Hazels shadow, p.12
Hazel's Shadow, page 12
“No… More like, grateful for the sage. You have to feel positive and peaceful.”
The girls were looking awkward as Hazel passed out the sage.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get it once we get started.”
“And the shadow will just leave?” Riva asked, rolling the stems of her bundle between her fingers.
Hazel looked at the house. They had left the front door ajar in their hurry to get away, making it look more abandoned than any other house in the neighbourhood.
“Let’s go,” she said, choosing not to answer. She lit the end of her sage.
20
Come In
Shielding the little flame with her hand, Hazel crossed the lawn. The dog barked and resisted Di’s lead, digging in its paws. The cat hissed.
“I’ll put them in the backyard,” Di whispered, and she disappeared around the side of the house. The cat streaked after her, determined not to be left behind.
Hazel climbed the front steps. Her pulse sped up with every step closer, like she was pressing on a gas pedal that revved her own heart. The darkness within the small crack of the open door was alive with imagined movement. Too afraid of what might happen if she stretched out her hand for the doorknob, Hazel nudged the door open with her foot. She paused on the threshold to allow her eyes to adjust.
“Here,” Jen said from the bottom of the steps, and she passed Hazel a flashlight.
With the sage in her left hand and the light in her right, Hazel stepped inside. She opened her heart, and directed her silent ‘leave’ message to the shadow. She nodded at Jen, who had followed her inside. Setting the flashlight down on the coffee table, Hazel went to the window, wafting the sage from floor to ceiling with her hand. Jen imitated her, moving down the hallway to the first bedroom. So far so good.
Riva tackled the kitchen, and Alexis the bathroom. Without complaint, Morgan crossed the hallway beam over the open basement to reach the master bedroom. Riva stalled in the kitchen as Hazel came closer and closer to the basement door. Everyone was avoiding downstairs. Hazel’s palm was sweaty against the sage stems and she wished someone else would volunteer. She paused with her arm raised, smoke curling from the smoldering sage. Hazel could feel her heart-rate quickening already.
“There’s another body out there,” Di said, shutting the front door behind her. Hazel dropped her sage in fright.
“You scared me,” she gasped, scooping the smoking sage back up and refusing to turn her back on the basement.
“Sorry. What do you think it means?”
Hazel continued contemplating the glass doorknob as Jen arrived behind her.
“I saw the first body after the shadow attacked Riva,” Hazel said, “which it had never done before. If there’s another body now…maybe it can attack again.”
“You think the corrupt are the shadow’s food? Like we are theirs?”
“Ugh, please don’t put it like that,” Jen said, with a shiver.
Hazel stopped listening as she wafted the smoke over the door, taking a step closer.
“Do you want help down there?” Di asked, seeing Hazel was not to be distracted.
Hazel hesitated. She was scared, but she didn’t want to be responsible for putting Di in danger.
“I missed out on doing up here. I drew the short straw,” Di said, lighting her handful of sage. “We’ll go together.”
“Me too,” Jen said, grabbing the flashlight. The beam trembled in her hand.
Hazel felt a surge of gratitude even as her heart tried to beat its way out of her body and away from the shadow.
“I’ll go first,” she said, sounding hoarse.
She used her toe to thrust the door open again.
From the depths of the basement, the half-male, half-female shadow sang, “Come in!”
Hazel’s hair prickled up as she stared into the darkness for the source of the voice.
“Don’t go,” Di squeaked, taking it all back. She grabbed Hazel’s arm.
“We have to do it, one way or the other,” Hazel whispered. She couldn’t make her voice come out any stronger.
She sent the sage in first, obscuring her view even more.
She cleared her throat and called to the shadow, “I’ve hated you since I was six years old. Leave! You aren’t welcome here, and you are not allowed to harm us, anymore. This is not your house, and it’s time to get out.”
