The Accidental Siren

9.2 Night Terrors and the Flooded Confessional

She wore a cream-colored tank top, my favorite with the thin, vertical pleats. Her shorts were denim with purple stitching, a broken belt-loop, and a hole in the back left pocket. Braided pigtails brushed her collarbone. A taupe bath towel served as a homemade knapsack, tied at the top, bulging with the bare necessities as if she was a cartoon runaway.

“Mara?” I rubbed my eyes and took a second step into the parlor.

“Shit,” she whispered. Her shoulders fell slack and she turned around.

“Mornin’ to you too.”

“Go back to bed, James.” Her eyes jumped between me--standing like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in my undies and plain-white tee--and the gate to the foyer stairwell.

“Are you runnin’ away?” I asked.

She took another step toward the stairs, then hesitated. “I don’t care if you tattle, but can you give me a ten-minute head start?”

“Wait...” I shook my head to fight the sleepiness, then asked, “Where are you going?”

She groaned, took my wrist, and hauled me back to my room.

“What?”

“You’re gonna wake Livy.”

“Tell me where you’re going.”

Mara's body responded with a series of micro-spasms in her knees and neck. “I had the dream again.”

“The one with the hill?”

“James... it’s time.”

I blinked. Mara still looked like a kid, but her voice carried a somber undertone; a tone usually earned after years upon years of life experience. “Time?” I asked.

“Today’s the day, James. And I need to go alone.”

“No!”

She covered my mouth with her palm.

I lowered my voice and blurted through her fingers. “You’re not really going up there--”

Her eyes were frantic; scanning my room as if chasing an invisible fly. “Please don’t tell your parents,” she said.

“It’s five in the morning!”

“I need to go.”

“It was just a dream!”

Mara didn’t respond, but looked at me as if I was crazy.

“It’s sunny in all your pictures,” I said.

“In my dream last night... it was raining.”

“You can't go in the woods by yourself.”

“I’m not afraid of bullies.”

“Mom’ll kill you when you get back.”

“James,” she said and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m not coming back.”

There was a madness in Mara’s gaze that suggested I shouldn’t doubt her. Whether or not her dreams were prophetic, all that mattered was that she believed them.

“I’m going with you,” I said, then burrowed through my laundry basket for a pair of shorts.

“James, you can't--”

“There were two stick figures in your drawings. If something's really gonna happen on that hill, maybe the other person is me.”

*  *  *

“Watch for worms,” Mara said as we made our way across the paver-brick drive. “They sneak from the cracks when it rains.”

The storm was on hiatus, though gusts of wind rustled the leaves, sending showers of oversized droplets on our heads. We took the steps behind the retaining wall. At the top, I paused and scanned the horizon. The sky was dark above us, but there was a clear distinction between the murkiness of “five AM” and the obsidian clouds hanging above the lake. A silver bolt struck the sea and I began to count under my breath, “One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi. Three--”

“James!” Mara said, already twenty steps ahead. “If you're coming--”

The thunder cut her short.

*  *  *

Mara held her flashlight to her temple and followed the beam through the trees. The ground was soggy and slurped our shoes as we climbed the brink of The Great Divide. At the top, Mara peered over the edge and aimed the flashlight into the dark. Like the black hole in Whit's astronomy book, the abyss swallowed our meager cone of light and, the longer we stared, threatened to swallow us too.

I wanted to tell Mara that it wasn't too late to turn back, that we could still be in bed before Mom or Livy woke up, that she could sleep in my room until dawn...

She clicked off the flashlight and wiggled it in her knapsack, then grabbed a sapling to stabilize her first step into the pit. The darkness engulfed her in seconds, though I could still hear her clumsy footfalls over the wind.

“Wait for me!” I said. I closed my eyes; they were useless anyway. I found comfort in the heightened awareness that comes with a lack of sight. I tested the slope with my toes, feeling my way from tree to tree with arms like an insect’s antennae, relying on my sense of balance to keep me upright, following the patter of Mara's shoes on the wet earth.

The ground became level for several steps, and I knew I was on the path where Dorothy was buried. I paused, fully aware that my next step would bring me deeper than I had ever dared to venture before. Mara had crossed the make-believe border with ease, never stopping to ponder the cat she buried only three days before.

*  *  *

We reached the basin as the clouds pinked from the rising sun. Clusters of moss turned bright green in the meager light, creating a visible grid on the forest floor to help us keep our bearing. The storm had created puddles in the dirt like oblong mirrors among the stumps. There were no fish in these ponds, only drowning ferns, swimming ants, and spiders that wished they had gils. I stared down at my reflection as I rounded the largest puddle. I appeared upside-down in a backwards land; a land of treetop silhouettes, rippled skies, and inverted beauty; a land where Mara is mediocre and the rest of us are gorgeous. (Even there, Mara is unique.)

Twenty feet in front of me, she checked her watch and picked up the pace. I felt fat again as I lumbered after her. “Wait up!” I said.

Mara stopped as if she didn't have a choice. Her right leg was riddled from her knee to her sock with tiny lacerations. But she looked at me, grinned, and gestured playfully, “hurry up!” 

Days ago, I would have fallen for Mara's ruse. But now I saw past her joyful mask--past her genuine smile and infectious gait--all the way to an anxious little girl willing to risk our lives to meet a phantom on a hill.

*  *  *

It began to rain and Mara walked faster. Her shoes were mud pies, her left braid was frayed after snagging itself on a low-slung branch, and her tank-top clung to her back from a rousing crescent of sweat.

We passed a tractor beneath a blue tarp. Raindrops created a comforting patter on the plastic. An axe laid against the exposed wheel. We saw a salt lick a minute later, but no deer.

The walls of the basin were ginormous, dark-grey, covered in ominous trees that seemed to bow toward us as if we were the center of the forest. Thunder didn't just shake the sky, but echoed and multiplied throughout the entire valley.

We heard it before we felt it; a whoosh and surge through the canopy like the sound of a tilting rainstick. 

Mara looked up.

“Here it comes,” I said.