Ravens (3 page)

“Kendra?”

She jumped at the sound of her father’s
voice.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she muttered. She looked away
and rubbed her arm as if she’d been guilty of doing something wrong by entering
the vacant bedroom.

“What are you doing in Julie’s room?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Kendra Pierce,” he growled. “What have
you done to your hair? And great devil, are those tattoos on your arm?”

“Obviously.”

“Do not get smart with me, young lady.
We’ve raised you better than this. Did that Randal boy talk you into this? I
knew he reeked of bad news the day I saw his tattoos.”

“No, it had nothing to do with him. And
so what if I got tattoos?”

“You will not desecrate your body.” His
eyes flashed as he backed away, disgusted.

“Geez, Dad. It’s not like I’m out doing
drugs, or drinking alcohol, or messing around with guys.”

He dropped his jaw, surprise written on
his face. She’d never spoken to him this way, never back talked.

After a moment, he relaxed, and the
tension fled from his expression. Dad calmly removed his glasses and cleaned
them with his shirt. He replaced the specs and spoke with an even, unaffected
tone, “You don’t have to go through this every year.”

“What do you know?” she barked and
marched past him.

He grabbed her arm, and pulled her back.
“You think I don’t know anything? Imagine working all day to provide for your
family and searching all night to find your lost daughter. Imagine losing one
child and watching the other draw back into obscurity. It’s time to grow up,
Kendra. You’re not the only person in this world. Whatever happened that day
spared your life, so don’t throw it away because at least you still have a life
to live. You think I don’t feel your pain every year? You think I don’t worry
every time I think about you?”

Kendra snatched her arm away. “Then
don’t bother worrying about me.” She stomped off and passed her mother at the
bottom of the steps.

“What’s going on, Kendra?” she asked.

“Same old thing,” she mumbled and raced
off to her refuge in the barn.

They didn’t cause any of this, and
Kendra knew that. She didn’t feel good about how she reacted. Her parents tried
hard, but this time of year made the kindness in all of them mutate into
short-tempered anger. When would it end? The small arguments and sudden
outbursts didn’t just revolve around the disappearances. They fought over
everything: her grades, her apathy toward making friends, skipping her high
school graduation ceremony, her lack of plans for the summer, and her lack of
interest in finding a job or going to college.

Kendra paced back and forth across the
barn before trying to get some rest. The effort proved useless. Her thoughts
abandoned her parents and Julie, and meandered back to Liam. Though Randal
eased her pain, and Liam wasn’t real, Liam made her somewhat happy.

She sat on the top step in her loft in
the late evening. Sleepless in Texas, as usual. She touched the newly imprinted
tattoos as she reminisced about last night. The fatigue and anguish of the
anniversary died like a faint whisper as she recalled Liam’s glorious inked
body. Though she hoped he would one day vacate her head, he would forever be a
part of her flesh now.

Kendra stared down at the steps, lost in
thought. The otherwise calm and peaceful day vanished with little residual
trauma. Ten years ago, the scene in the barn had been far different, and it
filled her thoughts.

The sound of running footsteps echoed in
the dusty and malodorous barn.

“Ah! Stop it, Liam!” an eight-year-old
Kendra laughed as she ran from the eight-year-old boy. Her long locks flowed
behind her, lashing Liam’s face. He knew better than to grab her by the hair,
despite the temptation to stop her dead in her tracks.

“I gotcha!” Julie cried as she jumped
onto Liam’s back. She had stalked him from her perch on the fifth step leading
to the loft.

“Ah!” the boy blurted, taken by surprise
by the elusive enemy.

“I saved the day!” Julie shouted
playfully. She punched Liam as he rolled over in an attempt to get hold of the
overly enthusiastic child. 

“Get him!” Kendra jumped on Liam, joining
her sister in what they described as child terrorism.

Liam might have been older, but he
didn’t stand a chance against the little fists of fury. The girls covered him
as he fought back, as much as he could’ve fought back without hurting them.

“Cry Uncle! Cry Uncle!” the girls yelled,
not letting up with their punches, kicks, and pushes.

“Uncle!” Liam cried. Boy, did these
girls play rough.

Kendra backed off. Scrambling to her
feet, she ran to the steps, giggling all the while. She froze as a chill
crawled up her spine, followed by a wave of heat. The ground trembled beneath
her. Julie and Liam yelled in panic behind her. Kendra couldn’t move. She
remained in her position staring up at the loft.

It all occurred in the matter of a few
blinks. The hazy white and pink light blasted forth like an explosion. Waves of
odd warmth with short intervals of vibrations shocked her from behind. She fell
on the steps, but caught herself with her hands before her face made impact.
She held on tight as the portal sent out a jolt of vibration, rocking
everything from its hinges in the barn. The ground trembled as the energy
radiated outward reaching the house where the adults sat on the patio.

A noise that sounded like snapping
fingers accompanied the light. The oddly normal and non-alarming sound didn’t
compare to the portal’s other effects. The trembling, light, and sound came and
went. The portal sucked in two of the three children.

With shaking hands, Kendra stood and
glanced behind her. She faced the silent, empty, and disturbingly eerie barn.

“Ju-Julie?” she stuttered, keeping her
hands close to her torso where they curled into small fists.

No one responded, only the silence of a
dead room. She took a step down.

“Li-Liam?”

She frantically searched the room. She
took another step in the quiet, desolate barn.

“Not funny, guys.” The intended
declaration ended up a mere murmur.

The lights flickered, and Kendra jumped.
Her little heart pounded beneath its caged walls. She calmed down and trudged
to the bottom of the steps where only moments before her sister and friend
wrestled. Only moments before, she felt them, touched them, and left them.

