Wake Up

by Brooke De Lira

  Luke snapped his fingers, bringing my eyes back to his steady gaze. “Hey, you gotta focus right now. Your truck is still down by the beach. Run down there and bring it up while I make a tourniquet.”

  He was already tugging off his new sweatshirt and his white tee, revealing every flexed muscle of his chest and abdomen. My gaze darted between him and Jimmy’s bleeding limb. If Jimmy died, all of Aiden’s hopes, dreams, and secrets, the ones he’d never told me, would die with him. Suddenly, ash began falling like snow over the three of us. The smell of charred paper rose alongside the eerie scene, sending a shiver down my spine. Somewhere in the distance, someone hummed that sad song.

  “Mads!”

  My attention snapped back. The ashes disappeared. The humming stopped. There was just Jimmy bleeding on the ground, Luke wrapping his shirt just above the knee.

  “Right.” I ran down the gravel road toward the beach, adding just a few notches more speed than might be natural in the real world. When I reached the shore, I saw the pickup, the keys still in the ignition. I hopped in and fired it up. The dream catcher flailed wildly as I used my fresh-out-of-driver’s-ed maneuvering skills to roar up the road.

  I pulled up beside them, and Luke dragged Jimmy, wailing in pain, into the back seat.

  “Keep that leg elevated, kid. And keep pressure on it.”

  Jimmy whimpered, his hands shaking as he held his own blood-soaked jacket to the wound.

  Luke hopped into the driver’s seat wearing nothing but a hoodie over his bare skin, and I took the passenger’s side. He floored the gas, sending all our necks’ whipping back like a rickety carnival ride as we started toward the small hospital just down the interstate.

  Luke shook his head, hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. “He might be a psycho, but no one deserves to go like this. He’s gotta make it.”

  I glanced back to see Jimmy finally calming down. His breathing was constricted yet steady, his eyes closed.

  “It wasn’t him, Luke.”

  His face swung to face me. “What do you mean? After everything we saw...”

  I pressed my palms to my forehead, suddenly feeling dizzy. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t him.”

  Luke sighed, leaning back in his seat. I watched him for a minute or two, noticing the way his leg fidgeted, how his jawbone poked out as if he was clenching his teeth. His whole predicament came rushing back.

  “You’re afraid the cops will find you if you drop Jimmy off at the hospital, aren’t you? You should never have come back to help me. Let me take Jimmy. I can-”

  “Why would you care about all that if I’m not real?” he mumbled, eyes still fixed on the road.

  I was ready to protest, maybe argue some sense into his thick head, but my vision blacked out. My world tumbled until I didn’t know what was up or down. I blinked, my mind returning to the pickup, but the world was still spinning around me. No amount of focus could pull me out of this vertigo. I had never felt so sick in a dream. Never.

  No. C.

  “Drop me off, now!” I blurted, my whole body suddenly trembling with cold, muscles so weak I could barely turn my head.

  Seeing my condition, Luke steered to the shoulder of the road and slammed on the brakes.

  “Mads, what’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  I grabbed his hand, my limp fingers barely obeying me. “Don’t worry about me. I know what I have to do. I need to leave and find C.”

  “You mean your friend? No, I won’t let you go like this.”

  “Trust me, Luke. I need to do this. And you need to get Jimmy to the hospital. Please, save his life.”

  He hesitated for a long moment, finally nodding his consent. “Just be careful,” he murmured.

  I stumbled out the door, waving for him to get going. Once the truck was out of sight, I took a deep breath, focusing my aura in my chest. When my vertigo passed and the strength returned to my muscles, I sprinted as fast as my legs would take me.

  I’m coming, C.

  Don’t fade on me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  My hand hovered over the doorknob of the lake cabin. Damn, I’d never been so afraid to open it. Sucking in a breath of courage, I turned the knob and swung the door open. A few feral cats lazed around the living room, but C was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the room. Just as I was about to check the bedroom, a small voice broke the silence.

