Dark Visions

by L. J. Smith

  "He's bad off-like you when you burned up so much energy yesterday, Kait," Rob told her. He was holding Gabriel's arm-and Gabriel was resisting feebly.

  "I don't burn energy doing this. I take energy," he said.

  "Well, you burned something this time," Rob said. "Maybe because you were connecting so many people. Anyway.. ." Kaitlyn could hear him take a deep breath-and sense him getting a better grip on Gabriel's arm. "Anyway, maybe I can help you. Let me-"

  "No!" Gabriel shouted. "Let go of me."

  "But you need energy. I can-"

  I said, let go! Once again, the thought itself was an attack. Kaitlyn winced and everyone backed up a little-everyone except Rob. He stood his ground.

  Lewis said weakly, "I think he's got enough energy right now."

  Gabriel's attention was still on Rob. "I don't need anything from anyone," he snarled, trying to pull out of Rob's grip. "Especially not from you."

  "Gabriel, listen-" Kait began. But Gabriel wasn't in a mood to listen. She could feel waves of defensive, destructive fury beating at her like the icy battering of a storm.

  I don't need any of you. This doesn't change anything, so don't think it does. By tomorrow it'll be gone-and until then, just leave me alone!

  Rob hesitated, then released Gabriel's arm. "Whatever you want," he said almost gently. He stepped back.

  Now, Kaitlyn thought, comes the interesting part. Whether Gabriel can make it to his room on his own or not.

  He did. Not very steadily, but belligerently. Not needing words to send the message that they'd all better keep away.

  The door to the large bedroom shut hard behind him. Kaitlyn could still feel his presence on the other side, but it was a feeling of walls, of spiky barriers. She herself used to have walls like that.

  "Poor guy," Lewis muttered.

  "I think we'd all better go to bed," Anna suggested.

  They did. Kaitlyn's clock said 2:52 a.m. She wondered vaguely how they were going to make it to school tomorrow, and then exhaustion overcame her.

  The last thing she remembered, as her defenses lowered in sleep, was thinking, By the way, Gabriel, thanks. For risking your own neck.

  She got only nasty images of icy walls and locked doors as an answer.

  She was dreaming, and it was the old dream about the peninsula-the rocky peninsula and the ocean and the cold wind. Kaitlyn shivered in the spray. The sky was so dark with clouds that she couldn't tell if it was day or evening. A single, lonely gull circled over the water.

  What a desolate place, she thought.

  "Kaitlyn!"

  Oh, yes, Kaitlyn remembered. The voice calling my name; that was in my first dream, too. And now I turn around and there's no one there.

  Feeling resigned, she turned. And started.

  Rob was climbing down the rocks. His gold-blond hair was flecked with spray and there was damp sand on his pajama bottoms.

  "I don't think you're supposed to be here," Kaitlyn told him with the confused directness of dreams.

  "I don't want to be here. It's freezing," Rob said, hopping and slapping his bare arms with his hands.

  "Well, you should have worn more sensible clothes."

  "I'm freezing, too," a third voice said. Kaitlyn looked. Lewis and Anna were behind her, both looking chilled and windswept. "Whose dream is this, anyway?" Lewis added.

  "This is a very strange place," Anna said, gazing around with dark, thoughtful eyes. Then she said,

  "Gabriel-are you all right?"

  Gabriel was standing a little way down the peninsula, his arms folded. Kaitlyn felt that this dream was getting crowded-and ridiculous. "It's funny-" she began.

  I don't think it's funny, and I'm not going to play, Gabriel's voice said in her head.

  ... if it was a dream.

  Suddenly Kaitlyn was very much in doubt.

  "Are you really here?" she asked Gabriel. He just looked at her coldly, with eyes the color of the ocean around them.

  Kaitlyn turned to the others. "Look, you guys, I've had this dream before-but not with all of you in it. But is it really you, or am I just dreaming you?"

  "You're not dreaming me," Lewis said. "I think I'm dreaming you."

  Rob ignored him and shook his head at Kait. "There's no way for me to prove I'm real-not until tomorrow."

  Strangely, that convinced Kait. Or maybe it was just the nearness of Rob, the way her pulse quickened when she looked at him, the certainty that her mind couldn't be making up anything this vivid.

