Dark Surge Read online

  DARK SURGE

  Gina Ranalli

  DARK SURGE

  Gina Ranalli

  This eBook edition published 2012 by Dark Regions Press as part of Dark Regions Digital.

  www.darkregions.com/

  Dark Regions Press

  300 E. Hersey St.

  Suite 10A

  Ashland, OR, 97520

  © 2012 Gina Ranalli

  Signed collectible editions with a full color cover available at:

  www.darkregions.com/books/dark-surge-by-gina-ranalli

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 1

  A black fly landed on the cutting board where Tess Waters was slicing tomatoes. She waved it away with her knife hand and continued on with her sandwich making.

  “There’s a fly in here!” Emily shouted delightedly.

  “There certainly is,” Tess agreed, casting a glance back over her shoulder at her six-year-old daughter.

  Emily sat at the kitchen table, the cloth place mat draped over her head, tiny fingers pinching it’s corners beneath her chin, giving her the appearance of an old world Italian woman out doing her shopping. She grinned at her mother, sans two front teeth. “Flies carry disease and eat poop.”

  Tess went back to her chopping. “They do, indeed. Honey, put the place mat back on the table please.”

  From behind her came a soft sigh, as if the weight of the world had just fallen upon the shoulders of a kid in the middle of the first grade. “Are you almost done making the sammiches?”

  “I’m about to start the assembly.” As if on cue, four pieces of bread popped out of the toaster and Tess wiped her hands on a dish towel before moving across the small but sunny kitchen to get plates out of the cupboard. “And stop saying ‘sammiches.’ It makes you sound unintelligent.”

  “It makes Daddy laugh.”

  Tess muttered, “Well, Daddy likes his women unintelligent. That’s why he’s not here.”

  “Huh?” Emily was still toying with the place mat.

  “I said, I’m not Daddy. Right? Do I look like Daddy?” Tess continued to move around the kitchen, spreading condiments over the bread, piling tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado and alfalfa sprouts as artistically as she could without having the entire things fall apart.

  Emily giggled. “You don’t have a beard.”

  “Not yet anyway.” Tess smiled. The sound of her daughter’s laughter had always been able to make her smile, even in the most dour of circumstances. As she plucked the place mat from her daughter’s head, returned it to its proper spot and placed Emily’s plate on top of it, she added, “But, you never know. Some old ladies have whiskers, right?”

  “Miss Swanson does! Right here!” Emily pointed to the area under her chin. “Lots of them.”

  Tess laughed. Miss Swanson was Emily’s math teacher, an old crab of a woman who truly appeared to despise her job. “Okay, Missy. Eat up. Your dad will be here in an hour.” I hope, she thought, biting into her own veggie sandwich. Josh had a tendency to be late. Always had. Late for dates, appointments. Late home from work. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy. He’d just never been able to estimate how long something would take him, had always underestimated.

  After taking a bite out of her sandwich, Emily said, “Good sammich.”

  “Don’t talk with you mouth full, please.”

  Emily made a show of chewing and swallowing. “Good sandwich.”

  “Thank you.” Tess found herself smiling again. She wondered how many children Emily’s age would be happy to have an all-vegetable sandwich on wheat and a glass of organic apple juice to go with it. Probably not too many these days. But Emily had been raised on an abundance of fruits and vegetables and never complained. Tess considered herself lucky that her child enjoyed healthy food instead of the over-processed junk too many parents currently fed their kids.

  She herself had been raised eating crap due to a lazy, indifferent mother and a mostly absent—thankfully—but violent and resentful father. She couldn’t count how many nights she’d had to eat cereal for dinner because her mother couldn’t be bothered to get her ass up off the couch. Eventually, Tess had learned how to make mac and cheese, hot dogs, and anything that came out of a can. Usually, the only beverage in the house had been soda. Greasy potato chips had been a main staple in her diet—her mother had counted them as vegetables—along with the doughnuts her father favored. It was a wonder Tess had stayed so skinny all through her growing up years, but no wonder at all why she’d ended up with so many cavities, the dentist being the only doctor Tess and her younger brother saw on a regular basis, for some unknown reason.

  Looking across the table at Emily, Tess did her best to shove thoughts of the past out of her mind. She wasn’t the type for a pity-party, even if it was in her own head. She’d spent her teenage years as well as her twenties feeling sorry for herself and angry that her upbringing had been so difficult, but by thirty she’d been with Josh for over two years and Emily had been born. From that time on, she’d seldom thought of her own parents except to remind herself of what not to do with her daughter. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in nearly a decade and had no intention of ever doing so again. Her father had died during the estrangement from Tess, and it saddened her that the only thing she felt in regards to his death was apathy.

  “Daddy’s gonna take me to see Shrek 4,” Emily announced cheerfully, snapping Tess back into the present.

  “Didn’t he take you to see that last weekend?”

  Emily shook her head, a smear of mustard on her chin. “We were gonna go but Gillian didn’t want to, so I just watched a DVD at home.”

