Freezing rain fell from the sky, pitter and pattering across the ground before coalescing and freezing to form beautiful ice crystals upon the ground, clinging to the glass blades to create a field of dull knives and would soon sparkle when the clouds broke for the sun to shine on it. The road conditions were highly dangerous as black ice reigned supreme. In a couple hours Ally would get off school and take the bus home, and she watched the window as heavy drops plopped on the glass and splattered down the panes of the windows of her classroom.
Someone walked by and knocked her things from her desk to the ground, her binder spilling out paper and pencil rolling away as the person falsely apologized with a sarcastic, “Oops.” Ally stared down at it numbly and picked it up, while her friend, Karen, who was sitting across from her stood up and confronted them.
“Hey! What’s the big idea?”
“I said oops,” the bully said with a mocking smile.
“It was on purpose. I saw you reach out and knock it to the ground as you passed.”
“Why do you care? She’s the girl who faked fainting at someone’s memorial for attention.”
Ally ignored the conflict; bullying had been on the rise since what had happened. The rumor had been spread she had faked the fainting spell, and while most of her fellow students took at face value that if the ambulance had arrived for her there was likely and actual emergency, many others had seen it as free real estate for them to attack her. Perhaps they believed the rumors, perhaps they just needed someone to vent the terrible stress of coming of age on another person. Ally didn’t really care either way. She was more focused on the strange singing masked beast that had been borrowing her headspace nonstop since that night, her mind unable to let go of what she had experienced when she heard its voice.
She thanked Karen, who smiled and went back to working on her assignment in another class while she opened her notebook and continued a drawing she had been working on since the incident, a sketch of the mask. She filled out the sinking markings that helped define where there should have been eyes. The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t tell if the dark sunken hollows were holes, and the beast merely didn’t have eyes to see through them, or if it was completely solid, covering the eyes of the beast. She wasn’t even sure if it was a mask, maybe it was some sort of bony covering for its face, part of its feature like the horn of a rhinoceros.
Karen set her pencil down and stretched, “Finished! What are you working on Ally?”
“Just a drawing.”
“Can I see?”
Ally didn’t see why not. She turned her notebook towards her friend who stared at it intensely as a look of confusion passed over her face. “It… kind of looks like the carvings my neighbor makes. What is it?”
Ally tilted her head to the side and asked, “You’ve seen it before?”
“Yeah, we had a creepy neighbor move several years back. She’s retired, I guess, and spends most of her time with her cat on her front porch whittling masks that look just like this one. She’s nice and friendly, but there always seems to be something… I don’t know… dark? Sad? Just something is wrong with her. I take it they must be from something if you’re drawing it.”
Ally looked down at the drawing and said, “Uh, yeah. I saw it a few weeks ago, though I’m not sure what it is exactly.” It wasn’t a lie, but it definitely omitted much of the truth. “What’s the name of your neighbor, maybe she knows more about it?”
Karen shrugged, “Rebecca Whitlock. She moved down here from Alaska if I recall. You going to ask her about it, I take it?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Good luck, I’ve asked her before, and all she does is frown and shake her head. Says it’s something not for children. Even said that to my dad, which irritated him.”
When Ally got on the bus that day, she made a point to bring her notebook with the sketch with her. She had the feeling that showing it to Rebecca would help convince her to tell her more. At the same time, she looked up ‘Rebecca Whitlock Alaska’ on her phone as the bus rumbled down the country roads to drop off the students.
Almost every link was for a scientist by the same name, a woman who worked for something called IARC. Ally googled that, and soon found the International Antarctic Research Center. Dr. Rebecca Whitlock had joined in 2000, but her research had been ongoing since the late nineties. Apparently, she had been a big voice for helping corporations go green and conducting research in global warming and its effects on the Arctic. Her research had supposedly been sited and been used in the early for some environmental agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, earning her a Nobel Prize. It was all quite above her head, but the wiki article stated that thanks to her, unimaginable damage to the world was able to be avoided.
There was then a list of her accolades and awards, which were a lot, and nothing of her personal life. Ally moved through some more links, as it was unlikely the same woman, and came across an old news article of a woman by the same name in Alaska being found after a bad winter having disappeared in the wild showing up alive and well, which had occurred in the early nineties. It had been scanned and uploaded as part of some historic preservation project by the state. The article went on to explain that seven similar incidents had occurred that winter of individuals who had disappeared and were believed to have died from frostbite. Her reappearance coincided with another individual being found in the wild who was claiming some spirit or ghost was responsible for the disappearances, and that he had seen it. It sounded like the type of slow news that local stations focused on. After those there was nothing but an amalgamation of other women by that name, all different, yet all the same in how uninteresting they were. Shame, it would have been nice to find something on the woman she planned on talking to.