There was no response. Hazel shifted to the left so Jen could shine the flashlight on the stairs. It was a small comfort that there was no way for reaching hands to grab her through the steps until the bottom. She took a steadying breath and descended the stairs, Jen and Di at her heels. She sent the sage smoke from steps to ceiling as she walked. The wooden floorboards creaked as she passed over them.
Heart hammering again, she reached the final open-backed stairs. She moved neither faster nor slower despite visions of horror movies and hands grabbing ankles. She didn’t want to give the shadow the satisfaction of knowing she was afraid. Her feet landed on the cement, and Jen raised the flashlight behind her so she could see into the corners of the room. The light couldn’t reach that far.
Nothing but a gut feeling made Hazel suspect the corner furthest from the front windows, under the ripped up hallway. The missing floor left a gaping hole in the ceiling, but still no light came in. She stepped to the wall and continued the familiar process of cleansing from floor to ceiling. Then Jen yelped and Hazel and Di whipped around.
“What is it?” Hazel asked, rushing to her side.
“It said my name,” Jen said, her free hand clamped over her left ear as she stared into the same dark corner, shaking.
Hazel bluffed for Jen’s sake. “That’s not so bad. It’s just words. Sticks and stones, right? Try and ignore it. We’re almost rid of it. Come on, keep going.”
She went back to work right away, Jen still breathing hard where she stood. Hazel knew how horrifying that voice was, but they had to get on with the job.
As she made another motion from floor to ceiling, Hazel thought she heard a small shuffling sound from the hallway corner. Her eyes adjusting to the dark, she saw shelves running up the far wall, with a long wooden tabletop built in at hip-height. On the table was the collection of tools they had been borrowing to seal up the house. She thought she could make out the curve of a table-saw and an open chest of tools.
“What are you looking at?” Di demanded, catching her at it.
“The tools,” Hazel said. “We might want them upstairs at some point.”
“Where is…it?” Di asked. “Is the sage working?”
“I’m sure it is,” Hazel lied. “Why don’t you do the back of the stairs? We don’t want to miss a single crack.”
A thump came from the darkest corner. Hazel whirled around to see the cord of the power saw dangling over the edge of the table, swinging. She sped up her cleansing of the wall, floor to ceiling, floor to ceiling. She tried to focus, but couldn’t quell the sensation of someone standing over her shoulder. She looked back. The dark bulged forwards, like a light overhead had gone out.
“Hazel…” Jen said, who was staring in the same direction. “Do you see something over there that I don’t?”
“No, just shadow,” but even as she said it, Hazel saw the outline of a black figure.
Its face was bowed and hidden by the gloom. The over-long limbs were frozen at its sides. The longer she stared at it and nothing happened, the faster Hazel breathed.
It was one of the hardest things Hazel ever had to do, turning back to the wall. She started counting her breaths in her head, elongating them as much as she could. She passed under the boarded windows and shivered. A drip of nervous sweat tickled her eyebrow. There was an exhale on her neck. Or perhaps she had imagined it. Her eyes passed over the cracks in the cement wall, the only things she allowed herself to look at besides the rising and falling of her hand holding the sage.
“You aren’t welcome here,” she muttered to the shadow again. “Leave now. This is not your house. You are not allowed to hurt us.”
Hazel was so aware of the figure in the corner she might as well have had eyes on the back of her head. The closer she got to it, the more her skin prickled and cried out for her to run. She found the table that ran along the back wall. She turned to the shelves, ready to cleanse them with smoke, and let her eyes flash to the corner. The figure was still standing there. Hazel almost wished it would move. She wondered if it was watching her out of the corner of its eye now. Its head had not even tilted.
There was movement to the right. Di was headed towards the figure with her sage, much closer than Hazel had guessed.
“Di—”
The figure turned, stiff as a statue, in Di’s direction. Hazel’s lungs stopped working. She dropped her sage.
“Di, run!” she gasped, breathless.
Instinct made Di turn to the shadow instead. It flashed towards her, flickering like a strobe light between lunges so that Hazel never saw its feet move. It was on Di before Hazel had set down her first step.
