The Dissonance E-Book

Shaun Hamill

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 722

Beschreibung

Four teenagers are thrust into a life of magic, secrecy and sacrifice in this captivating dark fantasy, perfect for fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower and The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning It starts as an end-of-junior-school sleepover, but when Athena, Hal, Peter and Erin stumble across a missing boy, deep in the forests surrounding sleepy Clegg, Texas, they discover a world of sorcery and untold power. So begins a new life with the Dissonance, under the tutelage of Professor Elijah Marsh. Twenty years later, separated and broken by their experiences, the four friends are pulled back to Clegg for the anniversary memorial service at the town's high school. Each carrying their own trauma, they come together once more to confront the legacy of their actions, and the monsters they failed to bury. Trapped between their past and present, they must reclaim the power and potential of their youth, with the wisdom of adults, to learn their final lessons, and try to make amends.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

2019: Tremors

Hal

Athena

Owen

Erin

Owen

1996: The Sleepover

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Erin

Hal

Athena

2019: Homecoming

Owen

Hal

Erin

Athena

Owen

1997: The Conference

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

2019: Reunion

Hal

Athena

Erin

Owen

1998: Athena’s Doorway

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

2019: Memorial

Owen

Erin

Hal

Athena

Owen

1999: Field Trip

Athena

Erin

Athena

Hal

Erin

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Hal

Erin

2019: The Last Adventure, Part One

Athena

Erin

Owen

Athena

Hal

Owen

1999: The Day Of (And What Cameafter)

Hal

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Erin

2019: The Last Adventure, Part Two

Athena

Erin

Owen

Athena

Owen

Athena

Owen

Athena

Erin

Hal

Athena

Hal

Athena

Erin

Epilogue: The Next Adventure (2019)

Hal

Erin

Athena

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Also by Shaun Hamill and available from Titan Books

A COSMOLOGY OF MONSTERS

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The Dissonance

Print edition ISBN: 9781835410172

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835410202

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: July 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Shaun Hamill 2024.

The right of Shaun Hamill to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Sergio

2019

TREMORS

HAL

Twenty-one years after killing his mother and one year after killing a man in a bar fight, Hal Isaac stands on the steps of St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Vandergriff, Texas, and smokes a cigarette.

His AA meeting has just let out. The sun has set, but the day’s heat remains like a physical force pushing down on his body, juicing him for sweat. He could hop into his car and crank the A/C, but he always gets a headache during meetings, and a cigarette grants his mind a few minutes to unfurl. It’s the main reason he took up the habit. Cigarettes give you a chance to press pause on life.

He’s not the only one who feels this way. Probably two thirds of the meeting linger on and around the steps, clumped in groups of twos and threes, their tendrils of smoke rising into the oppressive air. Hal doesn’t stand with the others, but he appreciates their presence. They’re a buffer between him and loneliness. Their chatter washes over him while he studies the expensive-looking houses across the street. Do the upper-middle-class occupants look out their windows at this time of night? What do they think of the tableau of fuckups on the church steps?

“Hey.”

He hadn’t noticed the woman approach. Susie. A new face. Been coming for a few weeks, since Social Services took her kid.

“Hey,” Hal says around his cigarette.

“Congrats.” She nods to the chip in his left hand, the one they gave him at the end of tonight’s meeting. He’s been twirling it between his fingers like a close-up magician ever since. He stops and lets the aluminum circle fall into his open palm. It’s the gaudy blue you’d expect to see tossed from a Mardi Gras float, except for the triangle etched around a big roman numeral I.

“One year,” she says. “There are days when I think I’ll be lucky to make it to six weeks.”

“One day at a time.” AA’s full of these little clichés. It takes as long as it takes. It works if you work it. In his old life, Hal, a Jew—if not a very good one—would have rolled his eyes at the pure WASP-y Christianity/motivational poster of it all. Now these trite aphorisms hold his sanity together.

Susie pulls a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She slaps it on her palm a few times before pulling off the cellophane.

“I forgot my lighter,” she says. “Help me out?”

Hal gives her his full attention for the first time. She’s lying about the lighter. She wanted an excuse to talk to him. Hal’s always been able to find company like this when he wants. Jealous friends have called it his superpower. Hal, who knows what an actual superpower looks like, thinks of it as an accident of personality. He’s good at reading people, is all.

AA says you’re not supposed to start new relationships during the first year of sobriety. And hooking up with a fellow alcoholic? That’s a double no-no. But Susie is pretty, and she seems nice, and Hal is feeling low tonight. His lawyer called earlier today to set up a meeting for tomorrow. Insisted they talk in person. That can only mean big news. Likely bad news. So Hal lets this conversation with Susie play out a little further.

“Want to see a magic trick?” he asks.

Susie spreads her hands in a by all means gesture. He closes his eyes and pushes past all the worry and anxiety to that deep place in his center that he never visits anymore. He makes an exception tonight because he wants to delight this sad, pretty woman. There’s nothing in the blue book that forbids making a pretty woman smile.

He strikes his mind against the spark of pain in his middle. Light flashes behind his eyelids and he opens them in time to watch Susie’s cigarette light itself without visible assistance.

This little show is the extent of what he can do these days. He doesn’t understand why he has this talent. It isn’t one he had as a kid, when he could do far more impressive things.

“Ta-daa,” he says.

Susie pulls the cigarette from her mouth and looks like she might drop it, or maybe throw it at him. She’s not charmed. She’s freaked out.

She jerks a thumb toward the parking lot, where no cars have arrived for several minutes. “My ride is here. I better go.”

“Sure thing,” he says.

“But congrats on your one year. And thanks for the reminder! One day at a time!”

He raises a hand in farewell as she speed-walks away from him. She drops her cigarette, its cherry winking orange on the pavement. He follows her far enough to stamp out the fire and pick up the butt. He frowns at it, and it bursts like a trick cigar in a cartoon. Tobacco and paper waft through the sticky air, down toward the lawn. Hal looks around, but everyone else seems busy with their own thoughts and preoccupations and conversations.

