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Chapter Four: Through the Glass - Part Two
Calla
Gemini: Be open to new experiences, but beware; not every open door is an opportunity.
Calla opened her eyes.
Whoa.
She blinked. She was at the party she'd seen through the glass. In Sydney. One of those off-campus house bashes that was still close enough to drunkenly stumble to and from. A walk of, if not shame, certainly ill-advised life choices that she — and many of her classmates — had made many times.
It worked!
Calla made a note to give Rowan and his woo-woo a bit more credit when she got back.
If she got back.
She was back in the real world again. Would she even go back to The Elysium? Could she even get back, if she wanted to?
Swept by an unexpected sense of disappointment, she was surprised to hear someone let out a loud, incoherent whoop. Strange, she could feel the sound rip through her throat, scraping her chords hoarse, but she hadn’t made that sound. Had she?
Her stomach churned as the world around her tilted, spun. She was twirling down the campus sidewalk toward her dorm like the world's worst ballerina. But she wasn’t the one doing it. She could feel the sensation of movement, but it was as if she wasn’t really moving. Like a puppet on strings or a remote-controlled toy, she felt like she was being pulled and led into each gesture and step.
The faint and fuzzy echo of memory pulled at her disoriented, disembodied — or detachedly re-embodied, maybe — mind, begging her body to do something. To stop. To right itself.
To run.
Fighting the urge to be sick, she tried to remember why. What was this feeling? Like deja vu screaming too loud in her head to hear its warning clearly.
“Oi, Calla,” a low, laughing voice purred as arms wrapped around her, jostling her as they tried to pull her away from the crosswalk, “my dorm’s closer; come back with me, yeah?”
Benji.
Her botany lab partner. For a semester, they’d worked well together. A well-oiled machine. A perfect pair. And, when they’d aced the final practical exam, it’d made sense to celebrate. To come to this party together. Drink to their combined success. To their inevitably bright futures.
“Fuck off.” She heard her own voice chuckle over the sound of busy traffic as she playfully shoved at his pushy hands. Calla felt dread build as her sober yet still disoriented mind pieced together the broken bits of her past.
“C’mon,” he cajoled, still smiling, still pulling at her arms, her waist, tugging her so close she could taste his cloying cologne on the scant air between them, “we’re good together. Let me show you just how good we could be.” His hot, beer-soaked breath scorched her neck, making her recoil.
Her body froze, the weight of the situation shifting as his hands slipped beneath her shirt, his fingers digging into the now revealed skin just about her jeans. A nervous giggle bubbled up her raw throat, like a choked scream. “Stop joking.”
“I’m not laughing.” His voice sounded like a warning.
She shook her head, nothing making sense anymore. “We’re friends.” She’d thought they were. Now she felt like a fool.
“I never wanted to be your friend, Calla.” His fingers sunk in deeper, holding her like he had no intention of letting her go. “You had to know. You had to know what I wanted. What I want.”
She shook her head, the noise of rushing cars drowned out by the thoughts racing through her mind. “No.” She hadn’t. Should she have? Benji had seemed different. So many of the other guys her age reminded her too much of her feckless, absent, drunk of a sperm-donor. Focused more petty, pointless thrills. Benji was like her, was curious and hardworking, relentless with a goal. How many late-night cram sessions had they had, where they'd sacrificed sleep for test scores? How many times had they worked side-by-side in the lab, grinding out botany experiments like they'd been farming xp? They were good together. Why couldn’t they stay like that?
She winced as a car laid on its horn, the sound as blaring as a blow to her gut. How was this happening? Why did everything good — every fleeting moment of beauty, each ephemeral glimpse of joy — change? From a father she’d never known to a mother who’d checked out before she was born. From every crashed-in, couch-surfed house they'd ever lived in to all the dilapidated apartments that they’d always had to leave before it ever felt like a home. From every well-meaning teacher or neighbor who knew something was wrong but did what they could, which was never enough, to every friend who turned away or left when things — when Calla — became too much. Wasn’t she allowed one thing — one thing — that simply stayed?! “No.”
