by Shirley Duke
Omar closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
Uh, Omar?” Omar flinched. He turned to see Jon standing in the kitchen doorway.
“I guess you didn’t hear me knock,” Jon said.
Omar didn’t say anything. He didn’t like the fakecasual sound in Jon’s voice.
“Uh, Omar?” Omar’s silence made Jon awkward. He sat across from Omar at the kitchen table. “I gotta ask you something.”
Omar met Jon’s gaze. For a second, he saw Jon as he’d looked the first time they’d met in middle school. Jon had looked like a fifth-grader at best, with blonde spikes sticking out all over his head. But he made up for it with a big, easy personality. That day, Jon’s face was nothing but a big smile and clear blue eyes.
“Omar, this is tough.”
Omar returned to the present Jon, the one who looked red-eyed and tired.
“I was at school today . . . for help about Natasha, you know?” Jon continued. “There were a lot of kids there.” Jon paused between each sentence. “People at school—the kids I was with—they think that you had something to do with her . . . and the ferry too.
“I mean, I know they were just stories—” Jon looked at Omar questioningly. “I know I got mad at you before when you said you had something to do with Natasha, but now—”
Jon was looking for something. He was waiting for Omar to reassure him, but Omar couldn’t say whatever it was Jon was looking for.
“A lot of people got hurt, Omar.” Jon’s words sounded like an accusation.
“I’ve got to go, Jon,” Omar said at last. He had to get away from here. Away from the TV, from Facebook, away from the scared look in Jon’s eyes.
“Sure, okay,” Jon said in that casual voice again. He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed out without looking back.
Omar waited for Jon to walk out of sight before standing up. Then he grabbed his coat and phone and headed out. He stopped and turned back for his laptop. Omar didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do. Maybe he’d be able to write. Maybe he was too messed up even for that.
He headed blindly toward the front door and clawed at the door’s bolted lock. Finally, the lock clicked and the door swung open, but Omar couldn’t move. A blue cruiser was parked by the curb in front of his house. There was Monroe, in uniform, coming out of the driver’s side. Another officer was already coming up the walkway.
Omar slammed the door shut. He bolted the lock again. Then he ran out the back door, through his yard, to the fence.
“Omar Phillips!” Monroe was running around the side of the house. “I have a warrant to search the premises, Omar!”
Omar reached up and curled his fingers over the top of the wooden fence. He easily pulled himself up and swung lightly over the top.
“Go ahead and run, Omar!” Monroe called. He was standing in Omar’s backyard. “I’m a patient man, Omar.” His voice sounded like he was smiling. “A patient man with a mission. I’ll be right here waiting for you when you come back.”
Omar headed toward the woods. Instinctively, he walked in the direction of a clearing several miles in. Sunlight streamed through the branches overhead and fell in mottled stripes across his chest. In the distance, he could hear the faint crashing sound of a brook running over rocks. Omar tried to take in the peace of this place, but nothing could reach him through the static in his brain. It only hurt more to be here, to see this, and to have it feel so out of reach.
Omar was at the edge of the clearing when he lost control of his hands. For a second, they froze, bent at the fingers like claws. Then they started twisting. Omar felt flesh squeezing between his fingers. Then a gurgling sound. In his vision, he was squeezing someone’s neck. As his thumbs crushed the windpipe, he heard his victim cry out.
Omar was kneeling now. His knee was pressing on someone’s chest. Omar looked down. It was Monroe. Monroe’s face was turning purple. Red lines crisscrossed the whites of his eyes, as blood vessels popped beneath the surface. Monroe was crying too. His tongue lolled from his mouth as he tried to beg for his life. Omar felt Monroe’s drool. He felt Monroe’s tears and spit coating his fingers.
“No!” Omar screamed. He yanked his arms away from Monroe’s neck. He grabbed the sides of his head and started spinning, as if he could shake the vision away.
“Write it.” Just above the edge of consciousness, Omar detected a voice in his head. He knew that voice. Not male or female. Not young or old, but slightly electronic. It buzzed in the circuits of his brain. He had heard it before. When? As Omar hesitated, the voice grew more insistent.
