The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I wanted to see her. Simply, selfishly, I needed to see her again. Whether my body healed or not, I never would until I knew she’d forgiven me.

  I spotted a flint stone in the grass at the base of the tree in front of me and I picked it up, angling it against the bark. Then I started carving. The flesh was soft, yielding under my force. I blew off the excess, chipping away with my fingernails until I could see the red skin underneath. I wrote my name and then I wrote hers, large enough that I’d be able to find it again and large enough for her to find it too.

  21

  Bryn

  There was no slow creep back into consciousness. No slight tug coaxing my eyes open. I was staring at my grandfather’s face, his scent caught in my lungs, and then I was staring at the shadow.

  My eyes shot open and it was there in the observation room with me, so close that the cold felt like flames. I watched it, dark and slithering between my limbs, every brush against my skin making me numb. My veins turned to ice, cutting through my skin like translucent cords, and I was paralyzed.

  My eyes drifted closed, everything inside me slowing at once—my pulse, my breathing, my consciousness. Sleep tried to pull me under again and I fought to stay awake as the shadow curled itself around me like a shifting black hole.

  It forced my eyes closed, my body sinking so far down I thought I was going to slip into nothing. I struggled to stay alert as my jaw unhinged with a snap, the shadow trying to claw its way inside me, filling me with ash. I choked. I tried to scream. And then I felt a new burning, something warm trickling down the side of my face, cutting across my lips, dripping down my chin.

  Blood.

  The pain shook me back into my body, my fingers gripping the side of the chair as I reached for the call button. But my limbs were still numb, every part of me exhausted. My eyelids drifted closed again, something bright shuddering against them. I forced them open as the door to my room pushed open.

  “Bryn?” It was Vogle, glowing hand raised, the shadow nothing but a wisp of smoke drifting down to the floor.

  “What…what was that?” I was staring at Vogle’s hands, the light already gone from them.

  “You’re bleeding.” He spotted the cuts on my face, ignoring my question. “Are you alright?”

  I tried to sit up, to examine the rest of me. But then I saw the blood, still wet and sticking to the collar of my shirt, and I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t answer him at all. All I could do was cry.

  I sat across from Dr. Banz, the brain scans taken during my most recent episode on a series of screens above his head. He and my mom had both spent the first fifteen minutes of the meeting just staring at my face and what the shadow had done to it. I’d told my mom I’d scratched myself as I was waking up, that it was an accident, nothing to worry about, and because she wanted so badly to believe me, she did. But Vogle had already spoken with Dr. Banz and every time he started to speak, one look at the thin scab trailing from the corner of my eye down my cheek, made him stop.

  He cleared his throat, tried to start again. “These stills show some pretty remarkable findings…”

  I’d expected some kind of chart—Y and X-axis covered in chicken scratch that was all supposed to mean that I was getting worse. But there weren’t waves and squiggly lines like I’d expected. There were shapes and shadows and textures and suddenly I was on my feet, standing an inch from the first screen.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “We hadn’t expected you to have another episode just yet, especially one so brief. The machine you were hooked up to was prepared to monitor brain waves but it also has other capabilities.”

  “What other capabilities?” I asked.

  Vogle cleared his throat. “I’ve assigned superficial elements to certain brain activity. It’s still fairly new equipment and not at all comprehensive but with the use of fMRI technology and computation models, what you’re seeing is essentially a translation of what your brain activity indicates you were viewing during your episode.”

  “Like a picture…”

  “Correct,” Dr. Banz said. “These are stills from your brain, Bryn. From what you were seeing when you were asleep.”

  My fingers gravitated toward the screen, tracing the shapes. It was grainy and distorted but I could make out the ocean and the trees. I walked from one monitor to the next, examining every single pixel, waiting to see his face. My mom was behind me, looking too. As soon as her breath hitched I knew she’d found my grandfather.

  She took a step back as I did the same, and among the dark shadows I found his eyes.

  “Bryn,” she said. “You dreamt about him?”

  “Someone else?” Dr. Banz asked, the last word trailing off as he suddenly forgot to censor himself.

  I kept staring at the shadow of my grandfather’s face, wondering how Roman’s might have looked if he was still stuck in my dreams and hoping that my mom hadn’t heard what Dr. Banz had just said.

  But then she took a step towards me. “What does he mean, someone else?”

  Her gaze burned hot on my back, on my cheek as she tried to force me to face her, but I wasn’t sure how. I’d spent the last ten months hiding the truth, trying to protect her, but maybe I was just protecting myself. His name sat on the edge of my tongue. I took a breath and then I told the truth—to my mom, to myself.

  “Roman.” I faced her, then Dr. Banz. “He’s gone.”

  My mom’s face was pale. She shook her head. “What do you mean, Roman?”

  I turned to her, nails digging into my forearms. “That day I asked if I could talk to Dr. Sabine alone?” She nodded, impatient, and I continued. “I told her that the dream-state had changed. There was…someone else.”

  “Roman?” she said. “You mean you dreamt about him after you met him at that concert?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  She crossed her arms. “Not exactly?”

