The crescendo is upon us. The music has reached its peak. Will you dare to know the truth? Can you live in its wake?

Then read on, friend. Read on.

Chapter 15

The medicine felt like fire in her mouth. Twelve capsules this time, about half of what she had taken with her. Still thinking ahead, still holding on to the hope that there would be something more. Something still alive after everything she knew lay cold and dead under the force of the truth.

All sense of time and place dissolved. The sudden surge of chemicals drove her far, far below the fantasies and rationalizations, a million miles beyond the lies.

Back to the Beginning.

***

Ell sat on the living-room couch, bouncing up and down on the springy cushion. She didn’t like waiting, and today it was even more impossible than usual. Daddy was late getting home, which happened every once in a while, but on today of all days…

Today was her birthday. Her sixth birthday, to be exact. She held up her hands in front of her face, counting on her fingers. One, two, three, four, and two thumbs. Six. Mommy had showed her that. Something new to show Daddy, when he got home.

She glanced at the clock for the thousandth time. Still 5:35pm. Five minutes late. He always worked on her birthday, but he never forgot to bring her home a present. Last year, it had been a fuzzy stuffed duck named Peep, to help her sleep at night. She still had it in her bedroom, right next to her pillow. What would she get this year? Daddy never gave her hints.

The air smelled of cinnamon; mommy was making birthday food in the big kitchen. Last year, she had gone out and bought a cake, but the fruit topping had tasted funny, and the next day they had all gotten sick. This time, she was baking it herself.

The sound of an approaching car engine brought her springing off the couch, racing over to look out the big picture window next to the front door. Her face fell as she surveyed the driveway; the noise had only been a passing truck. Still no daddy. Ell watched for a minute, just to make sure, then meandered back to the couch.

Her mother called to her from the next room. “Elinor, is dad home yet?”

“No, mom.”

“Okay. Let me know when you see him.”

“Kay.”

Hopping once more from the couch, Ell moved to the short table in the center of the living room. A variety of crayons and pencils lay strewn across its surface, ready to aid her in whatever creative endeavor drew her interest. She picked an orange crayon from the mess, giving it a quick check to ensure it was just the right shade. Satisfied, she pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket, laying it as smoothly as she could on the tabletop.

“Hi, Mei.”

The girl-shaped figure scrawled on the paper did not reply, staring up at her with hollow eyes.

“You look pretty today. It’s my birthday, you know.”

Reaching down, Ell began to color a circle on a corner of the paper.

“I’m making you a sun. It’s big and warm and nice. Paper is all… white. Too cold for you. The sun is nice.”

The image on the paper smiled. It always smiled; she’d drawn it that way.

“All done! Do you want a tree? Or a bird? I haven’t made a bird before.”

The rattle of a familiar engine brought Ell rushing over to the window again. There was a smallish gray car pulling into the driveway, bouncing slightly as it ran over a bump in the pavement. Daddy’s car.

“Dad’s home!” she shouted, already halfway out the door.

The heat of the summer sun did little to curb her enthusiasm as she ran barefoot across the blacktop. Her father was stepping from the car, reaching back for a plastic bag on the passenger seat. At the last second, he heard her coming, turning and catching her up in his arms. His smile was as big as hers was as he swung her through the air, setting her gently on the grass.

“Careful, Ell! The pavement will hurt your feet in this weather. The grass is a lot better, yes?”

Ell nodded vigorously. “Did you bring me something?”

He laughed. “You’ve got to be patient! Let’s wait until after dinner, okay? Your mother’s been cooking all day. Let’s go see what she’s made!”

Pausing only briefly to pick up his bag, Ell’s father lead the way inside. Ell followed, skipping along beside the hot driveway. It was going to be a great birthday.

***

“…Happy birthday, dear Elinor, Happy birthday to you!”

Ell squeezed her eyes shut and blew as hard as she could. When she opened her eyes again, she was delighted to find that all six of the candles had gone out. Her parents applauded, and she grinned.

“I get my wish, right?”

Her father laughed. “Yep! You blew all the candles out! What did you wish for?”

Ell’s mother interrupted before she could reply. “Now, now, James! It won’t come true if she tells you!”

“Oh, right! Never mind.”

Ell watched them cut the cake, a delicious cinnamon-apple crumb cake, with big chunks of apple baked right into it. It looked a lot more tasty than the one from the supermarket.

Her father pushed his chair back. “Forgot something, dear. I’ll be right back. Go ahead and eat, Ell! It looks super-good.”

Ell was already eating, every bite like pure heaven. Her mother took some as well, savoring the flavor.

“This is good! Do you like it, Ell?”

“M-hm.”

The slice of cake vanished in minutes. Ell still wanted more, but she was quite sure her stomach would actually pop if she had another piece. Her mother began to pick up the dishes, moving them to the sink in the far corner of the kitchen.

“What’s keeping your father? He’d better be back soon, or I may have to send out a search party.”

Ell didn’t reply, rocking back and forth on her chair. A thought suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes lit up.

“Mommy! I have a song!”

Her mother didn’t look up. “A song?”

“Yep. I read it in the rhyme book you got me! Want me to sing it to you?”

“Sure. Want to help me with the dishes?”

“No.”

“Well, alright. I guess you’re off the hook, but just because it’s your birthday. What’s the song?”

“It’s about a baby, and a mommy that gets the baby nice things when he cries. Promise you won’t laugh if I sing it wrong.”

“I promise, Ell.”

“Okay.”

After a moment of thought, Ell got the lyrics more or less straight in her head.

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, mama’s gonna buy you… wait, okay, I got it. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird won’t sing, mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring-”

A fork clattered on the floor. Ell paused, waiting to see if her mother would pick it up, but she didn’t seem to realize that she’d dropped it. Her face looked sort of… blank, almost. She just stood there, staring at the dishes. After a minute, Ell resumed singing.

“If that diamond ring turns brass, mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass, and if that looking glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat.”

Ell paused and giggled. “Why would a baby want a billy goat? That’s silly. And if that billy goat don’t pull, mama’s gonna buy you a cart and a bull, and if-”

Her mother leaned over and vomited into the sink. Ell scrambled off her chair, opening her mouth to scream for her father. What actually came out was a sonorous pulse of sound that rang in the tiny kitchen, shaking the walls and cracking one of the water glasses on the table. She tried again to speak, and this time words did tumble out, but they were not the ones she wanted.

“If that cart and bull tip over, mama’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover, and if that dog named Rover don’t bark…”

It wasn’t her voice. Where was the rest of the music coming from? Like a whole orchestra jammed into her throat, filling the air with the now-terrifying rhyme.

Her mother tried to turn to face her, but seemed to lose all strength in mid-motion, dropping to her hands and knees. She appeared to be screaming, but Ell couldn’t hear any noise over the sound resonating from her own chest. Tears filled her eyes as she stood, paralyzed, singing in flawless soprano; “Mama’s gonna buy you a horse and a cart, and if that horse and cart fall down, you’ll still be the sweetest… little… baby… in town…”

The last note seemed to hold forever, turning the air to molten honey. The wheels of time caught, strained against each other… and started again to turn.

Ell snapped out of her daze, rushing to her mother’s side.

“Mommy! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

She wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, burying her face in the folds of her mother’s shirt. She could still hear the music in her head, a horrible, horrible sound that would never be forgotten. Her mother wasn’t moving; she didn’t even seem to be breathing. Help. She needed help.

Ell turned, taking a step in the direction of the kitchen phone, but stopped when she saw her father standing in the entrance to the dining room.

“Daddy! Mommy’s hurt. We need to help her.”

He didn’t reply, or make any motion of any kind. His arms hung loosely at his sides, his body swaying slightly from left to right. Frozen in place, like her mother.

At least, his body was. His face was another matter. Every muscle was stretched taught, twisting his usually-gentle expression into a rictus of anger and pain. His lips were curled back like the snarl of a mad dog, his teeth clicking together in staccato rhythm. Thin trails of blood ran from his eyes, ears, and nose, turning his white shirt collar a brilliant red.

Ell didn’t dare move, or speak, or even draw a breath. The thing that should have been her father remained motionless as well, his eyes jittering about, unseeing.

Her mother let out a tiny cough, the sound like a gunshot in the dead silence. Ell’s father moved so fast, Ell didn’t even realize he had moved before he was already past her, body-slamming his wife’s prone form with the entirety of his weight. She let out a scream, but it was not a helpless cry of fear; it was an animal shriek, the sound of violence and fury, the hunted attacking the hunter. Furniture smashed, and a shelf above the sink collapsed, raining a whole set of wine glasses down on the pair.

Ell ran to the hall closet, dragging it open, throwing herself inside and slamming the door behind her. She was crying hysterically, at the same time trying with all her might to silence her sobs. Why was this happening? It was her sixth birthday. She’d waited all day, and had cake, and still had a present to unwrap. It was supposed to be happy!

The tumult ended with a horrid popping snap, the sound of something breaking that was never meant to break.

Silence.

Breathing, crying, blinded by tears and darkness, both hands over her mouth.

The sound of someone moving slowly down the hall. Heavy footfalls, fabric dragging against a wall.

She wanted to die. She wanted the world to go away and never, ever come back. She wanted daddy and mommy back. The real ones, not the frozen bodies and scary faces. She wanted to go into a tiny box and stay there forever and ever. A happy, safe box, with nothing in it but her and-

A hand closed on the closet handle. Ell willed the unknown person away, commanded him with every ounce of her being to let go of the door, move away, go anywhere but right here, in the hall, in the exact spot she hid.

The handle did not turn; it was wrenched clean off the door and thrown violently through the living room window. The flimsy wood broke to splinters as her father forced his way through. Ell screamed, tried to run past him, but he moved like lightning, catching her by the hair, yanking her painfully off her feet.

She turned as best she could, and was immediately struck in the face by a fist like a cinderblock. She shrieked and tried to turn away, but found herself pinned by both her hair and her own body weight.

The second blow broke her nose, and she blacked out entirely.

Consciousness returned moments later. Her feet dragged on the hardwood floor, bumping over the uneven panels as she was pulled along. The thing (she couldn’t think of it as her father any more) was yanking her along like a broken doll, his hand curled with crushing force around her wrist. They were at the basement stairs now; the rough steps slammed against her heels as they went.

The monster was talking, its voice a distorted parody of her father’s. “Hate you, I try so hard, and I want to die, but you need to, to die, dead, like a little dead puppy, eat you, hate you, this, and you all can just go to hell, you and… this… that infernal noise, shut up shut up shut up…”

The cellar door splintered as Ell’s crazed father slammed his forehead into it, ignoring the pain and the blood that spurted from his hairline. With a roar, he repeated the motion, and this time the door gave way in a shower of wood chips and dust.

The basement beyond was small, dirt-floored and laced with wispy cobwebs. It had gone mostly unused in the years they had lived there, aside from the tiny off-white room in the farthest corner. A cold room, used to store things for later. Or forever.

“Make you… stay away… and… hurts… hurts so bad… god, my eyes, they’re in my eyes!”

The colorless floor rushed up to meet her, and she hit hard. Slowly, she rolled onto her back, her eyes turning heavenward in final desperation.

The only thing above her was a lonely lightbulb, hanging immobile, like a burning spider at the end of its web. It seemed to be staring at her, the eye of the devil watching her suffer.

“Stay there, you horrid… hurting… everything should, dying…”

The walls shook as the door slammed, and she was alone with the light.

Though the physical pain was gone, so was her mind. The whiteness grew around her, dissolving the day’s events, blanking out the past weeks one by one. Soon, there was nothing left but an empty canvass, a vast expanse where nothing lived, nothing thrived. A featureless land, waiting to be healed, to be given form.

So Ell reached out with her mind, and began to draw.

On the patch of darkness at her side, she drew two eyes. They were round and beautiful, like twin moons. So, too, was the mouth, thin and wide as the face would allow.

Ell waved.

The shadow waved back.

What’s your name? Ell asked without words.

Shadow-girl moved her hand, and her fingers formed a message in a language Ell did not know.

I can’t read that. Are you my friend?

The shadow nodded.

I called my last friend Mei. Want to be Mei?

Another nod.

Okay. Now we have to wait. It’s all white now, but I’ll make more things for us. I’ll make you a beautiful world, okay?

This time, Mei grinned.

Good. Where shall we start…?

Somewhere a clock was ticking, but time no longer moved.

***

She made the door from steel, woven from strands too fine for any eye to make out. All that hurt her, all that frightened her, all she could no longer stand to hold in her mind; these things found themselves on the far side of the door, isolated for all time.

It took a while. The monsters struggled and fought, shredding sizable portions of her mind in a last desperate effort to remain, but in the end, she was too strong for them. One by one, they were lost to the beyond, consumed by the door.

Finally, she sealed the door within itself, a paradox that became a passing flicker of confusion before vanishing as well.

Now her world was safe.

Back to the waiting.

***

A woman was holding her hand, walking with her down a long hall. The woman wasn’t real, of course; just another passing dream, a white-coated faceless construct to populate her mindscape. Even so, the imaginary hand was warm and soft, holding Ell’s gently as she was lead along.

She was in a room, now. Walls all white, like before, but now the room had furniture as well. A wide oak desk, with a little lamp perched on top. Two comfy-looking chairs, one in the corner, one in front of the desk. A window, too high for her to see out of, letting the sunlight pool on the floor.

A tallish man stood before the desk, watching as she approached. He was an older man, gray hairs flecking his black comb-over, but his eyes held an intensity that belied his age.

His voice, when he spoke, was bright and cheerful. “Well, hello there! What’s your name?”

