The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I reached for her hand, ignoring the way it didn’t reach back. I remembered being in the dream-state with Bryn, the two of us standing beneath the branches of her childhood hideout as she talked about waiting. About how her mother had spent a lifetime waiting for Bryn to wake up. She’d asked me who would ever want a life like that and I’d told her someone who knew what it was they were waiting for.

  I heard Bryn’s voice downstairs and stood, matching it with the silent lips in front of me. And I knew. I knew exactly what I was waiting for and I knew that I would never stop. No matter how far she pushed me away. No matter how unrecognizable she became. I would wait for Bryn forever.

  I ran downstairs and spotted Bryn yelling and pacing. Dani circled her, trying to calm her down. And it was all I needed to see. The fear and panic giving her away. The real her.

  She’s still in there.

  Bryn turned towards the stairs and almost collapsed with relief. I thought I might collapse too, relieved that she still felt something, anything at all. She took a step and I braced for the impact, for her arms around me. Instead, the front door pushed open, pulling her gaze.

  Andre flung himself inside, a woman I didn’t recognize leaning on him and trying to catch her breath. For a long time Andre just lay there in the doorway, breathing into the floorboards, the woman next to him burying her face in his back. Vogle, Rafael, and I pulled them towards the couch, hands slipping on sweat and what looked like blood.

  Andre finally looked up, the only recognizable part of him his voice as he said, “Someone get me a fucking beer.”

  15

  Bryn

  Everyone circled around Andre and Olivia, waiting for Andre to say something terrible. He was the first Rogue to return with his Dreamer and no one knew what to say or do or even think. Celia brought Olivia a blanket, a glass of water, and a fresh set of clothes but she refused to move.

  Felix cracked the top off another beer and handed it to Andre. Olivia snatched it from his grasp and chugged down half of it. She looked around the room, taking in our expectant faces, but still she didn’t speak.

  Felix was the only one bold enough to ask, “What’s it like out there?”

  Andre sighed, head heavy. “You think you want to know where I’ve been but I promise you, you don’t.”

  “You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” Vogle offered.

  “People think the world is ending,” Felix said. “The sun won’t come up and there are giant crows trying to eat everyone. People have been uploading pictures of them online. They’ve spotted them as far as Florida.”

  “They’re moving fast,” I said.

  “No.” Andre shook his head. “Whatever’s seeping out of the bowels of hell is taking it’s time, trust me. That’s the only good news. The airport’s a madhouse. I had to hotwire a car in one of the parking garages. Can you believe there are cabbies still trying to charge for a ride?” He twisted the neck of his beer. “Anyway, the car stalled and we got stranded just east of here near a small cemetery. It had been all dug up, bones littering the dirt road. Shooed away some dogs who were gnawing on them.” Andre wrung his hands. “And then we realized they weren’t dogs.”

  “What were they?” I asked.

  Andre huffed. “Not a fucking clue. They bared their teeth and I set them on fire, leaving a blazing trail behind us as we raced all the way here.”

  “So it’s concentrated,” Roman said.

  “It might be starting here, drawn to something,” Andre said, “but it’s spreading.”

  Drawn to you. The hiss landed against my ear, making me shiver. I scanned every dark corner of the room, waiting for Anso’s daughter to manifest.

  “What did you say?” Roman waved a hand.

  I shook off the chill. “It’s being drawn to me.” I turned to Felix. “Have you been following any international news?”

  “We’ve been following everything.” He immediately pulled out his laptop. “I think Andre’s right about it moving slow and starting here. Every news station around the world has been covering the endless eclipse and not much else.”

  “I want you to look up Spain,” I said. “Andalusia.”

  Felix clicked across the keys; face bright with synthetic light. He held his breath, sitting back and staring at the screen. He finally faced it towards us, turning up the volume on the video.

  The angry mob that had been after Alma’s sister was scattered across the village, breaking things or trying to salvage them, everyone in the streets running or yelling or crawling on their hands and knees. The flames still raged in the background, smoke swirling into the sky. But they seemed contained and I realized it wasn’t the inferno people were trying to outrun.

  The camera shifted, shaky. Whoever was holding it had broken into a run. Within the frame there were spots—black static that bled across the screen. Between the shacks and storefronts darkness crawled out on skittering legs.

  “God.” Adham backpedaled, stepping on Roman. “I feel sick.”

  “Spiders,” Dani breathed, just as pale.

  But they weren’t normal spiders. These varied in size, some so small the wind carried them onto rooftops and washed them across the street like drops of rain, and others so large I could see their snapping teeth.

  “It followed me there.”

  I absorbed every image that flashed onto the screen, still and stoic. The nightmares hadn’t just followed me all that way; I’d carried them. I was them.

  “Now you see.” Anso’s daughter was trapped within one of Celia’s gilded antique mirrors, her voice breaking through the glass in wisps of smoke. “You carry the night inside you.”

  I took a step back but everyone was still staring at the computer screen, Anso’s daughter the only one staring at me. They couldn’t see her. They couldn’t hear her.

  “You’re shedding it piece by piece. Starlight scattered, turned to flames. You’re setting the world on fire with every step.”