“Write it,” it said again.
Omar peered into the blackness of his memory.
“Write it!” The voice was almost screaming now. As the answer jumped into Omar’s mind, he gasped. “Dead in Red.” He’d heard the voice while writing “Dead in Red.” And then again—Omar jumped up. He’d heard it again while writing “Ferry to Hell” and then again while writing “Death Dive off Bluff Island.”
Omar stopped, remembering “Death Dive.” The narrator had been waiting for “Kellner.” Why was that name so familiar? Who was it? Omar closed his eyes to think.
Kellner . . . Kellner . . . Suddenly, the laughing face of Jon’s older cousin came to Omar. Then he saw the dangling figure from the bluff, the red fingers around the figure’s throat. Omar scanned the moonlit face that appeared in his mind.
Omar shot up. He knew that face. Jon! “Death Dive” was about Jon!
Omar spun around looking for his laptop. It was lying in a clump of leaves several feet away. Omar raced over, unzipped the case, and turned it on. There was the file—“Death Dive off Bluff Island.”
What a crappy title, Omar thought. He barely remembered writing it. As he scrolled down, he skimmed the story. Most of it felt just as unfamiliar. But this was no time for rewriting. Omar had to change the ending—no searing fingers, no rocks, no snapping bones.
Omar started to edit the final scenes. His fingers tapped expertly on the keyboard. This is what Omar loved about writing stories. You could change anything. Its whole universe was up to him. Instead of a cliff, a street. Instead of rocks, trees. Instead of death, life.
Omar stopped to review his work. He peered at the monitor. Not a word had changed. Maybe something was wrong with his computer. Omar carefully typed Breaker Street over Bluff Island in the file. For a second, his edit glowed at him from the monitor. But then it went back to Bluff Island. Omar tried again with other words, but the same thing happened. Cliff went back to cliff, rock to rock, and death to death.
Last year, in European History, Omar had been gripped by the story of lepers, those diseased people from the Middle Ages. Their fatal illness made their fingers and toes curl inward. They walked around with black bumps and red patches on their skin. Some went blind. Everybody thought lepers were contagious, so they were afraid of being around them. The lepers were separated from everyone else. They were moved into leper colonies to die together.
Omar wished there was a colony for people like him—cursed people without real families, who scared and disgusted those around them, who were hunted by the police. Omar had lost Natasha and now this. Writing—the one thing that eased the visions, the one thing he truly loved—killed the people around him.
But Omar didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. Another vision was coming over him. He was in this one, driving in his car. The night was so black. His foot pressed on the gas. He went faster and faster, around the corner, until the car stopped with a lurch. Omar had run over something. He got out to look. So foggy. He heard crying, that crying. There was his brother, under the tire, in a pool of blood.
“Write it, write it, write it.”
“No!” Omar screamed.
“Please, Omar, write it.” His brother’s voice now, crying.
“Write it, Omar.” His mother was there suddenly, holding his crying brother.
“You’re not my brother! You’re not my mother!” Omar screamed.
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“Please, Omar,” his brother said again.
“No, no. It’s a trick. Stop it!” But Omar’s hands had already picked up his laptop and opened it across his folded legs. A file was opened, and Omar’s fingers were flying over the keys. Omar lifted his hands away, but instantly they were brought back down again. He squeezed his fingers into fists, but they uncurled and starting tapping lightly again. Omar watched the words appearing, spilling into neat black lines across the monitor.
“No!” From some primal pit inside him, a roar erupted. Hands still typing, Omar pushed the laptop off his legs and onto the ground. He kneeled in front of it to brace himself. Omar’s whole body coursed forward, then with a shove back, his hands released themselves from the keys.
Omar picked up the computer and lifted it over his head, throwing it as hard as he could. The computer smacked against a tree and fell to the ground, bouncing a couple of times. Still, the screen was lit. Omar bounded over to the tree. Then, with another yelp, he raised one bent leg and brought the heel of his boot crashing down on the monitor. The screen went black, but Omar kept twisting his heel. He savored the crunching sound, the gravelly feel of broken glass under his feet. Omar didn’t care if he ever wrote again.
