I stared at the street, at the storefronts, at the people on the sidewalk, anything but my reflection. We pulled to a light and I found a silhouette at the end of the street, someone standing out of the glow of the streetlight. I felt them looking even though I knew they weren’t. They were a stranger, just darkness, but after what I’d done it still felt like they could see straight through me.
I traced their shadow until the light flashed green and as my eyes fought to stay open I felt another long sleep already tugging at me.
5
.
I sat on the beach, waiting for night. The sky had been stuck in this strange orbit, sunlight sinking into a thin line but never blinking out. I could see stars but the landscape was paralyzed, time as forgotten as me.
I blinked, waiting to wake up. I buried my face in my hands, watching the horizon line from between my fingers like the long hand on a clock. But it was still.
I stared down the road, waiting for the sound of someone coming up the hill—an engine, footsteps. But it was quiet. A cold breeze crept up the back of my shirt and I shivered as I finally got to my feet. I took slow quiet steps as I trudged through the tall grass, freezing at every sound and every shadow.
The place was deserted, nothing but strange trees and the sound of insects, but I still felt like I was trespassing. I kept walking, looking for a house, for some kind of park ranger, for any sign of life at all.
The grass disappeared, the meadow receding. Suddenly I was at the top of a hill and the sky split—cobalt sinking into a swirling grey. I had one foot in the meadow and the other buried in snow. Snow? The chill stung the sole of my foot, warm and cold air converging against my skin. I knelt down, brushing the snow with my hand. It came back burning. What the hell?
I scanned the snow for other footsteps. For her footsteps. But it was empty just like everything else. I closed my eyes. Tight. Waiting for it to disappear. But I could still feel the chill. Ice settled against my skin, making me feel exposed and I kept glancing over my shoulder, still waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows, to tell me it was all just some fucking joke.
I looked back across the meadow at that invisible line where two seasons converged, searching the shadows for some kind of machine, for the artificial source of the snow. Still nothing.
When I reached the trees the roots were lined with puddles where the snow was starting to melt. Summer again. But I was still dazed. I stumbled, staring up at the trees, my hand brushing one of the trunks. They were massive, the grain completely smooth, frozen in stone. They seemed ancient and I felt like I was walking through the pages of some fairy tale.
What is this place?
I still didn’t have my memory but I had my instincts and my instincts were telling me that there was something very wrong about this place. And about me in it.
My hand snagged a jagged twig, catching thorns. A line of blood trickled up from the center of my palm and as I examined the wound something pricked at my senses.
Heat.
White.
There was a flash of light so bright that I couldn’t see anything else. I thought I was drowning again, or maybe waking from this nightmare. I blinked, tears welling up as it seared my vision. My knees found the soil and I gripped it, tearing at it. And then the light let go of me.
I was afraid to open my eyes again but when I did I was back on the beach. And then I just froze there. Afraid to move another inch. I was perfectly still, waiting for the pain again but then I heard a soft knocking. That’s when I saw the small rowboat tethered to a dock and bobbing along the top of the water.
People. Rescue.
I ran for it, arms pumping as fast as I could. I reached the edge and looked inside. It was empty. No fishing poles or other gear. No wet footprints. I picked up the rope, checking the age, but it didn’t feel brittle, wet fibers still tight as I flung it back into the water.
I wanted to sink there, to catch my breath, but when I turned back towards the empty beach it was…buried. Two seconds before I’d been running through sand and shells and sea sludge and now it was gone, covered in rows and rows of giant sunflowers—dark red faces opened wide like a yawn, thick stalks bowing in the breeze blowing off the ocean.
What the…
Every time I blinked I waited for the landscape to reset again, for the ground to give way, for me to fall off the edge of the earth. I waited to disappear.
Slowly, I made my way back up the dock, itching and on edge, and then I was peering in between the sunflowers. I took a few steps between the stalks, hesitant, petals brushing and bouncing off the top of my head. Caterpillars scaled the leaves and dragonflies zipped from one bud to another.
I stopped, that low insect hum rising, drowning out everything. I followed it toward the other side, being careful not to snap any stems. But they just kept going, rows growing dense, petals curling in a thick canopy over my head that cast red shadows along my skin.
I turned, trying to find my way back but I couldn’t hear the waves any more, just the whirr of insects riled into a frenzy the harder I tried to tear free. Everything was moving, shifting, like I was tumbling inside a kaleidoscope.
I looked for a break in the row, for the sky, for emptiness, but there were only the sunflowers. I pushed past the thick stalks, finding my footing and then I stopped being careful and I started running. Green necks snapped under my feet, petals spilling onto the ground behind me.
Shit. Where is it?
I pushed through a wall of dark petals, dizzy, and then I slammed to a stop.
She was standing in front of me, eyes wide, a leaf clutching at a strand of her black hair.
“You,” she said.
I caught my reflection in her eyes, swirling and green. I could see that my own were dark and muddy, my hair black and stiff from seawater. My face was dark too, shadows spilling over a wide nose, thick eyebrows and tight lips.
“Who are you?” she said.
