Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (10 page)

Some were burn marks, some left
over from clean cuts.  There were whole areas of scar tissue on his upper arms,
a mass of mottled skin.  And in places the scars formed distinct patterns.  Circular,
symmetrical, dots.  Teeth.  Someone had bitten his hands and his face.

“So now what?” Sandy whispered.  “Was
this part of your plan?”

“I’m going to wake him up.”

“Do you think we should do that? 
Maybe he hasn’t slept for days.”

“And maybe he has.”  Jina rocked
him slightly.  “It’s time to get up now.”

Lewis stiffened and looked up. 
He immediately jumped out of her arms and scrambled back against the wall.  He
gasped for breath and then shook his head as though he had just been under
water for too long and had finally come up for air.  His head fell into his
hands and he remained in such a position until he breathed normally.  Then he
sighed and looked up.  Bloody fingerprints dotted his forehead.

“Are you two real?  As real as
he
is?”  Lewis pointed at them.

He?  They turned to look at each
other, but instead saw the tattered shoulders of a dark suit.  S.A. sat between
them. 

He smiled angrily.  Pointing to a
scar on Lewis’s neck, he said, “
This
is where I cut him.”  He made a
slashing motion with his hand.  Lewis jumped and tried to push himself into the
wall.

“This is where glass tasted him.” 
S.A.’s grin was now soothing.  He gently touched Lewis’s forehead, and Lewis
relaxed with the caress.  S.A. traced his finger down Lewis’s arm to his hand.

“
This
is where the
mantises tried to gnaw through his fingers!”  S.A. beamed triumphantly.  Lewis
tensed again, his hands and feet pushing against the floor. 

Sandy looked more closely at
Lewis’s hands.  Scars wrapped around some of his fingers leaving permanent
rings.  Sandy felt the ring on her own left hand with her thumb.  She turned it
slightly.

“This is where the maggots chewed
at his living flesh.”  S.A.’s voice held no emotion whatsoever.  He lightly
touched Lewis’s mottled upper arms.

“This!”  Lewis’s shirt burst into
flames and disappeared.  He screamed and then grew very quiet.  There were no
new burns, yet his torso was marked with older wounds that resembled drip paths
made by running syrup.

“This is where glass did not
cut.  It poured.”  S.A. picked up a piece of broken glass from the floor.  It
melted, forming a ball of orange liquid in his hand.  He dropped it and it
cracked on the floor.

“This,” whispered S.A., pointing
lovingly to a row of tooth marks on Lewis’s face, “is where I bit him.”  His
voice rose to a normal volume.  “And this is where he bit himself.”

S.A. laughed at the tooth marks
on Lewis’s hands and forearms.  He then took on a reverent countenance.

“And this, this is my art.”  He
softly swept his hand over the patterned marks in the shapes of spirals,
geometrical designs. 

“And finally, this is where he
bloodied his fingers while scratching his way out of this room.  His name is
Lewis Torentelli.  He is pleased to meet you. 
Very
pleased, I’m sure.”

Lewis nodded tensely.

“Well then, I shall leave you
three to get aquatinted.”  With a dip of his head, S.A. stood.  He bowed
slightly before climbing the stairs.  The stairs weren’t actually there.  His
footsteps on air rang throughout the room.  A door creaked and closed.

Only then did Lewis relax.  He
wearily leaned his head against the wall and sighed.  Jina gently took his
hand.  “Sandy will take care of you while I find an escape.” 

When Jina stood, Lewis came
alive.  “No way out!!” he shouted.

Sandy comforted him.  “It’s ok. 
Jina has a plan.”  Then Sandy looked back to Jina and hoped that she really did
have a plan.

Jina rifled through her gym bag
and pulled out two thin metal rods.  She inserted them into the keyhole.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Yep.  Remember Nat?”

“One of your jerks?  Yes.”

“He taught me how to do this.  I
never told you because I knew you’d bug me about it.”  Jina played with the
lock and got a frustrated look on her face.  “Of course, I wasn’t very good at
it, but these kinds of locks are easy.”

Lewis scrambled to Jina’s side.  “We
can’t get out,” he whispered into her ear.

“Nonsense.  I may be rusty at
this, but it’ll work.  Hey, Sand, can you get him a shirt out of my bag?”

Sandy did as directed, and wasn’t
surprised to find a couple of shirts that would fit Lewis well.  They were both
shirts from former boyfriends that Jina had claimed as spoils of war.  She
chose one.

“You don’t get it,” Lewis
interjected.  “We can’t leave this house unless
he
lets us out.  It’s
his game, and he has control.”

“So maybe this is part of his
game?  We have to at least keep trying.  We can’t just sit in here and wait for
nothing.”  Jina continued to twist the lock picks.  Her look of frustration
turned to an expression of relief when she heard a click.

“Got it.  Put that shirt on, and
let’s go.”

T
he
hallway smelled of vanilla.  As they walked, the scent intensified, until they
came to an open door on the opposite side of the hall.  The doorway framed a
view of thousands of books.  An inviting fire blazed in a brick fireplace. 
Jina entered the library.

Sandy reached out her arm to stop
her.

“S.A. wants us to go in there. 
Let’s try doing what he doesn’t want us to do.”

But Lewis barged through.  With
animal haste, he knelt at the coffee table in front of the fire and started
vigorously filling his mouth with the pastries that covered the table.  Three
cups of coffee silently steamed next to the array of food.

Jina paused with Sandy, until
Lewis motioned for them to enter.  The food and comfortable environment seemed
to transform him into a new person, relaxed and even energetic.  Jina shrugged
and joined Lewis, sitting on one of the stuffed sofas and delicately nibbling
at a cherry turnover.