“What’s happening to me?” Omar whispered. His mind started spinning. What was he going to do? How could he stop the visions? How could he keep the people he loved safe?
“There’s no way out,” Omar whispered at last. He curled to the side and hugged himself around the middle with both arms. “I need to die.”
You can’t die.”
Someone was approaching Omar from behind. Omar didn’t recognize her high, musical voice. As her shadow fell across Omar’s face, he shot up.
“What did you say?” He spun around.
There was Goth girl Sophie Minax, the one with the Facebook drawing of “Dead in Red.” She was dressed all in black—shiny, plastic boots, long black skirt with black sequins, black ribbed tank top. Her black lips opened into a bright smile.
“I said, ‘You can’t die.’ ”
Omar didn’t know where to begin. “What the hell—” he started to say, but a shot exploded in his ears. Omar jumped back. A smoking pistol flashed in Omar’s mind. He shook his head violently, trying to clear the image.
Sophie peered at him through the purple hair. “Is it a bad one?”
Omar blinked and looked down at her. “You know the visions?”
“Of course.” She sat down on the ground. She stretched her legs in front of her and leaned back on propped elbows. “I’m one of you.”
Omar writhed and screamed as the vision took over. Sophie knelt down next to Omar. She stroked his hair, murmuring softly, “They’re hard to live with, aren’t they?”
Omar looked into Sophie’s dark eyes, gentle and concerned. Their deep gold flecks glinted in the light, and the blinding spin of images disappeared. The smell of smoke was gone. Omar’s head felt light as the vision ended abruptly.
“What do you mean, ‘one of you’? What are we? What’s happening to me? Why can’t I die?” Omar blurted out.
“Slow down, Omar. We have lots of time.” She studied his face with an interested smile. Sophie pulled Omar by the hand. “Let’s walk.” They headed down a path deeper into the woods. Omar leaned into Sophie. She smelled like damp earth and burning wood, but there was another scent too, like chemicals or maybe paint.
Omar gripped Sophie’s hand as they walked deeper into the forest. There was no path, but Sophie obviously had a destination, turning at specific points along the way. As they walked, the sun lowered in the sky.
“You and I are members of a special . . . how shall I put it?” Sophie paused as she searched for the right word. “A special . . . race, Omar,” Sophie finished, nodding a little. “We have special gifts—we’re brilliant artists. Like you, for example, with your writing and me with my drawing. But our gifts . . . they have betrayed us.”
Betrayal, Omar thought. Yes, that was exactly how it felt. “So I’m right then, Sophie?” he said. “My stories are the cause—my stories killed Natasha and the ferry commuters—”
“Yes, Omar, you are more powerful than you know. How can I explain it?” Sophie stopped again as if to pluck the right words from the air. “Our lives are a tangled web of—yes, curses, Omar—but also gifts,” Sophie continued. “We’re practically immortal, you and I. Take me, for example. I’m hundreds of years old. I’ve experienced dozens of deadly accidents, fatal illnesses. None of it touched me—not even age can take its toll on us, Omar. There is no running away from our lot. We must learn to live with our powers, to fulfill the dream of who we are.”
The dream of who we are? Sophie sounded crazy. And yet everything she said seemed to make sense of the horrors that surrounded him. Omar had so many questions; his mind riffled back to the first one. “But why practically immortal?” he said. “So we don’t have to live forever?”
“There is one way we can die,” Sophie said. “Many like us have died that way. In fact, you and I are the only two left, Omar. That’s why we must rely on each other.”
“Wait a minute. Slow down. How did they die? Why?”
“They couldn’t stand the visions,” Sophie replied. “They were weak. Not strong like you.”
“I don’t understand.” Omar stopped walking. “I’m not strong.”
Sophie looked sharply at Omar. “You are! I’ve been watching you. I know you have a strong will—as strong as mine.”
Omar scoffed. “Strong? All I want to do is die!” He stared out across the woods and his heart pounded. “Please, tell me how to do it.”
