The Girl Who Sees

by Dima Zales

Un-freaking-believable.

  The emotion magic tries to evoke in spectators is awe. As a magician, I’m sadly limited in how often I can feel this emotion because I know too many secrets. What I just saw, however, opens the constipated gates of my awe, and I feel like I might drown in it.

  Sliding the blindfold back down with trembling fingers, I try to update my world paradigm with this new development as I keep walking. Unless I’m sleeping, I must be on another planet, or maybe in a different universe… or realm, or dimension, or plane, or a parallel world, or whatever. And I’ve gotten here by way of something like Stargate, a wormhole-like magical teleportation artifact.

  Of course, as Ariel drags me deeper, a part of me screams out rational explanations. For example, someone could feasibly create a giant dome and depict the strange sky and clouds on it, like in The Truman Show. Yes, there’s no reason for someone to bother doing that to me, but isn’t that explanation easier to swallow than “another world?” Then again, another world is still not as weird as necromancy. After all, it’s a fact that countless other planets do exist, and wormholes/other universes are covered by some legitimate scientific theories.

  Is this where the Cognizant are from? A place like this? That would explain why the Council didn’t consider themselves human—but it also raises a million follow-up questions. Why do we (it’s so strange to include myself in this) look so human? Could the Cognizant be from a parallel world/universe where evolution—or design—led to beings that look just like humans, but have slight oddities, like the tendency to manifest powers that regular humans believe them to have?

  If I don’t find a way to get some answers soon, my brain will implode from curiosity.

  On a whim, I sneak the hand Ariel is not holding into my pocket and palm my phone.

  As the name implies, “palming” is the magician’s technique of hiding objects, usually cards, in the palm of one’s hand. Being a girl, my hands are small, a disadvantage in this area, which is why I try to make up for it with practice. I often sleep, eat, and commute to work with a card (or coin, or sometimes a phone) palmed using a variety of methods, some of which were invented by me.

  So, for example, I’m now holding a phone in such a way that the back of my hand hides the phone from Ariel’s view, even if she were to turn and look at me.

  It’s now 12:41 p.m. That means we’ve been walking through these secret tunnels for a little less than eighteen minutes. Unsurprisingly, the phone has no reception, and the GPS doesn’t work when I bring up the Maps app. The strangest part is how the compass feature behaves—the digital arrow spins around nonstop, like a spin top inside of a dream in Inception. Phones don’t have a traditional compass (a tiny magnet spinning on its axis) built into them, but they do have a magnetometer which allows for the same functionality.

  Is something in this world messing with the magnetometer, or is the spinning somehow due to the lack of a GPS signal?

  Slipping the phone back into my pocket, I follow Ariel for about ten more minutes until I finally see our destination—a blue gate. Aside from its color, it looks just like the gate we walked through to get here. Ariel’s pace speeds up as we approach it, and I jog to keep up with her despite the violent complaints of my leg muscles.

  Just like before, Ariel disappears into the gate, her outstretched arm hovering in the air for a few seconds before it pulls me in.

  This time, I follow eagerly, wondering if I missed any odd sensations when crossing that first boundary.

  The feeling of crossing is very brief and subtle, but—and this could be my already overstimulated imagination—I think I do feel something: a momentary weightlessness and a hint of an ozone smell. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be taken apart, molecule by molecule, in one spot, and instantly reassembled at the destination (assuming that’s how these gates work).

  A crazy thought occurs to me. If some molecules got lost in transit, would I look thinner?

  We end up in a room with a roof, where the ceiling reflection looks identical to the one I saw at JFK. I catch glimpses of the warp gates here too.

  When we exit the gate room, we end up in a hallway with a floor that also looks similar to the one at JFK.

  Did we go back?

  No.

  That would be pointless.

  There has to be a better explanation.

  I palm my phone again and sneak a peek at it.

  The time is 12:43 p.m.—which doesn’t make sense. We walked for over ten minutes in that alien place and for about three more minutes after we came out. Could those missing ten minutes have been a fluke due to the lack of cell reception? Or—a more intriguing possibility—does the time spent in that purple sky place not count here on Earth? Maybe time passes much more slowly there?

