Unreal City (4 page)

“Oh, you used to have long hair?” she asked amiably, and I hesitated before I shook my head, wondering how best to stop this conversation before it began. “Then—”

“That’s my sister. We were twins.” Past tense. Why did I use past tense? Now a question even better than
What’s your major?
would come next. Joy stopped talking, her expression showing she was unsure how to voice her curiosity, so I decided to skip the awkwardness and cut to the chase.

“She died a few months ago. She was murdered,” I said, hoping we could leave it there.

Joy’s face darkened and she looked at me directly, trying to make eye contact. I refused to meet her gaze.

“Sarah…I’m so sorry. I—I had no idea, if—if there’s anything I can do, or…I’m not sure if you wanna talk to someone about it, or…”

Her words came from an authentic place of sympathy and caught me off-guard. I was so unaccustomed to anyone daring to breach the unspoken grief-code of complete avoidance of the topic that I was rendered vulnerable. And when I feel vulnerable, I almost always defer to anger.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” I snapped, and Joy recoiled. Guilt gripped me seconds after I’d spoken, and I cast my eyes to the corner of the room, gripping my pant leg as I waited for the discomfort of the moment to pass.

Joy’s head dropped a little. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to pry, or bring up bad memories…I just wanted to make sure that you were okay,” she apologized. Her kindness made me hate myself even more, and I felt my anger bubbling up again, like stomach acid rising in my throat.

“‘Okay?’ Why do people always ask that stupid question? Like I’ll just wake up one day and everything will be back to normal?” My voice rose with every word, and the angrier and more embarrassed I got, the more I felt myself wanting to attack her verbally. “I’m never going to be
okay
again. Never. How dare—” I bit my tongue hard to stop myself, tears stinging at the corners of my eye.

“I’m—I’m sorry, Joy, I—I’d better go. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.” I grabbed my laptop, shoved it into my bag, and fled from her dorm room and across the courtyard, past some people strumming on a ukulele. Their carefree happiness made my stomach churn, and I pushed past a massive, crimson, abstract sculpture.

Looking around for somewhere to go with my fury and shame still rising, I saw the trees at the edge of the meadow and bolted for them. I hated everything at that moment, but I urged myself to keep going. One foot. Then the other.

I tried to keep from breaking into an all-out run, my heavy messenger bag slamming rhythmically into my thigh as I descended the sloping meadow. The morning wind had died down; the grass was dry from the heat of the September afternoon and the ground hard and dusty. I batted at bees buzzing in my ears as I drew closer to the line of trees. The air here was sharp and clear, but it smelled heavily of pine, fertilizer, and dry grass.

I remember taking deep, heavy breaths of the layers of scents while crossing the brush of the meadow toward the trees. The closer I got to the edge of it, the more the sense of being drawn into the pines intensified. In there it was shady. It was cool. In there it was safe. The trees almost wanted me to wander in, come into the shadows, to the light-falls that shone in points of dappled clarity on the forest floors, to the disordered kingdom of humming insects, to the place where everything was simultaneously growing and dying at each other’s hand. In those trees I could hear peace calling. I could hear something beckoning, offering a way to pierce my anger and rip it out, leaving me neutralized but tranquil.

Tormented by my jumble of furious, desperate thoughts and yearnings, I made it into the row of pines and away from the eyes of the world. Though there was a view of the freeway from here, it was quiet at last. The sun’s rays didn’t beat down quite as intensely while I was hiding in those woods. I took a moment to catch my breath and let my gaze fall to my shoes, so caught up in lamenting how poorly I had treated Joy that I became oblivious to the danger nearby. I didn’t have an inkling that I was being watched until I glanced up to see the heart-stopping, unearthly face of a creature I then had no name for.

That was the first time I lay eyes on the nightmare that I would come to know so well.

I YELPED. I
couldn’t help it. That instant was like those moments in dreams when you realize everything around you is a façade, except I knew that it wouldn’t fade like a dream—what I was seeing was real.

At the end of the narrow dirt trail sat a black-furred animal a little larger than a fox. I thought at first glance that it was a rather large cat, but its face proved me wrong. Those eyes were too bright and fiery green in color…and too
aware
. They were intelligent, sentient, and curious. Its skull was misshapen too, with a toothy mouth that curved up at a terrifying angle in an unmistakable grin. Its ears twitched slightly as it regarded me, those little needle teeth glinting all around its dark lips. It struck me then why the creature’s face disturbed me so: it looked
human
almost—a hideous crossbreed of primal, animalistic rawness and human understanding.

In my horror, my foot slipped on the loose earth of the hill and I almost slid down the slope, causing my heart to pound even harder. My hand shot to my forehead as my vision refocused. That
thing
was really there. No matter how many times I blinked, it stayed there.

Terrified yet mesmerized, I stared at that ethereal abomination as it did the same to me—that mocking, dangerous grin still stuck to its face. Then without warning, with all the grace of a feline and more, it turned its bushy tail, skittered down the path, and was gone. I watched it go, my heart slamming against my ribcage.

What the fuck
was
that?

I wanted to leave, to run away from that unnatural, ungodly thing, but I couldn’t. I don’t think anyone could have. How could I continue on as if
that
hadn’t just happened?

