by Lissa Kasey
I pointed to the tray. “Just did.” Though I was still hungry. “Bland hospital food, yay, right?” I settled back against the pillows and let the tension ease a little. My muscles still twitched and spasmed. It was lessening, but still annoying.
Lukas jumped up like he had a spring in his feet. “There’s a good size cafeteria.” He looked around the room, confusion on his face for a minute. “We passed it on the way up. Let me get you some food. What do you want?”
“Um, anything other than bland chicken and potatoes? I’m craving bananas like crazy. I could eat a dozen at least. Maybe some turkey too.” That sounded divine, and weird. “Not like together on one sandwich, but like maybe a banana and a turkey sandwich?”
Lukas looked at Micah.
“I’ll stay here with him. It will probably be a while before the doctor shows,” Micah said.
Lukas held on to my hand, grip almost painful. He stared at me like he thought I’d vanish any second.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Starving, but fine.”
Micah moved around him to sit on the edge of the bed beside me. Lukas stared another moment and then finally nodded, before letting me go. “Don’t either of you leave this room until I get back,” he commanded.
We both nodded like bobblehead dolls. Lukas looked back a dozen times before he left. Micah deflated a little once he was gone. He curled up beside me, resting his head on the pillow beside mine, and I stared at him, loving those pale blue eyes and the dance of freckles across his nose.
“I really hope this is real,” I said. The nightmares, if that’s what they were, needed to be done. No more darkness, shadows, or fire.
“How are you really feeling?” he asked.
“Starving,” I said because it was the truth. “And more than a little confused. I lost time, yeah? More than a couple of days?”
He nodded. “A month.”
That took a minute to process. I’d been missing a month? It felt only like seconds. “Gone like you were gone?” I asked. Vanished, untraceable, presumed dead, which explained why Lukas looked so broken.
“Maybe?”
Wow, did I have questions. “You and Sarah okay?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“The cemetery?”
He was silent for a minute or two. “I sort of have a vague memory of a dream of you and me and Sarah in the cemetery.” A mix of emotions rolled across his face as he fought to keep his mask in place. He looked away, his lips tightening as though he were trying to fight back tears.
Not a dream, I thought. He remembered more than he wanted to. “I dreamed of you being pulled into the grave. We tried to hold on, but you pushed us away.”
“Hmm,” I said. Not willing to add to his anxiety with the truth of what I remembered. How much of it was reality? We couldn’t share dreams, right? So there would be no reason that his dream would match mine, unless neither were dreams.
“Sounds terrifying,” I offered without confirming or denying anything.
He gripped my hair and turned my face toward him, anger clear in his eyes. “Stop trying to save me. Especially at your expense.”
“I can’t control what you dream,” I told him. He knew, or at least suspected that what he remembered wasn’t a dream, even while I wished it were. But I also wasn’t going to stop trying to keep him out of harm’s way. “You’re pretty hot when you’re mad.”
He let out a frustrated sigh and let go to lie back down beside me. “The police found us, me and Sarah, both unconscious near the open grave.”
“The same night you went missing?”
“Yes,” he said. “Well it was almost morning. They’d already gone by the grave a bunch of times. Two dozen cops in the cemetery that night and we appeared out of nowhere, with no one able to explain how it happened.”
“You were right behind me. Where did you go?”
“I thought I heard Lukas say he’d found Sarah. Thought you would have heard him too and would follow. Next thing was the dream… and then waking up at the grave.”
I thought about that for a moment. Had he been grabbed by the curse of the grave that had taken Sarah? Why hadn’t it taken me? Instead I’d gone all the way back to his house and encountered something else. The demon from the desert? I still had too many questions to make sense of it all. “I went to sleep in your garden.” That much I was positive of.
“I know. We have you on camera,” Micah said.
That was an interesting revelation. “Just me?” I wondered. Were the black-eyed child and moving gnomes real? I wasn’t sure Micah would ever sleep again if he saw those things in his garden.
