Chapter Thirteen
The four girls sat quietly together for several hours after the argument and Sandi's declaration. It was Tiffany who broke the silence.
"Like, I'm glad we're all friends again, but what do we do now?"
Stacy, Sandi, and Quinn all looked at each other and shrugged. Quinn spoke up first.
"I just don't know, Tiffany, I'm all out of ideas right now. We're all tired, dirty, cold, and hungry, and I just want to go home."
Tiffany frowned, "But what do we do about Stacy's ghost? Or is it Sandi's ghost? Or is it Sandi's devil? I'm really confused."
Quinn opened her mouth, then thought. What was bothering her two friends? What was the difference between Sandi and Stacy? Why was Stacy feeling so good about whatever was happening to her, and Sandi so bad? Tiffany had seen the light, and heard singing, but not been possessed. She decided to approach the subject carefully.
"Stacy, please tell us what you meant about the Snow Lady. We just want to hear about your dream or whatever, it might help us figure some of this out, okay?"
Stacy looked down at her feet. Since Sandi's confession about always thinking of Stacy as beautiful, Stacy had been thinking about the last two years of school, of the flaws and strengths in each of the ex Fashion Club members, without the condescension she had felt the night before
I'm better than I was, but then, we all are. None of us are perfect. Sandi may be a real bitch sometimes, but so was I, last night. Tiffany might be bossy, and clueless, but that's to cover up her fear of rejection. They're both afraid! Neither one of them have any friends outside of the four of us. Quinn has guys chasing her around, but outside of that Lindy she's talked about, no real friends. And Lindy isn't a friend anyway, just somebody Quinn cares about. Even Daria wasn't a real good friend to her, though she wasn't a good friend to Daria either. I really don't know. Aren't families supposed to get along with each other? Not fuss or fight all the time? Even my mom used to get this look whenever I said something dumb or stupid.
And the Snow Lady. What's going on with that? Sure, I feel sorry for her, but she's got to have some connection to what's happening with Sandi. Is she a ghost? But I thought ghosts weren't real, just something for people to write stories and make movies about. And if she's a ghost, how is she a spirit of Nature? I saw her bones. Can part of Nature die? Was it just a hallucination from being buried in the snow?
Stacy sighed, shaking her head.
"Well, this is what's happening..."
The other three girls sat quietly through Stacy's story. She held nothing back at all. The vision, seeing underground, even the way they each looked at night, Quinn's sunlit radiance, Tiffany's softer glow, and Sandi's almost negative image.
Quinn shook her head.
"That night vision thing sounds like what the police and army use, to see in the dark, you know, with heat? But what we look like? That sounds like, you know, New Age stuff? Auras and crystals? And why do we look all different from each other?"
"Well, Quinn, you are all positive, you know," Sandi said." Maybe that's what Stacy saw. Tiffany's really, um, low key? Quiet. Stacy couldn't see herself."
"But Sandi," Tiffany said, "What about you? All that, eww, stuff about black bones. Why would she see that? It makes you sound all, um, reversed, inside out. And your, ah, um, condition, with the cold and cramps and swelling?"
Sandi's burst of strength faded. She collapsed back against Tiffany, whispering, "I don't know, Tiffany, but maybe it's only fair."
Her lean body convulsed, wringing a shriek out of her emaciated face. Blood trickled down her chin as she bit her lip. Then Sandi really screamed. Her swollen belly heaved and twisted, as if something was moving inside it. Tiffany jumped away from her. Sandi passed out, eyes closed, laying limply on the bare wood of the old bed. To their horror, her huge belly squirmed, jerking Sandi around like a limp rag doll for several minutes, before it slowly stopped. Sandi's breath whistled through her clenched teeth. Her skin seemed to tighten even more on her face, almost making it look like a bare skull.
They clustered by the front door, staring at her in fear. Stacy's hands covered her mouth, as she whispered over and over," Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!" Tiffany huddled behind the other two girls, her nails digging deeply into Quinn's arm where she grabbed it.
Guardian angel, where are you! Quinn screamed silently. I'm really, really scared out of my freaking mind! Is Tiffany, of all people , right? Are there ghosts and devils here?
A dark, chilling thought filled Quinn's mind.
And is there one in Sandi trying to get out?
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Sandi Griffin swam inside her skull through a sea of pain and darkness. Something was trying to claw its way out of her. Images of people she knew screamed at her, her mothers contempt, her fathers helpless love, Sam and Chris's open hostility. The beauty of her friends, Quinn's radiantly good looks, Tiffany's cool calmness, Stacy's openhearted friendliness. Guilt gnawed at her.
