The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  Her eyes appeared first, cutting through everything else. The woman who’d been in the cave with Bryn peered back at me from between the trees. A sharp staccato sound filled the forest.

  k-k-k-k-k-k

  The sounds became letters, hanging like ornaments on the branches. The branches vanished and the letters spilled onto a blank page, the shapes shifting into some kind of order.

  K-E

  k-k-k-k

  Oswald flipped to the next page in his journal and it was covered in ink. KEY. He’d written the word a hundred times, sketches of different keys scratched over earlier designs. He was testing them…searching for something.

  I urged his thoughts forward and he flipped another page.

  The key unlocks:

  Dreams

  Other Dimensions

  Hell

  The Rogues’ Curse

  Immortality

  Her mind…

  What else…? I pushed against Oswald’s memories, trying to steal another inch, to search for another crack. More. What else is there?

  He was blank. White. The cold plunged like a needle straight into my thoughts, blinding me. I felt the shadow’s breath, the sleep trying to slither its way back in. But instead of slipping inside, the shadows forced me out.

  My back hit the hardwood. Cole scrambled to my side. I could barely hear his voice as I tried to sit up.

  He squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t move.”

  Cole stared at the ceiling, trembling. I could sense them too, but even the breeze was a ghost, the shadow invisible.

  “Can you see it?” I whispered.

  Cole’s eyes glazed over, terror filling him like a serum. He twitched, his lips pinched shut. His breaths were coming too fast, neck straining.

  “No, no…don’t let it inside!” I threw myself on top of Cole, the scrape of ice breaking the skin on my back.

  Adham snatched the shadow down, it’s weight cracking the hardwood. It disintegrated, ashes falling down like rain.

  A drop of white settled in the center, dissolving as another fell against my arm. Snowflakes settled against Cole’s shoulder and we both looked up, snow falling from the ceiling. Through the ceiling.

  Adham threw back the sliding doors, the Rogues in the living room all staring up too.

  “Who’s sleeping?” Cole said, bracing for the same thing I was—another waking nightmare.

  “Celia…” I rushed to her room but she was sitting up in bed, watching the snow make small piles. I turned to Adham, bristling. “Did you lose one of the shadows?”

  Without looking up, Celia whispered, “Bryn.”

  63

  Bryn

  The toast sat untouched on my plate, the packet of jam still sealed. My stomach ached, gnawing at my insides and begging me to eat. I was too afraid. I could tell that there were things floating just at the edge of my consciousness. Things I couldn’t reach. Things I wasn’t sure were real.

  “Bryn, we talked about this.”

  A woman sat next to me on the bed. Something about her seemed familiar and I wrestled for letters and sounds that were just on the tip of my tongue. Her name. What is…? She reached over and opened the packet of jam, spreading it on a piece of toast. She held it out to me but I wasn’t sure if it was safe to take.

  “Please, Bryn?”

  Her arm bumped mine and I jumped. “You know me?”

  She sat back and then she smiled. “We met three weeks ago. My name is Tracey.” She showed me her badge as if that would somehow make her seem more legitimate. “You’re just a little weak because you haven’t eaten.”

  She held the toast up to my lips and the smell forced a dangerous reflex. I kicked at the tray of food and it crashed to the floor. The sound was so loud, symbols crashing between my ears, over and over. Tracey bent down to pick up the food but still the sound didn’t stop. It scaled the walls as if it had legs, racing up and down until I was trapped in it.

  I buried my face in my knees. I felt a sharp stick and then something warm glided through my veins.

  Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.

  I leafed through the pages covered in crayon. It covered me too, blue fingerprints leaving pieces of me on the sheets and pillows. But the pieces of me on these pages were the only ones worth saving. I read them over and over again.

  Roman is real and you found him in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He can’t dance but he can play the bass. He doesn’t always like himself but loving him is helping. He saved you and you saved him. You woke him up with a kiss and it turned him into flames. He can destroy things like you but he can also heal them. You can too. You can.

  Your mom loves you more than anything. She used to sleep at the hospital with you almost every night. Your uncle Brian would bring you tacos and the three of you would eat them with the window open because you hated the smell of hospitals. You still do. Your mom is loyal and fragile and fearless even though she doesn’t know it. You want to tell her she’s brave. You will.

  Dani is your cousin and your best friend. She knows what you are and she feels guilty. But you’re glad that it’s only you. That you’re the only one who dreams. That still didn’t stop her from getting hurt. The shadows attacked her the same way they attacked you. They controlled her, destroyed some part of her, but Felix is putting her back together. He is also your best friend and Roman’s too. He makes you laugh even when you don’t want to. He was hurt by the shadows but you stopped them before they could do more. You did.

  Your grandmother knew all along and she tried to protect you but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even protect herself. Roman didn’t let you see it but you felt it. It hurts so much because she loved you. More than your mom and Dani. More than your grandfather. More than anyone. And you love her too. You do.

  Details sprouted slow and I scribbled out the ambiguity until I was reliving every moment—every sound, every taste, every touch. I wrote three pages of every detail of Roman’s face. One page of every detail of my mom’s famous waffles. Four pages of every random day that my father had decided to show up and turn my life upside down. Six pages of Dreamers and what they’d left inside me. One page of the wounds Anso had left too. One page for the wounds I would leave in him.