“The camera glitched around three a.m. and you vanished before it came back on. Out for like thirty seconds and you were gone.” Something in his voice changed, a hitch of fear, I realized.
“It wasn’t your monster,” I promised him. “It was mine.”
He looked at me with a confused frown. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. Saying it out loud would make me feel crazy, and sitting in a hospital, I didn’t want to chance someone listening and have them commit me. “Maybe it can wait until we’re home?” I glanced around. “What hospital is this anyway?”
“Piedmont Atlanta Hospital.”
Atlanta? “Georgia?”
He nodded. “We got the call late yesterday that you were here. Couldn’t find a flight right away so we drove. Sorry it took so long. Lukas started off at the wheel but couldn’t keep under the speed limit. And it’s been a while since I’ve driven, but I had to take over. I’m a bit more of a cautious driver.”
“How the fuck did I get to Atlanta, Georgia?” It was all more than a little overwhelming. The dream, losing a month of my life to who knew what, finding myself in another state with no memory of how I got there, and the strain the month had obviously taken on my body. I thought about the fire thing. Jin or whatever it was, who claimed I belonged to it. While it had burned away the shadows, it seemed to have done something to me as well. Taken over, perhaps? Or maybe the loss of time and memory was from the shadows? Could I have survived a month unconscious in the ether somewhere? I had so many questions I wasn’t sure where to begin.
Micah reached up and stroked my face, turning it a bit so I could stare into his beautiful face. I really hoped this was real. “Don’t dwell, okay? I let the time I lost eat me up for months, the questions, the fear, the uncertainty, and it did nothing for me. Let’s focus on getting you well and home, yeah?”
The memory of those shadows eating me flashed through my brain again. The pain, the fear, the certainty that they were death of the soul. Had Micah experienced the same before? Either way, those memories didn’t need to be shared. Though I wasn’t sure I could brush them aside. I nodded. “Okay.”
He leaned forward a bit to kiss me, then laughed a little. “Need to trim this beard else I can’t find your lips.”
I smiled back, feeling a little lighter as he wrapped his arms around me and snuggled in beside me on the small bed. “Whatever you need,” I promised.
Chapter 27
It took almost seven hours to gain my release from the hospital. They wanted to keep me another night but I refused, needing away from the hospital and to wrap myself in my little family for a bit. Lukas watched me eat, then dozed in the chair beside my bed while we waited for the doctor to appear. He jolted awake every few minutes or so like he was afraid he’d open his eyes and I’d be gone. Micah stayed curled up beside me on the bed, fingers stroking my arm, head resting on the pillow beside mine. The nurse didn’t protest.
I had to suffer through a potassium drip which made me feel like my arm was on fire. The doctor appeared with a handful of test results, a frown about my malnourishment, and a list of vitamin deficiencies. I’d lost weight again. Weight I didn’t have to lose. He didn’t want to release me, but I didn’t think making me eat was a reason to add to big hospital bills, and I knew the VA wouldn’t pay for an extended stay.
Apparently I’d be
en in the hospital four days after walking into the ER on my own and collapsing. Unconscious for two days before I’d given them my name so they could try to find out who I was and where I belonged as there had been no ID on me. I didn’t ask where my ID or phone went because the comments from the doctor about my unknown identity and rough shape made Lukas’s expression tense. They had contacted the police, who did a missing persons search, finding my profile, and Lukas’s contact information.
The police even stopped by to ask a handful of questions I couldn’t answer. How did I get there? Where had I been? How did I get in such bad shape? Had someone been holding me captive? I felt like a broken record with a playlist of “I don’t know,” and “I don’t remember,” on repeat.
