The Vhyaten

She had always been a quiet girl. 

Pale lips that would hardly part to utter the faintest “sorry” upon a mistaken interaction with her peers, if you could even properly call us that. We all flocked around her like a committee of vultures. Every interaction notated with the intrigue of a celestial event, she was rarely caught in a moment where conversation could tangle her in its web. There was almost nothing that wasn’t strange about her.

I’d never witnessed more than a couple of inches of her porcelain skin grace the presence of the air in the room. It was religious. The high collared blouses with sleeves that hung down to cover all but the very tips of her fingers hid nearly every inch of her. The hood that rarely ever left its place atop her head gained envious glares from the entire class in winter, our own hats deemed “inappropriate for indoor wear” by the school.

For the longest time, I didn’t understand how she was able to write. The black polished nails that crept past the dark sleeves had not struck me as capable, but they managed, the dark color blending with the cloak so that she scarcely appears to move while she worked.

It was all too easy to stare. The show had yet to quell the curious thirsts of the school.

Unlike the others, I tried not to be consumed by her presence. School had never been a source of entertainment in my formative years. Days spent struggling to read as words squirmed on the page in front of me left a stain that I was determined to erase through the plight of my own hard work.

I wasn’t prepared to let my future fall for the strange and ethereal beauty who was positioned beside me in my science class, and I was both relieved and confused at just how little of a distraction she consciously imposed.

She never asked for anything, not even a pencil.

In fact, the only time I ever heard her speak was when the teacher called roll. A process that, by the middle of the year, felt like a game.

I guess that when you rarely hear someone speak, the sound of their voice never quite loses its intrigue.

The way her mouth moved to form the singular syllable of the word always seemed to suck the air out of the room. The chorus of an accent that rolled under her voice was unplaceable. Nowhere could truly be ruled out. She had not introduced herself, properly, barring the rather short phrase the teachers had demanded from her when she had first appeared.

“My name is Rhastasia Jhulkefiirahtt.”

No explanation for her appearance. No clue as to where she had transferred from. Not a single inkling to a common interest or shared culture. She walked to the front gates, alone, and she spent her lunch hour in a private study room at the back of the library. I’d earned twenty bucks for following her, and an invitation to a party for the lack-lustre story of what she did inside.

Never getting to know the story behind someone’s sudden appearance was infinitely more frustrating than any story a person could ever tell. Observation was all we had.

My own observations had only given me more questions. She didn’t eat, there was no lunch-ware in sight when I opened the door pretending to have a question for her. She sat cross-legged in the far corner of the room, large crystal towers on either side of her. I swore I saw the faintest glow coming from her eyes, but when she looked at me- I immediately lost my courage. Barging in on her meditation felt invasive.

She had taken up a permanent residence inside my mind ever since. If the book I was reading ever failed to occupy my thoughts, the undefined history of her kept my mind from completely withering away under the burden of my own existence.

It had inadvertently become the easiest thing for my classmates to talk to me about, a bittersweet symptom of the time I was forced to spend in the chair next to hers. If she was a safer subject of conversation, I probably wouldn’t have minded. However, her lack of speech did nothing to hide the rest of her oddities from anyone close enough to look. Unfortunately, my brain couldn’t quite dismiss them as personal preferences the way everyone else seemed to.

The rumor mill had churned out her unspoken taste for gothic style. Fueled by her ebony hair, dark clothing, and, most notably, her eyes.

There was no distinction between her iris and sclera. It was all blended in an off putting shade of black. Contacts were the standard opinion, but I couldn’t buy it. I’d looked into those eyes. I’d seen the faint shimmers of greens and golds that lurked beneath the murky surface, like staring down into an old mine shaft. I’d seen them glow like flashing emeralds in the dark of that study room.

“Rhastasia Jhulkefiirahtt?” Always her full name. Never pronounced correctly. Not that she ever made the effort to correct anyone. Her fingers would merely grasp tighter around the pendant hanging low on her chest. A piece of jewelry that was ever present, and yet to meet my own visual inspection.

She clung to that necklace like it held her own sanity.

“Rhastasia Jhulkefiirahtt?”

The lack of response surprised us all. I felt the eyes of the thirty other people in the room move to stare at the empty chair beside me.

She had never missed a day of class before.

Roll call resumed, and the school day continued. Nothing changed, but it all felt different without her eyes looming over my shoulder. In place of my usual anxiety over being observed, I found that I was worried about her wellbeing. Another side effect of the whole ‘not talking’ portion of her existence,

She could be dead, for all I knew.

I put those, much more entertaining, thoughts aside and focused on school. Classes seemed to pass without incident, the only drudge drug up from my own life came in a familiar text from my mother.

Just letting you know I won’t be home tonight.

I’d stopped expecting her to come home years ago, but telling her that wasn’t an option. My father had already destroyed her personal life once, I couldn’t bring myself to make her face a reality she didn’t want to be a part of anymore. She would realize her fate soon enough.

I walked home, headphones plugging up my ears to drown out the sounds of the dying suburbia where I had lived my entire life. The path was so familiar, I could walk it blind. I used to count the cracks in the sidewalk, all seven hundred and twelve of them, hoping that if I dawdled long enough my mother would be home to greet me when I returned.

That hope died about a year ago, and I stopped looking at all the little details of the world around me. None of it mattered.

The door to my house swung open, and the familiar warmth surrounded me.

Just another Thursday night.

I set myself up on the couch, spreading my notebooks and papers out over the coffee table and the seat next to me so I was surrounded. I’d grown more comfortable being alone, pretending the space was mine to do with as I pleased. No sharing or fighting over where I could be or how I was supposed to do anything. No one to pull me away from my own little world until my sister made it home from the rounds of extracurricular activities my mother had systematically enrolled her in.