Her timid feet touched the floorboards.
An odd, new creak occurred. Kendra gulped. The butterflies crashed against her
insides in wild torment. Her skin crawled as if parasites burrowed beneath her
flesh. She shook. Sweat formed on her brow with every step. It trickled,
tickling warm skin. She swallowed, placing one foot then the other onto the
floorboards near the haystack where Liam planned to toss Julie.

“N-not funny, you guys. C-come out now,”
she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

Again, silence met her. Kendra stumbled
around, scraped her shoes against the floor in case Liam and Julie knew of a
secret compartment that she didn’t know of.

She bent over the large haystack and
pulled aside straws. Nothing. She pulled more and more, growing from timid to
frantic in a matter of seconds. What happened to them?

The barn door swung open and slammed
against the wall with sudden force. Kendra jumped at the sound and spun around
to face the group of adults.

“Kendra!”

“Daddy!” She ran to the man.

“What happened? Where’s Liam and Julie?”
he asked, bending to one knee so he could be at her level.

Kendra shook her head as she awkwardly
shrugged. Huge tears slid down her cheeks and dampened her shirt.

“Where are they?” Liam’s mother, Mrs.
Wallace, demanded.

“They were right behind me,” she sobbed,
“and after the light I couldn’t find them.”

“I’m sure they’re here somewhere,
probably got scared.” Her father reassured her. He stood and ushered her toward
her mother. “Take her to the house. We’ll find the kids.”

“Come on, baby.” Mrs. Pierce took her
daughter’s shaking hand and led her out.

News spread and many locals helped in
the search. No one found the kids in the barn, hiding in the haystack, trapped
beneath intact floorboards, or lost on the property or in the nearby woods. The
police and parents searched for months, but they couldn’t find the kids or a
clue to what transpired.

Everyone probed poor, hesitant,
quivering Kendra for answers. She only had one story, which she repeated for
different authorities. After the second time, she believed she gave the wrong
answers because they kept asking. Because of this, she formed a stutter and
kept it for several years until she enrolled in martial arts. Liam prompted
this new and impulsive interest while frequenting her mind. He grew with her.
He appeared healthy and, other than his concern for her, held a spark of
happiness with a streak of wildness. At first, he materialized as a blurry but
youthful boy, and Kendra knew the hallucination couldn’t be anything more than
a wretched hope that her heart clung to.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said in the first
conversational vision. Previous dreams were simply recollections of faded
memories, but then he appeared as what he should have been: a developing
teenager. Over time, just as it would’ve been in real life, she watched him
mature. He grew tall, masculine, and some part of his otherworldly life made
him fit, atheletic.

He wanted her to be strong and
assertive, not allowing the incident to hinder her progress in any way. Though
she knew he died and no longer felt fear, or any emotion for that matter, he
seemed to insinuate a different existence.

Kendra listened, as she always did, to
the methodical voice in her head. She spent the majority of her time training
in the barn against her mother’s protest. She relocated the lawnmower and yard
tools to the storage shed. The barn became a barren, dry, and dusty memory of
the past. Her parents refused to enter, but Kendra vowed to defeat her fears.

At first, her parents didn’t mind her
indulgence in martial arts and spending time in the barn, but they didn’t want
her sleeping there, alone and away from their protection. They hoped renovating
the barn would ease their memories, but they could no longer enter. Kendra, on
the other hand, fought her emotions and faced her pain every day by entering
the barn.

Kendra lost her stutter when she gained
confidence at the dojo with other fighters. In fact, she developed into quite
an aggressive and solitary girl. She loved the fighters because they, with the
exception of Randal, didn’t know about her past.

Since Liam’s parents moved away two
years after the incident, no one spoke of him. Life would never revert to normal,
so why fight being abnormal? For Kendra, this rough, hard exterior seemed
better than the depressed, timid child she had once been. The voice in her head
wanted her to become strong and aggressive, to prepare her for what had to
come. She didn’t truly understand, but considered it a poetic embrace of the
unknown, but imminent, future.

She sat at the top of the stairs in the
loft and stared down at the barn where she’d last seen her sister and friend,
and reminisced despite her not wanting to.

Kendra dropped her head before the tears
came. Standing, she retreated to her bed. She opened the blinds with a finger
and a thumb, and peered into the gloomy woods. Surely, nothing could be lurking
out there waiting for her. There couldn’t be anything, or anyone, watching,
could there?

“No,” she said, shaking her head and
falling into bed. What a ridiculous notion. Besides, who would want to mess
with her now? She wasn’t that little girl anymore.

Kendra’s thoughts wandered back to Liam.
He, like clockwork, arrived just before the anniversary, appearing as clear as
reality, as if he stood in the same room. His voice continued to push Randal
away. There should never be more than one voice in any one person’s head, and
Kendra had to learn how to control the voice. This mind belonged to her, not
him. She found a reliable friend in Randal, and Liam shouldn’t stand in the
way.

Sure, Randal might’ve been a few years
older than her, but that meant experience and maturity. He pursued Kendra with
careful diligence. Contrary to his powerful body, he had a sincere personality,
the things every girl wanted. The incessant voice in her head and the
smoldering white and black eyes from her visions pushed her away from him,
though. 

Kendra drifted off into slumber. She
convulsed in her sleep, in the heated nightmares that littered the waning
night. She subconsciously wiped the sweat beads from her brow, trying at the
same time not to rub or disturb her new tattoos.

“Kendra!” the boy’s small voice
resonated in the barn. He ran around at the bottom of the steps like a hazy
ghost of the past chasing after young Julie. Her laughter, high-pitched with a
faint echo, haunted the barn.