Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “Sienna?” My brother’s voice filled my ears as the world distorted around me.

  “What are you doing here?” Sierra asked, her voice a high-pitched shriek.

  I opened my eyes to see Reed standing there, in his suit, beard in full bushy bloom and his hair back in a ponytail. “Reed,” I breathed, a silent whisper of thanks. “You were right … about me,” I choked out, barely able to form the words.

  He looked around, his eyes widening. “Sienna, where are we? Where are you?”

  “Bayscape Island,” I said. “It’s …” I glanced at my mother, whose hands were still anchored on my cheeks. I could feel the blood dripping down my face. “… I’m here.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Breandan hissed at Reed.

  “I shouldn’t be here?” Reed asked, more than a little offended. “You’re fricking dead, man, I think you should be in the great beyond, not hanging out on Lake Superior’s scenic coastal islands.”

  “I killed him,” I said to Reed, because he needed to know he was right and I was wrong, “I killed him. I’ve killed everyone.”

  “Sienna, what the hell is going on here?” Reed asked, and he moved forward to push my mother aside. She hit the ground with a scream and rolled back to her feet, hissing at him like a snake all the while. He shoved Breandan and Zack away as well, prompting similar responses. “Get off her, you wraiths!” He shook me, and looked into my eyes. “Sienna, I don’t think you’re on Bayscape. Is this a dreamwalk?”

  I blinked, looking around. Everything was surreal, otherworldly. I had passed out, hadn’t I? Was I hallucinating? “I … maybe?”

  “Sienna, I need you to tell me where you are,” Reed said. “I need to find you in order to help you.”

  “I was on Bayscape,” I said. “I was there on the island, and there were these people, but they were really …” I gestured out to Breandan, to my mother, to … Zack. “They were … them.”

  “You met your mother, your ex-lover, and your dead Irish friend on Bayscape Island?” he asked. I wasn’t far enough gone to miss the skepticism.

  “Well, when you put it like that …” I said, feeling weak again, like the blood was draining out of my hand. I held it up, and yep, it was still bleeding. “This won’t heal. I can’t reach my souls.”

  “You have no soul of your own,” my mother hissed, “so you have to take those of others—”

  “You’re a fucking ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” Reed said, and my mother recoiled. “Sienna, tell me exactly what happened from the moment you left the agency.”

  “I drove …” I said, “… up to Bayscape. Took the ferry. Met Jake.” He looked at me like he wanted to ask who Jake was, but he held it in as I went on. “Met Sarah … Sierra,” I gestured to dear old mom, “Brant … Breandan, and Zebulon …”

  “Dumb name,” Reed said.

  “Screw you,” Zack said. “I never liked you anyway.”

  “Well, you were never good enough for her anyway, dick,” Reed replied without missing a beat. “Also, your mini-fauxhawk was always stupid.”

  “This from a man who's one plaid shirt away from being a lumbersexual,” Zack shot back.

  “I met them all,” I said, ignoring all the asides flying around. “And then the weather … the blizzard started.” I giggled, and looked at Erich Winter. “Winter is coming … he’s here!”

  “Blizzard?” Reed asked. “What blizzard?”

  “It swept over the island,” I said, my voice taking on a singsong quality, “shut down the ferry. Trapped us all there. I got caught out and couldn’t find my way,” I said. “Then they threw me in jail and started tearing me apart inch by inch—”

  “Sienna, it’s September,” Reed said. “There are no blizzards in September. It’s fall.”

  “It’s Minnesnowta,” I said.

  “Wisconsin, actually,” Reed said, “but it’s not Hoth, is my point. There’s no snow on the ground right now.”

  I blinked at him. “No, there is. I saw it.” My head tilted, and I looked at Winter. “I saw the snow, saw the blizzard. Saw it with my own eyes and—”

  Something shifted in the world, and I felt that gut-wrenching sense of things shrinking around me, like the sun had gone down long ago and I was trapped in the woods, all alone, in the middle of the night.

  I stared at the place where Reed had stood only a moment earlier. “Reed?” I asked, and my voice cracked.