  I knew it was a risk telling her that I lied about meeting Roman at a concert but just then all I wanted was for her to understand why he’d meant so much to me.

  Dr. Banz tried to lead my mom back to her chair, though he looked just as shaken, but she shrugged him off.

  “I’m not sure I understand, Bryn.”

  I tried to wrangle my thoughts into something that might make sense but once I said his name I couldn’t stop. “Roman was in a coma and in my head.” She jolted, even more confused, but I kept going. “He was stuck there somehow,” I said, trying to explain. “Without his memories, without any kind of identity at all. But then things started coming back to him, we started putting the pieces together, and then I found him. In the real world, in that hospital bed.” I swallowed tears, trying to keep my face still.

  My mom looked to Dr. Banz. “How is that possible?”

  He gripped his jaw. “We’re not sure.”

  “He woke up the night I went to see him,” I said. “Since then I haven’t seen him during an episode.”

  “But now there’s someone else…” Dr. Banz clarified.

  I stepped towards the picture again. “It’s my grandfather.”

  My mom looked down at her hands. “He passed away almost three years ago.”

  Dr. Banz’s knuckles blanched around his cane. He shot me a look and then made his way over to my mom. Whatever he was about to say was just for her.

  “Typically, KLS patients don’t experience these types of vivid hallucinations during an episode and it’s even more rare that they remember them. But there have been a few cases of KLS patients imagining people who have passed away. Although, it is incredibly hard to document these kinds of things, especially when the sufferer’s speech is temporarily impaired during an episode. Bryn may be having a similar reaction, except due to the rareness of her other symptoms, including the very vivid dream-state, it’s a much more tactile and realistic experience.”

  “But Roman?” my mom asked. “Could it be possible? I mean, could the coma have caused—?”

  “I’m not sur
e.” Dr. Banz paused, shifted his weight. Then he slipped back into his reassuring specialist voice and my mom finally took a breath. “There are many theories within the field of Cognitive Neuroscience pertaining to quantum physics,” he continued. “But that’s just it, they’re theories, and far-fetched ones at that.”

  “But there could be an explanation?” She stiffened again and I was waiting for him to placate her with another believable lie.

  “Could be…” He chewed on the words. “Or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or not.”

  My mom and I both tensed and suddenly I wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing. What if telling her the truth about Roman had only made things worse?

  “What do you mean, or not?” She reached for my hand.

  “I mean sometimes we can explain things with science—we certainly always hope that’s the case. But for every theory I’ve seen quantified by proof, I’ve seen a hundred others quantified by something even more mysterious than the universe itself.”

  “What’s that?”

  Dr. Banz looked at me this time. “Fate. And if this boy woke from a six-month long coma on the very night you came to see him, well, I don’t know what else could explain a thing like that.”

  My mom looked back at the grainy still of my grandfather, tears in the corners of her eyes, and I knew what she was thinking. That maybe he was real too. But instead of saying the words out loud she said, “You shouldn’t have kept this from me.”

  That same anger from the day she’d discovered me missing was back in her voice but the sting this time was worse. This time she wasn’t just upset that I’d lied to her, she was upset that she hadn’t realized how much.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her arms were crossed, her eyes narrowed at the floor. She couldn’t even look at me and I wondered if she’d ever forgive me. I wondered if I deserved it. But before either of us could say another word there was a knock on the door, Sheila stepping inside.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Banz, but you’d scheduled Bryn for her hormone testing this afternoon.”

  “Yes…now if you’d like to re-schedule,” Dr. Banz offered, “we can.”

  I was staring at the pixelated photo of my grandfather in an effort to avoid my mom’s eyes. They’d even captured his dimple right, a shaded nick just above his mouth.

  “Bryn?”

  “Sorry…” His words suddenly hit me. “No, I’m okay. I can do it.” I was exhausted and couldn’t imagine anything better than crawling into bed but I didn’t want to be left alone with my mom, especially if another shadow could be lurking nearby.

  After I followed Sheila to one of the labs downstairs she handed me a thin blanket and led me to a chair. “A nurse should be with you in a few minutes to take a cheek swab, a urine sample, and a few blood samples. And sorry about the cold, there’s a temperature regulated storage room just on the other side of this wall.”

  “It’s okay.” I remembered the way it had bit into me that morning, the cold of the shadow so fierce it burned.

  When Sheila and the nurse who’d taken my blood finally left me alone, I pulled down the collar of my shirt, examining my shoulders. I’d felt pinned down by more than just the chill and now I knew why. There were faint red marks, long and thin, that trailed from my collarbone to the top of my arm. I brushed one with the tip of my finger, the skin there raised and still tender.

  The door pushed open and instinctually I shrugged the blanket to my chin, covering myself. The door fell closed again and for a while both Vogle and Dr. Banz just stood there, Vogle with one eye on the glass window and one on me, Dr. Banz gripping his chin and staring at the floor. I inhaled and they both stiffened, finally looking at me. Then I didn’t say a word. I just pulled my collar down over my shoulder revealing the welts.