He decides his mind is as clear as it’s going to get tonight. He drives home, to his studio apartment, and tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to sleep.

He rises logy and miserable the next morning and considers calling in sick to work, but his meeting with his lawyer isn’t until the afternoon, and he needs a distraction until then. Also, he needs every penny for his stack of overdue bills and attorney fees.

He showers and goes to the auto finance company where he works. He answers emails and phone calls from customers hoping to reschedule their car payments. Everyone he talks to seems to have prepared a speech, a justification for why they should be allowed to skip this month’s payment or at least be given an extra week to get the money together.

Customers think they have to convince Hal, but the truth is that every one of this company’s customers is allowed to rearrange their payment date as often as they’d like, and everyone is also allowed a certain number of skipped payments before the repo men are unleashed. This latter number is based on an algorithm—the unholy union of payment history with the company and overall credit score. Hal’s job is mostly to put a human face in front of the algorithm, to create the illusion that the company cares about its customers.

There is one decision he gets to make every time he answers a phone call or email. He gets to decide how friendly he wants to be. For example, around 11 a.m., Hal gets a call from a man who wants his APR adjusted. Normally Hal would sympathize; he’s never been great with money himself, and has often bitten off more than he can financially chew. But this guy? This fucking guy.

“You need to lower my APR,” the man says. It’s the voice of someone used to issuing orders and being obeyed. “It’s too high.”

Hal’s voice remains placid, pleasant. “That’s not a service we offer. I can help arrange your payment schedule—”

“Are you deaf? I don’t need to change my payment date. I need to change the amount you’re gouging me every month.”

Most people’s hackles would rise at this tone. Hal’s seen it happen with his coworkers. Hal, on the other hand, settles back into his chair and smiles. Call it another superpower, or accident of personality.

“Sir, I would remind you that you took out an auto loan with a subprime lending company,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“You came to us because you needed to clean up your credit,” Hal says. “That’s an extra risk to us, and an extra risk comes with an extra cost.”

“Now listen,” the man says.

“We didn’t create this situation,” Hal says, upbeat and friendly. “We’re helping you tidy it up. You’re paying us for the favor. You agreed to all of this in writing, and it’s not our fault if you didn’t bother to read your contract. The APR will not change. But if you’d like to talk about changing your due date or would like to make a payment today, I’d be happy to help you.”

“Fuck you, you little prick.”

“I see here you’re already past due,” Hal says. “Would you like to make your payment?”

“Eat shit and die,” the man says before he hangs up.

Hal sighs, relaxed for the first time all day. He loves a fight, verbal or physical. He’s good at them. Can keep his cool while other people lose theirs.

But the high is short-lived. As the morning drags on and the seconds tick toward his meeting with his lawyer, he fumbles call after call, and eventually asks his supervisor if he can move to emails for the rest of the day.

For lunch, he goes to Taco Bell and orders two bean burritos. He sits in a booth meant for four, and while he eats, he stares into the middle distance, hoping the salt and fat will soothe his nerves. They do, for the few minutes it takes to eat them.

Hal clocks out at 2 p.m., and drives into Dallas. Hal’s lawyer, Robert K. Tuttle, has his own building right off I-35. The frosted glass on the front doors bears a crest that reads “LIBERTY OR DEATH.” It’s the sort of thing a tacky person would mistake for classy.

The inside is every bit as ostentatious, with track lights and large paintings of Southwestern landscapes on the walls. It’s a ridiculous place, but the firm’s results are impressive. Tuttle’s website has a long list of DWI and intoxication manslaughter charges dismissed or refiled as lesser charges. It’s why Hal sold almost everything he owned to hire Tuttle.

The receptionist is polite and cheerful as she directs Hal to one of the plush leather chairs in the lobby. Hal tries to play a game on his phone as he waits, but he can’t concentrate. After a few minutes, the attorney appears in his office doorway, shaking hands with a middle-aged woman who looks like she’s having a bad day. Her sunken eyes are haunted, rimmed by heavy bags. Tuttle waits until she’s out the front door before he shakes Hal’s hand.

“Hal,” Tuttle says. “How are you today?”

“You tell me.”

Tuttle leads Hal into his office and takes a seat behind a massive desk with the “Liberty or Death” crest carved into the front. Hal takes one of the small chairs opposite, feeling like a little kid called to the principal’s office.

Tuttle steeples his fingers. “You know I didn’t invite you here to talk about the weather.”

“I figured.”

“It’s not easy or fun to say this. The DA’s office made a plea offer and I think it’s the best we’re going to get.”

“Okay,” Hal says. His voice sounds far away to his own ears.

“Ten years, with a chance of parole after the first five years served.”

“Five to ten years,” Hal says.

“We don’t have to take it,” Tuttle says. “We can go to trial, but it’s a gamble. You might be acquitted, but you could also end up with a longer sentence. And a trial would cost you more, whether you won or lost.”

“I see,” Hal says, because he feels like he has to say something.

“Take a few days,” Tuttle says. “Think about it.”

He stands to let Hal know the meeting is over. Hal follows him out of the office. Tuttle pats him on the back but doesn’t try to shake his hand again, for which Hal is grateful.

Hal’s legs carry him to the edge of the sidewalk in front of the building before they give out and he sits down hard on the pavement. Pain shoots up from his tailbone, and the numbness vanishes, replaced with a sharp hatred of everything about Robert K. Tuttle, that smarmy cartoon of a man. Fucker probably thinks ten years is a good deal. Another victory to add to the list on his website.

Hal spreads his knees and lowers his head. He focuses on his breath, counts from one to ten. He’s in the middle of the third round of counting when the earth rumbles. He looks up toward the highway, thinking it must be a truck, but he sees nothing big enough to make the ground shake. Also, the tremble isn’t moving like an eighteen-wheeler. It seems to be everywhere.

He tries to stand up, to look around, but the ground beneath him softens, then pulls taut and bounces him like a kid on a trampoline. He trips and falls onto the sidewalk on his hands and knees. The burritos he had for lunch backflip in his stomach. Acid burns up his throat and he vomits all over the pavement. Bile splashes the back of his hands.

