Dark Visions (17 page)

"It'll go away when we go to sleep," Gabriel said flatly-but aloud, Kaitlyn noticed.

"Are you sure?" Lewis asked.

"Yes."

Kaitlyn decided not to mention that Gabriel didn't feel as sure as he sounded.

"We really should go to sleep, anyway," she said. It was only now, when all the panic and excitement were over, that she could begin to realize how tired she was. She was stiff from tension and from sitting under that desk. And her mind was exhausted from trying to take in everything that had gone on today.

From Marisol's seizure, to Mr. Zetes appearing by the hidden door, to her drawing in art class, to the burglary-so much had happened that her brain was simply giving up.

"But you didn't tell us what was down there behind the panel," Lewis said. "Did you find anything?"

"We found plenty, all bad," Rob said. "But Kaitlyn's right. We can talk about it tomorrow."

Kaitlyn could feel Anna biting her lip on questions, judging that it was wiser to wait. She could feel Lewis sighing. But it was all muffled by an enormous sense of weariness-even of dizziness, of illness. She wasn't just feeling her own fatigue, she realized. Gabriel was on the verge of collapse. He was-Rob, she said urgently.

Rob was already moving. In trying to stand up, Gabriel had staggered and fallen to his knees. Kaitlyn helped Rob put him back on the couch.

"He's bad off-like you when you burned up so much energy yesterday, Kait," Rob told her. He was holding Gabriel's arm-and Gabriel was resisting feebly.

"I don't burn energy doing this. I take energy," he said.

"Well, you burned something this time," Rob said. "Maybe because you were connecting so many people. Anyway.. ." Kaitlyn could hear him take a deep breath-and sense him getting a better grip on Gabriel's arm. "Anyway, maybe I can help you. Let me-"

"No!" Gabriel shouted. "Let go of me."

"But you need energy. I can-"

I said, let go! Once again, the thought itself was an attack. Kaitlyn winced and everyone backed up a little-everyone except Rob. He stood his ground.

Lewis said weakly, "I think he's got enough energy right now."

Gabriel's attention was still on Rob. "I don't need anything from anyone," he snarled, trying to pull out of Rob's grip. "Especially not from you."

"Gabriel, listen-" Kait began. But Gabriel wasn't in a mood to listen. She could feel waves of defensive, destructive fury beating at her like the icy battering of a storm.

I don't need any of you. This doesn't change anything, so don't think it does. By tomorrow it'll be gone-and until then, just leave me alone!

Rob hesitated, then released Gabriel's arm. "Whatever you want," he said almost gently. He stepped back.

Now, Kaitlyn thought, comes the interesting part. Whether Gabriel can make it to his room on his own or not.

He did. Not very steadily, but belligerently. Not needing words to send the message that they'd all better keep away.

The door to the large bedroom shut hard behind him. Kaitlyn could still feel his presence on the other side, but it was a feeling of walls, of spiky barriers. She herself used to have walls like that.

"Poor guy," Lewis muttered.

"I think we'd all better go to bed," Anna suggested.

They did. Kaitlyn's clock said 2:52 a.m. She wondered vaguely how they were going to make it to school tomorrow, and then exhaustion overcame her.

The last thing she remembered, as her defenses lowered in sleep, was thinking, By the way, Gabriel, thanks. For risking your own neck.

She got only nasty images of icy walls and locked doors as an answer.

She was dreaming, and it was the old dream about the peninsula-the rocky peninsula and the ocean and the cold wind. Kaitlyn shivered in the spray. The sky was so dark with clouds that she couldn't tell if it was day or evening. A single, lonely gull circled over the water.

What a desolate place, she thought.

"Kaitlyn!"

Oh, yes, Kaitlyn remembered. The voice calling my name; that was in my first dream, too. And now I turn around and there's no one there.

Feeling resigned, she turned. And started.

Rob was climbing down the rocks. His gold-blond hair was flecked with spray and there was damp sand on his pajama bottoms.

"I don't think you're supposed to be here," Kaitlyn told him with the confused directness of dreams.

"I don't want to be here. It's freezing," Rob said, hopping and slapping his bare arms with his hands.

"Well, you should have worn more sensible clothes."