  Soon the words smeared to white, my face so close to the page that all I could see was the blurry outline of my fingers. They moved until I was numb, scratching, scratching holes in the page until I couldn’t remember why I was writing in the first place.

  You dream. You destroy.

  You dream. You destroy.

  You dream. You destroy.

  The words rocked me until I was sick.

  You dream. You destroy.

  You dream. You destroy.

  You dream. You destroy.

  “Uh-oh. I think they broke her.”

  “She’s scared.”

  The voices materialized somewhere in the room but I couldn’t see them past the tears. I tried to sit up and that was when I realized that I was back in my restraints, the crayon and pieces of paper stacked neatly on the nurse’s cart near my bed. I wriggled, trying to get the tears to wash down my cheeks so I could see.

  “Should we get a nurse?”

  “No,” I pleaded. Another nurse would mean another sedative.

  The papers shuffled, the boy slipping one of my pages free.

  “Don’t touch that,” I spat.

  He squinted, trying to read the frantic cursive. I’d written as small as I could so that no one would be able to decipher it at just a glance. They would have to look up close. He was.

  “Put it back.” I pinched my eyes shut, waiting for one of them to take pity on me and leave. It was my only weapon. “Please.”

  “Dreams…” the boy muttered as he showed the page to the girl. “Made of flames. Shadow people…” They exchanged a look.

  “Like Calvin,” the girl said. “Isn’t that why he cut himself? Because he said the shadows were after him?”

  I spoke as calmly as possible. “Who’s Calvin?�
��

  “Calvin’s one of the other patients,” the boy said. “He’s still in restraints too.”

  The girl furrowed her brow, staring at the far wall. “Don’t you hear him at night? He’s always thrashing and screaming in there.”

  I followed her gaze. “There?”

  She nodded.

  “Why is he in there?”

  “Same reason you’re in here,” the boy said. “Because you’re crazy.”

  The girl smacked him in the chest. “Be nice.”

  “What?” He shrugged. “We’re crazy too.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But at least we realize it. You’re telling her something she probably doesn’t even understand.”

  “I understand,” I said, trying to interrupt. “But I’m not crazy. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  The girl waved a hand at me, speaking to the boy. “See? She still thinks it’s real.”

  The boy shook the page he’d been reading. “Obviously.” Then he crumpled it up and threw it across the room.

  I hurled myself forward, restraints cutting into my skin. “Don’t.”

  “It’s for your own good,” the girl said. “If you keep talking about shadows and demons or whatever they’re never going to let you leave.”

  The boy rolled his eyes. “She killed someone. They’re never going to let her leave.”

  “Killed?” My voice shrunk. My mom had said there’d been an accident and that I’d been responsible. But when I’d tried to get her to tell me what had happened to my grandmother and Dani she’d never used the word killed. She hadn’t answered me at all.

  The girl smacked the boy again.

  “Ouch,” he groaned. “How was I supposed to know she didn’t remember that part?”

  The girl put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know. Did you remember killing your parents when you first got here?”

  He quirked his mouth. “That was different. I was seven. Besides, she’s already been here almost three months.”

  “Three months?” I croaked. No one heard me.

  The boy shoved the girl. “And stop smacking me.”

  She shoved him back. “Stop being an idiot and I will.”

  The boy landed against the bed railing. His arm grazed my fingertips and they spun a web, light spreading from my skin and climbing into his. I gripped his arm and the light travelled in reverse, memories flooding me until I was drowning in them. I tasted melted plastic and chocolate ice cream cake and rain and his mother’s blood. I watched him fall asleep in her arms and then I watched a monster crawl out of his nightmares and rip her open.

  I let go of him and he collapsed, a grey hue slipping under his skin. He gasped, eyes darting.

  “It wasn’t you,” I said.

  He grew still. Listening.

  “I saw what killed her. And it wasn’t you.”

  He let out the heaviest breath and then he disappeared.

  The girl stared at the empty space where the boy had just been. She trembled, almost slipping as she tried to take a step back. Then she took another. And another. And then she was running down the corridor, screaming that I’d killed him.

  Muffled beneath her screams was another sound. Thud-thud-thudding against the wall. But it wasn’t frantic like before. There was no moaning or thrashing. Just a dull and constant banging. Slow. Speaking to me. I stared at my veins, still glistening with the boy’s memories. His dreams. I flexed, forcing them deep until every muscle was awake and then the restraints disintegrated.

  64

  Roman

  Every window was dark. My dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway but I knew we weren’t there to see him. I gripped the steering wheel, more afraid of following this night in reverse than reliving the crash all over again. The shattered bones I could take. But this head-on collision was different. Because I wasn’t the one in control of the pain.

  “She’s waiting for you,” Carlisle said.

  My voice wavered. “This is a nightmare…isn’t it?”

  Carlisle’s face softened. “Only if you want it to be.”

  My hands fell, trembling. I imagined crashing straight through the house. I wanted to destroy it—every memory. I wanted to erase them all.