  “Madelyn, is that you?”

  “C, where are you?”

  I treaded across creaking floorboards, cautiously, searching for the source of the voice. When my eyes fell on the armchair, I cupped my hands over my mouth, a feeling of despair creeping over me. There was barely anything left of C. A few patches of her torso, one leg, her mouth and one eye. A single remaining hand reached toward me, and her lips curled into a smile.

  “I take it you didn’t find the truth yet?”

  Tears rose to my eyes. “No, but we still have time. Look at you, still kicking, still hanging on.”

  She sighed, a single tear falling from her eye and disappearing into nothing.

  “We lost, Maddie.”

  “What? No, it’s not even sunset!”

  She shook her head. “We’re done. I’ll be gone soon, and what will happen to you after that, I can’t say. Maybe you can live on in this world. Or maybe you’ll fade, too. But at least we tried.”

  “No,” I spoke in my firmest voice despite the tightness in my throat. “I’m not giving up yet. We have at least two hours, don’t we? We’ll go back to the vacation house, check out Aiden’s room again. We probably missed something.”

  C must have heard the desperation in my voice, but she didn’t argue. Just smiled and dipped her head. She knew it was a lost cause, and deep down, I did too. But I had to do something. For Aiden. For my family. For Alice.

  “Wait here.” I ran out the back door to the shoreline, focusing to materialize a fishing boat. Nothing. Just gray waves under a sky that grew darker by the minute. I focused again, centering myself despite my wild emotions. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, there was the aluminum fishing boat, its motor already revving to go.

  I darted back into the house, gently picking up C from the chair, supporting her from her back and the crook of her knees. Even though she was barely visible, I could still feel her body, though it was lighter than it ought to be.

  “Just hold on. Now that we’ve eliminated Jimmy as a suspect, I’m sure we can’t be far from the truth.”

  A deep breath escaped her lips as I carried her to the boat and gently laid her on its metal floor. A wave splashed over us, drenching my body as I gripped the steering rod and began cruising toward the base of the cliff. Choppy waves jostled my brain against my skull, bringing back that dizziness and a killer headache. But I ignored it, keeping my eyes on the towering rock that loomed in my vision as we approached. That rock that held the sweetest memories. As well as the darkest.

  I killed the motor when we approached the rocky shoreline. Picking C up gently, I hopped onto the nearest boulder. I looked up, fixing the top of the cliff in my vision, and my feet left the ground.

  “I would scold you for levitating, but I suppose none of our rules matter much anymore.”

  “Stop talking like you’ve I already given up,” I whispered.

  She sighed lightly as I stepped onto the top of the cliff.

  “Maybe I have.”

  I carried her until I reached the doorway of our vacation house, glancing down at the patches of her that I could still see. They were shrinking. Neither of use spoke until I stepped through the doorway and laid her onto the couch. An Intruder girl stared through one window, her face worried.

  “Scram,” I yelled with no restraint. The girl pouted and hung her head, turning away.

  “Maddie,” C murmured from the couch. “I think I finally understand the Intruders.”

  I knelt beside the couch, looking into the eye that seemed to float in thin air. “Well, at least that’s something. Tell me. What are t
hey?”

  She closed her eye. “It never made sense, that an outside force could enter your dreams, impervious to your every attempt to stop their actions or chase them away. But at the same time, you did not consciously create them. I believe, then, that they are a projection of your own subconscious.”

  Her floating hand wrapped around mine, her eye shooting open. “They were never Intruders. They belong to you. They are you.”

  A fit of coughs cut her words short, sending a shiver of terror across my skin.

  “Don’t worry. I’m headed to Aiden’s room right now. There must be something that can lead us to the truth before-”

  A sharp whack, followed by a bone-throbbing pain in the back of my skull. I fell to my hands and knees.

