Where is that idiot brother of mine? Aiden and I had come to the masquerade ball to give one of our clients the masks he had ordered for the occasion. Of course, we got separated as soon as Aiden caught sight of all the pretty girls after we arrived. So for the past three hours I’ve been looking for my brother and I still hadn’t found him yet. To make matters worse my dress had been ripped while I was looking for him by two boys who had gotten into a fight and now it was trying to slip off. Aiden, when I find you you’re so dead!

Finally I spotted him, his back turned to me, in a corner with a bunch of giggling girls. Of course. My eyes narrowed in anger as I made my way over.

“Aiden… Aiden!” I hissed, trying to get his attention. When that didn’t work I shoved him with my free hand, the hand that wasn’t holding my dress together. “Aiden!”

He turned around, green eyes looking at me in surprise through the holes of a white and green masquerade mask.

“Stephen!?” I asked bewildered.

“Ani?”

“What are you doing … never mind, where’s Aiden?”

“I don’t know, I came here looking for him. I think he grabbed the wrong mask, so I have to find him and give him the right one if he did. What happened to you?” he asked, noticing the state of my dress for the first time.

“My dress ripped and now it won’t stay on!” I said. He laughed. I went to hit him but the dress started to fall as soon as I did, which only made him laugh harder.

“Stop laughing and help me you prat!” I huffed.

He stopped laughing, but he still had that annoying smile on his face. “Okay, okay, calm down Ani. It just so happens I brought some extra clothes with me. You can use those.”

“Thank you. Now get rid of your fan club and come on.” I said pointing to the group of now pouting girls behind him. He smirked at me, but did as I asked, and soon we were leaving the ball room - though not before I had received some rather heated glares.

When we got out of the ball room, Stephen led me down a hallway to one of the bathrooms that the owner of the house had set aside for the ball. He handed me a bundle of black clothes, when walked over to the opposite wall to wait. I turned to go into the bathroom, but a sign on the door kept me from going in. I turned back to Stephen and he looked at me, an eyebrow raised.

“Yes?”

“This bathroom is for men.”

“Yes.” He said, nodding his head not seeing the issue. “And?”

“Umm… I’m a girl!”

“Well, we can’t have you go into the girl’s bathroom only to come out dressed in a boy’s clothes. We’ll get kicked out.”

I looked down at the bundle, noticing for the first time that I was indeed holding some of Aiden’s nicer clothes.

“I can’t wear these!”

“Why not? You’re about the same size. Look, it’s either you suck it up and wear your brother’s clothes, or you can continue to wear a dress you have to hold up to keep it from falling off you. Your choice. Personally, I think the later would be funnier.”

I glared at him. He grinned, raising an eyebrow as he returned my stare.

“Fine,” I said through a clenched jaw after a minute. “But can we please find a different room for me to change in? Sharing a washroom with you and Aiden at home is bad enough, I really don’t want to see what that one looks like.”

He rolled his eyes, but led me to another room a few doors down. After testing the door to make sure that it was unlocked, Stephen went over and leaned against the opposite wall to wait for me to change.

The clothes, surprisingly enough, did fit. The pants were a little long, and the shirt didn’t fit me as well as it would have fit Aiden, but, other than that, they fit almost perfectly. Stephen looked up as I came out of the room, dress and mask in hand.

“See Ani, told you they would fit.” he said, pushing away from the wall.

“Yeah, thank you. Hey, can you hold the dress for a second while I put my mask back on?”

“Well actually, it would probably be better if you wore the one I brought to exchange with your brother. You’d look kind of funny walking around in your brother’s clothes but wearing a woman’s mask.”

I thought about that for a moment, realizing he was probably right.

“Okay, fine.” I said, holding out my hand for the mask. He started unwrapping a small bundle I hadn’t noticed he had been carrying until now. “Though, should I worry that you know more about mask fashions then I-” I stopped mid question when he finished unwrapping the mask and I saw it for the first time.