  “What does that even mean?” I snapped.

  “It means that she’s waiting. For you.”

  I blinked and I was standing at the front door, whatever had put me in this nightmare beginning to grow impatient. My hand hovered over the doorknob and then I twisted it open.

  Familiar smells led me inside—pancake mix, my dad’s cologne, motor oil. I flicked on the kitchen light and saw the mixing bowl in the sink, one of my dad’s jackets flung over a chair, our oil-covered boots by the garage door. My heart slammed against my ribs as I stared at the door, waiting for him to walk through it with an old rag around his neck, his hands covered in soot. But I knew where he was tonight—with her.

  No…

  My dad wasn’t with another woman. He wasn’t in this nightmare. He wasn’t anywhere.

  Because he was dead.

  I stared at the floor, wanting to sink there. To curl into myself and rot within the emptiness. But then something wrenched my gaze to the top of the stairs.

  My stomach clenched.

  How could I lose them both on the same night?

  I couldn’t see it again. I couldn’t see my mother’s blood, breaking like a flood into the memory of my dad’s body. Covering him. Drowning him.

  I clutched the stair railing, drowning too.

  Breathe, Roman. Take a breath.

  In my mind, their blood converged, washing them both out like the tide. Farther and farther away from me.

  Come back…please. Come back.

  Door hinges squealed as footsteps padded onto tile. I eased up the stairs and saw my mother’s shadow cutting beneath the bathroom door. I didn’t know which side of the memory I was on or how much of her would be left once I finally opened the door. All I knew was that I had to open it.

  She’s waiting for you.

  “N-no…please.” Her voice was muffled. By the door. By…tears. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  My heart raced, stirring my steps, and suddenly I was at the threshold. My hand shook, knocking the doorknob as I wrestled it past the lock. It fell open, the steam too cold as it reached out to grab me. Shadows slithered around my arms and legs but they weren’t trying to drag me inside. They were trying to force me back. I pushed them away instead, my flames still intact.

  The shadows retreated and then they converged, darkening like a storm cloud over the bathtub. My mother was already sinking, a wisp of smoke angling the broken mirror over each wrist. Smoke. Not her own trembling hands. It was the shadows. Not her. Not her. It wasn’t her.

  I threw myself against the side of the tub, my rage striking like lightning through the storm. I heaved my mother out of the water, wondering if the cold would rile her senses. My fingers trembled as I sutured her wrists, the heat amplified by fear. By relief.

  “Mom…” I brushed her hair back, smearing the blood. “Mom, please. Wake up. Wake up.” I lead the water to her face, my hands warming it as I washed off the blood. “Please…” I wrapped her in a towel, her head still hanging limp against my shoulder. “Mom! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so—”

  My lungs forced down every breath. The shadows had followed her; they’d found her because of me. All this time…she’d been haunted. She’d been hunted and murdered. Because of me.

  “Mom…”

  My face brushed her cheek. I finally forced myself to inhale, the smell of her wet hair, of her blood strangling me all over again.

  Lashes scraped my face. Beneath the shaking I couldn’t tell which one of us was moving. Which one of us was dying.

  I eased back, staring. “Mom?”

  Her lips made the tiniest seam.

  “Mom…” My arms tightened around her, afraid of chasing away her last breath.

  She inhaled.

  And then s
he blinked.

  “Roman…” She smiled.

  The sob ripped out of me, my mother cradling me instead. I buried my face in her lap. Shaking. Breaking. While she held me. She was weak, arms falling against me as I clung to her. But for the first time she wasn’t pushing me away. She was reaching for me. She was letting me reach back.

  My mother rocked me, hold tightening as her tears slipped onto the back of my neck. I breathed deep, shedding the last ten years until I was just a boy again. Her son.

  “Roman…” She rested her cheek against the back of my head, her weight on me like a fortress. “I love you.”

  I peeled myself off the ground, staring into her eyes.

  She held my face in her hands. “I have always loved you.”

  65

  Bryn

  The cold floor pricked my toes, my legs numb from being flat on my back for so long. I gripped the bed railing, heaving myself onto my feet. Then I slipped, coming down on my knees. They gave out too, my body unsure how to run or even move. But I had no choice. I crawled to the door, wrenching myself up by the handle. I peered into the hall, catching my breath as I searched for the girl and an army of nurses.

  A voice blared over the intercom as a blinking security light washed the walls red. CODE NINE. CODE NINE. ALL PERSONEL REPORT TO THE 5TH WARD. LOCKDOWN WILL BEGIN IN TEN. NINE. EIGHT…

  An emergency exit door leading to a stairwell was about fifty yards ahead of me. But I wasn’t trying to escape. Not yet. I slipped into the hall, shoulder dragging against the wall as I tried to hold myself up. If Calvin’s room was just on the other side of mine then all I needed to do was make it a few more steps before rounding the corner.

  I skirted to the other side just as I heard footsteps. Then I collapsed again, my legs shaking. I hugged them to my chest, pressing my back to the wall as two security guards raced towards the emergency exit. They passed right by me, one with a strait jacket gripped in his fist, the other with a long black baton. One of the nurses trailed after them, three long syringes in her hand.