Karena stared. There he was, after all this time, sitting there just like he’d been at Quencher’s over 14 years ago. Exactly like he’d been last time. His hat was pulled far over his face so that she couldn’t see it. But she didn’t need to. The face haunted her nightmares all the time, and she knew it well.
Suddenly, Karena freaked out. Frantically, she stood up and threw her plate at him, but she missed and the plate crashed against the wall and splintered into pieces. Karena picked up a knife, hardly even aware of what she was doing, and charged at him, raising the knife in the air, but a force held her back. She realized her friends had grabbed her, were trying to calm her down. She trashed wildly in their arms. She had to kill him. She had to kill the Sandman before he could start her torment all over again. She raised the knife and threatened to stab her friends, and they backed away. She charged at the Sandman, who continued to sit calmly in the same exact positon, as if nothing was happening at all. People were staring at her, terrified, but she paid them no heed. She only could see the man sitting in front of her.
And then he disappeared. He’d been there a moment ago, and then he was gone. Karena whirled around, looking for him. There he was, standing outside the window on the opposite wall, with his hat still pulled over his face as if he’d been there all along. Breathless, heart beating furiously, Karena charged once again, picking up a chair along the way. She hurled it in front of her with as much force as she could muster, and the window smashed into millions of tiny pieces as the chair collided with it, causing her friends to back away. She must’ve seemed like a madman, but she didn’t care. She had to kill him.
She leaped through the broken window, getting her legs scratched as they scraped against jagged shards of glass still stuck in the frame. She landed with a crunch on more glass, and, without slowing down, sprinted towards the Sandman, brandishing the knife all this time. She hurled herself at him, knife extended in front of her in a position where she could stab him.
But once again, he was gone. It was like he’d never been there, and Karena found herself careening towards the ground, caught terribly off balance from having expecting herself to be crashing into someone. Her arm got cut with the knife when she landed, and it began to bleed tremendously. Not caring, Karena got up again and spun around, looking for him.
He was standing not thirty meters away, in the exact same position as the previous two times. Unmoving. Karena began to feel hopeless. It was impossible to catch him. There was no way he would just let her catch him and slay him. He was invincible.
Nonetheless, she pushed on, with a vigor she hadn’t anticipated. She suddenly found herself sprinting even faster than she had before, an aggressive look in her eyes, but also a determined one. It would end now. She wouldn’t let this continue the way he intended it to. She had to kill him.
He was standing in the middle of an intersection; there were no cars. Karena went off the sidewalk and sprinted towards him. She knew it was foolish, this whole pursuit, but she wouldn’t give up. She ran in the middle of the street, focused on him and him alone. In seconds she was running out into the intersection, and would be at him in just another second. She knew he would disappear, but she had to…
A car flew out of nowhere, brakes squealing, and it careened into her body, throwing her to the side and causing her to go sailing through the air. She slammed into the pavement, and immediately felt a physical pain like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It was impossible for her to describe it. Her vision was red, and she could vaguely see blood dripping onto the street around her. She could vaguely see the Sandman standing there, in the same position in the middle of the street.
People came out of the car to tend to her, but she ignored them. They didn’t matter. They would be gone in moments, anyway. It didn’t matter what happened to her now, if she was taken to a hospital or if she just died. She was going to start over again no matter what happened.
And then, the Sandman reached into his pocket and pulled out the hourglass. Karena could scarcely see him, but she could see his face. It was the same face as before, but it was older now, maybe 20 years older than the last real time she’d seen him when she’d first woken up as a baby. But nonetheless it was easy to tell that it was the same man, the same expression, the same everything.
The sand was at the bottom of the hourglass. Karena saw the Sandman raise his finger through her blood-stained eyes. And then, all sound disappeared except for one noise.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“You win,” she muttered through her swollen mouth. “This time, you win. But not next time.”
And everything disappeared.
20
The pain left Karena’s body, or at least the physical pain, not the other pain. And the other pain was much stronger. She knew what was going to happen now. Everything was black, and she felt the bedding form under her body as the world came into existence. Her new body was unblemished, free of all bruises and cuts, but she did not want it. She wanted her old body, the one that was 15 years old. Not the one she’d just been in, but the one before that. The original one, where she hadn’t had any worries, or at least any real worries. The body where she could freely live without the surveillance of the Sandman, where she could grow up properly like an ordinary human being. The body where there was no Sandman, where she had actual friends, where there wasn’t a care in the world. That was what she wanted.
But it was useless to wish for such things, and she knew it. She was here, lying in her crib, as baby, and there was nothing she could do about it.
The light turned on, which was strange, because she hadn’t been crying and so her parents wouldn’t have known to come in to check on her. And then she looked up and saw who’d turned on the light.
It was the Sandman.
