Chapter One
Noel Flincher sat in the back of the classroom, eyes closed. She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t daydreaming. She was screaming.
And the voices in her head were screaming back.
“No one cares about you. Just do it. DIE,” she taunted, her voice sharp like the calls of a predatory bird. “You know you should. No one will care if you die. They’ll just laugh. You’ve got it coming. You’re worthless.”
“Look at what you’re doing, Noel. Taking up precious space. This isn’t your place.” His voice was deep, like the growl of a rabid dog.
“No.” Noel wrapped her arms around her chest, shaking. “Get out of my head. Just stop. Go away.” She couldn’t yell at them, just whimper and pray that they would take pity on her. After thirteen years, she had lost all hope of forgetting their terror. But if nothing, they could just leave.
“Why would you want us to leave you, little Noel? We’re the only ones that care about you. If we leave, you have no one.” Theol’s voice softened, fabricating concern.
The onset of tears was approaching. Her eyes were burning and she couldn’t stop shaking.
“Noel,” the voice was soft, a whisper.
Not Theol.
Not Dala.
Noel opened her eyes.
Bastian Jesser was leaning towards her, his head cocked to the side, concerned. His expressions were
always exaggerated and he wore his emotions in his slender face. For the time being – as soon as she locked her simple green-eyed gaze with his sharp, wide blue one – the heckling chortle in her head subsided.
“Yeah.” She loosened the grip around herself and tried to hide whatever emotions were welling up on her own face.
“Are you alright? Cold?” The worry in his voice was authentic. He leaned closer.
“Yeah, just cold,” she lied.
Bastian started to pull at the sleeves of his sweatshirt. As he lifted it over his head, she caught a glimpse of his pale, scrawny stomach.
Noel tried to smile but it was a foreign contortion of muscles and she stopped before he looked at her. She had never really noticed his looks until now.
He was cute in an unconventional way, long and wiry, like she was (lacking her curves of course) with scraggily brown hair brushed away from his face. He reminded her of those guys who spent every afternoon sitting on the curb with their skateboarding buddies, but never actually set foot on a board.
“Keep it as long as you like.” Bastian pressed the worn gray sweatshirt into her lap and smiled. Noel was obligated to smile back.
“Thank you.” She burrowed into it, arms through first before lifting the rest of the cotton monster over her head. It smelt good. Musky and masculine
“Any time.”
“HOW DID SHE DO THAT?” Dala bellowed, thrusting her talons into the wooden crate. She paused for a minuet, inhaled, and pulled away from the warehouse shelves. “Never, and I mean NEVER, has that child ever been able to force us away. Why now?”
Her entire form was shaking in anger.
“You should have been paying attention. It had nothing to do with Noel. It was that boy. More specifically, it was his compassion,” Theol floated several feet off the ground, eyes closed, back stooped, voice – though still more animal than human – was smooth and composed. He was more curious of the sudden overcoming of his powers than angry.
Dala glared at him, but didn’t tempt the old monster. He was radiating with power, his entire aura attuned to a frequency to strong for the young demon. Though she had never dared ask him outright, she was almost certain that Theol was one of the god Morpheus’s sons. He had more power than any Master of Nightmares to have preceded him.
There was silence between student and teacher. Dala silently contemplated her teacher’s ancestry. Theol searched for a meal.
“You’re still curious, aren’t you?” He growled, still focusing himself on the hunt. “You want to know how.”
“Is it really possible for compassion to overcome power.” She had wandered towards the crates again, but her rage had been smothered by curiosity.
“Quite.” Theol opened his eyes and drifted back to the ground. “You should have been able to understand this immediately. Everything we can do is based on fear. But when someone suddenly forgets that fear, we loose our grip. She was distracted by emotions that weren’t built on fear. We haven’t lost her forever, just for the moment.”
Dala didn’t reply. Rather, she glided over to a window and gazed at her reflexion. Very rarely did Dala ever feel the need to be vain, but something had pulled her towards the glass. She was a monster of shadows. And all that stared back was a pair of burning red eyes. She remembered her mother’s words.
“We are mara, we have no need for trivial beauty. We have power. That is beauty enough.”
