“Guess so,” Chrissi hesitates before crossing to the opposite room and following Lesia inside. “See y’all in the morning,” she says more as comfort to herself than a common nighttime farewell, then slips inside.
“Ugh, this place is dis—gust—ing.” Lesia stands in the middle of the room staring at the queen-sized bed with an inch of dust covering the bedspread. Noticing a few picture frames on the floor with a small cracked mirror, she walks over and begins hanging them up on the nails in the wall where age and dust has formed discolored silhouettes where they once found their positions.
“Yeah…um,” Chrissi stares at their room lost for what to do next. Just then a knock sounds at their door. Lesia jumps to the farthest corner of the room. Chrissi opens it to see Phil.
“Gross room too?” he asks hopelessly.
“Pretty much.”
“Thought so. OK. ‘Night.” He saunters back to his room disgruntled. Chrissi chuckles as she closes the door and locks one of the four locks. She sits at a corner desk organizing her backpack. Lesia runs to the door and locks the other three deadbolts.
They settle into the middle of the bed, huddled together like childhood friends. The atmosphere that affected Lesia outside the inn is almost overwhelming now making it extremely easy to put aside any awkwardness tonight. The girls close their eyes and pretend to sleep; ignoring their current curious circumstances seems a better solution than giving the eerie any thought at all.
***
Kesil stands in the center of the town, cobblestone beneath his feet, back to Chrissi. She jogs toward him and as she comes closer she realizes, a lump forming in her chest threatening to rise to her throat, it isn’t Kesil at all. It is the man from her other dream. The man with the slicked back hair and stark blue eyes that don’t seem to match the rest of his features. He is wearing dark blue jeans and a black fitted t-shirt with shiny ebony loafers. His tan skin, real or fake she cannot tell, only seems to highlight his brawny and powerful build. Part of him reminds Chrissi of Kesil, except that this stranger seems to be a forgery of man.
She stops suddenly, unsure of what to do. It is just the two of them, the rest of the town still sleeps. A small lantern at the top of the central fountain is the only light. Did he hear her? Does he know she is there? Maybe she can go back inside and end this vision. Slowly, Chrissi begins to step back, towards the inn.
“Not so fast,” he coos creepily. Then before Chrissi can turn and run the scene changes and they are a mile outside the town. She can still see the buildings in the distance. Behind her the man overshadows.
She doesn’t want to face him, not here, not alone, not now. Not yet. He obviously wants her dead and he obviously has some power. He is so peculiar there has to be something magical about him. The way he talked the whole town into hunting her like wild animals. The way he is influencing her dream right now.
Slowly, she turns to face him. But before she can look him in the eye the scene changes again.
Chrissi is amidst a crowd of people in the center of the town. It is daylight and the man stands on the fountain, higher than the crowd, preaching. Chrissi is too afraid to listen. Instead she moves around the crowd, unnoticed, unseen trying to find her friends. Trying to find safety. As she weaves between the townspeople nobody seems to feel her. She is invisible and her friends are not here. She is forced to hear the man speak.
Finally, she looks up at him. This time he wears a white button-down shirt and lighter blue jeans. His black loafers are slightly scuffed, but his hair is still slicked back revealing the eyes set in tanned skin of perfection Chrissi is sure are all simulated. This man cannot be real. Sun damage and blemishes, he has never known. Instead, he looks plastic, completely unreal.
“Today is the day!” he shouts, fist pumping in the air for excitement. The crowd follows suit, raising fists with joyful cheers.
They begin to chant, “Today is the day! Today is the day!”
Chrissi has no idea what is set to happen today, but knows without a shadow of a doubt she wants no part of it. She continues weaving through the crowd toward the side, away from the man. As she reaches the edge she takes a final look back. The man is staring right at her. His blue eyes change to green, to brown, to red then to yellow as he speaks just to her.
“The day will come.”
A flash of Chrissi’s tombstone from her other dream plays in her mind, as if he planted it there. She stumbles back and before she falls completely to the town’s feet…
***
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
BAM!
