Authors: Lynnie Purcell
He finally stopped and leaned down to speak in my ear. “What is my name?” he asked in his oily voice.
“Master…”
He smiled, thinking he had won.
“…Limp.”
He raised his hand to hit me again, but another hand caught his. A woman stepped out of the dim light of the room I had landed in. Her eyes were red and lined with patchy black, like a particularly strange eye polka-dot. Her face was heart shaped, and her hair was pulled back into an elegant 1950s bun.
“Oh, come, now…we can find a better solution, can’t we?” she asked Master Limp.
“Hmph!” Master Limp said.
The woman smiled warmly at me. “You can call me ‘Mama Dot.’ I want everything here to be just perfect for you. We look forward to having you as part of our family… The future might be a little rocky, until we can get on the same page, but I have confidence you’ll see the light eventually. My children always do.”
“Are…are you crazy?” I asked her. “Like, is everything working okay upstairs?”
Her sweet smile didn’t flicker, though the red of her eyes lost a little of the happy light. “If you need anything, just let me know. I’ll be in charge of the information side of your training, so we won’t see each other for a little while. Lots and lots of learning. It’s going to be so much fun!”
Master Limp jerked me to my feet as I stared at Mama Dot. Her smile was terrifying. He drug me through a long corridor of metal doors; doors designed to keep people in. The hall was eerily silent, no thoughts, no voices crying out in protest, though I could sense the people inside the rooms. Each door I passed added to the weight of the grim awareness I was finding in my heart. This was real. There was nothing I could do about it.
Master Limp finally stopped at a door in a dead-end hall. Before we walked in, he checked my pockets. He pulled out the picture of Daniel and a gris-gris bag a woman in a voodoo shop had given me; symbols of my previous life. He smirked as he crumpled the picture of Daniel. Everything I had, including the necklace that had been taken from me in New Orleans, was gone. My pockets emptied, he bent down in front of me and picked a hinged, round piece of metal off the floor.
“Phase one,” he said with an evil smirk. “Let’s see if you go crazy, shall we?”
He held the device up to my face, and I realized it was a metal mask, complete with a lock. It was only recently I had discovered a profound fear of close spaces – getting locked in a crypt could have that effect. There was no way I was going to get locked up again.
I tried to back away, but he kicked my feet out from under me. Without hesitation, he put the mask around my head and pushed a bolt through and locked it. Feeling disoriented by the weight, and the way everything was suddenly cut off, I felt Master Limp pull me up and drag me over to a wall. There must have been another lock on that wall, because I felt him run the chains I was wearing through another piece of metal and secure it. I felt him lift away and the feeling in the room shifted as the door was shut again.
I struggled to get away from the wall, screaming profanities, not caring if I got another beating. I would take a beating I could see over a mask of silence any day.
I screamed until my throat could not tolerate the screaming any longer. The silence was profound. The only sound I had was my thoughts and the pulsing of blood through my veins.
To keep from freaking out about having a large mask over my face, and being chained to a wall in enemy territory, I started tried to calm myself down. I tried think logically.
My thoughts were far from calming.
I was tied to a wall and lunatics were in charge of my foreseeable future…Worse thoughts assaulted my brain. Was Daniel dead from the explosion Damian set? Alex? The kids? Daniel was a big question…we hadn’t gotten the chance to set things straight, to say the things we need to say. What if he was really dead? What then? What if I died here and never got to say the things I should have said? Why had I let the silly things come between us?
Somewhere in-between my thoughts of doom, and my panic at the idea of Daniel’s death, I slipped into an un-restful sleep. It was the sort of sleep brought on by necessity, rather than desire. There, my dreams were haunted by the worries I had faced while awake. But the worry was different in my dreams – it was given life.
My first dream was confusing.
I was up high, in a large, circular tower, which overhung a rocky mountain. Down below was cracked sand and multitudes of people. Dust swirled the air as thousands of people moved around on the dusty plain. A curious sense of déjà vu flooded me. Had I been here before?
