Chapter 18 - Imprint

“Amá sání, there’s something outside.”

Mikayla looked over her shoulder as she pointed out the window with her small hand, clutching the sheer curtains in the other.

Her grandmother looked puzzled, but got to her feet from her wooden rocking chair a few feet away, and joined her young granddaughter by the window.

They peered out into the twilight.  Shadows stretched across the front yard from the handful of tawny shrubs that guarded the house from the dirt road fifty feet beyond.  Amá sání’s dusty old station wagon sat silently in the gravel driveway.  The sun had already set on the horizon behind the vehicle and the dark blue of night was quickly blanketing the sky.  What little light that remained on the land was slowly being swallowed up.

“I don’t see anything, áłchíní.”

“Listen,” Mikayla whispered, pausing a moment and looking at her grandmother, studying the old woman’s face as she peered out into the encroaching darkness.  “The crickets aren’t singing.”

She watched her grandmother’s expression change from amusement to a controlled emotionless frame, where she locked her jaw and her eyes gave away her true emotions.

Mikayla’s eyes widened as she recognized the fear in amá sání’s dark brown eyes.  She may have only been living with her grandmother for two years now, but already, she could read amá sání’s face, no matter how skilled she was at concealing her true emotions.

Her grandmother gently pulled Mikayla away from the window and pulled the curtains across in an attempt to conceal the outside world.

“Would you mind warming up some goat’s milk for your amá sání, áłchíní?”

Mikayla nodded, wondering why her grandmother was behaving so strangely.  She went into the kitchen and poured some fresh goat’s milk from the fridge into a little saucepan.  As she did so, she strained her ears to listen to the faint noises her grandmother made in the living room. She must have picked up the phone because Mikayla could hear her whispering to someone.

“I need you to come over here immediately.  I think there’s one outside.”

There was a pause as Mikayla turned the gas on the stove to low and flicked the spark button to start.  Blue flames shot up on the element, dancing in the faint light coming from the oil lamp on the small round kitchen table.

“Yes, I checked earlier.  They’re still there.  They must need replacing.”

Mikayla put the saucepan on top of the burning element, careful not to make any loud noises.

“Thank you.  Be sure to place more charms on your way to safeguard the neighbourhood.  We don’t want them stealing any children who might still be outside at this hour.”

Mikayla heard the phone placed gently back in its cradle.  Although she had been staring at the doorway to the living room, she now quickly averted her attention to the stove to watch the milk.  Her grandmother’s footsteps swept softly toward her, and once she was just a few feet away, Mikayla looked up at her over her shoulder and said, “Are we going to have a visitor?”

 Amá sání avoided her gaze, but nodded.  “Yes.”

“Should I add some more milk for him?”

Her grandmother shook her head.  “No, that’s alright, áłchíní.  You stay right here and keep an eye on that milk.  I’ll be right back.”

Mikayla nodded, turning her attention back to the milk on the stove.  She listened to her grandmother go to the cupboard, pull something out, and then went to the window over the sink, then the door to the garden, and all of the other windows and the front door of the small house.  She didn’t know what amá sání was doing, but she didn’t question it.

She pursed her lips, as she watched steam begin to curl up from the surface of the milk.  She pulled it from the heat and turned the gas off.  As she turned from the stove towards the sink, the pot fell from her hand as the hot milk splattered on her legs and feet.

Glowing red eyes stared back at her from the window over the sink.

.

Mikayla woke with a start.  Those red eyes, still burning, left an imprint in her mind.  It stung, more than just an uncomfortable pain—it was as though her head had been submerged in boiling water.

“Holy shit,” she hissed under her breath.

Clutching her head, she got to her feet and staggered to the bathroom across the hall.  Falling on the sink, she turned the faucet on and ran the cold water, splashing it on her face

“Shit.”

It had been a few months since she last woke up with a headache this bad.  She wasn’t sure what the cause was exactly, but she had a pretty good guess that she had a visitor last night while she slept.

“Shit.”

