Rishi's Wish

Chapter 2

2

Dee was sure she'd heard a voice curse; felt fingers on her neck. When she managed to pull her eyelids apart, there was no one, only the shriveled face that had been her attacker staring at the sky, metal fence-post sticking from its chest.

-What's with that thing looking like a mummy?-

She giggled with delirium at the observation.

Her weight shifted, flooding pain through her, and there was no more laughter. There was no more anything as moving took all her focus.

She managed to get herself to a kneeling position without using her arms. Head hanging to her chest, she paused to gather her will, body fighting her desire to stand. She was one giant hurt. As one fought for attention over the others, another she hadn't even known about rose to take top place. Her right arm was held close to her stomach by the left, and she vaguely remembered the creature using the appendage as a chew toy. The bleeding had stopped, though a fresh current now leaked out of her, spawned by her movements.

It was only through masterful compartmentalization that she didn't pass out. That and her inner-voice making light of the severe wounds tethered her sanity.

This tether was too thin.

The reality of her staring at her own shattered bone through her own shredded skin slammed into her, bursting through those things that had sheltered her. Her world narrowed to a four-inch space between her hands filling with the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left.

As she continued to dry heave, she remembered the light touch that had brought her back to consciousness, focusing on the sensation to better determine the truth of it. Someone checking her pulse? Had that same someone cursed, thinking they'd found a dead body in the cemetery? What did they think of a mummy lying next to her? Who would even be out at this time of night, and where had they gone?

-Maybe a ghost checking who was disturbing its territory?-

She might have rolled her eyes if she had any control over her movements. Dry heaves continued to wrack her body.

When she regained control of her actions, she leaned back on battered knees, cradling her arm as she panned her surroundings. Seeing nothing out of place, she slowly, gingerly, rose on unsteady legs.

Thoughts of nameless strangers and ghosts left her head when she stepped on a phone lying in the grass—her phone.

Picking it up, she looked at it as if something on its surface might reveal its appearance, too late to be of any use.

Another shaky step forward had her kicking the body of the thing she shouldn't have forgotten. Ignoring its withered form, forbidding questions of the hows and whys of its posthumous physiological changes, she pondered what to do with it. She couldn't just leave it here, could she? Would someone be able to trace it to her if they found it? And what would they find if they ran tests on it?

Did she even care?

-I'm pretty sure you'd be a lab rat if anyone ever figured out anything about you. Don't leave this body here.-

The idea of someone learning how much of a freak she was brought her attention from the shriveled husk at her feet to the question of how she would get home. Exhaustion pulled at her. So much she was tempted to lay back down in the damp grass. She was miles from Mike's, which was miles closer than her place.

Her head hurt, pounding from blood loss. Chilled to the bone, sure she was using the last of her energy to concentrate on the strangest of problems, she wiped absently at her battered arm. This brought her attention to the fact that it was still trickling blood, and the hand of that arm was numb in a way that even staring at it brought her no sense that it was part of her.

Fighting hysteria, she returned her attention to the corpse at her feet. Her battle with fatigue made it impossible to hold onto more than one thought at a time, so she'd forgotten this issue that needed a solution before she could work on getting home.

Her eyes glanced into the dark landscape again, remembering the lingering touch that had fluttered over her neck, searching for the someone she knew had been here. Had that someone been watching over her? Had this same someone saved her last year from a similar fate?

-No one saved you from this thing. You killed it all by yourself.-

That was true, but it didn't mean no one had helped her before or hadn't been here tonight.

-Like a guardian angel or something?-

The ridicule in her head was thick as she panned the cemetery, tired eyes losing focus among the silvery stones reflecting the moon's light. What should have taken mere seconds kept her standing there far longer. Still, she was sure she'd be able to see if anyone was out there.

Even knowing there was no way she could find him nestled in the shadows, Hamal slid more securely into darkness. The way her eyes probed the area shouted at his subconscious to be less visible. Her movements were too precise, even in her dazed state, for someone who couldn't see well in the night.

Putting back on the night-vision goggles in preparation to follow her through a canopy of trees to her house, he monitored her movements, barely breathing. He stared wide-eyed when she grabbed a leg of the husk and dragged it the hundred feet to the far side of the grounds where a steep hill dropped to a thicket perfect for hiding a husk no one would come looking for. At her level of blood loss, exhaustion, and simple lack of mass, she shouldn't have been able to drag that much dead weight so casually.

His brain raced through possibilities, both practical and unlikely, that might explain all he'd seen this night from the girl who, less than an hour ago, he hadn't believed was worth his time.

Forcing himself to pay attention, he watched her stare after the fallen corpse, her expressionless face motionless for several minutes. The fact that she was conscious said much about her mental fortitude. He reiterated to himself that she should be dead. The ulnar artery in her wrist was severed in multiple places. It was her blood that had laid such a clear path for him to follow. That she was staring off in a daze shouldn’t worry him since she was fatally wounded.

When she lifted her phone from a pocket, he knew it could only be Mike she would call. There was no one else, as far as he'd seen, she could call this late. There was no one else she could call, period.

He couldn't hear her conversation from his position but watched with studious appraisal. When she began her journey out of the graveyard, pace plodding, he followed at a distance.