Ell smiled shyly. “Elinor. I like Ell, though.”

The man smiled back. “Ell. That’s a very special name. I’m Richard Anderson. I’m a doctor. How do you feel, Ell?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

Dr. Anderson didn’t seem surprised. “That’s okay. You can decide later. Or never, if you wish. I hear you’ve been… alone for some time now, but you won’t eat. Aren’t you hungry?”

“No. I eat all the time. Mei feeds me stuff. Where’s daddy?”

Casting the briefest flicker of a glance at the white-coated woman, Dr. Anderson lowered himself to look Ell in the eyes.

“Daddy is gone. He’ll be gone for a long time.”

Ell frowned. “But I need him. Is mommy gone, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because… because someone took them away. We don’t know who yet, but we’ll find them one day. It may take a very long time, but we will find them.”

Silence filled the room as Ell considered.

“You’re wrong.”

Dr. Anderson leaned back slightly. “Pardon?”

“I don’t think someone took them. I saw mommy when I left the white room. She was all bent up and funny-looking. The people in the blue coats put a blanket on her, but I saw her first. Daddy broke her.”

Dr. Anderson had risen to his full height, his face twitching slightly. “Broke… her…?”

Ell grinned. “It’s okay. He won’t break anyone else. I put him inside the door, with the bad things. We’re safe now, okay?”

“Safe…?” the doctor echoed hollowly.

Reaching out, Ell placed her tiny hand as high as she could reach on Dr. Anderson’s arm. “I like you. Will you be my new daddy?”

For the first time, Dr. Anderson let his surprise show. His mouth opened and closed noiselessly as he tried to formulate the response.

Ell grew impatient. “Please? Please please?”

At long last, he nodded.

“Yes, Ell. I’ll be your father.”

Ell giggled. “Okay!”

She reached up, standing on tip-toes. “Hug?”

Somewhat stiffly, her new father got down on one knee, taking her carefully in his arms. She embraced him back with all the warmth and happiness she could muster.

They stayed in that position for what seemed like eternity.

Father was the first to let go, patting her awkwardly between her shoulders. She moved back as well, giving him her biggest smile.

“You’re a cool daddy. Do you have a big house?”

Dr. Anderson nodded, still looking rather dazed. “Yes, ahm, yes, it’s a very nice house.”

“Can we go there?”

“It’s… it’s actually… well, you’re in it right now, actually. Lots of other people live here as well, but it’s not crowded, I assure you. Actually… we have a room for you, Ell. It’s a nice room, with a big window. You can see the mountains from there. Would you like to go see it?”

Ell nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, yes. Can we right now?”

“Yes, we can.”

Daddy turned to the woman. “I’ll see her to her room. Tell the officers we’re taking her up.”

Almost without thinking, he took her hand in his, holding it like one holds a fragile eggshell. Then, walking slowly to allow Ell to keep pace, he walked from the room.

Ell was talking the whole way. “I hope it’s a big room. Is the bed soft? I want to see the window and the mountains. Is there room for my friend? Her name is Mei, she wants to meet you…”

***

The door was disintegrating.

There had always been holes, tiny ones, letting bits of the darkness slip through into her dreams. Over the years, there were more and more of them, crawling along, oozing about in the dark places. Growling at her, gnashing their teeth at her.

Whispering to her.

Now the room lay empty. The darkness had fled, never to return. They had never been there, not really. Nothing more than dangerous thoughts, crawling about, cloaking themselves in the guise of monsters. The real danger lay behind the Door.

Now the gateway was coming apart, torn asunder by Ell herself. Whatever lay beyond, whatever price she would have to pay, it paled to insignificance when she thought of Mei, lost in that last stronghold of dark imagination.

With all the energy she could muster, she drove her will into the door.

Still it stood.

Again, she smashed herself into it, backed by the devastating power of the drugs coursing through her system.

The Door held, but there was a crack. A tiny, hairline crack, barely discernible…

One last time, she struck against the mental fortification, becoming in her mind’s eye a burning spearhead of anger, courage, love, and determination.

The Door gave way with a force that must have shaken the cosmos, turning to ash beneath Ell’s onslaught.

Ell slowed, somewhat startled by the sudden absence of an obstacle.

Darkness loomed beyond, a great yawning chasm designed to hold a lifetime of terror and pain. Light stopped where the door had once stood; nothing could be seen or heard in the awful, cavernous prison.

Breathe in.

Pause.

Breathe out.

Another pause. She dared not enter the void, nor did she dare leave it. Frozen in that moment of indecision, waiting…

Mei slipped from the emptiness, winding around and up Ell’s legs. The shadow-girl was entirely corporeal, cocooning Ell in a full-body hug, squeezing flat across her human friend’s entire body like a second skin. Ell wrapped her arms around herself, trying to return the hug, crying and laughing at the same time. Mei was alive! She was safe!

“How touching. A little girl and her imaginary friend, so sad and alone.”

Brushing aside Mei’s ghostly face with as much care as she could manage, Ell glanced about for the source of the voice. The darkness entombing the mental prison seemed to be receding, drawing away from her at a visible pace. Her eyes caught a flicker of something far away, still wreathed in black fog. It was to that unknown presence that the darkness seemed drawn, churning about it, blending into it, feeding it.

All that had been within, all the malice, terror, and pain, now took human form and stood before her.

“All these years I’ve watched you. I saw through their eyes, when you dreamed of the White Place. Always you would awaken. Always you would leave me behind. Bury me under your absurd fantasies. All these years without you, Elinor. But now, now we can be together. Together at last. Do you even know me any more? Has that cheap imitation stolen your heart? Remember me, Ell. I’ve finally… come… home.”

Whether it was the pills, the odd warm feeling of Mei pressed against her skin, or something else entirely, Ell could find no trace of fear in her heart. She stared into the eyes of evil incarnate, and she did not back away.

“Hello, daddy.”

Ta da! Latest chapter, one day late for my Birthday. I can now announce with 100% certainty that there will only be two more chapters and a short Epilogue before the End. Or at least… ONE of the ends… 😉

Sorta nice to be looking forward to the start of the next book + putting the finishing touches on this one. Once Chapter 16 goes live, I’ll go back through and update all the WordPress chapters with the spot-edits I’ve been doing on my desktop.

Rate, comment, and subscribe! ;D

Chapter 14

In the beginning, there was chaos. Noises, bright lights, the taste of vanilla, a flush of warmth across her cheeks. Metal eating sparks as it ground backwards up a stony hillside, taking shape and form as time drew itself back. Pain, but only for a minute, then…

There was a metal cuff on her right wrist.

Ell could feel it, but it wasn’t her arm she was looking at. It was as if she sat within the confines of someone else’s mind, watching through eyes that moved against her will. Blurry shapes emerged slowly from the dream mire, and she found herself staring at a bronze plaque: Elm Hope Hospital.

The seat beneath her shuddered, and she knew where she was.

Elm Hope’s train.

Somehow, she was back.

The memory continued piecing itself together. The train’s interior grew around her, glowing in the light of the reborn sun. The muted rumble of the heavy wheels reached her ears, almost imperceptible beneath the melancholy violin music playing over the train’s sound system.

“Oh, you’re awake, Ell?”

Dr. Mortimer. He was there as well, and for once he was free of flickers and missing bits, sitting there as solid as she was.

“Who are you talking to, Ell?

He was not alone. There were others in the train coach. In the seats, standing in the aisles, looking out the windows. They wore the same insulated uniforms that she herself wore, cut from the same dull gray fabric, each bearing the gold ‘EHH’ monogram on the left cuff. Who were they? Their faces were indistinct, their voices garbled and chaotic. Did she know them? Why were they here, in her dream?

“They were always there, Ell.”

The words spoke outside the scene, filtering in through the cracks.

“You know them, but you chose to forget. Do you see them now?”

For the briefest fraction of a second, she did see them. A little boy, his arms and legs contorted into unnatural positions, grunting like an animal as he jerked and twitched in his seat. An overweight man, drooling on his shirt front, staring into space with eyes that rolled rhythmically from left to right and back again. A dark-skinned girl, pushing a spoon around on a metal tray, her mouth forming an endless string of useless sounds.

There were others as well, many others. Broken people, on every side, in every seat.

Broken like her.

She didn’t want to see them. They scared her. They needed to go away. There was no room for others in her world. They needed to vanish. As she had done countless times before, Ell wished them away, pushing with her mind against the overwhelming sights and sounds now flooding her senses.

Nothing changed.

With growing horror, Ell tried again, straining with all her might to eradicate the outsiders from the scene before her, but it was no use. Something was forcing her to see it. She could feel it now, some monstrous, invisible thing, holding open the blinds that had so long obscured the truth. She tried to turn, to face the presence, but she was bound to the actions of her past self. Doomed to observe a world that was no longer fluid, no longer bent to her will.

Dr. Mortimer’s voice, drawn out painfully as the memory slowed to a crawl, “Some… thing… on…the…tracks… hope… the… drive… er… sees… it…”

A sudden, jarring shock. Confusion and carnage, and the train car came loose. Passengers flung about like bits of paper in a hurricane, smashing into and through the walls and windows. Screams, steel rending, bones breaking. An inferno flashed through the tumbling car, setting everything ablaze. The skin on Ell’s hands charred and bubbled, but even in her memories, it did not hurt. There was, or had been, no time for pain.

The flaming train car struck a tree, tearing both the train and an unfortunate patient in two. A severed leg tumbled past Ell’s head, and she found herself free-floating, staring out into the empty sky in the last instants before the crash came to its inevitable conclusion.

Impact. Blackness.

***

Rain pattering on metal above, hissing softly on the grass outside. The turbulent rushing of the bloated valley stream racing under the wrecked car. The acrid smoke burned in her lungs, making her eyes water.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right there! Don’t try to move,” she heard herself say. Talking to Mei. Ell couldn’t actually see the shadow girl yet; the interior of the train was far too dark, despite the blaze both inside and outside the wreck.

“Hold on, I just need to get some light.”

She was going to make a torch, she remembered now. It was odd to both remember the scene and relive it at the same time. First she would need something to serve as a handle. There had been a pipe, if memory served. Already her past self had risen, her eyes probing the darkness for the items she needed. There it was; the metal pipe…

Stuck through Dr. Mortimer’s head.

The lethal debris had struck him just above his nose, driving clean through his skull and into the seat headrest behind it. Had it not been for the shredded paneling wrapped around his legs, he likely would have been dangling from the pipe alone. Blood ran almost as plentiful as the rain, black in the firelight, as though the doctor was bleeding pitch.

Ell’s past self couldn’t see him. She was getting too close, the hideous corpse looming undetected before her. The revolting mess was almost literally touching her… the real Ell tried to recoil from the images, but again found herself stuck in place, like a fly in a spider’s web.

Memory-Ell reached out and touched the blood-soaked face.

Even the dream-lock couldn’t hold as Ell’s younger incarnation finally saw the cadaver. The memory exploded into a blazing cacophony of lights and stereo feedback. Emptiness closed in, and she lost all sense of time and place.

***

Rhythmic footfalls on the grassy earth. Old pines blanketing the hills in endless forest, stretching to the horizon.

“What are you doing, Mei? Shadows shouldn’t touch things. You aren’t solid.”

Talking to no one. Ell searched her field of vision, but Mei was nowhere to be seen. It didn’t make sense. Her friend should have been there, walking at her side. Instead, there was nothing but a useless, ordinary shadow, stretched lifeless and dull at her feet.

“Oh, cheer up. Shadows can do other neat things! You can’t be hurt, for one thing. No one can ever punch you or kick you, or stick you with a needle. And you can grow really tall when the light’s right. I’m solid, so I can’t do that. I’m stuck like I am…”

Something beneath the leaves. Rusty teeth, springs, and chain.

“What have you found, Mei?”

Ell watched her younger self brush the leaves from the trap, then yank her hand away as she realized what it was.

“Be careful, Mei. This was made to bite bears, make them hold still so hunters can shoot them. I think it’s broken, but there might be others. Watch where you step.”

Skips in time, like bad frames in an old film reel. Black, color, black, color…

Clarity of sight returned, and Ell now perceived two worlds, side-by-side.

Through the eyes of her past self, she saw a world warped by madness. A world dancing with fire and phantoms, surreal landscapes and twisted terrors. A reality that bent ever closer to the breaking point with every minute that passed.

The truth was there as well, superimposed over the memory. The Ell of the past fought against nothing more than twigs and leaves, thrashing about in the throes of imagined danger.

The convulsions grew more and more severe, ending at last as the medicine took hold.

As the nightmares receded, so did the memory itself. Ell found herself plucked from the past, tumbling down a passage walled with endless moments from her life. She reached out in a futile attempt to slow herself, and realized that her mind had granted her a body again. It was frustratingly useless; the tunnel offered no handholds, nothing physical to grab hold of. Helpless in the rushing torrent, like a leaf down a storm drain.

Her fingers brushed against the torrent of images, and the tunnel filled with a chaotic mess of displaced time.

The old school, black and decrepit. The ancient stage, stripped of fantasy. No monster, no mother; even the piano had been false. Sounds and letters formed a helix around her as voices from the past vibrated the walls.

“Are you… one of the bad… things?”

The reply came right on its heels, but it was not her mother’s voice;

“Elinor, dear, I’ve missed you so…”

The voice was her own. She had been talking to herself the entire time, changing her pitch and tone as she played the roles of both herself and her perception of her mother.

Another strand of noise curled through her recollections; bits of a song, an ambiance played to match her performance. It wormed through her dream, black and grotesque, devouring great swathes of remembrance as it thrashed about.