  I shook my head. Go away. You’re not real. You’re not.

  Her gaze shifted to Olivia, smile crooked and almost sad. “I can’t wait to watch her burn.”

  I fought off the sight of her, backing into Roman. When I finally opened my eyes again he had control of the mouse, expanding another video to full screen until the entire thing was rippling and red. The camera panned out over smoke as flames raced across power lines. Sparks fluttered down, people swatting at them and straining from the heat as they watched the building burn.

  “Is that—?” The video accelerated and I stopped, the barbershop a pile of ashes, the adjacent buildings ripped down to the studs.

  Steam clouded the camera lens as firefighters used their hoses to bat down the flames. Through the lingering shimmer of heat I could make out a clothesline clinging to a row of bricks that was all that was left of an apartment building. I knew it was an apartment building because I could see beds and couches and television sets and old quilts and charred photographs and a broken tea set and a wooden rocking horse. And people. They were cloaked in black, blankets burning them in bundles of arms and legs, ashes burying them like snow. The Chicago sky had been full of clouds when we’d left and now there was nothing but the moon, its light making the blood burn bright as new.

  Because we’d left. I left.

  Without thinking about the finiteness of the walls or the possibility of other dreamers, human and helpless as they slept in their beds. I hadn’t thought about who or what the blast would devour once we were out of its reach. I hadn’t thought about anything but stealing Ian’s dreams. What had I stolen instead?

  Roman noticed me shaking and I finally noticed it too. He shut off the video but it was too late.

  “I can’t put her back…” I faced him, my voice low. “I can’t do it. Not again. Not when I’m—”

  “Bryn…”

  “No. You saw what happened to the others and what’s happening now.” I motioned to the computer screen. “Something’s wrong…” I glan
ced back at the empty mirror, smeared black as if it had been burned. “There’s something wrong with me. If I touch Olivia I’ll…”

  Roman’s eyes cut to Cole.

  He was looking right at us. Everyone was.

  This whole time we’d been lying to Cole by omission, sending him on supply runs and away from the other Dreamers; keeping his powers on standby in case we needed to use them. Or maybe just trying to avoid betraying the one person who’d finally given our parents the versions of us they’d always wanted. That they’d always deserved.

  “It doesn’t last.” Kira stood in the doorway, awake in her body.

  I tried to stop her. “No, Kira…”

  “I need you to know that I’m fine.”

  “Kira, wait…” I was stalling but I didn’t know why.

  “Even without the dreams—”

  The air went out and I couldn’t tell if Kira was still talking, if Cole was still listening.

  But then he said, “I know.”

  I turned to him, slow. “What?”

  Cole sighed. “I said I know.” He lifted Stassi’s hand, still in his. “I’ve been reading her for hours. I’ve seen everything.”

  Roman’s face fell. “Everything…as in…?”

  “As in we know you’ve been lying to us,” Adham said. “Why?”

  I looked to Roman and he looked back.

  “Obviously you thought we couldn’t be trusted,” Adham said, despondent. The look he gave Roman was the equivalent to a punch to the gut.

  “That’s not it,” Roman said.

  Cole looked down. “No, you just thought I was some kind of coward.”

  I approached Cole, hands trembling. We both stared at them, my reach like a live wire.

  “I don’t know what’s in me. I don’t know what it’s doing to the Dreamers but I know that it’s not good. I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I’m not hurt,” Kira said, moving to stand right in front of me. “Bryn, you saved me.”

  “Do you even remember?” I asked her. “After I touched you it was like you…” I exhaled. “You fought and you cried. You were a mess, Kira.”

  “Like you’d lost your mind,” Roman said. “And Alma,” he added. “She fought like she was in some kind of nightmare. Ian too. What was it that he said?”

  I bit down on the inside of my cheek, trying not to remember. “You took it. He kept repeating that over and over.”

  Vogle nodded. “It was as if Bryn took his consciousness.”

  “Because I took his dreams,” I said.

  Vogle gripped his chin. “And you took their dreams while they were still outside their bodies.”

  “What do you mean?” Roman asked.

  “When Bryn touched all of the other Dreamers, either she was placing them back into their bodies or they’d just woken up in them.” Vogle paced. “There are two parts to all of you, the human and the Dreamer. When you took the dreams from the others, they were awake in their bodies, so the human part of them remained intact. But with Ian…”

  “He was just the Dreamer,” I said.

  Vogle nodded. “Without a physical body he was his own consciousness, nothing more, meaning he wasn’t just a Dreamer. He was the dream itself.”

  “Meaning that when Bryn took their dreams she also took their minds,” Roman clarified, “well part of them, driving them into some kind of temporary insanity.”

  “Temporary only if they had a living body to wake into.” I stopped, my own mind racing. “Could I have killed him? Or Kira? If I hadn’t let go, would I have?”

  Roman sighed. “Bryn he was already—”

  “You know what I mean,” I snapped. “Would it have…destroyed them?”

  Vogle pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just like the girl in the story,” Celia said. “The First Dreamer.”