Sandy sat next to her and
whispered into her ear.  “You know what happens every time we eat something of
his…”

“We hallucinate?  Since we’ve
been here we haven’t had to eat to see shit,” Jina whispered back.

“Don’t worry,” Lewis said with a
mouth full.  “I eat here all the time.  Sometimes it turns into beetles before
I finish, but it’s good until then.  Sometimes I get hungry enough I go ahead
and eat the beetles.  Or maggots.  You’d best eat while you can.”  He stuffed
another half of éclair into his mouth. 

“No thanks, I just ate.”

“It’s been days since he’s given
me anything,” Lewis said when he had swallowed enough of his bite to speak.  “This
is a reward.  We did something right.  No telling what, though.  Maybe it’s for
you guys for rescuing me.”  He made a hoarse sound that could have been a
laugh.  “Or for me, for rescuing you,” he added before stuffing his mouth
again.

Sandy browsed over the titles on
the shelves. Lewis finished quickly and then made himself comfortable on the
couch.

“Anyways, as I was saying, we
aren’t getting outta here unless he lets us.  I’ve been looking for the door
for weeks.  Or has it only been a day?  I can’t tell.  I only found an outside
door once.  The back door.  It was locked.  More than locked.  It was nailed
shut.  While I was pulling on it, an arrow flew out of nowhere.  I felt air
when it passed my head.  I took the hint, and left the door alone.  Which
really sucks, because I’m sure I missed my final.”  Lewis scratched his head
and closed his eyes.

“We’ve heard of you, Lewis,” Jina
said calmly, sitting beside him.  “They’ve been searching for you for months. 
Your mom hasn’t given up.  We’re going to get out of here, and we’ll take you
with us.”

His eyes shifted, like he was
trying to remember something.  “I’m majoring in Law.  Like my dad.”  He spoke casually,
as if they’d just met at in a dorm and were hanging out with friends.  Jina
squeezed his hand.

Meanwhile Sandy had spotted a
rust colored book with a picture of a fairy on the binding.  She pulled it down
and began flipping through it.  She read the title page aloud, “A compendium of
fairy lore throughout Europe and the English Isles by WD Graves. 1894.”

“Cool, fairytales by firelight. 
You sure we have time to relax here, Sand?”

She flipped through a few more
pages.  “Not fairy tales.  It’s an academic account of fairy lore in Europe. 
It’s full of stories, firsthand accounts or actual folktales.  Like a
mythography.”

“Mythography?”

“Yes.  An account of what people
believe, without any weight given to whether it’s true or not.  Like a textbook
on Greek mythology.  But this is about the fairy faith.  I think I’ve seen a
copy of this at the University History Library.  It was written in the late
19th century.  It’s of historical value to help us understand what people used
to think.  Get this...  It says the sidhe, otherwise known as fairies, can lure
a human into... Oh my god.”

“Sandy?  You’re looking pale.”

“It’s no accident I found this
book.  It—it says there are countless tales of... fairies luring humans into
their world by offering them gifts, especially... food.”

“You’re saying S.A. is a fucking
fairy?” Jina spat.

“Jina,” Lewis whispered, “you
shouldn’t say his name too loudly.”  His confidence seemed to wane and he
shrunk in on himself a little.

Sandy ignored him and replied to
Jina’s question.  “Something like that.  Fairy folk enjoy abducting humans to a
place some call Tir Na Nog, the land of eternal youth.  While there they see a
lot of weird things that can’t be explained.  They’re forced to do things they
don’t want to, including... oh god.”  Sandy’s hand wavered in front of her
mouth.  “Including taking them in marriage.  Especially women.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Jina
said.  “Sandy, I’m so sorry.  There’s got to be a way out.  Someone had to tell
the tale, right?  Does it say how those humans escaped?”

“No.  Once there, they are
trapped for any length of time, overnight or even hundreds of years, until the
fairies send them back for no apparent reason.”

“What?  That can’t be right.  In
all the fairytales I’ve read, there’s some way out of every curse.  Like
kissing a princess or cutting through the brambles into the castle.  Even
Rumplestilskin let people go if they guessed his true name, remember?”

“Like I said, this is an account
of fairy lore, not of modern fairy tales.  Most of these stories don’t have
happy endings.  But let me keep reading.”  Sandy sat on the corner of the couch
and turned the pages.

“Thank god you read fast.”

“Shh... let me concentrate.  Ok,
here’s a story about a farmer whose wife was kidnapped by fairies.  He followed
her into Tir Na Nog.  He found her, and held tightly to her.  The fairies made
all kinds of scary faces and forms trying to scare him into letting go.  But he
knew if he let go, they’d both be lost forever.  So in spite of his fear, he
held on.  But it was too late.  She had eaten fairy food at a banquet, so he
lost her.”

“Fuck.  We ate the fairy food.”

“Yeah... but... remember.  This
is lore, right?  Maybe there’s something to this.  Remember how I made the spiders
disappear by convincing myself they weren’t real?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the same thing this
farmer did, in a way.  He had to hold on in spite of the illusions.  He had to
believe they couldn’t hurt him.  That’s a common thread in many of these
stories.  The ones that end well do so because someone had a strong enough
will, or believed the apparitions couldn’t hurt them.  So maybe it doesn’t
matter so much that we’ve eaten his food.” 

Lewis seemed to perk up a
little.  “When I first got here, I tried arguing with him.  I convinced him
that none of this could be real, and... he went away for a while.  I think
Sandy may be right.”

Sandy nodded and continued
reading.