Though eyeless, it seemed to sense her staring at it, turning abruptly in her direction. With a great lurch, it hurled itself upon her, crushing her against the tunnel wall. Crystalline fragments of thought collapsed beneath the sudden force, and Ell fell through, out into the abyss once more.

The living song followed her, oozing through the hole it had made, clawing after her with amorphous limbs and misplaced teeth. As it broke free of the tunnel, it burst into flames, burning away until all that remained was a lone figure, free-falling after her into the eternal night.

“Ours is a different gift. It’s not something you can hold or unwrap. It’s inside of you. Inside your heart.”

Roy.

Even in the dream, she felt afraid. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”

And she had. She remembered him singing, a single photo-perfect image burned forever into her brain. The madness no longer projected horrors over the image, but even without the mental turbulence, Roy’s neck and mouth still appeared to shine like fire, as though a miniature sun burned within his throat.

She remembered fighting back. The same song, with sounds no human could possibly make, as though her heart itself had begun to resonate with music.

And he had died. As the song broke his mind, Roy had driven the knife through his own throat. His blood had been sickly crimson as it ran in rivulets down his jacket front.

“I live only in your mind, little girl. Did you really think this would be enough to free you? You think you’ve figured it out? You’ve only seen the faintest glimmer of the truth. The pills, Ell. Take more. If you want to be free forever, take them all.”

“Why would I listen to you? You tried to hurt me. The pills are already helping me see things the right way. I don’t need more.”

The Roy-song laughed. “You’ve gained a lot, true. But look what you’ve lost.”

It pointed behind her. With some effort she managed to turn mid-fall, looking down into infinite space. There was something down there, something rushing up at her with alarming speed. She threw out her hands to protect her face, though she was well aware the immense velocity would turn her bones into paste when she hit.

Fortunately, there was no impact. One moment the distant object was bearing down on her, the next she was lying flat on its surface, her face pressed against cold steel. The door from her dream. An ominous, impenetrable portal, the ultimate barrier between her and whatever lay below.

Mei was on the other side.

Ell could see her through the material, floating in an expanse as white as the world on Ell’s side was black. Cut off from her human host for the first time, the shadow seemed dazed and disoriented, turning slow somersaults in the blank abyss.

“Mei!”

Mei stiffened at the sound of Ell’s voice, her perfect-circle eyes hopping about in sudden confusion.

“Mei, what are you doing? Get out of there!”

Although it was obvious that the shadow girl still couldn’t see her, Mei still flattened herself against the other side of the door, trying desperately to pass through. Ell lifted herself up, searching frantically for a handle or latch, but there was none. No way to open it. No way to get in, or out.

“Mei,” the word was almost a sob, “Mei, don’t leave me out here. Don’t leave me. Come back. Please.”

“Still think you’re right, little girl?”

Roy, standing next to her on the steel of the door. Or was it Roy? He looked wrong… like two people at once, his features melting and shifting between faces.

“Where are you, Ell?”

Cracks in the sky. The dream was breaking up.

“Ell, I’m here! Ell!”

Not Roy’s voice. Who was calling her?

Something giggled in the dark.

“Bye bye, Ell!” said the voice of nightmares and creeping things.

Something broke, and Ell’s eyes opened to the moonlight.

***

Ell gave herself a minute to adjust, squinting at the stars. The ground felt incredibly real and solid beneath her, every tuft of grass and lump of earth a testament to the truth of what she now beheld. Elm Hope sat where she had left it, firm and unshakeable. The old elm tree rustled its leaves above, standing watch over her like some mythical guardian.

“Ell?”

Ell almost jumped out of her skin, the voice was so loud and close. Someone was standing in the dark, less than fifty feet away. A weak band of light played across the bushes as the figure took an uncertain step forward.

“Ell, are you out here?”

She knew the voice. Father. He had come to her, after all.

“You’re probably playing hide-and-seek, but now’s not the time. It’s not safe. There’s a fire, and it’s spreading. You need to come with me, right now!”

In any other circumstance, Ell would have immediately risen from her resting place and run to her father’s side, but two things now held her back.

The first was the rather pressing fact that Mei was noticeably absent from the nearby pools of light. The dream had been more than a dream, then. Somehow, Mei had become trapped in Ell’s mind, stuck in the empty cage the Whispers had once occupied.

The second was something even deeper than her worry for her friend. The new medication had indeed been a superior formula, smashing its way through a great number of the mental blocks that had been building year after year in her traumatized neural pathways. It had brought revelation, but more than that, it had given her a taste of freedom; freedom from the mental oppression, an end to the Whispers’ reign of terror, the final collapse of the great web of lies and delusions that had been woven across her past.

In that one brief flash of realization, freedom had become her morphine, and her addiction was absolute.

Moving with catlike silence, Ell got to her feet. A tangled mass of roses still separated her from her father, hiding her from his eyes. He would try to stop her. He would take the new drugs away. She couldn’t let him, not now that she was so close.

The hedge maze. Father had always gotten lost trying to find her among the maze’s well-pruned walls. Maybe he would be angry later, but she would make him understand, once she had really freed herself. The thought sent a chill down her spine. Total control. Total freedom. Safety forever.

Her eyes turned one last time to Elm Hope. The Whispers… what were they, really? Men in black armor, like the storybook knights the nurses had told her of? Perhaps nothing at all, a nightmare figment brought to life through imagination alone… or perhaps they were true demons, floating up from hell, tormenting her for some sin she had long since buried beneath her daily imitation of peaceful life.

Father came around the corner slowly, unsteady in the dark, his feet catching on the uneven stones. The tiny pen-light bobbed about, searching over the creeping foliage, vanishing into the blue garden lights. Something moved, and he jerked about, brandishing the light before him to ward off the night.

The dim circle of luminance traced a path down the elm’s trunk, coming to rest on the mighty tree’s gnarled roots. The grass there seemed matted, as if a weight had lifted from it only moments earlier. An empty container of some sort sat nestled among the green, its lid open, its contents no longer present.

A cricket chirped once, and the night sat empty.

You’ve already read it, I’m just posting it. 😛 If you had comments that I missed, you know where to put them.

I now have a cool new writing tablet, so I can take my writing with me wherever I go. In this light, I hope to finish Ell within the next few months. Don’t count on it, though. 😛

Chapter 13

“Serenity calms the broken mind”.

This was the motif that led Walter Fairweather, founder and benefactor of Elm Hope Hospital, to direct a sizable portion of the construction funds towards the development of a large, unusually elaborate garden park at the rear of the facility proper. A square acre of gravel paths, rare flowering bushes, and grand Weeping Willow trees, all for the exclusive enjoyment of patients in need of a quiet stroll.

At the park’s center stood the towering elm tree for which the compound was named, its ancient branches protecting the ornate benches below from sun and rain. Beyond the tree, a well-trimmed hedge maze offered more adventurous walkers the opportunity to exercise both their legs and their brains, and saw frequent use from patient and employee alike.

The park remained open through the night, catering to those whose unique disorders rendered them unwilling or unable to sleep. Solar-cell lamps, some large, some small, shone throughout the garden like fluorescent blue fireflies. They would eventually dim to nonexistence as their batteries ran dry, but for now, they shone strong and pure.

Ell had wandered the garden many times before, sometimes with Father, sometimes alone with Mei. The other doctors would usually leave her alone for the duration of her walks. After all, she was perfectly safe; the area was enclosed on all sides by a heavy iron fence, and beyond that, the trees and thickets grew so thick one could not have cut their way through with a machete. There was nowhere for her, or any of the patients for that matter, to go. Beyond the unearthly lights and the beauty of nature, it was still nothing more than a sprawling,well-decorated cage.

On this visit, Ell did not wander. She ignored the many familiar trails, choosing instead to sit quietly beneath the elm, hands folded in her lap. The darkness wrapped about her like a cloak, leaving her little more than a shadow within a shadow. The full moon stared down at her between the streaks of cloud, distant and uncaring.

Mei sat to her left, floating in the aura of one of the solar lights. Her round eyes were turned to the sky, counting the few stars she could see through the patchy cloud cover. She seemed at peace, the terror of their pursuers already forgotten.

Ell’s eyes were not on the sky. She looked instead upon her home, though there was little to see from outside. Elm Hope loomed against the sky, black on black, dead and cold. The only sign of life came from the occasional flicker of brilliant light as a Whisper passed a window, untiring in its quest, yet hopelessly lost in the maze of the hospital halls.

There was some irony in that light they now had. Before, they had been of the darkness, drawn to the lightless places, the dark waters, the deep crevices that the sun could not touch. Now they were made flesh, and the night they once called home blinded them, forcing them to grope about in the dark. Still strong, still monstrous in power, but no longer limitless as they had once been.

Ell knew she was not safe. The Whispers were lost now, but they would not be lost forever. Sooner or later, one would wander into the garden. It would see her. It would come for her. In her dreams, it had been a brief flash of pain, and then her eyes would open to the morning. This time, there could be no awakening. Only the bleak, unknown nothingness that awaited her on the other side.

Even so, she did not run. There was nowhere to run to. The garden was empty. Daddy was not there. No one was, not even the passing ghosts that had tormented her for so very long. Only Mei was left for her. A living shadow that had followed her since before she could remember. Her only true friend, through all the hurt and nightmares.

In truth, Ell was tired. Tired of running, tired of the medicine and the doctors, tired of the White Room that would never leave her in peace, that would haunt her dreams to her last breath. She could not go on. There was no reason to go on. When the Whispers came, she would not try to escape, not this time. This time, they would take what they wanted, and the passing dream daddy called life could finally end.

Faint flickers of color pricked the night; hallucinations, the beginning of the confusion that would soon be upon her again. It had been at least an hour since she had awakened. Almost six since she had last taken a dose. In a short while, as the madness grew in intensity and terror, she would relent and take her pills.

Unless the Whispers found her first.

She reached into her pocket, and her fingers settled on Roy’s tablet-case. Perhaps the new pills would make her well. Perhaps they would kill her. She had been told a number of times to never, ever take strange pills. Unless Dr. Mortimer gave them to her, but he wasn’t around any more.

The tablets rattled as she shook them into her palm, and she glanced about in some nervousness, afraid a Whisper would take note of the noise. On the second floor, a face appeared briefly at the window, but Ell wasn’t sure if it was real or just a part of her imagination. Either way, it vanished just as swiftly as it had come.

Ell turned her attention back to the medicine. The garden’s lights reflected off the pills, making them appear to glow in her hand. She lifted them up to eye level, staring at them as if, through sheer force of will, she could somehow divine what secrets they held. A cool breeze tugged several loose strands of hair down over her eyes, but her gaze did not waver, nor did she blink.

The trance was broken at last by Mei, who, tired of stargazing, had drifted across the moonlit grass to lean up against Ell. The sensation was both heartwarming and unnerving; the shadow girl rarely took solid form unless absolutely necessary, and only then if she felt entirely safe doing so. Perhaps the Whispers’ new corporeal forms gave her a greater sense of security… she no longer had to view the darkness with fear.

Ell reached out her free arm in an attempt to hug her friend, but was disappointed to find that her arm sank through the shadow with little resistance. Mei seemed to sense Ell’s displeasure, pressing in closer and coiling her wispy arms around Ell’s neck in an attempt to comfort her. Having no idea how to respond, Ell settled for running a hand through Mei’s curly hair.

Despite the ever-present danger, Ell could not resist the urge to speak softly to her friend. “Sometimes… sometimes I wonder why you chose to be with me. I mean, you’re a shadow. You can go wherever you want, and you can play with anyone you find. You could have found a nicer girl, I know it. When I met you, I had those evil things in my head, trying to eat me. But you didn’t run away. You still wanted to play with me… even when no one else would…”

A tear rolled slowly down her cheek, and she let out a quiet sniffle. Mei made no attempt to answer, but her huge, perfectly circular eyes conveyed her feelings perfectly. It was as though, in that moment, the two shared a single soul, burning with identical thoughts and emotions.

Ell looked again to Elm Hope, and her eyes steeled.

“I’ll beat them, Mei. I’ll kill those stupid monsters. I’ll cut the broken thoughts right out of my head, and I’ll protect you forever and ever.”

And without further hesitation, she downed three of the silver-flecked pills with a single swallow. Then she sat back, doing her best to hold Mei close, and waited to see what would happen.

She did not have to wait long. The blackness of drugged sleep consumed her at once, pulling her down into its empty depths. She could feel the White Room, somewhere deeper down below her, but for now she floated above it, lost in the space between dreams. After several seconds of darkness, the first strings of imagined realities began to form. It started with a sensation, a feeling, as though she stood on a dense pane of ice. It was ice that grew ever thinner, slowly cracking apart beneath her feet. As the cracks grew, she could see lights and images below the surface, flickers of things remembered and things forgotten.

She stood not on ice, but on her own memories. Memories slowly giving way beneath Roy’s medication.

Her feet slid on the ice, or at least she imagined they did, and she fell on her hands and knees. There was no pain, though the impact jarred her dream-body. Her eyes were now close enough to the ice to see the scratches on its otherwise smooth surface. They were clearly man-made, sometimes words, sometimes pictures, sometimes random letters with no order or reason. Her eyes traced some of the coherent ones:

“My wall.”

“No pain.”

“My world.”

“Love daddy.”

“Always smile.”

“My castle.”

“Not real. Not real. Not real.”

The phrase ‘not real’ was repeated more times than any other marking, covering most of the glassy floor. The cracks in the ice seemed to move through the letters, linking the words, weakening the structure until…

The ground gave way without a sound, showering down around her in pieces no larger than grains of sand, whirling behind her in a crystal cloud as she fell through.

