Shade of Human

Six - SoH

Six:

Gray-blue haunting eyes devoured my violet ones. Her recognition of me by face bespoke her reason to tread on campus grounds. She wore skin-tight pre-faded jeans and a navy tee shirt that appeared to gleam from the quality of the silken thread.

Her blue-gray eyes were like the midnight ocean on a stormy evening. She was mystifying and something vibrated from her, something alien to my senses. She was not at all normal, nothing like the multitude of beings passing around us. Even they seemed to cut a wide berth for us like primal instinct caused them to flee in terror.

Sexual attraction confused me because I was grieving for my dead girlfriend. I felt ashamed that my living, breathing, flesh, and bones ached for physical contact. When my one love was rotting in the ground. Turbulence would be far too polite a word to describe the effect of angst on my teen body. Signals seemed to cross in the air. My heart shattered all over again as if only realizing for real that Ariel was lost to me forever.

In that moment where the body and the senses are urging you to move onward, to function once more. It feels as though all that has been lost is now cheapened by survival. Hatred would come much easier now, but the attraction was agonizing. My world snapped back into place suddenly, as I felt the jolt of invisible electricity surging through my body. It was suddenly like something deep within was rushing to the surface, something primal and violent. Something as unseen as the specters that other people wholly ignored.

She was like a forest fire in my little universe, burning down all the comfortable things that kept me hidden from view. This unseen energy felt like a constant sucker punch to my gut. There was little doubt as to her being different. Even my keen instincts told me to be weary, to fight or to fly. Being as it was a day for fighting, I dug my heels in, contented because she could hardly assault me in plain view of all these underage witnesses around me.

She smiled a coy smile. Her beauty somehow seemed more like a dangerous animal. She had pristine white teeth. Her smile sent a distinct electric surge throughout me. Wave after countless waves of power brushed against me as she came closer. Time was a relative concept to us now. It had felt as if ages on earth passed in her approaching vector. Something in me was terrified to meet this woman, and something else was equally enthralled to greet her.

No one had ever elicited such a pungent reaction inside my body, not even Ariel. There was something almost otherworldly in the magnetism as she crept closer to me slowly.

“Are you Hannah Graves?”

She asked, in her strange unaccented tone. Her voice told me she was merely asking as a formality because I could see in her eyes, she knew she had the right girl. The way she stilled was almost supernatural. She was calm. Slow to make any extra motions. She was a patient predator.

“You know it.”

I blurted. She saw something, something that confused her. I saw silver veins rush along her naked skin for a moment. Silver webbing through her eyes, but the look was gone in the next heartbeat. She was the pristine beauty. Whatever I saw, I wished to god I could have chalked it up to madness and grief. However, part of me already knew that I was speaking to the first known supernatural being in my life, besides myself.

“Yes, I do. I need a word with you, Miss. Graves.”

Her words were velvety like the richest of silken garments, so alluring and inviting. I was already suspicious of her charms, but now they felt excessively potent. They felt like a facade to me, but merely because I seemed to see beneath them. The sizzling power roaring beneath her skin. Some unknown force was like a power plant, except contained in flesh.

“You are already having words with me. What do you need?”

I asked her in a somewhat terse tone. She seemed to be even more suspicious of me suddenly.

“What, are, you child?”

She inquired it slowly, making it somehow sound like an entire paragraph in a single sentence.

“Isn’t that your job? Or did I assume wrong?”

I asked, pushing her. My current relationship with authority was rocky. I did not feel like cracking like an egg for her and just giving her all my secrets. Maybe it was because I had been tossed around like garbage by enough police lately. Maybe I just did not trust the energy I was feeling. She did not appear to be an enemy, yet I could not find trust or any other lighthearted feelings now.

“I have a badge if that is what you’re asking, but I am not looking to cause you any further trouble. I could deduce that you had not set that fire upon a single glance. You are not the type to commit arson, but you are the type to trespass on a dare. No, my guess is you took that heat for someone else.”

My heart was throbbing in my chest. Was I really that easy to read? Was this some head game?

“Please, I don’t have anyone in my life worth three months of juvie food and communal showers. However, I am no snitch, so you must excuse me. I have nothing to say to a cop.”

