by Gareth Otton
Sensing the mood, Hawk growled, borrowing Growler’s trick of slipping a little Dream into the noise.
“You better tell him to behave little girl, or my men will shoot,” Harry said even as another of his guys slipped in behind him. “And don’t try running. If either of you so much as twitch, we’re taking the shot. From this close, what are the odds you can escape into Dream before the bullet hits him.”
Fear seized Jen, and she said, “Hawk, calm down. Please.”
The growling stopped, though Hawk didn’t look pleased.
“What are you doing to him?” Jen asked, unable to keep the wobble from her voice. “Please don’t hurt him.”
“There won’t be any need to hurt him if he doesn’t try to hurt us,” Penelope said. “We’re just going to restrain him while we have a chat.”
Jen was watching Harry and didn’t trust his grin. She was terrified for her dog. Strangely, when Harry lowered his gun, she grew even more apprehensive, especially when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dog collar.
Hawk backed away as Harry approached, looking every bit as scared as she felt. His panicked eyes darted from Harry, to the men behind him, and then to Jen. He let out a high-pitched whine that broke Jen’s heart, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Run Hawk,” she shouted, but for the first time he didn’t obey.
He took one look at the men approaching, or more specifically their guns, and then he looked at her, and suddenly he sat down and lowered his head in defeat.
Harry moved like a striking cobra, wrapping the collar around the dog’s neck and buckling it in place. On instinct, Jen dived off the bed, lunging for Harry and her dog. In her panic she forgot that there were men with guns present, she only cared about getting that collar off Hawk’s neck.
However, she barley made it a step before there was a muscular arm around her waist that lifted her from the floor. She screamed as she tried to fight and was about to resort to Dream when suddenly she noticed there was a gun in Harry’s hand again, and this time it was pointed at her dog’s head.
“Do it,” he sneered. “Give me a reason to blow his head off.”
“Mr Phillips,” Penelope Banbridge snapped. “That’s enough. We’re not trying to scare the poor girl.”
“That’s no girl,” he sneered. “At least not until she’s collared like this thing,” he said, using the muzzle of the gun to poke Hawk in the head. Jen screamed again in protest and once more Penelope shouted for Harry to stop.
Hawk, not liking bullies no matter what weaponry they had, lifted his head and growled… only suddenly that growl turned into a yelp as a bright light flared to life on the front of his collar and smoke plumed from his neck. The smell of burnt hair filled the room as Hawk whimpered and Jen looked on in horror as she recognised a small metal dreamcatcher cooling on her dog’s collar. It wasn’t hanging from it like a dog tag, but was flush against his fur, embedded into the collar so that as it heated up, it would burn her dog.
Jen understood what that meant. They had finally discovered a way to keep a dreamwalking dog from using his powers.
She screamed and renewed her fight, reaching for Dream herself, ready to defend her dog. But her ability to touch Dream vanished. Her legs stopped moving and were she not hanging from the arms of one of Harry’s men, she would have slumped to the floor.
“What did you do?” she cried as she looked at her wrist, horrified to see a metal bracelet. Harry grabbed her hand to hold her in place and though she tried to fight him, there was nothing she could do against his strength. She tried to reach for Dream, but there was a barrier between her and the door in her mind. More than this, the bracelet on her wrist became burning hot, and she yelped in pain.
“Oh my God,” Jean gasped. Jen glanced over to see her foster mother with her hands covering her mouth and her wide eyes filled with tears. Meeting Jen’s gaze, she said, “I never wanted this. But you didn’t leave us any choice.”
“No more sneaking out now, little girl,” Harry whispered as he slipped a key into the lock on the bracelet on Jen’s wrist. “You’ll burn your hand off long before you overheat that dreamcatcher. You’re not going anywhere.”
The sick pleasure that dripped from his voice made Jen want to scream and upset Penelope as well.
“Could you please act like a professional, Mr Phillips? All you’re here for is to secure the girl. I will not stand by and let you taunt her.”
