her to sleep through it. Even if the bed was warm to the point of being too hot and she had a full-sized down comforter over her. It was her thick pink one. A thing that had been picked for her, by her mother. After all, she wouldn’t have gone with pink, personally. It wasn’t a bad color, really, it was even her favorite but seemed a bit cheerful, to her. Girly, in a way that she didn’t want the world to know she actually was.

  After a moment, she felt eyes on her again.

  As if she were being watched, while in public. The kind of thing where you looked up in class, half thinking that the cute guy from the football team was watching you, only to find out it was Scary Larry, leering at you as his thick windowpane glasses glinted in the overhead lights. A bulge in his pants, as he breathed noisily through his mouth.

  Not that they’d had a guy like that at school. She’d known everyone there since she was a child, after all. Almost everyone. They’d had two or three kids that had shown up over the years, moving to the small town for some reason or another. It had been odd enough that she could still probably get close as to what years they’d come there in. Even if only one of them had ever even tried to talk to her at all. Elroy wasn’t big enough for there to be a lot of people she didn’t know, really.

  For that matter, even if she wasn’t fond of the kids that used to make fun of her for being weird, if not ugly, due to her scar, most of them really weren’t that bad. They’d had a bully or two, but they’d left her alone, for the most part. Mainly because there was a rumor that she’d killed a man in a knife fight once. Every few years someone had actually bothered to check on that little fact, the word going around that it was, more or less, just true. Glossing over the fact that she’d been five when it happened and didn’t make a habit of it.

  The feeling, that dark sense of someone creepy watching her, didn’t go away. Not at all. She finally sat up in the dark, looking at the window, half expecting to see a face there. That was where the sense of observation was coming from, naturally. She was a bit too old to imagine that a monster lived in her closet or under her bed.

  Not too old to believe that someone might be peering through her second story window, though. The brain, the subconscious mind that ruled humanity even if they weren’t prepared to admit it, didn’t always care about what was possible. Jess had lived her entire life knowing that impossible things could happen, after all. That had influenced her reality a lot, over the years. When others ignored the bumps and creaks of the world, she paid attention to them. On occasion she even thought that she saw Malia. The little girl, still in her blue velvet dress, always seemed solid to her. When that happened, she just waved and smiled. They were friends, after all.

  Which didn’t mean that it was sane to feel someone watching her from outside like she was doing at the moment. She didn’t even have a tree to rustle in the wind, that she could use as an excuse. Everything was on the other side of the yard that way. That was large, too, so while she could hear a tiny bit of movement in the distance, if she tried and the wind picked up a bit, right now there wasn’t anything like that happening at all.

  Finally, knowing it was stupid but needing to know for certain that nothing was there, she climbed out of the bed, crossed the room and flip the light switch. Then she blinked, her eyes refusing to focus. At least she thought that was the case. There was a face there, just outside her window. Not her own reflection, either. She tried to make it be that. Hoping that it would be the case or that she wasn’t totally awake yet and dreaming, while her eyes were open.

  That was a thing, she thought. A lot of what people saw was in that time between waking and sleep. The shivering was still taking place though, and had been for long enough that she was awake now. It had been too uncomfortable not too.

  The vision, hallucination or imagined fiend, was staring directly at her, bobbing gently in the air. As if it might be hovering outside of her window, looking in. It’s flesh, if it had that and Jessica wasn’t just losing it, which was probably the case, was brown and mottled, with thick, ugly, ropey veins all over the face. Slick seeming to a point where it nearly glinted in the light. Like a mylar balloon, or something like that. The eyes were huge and its mouth opened, showing long white teeth. Below that, the body was mainly invisible to her. There was a sense of too many limbs, but she couldn’t make anything like that out. Not without moving closer to it.

  That was a thing that, rather prudently, she decided not to do. Instead of feeling brave, the shaking she was doing turned to shuddering. A thing, which now that she was up and moving a bit, was clearly all about fear. It was bad enough that, for a moment, she felt an urgent need to run to the bathroom. That or wet herself right there, defensively.

  That, if she could pull it off, was her go to rape prevention plan. To vomit, piss herself and even defecate, if she could pull it off, if anything like that started to happen to her. So far it hadn’t, thankfully. That kind of thing, being raped, was actually her worst fear. Especially being taken from behind, against her will. A lot of women fetishized that kind of thing, if in secret. At least she’d read about that online. Jessica couldn’t see that at all. The idea of being sodomized by force, even thinking of it in the moment as a fleeting thing, left her shaking even harder.

  The thing outside her window wasn’t even trying to get in. It was just hanging there, seeming slimy and drooling. A thick rope of spit, or something like that, hung from its lips, the white teeth shining with menace. Each one of them seemed to promise her death. That could have been the expression or even the sense of evil that came from the thing.

  She watched for a moment, not screaming. Jessica didn’t make noise when she was scared. Malia, her friend, had told her to be quiet, if she could, and that lesson had stuck. Instead, she stood and watched, for a long time, waiting for her mind to clear. For the being to simply not have been there at all. To be a Halloween decoration or even a prank being played on her at random.

  After all, the last time she’d checked, solid objects didn’t really fly around like that. It coul
d, she supposed, actually be a decoration of some kind that had gotten free. One of those inflatable yard things that weren’t lighter than air, but that the wind might cause to blow around. At least she supposed that was a thing that might happen. The problem there was that those things didn’t move, blink and look like a real, if alien creature. Not that she’d ever noticed.

  After a full minute, the yellow eyes locked with hers the whole time, she nodded. After all, if it wasn’t there, then acting like it was, would be foolish. She was a master of fear. At least she was used to being afraid and then going on with her day, which had to count. Jess walked forward, her bare feet on the tan carpet, heading toward the window, directly. The face didn’t move, other than the lips seeming to quiver a bit. It didn’t leave, either. Not until, after blinking twice, so she was certain it had happened, it vanished.

  Just fading from view, directly in front of her. Becoming first see-through, then positively translucent and finally, not being there at all. Except that she could still feel it there. Watching her. Staring at her, with its teeth gleaming.

  Shakily, she snorted a bit. It wasn’t a very good effort, but she tried to seem strong, even if she was the only one there.

  “Well, that’s a thing then. I’m up now.” She was tempted to go and sleep on the sofa in the living room, but doing that kind of thing would force her parental units to ask why she was acting strange. Then she’d have tell them about the flying figure outside her window, a thing that looked a little too much like a werewolf with no fur to be levitating, and the next thing she knew, it would be back to therapy.

  A thing which, as far as she could tell, didn’t actually work. You either got better on your own, or you didn’t. Other than separating you from a lot of money, that kind of thing didn’t really seem to serve a purpose. Not in her world. Not any longer.

  That meant, since calling the police was right out, given that they weren’t any more prepared for her imagination than she was, Jess crawled back into bed. With the light off. After all, if the thing from her subconscious wasn’t going to tell her what she needed to do openly, she might as well get some sleep.