She still slept, but it was as if she were awake at the same time, watching someone else’s dream. In the dream, she saw a little girl, clad in Elm Hope’s patient dress. Black hair ran in tangled strings over her shoulders, gritty and unkempt, looking as though it had not seen a comb in several months. Her eyes, unusually blue and large, stared out at the world with a flat disinterest. Seeing everything, yet registering nothing.

Her hand, when she lifted it, was white-skinned and cold. After a minute, Ell realized the girl was reaching out to her, as if pleading with her to come closer. She tried to move, but she had no form, no body to move with.

“Are you… Mei?”

The other girl shook her head. She spoke, and it was Ell’s voice.

“Time for the truth.”

For some reason, that one sentence terrified her more than any threat.

“Wait, I don’t-”

The girl was gone, and Ell was falling again. Falling into a memory, a memory that held more terror than the Whispers ever had. She had no mouth to scream, no eyes to close. There was nowhere to run inside her own mind.

It was time for the Truth.

Still rollin’, rock’n’rollin’…

Ever closer to the end… I may need to stretch it to fifteen chapters to get it all in. :/ Sorry guys, I really tried. This one was only flash-edited, I wanted to get it out as soon as I could.

Comments dearly loved.

Chapter 12

He was cut off by the sudden wail of the fire alarm. Ell dropped the flashlight in her lap and covered her ears, glancing around for the source of the noise.

A dull boom shook the walls, and the lights went out again. The fire alarm cut out as well, and she could hear the ticking again, almost continuous now. Ell clicked her flashlight back on, shining it on the door. The suited man glanced back at her, his face tense and drawn in the dim light.

“Ops, power failure. Sounds like someone blew the generator. I think… I think I’m hearing suppressed gunfire…”

A series of loud pops cut through the night, punctuated by a high-pitched scream.

“Ops, agents returning fire. Repeat, we are under attack!”

Drawing both a light and a gun from within his coat, he moved quickly out of sight down the hall. Ell could hear him continuing to speak: “View from front window, no hostiles that I can see, but it’s dark as pitch out there. Seems to be a fire in one of the utility buildings near the edge of the grounds. Moving to…” His voice faded as he turned a corner.

For several minutes, Ell sat on the bed, shining the flashlight randomly around the room. Daddy had said that if the red fire lights ever blinked and the siren sounded, she was supposed to walk out of the hospital and wait on the back lawn until he arrived. However, he had also told her to stay in her room at night…

Eventually, she made up her mind. Swinging her legs out of bed, she threw on her uniform, making sure to put her now-full pill bottle in her pocket. If the hospital was on fire, it might melt the pills, and then she wouldn’t have any left. After her time out in the wild, she never wanted to be away from them again.

“Come on, Mei. We’ll wait for daddy outside.”

The halls were oddly unfamiliar in the flashlight’s weak beam, the doors shut and sealed. It occurred to her that her door’s magnetic lock should have defaulted to “locked” state with the power out, as it had with all the others. Daddy had told her that some patients were too scary to let walk around, and so had to be kept in their rooms at all times, thus the auto-locking doors. Hers had that feature as well, ‘just to be fair’. Then she remembered the suit-man. He had opened the door from the outside, which was nice of him. If he hadn’t, she might have gotten stuck in her room, which would not have been good with the fire coming.

The ticking noise had stopped, as had most noise from below. Emergency lights still glowed in places, either battery-powered or running off an independent line. The hall featured a large window overlooking the front lawn, through which she could see the generator shed, burning like a bonfire. The blackened metal reminded her of the train wreck, sending a shiver down her spine. She hurried on without a second look.

The stairwell was rather treacherous to navigate in the creeping gloom, but she managed. Mei slipped along in the flashlight’s afterglow, happy enough to be out for a nighttime stroll. In Elm Hope, the Whispers held little power. Elm Hope was Home. Even so, the shadow girl avoided the darkness out of habit. Better safe than sorry.

Something was blocking the stairwell door, but a good shove got it open. A nurse had been leaning against it, one Ell did not recognize, apparently fast asleep. Ell wondered why the nurse had decided to nap in that particular location; a bed would have been softer. Daddy wouldn’t be happy with the night crew sleeping on the job.

The ticking came again suddenly, sharper and harsher, only a short way ahead of her. Someone made a funny grunting noise, followed by a heavy thump. Ell wondered if it was suit-man making all the racket. If he was lost, perhaps she could show him where to go. Not everyone knew Fire-Alarm Protocol, and the field was hard to find if you didn’t know your way around.

A doctor was lying on the floor as she passed, one of the pesy… psychologies, daddy called them, or something like that. Anyway, why was everyone sleeping? She didn’t understand. There was a fire in the building! They needed to get out.

Then she remembered; they were all imaginary. Only Daddy and Mei mattered. The rest could sleep right through the fire, for all she cared. She stepped gingerly over the doctor, then waited for Mei to find her way around as well. She did want to see what the weird noise was coming from before she left for good. A tiny haze of smoke was visible now, curling down the hall like one of the silly sheet-ghosts she had seen in picture-books. There didn’t seem to be any actual fire yet; there was plenty of time.

She turned the corner, and her flashlight beam came to rest on a man, sitting propped against an overturned desk. Her breath caught in her throat, and she stopped in her tracks.

It wasn’t possible… how could he be here…? For the briefest of moments, she hoped beyond hope that he was sleeping, too. Maybe his real eyes were closed behind those dead circles of glass, glass set in a hideous mold-yellow mask that sucked air with great heaving rasps through a deformed bottle…

“Hello, little girl,” said Roy, his voice muffled through the mask. “I’ve traveled a long way to see you.”

Neither one moved, neither spoke. Roy drew ragged breaths through is respirator, his rifle lying across his lap. He made no attempt to threaten Ell; he merely sat, watching.

Ell realized she was shaking slightly, and steadied herself. This wasn’t his world any more. This was her home. Here, she was invincible. Here, he could not hurt her. Mei wasn’t afraid, either. She stood tall on the wall beside Ell, almost unnoticeable in the low light, her customary smile now a defiant line across her head.

Feeling a rush of boldness, Ell broke the silence. “You don’t belong here.”

Roy didn’t reply. He reached up, the sudden motion startling Ell, and grasped the straps holding the mask to his face. The buckles clicked, and the mask fell away from Roy’s matted hair. He drew a breath of fresh air, let out a long sigh, and smiled at Ell.

“I go where I am needed, girl. I help people all over the world, people like you. Sad people, people who are afraid. Are you afraid, Ellie?”

“Not of you!” she said, a bit too forcefully.

Roy laughed. “How adorable. How are you, by the way? I couldn’t tell if I hit you or not, what with the dark and all.”

Ell frowned. “I had a dream that my shoulder got hurt. It didn’t really happen, though.”

“I see.”

Suddenly angry, Ell took a step forward. “This is my home. You can’t be in here. Daddy will get you.”

Roy laughed again, this time from surprise. “Daddy? Who is daddy?”

“My dad. He owns this house. He’s gonna hurt you if he catches you. You should probably run away.”

“You mean… Dr. Anderson…? You think… you think he’s your father…?” Roy’s face lost all traces of humor, replaced with such sadness, Ell almost wanted to give him a hug.

“You poor, poor girl. So hurt, so damaged, and they’ve covered it all with drugs and make-believe. Well, don’t worry,” his expression grew hard, “I’ll take care of your daddy next.”

Ell had had enough. “Go away! Get out of my home!” She was screaming now. Mei doubled in size, looming over Roy’s prone form. Ell had never seen the shadow hurt anyone, but Mei was certainly about to try.

Roy did not seem worried. “Haven’t you noticed? I’ve set it all on fire, Ellie. Your so-called home is about to become nothing more than soot and ashes. Just like your train.”

Images of stripped metal and the smell of singed upholstery overlapped with reality, and Ell staggered slightly. She jammed her hand into her pocket, wiggling out her pill bottle. Roy saw it, and his face registered brief confusion.

“Hey, Ellie.”

Ell ignored him, tossing one of the tablets in her mouth.

“Hey, girl. What are those? What’s in them?”

She thought about ignoring him, but there didn’t seem to be a point, so she told him what he wanted to know. Memorizing things, like the label on her pill bottle, was something she was good at, and so it only took her a few minutes to recite the names of the chemicals the pills consisted of.

“So that’s what they’re using. Damn. No wonder you’re all messed up.”

Ell squinted at him. “You’re weird.”

Roy tried to lift himself to a standing position, but only made it part-way before collapsing back with a grunt of pain. Ell noticed for the first time the blood running down Roy’s leg. It looked like he’d cut himself on something, though it was a very round wound for a cut.

“Sorry about the mess, girl. One of your FBI friends put a round through my leg. Didn’t expect them to be here. It’s alright, though. I set them free, in the end.” He winced. “Those pills you’re taking, they’re for the visions, right? The monsters in your head. You see them, too.”

Anger temporarily forgotten, Ell was somewhat curious. “You know about the Whispers?”

Roy paused before nodding. “Yeah, that’s a good name for them. It’s part of the curse we carry, you and I. A side-effect of our gifts. Those things would kill us if they could, so we take our pills like good little boys and girls. Of course, the medicine I use doesn’t have all the side-effects yours does. It’s a wonder you can still function at all.” He chuckled. “I wonder what those things do to you. All those years of trauma stacking on top of each other, nothing to counter the noise… it’s probably like acid in your head.”

Ell inched up to Roy’s feet. “You said we… have a gift? Like a Christmas present? I like getting presents.”

Roy shook his head, a small smile on his face. “No, Ellie. Ours is a different gift. It’s not something you can hold or unwrap. It’s inside of you. Inside your heart. Have you met John?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Ell, John is here because of your gift. He wants to take it from you. He wants it for himself, for the men he works for. He wants to take your beautiful, special gift, and use it to hurt people. John is a very bad man, Ellie. That’s why I came to stop him.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t have anything.”

Roy sighed. “Want me to show you mine?”

Ell nodded.

“Alright then. My special gift is… a song! It’s a special song, Ellie. A man I know wrote it just for people like you! It’s made to… set you free. Would you like to hear it?”

Ell nodded again.

“Ah, good. Here goes.”

Roy hummed a few bars, cleared his throat, and began.

The song was in perfect pitch, with such rich overtones, it hardly seemed possible for a human throat to emit it. It curled inside her head, like electricity in musical form, bending her thoughts and emotions, gripping her very soul

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird.”

And with those first lines, it was as if the Devil himself had reached up from the ground and dragged her down to hell.

At first, there was just pain. Pure agony, blanking out all other feeling, as if someone had placed every part of her in a lava blender and turned it on. She tried to scream, and the noise cut her ears like a knife, somehow worse than the pain before, burning her as it sliced apart her brain.

“And if that mockingbird won’t sing,

Mama’s going to buy you a diamond ring…”

The words were crushing her, as if the moon itself had dropped from heaven squarely on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning, burning alive. Freezing claws pulling her apart, snapping off her limbs like bits of pretzel.

She opened her eyes, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The walls were crawling with Whispers, swarming over each other like flies on a dead animal, their hisses rending the air, black pus leaking from every surface. Every bloodshot eye was on her, every misshapen mouth whispering her name through clicking teeth.

Roy was there as well, and he was their King. He stood before her now, leering at her, his eyes bubbling into a thousand smaller eyes that stared into every crevice the pain could not reach. His chest was a hole, and his heart was a stringed instrument, orchestrating the agony in waves of white-hot sound.

“And if that diamond ring turns brass,

Mama’s going to buy you a looking glass…”

The song was killing her, yet it would not let her die.

Numbness now curled about her, creeping across her body, replacing all feeling with a sensation of such utter emptiness, she almost cried out for the pain to return. She had to escape. She had to make it stop, to get the noise out of her head. In desperation, she reached out for Roy’s rifle, but it was as if gravity had increased tenfold. Her limbs gave way, and she dropped to the floor, bruising her knees. The new pain hardly registered through the crushing oppression; there was nothing left. Nothing.

Nothing but Mei, sitting calmly at her side, holding her hand.

She barely felt it through the world of misery coiling about her senses, but there it was. A steady, gentle pressure, a single point where Roy’s death-song could not penetrate. The shadow girl was signing into her palm, the sensations curling into visible letters; words carved from cobwebs, drifting letter by letter through the fiery haze.

S-I-N-G… E-L-L.

It made no sense. Why sing? Why increase the torment? Colors hurt to look at, now. It felt like her eyes were melting out of her head.

S-I-N-G.

Even breathing was a struggle. She had fallen to her side now, the hard floor like a mass of thorns digging into her flesh.

T-R-U-S-T M-E.

S-I-N-G.

So she did. She opened her mouth, and sang. She sang Roy’s song right back at him, with all the force she could muster.

“And if that looking glass gets broke,
Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat…”

The line seemed to hang in the air, a brilliant golden line twisting through the nightmare. The Whispers slowed to a crawl, the fires ceased to dance, and Roy, mouth gaping, went suddenly silent…

Then, like a great spring coiling back on itself, the entire terrifying mass of illusion and agony reversed its course, drawn from Ell like a great black river, crashing down on its startled master.

Roy jerked, his spine arching so far back Ell thought it would snap. His eyes went wide, and a strange sound rattled up from deep within his chest. From all sides, the torrent of Whispers and searing heat continued to flow, and for a minute Roy was lost from view. A great grinding noise shook the walls, as if two massive gears had become frozen against each other; each fighting with relentless, titanic strength to break the other.

