The Chickadee Girl

The Friend that was Not

Ten minutes down the road, and she felt unease again beginning to flit around the edges of her consciousness; though she'd been instinctively sticking to one side of the road, she'd not been passed by a single car. It wasn't a high-traffic road, true -- but no cars at all was alarming. The sunny confidence of a few minutes before had begun to evaporate, as every metre passed without a sign of life. She knew this road well enough - though she'd never had reason to walk it before, she'd been driven along it by parent or chaperone dozens of times. Why then, did it feel so foreign? Why did she suddenly feel so exposed and vulnerable... and why was the hair on the back of her neck standing on end? 

Something was wrong. Unnerved, she stopped and held her breath, listening with every particle of her being. All was quiet - in fact all was still. To this point there had at least been birds singing – it had taken them all falling silent for her to realize that they had been there at all, providing her journey a kind of soundtrack. Lonely, dusty pale grey road; the cool breeze had died, and the greenery on either side of the road was suddenly thicker and darker than it had been. 

And then, as she stood staring up at the trees, she saw that something... some thing was in the process of dragging itself out of the undergrowth just up the path. As she watched, it pulled itself upright, and staggered forward, apparently single-minded in its determination to get up onto the road.

She drew in her breath sharply, an involuntary gasp.

Whatever It was stopped and turned to face her, and she saw that the blistered, mutilated features in the sallow face were contorted into an expression of naked, unhinged rage. A trail of blood ran from its nose, and one eye was drooping. 

But it wasn't an it.

It was Cass.

...But it also wasn't Cass - the features were distorted, almost as though it was someone wearing a Cass-shaped mask. It wore Cass's clothes, even - a grey sweatshirt she usually slept in, and black sweatpants...but as it stared down the road at Isa, she could tell, even as she began to panic, that this was not her friend.

And then Cass, or whatever it was, began running towards her.

On all fours.

***

There'd been a moment, once, when she was about nine, when she had truly understood for the first time that it was possible to die. She'd been playing with some other children at a resort on Prichard River, and one of those children had a scrappy grandfather with a boat. This fact (boat, not scrappiness) had been conveyed to her by the child himself, in an effort to impress her; it initially had. She'd never been much of one for water activities, but after listening to the other child boast about his own water skiing ability for the length of a full glass of orange juice, she was determined to try it. If he could do it, she reasoned, it must not be terribly difficult. She'd been swimming lengths in their backyard pool, and there'd be a lifejacket involved.

And so she'd tried it, and it had all gone well for the first few minutes. She'd remained standing for a full tour of the waterfront, and been rewarded with long-distance, mimed applause from her nanny, who was stationed on the shore watching, Isa's towel clutched in her delicate hand. Then, on the second trip round, Isa had taken a silly little wave (the wake of another boat) at just the wrong angle, and ended up in the water, shocked and spluttering. 

And that too was fine. She floated, and waited for the boat to come back for her. It was while she was waiting, floating and alone and getting colder, that she was pulled into a bed of tall weeds by the current, and felt the soft winding of one of the slimy ribbons around her upper thigh, pushing too far up inside the shorts she was wearing over her bathing suit. Panicked, she'd thrashed around for a moment, and undone the straps on the life vest. Once a reassuring cocoon, the jacket had abruptly transformed into an instrument of torture - something holding her at the mercy of the current and the weeds and anything else in the suddenly bottomless lake that might care to take a shot at her. She'd gone under a few times by the time the boat reached her, and had spent the rest of the day chilled and shaken, first wrapped in a borrowed towel in the back of the boat, and then (wrapped in her own towel) under a sun umbrella on the beach. She'd ended the day at the foot of her nanny's bed, wrapped in a quilt. 

But....But. As she had slipped below the surface for the third time, she had been flooded with a curious calm and opened her eyes, even as her lungs protested, and even as she knew she had to be drowning. The riverbed, alien and startlingly beautiful, reached up to her. It enticed her downwards, where things were still and serene and the weeds leaned there and here with a hypnotizing grace. And she'd known for sure that it was possible to stay there. And that that might be alright.

***

That memory was a long way off as something not quite human silently bore down on her, its mouth sagging open like a horrendous fresh wound. It stood up unsteadily as it lurched forward, one searching hand extended, the other swinging long at its side as though boneless. Isa's reflexes failed her for just a moment, as she tried desperately to make visual sense of the creature... and then all those reflexes triggered at once. She spun around, and fled back the way she had come, trainers pounding, limbs clumsy-heavy with terror, ice shooting through her every vein and artery. At some point, her book bag slid from her shoulder. She did not slow, didn't even feel it drop. She hadn't come far from the school property, and was bolting past the gatehouse moments later, suddenly aware that she was keening like a beaten dog, and that she had been for whole minutes. It was only when the sharp pounding of her footsteps against concrete suddenly muffled that she looked down and saw that the green of the school lawn was once again under her feet.

Circling around the wall between the academic building and chapel, she dared a look back, and then flattened herself against the wall, gasping and choking back sobs in an effort to stay silent.

It was nowhere in sight. And no, not circling the trees or coming around the bend in the road.

She peeled herself from the wall, her breath still coming in violent heaves. She had no idea how far it was behind her, and hadn't watched it move for long enough to know how fast it might have been able to follow. What if it was crouched somewhere close by, watching her?

What the hell had it even been? It hadn't been her friend, she knew that in her soul. Whatever it was, it hated her as she had never been hated by anyone.

But could it have been Cass? For a moment, she gave herself over to doubt. What if Cass was horribly injured and trying to seek Isa's help? What if she had narrowly escaped whatever had happened to everyone else, and gone into hiding in the woods, waiting for a passerby? The shape and face of this... thing had been human, but the gait - almost as though it was falling apart, or in horrible pain as it moved. No. She was sure It had wanted her dead, and as she recalled the shape of its contorted figure, it was clear whomever it was hadn't eaten in days. Cass had been healthy and well-nourished only the day before, and nothing that could have happened to her overnight - not anything - could have transformed her into the creature Isa had just seen. It had been not only skinnier than Cass but taller too, she realized - a grinning, gangly, horrific creature. Its searching hand -- greyish and filthy and clumsy -- groped towards her again in her imagination and she got another shot of adrenaline, this time running all the way back to Peyman Hall. She slammed into her room, rammed her desk up against the door, and locked herself in the closet. 

And that was where she sat, clutching the only weapon she could find (a fork lifted from the Dining Hall), and waited, trembling, for a final showdown that never arrived.