Trigger Warning: This chapter contains instances of self-harm and violence.
When we got back to the Institute, before I could spend any time with Hunter, the Smith who had accompanied us to the airport dragged him into the Heka building. Naturally, I was pissed. It wasn't like the head scientists'experiments brought us any closer to understanding anything. About magic. About us.
While Hunter was inside the Heka building, we waited outside. I paced around while Blake stood nearby, arms folded over his chest, and Alison sat cross-legged on the ground.
"Calm down, Ry," Alison said, "they aren't going to keep him."
I lowered the ridge of my brow at Alison. "Seriously, Ali?"
"I don't blame you," Blake said, "The way Melchior tried to sacrifice Hunter was messed up."
"You used to be the institute's biggest fanboy when we first came, what happened?" Alison said.
"I've never thought the institute was perfect; I just thought that it was necessary."
"Why?"
Blake sighed and looked at the ground, like he didn't want to say anything else. "It's kind of a screwed up story."
"What's up?"
"It's just--well, let me just tell you how I got extracted..."
~4 years ago~
Blake and Gerald were thirteen and fourteen, respectively, leaders of their own little enclave in a double-wide trailer full of foster kids north of Chico, California. There were six of them, not including Blake and Gerald: Fisher, Ronda, Tess, Nicki, Hale, and Mikey. Fisher solved math equations in his sleep, Ronda swooned over romance novels, Tess kept to herself, Nicki dreamed of being a cheerleader, Mikey had white hair, and Hale flirted with Blake all the time; in fact, Hale had been Blake's first kiss. Blake, however, only had eyes for Gerald, who insisted he liked "girls with big tits," criteria Blake knew he didn't fit.
Linda, their half-drunk but kindly middle-aged foster parent, collected kids for the middling state checks she used to maintain her drinking habit. Blake said she'd gone through a brutal divorce that left her filling the holes in her life with foster kids. Most people would've just gotten cats.
Linda's trailer had a weather-worn wooden porch out front, and a sizable backyard with an old elm tree that had a tire swing hanging from one of the branches. There was also a forest behind her house she told the kids to stay away from. She said it was haunted. The kids shared two bedrooms, divided into a boy's room and a girl's room. Each room had bunk beds and huge dressers filled with clothes.
Although he didn't know it yet, Blake's wizard senses had already kicked in--long before his other powers--so he had no words to describe the eerie feelings he'd been having for weeks. To take his mind off things, he had wandered into the backyard, grabbed a stick, and was using it to whale away at the tire swing.
A few whacks in, and Blake still couldn't shake the eerie feelings bothering him, like the ones he got around Tess. Tess was a strange, 12-year-old girl. Most of the other kids avoided her because they thought she was weird. When Blake was around her, he could feel her loneliness, but something beneath the surface told him she was more than just lonely. Something told him she was afraid. Of what he didn't know.
Gerald had ventured into the backyard with Blake and leaned against the old oak tree. He watched Blake take a few swings before he said, "The other kids say you and Hale kissed." Blake stopped attacking the dangling piece of rubber and lowered the stick. Gerald's question had been the only thing to take Blake's mind off Tess. "Is it true?" Gerald asked, "Are you gay?"
"I don't like labels," Blake said, defensively.
"That's how people say they're gay when they don't want to admit that they're gay," Gerald said, slyly goading Blake.
"I like whoever I want to."
Gerald laughed. "Relax, Blake. I don't care if you're gay. I was just curious."
Blake took another crack at the swing without saying anything else. When he had finished hitting the tire, he headed into the trailer, but Gerald stayed in the backyard. With Tess fresh on his mind, Blake headed for the girl's room. Luckily, Gerald wouldn't be around to ask Blake a million questions about his "weird feelings." Blake found Tess in the girl's room, lying on the bed and crying. "Hey, Tess," Blake said, approaching.
She buried her face in a pillow, hiding it from Blake. As Blake neared her, he spied a tracery of cuts along her arm. "Hey!" Blake grabbed Tess and turned her. "What happened to your arms? Are you cutting yourself?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"What?"
