by E. E. Holmes
The girl appeared to be steeling herself. And then she spoke, “About ten months ago I started having these Visitations—the same kind that you’ve been having for your entire life. Ever since it started, I’ve been in search of the reason why. And just last night, I got the answers I was looking for.”
“Why? Why can we see them when no one else can?” The question escaped my mouth without conscious thought, the question I had asked myself a million times in my life, and never with the hope of an answer. My eyes blurred with sudden tears.
“It has to do with our heritage, our bloodline. You and I were both born into a line of women who have this… ability. We’re related, Hannah.”
“Related?” I whispered.
“Yes. We’re sisters.”
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t have said the word I thought I heard. She couldn’t have meant it about me.
“But I don’t have anyone. I’ve never had anyone,” I managed at last.
“I know. I didn’t know about you, Hannah. I didn’t know you were here, or I would have been here sooner. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t have anyone,” I repeated, because it was the only truth that I knew, and my drugged brain would not let go of it because to let go of it was to let go of myself. “Only the dead people. I only have the dead people.”
“But you do now, Hannah, that’s what I’m trying to tell—”
The girl stopped speaking suddenly and fished a phone out of her pocket. During her hushed and hurried conversation, I felt like I was pushing the boulder of information she had just dropped upon me up a mental hill, trying to reach the top, to reach the moment it would tumble over the other side and I would be able to understand it. But I felt so weak, and the boulder was so heavy, and I was so, so tired.
The girl—Jessica, her name was Jessica—hung up. “Hannah, I’m really sorry, but we don’t have a lot of time for explanations right now. I promise you that I will answer every question that you have, every one that I have an answer to. But right now we need to get out of here. Will you come with me?”
I couldn’t even bring myself to speak. My brain was trying to protect me from what must surely be some kind of trick or a trap or a lie. But a tiny voice had woken up in the back of my head, and it was shouting at me as though from miles away, its message almost lost in the vastness it had to cross to reach me:
Trust her. Trust this girl.
Without deciding to, I agreed. I tried to stand, but stumbled, and the girl—Jessica—offered me her hand. After a split-second hesitation, I took it.
We both gasped.
A powerful current, almost like electricity, pulsed between us. Yet rather than wanting to break apart, the current only bound us more closely together. A gust of wind blew our hair around our faces, and the quiet of the room was suddenly alive with voices, bleeding through the walls, echoing from the floors, emanating from everywhere.
Jessica pulled her hand away just as I jumped backward, knocking into my desk in my haste to get away from her. “What was that?” I demanded, but she looked as shocked as I felt.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think we should let it happen again,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I considered this. I could feel nothing now but a faint tingling in my fingertips and the pounding of my palpitating heart. “I think so,” I said.
And then all hell broke loose. Everything happened so fast, I could barely process it. The place went into a code pink lockdown, and before we could decide what to do or where to go, we’d been locked into the room together. It was crumbling. This tiny sliver of hope in the form of a stranger who claimed to be my sister was about to be crushed before I’d even completely convinced myself it was true. I couldn’t let it happen. I had to know what would happen if I followed this girl outside of these walls—if I took that hand just one more time.
Well, spirits had gotten me into this mess, and spirits were going to get me out of it.
I’m still not sure how I managed it, as drugged up as I was, but the feeling of Jessica’s hand in mine had burned a small peephole of clarity through the haze, and I acted instinctively.
I shoved Jessica safely away in the closet and, just as the nurses arrived with their threats of more drugs, I closed my eyes and reached out.
This is it, I called out to the spirit energy around me. For years you’ve asked for my help, and I’ve never known how. But I felt something a moment ago, when I held that girl’s hand, that’s going to change all of that. But none of it will matter if we can’t get out of here, and so I need you all. Come to me, please. Help me so I can finally help you.
And they came, all of them, as though they had been waiting in the wings for this very moment. And after years of feeling like I had no control at all, how easy it suddenly was to control them. It was as though each of them was tied to an invisible, mental string, and all I had to do was tug on them with a single thought, and that thought was obeyed instantly. And in that moment, I really only had one thought: Get me out of here. A single point of my finger, and the room was a tornado of whirling spirits, shattering glass, and flying furniture. The nurses who had kept me locked up and sedated for years were sprawled unconscious on the ground, and the door we needed to escape through stood open. In my shock at what I had just done—or rather, what the spirits had done for me—I released my hold on all the strings, and spirits were free again.
“Hannah? Are you alright?” Jessica put a hand on my shoulder, making me jump.
“Yes. I’m alright,” I said automatically, because I had no other words to describe the heady, powerful feeling still flooding through me, ebbing away now, leaving me drained and foggy once more. I met Jessica’s eye and tried to smile, but I couldn’t. She was looking at me with something like fear, but a moment later it was gone as she took charge. “We’ve got to get out of here, now!” She grabbed my arm and we ran.
But something was happening to me as we dashed through the halls toward freedom—with every step, I was growing weaker. It was as though my limbs were slowly filling up with sand, and my mind as well. We took the stairs down to the kitchens, destroying a door sensor along the way, and with each step, I grew less and less aware of our surroundings, less and less in control of my body. I felt myself slipping away.
Just a little further, I urged myself. You’re almost there.
