Marked

by T. L. McDonald

  Something distracts him causing him to sever our connection before he can find what he’s looking for. All at once the pressure in my head dissipates and I’m free. My secret safe.

  I sit up in one swift motion my hands finding their way to my abdomen to stop the bleeding, but the skin there is dry and smooth. That can’t be right. I felt the burn of the knife as it entered. There should be a wound here. Where is the wound? Where is it!

  Hands grab ahold of my shoulders forcing me down. I thrash and jerk to get away.

  “Hanna! Hanna calm down!”

  The voice sounds familiar, but it’s too hard to tell over all the screaming. The hands pull me back up turning into strong arms that wrap around me holding me still. Cradling me. These arms don’t want to hurt me they want to comfort me.

  “Shhh, its okay now. You can stop screaming. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Am I the one screaming?

  At this realization my heart rate slows, ending its marathon. Catching my breath, I take in my environment. Ugly institutional green walls, a vase full of flowers on a window’s ledge, an uncomfortable looking chair sitting in the corner with a blanket draped over the arm, and sad limp balloons tied at the end of my bed.

  I’m in the hospital, a place I’d hoped I’d never see again.

  “Hanna.”

  I turn my head toward the sound of his voice. His eyes once a piercing green are now dulled and filled with worry. Brown messy hair sticks up every which way and his clothes look slept in.

  “Jared?” My voice is raspy, my mouth dry. He smiles in relief and wraps his arms tighter around me.

  “Need…air,” I gasp.

  “Oh. Sorry.” He lets out a half laugh as he releases me.

  “What happened to me?” My hands go back to where I thought for sure I’d been stabbed.

  He turns his eyes away focusing them on the floor. Whatever happened to me must have been bad if Jared can’t even look at me. “What do you remember?” He asks so quietly, I have to strain to hear.

  I try to think back, but it’s mostly jumbled images that I can’t really focus on. “I remember going to the club.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, but it must’ve been bad if I’m in here.”

  “I’m so sorry Hanna.”

  “For what?” I ask, a feeling of unease settling in my stomach.

  Minutes pass. The tick tock of the clock on the wall gets louder and louder the longer he stays silent. Pain, guilt, and sadness ripple simultaneously beneath his features.

  “Jared. Please tell me what happened.” He won’t look at me; the sick feeling in my stomach grows stronger.

  “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have come after me,” he says finally looking at me with eyes full of self-loathing. “You wouldn’t have been in that alley.” He takes my hand and stares at me with such intensity I’m finding it hard to breathe. “God, Hanna. It could have been you who…” He trails off, his eyes drifting once again to the floor.

  Something tugs at my memory. “It could have been me that what?”

  Letting go of my hand he folds his own in his lap. He looks up at me through his lashes, tears dropping to the floor. “Died.”

  It was barely a whisper, but I heard that word loud and clear.

  The memory comes rushing back full force. The two guys in the alley, the blood—so much blood—the black holes where there should have been eyes, and the cold darkness that dwells in them. The way my wrist burned when the dark haired boy grabbed me, and the flash of whiteness that followed pulling me under.

  I remember it all.

  My hospital room door swings open pulling me out of the memory. Hastily, I wipe the tears on my face away with the back of my hand. Beside me, Jared does the same.

  “Hey, you’re awake,” Adam says with a mix of relief and happiness as he sits two coffees down on a small tray to the right side of my bed nearly spilling them in his haste to pull me in for a hug. His blonde hair is wet and smells like coconut shampoo. Closing my eyes, I breathe it in deeply, wishing I were home and not here. Adam releases me, but I can’t bring myself to open my eyes. When they’re shut it’s easier to pretend that none of this is real. It’s easier to pretend that I’m not here. “Hanna, are you okay?”

  I open my eyes; force a smile. “Yeah,” I say though I’m not, not really and I fear that I’ll never be okay again, but I can’t tell him that. He has enough to worry about with taking care of me and juggling his college classes. Besides, if I told him everything that happened, everything that I saw, he’d think I was insane. And who knows, maybe I am. People don’t just have black voids for eyes. Not anyone human anyway.

  Okay, now I definitely must be losing it if I’m considering the possibility that Blondie isn’t human. Of course, he’s human. What else could he be? This is the real world and in the real world people with black holes for eyes don’t exist. He was probably just wearing contacts or something. Or maybe I just imagined it all. It was a scary situation and the mind can play tricks.

  Yes. That’s all it was. A trick of the mind brought on by fear.

  But deep down, I can’t seem to really make myself believe it.

  Deep down, I know there was no trick.

  Deep down, I know it was real.

  “You really had me worried, sis, when you weren’t waking up,” Adam says with a shaky voice bringing me out of my spiral of dark scary thoughts. His eyes glisten. He’s fighting back tears. Adam hardly ever cries. In fact, the only time I think I’ve ever seen him cry was when Mom and Dad died. “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you. You’re all I have left.”

  I hug him swearing to myself that we’ll never lose each other. Even if there is some evil Blonde guy with black eyes who may want me dead.

