The Elementals Page 4

  I took the stairwell. Outside it was getting dark already and the cold bit. My head was pounding. It occurred to me that the combination of so many words, and too much caffeine, and alcohol, could do strange things to a person, especially a young, impressionable one with a sick mother. I thought about the drink I’d had at the party the night before—ever since then I’d felt weird, jittery, too awake, and I’d wanted more, the thick darkness of it, the strange, subtle fragrance, the indescribable taste. Maybe that had affected me, too. Add in the way college isolated you, left you feeling as if the rest of the world, including your past and your family, was just a dream compared to what you read in your books and on the faces of the other students, and anything could happen.

  It had. Way before freshman year had begun. And it continued to happen—anything—because as I turned the corner there was the guy from the Halloween party. He was standing with his hands in his coat pockets, his back bent under the weight of his pack. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was slightly pursed with the same kind of worried concentration as he spoke to a blonde woman in a long red velvet coat seated at a small table with tarot cards spread out before her.

  I wanted to call out to him but it was impossible to speak. A cold wind swirled up, trying to get inside my coat like a ghost, reminding me why I was here at all.

  I turned my head to the side, imagining Jeni standing there wearing a knit Hello Kitty cap, smiling at me so the dimples showed. He’s cute, right? When I turned again the man had disappeared into the crowd.

  The woman at the table was watching me with pale green eyes and I found myself going over to her, instead of after him as I really wanted. Her hair was cropped short, dyed platinum with a few streaks of red and orange like flames, and her delicate nose was slightly rounded at the tip, with visible, sensitive-looking nostrils. When she spoke it was with a strange accent that sounded vaguely familiar, and a slightly petulant pout of her lips. “Tarot reading?”

  I nodded, thinking of the dark-haired man’s hands on the same deck, and sat across from her. “How much?”

  “Twenty.”

  I gave her a crumpled bill from my pocket. She looked into my face and held out the cards.

  I shuffled and picked three and she laid them out in front of her, flipped them over, examined them. I recognized the images; my mom had bought me this deck from a New Age bookstore and Jeni and I spent hours with the disconcertingly bright pictures of often brutal scenarios. The Nine of Swords, in which a woman sits up in bed covering her face, the weapons hanging ominously on the wall behind her. The black-haired Magician in his rose arbor. The Six of Cups—two village children with gold cups full of white flowers. I couldn’t remember what any of them meant.

  “You come from sorrow,” the woman said. “You have lost someone dear to you. And you fear you will lose more. But there’s beauty in your future.” She looked up at me, her skin so smooth and golden it almost glittered. “Great joy and celebration in this city built on sacred burial ground. A child.”

  Why did her voice sound familiar?

  “What can you tell me about the loss?” I asked. Every time I walked by a neon sign reading PSYCHIC I was tempted to ask about Jeni but I was afraid it would only terrify me and confuse me more. Now, sitting so close to this woman, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Someone you love. Someone who loves you.”

  “Where,” I asked, “is she?”

  The woman bit her lip. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She took the twenty out of her pocket and handed it back to me but I shook my head. Taking it would have been an admission of some kind of defeat.

  At that moment something fluttered in my peripheral vision and I turned to see the homeless woman wearing the wings. The smaller person was holding the train of her dress.

  “You think you’re fine now,” the winged woman said. “But just wait. It gets harder. Then you’ll be just like us.”

  Suddenly I longed for walls around me, even the confines of a room shared with Lauren. I got up to leave. “Thanks.”

  The tarot woman smiled. “Blessings,” she said.

