Dreaming Awake

by Gwen Hayes

  I couldn’t remember anything else. I had no idea how I’d gotten to this room and all I could feel was surprise that I was even still alive and the ever-present fear that hadn’t gone away since I’d first met Mara.

  What had been in that shadow and what had it done to me?

  I didn’t feel as if I’d been physically harmed, other than the fact that I was tied down. In fact, I felt less . . . helpless than I had. What had changed? Did the shadow do something to me?

  The straps holding me down chafed my skin. If I could access demon speed and blow up glass . . . maybe I had other, unknown powers. Strength would be ideal. I accessed the others when I was upset and agitated—that’s when I saw auras too—so I focused on my feelings of fear and anger to see if I could get untied. If I was going to be cursed with demon blood, I might as well use it to my advantage.

  My whole life I’d been trained to choke emotions, hold things inside, but now my source of power was intricately woven into the volatile core of my heart. Tapping that power, really focusing on my rage, I flexed beneath the straps and they snapped off as if I were the Hulk instead of, well, me.

  I swung my legs over the table and tried to get my bearings. I wore a hospital gown, but the room was too dingy to be a hospital room. Ancient medical equipment flanked the table next to me. Rust coated the surface of the metal in patches of varying shades of oxidation, as if some indefinable liquid had pooled time after time but had never been wiped down.

  Unlike my father’s hospital room, no disinfectant odor concealed the fusty, malodorous air. In one corner, an industrial-size hose hung on a hook, and in the middle of the floor, a drain cover clogged with bits of hair and . . . something . . . sat there menacingly.

  I remembered a field trip to a grocery store once, when they took us to the butcher room in the back with a similar setup. I remembered what they did to the meat in that room.

  I needed to get out of there.

  I gasped and choked on my breath when I saw the lines on my arm. Someone had drawn on me with a black marker. I hopped off the table. I didn’t want to know why that had been done. I just wanted out of that place.

  Halfway across the room, I stopped short when the door flew open and Donny and Amelia were brought in by skeleton guards. They too wore hospital gowns. They too were marked up.

  Donny struggled more than Amelia. “Don’t you hurt my baby!” she yelled. Ame saw me then. “Thei!”

  It all happened so quickly. More guards came in and rushed me. Behind them, several more came with two additional gurneys and a rolling tray with instruments. Even with all my fear and rage, I couldn’t shake the skeletons on either side of me. They herded my friends and me to the middle of the room and watched the door, so that is what we watched too.

  I glanced down at the marks on my arm and then back at Amelia’s and Donny’s arms, and then I knew.

  Oh God.

  Thoughts gave form to fears I’d never let myself dwell on before. The handmaids. Had they been hacked apart and restitched like foul jigsaw puzzles in this very room? Were we next?

  At the door, Mara appeared, still wearing the same slinky outfit from my kitchen. On her arm a small old man shuffled in alongside her. She escorted him gently into the room, patting him endearingly and smiling as if she were on the arm of Brad Pitt on Oscar night.

  The old man was shrunken and white. Every step wavered him precariously closer. Time had carved deep grooves into his translucent skin. He had no teeth left and his jaw worked uselessly as he made nonsense sounds in a frail, old voice. Spittle collected in the corners of his mouth.

  His tattered lab coat had been stained to the color of bisque, with blotches of brown and red.

  They stopped in front of us. Mara spoke a little louder than normal, enunciating her words carefully with a gleeful enthusiasm. “Here are your patients, Doctor. They are all ready for you.”

  Amelia whimpered while Donny struggled. The “doctor” made a few sounds like “mah, mah, mah” and he raised his shaky hand towards my cheek. I flinched. His eyes were clouded completely over. He couldn’t see a thing.

  “We’re all very much looking forward to seeing your work again, Doctor. You’ve always had such a way with the scalpel.”

  The maids came in then, each bringing a different-colored dress of the same style. They hung them on a bar and cooed at each other happily. Their heads wobbled unsteadily on their necks at the point where there was heavy black stitching. Their mouths had been seamed closed with black Xs.