And I almost ruined it all! Me and my "Fashion Club!" Trying to impress Mom with how well I could control things! Well, Stacy showed me, didn't she? Quiet little Stacy took it all apart. No wonder she and Quinn are close friends now. Tiffany's better off with them. What am I anyway?
I'm not smart like Quinn and Stacy. I'm not a workaholic like Mom. She only takes time off to impress other people with the money and power she has! I'm stupid and lazy! I'm mean and selfish! I deserve to go to Hell!
A cold harsh wind blasted through Sandi's tortured mind, filling it with images of densely falling snowflakes. Icy crystals sparkled, their geometric designs flashing brightly. She saw bare limbed trees break under their crushing mantle of white. The stiff frozen limbs of men, women and children emerged from the shrouding blizzard, victims of the searing cold. This was raw winter, stripped of the rebirth of spring. Dead eyes stared back at her, frozen wide open for all eternity.
Sandi whimpered. The dead eyes accused her, blamed their agonizing deaths on her. She wanted to look away, close her own eyes, but couldn't. She saw waves of sheer cold wash the world like waves against a beach. Large fur covered animals froze in their tracks, their mouths still full of fresh grass and flowers. Rivers of ice formed, grinding down mountains in their path.
Men and women tried to survive this cruel new world, eating meat, wearing furs. But the cold trapped them. Avalanches roared down mountains, burying tribes. Waves of ice cold water washed islands and coasts clean, leaving no trace of small groups of fishermen, scattering their bones in the deep water. Cracks would open in clear blue ice, trapping hunters, leaving their hungry families helpless.
A cold clear voice spoke to Sandi.
"Do you see the way of the world now, child? This world teeters on a razors edge, between fire and ice. Your ancestors knew this, but you didn't even imagine it, did you?"
"No! I'm sorry, so sorry, I didn't know! Who are you?! What are you doing to me?"
"I? I am the cold in the outer spaces, the frost on dead leaves, the ice and snow. I do nothing to you. You and your companions have been caught up in tragedy. Your friend Stacy will find out that to all things there is a price."
"What about me?!"
"You? You bear death, woman who is still a child, you bear death. It lurks inside of you, peers out of your eyes. It hears what you hear, and will speak with your tongue. "
"I don't understand."
"You refuse to. You already know what you ask, you four, but do not yet know it. The answers are buried in your own mind, Alexandra Griffin."
"Are you an angel? Or a devil?"
"I am what the people of the Land of the Rising Sun would call the Kamiof the Cold, the Spirit of the Winter. See now what truly is!"
Sandi felt herself yanked abruptly upward, her spirit caught, hurled upward like a frail leaf. Her attention was forced to the bare limbed trees. Wrapped deep inside the sheltering bark, she saw inside each tree a slumbering spirit, resting until the time spring would awaken her.
Ghost like forms danced along the howling winds, barely seen. The clouds themselves became dim forms hurling through the wild skies, wild riders on massive horses. Tall mountains were revealed to be giant manlike forms, slumbering in an eons long sleep.
Also sleeping were men and women, trapped in long forgotten graves, their bones scattered, their flesh dust. Good people and bad people alike, long lost to humanity. Their desperate spirits shouted out to Sandi, calling her to remember them, their deeds and names, great and small.
Sandi plummeted from the sky, soaring through the snow, soil and rock as Stacy had before. A pathetic huddle of bones called to her. The cry was desperate, a dying mother pleading for the child already lost, fury at an absent husband. The rage of a dying soul. Immortality betrayed by love and lust.
Sandi screamed in pain and tried to run, but wherever her spirit went, it saw with it's new eyes. The very air teemed with the ghostly images of men and women, of the forces of an uncaring, indifferent Nature personified, each and every gust of wind, even the very stones in the fields pulsing with life.
Sandi swan through this throng, feeling a tug. She could feel her body calling her back to her world of physical pain, but struggled ahead, feeling stiffer and stiffer. She stumbled through walls that seemed to become more and more solid, until she passed through one final one.
Her mother, and Quinn's sister, Daria seemed to be arguing with each other in a bathroom, on the opposite side of a mirror from her. Quinn and Daria's mother, Helen, stood in the open door, a startled look on her face, as she pointed toward the mirror. Daria and Linda turned to Sandi, looks of shock on both their faces
Sandi reached out, but the mirror shattered at her touch.