Dylan

Terry told me that I needed to show confidence around girls. They liked self-assurance. But no matter how hard I tried, I always became weird and awkward around cute girls.

Clarissa was one of the prettiest girls I'd ever seen.

So what was the first thing I did? Blurt out that I hated Lord of the Flies because of what happened to Piggy. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that it was because I saw myself in that character. Good going, me.

At first, I thought Clarissa had checked out of the conversation. Her green eyes glazed over as she stared into the deep freezer. The harsh florescent bulb highlighted a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

It took a few seconds of awkward silence to realize she wasn't just bored at my lame attempt at conversation. She stared fixedly at the bundles of meat as if hypnotized.

"Clarissa?" I hesitantly reached out to touch her shoulder.

A tingling pulse of something skittered across the tips of my fingers. I drew my hand back, surprised. Clarissa hadn't seemed to notice.

I reached to her again. The weirdness felt stronger just below her left shoulder blade. It pulled my hand in, like two opposite ends of magnetic poles. It felt... dark.

Disharmony, I thought, without knowing why.

"Hey, um, what's wrong with your shoulder?" I asked, and then like a total and complete idiot, laid my hand over the spot.

It was like being struck by lightning. No, it was as if I were the lightning, striking into her.

Clarissa flinched and twisted so she stood solidly between me and the freezer. Her pupils were contracted to a vertical bar. Inhuman.

"Don't touch me!" she snarled and shoved me. Hard.

I flew backward, arms pinwheeling, and landed flat on my back atop the pool table. My breath whooshed out of my lungs.

When I inhaled, the air tasted of salt.

I stood atop a sandy bluff. The roar of the surf was loud just beyond yellow-gray dunes. A cold, brisk wind whipped my dark hair around.

Kneeling, I furrowed the cool sand with my fingertips. Out to sea, the Pacific ocean was steel gray-blue. The waves whipped to white frothy peaks as they rolled onto the surf. The sky above was overcast with fog, but free of winged shapes. There wasn't a griffin to be seen.

I knew this place. This was my uncle's beach property in Big Sur.

But... I couldn't be here. I was supposed to be hundreds of miles away in South Lake Tahoe. Unless I'd, what, been transported? Lost time, like in those Alien Encounter documentaries?

I pinched myself, just in case. I wasn't instantly transported back to the basement, and I didn't wake up.

The wind picked up, throwing stinging modes of sand against my face. When I walked to the lee of the dune where the wind calmed, my sneakers left indentations in the soft sand. It was like I was really here. But I couldn’t be. Right?

A high, childish laugh echoed off the sands. I turned in place.

Two figures were just visible in the misty air by the shoreline. One woman, tall and willowy walked along the shore alongside a child about six-years-old or so. The child laughed again as he scampered to a rocky tide pool.

I heard their words as clearly as they stood next to me.

"Look, Mommy! A starfish! No, two starfishes!"

"Yes. They are predators. They cleanse the pool of the unhealthy and sick."

In the blink of an eye, I stood in the tide pool, my jeans soaked up to the calf. The little boy didn't notice me, and pointed excitedly to a spot to my right. "There's a clam. Are the starfishes going to eat that, too? Shell and all?"

The boy was me.

The woman, my mother, placed her hand on the boy's shoulder. She was not the dead creature who had visited me in the bark house. This was my mother at her most strong and beautiful, before her mental illnesses ate her from the inside out.

Peering over my younger self's shoulder, she smiled. "That is actually a sea muscle. And yes starfishes will eat them, but very slowly."

"That's sad."

"Perhaps, but it is the cycle of life."

"Like in the Lion King?"

"Something like that. Be thankful for the predators, Dylan." My mom's lips twitched in a smile. "Come, follow me. There is something I have been meaning to show you. Both of you." With those words, she turned her face up from the pool to stare directly at me. The real, older me.

The place where my mother's eyes should have been were sunken black pits.

If my younger self noticed, he said nothing. He gave one last lingering look towards the starfish, then obediently followed.

Mom? What is this? What is going on?

No words came to my lips when I tried to speak. I was only an observer. I had no choice but to follow.

My uncle always kept the beach he owned as natural as possible. Twisted bits of driftwood, broken seashells, and kelp littered the sand.

Low tide, I thought as I followed the pair and stepped over a clear glob that had once been a jellyfish. My sneakers left tracks in the wet sand, though when I looked down I found my steps were exactly in the same place as my younger self.

In the sky overhead, a blue moon—a full moon—was just visible through the fog.