And then I felt the air go. She didn’t know who I was either. I shook my head. I thought I might cry; I could feel that raw sting at the back of my throat. But I was still frozen.
She pulled the strand of her hair free and tucked it behind her ear, still staring at me. “How…?” But then she grew quiet.
She reached for me, hand trembling. It hung there, me staring at the tip of her thumbnail, her staring at my face. Then I felt her thumb pressing into my cheek, trailing down my jaw. She was warm.
“Please,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”
She gave a small nod, eyes flitting toward a break in the row of flowers and I followed her.
It had been empty earlier, nothing but sunflowers and sand. But now there was a small farmhouse. Porch swing. Blue door.
“What is this?” I asked.
She led me inside and opened the windows, dust swirling in the sunlight spilling across a leather couch and a tall bookcase. She held out a blanket and I curled it around my shoulders. But I wasn’t cold anymore. My clothes were dry. Soft. Like they’d never been wet. Like I hadn’t almost drowned.
She stood in the center of the room, her green eyes wide, teal-colored fingernails scraping nervously at her forearm. Black curls dusted her pink cheeks and she gripped them in her fist, her shoulders tensed.
I looked down, away from the heat of her gaze, but I could still feel it pouring over me. Her eyes settled on my shoes, on the floor between my feet, and then they climbed every inch of me. I stood there, forgetting to breathe, not wanting to, because even my lungs felt foreign.
It was so quiet and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, my pulse thrashing until there was only static. Until there was only her eyes on me. I wanted to shake out of that skin and as she took a step toward me, examining my face again, I thought I just might.
“You’re not…” She inhaled. “How…?” Exhaled. “This isn’t possible.”
“What’s not?”
“You being here. It isn’t—”
“Where am I? W
hat is this place?”
“It isn’t…” She narrowed her eyes. “Real.” The word trailed off, uncertain.
“What do you mean it isn’t real?” I said.
“You,” she said, gripping her scalp. “You’re not real.” She walked to the other side of the kitchen, then back to the center of the room.
“But…yes I’m…” Am I?
“This can’t happen,” she said, pressing her palms over her eyes.
“Look, I’m lost in more ways than one. Can you just please explain this to me?”
She sat down on the couch. “I’m sick,” she finally said, not looking at me. “I have Klein-Levin Syndrome. It makes me sleep a lot, for long periods of time, and this is where I go when I’m…”
“Sleeping?”
She nodded.
“You mean like a dream?”
She looked at me. “They don’t know. The doctors, I mean. I’m not supposed to dream during an episode.”
“But you do? But this isn’t…this doesn’t make any sense. I’m real. I’m here. How?”
“I don’t know,” she said, a quake in her voice.
I moved to the window, watching the tide roll in. A dream? No. This was real.
I glanced back at her. What if she was sick? Only it wasn’t Klein-Levin Syndrome, whatever that was, but some kind of psychosis—schizophrenia, some other shit that makes you think you’re dreaming.
No. I’m just…I’m lost. I must have shipwrecked or something. I must have been with other people right? A family maybe? I just hit my head. That’s why I can’t remember anything. I hit my head and she obviously hit hers too. Hard.
But what about the snow?
“No,” I said, tossing the blanket on the couch. “This is crazy. Where’s everyone else?”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Your family? The other people who live in this house? People that live nearby? Anyone?”
“It’s just me,” she said, her voice small.
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe,” she snapped. “You’re the guest here. You’re in my head, remember? And I’m not going to waste my time arguing with some figment of my imagination.”
“Me? You think I’m the one who’s not real? You’re probably just some psycho who recently escaped the mental ward. So, yeah, don’t waste your time trying to convince me of anything. I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”
“Oh, call me crazy,” she huffed. “That’s original. Whatever. Have fun sleeping on the beach.”
I walked back outside and as the door closed behind me it was like someone snuffing out a match. The sun disappeared in the same beat that she bolted the lock and it was suddenly night. What the hell?
I turned back toward the door but I didn’t dare knock. Shit. I looked toward the beach, no longer covered in sunflowers, but I wasn’t ready to face the water. Instead I wandered out into the yard, staring at the big farmer’s moon swallowing the sky. It was orange and so wide that I felt like I could see every dimple and every crater, the horizon completely obscured. And the light, I swear I could feel its heat.
I stood there, the water in front of me, trees cinching me on either side, not sure where to go. Not sure if it was safe. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there but in that time I hadn’t seen another person except for the girl. And what if she was right? What if there was no one else?
The air suddenly felt charged, the solitude almost supernatural and I felt a chill cut through the heat pouring from the moon. I made my way back up the steps, fist raised over the door. But then it fell back down to my side and I curled up on the porch swing, searching for the girl’s silhouette through the window until I fell asleep.
6
Bryn
His shoulder was pressed against the window, rising and falling. He was sleeping. Here. I took quiet steps around my grandparents’ farmhouse as if trying not to stir him, as if he was real.
That night after Dani had dropped me off I’d curled into bed, blankets pulled tight over my head, and I’d felt that slow wave slipping down over my skin, pinning me to the mattress, sleep stifling everything. I’d blinked and I was back on the beach. That’s when I’d seen the boy abandoning the sand and disappearing between the rows of sunflowers.