She’d forgotten that he’d be here too. He looked like he was at least 80 years old now, but in every other way he looked exactly the same as before. Karena stared, wide-eyed, helpless, as he lifted the hourglass out of his pocket. The sand was all at the top now, just starting to fall down. Karena knew exactly what sound she be hearing next, and she closed her eyes.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
When she opened then he was gone and the light was off, as it had really been the whole time, but she still felt like his presence was still around her, watching everything she did. She would feel that way for a very long time.
She didn’t cry out. Her parents would find out that their 11-month year old daughter could speak in the morning. She decided that she’d at least take advantage of her new, sleepy body and get some rest for the very first time in a very long time.
21
When Karena woke up in the morning, Harold and Christi still had no idea what had happened to her. To them she was still merely a normal baby, and they acted like she was when they came in to greet her late in the morning, when the sun was already high in the sky. They came in quietly, so as not to wake her if she were still to be sleeping, when in fact she’d been awake for quite some time now.
Before her parents could start talking to her and treating her like a baby, Karena spoke. “I have something to tell you,” she said.
As she’d expected them to, her parents gasped and reeled back as if struck.
“And I just did,” Karena said. “Since I’m sure you find it strange that your 11—month old daughter is talking to you like an adult, and believe me I would too. As a matter of fact, I am an adult, of 30 years of age, and this is the third time I’ve been in this body, and the second time it’s happened with me having been a grown-up. Please don’t freak out right now, even though you probably will, but I can explain everything, even though you probably won’t believe me. Then again, I am a baby who couldn’t speak English just a few hours before, at least in your world, and now I can, so what could possibly be more outrageous than that? Perhaps you’d believe any story I told you, though I won’t test it out. I’ll only tell you the true story, and hopefully you’ll believe that. If you don�
�t then please don’t send me to a mental hospital, because that would be awful and…”
Karena was practically out of breath from all this rambling. She hardly even knew what she was talking about, and was mainly talking simply for the sake of proving that she could talk, even though her speech was impeded upon by a thick layer of baby slobber and a high-pitched voice.
Harold and Christi merely stared at her, jaws hanging open. I’m not sure anyone would know how to react in a situation such as this, or at least any normal human being who’d never been through anything like this before.
Karena knew that by speaking she was going to freak her parents out even more, but she did it anyway. “Please don’t just stand there staring at me,” she said. “It’s freaking me out just as much as I’m freaking you out, well, maybe not quite as much but I’m sure you understand what I mean. The point is, you’ll get used to this eventually, so why be surprised now? Ok, that doesn’t make any sense. Look, just please, please don’t send me to a mental hospital, or any kind of hospital for that matter, because I assure you I’m perfectly okay and don’t need any sort of medical treatment.”
Karena’s parents were stunned. Finally, Christi was able to gain enough control of her flabbergasted jaw to utter the phrase: “What?”
Karena sighed. “Look, I can explain everything,” she said. “I just need you not to freak out and not to panic or anything like that.”
Harold’s eyes grew wide. “Okay, then,” he said in a trembling voice, sitting down. Karena didn’t know if he thought he was in a dream or what, but he would soon snap out of his trance; both of them would.
And so Karena, not quite sure if her parents were really listening to the words she was saying or if they were still merely mesmerized by the fact that she could talk, explained the whole situation to them, only leaving out, like last time, the aspect of the Sandman, which now actually seemed like a pretty major part of the story. There was no need to tell them about that. Then they would think that she really was crazy. Besides, talking about him now wouldn’t be good for her. For the past few minutes she’d forgotten about him when she’d been rambling on to her parents, and she wanted to continue having forgotten about him. She wanted to keep it that way for as long as she was able, which she knew wouldn’t be very long.
After she was done explaining the situation to her parents, they were still stunned. “How,” Christi gasped, seemingly out of breath. “How is this even possible?”
“I don’t know any more than you do,” Karena said.
“I don’t understand,” Harold whispered.
“Neither do I,” Karena replied. “But I accepted it a long time ago, and that’s what you should do now too, like you did eventually in my past life.”
“We were there in your past life?” Harold asked.
Karena hesitated. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “My past life was identical to this one. This all happened to me before.”
“Were we there when you disappeared?” Christi asked.
Again, Karena hesitated. Then, making a decision in that moment, she said: “No, but this time you will be.”
22
Karena’s deja-vu was far, far stronger than it had been in her previous life. If you experience something for the second time, then undoubtedly you will have a sense of deja-vu, perhaps even quite a strong one. But if you experience the exact same thing a third time, the sense of deja-vu will be practically overwhelming.
This is exactly what Karena experienced on a day-to-day basis growing up as a child in her third life. Everything that happened, everything in the news, everything with other people and with the town, she’d known what would happen before it even happened. She even proved this to her parents in the early days when they still didn’t quite believe her story.
One day, told her parents exactly who was going to win the election for governor in their state the day before the election. And sure enough, the next day that very person was elected, much to the surprise of Harold and Christi. She did this multiple times, predicting the outcomes of elections and sports tournaments, not that she’d been paying much attention to these things in her past life, but she had a pretty good idea of what the outcomes of major events would be.
