Lights Out (Book 2): Under Attack

by Cal, Sarah

  None of it required her full concentration, and she took advantage of it. She wasn’t paying too much attention as she worked, and Carol seemed to notice something was wrong with her.

  "Hey, are you okay?"

  She hummed and looked up, surprised to see Carol scrutinizing her. "What is it?"

  Carol narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You've been out of sorts since you came in here. Did something happen when you went home last night?"

  Emma snorted. "Yeah, something happened," she muttered darkly.

  Carol just arched an eyebrow. "Well, then tell me. What happened last night?"

  Emma sighed. It wasn’t exactly a secret. The police hadn't told her she had to keep quiet about it, and she really would have liked to talk to Chase about it first, but she hadn't been up to it the night before, or that morning. Maybe it would be easier to just tell Carol. Chase would just fret and that wouldn’t help her.

  "You remember the woman that I shot at?"

  Carol nodded. "Of course I do. When they brought her in, I was the one assigned to her. And I did just see her a few days ago at the trial."

  "Well, I met her against last night."

  She wavered, wondering how to even broach the subject. Just thinking about it brought the memory back sharp in her mind, and her heart beat faster in remembered panic. She had almost died, again, only that time, Merry had been with her. The other previous times, she had been with Chase. Chase would have protected her, but Merry she had to protect. Being put into that position had perhaps been worse than the situation itself.

  Emma wasn’t used to protecting people, not like that. She didn’t think herself strong enough. And she hadn't been, they had been forced to run. Providing for her family was one thing, but she knew she might be put in the position again in future. It worried her, because she didn’t know what she could do if they were ever in a situation where their lives were in danger. With the gun, the only weapon she'd had, now out of her hands, they would be doomed.

  Carol finished whatever she had been doing and approached Emma, who had been standing in place for a while, lost in thought.

  "Come on. I think we can take a break for a few minutes."

  Emma just nodded and followed, taking off the gloves she had put on. They stepped outside and walked leisurely. Emma gratefully took in large gulps of air, washing away the smell from the hospital. That was one thing that hadn't changed much. It didn’t seem like Carol was bothered by it, but then she'd had more time to get used to it. Emma couldn’t imagine ever getting used to it, the job and everything that went with it, but Carol looked almost comfortable.

  They weren’t going far, anyway, but at least the air was clear out here.

  "Okay, we're alone now, so spill. What happened yesterday?"

  She sighed. "That woman from the shooting, I met her yesterday. Or I suppose I should say, she ambushed me. I was heading home and I came across my sister in the streets. The woman appeared out of nowhere, and she had a knife. I tried to talk her down, only it just made her more angry, and I grabbed my sister and we ran. She chased us all the way to the police station where she got arrested."

  They were far enough away that they decided to stop. There were no emergencies, but she knew Carol didn’t want to go too far regardless. Emma leaned back against a building while Carol stood in front of her with her arms crossed over her chest.

  "Sounds like you had a lot of excitement last night."

  Emma snorted. "Yeah. I could have done without it."

  "I didn’t realize you had a sister, though. Younger or older?"

  Emma chewed on her lip, seriously thinking about it. Sometimes she forgot, and there were times that Merry reminded her. Most of the time she acted like she needed to be taken care of. Then there were times like last night when she acted so much older. She didn’t even look her age, though Merry was a year away from thirty, but that could just have been because she wasn’t satisfying most of her body's needs. She hardly ate, she hardly slept. When she managed to, she was woken up by nightmares.

  It wasn’t something easy to explain, as easy as the question sounded. Because she could just give the straight answer, but the reality was so much more complicated than that. Carol was someone she'd come to sort of trust in, and she wanted to tell her the whole truth.

  She wondered for a moment if telling Carol was a good idea, and decided she didn’t have anything to lose.

  "Merry is older than me, but it's hard to believe sometimes. My parents died ten years ago. I was fifteen, she was nineteen. Merry... didn’t take it well."

  Carol nodded, sympathetic. "I can imagine it wasn’t easy for any of you."

  "Yeah, but it was hardest on her. She claimed that she had this... bad feeling right before the trip, and tried to tell my parents not to go, but no one listened to her. So it happened anyway, our parents died, and Merry suddenly thought she could tell the future. She was so bad in those first few months, the psychiatrist assigned to her when we first woke up at the hospital recommended she be put in a facility where they could help her recover."

  "And your guardian didn’t want to?" Carol guessed.

  "Our grandmother," she clarified. "She's the only other family we have left. Merry didn’t want to go anywhere, so my grandmother wouldn’t let them lock her up. I had my own issues that put me at odd with a shrink recommended by my high school, so I was glad that they didn’t take her away." She chewed on her lip and frowned at the ground. "Lately, I've been wondering if that was the best decision. Maybe, if we had let her go then, she might not be so bad right now. She functioned just fine the past than years, but something about what's happening is making her worse than she's ever been before."

