Into the Real

by Z Brewer

  Caleb nodded and looked like he wanted to say something more, but I pulled my attention away. There was no time for talking. We needed to get somewhere safe.

  15

  The streets on the edge of town were empty and quiet. We’d chosen to leave the café behind for fear another Ripper might follow us there. We were too tired to fight anymore. Exhausted, both mentally and physically. It didn’t take us long to find a place to call it a night—a big, dilapidated Victorian with a rusted truck on the front lawn. It looked like the driver had lost control and crashed into the large oak out front. Apparently, he’d been a mechanic or something, because rusted hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches dotted the lawn, making it look like a toolbox’s graveyard. As we walked, I pulled a bit of sage from my leg pouch and rubbed it on my skin to mask my scent. I handed some to Caleb so he could do the same. Hopefully it was enough.

  We agreed to sleep in shifts, just in case the Ripper’s friend came looking for us. After burning more sage, I took first watch. I was supposed to wake Caleb after an hour or two, but I wasn’t tired in the slightest, so I let him sleep and watched the night out the window for any sign of trouble. I wasn’t sure I could kill another Ripper—not tonight. Every time I took one down, a piece of me died. My soul was withering away with every drop of blood spilled. You’d think ridding the world of monsters would feel triumphant and just, but the truth was, it was harder to do every time.

  I wasn’t a killer. I wasn’t hard or unbreakable. I wanted to survive, and that meant pushing my feelings down. But the feelings were still there.

  The sky outside brightened, and I realized I’d been up all night, staring out the window at nothing. It was dangerous to let my mind wander like this—to imagine a world where it wasn’t kill-or-be-killed. Every moment I spent imagining a world like that was a moment I wasn’t doing what I needed to do to survive in the real world.

  I massaged my hands together to warm them. The room we were in had a fireplace, so I slipped outside and gathered some wood and kindling. My arms full, I returned to find Caleb rubbing his eyes into wakefulness. “I could’ve helped with that,” he said.

  “It’s no big deal. I was up anyway.” Crouching by the fireplace, I dropped the pieces of wood inside. Caleb joined me in arranging them. Some kindling and a match later, the fire we’d built crackled to life. Retrieving the jerky from my pouch, I opened the bag and held it out to Caleb, who nodded in gratitude and took out a couple pieces.

  Caleb fixed his gaze on the dancing flames. After picking up a stick and poking at a few of the coals, he said, “I feel pretty useless.”

  “Are you talking about last night, with the Ripper? Because you were anything but useless. That thing would still be alive without you.” I sank my teeth into a piece of jerky and ripped a bite off, chewing. The sage I’d gathered should last a little while yet, but we were going to need more food soon.

  “We wouldn’t have been in trouble in the first place if I hadn’t ignored you and gone out to fill the canteens.”

  He was right, but it wasn’t like I’d never taken a senseless risk before. “Everybody screws up, Caleb.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But not everybody needs someone to look after them. To feed them, keep them warm and safe. You saved my life last night. Lia saved it the other day. I feel like I’m incapable of taking care of myself.”

  “Lia saved your life?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He tossed the stick he was holding into the fire. We both watched it burn as he gathered his thoughts. “She found me at the docks.”

  I remembered the last time I’d been down near the docks. My parents, Kai, and I had been searching some of the crates stacked on the pier for supplies. My dad had headed to the boathouse. It was so dark inside. My mom had run up to him, to beg him not to go in. It was the perfect lurking ground for the Unseen Hands. As they stood there arguing, Kai and I exchanged looks, but neither of us spoke. Maybe we were too afraid to step into an argument between our parents. Maybe we knew that something terrible was about to happen. Whatever it was, something terrible did happen. One moment, Mom and Dad were arguing in the doorframe of the boathouse. The next, they exploded into a cloud of blood—ripped into bits by the Unseen Hands. It took just a second for Kai and me to become orphans. I imagined it would take a lifetime to forget that moment . . . if I ever did.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I said, “Were you trying to leave Brume?”

