Sports Illuminated Magazine

On the cover: Omegalexandra "Hera" Brown broke barriers both physical and mystical in Aspen last spring. The ice climbing champion is the first of the devout Bloodlines sect, which typically bans competition among its followers, to qualify for the Winter Olympic Games. "Destined to Exceed," p. 43.

#

I’m glad most of the hall and my room are empty when I arrive, panting, and slam the door behind me. I catch my reflection in the window—sweaty, wild eyes, hair a mess; I look deranged. The shades can’t release fast enough—anything could be looking in.

Come on, Haze. What do you think is out there—a werewolf? A teenager in a cloak trying to recruit you to her uber-gothadelic band?

Maybe I imagined the girls in cloaks outside. In and out, my breath slowly regulates. Background noises begin to fill the hall as others return from dinner.

I take it as a good sign that my thoughts are now spinning towards the outrageous. Because of course there’s a logical explanation, there’s no reason to imagine what I saw was

Vampires. No wait—of course! WITCHES! Salem and warts, Hogwarts. Hermione and Serena, Tabitha, Agnus Nutter.

That does the trick. My racing mind slows and I sink into my desk chair, chuckling at myself.

Chimera opens the door breezily then sees me and her expression falters. "What’s funny?" she asks with a note of caution. I must still look wild, perhaps in a mildly dangerous way.

Whatever. Better hilarity than fear.

"Witches. The idea of witches in Witchniss." I answer, shoulders shaking lightly with unsuppressed giggles.

"I see."

Chimera flicks the corners of her mouth as though to smile but her lips remain pressed together unconvincingly. She walks to her side of the room, removes her coat, and hangs her bag over the back of the chair without looking at me again. She’s left her gloves on, which is weird especially because the next thing she does is take out a paper journal. The pen slips slightly between her fingers and she adjusts it.

Why isn’t she taking off her gloves, if she’s writing longhand?

My giggles stop abruptly. I need to get out of here, urgently. I consider messaging Bug, then decide to walk to her room instead.

"I’ll be back," I say, acting distracted by my boots in order to avoid her gaze, though it doesn’t matter since she says goodbye without looking up. In the hallway I’m met with the sound of a rainstorm from more than one shower going in the common bathroom, along with music and warm lights spilling out of open doors. Momentarily, I’m soothed. Until I pass the fountain by the stairwell, which is broken and leaky.

Drip-drip-drip.

I dart downstairs to Bug’s level. Gaia, she better be there. Ideally scrubbed in to perform my lobotomy.

Bug’s door is open. She’s sitting on a woven rainbow rug with her back against the bed. Her roommate is at her desk, and they’re both singing along to something with a thumping beat while they manipulate things invisible to me on their projected screens.

I relax as soon as she looks up and smiles, still singing. She waves me in and I sit on her desk chair. Her roommate introduces herself as Jazmir.

Bug speaks as soon as our hellos end. "You, Haze, look like you’ve seen a spectral presence."

"I practically did. And now I’m losing it." I glance to the doorway, then back to Bug and Jazmir. "Can we talk?"

Bug rises and shuts us into the room.

With Jazmir? ask my eyes.

Yeah, she’s good, Bug’s reply.

I clear my throat then ramble through what I saw after leaving the dining hall. The two of them interject with a few curt clarifying questions, but otherwise remain quiet until I stop. We sit while my words wash through us then fade like an outgoing tide.

"Hellfires." Bug finally breaks the silence.

"You think it’s the same as…" Jazmir asks her.

"Can’t be sure. But either way, it’s not good."

My head, which has been flicking left to right to track each speaker, shakes more rapidly as I say, "Hold on—you’re not going to tell me I’m crazy? That there’s no way this wasn’t some a cappella troupe prepping for a creepy nighttime show? Or improv? Or maybe it was some secret society with… unique customs, having a playful little caper in capes?"

"That one—maybe." Bug points to me.

"Playful caper?" Jazmir snorts. "More like playing with fire, fueled by their own misguided righteousness. Dumbasses."

"They’re Bloodlines, most likely," Bug explains. "But more importantly, some of them may also be… something worse."

I press the heels of my hands into my temples and push in tiny circles with my eyes closed. After three breaths, I stop and say, "What?"

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Jazmir pulls her chair next to mine so that I’m seated between her and Bug. They each hold one of my hands while they describe a series of strange events from the previous year. Fleeting caped possies flitting in the evening shadows. Corners of the temple that would fall to a perfect hush if an outsider came near. Rune brandings and scarification. A particular shape to indicate membership: a wide hook like a bowed-out cane.

"But why?" I ask.

Bug and Jazmir exchange a look.

"It’s a rib," says Jazmir. "The rib. From Adam."

They give me several seconds to put it together. I must look blank, because Jazmir adds, "You know, so he can take it back? They don’t need him—or all of themselves, apparently." She ends by snorting again and rolling her eyes.

Then, finally, I gasp. New Eves. Only psychotic extremists would have such a sick trademark.

I’m the poster child for a counseling textbook: my first reaction is denial. "No, that’s too nefarious—this is a school. Why?"

"Who better to recruit than the impressionable youth?" Bug offers.