By the time I was allowed out of the hospital it was after eight at night and I think we were all exhausted. We stumbled to Lukas’s car and Micah got behind the wheel. Lukas curled up in the backseat next to me, wrapping himself half around me like we often did as kids when we’d been hurt or sad. I sighed softly at having him close. Not many understood our connection as twins, but it had always been that way, a comfort thing. Growing up we were never alone and that bugged me. Once I’d enlisted, I realized that loneliness could have different meanings. Having Lukas back with me now, made me feel safe. That was all that mattered right at that moment.
“I’m taking us to a hotel for the night,” Micah said as he steered us out of the hospital parking garage. “We’ll head home in the morning once we’ve all had some rest.”
Lukas grunted.
“Any chance we can stop at a drug store for basic stuff?” I asked. “Like clean underwear and something to shave with?” They’d given me basic scrubs in the hospital, but I wanted to feel like me and not some escaped psych patient.
“I brought stuff,” Micah said. “It’s in the trunk. Would have brought it up to your room, but…” He hadn’t wanted to leave me to go get it, I deduced from what he left out. I thought about that as we drove and the city passed us by. He wasn’t taking us to the nearest hotel. In fact, he took us out of downtown and to the edge of the city. Lukas fell asleep, only to jerk awake twice more before Micah pulled us into the lot of a tiny Quality Inn. He turned back and looked us over. “I need to go in and get us a room.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Don’t leave the car.”
“Hadn’t planned to,” I promised. Was he afraid I’d disappear again? I had plenty of healthy fears about that happening to him too. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Our eyes met and he nodded, then got out to make his way to the front desk. At least I could see him through the big glass entry door. I ran my hands through Lukas’s hair. He was a mess. Thinner than I’d last seen him, scruffy, and unkempt. I’d have to call Mom and Dad too. Would it be the circus Micah’s disappearance had been? I hoped no one treated Micah or Lukas as badly as they’d treated Tim.
I sighed and closed my eyes, half falling asleep because the opening of the trunk woke me. I glanced back to find Micah pulling bags out of the back. He rolled them around the side of the car and tugged my door open. “Can you get him to come inside? We’re around the corner from the desk.”
“Sure,” I said, and dragged Lukas, half-conscious out of the car and into the hotel. I was barely upright myself, though having eaten a couple times I didn’t feel quite so dizzy. At least the room was close. We leaned on each other and while he didn’t open his eyes, he moved along with me.
The room was uninspiring. Two giant beds, a good-sized bathroom, and the standard dresser/tv set up. We were on the first floor, and the large window overlooked the outdoor pool, but Micah shut the drapes and closed out the night sky and pool lights. I helped Lukas to the bed furthest from the window, yanked off his shoes and pulled the blanket over him.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he grumbled at me.
“I’m not,” I promised him. “Gonna shower, I think.”
He glared at me a moment, like he was searching for a lie. Finally he nodded and closed his eyes. He was out in seconds.
Micah locked the door, then dug through one of the bags to hand me a small dragon-shaped bag.
“This is cool,” I said. “Did you make this?”
“Of course.”
When I unzipped it, I found my toothbrush, paste, my electric razor set, a comb, and a small tube of the hair stuff Micah had given me.
“Are you hungry?” Micah asked. “I can order food while you shower.”
A shower sounded like heaven right that minute. And pizza. I was pretty sure I could eat a whole damn pizza. “Starving. Any chance a pizza place is close?” I remembered then that he couldn’t eat cheese. “Or maybe something you can eat too?”
“Pizza is fine,” Micah said. “What do you want on it?”
“Pepperoni and pineapple. Yes, I know I’m a heathen, but sweet and salty does it for me.”
Micah’s lips curved up into a smile and he opened his phone to order pizza. I found my way into the bathroom to clean up. It was the first time I had really looked at myself. I looked like a homeless man. Grizzled, emaciated with bags under my eyes, and so much gnarled, dark hair that I didn’t know how Lukas or Micah had recognized me at all.
