Authors: Karina Halle
“They lie to you so well,” he says. “I suppose they want to protect their latest guinea pig. You’re nothing but a tool to them, you know that, don’t you? You can feel it. How they only give you so much information, just the right amount, to make you complacent and afraid.” The Michael demon’s hand tightens around my mom’s arm until her eyes close in silent, debilitating pain. “He’s not who you think he is. He’s not even who
he
thinks he is.”
I don’t want to ask who he’s talking about, even though I know it’s Jay. It doesn’t matter. It’s not real. It’s my own subconscious, my own doubt.
“Do your worst then,” I tell him, finding strength somewhere in the depths of me.
Michael’s head jerks back like he’s not hearing me correctly and in that one sickening instance, I’m afraid. Truly fucking afraid. Because that reaction was a little too real.
The black, nebulous creature reaches over to place its hand over my mom’s chest.
“Last words?” Michael asks my mother. “Until I do it all over again?”
My mother eyes me with so much sorrow my heart breaks.
“Don’t come find me,” she whispers frantically. “No matter what happens, Ada. No matter what I say. No matter what—”
The black being pushes its hand into her chest until it’s a gaping black drain. I see galaxies among arteries, planets around her beating heart.
“No!” I scream despite myself.
My mother’s mouth falls open, choking, no words, no breath. Blood trickles from her mouth.
With sickening quickness, the black thing brings its hand downward, severing my mother’s body in half from her collarbone down like a hacksaw on a carcass. I turn my head, blood splattering hot against my skin, coating me from head to toe.
“You can stop this,” Michael says and he’s at my ear, breath that ices.
No
, he’s inside, in the middle of my chest, burrowing deep. I can feel evil in my blood, sinking into my cells and beyond. There is no escape. “You can stop this Ada. Or she’ll be tortured for eternity.”
I’m crying. I’m screaming. I’m tortured and yet if I turn my head and open my eyes I’ll see who is really suffering.
So hurry now and listen,
Michael’s agonizing voice whispers from within me, permeating my brain.
Run to the pond that does so glisten.
I try and push him out of my head. I put up a black wall, tall and eternity-bound.
Step in before she dies.
Another wall. I concentrate as much as I can, seeing that dark wall block me from him.
“Ada!” I hear another voice whisper.
And now you know it’s he who lies.
“Ada!”
Hands on my shoulders.
I gasp for air like I’ve been underwater. Panic floods my bones, my body ready to run. All feeling is back, clarity like nothing else.
I’m in my room. My old room. Sheets tangled at my legs.
It’s dark but there’s air and I’m alive and this is real.
This is life.
And my father is in front of me, face white, his eyes darker than ever in the black. For a moment I’m afraid he’s possessed, that this isn’t him.
“Ada,” he says again and steps toward the window, to the light. I watch him, breathless, my heart racing, so afraid of what just happened in my dream that I can’t even speak. I’m not even sure if any of
this
is real.
Is this what it’s like to go insane?
“I’m sorry to wake you,” he says, running his hand down his face. It seems like my father, that I’m awake, but I can’t be sure. Will I ever be sure? “I just . . . I couldn’t ignore it.”
Somehow I find my voice. “What?” I sit up straighter, trying to get my bearings. The dream ended so horribly, so suddenly, that I’m afraid I’ll easily slip back into that gruesome scene.
My dad paces back in forth in front of me, hands behind his back, and I know now that this is real. But the thing is, my father has never woken me up in the middle of the night before. It’s always been the other way around.
Suddenly I’m so acutely aware of how it is now. How it’s just me and him in this big old house. That’s all we have here.
He stops, looking down on me with such fear that I’m not even sure I knew fear until this moment. I have never seen my dad afraid. Wrought with grief, yes. Inconsolable, yes. Angry, ignorant, deceitful, smug, arrogant, condescending, stubborn, all a million times
yes
.
But afraid? My father is a highly-regarded professor of theology. He is never afraid. He has God on his side after all.
“I might be going crazy, Ada,” he says softly. He looks away, like he can’t even bear to see my reaction.
“Okay,” I whisper, clearing my throat. “What happened?”
He sits on the edge of the bed, looking absolutely despondent as he stares forward at the wall. “I don’t know,” he says, almost inaudible. “I don’t know. Your mother.”
I sit up straighter. I can see the black thing slicing her in half, the look in her eyes, the plea for me to run.
“Your mother,” he goes on, pain creasing his brow. How I wish for my strong, unfeeling father at this moment. “She was in bed with me. She was right there. Right there.” He sobs and puts his head in his hands. “It was her. It was her, Ada. I wasn’t asleep. It wasn’t a dream.”