It was a half-mask, designed to sit on the nose and cover the just the area surrounding the eyes. The left half of it was a solid black, while the right had a black and red checkered diamond pattern. The ends had a slight point to them, adding a subtle masculine quality to the mask. He handed me the mask, and I was surprised to find that the front of the mask didn’t have a texture of a fabric, but was smooth like plaster, even on the side with the checkered diamond design. Also, the string or ribbon that was traditionally used on a male mask to tie and hold it on the wearer’s face was missing.

I looked up from the mask to Stephen, who had a look of apprehension and nervousness in his eyes. “Well? What do you think?”

“Stephen this is… is amazing. How’d you make-”

“I’ve been experimenting with a few new methods of mask making. It doesn’t need a string or ribbon to stay on because it’s flexible enough to form around the natural curves of the wearers face, while strong enough to keep its shape.”

He took the mask from me to show me what he meant, his eyes lighting up in excitement as he explained it to me.

“It’s beautiful, Stephen. I’d be honored to wear it.” With that I took the mask back from him and put it on.

He was right. As I put it on I could feel the mask’s interior start to form to my face, but when I touched the outside of it the shape hadn’t changed. I shook my head really fast from side to side, then up and down. But no matter how fast I did it, the mask never slipped nor fell off.

“It works!” I said, laughing, shaking my head some more. He laughed, but I saw in his eyes that he was just as happy as I was.  Some giggling from off to the right caught my attention and I looked up to see some of the girls from earlier in the doorway of the ballroom, all of them looking at me. Turning to Stephen in confusion, I raised an eyebrow.

“Well, in your brother’s clothes and that mask, and with your hair cut so short, to them you probably look like, well like a guy.”

“Oh?” I said confused, looking back over at them. When they saw I was looking, the group of girls started giggling and blushing again, only this time a few of them started to come over, their gazes fixed on me. “Oh!” I gasped, the realization finally hitting me. Turning back to Stephen. “Yeah, um, no, I don’t think I’m going to stay then. That’s just a little too… strange for me.”

He laughed, but didn’t try to stop me.

After he was done telling me to take his cloak on my way out and I was done telling him to kick Aiden’s butt for me when he found him, we said our good-byes and I headed for home.

The night had become much colder and windier in the time I had been at the masquerade ball, and as I was walking the narrow streets home I found myself suddenly very grateful for Stephen’s cloak. It was a beautiful night though, and I found myself enjoying the walk home, despite the cold. There was just something about how the empty streets looked with the cobblestone paths and tall, narrow buildings all bathed in the pale moonlight that I found to be quite peaceful, serene even. I hadn’t felt this calm in years, not since before my parents’ death, and I was determined to enjoy as much of it as I possibly could.

I was walking on a bridge over one of the merchant waterways when a sudden sound of a woman’s scream cut through the night air, bringing me out of my peaceful state. I stopped where I was, turning and looking in every direction to see if I could find the source of the scream. Seeing nothing, I started walking again, and by the time I got to the end of the bridge I started to believe I had imagined it when another scream ripped through the night, followed closely by drunken laughs, coming from an alley close to my right. Running to the mouth of the alley, I saw a woman being pinned to the wall by two men while another stood and watched, a bottle in his hand. All three of them, even at my distance, reeked of alcohol. Not knowing what I could do to help, I began looking around for the King’s Guard until I realized that the men in the alley were the Guards.

As this realization hit me, the guard who had been watching his companions took one last swig of the bottle before throwing it against the ally wall, narrowly missing the woman’s head. She screamed again, and I could see tears streaming down her face as she tried to get away, but couldn’t. The guards laughed, and the one not holding her started making his way over to her, a look of glee in his eye as he took in her fear.

I had been standing there, frozen that entire time, but hearing the guards laugh and watching them get a kick out of terrorizing this girl caused something inside of me to snap. Roaring like an angry beast I charged at the guards, tackling one of them to the ground before the other two could even register what was happening. As soon as they did though, they let go of the girl and came at me in a drunken swagger, swords drawn. I was too consumed with rage to care though.

After rendering their companion unconscious with a blow to the head, I turned to deal with the other two. They lunged at the same time, the alcohol in their system making them misjudge the distance and knock into each other. Taking advantage of this distraction, I grabbed one of the guards by the back of the collar and slammed him first into one wall, then into the other, before throwing him back at the first wall once more. He fell to the ground like his companion, unconscious.