"Who easier to manipulate than someone who’s just looking for friends, or somewhere to belong?" Jazmir adds.

"Who would fall for that crap though?" I respond, louder than intended. Denial with a side of outrage. I’m moving right along towards acceptance.

"More than you’d think," says Bug, her voice rising to match mine.

Jazmir steers the conversation back to last year. "The strangest one though, was Iotabel. She was a senior who disappeared right after winter break. In class one day, then just… gone. A month later she turned up, unconscious and sans one rib."

I feel like I’ve found out ice cream is made of maggots. Or that my childhood giraffe toy was the symbol for an underground organ harvesting ring. "You’re not serious."

"Sadly, I am," Jazmir continues. "She was shook—and wouldn’t say what happened to her, no matter how many ways anyone asked."

I glance around the room, picturing the rest of the dorm, the lawns and stately topiaries along the road, the sleepy town beyond. My thoughts race again. Why does anyone still go here? How have I not heard about this?

Reading my mind—truly?—Bug jumps in. "I mean, she did have a story, but no one believes her. Fell in with a Chicago chippers syndicate, owed money and got thrashed; rib removed to get at a punctured lung."

Jazmir looks like she’s struggling to maintain an even tone while adding, "But everyone knows she was one of the cloaked girls around here. Everyone knows that particular bone is far too coincidental."

"Well, what happened?" I ask. I can’t imagine that was the end of the story.

"Oh, you know," Bug replies. "The school made some statement about public safety and instituted the Nesteye tracking, so as long as you’re on campus, they know where you are. Warned us about crime. Banned all self-scarification and unsanctioned group meetings in an effort to limit the number of outsiders who get in here."

I swallow this for a moment, but still can’t reconcile what I saw. "What about the cloaks, then?" I ask. "Why would they advertise themselves—why would anyone wear something so obviously tinged, if they were part of some kind of banned secret society?"

More importantly, why would anyone be willing to lose a rib and be a terrorist over the existence of a few harmless infants? That’s assuming the one in Africa is even viable. The New Eves and the Bloodlines, who I guess are their more palatable counterparts, seem to have some real disproportionate rage issues. Surely, five billion women could keep a babyman under control…

My struggle to understand prevents me from knowing whether I’ve said that last part out loud.

Bug shrugs. "Freedom of expression? No one’s that stupid though. Not even on Halloween. Well they didn’t used to be, anyway. Still, from your description it sounds like the brilliant brigade you caught sight of wasn’t trying to be seen behind those bushes."

I nod, though I can’t help but think they weren’t trying too hard not to, either. I’m wary of casting scary cult members as ‘dumb,’ as nonsensical as their beliefs might come across. That’s a recipe for being caught off guard.

Jazmir unpeels my fingers from my biceps. I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping them.

She smiles gently at me. "The moral is: be wary of strangeness, check in with your buddies, and don’t grant easy access to your skeleton."

I force out a single, unconvincing ha and Bug holds me from the other side.

"It’ll be all right," she whispers. I don’t know how she knows. For that matter, I don’t know how these two are not only calm, but so cheerful. "You know what wards them off?"

"Garlic?" I offer.

"Common sense," she corrects.

Jazmir laughs. "Ah yes, I forgot that one—don’t leave home without your brain. Solid life advice, really."

A new thumping beat comes on the playlist, and we all sing gimme gimme gimme all your love. Meet me in the next life, be my wife, wife.

The inanity of the song truly does uplift our moods. I hang out a while, letting the division between my feigned ease and the real thing blur.

#

By the time I get back to my room, Chimera is already asleep with the lights off. I creep around quietly in the dark before climbing under my covers, grateful that she doesn’t wake or even stir.

For hours I lie in bed, too wired to sleep. Even if a sinister group is woven through our campus—the girls on the lawn, their cloaks and the silver, drip-drip-drip—according to Bug, they’re preying on the weak and vulnerable. Which of course doesn’t make it all right, but my ego allows me to find a shameful comfort in it. Still, to know about it and not do anything feels wrong, agonizing. Shouldn’t there be some kind of a tip line? A federal agent on the case?

I roll from my stomach to my back. Chimera has opened her window shade, and clouds outside make the entering moonlight wax and wane across her jungle print bedspread, desk and chair.

Her gloves, draped over the back of the chair.

She’s flipped away from me, back rising and falling steadily. I watch for nearly half an hour, to make sure. The light has moved up the side of her wall, and I know full darkness is close, but I can’t wait for it.

As slow as I can manage, I creep to the chair. Chimera’s back rises and falls, rises and falls.

I lift one glove and pull the material inside out. Then the other.

There’s nothing in there, no bloodstains. You maniac.

The floorboard beneath me hitches, though I swear I haven’t moved. I return the gloves and race back to my bed, not caring whether I make noise, and roll towards the wall just as I hear her shift and sniff a little before stilling again.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. I tell myself to sleep. Of course, there was nothing there.

Maybe I imagined everything, and Bug and Jazmir were only caught up in my headiness. I’m not used to the darkness out here, the silvery shadows. The abnormal quiet that pounds away at my head when I stop to think about what secrets such conditions hide.