When his stomach stops heaving, he realizes that the earth has fallen quiet below him. He tries to stand again, bracing himself against the bumper of his car.

The tint of the world has changed. Everything has turned a burned, brownish tinge. The sky is a fiery red. But on the highway next to Tuttle’s office, cars hurtle down the road as normal. No one stops to gape or scream like extras in a disaster movie. Is no one else seeing this? Is it just Hal? Did the plea deal snap his sanity?

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He bends over and wipes his hands on the grass before taking it out. The notification is a Facebook event invitation:

THE CLEGG HIGH SCHOOL20th ANNIVERSARY MEMORIAL SERVICE

ATHENA

A couple of hours after Hal Isaac throws up outside his lawyer’s office, Athena Watts teaches her sex magic seminar. It’s her most popular talk, for obvious reasons, and the one she offers most often. She can teach it on autopilot now, and for much of tonight, that’s what she’s done, filling the whiteboard with diagrams of magic circles and pronunciations of obscure words, while her mind mulls the meeting she has scheduled after closing.

Athena’s Books and Beans, her combination occult shop/café, is located in an old house in what most would call a “dangerous area” of Ashland, Oregon. The parking lot is more pothole than pavement, the front walk a series of broken concrete slabs. A seedy motel stands next door, and the housing projects are only three blocks away, but Athena’s never had trouble with her neighbors, and the shop draws a respectable crowd of customers most days.

Said customer base comprises a few overlapping groups: first, people who want a decent cup of coffee not from Starbucks; second, practicing Wiccans and dilettante occultists (people who believe magic can be discovered and practiced with rituals found on the internet or in mass-market publications); and third (and smallest), real-deal Dissonance users. The first group keeps the café full of paying customers. The second group drops disposable income on worry stones and spell kits, and also accounts for most of the students who enroll in the classes, which Athena holds on the second floor of the house. But it’s the third, secret group—the ones who know about the real power in this world—who keep the shop in the black. There’s money in rocks and herbs and penis-shaped candles, but there’s money in Dissonant artifacts and texts.

Garrett Thorpe, an old acquaintance and one of her most reliable dealers, called yesterday with a promise of something special. He’s prone to exaggeration, but he’s never offered her something she couldn’t move. Also, he’s good-looking for a white guy, and she never minds having his undivided attention for a little while.

Now, as her talk nears its end, she forces her thoughts away from those possibilities and back to the task at hand.

“Remember,” she says. “You perform the ritual under a full moon. Outside, in direct moonlight, or the spell won’t work. But if you get caught by kids with cameras or the police, you didn’t hear any of this from me, okay?”

The students laugh, even the ones who’ve taken this seminar before. The lame jokes make all the middle-class white women feel more comfortable. As a Black woman in a mostly white community, Athena has had a lifetime of practice making white people feel comfortable.

“And if this goes well and you end up rich and famous, maybe let me wet my beak a little, all right?” She rubs her thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for Pay up, which prompts another round of good-natured laughter. Athena forces a smile at her own joke.

Garrett appears in the classroom doorway—tall, black-haired, in jeans, T-shirt, and a sports coat despite the weather. He looks like the white Hollywood leading man version of a college professor. He sees what’s happening, holds up a hand in apology, and backs out of sight. Athena turns toward the whiteboard but freezes as she catches her reflection in a darkened window: sleeves of her button-down shirt rolled up, brown hair barely contained by a scrunchie, Coke-bottle glasses in need of a good wipe-down. She’s never felt more like a middle-aged schoolmarm. She swallows a sigh as she faces the class.

“I don’t know why I started turning around,” she says. “I have nothing else to write. All this sex talk has me flustered, I guess. Thank you all for coming. I mean, thank you for attending. Attending.”

It’s a weak joke, but it earns a laugh and mild applause. Most of the crowd disperses, but a few students hang back to ask questions. Athena does her best to answer while shepherding everyone downstairs and out the front door. Her barista, Danni, does the same with the last of the coffee drinkers. After Athena locks the front door and flips the sign to “CLOSED,” she leaves Danni to clean up and returns upstairs to find Garrett in the classroom, studying the whiteboard.

“I don’t recognize any of this,” he says.

“It’s Wiccan, not Dissonant.”

Athena has known Garrett since she was fifteen years old, when they met at a conference of Dissonants. He used to be a straight-up asshole, but in early middle age he’s mellowed into a likable blowhard. He’s from a Dissonant family, one of those rare lines where the talent passes reliably from generation to generation. Like most old Dissonant families, his is very wealthy. He doesn’t have to work, but he does anyway, traveling the world seeking and trading Dissonant texts and artifacts. Most of what he obtains, he sells to affluent collectors, but he offers smaller finds to shops like Athena’s. She sometimes wonders if he visits her so often out of a sense of pity, or if maybe there’s something more behind his frequent appearances. His visits always feel fraught with possibility, although she’s never quite sure if the feeling is one-sided or not. Every time he visits, she inches closer to inviting him back to her place.

Garrett points to the board. “Does it work?”

“Am I selling snake oil, you mean?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes you did. And yes, the ritual works, but not in the way you’re thinking.” She walks past him and wipes the board with an eraser. “It’s not a Dissonant command line. More like meditation. Directing your energies toward a goal.”

“Sounds hippie-dippie,” he says.

“To a snob, sure,” she says. “It’s like prayer. Hospital patients who pray recover faster than patients who don’t. It’s the layperson’s method of drawing power from the universe, or maybe the mind manifesting what it wants by directing its own strengths through some imagined external force.” She sets the eraser down.

“Sex magic,” Garrett says, his tone more considering.

“Try it sometime,” Athena says.

