by Cory Clubb
“Me? No, thanks. I don’t like my food slathered in grease.”
“Are you kidding? Look at those pictures.” I motioned to the menu overhead. “A golden bun lying atop a sizzling, cheese-covered, grilled-to-perfection burger with a stack of steaming fries piled high next to it. Behind it, a tall, sweaty, cool cup of sweet drink to wash it all down.”
Kate raised her eyebrows to me then let out a snort.
“You do know you’re lying to yourself thinking that’s healthy for you, right?”
I laughed back. “Oh, I know, but I just can’t resist something so good.” I turned back to the mouth-watering photo. “Lie to me all you want, delicious slider. You will soon be in my belly.”
“You’re disgusting, you know that?”
I looked back at Kate. “Oh, and the things I know about you.”
She instantly grew serious and punched my arm. “That’s not funny.”
Having Kate know my secret was actually not the worst thing in the world. It was sort of fun, really. Too bad all fun comes to an end. Ours did when I spotted Trent coming toward us from across the room.
I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get my sliders.
I took Kate’s hand just as the worker at the counter asked for my order. We turned and moved back toward where Dean and Celia waited for us.
“Nolan, what are you doing?” Kate tried to wiggle her hand out of mine.
“Scumbags right behind you.”
Kate looked over her shoulder. “What do they want?” she asked.
“Revenge,” I said without thinking and hoped she hadn’t heard. Kate gripped my hand tighter now, realizing the reason for our hasty change of plans.
Dean saw us coming. I tossed my head to the side, indicating the trouble following us while trying to speed up our pace.
“Split up. Meet at Old Navy in fifteen minutes,” he called out to us, low enough that Trent couldn’t hear. “If things turn real bad, find those mall cops.”
I nodded, fully understanding the plan.
I supposed we could have just gone straight to the mall security, but then there was the chance our parents would get involved, and, like Dean, I didn’t want to screw up this outing, considering we were both looking forward to tomorrow night.
Dean and Celia took off to the left and Kate and I to the right. To follow us both, the Three Stooges would have to separate as well. I was curious whom they would choose to follow and also what Celia was thinking.
With Kate’s hand still in mine, we weaved between shoppers and groups like a pair of fish through water. I looked back to see if I could see any of them following, but it was too crowded. Trying to blend in with everyone wasn’t all that hard to do, but we must have been moving too fast because Kate tripped. Her hand being in mine kept her from a total face-plant, although she did go down to her knees. I turned, half catching her under the arms, letting her weight bear down on me. My leg lurched back to balance us.
“Whoa—you all right?”
“Yeah, keep moving,” she said, back to her feet in a flash.
How had it come to this? My mind tried to grasp that question as we narrowly missed plowing over a woman toting two children by the hands.
“Slow down!” she called out when Kate whispered in an apology as we passed them. I noticed a smile on Kate’s face. Was she enjoying the chase? Then I heard a snarky laugh and took another risky look back. It was confirmed. We definitely had pursuers, and not one or two—we had all three of them on us, Trent in the lead. Why would they all come after me? We had to lose them somehow.
By now I was becoming winded, and each step began to grow heavier. It felt like my body was shutting down. Was I dying? Was there something inside my head? I couldn’t be sure, but figured I was just out of shape. This running thing wasn’t going to last long.
“We need find somewhere to hide,” I said quickly between breaths.
“Here.” Kate became an anchor and towed me into a store. I didn’t have time to read the sign before I was already inside. Kate didn’t stop and wound around a few racks of clothing, ducking down behind them.
A middle-aged overweight man, his glasses at the end of his nose, peered down at us where we cowered for cover.
Kate shot him a glance. “Take a picture—it will last longer!”
The man went back to looking over the shirt he held in his pudgy hands.
I listened toward the front of the store to see if I could pick up Trent’s voice. Had they seen us come in here?
My chest rose, and my lungs felt like bagpipes.
“You okay?” Kate whispered.