Harry sneered and stepped away, tossing the key up in the air and catching it again, never taking his eyes off Jen. Slowly that sneer turned into a smile and he said, “This might be one of the best days of my life. I can’t wait to do the same thing to your old man. I wonder how big he’ll be then.” Laughing, he said, “I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. I can’t wait to hear him scream.”
The words triggered a switch in Jen’s mind, and suddenly it was too much. Her anger reached a boiling point and she screamed. Blazing bright light filled the room as she fought against the dreamcatcher on her arm, using her anger to block the pain so she could get to Dream and wipe the smug smile from Harry’s face. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t break through that barrier and even her anger couldn’t keep the pain out.
The red in her vision faded, the energy flowing through her ebbed, and she could feel the agony of the burn on her left wrist. The stink of roasted flesh filled the air and this time when she screamed it was in agony as the metal grew so hot it was melting her skin.
“For the love of god, Jen. Stop. Please. You’re hurting yourself.”
Jen ignored the voice of her foster mother and pressed the bracelet against the arm of the man holding her. He screamed as the metal touched his skin and dropped her to the ground. She tried to catch herself, then cried out again as she subconsciously reached for Dream to animate her legs. Not only did the bracelet flair to life again, but she collapsed to the floor in a heap.
Unable to hold back her tears, she crawled as best as she could without her legs towards her dog, who whimpered at the sight of her, dropping onto his stomach and crawling forward so she could reach him quicker. As soon as he was in reach, she wrapped her arms around his big neck and buried her face in his fur.
“Why didn’t you run?” she gasped between sobs, but of course received no answer. Hawk just whimpered as Jen clung to him, trying her best to ignore the agony in her wrist but failing miserably. The pain was a constant throb and the longer it lasted the more it hurt.
“You arsehole. She’s a little girl. What’s wrong with you?”
It was Jean again, sounding as furious as Jen had ever heard. Jen didn’t look up though. She didn’t care. Her whole world was pain, and it was so overwhelming that she didn’t even notice when firm hands reached under her arms to separate her from Hawk. Jen hung on as best she could but it was a losing battle and soon she was pulled into the arms of Jean who tried to hug her close.
“Get off me,” Jen screamed, trying to fight her way free, but again it was no good.
“Calm down. We need to get you to the hospital. We need to get your hand seen to.”
“I said get off me,” Jen screamed again, continuing to thrash and fight but making no more progress than before.
“I’m so sorry. I never wanted this,” Jean all but whispered. “You didn’t leave me any choice.”
She repeated that she was sorry over and over, but Jen wasn’t listening. She was weeping in pain, frustration and terror as she was dragged from the house and into the car. She only looked up when she heard a high-pitched puppy bark and saw that her dog was being held back at the house. Bright light flared from his neck where the dreamcatcher was housed, and again Hawk yelped in agony and fell back.
“Why didn’t you run?” Jen whimpered.
But again she got no answer as she was bundled into the car that pulled away as it headed to the hospital.
20
Tuesday, 29th November 2016
18:00
“What is this?”
Dr Burman asked, sounding angrier than when he caught Tad cheating on the golf course.
“It’s a trinket to stop Jen running away,” Jean explained, her voice shaking. Even to Jen it was obvious the woman didn’t believe what she was saying. She knew full well it was more than a trinket, but was telling lies so she could live with herself.
“A trinket?” Dr Burman spat. “It looks to me like a shackle sitting amongst horrendously burned skin on a thirteen-year-old girl.”
His voice grew louder with every word and Jean shied further away like she was afraid of what he might do.
“Take it off so I can treat that wound.”
“I can’t do that. The second it comes off, she might dreamwalk away.”
“I don’t care about that,” Dr Burman snapped. “She is a child with an extremely serious burn on her arm. She also has the ability to heal herself. Leaving her like this is… it’s… child abuse. It’s torture.”