Lesia darts up and Chrissi freezes, now wide awake.
“It was just something falling, totally normal…right?” Lesia’s eyes dart to every corner of the dark room.
“Probably,” Chrissi mutters, still startled. “Why is it so dark?”
“We aren’t in suburbia, there are no street lights.” The girls look out the window at the head of the queen-sized bed.
The inn shakes as if in fear itself.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
BAM!
Picture frames fall off the wall near the doorway and a force hits the door causing the girls to scream in panic.
“Chrissi! Lesia! Let us in!” Kesil shouts from the other side. Chrissi runs to the door and fumbles with quadruple locks, finally opening it to Phil running his hands through his hair, and Kesil with aggressive and determined eyes. They push themselves passed Chrissi, still in shock.
“Go to the bathroom,” Phil orders. “Now!” he shouts when the girls do not move immediately.
“What’s going on?” Chrissi demands, taking offense to Phil’s newfound machismo. Inherited from Kesil, no doubt.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
BAM!
The windows rattle and the walls tremble.
The last of the frames and the little mirror crash to the floor.
“Bathroom!” Kesil yells, pushing everyone out the door and across the hallway into the small toilet room. He closes and locks the door, then slides down to sit against it.
“Um…why are we in the restroom?” asks Lesia after a minute of awkward heavy, frightened breathing.
“At first, I thought it was an earthquake,” Phil begins to explain.
“Then I saw it,” Kesil says, staring blankly at the door like he is replaying his memory, speaking as if he is in a trance.
“It? It what?” Lesia panics.
“A shadow figure, outside our window. It was dark and translucent, like it can be seen but invisible too. It’s eyes bored into me,” Kesil gulps. “They were yellow.” Finally he turns around, facing everyone. The girls’ mouths are agape, eyes wide with fear. Chrissi chokes back tears, remembering her dream just moments before and the yellow eyes that bore into her own with fateful words she hopes to soon forget.
“I saw one too,” Phil’s grip on his flashlight becomes so tight his knuckles turn white. “It was like it was pulled to me, but just a part. I felt all these feelings come up that I haven’t felt in a long time. Anger, jealousy, bitterness. All these scenarios and memories started playing and replaying in my head. It was feeding off it, or trying to anyway. When Kesil pulled me away from the window I felt better.”
“So stay away from windows,” Chrissi says almost catatonically.
“Hence, bathroom,” says Phil gesturing around the four window-less walls.
“So…we crash here all night? Some rest this ends up!” Lesia says as she crawls into the bathtub and attempts to curl up, but before she can attempt to be comfortable the inn trembles again.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
BAM!
“And what’s that?” she asks sitting up straight.
“Him,” Chrissi whispers. “Wanting in.”
Kesil shakes his head in confusion, “Him? You mean them! There are many of them out there.”
“Yeah, we jus
t found out why this town doesn’t get visitors,” says Phil.
“I think we’ll be safe here for the night. We can take turns keeping watch.” Kesil settles in, putting his backpack in his lap and getting as comfortable as possible on the floor near the door.
“Who can sleep?” Phil says, sitting down against the toilet.
Chrissi sighs, sitting across from him against the opposite wall, “Not me.” The wall quivers behind her.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sunlight creeps its way through windows in the hallway and underneath the door to the tiny bathroom. Slowly everyone wakes from shallow naps.
“Well, that was pleasant,” Phil stretches causing several vertebrae to crack. “Owww,” he yawns.
“Dude, you look green,” Kesil says sleepily. Phil stands up and looks in the foggy mirror above the dust-ridden porcelain sink. Dark circles hold sunken, bloodshot eyes on his pale and clammy face.
“I don’t feel great either,” Lesia mumbles trying to climb out of the bathtub. Her foot slips into Chrissi’s hip.
“Ouch,” she moans and begins to stir.
“Sorry.”
“How are you feeling Chrissi?”
Chrissi moves slothfully to turn over and look at Kesil, “Awful.” Her face really does wear a tinge of green. “Um, move.”