My vision had dimmed to shades of gray as Jessica dragged me across the lawns toward a waiting car. She pulled me into it, slid me across the seat, and slammed the door. I had one whiff of leather interior, one fleeting glimpse of a beautiful, frantic-eyed face in the rearview mirror, and then my body and mind gave out and I slipped gratefully into unconsciousness.
§
I felt the last of the bleariness and fog swirl away down the drain with the hot soapy water, felt my muscles relax into real awareness for the first time in weeks. I turned the temperature up higher and higher by degrees, searing away the shell into which I had retreated for so long. Something vital inside me had shifted, a reversing of poles, or else a re-centering of gravity.
I felt better. I felt like me.
I’d woken to the careful ministrations of the beautiful face from the car—my aunt, Karen. After assuring me that I was safe, that no one would be coming after me, she urged me gently to sip some water, then to eat a little toast. The effects of the escape, as well as my medications, were fading, and after a while, she had suggested I take a shower and change into some clean pajamas, which she had folded meticulously on the end of the bed. Maybe it was the crisp and perfect lines of the clothing, or the way she so tenderly continued to smooth and arrange them even as she picked them up to hand them to me, but I had agreed. Now I thought I might just stay in this shower for the rest of my life, burning through layer after layer of memory and watching it all drift away from me on clouds of steam.
“Sweetness? Can I come in?”
For the first time since he’d left and then come back, the sound of
Milo’s voice was a welcome one. I smiled a little to myself.
“You’re here.”
“Of course, I’m here! What, did you think I was going to wallow away my afterlife in that hellhole without you?”
“I don’t know. No, I guess not. I’m just… I’m just really glad to hear your voice.”
“So, does that mean I can come in?”
“Sure.”
“I’m just… checking on you, because, well… I mean, shit.” Milo let out a long, slow breath.
I almost laughed. “I know, right?”
“Sorry, but that’s all I’ve got,” Milo chuckled. “I’m low on eloquent sound bites at the present time. That was one wild exit out of that place. But seriously, how are you feeling?”
I considered this, before deciding on the right word. “Awake.”
I felt rather than saw Milo’s smile. “Well, that’s something. Welcome back.”
“Thanks.” I paused. “I really wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“After the way I treated you.”
Milo gave a sad laugh. “After the way you treated me? Are you kidding? Sweetness, you’ve got nothing to apologize for.”
I let the water keep running because it was easier to face my shame with the sound of it muffling his voice, with the steam cloaking his expression.
“Yes, I do. Even if you don’t need to hear it, I need to say it, Milo. You stayed behind for me. I thought it was all my fault, but all that does is remove your agency. It erases you, and your choices. I never should have taken that from you. I have to let you own that. I’m really sorry.”
Milo’s voice was thick with tears. “Apology totally unnecessary but gratefully accepted, sweetness.”
“Thanks. And I’m… I’m really glad you’re here, and I’m going to let myself think it and say it out loud. You chose me, so I’m choosing you. If… if that’s still okay?”
Milo snorted in an exaggerated way, which I knew meant the emotion had gotten too real for him. “As if you had a choice. I’m basically, like, your permanent stalker now, so get over it.”
I laughed. It felt weird and rusty, but also good. I shut the water off, pulled a fluffy white towel from the rack, and wrapped myself in it. It smelled faintly of lavender and fell all the way to my ankles. When I stepped out of the tub, I saw Milo sitting cross-legged on the double vanity, smiling at me. I boosted myself up and sat beside him.
“They’re going to be waiting for me down there, huh?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“I’m kind of scared.”
“I don’t blame you,” Milo said. “But scared can be good. At least it means you’re here, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“They seem… genuine, Hannah. They seem really worried about you.”
“Yeah. I just… I guess I never really let myself wonder what it would be like to have a family. Not since I was a kid. It was a self-preservation thing.”
“I know. Especially because families don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to,” Milo said.
“Exactly.”
“But… they risked a lot to get you out of there. I don’t think they’re done risking stuff for you. They obviously care. And… well, you might finally get some answers, you know? About why you can do… this.” He gestured between the two of us and smiled again.
“I know. It’s just…” A small, slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up and escaped me. “Well, it’s actually kind of terrifying when you might finally get the things you’ve been praying for your whole life.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Milo said gently.
I slid down off the sink and turned to face the mirror, looking into my own face. Only now, I could also see her face, too. My sister, Jessica. My nose was actually our nose. My dark eyes were actually our dark eyes.
“A sister,” I whispered to our shared features. “A twin.”
And for the first time ever, our smile smiled back at me.
Complete works by E.E. Holmes
THE WORLD OF THE GATEWAY
The Gateway Trilogy (Series 1)
Spirit Legacy
Spirit Prophecy
Spirit Ascendancy
The Gateway Trackers (Series 2)
Whispers of the Walker
Plague of the Shattered
Awakening of the Seer
Portraits of the Forsaken
Heart of the Rebellion
Soul of the Sentinel
Gift of the Darkness
Tales from the Gateway
THE RIFTMAGIC SAGA
What the Lady’s Maid Knew
E.E. Holmes is a writer, teacher, and actor living in central Massachusetts with her husband, two children, and a small, but surprisingly loud dog. When not writing, she enjoys performing, watching unhealthy amounts of British television, and reading with her children. Please visit www.eeholmes.com to learn more about E.E. Holmes and The World of The Gateway.