She towelled her face dry before staggering out and down the stairs to the kitchen, swearing up a storm under her breath as she went.  The sun was just cracking above the horizon, barely illuminating the kitchen with its faint glow.  Darkness was certainly in her favor, as any bright light would only intensify her pain.  She opened the door to the freezer and grabbed a tray of ice.  Whacking the plastic tray on the counter, she dumped out the ice cubes and filled a plastic re-sealable bag with them.  Wrapping the bag of ice in a dishtowel, she pressed it to her head as she sat down at the table.

Moments later, she heard footsteps on the stairs as Anna-Marie, still tying the belt of her navy blue robe around her waist, entered with a confused and alarmed look on her face.  As soon as she saw Mikayla sitting there in the pale light of dawn, she planted her hands on her hips.

“What in the world is going on down here?  It’s six-thirty in the morning.  Aiden and Gracie are still sleeping.”

Mikayla closed her eyes, in too much pain to heckle her.  “Got a migraine.”

“Then take some aspirin!  There’s no need to make such a racket.”

“Aspirin does shit.”

“And ice will?”

“Better than that shit.”

Anna-Marie heaved an exasperated sigh.

When Mikayla opened her eyes, she saw Anna-Marie standing there in the faint grey morning light, looking helpless, and unsure of what to do.  Ann could tell that Mikayla was in a lot of pain, but if Mikayla rejected her offer of aspirin, what else could she do?  The uncertainty in her eyes evolved as her gaze met and held Mikayla’s.  Her eyebrow arched up as her eyes widened in surprise.

Mikayla cursed in her mind again as she realized that she didn’t have her contacts in.

But instead of being worried about her eye color, another searing hot pain ripped through her head like a red-hot knife.  A hiss escaped her lips as she clenched her eyes shut.

Fuck!

Everything burned and a hissing noise, like steam whistling from a kettle, filled her mind, drowning out all other sounds around her. 

Gritting her teeth in an attempt to stifle a cry of pain, she rose to her feet.  She felt herself moving forward, touching a hard surface, grasping a long, slender object, and pressure against the inside of her arm. 

Warmth spread through her.  She could feel the boiling of her mind cease as warmth flowed down through her veins.  The hissing noise in her mind turned to singing, a hum, and then silence.  The pressure on her head drained, the stress lifted, and calmness enveloped her.

A sigh whispered from her lips as a sense of peace fell on her.

If only momentarily.

“Oh my god!  What are you doing?”

With a groan, Mikayla opened her eyes and looked at Anna-Marie in irritation.  What now?  Her headache was finally clearing up and Ann’s high-pitched shriek wasn’t improving the situation at hand.

Until she noticed the dark blood running down her arm and dripping onto the floor.

Mikayla mentally cursed again.

Without thinking, she realized that she had risen from her seat, tossed the bag of ice on the counter, grabbed a knife from the wooden block next to the stove, and pressed the blade into her arm.

The cut was deep.  Deeper than any of the others she had inflicted on herself.

“Oh,” she murmured, raising her arm to examine the cut.  The blood ran down her elbow in thick lines and dripped on the clean, white tiled floor.  “That’s not good.”

She swayed.

“Mikay!”

Anna-Marie rushed forward, grabbed the dark red, yellow, and green striped dishtowel from the makeshift icepack, and wrapped it around Mikayla’s bleeding arm.  She tried to steady Mikayla as she moved the tall, lanky teenager back to her seat at the table.

Mikayla rested her head on the tabletop, and closed her eyes; a hint of a smile played on her lips as she found the cool surface against her cheek soothing.

Despite Anna-Marie’s strong grip around the cut, the blood quickly soaked through the towel.  Fear washed over Anna-Marie as she stared at the towel in her hands. 

Did Mikayla hit a deep vein?  Would Ann have to take her to the hospital?

“What’s going on?”

Anna-Marie looked up at James as he came into the kitchen.  His groggy eyes shot open when he took in the site of Mikayla bleeding at the table and his wife gripping the bloody arm tightly.

