14 You Can’t Leave the Past in Your Rearview Mirror
You Can’t Leave the Past in Your Rearview Mirror
“You’re hardly the first stray to move in,” I point out when he apologizes for the fifth time.
“I don’t want you to feel pressured. I know the situation is . . . unique.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to be the least unique roommate I have,” I say dryly, gesturing to the surrounding chaos.
Eldi is watching her tablet again, dangling upside down and half off the bench seat of the kitchen table.
All I can see are her dirt-covered toes leaving smudges on the upholstery.
Dave is digging through the box of clothes Calvin has set in my bedroom.
Doug is catching and folding every article of clothing Dave carelessly flings out of the box, making soft chastising noises that Dave is studiously ignoring.
Manny has crept up from the basement to see what all the activity is about and is pushing every button on Calvin’s espresso machine in evident delight.
It takes up most of the counter space, sending periodic steam plumes into the air and spilling coffee grounds into the sink.
“You have a good point,” Calvin says, snatching my cactus out of harm’s way as it’s precariously close to the sink and Manny’s flailing plastic arm.
The only moment I feel the strangeness of it sneak in, causing a small pang of loss, is when Calvin’s shirts find their way into my closet as I push the ratty old Gorillaz T-shirt into the back and line up Calvin’s much newer, less ratty shirts next to the rest. At least the Winnebago is courteous enough to expand the closet space to accommodate.
“My cousin called me,” Calvin tells me as we unpack.
“Your cousin?”
“Archer. His husband spends a lot of time investigating the paranormal. Archer called to ask about the strange rumors. He wanted to know if I knew anything about the connection certain children have with it all.”
That gives me pause. I set down the pants I’m folding and stare at him. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you? I was serious about lying low.”
“He’s got a kid. Wren. She’s adopted. Sweet but a little bit strange. I didn’t think anything about it until recently. After I found out about Eldi . . . well, some things started to make a lot of sense. Wren reminds me of her, of Eldi.”
“How much did you tell him?” My heart is racing. The more people who know about Eldi, the harder it’s going to get to keep her safe. But how many of these kids are out there?
“Enough to warn them. Maybe we should meet up with them. Some allies we could be honest with can’t be a bad thing. We can trust them. And they’re family.”
I snort. Trust them. Because they’re family. What could go wrong? “As if they wouldn’t sell us out to save their own kid.”
“Is that really what you think?”
“It’s what I would do,” I say coldly.
“I don’t believe you,” Calvin says.
I shrug, finish folding the pants, and neatly tuck them away into a drawer.
“Have you contacted your family?” Calvin asks too casually.
“I don’t have family.”
“Besides Eldi, you mean,” Calvin clarifies after a long silence. “You came from somewhere,” he points out, pressing the issue more than he usually would.
“How do you know? Maybe I’m an abomination created in a laboratory. Maybe I sprang fully formed, a monster, from another dimension. Perhaps I crawled up from the depths of hell itself. I was an alien traveling here on an interstellar spaceship—”
“All right, all right. You don’t have to be facetious; I get it. You don’t have to tell me.”
A pang of guilt washes over me. Not enough to make me confess more truths, though.
It’s not just Calvin’s cousin asking him questions.
Calvin’s fan base is getting suspicious of his silence on recent astrological happenings.
Calvin’s been uploading premade and unrelated content, but his viewers and listeners aren’t dumb.
So far it’s benefited him, upping his views and episode listens as conspiracy theories spread.
Theories range from uncomfortably accurate (Calvin’s in trouble with shady government organizations because of his investigating and is on the run) to wildly off base (he’s been kidnapped by aliens and has sparked intergalactic war, news of which has been suppressed).
We make it all the way to the northern edge of Montana by dinnertime.
My internal clock is fucked by this point, but at least I can nap while Calvin drives.
I think we might actually have thrown Zara off our trail.
If everyone and everything else hides in the basement, I have fake ID to get into Canada without being traceable.
Winnie’s license plate has at some point morphed from US to Canadian.
I pat her bumper fondly in thanks when I notice.
But it goes south, metaphorically speaking, as soon as I let my guard down.