"It's Birdie." She pointed at an old rag doll sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the girl's room. The ratty old thing had a floral dress that used to be bright pink, but it had turned a dull champagne color. A pair of graying pigtails fell around its lifeless face, which was embroidered with frayed eyes and lips. Linda had said the doll was in her family for generations and the kids were to leave it alone.
"What? The doll?"
"Yes! She told me if I didn't cut myself, she'd kill me in my sleep."
Blake furrowed his eyebrows at the doll. As old and eerie as it was, he certainly didn't believe the doll was telling Tess to cut herself. "Tess, you've got to stop hurting yourself!"
"I knew you wouldn't believe me."
"Tess! If Mrs. Linda catches you doing this, she's going to send you back to the state home!"
Tess kept quiet. Sensing he wouldn't get anything else from her, Blake left, his wary eyes still trained on the weird doll smiling from the corner of the room.
A few days later, while Tess was washing dishes, Linda found the cuts on her arm. A brief argument ensued before Linda pulled out her phone and called child protective services, and the next day, two social workers came and took a sobbing Tess back to the state home.
After Tess had left, Blake went into the girl's room and hovered over the doll, his eyes scouring the seams that just barely held together her yellowed fabric body. The stitches that formed the segmented line across the doll's face were shaped into a never-ending smile. The creepy grin followed Blake, mocking him. He hoped his spider senses would tingle, but they didn't. Still, he couldn't shake the eerie feeling that maybe Tess hadn't been lying.
Something else was going on.
Not long after, Hale—who normally followed Blake everywhere—became reclusive, hiding in the boy's room all day and sitting with his head hung. Because Linda didn't have a proper dining room table, the kids would gather in the living room for dinner time and sit on the sectional sofa to eat together. Hale didn't eat, though. He just sat there, neck slack, eyes gazing at the floor, a plate of untouched food resting on the TV tray in front of him. Blake sat and watched Hale from the corners of his eyes, picking up on the same strange vibes he used to get from Tess, but coming from Hale.
After dinner, while the other kids were cleaning up in the kitchen, Hale hurried off to the boy's room, so Blake followed and found him sitting on the bottom bunk, staring into the dark forest through the slats on the window.
"Hey, Hale, what's up?" Blake sat next to Hale on the bed. "What's been up with you lately, buddy?" Quietly, Hale watched wind sweep through the pine trees outside. It was like Blake's words never reached his ears.
Blake looked down at Hale's long sleeve shirt. It was the dead of summer. None of them were wearing long sleeves. Blake grew curious. "Let me see your arms, Hale," Blake said in a low voice.
Angrily, Hale flung his skinny arms around himself and withdrew from Blake.
"Let me see them," Blake said again.
"Leave me alone!"
Blake snatched Hale's left arm, slid up the sleeve, and saw cuts spidering up its length. Raw. Red. Some fresh. Others crusty, scabbed over for maybe weeks, maybe days. Blake swallowed hard, then he eyed Hale. "Hale, did the doll make you do this?"
Hale's eyes filled with tears, fear shining in them like the dim light of a candle just before being snuffed out, but he sealed his lips. "Hale," Blake asked again, "did the doll make you do this?" but Hale still refused to speak. "Hale, answer me!" Hale didn't say anything. The only sound Blake heard was the air whispering through the vents.
As Mikey and Gerald walked into the boy's room, Hale hurried down his sleeve and gritted his teeth at Blake. But Blake wouldn't be so easily swayed. Before Gerald could climb up to his bunk, Blake grabbed his arm and yanked him into the bathroom.
"Something's hurting the other kids," Blake said.
Gerald looked around, like he was confused by their new surroundings. "What?"
"Remember when I told you Tess said that Miss Linda's doll was making her cut herself?"
"Blake, what the fuck . . ?"
"I don't think she was lying?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Hale. He has cuts all over his arms."
"Whatever, Blake," Gerald said, reaching for the door handle.
Blake slammed his hand on the door knob and trapped Gerald in the bathroom with him. "I'm for real. Something really messed up is going on."
"What's for real, Blake? You saying that ugly-ass doll is in there cutting up the other kids?"
"I don't know, but something's not right. Something weird is going on. You got to help me figure out what?"
"Fine. We'll stay up tonight and make sure that doll isn't going all Child's Play on Hale."