  She hadn't let herself think it consciously, but how could she not? Merry wasn’t okay. They had assumed before, when they wouldn’t let her be put in a facility, that she would be okay over time. She had nightmares every time she closed her eyes back then, and she and Janice had both thought that was the reason for the change. They had assumed, if they gave her time and attention, she would be back to how she was.

  Only, it never happened. If anything, Merry got worse as the years went on, and they grew used to the change so that they rarely still noticed it. It was no longer strange; it became the norm and they learned to live with it.

  But if Merry had received the treatment back then, maybe they wouldn’t be facing the problems they were now, as far as Merry was concerned, anyway.

  "Just how bad is your sister's condition?"

  "It was so bad, she didn't leave the house, that I saw, for ten years. She keeps having nightmares, she barely eats. I don’t know how much weight she lost, but she's taller than me and I weigh a lot more. She doesn’t like going to medical checkups so I don’t know just how bad her condition got. Then there were the visions and he predictions of the future. She even claimed, the day of the crash that she had seen it happen in one of her visions."

  "And she's been like this for years? Isolating herself in your house?"

  "Pretty much, yes. But something about the current situation is messing with her. Or it could just be her deteriorating mental health. Twice now I've found her outside, and both times she was gathering a crowd and trying to give them some deep message about what is going on. The first time I found her in the town square, she was on a car and saying something about the apocalypse being a test from God, and these people were listening to her, it was just the weirdest thing. I had a neighbor of mine who was a nurse come in to look after her while I was away, but she's been acting worse than usual. Karen, my neighbor, has children and she no longer wanted them around my sister, so I think she stopped yesterday."

  Carol nodded along as she spoke, concentrating on every word. It made something in Emma's chest relax that someone was taking her seriously regarding her sister's health. Even more, Carol seemed like she could understand. Most people didn’t realize how hard it was. The few in her school that had somehow found out just thought she left her sister to take
care of herself, but that wasn’t the case. There were times when Merry needed special attention, and Emma was the only one available to provide it when their grandmother was having one of her bad days.

  "I really don’t know what to do about her. Yesterday was the second time I met her outside, the first time was the night I shot that woman. My neighbor didn’t show up at my house when I left this morning, and I don’t think she'll be coming back. I need to find someone that can handle my sister, and I don’t know where to begin looking."

  "What you need," Carol said, "isn't someone to just look after her. You need a psychiatrist to talk to your sister—I might be able to help you out."

  Emma pushed off the wall, taking a step closer to Carol in sudden excitement. "You can? Do you think you're qualified?"

  She shook her head, and Emma was ready to be disappointed when she spoke again.

  "I don’t deal a lot with psychiatric cases, but my sister majored in that field and she's had plenty of experience. I'll send her over tomorrow to give you a diagnosis, and then we'll see if she has any way to help you."

  Emma could feel hope growing in her chest. Finally, a possible solution had presented itself. Beyond the hope and excitement was gratitude toward Carol. She didn’t meet that many people willing to help someone they barely knew, and she felt Carol was someone she could consider a friend now. Before, she'd only ever had Chase, and as much as she appreciated him, this was something he couldn’t have helped her with.

  Their short break over, they went back to the hospital to continue their shift, and Emma put a little more effort in her work, now that her bad mood was gone. She ended up doing more talking with a couple of the women there instead of any real work, but there really wasn’t a lot left where her minimal skills could actually be of use.

  At the end of the day, Emma went home. She hurried, her fear from the day before almost forgotten as she nearly sprinted all the way home. It was late evening, but the sun hadn't gone beyond the horizon yet when she got home. She found Merry curled up on the sofa reading a book. She glanced up when Emma walked it.

  "Hey. How has your day been?"

  Emma planned on being civil. She wasn’t sure Merry would answer for a moment, but then her sister sighed and put the book down, still open to where she'd reached. She curled up even further on the couch, laying her head down on her folded arms.

  "I haven't slept well in days because of my nightmares, actually. Today was a good day... but how long can it last? And it's not just the nightmares. I'm scared and hungry and sick of the world around me. It's almost as bad, if not worse, as the nightmares that haunt my sleep."

  Emma froze in her surprise at the words coming out of her sister's mouth. It was just so different from how Merry had acted and talked the day before, she might as well have been a different person. She had to take a moment to adjust to the sudden personality switch. Her words didn’t have anything to do with her predictions; for the first time in a long time, she had actually been honest with how she felt, and Emma wasn’t sure how to react.

  But she spent time with her sister, comforting her because she looked like she needed it. She took a seat beside her and engaged her in conversation, just light small talk that had her relaxing a little. Emma even read some of the book to Merry until she fell asleep on the sofa.

  It was the quietest time she had spent with her sister that she could remember. One that didn’t end in an argument, or one of them feeling bitter or angry, and she counted it as a sort of win. Emma watched Merry fondly, and leaned down to kiss her head. She went around, making sure the house was locked up, and blowing out the single candle in the living room. She debated attempting to carry Merry, or waking her up to get her to her room, but it was so rare she slept looking so peaceful that Emma didn’t want to disturb her.

  So she got something to cover Merry with and went up to bed herself. Chase was already there, asleep, and she slid into her side of the bed and closed her eyes.