  6. When it hurts the most

  When I spoke to my parents on the phone they always had the same detached, calm tone, as if they were talking about a TV show or baseball game rather than an illness that harvested and killed a large percentage of the population. I didn’t ask many questions, either. I really didn’t want to know. Mostly we talked about my classes and how many more days there were until I came home for Thanksgiving vacation. The weather, dorm food, if I needed more warm clothes. So they wouldn’t worry, I told them that I had a friend. The name that came to my mind was from a Tori Amos song. “Bean is in my English class. She’s really nice. She’s from Marin County. Her parents have this beautiful house there.” I could tell this made them happy. I didn’t mention how much I was drinking, of course, or the flyers I tried to hand out, or that I roamed the streets alone at night. They didn’t ask me much, either. This was unlike them; they always used to want to know every detail.

  * * *

  I took BART by myself, but it seemed safe—so clean and well-lit and there were other girls traveling alone. It struck me, seeing them, how I would never have done this before. If Jeni had been too trusting, I had always been cautious. Now I was reckless. Intrepid. But I put my hair in a ponytail tucked into my coat and wore my low-heeled black cowboy boots in case I might need to run.

  When I got to the Tenderloin I was even happier with my decision to dress down—not that I had much to dress up in. Girls in short coats and high heels stood shivering on the corners and cars cruised slowly past. Even the neon had a lurid glow.

  The theater was in a historic building where every famous band had performed. The marquee read HALLOWEEN HOTEL. Inside, the place was decorated in rose and gold with a huge chandelier that looked as if it were made of shattered stars. People filled the lobby and I felt smothered by the warmth of the bodies around me and the music vibrating through the speakers.

  I wandered around by myself for a while—in and out of the restroom, through the lobby as if I were looking for someone; I was always looking for someone.

  But the one I found was not her. I looked across to the bar and saw the man from the party.

  He was alone, too, it seemed, one elbow propped on the bar as he downed his drink. He adjusted his glasses with his middle finger and stared myopically across the room in my direction.

  Mine, I thought reflexively, as if I had thought it many times before. Mine. I wanted him to be.

  What were the chances that I would find him here? What did it mean?

  I went over to the bar as near to him as I could get and ordered a 7UP. When I turned my head he was watching me. I felt some kind of pang in my chest, a cold, hard sensation as if I’d been struck from the inside. If only I’d been able to order a real drink, I thought, anything to take the edge off so I could speak to him.

  You’re going to anyway.

  He turned sideways and took a long swig of his beer. I was afraid to look but it seemed as if his head was inclined in my direction, that he was going to come over to me …

  But then he was sliding some dollar bills down for the bartender. I held my breath as he moved away and I lowered my head and stared at the shiny wood surface of the bar. My cheeks were burning with embarrassment for having imagined his interest. But I needed to speak to him, no matter what.

  Then, a hand on my arm.

  “Greetings.”

  His fingers were long and tapered, but not especially thin, covered with those silver rings. I couldn’t look at his face.

  “Jonathan Graves. John.”

  “Ariel.”

  “Like in The Tempest.” He paused. “You were at our house the other night,” he said.

  “Yeah. Cool party.” Trying to act casual. Twirling the thin red straw in my 7UP, poking at the poisonously red maraschino that floated there. Were those things even real fruit?

  “You had a picture of some
one.”

  He’d called my bluff. Nothing was casual. Everything mattered too much. “My friend, Jeni. She disappeared from the dorms on a school trip last year. They don’t know what happened.” My hand felt for the flyer in my pocket. I hadn’t had the heart to pass out any more lately.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I heard about that. It’s terrible.”

  I lowered my eyes but the silence was so palpable I had to look at him. His irises behind his glasses were soft. They had gold rings around the green and I felt mildly dizzy, as if I’d been staring too long into a kaleidoscope.

  His eyes were focused on my face so fully that it made the nape of my neck tingle. My stomach ached; I wished I’d put something besides coffee in it before I’d left. Ever since Halloween my appetite had been waning.

  “You go to Cal, then?”

  “Yes. I just started. Do you?”

  “Do. Still. It never seems to end.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Sometimes I just want to forget about my dissertation and get as far away as possible.”

  “What’s it on?”

  “My thesis? The soul in literature. How it manifests and if there is some secret hidden in words that enables the soul to continue on.”