Our mother didn’t want her to end up like me, and I didn’t blame her. Maybe if I had been on every sports team the school had to offer I would have learned to appreciate kids my own age.

I sighed and shook out my hair, digging my nose back into the book I was reading and turning the music up a few extra notches.

I hadn’t realized just how loud I’d made my surroundings until I heard something that sounded like a knock. I didn’t answer, holding out hope that it was just something in the music and I wouldn’t have to face the rest of the world until my alarm went off the next morning.

The second knock was louder, more forceful. I heard the coat rack on the back of our front door shake.

“Coming!” The urgency of the interruption made me a little worried. Most people would call, if something happened, but a part of me was afraid my sister had gotten herself into some sort of trouble.

The sight before my eyes as I cracked open the door was impossibly more worrying. I didn’t even know what to say. I stood at the entrance to my house with my mouth hanging open like an idiot, mind racing to try and fill in the gaps of the situation.

I couldn’t find a rational explanation for the situation in front of me, but I made an attempt.

“Did something happen?” I craned my neck to look past her billowing robes, but the neighborhood was quiet. I couldn’t see her face from under her hood, but there was no mistaking her.

She had more skin displayed than usual, her long cloak left open to expose the low cut blouse that was fitted over her chest. A bronze key dangled from a ribbon tied around her neck, the metal a stark contrast to her fair skin.

Her lips parted, and my ears prepared to hear her voice, but no words greeted them. She did something much more memorable, she smiled.

Every muscle in my body froze. I felt my own heart stop for a moment as my eyes tried to process the sight.

Her smile wasn’t like other smiles, filled with straight white teeth or braces. No, her smile was menacing, a grin made up of long white teeth filed into sharp points. Some glittered with gold tips, others appeared to have gemstones drilled into them as jewelry, all were razor sharp.

She took a step towards me, her smile never wavering. My body wasn’t moving, I was trapped in the threshold between her and my house like a deer in headlights. The wind rustled her long cloak, and I caught a whiff of something herbal. She was wearing perfume.

“Come with me.” Her words took me a moment to understand. Her lips took the simple phrase and filled it with body, so different from the English I was accustomed to I nearly didn’t recognize them.

Her accent made the consonants hard, like nails that held together the long vowels of her words.

I felt her hand before I realized she had moved, long nails pricking at my skin as her fingers wrapped around my bare arm. Her fingers were ice cold, the rings weighing them down only adding to the shock in temperature as her grip tightened around my skin.

I felt a single squeeze before the sensation traveled down my arm, my own limb inching closer to her as she brought her hand down to hold my own, pulling me further and further away from the safety of my open doorway.

I had taken a total of three steps when I realized something was wrong, and her hand gave mine a gentle tug, coaxing me closer. “Come with me.” Her words repeated, and I noticed how raspy her voice was. It held an oddly comforting quality, like the voice of a grandparent after finishing a cigarette.

I glanced back to the wide open door behind me, feeling another, harsher tug in response.

“Don’t worry.” The smile she flashed was meant to be reassuring, but the glint of the evening sun as it flashed against the points of her teeth couldn’t have been more threatening.

“Where are we going?” I looked between her and the street in confusion. “Do you need help?” I raised my eyebrows, trying to get a better look at her body to see if any obvious signs of trauma were present. I gave up when she shook her head.

“Trust me. You must come.” Her fingers laced through mine, their rings digging into my flesh with an uncomfortable amount of force. I tried to pull away, deciding that, if I was going to humor her little adventure, I had to at least shut my own front door, but she held fast to my hand. I jerked, but I only succeeded in putting more strain on my arm and shoulder.

“Let me go.” My voice came out much more desperate than I intended. “I need to go-” A sharp yank made a shooting pain run up my arm, and I panicked. Her grip was like stone, holding me in place as I squirmed to get away, to no avail. “Please,” I begged. “Let me go!” My voice cracked, and I felt my previous curiosity transform into terror as the realization of what was happening took hold.

She was never asking.

I opened my mouth to scream, a final effort to catch the attention of one of my nosey neighbors and resolve the situation, but before I could make a sound I felt another set of hands grab onto my shoulders and my body was being shoved forward, face first, off the front of the porch.

I caught myself, landing in the dirt on my hands and knees. I gasped, trying to catch my breath. My heart was racing as I craned my neck up, my eyes staring into the black abyss beneath her large hood. “What are you?” I pushed myself up, remaining on my knees when I noticed the cloaked strangers surrounding the two of us.

They were shadows, unable to identify without peeling back the heavy hoods of their floor length robes. I wanted desperately to believe that this was all some prank, that I’d pissed off some psychotic drama freak and they recruited the weird new girl to scare some sense into me, but it seemed too professional.

One of the robed figures stepped up behind Rhastasia, like she was being guarded. “We are Vhyaten.” The words held the same accent, the same raspy quality, but it came out much smoother, like a whisper on the wind.

My eyebrows furrowed as I turned my head, staring at empty faces trying to determine the speaker. My mouth opened to speak, the questions circling my mind gaining force as I struggled to find the right words. My eyes followed the movement of the cloaked figure that loomed over Rhastasia, watching the golden ringed fingers free themselves from the oversized sleeve. The hand seemed to float in the air, keeping my body in a trance as I watched the black polish on the fingernails come together in a pinch.

The single snap rang in my head like a gunshot, and I felt my muscles give out. Before I could even hit the dirt, I blacked out.