Tears filled Jean’s eyes and though she wiped them away, there was no hiding how miserable she was.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she almost sobbed. “She keeps running away and I can’t chase her when she uses those powers of hers. I can’t keep her safe if I’m not with her.”
“You can’t keep her safe when you are with her either if you let injuries like that go untreated.”
“She had it seen to at the Emergency Room,” Jean tried, but Dr Burman wasn’t having any of it.
“I’m amazed they let you leave with her like this. That will become infected if it’s not already, and that says nothing about the agony she must be in. I will not ask again, take it off, now.”
Jen heard the argument, but wasn’t paying attention. She had barely paid attention to anything over the last day, as her life was little more than pain and misery. The throbbing in her arm was impossible to ignore, her inability to convince Hawk to leave her played on her mind, and then there was the guilt she felt for not helping the ghosts. She hadn’t even felt this miserable when she had broken her back.
Jean hesitated only a moment longer, tears running down her face as she agonised with the decision before reaching into the pocket of her jeans and pulling out a small key.
“I was told if I ever needed to do this, then I had to be in constant contact with her,” Jean said. “Otherwise she could dreamwalk away.”
Dr Burman didn’t answer, he just stared at the woman.
Jen yelped in pain as her hand was manipulated, awakening the agony that had settled into a dull throb.
“Easy Jen,” Dr Burman soothed. “You need to be strong just a little longer. This will hurt, but then we’re going to make it better.”
“What will?” Jen asked, looking at the doctor with dazed eyes.
He never had to answer as suddenly Jean was separating the bracelet. Dead and damaged skin was tugged away as the bracelet opened, and Jen screamed.
It was like she was being burned all over again as searing hot pain ripped through her wrist, the kind of overwhelming agony that made it impossible to think. Strong hands held her down as she thrashed and tried to pull away.
“Easy, Jen. It’s over now,” Dr Burman repeated time and again, first nearly shouting so he could be heard over her screams and then lowering his voice to a soothing whisper as she calmed down.
“It hurts,” she said.
“I know, but we’ll fix that, won’t we? You can heal it.”
For the first time in over twenty-four hours, Jen heard something that caused her tired brain to sit up and pay attention. It grasped onto a way to escape the pain, and a spark of determination roared to life within her. Somehow she found new strength to push the overwhelming agony aside, and her eyes swam into focus as she locked her gaze on the doctor.
“I can?” she asked.
“Of course you can. You’ve been practising a long time, remember.”
Jen wiped her eyes and looked down, then wanted to cry all over again as she saw the ruin of her wrist. Nasty yellow blisters surrounded red-raw skin in a perfect band around her wrist. Dimly she was aware of the sound of Jean sobbing in the background, but Jen ignored that as she looked at the mess of her once flawless skin.
“I don’t know how to heal this,” she said, panic speeding up her words and encouraging new tears.
“Yes, you do. It’s not much different to healing a cut. You just have to concentrate.”
“It hurts so bad, I can’t concentrate,” Jen whined.
“Yes you can,” Dr Burman replied, gripping her chin and forcing her to look at him. “Think. We’ve been over this. Control yourself. Think of everything we’ve spoken about before and apply it to what you see here. The quicker you get it done, the quicker the pain stops.”
Again Jen wiped away her tears and then she nodded.
I won’t disappoint him again, she told herself, thinking of the shame of not being able to heal him. I can do this.
Taking a deep breath and doing her best to ignore her agony, she turned her attention to her wrist.
Seeing that horrifying, ruined flesh made it hard to remember what her wrist looked and felt like before. She glanced at her other wrist, using that as a model to build the picture in her mind. First she imagined how it would look until she was happy with what she wanted, then she moved onto the next step, which was infinitely harder; how it should feel.
She tried to block out the pain of her left wrist so she could focus on the sensations of her right. She flexed and turned that wrist, waving her hand to understand how the skin should feel and how the wrist should move. However, her agony was overwhelming, making it harder for her to lock those feelings into the image in her mind.
