Experiment in Terror 05 On Demon Wings (11 page)

He emerged from the hal , shaking his head and holding

something in his hands.

“What is it?” I asked.

He stopped in front of us and held up a miniature pair of

pastel blue slippers, the knit kind made for a newborn baby.

How freaking creepy.

“I found them on top of the flower pot,” he explained. The

slippers were attached by a thick rope of yarn and when he

hung it from his index finger they danced back and forth

from the movement, as if they were taunting me.

“Ew, dad.” Ada grimaced, shielding her face. “Get them

away from the dinner table, jeez.”

My mom agreed, tel ing him he didn’t know where they

had been.

I was the only one who felt personal y impacted by the

slippers, and was mildly horrified until my dad took them

over to the trash can and placed them inside. The lid closed

with a heavy thud but in my heart I felt like it wasn’t enough

to keep them out.

Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? I had a

miscarriage and suddenly a pair of baby shoes appeared

at the front door. But who else besides my family knew

about my situation, and who would do such a thing?

I shivered and quickly excused myself from the table, not

caring what my parents thought. My appetite was total y

gone.

I woke up in a strange, dark place. There was no pil ow or

mattress underneath me. Instead I was lying on something

spongy that scratched my bare arms and tickled the back

of my legs.

I sat up careful y as a cold breeze whipped around me,

making the ends of my hair fly. I was in a forest fil ed with a

blue-green glow. Al around me fireflies and lightening bugs

darted and danced with each other.

A baby’s cry broke the thick silence of the trees and I

immediately leapt up off the mossy ground and walked

across the uneven terrain until I came to a darker patch of

the forest grove. I entered along a tight, unwelcoming path

and ducked underneath the low branches that seemed to

reach for me. I was certain if I looked up at the trunks, I’d

see pairs of wooden eyes watching my every movement. I

could almost hear them rol ing back and forth in the bark.

I walked and walked for what seemed like forever until I

reached a clearing. A man sat on a log in the middle of it, a

fire burning brightly in front of him. His back was to me and

he was holding something in his arms, staring down at it

and occasional y saying something in a language I had

never heard before.

I paused halfway across and the man lifted his head. I

could see now that my suspicions were correct. It was Dex,

down to the faded grey hoodie. And he knew I was here.

“Perry,” he said. His low voice sounded as if it were

touched with metal ic reverb.

I came forward and walked around the log so I was

between him and the fire. He didn’t look up at me. He kept

his attention focused on whatever he was holding in his

arms. I couldn’t see it properly since it was swathed tightly

in white cloth but I knew it must have been a baby, most

likely the one who I’d heard crying earlier.

“I wish it had been ours,” Dex remarked with an eerie

lack of emotion. “Here, you take it.”

He held out the bundle and I took it into my arms warily. I

peeled back the corner of the cloth. There was nothing

inside but a pile of raw, oozing flesh that squirmed and

squiggled against me. Within seconds, putrid blood

saturated the bundle and began to spil down my arms in

sticky torrents.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Dex asked, and raised his head to

face me. His eyes were dead white and smoothly blank,

like they were plucked from a marble statue.

“What the dickens?”

My dad’s voice boomed out from the trees and my vision

was suddenly fil ed with artificial light. I winced at the

brightness then coaxed my eyes back open.

I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, in only my

boxer shorts and a ripped concert tee. In my hands was a

giant piece of steak, bloody and raw. Half of it had dripped

down my arms and legs, staining them a pinkish red, and a

transparent puddle pooled at my feet.

I turned around and looked at my father, who was

standing by the fridge, his hand on the light switch. His eyes

widened at the sight of me.

“Perry…what on earth are you doing?”

I looked back down at the steak. I had no idea what had

just happened. One minute I was in a forest, the next I was

fondling steak in my kitchen.

I was sleepwalking.

My dad opened a cupboard, took out a plate and got me

to drop the steak on it. It landed with a sickening splat.

“Were you trying to make something? It’s the middle of

the night,” he commented warily after he placed the plate on

the counter and handed me a wad of paper towels to wipe

myself with. “My goodness, were you eating that
raw
?”

He reached over and touched the side of my face. It was

wet and sticky al around my mouth. It was then that I

noticed the taste of blood and meat on my tongue. I guess I

had been.

A wave of revulsion swept up through me and I barely

made it over to the double sink before I vomited into it.

I heard my dad mutter something and he quickly

disappeared from the room. I didn’t care if I was making a

mess of the kitchen; I had to get this poison out of my

system.

He came back a few minutes later with my mother in tow.

I had nothing left to throw up by then.

“Oh, Perry,” my mother said once she saw me.

I waved her away with one hand while I wiped my chin

with the other. I turned on the taps to wash away the vomit,

careful not to look too closely at it or it would happen al

over again. Then I splashed the cold water on my face and

dried it off with a stained dishtowel.

I took in a deep breath as shudders swept through me. I

was weak and surprisingly stil hungry. I turned around and

faced my parents. They were silent and I could only imagine

what they were thinking. With the two of them so close to

each other, and a healthy distance away from me, it made

me feel even more alone. I knew my mother acted afraid of

me at times, but now it was both of them and I wasn’t sure it

was entirely unwarranted.