Ally got home, did her normal ritual of flopping on her bed and then taking the dog out and putting on the news. Yesterday there was an interview with Randy J., which was about the most interesting thing that had happened all week, and today looked boring in terms of the news as well.
Mary got home, and as Ally heard the door, she turned the TV off and asked from across the house, “Hey mom, can I borrow the car this evening?”
“What for?” Mary asked.
“I wanted to go by Karen’s house and ask her neighbor some questions about some things.”
“Why?” Mary’s skepticism was not unwarranted, it was an odd thing for a teenager to do.
Luckily, Ally had a prepared excuse. “She apparently won a Nobel Prize when she was younger. She’s retired now, I just wanted to learn a bit more about her.”
Mary seemed hesitant, “Doesn’t Karen live in Hazelwood?”
Ally had hoped she wouldn’t remember that. Most everyone was on edge after the murder of three high schoolers, and apparently a lot of people were trying to move out of Hazelwood right now while the police scrambled to find out what was going on, luckily Ally was prepared for this as well.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Karen’s road has a cop stationed on its corner. All of Hazelwood has had state troopers keeping a close eye on it since what happened, I’ll be fine. I have my phone, there will be police close by, and I’ll be careful to not gather in a group of four.”
“Just because he targets groups of four doesn’t mean the killer won’t change his pattern.” She sighed, “Fine, but I want you to call and check in every hour and if you don’t, I’m calling the police. Also, I have your GPS on your phone turned on and will be monitoring it. Don’t go anywhere besides Karen’s neighbor’s house, if you do, I’m calling the police. And take Lily.”
“Not sure what the dog is supposed to do? She’s pint-sized.”
“It’ll make me feel better. Honey, stay safe, and I love you.”
Ally hugged her mom while grabbing the keys from her, “Love you too, mom.”
The country roads of Indiana allowed for one to drive fifty-five in most places, though most everyone sped by five or ten miles per hour. Ally didn’t risk it today though. The police were out in force, and she didn’t feel like getting a ticket. She slowed down as the speed limit wound down as she approached the four-way stop that marked downtown Hazelwood, which like most small towns in the country wasn’t much more than that. There was a church on one corner, and a fire department on the opposite corner where annually there was held a fish fry and tractor pull, a common tradition in the Midwest where locals would modify their vehicles and figure out who had the strongest machine and talented drivers. It had categories for tractors, trucks, semis, and so on.
Ally had many fond memories of her childhood arriving and enjoying the fish and fries, while watching the variety of activities set up. The military recruiters would bring a rock-climbing wall, there was always an interactive firefighting class for kids, and more. Mary hadn’t taken her since they had moved away from Hazelwood, though she had been allowed to go back a couple of years ago with a friend.
She passed by the fire department and continued until she turned down a road bordered by corn on one side, and soy on the other, waving at the officer parked on the corner who waved back. She continued down until the fields ended, and there was wood on one side of the road and some houses on the other. Karen’s was the first on the right, so that must mean that the next was Rebecca Whitlock’s. She pulled onto the gravel driveway and looked at the cozy two story house, with white sheet sliding to give it the appearance of wood, though it clearly was not. On the front porch was an old woman with a knife, carving something in her lap. Hanging up around the front porch were masks, identical to the one that Ally had been unable to stop thinking about since the first night she had that dream.
Ally took stock of the old woman, who was wearing a sweater and a long skirt, and a blanket over her legs that caught the shavings. To her surprise, while she was more wrinkled, and hair had turned silvery in her age, it was the same Rebecca Whitlock who had won the Nobel Prize. Her countenance was frail and bony, but despite this had sharp, bright, piercing brown eyes that sized up Ally as she approached.
Ally stepped onto the porch with her backpack slung over her shoulder and began to speak, but Rebecca held up one finger and tilted her head and breathed in deeply with her nose. “Peculiar, you have the scent, but I don’t feel the presence.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. What do you want, girl?”
Ally was slightly flustered by her curt tone, but she had driven out there for answers, and that was what she was going to get, even if she had to appeal to this woman’s ego or whatever else. “You’re the same Rebecca Whitlock who worked for the IARC, correct?”
The woman smiled mischievously, “Someone did their homework. That is correct, you here for a school project interview or something?”
Ally shifted her backpack to her other shoulder, “Um, no. I wanted to ask you about the masks.”
“Not something to discuss with children, I assure you.”
“But I think it’s really important.”