  “Sounds like something you shouldn’t run away from,” I said.

  He loosened the green scarf that was looped around his neck, intensifying the color of his eyes. His lips had a brooding quality as he fiddled with the rings on his fingers.

  The lights dimmed, signaling that the show was starting.

  “Are you by yourself?” he asked. When I nodded he motioned for me to follow him.

  The crowd closed in and he took my hand. His palm was cool, with light calluses. I tried not to cling too tightly or not tightly enough. Someone’s pulse nestled between us. It must have been mine; my heart was pounding along with the music. I realized how long it had been since someone had touched me.

  As we wound our way through the pack of bodies I thought I saw Coraline Grimm standing by herself. Yes, it was her. She gave me an odd look, tilting her head, staring from me to my companion and back again—so odd that it kept me from saying hello—and then we’d moved past her.

  We took our places in front of the stage and he removed his wool coat—a fitted, turn-of-the century style. The crowd jostled me against him. I shrugged off my jacket and wiped sweat from my temples with my thermal sleeve. I wished I had worn something pretty and light. We waited like this, not looking at each other, for the band to start. Halloween Hotel was a post-post-punk band that sounded a little like early Joy Division, with a girl singer who looked like PJ Harvey. There were hundreds of Web sites devoted to decoding their weirdly beautiful lyrics. They were something else Jeni and I had shared.

  At one point my companion leaned over to me so that I could smell the light, warm fragrance of his hair and he spoke into my ear.

  “Some music,” he said, “knows how to open your heart. You know? But that’s when it hurts the most.”

  The stage was draped in red velvet. As the curtain lifted I felt my knees grow weak. A small woman stood in the center of the stage. She was barefoot and wore a long white dress like a nightgown and she seemed to be looking right at me.

  “The dead children are risen. The bones are singing. You can’t forget us. You can’t forget us. We are the messengers.”

  In the crowded darkness someone stood behind me, placing his hands on my hips, his fingers grazing my skin between my shirt and jeans, his fingertips pressing ever so lightly into my flesh.

  * * *

  John Graves gave me a ride home after the concert, in a finned white 1960s Cadillac, asked me for my cell phone number and drove away into the fog, leaving me standing on the sidewalk wondering who I had just spent the evening with.

  7. The gloaming

  I slept almost the whole day. That night my parents called. It was Sunday, a twilight worthy of the word gloaming, and the town had a melancholy feeling, even in the way the light fell morosely across the streets below my window. I sat on my bed and listened to my mom and dad talk about the weather and a movie they’d seen and I answered their questions about school but when they asked what I had done that weekend I felt tears coming. I bit my lip, fanning my face and putting my other hand over the receiver so they wouldn’t hear.

  “Sweetie?” my mom said. I had been able to keep myself from crying in front of them until then. I hadn’t wanted to worry her but it was too much.

  My dad got on the other line and they kept asking me what was wrong and what they could do. I couldn’t talk about the cancer. It was as if we’d all made a pact not to mention it. I couldn’t talk about the concert and how a strange boy brought me home. I couldn’t talk about her but I did anyway.

  “I’ve been looking for Jeni.”

  “Ariel, sweetie, we’re talking about your friend, Jennifer?” my mom asked gently.

  She started calling Jeni by her full name a few months after she’d disappeared. I knew my mom wasn’t aware she was doing that but it made me sad, as if she had given up. Jeni might come back but Jennifer Benson was already a reference from the past.

  “Jeni, not Jennifer. What other one is there?” I hadn’t meant to snap out like that. “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay. We know you’re under a lot of pressure and stress,” said my dad.

  “But that’s not what this is about!” I yanked the ponytail out of my hair and tugged on a handful of roots. “I’m looking for her. What’s wrong with that? The cops didn’t do shit.”

  “Do you want us to come there?” my mom asked, and I heard my dad say quietly, “Natalie…” which I knew meant, You aren’t up to traveling anywhere right now, even if your daughter is having a nervous breakdown.