  The dresses they brought in were identical to the ones they wore.

  Oh, God. This could not be happening.

  Mara’s eyes cut like black diamonds when she looked at us. “I’ve been impressed by the strength of your friendship, ladies. It occurs to me that you should have a more permanent bond to celebrate that substantial link you share. The good doctor has agreed to help us transform your relationship to the next level.”

  At that, the guards hauled us to the gurneys. We didn’t make it easy for them—I’m sure after seeing the maids, Donny and Ame realized we were going to be an encore production for the invalid doctor.

  We all struggled, but the skeletons were too strong. It was impossible to hurt them, for they had no soft flesh to punch or kick, no organs to protect. Just bones and a viselike grip.

  There was a tray of sharp objects next to my bed, all of them dirty and rusty. I managed to kick it over before they forced me to lie down. It didn’t matter. The skeletons just picked up the instruments from the dirty floor and put them back on the tray. It took six of them to hold me down.

  We all continued screaming and thrashing, trying to get away. Donny’s fever pitch broke my heart. She was so concerned for the unborn child in her belly. I didn’t understand how it came to be there, but it didn’t seem to matter to its mother.

  “I think you should sew their mouths closed first, Doctor.” Mara loomed over me so I could witness her cool smile. “That might quiet them down.”

  The doctor had a scalpel in one shaky hand. “Mah, mah, mah,” he said, gumming his lips and coming closer to me. The knife shook terribly as he got closer and closer to my eyes. He wasn’t even seeing me, just coming towards where he thought he should make the first cut.

  The seconds lasted too long. They were stretched and drawn tight so that every excruciating detail could be remembered in perpetuity. The last things I would ever see with my own eyes would be the crags on his face, the strange wiry whiskers that grew like tufts of white tumbleweed on his chin, the vacant milky eyes. I’d remember the sour smell of age and death and senility bearing down on me to ransack my youth and sanity. Slower and slower, the shaking instrument that would take me away from myself for good continued to inch towards me at a godforsaken crawl. A maggot crawled out from his nose before oozing back into it.

  That high keening sound had to be coming from me. It was the sound of desperation. I bet Mara loved it.

  The doctor trembled so hard and his hand was so weak that he dropped the knife just as it was about to make contact with my skin.

  I whimpered with relief and a certain letdown. The reprieve was temporary. I would only have to go through it again.

  The scalpel landed on the gurney next to my head and Mara picked it up and put it back in his hand, folding his fingers over the instrument. “There, there, love,” she told him. “Do try again.”

  There would be no anesthesia, no drugs to block the pain or dull the senses. And it would take hours and hours for him to finish this job. He was too weak to make effectual cuts; they would be dull and painful and ugly.

  Death would have been kinder, but people don’t die in Under unless Mara wants them to.

  Like Varnie.

  My heart filled my throat. How would we ever be the same without Varnie?

  Remembering his bravery and his sacrifice sharpened my desire to live. I wouldn’t let what he did be in vain. Not while I had breath in my body. Shoving past the fear, I found that place in th
e center of my soul and pushed with everything I had. A sharp crack filled the air as if I had summoned a lightning bolt. More cracking and popping followed and I was free from the oppression that had been holding down my limbs. The power inside me grew and grew, filling me with a confidence and strength I’d never felt before.

  And then I remembered. The shadow creature hadn’t hurt me or tied me down. It had found me because it was my shadow—it had been looking for me because it belonged to me. It was the darkness I shared my soul with. The darkness I tried to deny.

  I accepted that now—that I was made up of more than human flesh and bone. And that darkness would not be caged. The beast within had simply been biding its time, waiting for me to accept it as Haden had needed to reunite with his demon side to save me.

  I might damn my soul forever, but maybe I deserved no less.

  One thing was certain: my demon cried for vengeance.

  I sat up and watched as each of the skeletons in the room snapped and splintered, collapsing as their bones became brittle and ground to dust. As I ground them to dust. It felt incredible.