"I wish I were a starfish," Dylan-the-boy grumbled. He swung his arms wildly as he walked. "Then I could eat clams in the tide pool. I'm hungry. Fasting is stupid."

Fasting?

"You are fortunate to be young. Your body has gone without for only one day, because you have few impurities to cleanse." My mother's skin crinkled in a smile. "It takes old people like me much longer to rid ourselves of the toxins of this world. Three or four days."

Again, the sunken pits where her eyes should be, fixed on me.

"But why?" the boy asked.

"It is the only way to see. And Dylan, you must see."

There was a large upthrust of rock perhaps a quarter mile down the beach. The highest parts were grown thick with succulent plants, the bottom half encrusted with shelled muscles now closed against the air. When the tide turned, most of the rock would be submerged. Thanks to the full moon influencing the tide, more was visible than usual.

The low tide revealed a deep cleft hidden in the rock. A cave...

* * *

"DYLAN! Oh my God!"

The shout jolted the world around me.

My empty lungs were on fire. I opened my mouth, but couldn't suck air in.

Clarissa's hands, hard with panic, pressed over my sternum. My heart. My lungs kicked painfully back into gear. I gasped in a breath not flavored by salt, but dust and old carpet. A true breath in the real world.

I’d hit the slate pool table hard. My back hurt, though I'd missed landing on the billiard balls by inches.

"I'm sorry! Are you okay? I don't know how I—Oh, I'm so, so sorry!" Clarissa, frantic at my side, helped me sit up.

Gulping air, I looked dazedly around. I was in the basement, which meant I hadn't been at the ocean. I'd hallucinated. Again.

"Stay here," Clarissa said. "I'm going to get the others."

It was too easy to picture the derisive look on Lilly's face when she heard I’d been knocked stupid by a Clarissa.

"No," I said quickly between breaths. "Wait, I'm fine. Air... Knocked out of me. How did you... Do that?"

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I... You startled me, and after everything yesterday—"

"It's fine." But it wasn't. What had been that dark magnetic pull in her shoulder? The start of my hallucination? Like, how some people saw auras before a migraine? Was this what going crazy was like?

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Bracing myself, I raised my gaze to Clarissa's face. But other than a blush coloring her cheeks, there was nothing strange about her. Just a cute girl with normal green eyes.

A cute girl who'd thrown me eight feet.

Biting her lip, Clarissa glanced toward the top of the stairs as if she were still debating calling for help.

"I'm okay. Really. Just don't tell anyone," I blurted.

"What?" She turned back to me. "Why?"

I meant to say, 'Because they'll worry,' but what came out instead was, "Because they'll think I'm going crazy."

That got her attention. Her eyebrows knit. "Why would anybody think that?"

Because I'd spoken to my dead mom twice, now. Because an invisible something had flowed between my hand in her shoulder. Because some mental illness’s ran in the family.

"Look, I'm stressed. You’re right. The last couple days have been," I swallowed, "really bad."

She stared at me for a long moment. Her jaw tightened, but her voice was soft as she asked, "How did you know about my shoulder?"

I froze. "I didn't."

Clarissa rolled her left shoulder. "I got bit by one of those griffins yesterday. It was really painful until you touched it." Now she was the one who hesitated. "What did you do?"

"I don't know." I held up my hand, but it looked the same as always. No weird ET light coming out of my fingertips. "You felt, um, sort of unbalanced there?" Great. I sounded unbalanced.

She stared, and I braced myself for her to laugh.

Instead, Clarissa nodded once, slowly, and bit her bottom lip again, eyes flicking to the stairs. "Can you look at it for me?"

That wasn't what I expected. "Um, sure?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You can't tell anyone else. I don't want to worry my brother."

"I won't."

She turned away from me, and my mind completely stalled out as she lifted her shirt to expose the long, smooth skin of her back. She wasn't wearing a bra.

The hoodie and shirt lifted higher, and there, under her shoulder blade, was a deep gash. For a split second, I thought I was staring at blood and muscle, until Clarissa turned slightly to the light of the open freezer.

The gash was sealed shut. The skin was whole and unbroken, except for a line of dark red... feathers.

They were smaller than my father's had been. His had sprouted and grown to the length of my hand within a few seconds. Clarissa’s was downy, like a chick after hatching. A couple of longer, maroon quills stuck out here and there, as if ready to sprout into full feathers. But they were tiny. Not grown in.

I lifted my hand, then stopped. "Can I touch?"

She shook her head and dropped her shirt to cover her back. She turned to me. "Is it bleeding again?"

"No, it looked healed, but..."

Her smile was sarcastic. "The feathers?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "You said a griffin did this?"

