Lisa
A blast of bright light burst in front of Lisa and a vortex of viciously swirling wind threw her two metres away onto her back. In the rush of stormy turbulence she thought she heard shrill arrogant voices, thought she saw still brighter tiny lights spiralling around within the flash. She lay on the hard dry ground staring up with half-closed eyes at the oak's branches as they thrashed wildly above her. An acorn fell and hit her on the ear.
Lisa was disorientated, dizzy and utterly dumb-founded. Just as well I missed dinner, she thought, it would have ended up all over Calen.
Calen!? She hutched up onto her elbows, blinked away the stars, and peered at the crumpled figure lying beyond her. Lisa had been blown backwards, Calen looked as if he'd just been pummelled into the ground on the spot and he wasn't stirring.
She stumbled to her feet. 'Get help' was her first thought; 'phone' was her next. She had a recollection of dropping it the instant the light explosion sparked. She looked down and something glinted back at her from the leaf-litter. Lisa picked up a small squat mysteriously glowing jar with a cork stopper attached, by the tiniest chain, to the jar's neck.
Unthinkingly she eased the cork out and peered in on a splash of liquid filled with glimmering swirling lights. What the..? She gawped closer and her eye was only centimetres from the jar rim when something inside moved, gurgled and splashed. Lisa dropped it with a disgusted yelp.
It served to pull her back into the moment and the need for action. She dropped down beside Calen, lifted a limp hand and put her head close to his. He was still breathing, still alive. She stayed there, perhaps just a moment longer than necessary.
'Calen, come back to me. I didn't mean the whole club thing.' She searched for any broken bones or misshapen limbs. There were no obvious cuts or marks. 'Where's your phone?' No sign. He'd been holding it pre-cataclysm, she was sure.
She stood and a quick hunt around in the leaf-litter unearthed her phone, next to that now empty nauseating jar thing. At least it had stopped glowing. The phone was lit and as she picked it up she caught sight of Calen on the big screen...
...except it wasn't the Calen in front of her; it was Calen with a scrubby black beard, longer, stragglier, less to-die-for hair, weird clothes, and... gracious, were those ears?!
She almost dropped her phone again but, instead, looked past it at real-world Calen, who lay there exactly as she'd left him. It was beyond bizarre. Lisa held her phone screen up again; fashion-challenged spiky-eared Calen reappeared in the exact same spot; the exact same pose. She spun it up and around. Her screen revealed the oak tree, the meadow, the night sky, all there... except that the meadow was wilder. Lisa realised she had held her breath for longer than was sensible. It came out now in a wheezing gasp as a dark twisted wood showed on the screen where the lights and buildings of the student village should be.
Had she hit her head? There was no other explanation. A groan sounded, but it came not from the Calen in front of her, but from her phone. She pointed it at him. Sure enough, real Calen was still but 'screen Calen' was moving and groaning. His jay-blue eyes flicked up, stared at her, closed. He shook his head. Blinking, he gave a start.
'Li-sa?' he said in an eerie echo of that afternoon in the cafe. 'Lisa what's happe – how are you doing that?'
'What?' she answered without conscious thought.
'Floating your face in the air like that, it's unsettling.'
'Calen, how are you in my phone?' (Not a line she'd ever planned to use.) 'Are you OK?'
'No, my eyes ache. My body feels weak, so weird. What's going on?'
I have ab-sol-ute-ly no idea, thought Lisa. Real Calen wasn't moving but his breathing was steadier. She heard a tell-tale rustling of dry leaves, steps. She spun around. Nothing, the sounds were coming from the phone. Lisa saw screen Calen's eyes widen with horror and turned the phone around to reveal the most primeval figure she'd ever seen. It was stalking the fallen boy and there was a large dog – no, not a dog; a giant weasel thing – creeping low and sinuously behind it, teeth bared.
The figure had a riot of dark and silver hair you could lose a family of gerbils in. Two black pits surrounded hooded green cat eyes that scowled out at Lisa. A black gash of a mouth flung a stream of low harsh guttural words in her direction. It quite possibly had horns. It may have been female. A bird's beak and skull hung from its neck spinning in front of the short cloak it wore. The rustling noise was made by a flamboyant wave of wide skirts that herded the leaves ahead of it, and left a trail behind.
Every synapse of Lisa's mind screamed 'witch'. The witch hissed at Lisa making warding gestures with fingers capped by black claw nails.
'Get away from me,' Calen's voice called from her phone, 'Lisa, you've got to help me! Please. Wuurgh!'
She held the phone up stupidly as if it was a vampire cross and saw the out-sized weasel thing racing from behind the witch's skirts. It leapt towards her, all claws and teeth and she dropped the phone on the carpet of leaves.
'Lisa,' interrupted a yell from the real world, 'what the hell?'
Real Calen was lifting his head now, and groaning, but the call had come from a figure that was running around the path towards her. It was Shagger (bloody) Harris, but right now Lisa was happy to accept any help. She could hear the witch's creature still scratching and growling from the phone on the ground.
'Phone for help,' she shouted to Shagger as he reached the outlying branches of the oak. He had his mobile out.
'I've called Johnno already,' the breathless boy said, 'I caught the flash from across there and saw you both go down. I told him to get some teachers out here.'
'We need a medic I think,' said Lisa dropping to place a hand on Calen's arm.
'What's going down? You look like you've seen a ghost.' Shagger knelt beside them and felt Calen's wrist. 'Calen, mate, you OK?' He turned to Lisa, 'His pulse is steady.'
Other dark figures had appeared across the meadow and started moving towards them. The noises from Lisa's phone had stopped. It all felt strangely normal again.
'Something's happened to my phone,' said Lisa, reaching for it cautiously.
'I'm not surprised; that was a hell of a... what... explosion?'
'Can you have a look, Shagger?' She didn't normally call him that; she didn't normally talk to him at all, and now his proper name eluded her.
'It's hardly the time, Samuels,' he said a little formally as she pushed it at him, taking care not to catch sight of the screen herself.
He scrutinised the phone, 'It may be OK, I think. Is that Goosy Gander?'
She moved to his shoulder and knelt on something hard. The screen had returned to her normal home screen, a picture of Mr Gander, taken from the school web-site, now covered in app icons.
She pushed it clumsily into camera mode, while he held it. Shagger lifted the phone up and moved it around. 'It's fine,' a frown crossed his face, 'oh no there is something wrong with it. You best get it checked out.' He handed it back to her.
'What's going on, guys?' said Goosy's voice behind her. She turned to see Mr Gander and Mr Williams, jogging towards them. She clicked off her phone. Across the field, other figures could be made out in the path lights.
'It's Calen Whitmore, sir,' said Shagger, 'He and Samuels have had another tiff.'
'What kind of tiff?' Goosy's steps slowed as he reached them.
'Usual kind, you know, sir, young love, highly-sexed social meds, pent-up hormones.'
Thanks, Shagger, thought Lisa, as she investigated the thing beneath her knee. It was the little jar. She slipped it into her pocket.
'I think he's OK now, though, aren't you Calen? How many fingers am I holding up?'
Lisa turned to stare at the boy that she had been threatening only what, two minutes ago. He was propped on his elbows, his gaze fixed on the pocket where she had secreted the jar. His eyes raised and locked onto hers... his flint grey eyes!