And yet, despite how disturbing this is, how heartbreaking it is to see my dad crumble, it gives me hope. Because she was fine. She was with him and okay, nothing at all like my dreams led me to believe.
“She was there with me.”
I reach over and put my hand on my dad’s back. “It’s okay. She’s trying to tell you she’s good. She’s happy,” I say softly.
“No,” he says abruptly. “She was dying. All over again.”
I can’t breathe. I stare at him, unsure how to approach this, how to make sure we’re on the same page.
“Dad, mom’s already dead.”
“I know. I know she is. But she wasn’t just now. She was dying. She was gasping for breath and I heard her voice in my head. She said . . . she said . . .”
Oh god. I close my eyes, praying that it’s not the same.
“She said, don’t come find me. No matter what happens.”
“No matter what I say,” I finish quietly.
He gives me a sharp look and the fear has transformed. He’s no longer just afraid of what he saw.
He’s afraid of
me
.
“I had a dream,” I explain. “She said the same thing to me. Just now. Before you woke me.”
He’s staring at me in disbelief, blinking hard.
“Dad. What happened after she said that?”
He still seems out of it, like he’s having a hard time with the two realities. “She . . . I . . .” He closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath. “I pulled back the covers and she wasn’t even there from the neck down. It was just blood. Just blood. So much blood.”
I don’t know how to fix this. I know my father is looking for the most reasonable explanation but I’m so terrified that after everything that has happened so far in our lives, I’ll be another daughter to blame. He saw what happened in that subway in Manhattan. He saw what happened to me then, he saw what happened to Perry months before and yet he never believed. His faith never let him believe.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I ask him. My voice is trembling now and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
He stares at me and it’s almost like I can see two parts of him grasping for control. I already know which one will win out. It’s the only thing he knows, that he can rely on. His faith.
“No,” he says gravely. After all that he’s seen, to admit to seeing ghosts would shake his very foundations.
“Then this is a dream, dad,” I tell him gently. “Go back to bed. She won’t be there. You’ll wake up in the morning.”
I’m not sure how much of that he can believe but still he gets up, tells me he loves me, and leaves the room.
I wait with my breath held, wondering if I’ll hear him talking to her. If he’ll cry or scream. But there is no sound. I have no doubt she was there but she’s gone now.
I lie back down and close my eyes. I want to think about what it all means but I’m exhausted and, more than that, I’m horribly sad. My chest feels like it’s being crushed from the inside out.
I shed bloodless tears and sleep.
By the time I’m up the next morning, the sun is slanting in through the window, which means I’ve been in bed for way too long.
But to be honest, I don’t care. I could sleep all day. I didn’t have any dreams (after the main one, of course) and with that in mind, I want to just cocoon myself in the covers and pretend that nothing is wrong. I want to sink into deep oblivion, mindless and dark, and stay there for a long time. Nothing is bad. Nothing can hurt me.
I don’t want to think about last night. Not one bit.
A knock at my door nearly makes me scream. Apparently my subconscious has no chill.
“Come in,” I say, assuming it’s my dad.
The door opens.
I suck in my breath.
Definitely not my dad.
Jay stands, large and in charge in the doorway, my mug that says
Coffee First, World Domination Later
is in his hand.
“What . . . what?” I ask and then realize I’m sitting in bed in just my bare camisole (holy nipple city). I grab the covers, hauling them up to my shoulders. “The fuck?”
“Nothing I haven’t already seen,” he comments mildly as he eyes the blanket, stepping inside the room. “Brought you some coffee.”
“How did you get in here?” I cry out, still so fucking confused. “Did you teleport in?”
He shakes his head, placing the coffee on the bedside table. “Knocked on the door. No one was home. Your dad left a note saying he’d be back later. Coffee pot was still warm.”
Now that he’s closer to me, I can smell that distinctive scent of his, the spiciness that gives me a jolt of warmth. He’s dressed in all black again—boots, jeans, a thermal shirt that clings to every inch of muscle. I’m both vaguely thrilled, nearly turned-on, from him being in my room beside me like this, and totally annoyed he’s here at all.
I eye the coffee, even though it looks amazing and promises to fix what ails me. “So is this a Jacob thing, to just waltz into people’s homes uninvited?”
He crosses his arms over his broad chest and casts an inquisitive eye over all the clothes piled in the room. “It’s a Jay thing. So this is where you used to sleep. Did it always look like an outlet store?”
“An
outlet
store?” I practically hiss at him. I’m not sure if he’s trying to be insulting or not but I’m not taking any chances.
The fact that he’s hard to read doesn’t help.
He stands over me expectantly and eyes the coffee.
