Chapter III. 2007 #2
Camilla turned away. Looked at the tree and wondered if she could forget what was happening behind her.
Focus on the bark and its great looping twists.
Breathe and pretend she didn’t want to rip Noah’s head off particularly.
He wasn’t like the rest of them. Wasn’t posturing or condescending. He was supposed to be better.
Her fingers itched toward her scalp. It would be so easy to tear a piece of herself away. A tiny scab. Something no one would think to look for. Something no one would miss. Every part of her vibrated in anticipation of the relief that would move like a great tremor down her spine.
She lifted her hand as if to tuck her fingers behind her ears. Pretense on display. The summation of her life made small.
And then there was the first scream.
It seemed to begin in the chest. Guttural and halting. As if the person couldn’t understand why they were making such a noise. It pitched upward into something raw. Panicked.
The guys’ laughter, as quickly as it had come, died away.
Without wanting to, Camilla’s body turned back toward the bonfire. The fear had become part of her, too. It drew on her in small sips. Taking her belly. Her chest. Her tongue. Bit by bit devouring her until she could do nothing but tremble and look where Sam lay twitching in the dirt.
He screamed again and clawed at his throat, his back arched and mouth opening so wide Camilla worried his jaw would crack open. “Please. Oh, please.” His teeth bit off the edges of the words, and his head jerked back and forth as a thin line of drool crept from his lips.
“What’s happening?” Ariana asked. No one responded. No one moved. Shock held them in too tight a grip. It was as if they were held under a great dome, the air gone still as whatever watched them kept them pinned beneath its watchful eye.
Finally, Noah knelt beside Sam, his hands hovering over his chest as if the act of movement could suddenly conjure the right thing to do.
He’ll ruin his jeans, Camilla thought, dimly aware what a stupid thing it was to worry over.
“Someone call 911,” Brianna said, and took a step forward, her own cell phone forgotten in the limp grip of her palm.
Michael held out a hand. “No cops. Just give me a second to think.”
Over and over, Sam gagged, the sound deepening and lengthening as it grew into something that sounded more animal than human.
What if Sam swallowed his tongue? Was that even possible? Or what if he’d hit his head when he fell and what they’d all just seen was a seizure and now they were all standing around watching him die?
The bonfire leapt behind them, a draft of wind seizing at the sparks and casting them upward.
Camilla followed their trajectory and wondered if she would spend the rest of her life categorizing her future self around this night.
What she had and had not done and what that meant about her.
If it meant she was as empty as she sometimes felt. A carcass built of rot.
She closed her eyes, and the sparks followed her into the dark. In the world outside, Sam still choked, but Camilla felt removed. As if she’d slipped out of the skin of this world and into some strange in-between place.
In the distance, the wind caught at the trees. Buried within it, she imagined she heard her name. The barest of whispers.
Camilla.
Her throat burned with the need to respond, but her tongue sat useless behind her teeth.
She could have torn it out for the want of movement.
Just to know she still had some semblance of control over her body instead of this woozy lethargy.
To see it there in her hand and know that it belonged to her alone, and she held the power of its use.
“Camilla.”
Her eyes snapped open. Sam stared at her, his voice ragged as he called her name again. “Camilla.”
Garbled sounds leaked from between his fingers as he sat up, and then there was another terrible groan as he opened his hands and showed her the pale, fleshy mound in his grip.
A tongue. He was holding a tongue.
Camilla screamed and scrambled backward, her hands scraping against the dirt as his mouth gaped open, dark blood spilling over his chin. He crawled toward her, the tongue held before him in one hand.
He lifted it to her, and Camilla closed her eyes.
She could not bring herself to process that he’d bitten or torn off his own tongue.
Everything was confusion and fear and so much screaming, the world around her crashing down as they all scrabbled away from Sam and what he held in his hands.
He made another sound in his throat—a strange ticking that grew louder as he drew closer to her.
But the sound changed. Another hitch, and then another, and her eyes flew open because she recognized what it was Sam was doing.
