Light (4 page)

“Good night,” I said as Mom came back. “Sorry about today. I didn’t mean that.”

Mom wrapped me in her motherly arms again. “Of course you didn’t. I’ll get you a new phone tomorrow and pick you up.”

“Mom!” I groaned.

“No Chastity, that is not negotiable.”

“Okay,” I said and ran up the stairs to my room.

I sighed as I closed the door behind me and took a breath. I was in my sanctuary. A place where my bookshelf was stacked with novels. My desk was always tidy and my computer had been off for the past four weeks. I only used to chat to Clare at night, so I didn’t need it anymore.

I walked over to the bowl that was in my room and opened the tin of tuna, pouring some milk into another.

I fell onto my bed and just lay there. My mind was clouded with thoughts and I kept staring at my hands, trying to find holes or something that could make today’s events possible, but there was nothing.

I knew it hadn’t been my imagination.

It couldn’t have been.

I flinched as the cat jumped and my small ‘forget-me-nots’ planted in a small grey pot fell to the floor.

She meowed, apologizing about her not so gentle entry as I jumped out of bed to save what I could, and stared at my door, hoping Mom or Tim’s super hearing hadn’t heard it.

Then I put the plant into the empty milk glass and stroked Shades on her fluffy head. She was really such a beautiful cat.

She must belong to someone, she wasn’t skinny, and she had a beautiful coat.

I crawled back into bed and when Shades was done with her milk and tuna, she came to join me.

She kneaded the spot for a few seconds before she lay down gently with her little paws stuck underneath her. A loud purr escaped her belly and I smiled.

This was home, and I was safe tonight.

I fell asleep faster than I thought I would. Guess it was the fatigue that had finally caught up to me. At first it was normal. I dreamt about absolutely nothing. The sound of a trashcan’s lid falling woke me up. My eyes flew open and I closed them again, opening them slightly.

My heart beat a thousand beats per minute as I realized I wasn’t inside my bed anymore. I wasn’t even inside my room, or my house.

I was lying on the hard, cold floor of an old sewerage that clearly wasn’t in use for sewerage purposes anymore. It smelled like pee and rotten dustbins. It was gross and made me wanted to gag.

A brown piece of cardboard that smelled worse than feet covered my body and I shoved it off. I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on today. The tutu was all ruffled up and torn. The one side bent into the shape of my body as I slept on it.

No, this can’t be.

I sat up straight and thought hard. The cat had gotten me home. I’d seen my mom, I’d taken a bath. What the hell was I doing here then, sleeping inside the tunnel like a homeless person?

I jumped as I found a couple of other bodies lying on the other side of the tunnel.

I didn’t remember who they were or recall meeting them, but since I was here, I clearly had.

I looked at my arm. The mark was still there and I hovered to pinch myself.

If I felt this, I’d know I was awake, and that this was real. If I didn’t feel this, I was just going to crawl back under that stinking cardboard and wait for my alarm clock to buzz.

Still I didn’t want to pinch myself. I didn’t want to find out. I closed my eyes and did it.

The pinch was real. My eyes shot open and I was still inside the tunnel.

Rats rushed by me and I shrieked. I thought the bodies would wake up, but they didn’t. They just stayed there, motionless.

I saw another rat and pushed my knees to my chest.

I frowned and as I looked again, I opened my eyes wider to make sure I really saw it and that it wasn’t my mind playing tricks.

There was clearly something off with the rat. From the front, he was fine, but the back. You couldn’t see the tail or feet. It was surrounded by dark smoke.

He scurried away, deeper into the tunnel and another couple followed.

I looked again.

All of them had this dark cloud of mass following them.

My heart beat again. Something wasn’t right with this place.

I looked around again, touched myself and squeezed softly.
If this place is real then where the hell am I?

.

A NOISE DEEP DOWN IN THE TUNNEL CLANGED
loudly. I got up and heard the crunching sound of glass underneath my sneakers. The stench forced me to inhale through my mouth but the taste it left was ten times worse.

A cold breeze in front of me screamed opening and I just had to get out of here and hopefully find my way home. Still the funny looking rats made me wonder if I hadn’t already lost my mind and was stuck somewhere inside four, white padded walls.

More rats rushed past me, all of them minding their own business, but the black mass was following them like a shadow. It was creepy and made my skin crawl.

I found the opening and started to search the wall praying that there was something lodged inside that would support my weight. My hands found a beam. It was really far from the floor, but I just had to get my foot on there. I needed to get out of this abandoned sewerage tunnel.

After half an hour struggling, I finally managed to push myself up and found another beam close by. It was some sort of a ladder, and I found one beam after another. In less than a couple of minutes, I found myself out of the tunnel.