  "So now we're sharing dreams?" she asked edgily.

  "It must be the telepathic link. That web of yours," said Anna.

  "If Kaitlyn's had the dream before, it's her fault," said Lewis. "Isn't it? And where are we, anyway?"

  Kaitlyn looked up and down the narrow spit of land. "I don't have a clue. I've only had this dream a couple of times before, and it never lasted this long."

  "Can't you dream us somewhere warmer?" Lewis asked, teeth chattering.

  Kaitlyn didn't know how. This dream didn't feel like a dream exactly-or, rather, she felt much more like the waking Kaitlyn than the fuzzy Kaitlyn who moved semiconsciously through dreams.

  Anna, who seemed least affected by the cold, was kneeling near the edge of the water. "This is strange,"

  she said. "You see these piles of stones everywhere?"

  It was something Kaitlyn hadn't noticed before. The peninsula was bordered with rocks, most of which looked as if they had just washed up. But some of the rocks were gathered into stacks, piled one on top of another to form whimsical towers. Some rocks had their long axis up and down, some were placed horizontally. Some of the towers looked a bit like buildings or figures.

  "Who did it?" Lewis asked, aiming a kick at a pile.

  "Hey, don't," Rob said, blocking the kick.

  Anna stood up. "He's right," she told Lewis. "Don't spoil things. They're not ours."

  They're not anyone's. This is just a dream, Gabriel said, throwing a look more chilling than the wind at them.

  "If it's just a dream, how come you're still in it?" Rob asked.

  Gabriel turned away silently.

  Kaitlyn knew one thing: This particular dream had gone on much longer than any of the others. And they might not really be here, but Rob's skin was covered with gooseflesh. They needed to find shelter.

  "There must be somewhere to go," she said. Where the peninsula joined the land, there was a very wet and rocky beach. Above that, a stony bank, and then trees. Tall fir trees that formed a dark and uninviting thicket.

  On the other side, water . . . and across the water, a lonely cliff, bare in some places, black with forest in others. There was no sign of human habitation, except-

  "What's that?" she said. "That white thing."

  She could scarcely make it out in the dimness, but it looked like a white house on the distant cliff. She had no idea how one might get to it.

  "It's useless," she murmured, and at the same moment a surge of warmth swept over her. How strange-everything was getting cloudy. She was suddenly aware that while she was standing on the rocky peninsula, she was also lying down . . . lying down in bed....

  For a moment it seemed as if she could choose where she wanted to be.

  Bed, she thought firmly. That other place is too cold.

  And then she was turning over, and she was in bed, pulling up the covers. Her brain was too foggy to think of calling to the others, of finding out if it really had been a shared dream. She just wanted to sleep.

  The next morning she woke up to: Oh, no.

  Lewis? she thought hazily.

  Hi, Kaitlyn. Hi, Rob.

  G'way, Lewis. I'm sleeping, Rob said indistinctly. Only, of course, he didn't say it, not with his voice. He was in his own bedroom, and so was Lewis. Kait could feel them there.

  She looked up over hummocks of sheets and blankets, to see Anna looking at her from the other bed.

  Anna looked flushed with sleep, sweet, and resigned.

  Hi, An
na, Kaitlyn said, feeling somewhat resigned herself.

  Hi, Kait.

  Hi, Anna, Lewis said chirpily.

  And good night, John-boy! Gabriel shouted from across the house. Shut the hell up, all of you!

  Anna and Kaitlyn shared a look. He's crabby when he wakes up, Kaitlyn observed.

  All boys are, Anna told her serenely. At least he seems to have got his strength back.

  I thought, Rob said, his mental voice seeming more awake, that you said it would be gone by this morning.

  Thunderous silence from Gabriel.

  We might as well get dressed, Kaitlyn said at last when the silence went on. It's almost seven.

  She found that if she concentrated on herself, the others receded into the background-which was just as well, she thought as she showered and dressed. There were some things you needed to be alone for.

  But no matter what she did, they were there. Lurking around the edges of her mind like friends just within earshot and shouting range. Paying attention to any one of them brought that one closer.

  Except Gabriel, who seemed to have locked himself off in a corner. Paying attention to him was like bouncing off the smoothness of his steely walls.

  It wasn't until she was dressed that Kaitlyn remembered her dream.