I turned to face the third and final one, only to see him running out of the alley. I started to go after him, but a noise to my left stopped me. The girl was still in the alley, lying on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head with her arms. As much as I wanted to go after the last guard, she needed me more right now.

Crouching next to her, I gingerly put my hand on her shoulder, pulling it back immediately when I saw her flinch.

“Hey, it’s okay, they’re gone. You’re safe now.” My voice cracked a bit, still sore from yelling. This time when I put my hand on her shoulder, she didn’t flinch. When she looked up at me from between her arms, I saw for the first time how young she really was for the first time, looking to only be about 16; my age. She looked hesitant at first, unsure at first, but when she saw I was telling the truth she lunged into my arms and started to cry even harder, only this time from gratitude.

“Thank you… thank you, sir.”

Sir? Reaching a hand up to my face, I felt the mask, still intact and on my face. I didn’t say anything in response, just sat against the wall and held her until she stopped crying. I stayed there even after she went home, thinking. Thinking about how tonight it had been me who had saved that girl.

I hadn’t saved her from just any thug looking for a fun time, I had saved her from three Guard members, the ones who were meant to protect her. This wasn’t the first time either, there were other stories, stories worse than tonight about the Guard, stories I’m beginning to suspect are true. But who was going to protect the people from their protectors? Tonight, in the shadow of a dark alley, a Masked Vigilante has risen. Tonight, the people got their protector. Tonight, the people got their hero.

The curtains blew back as she gazed out into the clear blue sky, the scent of lilacs reaching her delicate nose.  She used to love that smell.  But that was before the accident.  Now, the slightest hint of it made her shiver a little.

“Lorelei! Come down here! It’s about time to go!”

Lorelei took a deep breath and carefully made her way down the stairs to meet her grandmother.  She was all that Lorelei had left and she loved her, but living with her was becoming unbearable.  She needed to get out.  As she moved down the stairs, her black satin dress swayed gently, contrasting with her pale skin.  She had a decided look upon her face which her grandmother acknowledged with a sympathetic sigh.

“We should go.” Lorelei whispered.  Her grandmother, draped in black velvet despite the hot weather, placed her large sun hat upon her short white hair and made her way out the door.  Lorelei followed, locking the door behind her.  Climbing into her grandmother’s faithful Lincoln, she prepared herself for the long journey ahead of her.

On the way to the funeral she thought of how lovely Saturday had been.  She needed something happy to think about.  She and Elliot had gone to the meadow by Marshall’s Lake.  It had been the best day of her life and the worst day of her life.  He had even given her her favorite flowers; lilacs. She remembered exactly how he looked: short brown hair, deep green eyes, and his warm, crooked smile that always made her heart skip a beat.  Talking and laughing, they made their way to “their spot”, a small clearing in the area otherwise surrounded by trees.  Looking at it, you’d think it had been made for them.  There were chair like stumps placed close together, a small stream that provided the appropriate amount of background noise, and the trees had formed a canopy above them to protect them from the scorching sun.

“I love you.” He had confessed to her.  She believed him too.  He watched her face as he brushed her dark hair away from her face, exposing her round, brown eyes.  He stared at her, waiting.  She gave him a quizzical look and cocked her head to the side.

“Aren’t you going to say it back?” He questioned her.  She looked down at her black flats, in a loss for words and his expression changed to a solemn look of understanding.  She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as he rose and walked away.

She rested her head against the seat.  Why had she thought of that?  Her grandmother turned up the radio.  Her “oldies but goodies” were playing.  She gave a half smile, realizing her grandmother was attempting to distract her.  She felt an indescribable heaviness on her chest as she watched the road pass and the vegetation surrounding the road blur.  Her grandmother touched her cheek and it was only then that she realized she had been crying.  She looked at her grandmother lovingly and opened her mouth to say something but decided against it.  The car hummed and the music continued playing, allowing Lorelei to think some more.  She thought of what was going to happen, what was happening now, but most of all, what had happened.