It smelled worse than inside. A strong breeze made it hard to breath, and I took off my knitted ballet shirt that covered my leotard and wrapped it around my head.

My scent lingered heavily on it and it smelled ten times better than the air.

I tried to see through the wind and nothing made sense. I had no idea where I was, nothing in front of me looked familiar. To be honest I didn’t even think I was in Chicago anymore.

The buildings were dilapidated. Structures that were once stores, were torn to the ground. Rubble was strewn everywhere and there wasn’t a sign of another living soul.

Loneliness crumped my chest. I was struggling to breathe as it was but this heaviness made it ten times worse.

Dreaming popped into my head, but there were no way that dreams could be this real. To feel the wind burning your skin, drying it out in mere seconds, the cold brushing against my body. I started to shiver and knew I had to get out of the cold, but where to? I had no idea.

A ripple of golden dust twirled around me and flew in a golden stream in front of me. My first instinct told me to follow it. It flew over a street lamp that lay on the asphalt. I climbed over it and ran to keep up. It flew around the corner, and I saw more destroyed buildings. The cars were rusty, with no doors or tires.

I didn’t know what had happened here, or even where the hell I was.

I jumped around as a cold finger traced down my back. I could feel eyes on me. Who they belonged to I had no idea but the chill, the kind that flows through your core and makes you shiver from within, told me that they didn’t belong to anybody good.

Through the corner of my eye the golden trail flew into another old building. There was a faint light coming from inside and I ran as fast as I could toward it. There were people there. I didn’t know whether they were good or bad, but the thought of not being alone was better than the feelings I’d had a couple of seconds ago.

I could tell the structure used to be beautiful. It had two golden lions molded inside the wall. Part of the one lion’s head was broken off and the other one had plenty of soot over it.

I found the outline of a reception inside. Around it were crates and lots of steel tables stacked against one another.

Further down past the reception I found a fire that burned behind something that used to be a couch. It was what made the faint light, but there was nobody in sight.

The trail of golden dust drew a direction line in mid-air and a knowing feeling told me that it was where I should go.

The trail flew forward and down another opening that led into the ruiend wooden walls.

Although I didn’t understand the golden dust and I really didn’t like this situation, I had a feeling I could trust it to get me to safetly inside this nightmare.

I crawled down the opening. It was pitch black and my heart beat a notch faster.

There was no sign of the golden trail. A horrible laugh broke the silence and my first reaction was to get the hell out of the wall, but then my eyes caught the golden trail again. It lit up the wall in the distance and it was the only light. I rushed to it again and followed it.

The laughter came again. It sounded mechanical and I was scared out of my mind when a clown figure came into sight.

It wasn’t real, it was plastic and I reached out to touch it just to make sure. He let out another laugh and I jumped back a couple of paces. I caught the golden trail in the distance again and ran to keep up.

With the eerie clown behind me, I could face whatever lay ahead.

This was one of the reasons I hated stupid clowns.

More rats squeaked below my feet and I danced like a show pony as I could feel them inches from my shoes.

I hated how my heart jumped a million beats per minute—or so it seemed—and the inky black darkness blinded my sight. I didn’t like watching over my shoulder every five seconds either. Someone or something was not far behind me. I could still feel its eyes on me and I just wished that I could get out of this place, wherever this place was. Still I followed the golden trail and it led me straight to the end of the alley.

It stopped and started to swirl around in an oval shape until it became a solid golden circle. I found myself staring at it, I was mesmerized and couldn’t stop looking.

Then it stopped and landed on what looked like an altar. Faint light started to glow and the altar became alive.

It looked like an old mirror that was formed in the shape of an eye. The mirror was the inside of the eye.

It became brighter and brighter until my reflection was caught in the mirror.

I tried to turn around and run away but when I glanced one more time, my reflection just stood there, as if it was someone else. She kept staring at me, she wasn’t afraid and told me to wait.

It was so freak’n creepy.

My feet were nailed to the floor and I couldn’t move.

My reflection started to narrow, as if something invisible was closing in on the sides. It changed the shape until it resembled the pupil of a snake’s eye.

The outline of a woman appeared inside the pupil. I could see her hair flowing in a path of wind. The strands were long and liquid. I knew it wasn’t me as my hair was cut in layers that only reached my shoulders. I stared at it as I couldn’t do anything else.

The same golden dust-like grit from this afternoon emerged inside my hands again and ran down to the ground. I stared at it. This was anything but normal. The color of the sand had started to change slowly into a darker brown. It kept changing until all the light gold was gone, gradually turning darker and darker, until it was solid black. I didn’t understand any of this, and I didn’t know what it meant.