  “He’s gone,” my mother said, inches from my face. I could smell her breath, her sweat, and it reminded me of the times beyond counting that she’d dragged me physically, screaming all the way, into the dark and heaved me into a metal box. “Now … you’re all ours again.” Her voice brightened, but it did nothing to assuage the choking, gripping fear that was suffocating me in its hand. “You should feel right at home, because this … is where you belong.”

  51.

  Reed

  I awoke in a sweat. I hadn’t even thought I’d get to sleep, let alone thought I’d be dreaming lucid, surreal dreams about Sienna being tortured by the people closest to her who had died. My skin was covered in a sheen of perspiration, and my smooth cotton sheets clung to my body as I sat up, gulping in breaths like I’d just emerged from a dive into the darkest depths of the ocean and hadn’t had a bit of oxygen in months.

  My fingers came up and found the wetness on my brow, the soaked edge of my hair, which I’d loosed for sleep. It was drenched an inch out from the scalp thanks to my nightmare, and my breaths were still coming in hard gasps, like I was seconds away from being submerged back into the icy cold water again to struggle under the surface of the nightmare.

  “What is it?” Isabella asked, awake. She clicked on the lamp next to our bed and sat up, her red slip falling loose on her shoulders.

  “I just …” I said, still not in control of my breathing. “Had a … dream? Nightmare?” I brushed the hair back out of my eyes. “I don’t even know.”

  “What was it?” she asked, eyes bleary but concerned.

  “I dreamed of Sienna,” I said, my chest still heaving up and down. “I dreamed she was in trouble, that she was being … attacked by nightmares.”

  “Sounds terrible,” she said, her long fingers delicately wiping sweat from my brow. I stared down at my smooth chest and it gleamed in the lamplight. “But it fits very well into what is going on in your life at the moment. It wouldn’t take a psychologist to connect the dots on this, I think.”

  “Right,” I nodded, my breaths finally slowing down. “Natural. I’m afraid for Sienna, so I pictured her in the most frightening environment possible. Yeah. Totally makes sense.” I ran a hand back through my cold, wet hair. Something tugged at me like I tugged at my hair. “It felt so … real.”

  “Do you think she is trapped in nightmares?” Isabella asked. “Somewhere, suspended in darkness?”

  “It’d be a horrible thing,” I said. “She was … powerless. It’s like those visions of those people were preying on her guilt—”

  “I thought you said she didn’t have any of that,” she asked.

  My face settled in a hard mask. “Really? Right now?”

  “Sorry,” she said, genuinely contrite. “Do you think she reached out to you with the dreamwalk, then?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I asked her where she was.” I sat up straighter. “I felt like I had my wits about me. It wasn’t really that dreamlike, on my end. I felt in control of myself, and I didn’t do anything weird. The world was weird around me, but that’s … that’s maybe because of Sienna.” I lapsed into thought. “She said she was on Bayscape, but there was a blizzard.”

  Isabella frowned. “God, already? I hate this state.”

  “There’s not a—” I paused, and reached over to my nightstand and fumbled for my phone. I picked it up and dialed J.J., and he picked up on the fifth ring.

  “Hello?” he asked in a sleepy voice.

  “J.J.,” I said, “Did we ever get anything else back from the cabin rental place where
Sienna was staying?”

  “No,” he murmured, sounding like he was rolling into his pillow, “we did not.”

  “Do you know what the weather is on Bayscape right now?” I asked.

  “What?” J.J.’s voice rose. “Why? You want to vacay, too? Will you promise not to call me from there?”

  “J.J.,” I said, “I need to know what the weather is on Bayscape Island right now.”

  “FFS, man, there’s an app for that,” he said, completely disgruntled. I heard him shifting on the other end. “Okay, Bayscape Island weather, since you’re an incompetent who doesn’t know how to Internet like an adult. Currently, it’s 65 degrees and the moon is shining down on fluffy clouds. Good enough? Can I sleep now?”

  “No,” I said, “I need you to call the rental car agencies and find out who Sienna rented her car from and see if they have GPS in it.”