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“Depends how you like your sex.” She doesn’t wait for his reaction, but heads downstairs. After she bids Danni good night and watches to make sure the girl gets to her car okay, she and Garrett sit at one of the café tables, drinking beer instead of coffee. Garrett regales her with the story of his most recent adventure, something about a family of cannibals on Mount Nebo in Arkansas. She half-listens with a mix of jealousy and boredom. Garrett is a person impressed with his own experiences, and Athena hates herself a little for pretending to be impressed as well. It’s good business—if Garrett suspects she has a crush, he’ll underestimate or feel sorry for her, and give her a better price—but it’s more than that. This obnoxious blowhard also reminds her of another obnoxious blowhard she knew as a kid. One whom she liked much better.

By the time Garrett’s finished his second beer and third anecdote, Athena can’t keep her curiosity in check any longer. She drops the façade of polite interest and asks, “So what do you have for me?”

Garrett looks a little startled at the abrupt change in her manner, but rolls with it. He lifts his briefcase onto the table and unclasps it. He removes a gold disc the circumference of a small dinner plate, but thick and solid like a barbell weight. Intricate designs are etched on the surface, making it look a bit like a bronzed circuit board.

“The cannibals were using this as a beer coaster,” he says.

He cups his hands around the disc. Warm light shines from the designs on the surface—diffuse at first, and then coalescing into a swirling mass of colors, which then solidify into a three-dimensional image of a creature that could be an otherworldly woman. Her silvery skin shines like the moon, her eyes are solid black orbs, and her dark hair floats around her like she’s underwater. Gills ripple on her neck. Her black eyes make it difficult to read her expression, but Athena thinks the creature looks sad. Her right arm bears a dark birthmark in the shape of a spade.

“It’s a Dissonant painting,” Garrett says. “A creature called—”

“An undine,” Athena says. “A cosmic elemental.” She scolds herself for interrupting, and for letting on she knows as much as she does.

“You know your stuff,” he says, sounding impressed.

Athena chooses her next words with more care. “I thought the Dissonant community considered undine mythical. Part of the ‘Many Worlds’ heresy.”

“They are,” Garrett says. “Which is why I’m bringing this to you and not to a more upscale dealer. They’d consider it in bad taste. I thought I could count on your—and your clients’—discretion.”

He strokes the edge of the disc, and the image zooms in on the undine’s face. She looks familiar to Athena, like something from a dream.

“She seems unhappy,” Athena says.

“Because she knows she’s not real,” Garrett says. It’s a joke, but Athena can’t fake a laugh for him. She’s too exhausted after an evening of playing “teacher,” and anyway her curiosity has taken over now. Once she’s curious about something, it’s hard to be anything else. She puts her hands on the disc and swipes a few times, to examine the image from multiple angles.

“Who’s the artist?”

“If you were painting heretical images, would you sign your work? If I had to guess based on the design, I’d say it was done in the late ’70s or early ’80s, though.”

“I’ll take it,” Athena says. “Usual terms.” Meaning consignment. Fifty-fifty split on the proceeds. Garrett sets a minimum price, and Athena will negotiate anything on top of that.

“Cheers,” he says. They clink the necks of their beer bottles and drain the remains.

After Garrett excuses himself to the restroom, Athena finishes cleanup. She’s debating whether or not to finally take the plunge and invite Garrett back to her apartment when she overhears him talking in the bathroom. The walls in the old house are thin, and in the after-hours quiet, she can hear every word. The polite thing to do would be to make a lot of noise to bury his, or just leave. Instead, Athena stops tying up a trash bag to eavesdrop.

“No, the meeting went well,” he says. “She’s good. I doubt it’ll take more than a few weeks to sell.” A pause. “No, you’re thinking of the guy in Austin. Whatshisname. This is the woman in Ashland. The one I met as a kid? Yeah, the cute, thick one. She really knew her shit back then, but then something happened to her whole coven, and after that she gave it all up for some reason. Doesn’t practice anymore. Yeah.” Another pause. “I dunno. Maybe? Fingers crossed. I’ll text you and let you know how it goes.”

Athena resumes garbage duties as the toilet flush roars. When she returns from the dumpster out back, Garrett is back in the café. He smiles at her, but the expression falters when he sees her face.

“Something wrong?” he says.

“No,” she says. “Long day. I’m beat.”

His face falls a little, and she feels a little stab of triumph. He was hoping she would finally ask him over, too. He’s probably used to being invited wherever he wants. She almost feels sorry for him. Almost.

“Sure,” he says, recovering quickly. “Same here. I’ll get out of your hair.”

She’s walking him into the front room, past the display case and cash register, when she feels the tremor. Her first thought is that someone is driving past the store, blasting their bass. Only, unlike a bass tremor, which passes and fades, this one grows. The building begins to shake around her. The portrait disc—the painting of the undine—bounces on the table in the café. Garrett grabs her arm. She assumes he’s trying to steady her, but he sways and, as he pulls her down to the floor, she realizes he was using her to keep his own footing. The wooden floor hurts when she hits it, and she feels every one of her thirty-seven years. She covers her head with her hands, because isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in an earthquake? Behind her she hears the portrait disc fall off the table and bang to the floor. But that, she notices, is the only unusual sound aside from the rumble of the quake. There’s no shattering of glass, or clatter of pretty rocks falling out of their baskets, or glass jars of herbs shattering on the floor. When the rumble stops, and Athena sits up, everything in the entryway sits where it should—products on shelves, pictures straight on the walls. Like nothing happened.

“What the hell was that?” Garrett says. “Some kind of earthquake?”

“Maybe,” she says. “But—” She gestures around the room at the lack of destruction. “You ever experienced anything like this before?”

“No,” he says. “That was a first. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Her heart and mind are both racing. What could have caused this? What does it mean that only she and Garrett and the portrait were affected?

In the ensuing silence, Athena’s phone dings from its hiding place behind the counter.

OWEN

The morning after Hal Isaac and Athena Watts experience their personal earthquakes, Owen Gilliland steps into the bathroom of his father’s trailer in Wellspring, Alabama, sees himself in the mirror, and swears.

When he went to bed last night, he’d hoped he wouldn’t look so bad in the morning. But the morning has come, and Owen’s face has puffed up with a massive, impossible-to-hide black eye.