I stepped toward the open doors to get a better look, hoping that look would give me answers to the familiarity churning in my gut. As I did, I saw a familiar stranger. His white hair fell gently to his shoulders, and he wore a linen shirt and linen pants to match. He had haunted my dreams before. His face was familiar, but I did not know his name. Casually, he leaned against the rail separating him from a thousand foot fall. When he heard me move, he turned his head to look at me, a smile on his lips. I froze as his yellow eyes regarded me.
“Clare…” he whispered in a voice full of magical power. “I’m glad you came.”
“Are you real?” I asked him.
“Are any of us?” he asked.
I groaned. “Oh, no…not one of those dreams! I think I should wake up now, before I get a dream headache.”
He smiled softly. “You are safe here. No one will lock you away or threaten your life. You can live in peace.”
“Peace?” I asked.
My eyes moved to the people swirling around on the desert floor. It was obvious they weren’t there for peaceful reasons. It felt like an army.
“They ensure our peace,” he said.
“If you have to have an army to constantly guard your peace, you don’t really have peace,” I pointed out.
“No one threatens me here. No one chases me. I can live without fear. So can others…look here.”
He gestured me inside. I passed through the circular room into another room. The second room mirrored my house in design and the feeling of warmth. My eyes were instantly drawn to the far corner, where Ellen and Sam were sitting in chairs by the fire. They laughed and flirted, totally at ease in their environment. Ellen spotted me next to the door and her brown eyes lit with excited love.
“Clare!” she said in her perfect voice. “You’re here!” She rushed over and pulled me into her arms. “I’ve missed you so much!”
“I…I missed you, too, Mom,” I said, feeling confused.
“It’s good to see ya,” Sam said, getting up from his chair and giving me a brief one-armed hug. “We were worried…”
“Alex! Clare is here!” Ellen called.
Alex stepped out from another room I hadn’t noticed. Her round face was full of sisterly love. “There you are. What took you so long?” she demanded.
“Thanks a lot!” I laughed.
She laughed at me and gave me a fierce hug. “Everything will be okay now. I promise.”
“Do you see?” the yellow-eyed man asked. “Everything you love is here. Safe. I promise you they will stay safe forever. You will never have to worry again.”
Everything I loved? No…that wasn’t true. Something was missing. I struggled with the feeling; something dark fought against the realization my brain was trying to make. It dawned on me in a flash of understanding. Where was Daniel?
I backed away from the glowing scene in front of me. I wanted to stay, to be a part of that warmth forever, but I couldn’t. There was no warmth, unless Daniel was there.
The man followed me as I retreated to the main room of the circle tower.
“Clare…think about what you’re doing. Stay. Be with your family forever,” he urged.
I ignored him. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of the uneasy feeling in my gut, but I knew if I kept looking at Ellen, I would stay. I would stay without a second thought.
Without realizing it, I backed out on to the deck overlooking the desert.
“Nothing is forever,” I told the man.
His yellow eyes lit with a burning fire of desire. “I’m working on forever. I’ve almost broken the secret. You can help. You can help your family live forever.”
The thought of not losing my family was extremely appealing. I wanted it more than anything. How long had I feared being alone, because of the curse of my existence? How long had I feared losing Ellen to the simple, relentless march of time?
I teetered on the edge. I rocked on to the balls of my feet, prepared to take that first step forward; that step toward forever. There would be no outliving the people I loved by centuries. There would be no regret when they were gone. Before I could make that choice, another voice interrupted me. It was not the sort of voice I could easily forget. Though it was full of anger and pain, I knew it in an instant.
“Let me out of here!” Daniel commanded.
Another vision overrode the one of the yellow-eyed man.
Daniel was stuck in a silver room, though there were no chains on the walls. His eyes were full of darkness, his anger obvious. He pounded on a heavy door; his strength was formidable, but it was not enough to bend the door to his will. No one answered his yells.