  Frustrated by the lack of answers yet again, I launch the Maps app and see that the GPS signal is back.

  According to the phone, we’re still in an airport, but not JFK. Instead, we’re at LAS—the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. As in, twenty-five hundred miles away—a distance we seemingly walked, even though, according to my phone, such a stroll would normally take over a month (or thirty-seven hours driving, or five hours on a plane).

  Obviously, the gate we just used can save its users—the Cognizant—a ton of time.

  Hiding my phone again, I follow Ariel out of the LAS version of the labyrinths into the terminal.

  The crowds here are not as bad as at JFK, but they’re large enough for me to wonder why no one is confronting the girl leading her blindfolded friend around like a walking dog. I guess they all assume it’s something kinky and take the whole “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” motto very seriously.

  As we make our way out of the terminal, Ariel takes out a phone from her pocket and does something with it.

  A car is waiting for us when we exit, so I assume Ariel summoned a ride.

  She guides me inside, and we start driving. To my disappointment, Ariel doesn’t discuss the destination with the driver or talk to him at all; he just follows the directions in the app.

  Since my body is blocking my right pocket from Ariel’s view, I sneak out my phone yet again. The battery is running low, which makes sense as it only charged for forty minutes in the cab. Oh well, I might as well squeeze all the remaining usefulness out of it by keeping an eye on our progress.

  It doesn’t take long before I see that we’re headed to the famous Las Vegas Strip.

  Given that Ariel didn’t say it was okay to speak again, I do not utter a word until the car stops.

  According to the GPS, we are next to the Luxor Hotel—a place I’ve dreamed of visiting for years because this is where Criss Angel regularly performs his MindFreak show.

  A half-formed thought flits through my mind. Could I be taking part in the most elaborate prank ever created? Did Ariel somehow get in touch with Criss Angel and tell him how much of a fangirl I am? Maybe he offered to involve me in a Punk’d-type TV show with a huge budget. Derren Brown, a British mentalist, once convinced a guy that a meteor had hit the Earth, resulting in a zombie apocalypse. Could something like that be behind all of the crazy things I’ve gone through?

  If that were the case, this would be a great place to finally reveal it all.

  The problem with this idea is the nagging question of “how.” The only way what I’ve seen is even remotely plausible is via hallucinogens as strong as the ones the Scarecrow weaponized in Batman Begins. Come to think of it, it is Ariel’s favorite film, so it could be the inspiration for all of this. But how can someone direct hallucinations to cause dreams that come true? This theory completely breaks down upon examination, no matter how much I wish I were being fooled (especially by Criss Angel).

  We leave the car and walk into the hotel. My resentment of my blindfold grows.

  I’d like to get a real look at the Egyptian theme of this place.

  The Luxor is such a huge place I soon lose track of where Ariel is taking me, and my phone finally
dies, so it can’t help me.

  Eventually, we stop by some door, and Ariel clears her throat. “It’s okay to take the scarf off now.”

  I rip the thing off my face and pretend that my eyes need to adjust to the bright light.

  Posters everywhere inform me that we’re next to Luxor’s less-interesting-for-me attraction, Bodies… The Exhibition. A big sign on the door in front of us states that the show is closed for renovations and will reopen tomorrow.

  Ariel once took me to a version of this exhibit at the South Street Seaport. I was both impressed and grossed out. In a nutshell, the creators of Bodies took a bunch of dead people, skinned them (in some cases, taking the meat off the bones), and arranged them in different poses. Sometimes, they’d drive the gruesomeness home by exposing a cadaver’s brain; other times, they’d have the muscle-encased skeleton hold its own skin or exposed organs, or they’d just put the tree-like circulatory system on display. If Hannibal Lecter, Leatherface, Freddy, and Jason all decided to get artsy, their masterpieces would fit right in with those exhibits. What made that trip worse was that Ariel—who, as part of her studies, works with cadavers—kept adding juicy details, such as how magnificent the vivisection work was.

