Burdened (A Burdened Novel) (42 page)

“Okay, Tracey
, I know you are in pain. But I need you to calm down and focus on what I am saying.” Pause. “Okay, Tracey?”

“Okay
,” I respond, only so she will leave me alone. Listening to her, thinking about Nathan, and this pain, is too much to bare.

“Breathe
. Stop holding your breath. You have to breathe through the pain. It makes it easier for you to cope with it.” I’m not trying to hear that. “Come on, Tracey. We need to find Nathan. He may be in trouble!”

She’s right
—I do need to find Nathan. Now that I think about it, he’s probably the reason I’m in pain, because
he’s
in pain.
Nathan
, I cry out in my head.
Please be okay
. “Okay, Taylor, just give me a minute.”

“No time. The longer we take
, the less time he has.” I let go of my breath and pain rushes over me. So much pain, everywhere, all over me. My hands, my head, my legs, my feet, my back, and the worse—my chest.

I start panting
. It makes me feel light-headed.

“No
, Tracey, slower. Breathe slower.” I slow the breaths—through the pain—and slowly my vision clears. “That’s it, Tracey, very good. Now, there are only two pains I need you to focus on. These two pains will act as navigation to find Nathan. It’s like, following your heart. But you need your brain to tell you where your heart needs you to go.” She looks back at me, only for a second, then turns back towards the road.

“I understand.” Grabbing the handle on the door
, I sit up, thinking about the pain in my chest.

It’s horrible. It feels like my heart wants to
explode out of my chest by the way it’s pounding—the ice-cold blood pumping through it, rushing too forcefully through my veins. I feel it all as the blood flows.

I try
to focus on the pain in my head. It’s not as bad as my chest, but it too is agonizing. Focusing on them both together makes my body shake.

I try to focus on where my heart is
, and it’s clearly in my chest. That was stupid.

“How is it going
, Tracey? I need something.”

I throw my head against the back of the seat in frustration. Taylor is really impatient.

My hand starts to burn vigorously. I look at it, full-black, and the vines are thick, running up my arm.

I tell myself I want to find Nathan. Seconds later
, my fingers spark with fire. “What is going on, Tracey? Are you lighting—oh my gosh, is that your hand? Tracey, your hand is on fire!” Rose is hysterical.

“Tracey
, you all did!?” I am not ready to have this conversation right now.

“I know how we can find him
,” I say, sticking my hand out the window and wanting the fire to help me find Nathan. Fire snakes from my hand, probably freaking out the people around us. I pull my hand back in the window after it snaked from my palm. It takes the form of a real snake that is about the size of my entire leg. It’s fast.

“Follow it
,” I say hurriedly.

Taylor waste
s no time, and I put on my seatbelt. I watch the snake of fire slither quickly through the streets and around cars on the freeway. It’s faster and Taylor is trying her best to keep up. I can feel it against the cold ground as it moves. It feels like it wants to find Nathan just as bad as I want to.

“You will explain this to me once this is over.” Taylor swerves through traffic.

We drive for an hour. My need for Nathan increases, confirming something is wrong. We arrive at a small cottage, when Taylor finally slows down.

“Are you sure it brought us to the right place
?” Rose is scoping out the place before we get out. Her doing so makes me wonder where the guys of the family are. Why is it only the three of us?

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“That’s what I have been trying to figure out since I came out of the bathroom,” Taylor answers.

“What?” I ask dramatically. The bathroom? A sledgehammer is banging against my forehead, and although I want to
hear more details about what happened, I decide against it. “Never mind. We’ll talk about that later. Did you see where that fire snake went?” I ask, looking around the grass and in the trees, but not seeing it.

“No, and
that
is what we are going to talk about later. You, me, Nathan, and that fire snake,” Taylor responds in an exaggerated voice.

I open my black palm
, wanting the fire to come back to me. We walk around the small cottage before deciding to go in. Walking up the steps to the front door, the snake of fire comes back to me and enters my palm. I almost ask it if it found him, since it was gone for so long. But that seems silly, especially with Taylor and Rose here.

We step in, the door squeaking close
d behind us. It becomes pitch-black. Not even the moonlight can enter through the boarded up windows.

“Taylor?” I call out to her.

“Tracey,” she returns my call.

“Rose?”
we say at the same time.

“Yes
,” Rose responds quietly.

There is no light.
I try to focus my eyes on something. I get nothing. None of us have moved since we walked into the cottage.

If I could only see
… We are wasting too much time. I blink again and red moves in my peripheral vision. I blink again and it’s gone. What is going on?

I turn my head slightly
, to see what it could have been, but I see nothing. I blink once more and it returns in the form of a human. I gasp, jumping away from it, startled.

“Tracey
, what’s wrong? Where are you?” the strange figure speaks to me, with Taylor’s voice. It doesn’t move; it just looks around the room quickly.

I stare at her for a moment, remembering
her body shape. It
is
Taylor, just not in Taylor’s skin. Or skin at all.

“I
think I can see you,” I think out loud. “But, you’re…red.”

“Like heat vision?” Rose’s voice asks from behind me. I brace myself before I turn around. Slowly turning, there she is
—in all her red-glowing glory.

“I guess you could call it that.” I’m still trying to make
sense of this.

“Wait…” I turn back to
‘red Taylor,’ standing with her arms folded in front of her chest. “You’re telling me you have heat vision too?”