  Caleb shrugged. His voice quieted some. “I guess you could say I was trying to leave. After losing my family like that, I didn’t want to live anymore. She stopped me from jumping. I was cold and alone, and ready to end it all after finding nothing in that bunker but a horror show of blood.”

  A heavy silence fell between us. One that Caleb broke when he said, “I’d lost everything, Quinn. It felt like my whole world had shattered. It still does. But I wanted the fear and sadness and confusion to end, and I only saw one way to end it. I know that’s cowardly, but—”

  “No, it’s not.” He met my eyes with surprise in his. My heart hurt for him, but I understood. Too many residents of Brume understood how he’d been feeling. “You were scared. Losing your family the way you did was traumatic. You’re not a coward, Caleb. You’re human.”

  An ember popped from the crackling fire, extinguishing on its own before I could put it out.

  “Seeing Lia through the haze . . . she looked like an angel. For a moment, I thought I had died. Like maybe I’d already jumped and couldn’t remember.” He swallowed hard. When he continued, his voice cracked, as if he were holding back tears. “Then she introduced herself, talked to me, built a fire, and gave me some bread to eat. She showed me kindness just when I was convinced that the world was devoid of it. I owe her. She didn’t have to do any of that.”

  He was right. She didn’t. But it wasn’t like Lia to leave somebody in harm’s way. Even when she was little, she’d find stray cats and dogs and bring them home so they could be taken care of. Lia didn’t give up on living beings. Not until they forced her to. Clearing my throat, I said, “Look, I’ve been pretty hard on you, but the truth is, you seem like a good guy. You didn’t have to go into the school to look for Lia, but you did. You didn’t have to help take down that Ripper, but you did. I don’t know what the future holds for any of us, but I do know that together, three people have a better chance at survival than two. And in a place like this, survival is all that matters. Let’s find Lia.”

  I swallowed hard before speaking again. “Let’s find her together.”

  He glanced from the fire to me and back again. After a while, he nodded. I wondered how much of the dried blood remaining on him had belonged to the Ripper . . . and how much had belonged to his family.

  I cleared my throat. “Hey, about what happened last night with that Ripper, before I got there—”

  “I screwed up. I know. Just froze and hid like a goddamn baby.” His shoulders sank in disappointment, but he didn’t tear his focus from the fire. “You don’t have to point it out. I get it.”

  When a person’s pride was wounded, sometimes they just couldn’t engage. I knew that feeling well. “The first time I saw a Ripper, I almost peed my pants.”

  He shook his head. “Quinn, you don’t have to do this.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Trying to make me feel better.”

  Staring into the flames, I let my mind wander back to a time that I wished I could forget. Maybe it would help to talk about it, though. Trying to ignore the existence of difficult truths only encouraged them to grow within you—to grow and grow until they consumed your whole world. “I was out with my brother, Kai. Our mom hated nights, hated darkness. So Kai and I . . . we wanted to catch a bunch of fireflies and put them in a jar for her, so she’d at least have light for her birthday. Maybe it was a little strange for two teenagers to do, but we wanted to see her smile again, y’know?”

  He’d turned his head toward me. “That’s really sweet.”

 
“Stupid is what it was. That little adventure almost got us both killed.” My throat felt drier than it had been. I attributed it to the fire, pushing down the guilt that was haunting the corners of my mind—guilt that threatened to release a dam of tears if I didn’t keep myself in check. “We were in the park. The sun had only just gone down, so Kai was certain we could capture a few and get to safety before we’d have anything to worry about. We didn’t yet know about Rippers being nocturnal, so we had no idea how much danger we were putting ourselves in.”

  Caleb’s eyes were locked on me.

  “Kai had the jar in his hands. I’d cup my hands around the fireflies to capture them, and when I had one, he’d open the lid and I’d put it inside. I was mesmerized by the soft blinking of tiny stars surrounding us, and I got caught up watching them. It was nice, seeing something so beautiful in a time when the fog wall had just surrounded Brume and gloom seemed to hang over everything.”

  Caleb spoke softly, empathy dripping from his every pore. “What happened?”