He was laughing. And then Michael, too. And then, because her body was suddenly empty of its adrenaline or because the relief was too great or because she didn’t know what else to do and was still confused and woozy and a little drunk, Camilla laughed as well.
Noah did not laugh. He looked at Brianna.
“What the fuck?” Brianna advanced on them, her body trembling, fists clenched at her sides. Her rage was incandescent. A shimmering aura that threatened to consume anything that dared to draw near.
“Cow tongue. And a fake blood capsule,” Sam said, and then dangled the organ over his mouth and lewdly waggled his own tongue at it. He turned and faced Noah, blood still streaming down his chin. “You nailed it, dude. Way more realistic than the fake one. Thanks again for bringing it.”
“Noah?” Brianna did not face him but kept her gaze leveled on a still-grinning Sam.
Noah reached for her. Thought better of it and dropped his hands. “We keep them for the dogs. It was just a joke.”
Brianna nodded once. “A joke. Sure.”
She looked at Camilla, and Camilla felt the chill in her gaze.
She wished she had not laughed. She couldn’t remember why she had.
None of what was happening was funny. Tucked in a faraway part of her, there was only the sensation of the release it brought.
How the laughter had been the only thing that could drive away the feeling of free-falling into an abyss.
“You’re all a fucking joke.” Brianna turned on her heel, her fists still tucked at her sides as she strode away.
“Brianna,” Noah called as he stumbled to his feet and made to follow her.
She did not pause. Did not choose to wait for him or to let him come to her. Camilla watched as the defeat moved through Noah—his body loosening with that failure.
Brianna’s voice carried back to them in hard, angry syllables. “Don’t you dare.”
“Here, Brianna.” Sam hoisted the tongue overhead before tossing it after her retreating back. “Don’t forget your treat. I heard it’s good for bitches,” he said.
Camilla didn’t see Noah move, but she heard the punch connect. The meaty slap of skin against skin. The shouting as the others tried to pull them apart, Sam’s nose bleeding as he went after Noah, who ducked low and tackled Sam to the ground.
The firelight glinted against the blood spattered in the grass.
Hard to tell what was animal and what was human, but Camilla stepped past it and hurried after Brianna.
She would be able to calm her down and bring her back.
Explain that Noah hadn’t meant it, that she hadn’t meant it; he had only wanted to make them all laugh, and it had all been so confusing.
“Brianna, wait!” she called. Brianna was already to the tree line, following the path that led through those massive, arching branches and back out to the Shaw’s unused field, where they parked their vehicles.
They were beneath the trees, Camilla stumbling over roots that threaded themselves near the earth’s surface, when Brianna finally stopped.
Her body gone so still it seemed unnatural.
As if she’d surrendered herself to the forest around them, and it held her suspended there in stasis until it commanded her to move.
“You know,” Brianna began, the words dying off between them as Camilla slowed, “I should have known better.”
“Sam’s an asshole. And Noah’s an idiot. But he didn’t mean it.”
“I should have known you were no better than them. Everything’s a joke, right? Nothing matters to you because it doesn’t have to.”
Camilla shook her head. She tried to throw off the sting of what Brianna had said, but it sank into her like venom. “That’s not true.”
“Except that it is. You get to flit around. Act out your little make-believe rebellion with absolutely no consequences. And the fucked-up thing is, you don’t even see it. You get to laugh at the Dark Sisters because nothing like that would ever touch you.”
“The Dark Sisters aren’t real.” Camilla felt as if she was nine again. Back in Tricia Allman’s pool house, telling herself she didn’t believe.
“That’s not the point!” Brianna’s voice pitched upward.
In the four years of their friendship, Brianna had never looked at Camilla with such disgust. The hurt of it lodged in Camilla’s chest and made it hard to take a full breath. If she could go back, she would swallow her laughter. She would erase the entire night.
“You get to laugh because you get to choose.” Brianna stared into the trees, the moon catching at her face and illuminating the tears on her cheeks.
“You get to choose to ignore it all. The Sisters. What they symbolize. Those expectations. I don’t get to do that, Camilla.
I never have. So no, they aren’t real, but what they stand for is. ”