It was the beginning of the third grade when she first met Elliot Rois.  He had moved there from Alaska so he was an instantly attractive to all of the young ladies of the third grade.  The thing was, he hated all of the attention.  He sat by Lorelei the whole year and she never spoke to him save for the occasional question on homework or if she had an extra pencil he could borrow.  They didn’t see each other again until tenth grade.  When she saw him again she couldn’t believe her eyes.  He had grown into his once lankiness and was very tall.  He noticed her at once and approached her.  “Hi Lorelei!” He flashed his crooked smile and the rest was, as they say, history.

They stopped for lunch at a sandwich shop that had a soft spot in her grandmother’s heart.  Well, she figured it did as they ate there every weekend.  She walked up to the counter and spotted Sam, the boy she had gotten to know over the time she’d been coming the shop with her grandmother.  Sam saw her and smiled weakly.  He knew.  Everyone knew.  After she had placed her order and gotten her lunch, she sat down by her grandmother and picked at her food silently.  She appreciated the silence that had fallen between them but she knew that it would end soon and she would be forced to speak again.

She waited a short while before she went after him.  She would’ve gone earlier but it was if she had been glued to the stump she sat upon.  She practically sprinted through the brush and exited the area of trees.  It had gotten dark.  She squinted, searching frantically for Elliot.  After awhile she assumed he had left without her but then she saw him standing at the edge of the lake, staring into the water.  She slowed her pace and made her way over to him.  When she got to him he was in a trance of some sort.  She placed her hand on his back and he shrugged it off.  She tried it again and this time he whipped around and stared her square in the eye.  She caught the look of total resignation in his eyes and said what she had wanted to say since he left. “I’m sorry.” Those words hit him hard.  He looked at her in total disbelief.

“You’re sorry?  That’s all you can say?  It’s been over a year.  I’ve been so patient.  Aren’t you happy?  What am I doing wrong?” He said, his voice growing desperate.

“I’m really sorry” She replied.  It was all she could bring herself to say without falling apart.

“Whatever.” He mumbled and walked away.  As he walked into the distance she could sense that she was never going to see him again.

They finally reached the cemetery.  She was both grateful and terrified as she stepped out of the car and walked to the ceremony.  She sat through the entire thing without speaking once and at the end when she was to pay her final respects, she did what she was never courageous enough to do before.

“I love you too.”

The soft creaking of the bus had lulled Logan Hemfield to sleep once again. The dimly flickering lights would come on every so often, waking him up, but would soon fade back to their persisting emergency-light-like dimness, the seizure of an electrical beast.

There was nothing else to do, so Logan slept. No one to call, no one besides the ones he was stuck with to get him out of this desert prison. There was no way he would make it out of this sandy hell-hole alive if he deserted the bus.

But he might not make it out alive anyways. Something had stopped the engine, and nobody here could get it started again. They were 19-year-old college sophomores, not experienced auto mechanics.

There had been more than three at first. At first. The first day here had been maddening, and most of the others had left during that night to go find a road. They took some food and some water, and promised to come back if they found one. Nobody had returned, save one.

Jason had come back, clothes tattered, delusional, muttering, “They just took them,” over and over and over again. Well, until he died, racked with convulsions, an hour later. After that, only three of the original eleven were still in the bus. For all they knew, they were the only ones still alive.

August 3^rd, 2009, 11:04 pm, 4^th night in the desert

“Gage, have you seen Kaylee?” Logan called across the bus.

“Wha…” Gage mumbled wearily. “I’ve been asleep.”

“Do you know where Kaylee is?”

“Nah, man. I remember seeing her maybe two hours ago, but then I fell asleep.”

“Man, this isn’t good.”
“What’s not?”

“I’ve been awake this whole time. Probably ten minutes ago, I turned away from her for a little while, and when I looked again, she wasn’t there. I thought that maybe she had gone outside to do her business, but she’s still not here.”

“Maybe she was bored, or just wanted to go outside for a while,” Gage guessed. “Girl can do whatever she wants to.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Do you want to go outside and see if she’s there?” Logan implored.

“No way, man. It’s like 20 degrees out there. And do you really want me to invoke some interviewing session with Kaylee about what me going after her means? Dude, she’ll be back here in the morning. Just go to sleep or whatever and stop worrying. It’s a bad habit of yours.”

