by Amy Richie
“Oh.” I didn’t feel any different though.
“I know you don’t feel like a warrior right now, Ren,” she said hurriedly.
“I’m not a warrior.” There weren’t many clear things in my life, but that was definitely one of them. I was no warrior; I couldn’t be what Nona wanted me to be.
“It’s already been spoken.” Her forehead smoothed out. “When you wake up, you need to talk to Toby.”
“Toby hates me.” The words spilled out before I could think about them. It was true though.
“Tell him you’ve seen me,” she plowed ahead as if I hadn’t said anything. “Tell him Tristan will be coming soon. He needs to take you to a safe place until I come again. It’s important that Tristan doesn’t get to you before it’s time.”
I nodded mutely. Tristan had said I wasn’t ready yet. Did he know I was meant to destroy him? The woman behind Nona shifted into focus. There was a small gasp and then Nona was gone before I knew what had happened.
I was left alone with the woman on the road. Her face was familiar to me. She came to me often; just to watch. Like now, she didn’t say anything. Her sad eyes searched my face for something. I sat back until I was resting on my feet and stared back at the woman. Nona was gone but her words still echoed inside my head. Destroy Tristan? Even if I could - which I couldn’t - why would I want to? He seemed nice.
Chapter Three
The shrill buzz of the morning alarm blaring across the speakers in the hallway finally forced my eyes back open to face another day at Nine Crosses. There were no windows allowed in the rooms on D ward. Most of us housed there would have jumped out just to see if we really could fly. The morning alarm was my only indication that the sun had decided to make another appearance.
Four more minutes and the aides in their all white pants and scrub tops would make their rounds to be sure we all got up out of bed. Four more minutes and they’d be in to pull my pink draw string pants on for me like I was an oversized Barbie doll.
I pulled myself up and let my feet slide off the bed and onto the floor. Toby sat in the corner of the room, oddly distracted and not throwing insults my way.
I rose as quietly as possible and scurried past him to the simple box-shaped bathroom, attached to the room but lacking a real door. I pulled the curtain closed without turning around.
Clean pants and a plain white tee shirt were folded neatly and setting out on the sink along with clean under clothes. There was no mirror, just a plain grey wall to look up at.
I was just pulling the shirt over my head when the door creaked open. “Ren?” a woman called loudly. Had it been four minutes already?
The woman standing by the bed with a ready smile wasn’t a familiar face. My eyes narrowed momentarily but I moved forward until I was sitting on the bed. New aides were rare but she was wearing the white uniform and the cheesy fake smile.
“Shoes.” She waved the all white shoes in the air before setting them down by my feet.
I never quite understood why they kept our shoes in the hallway at night. I could see their point if they had shoestrings so no one could hurt themselves; but these were Velcro. How could we inflict damage with Velcro?
“You want me to braid your hair?” the aide asked with her plastic smile and annoying rise in her voice.
Her own dark hair was cropped close to her scalp but I didn’t object when she began working my long brown locks into three separate strands. I never bothered with my hair much, always preferring it long enough to easily pull back but not too long so that it became a chore. It hung straight and boring just past my shoulders.
“There,” she declared happily, “now you’re all pretty and ready for breakfast.”
I tried not to glare at her on the way past.
I had had strange dreams before. Spending more than three years in a mental hospital and my entire life seeing ghosts had given my imagination plenty of fuel. Last night felt different though. It felt real.
Did that mean Tristan was really going to come kill me? And I had to count on Toby to keep me safe? I glanced over at him, sitting on the windowsill - glaring at everyone who couldn’t see him. Toby wouldn’t save me, he hated me.
“You better eat your oatmeal, Ren,” he advised snappishly, suddenly right next to me on the bench style seat. I carefully picked up my spoon. “Good girl,” he purred.
I had tried not listening to him before and my bowl ended up sailing across the room while I ended up strapped to a bed with a needle in my arm. I sighed lightly, pushing a spoonful of unsweetened mush into my mouth. I didn’t like Toby either. No matter what Nona told me in a dream that probably wasn’t real; I wasn’t talking to Toby.
“Thinking about Tristan?” he asked abruptly.
I felt the heat rushing to my face, leading him to draw the wrong conclusion.
He clicked his tongue loudly. “Better just get him out of your head, psycho Barbie. He’s out of your league.”
Why? Because he was a ghost that may or may not want to kill me? I almost shrugged but stopped myself in time, years of careful stoicism coming to my aide.
I broke off a piece of crust from the dry toast and shoved it in my mouth. It was a little hard to chew but a swig of my almost cold milk washed it down easily enough. Meal times were never a grand affair here. Keep us from starving, but that’s about as far as they went.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Toby abandoned his place next to me and slid into the open seat across from me. “More silent treatment and listening to Doctor Moore tell you how crazy you are?” He clicked his tongue and smiled extremely wide. “Fantastic!”
Toby could have been attractive, once upon a lifetime ago. It was all there in his face. From the deep dimples his smile created to the sharp cut lines his jaw made across his face to his chin. If only he didn’t snarl and sneer so often. If only he would smile…ever.