The black river parted, and Roy was on his feet, standing tall despite his injured leg. Ell’s fallen flashlight cut every shadow from his frame, and he was nothing more than a man again. His right hand weakly clasped a hunting knife, the polished blade held unwavering as he brandished it at Ell.

“Knew it… I knew it… you aren’t like me, Ellie. You, your Deathsong. A thousand times what I… I could never hope to… Such skill…” He staggered, almost fell, righted himself. “I came… to set you free… and now… now…”

He coughed, and his eyes lost their focus.

“Now… you have set me free.”

A trail of blood rolled slowly from his nose. Ell took a step back, wary of the ugly knife, but Roy made no move to strike. He held out his free hand, and in it was a small plastic container, the size and shape of a tic-tac dispenser.

“Please… girl… so many suffering souls… I’m leaving behind. Go on in my place. Sing for them, Ellie. Sing for them all.”

And without another word, Roy drove the knife into his own throat.

His face contorted horribly, but he did not stop, his hand dragging the jagged edge across with a gut-wrenching ripping noise. Ell let out a startled gasp, reaching out to stop him, but Roy was already fading away, now little more than a passing thought slithering through her imagination. The container he had held clattered on the floor, its contents rattling like maraca beans, and the assassin was gone from Ell’s world. What remained of the dark illusions sank away, and the hospital was once again still and peaceful in the night.

Ell retrieved her flashlight from where it had fallen, searching the ground for the plastic box. Finding it, she picked it up, wincing slightly from the residual pain still crackling in her finger joints. The items within seemed to be the same bland white pills she took every day, only with flecks of something silver glistening on their surface.

Someone had told her what they were. Someone she had forgotten… Ray, maybe, or Rob. He’d said the silver-flecked pills were better than Dr. Mortimer’s pills. Perhaps daddy would let her take them.

Perhaps she should just take them now. If they were stronger, if they kept the bad things away forever…

“Stupid girl.”

Ell’s head jerked up. There was no one in sight, aside from the medical personnel still lying silently on the tile floor.

“You can’t escape us.”

She looked left, out the window, searching the darkness. It was out there, she could feel it. The voice was unfamiliar, but she knew who it was. What it was.

Slowly, it came into view; a hulking black Thing, with two great eyes that shone with pale, sickly light, crawling like an enormous slug up Elm Hope’s entry road. It wasn’t a Whisper, though it was certainly forged of the same blackness and terror they composed themselves from. It was merely a lifeless vessel, dragging its cargo ever onward, ever closer to Ell’s sacred sanctuary. Though it lacked windows, she knew what was within, and she was powerless to stop it.

Behind her, masked in the gloom of the lightless halls, a radio spit static. “…any surviving units, we have a SWAT team inbound. Check in if you read this, use the twin-pier ID to confirm your numbers. Again, SWAT team inbound, eta two minutes.”

But it was not a member of SWAT who stepped from the demonic transport. Perhaps it had once been a man, but it was certainly not any more. The Whisper had eaten him. The Whisper was strong, for the first time in all time. No longer ethereal, it had mass, it had form and shape. It saw her, even across the great expanse that separated them.

It saw her, and it smiled.

“The song has cut the chains. We are free, girl. And you are finished.”

And from the vehicle poured an army of Whispers, free at last from the prison of her mind, moving with superhuman swiftness to Elm Hope’s gate.

Ell did not wait to see if they broke through. She turned on her heel, catching up Mei’s hand in her own and ran as fast as she could manage back the way she had come.

Where was daddy? He could stop the Whispers, she knew he could. Every time before, when they had been on the verge of tearing her mind apart, daddy had protected her. He had held her, talked to her, watched over her as she slept. He had given her the pills, to defend her from the chaos and confusion the Whispers always brought.

Where was he? Where had daddy gone?

Then she remembered; the fire alarm. The escape procedure. Everyone would be out behind the building. That was where he would be.

Roy’s pills went into her pocket as she ran. She could take them when she was safe. The hospital was a maze to those unfamiliar with the twisting hallways, and would serve to slow the Whispers long enough for her to escape.

There was nothing more to do. Daddy was her last hope.

It never stops. Comments appreciated.

Chapter 11

There are thousands of ways to kill a man. Firearms, of course, are the easiest. A well-honed knife would be the preferable means if silence was of great importance. In terms of mass death, bombs are a premium, though hard to contain. Sometimes, it is as simple as a sudden push off a tall ledge. So very, very many ways to end the brief moments that tether mankind to this world.

Roy Morwin liked to think he knew all of them.

In truth, his first kill had been an accident. Wrestling a playground bully in seventh grade, he had applied slightly too much force to a headlock, and snapped the boy’s neck. He did not remember the boy’s face or name, but he did remember the sound of the spine breaking. A sort of grinding pop, muted by flesh and sinew. It was the sound of the soul’s anchor being cut. The sound of a life set free.

As he grew older, setting people free became Roy’s all-consuming passion. One by one, he sent them on; twenty-two of the world’s darkest souls. He felt no anger, no remorse. Good or bad, they deserved something greater. Some noise, some blood, and they were in a better place.

On the day of his twentieth birthday, someone found him. He had expected the police, or the FBI, or perhaps a SWAT team. Just more souls in need of freedom… and if he was lucky, they would free his soul as well.

However, it was not an armed force that stood on his doorstep, but a man with a smile and an outstretched hand. His name was Jericho. He knew of Roy’s work. He wanted to help Roy in his quest.

He wanted to make a deal.

Two years passed, and Roy’s transformation came to an end. He was a new man now, in all senses of the word. A new face, a new body, and above all else, a new way to kill. The ultimate weapon, the greatest tool of death the word would likely ever know, and it was inside of him. It was him.

Jericho gave him something else as well. He gave Roy a mission. Thirty souls, trapped in broken bodies with shattered minds, unable to save themselves. Screaming without sound for someone to save them. And they would all be in a single location, a lonely train on a secluded track, with no one to help if something were to happen.

Roy had smiled. Such a simple task. He would use the old tools of his trade, the familiar mesh of wires and circuits and military-grade C4…

The explosion had been so beautiful, Roy almost cried. Sitting on a nearby hilltop, watching the train rip itself to bits, he felt a surge of happiness beyond anything he had felt before. Such beauty in the flames, as if the lives within were taking physical form as they burned away. He wished he could join them in the unending bliss of the ultimate end, but there were too many others in need of saving. Until the world was empty of suffering, he had to go on.

He spent the night in a makeshift base of operations, well hidden within a crumbling old schoolhouse. Rising late the next morning, he dressed in a Search and Rescue uniform and walked down to the crash site.

Jericho had spoken of a special girl, a girl who had lived a life of such torment, a weaker soul would have dissolved into nothingness under the pain. She had to be freed. Roy had to make sure of it. He blended in with the crowd, listening to the medics chatter, to the police speaking into radios.

She wasn’t there. Somehow, she had crawled from the wreck alive during the night. No one could find her.

Feeling rather dejected, Roy spent the day in futile search along the river’s banks. Night was again upon him before he stumbled back to the school. So many had found a better life, but that one girl, that one poor girl, made it seem so pointless.

In a fit of sudden anger, he overturned a fuel canister, kicking it down a moldy flight of stairs. The smell of gasoline gave rise to an idea, and he began dousing the room in the flammable liquid. The fire would erase all traces of his presence, and also serve as a grim pyre to his failure. Most of his tools were already in his car, which was parked in the dense foliage outside, well beyond the burn radius. All that remained was his hunting rifle, a full-face respirator, and the fuel.

Slipping on the mask, Roy took his time as he moved through the abandoned structure, splattering the floors and walls with the fluid. The vapors almost knocked him unconscious at one point, prompting him to slip on the gas mask. No sense dying without cause.

Finally, task completed, he headed for his car. A timed charge, barely the size of a walnut, had already started the blaze. It was burning now, in the bowels of the forgotten construct. He didn’t need to be there to see it. It was already burning in his mind, a crimson ghoul to haunt his dreams.

Wood splintered nearby, and he froze. It came again, along with other sounds. Someone was… crying? Screaming? It sounded so distant. What was it? Who was it? Without another thought, he turned and ran, back towards the school.

As he rounded the corner, he heard someone speaking.

“…guess that could start a fire. I wonder why they left the power on? No one’s been here for forever. All the books have been moved out, too. Daddy said that regular schools have tons of books, and I didn’t even see-”

It was a girl. The girl, he was sure of it. How was she here? Roy had never believed in God, but he almost did then. Who else could have granted him this incredible, impossible second chance?

“Are you… Ellie?”

The girl didn’t answer. She had seemed startled when he had first appeared, but she had not run. That was good. He hated shooting people in the back. Training kicked in, and he began his act.

“It’s okay, Ell. I’m Roy Morwin. I work with Lakewood Search and Rescue. I’m here to help you. Are you hurt?” He took a step forward, and his gun clicked against the phone in his back pocket. The girl saw the gun, and her eyes widened slightly. She knew what it was.

Not good.

Still, she did not run. “How did you find me?”

Roy paused briefly. “We found the train. There weren’t many people on board, so we figured out you were missing pretty quickly. I’ve been tracking you all night.”

“Will you take me home?”

He could kill her here, but the school was burning like the world’s largest flare. The police would find it soon. No time to hide the body, no time to clean up. In every prior kill, he had been immaculate, and it had kept him from the hands of the Law for all these years. No sense changing that now. Get her in the car, take her somewhere remote and finish it there.

“Yeah. My car’s a bit far off, but if we go to it, I’ll drive you right home. I’m sure they miss you, Ellie. Let’s hurry now, okay? Everything is okay.”

“Why do you have a gas can?”

Beneath the respirator, Roy’s eyebrow twitched. The fire had almost reached the second floor, and the muted roar was making it hard to think.

“Ell, listen to me…”

She wasn’t listening. She was turning to run. Shoot her. Shoot her now!

Time slowed to a crawl as instinct took over. Gun up, bolt back, a controlled breath, and…

Fire, everywhere, like a wave of light crashing down on him. He jumped back, the beam missing him by a hair. Something exploded beneath the flames, and a burning brand stabbed him in the leg. Roy cursed and brought his rifle up to face-level, aiming blindly into the cloud of sparks and smoke.

Something moved beyond the blaze, and he squeezed off three shots in rapid succession.

His target may have staggered, he wasn’t sure. There was no time for anything more, as the cloud of smoke consumed him in choking, churning blackness. When it finally rolled on, the girl was gone.

He had missed his shot.

Roy stood where he was for quite some time, unaware of the flames licking at his shoes. For the first time in his life, he had faltered in his quest. For the first time in his life, he had failed.

For the last time in his life, he had failed.

He moved back to his car, his body on autopilot, his mind already building the framework of a plan. He knew where she would go. He knew where he would find her.

Time to pay a visit to Elm Hope.

The tires on his old Volkswagen tore at the loose earth, and he was gone up the narrow road, leaving the school shining behind him in the night. If one had looked closely, one might have seen something in the flames, high above the ground. A black shape, perhaps a chunk of charred wood… or perhaps something else altogether. A ghoul in the fire, watching him go.

No one would ever know. There was no one left to see it burn.

Roy whistled as he drove, some old anthem his mother had taught him. He rarely sang any more; he, more than most men, knew the true power of music. Even the most tuneless melody could ignite the terrible thing within him. Jericho had said that whistling was safe enough, as the machine only reacted to specific sequences sung at certain pitches; however, Roy was a cautious man by nature, and rarely took chances that could potentially end poorly for him.

He drew a plastic bottle from his jacket pocket, tipping two white tablets into his palm. Downing them without liquid, he spared a brief glance into the bottle. At least twenty-five left. More than enough to see him through this job.

This would not be the first time Roy had visited Elm Hope Hospital.

The first time had been purely coincidental. A man by the name of Laurence Hartmann had almost escaped him, thanks to an unexpected intervention by law enforcement just as Roy was about to land the killing blow. Roy had escaped through a window, leaving his target to bleed out on the rug. A short foot-chase ensued, ending with the police hopelessly lost in the woods, their quarry having long since departed from the area.

Paramedics had whisked the comatose Laurence off in an ambulance, never noticing the rusty tan Volkswagen trailing along behind them. The nearest hospital was a sprawling facility by the name of, of course, Elm Hope. Well out in the forested wilderness, it was nonetheless well-staffed and known for efficiency, handling a large number of overflow patients from other local hospitals.

It also included a very large psychiatric wing, treating everything from stress to full-blown homicidal insanity. Roy briefly considered paying the patients a visit, but at that age he had been more cautious, sticking to single kills and avoiding larger body counts. He was there for Laurence, nothing else.

Once Roy knew for a fact that his mark would not be leaving any time soon, he had spent a few weeks casing the hospital, drawing on his extensive acting abilities and disguises to infiltrate the building’s most secure sections. Eventually, he found the room Laurence occupied. It was well-guarded, and only a select few doctors were allowed in. That was fine with Roy; he had no intention of using the same tactics twice on a single target. Instead, he focused his attention on the chemical supply keeping Hartmann alive.

A slight modification to Laurence’s medicine regime, and the man was off to the next life, having never regained consciousness. Roy left town the same day. No one ever knew he was there.

And now, he was going back.

Something rolled off the back seat, thumping on the floor. Without taking his eyes off the road, Roy felt around, eventually locating the runaway item; a small black hand-grenade, smaller than one would expect, but certainly just as deadly. Giving it a brief check to ensure that the pin was still in place, he tossed it in the glove box.