Calla wished she could swallow the sound. Take back the tiny, two-lettered, barely whispered word. At the time, she couldn’t have stopped herself. It’d felt necessary to say. As if that small, sharp, pebbled word could somehow turn back the tide of the conversation. Change its treacherous trajectory back to something more familiar. Put them back on safer ground.
Looking into Benji’s eyes, it was as if time slowed, giving life time to rub her nose in her mistake. Her breath stuttered as the smiling, charming lines of his face hardened into something harsh. As the look in his eyes changed from a socially lubricated, yearning flame to a vengeful, alcohol-doused fire needing to raze. His hands tensed, his fingers biting into her flesh, turning the possessive clutch into a crushing clench.
Her pulse hitched as she became acutely aware of the steady stream of Friday night traffic, a mad mix of happy-hour drinkers heading home and the pre-gamed, post-work pub crawlers eager to take their place at the bars and clubs. As the two groups crossed right at her back, at speeds she swore she could feel in her soul, Calla begged her body to fight. To run. To escape. But her body froze, stuck as her whole world shifted around her, changing the familiar street into an unforeseen trap and her friend into someone she didn’t even recognize. “Let me go.” Her voice sounded so small, all but lost beneath the city din and in the face of his suddenly overwhelming fury. A pitiful plea shaped into the flimsiest shield. “Please.”
“Fine.” Like a slap to the face, she felt him shut down, close himself off. “Be like that.” In a blink, his eyes went cold, dead. As if, in that moment, he’d wiped months of them working together, growing closer, from his memory, leaving nothing between them. At all.
Which hadn’t been what she wanted. She’d wanted her friend back. She still did. Her hand reached out to him. To comfort him. To reassure. To reconnect.
Only to have him do exactly as she asked.
He let her go.
With that hard, clumsy shove, Calla’s unsteady body tripped and flailed, before falling into the blinding burst of headlights and the crushing embrace of the oncoming cars.
* * *
Rowan
Rowan screamed.
He thrashed.
He kicked and hit and scratched and bit.
But, without a body himself — just some incorporeal spirit stuck inside another’s body — none of it did a bit of good.
How had this happened?
They’d done it all by the book.
They’d followed every instruction, checking them against the dictionary, to be sure that they got the exact right nuances and connotations of the words.
They’d done everything right. What had gone wrong? How bad could it be? Calla had asked him. He should have known better. He was Widdershins; of course, it could go badly.
But to have gone this sour.
It was an impossible nightmare. Rowan watched his Aunt Gilly run, blood trickling down the back of her neck from the killer’s first strike. The panic in her eyes dulled the brilliant Drury green. Tears streaked her cheeks as she ran, certainly blurring her vision as she raced through the dark night.
Rowan tried to clutch the man’s legs, tried to force him to stop but, while the window washing spell had allowed him access to the man’s body, he had no control over it. He was nothing but a silently screaming specter forced to watch his aunt tear through her garden while her clothes, her hair, and her skin caught on the branches and thorns. A terrified shriek rang though the night air as she tripped on a large fallen branch hidden beneath the damp, mulching leaves. Rowan felt his breath leave him when he saw his aunt fall.
He could feel the corners of the killer’s lips curl as amusement and a coursing sense of righteousness surged through him. The killer slowed, seeing his prey was hurt and down.
He didn’t have to rush.
He’d already won.
Now, he just wanted to savor this. The feeling of divine duty giving him a bigger rush and sense of power than anything he — or Rowan — had ever felt. Rowan felt the killer bend at the knees, reaching down to grab the wooden limb his aunt had tripped over. He could feel the smooth surface of it as he pulled it out of the rubble. He felt the man’s grin widen when he looked at the long, slim piece of wood and the long sweep of steel at its end. The shovel, still dirty with debris from the compost heap, looked heavy with fatalistic purpose to the man.
To Rowan, who was shouting — unheard by anyone but himself — and watching from within the in-between space of the smirking man’s eyes, it looked like an omen. And, though he tried, tried wrapping his will around the man’s — the murderer’s — arm, tried to pull it back, tried to wrench it completely from the killer’s form, he could do nothing. He was beyond helpless as the body he was trapped in moved with deliberate and deadly accuracy, bringing his weapon down upon his aunt, the sound of her screams ringing through the night.
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