A shrill noise came from the eye, and I covered my ears with my hands. More grit accumulated in my palms and I could feel it flow into my ears. It hurt like hell and in a panic I screamed.

The grit flowed through me and it felt like it was embedded under my skin, I scratched at myself trying hard to get it out.

Then a horrible ache jolted through my head. The sand flowed all the way to the pit of my mind. I let out another scream as everything just burned.

A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I turned around. When I tried to get away from it, it only clutched my shoulders stronger, speaking softly to relax my beating heart. I struggled to focus on who it belonged to. My eyes watered from the pain the sand had caused and it made the figure blurry. It was taller than me and the deep sound of its voice told me it was male. The force of his grip around my wrist somehow broke the spell that held me to the spot in front of the eye.

I could move again and the further I got from the eye, the less my head hurt. I had no choice but to trust whoever he was, and get away from this insanity.

He pulled me up the opening through the wall, the way I had come a couple of minutes before, and found the area with the small fire again.

I started to cough uncontrollably, like I couldn’t breathe and more sand came running out of my throat. It started to become less and less, until there were just specks of black sand clinging to my skin and clothes.

I tried to shake it off, wary that it might be dangerous, but it stayed there, like a part of my leotard. I’d never felt this dirty before.

“Here, drink this. It will make you feel better,” he said and a silver flask came into view. Tim had a similar one, but he hardly drank out of it and just kept it as some sort of souvenir.

I looked at the hands that held it, they were covered with dark leather fingerless-gloves. When I saw his face, I thought it was Ty, but when I looked again, it wasn’t. His hair was dark, and cut into that scruffy hairstyle Ty had, his eyes were dark too. I gazed at him and noticed a pair of full lips, sun-kissed skin and an Enrique Iglesias mole above his lip.

He took a pair of glasses from his pocket and put them on his face. He was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen and it seemed my dream guy had just turned into a reality.

He wore a leather jacket and dark leather pants with the coolest black boots. He was at least two heads taller than me and had broad shoulders and long limbs.

He spoke again, this time in Spanish and when I didn’t answer, he chose another language.

I finally realized what he was doing. “English, is fine. I’m American.”

“So you do speak. For a minute there I thought I had to sign,” he said with a hint of a smile tucking at the corner of his mouth. He pushed the flask, still in his hand, a bit forward and this time I reached out and took it.
“Thanks.” The word barely came out and I took a sniff at the opening of the flask. It smelled like alcohol, the 83 percent kind. “What is this?”

“It doesn’t matter. In the Oblivion it’s the only piece of sun you will get. Now drink.”

“The Oblivion?”

“Drink,” he ordered again without answering my question and I took a sip. It burned all the way down and I started couching again.

“Yeah, it’s another thing you’ll get eventually used to down here.”

I handed the flask back to him. I wasn’t planning on staying here. A cold breeze brushed up behind me and I rubbed my arms, trying to will warmth into them, but it didn’t help. My hands were freezing too.

The guy immediately took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders. “Here, it will keep you warm. Where are you from?”

“Chicago,” I said as I knew I wasn’t in Chicago anymore.

He gave me a crooked smiled. One that reached his eyes. He was damn perfect. “Ahh, the windy city.”

I huffed, wanting to smile but not here. I didn’t trust anything around me.

“I’m Leigh, short for Leighthan.” He let out his hand and stared at it and then back at me. “And you are?”

“Chas, short for Chastity.”

He looked at the floor and his lips curved upward. “Like chastity belt?”

Why is that the first thing that always popped into everyone’s mind when I introduced myself. It made me smile and I nodded.

“Yeah, like chastity belt.” I blew out a gush of air as if it was going to help and wished that it would get rid of this feeling, but it didn’t. No matter how many breaths I took or how many I let out, the feeling didn’t want to go away. “So what is this place?”

Leigh raised his one dark eyebrow. “You don’t know about the Oblivion?”

“The what?”

“The Oblivion, you know the other side of Revera.”

I just stared at him.

Both his eyes rose slightly as if a light bulb finally lit up. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“Clearly not.” I said a bit more sarcastic than I wanted to.

“So you have no idea what you are?”

“What I am? Other than my beautiful complexion and raven dark hair,” I joked. Stop it Chas. This wasn’t the place to make stupid jokes. “No.”

“You are a Dream Caster, or by that black sand all over you, I’ll say a—”

A loud clucking noise on the other side made both Leigh and I jump, interrupting his explanation of what I really was.

Leigh crouched immediately down, grabbing my hand and pulled me down with him. By the way the fire reflected on his face, he looked anxious, alert. “We have to go,” he said and searched with his free hand behind him, picking up a black bag that made me think of a golf clubs and something that used to be a bow, it was missing the string.