  My world went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Luke

  Luke stumbled through the doorway, breathless. He carried Jimmy across the emergency room as blood dripped onto the sterile tile floors. Parents with crying children and older folks looked up, worry and curiosity coloring their faces as they witnessed the scene. Something right out of a gritty hospital drama.

  “We need help,” Luke shouted, adjusting Jimmy’s arm over his shoulders as the teen’s head began to loll. He was losing consciousness. A pair of men in white uniforms rushed to Luke’s side, each taking one of Jimmy’s arms while a tough-looking woman approached with a stretcher. Before Luke could catch his breath, one man was pushing Jimmy through the swinging doors, the rattle of the wheels and Jimmy’s weak moans fading down the hall.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and fill out the forms over at the counter, okay?” Luke blinked at the man in white. The same white that those terrifying monsters wore. But this was just a man. A human. Luke nodded, turning his attention to the reception counter.

  Straightening out his scrambled thoughts, he jogged to the counter, zipping up his hoodie over his bare chest. He inhaled the smell of hospital chemicals and various types of cheap perfume as he caught his breath at the counter. He forced a grin at the gray-haired woman who stared at him over her bifocals.

  “I’ll need you to fill this out,” she mumbled in a monotonous voice, handing Luke a clipboard and pen before taking a sip of her bottled root beer through a straw. Luke tried to calm his hands that still trembled with nerves, filling out all the fields with information he knew about Jimmy, guessing the rest. His pen paused over the fine-printed form when he came to the bottom of the page, which asked for information about himself.

  “And I’ll need some I.D.” The woman added. Luke glanced up, trying to hide his panic. He pretended to scribble, masking his moment of indecision. If the police did find out he was here, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. He’d be long gone before they tracked him down. Feeling confident, he wrote his full name and dug his wallet out of his jeans to hand to the woman.

  She grabbed it, glancing between the I.D., the form, and the teen who stood before her at least three times before finally settling her eyes on him. “Luke Barnaby?”

  He nodded, smiling with a shrug. “That’s me.”

  She sighed, pursing her lips over the straw again and sucking up the last of her soda with a gurgling sound. She handed his I.D. back.

  “Please take a seat, sir. Someone will call you in shortly to ask you some questions about what happened to…” She checked the form. “Jimmy Olson.”

  He nodded vigorously, finding a seat where he could watch both the swinging doors to the emergency ward and the reception counter. He noticed another pair of swinging doors that led to the rest of the hospital. When his eyes fell on the counter again, hot adrenaline pulsed through his veins, sweat gathering on his skin.

  The woman was on the phone, head down as she spoke in low tones. Her eyes fixed on him for a split second. He took a sharp breath. That was it. He had to get out of there.

  He waited for the woman to spin around in her chair to grab a file. Then, he sped to that pair of swinging doors that led to the main hospital. He didn’t look back, walking just fast enough not to look suspicious. What was he thinking? He was black. In Shy Harbor. He was suspicious by default.

  A pair of security guards watched him as he passed, and he struggled to keep his pace calm and casual.

  Don’t look at them. Don’t look at them.

  Suddenly, he felt like Harrison Ford in that old movie The Fugitive. Except he wasn’t nearly that skilled, or smart. Or lucky.

  Relief washed over him as the exit doors came into view, the sunset light outside appearing almost purple under the approaching storm. Luke wondered if Madelyn was safe. Or if she was still desperately wandering around, searching for that memory, thinking she was living in a dream.

  The thought gave him pause. What if this really was her dream world? Her psychic powers and those weird creatures definitely weren’t natural. Did that mean that he was no more than a spark of a lonely girl’s imagination? A puppet who was convinced he was a real boy?

  Just as his hands touched the cool metal handle of the glass door, something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. He walked over to the empty reception counter and picked it up, looking it over from every angle. His heart beat two knots faster as he slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie and ran out the door.