  Donny and Amelia were still tied to their tables, so I pushed the ancient doctor away and we tumbled to the floor. I grabbed a scalpel from the floor and rose to cut their straps, but Mara stood in front of me, blocking me.

  “Get out of my way.” An unusual bravado filled me to overflowing. I was so done with all of this.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You forget yourself.”

  “I know my place and it’s not here. Your reign of terror is over, Mara. You keep coming at me with everything you have and I keep thwarting you because I will not give up.”

  I thought of every strong woman I knew about—my mother, Muriel, my best friends . . . Buffy the Vampire Slayer . . . I would not back down. I would not surrender.

  Everything boiled down to its most basic form in my head. A certainty, almost an epiphany, solidified there. Like a spotlight shining on a single thought, I realized I wasn’t afraid. I was free. Perhaps also insane, but free from fear.

  I kept moving towards Donny and Ame, scalpel in my hand, and Mara actually backed up. I felt like maybe the insanity was taking over a little, but I also felt empowered. I had something she didn’t have.

  I wagged the knife at her. “Your evil is strong, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that my love is stronger. And that is what makes you so angry, isn’t it? Of all the things your kind can do . . . all the damage you wreak and all the power you hold, you still can’t defeat humanity. You never will. You keep searching for a way to steal our strength because you’re jealous.”

  She hissed. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all of them. We’ll see how strong you are when I eat your precious little heart.”

  “You’re nothing but a big bully. You’ve made a career of scaring people, but it’s all tricks. Smoke and mirrors. What are you going to do to me, Mara? Send more skeletons? I’ll kill them. Send the doctor after me?” We looked at him, unconscious on the ground at our feet.

  “You unworthy little tart! You don’t think I can cut you without the doctor? You will be just like those handmaidens you dread—mark my words. I will dismember you one piece at a time.”

  I chuckled. I actually chuckled. “You really don’t understand humans at all.”

  She let her face register surprise.

  “I won’t stop fighting you. You’ve thrown everything you had at me. You tried to erase who I was by kidnapping me the first time, and you tried to make me forget who I love by playing with my memory and taking away the people I care for—but I’m still here and I’m still fighting.”

  “You would do well not to give me more ammunition, child. You forget that I’m still standing too.”

  “Not for long, Mara.” Okay, some of my bravado was bluffing. “You’re so jealous of me.”

  The snake bracelets on her arms began hissing and coiling as her anger built. “I’ll destroy you.”

  “You hate that Haden loves me—that he can love but you don’t know how. More than that, you hate that humans have souls and you never will. It doesn’t matter how many you steal or destroy in your quest to possess one, you will never have a soul of your own.”

  She smirked. “Have you seen your father lately, Pussycat? Do you know how he suffers? It’s all your fault. You brought this on him. All of them.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Theia.” Amelia’s voice rang out, clear and true like a bell in the din of my doubts. “Mara brought this on us all, not you. She’s been playing with us like toys for a long time.”

  Mara laughed. “Oh, Amelia, you pathetic child. You owe me so much and yet this is how you repay me. You were nothing—you still are nothing. Without my gift, what do you have?”

  “That wasn’t a gift. You cursed me!”

  Mara shrugged. “Without my curse, how will you fight me? My spell gave you power, Amelia. Now you have nothing.”

  I remembered the day on the beach that Mara sent something dark after the three of us. We stood together and buffeted her magic then. We could do it now.

  I began reciting the spell Ame had taught us the day on the beach. “Though in the shadow, darkness hides.”

  Mara snapped her soulless gaze to me.

  “This spell protects and thrice provides.”

  She hissed.

  Amelia’s voice joined mine. “For whom I trust the dark divides.”

  “Crap,” Donny yelled. “I totally don’t remember the words.”

  Ame and I continued, “But whom I love my will decides.”

  Mara grew several feet taller and her skin began pulling back from her face, exposing a chilling horror beneath her flesh.