  “The jar Kai had been holding smashed into the tree to my left. I remember Kai shouting for me to run, but when I turned, I was face-to-face with a Ripper.” In my mind’s eye, I saw the monster’s snarling mouth, the muscles that moved fluidly beneath its see-through skin. I forced myself to relax my hands, as I’d balled them into fists without noticing, pressing my nails into my palms. “Kai had thrown the jar at it but missed.”

  Caleb was leaning toward me now, entranced by the story. I could only hope hearing it would put him at ease some—the way I’d wished someone had put me at ease back then. Wished someone had told me I’d done nothing wrong—that some things were just the fault of the world. “How did you get out of that?”

  “Lucky for us, our dad had noticed we were gone, so he tracked us there. He and Kai managed to kill the thing. I just stood there watching, frozen and scared. The look on my dad’s face as we headed back to safety still haunts me. I’d never seen him more disappointed. After that, he made sure that neither Kai nor I ever went outside alone at night.” I met his eyes. “Like I said. Everybody makes mistakes.”

  Caleb pursed his lips. His eyes shone in sympathy. “You said it yourself. You were just trying to make your mom smile.”

  The wind outside picked up, slapping a tree branch against the outer wall in a steady, repetitive motion—almost as if it was drumming its fingers, waiting for the next night, the next bout of chaos to begin.

  “Yeah.” I met his gaze and held it so I could be sure my point came through loud and clear. “And you’re just a guy who got a little freaked out because a monster was about to rip him to pieces. It’s okay. It happens. We can’t live in the past, because if we do, we won’t have a future. We have to live in the now.”

  As I uttered the last word, I swore I heard muffled voices in the distance barking orders that reminded me of soldiers. But there were no soldiers in Brume. No heroes—only horrors. The sound soon faded, and I wondered if I’d heard it at all.

  14

  “How do you know if you love somebody?”

  Dr. Hillard leaned forward, giving me a look that exuded empathy. An hour into our session, I was growing tired. But not tired enough to just agree that I was ill without further self-exploration. “God will tell you,” he said.

  I mulled that over for a moment. Caleb had said before that God is love. Lloyd had said that God wasn’t here. It made me wonder, if both were right, if that meant that there was no love to be found here. I hadn’t felt much love since I’d come to Camp Redemption. The only love I really felt was for Lia back home. “What if he’s wrong?”

  The image of Lloyd being carried off last night played over and over again in my mind. His eyes had been full of terror. He’d struggled to no end.

  “God is infallible. He’s never wrong. He wants you to get well, and the first step is embracing that he made you to be attracted to males, just as he made Eve to be Adam’s counterpart.”

  Two men had gripped Lloyd and dragged him away. Randall had said the Serenity Hut wouldn’t be as bad as Deliverance, but it would be close. I didn’t want that—not for any of us here. What was happening to him now? Was he in pain?

  “But I’m not attracted to boys. I mean, I’ve tried to think of them that way. It just feels wrong.”

  “That’s the demon speaking. Humans were designed to procreate, and women were designed to give birth. The demon wants you to give in to your compulsion to lust for the same sex in order to curtail God’s work and prevent childbearing.”

  I took in what he’d said for a moment, rolling it over in my mind and looking for the bits of logic that I was sure he could see in what he’d said. It was a long, hard, fruitless search. “So basically, what you’re saying is, if I get rid of the demon and have a baby, I’ll save the future of mankind?”

  “In the simplest of terms, yes.” He blinked, and I could tell that he was trying to figure out if I was mocking him or not. The truth was, I wasn’t trying to, but it was difficult not to poke fun at the ridiculous.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Hillard, but that just sounds crazy to me. It sounds like the plot of a Syfy original movie.” My mind refused to stay in the present. I saw Lloyd’s eyes, full of terror. I saw the orderlies’ hands gripping his arms. Either Lloyd had been scared, or the demon inside him was.