“I know, I know,” Logan acknowledged. “You’re right. Sorry I asked. I’ll see you guys in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night,” Gage yawned.

August 4^th, 2009, 6:48 am, 5^th day in the desert

Dawn broke on the new day in Sahara, Arizona. That’s what the three had nicknamed it, at least. Going outside of the bus any later in the day and saying that it was hot was like saying that the Arctic Ocean might be mildly chilly.

Logan and Gage rose at about the same time, both feeling like their throats were coated in sand.

“Dude, is there still water?” Gage croaked through parched lips.

Logan opened the, thankfully, insulated cooler, and counted ten more bottles. “Yeah,” he answered, and tossed his best friend one.

Gage took a gulp and asked, “Do you know how much I want to get out of here?”

“No, but I guess I’m about to find out. Again,” Logan said, annoyed.

“I’d get rid of both my T.V. and my Xbox if it meant getting out of here.”

Logan groaned. Gage had been coming up with what he’d do to get out of here for three days now. If Gage kept this up, Logan would be about ready to get rid of him if it meant getting out of here.

Logan noticed something. “Gage, Kaylee’s still not here.”

“That’s odd.”

“Now I’m really worried.”

“Me too. It’s just plain weird that she’s just gone. She didn’t say anything that I heard about leaving.”

“Man, what if one of the things that Jason was talking about got her?”

“Dude, Jason was crazy to begin with, and a notorious liar. Besides, he was probably dehydrated or had melted-brain syndrome from this desert heat.”

“Melted-brain syndrome?” Logan asked, laughing nervously.

“Yeah. His brain melted. Kaylee probably wandered off somewhere and got lost or something. I feel sorry for her, but she shouldn’t have gone outside at night, and it was her decision if she was trying to find a road or something.”

“Dude, it’s only us now.”

Gage was silent for a minute.

“Yeah, I know,” he said softly.

They were both silent for a while, just thinking about the implications of what had been said. Logan was almost to tears when Gage suddenly sat up straight.

“Was that your stomach?” Gage mused.

“What?”

“That rumbling. Was that you?”

“What rumbling?”

They both listened close for a minute, hearing only the low, soft whistle of the desert wind passing around the bus.

“I don’t hear it anymore,” Gage said, looking like he felt dumb. “But it was there,” he assured Logan.

“Fine, sure, whatever,” Logan said. “Let me know if you hear it again.”

Logan opened the cooler. They had enough food and water that if they were careful about what they consumed, they could easily last for two more weeks.

But Logan and Gage didn’t want to stay out here for two more weeks. They wanted to go back to their dorms, where they had air conditioning and television, no matter how willing Gage said that he was to give it away.

Suddenly, there was a loud thump on top of the roof of the bus.

“What the hell?” Gage blurted out.

They both stood up. There was a small indent on the inside of the top of the bus that hadn’t been there before.

Logan opened the doors of the bus and braced himself before taking a few steps into the hot desert air that hit him like a physical force so that he could see what had landed on top of the bus. Gage stepped out after him.

There was a dead crow on top of the roof of the bus.

A sickening sweet smell suddenly came over both of them.

“What – is – that?” Gage asked, disgusted.

Logan scrunched up his nose and shrugged. A slight gust of wind stirred the air, and Logan brushed his long, black hair out of his face. He looked down and saw a small piece of red fabric dancing along with the breeze, stark against the pale brown of the dirt and sand. He went and picked it up, missing it a few times because the wind would blow it away at the last second. It was wet. He looked down at his fingers, which were now stained the same red as the fabric. The stench was stronger over here. Another piece of fabric blew out from behind the bus. Logan’s eyes grew wide. He ran behind the bus. The stench was definitely at its strongest over here.

Logan took a few steps through the sand. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Then a definitive squish. He sank into the sand a little bit, then stopped.

Logan dropped to his knees and began to frantically dig at the ground.

Five minutes later, and he had uncovered what was left of Kaylee’s body. Her clothes were tattered and bloody, and the same with her skin. Her whole left arm was missing, exposing the shoulder bone and rotten muscle that it had been attached to. There were what looked like bite marks all around Kaylee’s corpse.