  Bristling at the words at home, Tess took a bite of her sandwich and nodded, rather than reply. Since when had Emily started referring to Josh’s apartment as home? He’d only moved in with Gillian Joel a few months ago and Emily only visited on weekends. Tess considered asking Emily about it, then dismissed the thought. Probably just one more symptom of the divorce—the confusion a child goes through in the aftermath of a dissolved marriage. And even if it wasn’t—so what? There was nothing wrong with Em calling where her father lived home. Hell, Tess would have loved to have two different bedrooms when she was a kid. Two different toy boxes. Two different closets full of clothes.

  Two different mothers.

  Tess frowned momentarily before catching herself. “Drink your juice, honey.”

  After obediently taking a sip, Emily said, “Daddy is a handsome man. Isn’t Daddy a handsome man, Mom?”

  Almost choking on her bite of sandwich, Tess carefully swallowed before answering. “Uh huh. He’s very handsome.” It wasn’t a lie. Josh had always been a beautiful man. The trouble was that he knew it and used it at every opportunity. He was a tremendous flirt and there was virtually no woman impervious to h
is charms. “What made you think of that, sweetie?”

  “Gillian says so all the time. She says, ‘Emily you are so lucky to look like your Daddy. He is a very handsome man.’ ”

  Tess felt her stomach cinch tight. “She says so all the time, does she?”

  “Yup.” Emily happily took a bite of her sandwich and when a chunk of avocado popped out and landed on her plate, she scooped it up and ate it, smiling at her mother with green lips. “Good grub.”

  Her own appetite dwindling, Tess pushed her plate aside, only half her sandwich gone, and tapped her own lips with a napkin. She knew she should say something, but her mind was drawing a blank. Instead, she smiled at her daughter, hoping she looked more positive than she felt.

  “You didn’t clean your plate,” Emily announced.

  Raising an eyebrow, Tess said, “You know we don’t always have to clean our plate, Em.”

  “I know. You can stop if you get full.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Gillian says all growing girls should clean their plates.”

  Tess was beginning to feel the first twinges of real anger now. If this kept up much longer, she would need to have a serious discussion with Josh. Rather than betray her feelings, she asked, “You like Gillian a lot, huh?”

  Emily nodded. “She’s nice.”

  Reaching for her glass, Tess took a long swallow of water.

  “Don’t you think she’s nice, Mom?”

  She wondered if Emily was picking up on her feelings despite her attempts to hide them. Finally, she said, “She seems very nice, yes. I don’t really know her that well, though. But if you think she’s nice, then she must be. You are a terrific judge of character.” She reached across the table and ruffled her daughter’s dark hair, causing the girl to giggle. Whew, she thought. Barely escaped that one.

  Deciding that she wouldn’t let her ex-husband’s new girlfriend get to her, Tess dragged her plate back in front of herself and polished off the rest of her lunch. Luckily, for the remainder of the meal, the subject of Gillian didn’t come up again and they could discuss the usual things: how funny Spongebob Squarepants was, Emily’s sticker collection and their plans to use one of the avocado pits to try and grow a tree.

  When they were finished, Em helped Tess clear the table, then darted off to her bedroom to decide if she should bring her new Barbie to her Dad’s or her favorite stuffed pink bunny, Joey.

  Loading the dishwasher, Tess continued to stew about Gillian. Perhaps she should speak with the woman directly, instead of going through Josh. That might piss Josh off, but, she figured, it would be the more adult thing to do in addition to maybe getting more of a feel for Gillian.

  She was wiping her hand on a dish towel when the fly buzzed by close to her face. Swatting at it with the towel and missing, Tess scowled towards the ceiling in the direction she thought the bug had gone.

  It came at her from behind, buzzing by her right ear and she spun around, taking another swipe at it. Missed again.

  A moment later, the fly landed on the counter directly in front of her. It was a fat little bastard. Twisting the towel into a rope, Tess wondered if it was a horsefly as she took aim, but before she could get off another swing, the fly had taken flight again and then Emily was behind her, holding her two toys and asking her Mom which would be better to bring.

  “The Barbie doll,” Tess said absently, her eyes searching the room. “You should definitely take the Barbie doll.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Speck leaned against a tree, a Marlboro dangling from between her lips. It was roughly her 43,800th smoke, though she was only eighteen. Pretty much a pack a day—give or take--since she was twelve and she figured she was well on her way to needing a hole punched through her throat or dying altogether.

  She didn’t figure it mattered much either way. Living on the street like she did, she knew there weren’t a whole lot of people who would care or even notice she was gone.

  Although that wasn’t entirely true, just something she told herself when she was feeling particularly pathetic. She was currently watching at least a few people who would notice, even if they wouldn’t care all that much.

  Speck was part of a group of teenagers who called themselves the Litter, a ragtag tribe of runaways and throwaways who stuck together as best they could, giving them all some semblance of family which most of them had never known before. She supposed a few members of the Litter would miss her. Mick, for example, who was her best friend and quite literally, her partner in crime. Dobie might miss her too, but only by default, as he was Mick’s boyfriend and would feel Speck’s absence like a ripple in a pond.