It took me a good long while to take a single step down the path where it had disappeared. But after that gargantuan effort of courage had been taken, the steps that followed came with rising momentum. I remained terrified as I hurried around the narrow bend on the forest path after the creature, but I needed to know. I needed to at least see it once more, to ensure that it
had
in fact been real.

The dirt trail began to slope downward to a little clearing. In the gulch below sat a large cement box with a square hole cut into it. I was just in time to see a little tuft of black fur disappear down into that hole. I knew what this place was. I’d heard the other students talk about it: Porter Caves.

All too aware of my recklessness, I slid down the sandy slope and climbed with shaking legs onto the box. I could see the edge of a rickety metallic ladder dropping down into the dark, but even after just a few feet, I could see nothing but darkness so deep that anything below it seemed to have disappeared from the Earth altogether.

“He-hello? Are you—is anything down there?” I’d meant to say
anyone
but it came out wrong. I waited, listening to the drumbeat of blood smashing rhythmically in my ears. There was no reply.

The idea of climbing down that ladder on a cheerful day would’ve seemed daunting. I won’t pretend that it didn’t take me quite some time to pluck up the courage to peer deeper into the hole. I was stuck. It was the feeling of being so averted to an inevitable future, coupled with a sick, fascinated yearning in the pit of my stomach. As I sat there, getting queasier by the minute, I just knew that whatever was down there was the same creature that had been hiding in the trees this morning. I felt that same sense of a looming, unnamed threat. It was the thing that had thrown me the tennis ball—like it had been fishing for me.

As anticipated, my fear gave way to anger and I threw my leg over the edge and began the descent into the dark. Halfway down, I fished my phone out of my pocket and turned on the camera flash to shine a feeble light down into all that dark. It came as a shock when the ladder turned flat and ran across the ground, and I stumbled with a little yelp, half-expecting something to start snapping at my sneakers.

Shaking from head to toe, I at last hit the bare bottom of the cave. The chunk of light from the world above seemed too far above my head to keep up any illusion of safety. I turned around slowly, gasping in a lungful of the stuffy air. It smelled of dank earth and marijuana, increasing my nausea.

“I saw you come in here. Where are you?” I tried to shout, but it came out in a pathetic whisper. I raised my phone with my shaking, grimy hand. Webby black plants that looked like veins hung from the cave ceiling and bits of discarded garbage floated around in the shallow, filthy pools of cave water.

I turned in a complete circle, and my shoulders slumped.
It’s gone
.
How could it just be—

My phone light fell on a crevice to the side of the ladder, and I caught a glint of green. The cave went deeper. Balling up my fists and gritting my teeth, I approached the narrow passage that led deeper into the cold, moist earth on uncertain legs.

“Come on out, you little shit. I know you’re there,” I snarled with a confidence I didn’t feel.

The way down was tight and slimy, caking my hands and jeans in grimy clay. As I shone my tiny circle of light ahead, it caught the edge of a black, bat-like ear. There it was.

I screamed, feeling my panic spike. I couldn’t get out; I was stuck down here with it and
I couldn’t get out
. I scrambled up the rocky slope and slammed my knee into the stone. It hurt so bad that I wanted to double over, but I needed to get away—it was just too damn close. When I turned back, sprawled on my back and trembling like a leaf in the wind, it was still there. It put an experimental, black paw forward and cocked its head at me, as if my terror confused it.

“Wh-what
are
you?” I demanded, my teeth chattering.

It answered me with unwavering composure, its voice echoing inside my skull. “Hungry.”

An awful thrill shot through me, as if I’d been injected with poison that swept through my veins with every frantic pump of my heart. I braced my back against the cave wall, getting as far away from the creature as I could. I was too scared to run, too scared it would chase me.

“Are you gonna eat
me
?” I breathed.

“Not unless you ask me to,” it replied conversationally, yet with a hint of sadistic playfulness. There was no doubt in my mind he meant it. The creature—
demon
was the word I was thinking at that moment—laughed at me. His mouth never moved when he spoke or chuckled, but I heard it all the same, as if the intention was beaming into me like a laser.

It was as if in that moment a window of fogged glass had shattered and revealed an entire world beyond everything I had thought to be true. And it wasn’t beautiful. It was petrifying. I wasn’t ready; no one could be. It’s easy to sit there and say you’d be ready to abandon the laws that dictate your world in lieu of something more exciting or fantastic, but when you’re faced with it, I know from experience you’d give anything to go back to that safety. That ignorant time before the shift became a comfort that I longed for—that I
burned
for, like a parched throat in the desert.

I stared as he blinked those eyes that looked so much like gemstones backlit by a flame. “Forgive my glibness. I know I shouldn’t tease,” he apologized.

My shivering hand drew the light away from him for just a moment, and when I lifted it he was gone. The bottom of my stomach dropped out as I searched frantically around for him in the crevices, until a tickle of whiskers on the back of my neck signaled that he was right behind me. I cried out, the sound bouncing off the walls as I shuffled backward, deeper into the cave. His smile broadened, amused by my reaction.

“I am a familiar spirit, and I’m here to serve you, Sarah Wilkes.”

My mouth went dry. “How do you know my name?”

“I’ve known you for a while, now. I’ve been around almost always, and I’ve heard your name from many mouths,” the familiar said, padding silently closer to me with those terrible eyes glinting from the light of my phone. His eyes hurt to look at, like staring at the sun for too long.