Retinue of Lost Ones

Chapter 8

"Ugh. I don't even know how to pronounce this stuff," Lacey complained, standing back to examine the poster Hailey had taped to the hallway wall. "Cat-harsus?"

"Catharsis," Cael said.

"Sounds like 'catheter,'" Hailey joked.

"Gross! Only you would think of that." Greta reached out and pasted a picture of a Greek chorus mask on the poster board.

"Wait, what's a catheter?" Lacey wondered.

"Don't ask," Cael advised. "Okay, so who's saying what?"

Hailey stood back from the poster, frowning and stroking her upper lip. "Okay, I'll say the part about the tragedy structure," she said. "Cael, you cover the chorus stuff. Lacey can do the comedy, and Greta can talk about Anti-gone."

"Antigone," Cael said, but no one heard her over Lacey's exclamation.

"Oh my God, it so sucks for Taylor. Did you see who she was in a group with?"

"No, who?" Greta demanded.

"Caitlyn Butteris, Kayla Hansen, Brady Snowden, and Shane Elliott." The girls made gagging sounds.

"Well, that's what happens when you're absent on the first day of a project," Hailey reasoned, peeling some tape up from the floor. "I mean, Mrs. Reed announced it last week. I know I would have dragged myself to school yesterday even if I was puking."

"Brady Snowden smells like the locker room after summer football camp." Greta held her nose and waved her hand in front of her face.

Hailey glanced at Cael's drawn face. "Guys, come on. He lives in the trailer court. It's probably not his fault."

"Water's not that expensive. I think the school nurse gives away deodorant," Greta said, flipping out her phone and tapping some apps.

"Are we done here?" Cael asked, shouldering her gym bag. "I want to go for a run tonight."

Hailey glanced out the windows by the main office at the gathering clouds. "It's gonna rain," she said. "I looked at the radar eighth period."

"Damn," Cael muttered. With the activity escalating at home, she was desperate for the endorphin release of a good run. Things were bad, and getting worse.

"Why don't you go down to the weight room and use the treadmills?" Greta advised, as Hailey rolled up the poster for tomorrow's presentation. "I mean, you're not supposed to be in there without a coach to supervise but they like, never lock it."

"Okay, thanks. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

The school was quiet. Faint music tinkled from the choir room, but almost everyone had gone home for the evening. As promised, the weight room was unlocked, the smell of rubber and sweat leaking out into the hall. Cael ducked into the silent locker room to change into her gym clothes, and then fired up the treadmill, setting it to 30 minutes of intervals. She'd forgotten her earbuds, but that was okay. She was alone with her reflection in the huge mirror that covered one of the weight room walls. The constant sound of her feet pounding the treadmill was as soothing as the crash of the ocean.

Without warning, the door to the weight room banged open. She gasped and clutched at the handles of the treadmill, managing to right herself before she flew off and hit the wall.

"You should see your face!" Blake laughed, strutting in and slinging his gym bag into the corner, puffing his pecs up underneath his Underarmour tank top. "Scared you, didn't I?"

Cael gulped and nodded, offering a limp smile, resetting the treadmill.

Blake laughed. "Sorry, sorry. What are you doing?"

Cael thought, privately, that it was pretty obvious what she was doing. "It's raining," she explained. "Wanted to get a run in."

"Yeah, I need to get some reps going." Blake stretched his arms briefly, and then made a big show of loading several round weights onto the bench press bar before sliding underneath and straining through some lifts. He really ought to have a spotter, but Cael wasn't about to volunteer. The treadmill whished along, and Blake's manly grunts were punctuated by thunderclaps from outside.

Blake exhaled and sat up on the bench, rubbing his collarbone, and then draped a towel around his neck. "Ben said Greta said she'd go with him to homecoming."

"We're doing a girls' thing," Cael said. Lacey had broken up with her boyfriend the week before, and her friends vowed to go stag to the dance in solidarity. That was more than fine with Cael. It felt revolutionary and right.

"Nah, Ben said Greta's gonna say yes."

"Lacey'll kill her." She could barely get the words out — the interval had started and the incline jumped.

"So, Ben's getting a limo." Blake leaned back casually on the bench with a barely concealed flex of his abdominals. "If I pay half, we can go with them. They're getting reservations in Cedar Rapids at that Italian place."

Cael was running, but she wasn't getting away from him. She ran through the interval, and pretended to be too winded to speak.

"All this homecoming stuff is about you girls anyway," Blake said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, giving her a practiced, earnest stare through his blonde bangs. "I just want you to have fun. It's your first homecoming in Franken and everything..."

The stereo in the corner, dusty and silent, suddenly screamed to life, blaring a country music radio station. Cael and Blake both winced and covered their ears.

The radio dial fluctuated wildly, twisted by unseen fingers, racing from DJ to music to static to music to commercial to static, where it stayed, the white noise roaring out through the cheap speakers.

No! Cael's mind screamed. Her lips whispered the echo. "No. Not here."

A babel of guttural voices rose up from behind the static and rang throughout the cement and cinderblock weight room, bouncing from every hard surface. The words were unintelligible and savage, intermixed with primordial howls and a deep, undulating growl.

"What the hell?" Blake twisted on the bench and narrowed his eyes at the stereo.

Cael managed to turn off the treadmill before she fell off of it, but could only stand on the tread, stupefied. The low moaning beneath the growling and shrieking shooting out of the speakers was coming from her, she realized. She raised her hands to her mouth.

The lights flickered wildly, the fluorescent strobing and trembling. "The storm—" Blake started to say, but a primordial, nightmarish voice squealed through the radio, drowning him out.

"Caelyn — lust — is— sin—"

She screamed into her hands, wishing she could shut her eyes, terror forcing them wide and open.

"Hey—" Blake stood up, the color in his face evaporating, his brow slick with sudden sweat.

As Cael watched, her hands claw-like on the sidebars of the treadmill, Blake's reflection in the large weightlifting mirror was, in a half-blink, joined by another figure. A tall man stood behind the boy, oozing black smoke from his pores, As thunder boomed outside, the mist swept back for a moment, revealing his features. The shadow was a stern man with steel-wool hair, a white shirt, black pants, and gold-rimmed glasses. He could have been someone's grandfather, or a retired veteran at church, but the hatred that leapt from his eyes, red coals behind his glasses, was savage and inhuman.

The apparition looked back at Cael through the mirror, and howled, his mouth cracking open farther than it should have, distorted and snake-like.

The mirror cracked with a sharp snap. The lights plunged out, and a heavy thud echoed through the weight room. At the same time, the treadmill, along with two others nearby, flipped on full blast. Cael lost her footing and flew back into the cinderblock walls behind her, lungs deflating, white searing across her vision from where she'd hit her head.

She dropped out of the world for a few seconds, and when she returned, all she could hear was Blake screaming.