  There was a pause. “That … is actually a really good idea. But Phillips will kill me if I pull resources off the hunt for Anselmo and Cunningham.”

  “What are you doing right now?” I asked.

  “I was sleeping,” he said pointedly. “Now? Not so much anything but hoping faintly that someday I’ll be able to close my eyes and return to peaceful slumber—”

  “Great, so I’m not taking you away from the manhunt,” I said. “Get on that, will you? It’s important. It might give us a clue where they got her.”

  “‘They’?” J.J. asked, and he didn’t sound sleepy anymore. “Are you seeing a conspiracy theory here, my friend?”

  “I’m a seeing a league of villains,” I said, “forming with the intent to take out some revenge on Sienna.”

  There was a dead silent pause. “For realsies? Man, we are stepping further onto the comic book page every day ’round here—”

  “J.J.,” I said, “I think she’s being kept in nightmares, tortured. I need to know where we lost her so I can pick up her trail.”

  To his credit, he said, “On it,” and hung up.

  I clicked on my lamp and hung my feet over the edge of the bed, felt my toes touching the soft carpeting. “What now?” Isabella asked from behind me, and I felt her silken touch on my shoulder.

  “I need Augustus,” I said. “I need more force at my disposal.”

  “I will see what I can do,” she said, getting up with a squeak of mattress springs. I heard her putting on her robe, the soft cotton dragging the floor while she raised it up on her shoulders from where she’d left it puddled on the ground last night. “But do not expect miracles.”

  “I don’t know what to expect,” I said as she walked out the door into the living room. I heard her turn on the coffee maker, listened to the soft hum of it heating up. My eyes found the gaping hole I’d made in the wall in my fury last night, and I resisted the urge to add another.

  Was Sienna really in danger? Had I really seen her? A chill ran across my scalp like someone had massaged cold fingers over it, leaving goose bumps behind.

  “Where is she?” I muttered to myself, letting my brain stir into thought. “Bayscape? Really Bayscape, just unconscious and imagining a blizzard? Or did they get her before that? Some rest area?” I paused. “Why didn’t she fly?”

  “Luggage,” Isabella said as she passed through the bedroom into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.” My skin tingled, my flesh cold. I pulled the covers tighter.

  Maybe they hadn’t gotten her. Maybe I had just had a nightmare, all my own. But it had seemed so … photo-real in places. I’d been in a dreamwalk before, and this hadn’t quite felt like that. Sienna was in charge of her dreamwalks, was able to set the location, control the decoration, even the clothing of the participants. Here, she felt wildly out of control, like she was just being dragged along by those things. Those … wraiths. It was as good a word as any.

  Manifestations. The word popped into my head unbidden, faint, like a whisper from across the room.

  I stood, spinning to see if someone had snuck in behind me. Isabella’s side of the bed was empty, the sheets awry where she’d gotten out, her lamp still lit. My scalp still tingled, and my spine was ramrod straight from my reaction to that chilling sensation.

  My breathing was fast again, but this time I had it under control quicker. The tinted windows offered a view of the campus, but at this time of night the only thing I could see was lamps lit across the grass-covered grounds, fireflies in the night that never moved. There were a few lights on in the headquarters, I saw as I looked out the window. The response team, no doubt, still working the manhunt.

  Somewhere between here, home, and Bayscape Island, someone associated with Eric Simmons, Anselmo, and the Brain had grabbed Sienna. Somehow. Somehow they’d gotten her, had subdued her, and were torturing her with nightmares. That was my theory.

  My admittedly crazy theory.

  Somewhere between here and there …

  My scalp tingled again, and another lone word popped up like an apple coming to the top of the barrel, breaking the surface, mid-thought with buoyant violence. Somewhere between—

  HERE

  —and there.

  “Oh.” I blinked my eyes twice. “Between—”

  HERE

  “—and there,” I finished, already in motion.