We’ve trundled off deep into some forest on dirt back roads, trusting in Winnie’s magic to hide our illegal camping.
Eldi is bouncing off the walls. Literally.
Climbing with sticky little hands like a gecko.
Leaping from her loft bed to the sink to the bench and back to the floor.
I wouldn’t let her out hunting, and she’s mad about it.
She’s been set on looking for her favorite constellation, shrieking, “Orion, Orion, Orion,” every thirty seconds.
I’ve been snapping at her, increasingly frustrated all evening.
Doug and Dave are off doing their nightly thing.
I knew it was useless to try to stop them.
“Are you seeing the same news I am?” Calvin says in amazement, without looking up from his laptop. His eyes are moving fast in the flicker of light as he scrolls.
“I’m definitely getting the same reports,” I say. “The president scheduled an announcement tomorrow morning.”
“There’s speculation the government is going to go with full disclosure regarding UFOs and extraterrestrials.”
“I have a hard time believing that,” I say. “Aliens could stand in the crowd, and the government would still deny their existence.”
“I don’t know, Reggie. This is getting big enough to be undeniable, don’t you think?”
Eldi leaps onto the table, scattering papers, shutting my laptop abruptly, and knocking my cactus from its temporary perch.
I yelp in pain as several spines burrow into my fingers when I grab for the plant as it goes sliding across the table and crashes on the floor, scattering dirt as its uneven clay pot cracks neatly in half.
“Eldi!” I explode. “I’ve told you a hundred times to stop running around the Winnebago. You broke my pot and killed my cactus.” Calvin quietly moves to collect the broken pieces and gingerly pick up the cactus with kitchen tongs.
I pluck out sharp spines and swallow back tears. I will not cry in front of Eldi and Calvin over a plant. But when I look at the broken little pot, painted with faded flowers, sitting in pieces on the kitchen table, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself from crying.
Eldi irreverently blows a raspberry and leaps from the table into the pile of dirt, and I see red.
“Be quiet.”
Eldi goes rigid and still.
“Get out,” I continue.
Eldi bares her fangs and hisses.
“Get. Out,” I repeat through gritted teeth.
“Reggie—” Calvin says warningly.
“No, I’ve had enough,” I say, unable to stop the words flooding out. “Get out. Don’t come back until you can behave. I don’t want to see you right now. I want some peace and quiet for once. You made a mess and ruined my things. Stop racing around Winnie like a feral beast.”
Eldi looks like I’ve slapped her. She runs, pausing only to grab Goat, scattering dirt in her wake and slamming the door behind her.
The guilt is immediate and all-consuming, but all I can see is the little broken pot and the scraggly cactus lying in the dirt.
Calvin cleans the rest of the mess in silence while I sit on the floor, trying to see past the haze in my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat.
By unspoken agreement, we wait for Eldi to return.
I’m pretending to be deep into research.
Calvin might actually be getting things done, but I’m staring blankly at my screen, occasionally refreshing my email and news feeds and staring out the window the rest of the time.
There’s no sign of reflective eyes in the darkness.
Finally, Calvin clears his throat and says, “Maybe we should get some sleep. I’m sure she’ll be back soon. She’s probably found Doug and Dave by now.”
His reasonable tone of voice makes me want to punch him in the face. I make a noncommittal noise and refresh my email mindlessly.
The familiar whoosh of my notification sounds.
It’s my mysterious but reliable source. It’s short, not attachments, only a few words long.
I picture someone hiding, frantically typing out the words on a phone, desperate to send them to me with no regard for punctuation.
I picture someone typing them out meticulously, intent on taunting and confusing me.
It eats at me, not being able to tell which picture is the truth.
Subject: the sky is falling
ladybird ladybird fly away home your house is on fire your children are gone
ladybird ladybird fly away home your house is on fire your children will burn
I read the eerie words a second time.
“What’s wrong?” Calvin says sharply, but I can hardly hear him over the ringing in my ears.
Is it a threat? A warning? If the sender is who I think it is, maybe it’s a taunt.
Calvin comes around the table, leans over me to read the words on the screen, claws extending from his fingertips and digging into the tabletop as he breathes the words out loud into my ear.