  “Forget it,” I told them. “Just forget it. Why do I even bother trying to talk to you about anything except my classes and the stupid weather? You don’t ever listen!”

  My mom’s voice sounded very small when I finally stopped. “I know I haven’t been there for you as much as usual. I’m really sorry.”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Please tell us more,” said my mom, but I couldn’t.

  “I really have to go.” And I hung up.

  * * *

  That night as I was changing for bed I saw Lauren staring at me.

  When I glanced down at my abdomen I saw what she was looking at. There were five small dark marks there, bruises, like the imprint of fingertips.

  What the hell? I thought suddenly of John Graves, his long fingers with the silver rings. He had held my hips from behind—it must have been him—but only lightly.

  I was glad for the marks; it meant he was real.

  8. The way you are suddenly somewhere in a dream

  Fear echoed inside of me like footsteps on the marble floor of Doe as I walked back to the dorms in the dark. We were told the campus was safe at night, watched over by guards, stationed with surveillance cameras and call boxes, but I didn’t feel that way, not after what I knew.

  Now every tree hid a serial killer and every shadow was one.

  I was afraid but not so afraid to stay in at night; I had to be vigilant, I had to keep looking. And part of me was out there for another reason. Part of me wanted someone to come out of the darkness and grab me by the throat and make me forget everything about my life, but not just anyone—John Graves.

  “Ariel,” he would whisper into my ear as he tugged on my ponytail. “Ariel, like The Tempest.”

  Ever since that night at the concert I thought about him constantly, almost as much as I thought about Jeni. I thought about the smell of his hair and the feel of his hand holding mine and the frown line that formed between his eyes. I thought about the angular shape of his cheekbone and chin and throat contrasting with the softness of his mouth and eyelashes. All I had to remember him by were those marks on my abdomen—they looked like fingertips. The marks were real—I could see them—but I wondered i
f I had imagined the man. It seemed as if something was wrong in my head now, as if all the stress and drinking and the two events that changed my life had started to do things to my mind. My parents had sent me to a school counselor, Ronnie Wang, a cheerful young woman who let me ramble on about the pressure I put on myself to get good grades, the weirdness of living in a dorm after being an only child and the general loneliness of being away from home. Once I broke into tears about global warming and the smile left her face as she leaned forward to look me in the eye.

  “Is there anything important going on that you’re not telling me, Ariel?” she asked.

  “The planet is in danger. I don’t think much else is significant.”

  “Anything with your family?”

  I stood and hefted my backpack onto my shoulder. “I’m just kind of emotional about it,” I said.

  * * *

  That Saturday night I got back to the dorm safely—no apocalypse, no serial killers, no John—and went to sleep early. But I didn’t really rest; it was like I was running in place in my bed the whole time.

  I woke sharply from the head-pounding, half-sleep haze to hear Lauren’s moans and Dallas’s whispers.

  “Go get a fucking room,” I said as I jumped from the bed, pulled a jacket over my pajamas and grabbed my shoes.

  “This is a room,” Dallas mumbled.

  “This is my room.”

  “What a coincidence, it’s mine, too!” Lauren said and they laughed.

  I put my sneakers on in the lounge and then I sprinted down the eight flights of stairs to the lobby. It was past midnight and the air felt silent and chill. I just started to run.

  I didn’t know I was going toward the house where John Graves lived—not that I hadn’t wanted to before, but I didn’t think I’d be going there that night. Not without brushing my teeth and hair and putting on lipstick, not without thinking what I’d do when I got there. But I kept running north up into the hills.

  I was standing in front of the house the way you are suddenly somewhere in a dream—without really realizing how you got there. The oak trees surrounded me, leaves like giant hands holding the darkness. Candlelight shone through the windows like wine bottles shine in a dark bar and I could hear music and soft laughter but there wasn’t a big party going on this time. I crept up to the window and looked inside.