AshesAndBlood Read online

  They invited me to join them, but I had just started high school and chose to stay with my friends and watch out for my brat of a sister. Plus, part of me thought if I stayed, Mom would get better. I often regretted that decision when arriving home from school to find my mom drooped over the kitchen table in whatever food she had attempted to make for lunch. She would pass out after throwing up half of whatever the hell she had eaten.

  After a while of cleaning her up, I stopped. I couldn’t keep doing it every day. I really wished I had gone with my Aunt Karen and cousin Emily. They treated me like family, unlike my own.

  What would my aunt and cousin say if they knew he was alive? What would his ex, Mary, do?

  He looks the same, except bigger, much bigger. He’s always been tall and broad-shouldered, but now he’s double the size. My arms can’t reach around him to give a hug and I swear my waist is the width of one of his arms. Still clean-shaved, including his head—he never would let his hair grow out because it’s curly strawberry blond—too girly for him. Even if he did grow it out, no one would have the balls to tease a walking mountain. He can easily throw anyone who would dare make fun of his strawberry curls clear across any room, and through a wall, if he wanted.

  “I, I can’t believe you’re here. It feels like a dream or as if I’m seeing a ghost.” Glancing back at Xander and Tristan, tears fill his green eyes. “Where did you find her? How did you know to bring her here?”

  Tristan and Xander couldn’t be more perplexed about what’s transpiring. Tristan studies Kevin and me, going back and forth between our faces. He can tell we are related. We both have similar cheekbones and long ears. Even without his hair, you can still tell he has ginger-like qualities. I’m a mixture of ginger and brunette.

  Xander crosses his arms and scrunches his brow. “Found them surrounded by nunda last night, a couple minutes away from camp. Told them we’d take them to town. We thought you might rent them a room. They claimed to know no one.” Staring, his eyes penetrate through me, mad I lied, yet technically, I didn’t know I had lied. “They didn’t have much on them. Thought the right thing was to bring them safely to town. How do you know each other?”

  I never would have seen this coming. Not in one million years did I expect I’d find Kevin alive, in a strange town, on a distant world. I’m lost.

  “It’s a long story, I’ll explain everything. She’s family, the first I’ve seen in over eight years. You must be hungry. Let’s go to the house and we’ll talk over lunch. I have so many questions. How’s my mom and sister?” Ushering us out of the workshop, toward the house, Kevin won’t stop asking me questions.

  I can’t hear him, my mind is spinning. My cousin is alive and here, of all places. That means there is little to no chance we will return home. It’s hard to even concentrate on my surroundings besides the never-ending line of questions streaming from a man taken from our world as a teen.

  Unable to see his mom and sister ever again.

  Chapter Four - Megan

  As we exit through the employee set of double doors into the courtyard, cool, refreshing air fills my lungs. It takes a moment to collect myself, to steady my breathing after being suffocated by excessive heat and troublesome knowledge.

  To distract from my racing thoughts, and Kevin’s never-ending questions, I study the courtyard. A garden overflows in its square plot beside the jade barn next to a faded chicken coop that once had been painted white. Various types of vegetables and fruits that I’ve never seen before are growing. Bright blue raspberries, yellow-green tomatoes, orange beans, and corn grow in the compact space. It seems Kevin takes fantastic care of the garden, another thing I would never expect. My cousin has a green thumb. His mom would be proud. Across the courtyard, a jade wooden barn, our possible shelter, rests, decaying. It requires extensive repair before winter, if it can withstand another rainstorm.

  Kevin opens the house door, welcoming us into a quaint two-bedroom ranch with an open-concept kitchen, dining, and living room. Against the left wall sits a massive hearth and a small cast-iron stove with a flattop to cook on. Multiple cast iron pots and pans along, with other various cooking utensils, hang above the oven. In the kitchen’s heart is a simple wooden table with four chairs to match. The living room has a modest fireplace at its focal point, surrounded by two rocking chairs. On either side of the fireplace are windows with benches underneath. It’s simple, not remarkably clean, but not disgusting. It has no organization either, probably because it’s a snug little bachelor pad.