  I ripped open the front door without unlocking it and sped down the hall, the soft carpeting absorbing the impact of my run. I stopped in front of Sienna’s door and hammered at it, slapping the palm of my hand against the wood. Lines began to appear, splits in the solid construction, and one final kick broke it down, ripping it free of the hard lock that was keeping it closed.

  “Reed?” Scott’s voice reached me from over my shoulder, full of sleep, but I ignored him.

  “What’s going on out here?” Ariadne called from down the hall.

  I surged into Sienna’s quarters, almost running over the mewling dog (imaginatively named “Dog”—my sister is such an unwitting hipster), who managed a feeble bark and then ran back around the corner like Lassie on the way to Timmy in the well.

  “What's the dog doing here?” Ariadne called from somewhere behind me. “He's supposed to be kenneled-”

  I strode through the darkened apartment already fairly sure of what I’d find. The apartment was quiet, the living room peaceful, but the sounds of music playing faintly reached me from just behind the closed bedroom door. I made for it like I was unleashed from the chain, grabbing the handle even as Dog scrambled aside to make way for my violently unpredictable charge.

  I rolled the handle in my hand and shoved against the door. It opened, then stopped with a thump. “No,” I whispered, and shoved again, gentler this time. Something was blocking the door, something that was at least a little heavy. A smell hung in the air, like the dog hadn't been outside in a long while.

  I pushed until I made a big enough crack in the door to slip through, and I did so as I heard footfalls behind me. “Reed, what are you doing?” Scott said from the entryway. “What’s he doing?” I heard him ask someone else with him, probably Ariadne.

  I knew exactly what I was doing.

  I pushed my body through the narrow opening into Sienna’s bedroom and turned as I stumbled in, eyes trying to pierce the darkness. I fumbled for the light, trying to find it on the wall, missing a couple times before I hit it, bathing the room in light. The dog mewled again outside like he’d been whipped, just as my eyes fell on the object behind the door.

  “No no no no no,” I said, falling to my knees. Her skin was cold, flesh paler than the death she was being convinced she was, even at this moment. Her eyes were closed, and her hair hung limp as I lifted her back up off the ground to cradle her in my arms. “No, Sienna, no …”

  My sister did not respond, she just hung there in my arms, a prisoner in her own tortured mind.

  52.

  Benjamin

  Benjamin sat curled with his knees against his chest, rocking on his haunches, muttering in low tones to himself as the ni
ght stretched over the crater. “Never should have … can’t believe I …” His balance kept him from tipping over one way or the other, but his sanity felt like it had finally slipped completely out of reach.

  The voice that he heard in times of stress, the one that brought with it its own range of color and horror, no longer seemed to be a monstrous form outside himself. Now it seemed like the other half of his whole, a part of him that he truly despised, that he wished he could have left somewhere behind him.

  But, no, he hadn’t left it behind at all. He’d seen it awaken when he’d been overseas, hadn’t he? He’d seen it the first time outside that café in Bredoccia, in Revelen, on the day he was leaving, when the men in leather jackets had come at him and he’d watched fire dance out of his fingers and burn them alive.

  He’d seen bright orange that day, a mix of yellow and red that made him fearful, made him want to be home. He hadn’t wanted to come on the vacation in any case, but he’d done so when the deal had been so good, figuring he’d see some sights, take in some exotic places.

  It hadn’t gone the way he had planned. She’d seemed so nice, that Frea. He couldn’t believe she’d gone back to the hotel with him. It had been far, far more than what he’d expected. He could still faintly remember the sting of her last kiss on his back, when he was in an almost dreamlike state. She’d slipped out without a word of goodbye, knowing that he was leaving the next day.

  Was all this down to her? Had she—

  No. No, surely not. She’d been kind where few had, done something for him that no one else had ever done. Benjamin clutched his hand tight, pulling it close to him.

  No, that wasn’t where things had jumped the track. Had it been the airport? That had certainly been … monstrous. He could see it all in his waking dreams now, when he closed his eyes. The laughter of the others, the tears that had streaked cold and wet down his cheeks, the painful itching in his throat.

  The red that streaked his vision, the sight of fire burning through people and faces—