I was probably losing my mind.

~~~

“Uh, miss. This isn’t what I ordered.”

A man just uttered every barista’s worst nightmare.

I poked my head around the espresso machine and

looked at the culprit. It was pompous Larry again. Figures

that I’d bother to know his name and he stil cal ed me miss.

Maybe that just proved that he annoyed me more than I

annoyed him.

I sucked in a smal breath and gave him what I hoped

was an apologetic smile. It was my first day back at work

and everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong. I’d

spent the morning taking it easy and just sorting out the

merchandise in the backroom but as soon as Shay left for

the day, I was ushered out into the front of the store where

the chaos reigned. I was messing up orders, snapping at

people and just feeling like I was slogging through mud to

get the simplest things done.

Not to mention there were times where I’d be doing

something like grinding a bag of beans for someone and

then the next instance I’d be wiping tables and I had no

recol ection of how I went from one thing to the other. With

time slips now part of the question, Larry was just icing on

the cake.

“I’m so sorry, Larry,” I said, putting special emphasis on

his name. “I’l get you a new one right away.”

I quickly made him another drink, even though the lunch

hour rush was in ful swing and with Shay gone, it was just

Ash, Mikeala and me at work. I could feel Mikeala shooting

me a dirty look from the register as she scribbled another

order on the paper cup and slammed it down beside me.

She had taken a while to warm up to me. She’s always had

an obvious crush on Ash, though, and now I could see why I

annoyed her.

I tried to squelch the flustered feeling and made the

drink, properly this time, taking deep breaths through my

nose as I did it. When I got flustered I made even more

mistakes and then I panicked. I’d been through too much

recently to panic over coffee.

I handed Larry the right (and terribly convoluted) version,

and apologized profusely. He raised his chin and set out of

the store. That was usual y the sign that things were OK.

“Daydreaming again?” Mikeala asked under her breath

as she brushed past me to grab something.

Actual y, I hadn’t been. I’d just been asleep on my feet,

trying to clear my thoughts and get it together. I could stil

feel the sickness of last night and it only grew worse with

each waking hour I’d spent in the shop. You guessed it, that

bathroom smel was back again, and since it always

reminded me of bad meat to begin with it didn’t bode wel

with my midnight raw steak endeavor. Also, I was fairly

certain I’d only gotten two hours of sleep since I weaned

myself off the NyQuil, lest I start going to Walgreens for

glitter and false eyelashes.

“Hey, she’s back, that’s al that matters,” Ash yel ed over

the grinder as he prepared a bag of fresh java for

someone.

Mikeala didn’t look too pleased at that, which only

solidified my theory. Mikeala wasn’t a bad-looking chick at

al . She was tal and flat-chested but had a delicate

porcelain face - when she wasn’t giving me the stinkeye.

She was funny, too, and someone I hoped to win over one

day, whenever that was. The way I was acting, I started to

doubt having much of a future at Port-Town.

I gave Ash a grateful smile. I’d make it up to him one

day. I didn’t want to lead him on – my acquired hatred for

men didn’t extend to him – but he real y had been the

biggest supporter, along with Ada.

“Tal , extra hot, no whip, sugar-free caramel latte,”

Mikeala barked as she scribbled down another order and

plunked the cup in line. I quickly noted the person who had

been at the register, a man in a pointy blazer and hipster

glasses, and got started on the drink.

I moved over to the syrup dispenser but for the life of me

couldn’t locate the sugar-free caramel one, which was

weird since I had to use it at least three times in the last half

hour.

I leaned over and concentrated, careful y examining the

label of each one. We had vanil a, sugar-free vanil a, mint,

sugar-free mint, caramel, almond, sugar-free almond,

hazelnut and cinnamon. No sugar-free caramel.

“One second.” I raised my finger at the man and ducked

down to raid the cupboards by the sink. Ash was standing

beside me, wiping the excess coffee grinds off the bag.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“The sugar-free caramel. I was just using it, but now it’s

gone,” I said, straining as I reached to the back of the

cupboard. I pul ed out a bottle but it was vanil a like al the

rest of them were.

I looked up at Ash. “Did we run out?”

He looked over at the syrup dispensers by the machine.

He frowned. “Isn’t that it right there?”

I turned my head. Right beside the machine, in plain view

and separate from the others, was a bottle of syrup with a

sienna-shaded label.

I walked back to my station and picked it up. It
was

sugar-free caramel. It would have been in front of me the

whole time; how the hel did I not see it?

“Perry,” Mikeala growled softly as she plunked down two

more cups. The line in front of her seemed to be growing

and growling with impatience. “What is the holdup?”

I couldn’t answer her. I looked up at the hipster

businessman who was waiting for his drink while

distractedly flipping through a newspaper.

“Excuse me,” I asked him. He looked around and then

came forward.

“Yes?”

I pointed at the syrup. “Was this always here? I mean,

did you put this here? Or was it here al this time?”

His head lurched back on his neck and he eyed me

through his glasses. “I beg your pardon?”

“I just want to know if I’m going crazy or not,” I blurted out.

“Because this wasn’t here a second ago and yet now it is.

Explain that.”

I heard Mikeala inhale sharply.

“Are you accusing me of hiding the syrup?” the man

asked incredulously. And loudly. I think the entire shop