I nodded. “I think we lost them.”
The man had moved away from us to another part of the rack, but kept sliding his eyes first to Kate and then to me. I made good eye contact with him and was back in a split second.
“Harold. Get lost.”
The man’s eyes widened at me and he lumbered off to another part of the store.
“Come on. Let’s try not to look so crazy,” I said as we pulled each other to our feet.
“Did you know that guy?” Kate asked.
“Who? No. Why?”
“Well, you said his name.”
I tapped the side of my head. Kate gave an “a-ha” look and shook her head. “I feel so vulnerable around you now.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not a creeper.”
She made a face that said otherwise.
An overhead announcement thanked us for shopping at Old Navy and said there was a storewide sale.
“So how long before Dean and Celia make it here?” Kate questioned, looking around the store.
“Don’t know. They did run the opposite way, but probably figured out by now that no one was chasing them. I bet Trent won’t be able to find them now either.”
Kate rummaged through her shoulder bag and brought out her black notebook. I recognized it from the other day when we had run into each other in the hallway. It seemed like such a long time ago. How things had changed since then.
“So, while we have a few moments alone … I did some research,” Kate said as she paged through her notebook. “Have you ever heard of the Shadow King?”
I was still scanning the entrance to Old Navy for either Dean and Celia or Trent.
“What? No. Is he some kind of Disney character?” I finally answered. Kate let out an annoyed breath matched with a scowl. I placed my attention back on her. I really had no idea who or what she was talking about.
“The Shadow King is a fictional character from the X-Men comics,” she said, sounding truly like a nerd. It was my turn to roll my eyes. Kate went on. “He’s a psychic evil being living on the Astral Plane. The Astral Plane is a psychic dimension, something folks with ESP tap into to tell fortunes, talk to the dead, and such.” She stared at me for a second, making sure I was following.
I indulged her, nodding and saying, “Yeah, okay, whatever. What does this have to do with anything?”
She had a reply waiting. “You said you saw something inside of Stephanie’s mind, right? A monster or something? Maybe it’s something like this Shadow King.”
“No,” I said. “It was Stephanie’s body, but it definitely was not her. Like something was living inside her.”
Kate cut in. “Like a demon?”
I started to jump to crazy conclusions myself. “Wait, are you saying it was some kind of possession?”
Kate made a “hmmmm” noise, and I shrugged my shoulders at her.
“I did do some research on Stephanie. Everything was pretty straightforward. I didn’t find any kind of weird demonic stuff. She wasn’t into tarot cards or speaking with the dead through a Ouija board or anything. I ruled it out.”
Kate spoke her words plainly, as if she dealt with this occult stuff every day, but they sent chills down my spine. How she had obtained that kind of information on Stephanie was an even scarier thought.
“She was in a coma. Do you dream in a coma?” Kate asked out loud, although
she seemed to be arguing with herself. I shrugged my shoulders again. “You might have been in her dreams. Ever think about that?”
I hadn’t. I guessed it could be a possibility, yet it didn’t seem likely, and I told Kate so.
“I think the environment of her mind would have been different, which it was, but it didn’t seem like a dreamscape—just her normal room with the creepy dial turned to max.”
Kate was silent a moment, a thought obviously working its way free. “Okay, that just gives cred to why I don’t think this is self-inflicted. There’s something else at work here.”
I spied the front entrance once more, saying, “You mean something like that shadow dude.”
“It’s Shadow King,” Kate corrected, “and yeah, I think there is something else, something seeking her out.”
Kate seemed so intense in her belief that it was hard to keep a straight face. Was any of it true? She was a fan of the fantastic, and that usually meant the fake.
She snapped the notebook closed and put it back in her bag.
“You guys okay?” I heard Dean’s voice, and he and Celia came up beside me. I hadn’t noticed them and I jumped a little.
“Fine,” Kate answered for us. There seemed to be an air of uneasiness among Kate, Dean, and me. It must be Kate’s paranoia leaking out and getting to me.