  Composing himself, Adam pulls away first. “Has the doctor been in yet?” He asks while grabbing the coffees from the table. He hands one to Jared then offers me his. I decline. There are too many knots in my stomach right now to handle coffee.

  Just then, Kat bursts through the door. “Thank God, you’re awake.” She rushes over to my bed flinging herself at me. “It’s about time, you’ve been asleep for like four days.”

  My eyes widen so huge it’s surprising they don’t fall right out of my head. “Four days? I’ve been here for four days?” I glare at Jared for not telling me this sooner. He shrugs in apology.

  Kat’s red leather pants make a squeaky screechy sound that causes me to cringe as she releases me. She flips her hair over her shoulder with a flick of her wrist smacking Jared in the face with it. I try not to smile at the murderous glare he’s boring into the back of her head.

  “I’m going to go see if I can find the doctor.” Adam looks at Kat then rolls his eyes before glancing over at Jared giving him a look that says ‘sorry man.’ Adam isn’t a big fan of Kat’s either. He thinks she’s too self-centered.

  “So everyone at school is talking about you. You’re like famous now,” Kat says way too chipper.

  Being famous is the last thing I want.

  ***

  Even though I feel fine and I’d rather eat dirt than have to stay another night in this place because it only makes me think of death, Dr. Roberts insists I do for observational purposes given that I had basically been in a coma. Adam agrees.

  “I know you feel fine Hanna,” says Dr. Roberts. “And your tests have come back normal, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you were in a coma for four days with no apparent causes as to why. Let’s just give it one more night to make sure everything is okay and if it is, then you can go home in the morning.” He writes down something on the back of a small white card before handing it to Adam. With a quick smile and a nod of his head Dr. Roberts exits the room.

  “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “I don’t like it here either Hanna. After Mom…”

  “I don’t want to talk about Mom. What’s on the card?” I ask.

  “A name a
nd number for a therapist.”

  “I don’t want to see a therapist.”

  “It might be good for you to talk to someone about what happened.” Adam studies the number on the card. “I can make the appointment for you if you want.”

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to forget it and move on.” Adam starts to argue, until he sees the ‘no way in hell am I going to budge from this’ look on my face and he drops it. Besides, no one would believe what I’d have to say anyway.

  We sit in silence for a while after that. I know he just wants what’s best for me and I love him to death for it, but some things you just can’t say out loud. Some things you need to keep to yourself. Things like blonde haired boys with terrifying black eyes.

  “You should go home and get some sleep. You look exhausted,” I tell Adam when he stifles a yawn.

  He stretches in the uncomfortable looking hospital chair turning his head to yawn again as if I can’t see him. “I’m fine. Besides, I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You don’t have to sleep in that torturous looking chair. I promise I’m fine and I’ll still be fine if you go home and sleep in a real bed.” I already convinced Jared and Kat to go home earlier, but Adam’s being the stubborn one. “Really Adam, I swear I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay.” Getting up from the chair he moves over to the side of my bed where he leans down to kiss the top of my head. “Good night sis. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.” He pauses at the door looking back at me like he’s about to reconsider going home. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  “Good night Adam,” I say firmly.

  “Good night Hanna,” he says with a half smile before he steps out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

  Now that I’m alone and nowhere near tired maybe I can start to make some sense out of everything that’s happened.

  Black eyes consume most of my thoughts. I try like hell to deny them in an attempt to convince myself that they’re not real even though I know they are, which changes everything I thought I knew about the world. Maybe nothing really is black and white, or simple, like I always believed it to be. Maybe it’s all complicated shades of gray with hidden worlds lurking beneath the surface that nobody knows about. And maybe I got a glimpse of that world when those black eyes landed on me.

  My head throbs with the start of a headache by the time my thoughts shift from Blondie and his black eyes to the boy with dark brown hair. Who was he? What did Blondie want from him? And why did Blondie kill him and not me?

  And then I think about the way the dark haired boy grabbed my arm and how everything went white when he did. What was that? And what’s even weirder is that I’m pretty sure there was something there in the whiteness. Something important. Something he wants me to know, something he wants me to protect. But what it is, I can’t figure out and it’s driving me nuts.

  I pull at my hair in frustration as the image of his face surfaces in my mind and it’s like I’m right back there in that alley watching him die all over again. What does this brown haired boy want from me?

  I hate referring to him as the Brown Haired Boy or the Dark Haired Guy. The last thing he ever saw was my face. He deserves to be called by his name. I just wish I knew what it was.

  Sam.

  I don’t know why that name pops into my head. Or why I have this overwhelming feeling that it’s his name. There’s no possible way I could know that. I’d never met or seen him before that night and it’s not like we had time to introduce ourselves in between his wheezing breaths and bleeding to death.

  Maybe I really am crazy.

  His name isn’t Sam, there is nothing in the whiteness, and people with black eyes don’t exist.

  Burning pain flares around my wrist. Looking down I see that my nails are bloody and deep gashes have been torn into my skin. I must have been scratching at it to the point of drawing blood. What is wrong with me?