Blake took his hand off the knob, so Gerald turned it and shot Blake one last glance before heading back to the boy's room.
Mrs. Linda fell asleep, drunk on the living room sofa, in front of the TV. Some old horror movie, Blake said probably Halloween, droned, and while Gerald nodded off to sleep in his bunk , Blake stayed vigilant, lying in bed with his arms folded under his head, eyes closed but wide awake. Hale slipped out of the bunk over Blake's and landed on the floor with a plunk, then he started into the hallway. Blake watched every step with one eye peaked open, and when he was certain Hale wouldn't notice him, he slid out of bed and shook Gerald awake before hurrying to the door to spy.
Hale walked into the girl's room, and a few minutes later, he emerged holding Mrs. Linda's creepy doll. Blake watched Hale walk past Mrs. Linda as she slept, go into the kitchen, and draw a knife out of one of the drawers.
Gerald walked up beside Blake, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, and when he caught Hale standing in the moonlight pouring in through the window over the kitchen sink, he whispered, "What's he doing?"but Blake was too busy watching Hale to give a proper response.
With a glinting blade in tow, Hale slid open the patio door, walked out onto the back porch, down the steps, and into the backyard, heading for the woods behind Mrs. Linda's trailer. As Hale crossed the tree line into the woods, Blake and Gerald trailed behind, taking shelter behind big fat shrubs and crumbling oak trees. Gerald and Blake kept their eyes on Hale until he came to a clearing in the woods, where he set the doll down on moss-covered log. Quickly, they took cover behind a thick birch. When they peeked again, they heard Hale muttering and crying as he stood over the doll.
"I don't want to hurt myself," he said, raising a trembling hand and pressing the blade to his skin.
"Who's he talking to?" Gerald asked Blake. But Blake didn't answer, for his body had been overcome with a strange, alien dread that prickled all over his skin like numbness.
"No! Please don't make me hurt myself," Hale said. Then Hale screamed and dragged the knife across his skin. Gerald rushed to take the knife out of Hale's hand, and Blake would've joined had the creepy feeling not clamped his feet to the ground like a bear trap. Blake sensed the feeling's source behind him, so he spun around and spotted Mikey hiding behind a tree with a wild grin on his face, his eyes glowing red. Mikey's lips were moving, mouthing the word "cut" over and over again.
Blake didn't understand how he knew that Mikey was making Hale cut himself, but on reflection, Blake admitted that if his wizard sight had been more developed, he probably could've seen the golden string connecting Mikey to Hale, connecting Mikey to the doll. When Mikey saw Gerald march up and grab Hale's hands, to wrestle the knife away from him, Mikey's face grew twisted with rage. He furrowed his eyebrows and mouthed the words, "cut him."
"Give me the knife, Hale!" Gerald said, still fighting with Hale for control of the weapon. Hale's eyes flashed red, then he growled and pulled away and sliced through Gerald's hand. Then, as if Mikey's control had vanished, Gerald dropped the knife and crumbled to the ground in tears. "Shit!" Gerald hollered, his hand dripping blood onto the dirt. Seeing Hale finally disarmed, Blake turned and searched for Mikey again, but Mikey was already gone.
Hale groveled at Gerald's feet, and even though Gerald wanted to punch Hale until he was black and blue, Blake calmed him down and suggested they burn the doll instead. Blake and Gerald dug a hole and filled it with sticks and branches, then they threw the doll on the pile and set it on fire using one of Mrs. Linda's BICs. Hale sat on the ground, face red from crying, glints of fire dancing in his eyes as he watched the doll turn into smoldering ash. Blake didn't tell Gerald or Hale what he'd seen, though. They returned to Mrs. Linda's trailer, and when they walked into the boy's room, Mikey was snuggled under a blanket. Blake half considered interrogating Mikey right then, but he decided against it. It wouldn't make sense to Gerald or even Hale what he had seen in the woods. How he knew that Mikey had been making Hale cut himself.