She seemed to be genuinely frustrated by my stubborn obstinance. She grabbed my wrist as I moved to walk past her. She cut me a steely look that could have sliced through titanium.

“The haunts around here are becoming deadly. Unless you want more girlfriends to turn up dead, you will tell me what you know about a local wraith.”

Her grip was considerably sturdier than my coaches had been. She had more power in her delicate structure than should ever be possible for a woman. Never-the-less, I twisted free. I felt some force push against her inside me. Something not so different to the storm of power that I could feel all around her like a second skin. She staggered back and her eyes were wide. The silver veins were back along her skin and through her eyes. She seemed to be perplexed how a sixteen-year-old could foil her, that she had been overpowered.

“Who are you?”

She asked again. I huffed and cut her a grim look.

“The b***h about to get charged with assaulting a police officer, if you don’t stay out of my face.”

I warned her darkly. My time in juvie lingered with me. I did not constantly carry hatred for the law with me, but she was drawing my mistrust to the surface. She was demanding everything upfront from me. Yet, I had more questions than I could count. I had been hoping against hope to find someone who I could talk to about these things, but I could not seem to trust anyone with the law right now. Whatever I was, I was more than human. I was not normal. I knew now that the laws protected only the normal lay person. I do not recall any rights or liberties afforded to supernatural teenage girls.

“Look, I get it, you’re fresh out. You don’t have any love for the law, and I am the law. But, if you decide you need someone to talk to, give me a call.”

She plucked a glossy black business card from her pocket and handed it to me. I felt a faint buzz on the card. Something of her power seemed to cling to it. I knew nothing about how this energy or power worked, but it almost felt soothing to touch.

I swallowed back some choice retorts and licked my lips.

“Maybe we’ll see.”

I said, making no promises. Somehow wishing for this to end, but also for her presence not to fade at the same time. Everything about this was illogical. Whatever she was, I had never felt it’s like in Doylestown before now. I had not really felt any different before my birthday either, so I had only so many data points to go on now. Monster movie characters and creatures rushed through my head as if I could find some answer in classic cinema. That logic seemed to fail me quickly, and I was back to nothing.

“I’ll be in town until these haunts are dealt with. I will find the wraith that killed your girlfriend.”

She said it sounded like a promise. I stared at her stupidly for a long moment.

So, it has a name?

I thought to myself darkly. Resolved now to devour everything I could on the web about a creature called a wraith. While it sounded like something out of a Greek myth, my blood sang to life suddenly. I felt awash with vengeance and hatred for this creature. The huntress inside me wanted to deal out death to the thing that stalked my love and ate her up inside.

“Goodbye, detective.”

I said tersely. I managed not to scream at her, though my pain was naked to the soul right now. I was hurt and agonizing with the recollection of the fateful night that started all of this. The night meant to be described as “sweet-sixteen.”

Clarke came to my side. He looked at me with a frown.

“Yeah, she was just here. I know I saw her!”

My heart thumped as I realized that whatever had happened, she had somehow pushed him out of our conversation. She had somehow vanished just as quickly as she had appeared once I looked over to my best friend. Whoever and whatever she was, she was not human or not normal.

I cleared my throat. I nodded my understanding to Clarke.

“Yes, I saw her, it’s fine. I will get to the bottom of all of this. Can we go to your place? I need you to help me do some research. I think I figured out what the thing was called.”

Clarke perked up. He stilled in place and he was all ears.

“What is it?!”

I licked my lips again and said, “I think it’s called a wraith. Or it is a haunt, one of those two. We need to look them both up. Those are the names for a being that looks and acts as we saw.”

I explained, not bothering to inform Clarke that I had talked to the detective while he was clueless nearby. Hell, I had been so wrapped up in her I had not noticed what was happening either!

Clarke whipped out his smartphone and searched on google for information about haunts and wraiths. He was rambling off random facts about the spectral beings as we walked to his car. The old Subaru four-door turbo car was his man-crush on four wheels. I could make a few snide comments about boys and their toys, but even I had to admit the small sedan had a lot of pep to it. It still shocked me that his mom had allowed his dad to buy the damn thing. There again, I was also shocked that she was allowing him to hang with me now. From the looks I was getting; winter had come as far as she and I were concerned. That did not mean I was going to just avoid Clarke’s house, not when he had a much nicer and faster PC to process all the data we needed!