  Everyone except Kevin sits around the table. Tristan pulls chairs out of the living room while Xander grabs one from outside.

  I organize my thoughts, decide what to mention, what will soothe or crush. I didn’t answer a single question from the mere shock of seeing him alive. Should I tell him everything? Will it hurt or heal? Is it better to know or not?

  Where do I begin?

  “They’re good. Emily got married last year and they both moved to Florida a couple years ago. Um, you remember Mary?”

  “Emily got married and they live in Florida? Never pictured Mom putting up with the heat. I remember Mary, but barely. It has been too long since I saw her or them. How is she doing?” Done washing his hands from a water trough, Kevin slices bread for the table, along with arranging a plate of cheese and what looks like ham.

  “Ah, she’s doing wonderful. Did she mention anything to you before”—What do we call what happened to us?—“before this happened?”

  “No. She wanted to get dinner when I returned from camping.”

  “How do you know each other?” Xander asks, his voice monotone, arms crossed.

  “We’re cousins. Our mothers are sisters.” Turning to face the girls, I say, “You remember when my cousin went missing, the summer before freshman year?” Reality sinks in as they realize he has been here for eight long years. We assumed he was dead. We never found a body. Wait—they found no bodies. Shit. “Where’s Brian and Dave?”

  Kevin places the tray of food on the green table, then sits, releasing a long sigh. “Lucky they found you.” He gestures to Xander and Tristan. “We had no light or fire when we first realized something was wrong. The nunda attacked within minutes. I don’t know how they didn’t get me, but I escaped. The nunda got them.” Must have killed him to hear his buddies from high school die. “Why d’you ask about Mary?”

  “Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you went through.” Should I tell him? I wish I knew what to say. “Ah, Mary is good. Um, well, she lives with your mom in Florida.” Kevin swivels his head, interested why his ex-girlfriend from high school lives with his mom. “She must have planned to tell you at dinner, after your camping trip. You have a son named Evan. He looks like you, a little clone. He even shaves his head. He keeps a picture of you by his bed and tells everyone his dad is his guardian angel. That’s what Mary told him. She’s a great mom and nurse. I think she works at a hospital.”

  Kevin looks electrocuted.

  “Your sister lives down the street with her husband. She’s pregnant, they’re expecting a girl. Everyone is doing well. They miss you. Not a day goes by that they don’t think about you.”

  “I, I don’t remember what they look like.” Zoning out, Kevin becomes quiet.

  His words send chills down my spine. Is this how I will feel years from now, unable to remember my family? Any pictures of his family would have been in an album on my phone, which I didn’t bring. I have nothing to help him picture his family, see the child he’ll never meet. Ciara and Dana stifle back tears, even Sarah’s eyes are glistening, but she doesn’t cry. Two tears trail down my cheeks. Even Tristan and Xander grow somber from our conversation. They may not understand what happened, but they can perceive it’s painful for their friend.

  “They remember, and they continue to love you and think of you. You’re constantly on their mind, wishing you were with them.” Grasping his hand, there’s nothing more to say. Nothing can help him or make him feel better. I
know, ’cause there’s nothing someone could say or do besides take me home.

  A lone tear falls past his cheek. He gulps, swallowing down his emotions, and smiles. “Is he a troublemaker, like me?”

  “His teachers fear him. Evan made a mess with a bunch of frogs a couple months ago.” I knew that would make him smile. “First thing Aunt Karen said was, ‘It’s the mice incident all over again!’ Evan didn’t number the frogs, like you did with the mice, but he let a box loose in the school cafeteria. Eventually he will figure out numbering them one, seven, thirteen, eighteen will cause more panic when they can’t find the missing numbers.”

  Everyone laughs. Kevin’s eyes water but no other tears fall. “That’s my boy. Wow. I can’t believe I’m a dad. He calls me his guardian angel, huh? I didn’t take Mary as the religious type. Well, I didn’t expect this. I need a drink. Anyone want some bicki?”

  Everyone nods.

  “Where are you from?” Less angry but lost, Xander still has his arms crossed.