The next day, Blake searched the house for Mikey, checking all the rooms, then heading into the backyard where Mikey disappeared into the tree line. Blake darted into the woods after Mikey, running through a maze of skinny cottonwoods and thick pines until he was lost. Blake spun around, whirling through a sea of white and black trunks, finally spotting Mikey standing a few yards away, half hidden behind a tree and watching Blake. Inside Blake's head, he heard a serpentine voice hiss Blake. He hurried to catch Mikey, but Mikey slipped behind the tree and when Blake turned the corner, he'd vanished.
Blake hunched over and caught his breath, then he saw Mikey lurking halfway behind another tree a few yards away. Blake tried catching him again, but every time he'd get close, Mikey would sink behind another tree and disappear, reappearing somewhere else a few seconds later. Blake chased Mikey until he came through the tree line at the other end of the forest, on the side of a summer-baked country road, where he saw Hale standing in the middle of the street as a truck rumbled toward him.
Blake was about to rush into the street to save Hale when Gerald ran out and pushed Hale out of the way. Gerald didn't have time to move and froze as the truck's horn screamed at him. Blake watched time slow to a drip as the truck swerved and hit Gerald, flinging his body into the nearby bushes. The truck came screeching to a halt, almost flipping over as its body turned sideways in the middle of the street. When the initial shock passed, Blake sped to check on Gerald, slowing his movements to a crawl as he approached the ditch where he'd seen Gerald's body land.
Bloodstained shoots of grass.
Gnarled, twisted limbs.
Gerald was dead.
At first, Blake didn't feel anything. He reached down and touched Gerald's mangled arm. Cold. Cold as grave dirt on a rainy night.
The coming days were a mess of social workers sweeping in and out of Linda's house, doing interviews with everyone, making sure Linda was fit to care for all the children. Mrs. Linda did a good job of hiding her drinking problem, and the kids loved her, so they fought to stay with her. The state officials declared Gerald's death a tragic accident and left.
Then, when solitude slithered in, when Hale cried to Blake and told him that another one of the toys was telling him to do things, horrible things, Blake knew, somewhere in the depths of his mind, Mikey had been behind Gerald's death. Mikey killed Gerald, and now Blake wanted revenge.
Blake couldn't dawdle too long, or Mikey would kill again, so he searched Mikey out one day and found him alone in the boy's room, reading a book.
"I know you killed Gerald," Blake said. "I'm not letting you hurt anybody else."
Mikey looked up from his book and his eyes flashed red. Then, in a deep, inhuman voice, he said, "What will you do to stop me?"
Blake's skin rippled with goosebumps. Something monstrous was raging inside Mikey's body, and it had taken control. Blake could feel it, like a whisper in the back of his mind; he heard the hissing and the slithering, felt the heat around Mikey, like the lapping fingers of hell tickling his toes. Mikey stood up and walked to the center of the room.
"Stop!" Blake said. Mikey stopped mid step, like some force had grabbed him and held him in place.
"This body is stronger than yours," Mikey said.
Blake inched away from Mikey, backing into a corner. "What? What's wrong with you, Mikey? What's going on?"
"However, yours is closer to the age of free mobility." Mikey's eyes flashed like headlights in the darkness, and Blake felt a searing pain in his head before everything went black.
Blake opened his eyes and found himself standing in a hallway in the state home, everything washed in a pale white glow. Two familiar-looking people, a woman in a gray business suit and a man in casual attire, talked outside a locked door, so Blake approached them, hoping to identify them, hoping to parse their words.
"It's hard to place him. He gets into fights constantly, and some of the parents say they're uncomfortable with how he expresses his . . . sexuality," the woman said. Blake recognized her voice. She was his case worker, Madeline. The man next to her was named Luis, and he was the state home's supervisor.
"What do you mean?"
"He flirts with the boys and the girls, and when his last foster parents asked him about it, he said he was 'pansexual'."
"So?"
Madeline rolled her eyes. Unable to make that condemnation stick, she shifted goal posts. "Well, the parents tried taking him to church, and he hit one of them with a chair."
"Why were they trying to take him to church?"
"Because of how he is."
"This is ridiculous, Madeline!"
"What's ridiculous is you keep trying to place this sexual predator—"
"Madeline! Has Blake ever sexually assaulted any of the children he's been in homes with?"
"We don't know—"
"Then why not find out before you make such horrible accusations?"