“Have a drink,” he tells me. “Clear your thoughts. And let’s discuss last night.”
“Last night?” I repeat.
He nods at the coffee.
I sigh and pick up the mug. It’s like he knows I’m mostly incoherent unless I have caffeine in my blood.
Somehow the coffee is perfectly hot, tasting a million times better than what my dad usually makes. Though he’s Italian, his taste in coffee sucks.
“What happened in your dream?” he asks me once I’ve had a few sips.
“You tell me,” I say. “Dream interpretation is your specialty.”
“I couldn’t see you,” he says, frowning. “I tried but you put up a wall. To keep me out.”
I raise my brow and take another sip, hoping things will make more sense when I get to the bottom of the mug. “I didn’t put up anything. I was dreaming. You weren’t there. It would have been nice if you were.” I trail off, the gruesome image of my mother being sliced in half flashing through my mind.
“What happened in it?”
I swallow thickly, staring down into the coffee for a moment, gathering up my wits before I tell him what happened. It’s impossible not to hear that disturbing song ringing through my ears, the feel of Michael speaking to me from the inside, the nebulous matter of the dark.
When I’m done, he’s staring at me just as he was before, a bit of indifference, a lot of nothing.
“So what do you believe?” he asks calmly.
“Well I believed it was a dream,” I tell him. “Until my father comes into my room moments after, telling me my mother has visited him in his bed. And I know my father…it took guts to admit that. This was the first time.” When Jay doesn’t say anything, I continue. “He saw her. Then he saw her dead. Just like in my dream. Repeating just what was said in my dream.”
Jay briefly holds his lower lip between his teeth, his eyes still focused hard on mine. I’m aware once again that this giant, mysterious beast is standing in my bedroom and I’m scantily clad in bed. It’s actually a lot better if I ignore that and concentrate on the horror at hand instead.
“Do you believe them?” he finally asks.
“Believe who?”
“The demons. What they said in your dream, not to trust me.”
I look down and anxiously run my hand along the blanket, looking for a loose thread to pick at. “If actual demons are invading my dreams and telling me this, then no. If my subconscious is telling me this . . . that’s a different story.” I pause. “And wouldn’t you say that’s all this is. My subconscious?”
I glance up and meet his eyes. I swear I see them shift from ice to slate and back again. Considering who, or what, he is, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they do that, only I have no idea what it means.
“I suppose your subconscious has a lot of . . . letting go to do.”
My eyes narrow. “As if you know what it’s like to lose someone and let go. As if it’s that easy.”
His lips twist into a placating smile. “I can’t pretend that I do. And I was talking about letting go of your distrust of me.”
I nearly roll my eyes. “Right. Like that’s easy too. When it comes to dealing with human beings, trust is something that is earned, not given.”
If I hadn’t been watching him so closely, I think I would have missed the flash of sorrow on his face, as if I had insulted some deep part of him. But the look is so quick, I wonder if I saw it at all.
He nods and walks over to the window that looks over at the Knightlys’. “Regardless, it would be helpful if you didn’t put up your walls.”
“I don’t have walls,” I hiss at him. “You weren’t there. Anyway, how did you know I had a dream?”
“It’s a given at this point,” he says. “But when I tried to step in I couldn’t. I had no idea if you were alive or not. So I came over.”
I realize I’m staring at him horrified, a chill running over me. “You had no idea if I was alive or not? Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”
He slowly turns around to eye me and gives me a mild shrug. “Life is never a given, princess.”
This guy is unbelievable. I shake my head.
“So is that all?” I repeat tersely. “You just came in to check if I was alive or not.”
“Pretty much,” he says, eyeing my mug. “And to bring you your coffee. Though don’t expect this to be a day to day thing.”
“Thank god,” I mutter under my breath. Not that it would be so horrible to have him in my room every morning, bringing me coffee or otherwise. I clear my throat. “So what do you expect me to do next time this happens? When the walls go up, or whatever? I was calling for you in the dream, you know.”
“I could hear you,” he says grimly. “I just couldn’t see you. Don’t worry. I’ll find a way next time.”
“Right.” I finish the coffee and put it back on the bedside table. “And so what does it mean then, the fact that my father saw the very mother that I dreamed. Is my subconscious powerful enough to project itself? I know Perry’s is.”
He shakes his head and takes a step closer to the bed. “It means demons are real. And they’re starting to reach the unbelievers.”
To his credit, he doesn’t say it lightly.
I find it hard to swallow. “Will they come after him?” I ask, unable to mask the tremor in my voice.
“No. They’re just appearing as a way to get to you. Your father is safe.”
