That night, heat lightning had lit the edges of the low clouds, silhouetting each irregular shape against the soft-dark sky. Sam could see a crow— or maybe a raven— wheeling overhead, easy to spot against the pitch grey night, rendered less than black by the occasional flash and the local light pollution. She tracked the bird’s wide, scavenging circles without moving her head, the air too hot and thick with late summer humidity to even expend that little bit of energy. She was sprawled out on her back on what had been the loading dock of the S-Mart, before it had folded last year and left the Kalmia Drive Shopping Plaza even more barren than it had been before. Logan sat somewhere off to her right, his feet hanging off the edge of the platform, head resting on hands folded on the lowest rung of the safety railing. She could hear him idly picking at the grimy paint, risking some sort of terrible lead poisoning.
Logan’s heels drummed against the side of the dock, a soothing rhythm, and for a moment, just a moment, everything was all right. There was no need to worry about having to go back to her aunt’s house, where Aunt Florence would almost certainly find something to scream at her about; there was no need to worry about Logan going back to his house alone, where his parents would deadname him and talk about sending him to church camp again because they thought he was something prayer could fix. They were alone in a still, almost silent universe, lit by distant atmospheric flashes and the warm yellow of the streetlights and the soft neon glow of the movie theatre across the parking lot. Sam could reach up and tug on the hem of Logan’s shirt and smile at him and not say anything and he would smile right back because right then and there everything was okay. They were ageless and weightless and careless, with the world entire waiting for them.
And then the quiet broke. The dark bird above them cried out into the hot night, and the moment shattered, the jagged edges of peace skittering to the far corners of the lot. The air that had been a still, gentle pressure not a second before became a terrible weight, miserable and stagnant. Sam watched the tension creep into Logan’s shoulders, and he went back to picking at the railing, gaze distant and jaw tight. She let her arm fall back to the pavement. They were thirteen again, powerless and bound to this dying suburb.
“Wanna go see of they’ll let us back in to watch something else?” Sam said, rolling over and propping herself up on her elbows. “I don’t think they’ll mind.”
“We’ve seen everything,” Logan said, more to the pavement than to Sam, “And none of it was worth seeing twice.” Sam made a face at his back, and before she could draw breath to defend her beloved Monsters From Hell’s Labyrinth 3: The Returning, a lady staggered around the corner of the theatre, in the wildest hat Sam had ever seen. The thing was bright green and looked over two feet wide, with netting and faux flowers and trailing feathers and so goddamn ugly that Sam didn’t even pause to wonder why she had stumbled out of the woods rather than in from the road.
The lady stopped to lean against a wall, and reached down to adjust the strap of one of her absurdly high heels. Along with the hat, she was wearing huge, dark designer sunglasses, and a dress a slightly paler shade of the same green. The whole outfit didn’t look right juxtaposed against the dying strip-mall; it looked like it cost more than Sam’s aunt made in six months. She looked like one of those rich ladies from the horse races Aunt Florence watched on television, like some southern belle that discussed her family tree and her dog’s pedigree in the same kind of terms.
“Oh my god,” Logan said.
“Oh my god,” Sam said back. They watched, transfixed, as she wobbled towards them like a newborn deer, and waved. Logan pushed himself back, away from the edge of the dock, away from the approaching woman, closer to Sam as she asked, “Do you know her?”
“No,” he said, as Sam sat up, “I think she’s wasted.”
“Hello!” The lady called, once she was within shouting distance, and she waved again.
“Very wasted,” Logan whispered, before calling back, “Hey!” Sam wanted to take his word for it; she wasn’t as used to managing drunk adults as Logan was.
“What are y’all doing out here, all by your lonesome?” The lady said, as she stumbled one last time before catching herself on the railing. Her sunglasses slipped and Sam caught a glimpse of her eyes before she pushed them back up.
Sam felt the hair on the back of her neck raise. Her eyes had been— her eyes had been strange. Too wide. Too yellow-green. Too sharp, too aware, for someone walking like that.
“We just got out of a movie,” Logan said. The lady smiled, and Logan leaned forward a little, smiling back like he couldn’t quite help it.