"Troubling," the monstrous voice said, this time inside Blake's head. "Have you always experienced this level of rejection?"
Blake felt ashamed, dirty, like he'd done something wrong. Had his case worker always talked about him like he was some perverted miscreant? He remembered the situation they were talking about. Blake moved through them like they were ghosts, then peered through the peephole on the door they were standing in front of. Inside the room, a younger Blake stood with his forearm resting against a grated window, watching another pair of social workers standing around, talking and smoking cigarettes outside.
A familiar pain glimmered in his heart, so he left and started walking through the state home, searching for a way out. He reached a pair of heavy double doors and tried pulling them open, but they wouldn't budge. He yanked back on the door a few times before giving up. Then torrents of water burst through the windows and started flooding the building.
As the water climbed up his legs, the intercom screeched on, leaving Blake's ears ringing. Then Madeline's voice came through, saying, "No one's going to adopt that kid. He's just too weird. No one will ever love him."
Blake covered his ears and muttered, "No."
"He's a pervert, a creep, a criminal in waiting—"
Her voice continued echoing through the building as the water crept up to his knees.
"No!" Blake said. "I'm none of those things. I'm not some creep. Stop saying that about me!" Blake sloshed through the water as it rose to his thighs. He rushed to every door he could find and struggled to get them open.
But they wouldn't.
"You will not be able to escape this," the monstrous voice intoned in Blake's mind. "You are already drowning. Submit to me and together we shall find a way to liberate you from your suffering."
"What are you talking about?" Blake said, searching for the voice's source as the water splashed around his stomach.
A man's voice came over the intercom and said, "I can't look at that boy; he makes me uncomfortable." It was one of Blake's foster parents, a young couple who had rejected Blake while he was in the throes of a deep depression.
"Stop it! Why are you doing this to me?" Blake said.
"You are not meant for this world. Truly, none are. You will always feel empty here. Hollow. You can't relate to the living. You can't speak to the dead. Who shall you confide in?"
"Myself! I don't need anyone else!" Blake yelled as waves circled his chest.
"Then you will die in despair. And I will still claim your body as my own."
Back in the boy's room, Blake was paralyzed on the floor, his eyes rolled up into his head, seizing as the Mara inside Mikey's body took control of Blake's mind. Nearby, Mikey had fallen unconscious. Two Smiths burst into the room and dragged Mikey and Blake side by side. Then they poured salt around the two boys and dropped to their knees and placed their hands around the ring on the floor and closed their eyes.
Inside Blake's mind, he was still trapped in the flooding state home, his face pressed against the ceiling as he sucked in gasps of air. Soon, the whole building would be filled with water, and Blake wouldn't be able to breathe at all. He closed his eyes, thinking those breaths would be his last, then he felt the water around him vanish, felt a blast of air billowing through his clothes. Opening his eyes, he found himself falling through the sky, lost in a squawking flurry of fluttering seagulls as they rushed past him into the cyanic heavens above. He shielded his face from their slapping wings until they were gone. Then he looked down and saw nothing but an endless deep-blue void below. Furiously, Blake swung his arms and legs like he was trying to swim, but he only fell, faster and faster, until the velocity forced his eyes shut.
When Blake opened his eyes again, he was in the white room with Melchior.
***
Alison looked at me and shuddered. "Ew, what a creepy story."
"That's how you were extracted?" I asked him.
"Mmhmm, but that's not the point of the story. The fact is Mikey was a wizard--"
"What happened to him?"
Blake paused. "I don't know. I guess they extracted him, but I've never seen him on campus. Anyway, my point was all that happened because Mikey was a wizard and a Mara took control of him. That's why it's dangerous to let wizards roam around out there like that. The institute probably reduces that from happening simply by being here."
"You assume," Alison said. "We know being in the institute is no guarantee other things can't get in here."
"You mean the sandman?" Blake said.
Alison nodded. "Yeah. Who knows how many weird things like that there are; things that can just walk in and walk out whenever they want. Safety is an illusion."
"The institute probably saved my life," Blake said. "This place isn't perfect, but it's necessary."
"Sometimes, I think people are willing to sacrifice too much in the name of 'safety'," Alison said.