This leaves him with three options: he can call in sick; he can skip school without calling in; or he can go like this. None of these sounds appealing, but the first two sound worse than the third. If Owen calls in, he’ll have to stay home with his father. The man’s currently snoring through a hangover on the couch, but he’ll wake up, and Owen doesn’t want to be there when that happens.

There is a fourth option. Owen could pack a bag and leave. Sure. He’s eighteen, and has a few hundred dollars in the bank. He’s old enough to quit school and try his luck somewhere else. A big city where gay kids are commonplace and safe(ish). It could be an adventure. He’d have to sleep in his car until he found a place to live, but as long as he was careful with his money, he could make it, right?

This fantasy—of peace, of being able to breathe—carries him through his morning routine and all the way through his drive to Wellspring High, but it dissipates as he climbs from his car and hears Monica call his name. He fights a cringe as she jogs over to him, a look of concern on her blotchy red face.

“Owen,” she says. She reaches for his cheek, but withdraws when he pulls away. “What happened?”

Last night, Owen’s father, Bill Gilliland, barged into his son’s bedroom without knocking, and got an eyeful of his son jerking off to a video of one man blowing another. Bill stood for a moment, processing the sight through a beery haze, and gave Owen almost enough time to shut the laptop and pull up his pants. Owen had his zipper up by the time his father crossed the room and punched him.

It could’ve been worse. The old man didn’t yell, or lecture, or issue more physical discipline. He didn’t ask any questions, or make any comments. After the punch, he left and shut Owen’s door behind himself. Within an hour he was snoring on the living room couch. There’s even a good chance that, when Bill wakes up, he won’t remember the moment at all, and Owen will remain safely closeted to his father. The old man probably won’t even ask about the black eye.

“Dad got drunk and I got in his way,” Owen says to Monica, as they cross the parking lot toward the front doors of the school. He shrugs like it’s not a big deal, but he doesn’t look at her when he says it.

To her credit, Monica doesn’t poke. She leaves the subject be and they walk in companionable silence to Economics. This is why she’s his best friend. She knows who he is. She keeps his secrets like they’re her own.

As the day goes on, a few other kids ask about the black eye, but none of Owen’s teachers say anything. It’s a small town. Most of them have known Bill Gilliland all their lives, and none of them wants to fuck with the man. Owen is torn between sympathy and outrage. They’re the grown-ups. Aren’t they supposed to do something?

By lunchtime, Owen’s feeling almost normal. He and Monica have a booth in the cafeteria all to themselves, and sit across from one another, absorbed in their homework, until Lucy Cushing approaches the table. Lucy is one of the kids who wears all black every day and listens to nothing but metal. She’s dating Owen’s crush, Cole White, the de facto king of the Wellspring High goths. Owen has been in honors classes with Cole since grade school.

“What’s with your face?” Lucy says.

“He got in a badass fight,” Monica says, without looking up from her precalculus textbook. “What’s your excuse?”

Lucy smirks, acknowledging the point scored. “Are you two busy tomorrow night?”

Monica’s head snaps up, and she answers before Owen can: “We are not.”

“Do you feel like getting into some trouble?”

“Depends on the trouble.”

“Midnight ritual at the cemetery,” Lucy says. “We need two more people.” She faces Owen now. “Cole thought you might be into it.”

Across the cafeteria, all the kids at the goth table stare at Owen. Most look skeptical, and who can blame them? Nothing about Owen or Monica screams midnight ritual. But Cole, skinny and pale, stringy black hair in a ponytail, blue eyes bright behind his glasses, wears the same face he wears in English class when he argues with Mrs. Clanton. If Owen had to name it, he would call the expression amused contempt. It always creates a little tug behind Owen’s breastbone, and it warms his face now.

“We’re in,” Monica says.

“Great,” Lucy says. “We’ll pick you up tomorrow around eleven-thirty. Wear black, okay?”

They exchange numbers and Lucy returns to the goth table. Owen scowls at Monica. “What the hell?”

“You have objections?” Monica says.

He has plenty. Monica agreed to this adventure without asking what sort of ritual they’re attempting. Owen knows fuck-all about the occult, but he assumes nothing aboveboard happens in a graveyard after dark.

Before he can say any of this, he looks at the goth table again. Cole gives him a smile and a thumbs-up, and his cheeks warm. What is the worst that can happen? They’re all of them just high school kids, led by an honors student, for fuck’s sake. It’ll be a bit of mischief, maybe a touch of petty vandalism, and they’ll all go home high on the adrenaline.

“No,” Owen says. “No objections.”

“That’s right. Now say ‘Thank you, Monica.’”

“Thank you, Monica.”

ERIN

The day after Owen Gilliland accepts an invitation to a midnight ritual, Erin Porter is running late to her job in Iowa City. The parking deck closest to her job is so packed she has to park on the roof, and when she gets out of the car, she’s still two blocks away and five minutes late. She can’t afford to wait for the elevator. She sprints down the stairs and between pedestrians on the sidewalk, only slowing when the High Ground Café comes into view.

She stops, wrestles her blond hair back into a semblance of a bun, and walks through the front door, trying to look casual as she maneuvers around a long line of grad students and TAs. From behind the register, Erin’s boss, Manny, gives her an impressive frown. He’s twenty-six, recently promoted to manager, and treats his new position with deathly seriousness. She hurries into the kitchen to throw on her apron and nametag, washes her hands, and steps back into the café proper.

“You want me to take the register or make drinks?” she says.

“Make drinks,” Manny says.

Erin might have a punctuality problem, but once she’s at work, she’s fast and accurate. She and Manny deplete the mid-afternoon line in under twenty minutes, sending the serious-looking intellectuals to their stools and booths with caffeinated drinks and baked goods.

When the third barista, Cindy, gets back from her break, Manny asks Erin to see him in his office—a closet in the stock area, with a tiny desk and a single chair. Manny takes the chair and Erin has to stand. As he studies her, she fights the urge to cross her arms. She won’t show him how uncomfortable this makes her.

“Why are you back here, Erin?” he says.