I didn’t know what I had done to Toby to make him hate me so much. I barely spoke two words to him and nothing at all in this decade. Could I talk to him now? What would he say? What would I say?
“Whoa!” He leaned back to look at me more fully. “There’s some pretty deep thoughts going on behind those blank, dopey eyes- huh?”
I blinked rapidly, forcing myself to look away from him.
“Hold on,” he growled, pushing me over on my side of the table so he could get right in my face, “”Something happened to you. What are you hiding?”
I tried to tuck my hair behind my ears but the nameless aide had braided it too tightly so there were no stray hairs hanging by my ears like normal. I swung my leg out from under the table, away from Toby, and rose swiftly onto shaking legs. He was right that something had happened, but I couldn’t tell him. How could I? He would think I was crazy.
I stopped mid-stride, before I had taken more than three steps. I was crazy. I was in a mental hospital and I saw people that weren’t there. I never thought of myself as crazy before; never allowed the possibility to take hold. What if it was true though?
“What happened, Crazy?” Toby appeared in front of me.
My mouth fell open but no sound came out. My tongue slipped out to glide across my bottom lip. It was strange how everything except Toby went out of focus. A low moan escaped my throat but no words formed. What could I say?
“Cat got your tongue?” Another voice taunted from just over Toby’s shoulder.
I dropped my head until I was staring at my feet and shuffled from the room. Talking to Toby was hard enough - impossible even; talking with someone else in the room wasn’t going to happen.
“Aww,” the woman in really tight jeans called cruelly, “did I scare you away? Were you and Toby going to make out or something?”
My feet carried me away from the woman and into a crowded rec. room. My session with Doctor Moore was in fifteen minutes. Trying to make huge decisions was making breathing harder.
“Hey Crazy.” Toby’s voice actually sound
ed a little bit…concerned.
“I have to talk to you,” I blurted out, then immediately slapped my hand over my mouth.
Chapter Four
I was pretty sure that Toby’s wide-eyed shock mirrored my own. He blinked a few times but he didn’t say anything. Finally uncomfortable enough, I hurried over to the only window on the fourth floor.
It was a small square that obviously hadn’t been cleaned in a while with three thick bars running along its height. Not much light made its way through the glass but it was still my favorite place at Nine Crosses.
I sank heavily into the faded pink glider that was situated sort of in front of the window. Toby was nowhere to be seen. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the two ghosts that had appeared in the darkest corner of the room. So far, they were only interested in talking to each other. Maybe they hadn’t noticed me yet.
I never should have said anything to Toby. He was already shaken up after Tristan’s visit and then he knew something had happened to me. Why did I have to scare him off?
Toby may have been mean to me every chance he got, but he kept the ghost people at a safe distance. They didn’t like him and he was always near me so they didn’t come very close. That was the only good thing I could say about Toby.
A shockingly cold gust of air hit me with the force of a brick wall, stealing my breath and leaving me gasping. More ghost people had entered the room. At least half a dozen or more. The two in the corner stopped talking and they all turned to me.
Rising slowly from the chair, I glanced around the room for Toby. No sign of him. I considered calling for him but rejected the idea. Nothing good would come out of giving the nurses a reason to medicate me.
Suddenly, in a movement I hadn’t seen, a woman with long pale hair and a white dress was just inches from my face. “Come with us,” she hissed, sending a shiver down my spine when her cold breath washed over my skin. “Come,” she cooed.
Forgetting about the chair directly behind me, I backed up and sent myself sprawling on the floor by her feet. Thick white fog hung heavily in the place where her feet may or may not have been. I scrambled to my hands and knees but there was nowhere to go, the other ghost people had come to surround me where I had fallen.
“There’s no reason for you to still be alive,” one of the voices whispered.
“No one cares if you live or die.”
“Your own mother tried to kill you.”
“Your father abandoned you.”
“If your own parents can’t love you, who can?”
“Everyone hates you.”
“Just die.”
“Why won’t you just die?”
I fell to my side, clutching my hands to my ears and squeezing my eyes shut. “Nooo,” I moaned pathetically. What were they doing? They’d never tried to hurt me before. Was this because of Nona?
“Ren?”
I felt hands on my arms, solid human hands. I looked up into the terrified eyes of Nurse Grey. She looked almost as scared as I felt. “Are you alright, Ren?”
“They’re going to kill me,” I sobbed, my voice broken and raspy. It was just how I imagined it would sound after so many years of silence. Of course, it came out clear when I told Toby that I need to talk to him.
Nurse Grey’s eyes widened even further. “Who’s going to kill you?” I clamped my lips shut. I couldn’t tell her about the ghost people. I couldn’t tell anyone. “No one is here. You tripped and hit your head on the chair, that’s all.”