He didn’t even bother to turn to light on.  He hurried to Ann’s side, swearing words Ann hated hearing under his breath.  “What happened?”

Anna-Marie was still in shock.  “It all happened so fast.  She was just sitting here with an ice pack to her head, complaining of a migraine.  Then she got up, grabbed a knife and slashed her freaking arm!”

James swore again.  Brushing her black hair behind her ears, he looked at Mikayla’s face and saw that she was unconscious.  “She’s passed out.”

“Oh my god!  Could it be because of the blood loss?  Get me a clean towel.  We have to take her to the hospital.”

James went to one of the drawers and pulled out a clean dishtowel, identical to the previous one, and handed it to her.  Anna-Marie unwrapped the soiled towel, grimacing as she did so, and examined the cut, terrified of what she might find.  James leaned over to see how bad it was.

He tilted his head, in silent confusion.  “It doesn’t look that bad,” he commented, despite the lack of light.

Anna-Marie didn’t understand.  The cut was about two inches long, but only half as deep as it was previously.  It looked like a severe paper cut, but Ann was positive it was deeper than that just moments before.  It had been bleeding heavily, and now it was just a trickle.

“It was worse than this.  Just look at the blood all over the floor over there!  That fell from her arm in just a few seconds!”

James wrapped the towel around Mikayla’s arm and held it tight.  He shifted his gaze to the area Ann was pointing to and saw the dark pool of blood on the floor.  He also noticed the wet bloodstains on Mikayla’s black clothes and the dark spots on his wife’s navy blue robe.  There was no way that a trickle of blood could have made that much of a mess in the matter of a minute.  Even the soiled towel on the floor looked like it had been a pretty bad cut.

Yet, as he held her arm then, the amount of blood flowing out was minimal.

He and Ann sat together with Mikayla at the table, and after a few minutes, they tentatively pulled back the towel to examine her arm.  The cut had scabbed over, a nasty black crust of a line that they wrapped up with some gauze from the first-aid kit under the sink.

They exchanged looks of puzzlement and fear.

This made no sense at all.

Sure that the bleeding had stopped, they moved her to the sofa in the living room.

“Her face,” Anna-Marie said suddenly as they watched the rather pale-looking teen slumber, her head propped up on the plush arm of the overstuffed sofa.  “Her face was different when she got up from the table and sliced her arm open.  It was like… like she wasn’t there.  She had complained about the migraine, even looked like she was in excruciating pain for a second there.”

She paused and shivered at the memory.  It was as though she was possessed…

James didn’t know what to make of it.  He hadn’t been there.  He didn’t witness what his wife had, but he saw that she was shaken by it.  He put his arm around her and pulled her close in an attempt to comfort her.

“Her eyes,” Anna-Marie murmured, resting her head on his shoulder, “I suspected she wore colored contact lenses but I never… I never expected that her eyes would be so dark.  They were red, like a dark blood-red.”

“What?” James looked at her like she was crazy.  Red eyes?

Anna-Marie pulled back and shook her head.  She regarded Mikayla apprehensively as she chewed on her bottom lip.  “I knew something wasn’t right about her.  This all proves it.  Red eyes, quick healing abilities, freaky weird feelings when you touch her… what is she?”

James shook his head.  “I don’t know.” 

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know either.  Some things were better left unanswered.

Or so he thought.

He went back to the kitchen then and flicked on the light switch.  Ripping off a few piece of paper towel, he ambled over to the stove to wipe the blood off the floor as Anna-Marie went upstairs to wake up the children and get them ready for school.

He stopped and stared at the small pool of blood on the clean, white tiled floor.

It was completely black.

.

Author's Note: *cue creepy music* LOL.  I hinted earlier to Mikay's "dark veins" on the inside of her arm, but I never said they were purplish-blue in colour...

People who "cut" themselves sometimes describe the feeling as releasing "negative/pent-up energy/pain". That's part of it for Mikay, but this was taking it to the extreme.