Because you’re an asshole. “Because I was late.” She looks him in the eye. She’s ten years older than he is. This little creep won’t cow her.

“Because you were late.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is this job important to you?”

“Sure.” Rage tightens her jaw. She can’t stand being talked to like a child.

“Times are tough. Do you know how many applications get dropped off every day, ‘just in case’?”

She unclenches her jaw through sheer force of will. “I’ll do better.”

“We’ll see.” He waves her out.

She spends the next few hours making drinks and warming up pre-made sandwiches for the crowd of graduate students. She’s not sure whether she envies or pities her customers. On the one hand, they’re in school, doing something with their lives. On the other, Erin knows the job situation in this city. She moved here a few years ago, looking for a change after drifting rudderless through her twenties. What she found when she arrived was a town full of PhDs working in call centers and waiting tables. Erin couldn’t get a callback from a temp agency, let alone an interview for an office job. She ended up doing the same thing in Iowa she’d been doing in Texas: serving coffee. Her position here, at the High Ground, is her third coffee shop job in as many years. They fired her from the first for tardiness, and she quit the second to start here.

She had other reasons for coming to Iowa, originally, but she tries not to think about that. Avoidance is the only path forward. Only pay attention to what’s right in front of you. It’s how she gets through today’s shift—the next transaction, the next drink, the next table to bus. She builds a chain of hours to pull herself through the afternoon and into the evening, when the staff lock the doors, stack the chairs, mop the floors, wash the dishes, carry out the trash, and go home.

Erin hurries to the parking garage, stops for drive-through, which she eats on the drive back to her apartment building, and nearly screams when she opens the front door of her third-floor unit and finds a figure looming in the darkened entryway, head and shoulders silhouetted in the light from the windows. She catches herself in time. It’s only Philip.

“You scared me,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” Philip says.

She flips on the entryway light, illuminating his prominent, dimpled chin, aquiline nose, and blue eyes.

“Why are you hanging out in the dark?”

“Am I not supposed to?”

“When the sun goes down, most people like lights. It would make me happier if you would turn them on.”

He smiles and Erin experiences a strange mix of sorrow, pity, and lust. She pushes past him into the apartment to hide her expression. The complexity might confuse him.

He follows her from room to room as she turns on lights. “How was work?” he asks.

“Boring. I don’t want to talk about it.”

They enter the bedroom, and here Erin leaves the light off. She drops her purse to the floor, disrobes, and crawls onto the bed to sit up against the headboard.

“Come,” she says.

He undresses, leaving his clothes on the floor by her own, and climbs into bed with her.

She reaches between his legs and finds him hard, ready. She guides him into her. He moves slowly at first, teasing her the way she taught him.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” she says.

“Me too,” he says, and she understands he means he’s missed her and looked forward to her return. That he’s eager to please her.

As he slides all the way in, she clenches the back of his neck with one hand and touches herself with the other. She’s got pent-up frustration to fuck out, and doesn’t need much time. When she finishes and cries out into his shoulder, he remains atop her, erect and calm, until she pushes him off.

He lies down and lifts an arm so she can snuggle on his chest. His breath slows and evens out. He’s almost dozed off when she lifts her head.

“Did you enjoy it?” she asks.

He opens his eyes. “Yes.” When she continues to stare at him, he adds, “It was very good.”

“What does that mean to you? ‘Very good’?”

He gives the question some consideration. “I’m happy I pleased you. Am I misunderstanding? Did I do poorly?”

“I don’t think you’re capable of a poor performance,” she says. “What I mean is, did it feel good for you? Not in your heart, but in your body.”

“I think so,” he says, but he sounds confused.

Revulsion runs up her arm from the point of contact. She lets him go and rolls away onto her side.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asks.

“No.” She gets up to use the bathroom, where she finishes getting ready for bed. She doesn’t meet his eye when she returns and climbs under the covers.

“Good night,” he says.

“Sweet dreams, Philip.”

It takes her mind a while to settle. She’s only just started to drift off when something hits the bedroom window.

Philip stirs beside her. She rolls over to look at him, mind hazy and confused, wondering if he made the sound. Then it happens again: a whump against the glass, followed by a skittery flapping noise.

She gets out of bed. As she pads across the bare hardwood floor, another long silence stretches out. She approaches the window and yanks the curtains apart. A greasy gray streak mars her view, but she can see the city street below, the cars at a stoplight, college kids traveling in packs.

Erin opens her mouth to report what she sees when something slams into the window and cracks the glass. She lets go of the curtains and steps back. A pigeon has pancaked across the window, wings spread, head twisted at an unnatural angle. Its beak opens and closes. Its wings twitch. Gravity takes over, and the bird adds its own ghostly streak to the glass. Before it can drop, another bird swoops out of the dark and into the first bird’s back. The crack in the window spiderwebs out from the point of impact with a sound like breaking ice.

Before she can decide what to do, another bird hits the glass. And another. And another. The sky, formerly purple black, becomes a live, flapping mass of gray and white that crashes into and through the window with a feathery explosion, a flood of wings and beaks and talons, a legion of angry squawks and cries.

Erin throws herself to the floor. She can’t see Philip through the flurry, can’t hear her own screams above the din. The torrent of birds hits the headboard and the wall above it. Broken bodies pile up on the bed where she slept a moment ago, then flop onto the floor where she cowers now. Most are dead, but many remain alive. They flap and claw at one another with what looks like blind panic, or rage. One with a broken wing rolls upright and turns its yellow glare on Erin. It hops toward her, squawking. Other intact pigeons close in as well—one missing an eye, one with a leg facing the wrong direction. They hop and drag themselves forward, beaks snapping open and shut, shiny eyes wide and inscrutable, individual cries drowned in the cacophony of this localized apocalypse.

Erin scrabbles back over broken glass and discarded clothing until her head bumps the wall. Birds continue to flood through the broken window, to pile up on the bed and spill onto the floor. The ones who can fly take flight. The ones who can’t find other ways to move, dragging themselves on broken wings or by beak.

