by T. G. Ayer
A tail? A freaking tail?
Joshua blinked and cleared his vision in case he’d been seeing things. Maybe he had something in his eye?
But no, peeking out from the bottom of Fila’s floor-length skirts was a furry bright-orange tail which swayed from side to side, and swept the floor as it moved. Fila kept walking, and Joshua kept staring, convinced he was imagining it all.
When he shifted his horrified gaze to the girl who’d been talking to the woman with the tail, he found himself staring into familiar eyes.
The girl’s face brightened, and a relieved smile broke out onto her face when she saw he was awake. She set the bowl in her hand onto her bed and almost sprang at Joshua.
“You’re awake,” she whispered loudly, glancing over her shoulder, probably afraid she’d disturbed one of the other patients. She seemed to have a very caring nature, something he knew instinctively about her. Still, he didn’t remember who she was.
Joshua nodded slowly. He glanced around him and asked. “Where am I?” Then he paused and focused on her face, his brow furrowing. “Why do you look so familiar to me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because we know each other.” She said it with an unspoken ‘duh’ and a comfortable familiarity that immediately made Joshua comfortable in her company.
Then disappointment filled him. “Oh. I’m sorry,” he apologized, shaking his head. “I don’t remember you.”
The girl made a face and grinned. “It’ll come back. Don’t worry about it.” She waved a hand, dismissing his fears.
He wished it was that easy, but just talking to her was making him feel better. “Were you the person who was talking to me earlier?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you heard me,” she said, giving him a soft smile. “I think it helps to hear someone’s voice. Makes you feel less alone. I know I needed that when I first woke up, but I didn’t have it so I figured I’d make sure at least one person woke up and didn’t have the shit scared out of them.”
Joshua chuckled and coughed, his throat dry and sore. Then he laughed softly as he stared at the girl’s face. “How do I know you?”
But she merely smiled and shook her own head in response. “I think I’m not supposed to tell you. You’re meant to heal mind and body on your own. I’m told it would be unhealthy for us to rush the remembering.” For a moment, sadness darkened her features.
“So where am I? Am I allowed to know that?” Joshua asked, aware that his tone was a little too harsh but reluctant now to take it back. He felt bad too, given the girl looked upset and conflicted.
But she didn’t seem to be affected by his rudeness. Instead, she shrugged one shoulder and smiled at him, a sadness in her eyes that he couldn’t define. “Someone will come over to speak to you soon enough. We’ve all been through the process.” She looked over her shoulder. “Or at least, those of us who have awakened have.”
Joshua let out a frustrated sigh and shifted onto his side. The room swayed around him, and for a moment he felt as though he were about to pitch over the edge of the cot and land on his face. His body still felt numb, but he was now aware that he could feel so much more in his muscles. He blinked hard and heard the girl leave, her footsteps soft on the stone floor.
Yes. He was staring at the floor, studying the gray slabs that had been laid together, in a similar fashion to a standard tiled floor. A memory filled his mind, Joshua helping his dad pave the back patio because his mom had wanted an outdoor seating area that didn’t look like a piece of grazing land—he’d been laugh-out-loud amused at her description.
Joshua stiffened and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He’d remembered his parents, the sight of the stone thrusting the past at him in a flash of awareness, bringing back all his memories of who he and his parents were, everything about their family. It comforted him to no end, but it also set him off-balance as he knew they’d be worried as hell about him.
He was frowning and rubbing his forehead when the girl returned with a bowl and a mug. “Remember something?” she asked softly as she handed a small wooden platter bearing a bowl to him. He reached for it, surprised at the violence of the hunger he suddenly felt within his stomach.
He glanced down at the platter and studied the deep bowl filled with dark gravy and succulent meat and veg. Beside the wooden bowl sat a hunk of bread and from the warm yeasty steam filling his nostrils he knew it had been freshly baked.
“Oh god. I’m so hungry,” he mumbled as he tore off a piece of the bread and dipped it into the gravy. He scooped up meat and a small piece of potato and shoved it into his mouth. He knew he was moaning with pleasure as he chewed and swallowed but he didn’t care.
The girl didn’t seem to mind too much either. She’d fetched her own plate and was sitting on the cot bed opposite Joshua, eating just as gustily as he was.
“The food here is amazing, I’ll give them that much.” She grinned between bites. “It’s been all too long since I’ve last enjoyed a meal. I’ve spent years tasting nothing.”
“Did you have a problem with your appetite?” Joshua asked, studying her as he ate.
“You could say that.” She chewed and swallowed, then reached for the mug before taking a good long sip. She set the mug down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve been dead a long time, I think. So this is like a second chance.”
Joshua frowned, his gaze flitting around him at the long hall, the giant carved pillars dotting the stone floor, the multitude of fires raging in fireplaces which could easily accommodate ten full-grown men standing abreast.
“And I suppose you can’t tell me what this is until the person in charge sees fit to tell me?” Joshua asked, his tone edged with frustration and a hint of bitterness at how helpless he was.