“I can help you,” Sophie said. “But I won’t tell you how to die, Omar.” She grabbed both of Omar’s hands. She looked at Omar the way old people sometimes do—in that kind but remote way. Like she thought she remembered what he was going through but didn’t really. “There is another way to stop the visions, Omar,” she said. “It will not be easy. It will be the hardest thing you have ever done. I will tell you about it, but not until you are ready.”
Omar had so many more questions for Sophie. “What does that mean—ready? How will I be ready? Can you help me keep Jon safe—he’s my best friend. He’s the one in ‘Death Dive—’” Omar began.
“Shhhhhh,” Sophie interrupted. Omar noticed that she was crouched down a little. “You’re scaring Hilda,” she whispered.
There was a scampering in the leaves. Then, a flash of brown. Sophie swooped down. When she stood up, there was a brown, furry creature on her shoulder. Its long tail snaked down her back; its whiskers quivered against her neck.
“Ooooh, how’s my baby?” Sophie cooed to the creature as she ran one finger down its sleek back. The animal nuzzled its pink nose in her neck, and Sophie threw back her head and laughed.
“Omar,” she said, still laughing. “This is Hilda, my ferret.”
When Hilda caught sight of Omar, she jumped off Sophie’s shoulder and dived back into the underbrush. Omar and Sophie followed the animal into a large clearing. Omar thought that he knew these woods fairly well, but this place was unfamiliar. Huge old trees with trunks as wide as doors circled the area. The tops of the trees touched, creating a canopy of black branches overhead. Some of the trees were weeping willows, and they looked like low, bent heads over the ground. In the middle of the clearing stood a huge granite boulder. It spiked up into the sky like a monument.
“Sophie, it’s so beautiful here—” Omar began. Then he stopped at the sight of a small structure on the far side of the clearing. Its sides looked almost orange in the slanting sun, but as Omar walked closer he saw that they were made of smooth sheets of metal. The roof was metal too, with sheets of glass that Omar realized were solar panels. A small metal tube with smoke curling out of it rose from the roof.
“You live here, Sophie?”
“Yes,” Sophie said, pulling open the metal door. She ran her hand against the wall to find a switch, and the whole thing lit up from the inside. O
mar stepped inside and gasped at what he saw. Every inch of every wall was covered in tiny lines—the same crosshatch from her picture on Facebook. Each line looked like it had been scratched into the metal— etched, Omar remembered the word—with a knife. Some lines were light and feathery; some were dark gashes. Obviously, the walls were covered with some kind of mural, but the detail was so intense that Omar couldn’t make sense of it. For a second, Omar’s eyes took in pieces of the whole—softness, curves or rough patches, watery surfaces, reflecting light, shadow. Omar pressed his back against one wall and focused on the opposite wall.
Faces. That’s what it was. Hundreds of faces— angry, pensive, joyous, desperate faces. Omar slowly turned around. Faces covered the other walls as well. As Omar’s eyes scanned the images, he noticed that as varied as the faces were, they were all similar in one way. Every one showed a teenager.
“Sophie! These are amazing!”
“Thanks,” Sophie said lightly. “It’s my most recent project—a collage of faces.”
“All young faces,” Omar added.
“Yes,” Sophie said. “How perceptive of you. All my subjects are sixteen—the age at which I stopped growing older. I consider the piece a testament to my perpetual youth.”
Sophie waved her arms toward a pile of colorful pillows against the far corner. “Have a seat, please.”
Omar sat down awkwardly on the pile, and Sophie laughed a little. “I hate furniture. It’s so . . . oppressive,” she said with another wave of her hand.
Omar looked around. Besides the pillows, the only other “furniture” was a woodstove and a laundry basket spilling over with Sophie’s clothes. Wires from a laptop on the floor led outside to some kind of solar-powered generator.
“Would you like some tea?” Sophie asked politely, and Omar noticed some mugs and other kitchen items in an orange milk crate beside the woodstove.
“Um, sure,” Omar said. He watched Sophie pull out a clay jar and scoop some black leaves into the mugs. She took the kettle and went outside. When she came back, it was filled with water.