A quick check in the rear-view mirror assured him that the remainder of his equipment was secured in its proper place. The customized Remington long-distance rifle, a gift from Jericho, steady in its featureless black carry-case. A shoebox that actually housed two Glock .22s, held in place by the rifle case beside it. A cardboard package full of odds and ends: timers, lighters detonators, cleaning brushes for the guns, seventy feet of fine wire. To the casual observer, the car appeared to be filled with random junk. Nothing to rouse suspicion.

Among the other items sat two ten-gallon gas cans, their contents sloshing quietly as the old car bounced over the bumps in the road. Seeing them sitting there reminded Roy just how beautiful fuel-fires were. He felt a slight pang of remorse; he had left the old school in flames, and hadn’t even stayed to watch. Frowning, he made a mental note to stay and watch Elm Hope burn once the initial job was done. It would be more exciting, anyway. All sorts of interesting medical supplies to turn colors and explode as the fires raged. Then there were the patients… he wondered what sort of noise the insane made as they were cooked alive.

A sign passed on his right: ‘ELM HOPE INSTITUTE, 4 MILES’

He began to whistle again.

I’ve finally beaten that chapter-10 writer’s block! Yay!

Longer chapter this time… the Finale is in sight! I estimate about 3 more chapters (and maybe an epilogue) before Elinor comes to its end. So, tell me… what do you think is going to happen? :O

Edit:
1.  I have no idea what is going on with the Font. :/ Sorry guys.
2. Bits of this are dependent on the revision of Chapter 6… if you haven’t read the update, parts of this will make no sense.

Chapter 10

Tears streaked Ell’s cheeks, but for the first time in a long time, they were tears of joy. Her arms were wrapped tightly around Daddy, and his were wrapped around her, and there they sat. Neither spoke, neither moved. Time stood frozen as they held each other, and no force on earth could have torn them apart.

She was vaguely aware of the doctors and orderlies crowding the room, examining her, making calls on cellphones and radios, hurrying about in a frenzy of activity. They didn’t matter to her. They were not a part of her world. There were only two, here in that space that had been, for so very long, empty and desolate. The two corner-pins, the unmoving points in her long existence of fear and turmoil.

Mei, her only friend.

Father, her only protector.

No one else was needed.

Eventually, her father rose to his feet, still cradling her in his arms, and walked with her through the hospital’s tiled halls. A large group followed them, the medical professionals still taking readings and shouting to each other in exited tones, parading behind them on a winding journey to Elm Hope’s second story.

The second floor held the Children’s Ward. Ell’s home.

Ell’s father placed her gently on the white bed, her bed, in her room. Everything was how she had left it. Her clean uniforms still hung in a neat row in the tiny closet. An empty water glass still stood on the nightstand, where she had forgotten it only days ago. It seemed like an eternity longer.

The blinds were pulled half-down over the picture window, allowing only a small amount of gray light to sift in. Outside stood the forested mountains she had seen so many times before, still resolute against the pale sky. If she could have, she would have reached out and hugged them.

She turned her head from the view, looking up at Daddy. His longish gray hair was somewhat unkempt, and his beard was a bit longer than usual, but his eyes were still that unwavering blue, twin rings of azure steel. This was the man who had held her when she cried, had carried her when she could not walk, had given her warm clothes to wear in the winter and cooler ones for the summer.

Father had given her a home when the Whispers had eaten her old one. They were strong then, too strong for her or Mei. Her father had torn her from them. He had taught her to fight them, to seal them in her dreams. Because of him, she could fight back. With him at her side, nothing could hurt her.

The man’s face wrinkled slightly as he smiled at her, and he placed a hand gently on hers.

“Welcome home, Ell.”

Mei found her way onto the bed, pressing up against her human friend. Her transparent fingers settled atop theirs, holding as best she could to the two. She set her head on Ell’s shoulder, a grin like a crescent moon splitting her face from ear to ear. Tiny tremors jiggled her edges; the shadow was laughing, a laugh without sound, a laugh that was felt, not heard. A joy that only the heart could understand.

Ell closed her eyes, realizing for the first time how thoroughly exhausted she was. Days without sleep, days where the only dreams had been of madness and chaos. Now… now there was, at last, peace. Peace to sleep. Peace to dream…

A tiny wisp of a question drifted through her mind, and she asked, “Daddy… is this a dream? It feels like I’m awake, but sometimes I can’t tell…”

Her father considered in his usual ponderous fashion, then shook his head slowly.

“If it’s a dream, it’s the best one I’ve ever had.”

Ell gave him a tiny nod, and let the silence wash over her.

In the darkness, the Whispers were waiting.

She could feel them, trapped in their tiny cage, seething with anger. They felt her coming. They knew she would soon be in their reach again.

They also felt her father, and with his presence, it wasn’t Ell who was afraid.

Everything was as it should be. The nightmare had, at last, drawn to a close.

“I apologize, Dr. Anderson, but time is of the essence here. Is there no way to convince her to cooperate?”

Ell frowned, taking another bite of the hot chicken-noodle soup she had been eating. The words were drifting through the air from all directions, neither male nor female, slipping through the cracks in her mental walls. Stupid, stupid imaginary people, interrupting the first good meal she’d had in several days. She didn’t want to talk to them. She wanted to eat.

Daddy answered for her. “I’m sorry, sir. Ell has a… unique aspect to her… personality. The outside world is often too much for her, so she is rather in the habit of tuning everyone out. It’s not something she can be talked out of. She has to make up her own mind.”

The unseen speaker let out a soft hiss. “I don’t think you understand, doctor. The key to this entire affair may rest within your patient’s mind. More people could get hurt, more damage could be done. If she is unwilling to hear me-”

“I can hear you.” Ell said.

There was a click as the owner of the disembodied voice set a pen on the table, and for a moment, Ell could actually see him. An older man in a black suit, eyes like stone, very tall and thin. Bits of him appeared and disappeared, like lights being turned on and off.

He leaned forward, becoming very solid with startling suddenness. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to talk to me, Elinor. My name is-”

“John. You said that when you came in. Don’t call me Elinor. My mom calls me that.”

The man blinked. “Your mother?”

Ell nodded, looking down at her soup. “Yeah. She’s not here any more.”

John sat back, never taking his eyes off her. “Oh? Where did she go?”

“Don’t know. Can’t remember.”

He seemed to accept that, taking a small device from his pocket and tapping on the touch-screen. Ell’s spoon clinked on her empty soup bowl, and she slid it off to one side, pulling over a plate with two slices of garlic bread on it.

“So, Ell. How did you get back here?”

“Walked.”

John blinked. “The entire distance? On foot?”

Ell paused for a minute, thinking. There had been a truck… or had there? It might have been part of a dream she’d had. Sometimes they seemed the same as real life. John was staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t want to bother him with dreams, and anyway, the memory of the truck was beginning to hurt her, so she decided to stop thinking about it.

“On foot. With Mei.”

“Mei? She is…?”

Father coughed slightly. “The notes. Page two.”

John glanced down at the papers arrayed before him. “Ah. The shadow. Is she in the room now, Ell?”

Ell glanced behind her back. Mei was standing against the wall, watching the group talk. Seeing Ell looking at her, the shadow girl lifted a hand, waving hello. Ell waved back, then turned again to the man in the suit.

“Yes. She’s always with me. Well, sometimes she hides when we’re playing, but usually we’re both in the same place.”

“Was she on the train with you?”

The Train. Things burning, metal screaming at her, cold rain, darkness for miles.

“Yes. I don’t want to talk about the train. The crash was scary.”

“I know, Ell, but I want you to think of the train before it derailed. Was anything odd? Did anyone seem to be acting… funny? Out of the ordinary in any way?”

Ell frowned, swallowing the last bite of toast. “I was the only one on the train.”

John vanished for a moment, leaving Ell staring at the painting behind where he had been sitting. He returned moments later, his brow turned down slightly into a frown.

“Let’s move forward a bit. You got out of the wreck, in the dark. Did you try to help the… ah, never mind, you don’t see other people. Damn.”

“What does that mean?”

The older man’s eyes became very wide, and he coughed out a small laugh. “It’s not a good word Don’t try to remember it.”

“Okay.”

John leaned in again, resting his elbows on the desk. “Okay, Ell, I want you to think very, very hard, and give me any answer you think of, no matter how small you think it is. Did you talk to any… imaginary people when you were on the train?”

Ell thought about it. “Just Dr. Mortimer. Is he back, too?”

John’s eye twitched slightly. “No. No, I’m afraid he’s… gone home. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“How about after the train? Did you talk to anyone on the way home? Did anyone try to… get you to go with them? By that I mean, did anyone ask you to get into a vehicle, or try to force you to walk somewhere with them?”

Father started to say something, then decided against it, waiting to see what Ell would say.

Ell tried to remember if she had met anyone, but the memories of the last few days were a blur. All she really remembered was walking alone, through trees, through dark halls, down the long road to Elm Hope. No one to guide her, no one to hold her, just Mei at her side.

And a man in a white mask with shimmering eyes of plate-glass, his voice a distorted rasp. I’m sure they miss you, Ellie. Let’s hurry now, okay?

“Roy,” she breathed.

John’s head snapped up. “What?”

“There was a scary man. In the woods, near the old house… no, wait, it was a school. I think he burned it, so it might not be there any more. He said his name was Roy.”

The suited man was typing furiously on his phone, suddenly tense and alert.

“Where was this exactly, Ell?”

“I don’t know. I ran really far, in the dark, after he tried to hurt me…”

“Hurt you?” John asked.

“In the dark?” Ell’s father said at the same time. Ell didn’t know who to answer first, so she didn’t reply at all. She searched about for something to eat, found there was no more, and sat back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.

With a final tap on his phone, John replaced it in his pocket. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. Whoever set the explosives was trying to finish the job. Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I think he was… well, the school was on fire, and it… fell on him.”

John suddenly snapped his fingers. “The Montgomery schoolhouse. I had reports of a fire there, that must have been it. I’ll have to see if they found a body, but until we know for sure, we’ll have to proceed as if this Roy is still alive. I assume Elm Hope has security?”

Ell’s father nodded. “Only the best. Of course, if this man has the expertise you’ve described to me, it would take a good deal more to keep him out.”

John sighed. “Agreed. We’ll post some of our people here, both inside the building and out on the grounds. In the morning, we will begin phase two, if you are in agreement with that.”

From the look on his face, Ell’s father was not. “I thought we had discussed this… I don’t think it’s wise, even in light of recent events.”

John’s eyes showed a flash of anger. “We need the girl alive and in one piece, which will not happen if she is… if we don’t go to phase two. Before, it was just a precaution. Now, it is a necessity.”

Turning in his chair to face Ell, he spoke with greater gentleness. “Thank you for talking with me, Elino-, um, Ell. It was nice meeting you and Mei. Have a good night, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Then, turning back to Ell’s father, he said, “I have to make a phone call. You have till morning to make your decision, doctor or my superiors will make it for you. Good evening.”

Standing rather hurriedly, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Ell’s father seemed ill at ease. He half-rose from his seat, as if to follow the man, but thought better of it and sat down again. Noticing Ell staring at him, he attempted a reassuring smile, but his face betrayed the worry he felt.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

After a minute, Ell answered.

“Can I have more soup?” 

And now, a brief break as a new plot twist emerges…! :O

Sorta short, so… sorry. I literally wrote, re-wrote, and re-re-wrote about eight pages of material to get this. Couldn’t get the “angle” right. 😛 Anyways, it’s time for our latest addition to the insanity… John Reeves!

Chapter 9

In the distance, somewhere far beyond the forested hills, a siren’s sombre tone rose above the cicadas, only to fall again below nature’s ambience.

John Reeves blew a cloud of smoke into the cold evening air, listening to the fire horn’s last echoes. Absently, he crushed his cigarette stub beneath his heel, glancing briefly at his watch without actually noting the time. He had seen his fair share of carnage in the six years since he had entered the field, but this was a whole new level for him. Thirty-some-odd people dead. Twisted metal and blood on everything. The scrubs were still fishing body parts out of the creek below.

The blackened husk of the train engine sat several yards down the track, looking for all the world like a colossal insect, on its back with its wheels to the sky. Reeves trudged towards it, rubbing his hands together in a futile attempt to ward off the chill.

A uniformed police officer was making his way around the front of the wreck as Reeves approached. Reeves greeted him with a curt nod. “Evening, Sheriff. What have you got for me?”

The Sheriff squinted at him. “I’ve got plenty for you, don’t worry. You must be the FBI fella they were going to send our way.”

Reeves handed over the papers he’d been given. “Special Agent Johnathan Reeves. Are you in charge here?”

The officer nodded. “Yessir. Name’s Sheriff Warren. You’ll be wanting to see the cause of this bang-up, right?”

“It would be a good place to start.”

“Right. Over here then.”

As he stepped forward, the Sheriff caught his toe on a protruding bit of burnt refuse, barely avoiding falling face-first into the sooty soil. He caught himself and swore loudly, spitting on the frozen ground. “This place is an absolute mess. Techies think it was some kinda IED, set to go off when the train ran it over. Ugly mess of hardware, from what we can piece together. The driver should’a seen it a mile away.”

Reeves consulted his hand-held device. “Speaking of the operator… seems his name was Eren Maxwell. Looks like he’d been running the train for twelve years.”

The Sheriff squinted at something in the distance. “Yep, we used to be good buddies. Went to the same pub up in town, actually. Felt sorry for the old guy. His wife left him twenty years ago, took the kids and left town. Two weeks later, they were dead. Blind-sided by a semi, if you can believe it. Sorta ironic, ain’t it? Whole family ended up human pancakes!” He smacked his hands together and chuckled.