The girl tilted her head to one side as though she was contemplating telling him. Then, just as she opened her mouth, the sound of a pained groan filtered toward them. The girl twisted around and then leaped to her feet, dropping her mug and bowl on her platter.
She ran along to the next aisle and hunkered down beside a young man who’d begun to moan as though he were in the grips of an awful nightmare.
Perhaps he was too.
Joshua considered that maybe the boy was experiencing exactly what Joshua himself had gone through over the last few days. He was sure that the time passing had been real. He watched as the girl stroked the other boy’s hair and arm and he wondered at the tenderness she showed.
It seemed as though she cared very deeply for the people here, almost as though she felt responsible for them. He studied the faces around him, most of the people still asleep and unmoving. A dark head peeked out from the furs on a cot nearby, another purple-haired girl was curled tightly into a ball. And a redheaded girl lay along the aisle, the color of her short hair making him flinch.
Something about red hair was pulling him back into his memories.
“It’s okay. You’ll be fine. Just breathe and don’t fight the memories,” the girl was whispering to the kid—because that’s what he looked like.
But again, something about the boy felt so familiar to Joshua, as if he knew the moaning kid very well. But even as he stared at the boy’s face, Joshua’s vision swam. When he blinked, he could have sworn the boy’s face had changed, as though two faces were superimposed on each other, like an overexposed photograph.
Joshua shook his head and kept eating. He decided that it was time for him to take action. He’d had enough of lying on a bed waiting to find out what the hell was going on. He’d slowly gotten his strength back, and now that he could eat, he planned to increase that strength.
Perhaps then all his memories would return, and he wouldn’t feel so…broken.
Joshua wiped his plate clean and drained the tankard of the slightly yeasty golden liquid. It felt a little like he’d just swallowed a mug full of honey mixed with weak beer. What a strange flavor, and yet so satisfying.
He felt calmer now, and strangely enough, much stronger.
But when he tried to stand, his head began to swim, and he was forced to sink back onto the cot with a soft thump.
“Take it easy,” his self-appointed, as-yet-nameless nurse scolded from the row ahead of him. “You only just woke up. Walking can be left for tomorrow. Or at least until you sleep a little more. The mead will help you, but it’s only meant to aid with the recovery and the healing. It’s not a magical potion though, so you need to be responsible.”
Joshua stared at the mug. “Mead?” The girl nodded but didn’t respond. She tucked the blanket around the boy’s shoulders then got to her feet to retrieve her platter and head over to Joshua to claim his.
She was gone then, taking the plates away and heading in the direction in which the Fila-with-the-tail had gone.
Joshua sighed and lay back down, exhaustion suddenly crashing down on him. His mother would have scolded him for sleeping so soon after a meal, but it appeared he was no longer in control of his sleep cycle. As he began to drift off, he wondered if his mom was okay.
Something told him she wasn’t.
Chapter 6
When Joshua opened his eyes next, his vision was crystal clear, and the pain that had filled his bones had faded somewhat. Hunger stabbed at his stomach again, the grip of it just as violent as the last time he’d been awake.
He shifted his head and took in the sight of a group of people, ages ranging from mid-teens all the way to mid-forties. They wore metal armor and chainmail, and wore large shining swords encased in leather scabbards, strapped to their waists.
The group walked by talking and laughing, and Joshua assumed that they were the same group that had passed him only days before.
But who were they and why were they dressed so strangely?
Had he by some chance been kidnapped by a Viking re-enactment club?
He shook his head and stared as the troop stomped past, then scanned the length of the hall behind him. He hadn’t paid too much attention to it the last time he’d been conscious, and to be fair his eyes and brain had throbbed in tandem when he’d tried to study the room for too long.
He sat up slowly and searched for his nurse, finding her leaning over the kid again. From where he was sitting, he could see the boy’s brown skin appear gray and Joshua had to wonder if the kid was going to make it. He was still moaning and seemed in even more agony than Joshua had been.
At last, the girl got to her feet and sighed. She turned to Joshua and smiled, fatigue clinging to the shadows beneath her eyes. “Welcome back.” She seemed to be wanting to cheer him up even when she herself was under a lot of stress.
“You look like you need rest,” he commented, squinting at her face. “Is it your job to look after everyone here?”
She shook her head. “No. But they’ve said I’m not yet ready to move to the next stage. I’m taking a little longer than the rest of the patients…which is understandable.”
Joshua frowned. “Because you’re a girl?” he asked, a little confused.
“No,” she snapped, her eyes flashing with indignation. “Not because I’m a girl, you idiot.”
Maybe it was her tone of voice, or perhaps even the way she’d called him an idiot, but an image of her flashed in his mind. Her face, but paler, almost skeletal. A bright yellow bandana wrapped around her head.
Her wide toothy childish smirk as she dropped ice-cream on his head when he’d called her a sapling because she was so skinny. Her narrow glare when he’d blamed himself when she’d fallen off her skateboard and broken her leg, because she’d wanted to own both her successes and her failures.
So many faces of the girl who now stood before him. Faces and events that told him how well he knew her.