In one vicious downwards swipe, the shadow scratched Di’s eyes with both hands. Di screamed and fell to her knees, clutching at her face. Red blood poured from her empty eye sockets. There was a thunderous sound overhead. It was like the dream where Hazel’s feet were stuck to the pavement again; every action slower than life, the weight of her feet too much to lift.
The shadow turned its face to Hazel and she saw its true form for the first time, no darkness, just Kelly’s blood-stained cheeks, red from the human flesh her teeth had torn into. She saw Kelly’s blue eyes clouded over like curdled milk; Kelly’s purple veins standing out against her pale skin, the blood solid and no longer pumping. Her clothes were still torn and stained where the zombies at school had ripped into her lower back. Her hair was matted and stiffened with blood. She sneered at Hazel, dropped to her knees over Di, and opened her mouth wide. She closed her lips over Di’s eye and made a sucking sound that Di’s rattling, high-pitched scream couldn’t overpower as she thrashed on the floor.
Hazel realized she was screaming too. Her legs gave way as she stopped trying to pull them from the quicksand-like cement. She saw Jen bearing down on her. Riva was leaping down the last stairs with Morgan and Alexis right behind her. They all flickered the way the shadow had, as if her brain couldn’t take in any more horror and would only let her see a flash at a time. She couldn’t stop screaming long enough to warn the girls away. Her throat went raw in seconds.
“Di!” she screamed, pointing at her. The words came with difficulty. “SAVE HER!”
Instead, firm hands grabbed her arms, and Hazel dissolved into a fit of screams as she was dragged towards the shadow. In a flash, Kelly was digging her hands into Jen. Flash—her teeth tore at Riva. Flash—now Alexis, now Morgan.
“Cover her mouth,” someone said. “I can’t take it anymore!”
Hazel once again had the bizarre experience of opening eyes she had thought were already open. She snapped her mouth shut, and the screaming coming from it stopped. The screaming coming from Di went on. Hazel jerked into a sitting position, causing a few more shouts of alarm.
She was sitting on the kitchen floor in the dark, facing the basement door. All the remaining furniture in the house had been pushed up against it. She heard a slap, and Di’s scream stopped for a millisecond.
“Pour some water on her!” came another voice.
Hazel’s eyes darted around so fast she could see colours swimming behind every blurry object and person. Di was lying next to her.
“Hazel,” the blur in front of her said. “Can you see me?”
“You’re blurry,” Hazel croaked. “Oh god, why can’t I see you?”
“Calm down,” came Riva’s voice. “Calm down. I’ve got you.”
She felt something brush her arm and flinched.
“It’s just me,” Riva said, and Hazel could hear the worry in her voice.
Her face came into focus.
“What happened to Di?” Hazel demanded.
Riva tried to soothe her. “She’s right here. We’re just trying to snap her out of it.”
Water ricocheted off Di’s face and splashed Hazel. At last, the screaming stopped.
Hazel crawled over to Di, and lifted a closed eyelid with her thumb. All she could see was the white of Di’s eye. Hazel collapsed beside her, relief flooding her limbs with warmth. Coming into focus, Jen, Riva, Morgan, and Alexis all exchanged confused looks.
“What happened to her?” Hazel asked.
“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Jen said. “You could see something we couldn’t.”
“I saw the shadow. But it was Kelly. She scratched Di’s eyes out and then-then—,” she paused to shudder and pull her words together, “drank them. From her head.”
Disgusted, they all looked at Di.
“But it wasn’t really Kelly, was it?” Alexis said at the same time as Riva asked, “But she’s fine, right?”
“I don’t know. And the shadow was probably just messing with me, with a vision of Kelly. But I don’t know. It’s a… It’s a hard vision to shake. We have to get out of here. The furniture won’t keep the shadow away from us.”
“But the sage—”
“It didn’t work downstairs.”
“But we weren’t finished,” Jen said. “We got everywhere up here, but we didn’t get through the whole basement before it…you know.”
“It’s not worth it,” Hazel said. She realized she was sweating at the thought of staying.