  She hoped, fervently, that Carol's sister might be able to make Merry better.

  Chapter 18

  Emma met Carol and who she supposed must be her sister, Barbara, at the door of her house when she answered a knock the next morning.

  She was surprised for a moment, before she remembered giving Carol details on how to get to her house before leaving work the evening before. Still, it was so early and Emma herself was only awake because she'd gone to sleep a little early the previous night. But then she realized how rude she was being, just standing there and blinking at them stupidly, shaking her head to make her mind wake up faster.

  "Hi. Please, come in. I'm sorry, but I didn’t expect you to be here so early," she said as she invited them inside.

  The two women walked in and Emma led them to the living room where they all sat down. No one else was downstairs, though she was sure at least Chase was up. She hadn't found Merry on the sofa where she left her sleeping last night, so her sister must have gotten up early and headed back to her room.

  "There is still some work to do at the hospital, so I wanted to get this out of the way early. I spoke to someone yesterday so they would cover for us, you won't even have to go in. You might want to stay behind with your sister for the day, anyway, after she and my sister have their talk."

  She nodded at her sister, who smiled warmly at Emma. They looked a lot alike, both brown skinned and brown-eyed, with almost similar facial features. The only difference was that Barbara kept her hair longer. It was brushed back from her face and held at the back of her head with hair clips and pins. Also, Barbara looked a few years younger than Carol.

  "Hello, Emma, I've heard about you from Carol and she told me a bit of what you told her concerning your sister. Do you mind filling me in on some details about Merry's past?"

  Emma nodded, nibbling on her lip as she wondered where to begin explaining, and how much detail she needed to include without turning it into a long story.

  "Well, we've been living with our grandmother, Janice, ever since our parents were killed in a horrific accident about a decade ago. Before, my sister was... outgoing. She had a lot of friends, and though she didn’t like school all that much, she was above average in just about everything. She was happy, she acted like any other girl her age, had the same interests and problems. But she hasn’t been the same since the accident. She sees things, dreams things, and thinks they are reality. Or, that they are predictions of the future, and she won't take me seriously when I say they can't be. She gets defensive, or hostile. Not physically, just with her words. Worst of all are the nightmares that came on because of the accident."

  Barbara arched her eyebrows. "Really? And how old was she at the age of the accident?"

  "Merry was nineteen."

  Her eyebrows went up impossibly higher. "I'm surprised she handled it so badly at such an age. If anything, I would have been more worried about you, being the younger sister."

  That was where everybody had been wrong. At the hospital, people had given her more priority because she was the minor, at least until Merry started displaying what they termed as abnormal behavior. Of course, it was the same in Emma's case, only her behavior was abnormal because it was too normal. People who went through trauma were supposed to have some reaction, so when she didn’t, they thought something was fundamentally wrong with her.

  Emma just told them she didn’t know how else to act, because unlike her sister, she didn’t remember. Then there were the geniuses that said she was just pretending not to remember, and Emma had to keep saying that she didn’t remember witnessing the accident. She didn’t know much about it, and at the time, no one really bothered to tell her much, because they thought she was too young to handle it. She put it out of her mind, because it was so much easier than trying to process it.

  "Not much changed for me," Emma said dryly. "I didn’t get along with people before or after it happened. I was always lost in a book, or a movie, or a song. I just took to that, after. The biggest different was that I n
o longer had my parents around, but I had my grandmother and my sister and new responsibilities around the house, that only grew as time went on. I couldn’t afford not getting my act together. Merry... closed in on herself. Refused to see her friends, refused to leave the house. Gave up nearly everything that had been her life before the accident. She'd have nightmares all the time so she was barely sleeping, and then she lost her appetite so she wasn’t eating enough, either. It's gotten worse recently."

  Barbara nodded slowly, her lips pursed. Emma waited for her to think, clutching her hands together in her lap and leaning forward slightly, willing the other woman to speak.

  The best case scenario, was that she knew what was wrong with Merry and how to help her. Emma knew it was nothing but a fantasy, though. It wouldn’t be that easy. The hospital had claimed they could help her if they put her in psychiatric care, but they had estimated months if not longer for Merry to get better. Having a specialist now would be helpful, but Emma couldn’t allow herself to believe one woman could make everything all right that had been wrong in a decade and was only getting worse in the space of a few hours.

  Barbara didn’t deserve having that responsibility put on her shoulders when she was there to offer help for free.

  "Can I speak with Merry?" she finally asked.

  "Of course. Just let me go call her."

  Emma jumped off her chair, wondering where to begin to look. Merry could have gone to her room when she woke up. But it was bright outside, and her room got a lot of sun during the morning hours. Would she have been able to go back to sleep? If she woke up before Emma did, would she have wanted to? Emma was concerned she had another nightmare. She hadn't heard anything, but the Merry's nightmares weren’t always the kind that had her waking up screaming at night. Sometimes she just cried silently, and Emma wouldn’t know if she didn’t check on her sister sometimes, before when she used to get up before dawn and go out for a jog before school.