Adrianne Brooks

 

Like most nightmares, this one was born in the dark. Swaddled in shadows, it suckled moonlight as if it were mother's milk. Its cries were a raven's song, mocking and lonely, and its laughter was all revving motors and secrets tucked away and kept still.

Adele had never met a nightmare she couldn't wake from.

Until now.

Until loose gravel digs into the tender soles of her bare feet, and breathing is a punishment instead of a right. As she limps down the street, ears ringing, she curses her own foolishness. She should have taken the time to grab a pair of shoes on her way out the door, but she knew if she had, she'd be too late. For what, she doesn't know. Wasn't it the way of nightmares to sow fear beneath the skin? To whisper chaos in the wind? She doesn't know where the fear driving her comes from, but she recognizes the sour taste of it. Knows it's hum in her bones.

A vibration that can shatter glass.

Adele pauses to catch her breath, disgusted at her own weakness. Looking back over her shoulder, she can still see her gran's curtains dancing in the breeze. When she closes her eyes, it sounds like the wings of some great beast. A nightmare's child set loose. The sound is what woke her up in the first place. As soon as she wandered into the living room, she knew what must have happened. Her sister liked to sleep-walk, and at first, Adele was sure she would find her curled up on the couch, the same as always. Instead, the door to the backyard was open, emptying the house of warmth and the smell of palo santo and Florida Water—scents of her childhood for as long as she can remember. She knew then the weekly cleansing her Gran performed hadn't worked. If they had, Désirée would still be safe in bed where she belonged.

Adele should stay and get help. She knows this. But something calls to her, a harried cry that tugs her from safety and warmth. Instinct takes over, and she's pulled from the house by a distant shriek so familiar she knows it in her blood and in her bones. No time for shoes or even a coat. No time to dash back through the house and wake Gran. No time to call the police or her father.

It's the screaming that drives her. Denying rest or hesitation, spurring her on for an entire mile despite her aching, shaking legs, and labored breaths. It is still ringing in her head when she realizes it is now accompanied by something else.

Up ahead, the raucous sounds of laughter and rock music spill out onto the wet pavement. Once upon a time, people danced and prayed for rain during seasons of drought. Ever since they rolled into town several days ago, all the Lost Legion has done is drink. Hell, maybe an endless stream of Corona and tequila shots is a biker's idea of a rain dance because the storm that strolled through the French Quarter last night was as fierce as any Adele has ever seen.

Bottles clinking and the sharp crack of pool sticks finding their target has long since replaced the call of crickets and cicadas. She finds an odd sort of comfort in their beat. Her gran-père never thought the hole in the wall he saved up for would one day turn into a dive bar, but unlike the women in the family, he'd never been blessed with the sight. The trailer she calls home was only a mile or so from the backdoor of the bar, so her father never has to travel far during the rare occasions he comes into town. In fact, Adele spots him as she darts past the line of motorcycles out front. Disheveled and groggy, he is slumped outside of the building. His chin rests on his chest, and his head lolls from side to side.

Frantic, Adele crouches in front of him. "Rat?" she hisses, slapping his stubbled cheek and trying to tamp down the frustration rising in her breast. "Dad, wake up. Désirée's missing." She keeps her voice low, reluctant to draw attention to herself. She's still in her pajamas, and the last thing she wants is for one of the members of the Legion to stumble across her in the middle of the night.

She shakes his shoulder once more, growling in frustration when she realizes how deeply the vodka holds him. He is more drink than man now. She tips him over, and he spills across the ground like a mistake given flesh. He groans, and Adele works his motorcycle jacket off. It stinks of beer and cigarette smoke, stale sweat, and his cheap cologne. Which is to say, it smells both familiar and beloved. Inside the inner pocket are the keys to his bike, and she slips her arms through the sleeves before straddling the mighty beast her father dubbed Pegasus so long ago.

She was five the first time he took her for a ride. She burned her ankle because she wasn't sure where to put her legs. The scar faded somewhat, but you can still see it if you know where to look. Some kids grow up knowing how to swim or ride a horse. Adele was conceived on the back of a Harley. Scar or no scar, the angry growl of the motor coming to eager life left its mark in her blood as well on her flesh.

She peels out of the parking lot, grateful for her father's jacket as the wind whips past. Even encased in leather, icy tendrils of air burrow beneath her clothes and claw at her skin. Adele grits her teeth. Désirée couldn't have gotten far. She'll do a lap or two around the block and be back well before her Rat wakes from his stupor.

Adele races through town, eyes scanning one familiar street after another. She tries to ignore the screaming in her mind but finds herself chasing after it. She can't shake the suspicion that if she doesn't follow the ephemeral call, she'll never see Désirée again.

When Adele was seven, her gran-père called for her. She followed his voice only to find him dead in his favorite recliner. Gran says Adele saw the truth of this world and the next. That for her, it whispered in a way most were deaf to. According to Gran, Adele was blessed by the ancestors and the Lwa alike. But to be beloved of Gods was a rabid thing. A life Adele wanted no part of. Still, she's learned not to ignore her gifts when they have something to tell her. More importantly, she's learned to ignore men like her father, who whisper behind Gran's back. Voodoo, hoodoo, that old Obeah woman living off Main. The crone, the hag, the foul-mouthed priestess with her wrinkled skin dipped in obsidian.

Her Gran has a reputation in Louisiana, and Adele wanted nothing more than to escape from beneath the shadow of it. A dream that seems far-fetched some days, especially now when she's chasing down the specter of her sister's voice on a bike too big for her, in a jacket that will never fit quite right.