  Madelyn had to see this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I blinked my eyes open, groaning as a throbbing pain pounded in the back of my skull. I tried to lift one hand to touch my head, but my wrists were tied together behind my back. I pulled, and they didn’t give. Closing my eyes, I tried to wish them away, but the rough ropes still cut around my wrists. I began to panic. That same weakness and vertigo I felt in the pickup had now sunk into my bones.

  When I glanced around to find C, panic turned to dread. The only thing left was her eye. The sound of labored breathing filled the otherwise silent room.

  “C,” I whispered, afraid of alerting my captor I was awake.

  The eye opened. “Oh, Maddie. I’m so sorry.”

  “What are you talking about? Did you see what happened?”

  The eye closed again. “None of it matters anymore. This is the end. We’ve lost.”

  I scanned the room for movement, anything out of the ordinary. All that caught my eye were the Intruders who still stared through the windows.

  “Don’t give up yet, C” I whispered. Maybe this was part of the mystery. Could whoever have knocked me out and tied me up be the same person who killed Aiden? Maybe it was all falling into place.

  “It’s too late, Madelyn my dear.”

  I looked back to C. All hope slipped away as the remaining eye faded into nothingness.

  “Goodbye. I’m sorry we failed. But maybe it was for the best.”

  All time seemed to stop. My blood stopped pumping. The air became still. I blinked.

  “C?”

  No answer.

  Tears rose to my eyes, my lips trembling in dark despair. “C!”

  I sat back on the floor, the world still rolling in my vision. No, I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t. My consciousness didn’t just fade away in front of my eyes, stranding me in this dark world. Alice needed me back. My parents couldn’t lose another child. Sure, both of them had been real asses lately. But right now, I just wanted to see their faces, to hug them and never let go. My true parents, not some made-up replica of them.

  Heavy sobs caught in my throat as tears pooled in my eyes. There was no more being strong, being brave. No more hope. It was over.

  The squeak of the door hinges caught me off guard. I swung my head to see who stepped through the door, the sudden movement sending me falling into vertigo again. When my vision righted itself, confusion flooded my thoughts. I stared to make sure that the little woman, decked out in a long-sleeved black dress, was truly who I thought she was.

  “Ruth?” I wasn’t sure whether to be afraid or happy to see her. What was she doing there? What did any of this have to do with Jimmy’s quiet mother?

  “Speak not, dem
on. I don’t want to hear your curses and lies.” Her voice was deep and hoarse with emotion, her lips fixed in a tight line.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You may have fooled the rest of Shy Harbor, but I saw how you used your demonic powers, in front of our place of worship nonetheless! You may take the form of a teenage girl, reigning evil upon this place, but I know the truth now. To think, I even took you into my home! But I suppose I should have known.”

  She walked forward, standing over me with a kitchen knife gleaming in her hand.

  “You’re a demon, just like your brother.”

  My blood went cold. “It was you,” I whispered, my body paralyzed as I looked into Ruth’s demented eyes.

  “You killed Aiden.”

  She straightened her shoulders, chin held high as she gripped the knife tighter.

  “His damnation was his own doing. Perhaps I did give him a little push, but he was headed to perdition all by himself.”

  “You’re a monster,” I growled, my head throbbing in protest when I stood to face the murderous woman. The woman I once thought to be a fellow believer. How could I have been so wrong?

  “Monster?” Her once-quiet voice trembled with fury. “How dare you? Your brother was the monster. He twisted the mind of my innocent little boy, an upright creature of God, and turned him to sin! No, he deserved worse than death. I will spend the rest of my life trying to save Jimmy, to help him find redemption. But there is no redemption in this universe for people like you and your brother.”

  She brushed back the frizzy locks that had fallen over her flushed face. “But I won’t let you get to anyone else. You shall meet the same fate as your brother. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must finish the preparations God has requested for your punishment.”

  With one last hateful glare, Ruth Olson turned back toward the door and slammed it behind her, the lock turning with a click. I screamed after her, letting all the pent-up anger bubble up from the depths of my lungs. When I finished, I fell to my knees, letting frustrated sobs overtake me.