“
No, but this isn’t a good time to discuss it. But I do believe this may help us move from this spot.” I look around the room. I can see objects. I can’t make them out, but at least I can see them, maybe because they give off heat. I don’t know. I just know I can see them.

“Okay, you lead the way.” Yea
h, should have seen that coming.

“Umm,
can one of you stay at my side?” I say nervously.

“Tracey
, let’s just go.”

I don’t know
where
to go. I think for a minute, deciding to let the pull of my heart direct me. “Okay, I’m going out on a limb here, but I think we should go down.”

Taylor responds quickly
, “You’re right.”

“I’m not feeling good about this
, you two.” Rose pauses. “It feels like something is wrong.”

“It’s her ability to sense situations and occurrences
,” Taylor informs.

“That doesn’t make me feel good
,” I say apprehensively.

“We got you
, Tracey. Anything happens, we’ll take care of it. You just hide somewhere.” Taylor’s red figure looks in my direction. “From all of us,” she utters quietly.

My heart double beats.
Nathan
? It was worth a try, but I get nothing.
Nathan, where are you? You’re killing me here
. I’m hurting, confused, and frustrated. I want to just stop, sit down in the middle of the floor, and ball like a baby.

Hold it together
, Tracey. I just need to hold it together.

I lead us to what seems like a kitchen. “We’re in a kitchen
. There has to be a door around here somewhere that will lead us down.” Looking for a door in the dark is like searching for a needle in a haystack…in the dark.

We split up, searching the walls
, finding nothing. We meet back in the middle of the floor. Rose takes two steps and falls flat. I bend down to help her. “Are you okay?”

“Yea
h. I tripped over something.” She starts to pick herself up.

“Wait, don’t move yet.” She turns slightly
, looking in my direction—not that she can see me. I follow her legs to her feet, feeling the floor around them. There is a lock that’s on what feels like a hatch.

“Rose, I’m going to help you stand back up. But don’t move
, while I get Taylor and bring her over here.”

“Okay.” Helping her stand, we put her feet right in front of the lock of the latch. “Not moving.”

Taylor is just standing in the middle of the floor, patiently. I lead her to where Rose stands. “How are we going to get into the hatch, now that we have found it?” she asks.

“I have an idea.”

“Okay, care to share?”

“Not until I see if it works.
” I place my hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Step back a little, Rose. I’m going to try something and I hope it works.”

I make my hand hot, extremely hot. Now that I know what’s going on
, it doesn’t hurt me as much. It more so is comforting. It reminds me of Nathan—not here to hurt me but to comfort me. It’s now a part of me.

I really need him.

I look at my hand and it is the brightest red in the room—close to burnt-orange, like the sun. Crouching down, I put it on the medium-sized lock and the metal begins to melt in my hand. I smile to myself, satisfied it’s working.

“Tracey
, you’re burning the lock off. I can see the metal burning in your hand,” Taylor says, enthused.

“Yea
h, it’s working.”

I pull at the lock,
prying it away from the latch. It comes off with ease—the hot metal looking like cheese being pulled away from a pizza.

I slowly lift the latch
, and my heart goes insane. I drop it, falling back on my butt.

Knowing where I am
, Taylor kneels down beside me. “He’s down there, isn’t he?” The pain is excruciating, so I can’t answer her. “I can feel it too. Just remember, you have to breathe, Tracey.” She pauses for a moment. “We have to keep moving.”

I breathe slowly
, knowing she is right. Rose kneels down and lifts the latch, and dim light shines through the small kitchen as she pushes it all the way back.

Nervous butterflies erupt through my stomach
, which makes the pain in my heart even worse.
You can do this, Tracey
, I think, trying to motivate myself.
You can do this.

There is a ladder that
takes us down to the lower level of the cottage. Taylor goes first, then me, then Rose. None of us speak, not knowing what could be down here—or who. We don’t want it—or them—to know we’re down here.

We walk
down a hall and come to a fork, giving us a choice of going left or right. Taylor turns right. I take two steps in the same direction and my heart hits against the spine of my back. Obviously, this is the wrong way. I grab her arm to direct her in the opposite direction. The pounding is not as hard, telling me we are getting closer to Nathan, and I breathe from the relief.

We remain quiet as we travel
down the dimly lit hallway. The butterflies in my stomach fly faster as I get more nervous. I want to throw up.

Making it to another
fork, Taylor turns to me with a face that says ‘where do we go?’ and her hands out, palms up.

I shrug my shoulders, and she gives me the
‘figure it out’ look.

I slow myself
, concentrating, trying to focus on my heart, rather than these damn butterflies. I let out a breath, preparing myself to take a deep one to help calm me down.

I start to breathe
when a loud bang echoes through the halls, making all three of us jump. My heart pulls towards the bang and I wish it didn’t.

Taylor and I look at Rose
—with her keen sense of situations. She shakes her head quickly.

They look at me
. I nod my head reluctantly. We hesitantly look down the brighter hallway, none of us moving. My heart pulls me to go. It’s the weirdest feeling; it pushes against my chest, forcing me to take a step forward.

I take another deep breath as we approach the area
where the light is resonating from. Taylor pulls me back, stepping in front of me, her eyes swirling dark, outlined in a red glow. That’s intimidating.

She places a finger to her mouth. Rose steps around me
, sniffing the air. She mouths ‘burned flesh.’ I smell nothing but metal and dampness.