  Blood continues to ooze from the gashes leaving little red splotches on the blankets and floor as I head into the bathroom. I lift up on the faucet handle with the back of my hand then rub my fingers over the scratches until the water runs clear. I watch as the last bit of blood swirls around the basin vanishing down the drain before I turn the water off.

  Now that most of the blood has been washed away the scratches don’t look that bad, but I wrap it in a paper towel anyway keeping pressure on it while I climb back in bed. After a few minutes I lift the corner of my make shift bandage to survey the damage. My jaw hits the floor. The scratches are completely gone and in their place is a pale blue symbol.

  What the hell?

  My heart beats erratically in my chest as I stare at the delicate loops and intersecting lines that make up the symbol. Heat radiates from it along with an intense compulsion to touch it. As I lower my fingers it begins to glow, pulsing with flashes of soft blue. I cease to breathe as my fingers make contact. Swirls of blue light surround me.

  Fuzzy images dance around in the light with urgency moving faster and faster until I’m so dizzy I fall out of bed, landing hard on my knees. Pain radiates throughout my legs, but I don’t care, because I can almost make out an image now.

  Deep brown eyes shadowed by thick lashes come into focus. They feel as familiar to me as my own eyes even though I can’t come up with a name for whom they belong to. The rest of the face sharpens, the blurred edges fading away so that I can almost make out some of the features when a knock on the door pulls me out of the vision. The room tilts and sways as I climb back into bed, the symbol returning to a pale blue. Not knowing what to make of it, or of what I just saw, I push my hand deep under the covers.

  A woman wearing pink scrubs covered in teddy bears enters my room. “My name is Jackie and I will be your nurse for the rest of the evening.” She gives me a friendly smile before flipping through my chart. Her hair hangs in tangled red curls giving her a youthful look even though she’s probably in her mid-fifties. “So how are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine,” I say. In reality I am completely freaked out about the symbol that magically appeared on my arm and the vision that came from it. But I’m not about to tell her that.

  A sigh of relief escapes my lips at her decision to come to the right side of my bed to take my vitals. I don’t have any desire to find out what will happen if she touches the symbol on my left wrist. I don’t have any answers to give her either if she asks me about it, because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there when I came in.

  Her fingers are cold against my skin causing goose bumps to spread up my arm. She smiles warmly at me, “Let me know if you need anything,” she says once she’s done.

  “I will, thanks.”

  Nurse Jackie turns to leave when her eyes land on the spots of blood on my blanket. I swallow hard trying to think of what to tell her. Obviously, I can’t tell her the truth because she’ll think I’m a nut case. I tuck my wrist under my back blurting out the first thing that pops in my head. “Bloody nose.”

  “What?”

  “I got a bloody nose earlier.”

  She looks at me more closely. I hope she can’t tell I’m lying.

  “I’m okay though. It was no big deal,” I continue because why stop now. “Probably from dry sinuses or something. I have allergies.” I scoot further down in my bed pulling the covers up around my shoulders being careful not to show the symbol. “I’m actually pretty tired, so if everything is good, I’d like to go to sleep now.”

  She watches me a few minutes longer than necessary before nodding her head and leaving. Once she’s gone, I free my wrist from the blankets to study the strange blue symbol. It both fascinates and scares me. How did it get there? Why is it there? And what does it mean?

  After staring at it for two hours with no magical answers coming to mind I decide to give up and go to sleep. Maybe when I wake up it’ll be gone. Or maybe I’m asleep now and this is all some long weird d
ream.

  But I’m wrong because when I close my eyes the real nightmare begins.

  Blondie is stalking me, his eyes getting blacker the closer he gets until there’s nothing left but darkness. I look side to side for a way out only to find the walls around me are closing in. I’m trapped. I shut my eyes as my back hits the wall.

  “Open your eyes Hanna,” he pleads.

  “No.”

  “You know you want to.” I can feel him standing in from of me. His fingers brush softly down my face before lifting my chin upwards. “Open them for me.”

  “No.”

  His nails dig into my skin drawing blood.

  “You’re not real,” I say denying the very real feel of his nails buried in my jaw. My voice shakes. “This is just a bad dream.”

  Though I can’t see him, I can feel him smile. He leans in whispering in my ear. “Are you sure about that?”

  “No.”

  At the sound of his laughing my wrist begins to burn. I touch it and just like before blue light erupts. Blondie steps back letting go of my face to shield his eyes.

  When I wake my sheets are tangled around my body like a snake holding its prey in a death grip before it devours it. I rip myself free tossing the covers to the floor. Moonlight seeps into my room through cracked blinds giving me just enough light to see the clock on the wall. 3am. My hospital gown sticks to my back as I sit up. Pain flares along my jaw, my face hurting like hell. I touch it gently. My fingers come away wet and sticky.

  It’s too dark to see what it is, but with the nightmare still fresh in my mind, I have my suspicions. Feeling my way in the dark, I head for the bathroom. I run my hand along the inside wall until I find the switch. Blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness I wait until my eyes adjust. In the mirror my reflection stares back at me. Along my jaw are several bloody crescent shaped marks, the shape of fingernails.