  Exhaling smoke in a long blue plume, Speck watched the two of them, both bald, tattooed and pierced, kick a hacky sack back and forth. Being a Saturday, the park was relatively crowded, despite the day being gray, damp, and chilly for late April. People came and went, probably shopping or visiting the nearby library or museums. Speck herself was considering heading to one of the above, just to get out of the chill for a while. To get away from the crowds.

  She really wasn’t much of a social person. Never had been. Which was partly where her street name came from. Because she could make herself small and part of the background, almost invisible, like a dust mote or…a speck.

  Only Mick knew Speck’s real name and vice versa, with the exception of Dobie. Mick was short for Michelle but Dobie had earned his name for more obvious reasons: he had a tattoo of a snarling Doberman on his upper arm, fangs dripping blood and yellow eyes more like that of a snake than any dog Speck had ever seen.

  Mick had been the one to name her. Over a year ago now, it had been. At first, Mick gave her the name because Speck was petite but then, as Mick got to know her better, she announced that the name was fitting in more ways than one. Speck thought it was a pretty good name and at this point, probably wouldn’t even notice if someone were to call her by her real name.

  Watching the two of them, Speck felt a pang of jealousy. They were the perfect couple, at least as far as the standards of homeless kids went. Inseparable, they could almost have been considered the “parents” of the Litter, though they were younger than Speck herself was. Mick, at seventeen, had been on the streets off and on since she’d been thirteen and Dobie, a year younger, had run away from a drug-addled abusive household at the ripe old age of eleven. They were the pros of the Litter, knew the best places to panhandle, which churches offered the best free meals, where the cops were most likely to harass them and chase them away.

  Mick considered herself Wiccan, a subject which Speck was simultaneously skeptical of and fascinated by. Late one night, sitting in the abandoned building they called home at the time, candlelight ghosts chasing each other across the ruined and graffitied walls and ceilings, Mick had told Speck of the time she had befriended a scarecrow in her hometown. She claimed to have actually talked to the thing. Odd enough, but then, supposedly, the scarecrow had talked back.

  “He was a wimp,” Mick had said, her voice funny from trying to hold pot smoke in her lungs as she passed a fat joint to Speck. Dobie was sprawled out on the floor beside them, drunk off his ass from consuming an entire six-pack by himself. “Can you imagine that? A scarecrow who was afraid of his own shadow.”

  Speck chuckled. “I think you been smoking too much weed, Mick.”

  Releasing her lungful, the other girl remained serious. “No. It happened. His name was George.” She paused, thoughtful for a second, as though she were remembering her old friend. “I named him myself.”

  “You named him?” Speck asked, once she’d taken her own hit and handed the joint back. “Are you sure this isn’t a dream you had about a stuffed animal or something?”

  Mick shook her head in dismay. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. No one believes me. Not even him.” She jerked her thumb at Dobie, who groaned, sounding miserable.

  “The room is spinning,” he said and promptly rolled over onto his side and vomited.

&nbs
p; Watching him with disgust, the girls had no way to either move him or clean up his mess, so they’d gathered up the candle, their smokes and raggedy jackets and made their way through the dark dilapidated building in search of another room to continue to get stoned in peace, without the smell of puke wafting from the nearby puddle.

  Speck had tried to continue the discussion of George, Mick’s animated scarecrow friend, but Mick quickly changed the subject.

  That night had been a long time ago, though Speck couldn’t have said how long exactly. Time was different on the streets. There were no calendars and very few clocks. None of them wore watches. The only real way to note the passage of time was to observe the seasons, the colors of the leaves and the grass and whether or not the passersby were wearing mittens and hoods or shorts and baseball caps.

  Now, the trees around them all had tiny green buds that seemed bright and cheery in the gray day, a welcoming sight as far as Speck was concerned, given that the winter had been far from a fun time for the Litter. Sometimes, they’d been forced by police to spend nights in shelters, something they despised doing. Other times, on sub-zero nights, they’d made the decision to go there themselves, literally afraid for their lives.

  Shelters were humiliating, had too many rules, too many winos, bag ladies and nutcases. The kids in the Litter weren’t any of those things. They were simply desperate.

  Sure, they did their share of panhandling—or stemming, which was their word for panhandling, for reasons Speck didn’t know. When she’d asked, no one else seemed to know either.

  “Just what it’s called,” Dobie had said with a shrug. “What it’s always been called.”

  Flickering her cigarette away, Speck wandered over to where Mick and Dobie were playing hacky sack and said, “Hey, I’m going for a walk.”

  “Where to?” Mick asked, whacking the small sand-filled ball with the side of her foot.

  “Probably the library. Wanna come?”

  Dobie snorted. “Do we ever want to come? May as well ask us if we want to go back to school.”

  “Suit yourself,” Speck said. “See you guys later then, I guess.”