I study him, searching his face for the truth. I think I can glean it from his eyes, the determined set of his jaw. He’s asked me to trust him and sometimes I wonder if I have a choice.
My cell beside the bed suddenly beeps, making me jump. I pick it up and see a text from Amy, wondering if I’m still going with her to the music festival today. I’d totally forgotten all about it.
The Northwest Music Fest runs for three days in downtown Portland at the waterfront and other venues, showcasing a bunch of bands. This year Amy and I decided to get tickets to see Duran Duran on one of the nights and it totally slipped my mind that tonight was that night.
“What is it?” Jay asks, mildly curious.
“Nothing. I just forgot I had plans with Amy tonight.” Honestly, even though I know going out to a music festival is probably the best thing for me, I’m tempted to cancel on her. But I know she loves the band as much as I do and I really haven’t seen her since all this crazy shit happened.
Still, it’s hard to pull up my fucking big girl panties and put all this Jay and dreams and demon shit behind me and pretend to be a normal girl. In fact, the last few days I’ve started to realize that the normal I’ve always wanted to be will now never be reached. It was always in my grasp . . . but it’s just smoke in my hand.
Silence falls between Jay and I as I get dragged into the depths of my head. He’s watching me, waiting for me to say something else, or maybe he’s not waiting at all. Maybe he’s trying to figure me out, to piece together the “me” he knows in my dreams with the me he sees before him. Maybe he’s just observing with tepid interest, like the way we watch animals in a zoo. We watch them because of how alike us – and unlike us – they are.
“Are you going?” he finally asks.
I sigh and slide the phone onto the table. “Yeah. I should. Get out of the house. Pretend the big bad wolf isn’t at my door.” My eyes flit to his and he stares back at me openly. “I’d invite you but . . .”
He shakes his head quickly, raising his palm to stop me from going on. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sure the Knightlys have some chore they want me to do. Or Jacob does.”
“So how does it work there? I mean, why are the Knightly’s letting you and Jacob stay there? Did they just move there for me?”
“It’s complicated,” Jay says, slowly walking over to my door. “As most things are.” He opens the door and gives me one last steady look, a gaze that seems to tip the room over, leaving me untethered, ready to fall. “Take care of yourself, Ada. I’ll see you later.”
Then he’s out of my room, closing the door behind him, and the room returns to a dusty chill, like he was never here at all.
***
“Hello stranger,” Amy says to me as I climb into the passenger side of Smartie. I breathe in her lavender air freshener that hangs from the rear-view mirror and immediately relax at the sense of normalcy it brings me. All lies, but I buy into it.
I give her an apologetic grimace. “Sorry I kind of dropped the ball on all of this.”
She gives a little shrug and clucks her tongue as she does a U-turn in the middle of the street, eying the Knightlys’ house as we go past. “You’re excused.” Then she gives me a sassy smile. “I mean, if I had a giant hunk of man meat living next door to me, I think I’d be a little distracted too. Don’t tell Tom I said that.”
I sigh. “It’s not like that,” I tell her and it’s the truth. “He’s just a friend.” Mmmm. Okay, maybe that part is a stretch.
“Sure, sure,” she says, tapping her fingers along the wheel to the beat of an obnoxious pop song. For once, though, I let it play, hoping the auto-tuned songstress can trick my mind into thinking everything is okay and life is as fun as it is in her song.
And it kind of works. As we drive into the city, Amy launches into the latest fight that she and Tom had, then starts going on about a show she started watching and before I know it I’ve completely forgotten about this morning, last night, the last few days. To escape, even for a car ride, is amazing.
It isn’t until we find parking and start the long walk to the concert, following hordes of music-lovers drinking beers out of paper bags, wearing large sunglasses and laughing loudly, that Amy turns the subject back to Jay.
“So how come you never mentioned him to me before?” she asks as we turn the corner past where the 24 Hour Church of Elvis used to be. In the distance, across the river, dark clouds are building up ominously. Even though the air is hot and muggy, I get a slight chill at the mention of his name. Or maybe it’s a thrill. It’s hard to tell these days.
“I honestly only just met him,” I tell her. “We went out for coffee, that’s all.”
“How old is he, twenty-five? Thirty? Like, a lot older than us, I know at least that much.”
I give her a wry look. “Then it’s a good thing he’s just a neighbor, isn’t it?”
She grins at me, the sparkles in her lip gloss catching the afternoon light. “You know, Ada, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you hooked up with someone. Even someone older. You’re eighteen, totally legal and shit. Why not hit that? Seriously, why not have a fling with someone, anyone?”
I roll my eyes, even though her remarks make me uncomfortable, just reminding me of things I don’t have. “No one interests me.” It’s something I’ve said again and again.