Only when she moved her hand did I notice the bloodied towel she held. I rubbed frantically at my forehead and along my hairline, searching for the injury hidden there. I never thought the ghosts could hurt me; my lips went numb now that I realized they could. My fingers made contact with the sticky mess just above my right eyebrow. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” The fear was gone from Nurse Grey, replaced by the ground in fake patience. The ghosts were still there but a newcomer with honey colored curls seemed to scare them back into the shadows. Tristan. His eyes narrowed when he caught my stare.
“They aren’t going to kill you,” he promised with an authority that none of them argued with.
I pushed myself off the floor, refusing the help of Nurse Grey until the first rush of nausea hit. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought. “I’ll let Doctor Moore know what’s happened,” Nurse Grey continued talking all the way back to the small nurses station in the middle of ward D. “He won’t expect you to come see him, but I’m sure he’ll be in to see you later.”
I didn’t flinch as my head was cleaned and a large white bandage was slapped over almost the entire area above my eyebrows. It felt stiff, but luckily no stitches were needed. Tristan remained close the whole time.
“Where’s Toby,” he fired as soon as the door clicked behind Nurse Grey.
“Some rest is just what you need,” she had declared with an absent minded pat on my head.
Tristan didn’t look like he was about to kill me. In fact, he looked pretty pissed that the ghosts had tried to. He paced the length of the small room, his steps more pronounced with each round.
“He should be here,” he said again. “I told him you weren’t ready.”
I sucked in a breath, prepared to ask what I wasn’t ready for, but no words came out. Nona had said not to trust him. Should I trust her though? Could I trust anyone?
“What are you doing here?” a familiar snarl made both our heads snap around.
“Well Toby, how nice of you to show up.” Tristan’s eyes widened slightly before they narrowed.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, slower.
“Doing your job.” The two men stood facing each other, their chests still but their faces livid.
“I’ll take it from here,” Toby said through clenched teeth.
“You better.” Without a single glance spared for me, Tristan was gone again. Had he really just come in to rescue me until Toby got back?
“What happened to your face, Crazy?” He wasn’t even looking at me, how had he noticed my face?
“The ghost people tried to kill me,” I replied in a low voice. No doubt, the nurses were right outside my door. Hearing me talk to myself wouldn’t help things.
Toby’s mouth fell open, then closed again. “You know,” he began, turning his face to look at me fully, “It’s a bit creepy that you quit talking for thirteen years and then one day decide that you have something to say.”
Thirteen years? “So I’m…nineteen?”
“Next month.”
“I thought I’ve only been here for three years.”
“Four.” He shrugged. “Close enough.”
“I…I guess I lost count.” Had I really been that out of it? It didn’t seem like it.
“So,” he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall behind him, “What made you want to suddenly start gabbing again?”
“Nona…told me to talk to you.”
Toby went completely still, his smug smile disappearing. “Nona?”
I nodded, no smile forming on my lips. “I saw her in my dream last night.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“She told me.”
I saw his teeth chewing away at the tender skin on his bottom lip. Was that a nervous thing? I had seen Toby everyday for all of my life and yet I knew nothing about him. The realization hit me as I watched him following Tristan’s path on the floor. How do you see someone everyday and not know them? Well, almost everyday.
“Did you hear me, Crazy?” he asked loudly.
“What?”
“I said,” he was still overly loud on purpose, “tell me what she looked like.”
“Nona?”
“No, I mean the hot little aide that came in this morning” He rushed forward to kick the edge of the bed. “Of course I mean Nona.”
“Umm…” I had been more focused on what she was saying rather than what she looked like. “She had short bla
ck hair.”
“Anyone can have short black hair. What was she wearing?”
The details of the dream were becoming hazy; like a childhood memory that was just almost there. “It might have been a white dress.”
“Might?” His jaw tightened.
“She was sitting on the road so it was hard to tell.”
“The road.”
“Yeah. We were sitting on a road. There were no houses and no cars. It was just us.” And the ghost woman, but she didn’t come until later, when the dream was ending.
“Damn it,” he whispered harshly, sinking heavily onto the bed. “That was Nona. Tell me everything she said.”
Chapter Five
“So let me get this straight,” Toby’s eyes narrowed slightly. He had pulled his legs under him until he was sitting cross legged in the middle of the bed. The mattress underneath him had given in to gravity and was trying to pull me closer, so I was pressed as close to the bottom of the bed as the hard plastic frame would allow. “Nona wants me to take you to a safe place - away from here?”
“She said Tristan would be coming soon,” I nodded.
“He was already here. Twice.”
“He didn’t try to kill me.” My voice was low but my implication was clear. Maybe Nona was wrong about Tristan.
“Not yet.”
“He saved me today.”
“The Cursed can’t hurt you.”
My fingers traced the outline of the bandage across my forehead, arguing with Toby when my words failed me. I didn’t blame them really- I had abandoned them for thirteen years.
“That was your own clumsy feet,” he shot out just as quickly.
“They were…” My lips snapped closed at his glare.
“They were doing what they were created for.” He looked over at me but his eyes only glazed over my face, not really seeing anything.
The Cursed were created just to scare the hell out of me? Nineteen years and today was the day to start? I sucked in my breath and held it there, waiting for Toby to say what we would do next.