  “She’s there.” Ariel tugs at the door, but it appears to be locked. “Are you sure you want to be part of this?”

  I finally connect all the dots.

  Beatrice, a necromancer, would naturally be in a morbid place like The Bodies exhibit. She’s probably doing the renovations in question—and having a blast playing with all the dehydrated, mutilated corpses.

  “Isn’t this a dangerous place to deal with someone like her?” I examine the lock on the door and twist the handle a couple of times.

  Ariel doesn’t reply but pulls out a gun, which is an answer in itself. She must’ve correctly figured that Beatrice was going to send more corpses my way—and that I wouldn’t survive the next wave. Somehow, she learned where Beatrice is, assessed the risks, and decided to arm herself to the teeth.

  Sometimes I think Ariel follows only one motto in life: “What would Batman do?”

  “I guess she always hangs out around corpses anyway,” I say, not sure who I’m trying to psych up. “And besides, she can make corpses at any time by killing innocent people. Oh, and I think the older the corpses, the worse—”

  “I really think you should stay here,” Ariel says tersely.

  “No.” I take out my lock picks and unlock the door in front of us. “Let’s go.”

  Sighing deeply, Ariel takes the lead and walks into the exhibition.

  The people (assuming it was people) behind the Luxor exhibit clearly decided to take the morbidness of the New York expo and ratchet it up a few grisly notches.

  There’s a skeletal corpse on a bicycle, and another riding a skinless horse. In general, there are a lot of sports depicted—because everyone knows the dead love their sports. There’s a cadaver throwing a baseball, one holding a basketball, one playing football, one playing chess (hey, it’s a mind sport), one throwing a spear, and even one with a golf club. Other corpses are playing cards (if the game is poker, that’s another mind sport), and one with a hollow skull is conducting a symphony with a baton. And if that weren’t enough to make you ponder your mortality, there’s also a pregnant woman’s corpse, with her insides and a pale dead fetus exposed.

  We find Beatrice next to a cadaver who’s been sawed into two halves that are high-fiving each other. She’s behind the two halves, working on one of them with some kind of metal instrument.

  “I’m sorry,” she says when she sees Ariel. “We’re closed for maintenance today. Please come back tomorrow.” Then her gaze falls on me, and her eyes widen before narrowing into slits.

  Ariel raises her gun and switches off the safety. “We need to talk, Beatrice.”

  The necromancer raises her hands, and the tool she was holding clanks against the floor.

  “As you can see, I found you,” Ariel says, and though not directed at me, the malice in her voice gives me the chills. “If you don’t leave my friend alone, I will find you again—or I’ll make sure others find you.”

  “I understand,” Beatrice says, her voice shaking. “I don’t want any—”

  Before she finishes speaking, electricity arcs from her hands into the two halves of the cadaver in front of her.

  They come alive instantly, their high-fiving hands gripping each other as the two halves hop forward on one leg, as though to become one whole corpse.

  Ariel fires, but the corpse reaches Beatrice in time, shielding her from the bullet.

  In horror, I watch as more necromancer lightning arcs through the exhibit.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ariel jumps to the side so fast my eyes have a hard time following her.

  She aims the gun again.

  “Behind you!” I yell and leap to help.

  I’m too late.

  A golf club crashes into Ariel’s back, and her shot goes into the ceiling.

  Spinning faster than humanly possible, Ariel pistol-whips the golf-club-wielding cadaver. His head flies across the room like a hollowed-out melon and lands with a crunchy splat.

  I spot a flicker of movement, but before I can cry out, a baseball slams into Ariel’s temple.

  She staggers but doesn’t fall. In the meantime, more cadavers—probably the ones playing cards earlier—surround us, and Beatrice dashes away.

  “Go after her.” Ariel takes out her knife and half slices, half punches off two cadaver heads. “I’ll take care of them.”

  I sprint after the necromancer, but a corpse crosses my way.