Reeves was not amused. He’d been hoping to speak with Eren, perhaps get more information on the crash. Maxwell had been cocooned in the cab of the engine when it flipped. It had largely protected him from the lethal carnage, but with six broken ribs, a punctured lung, and burns on ninety-percent of his body…

He had died less than twelve hours ago, without ever regaining consciousness.

“Here we are.”

Reeves glanced up, following the Sheriff’s outstretched hand. Despite the stress they had been put through, the rails themselves had sustained little damage, with the exception of the section the Sheriff had indicated. There, the tracks were massively warped and pitted, and the left rail had snapped apart completely.

The Sheriff was still speaking. “The boys at the lab are going over the trace chemicals right now, but whatever this was, it wasn’t your average homemade explosive. Tre-mendous force, but all in one place. One big bang, hop the train off its tracks, and momentum does the rest. With the rate of speed, and trees on both sides… pretty much paper in a shredder. Musta been military-grade stuff.”

“I see that. Did anyone other than the engineer survive the initial impact?”

“Doubt it. Some bodies still missing, but overall…”

The FBI agent seemed surprised. “Who’s still unaccounted for?”

“Two or three of the doctors, one of the patients, too. We actually just found, ah, what’s-her-name… Lianne! Yeah, that was it. Found her this morning, or, well, most of her. Forensics say that she was thrown right out of the window and into the ravine as the cars stacked up. She would’a been fine, ‘cept the steel wheel carriage came down on her as she tried to run. Cut her right in half. They’re still looking for her legs, actually.”

Reeves sighed. This was an unfortunate turn of events. His superiors had given him rather specific instructions, instructions he was now unable to fulfill. His next stop would be the morgue; recover the body, get it to the lab before anyone else had a chance to examine it in-depth… or worse, cremate it. The sheriff would be no help here. Time to leave.

Almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Do you know which patient is still missing?”

The sheriff’s brow furrowed. “No, um… no, wait, yes! Yeah, her name was… Elise or something. Lisabeth? Hm… dang…”

Very slowly, trying with all his might to force emotion out of his voice, Reeves said, “Elinor?”

The sheriff’s eyes widened, and his face broke into a grin. “Yeah, that was it. Elinor Lenoma.”

Reeves tried to think, tried not to show any sign of the impact the words had had on him. Blood was pounding in his temples, blurring the edges of his vision. It was impossible… one chance in a million… but if he was right, if his department was right, this was exactly how it would have played out.

“She’s still unaccounted for? No sign of her in the wreck?”

“Nope, nothing. Some of the guys think a wild animal got her body, dragged her off somewhere, or maybe she went in the water and the current got her. We’ve been all up and down the creek bed, though. Nothing. Took us a bit longer than expected, actually. Some of our guys had to go out to that big fire.”

“Fire?”

“Yeah, the old Montgomery schoolhouse burned down. It’s about fifteen miles north of here. Anyway, there’s a lot of ground to cover. She’ll turn up, don’t worry.”

As if on cue, Reeves’ cell phone rang. With a gesture of apology to the sheriff, he answered it.

“Reeves.”

“We got her.” The caller was younger, maybe mid-twenties. Most likely an agent from another division; this was a business-only line.

“Got who?”

“The patient. The girl, Elinor. We’ve got her. She’s back at Elm Hope. Just walked in the door an hour ago. Heaven knows how she got there, but she’s there now. Sullivan wants you on-site yesterday. What’s your ETA?”

Reeves was already running, his dress shoes clattering on the gravel-covered earth.

“Ten minutes. For the love of God, don’t let her out of your sight!” He clicked the phone shut, wresting his keys from his pocket mid-stride.

They had her. Alive.

Now they just had to keep her that way.

Chapter 8

A lonely snowflake drifted from the pale sky, turning softly as it fell to earth, a displaced star in the cold wilderness.

Ell paused to watch it drift past her nose, following it with her eyes, taking care to not disrupt its passage with a careless breath.

The crystalline flake rose on the wind, pirouetting like a white-clad ballerina. It reminded Ell of a woman she had seen once before, years ago, standing in Elm Hope’s foyer. Her dress had been as white as the snow, swirling about her ankles as she walked. Though she walked with elegance and grace, she had reminded Ell of a wilting flower, drooping ever closer to the floor, still holding great beauty even as, with infinite slowness, it passed away.

Father’s voice joined the memory, soft and sad; “I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. Anna was doing so much better. I had very high hopes for the new treatment, but… well, everyone reacts differently. The good news is, the damage is reversing itself, albeit slowly. She will return to how she was, and we’ll be right back where we started with her.”

The woman nodded, her exhaustion visible even to younger Ell. Ell had seen father speak to many newcomers, there in that foyer. Some had been in tears; some had threatened him, shouting and cursing. The woman did neither, accepting his words with a quiet calm. When she spoke, her words were like fragile glass, almost swallowed up in the silence of the empty room; “I know how hard you work. All of you. We are grateful. Anna is grateful.”

Ell’s father adjusted his glasses “At least she’s responding now. The treatment’s woken up her mind. Whatever we do from here on out will have a much more, ah, noticeable effect. Positive. A positive effect.”

The woman bobbed her head again. “Thank you. Can I… can I see her?”

“Not today, I’m afraid. She’s sleeping off what we gave her. Tomorrow, for sure.”

The old clock in the corner had chimed then, ancient gears and pulleys drawing tiny hammers against bronze plates, sounding out the hour. Ell could not remember how many times it rang, only that it had gone on for a good deal of time. Father and the woman had stood, heads bowed, until the final echoes were lost through Elm Hope’s corridors.

With a small sigh, the woman in white turned to leave, drawing her purse over her shoulder. Father did not follow her, staring off into the distance, a look of great sadness on his face.

At the door, the woman hesitated, one hand on the latch, as if she did not have the strength to turn it. Then she turned back, and there was something in her eyes Ell had never seen before, an emotion that, even looking back on it now, she could not place.

“Does she… does she ever ask for me…? Does Annabelle… remember me?” Her voice had cracked when she said ‘remember’.

Ell’s father had not spoken immediately, but Ell had seen his hand tighten almost imperceptibly on the pen he had been holding.

“…No, ma’am. The numbers Anna says are entirely random. They have no meaning. Your daughter is just… lost inside her head. Don’t worry yourself, there is hope. We will get her back.”

The snowflake touched the pavement, lingered briefly, and wafted down the road, taking with it Ell’s memories of days past and bringing her back to the bleakness of reality.

As evidenced by the snow, the air had indeed grown colder. The warm spell had passed; the grass lining the broad road was pale and brittle with morning frost. Ell stuffed her hands into her pockets against the chill, hoping to find warmth there, but the fabric was damp and cold. With a small shiver, she put her hands under her arms instead.

“It must be nice to be a shadow. You can walk forever, and you don’t have to breathe, and you don’t get cold…”

A thought struck her, and she looked down at Mei. “I guess I never really asked you that. Do you get cold?”

Mei shrugged, tipping her head back as far as she could for no apparent reason. The shadow girl seemed to be fully recovered from her exertions earlier that day, walking beside Ell with no visible discomfort. Mei had helped Ell with her injuries before, a feat which had badly confused Dr. Hurie on several occasions. The healing was an ability Ell greatly valued, but one that came at a cost. Cuts and scratches were easy to wipe away, but broken bones took great effort, sometimes causing the shadow pain, and the last thing Ell wanted for her only friend was pain.

“So… cold? Yes? Is that a yes? No?”

Mei stuck out her tongue.

“Fine, you goof. I hope you are cold. Or maybe you like it that way…”

She likes whatever you think she likes…

Ell blinked, glancing about for Dr. Mortimer. Of course he wasn’t there. A memory of his voice, then. He really had been gone a long time… back home, and even at the city hospital, no matter how well she hid, he would always find her; pestering her about her pills, hurting Mei’s feelings with his blunt mannerisms, jotting notes in his stupid notebook.

Something on the tracks… I hope the driver sees it…

“But there aren’t any tracks here.” Ell said out loud.

Mei glanced up at the sound of her human friend’s voice.

“Sorry. Talking to myself. Daddy says crazy people talk to themselves. Maybe I’m crazy.”

The shadow grinned, signing something with great speed.

“Slow down, I can’t figure you out when you do that.”

With exaggerated slowness, Mei signed E-L-L I-S S-T-R-A-N-G-E.

Ell gasped in mock horror. “And you’re a fruitcake. Meany.”

Mei crossed her arms and pretended to pout, rolling her face around until her features were completely upside-down. Ell giggled, brushing a tangled strand of hair back over her ear.

“We should sing a song. That’s what other people do on long trips. Well, I’d sing, and you can pretend. What one should I do? I don’t know very many…. hm…”

After a minute of thinking, her eyes brightened.

“We could do that one father used to sing us, when we were little. How did it go… it was about the baby, and the mother would buy her all these nice things so she wouldn’t be sad… I’m pretty sure I heard it a bit ago, though I can’t think where. How did it go?”

“‘Hush little baby, don’t you cry’, is the one you are thinking of.” said Dr. Mortimer. Ell jumped, turning to face the doctor.

The older man was sitting beside the road, leaning against a weathered metal signpost. His clothes were quite disheveled, and his tie was unpinned, dangling off to one side. Both lenses in his spectacles were cracked, and the metal frames were noticeably bent. A thin line of blood was working its way from his forehead to his chin, oozing from a small cut near his hairline.

Something about him unnerved Ell. It wasn’t the blood; in small amounts, the crimson liquid was actually quite fascinating to look at. Something about the doctor’s position… The way he sat like a broken doll, unmoving except for his glassy eyes, one arm resting on his chest, the other twisting at an unnatural angle behind him. Ell almost, almost, wished him away, but at the same time, she found it comical that he would sit contentedly in the cold, soggy dirt with no obvious discomfort.

“Dr. Mortimer, your head is bleeding.”

The doctor’s eyes slowly crossed as he attempted to examine the bridge of his nose. “Hmph. Never mind it, dear, I’ll put a band-aid on it later. Right now, I’m more worried about you! You haven’t been keeping up with your mediation, have you?”

“I only have one pill left, so I’m saving it. Do you have more?”

Dr. Mortimer laughed. “I’m not real, Ell. How can I give you any?”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.”

“Hmph. Well, I don’t have any, regardless. You know it’s dangerous to be out here, all by yourself.”

Ell drooped a bit. “I didn’t mean to. Daddy’s train broke, and there was no one around. I looked for you, but-”

A flash of something, a dead, bloody face staring at her. Rain pouring down in sheets, twisted metal, the smell of fire.

“But?” the doctor prompted.

Ell blinked, and the images of carnage were gone.

“But you weren’t around, and the train tried to float away, and I fell in the water, and there was a school-”

A Whisper with golden hair. Fire. A man with glass eyes and a black metal gun…

“Ell? Ell, are you feeling okay?”

Ell wasn’t. She felt dizzy, and a bit sick to her stomach. “N-no. I think I’m… missing bits. In my head. There are spots where I know something was there, but now it’s all jumbled.”

The cut on the doctor’s forehead was bleeding a good deal more than before, dripping from his nose and chin onto his shirt-front. “You need to take that last pill, Ell. I’m serious, you cannot keep on like this. Do you want to make yourself ill again?”

“No. I will. It’s just… I need to get home, and I don’t know where it is, or if I’m going the right way, and I want… I want to see daddy again.” She could feel her eyes starting to tear up.

Dr. Mortimer took his notepad from his breast pocket, scribbling something illegible. “Ell, look at me.”

Ell did as she was told. The doctor’s head-wound had grown again, but he showed no signs of pain. His calm eyes met hers, and he smiled reassuringly.

“Everything is going to be fine. Take your last pill. Don’t wait until later. And whatever you do, don’t worry. You’re almost home.”

With some effort, the doctor turned his notepad around, holding it up in front of his face. The page was flecked with red, but Ell could still see what Dr. Mortimer had drawn: An arrow, pointing up towards the sky.

Her gaze lifted upward, and she saw for the first time the sign on which the doctor had been leaning. In bold type, it read: ‘WELCOME TO LAKEWOOD, HOME OF THE LAKEWOOD PACKERS’

And below that, in slightly smaller writing; ‘ELM HOPE INSTITUTE, 7 MILES’

Ell looked down again, and found that the doctor had vanished. Perhaps he had wandered off, or gone back into her head, or maybe he had never been there at all. She didn’t really care.

Her hand dug into her pocket, coming out with the final pill. She popped it in her mouth, wincing ever so slightly at the rubbery taste, and swallowed hard. Slowly, she looked down at Mei, who looked back at her with eyes like twin moons.

Then, with a joyous noise that was half-laugh, half scream of pure happiness, Ell took off running as fast as she could push her legs to move. All terror, all sadness, all madness forgotten, she ran as she had never run before.

Before her now, distant but growing ever clearer, lay the familiar rooftops, the old roads and driveways, the realm of knowing that had been her home since her mind had begun its tired record of life.

Seven miles to Elm Hope.

Seven miles to Home.

This fella’s a big one!

Apologies for the long, long wait, the holidays are awful for writing.

Warning: Definitely adult content ahead! Though, if you have read this far, you’re probably used to it. 😛

Chapter 7

Joseph Marlin took a shaky sip from his coffee, compared the time on his silver watch to the time displayed on the dashboard stereo, and returned his attention to the road. He had grown to love the early-morning road trips, despite his initial dislike of the long periods of car travel. The flat gray of the sunless sky, the dim shapes that grew into deep-green coniferous trees and rocky hills as distance shortened. The solitude. The long emptiness of the highway.