  “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Kevin replies as he hands out a clear liquid in oversized shot glasses. “It’s not anywhere near here. It’s far, far away.”

  “Where?” Tristan raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t appear upset, instead intrigued, more inquisitive than his cousin.

  Sarah clears her throat. “Where we come from, it only has one moon—”

  Xander hits the table with his fist. “Absurd. Another lie—”

  Sarah squints her almond eyes, putting her game face on. “Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean we lied. Where do you think we got our backpacks, clothes, and tools from? Look at our shoes.” She points to the rubber on her sneakers. “Ever see rubber-soled shoes or know what it means?” She reaches for her phone, which no one has taken out since the nunda attack, afraid of their reaction, but Kevin started it, so Sarah will finish it. “See this, we call this a phone. It does thousands of things besides holding millions of books’ worth of information. Do you have any technology like this?”

  “That’s a cell phone now? Damn, I remember buying a flip phone. Wow, what does it do?” Forgetting his drink, Kevin leans over Sarah, checking out the latest technology he will never use or appreciate.

  “It plays music, movies, games, tells you the weather, news, any and all information at your fingertips. You can go online and shop. It’s basically a minicomputer.” Dana takes out her phone and passes it to Kevin. “It won’t connect to the internet, but there’s music and games. You’re free to play with it. We don’t have solar power chargers, so unfortunately they will die soon.”

  “Those things are alive?” Afraid of what lives in our pockets, Tristan straightens his spine and glares at the cell phones. “What else are they capable of?”

  Ciara laughs. “It’s a figure of speech. The phone isn’t alive, but energy powers it. Without power, the phone won’t work. It won’t hurt you. See?” Taking out her phone, she shows him a picture of the four of us at the beach three weeks ago, the last true hot day of the year. A lifeguard snapped the picture with the ocean in the background. We weren’t far from my mom’s house, I should have checked on her. “Originally, Megan and I are from Seaside. Here is a picture of us at the beach. So it wasn’t a complete lie.”

  “But which coast of Dargone, east or west? How is there only one moon?” Xander stares, his sable eyebrows raised.

  Laughing hard, Tristan gasps for air. “Oh Xander, stop being stubborn. If where they come from has one moon, either they’re insane or it’s a mystery. You can’t know and control everything, sometimes you need to believe. Why would they make up a crazy story to confuse us? Kevin said you wouldn’t believe and he was right. He’s been our friend for seven years and helped us through hard times. I believe him even if I don’t understand. Look around. Their stories, the things Kevin creates, the stuff the women brought, besides their weird clothes, plus the living phones. What animal is a phone? Face it: They are not from Dargone or anywhere we know. You’re so stubborn you won’t open your eyes to what is in front of you.”

  “Well then, how did you get here?” Xander raises his voice slightly and his face flushes red.

  Sarah replies, “No idea. We were going for a walk behind Dana’s house when the trees changed. We tried to go back but the whole forest morphed. If Kevin has been here this whole time, I assume we’re stuck.” Her voice wavers on the word stuck. She reaches for her glass of bicki, takes a swig, and looks Xander and Tristan in the eye. “We aren’t from this world, that’s a fact. How we arrived is a complete mystery, as I’m sure it is for Kevin.” He nods. “We are here against our will, trapped. I don’t expect you two to understand something we don’t comprehend, but if you can accept the facts, then we can move forward. We wish we knew what happened and when we find out, we’ll share that information with you. But as of now, we know nothing.” Finishing her drink, Sarah sets the glass on the table with extra enthusiasm, ending her rant.

  Some things in life make you smile, like the purple choking face Xander makes. Sitting speechless, trying to grasp what Sarah has said, he drops his head and sighs. Clearly frustrated, he doesn’t understand what happened, but he’s done arguing since it has achieved nothing.

  “Kevin, is it okay if we stay here until we figure things out? They mentioned renting out the barn or a room.”

  “Megan, you can stay as long as you want. You four can sleep in the bedrooms and I’ll sleep in the living room. I need to repair the barn. It’s not livable. Rent free. I won’t charge my cousin and her friends after the hell you’ve experienced. No one should go through,” Kevin shrugs, “this.”