“What a creepy thing to write,” he says. “Does it mean something to you? ‘Your children are gone. . . .’”
As he mumbles the words to the lullaby, it hits me. “Eldi. Eldi. Eldi! She’s outside—”
I’m moving before I understand what I’m doing. Pulling on rain boots because there’s no time for laces, racing out the door and blindly into the dark forest.
Calvin is right behind me, fully changing into his werewolf form to lope gracefully alongside me. He catches me as I stumble over a root.
“Eldi! Eldi!” I call for her frantically. I need a flashlight; I need a plan, but there’s not enough time to—and there’s too much light suddenly. Spotlights, shining only a short distance away, tracking something.
Eldi. They’re hunting her.
Calvin knocks into me, shoving me down and out of sight as a beam sweeps through the surrounding woods.
The rhythmic thrumming of helicopter blades passes low, wind skimming the treetops overhead, whipping up a swirl of leaves and forest floor detritus around us.
I shove myself back to my feet, running for the lights, following the helicopter. I’m hyperventilating now. My lips and fingertips tingle, and I force myself to take a long, shuddering breath. A branch whips across my face. I can’t tell if the warmth running down my cheek is blood or tears.
I spot her as we come to a gap between the trunks, darting along the tree line at the opposite side of a large meadow.
“Eldi!” I scream as helicopters hover, spotlights unrelenting. It’s as bright as day.
I can’t tell if she hears me over the noise of the helicopters, but she sees me and runs straight toward me as fast as I’ve ever seen her.
Dark, masked figures drop from the helicopters, land in the spaces between us, cutting us off. I was right not to trust Zara’s offer—she has betrayed me after all. How stupid I was to assume I’d thrown her off our trail. There’re too many of them. Too much distance between us.
It doesn’t matter. I’m getting through them to Eldi by any means. I’ll kill them before I let them take her. I’ll kill them all before she gets her hands on her.
Calvin tackles me to the ground again. He’s abruptly human shaped. Shouting something in my ear. I struggle upward, but he has his arms locked around me. A moment later, I understand why.
Eldi. It’s too late.
Nets whip through the air. Eldi falls, trapped but fighting hard. It takes a half dozen of the figures to control the nets containing her. The kind of nets that I know are too strong for her to escape, made to hold creatures even more powerful and vicious than her.
I fight Calvin just as hard. But he transforms, and I can’t fend off a werewolf. If I can only get to her, if I can at least go with her—
“Mama.” Her eyes lock on mine as she mouths the word.
And then she’s gone, wrapped tight, shoved into a heartbreakingly tiny cage that disappears into the belly of a helicopter.
Calvin finally releases me when I go limp.
He rises with a growl, smoothly changing back into human form.
A solitary figure is only yards away, closing in fast; dressed head to toe in black, face covered by a featureless black mask with a smattering of silver accents.
Their outstretched left hand catches the moonlight, warps the light emanating from the remaining helicopter’s spotlight, seems to draw it all in and consume it like a miniature black hole.
It’s an armored gauntlet, a silver hand shot through with veins of the darkest black.
She’s here, here, here. The voice in my head rising in a frenzied chorus of warning.
No. No, no, no, no—
Calvin moves as if to attack.
“Run.” It comes out as a whisper. “Run! Calvin, run!”
He drops like a stone as the figure clenches her fist, his screaming drowned out by the remaining helicopters.
I will not scream, not even as the pain overtakes me. My blood is boiling inside my veins. My ribs crushing my lungs. Pressure in my head, I expect my skull to implode with it. It blots out every thought but escape. I struggle to my feet even as my vision grays, reality growing jagged edges.
As my vision tunnels, the earth tilts around me.
I reach inside myself. Try to pull open that door through which I can reach the magic I can use to fight back.
It’s second nature to fling out a mental hand, grab hold of Calvin as a tether.
He feels like coming home. But I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been, and I’ve never thought I was strong enough.
It’s as if I were fighting rusty hinges to reach through that doorway.
It’s no use. I could never win against her. The dark figure slowly backs away, arm still raised, holding Calvin and me paralyzed with pain. She motions with her free hand for a second figure to approach. A syringe ready in their hand—