“You think? Still, someone like you doesn’t need to worry her pretty, little head about it.”
“Please! It looks just like the one I saw.”
The woman set the mask down and eyed Ally with interest. She contemplated something, and then asked, “And where pray, girl, did you see this mask before?”
“In my dreams.”
She scoffed, “So you happened to see something that looked similar to mine, what’s the big deal.”
“No, its identical. My friend saw my sketch and pointed out it was like mine.” Ally pulled off her backpack and pulled out the notebook and handed it to Rebecca.
Rebecca looked at it and squinted, before reaching into a pocket on her breast and pulling out a pair of glasses and putting them on. She stared down and glared at the drawing before handing it back. “You had a dream?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see only the mask or was there more.”
“It was attached to a great beast, whose fur waved in the air like hair suspended in water.”
The woman set the mask aside on a patio table next to her and tossed her blanket to the ground where the wood chips clattered on the ground. “Come with me, girl.”
She stepped inside, and Ally followed. They were greeted by a striped cat that went to rub against Rebecca’s leg, but at the sight of Ally bolted off deeper into the house. Rebecca led the way into a room that was full of more sculptures, but instead of masks they showed the creature in its entirety, though none captured its true beauty.
“So, you have seen it before.” Ally said.
“Quiet, girl, I ask the questions in my home.” Rebecca turned to address her and stared needles like icicles hovering over Ally’s head that could impale her at any second. Ally was surprised how commanding such a small woman could be and nodded in acknowledgement. “Good. Did it bless you?”
“Yes.”
“What were the conditions?”
“Conditions?”
“Don’t ask me questions. Just answer mine. What. Were. The. Conditions?”
“It didn’t give conditions, just told me my fortune.”
“Your fortune? What was it?” While she spoke, Rebecca opened the window to the room and peered out glancing back and forth, before nodding in approval of whatever it was that she was checking.
“Um, let’s see. Something about a wolf in sheepskin, don’t sign a contract or I’ll meet the boar. Sorry, it’s been a few weeks.”
“Don’t apologize. I must say, this is interesting.” Ally held back the urge to ask her what she meant, despite how annoying her cryptic words were. She already knew the answer she would get in response. Rebecca started pacing back and forth while musing aloud, “So you saw a dream of this thing. It gave you your fortune, and now you find my masks. How very peculiar. Can you tell me anything else about the dream?”
Ally relayed to her what had happened, how she had woken up and been brought to the starving boar, how the masked beast spoke of its gaze and of a trespasser, and then Ally told her she had seen it again at the memorial service and heard its song. She spoke of its mentions of avatars and realms. Once Ally was done, the woman sat down in a chair in the room and seemed to be in deep thought.
“The boar, yes, I think I know whose avatar that is. Poor thing, if only he would accept his blessing. As for the trespasser, I wonder who that is.”
“They’re not the same,” Ally asked.
Rebecca shook her head, “No. Trespasser refers to someone not of its realm. More peculiar is that it didn’t attach any conditions to you when it blessed you… What have I done!” Rebecca shot out of her chair and looked around in alarm, and there was a loud creak throughout the house as the cat started yowling from somewhere in the building.
“What’s happening!?” Ally asked in alarm.
“I broke the conditions on my blessing! I was to tell no one of the creature or how it works, and now I face the consequences.”
“Please, tell me what’s going on? What is the beast?”
“Quiet, no time.” The cat yowl had suddenly gone quiet, “If it comes through the window escape through the front door, if it enters the front door escape from the window. He is compelled to come for me, not you. Don’t try to help, you’ll just get us both killed. I received the blessing of the second chance, and the Headless Hog Farmer of Hazelwood received it as well. His name is Philip Conway, if you want to help you need to find out more about Philip Conway.” A single hand grabbed onto the open windowsill, clad in a cowhide glove with barbed wire tangled around it dripping with blood. “Run! Run now!”
Ally ran out the room and through the hallway, blazing as fast as she could to the front door, before tripping, catching herself with her hands and scraping skin from her open palms as she skidded on the floor. She turned and saw what she had tripped on was a small striped pig, which squealed as it ran into the room she had come from in a panic. Ally scrambled to her feet and flew through the front door, biting cold wind smarting across her skin as she arrived at the Volkswagen with Lily in the passenger seat barking and howling in a panic, her eyes glowing blue. Ally opened the driver’s side door, turned the key, backed out of the driveway, and sped as quickly as she could home.
Lily growled and snarled in the direction of the house as Ally made distance, her eyes slowly turning back to brown as the gap increased, the little dog trying its best to resist the blessing for the sake of Ally.