  “God…”

  Dr. Banz looked away but Vogle stepped forward to get a closer look.

  “What’s happening?” I hadn’t meant to sound afraid but I was.

  After a long pause Dr. Banz said, “You asked why we still called it a disease.” He exhaled. “There have been stages, we know this, but whatever it is, it seems to be getting worse.”

  “I’m getting worse,” I corrected him. I’d known that for a long time but no one else had ever confirmed it before.

  “If it was a disease,” Vogle cut in, “yes, it would appear you’re getting worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve spent just as much time as Dr. Banz has studying Eve’s disease, especially what seemed to be the final stages,” Vogle said. “When compared to your experience, there are striking similarities but there are also differences. For example, you haven’t shown signs of delirium or aggression, not to mention your dream-state also seems to be much more connected to the real world and because of the things you’ve seen…” He looked down at the welts again. “And because of the things I’ve seen I can’t say that I believe it’s a disease at all. ”

  Dr. Banz was staring at his hands, expression never changing, as if he’d heard Vogle’s theories before, maybe too many times.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked.

  Dr. Banz looked like he was about to cut in but then he just let Vogle continue.

  “I think your KLS diagnosis was meant to mask something and now that veil is starting to deteriorate.”

  “A veil?”

  “As your KLS symptoms have been increasing in severity so have the other strange things you’ve been experiencing.”

  “You mean the things I’ve been seeing.”

  He nodded. “That part of you that can see those things seems to be getting stronger as the rest of you gets weaker. Essentially they’re two opposing forces, one that’s trying to expose itself and the other that’s trying to keep it hidden.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not sure. It would seem, on some level, that your KLS has actually been acting as a veil in order to protect you. You’re being hunted for a reason, Bryn.”

  “Hunted?” I said, my voice stilted. “That’s what you meant about it being innate. Like I was born this way, only whatever’s wrong with me, whatever I can do is only now revealing itself for some reason.”

  “Like I said, it’s as if this veil, this protection your KLS has been providing is beginning to deteriorate, leaving you more exposed, which is why in all the years you’ve been suffering from this disease, the shadows have only just started to appear.”

  “Because I’m more vulnerable,” I said. “Because somehow they can see me now when they weren’t able to before.”

  “It’s just a possibility…” Dr. Banz cut in.

  Vogle’s eyes snapped to Dr. Banz. “It’s not a possibility, it’s fact.” He clenched his fists, exasperated. “You have to stop living in this denial and you have to stop it right now. The shadows want something from you,” Vogle continued, this time looking at me. “I know you can feel it. The second I stepped into your room this morning I could feel it too.”

  “But what do they want?”

  “Your…” He fumbled for the right word. “Your sight.”

  “Sight?” It sounded technical and wrong. “But I don’t see things on purpose and I can’t even control it.”

  “Maybe not yet.” Vogle sat down in the chair next to me, his hands on his knees. “Bryn, before I met Eve there was absolutely nothing remarkable about me. I was just an orderly in a hospital, trying to earn enough money for medical school. But then I was assigned to assist Eve’s doctor and it wasn’t long before strange things started happening to both of us. Eve was being tormented by something, something only she could see. But then I started seeing things too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the shadows. Only to me they’re not just that…” He bristled. “One night Eve was attacked while she slept. I’d been working late and had taken to checking in on her in the doctor’s absence. When I pushed open the door to her room it was hanging over her, her body pinned ther
e and trembling.” Dr. Banz turned away, facing the door, Vogle fighting the urge to glance in his direction as he continued. “At first I was frozen too. But then something compelled me forward and it happened so fast. The sight of Eve in danger caused me to ignite and I was on fire with this rage, only it was deeper than that, almost feral.”

  Vogle lifted a hand, the surface cracking as the first flame caught within his palm. He led the heat to the tip of his fingers, light filling the room, so strong that I could make it out beneath his shirt. He snapped his palm closed, the room freezing again in an instant.

  “You destroyed it,” I said, thumbnail cracking where I was gripping my seat.

  “Somehow,” Vogle said. “Yes. But the point is I wasn’t prepared for any of it, and even now, watching you go through what Eve went through, I feel like a worthless bystander.” He inhaled. “Until I remember that I’m still here and that what’s happened to me is no accident. I don’t know why we see the things we see. I don’t know why I can somehow repel them. And I don’t know what exactly they want from you.” He wrung his hands. “I don’t know much of anything. But I do know that what’s happening to you is no accident either.”

  “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What if I can’t fight it?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not meant to.”

  Roman.

  His name was like a hot flame on the roof of my mouth.

  “Where is he?” Vogle asked.

  “Who?” I said, though I already knew the answer.

  Then Vogle said, “The boy.”

  22

  Roman

  The plastic end of the box cutter was between my teeth as I ripped the upholstery from the front seat. We’d already stripped the exterior, the body panels in a heap against the wall. Every day that week my dad and I had been soaked to our socks in sweat and every night I’d actually been relieved to climb into the tub.

  A rock skittered across the driveway and I tensed. When I looked up Carlisle was tossing a cigarette butt into my front yard.