Trimming the beard came first because it itched and added weight to my face that I wasn’t used to. The initial cut wasn’t very neat and I left a huge ball of hair in the trash. The razor took care of the rest, trimming it to a respectable length. I even clipped on the extra side bits to remove some of the overgrowth on my sideburns. A barber could clean it up better, but at least I looked half like me. I couldn’t do much about the ratted mess of my hair. So I stepped into the shower.
The spray of the water hurt, even turning down the pressure or changing the temperature made my skin ache. Too much sensation, I think, like I hadn’t been a real living, breathing person for a while and I’d forgotten how to feel. I had to turn the water off to scrub my hair because it was too much to stand under the spray. After three full lathers and rinses, my hair finally washed clean. I hoped there were no bugs or anything.
Fuck. And now that was in my head. I washed it again.
After a while the door opened a crack and Micah poked his head in. “Pizza is here.”
“Okay,” I said. There was a towel wrapped around my waist, and I leaned over the counter trying to see my scalp and make sure I wasn’t infested with lice or some shit. It was one of my few phobias after an elementary school incident had shut down the entire school for a week.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I sucked in a deep breath, wondering if it was worth sharing this fear and making myself sound crazy. “I have a phobia,” I admitted. “Of lice.” I swallowed as uttering the word made me feel like squirming. “I don’t know where I’ve been…”
He blinked at me a moment before stepping into the bathroom and closing the door. He shut the lid on the toilet and motioned for me to sit. I felt heat burn my cheeks with embarrassment. What if he found something? I’d be a thousand times more horrified, even though I couldn’t remember where I had been for the last month. Those couple of months I’d lived on the streets I’d worked hard to remain bug free, using homeless shelters as much as I could and staying away from others.
Instead of searching my head, he combed my hair, and even used my beard trimming scissors to cut away some of the length. He massaged some of the hair stuff into my scalp, taking his time to run over every inch of it without the fear or hesitation I had.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You’re sure?” I gripped the towel, heart racing.
“Yes. Your hair and scalp is pretty dry, but I have a good hair mask that can help. It’s at home.” Instead of leaving my hair down to dry, he tugged on it, combing it away from my face, and wove it into a French braid, leaving the tiny tail of it on my neck. “This should keep it from tangling too much.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Sorry…”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We all have somet
hing.”
“Part of the training, right?” I asked feeling like the question put out there a thousand others. Was I still worth training? Was he still interested? Had my time away changed us enough that it wasn’t even worth the effort?
“Yes. Part of the training.”
“What’s your something?” I asked as he pulled a little bottle of moisturizer out of his own little toiletry bag and began applying it to my face.
“Birds,” Micah said.
“Birds?”
“I hate birds. They have dark eyes that seem to stare right through you. When I was a kid and we lived in this little town in China while my parents taught, they had billions of pigeons. Or maybe it wasn’t that many, but it felt like that many. Everywhere you went there was a sea of them. They’d do that funny noise and even peck at us for food.” He shivered. “I hate birds.” He applied something to my lips three times, each time I felt like my skin sucked it up. Finally he leaned forward and kissed me lightly. “Let’s eat, then get some sleep.”
The pizza tasted odd, almost unfamiliar though it was a national brand. I ate half of it while Micah ate a salad, then I got up to brush my teeth again. I’d already done it a half dozen times and still felt like my mouth was unclean, or even numb, though it looked fine when I glared at it in the mirror.
Micah made me drink another bottle of water, insisting my taste buds were off due to dehydration. I was willing to take that as an explanation over any of the thousand other scenarios that filled my head.
Finally I pushed everything aside, leaving nothing on but a pair of boxers which hung off my hips, and I crawled into bed beside Lukas. Micah didn’t bother with the other bed, he curled on the other side of me, sandwiching me between the two of them and wrapping himself around me. That was all I needed to drift off to sleep.
Chapter 28
I woke slowly the next morning, from a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep. Micah was still curled up in my arms, but Lukas was no longer behind me. Fear churned in my gut for a moment until he emerged from the bathroom looking freshly showered.