“What?” Phil looks over at her from his perch atop the toilet.
“Move. Now.”
“Oh!” Phil jumps up just in time for Chrissi to fling open the lid and vomit into the dingy grey bowl.
“Ew!” Lesia squeals, stepping on everyone in her mad dash to the door.
Kesil and Phil follow quickly.
“Did you eat something different than me?” Kesil asks Phil and Lesia.
“No, we have all eaten the same things,” Phil cocks an eyebrow in interest, “You don’t feel sick?”
“No, actually,” Kesil hesitates, “I feel great. Better even.”
Phil stares at him for a moment, wondering what makes Kesil so different. The dark mysterious eyes stare back in a firm challenge. Lesia leans against a wall, moaning, oblivious to the silent battle.
As Chrissi emerges from the bathroom, Phil tears away, “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I think so. I feel a little better at least. But we need to go right now.”
“You aren’t in any shape to travel!” Phil protests.
“Ohhhh, uhhhhh,” Lesia groans dramatically from down the hall, inching closer to the girls’ bedroom door.
“Maybe you all will feel better in a little while, like me,” says Kesil. He helps Chrissi into the room and onto a floral, lavender chair by a window near the bed.
“What were those things last night?” she meets Kesil’s eyes, boring into him for truth that she knows he is holding back.
“Probably the reason everyone seemed so strange last night,” he says simply and steps as far away from her as he can in the small room. As she leans into the filthy chair and closes her eyes, Kesil moves to Phil’s side and whispers, “She’s burning up. She’s affected more than either of you two.”
“Yeah, I see that. I also see you are not affected at all,” Phil expects Kesil’s challenging eyes to meet his own again, when Kesil’s gaze remains on Chrissi, then slowly leads to his own shoes, Phil echoes Chrissi’s demand, “We need to leave. I think she’s right.”
“But you just said we shouldn’t!”
“Look, logically this doesn’t make sense but since logic has been pretty absent these last few days, I say we do whatever is illogical. So far that has saved us!”
“Let’s go.” The boys turn their heads, startled, to Lesia, standing with her backpack on and Chrissi’s over her shoulder. “This place is…dark. I can feel it. Before we saw those shadow things last night, I felt it. We need to go, they’re right.”
Kesil looks at his feet again, pondering. If this place is so dark, why can everyone feel it except him? He feels so good this morning he would rather stay here in this mysterious little town. He turns back to Phil, “Can you go grab our bags?”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
Kesil points to the corner, “Grab her.”
Phil blushes, knowing his noodle arms would not be much help in supporting Chrissi down the flight of stairs. He runs across the hall and into the other room. When he reappears in the hallway, Kesil has Chrissi’s arm around his neck and his around her waist, supporting her frame. As they all proceed down the stairs, they are startled to find the hostess standing at the open front door, watching them.
“Guess it is time to go,” Phil mutters under his breath as they walk passed her. The second Lesia’s foot hits the concrete stoop, the lady slams the door shut behind them. “No payment needed, sweet!”
Everyone in the tiny town seems to be out in the hustle and bustle of daily tasks.
“I think we’re in the Twilight Zone,” Phil says. “Did we step back in time?”
“Yeah, there’s a serious lack of Louis V here!” Everyone stares at Lesia. “What?” she shrugs. “It’s true!”
They begin to take notice of people’s garments and tools. Their clothing is obviously homemade, simple, and fairly neutral. Wheelbarrows and other wooden tools are scattered across the cobblestone town square.
“Let’s just go.” Chrissi clutches her stomach and walks briskly back the way they entered the town yesterday.
“Don’t we want to go the rest of the way through the town?” Phil points in the opposite direction. Chrissi pauses and stares up at the sky, then everyone’s eyes turn to Phil in disbelief. He spins on his heel to look out across a green plain with a few scattered wild flowers, and then up at an ever-darkening and angry sky, full of dark-grey clouds threatening to rupture.
Thunder booms and the ground shakes beneath their feet.