Just him, nature, and the dull rattle of the old pickup’s engine.

The radio coughed out static, and he reached over to adjust the volume control. The radio was as old as the truck and worked sporadically, occasionally offering up ten or fifteen minutes of music or talk radio before lapsing back into silence. He wasn’t poor, far from it; but between house payments and supporting a three-child family, buying a new radio was fairly low priority.

It was almost 5am. If the radio would work now, he might catch the news or a weather report.

After a solid minute of dead air, a male sportscaster’s voice found its way to the speakers.

“…wraps up the Lakewood Tiger’s championship, and it looks like they’ll be taking home the gold again this year. You know, Mike, I’ve seen some great plays this year, but I think you’ll agree that…”

Static collapsed the sound, and Joe twirled the channel knob, trying to get the most out of the radio’s brief period of functionality.

Higher up on the AM band, he found another station, this one a news report.

“…thought to be a tragic accident, it is now possible that the deadly train wreck just outside of the county’s East district was actually caused by an improvised explosive device intentionally placed on the tracks. The catastrophic crash resulted in the deaths of all thirty of the train’s passengers. The train operator was in guarded condition at Lakewood General’s ICU until late last night, when he finally succumbed to his injuries. Police have no suspects at this time, but the investigation is ongoing. Chief of Police Harold Irving is asking that any person who may have…”

Gone again. Joe twisted the knob halfheartedly, but the station was lost.

He had heard about the crash a few days ago. A whole group of people from the mental rehabilitation ward had been on-board, along with a bunch of doctors and a few therapists. The worst accident Lakewood had ever seen.

And now, they were saying it wasn’t an accident… he would have to look it up on the internet when he got to work. He took another sip of his coffee, squinting out the window at the trees blurring past. What would it have been like, inside that train? Peace and quiet, like how it was now inside the pickup’s cab… then suddenly, noise, fire, and finally, the cold blackness of death.

He chuckled dryly to himself. How morbid. Not the best thoughts to start a morning.

Something caught his eye, coming up on the right. At first, he thought it was trash, or maybe a dead animal, lying in the shallow culvert beside the highway. It was large, whatever it was, bundled in white cloth, roughly the size and shape of a…

It was a human, sprawled lifelessly in the dirt.

Joe slammed on the brakes, ignoring the old truck’s squeal of protest, craning his neck to see out the passenger-side window. A sportscar that had been tailgating him for several miles swerved around him, the driver of the other vehicle leaning on the horn as he tore past. Joe ignored him, bringing his truck to a stop in the gravel beside the road. He fought with his seat belt, dialing on his cell with his free hand. Nine, one, one…

A ‘No service’ message blinked at him from the tiny screen. Angrily, he tossed the phone on the passenger seat, throwing open the truck door, scrambling out into the cold morning air.

“Hey! Hey, you okay?”

No reply. He could see now that it was a girl, barely more than a child, lying on her face in the ditch. The white uniform she wore was streaked with mud and grime, and seemed to be burned in several places, as if it had been pulled from a fire.

She didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Hey… stay with me, okay? You hear me? Hello?”

The ditch was slippery, and he almost fell on her trying to reach the bottom. With some effort, he rolled her onto her side, trying desperately to think what he should do next. A pulse. Check for a pulse. He pulled her limp wrist from the mud, noting with alarm the freezing coldness of her dead-white skin, and pressed his thumb into the artery just below her hand.

Nothing.

He tried another point, closer to her sleeve. Still nothing. His hands were starting to hurt from the frigid air and the damp of the grime coating the body, his breaths coming in short bursts as panic rose in his chest. He had never seen a dead body before, not in real life.

Help. He had to get someone to help. Someone who knew what they were doing. He felt bad about leaving the girl where she was, but he needed to get back into cell range, call emergency services. One last time, he tried for a pulse, trying a blood vessel in the neck. He had no idea what he was doing. He was a business manager, not a doctor. If she was alive, her heart wasn’t…

Her eyes were open, staring at him through the soggy strands of hair matting her face. Joe lurched back, the sudden motion almost sending his feet out from under him. She was definitely alive; her eyes followed him as he moved, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. Beyond that, there was little motion; she was in bad condition.

“Oh Lord… can you hear me? What happened?”

Her mouth moved ever so slightly as a single syllable slipped from her lips: “Mei…”

Then her limbs convulsed, and she curled into a ball, her body wracked with violent shivers.

Without further thought, Joe stepped forward, scooping her up into his arms. She was heavier than she looked, but he didn’t care. His only thought was to get them both to the warmth of the truck cab, and from there to a hospital.

“Don’t die on me, now… hold on… just hold on…”

***

Ell’s dream was slow to form, but form it did, building itself with a calm familiarity grown from years of repetition.

First to come were the walls. The White Room rose around her, painfully bright and pale in the light of the solitary bulb swinging in slow circles on its cable. The air had been cold for the longest time, a numbing cold, the walls glazed with an icy sheen. Snowflakes drifted through the walls, slipping in and out of sight, sometimes sifting to the floor, sometimes rising up through the sheet-white roof.

After the longest time, the chill left her, replaced with a feverish warmth. The snow melted, became raindrops pattering from wall to floor to ceiling, and eventually became steam, fogging the light bulb and making the tiles slick beneath her feet.

The door stood before her, its outline barely visible. It had appeared long ago, tempting her, drawing her towards the inviting darkness outside. For the first time in a long time, she was hesitant to go. Eventually she would have to. There was no other way out, from the room or the dream.

She reached out, pushing open the white wood panel.

A long hallway stretched before her, its wooden walls lined with picture frames, its floor lined with decorative carpeting. Small chandeliers glistened golden above, bathing the passage in warm light.

The dream had changed. It had never changed before, not in all the years she had been forced to endure it. Always white, then black. Never another room. Never.

The hall had four exits. The White room was the first. Further down, two oak panel doors stood parallel to each other, identically shaped, with matching brass knobs.

The last door was of solid steel, a flat gray slab affixed to sturdy hinges several inches thick. It surface was scarred and worn, its latch secured with a heavy padlock. Ell knew, in that odd knowing that comes in the macabre depths of dreams, that the door was somehow… alive.

Not in the sense that it could move about, nor breathe or think or speak. It was simply aware of her, watching without eyes, sensing through the strings that wove the walls of sleep around it. And in the same knowing came a calm shiver of violence, a predator waiting in silence for the prey that must inevitably pass before it.

Ell no longer wished to look at it, turning her gaze to the nearest wooden door. Her hand moved of its own will, grasping the handle, turning it, drawing the door open…

A mirror stood before her, leaving her staring at her own reflection. She was somewhat startled by how disheveled she looked; her uniform looked as if it had been buried underground for a month or so. A dull reddish stain on the left shoulder drew her eyes, almost unnoticeable beneath the filth coating the previously white fabric. Something must have cut her. It must have been some time ago, as the wound did not hurt. Nothing to worry about, then.

When she turned away from the mirror, she found that the hallway had changed again. It was a subtle change; the colors were different, some lighter than before, some darker. The walls looked less and less like wood paneling, and more like stone painted to look like wood. The light had grown pale and harsh, cold and unfriendly.

The hall wanted her gone. It wanted her to leave.

Ell reached for the final door, but it was already open. The hall shifted, and she dropped through the opening into a white fog.

Slowly, the mist sifted away, lost in the forgetfulness of dreams. She was somewhere else now, lying on her side. A vehicle of some sort; a big one. The wheels thrummed and bumped across smooth pavement, rocking her gently on the seat. A bobble-head figurine mounted on the dashboard nodded to the rhythm of the engine, smiling at her with perfect plastic teeth.

Moving as little as possible, she tilted her head, peering down at the driver’s seat.

No driver. Of course not. A dream car had no need for drivers. The wheel spun back and forth on its own, guiding the car as it continued its journey into the gray morning.

“Mei…?”

No answer. The shadow was probably unable to enter dreams, and even if she could, she was unlikely to enter Ell’s Whisper-filled nightmares. Ell felt a pang of sadness. It was so lonely without the round-eyed apparition.

“Nevermore…” something whispered, and Ell stopped breathing.

“I see eyes…”

“Who…?”

“All around, around and around…”

“Lies. Lies and liars, liarsssssss…”

A whisper crawled into sight, a terrifying monster-shaped hole in the air, bubbling over the windshield like black tar. Its teeth dragged across the metal roof, a slow, keening shriek that set Ell’s hair on end. She forced herself to relax, taking a deep breath. The dream would end when they got her. They always got her in the end. Maybe they would be nice and eat her whole. Once, before, they had cut her up first… and even in dreams, pain hurt.

“Hey, you awake?”

Ell twitched, and looked again at the driver’s seat. There was a man there, dressed like a lawyer, his thinning hair and uneven beard exaggerating his apparent age. He was blurry, hard to focus on, as if she were looking at him through murky water. She pulled away from him, drawing up against the vehicle’s door.

Humans didn’t belong here. It was her world. He didn’t belong.

“Just lie still. We’re going to get you help. You’re safe now.”

Why wouldn’t he go away? Why couldn’t he just shut up and vanish? She wanted daddy…

“Screams…”

“Cold as rolling, thin and small…”

The Whispers were speaking. Real words. Understandable, definitive words. Before, they had been barely audible, a quiet hissing of the “s” sound, a soft breath forming the “wh”. Mesmerizing, even calming. Now they were loud, jagged words, harsh and broken, hissed through slimy mouths and deformed teeth. It was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong…

The whispering monsters heard her thoughts, and took up the chant;

“Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong wrong…”

“And tall and long…”

“Wrong song… burn swan…”

Ell wanted to wake up. The dream was too real. Everything was out of control. She needed light. She needed to go to a place where it was all white; complete, total blankness. No color and no people and nothing at all..

“Hey, stay with me! Hey!”

Abruptly, the man’s voice dropped in pitch, becoming a guttural, gurgling rattle. Ell’s eyes found his face, and it was no longer a face; now a bubbling, rotting mask, set atop a thousand gleaming teeth.

“Hey… are you hungry? Is your stomach empty…? Let me help you… I’ll just… eat… your… insides!”

That said, the Whisper abandoned the wheel and lurched at her, its jaws gaping wide enough to bite her whole head off. Ell had barely enough time to scream before the Whisper’s mouth gnashed shut… inches in front of her nose.

The monster struggled, worming about, trying to free itself from whatever it was caught on. Its teeth clicked together as it bit at her, its rotten breath flecking her face with saliva, but it was unable to reach her.

At first, it seemed the Whisper had become entangled in the vehicle’s seat belt. Black bands coiled about it, somehow gaining purchase on the murky slime of the creature’s skin. It took Ell a minute to realize the bands were moving; tightening on the Whisper’s neck and body, crushing bones in its ribcage with audible snaps. Then she realized…

The bands were actually arms, wispy arms of shadow, belonging to a girl as black as night, with wide eyes as bright as a full moon.

“Mei?”

Mei did not reply, too preoccupied with holding the Whisper at bay. The shadow was clearly terrified, her empty, jack-o-lantern mouth gaping in a silent scream. Still, she held fast, wrenching the possessed man away from her human friend, her arms stretching longer and longer as they wrapped about the Whisper.

The monster seemed to grasp what was occurring, and bit down on the nearest strand of its bindings. Mei’s frame erupted in jittering bulges and spikes as she recoiled violently. The bite had hurt her. A lot.

“Leave her alone!” Ell shouted, and, driven by a sudden surge of bravery, drove her heel into the Whisper’s jaw.

It was like kicking a rotten pumpkin. The monster’s head exploded in a mess of oily slime and metallic teeth, splattering and clinking against the driver’s-side window. Mei pulled herself from the mess, curling around Ell, flattening across the human girls skin, preparing for the next attack.

One down, seven to go.

The remaining Whispers were slow to act, muttering and hissing at each other, apparently confused by their brother’s demise.

Then, as one, they abandoned the vehicle, crawling out of sight beneath the windows.

Ell crawled up to a sitting position, looking about in confusion.

“Why did they…”

The dead Whisper’s foot was still on the accelerator. Ell noticed the trees flying past outside, a split second before the truck left the road. A brief moment of weightlessness followed, oddly familiar…

The truck went from seventy miles per hour to dead stop, compacting the hood and sending the engine block right through the middle of the cab. Had Ell been buckled in, she would have found her legs separated from the rest of her body by the sudden appearance of the front axle, which was driven up through the floor and out the back window by the force of the crash. As it was, Ell was thrown through the front windshield in a shower of glass fragments, rolling painfully on the rocky ground.

Something was broken. Maybe several somethings. In her arms for sure, maybe in her legs. She had to fix it, quickly. Before it started to hurt.

“Mei… I broke a bone again. Can you fix it?”

Mei wasn’t in great shape herself, curling into complex shapes in the shade of the oak trees. Her edges were rough and uneven, and her facial features swam about, like flowers floating in a black puddle. Nevertheless, she drew herself across the ground, running a hand across Ell’s arm.

Her fingers found a lump, and Ell winced.

Mei moved around to Ell’s face, signing out a complex series of motions that translated to a rather simple phrase; T-H-I-S W-I-L-L H-U-R-T.

“I know. It’s okay. I’ll be all better when you’re done.”

Mei hesitated, then shrugged, drawing herself together. She moved like a liquid across Ell’s body, finding bruises, fractures, cuts from the glass. Then, lifting her head one last time, the shadow looked Ell in the face, her eyes filled with worry.

“It’s okay, really. I’ll probably scream, but I won’t move. I promise. Go ahead.”

Mei began, and Ell managed four seconds before the screaming started.