  “I can fix the barn,” Dana says. “My brothers and I have, well, had, a house-flipping business. I handled the books and clients and helped with some renovations. I installed a roof twice and built myself a tiny home.”

  All three men look taken aback by Dana’s construction knowledge.

  “Is it normal for women to have men’s jobs? Did you all have jobs before?” Tristan asks.

  We tell them what our jobs were back home. Sarah explains what a lawyer is, her dream career. Ciara tells them she was a caregiver and left out it had been for her parents. Dana explains her role in her family’s company. For my turn, well there’s nothing much to say besides being a waitress, bartender, and doing odd jobs.

  “I have to get back to work,” Kevin says. “Need to finish orders by tomorrow. Feel free to organize and work on the house and barn. You can change the sheets, there are more in that closet. You can clean the rooms, but don’t go through the drawers, please. I’ll empty them later. We’ll go out for dinner because we just ate the last of the food. Need to go to the market tomorrow morning. I have to sell a couple things. You guys can stay the night. Space will be tight, but you’re welcome to stay.”

  Kevin returning to work is his way of asking to be alone. It’s clear he’s putting on a show, he wants no one to see him distraught. The whole time we had talked about our old jobs, our homes, people left behind, Kevin kept zoning out. His eyes would grow distant then sharply refocus as if slapped, then fade away again. Poor man. He was a teenager, not that we are much older, being four years apart, but we still had more adult experiences. To lose your childhood friends… If we lost Ciara last night, I don’t know what we would do. How we would act.

  “Thanks, Kevin. We’ll clean up and get to work. I promise to help you as much as you’re helping us.” Dana gives him a smile, then begins to clean up the table. The rest of us follow suit.

  Tristan and Xander take their leave shortly after Kevin, promising to be back for dinner. They say they need to conduct business at the market and whatnot, but are probably going to discuss the crazy girls they found in the woods and their friend Kevin from a distant world. I wonder if they will join us for dinner or retreat into the woods, staying far away from the madness.

  Ciara and Sarah work on cleaning the house. It’s not large but hasn’t been cleaned properly in decades. The area that Kevin
lives in or uses isn’t bad, but the rest is awful. Not that it’s moldy, but there’s a thick layer of dust and cobwebs covering a good seventy percent of the house. There’s so much dust, my allergies won’t allow me in the living room to help clean without throwing a sneezing fit. Giving up on the house, I join Dana in the barn, getting some much needed fresh air.

  The barn has a structure, but not much else. Without pen or paper, Dana uses dust on the old wood floor to figure out the math, draw up blueprints, and decide how much wood we need to repair this mess. Make it habitable again. Possibly it’s somewhere we might want to stay while finding a way home.

  “All right, we have some usable wood to refortify the structure. Maybe if the guys get back early, they can take us to a lumber yard, or wherever they buy lumber. Hopefully, we don’t have to cut down trees and cut boards ourselves. Grab a hammer, we can get something done.”

  With a hammer in my hand, I swing it at decayed wood. I try not to get too emotional with each swing, tearing down the old boards, but it’s hard not to be furious. It feels good to release frustrations while being productive. With that momentum, it only takes a few hours to dismember the rotting planks of wood, transforming the barn into a skeleton. It’s easier to destroy a building, harder to rebuild. They call it demolition day for a reason: It lasts one day. The rest of the renovation takes a month if not more to complete, depending on water and electric. Unfortunately, we have neither. I’m not too happy about the lack of hot water or light. It will be hard getting used to no hot showers or flushing toilets. I really miss my brand new spa bathroom.

  The renovation on the barn won’t take long, maybe a month. Even without the comforts of a modern home, Dana plans something nice. She has the mentality that if we’re stuck here and the barn is our new home, we will make it perfect. It’s an optimistic way of seeing things. Even though a base camp reassures me, I would rather focus my efforts on finding a way back to Earth. We still need shelter while researching, but I think Dana gave up on home. After she saw Kevin stuck here for eight years, she may think it’s pointless to try.