It would have to be enough, though. She needed the agony to stop.
Tentatively she reached for that door in her mind, scared that she would feel the barrier again and reactivate her pain. However, there was no barrier, there was just the door and Dream.
Excited, she shoved at that door as hard as she could.
Fresh agony exploded through her mind like a thousand needles stabbing into her brain all at once. She flinched so hard she pulled her arm free from Jean’s grip, but she was in no kind of position to take advantage of that.
The pain was so intense that for a moment she couldn’t see or hear, and the pain in her wrist was forgotten. However, as the pain in her head receded, the pain in her wrist returned.
The agony just never ended, and Jen couldn’t hold in her whimpers.
“What have I told you about that?” Dr Burman asked angrily when she had recovered enough to listen. “You can’t risk that, Jen, it’s too dangerous. I know the scans came back fine but—”
“It hurts so bad,” she interrupted. “I had to try something.”
“Then concentrate and do this right.”
“But I can’t picture it. I don’t know how to heal this,” Jen complained.
“Yes you do, that’s what you’ve been learning. Remember the process of healing, the things that are happening beneath the skin on a cellular basis. If you can’t picture this the normal way, fall back on that. Come on Jen, I haven’t had you reading all those books for nothing.”
“I didn’t understand those books,” Jen complained, hating how it sounded like she was whining but unable to help herself. “They’re so hard and—”
“Nonsense, we’ve been over it enough that I know you’ve got the basics. I don’t care if you can remember all the big words, just that you understand the process. And you have proved to me before that you do, so use that knowledge. Think about what happens and help it along.”
Jen bit back an angry retort, knowing it wouldn’t do her any good to argue with him. Instead, she did as asked, focusing on everything she had learnt over the last four months.
If it was a cut, then she knew the first step would be to clot the blood, but that wasn’t an issue here. The next step was opening up blood-flow to the injured area so she could get oxygen and white blood cells to fight infection and start heali
ng the wound.
Her inflamed skin showed this process had already started, so surely all she needed to do was speed that up. But she couldn’t picture what was happening and didn’t know what it would look like to speed that up. If only she could see it up close so she could…
Her thoughts trailed off as an idea struck, and suddenly she was building a new image in her mind. She concentrated on making her eyes focus on something small, then magnified that feeling a thousand times over.
Once again there was pain, but this was not the needles to the brain or the agony in her wrist, it was an incredible tension in her eyes as muscles worked in ways they never had before, pushed to an extreme as her eyes focused down tighter than was humanly possible. However, compared to those other pains, this was nothing and she could deal with this. Better yet, it worked.
Suddenly she wasn’t looking at the shape of her wrist or the blistered skin, but at a new world of cellular shapes as they went about their work. It wasn’t like looking through a microscope as they still looked far away, but she had augmented her vision enough that the definition of those cells had become crystal clear and she could somehow see them from a distance. It was like putting on a pair of reading glasses when looking at small text. What was nothing but a blur a moment earlier swam into focus. It wasn’t bigger, just legible.
The trouble now was that Jen didn’t understand what she was looking at. The millions of cells all looked the same. However, the harder she concentrated, the more she got a feel for what she was seeing. She remembered diagrams in the books she had been reading, and while she couldn’t name them, she saw things she recognised.
The true breakthrough was when she learned to change the focus of her eyes as she moved around. She pulled back a little to find a different area of her skin to focus on, then looked closer at that. Pain was forgotten as she let herself become absorbed by this new skill, and soon she found what she needed.
Her answer arrived when she looked at the cells of her undamaged skin and then went back to the injury itself. She could see a difference between those cells and the ones in the wound, and she knew what she needed to do. She looked at that wounded area and imagined that the cluster of cells there looked just like the healthy cells of the rest of her skin. Suddenly excited, she threw herself into creating yet another new image, and ignored Dr Burman’s warning for caution.