She nodded. "Do you think I'm infected, now? With, like, griffinitis?"

"Well..." I said, straightening. My sore back gave a twinge. "It happened pretty fast with the adults yesterday, and none of them were bitten beforehand. My father definitely would've said something. So, I think it would've happened to you already, if it was going to." But that was just a guess, and a lame one at that. "Have you told anyone else?"

"Just you." Her green eyes were big and so very human. Nothing of the monster I'd seen before. "I didn't mean to shove you, I just—what if I turn into one of those things, now? What if I try to hurt you guys, or my brother?"

I wanted to tell her that she wouldn't, but we'd both know that was a lie. "Try something now," I suggested, nodding to the pool table. "You tossed me like I was a lightweight, and this table's made of slate. Can you lift it?"

Frowning, she took a step over and hooked her fingers under the lip of the pool table. Her arms tensed as she strained upward. The table didn't budge.

Then again, right now her eyes were green and human.

"See?" I said. "You're still you. No griffin super-strength."

She shook her head and stepped away, moving her shoulder in a circle as if to test it. "That doesn't mean anything. Except... My shoulder wasn't feeling right until you touched me. It doesn't hurt anymore." Her eyes narrowed. "What did you do? Really?"

I looked down at my own hand again. "I don't know."

"Did a griffin bite you, too?"

"No," I said quickly. “Just... I don’t know what happened.”

A flash of disappointment crossed Clarissa’s face. She nodded and half-shrugged. "Okay, but I'm the one who shoved you across the room. Why are you worried I’m going to tell people?"

I hadn't let myself think about the hallucinations—vision—whatever. There had been too much to worry about last night with not trying to be eaten, and all. I should make up a lie, but both visions had felt so real. They had been nothing like a dream.

I forced myself to spill it before I changed my mind. "I've been... seeing things. Yesterday, I spoke with my mom, who wasn't really there." I forced out a laugh that sounded bitter. "It runs in my family. My mom was always seeing conspiracy theories in everything — thought that license plates were sending her hidden messages. That kind of stuff. Now I'm turning out just like her."

"Oh." She looked like she didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about your feathers."

It wasn't funny, but our eyes met and a strained laughter pass between us.

I turned back to the still open-freezer. Not a good idea to keep it like that. I switched the plugs between the wall socket and the generator which was hooked into a special circuit on the house's grid. Flipping the ‘on’ button, the freezer hummed back to life.

Clarissa joined me. "I think it would be a good idea to make a list of what we have left. There are five people in this house, and we should keep track of how fast we go through the food. It's not like we can go to the store for more."

"Why not?" I asked. "There's a convenience store a mile down the road. It’s an emergency. I’m sure it’ll be fine to take stuff if we leave money in the till."

She smiled in a way that crinkled up her nose. "I don't want to live off chips and energy drinks."

Yeah, that would get old, fast. My reply was interrupted by the sound of rapid feet pounding down the stairs. We both turned to see Ben skid to a stop on the top landing. His face was tight with excitement.

“Clarissa! Terry says you need to come up quick! There’s a wildfire!” he said. “And Merlot says she sees people!”

* * *

The attic was easily the smallest room in the house, accessible from the third floor by a drop-down ladder. I don’t know why Merlot had gone up there, unless she was trying to find a quiet place to put the baby down for a nap.

By the time me, Ben, and Clarissa arrived, everyone else was gathered close to the single round window set into the west wall. I was tall enough to see over most of their heads. So, it was easy to spot the billowing of ashy gray smoke blooming against the blue sky. This was bigger than the fire at Stateline. Much bigger.

"How far off is it?" I asked.

Terry turned. "Couple miles. I'm pretty sure most of the smoke's coming from the city."

I glanced around until I spotted a newer-looking box next to an artificial Christmas tree. It had gotten knocked aside by someone, probably as they rushed to the window. My Mom's old knitting and a hikers guidebook had spilled onto the floor. Nestled half-under it was a set of her binoculars. Grabbing them, I pushed closer to get a look out the window. "Merlot saw someone?"

Lilly nodded to the outside. "There's a few cars out there. Look." I followed her gaze. A glint of light flickered in the distance. Squinting, I realized it was the windshield from a moving car out among the distant ridges.

The car—No, there was a line of cars, all made small by distance—traveled up the steep mountainside. They were between a natural meadow-like break in the trees. I didn't recognize the road, but there were plenty of roads and trails crisscrossing the national forest.

I didn't have time to focus the binoculars before they were gently, but firmly, taken from my grasp by my older cousin.