“But—”
“Show her,” Morgan said.
Hazel looked from one to the other. Jen got up and went to the living room, waving for Hazel to come with her. Hazel got to her feet as if she hadn’t stood up in years, all her muscles aching. Jen pointed to the peephole in the door. Hazel peered through and gasped. Outside were rows of the corrupt, all staring straight at them. They were standing where the girls had stood less than half an hour ago. Hazel followed the line down both sides of the house, where it curved and continued on.
“Ohhh…that can’t be good.”
21
The First One
“We’re surrounded,” Jen confirmed. “We’re definitely at the centre of this.”
“The shadow is the centre of this…” Hazel said, her heart sinking at the memory of why the sage was so important.
“They do seem like they’re under someone’s control, don’t they,” Jen agreed, her face grim.
“Okay. How are we going to get out of this?” Hazel muttered, rubbing her eyes.
When she looked back up, she saw that Jen was studying her.
“What?”
“I think you’re amazing.”
Hazel’s eyebrows raised of their own accord. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Brave, kind, competitive, gorgeous Jen thought she, Hazel, was amazing?
“You bounce back so fast,” Jen explained, her face reddening. “You’re onto the next thing before the rest of us have stopped panicking.”
“I have to.”
Jen shook her head. “No, you don’t. You are…you just…”
She waved her hands, unable to come up with the right words. She gave Hazel an apologetic smile.
“Hazel,” Riva called from the kitchen, “what’s your medical opinion on this? What does Di need?”
There was an embarrassed silence. Hazel’s heart, so low moments before, had risen high enough to lift her chest. They shared another smile, then hurried back to the kitchen.
“I don’t have a medical opinion,” Hazel admitted. “It was all Kelly. But she won’t be able to come in here now. Because of the sage.”
Riva looked disappointed. Hazel’s lifted heart slumped back down again.
There was barking from the back door and Morgan stood up to check on the dog. “He’s barking at the house. And the cat’s hiding in the bushes, I can see its eyes reflecting.”
Hazel said nothing. It was disturbing; the dog was more worried about the house than the zombies surrounding it.
The sun was up now, and the girls jumped at every creak and shadow as the house warmed up. They were all exhausted from the previous day’s run, but no one could sleep. They were too afraid of the zombies outside, pressing up against the backyard fence, and of the shadow inside, blocked only by the sage.
Alexis was huddled over a backpack on the fold-out couch, her eyes darting to the basement door and back. “I can’t believe no one has come to help us yet.”
“They still might,” Riva said. “They’ve probably just escaped themselves, with the corrupt all frozen last night. They know what it’s like to be trapped, they’ll make sure we get help. Anyway, the corrupt all surrounding us has got to look suspicious. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes.”
“It’s only a matter of time until we’re attacked by them. Or ‘it,’” Alexis said. “They better get here sooner than later.”
“Won’t matter,” Morgan said, playing with the sling around her neck, “according to Hazel.”
Hazel put down the lighter she was fiddling with. “Still, I’d like to get out of here.”
There was a huge gasp. Hazel dropped her lighter and leapt to her feet. Alexis fumbled the backpack. Riva and Morgan grabbed their spears and whipped around, looking for an attacker.
“I’m blind!” Di screamed on the bed beside Alexis. “Oh god, I’m blind!”
Alexis did the only thing she could, and grabbed Di’s hand. Di screamed again and tried to pull away.
“It’s just me, it’s just me!” Alexis cried, hands raised in a supplicating gesture that Di couldn’t see.
Di struggled against the sheets they had tucked over her, fighting to get up. Riva pushed her back down, but this was a mistake. Di freaked out worse than ever and struck Riva across the face. She fell back, clutching her nose. Hazel clambered over Alexis and squashed Di in a tight hug before she could lash out again.
“It’s me, it’s Hazel, you’re okay, you’re okay.”
Hazel had a deja-vu of herself under the covers, soothing Kelly as the shadow loomed over them both.