"There."

A command. Adele jerks the bike to the right. Too fast. Pegasus wobbles, he bucks, and then she falls. The bike skids across the blacktop, trapping her left leg and dragging her a dozen feet before slamming into the trunk of an old oak tree. The world goes dark, and when she comes again, a light rain trails cold fingers down the planes of her face. The screaming has stopped. She is lying beneath a flickering streetlamp, and the once bustling city is finally still, almost as if it knows what she always has.

That something dark and ravenous is out hunting.

Adele drags herself to her feet, trying not to cry out when pain ricochets down the length of her leg. She glances around, realizing she's driven to the edge of town. The middle school sits less than a block away, a hunched, ornery figure in the dark. It's summer break, but the neighborhood kids like to come and play ball when the weather allows it. Some kids got hurt a few months back, jumping the fence to explore the swamps beyond, but there is little the police can do to stop them.

She stands frozen, battling the little voice inside urging her to put one foot in front of the other. The voice who knows with absolute certainty that she will find Désirée here, in the dark and the damp just beyond the tree line. She won't go any further, she promises herself. She will shy away from where horizon meets blacktop with no waypoint in between, and find her sister back where familiar roads lead the way home.

But Adele doesn't leave. She can't. Because Désirée is waiting for her and she didn't come this far on her own.

"Adele!"

Adele gasps, partially in shock but mostly in relief. Then, icy terror floods her bloodstream. Muscles and tendons fight against instinct and desire. Crying out with the urge to move and stay still. To hide. She needs to save her sister—she's the only one who can now—but fear keeps her small and still. This is the part of the story where shame comes, so fast and hard tears fill her eyes. The hesitation might have lasted only a breath. But even one breath, as it turns out, is too long.

This time when Désirée screams, there is nothing supernatural about it. Nothing of spirit in the shrill, animal sound she makes. Her terror is real and cuts like a knife. Sobbing, Adele stumbles off the street and into the woods, heart bleeding. Her leg is a bright spot of pain as she crashes through the underbrush, but she bites her lip against the hurt. Here, and now, she is not Adele. Instead, she is Frankenstein's monster, unraveling with every agonizing step. Drenched in sweat and panting, she glances around for any sign of where the cries are coming from.

"Please," she begs her gift as if it is a God she's long ignored. "If there's any magic in me at all, please."

The ground sways beneath her feet, and Adele grips the trunk of a nearby sapling for balance. This is the reason kids aren't allowed in these woods, and this is the reason they keep coming back anyway. Here, away from prying eyes, the earth liked to dance. It's the water that waits beneath. They are too far inland for the bayou to claim the land, but still, she creeps. The result is an expanse of trees writhing like something dark and wild, something howling and hungry.

Just like Adele.

As the trees sway, she catches a glimpse of something through the foliage.

A hole?

No.

"A grave." Her voice is tight with horror. Adele races forward as Désirée's cries grow louder with every second that passes. Her sister is pleading, begging for her life. Adele can't see who it is she speaks to and is half convinced Désirée is beseeching the woods themselves- begging for mercy from the dirt and worms. She is tempted to do the same.

The world—this place—is starving. Ravenous. Aching for something to wrap its teeth around.

That night, it finds what it's looking for in Désirée. When the police ask her later, Adele will tell them the Devil fed Desi to it. That even as she pulled her sister from the grave he dug, he wrapped strong hands around her throat and squeezed so hard she forgot what screaming was. She'll tell them how he shoved her under with Désirée, beneath the rotting leaves and among the maze of roots clinging to the shallow soil. And how, in death and dying she and her twin were back in the womb together. Deep, deep, deeper to the water lying in wait. The water that made the world dance. She thinks about staying there with her sister, about making their grave their home.

Désirée had been her whole world since Adele took her first breath. She does not know what it was to live without her, to fill her lungs with air not first tasted by her other half. But she will learn. And in a few months, she'll tell a jury about how it feels to claw her way back up from her mother, brown and waiting. About that first breath in a New World. About the motorcycle revving to life in the distance and the insignia of her father's gang emblazoned on the back of an all too familiar leather jacket and shining in stark relief beneath the moonlight.

They will not listen. Instead, they will see the blood on her father's jacket and the tread of his bike in the dirt. They will hear how he left the bar and how no one noticed him afterward but Adele. Poor, traumatized Adele. A girl who swore that there was a monster in the woods, dripping fangs and covered in thick fur, red as blood and bearing death in a weighted, feral, grin. The jury will know her father has a history of violence. An anger management problem. A penchant for chaos. And they will take his name, rechristen him Murderer. Child-killer.

But before all of that—before the trial that will soon rock the nation, before the police drag Rat away, there are more visceral things she must concern herself with. Things she will not tell the jury. They don't need to know how death grips you hard and lingers close once he's tasted you. How having the breath snatched from your lungs will make you more rage than girl.

The world doesn't care about things like that.

Hours later, when the paramedic wraps a blanket around her shoulders and shines a light in her eyes, the woman doesn't ask her about the state of her soul. Oh no. Instead, she asks for her name. Adele's eyes will remain locked on her sister's corpse as they drag her from the marsh.

The paramedic does not make her turn away.

In that bated breath, Death will hug her close and promise that he will come for her next—that he will come for her, always. And it is the girl of rage who answers, "Adele Danielle Burdot." Her voice is hoarse and broken around the edges. It hurts to speak, so she will choose her words with care. "Dusty for short."