I sighed and let Terry have them before I turned back to the window. Terry was taller. He might have a better vantage point.

Bringing the binoculars to his face, Terry twisted the knob on the nose-piece. "I see five cars... No, six," he said after a moment. "I think they’re heading away from the fire."

"Can you see who's driving?" Clarissa asked.

Can you see if they are adults? Her real question hung in the air, unsaid.

"Too far away." Terry cleaned the lens with the end of his shirt before peering out again. "I think... The one in front is really short over the steering wheel." He let out a breath. "It's a kid."

Damn. Another data-point for the ‘all the adults turned’ theory.

"Is there any way to get their attention? Show them we are here?" Merlot asked, half-hopefully. She held Baby Jane, patting her bottom as if to reassure herself.

Lilly snorted. "How? By smoke signal?"

"We don't want them to show up here. We need to keep the food for ourselves." Terry still had the binoculars and ignored Lilly's impatient motions to let her see. "Besides, I think they're using one of the old forest service roads. It doesn't connect with the highway until you get past Mount Tallac."

"So, where are they going?" Clarissa asked.

I remembered hiking near there with Mom a couple years ago. That was the day she taught me that Jeffrey pine bark smelled like vanilla when you put your nose right to the trunk. I pushed the memory away. "It leads down to the basin and the lake, eventually. They probably think they're going to get help in town."

We all fell silent, watching as a line of cars crawled slowly up the mountain ridge. The caravan became plainly visible after they got above the tree line—the elevation where no more vegetation would grow and the mountain was bare to the elements. They'd have to cross over it to come down the other side again.

I knew that Terry was probably right about looking after ourselves. But it didn't alleviate the cold, sick feeling in my gut. How desperate were those other kids to risk crossing the mountain? Yes, we had to guard our resources. But if there was a way to warn them...

Didn’t they know about the griffins?

I pictured it: If they were latchkey kids, or stayed home from school yesterday and their parents never returned.... The electricity went out and they couldn’t call for help. What would I do if I didn't know better?

Stepping to the side, I glanced out the window to an angle where the sun would set in a few hours. What I saw made the cold feeling expand, and I gave it voice before I could stop myself. A low, moaned, "Oh no."

“What?” Clarissa asked, suddenly at my side.

Then her breath caught as she saw it.

High up in the sky to the west was a ragged line of flying griffins. They, too, were made small by distance, but the bulky-shaped bodies couldn't be anything else. They didn't fly like geese did, in a nice V formation. Or even like the ragged clumps of migrating songbirds. The griffins bunched and separated in a race against one another to the same goal.

I heard Clarissa swallow. "Do you think the griffins see them?"

The cold feeling in my gut said yes. Instead, I reached and gave the round porthole window a push. It was already unlocked, and the frame pivoted sideways to open a crack.

We had all heard the morning and evening shrieking of the griffins, but the faint noise that filtered in was different. Less of a shriek, and more of a high-pitched 'Eeee-Eeee' cry, which reminded me of those canned dolphins sounds from old TV shows.

The calls were taken up by other throats, echoing around the forest. Some of them were startlingly nearby. Soon, other griffins took to the air. Waves of them threw themselves from pine trees and dashed across the open sky. All headed in the same direction.

"They're hungry." Clarissa's voice sounded distant.

I glanced back to the mountain and thought I caught the moment someone in the cars realized they were in trouble. A faint echo of a beeping horn was nearly drowned out among the excited cries of the griffins. One of the cars broke the line as if it was trying to turn around, maybe head back for the safety of the trees. It tilted on the steep soil as a tire must've slid.

No, I thought. Slow down. Don't panic. Don't—

The car angled up sharply as the inexperienced driver punched the gas.

Merlot gave a cry as it tilted sideways on the road, then fell back, rolling onto its side, and effectively blocking the other cars from escape.

The first of the griffins swooped and landed. Even though it was too far to see details, I looked away.

"Can you tell if anyone made it out?" I asked Terry after a few moments. Maybe, once night fell, we could hike up and see if there were any survivors.

My cousin shook his head. He lowered the binoculars. His face was pale.

When I'd gathered enough courage to look out the window again, I couldn't see the cars for all the feathered bodies swarming on them. Dozens of other griffins wheeled overhead like vultures. Still more rose from the forest and headed that way, though surely there would be nothing left when they got there.

Merlot softly wept.

"And that's why you don't go out in the daylight," Lilly muttered.

Too many predators, I thought. There won't be enough food to keep them all alive. Soon, they’ll be starving.

How long until they learned how to break into houses?