Philip cowers in the opposite corner, arm across his face to protect his eyes as the horde descends, scratching and clawing and biting and pecking at his flesh. The sight startles the needle of Erin’s mind back into its accustomed groove. She stands, raising her hands like a sorceress in a storybook, and draws in the air, leaving streaks of green light behind her.

A great clap tears through the racket, followed by a shuffling sound as every bird in the room drops, dead. Philip uncovers his face and looks at the tableau on the floor in front of him, then at the jagged hole where the window used to be. A humid breeze tickles the curtains.

Erin realizes her arms are still above her head. She lowers them to examine herself. Her pajamas hang off her, shredded. Cuts and scratches crosshatch her arms. Philip’s arms are also marked, but his face appears to be intact. She’s grateful for this—and ashamed for how grateful she is.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“I think so,” he says. “Are you?”

“Yes,” she says. “Not hurt bad anyway.” At least, she doesn’t think she is. She won’t know for sure until the adrenaline wears off. She needs to move before that happens. She tiptoes through a carpet of dead birds to find and put on sneakers, then walks down the hall into the living room. Every window is broken, every surface festooned with dead pigeons. The flatscreen TV hangs in a precarious balance between its stand and the coffee table, its screen cracked from the impact. The hardwood floors are invisible beneath layers of gray and white feathers and unseeing yellow eyes.

She leans out one of the broken living room windows. Hundreds of dead birds line the street below. Their bodies form a trail that leads around the corner at the end of the block. A few pedestrians stand amid the carnage. One or two stare up at her, baffled.

“What happened?”

Erin startles to find Philip beside her. She didn’t hear him following. “A fleet of birds suicide-bombed our apartment,” she says. “Make more noise when you move. It’s unsettling when you sneak up on me.”

“I’ll try,” he says. “What happened to the birds? Why did they die?”

“Because I told them to,” she says.

She goes back to the bedroom. She hears his footsteps behind her now, slow and heavy.

“But why did they try to hurt us?”

She opens the closet and pulls down two armfuls of clothes. “Someone’s trying to kill me.” Or you. Her thoughts remain diffuse, scattered. She sweeps a blanket of pigeon bodies off the bed and drops a pile of clothes in their place. She turns around looking for her suitcase, then spots her phone on the nightstand. She picks it up and sees the notification she ignored earlier. A Facebook invitation:

THE CLEGG HIGH SCHOOL20th ANNIVERSARY MEMORIAL SERVICE

OWEN

Almost twenty-four hours after Erin Porter flees her apartment with Philip in tow, Owen and Monica change clothes in Monica’s bedroom. Once Owen has pulled on jeans and his only black T-shirt, he and Monica sneak out her bedroom window, leaving it cracked for their return. Cole’s station wagon sits idling at the curb.

“Remember,” Monica says, as they cross the lawn. “The secret is to act like you belong.”

The car’s hatchback door swings open. There’s a boy inside, next to a big picnic cooler. Owen recognizes Cole’s best friend, Dean.

“We’re almost out of room so you’ll have to squeeze in,” he says.

Owen and Monica negotiate the space as best they can, and once they’re secure inside, Cole gets out of the driver’s seat and comes around to the rear to shut the door for them.

“Glad you could make it,” he says.

“Happy to be here,” Owen says. He hates how lame it sounds.

Cole gets back in the driver’s seat. Lucy rides up front with him.

It’s a twenty-minute drive from Wellspring to the town of Culver, where the ritual will take place. Owen spends most of the ride in silence, listening to Cole and his friends joke and argue hot takes about the current metal scene. Their boisterousness fades as signs of civilization melt away, until the station wagon floats alone down a two-lane road, hemmed in by long stretches of forest. Occasional homes and churches flash past. The buildings look old, like they’ve been rotting in the dark for centuries.

Cole turns off onto an old farm road and parks the station wagon in front of a Baptist church. The building sits at the base of a steep hill lined with tombstones, and has an electric sign that might be advertising worship services or announcing the time and temperature. There are too many dead bulbs to tell for sure.

Cole and Dean carry the cooler up the hill. Lucy pulls several tiki torches from the back seat. They walk up the hill to a fresh grave. Dean shines his flashlight on the tombstone: Estelle Schaefer, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1947–2019.

Once they’re all gathered around the grave, Cole frowns down the hill at the road. He turns to Dean. “The cemetery’s more exposed than I expected,” he says.

“You wanted a fresh grave in an obscure location,” Dean says. “We’re on a farm road in the middle of nowhere. If a cop drives by, then, well, the universe clearly has other plans for us.”

Cole gives Dean a sour look but doesn’t argue. While they set to work unpacking the cooler, Lucy enlists Monica’s and Owen’s help setting up the torches in a circle around the grave. When lit, they give the area a spooky old-fashioned feel, although the effect is somewhat muted by the smell of insecticide wafting from the flames. The flashing, inarticulate billboard doesn’t help, either.

Owen now also has enough light to see what was in the cooler: a broken rake handle with a sharp point at the end, like the home and garden version of a spear; several Ziploc bags of dried plants; a lighter; a paperback book; a glass jar of dark fluid; and what looks like a real human skull.

Dean shoos everyone out of the torch circle and sets to work with his homemade spear. He scratches a broad circle on the ground, and then draws smaller circles and symbols inside it. Owen is so intent on watching that he startles when someone nudges his right arm. It’s Cole.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Cole says. “What do you think?”

“This is spookier than I expected.” It’s not, but Owen wants to be polite. “It’s my first ritual.”

“I never would’ve guessed,” Cole says, but he smiles to show he’s kidding.

“Have you guys done a lot of these?”

“A few.”

“Do you usually do them at a cemetery?”

Cole shakes his head. “Usually we try to manifest good grades with sex magic or whatever we can find online. I know I wear a lot of black, but even I’m not goth enough to fuck in a graveyard.”

Owen wonders how this group of goths would conduct a sex ritual. Do they pair off, or do they congeal into a mass of limbs and nerve endings, like that scene in Caligula? His face burns in the dark as he considers the possibilities.