“Well, I guess we can shop now,” Celia said, getting Dean’s attention. I had sort of forgotten about that part and now dreaded it. I would almost rather have been running from Trent and his goons again.
Looking at a few shirts on the rack next to me, I picked the same color Harold had been holding.
“Done.”
Chapter Thirty-two
IT’S AN UNDERSTATEMENT TO say I was tired when I finally crashed in my bed. The ride home with Dean was sober and gave me time to mull over a few snippets of the theories Kate had come up with.
One of them that had stuck with me was the possibility that Stephanie could have been asleep and therefore dreaming. Isn’t that what a coma is—unconscious REM sleep? Obviously the brain was damaged, thus the comatose state. I released a pent-up breath. I didn’t know all the facts, and neither did Kate. Her ideas were helpful but ultimately led to even more confusion.
Worse, we were basing our leads off fictional comic book characters. The keyword there was “fictional,” which really equaled “not real.” Who was I kidding? Kate really had no idea what was going on, same as me. It just made me feel even more exhausted and frustrated. I guess I had been attributing my frustration to the fact that it was time to sleep and I knew none would come. The voices would fight me on it and no doubt weaken me to what seem liked no end.
In any case, I extinguished the remaining light of my desk lamp and my bedroom was pitched into darkness. Next to my bed lay my noise-canceling headphones. I put them on.
The next thing I heard was my breathing from inside my chest. It seemed raspy, scratchy. Was I getting sick? I hoped not. Of course it would be my luck that just before the dance, I would get sick. I realized I was actually getting excited for tomorrow night. Sure, I thought, I can agree with that fact. I was excited; excited to hang out with Dean and Celia, but even more so that I was taking Kate. I had done it. I was actually taking Kate to the dance. Wow, had I not figured that out until just then?
All this insanity with Stephanie and Laura, Dean and Trent had overcrowded my mind like a clown car. But not tomorrow night. Tomorrow night I would enjoy everything. I deserved it, didn’t I? I settled on the fact that I did. Mind demon, shadow king, dream projection, or whatever it was be damned—I was going on a date with my not-so-secret crush and was going to enjoy it.
Then a single voice whispered, like it was flicking its tongue into my ear with its babble. It felt so close, so real.
I jerked off the headphones and took in the night sounds, but all I heard was silence. That’s because everyone else is probably asleep! I thought.
I sat up, turned on my desk lamp, and cursed. I was getting sick and tired of this. I wanted to sleep. I had the idea of something residing in my own head, something like I’d seen in Stephanie’s mind. Was that what it was? Had Stephanie suffered from insomnia as well? Was there some kind of link?
I flicked my finger across my navigation pad to wake my laptop. If I wasn’t going to sleep, neither was it. Switching my status on my instant messaging program to “available,” I scanned my friends list for Kate’s ID.
She was in “away” mode. I let another frustrated word slip out. I leaned my head back, running my hands through my hair.
The voice had calmed but began to gather again as I rested my head on my drawn-up knees. I shook it to try to get them to fade. It didn’t work, so I switched tactics.
I returned my laptop to my desk and sat on the edge of my bed. I closed my eyes and pushed out slowly with my hands. Just as I’d done before, I dived deep inside myself and focused. My lungs took a moment to get in sync, but then, as I drew in another breath and brought my hands back each time I pushed out, emptying my lungs, I could feel a rhythm. Yoga-ish? I was calming, and by hell, it was working, yet the voices still began to eat away at even that little bit of progress.
With my hands resting on my lap now, palms face up, hands open, I began to slowly raise my right arm in a curved motion. In my head, deep down into my consciousness, I mentally began to raise a wall. I could see it in the darkness of my mind. It was huge, glorious, and, best of all, strong—or so it felt to me. And that was what counted. It was dark and full as it rose like a geyser inside my mind, but it wasn’t alone. It had a twin that swirled like a surfer’s dream. My left arm was now lifted as if I was ready to give an invisible hug. I knew what I had to do—just bring the waves together, encapsulate the meandering chatter, and silence them.