She figured she could make a pretty good career betting on the outcomes of these sorts of things, but she immediately discarded the idea as fruitless. She would start over everything anyway, and so it wouldn’t prove to be of any merit to her or to anyone else.
Growing up from a baby into a toddler and beyond for the third time was even more painful than it had been the second time. Along with the deja-vu, there was also an overwhelming sense of hopelessness that hung over everything. How long would the Sandman let this go on? How long would she have to endure this repetition? Was this only the beginning, or was this the last time she would start over? There was no way of knowing.
Like last time, Karena tried to focus on other things. Last time she’d focused on learning and knowledge, but this time she focused on trying to find Shawn again. She had no idea if he was even out there, if he existed in this world on not, but she resolved that if he was, then she would find him as soon as she could.
And so the moment her limbs were capable of manipulating pages of a phonebook and clicking her way through the internet, she began searching for him. When she looked through the names of people in the suburbs where she lived, there were no results. She realized that he must have moved here later on in his life, and she immediately realized what a fool she was for not having asked him, in all those years they’d been together, where he was actually from. He’d said that he’d gotten a different job in each of his lives, so he could end up practically anywhere in the world.
Right now though, she knew he still had to be a kid if he was alive, and so she began looking for Shawn Ryker in multiple cities and towns all over the state. When her meticulous search yielded no results, she looked through cities and towns in the whole country, going state by state. She would spend hours at the computer searching for Shawn Ryker, finding some results but not the ones she wanted. A couple of times she found someone with the exact same name, but when she called them she instantly knew that they were not the right Shawn. All she had to do was say her name and maybe mention the Sandman, and she’d know. But for the longest time her search yielded nothing and Karena felt like she’d never see Shawn again.
23
Karena, after months and months of searching, still hadn’t found Shawn. She grew frustrated on multiple occasions, but other times she was glad to have a distraction from the constant fear of the Sandman. Besides, it was of absolute necessity that she carried out her search, otherwise she would have no one to whom she could really confide and open up to.
And then, one day, she found someone named Shawn Ryker on the Internet who lived all the way in Canada. Karena called him, and a man answered the phone who was not Shawn.
“Hello?” the man said.
“Hello,” said Karena, awkwardly, as these phone conversations always were.
“Who is this, eh?” the man asked.
“This is Karena,” said Karena. “Is this Shawn Ryker?”
“This is Shawn’s father,” said the man. “Who the heck is Karena?”
“Can you please put me on the phone with Shawn?” Karena asked.
“Are you a friend of Shawn?” the man asked. “He doesn’t have any friends, so you can’t be. Then who are you?”
Karena felt a surge of excitement at the man saying Shawn had no friends. This could be him, since she knew that after 8 lifetimes he wasn’t likely to be the most social person on the planet. “Can you just please let me talk to him?” Karena asked.
The man sighed. “All right, fine.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, before a boy of about 14 years old answered.
“This is Shawn,” said the boy quietly.
“This is Karena,” Karena answered.
There was silence. “Karena?” the boy asked. “Y
ou mean…the Karena who I met…”
“Yes,” Karena replied, almost bubbling over with joy. “I’m the Karena you met in your past life!”
“You’re real,” Shawn whispered. “Finally, after all these years, I hear you again.”
Shawn was even more excited to see Karena that Karena was to see him. Although they lived far away, Karena and Shawn were finally communicating again, and for Shawn it had been 12 years since they’d spoken.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I started over 12 years ago and I’d almost thought that you were never going to come. Although I suppose it wouldn’t make sense for you to come while I was younger, since I was still a little boy. I can’t believe I never told you where I’d be when you started over, if we actually could meet up again.”
“I searched the whole country,” Karena said. “Until I finally found you in Canada.”
“Well, I was born in America,” said Shawn. “But I’ve lived here for the past 5 years, like I did in my past 8 lives before going back to America and to my hometown.”
“Is your hometown here?” Karena asked.
“Yes,” Shawn said. “I move back in 6 months.”
Karena could scarcely believe her good fortune at finally finding Shawn and finding out that he was coming back in 6 months, which, compared to all the years she’d been repeating the same thing, was no time at all. It seemed that everything might soon return to normal again as Karena settled in her new life, or at least, normal as in similar to her previous life, not normal in the way a normal human would think of as normal.
But things were not going to return to normal, not even the way she would define normal in her previous life. Karena didn’t know this, of course, and it’s better to think of her thoughts at this time of hope than of her thoughts later on, when things were far from normal no matter who is defining the term. It would be better if the story ended happily with Karena and Shawn being able to see each other regularly, and with things being better, even if they had to keep repeating their lives over and over again. And while they would get to see each other again, things were not going to get better in the slightest. Instead, for Karena and Shawn both, things were only going to get worse and worse until their dread of the Sandman was deeper than the pits of Utumno.
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