“Mary Shelley was that level of goth,” Owen says. “She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave.”

“Queen of the goths,” Cole says.

“Okay, so we’re not here for sex,” Owen says, face burning even hotter now. “What are we doing?”

“Necromancy,” Cole says.

The word sounds familiar. Didn’t Gandalf spend some time trapped by a necromancer in The Hobbit?

“Something to do with magic and the dead?” Owen ventures.

“In ancient cultures, the idea was to seek the wisdom of your ancestors. Or to get information only the dead might have—about the afterlife, or the spirit world, or where you could find some lost treasure hoard.”

“And what are you looking for?” Owen asks. “Tonight, I mean. With the ritual.”

“Me and Dean have different reasons. Dean has some real questions about the afterlife, since his brother died when he was little. Me? I just want to see if we can do it. I mean, the other stuff we’ve done before, the other rituals? Maybe they worked, or maybe it was the power of positive thinking or whatever. But with this, it either works or it doesn’t. Either that skull over there will talk, or not. Proof, either way.”

He smiles at Owen and the goth visage vanishes, leaving the nerdy boy Owen remembers—the one who wore braces and ill-fitting clothes until last summer, when he went all-in on the black wardrobe and death metal.

Owen smiles back, genuinely happy for the first time tonight.

“It could also mean you did the ritual wrong, if it doesn’t work. Or maybe used the wrong ritual,” Owen says.

Cole nods. “If we get through this without getting arrested and it doesn’t work, I’m done. Back to praying to the earth mother before sex or whatever. You can only tempt fate so many times.” He squeezes Owen’s arm. “I’m glad you came.”

“Yeah,” Owen says. “Me too.”

Dean stops scratching the ground and wipes perspiration from his forehead. “Done,” he says, and tosses the little spear into the grass beside him. It rolls down the hill and into the ditch at the bottom.

“I’m not going after that,” Lucy says, annoyed.

“No one is asking you to,” Dean says, matching her tone.

“Let’s get started,” Cole says.

Owen follows Cole into the circle. Monica falls in step beside Owen and bumps his shoulder. She must’ve overheard his conversation with Cole. He bumps her back and feels warm inside.

“No matter what happens, do not step outside of this circle,” Dean says. “This is the safe space. Nothing can cross in. Got it?”

Everyone mumbles their agreement as they shuffle into the circle. Cole kneels in front of the tombstone and sets the skull atop it. Dean removes the herbs from the bags, places them in a small bowl, and uses the lighter to set them aflame. Tendrils of smoke drift into the air, filling the space with the thick aroma of sage.

Dean unseals the glass jar and hands it to Cole. A coppery smell joins the sage in Owen’s nostrils. Blood. There’s blood in the jar. Cole dumps it atop the skull, staining it and the tombstone beneath crimson. He plants both hands on the stone and begins to speak. His voice is strong and clear and carries, but the words are nonsense to Owen’s ears until Cole switches to English:

“Thee I invoke, Silver Hunter from the Sacred City of UR! Thee I call forth to guard this North Place of the Most Holy Mandal against the vicious warriors of Flame and the Principalities of DRA!” He continues, invoking guardian spirits for the circle, and Owen makes a disheartening discovery: even a necromancy ritual can be boring. His mind drifts, carried sleepily along on the rhythm of Cole’s voice. He thinks about how tired he’s going to feel in the morning. Maybe he should call in sick. But the problem is the same as always: then he’d be at home with his dad, which might be worse.

Owen’s eyelids are growing heavy when the scent of the air changes. An acrid, sulfurous stench replaces the incense odor. The switch snaps him back to wakefulness.

The world looks no different—everyone still in the protective circle, the preposterous billboard still flashing at the foot of the hill. But the cicadas have stopped singing. The only things Owen can hear are his breath, Cole’s incantations, and a high-pitched whine. Light flickers at the corners of Owen’s vision, but when he turns for a better look, he can’t find the cause.

The ground shakes, and Owen stumbles back.

“Holy shit,” Lucy says. Owen can barely hear her over the increasingly shrill wail.

A hand clamps on Owen’s elbow. It’s Monica, horrified. Owen doesn’t understand, but then he looks down. He’s stepped outside of the circle of protection. Although the ground within the circle appears to be soft dirt and grass, the world outside it has been replaced by a dark cave of jagged stone, lit only by firelight. Figures in diaphanous white gowns encircle the ritual participants. These creatures have stitches where their eyes and noses should be. Only their mouths remain open. The whining is coming from them. The sound grows, infiltrates his body, vibrates his insides until he feels like he’ll melt into a pile of goo. He covers his ears, but it makes no difference. The whine pierces his mind, relentless.

“Barashakushu, worker of miracles,” Cole shouts, barely audible above the din, “kindest of the fifty, we call to thee. Barashakushu, we invoke thy protection during this most dangerous of elixir-based rituals. Please hear our prayer and come to us.”

If Barashakushu (whoever that is) is around, they’re not taking calls. The eyeless figures encircling the group continue to whine, and raise their withered hands to beat upon the barrier of the circle.

“I don’t like this,” Lucy says. Gone is her goth-mean-girl attitude, replaced by a small, scared kid out past curfew. “I want to go home.”

Dean grabs her arm. “Don’t move. This is all part of it. Just stay in the circle.”

Lucy stands in place, trembling, tears streaking her makeup. Cole remains in front of the tombstone, braced to keep his balance as the earth shakes. The vibrations move, narrowing inward toward the circle of earth directly beneath the ritual participants. The freshly turned dirt on the grave falls away as the vibrations increase and worsen. Something bursts up out of the ground in a plume of dirt and wraps itself around Cole’s ankle. It’s a hand, white and withered.

Cole screams and tries to stand. He stumbles in the hand’s grasp and hits Monica, Lucy, and Owen. Lucy falls outside the circle and the spirits’ whining becomes a screech that stabs into Owen’s brain. He falls to his knees and covers his head with his hands. He hears Lucy screaming, and Monica, although he can’t make out the words. He hears the sounds of commotion. Of bodies moving. Tearing.