  It’s the orchestra conductor holding a baton, with ninety percent of his skull bones cut out, leaving his head looking like two suitcase handles crisscrossed.

  I skid to a halt.

  The conductor throws the sharp wooden stick at my face in a gesture reminiscent of demanding a crescendo from the percussion section of some infernal orchestra.

  I duck.

  Instead of plunging into my right eye, the wooden stick grazes my forehead, leaving a splinter embedded inside.

  The pain fuels my rage. I close the distance between us, grab at the conductor’s hollowed-out skull, and yank.

  The sharp bone cuts my hands, but the conductor’s spine severs, leaving his head in my hands.

  These corpses are even more fragile than the guys who attacked me in the hallway—hopefully, that gives us a chance.

  Tossing the head at the nearest approaching corpse, I resume my sprint after Beatrice.

  A gunshot rings out from Ariel’s location, but I don’t have time to look back.

  In a glass display to my right, I see a shadow approach. I dodge it, and a football-carrying corpse crashes into the display.

  If there had been a girls’ football team in school, I could’ve been a running back.

  As if to curb my athletic ambitions, a football slams into my back.

  My shoulder blades scream in pain. Fine. Maybe football is not for me, after all.

  Emboldened by the ever-shrinking distance between me and Beatrice, I grit my teeth until my jaws ache and keep running.

  Spotting a movement to my right, I halt.

  A bicycling corpse whooshes by where my body would’ve been had I not stopped.

  I kick the bike’s back tire, causing both the corpse and the vehicle to tumble into a naked circulatory system under a glass display. Shards of glass, bits of capillaries, and pieces of bone crunch under my boots as I resume my pursuit.

  Ariel grunts somewhere closer to me, then fires another round of bullets at whoever she’s fighting. All this is followed by thuds of cadaver bits hitting the floor.

  Beatrice glances over her shoulder, her face pale and sweaty.

  When she spots me so close, her gaze shifts to the pregnant woman cadaver, and two arcs of energy spring from her fingers.

  The exhibit animates and stands between me and Beatrice—who resumes her escape.


  Deciding it will be faster to run around this obstacle than to fight it, I make a wide circle around the preggers corpse, keeping her firmly in my peripheral vision.

  The corpse reaches into her exposed innards and pulls out a writhing cadaver-fetus from her womb. The underdeveloped zombie-kid hangs by a pale umbilical cord, and the mom zombie starts to twirl it, like a cowgirl from hell.

  My stomach churns at the sight of this abomination. Speeding up, I half expect the fetus to yo-yo back at its dead mother, but the cord must’ve been cut because the projectile takes flight, spinning through the air like a macabre bolas.

  I stop to try to dodge it, but the gruesome lasso gets me where I stand. The umbilical cord wraps around my throat, and the fetus smacks into the side of my head. Before the full horror of it can penetrate my brain, I feel tiny fingers and toes firmly gripping my hair.

  Squealing like Felix at a butcher shop, I grab the little offender by the torso and yank it away with all my might.

  I get it off, but sacrifice some hair—a totally worthwhile exchange.

  The umbilical cord around my neck seems to turn into an anaconda as it tries to strangle me, so I violently rip it off of me, leaving burn marks on my already-bruised neck.

  As soon as I’m free, the overdose of adrenaline helps me bolt away from the crawling little horror and its snake-like appendage.

  A single thought circles though my mind, over and over. I’m not supposed to die here. Otherwise, how could I have seen that vision of myself at the Council meeting?

  I’m meant to die after that meeting, not before.

  Unfortunately, this mantra does little to calm the insane beating of my heart, probably because I don’t entirely believe it. What if seeing that future created a type of butterfly effect that leads to me dying here? I did change the future on the TV stage, so maybe I’ve done it again. If I hadn’t told Ariel about my vision to convince her to bring me along, I wouldn’t be here—and now that I am, all bets are off.

  Putting those thoughts out of my mind before they become a self-fulfilling prophecy by getting me killed, I sprint until I see Beatrice again.