Gift of Death (Gifted Book 1)

by Lin Augustine

  I sigh in relief, but then I feel the blanket become even thinner—thin and loose like a summer top sheet draped so it’s covering the whole bed, but not tucked in. I put my head in my hands. So many things crawling out from the sides and some even passing up through the blanket itself.

  I rock back and forth a little. Guilt. I feel guilty about something, or a couple things, or a lot of things, I think. Anxiety. What does Ron think of me, knowing who I am, what I can do, what I’ve done? But what have I done, exactly? Sadness. Something is gone, something was stolen. I did something bad—something terribly bad.

  A soft cry escapes from my lips. And then, tears wet my hands.

  Hunter puts a hand on my shoulder, lightly, as though it almost isn’t there. “Chrys, it was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it.”

  “But what did I do?” I say, my voice muffled from my hands.

  “You killed Iris.”

  I sniffle. “I couldn’t have done that.”

  “I’m pretty sure you did.”

  I put my hands down and ball them up tightly in my lap, looking into Hunter’s concerned eyes. “Why would I do that? I’m not a bad person.”

  “I think it was an accident. Do you want to remember what happened?”

  “Are you going to take it all away?”

  “No, I’ll just leave a little bit—a tiny bit. Enough to prevent another panic attack physically. It should keep your body calm at least.”

  “Just my body though?”

  “Well, the physical symptoms are the worst. Without those, you might be able to process what happened more clearly. So? Should I do it?”

  I look up at the ceiling and fiddle with my hands. “Do I have to?”

  “If you don’t feel ready yet, then I won’t do it now, but I’ll have to eventually. I’m not going to keep you like this overnight. The longer I keep this up, the harder it’ll be for you to face it. We won’t be ripping off the bandage. I won’t do that again, I promise. It’s gradual. You can handle it. Just let yourself remember what happened.”

  I exhale deeply, letting my body and my hands relax. I lean back in the sofa and close my eyes. “Okay, just do it.”

  He removes his hand from my shoulder—I had kind of forgotten it was there until now—and then the blanket shrinks, covering just a tiny part of my mind, and everything comes flooding back to me.

  The buzzer sound and Carl shouting that I’m gifted. Iris touching me. Me pushing her. The cold energy. Her falling. Hunter coming. Carl frozen.

  I shut my eyes even tighter. My heart is speeding up and my breathing is becoming quicker, but my chest doesn’t hurt yet and I can still breathe okay.

  “I killed Iris,” I whisper. My hands start to shake.

  Hunter holds my hands to steady them.

  My eyes fly open and I jerk my hands away from him. “Please, don’t touch my hands. God, I’m going to have to start wearing gloves again.” I wipe my face with my hands.

  “Chrys, you don’t have to—”

  “I have no control! I just pushed her a little. I didn’t mean to-to do that. I was trying to get her to stop touching me. Carl told her I’m gifted and I freaked out.” I turn to Hunter. “I started to think about everything. All the death—when he said that—and I think because it was at the forefront of my mind, when I touched her, that happened and I…”

  Hunter nods, a sympathetic look on his face. “See? You didn’t mean to do it though. You’re not a bad person and you do have control, usually. That moment was a little overwhelming for you, and it made you do something you didn’t intend to do, that’s all.”

  The door opens and Li enters. She rushes over and sits down quickly. “Sorry,” she says, trying to catch her breath. “I didn’t realize your gift was that strong, Hunter. I really thought Elise could help.”

  “It’s okay,” Hunter says. “Chrys is almost there.”

  Li looks at me, noticing my wet face and probably awful expression. She sighs. “I know it’s painful, Chrys, but it’ll be worth it in the end.”

  I just nod, that image of Iris lingering in my head. My breathing is still labored but my heartbeat feels like it’s getting slower. It’s getting easier to look at that image. I still feel guilty and anxious and sad, but as those feelings and that image sit with me, without me trying to repel them away, they slowly start to fade.

  Hunter and Li are staring at me intently, the air tense with silence.

  I breathe out and say, “What’s still under the blanket?”

  “Blanket?” Hunter says.

  “Yeah it—that’s what I call it. The calm. Because it feels like a blanket, holding things down. I can feel that it’s mostly gone but there’s still like a little corner of my mind beneath it.”

  “A blanket. Okay. That’s good to know. It kind of feels that way to me too, but I always thought of it like a hug. Like, I’m hugging you with the emotion.”

  I nod. “Sure, a hug, I guess. But I think blanket is more accurate.”

  “Okay, anyway,” he says, “I don’t know what’s under there still. Whatever it is, it must be really deep. The kind of stuff you never let in.”

  “I do recall having something like that, but I’m not sure what. If you remove the blanket, won’t it go back to just staying stuffed deep down?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t really know. That could happen, or it could all come up to the surface, all at once.”

  Dealing with what I did today was awful, yes, but doable. And although the blanket feels nice, now that it’s mostly gone, I realize how heavy and suffocating it was. My mind feels so much clearer now. My body too, even.

  I close my eyes again and steel myself. “Just do it. Remove it all.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod quickly. “Just take it all away. I think I’m okay now.”