“Aimee?” Joshua asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“Hello, you,” she said as she closed in on him and came to settle beside him. “You remember now?” she asked, giving him a soft nudge in the ribs.
“I remember you,” he said, but he shook his head. “I just can’t remember me properly. I remember my parents and incidents at home, and now you...and times in our lives when things had happened when we were together.”
“Like what?” she asked, her light brown eyes round and eager.
“Like when you broke your leg falling off that skateboard when both our parents had warned us not to because the hill was too steep.”
Aimee let out a laugh. “Yes, I remember how furious your dad was. My dad had to calm him down. He told him bones grow back, and little things like a small fall off a skateboard had never killed anyone.”
Joshua stiffened, and his ears began to ring. “But it did, didn’t it?” he whispered. When she sent him a questioning glance, he said, “That fall of that skateboard. Maybe it hadn’t been directly related, but it started us down the road to your death.”
She smiled at him sadly.
“I remember it all, Aimee.”
And he did now. He’d known her from the time he was eight when he’d transferred to Craven. They’d been good friends because their parents had known each other, but Joshua was a little vague on those details. All he could focus on right now was how Aimee had died. Of a cancer that had eaten her alive.
“You died,” he whispered, ice filtering along his veins. “I remember it.”
Aimee nodded, but didn’t speak. She just let him talk.
“But…what are you doing here if you are dead? Where are we?” Joshua frowned and glanced around him again at the strange hall, thinking about the weirdly dressed people, the girl with the tail.
Aimee shook her head and placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry, Joshua. I can’t tell you. Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? When is someone going to tell me what’s going on? Is this just some bad dream? You’re supposed to have died. I went to your funeral, Aimee.” Joshua got to his feet, frustration, and uncertainty flowing through him in a steady, unrelenting wave.
Something was telling him that he really did understand what it meant yet. That he could see the truth, but he just wasn’t ready yet to accept it. How could he? Aimee died and yet here she was, alive and well.
And Joshua remembered a terrible accident that haunted him as his last memory before everything had gone blank.
He began to pace, his head spinning with the possibilities that he didn’t really want to accept.
Aimee let out a soft sigh. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but you have to keep it to yourself. I can’t be found breaking the rules even before I start my training. So before I tell you anything you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone that I told you the truth before you remembered it on your own,” she implored, her forehead creased, her eyes almost afraid.
Joshua nodded and swallowed hard. “I’ll protect your secret.”
Aimee smiled at him. “You always have. Which is how I know I can trust you.”
She paused to take a breath, and Joshua held his tongue, half expecting her to change her mind if he so much as breathed in her direction.
Then she exhaled slowly. “After I died, I woke up here in this hall, going through very much the same thing as you did. My memories were hazy but probably not as bad as yours because I didn’t die in a traumatic way. I was surrounded by my family and so much love, so it wasn’t a terrifying experience.”
Joshua heard the screech of tires again, and this time he felt a shift in momentum as if his body was recalling being thrown around.
Unaware of his internal tumult, Aimee continued, “So when I woke up here, I regained my memories within a day. But even though my past returned to me, my strength has been taking its time. They said it’s something to do with what condition my body was in before I’d died. I needed some time to recover, much more time compared to everyone else.”
“Because of the cancer? What it did to your body?”
She nodded.
Joshua paused and frowned at what she’d just said. “So you died and then came here. I take it that’s how most people get here? They die first and then wake up h
ere?”
This time Aimee’s nod was a hint of movement.
“So that means I died before I got here?” Joshua asked, expelling a breath.
Aimee’s face was sad as she got up to crouch in front of him. “This is why they say we can’t tell the new arrivals. We’re not supposed to tell them the truth. Not until they are ready to process this new reality at their own pace.”
Joshua registered Aimee’s words on a different level of awareness. His mind was too busy processing the images and the emotions that seemed to be crashing over him like a tsunami.
Tires screamed again, and he felt the car begin to skid and turn. They’d hit a patch of oil that had sent the car into a spin. He’d struggled with the steering wheel, desperate to avoid a crash—either with the oncoming car or with the light pole they seemed to be heading straight for.
He had to stop, but it wasn’t his own safety he was concerned for.
The click.
It was the click that flashed everything into his mind, like those old photographers’ light bulbs that flashed brightly and made a low popping sound.
The click of the seatbelt.
Bryn had struggled with it before they’d driven off from Ms. Custer’s house. She’d finally managed to get it to hold, but Joshua should have known better. He and his dad had both considered replacing it, but with one thing after the other, both had put it on the back burner.
Something that hadn’t seemed all that important at the time. But then, in the briefest of moments before the crash, Joshua had known how vital that seatbelt was.
The locking mechanism released the moment the car had hit the light pole. Joshua felt the impact through his bones, felt the flash of pain at the top of his spine. Whiplash. Maybe.
More likely a broken neck.
He couldn’t recall anything other than seeing Bryn flying forward and slamming into the windscreen, her red hair flowing as though she was swimming underwater. Shattered glass exploded everywhere, and Joshua had watched, helpless in those short seconds as Bryn flew through the broken windscreen and slammed into the light pole.