  "Anna-last night-did you dream anything in particular?"

  Anna looked up from beneath the glistening raven's wing of her dark hair. "You mean about that place by the ocean?" she said, brushing vigorously. She seemed quite undisturbed.

  Kaitlyn sat down. "Then it was real. I mean, you were really there." You guys were all in my dream, she added silently, so the others could hear it.

  Well, it's not really that surprising, is it? Rob asked from his room. If our minds are linked telepathically, and one of us has a dream, maybe the others get dragged in.

  Kaitlyn shook her head. There's more to it than that,

  she told Rob-but what more, she didn't know. Just then Lewis interrupted anyway, from the stairway.

  Hey, I think Joyce is home! I hear somebody in the kitchen. Come on down!

  All thoughts of the dream vanished. Kaitlyn and Anna ran out and met Rob on their way to the staircase.

  "Joyce!" Lewis was saying when they got to the kitchen. He was also saying Joyce! but Joyce didn't seem to notice.

  "Are you all right?" Kaitlyn asked. Joyce looked very pale, and there were huge dark circles under her eyes. She looked . . . young, somehow, like a kid with a short haircut that's turned out wrong.

  Kaitlyn swallowed, but couldn't manage the next words. Anna said them for her. "Is Marisol. . . ?"

  Joyce put down a box of Shredded Wheat as if it were heavy. "Marisol is ... stable." Then her adult control seemed to desert her and she blurted, lips trembling, "She's in a coma."

  "Oh, God," Kaitlyn whispered.

  "The doctors are watching her. I stayed with her family at the hospital last night, but I didn't get to see her." Joyce fished in her purse, found a tissue, and blew her nose. She picked up the Shredded Wheat box and looked at it blankly.

  "Now, you just let go of that and sit down," Rob said gently. "We'll take care of everything."

  "That's right," Kaitlyn said, glad for the guidance. She herself felt sick and terrified. But doing something made her feel better, and in a few minutes they had Joyce sitting at the kitchen table, with Anna stroking her hand, Kaitlyn making coffee, and Rob and Lewis setting out bowls and spoons.

  "It's all so confusing," Joyce said, wiping her eyes and crumpling the tissue in her fist. "Marisol's family didn't know she was on medication. They didn't even know she'd been seeing a psychiatrist. I had to tell them."

  Kaitlyn looked at Rob, who, shielded by the pantry door, returned the look with grim significance. Then, carefully measuring scoops of ground coffee, she asked Joyce, "Who told you she was seeing a shrink?"

  "Who? Mr. Zetes." Joyce passed a hand over her forehead. "By the way, he said you kids behaved really well last night. Went to bed early and all,"

  Anna smiled. "We're not children." She was the only one who could talk; the others were all engaged in a torrent of silent communication.

  I knew it, Kaitlyn was telling Rob. Joyce doesn't know anything about Marisol except what comes from Mr. Z. Don't you remember-when I asked about Marisol's medication, she told me, "He said a psychiatrist prescribed it." It was Mr. Zetes who told her that. For all we know, Marisol wasn't on any medication at all.

  Rob's face was tight. And now she's in a coma because-

  Because she knew too much about what was going on here. What was really going on, Kait finished.

  Which you guys still haven't told us, Lewis reminded her. But look, why don't we tell Joyce what's going on? I mean, what's going on with us. She might know how this telepathy thing works-NO!

  The thought came like a clap of thunder from upstairs. Kaitlyn involuntarily glanced upward.

  Gabriel's mental voice was icily furious. We can't tell anyone-and especially not Joyce.

  "Why not?" Lewis said. It took Kaitlyn a moment to realize he'd said it aloud. Anna was casting alarmed glances from the table.

  "Uh, anybody want sugar or Equal or anything on their cereal?" Rob interjected. Lewis, be careful! he added silently.

  "Sugar," Lewis said, subdued. But why can't we tell Joyce? Don't you trust her? he added in what came across as a mental stage whisper.

  "Equal," Kaitlyn said, to Rob. I do trust her-I think. I don't believe she knows anything-You idiot! You can't trust anyone, Gabriel snarled from upstairs. The volume of his thoughts was giving Kaitlyn a headache.