  “Okay,” Hunter says.

  Like a whoosh, the tiny blanket disappears from that corner of my mind. The stuff there is slow and sluggish. It tries to come up. I get snippets of it. My mom. That lonely, empty room. Vic Blanchet. The third task, a confrontation of my past.

  The self-loathing. That one comes up quicker than the rest, snaking its way between the guilt and anxiety and sadness, finding a comfortable resting place.

  Murderer, it whispers. Murderer.

  I let out a deep breath, my hands shaking. I ball them into tight fists, feeling my fingernails dig into my palms. I never did get a chance to cut them.

  This, though, I know how to deal with. I’ve been dealing with it for years and years.

  No, I yell in my mind, grabbing hold of its slithery tail. I’m not a murderer.

  I yank it, dragging it away from the forefront of my mind, untangling it from my other emotions.

  I love myself. I’m a good person.

  I hurl it into the corner and shut the door, shutting it all away.

  Sighing, I open my eyes and let my shoulders relax.

  Hunter throws his arms around me. “You did it!”

  “Uh, yes,” I say, feeling awkward, not sure what to do.

  He backs away quickly, his face a slight shade of pink. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I feel even more awkward and guilty now, especially because I know Hunter can sense it.

  “Well,” Li says, looking between the two of us with a grin, “I’m glad it all worked out. You did really well, Chrys.”

  “I didn’t really do anything though,” I say.

  “Are you kidding? Give yourself some credit. It’s hard to face tough things like that. Why do you think people drown themselves in books and TV and food and alcohol? It’s because they want to escape. You had an escape too, but it’s a crutch. I hope you realize that now.”

  “Yeah, I do. No offense, Hunter, but I kind of felt like a zombie under your control.”<
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  He shrugs. “I’m not surprised. My gift makes people like that, especially if I lay it on too thick—the blanket.”

  “The hug.”

  We both laugh a little.

  “So is that what you did to Carl?” I ask. “He wasn’t moving at all.”

  He nods and looks away, putting his hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah, I went overboard, but I was just worried. I let him go a while back.”

  “That’s good.”

  He turns to Li. “He’ll probably tell everyone what happened, Li.”

  She shrugs. “Yes but he has no proof, does he? Those small-town shops don’t have any cameras. We know that for a fact. We’ll monitor the news, see what gets out, but I don’t think you have to worry.” She gestures to the door. “Why don’t you guys go have dinner? I’ll go a little later.”

  Hunter is about to stand up but then remembers the scanner on his lap. “Oh, he had this too. It can detect the gifted.”

  He hands it to Li and she takes it. She turns it over in her hands, inspecting it.

  She doesn’t say anything more, so Hunter and I exchange glances and then stand up to go. Hunter turns back with his hand on the door knob.

  “Don’t you think this should count as her third task?” he asks.

  “It doesn’t count, sorry,” Li says, still looking at the scanner.

  “But she confronted her past.”

  “Hmm, I don’t think so. Did you confront your past, Chrys? Or did you just put it all back where it belongs—forgotten in the depths of your mind?”

  I look away with pursed lips.

  “Seems like the latter to me,” Li says. “Don’t you think, Hunter?”

  Hunter sighs and just opens the door. He walks beside me to the pavilion, both of us avoiding each other’s gaze.

  Chapter 31

  I’m Vic Blanchet again.

  A tiny part of me is aware this is a dream, yet I feel helpless, unable to get out of it or change the scenery.

  Vic—I—am walking down a dark alleyway in Paris with a young girl. The air is cool, the first touch of autumn, so the girl wraps her arms around herself tightly to keep herself warm in her skimpy dress.

  “Hey, Vic,” she says, “maybe we should head back. It’s kind of dark and scary here.”

  “No worries, love. Just a bit further,” we say. Our voice is smooth and deep, the kind of voice you’d want to hear talk you to sleep.

  I’m not sure if we’re speaking in English, or if it’s French but my brain is just putting it in a way I can understand.

  “Alright, just a bit,” the girl says, “and then let’s go to your place.”

  “Here’s good,” we say, stopping.

  We take her into our arms and kiss deeply. She smells and tastes like hard liquor and cigarettes. We pull away from her, leaning our forehead against hers. Her eyes are still closed and she wears a small smile.

  We explore her back with a hand, finding a small spot in the middle where the thin fabric of her dress makes a large diamond of exposed skin.

  We breathe in deeply. “You are so naive.”

  The girl opens her eyes quickly, angry or perhaps shocked. “What are you going on about, Vic?”

  We just laugh and rub our cheek against hers. She tries to push away but we have a firm grasp on her.

  “Goodbye,” we whisper.

  “What—”

  The cold energy flows in from her back into our hand and she crumples to the ground. We flex our hand as the energy travels up our arm and into the rest of our body.

  “Ah, so delicious,” we say.

  The energy still coursing through our body, we pull out a small piece of paper from our pocket and a tiny pencil stub with no eraser. We unfold the paper and crouch down. We rest the paper on the woman’s arm and write 59.

  “Hey!” a man’s voice says.

  That’s odd. I’ve had this dream many times before but no one has ever come.