  “She went mad.” My lips barely moved as the realization hit me. “But that means…” I looked to Roman. “We can’t undo it, can we? The psychosis or whatever it is.” I thought of Stassi, trapped in a dream while her body was nowhere to be found. “Once I take the dreams, if there’s no body to transfer them to, then they’ll just stay that way forever.”

  Roman shook his head. “Ian’s dead, Bryn, and whatever you took from him…he doesn’t need it anymore.”

  I finally spotted Stassi in the corner of the room. Her face was red and on the verge of tears. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. Before I could say anything she let go of Cole’s hand and disappeared down the hall.

  “I’m not afraid.” Olivia stood, speaking for the first time.

  My fingers stretched, wanting to reach for her. I clenched my fists instead. “You should be.”

  Olivia shook her head. “I haven’t slept in more than a decade. I haven’t seen my body since I was a child. I’ve been trapped in a nightmare that I never thought would end.” She stepped in front of me. “You can end it.”

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” she said. “I’m willing to risk anything.”

  “Your life?”

  “I’m not living. I’m dreaming. Please, Bryn…” Tears stung her cheeks. “I just want to wake up.”

  Olivia slept. For the first time in years she was back in her body, curled up in a warm bed, maybe even dreaming of things that weren’t trying to kill her.

  I’d touched her and the force of all of those memories had sent us both to our knees. We’d clutched each other as I absorbed a lifetime of being lost and then I could barely sit up as I emptied myself in another room. I dry-heaved, choking on all of the horrible things Olivia had spent most of her life wading through. Dani sat with me, holding my hair back, dabbing me with a cold washrag.

  “She was gone a long time,” I said, trying to explain why Olivia’s memories were different. Why they were such poison.

  But I knew Roman wasn’t buying it. He watched me from the bathroom doorway, shaking and sweating and sick, and I knew we were both questioning how exactly this was all going to end. Maybe not with me rescuing the Dreamers and destroying Anso but with me being crushed beneath the weight of their pain, every horrible thing they’d been through latching to my insides like a disease.

  Celia brought me something to drink that tasted like rosewater and charcoal. I coughed, choking it back up.

  “Please, Bryn. You have to keep it down.”

  “What is it?” Dani asked in my defense.

  Celia knelt, using her skirt to dab at the sweat on my forehead. “Something to keep Bryn strong.”

  Dani held the cup to my lips again. “Just sip on it.”

  I drank the entire glass while Celia, Kira, and Dani tried to rub the life back into my cold hands and feet. But the chill wasn’t in my skin. It was between my ribs, the air we breathed full of ghosts. Stassi could see them too, shivering as she stood in the doorway next to Roman.

  “Are they speaking to you?” I asked her.

  She nodded, jaw tight.

  “What do they want?”

  “To rest,” she said. “They just want to rest.”

  Celia clasped my hands. “Put them to rest and maybe you’ll get some too.”

  16

  Roman

  I found Cole and Adham in the dining room, Cole rubbing at the imprint of Stassi’s fingers on his forearm. Part of me expected to find that they’d left, the possibility of running into Cole’s monster not as bad as the alternative of staying in this house full of people who’d been lying to them for the past two days. I was relieved that they hadn’t run, not just because it meant there was a possibility that they might forgive us but because Adham was the only person who knew I was still wrestling with my own monsters.

  Adham sensed me in the doorway but he didn’t look away from the television.

  I spoke first. “I’m sorry.”

  Cole’s voice came out dry. “For what?”

&nbs
p; I looked at Adham until he looked back. “I shouldn’t have lied to you. Friends don’t do that.”

  Adham kicked one of the empty dining chairs in my direction. “No, they don’t.”

  I sat, still struggling with how to explain. Adham had been the one I’d turned to when I needed help keeping my demons at bay. I’d confided in him, trusted him, and he’d reciprocated that trust. Until now.

  “We just didn’t know how you’d react,” I said, deciding the truth was really my only choice. “We were afraid that you’d run and Bryn’s job is already hard enough as it is. We didn’t want to have to send a search party after you. We just don’t have time for that.”

  “Then how were you planning on doing it?” Cole perched his arms on his knees, more suspicious than angry. “Were you guys planning some kind of sneak attack or something?”

  “We hadn’t thought that far yet.”

  Cole sighed, expression loosening. “I get it.” He shrugged. “Sometimes lying’s necessary, especially if it keeps people from getting hurt.” He looked from Adham to me. “The truth is, I’m actually kind of relieved. I don’t want to go to bed every night worried that something awful is going to wake up next to me.”

  Adham stared at the floor. I knew he wasn’t thinking about all of the ways that Cole’s dreams put them both in danger. He was thinking about all of the ways Cole’s dreams brought them together. Cole couldn’t wait for the nightmares to finally let go of him but that would mean Adham would have to let go of him too.

  “I’m really sorry we lied to you. Both of you.” I wrung my hands, trying to find the words. “Before Bryn, I didn’t have real friends. Not friends I could trust; friends who cared about me. But then I met Felix and you two and I just…I want you to know it matters to me to have your trust. Your friendship matters to me.”