  “It’s normal to be resistant to treatment early on in the process. I assure you, Quinn, God has a plan for you, and we are here to help you understand and embrace that plan.” He scribbled something in his notebook and responded to me without meeting my eyes. Maybe I’d embarrassed him. “I’m afraid our time is up for today, but I look forward to continuing this discussion tomorrow.”

  Would I be here tomorrow? Or would I be in the Serenity Hut next? At what point did they decide that the only thing left to be done with you was to lock you away?

  The hall was empty when I stepped into it, but before I could head up to my room, Alice appeared with that sickly-sweet smile on her face. I wondered once again what sins she’d committed, and what made her an authority on what God approved of and what he didn’t. Maybe she had a BS in BS. “Hello, Quinn. How was your session with Dr. Hillard?”

  “Enlightening.” It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly.

  “Just so you know, Reckoning is beginning earlier today. The others are waiting for us now. I just wanted to make sure you found your way.” Once we entered the soft blue room, Alice settled onto one of the pillows on the floor and smiled. “Shall we begin?”

  I glanced around and did a quick head count. “Shouldn’t we wait for Susan?”

  “Susan required more intensive therapy. As a result of that, she’ll no longer be joining us for meals or Reckoning for a while.” She spoke as if it were the most normal thing in the world. But then, “normal” was a relative term. What was normal outside of Camp Redemption may not be normal here. “Now, who would like to go first?”

  Silence filled the room. Nobody wanted to go first. After what had happened to Lloyd the day before, the mood over the whole camp had been chilly, to put it mildly.

  Caleb seemed ready to change that, though.

  “Since my last Reckoning, I’ve snuck out of the house and kissed a guy.” Caleb spoke fast, as if he had to pour the words out before they retreated inside him forever.

  Randall gasped. “Lloyd?”

  I shot Randall a look to tell him not to give Alice any more ammo against her favorite target, and he shrank back. We all knew how she felt about Lloyd, and we all knew that Lloyd was the boy Caleb had been tempted by. Alice looked at each of us, her skin flushing pink, her brow furrowed in concern. Concern that we all knew what she hadn’t. That we were more out of her control than she’d realized.

  Her eyes lit up with flames. “I must say, Caleb, I am very disappointed and troubled by this sinful act. You were doing so well to resist the temptations of Satan. I’m afraid you may have stained your soul with this action.”

  Caleb’s shoulders sank. He stared at t
he floor, a look of shame on his face. All I wanted to do in that moment was hug him and tell him that he didn’t do anything wrong.

  Clearly, Alice disagreed. “Such an affront to the Lord. How did you feel afterward, Caleb? Repentant?”

  “Real.” Caleb’s expression was flat, but he met Alice’s gaze with conviction. “I felt real. Like I’ve been living in an imaginary world constructed for me by society, my parents, and myself, and all that crumbled away when our lips touched.”

  “God save you, child. Do you want to burn in hell?”

  “No. Of course not. You asked how I felt. I told you the truth. God hates liars, and I’m not one.” But the strength in his tone soon faded, clouded by doubt and fear. His shoulders slumped, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Only now I just feel confused and ashamed.”

  A cold smile curled her lips. She sure got some sick pleasure out of being right—even when she wasn’t. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet. After Reckoning, you’ll come with me for further treatment. Don’t give up on your journey to wellness, Caleb. You don’t have to let the demon of lust within you win.”

  “What kind of treatment?” I couldn’t help but ask. Would it be the kind of treatment that had marred Lloyd’s skin? Or whatever Susan was experiencing now? I doubted it was just an hour-long chat with the good doctor.

  “A lady doesn’t speak out of turn, Quinn. Besides, that’s not your concern. That’s between Caleb and God.” Annoyance filled me. I’d speak when I felt it was warranted, and I’d decide for myself what a lady did or didn’t do—and what I’d do or not.

  Brushing my curiosity to the side, she turned to her favorite camper. “Collins, why don’t you share with us now?”

  Collins sat up straight, beaming with pride. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he’d recently gotten laid. “Since my last Reckoning, I haven’t had a single compulsion to act on any homosexual urges. I’ve kept up my prayers, and I think I might be ready to return home. I feel stronger.”