Annoyed, he turned away from the door and took to pacing. As he paced, I sensed something was wrong, beyond his unaccustomed anger. Between steps, he started shaking. It racked his whole body. The shaking grew worse, and he dropped to the ground. The memory of the yellow-eyed man was wiped from my mind as quickly as the time for Daniel to fall down.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He didn’t seem to register I was in the room with him, or that I had spoken. His body kept convulsing; his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Daniel?!” I yelled.
I rushed over to him and touched him on the shoulder, eager to take away the pain. He didn’t seem to register the touch, but his lips started to move silently. I thought I saw them form my name.
I sat next to him and cradled his head in my lap. Again, he didn’t respond to my touch. He just kept convulsing. Sweat started pouring down his face, and he clenched his teeth. Clenching his teeth didn’t help take away the pain. He cried out in pain, the cry turning into a low growl, as he fought against the pain channeling through his body.
As I did my best to give him comfort, another figure appeared in the room. One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. I looked up at him, wondering if he could help me with Daniel, and recognized him. I had seen him once on the streets of New Orleans. He was a hobo, who Alex and I had met in our search for Daniel. He had helped us. It was strange to see him in my dreams, but I accepted his strange appearance easily after such a whirlwind of dreaming.
“Clare…don’t listen to your other dreams. He’s trying to trick you,” he told me.
“Who?” I asked.
“Marcus. Don’t listen to him. Can you do that for me?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I agreed absently as Daniel let out another low growl.
“Good,” he said. The hobo hesitated, stepping closer. “Your necklace, where is it?”
I looked down at my bare neck. “A guy in New Orleans took it from me.”
“Ah, I see…Remember…” he said.
“Don’t listen to Marcus. Got it,” I said.
He smiled in a way that was oddly familiar. The smile gave me comfort. I blinked, and I was left alone with Daniel again. I focused on him, forgetting the hobo in an instant. Daniel’s cries of pain sent shockwaves through my body. Helping him through the pain was more important than the oddity of the man who had just disappeared.
I sat next to Daniel for a long time, long even in dream standards, offering Daniel what comfort I could. The strange dreams that promised forever – the promise of Marcus – did not come again.
I didn’t understand Daniel’s convulsions, or how he had gotten locked in a room so similar to mine. It was better than dreaming he was dead, however, and I allowed myself the comfort of being near him. I stroked his black hair and whispered words of strength to him as he lay curled up in a ball. Once or twice, he looked directly at me, but his eyes told me he didn’t believe what he was seeing. He was lost in whatever madness had found him.
In that dream state, I waited for his pain to pass. A part of me hoped the moment of being with him would last forever; I hoped my dreams would become reality.
For the first time in my life, I feared what waking up would mean.
Chapter 2
When I woke up, I wasn’t sure if it was hours that had passed, or days.
It felt like an eternity.
It was strange to wake up to complete darkness, when my dreams had been so full of color and sound. It was as if my dreams were more real than the reality I was in. I blinked a few times to make sure my eyes weren’t still closed. They weren’t closed – I was simply still locked in the mask of silence.
I took a deep breath to keep from panicking and started to take stock of my body. If everything was working properly, escape was still possible.
My hips and shoulders were hurting from the position the chains forced me in. My neck hurt from holding up the head gear for so long. The only thing that didn’t hurt was my stomach. I had no appetite. I knew it had to be a while since I had eaten, but the feeling simply wasn’t there. Was this the latest addition to my list of talents, or had getting captured stymied my appetite? I felt tired after my vigil over Daniel, the dream not letting me rest the way sleep should make someone feel, but I also felt more alive. I kept the warmth of seeing Daniel in my heart as I readjusted to the present. It was a focus; a reason to escape. I shifted uncomfortably to get rid of the pain in my hips and arms. All it did was make me more aware of my pain.