  I whimpered a little. Ame yelled, “Again, Theia!”

  “Though in the shadow, darkness hides.”

  “Hides,” repeated Donny.

  “This spell protects and thrice provides.”

  “Provides!” What she lacked in memory, Donny made up for with gusto as she repeated the last word of every sentence.

  “For whom I trust the dark divides.” The straps that had been holding the girls to the gurneys snapped and flew across the room. Mara’s talons grew longer, sharper. Donny’s voice joined ours for the last line. “But whom I love my will decides.”

  The words made little sense, but the meaning went beyond the words. I’m pretty sure Amelia got it out of a new age spell book that probably had no business trying to fight real evil. Still, it was the three of us claiming our power, our bond. Mara leaped at me, claws out. I barely had my hands in front of me when she was repelled away as if she’d hit a wall. Amelia’s smirk let me know she wasn’t as powerless as Mara thought.

  Amelia and I ran to Donny, who was having trouble rolling off her gurney in her state of advanced pregnancy. She must have been so scared. Mara rose up and grew at least another foot taller and began shedding her human form altogether. Under her skin, she was made of slimy scales.

  The smell of brimstone filled the room.

  Mara bared her teeth in an inhuman snarl. In a voice that grated on my eardrums, she told us in detail how she was going to dismember us. “I’ll roll in your blood, Theia. I’ll gnaw on your bones and sate myself on your souls before I swallow your brains.”

  She grabbed Donny by her throat, raising her easily above her head while Donny thrashed helplessly. Without thinking, Amelia and I plowed into Mara. Her slime stung my skin through my hospital gown.

  We all toppled over, a mass of arms and legs and feminine shrieks. Mara swung one arm out and Amelia flew across the room. She yanked Donny off her by the hair. She wasn’t so lucky with me.

  My strength was no match for her, especially now that she was in this form, but I held on, trying to reach her throat. I kept sliding and the burn continued singeing my skin. She couldn’t get me off her, though, and in my tenacity I realized I was growling like an animal.

  Mara continued growing larger. With one giant heave of her now beefy arm, I found myself flying, landing on top of the
doctor.

  Mara half crawled and half slithered across the room towards Amelia. “I need a little pick-me-up, my sweet,” she said to her in a chunky, phlegmy voice. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Mara laid her hands on Ame’s shoulders and began draining Ame of her essence. I found a reserve of strength and leaped across the room as if I had wings. I pummeled Mara’s slippery flesh with my fists. I couldn’t stop her. She just kept draining Amelia. I saw Ame’s light getting dimmer and I ceased thinking; I just reacted.

  I used my feet to roll Ame away from Mara and pushed my friend as far as I could, and then I used the last weapon I had. The weapon Mara herself gave to me.

  I began to feed on Mara.

  The world fell away as I consumed all the evil that resided where the mare demon’s soul should have been. I wished I could say that it was horrible or unappetizing, that it repelled me or sickened me. Instead, it lit me up inside, filling the emptiness and the gnawing ache of hunger she herself had put there months ago.

  The darkness tasted like a rich chocolate—lush and decadent. Power rushed through me, swirling in waves and waves of electric energy. I must have surprised her—it took her too long to fight back, and by the time she tried to buck me off, I had already absorbed enough of her essence to weaken her.

  After only a few moments, Mara stopped struggling beneath me, reducing in size and returning to her human form as I continued to take and take. Everywhere my skin touched hers, the energy seeped in. There came a moment at a crossroads. I didn’t have time to rationalize or think it through, but I knew one instant of crystal clarity where the option was to cross the line or back away.

  I didn’t back away.

  From someplace far away, I heard Amelia begging me to stop, but I was too entrenched in feeding to answer. The choice had been made. Maybe it had never been mine; maybe this was what I’d been hurtling towards this whole time. The first time Varnie had ever read my tarot cards, the death card appeared three times in a row in a deck that contained only one. We’d all thought that something was trying to kill me—that I was in danger. Maybe I had been the danger all along.