And then she looked back at Theol, hunched with age and decayed by malevolence. Would she become like him in time? Another century, maybe two is all it would take. She had managed to retain the shape of a human silhouette for almost a millennium now, with slender curves and breasts. She would have been beautiful if she was nothing more than shadows.
But she wasn’t.
And in one swift punch, she shattered the window.
Theol looked at her, puzzled. “What troubles you now, dearest Dala?”
She was hesitant to answer. The truth would be a sign of weakness. “Nothing.”
Noel wasn’t sure why she was doing what she was doing, but she was. It wasn’t like her to walk up to anyone, especially when the hallway was in upheaval, every student making a dash for the doors, trying to escape the suffocating corridors of Brighton High School and into the freedom of the weekend.
“Bastian.” Her voice was meek, hard to hear over the crowd but Bastian must have heard.
“Oh, Noel, hi.” Even he was surprised to see her but continued shoving books into his locker.
She couldn’t find her words for a moment. Instead, she thrust his tattered gray sweatshirt towards him. “I thought I should probably give this back. Thanks again.” The hall was beginning to clear and a breeze was wafting in through the front doors.
“Really, its no big deal,” Bastian took it, started to through it into his locker, but stopped. “You know, I’ve got a lot of these. Keep it.”
Noel was shocked but before she knew it, the gray monster was back in her hands. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. Hey, do you need a ride home? My truck’s a big rusty but by far it’s more comfortable then the bus.” His big expressive face was filled with expectation.
“I only live a block away. I can walk.” She paused, not sure of what to say next. Why was it so hard for her to have a simple conversation? Had Dala and Theol stolen absolutely everything from her?
“Alright then, bye.”
And Bastian started to walk off down the deserted hall. Noel watched him. And when he stopped, turned, and looked at her again, she was surprised.
“Hey, Noel. Me and few friends are going to the movies tomorrow night. Do you want to come?”
Her eyes widen. Was he asking her out? No, that was silly, of course not. No one ever asked her out. But what did you say. Yes. No. “I’d love to.” The words spilt out involuntarily. She didn’t mind.
A grin stretched across his face, devoid of anything but the most innocent of intentions. “Great. I’ll call you tonight with the details. Later.”
And he walked away.
Noel ran to her locker, smiling for the second time today.
That Evening, Just After Seven
Alice Flincher knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door, holding the phone against the chest, trying to remember the last time anyone – especially a boy – had called. Then she realized nobody ever had.
“What do you want, Mom?”
She eased the door open and looked in at her daughter. Noel was fifteen, almost sixteen and taller than most anybody her age. In Alice’s eyes, she looked more like her father. His frizzy, dark brown hair, the smattering of freckles across her nose, even his ordinary green eyes.
“Phone.”
“Oh,” Noel sprang from her desk and crossed the room in three long strides.
Alice walked away without a word. Maybe things were finally changing. Something had been different about her sense she got home. She hadn’t been happy or even all that talkative. But she hadn’t been so distant either. Like she was touching base with the rest of the world for the first time in a long time.
“Bastian?” Noel asked. Insecurities she had never realized she had washed over her. Maybe he was just calling to say that it was stupid to invite her and now he wanted to tell her not to come. Or maybe he was just calling to laugh at her for being so naïve.
“Hey, Noel. So, you’re still up for the movie, right?
“Yeah.” Something in her head, not belonging to Dala or Theol – she assumed an unfamiliar mix of hormones and spontaneity – took over for her. “So what’s playing?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Some futuristic thriller I guess. It was my friend Mitchy’s week to choose. He’s into anything involving biological warfare or nudity.” He laughed and in reaction, she did to.
“Cool, well what time?” Noel belly flopped onto her bed and propped herself up on her elbows.
“I can swing by at 5:30. We normally hit the food court pre-show and Gigi likes to drag us shopping after. Hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. You need the address?”
“Nah, phonebook. You’re the only Flincher in the city.”
Noel rolled over on her back. “Talk to you tomorrow then?”
“Definitely. I’ll be in your driveway.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
The phone clicked as they hung up. Noel closed her eyes and smiled. Maybe things were finally getting better.