  “Hey!” he says again. “I know what you did!”

  I feel myself separate from Vic and I see Noah—no, wait, Carl?—standing before me.

  Vic stands up and walks down the alleyway without me, whistling a happy tune.

  “I saw you, you filthy gifted scum,” Carl/Noah says.

  I straighten up and shake my head. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  “Hurt her? You killed her! I’m gonna make sure you can’t hurt anyone again.”

  “Just let me—”

  Suddenly, a firm pressure on my neck cuts off my words. I struggle to breathe. I look around but no one is near me. No one is holding me. There’s just Carl/Noah, standing in the distance with a nasty look on his face.

  The pressure gets stronger, crushing my windpipe. Now, I can’t breathe at all.

  I grasp at my neck, making choking noises, trying to get whatever this is on my neck off of me, but I can only feel my own neck.

  I’m scared. I’m going to die.

  Help me! Someone help me, please!

  “Chrys,” I hear a whisper from somewhere. “Are you okay?”

  I fall to the ground, next to the girl, and thrash around, fighting the invisible force. I’m so lightheaded and my vision has gone spotty.

  Something shakes my shoulders vigorously.

  “Chrys!” the voice says again, this time a little louder.

  Hunter? Is that Hunter’s voice?

  Wait. I’m dreaming. I can wake up.

  Wake up.

  I open my eyes and bolt upright in bed, holding my throat and taking in deep, hungry breaths. When my breath starts to calm, I look to the side. It’s still pretty dark but in the moonlight, I can just make out Hunter’s face there somehow—perhaps standing on my desk chair.

  “You were panicking,” he whispers. “Were you dreaming about… Iris?”

  I shake my head and take in another deep breath. “No, it was Carl, I think. He was trying to kill me. He was choking me.” My whole body feels agitated and I’m shaking. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep tonight.”

  “Come down, then. We can go for a walk.”

  “It’s fine. You go back to sleep. I’ll figure something out.”

  “I won’t be able to go back to sleep either, with you feeling like that, so let’s just go outside together.”

  “Just focus on someone else, someone peaceful and sleepy.”

  “No.”

  I roll my eyes, not sure if he can really see it though. “Fine, I’m coming down.”

  I feel my way for the ladder and climb down. Turns out Hunter was standing on my desk chair because he climbs down from that too.

  We go outside and out back behind the cabin, into the thick darkness of the forest. It’s a cool summer night. Crickets chirp from all around us.

  After a little bit of stumbling over tree roots and nearly colliding with trees, we stop and sit down at the base of one of them.

  “You don’t make any sense, you know,” I say, hugging my knees to my chest.

  Hunter, sitting to the side of me around the tree trunk, has his legs out straight and his hands on his lap. “How so?”

  “You know now that focusing on one person helps reduce the noise, so logically, you should be focusing on someone who’ll make you feel the best.”

  “But that’s what I’m doing.”

  I sigh. “No. You’re just torturing yourself. Focus on a happy person, or at least a mildly content person.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh I see what you’re doing.” I stretch out my legs. “You’re keeping such a close eye on me so you can figure out when I fall in love with you and make your move.”

  “‘When?’ Are you saying it’s inevitable?”

  “Ugh, I meant ‘when’ in an ‘if’ sense.”

 
He pokes my arm with a finger. “Then you should have just said ‘if.’”

  “Whatever. You’re just trying to avoid answering me. That’s the reason why you’re focusing on me, isn’t it?”

  “I never thought about it like that, Chrys. I just thought it’d be important to keep monitoring you given all the emotional craziness that just happened to you. Dreams tend to bring subconscious stuff to the surface. I was worried you’d have a dream that would send you spiraling.”

  “So you’ve been monitoring me all night? Haven’t you slept?”

  “I was sleeping but I was also still focusing on you. It’s hard to explain. It’s like a part of my brain is always on, using my gift. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m aware of it. In fact, I think because of it, I never dream.”

  “Well they say that everyone has dreams but people who think they don’t dream just don’t remember them.”

  “I don’t think that’s it. I guess I do dream, in a sense, but instead of seeing stories and characters, it’s just feelings—the emotions I’m sensing. So when you started freaking out, my dream became like the energy of panic, I guess? It worried me so I woke myself up.”

  “I don’t get it at all.”

  He chuckles. “I don’t really know how else to explain it.”

  “It’s fine. Sounds like a ‘you had to be there’ kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So if you don’t dream in the traditional sense, that would make you immune to Carl, right?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe.”

  I lean away from the tree, so I can see Hunter’s face. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep ever again, knowing that Carl is out there trying to kill me in my dreams. Do you think that if you used your gift on me—”

  He waves me away. “No. Absolutely not. I’m never going to manipulate your emotions again. That turned out horribly last time.”

  “But maybe I won’t be able to dream while you do it. Or maybe I can dream, but like with Elise, he can’t break through the blanket.”

  He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I can’t do that to you.”

  “So you’d rather I just never sleep again?”

  He lets go of his nose and looks at me with a sigh. “I’d rather you be your own person, and not some zombie that I influence and mold.”