The scene had shifted while I’d been gone and I wasn’t sure if he was just another one of those moving parts. Here one second and gone the next. I was used to the landscape always changing—evolving and re-building itself to match my memories. But as I’d watched him stray farther down the row, suddenly everything had felt foreign and haunted and even then as I watched him sleep, I was afraid.
For five years I’d been coming here in my sleep, spending those long episodes among the landscapes of my childhood, the terrain literally sutured by my memories—the big hill I’d sledded down that one winter it snowed; the meadow behind our grandparents’ house where Dani and I would spend hours picking wildflowers; the beach where we used to go every summer.
I’d trekked for miles, never tired, re-discovering cotton fields and drive in movie theatres, abandoned playgrounds and old tree houses. Snapshots from every family vacation, every place I’d ever been to, familiar sensations still clinging to them like phantoms. But every place had been empty and I’d always been alone.
When I found my grandparents’ farmhouse it was exactly how I’d remembered it. Same worn furniture; my grandmother’s flower embossed dishes; my grandfather’s coin collection under a faulty floorboard in the bottom of his closet. I’d sifted through her jewelry boxes and buried myself in the scent of his old work clothes.
But as the years went by the small house started to fill with new things. New memories. Every book I’d ever read lined the shelves above the antique fireplace, held upright by trinkets I’d picked up at a flea market outside of town; by the scented candles Dani always gave me for my birthday; by some of my small sculptures.
The shelves were choking now, five years of social exclusion resulting in the kind of loneliness that can only be remedied with words. Lots of them. I plucked one of the books free, a copy of Tuck Everlasting, the cover bowed from countless nights pressed flat against my thighs.
I put it back and reached for a copy of Life of Pi, some loose pages spilling onto the floor. I stopped pretending to browse and finally grabbed my favorite copy of Through The Looking-Glass. It wasn’t my favorite book. I wasn’t sure I had one. But it was one I hadn’t seen in the real world for almost five years. It was a vintage copy, one my grandfather had given me for my seventh birthday. He’d written an inscription on the first page—My dearest Bryn, dream with your heart and the universe will bend at your will.
But then we moved out of my dad’s house and in between packing and trying to salvage the broken pieces of my mom, this little piece of me had gotten left behind. Somewhere…I wasn’t sure. I never saw it again until I got sick, until I came here and then there it was, tucked between an old farmer’s almanac and some of my grandfather’s western movies on VHS.
I sat on the couch, flipping through the pages, corners of them thin and transparent from the oily swipe of my fingers. But I couldn’t stop glancing back toward the window. I couldn’t stop waiting for the boy to disappear. Because he wasn’t supposed to be here. He couldn’t be. It was impossible.
I remembered the first time I’d told Dr. Sabine about this place.
Twelve-year-old me was gripping the seat of my chair, palms sweaty.
“It’s okay, Bryn,” my mom encouraged.
I chipped at the armrest, staring at my shoes. “It’s like a dream…but it’s not.”
“Are you sure?” Dr. Sabine said. “You know it’s possible—”
“No.”
I knew what dreaming felt like and I knew how hard it was to hold on to them when you were awake. But this place was different.
“Is it like the bad dreams you used to have?” Dr. Sabine asked.
I shook my head. “It’s like…mem
ories.” I smiled. “Like everywhere I’ve ever been and everything I’ve seen.”
Dr. Sabine turned to my mom. “It’s unusual. Normally KLS patients don’t dream during an episode.”
“But it’s not a dream,” I interrupted.
“It’s unusual,” she’d said again. “But we’ll run some tests during your observation.”
Those tests turned up nothing. Nothing you could measure, anyway. So I did my own research, spending every hour of wakefulness possible on the internet, buried in some book on KLS, on dreams, on delusions, parallel dimensions—everything I could get my hands on having to do with the brain and its ability to bend reality.
And what I’d concluded—the consensus among every doctor, author, and scientist I came across—was that we know more about outer space than we do about the human brain. In other words almost nothing. Humanity had barely scratched the surface, and wherever I was, whatever this was, was still buried somewhere just below that surface.
The wind surged, catching the boy’s shirtsleeve. I watched it flutter against the glass, almost tangling with the pink roses growing along the sill, the one’s I’d given my grandmother last year for her birthday. She’d harvested the seeds and now the window outside her bedroom was overflowing with them.
I watched the wind tear a few petals free and then I was walking towards the door, one hand reaching for the bolt, the other clutching a blanket. I cracked the door, peering out.
That old farmer’s moon from a night my uncle took me and my mom fishing was hanging in the sky. I was eight and remembered unbuckling my seatbelt and crawling onto the dash, my mom’s hands around my waist as I watched it rising over the hill in front of us.
I moved to drape the blanket across the boy’s shoulders but then the moonlight shifted, glinting against him like scales. I stopped, his veins churning a strange color under his skin. The breeze ruffled his hair and as he shifted I took a step back, the light growing dim.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 4