  Looking pained, Rob and Lewis sat down at the table. Kaitlyn poured Joyce a cup of coffee and joined them. The spoken and unspoken conversations formed an eerie counterpoint to each other.

  I hate to say this, but I think he's right, Rob said silently, when the echoes of Gabriel's forceful message had died. I want to trust Joyce, too-but she tells Mr. Zetes everything. She told him about Marisol, and look what happened.

  "Everything's going to be all right," Anna told Joyce. She's very upset over Marisol. That's genuine, she told the others.

  She's an adult, Gabriel said flatly. You can't trust any adult, ever.

  And if she's innocent, she could get hurt, Rob added.

  "If there's anything we can do to help Marisol, let us know," Kaitlyn said to Joyce. All right. We won't tell her, she conceded. But we need to get information about telepathy from somewhere. And we need to talk about what Rob and I found in that hidden room.

  Rob nodded, and covered it with a violent spasm of coughing. We'd better meet at school-alone.

  Otherwise talking like this is going to drive me crazy.

  Kaitlyn felt agreement from everywhere, except upstairs.

  That means you, too, Gabriel, Rob said grimly. You're the one who started this. You're going to be there, boy.

  Aloud he said, "Could somebody pass that orange juice, please?"

  CHAPTER 13

  They met at lunch, and Kaitlyn and Rob told about everything they'd found in Mr. Zetes's hidden office below the stairs. Anna and Lewis were as puzzled as Kait had been over the various files and papers.

  "Psychoactive weaponry," Gabriel said, seeming to relish the words. By unanimous agreement they were all talking out loud, and Kaitlyn couldn't tell what Gabriel was thinking behind his barriers.

  "Do you know what it means?" Rob asked. His attitude toward Gabriel had changed overnight. There was a new tolerance in him-and a new combative-ness. Kaitlyn had the slightly alarmed feeling that he meant to push and challenge Gabriel whenever he thought it was good for Gabriel.

  "Well, psychoactive should be obvious even to a moron," Gabriel said. "It means something activated by psychics."

  As opposed to something activated by psychos?

  "Lewis!" Kaitlyn, Anna, and Rob all said. Gabriel contented himself with a withering look.

  "I couldn't help it. I'm sorry. I'm not saying anything, see?" Lewis took a desperate chug
of milk.

  "Something . . . activated ... by psychic power," Gabriel repeated coldly, one eye on Lewis. When there was no interruption, he turned to Rob. "Do I have to explain weaponry, or can you manage that alone?"

  Rob leaned forward. "Why . . . would NASA ... want him ... to develop weaponry?"

  Kaitlyn slammed a fork on the table between them to get their attention. "Maybe NASA didn't want him to actually develop it-but to find out if somebody else could be developing it. Eighty-six was the year the Challenger shuttlecraft exploded, right? Well, what if NASA thought the explosion was, like, sabotage?

  Psychic sabotage?"

  "Sabotage by who?" Rob asked quietly.

  "I don't know-the old Soviet Union? Somebody else who didn't want the space program to go ahead? If you got psychics to develop PK that could work over really long distances, you could have them throw switches in the shuttlecraft while they were sitting here on earth. I know it's not a nice idea, but it's possible."

  "We're not dealing with nice people," Anna said.

  "Look, what about all the other things in that room?" Lewis asked. "The pilot study stuff, and the letter from the judge-"

  "Forget it. All of it," Gabriel said sharply, and when several people turned to protest, he added, Forget it!

  We've got something else to worry about first. Understand?

  Kaitlyn nodded slowly. "You're right. If this... web ... that connects us gets unstable ..."

  "Even if it doesn't, we've got to get rid of it," Gabriel said brutally. "And the only place to get information about telepathy-hard information, in detail-is the Institute."

  "That's right, Joyce has a bunch of books and journals and things in the lab," Lewis said. "But she's going to think it's weird that we're suddenly interested."

  "Not if we go now," Gabriel said. "She's probably asleep."

  "She might be asleep," Kaitlyn said cautiously. "And she might not be-and Mr. Zetes might be there____"

  "And pigs might fly. We'll never find out unless we go see." Gabriel stood, as if everything were decided.

  Jeez, he's sure active all of a sudden. Now that he's got a stake in things.

  "Lewis," Kaitlyn said mildly. But Lewis was right.