Logan staggered back a few paces and began sobbing. Gage heard him and walked over.

“Holy crap,” Gage said, and promptly threw up.

After he was done retching in the sand, Gage looked at Logan and pointed up at the sky.

Logan looked up. Little black dots were covering most of the sky and dimming the sun’s light. Then Logan realized what the little dots were: Crows.

Thousands upon thousands of the black birds had gathered in the sky above and were circling, as if something had told them that there would be a feast here, and they were just waiting until the food arrived.

The sky was growing darker by the minute, and the air was starting to become slightly cooler. Logan guessed that within a few minutes, that, although it was only afternoon, it would look and feel like dusk.

Logan and Gage exchanged a glance, and they both sprinted towards the doors of the bus.

Just then, they heard a faint, low rumbling in the distance.

“That’s what I heard earlier!” said Gage as they burst through the entrance to the bus, shouting above the sudden cacophony of bird calls.

Logan pulled the lever that closed the bus doors and latched it in place.

“That is definitely not my stomach!” shouted Logan back to him.

They both ran to the bus’ windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was making the noise. The light outside was too dim to see past just a few feet outside of the bus.

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude,” moaned Logan, slumping against the side of the bus. “What is that?”

Gage just shook his head.

There was another rumble, much closer this time.

The little light that was left outside was gone now, replaced with a wall of black.

The lights in the bus stopped flickering and came on, and the two boys caught a glimpse of a large shadow outside of the bus’ windows before there was a loud pop. The boys jumped, and then the bus’ lights went out completely.

The cries of the crows stopped, and the sound of the wind against the side of the bus ceased as well.

Another rumble slightly shook the ground, and then the boys heard a low, almost painful-sounding moan outside of the bus.

Logan pressed his face up against the window, trying to see what the sounds were coming from. Just then, the bus’ lights came on again. On the other side of the window pane that Logan was looking out of was a human figure, its bloody, distorted face pressing up against the outside of the window with its abnormally large eyes wide open.

Logan screamed in terror and fell back onto the seat behind him. The figure outside grinned.

The lights went out.

“Sally, I think we found dinner,” announced the figure in a rough, gravelly voice.

There was another low moan, seemingly in agreement, and then the bus flipped over onto its side.

Logan and Gage tumbled onto the left wall of the bus, now the bottom, and the windows along that side shattered, bashed up against the packed sand.

There was pounding on the bus doors, and then a sound of breaking glass.

“I’m ready to eat!” a voice said.

August 5^th, 2009, 10:00 am

Ryan Corfolk had set his television alarm for 10:00 am, knowing that he didn’t have any summer classes at the University of Phoenix, but still not wanting to sleep the whole day through.

The news station that his television was tuned to blared in his ear. “Yesterday, birdwatchers nationwide were astonished to see thousands of crows all headed in the same direction, towards southwest Arizona,” noted the female newscaster. “We go live to Ron Durham at the site where they gathered.”

“Thanks, Linda,” said Ron. “Earlier today, there were thousands upon thousands of crows all gathered in the sky above this area of the Sonoran Desert, which is very odd, partly because if we pan the camera around,” he paused, letting the camera do almost a full revolution before continuing, “you’ll see that there is nothing but dirt and sand around here. Well, until you look at this.” The camera spun the rest of the way around, then focused on a white, overturned bus that had entered the picture. Ron walked over to the bus. “This bus is number forty-seven-thirty-five. It was rented by eleven college students from the University of Phoenix, whose names have not been released to the press yet. According to the school records, these students were on a research expedition to collect soil samples from the ground about forty miles north of here, where they were going to stay for four days.

Three of the students’ bodies were found here, mutilated almost beyond recognition. There were what appeared to be human bite marks on the bodies, something that is confounding the forensic crime unit out here. No footprints have been found, but a large trench in the ground, something that the soft wind in this area would not have caused, has been discovered not fifty yards from the crime scene. This is a tricky one.”

No one knows why the birds gathered here, either. The three bodies would not have been enough for the almost seven-hundred-thousand estimated crows that were gathered here. As more information is gathered, we’ll report it. From the Sonoran Desert, I’m Ron Durham.”

Ryan turned off the TV.