“Right, this way everyone!” Phil jogs towards Chrissi and grabs her arm, pulling her along with him, quickly, putting as much distance as possible between them and the approaching squall.
As they reach the other side of the square, people begin staring wide-eyed at their little gang. They press on, awkwardly and hesitantly, to the outskirts of the town, passed a few squalor homes and on through a plain that seemed much smaller the day before.
“Are we sure this is the right way?” Lesia wonders out loud after half an hour of walking.
“How could it not be? It’s a town with two entrances,” Kesil says with finality.
“Wait,” Phil, at the head of the group with Chrissi, stops suddenly sending a domino-effect of stumbling through the troupe. “What’s that?” Everyone’s jaws drop with the hopelessness that settles on their, now very heavy, shoulders.
“That’s a giant wall,” Lesia says dispassionately.
Before them, about half a mile, stands a 100-foot, red-brick wall spanning hundreds of miles across the plain. They continue walking towards it in incredulous saunter, doubting their own eyes. When they reach it, they just stare. Chrissi can feel hope drain from her heart and an anvil of despair, regret, and guilt take its place. They begin to churn in her gut and the all-too-familiar feeling of sickness creeps up. She runs a few feet away and vomits again, but still feels little relief. She crumples to the ground and settles against the brick blockade.
“We have to get out of here,” Kesil resolves, feeling sympathetic anguish for the girl he feels compelled to protect. “Let’s go back to town and see what they know.” Lesia and Phil nod in agreement, recognizing their only option.
Kesil runs ahead of the other three, Lesia and Phil supporting Chrissi. He enters the bizarre town again and grabs the first person to cross his path, an old woman in a dusty mauve dress and white apron.
“Excuse me, how do we get passed the wall?”
The woman stares at Kesil then looks at his full stature. He can feel her judging gaze comb over his favorite but tattered t-shirt and cutoff shorts and then the well-used tennis shoes provided by Nahal.<
br />
“You can’t!” she blurts, putting stark emphasis on the contraction, then jogs away at an uncanny, and slightly alarming, pace for an old woman that causes Kesil to stifle a burst of laughter. He grabs the next person and asks the same of him, a middle-aged man with a young boy grasping at his brown trousers. But the man ignores him and carries on. The boy looks back at Kesil with wonderment. Apparently, strangers really are not common here, Kesil gathers.
Finally, as the others catch up to him, Kesil finds a boy, about 14 years old, at the fountain in the middle of the square. He taps the boy gently on the shoulder so as not to frighten him, “Hey.”
The boy turns his head, “Hey!” he smiles brightly.
Kesil hesitates, taken aback by warm friendliness that is not evident anywhere else in the town, “Do you know how to get out of here?”
The boy’s brown eyes dart around the square meeting several glares from fellow townspeople, “Not here.” He stands and motions back toward the inn, then walks briskly over, sure to stay far enough ahead of them so he will not be presumed associating with the strangers. His long light-brown hair blows in the cool wind of the coming storm. The wind is almost difficult to walk against but his strong stature makes it look easy. Kesil is the only one in the group able to keep up. When they reach the inn, the boy continues out to the field and around a bit so they end up away from the town but concealed behind the inn.
“My name is Nicolas, you can call me Nic,” he shakes Kesil’s hand and smiles warmly at Phil and the girls. “You don’t look well,” he walks to Chrissi and feels her forehead.
“She’s very sick,” says Lesia with a tinge of worry in her voice.
“Yes, I was that way when I first came here too. This helps,” he pulls a small green twig covered with thick bright-green leaves from his pocket and hands it to Chrissi. “Mint. Chew on a leaf for about 30 minutes, the nausea subsides.”
All three take a leaf and chew slowly and methodically, desperate for relief. The boy turns to Kesil and looks at him curiously. Kesil makes a show of reaching out for a leaf from Lesia.
“Well, I gather you want to leave Madquarah?”
“Yes!” everyone but Kesil blurts.
The Reconciling: The Overcome Trilogy Part I Page 13