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“Leave me alone,” I said, my voice weak, my whole body sick and unsteady.
“Alone?” Oriax mocked. “Oh, little mini-Messenger, you have so much still to learn. You and I are going to be BFFs. Sooner or later, you’ll break, little girl. And I will laugh as you are carted away to the Shoals. Shall I tell you about the Shoals? Would you like me to show you around that happy, happy place? You’ll end there eventually.”
She laughed. It was a sound full of glee and madness, rage and lust. But it faded mercifully as the scene changed again. The school was gone, as was Oriax. I felt a chill breeze on my face. There was salt in the air. I knew even before I looked that I was on that beach, the one from my dream. The one from my memory.
We were alone, Messenger and me. The sand crescent was abandoned, and the sun was dropping toward the horizon, touching the thin clouds with fire.
Messenger did not rush me. He asked nothing and said nothing, content to wait. He knew what I would have to say, the words that would be wrung from me as though by some terrible torture. And finally, I said them.
“I killed Samantha Early.”
He did not speak, but he had heard, and he then released the last of his hold on my memory.
My name is Mara Todd. My birthday is July 26. I was born in the maternity ward of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. My father had been stationed there at the time.
We had moved around, like many military families. I had lived in Hawaii, Virginia, the panhandle of Florida, and when my father was deployed overseas for the last time, we moved to San Anselmo, California, because it was near where my paternal grandparents lived. My mom and dad thought it would be good for me to be close to family for a change.
Middle school had been hard for me, but when we moved to San Anselmo, I found a place for myself at Drake. It was a humane school. San Anselmo was a good place to live. Steep, wooded hills in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais—Mount Tam, to everyone who knew it. We were just north of San Francisco and south of wine country.
I had liked it immediately, and loved our house above the creek, hidden away in the trees. We’d been happy there, me, my little brother, my mom, and when he could get away on leave, my dad.
Then he had died. And that was when I began to feel that I had stories to tell. That was when I started to feel the urge to write. My teachers praised me. It was what I had that made me special, a talent.
And then, Samantha Early had leaped past me. Suddenly Spazmantha was the real thing, a soon-to-be published author, and I was . . . a kid with promise.
“I was jealous,” I said.
“Yes,” Messenger said.
“I knew. Did you see that when you looked into my soul? That I knew Samantha was troubled? I had seen her washing her hands, I’d observed her doing counting rituals. I knew she had a problem. I knew what it was called. I knew how serious it was.”
For once I was grateful for his silence.
“I knew and I used it. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was mad at my mom for . . . I guess, for going on with her life. I was mad at the world for taking my dad. I couldn’t stand that . . . that I should lose him, and then lose the one thing I had come to care about. I did just what you said. I knew. I knew what I was doing.”
I listened to the waves. I breathed deeply of salt air.
“There’s one thing missing from my memories,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I need to see it.”
The beach faded as the mist flowed from the water, from the sky, from the sand beneath my feet.
I was alone. I had been alone. Back when the mist had first come for me.
“What the . . . Is this fog? What is—” I had stopped talking then when I glimpsed a figure coming toward me from that sickly yellow mist. I had squinted to see clearly, to discern first the shape and then the detail of that gaunt, pale face framed by black hair.
I had noted the coat, the shirt, the boots, the buttons of death’s heads. The rings on his hands, one a symbol of life, the other a representation of agony.
I had looked into the blue eyes, searching for an explanation. And he had said to me, “I am the Messenger of Fear. I offer you a game.”
He had explained my very limited options to me. I could choose to play the game, and if I won, I would go free. And if I lost, I would be punished for my deeds. I would be scourged for the death of Samantha Early. I would endure my worst fear.
I had chosen to play the game. It had been grueling, all but impossible. I had been made to cross a desert wasteland and tasked to collect seven objects that would be visible, but just barely.
Seven objects, scattered on sun-blasted rocks and barely peeking out from rattlesnake holes.