“I was hopin’ to see something myself,” the lady said. “Have you seen anything good lately, young man?” Logan was grinning wider, and laughing with her. Why were they even laughing? No one had said anything funny. Logan was leaning even further, now, like a moth caught in a spiral around a bare bulb. Sam grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt, to keep him from pitching forward off the loading dock. Never mind how she had even figured out he was a guy, the lady wasn’t old enough to be calling Logan young anything. She couldn’t be out of her early twenties.
“Nothing worth buying a ticket for,” Sam said curtly. She shoved herself to her feet, and dragged Logan up with her. “We should be going.” She began to edge towards the stairs down off the platform, planning to bolt off towards to road, where there were cars and foot traffic and possible witnesses. Sam thought about making for the theater, which was closer, but the lady was in the way and she desperately wanted to be as far from her as she could be.
“You don’t wanna talk?” The lady asked, and pouted theatrically. She was standing perfectly steady now, the wobble in her step gone.
“Sure,” Logan said, and then hissed, “Don’t be rude,” at Sam.
“You look like a couple of smart young people,” the lady said. “Smart young people who wanna know how the world turns.”
“Not really,” Sam said, “I’m failing Social Studies and he can’t factor equations for shit.” The lady laughed again, bright and charming, like this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
“Oh, none of that matters,” she said, “None of the junk they teach you in school. The stuff that matters can’t be in a textbook, most folks wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“Like what?” Logan asked, leaning towards her again.
“Things most folks’ll never see, sweetheart,” she said, her voice dropping quiet, like they were sharing secrets over coffee, not standing around in a filthy, dark parking lot, “You’d have to see it to believe it.” Logan made a small, breathless noise. “We could teach you, and you could be something amazing.”
“Really?” He whispered.
“Really,” the lady said, and stepped closer, her absurd hat throwing Logan’s face into shadow. “We could get you out of here, both of you,” she turned the smile on Sam, and she felt herself sway forward a little, caught in the same pull Logan was. “Out of this death trap of a town and doing something that matters.”
“What?” Sam breathed, unable to stop the question.
“Sacred duty,” The lady whispered back. “You’d be serving a higher power, something bigger than yourself, Sam, and we’d reward that. There’s always a reward for loyalty.” Sam swayed, hope squeezing the air out of her lungs. She’d give anything to get out of here, to get way from— and then the spell was broken, and cold horror washed down her spine. She jerked back from the strange woman.
“I never told you my name,” Sam said, and the lady froze, her smile going tight and brittle and plastic. “How do you know my name?”
“Logan said it,” the lady said. “Didn’t you?”
“Mmmhmm,” he mumbled, eyes glazed and still swaying towards the woman.
“No, he didn’t, and I never said his,” Sam said.
“Now, Sam,” the lady said.
“We need to go home,” Sam said, yanking hard on Logan’s shirt. “I wanna go home,” her voice cracked a little as she said it, and the desperation of it seemed to bring Logan part of the way out of his trance.
“All right,” he said, eyebrows bunched together. Sam started towards the road, pulling Logan behind her. She hadn’t made it three steps before they were abruptly stopped, and Sam lost her grip on him.
The lady had him by the wrist. She held him tightly— tightly enough that it looked like it would hurt, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was smiling at her, dazed again.
“Sam, don’t be difficult,” she said, each word precise and over-pronounced, all traces of local drawl washed out of her voice. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She offered her other hand. “Come here.”
“No,” Sam said, and flinched when the lady bared her teeth, snarling.
“Fine,” she said, and started leading Logan away, towards the woods.
Sam stood there, shaking, for all of half a second, but even that was too long. The woman loped across the pavement, moving impossibly fast. Her heels didn’t seem to bother her anymore, if they ever had. By the time Sam leapt after them, fleet with fear, she had towed Logan half-way across the parking lot and far out of Sam’s reach.
“Logan!” Sam wailed, but he didn’t even turn to look. “Logan!” Nothing.
They vanished into the dark, toothy shadows of the treeline.
Sam was alone.
She called out for Logan again, and again, feeling like a bleating sheep, wolves closing in. The theatre was dark now, and there would be no help there.
Sam hesitated on the edge of the pavement. Took one step into the grass, then another, and she was standing under the first few trees. Another step and she had left the dim yellow of the street lights behind.
Bark bit into her hands as she pushed branches out of her path.
She fumbled blindly into the dark, suffocating quiet of the woods.
Somewhere overhead, a crow— or maybe a raven— cried out.
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