Then I felt resistance, and it came in a physical form. My arms felt like they had fallen asleep, tingling with sensation as I realized they were shaking, my hands acting as though they were claws, trying to fight their way around. I felt my muscles tense and my tendons stretch. A quick sweat broke over my forehead, and coolness pitted under my arms. I had to stop thinking about my physical changes and focus on what I wanted my mind to do.
Gritting my teeth, I centered all my thoughts on the mind waves. Come on. It was slow, oh, so very slow, squeezing, pushing. Then I felt a spark—no, something made contact.
I recognized that my laptop had dinged. The new noise threw my inner focus off. I opened my eyes only to find that my fingertips in front of me were inches from touching each other. They felt like pulsing magnets at polar-opposite ends, resisting each other. Then my stomach clenched and I felt like a Boy Scout was practicing knots using my guts. I threw up and my body collapsed in a heap on the ground. Everything went black.
***
A REDDISH-YELLOW LIGHT glazed my eyelids and I opened them. Sunlight spread over my face like a blanket. My breathing felt hard, labored, as if I’d just run a marathon, as I sat upright.
I awoke on the floor of my bedroom. I could feel the imprint of the carpeting on the right side of my face. Then a stale smell came rushing to me and I found the contents of my stomach in a pile. I dry-heaved at the stench, but nothing more came up.
Was it morning? Had I silenced the voices, or better yet, had I actually slept? I couldn’t remember. The only thing I could dredge up from last night was hearing the ping on my laptop.
I went into my bathroom and used a damp towel to wipe my face then padded back to my desk. The noise I’d heard was from my IM. Somebody had left me a note. It was probably Kate with some other ridiculous idea or theory. I shook my head, annoyed that the stupid sound had broken my concentration last night. I’d been so close. In my navigation bar, a message flashed. This had better be important. I clicked it open.
The late-night message wasn’t from Kate. It was from BlondieGyrl, AKA Laura Hartman. All it said was:
We need to talk.
Chapter Thirty-three
SATURDAYS WERE USUALLY GOOD
days, but I had the feeling this Saturday was going to suck. I read minds, not the future, so I had no clue what was in store. You would think that with dinner, the dance later, and maybe a party afterward, nothing could get me down.
But right then it was Laura’s message I was concerned about; it caught me off guard. What did she have to say? I checked the clock on my nightstand. It was close to eleven a.m. Whoa, had I been asleep that long? Had no one even been in to check on me? Once that thought occurred to me, as if it was in his route, Dean knocked on my door.
“It’s me,” he said outside my room.
I tossed the towel I’d used to wash my face over the soon-to-be stain on the carpet. “Yeah.”
Dean entered.
“Hey, just wanted to give you a heads-up—”
He stopped short and jerked his head back, covering his mouth. “Whoa, what is that stench?”
“The empty pit of my stomach,” I said, like it was no big deal. I went to my window and opened it.
Dean forced himself into the room. “Uh, okay, first of all, that’s rancid. Second, are you feeling okay?”
I scratched my head. “Fine. Why?”
It was true—I was feeling pretty good. Last night was probably the most sleep I’d gotten in months.
“It was so quiet in here this morning, I let you be. Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“No, like I said, I feel fine. I would like to tell you I was sleeping, although it could be more like I blacked out. The voices and I had a tangle last night, and I’m really not sure who won.”
The room was starting to freshen up, but the air was cold and it made me shiver.
“Blacked out? Weird. Anything I can help with?” Dean asked.
I declined his offer. After everything that had happened yesterday with Dr. Vance’s visit and the antics at the mall, I was still trying to piece together my thoughts. Dean moved to a new subject.
“Listen, I’m not sure if you heard, but the school is putting on a small memorial for Stephanie today.”