"I'm freezing, too," a third voice said. Kaitlyn looked. Lewis and Anna were behind her, both looking chilled and windswept. "Whose dream is this, anyway?" Lewis added.

"This is a very strange place," Anna said, gazing around with dark, thoughtful eyes. Then she said,

"Gabriel-are you all right?"

Gabriel was standing a little way down the peninsula, his arms folded. Kaitlyn felt that this dream was getting crowded-and ridiculous. "It's funny-" she began.

I don't think it's funny, and I'm not going to play, Gabriel's voice said in her head.

... if it was a dream.

Suddenly Kaitlyn was very much in doubt.

"Are you really here?" she asked Gabriel. He just looked at her coldly, with eyes the color of the ocean around them.

Kaitlyn turned to the others. "Look, you guys, I've had this dream before-but not with all of you in it. But is it really you, or am I just dreaming you?"

"You're not dreaming me," Lewis said. "I think I'm dreaming you."

Rob ignored him and shook his head at Kait. "There's no way for me to prove I'm real-not until tomorrow."

Strangely, that convinced Kait. Or maybe it was just the nearness of Rob, the way her pulse quickened when she looked at him, the certainty that her mind couldn't be making up anything this vivid.

"So now we're sharing dreams?" she asked edgily.

"It must be the telepathic link. That web of yours," said Anna.

"If Kaitlyn's had the dream before, it's her fault," said Lewis. "Isn't it? And where are we, anyway?"

Kaitlyn looked up and down the narrow spit of land. "I don't have a clue. I've only had this dream a couple of times before, and it never lasted this long."

"Can't you dream us somewhere warmer?" Lewis asked, teeth chattering.

Kaitlyn didn't know how. This dream didn't feel like a dream exactly-or, rather, she felt much more like the waking Kaitlyn than the fuzzy Kaitlyn who moved semiconsciously through dreams.

Anna, who seemed least affected by the cold, was kneeling near the edge of the water. "This is strange,"

she said. "You see these piles of stones everywhere?"

It was something Kaitlyn hadn't noticed before. The peninsula was bordered with rocks, most of which looked as if they had just washed up. But some of the rocks were gathered into stacks, piled one on top of another to form whimsical towers. Some rocks had their long axis up and down, some were placed horizontally. Some of the towers looked a bit like buildings or figures.

"Who did it?" Lewis asked, aiming a kick at a pile.

"Hey, don't," Rob said, blocking the kick.

Anna stood up. "He's right," she told Lewis. "Don't spoil things. They're not ours."

They're not anyone's. This is just a dream, Gabriel said, throwing a look more chilling than the wind at them.

"If it's just a dream, how come you're still in it?" Rob asked.

Gabriel turned away silently.

Kaitlyn knew one thing: This particular dream had gone on much longer than any of the others. And they might not really be here, but Rob's skin was covered with gooseflesh. They needed to find shelter.

"There must be somewhere to go," she said. Where the peninsula joined the land, there was a very wet and rocky beach. Above that, a stony bank, and then trees. Tall fir trees that formed a dark and uninviting thicket.

On the other side, water . . . and across the water, a lonely cliff, bare in some places, black with forest in others. There was no sign of human habitation, except-

"What's that?" she said. "That white thing."

She could scarcely make it out in the dimness, but it looked like a white house on the distant cliff. She had no idea how one might get to it.

"It's useless," she murmured, and at the same moment a surge of warmth swept over her. How strange-everything was getting cloudy. She was suddenly aware that while she was standing on the rocky peninsula, she was also lying down . . . lying down in bed....

For a moment it seemed as if she could choose where she wanted to be.

Bed, she thought firmly. That other place is too cold.

And then she was turning over, and she was in bed, pulling up the covers. Her brain was too foggy to think of calling to the others, of finding out if it really had been a shared dream. She just wanted to sleep.

The next morning she woke up to: Oh, no.

Lewis? she thought hazily.

Hi, Kaitlyn. Hi, Rob.

G'way, Lewis. I'm sleeping, Rob said indistinctly. Only, of course, he didn't say it, not with his voice. He was in his own bedroom, and so was Lewis. Kait could feel them there.

She looked up over hummocks of sheets and blankets, to see Anna looking at her from the other bed.

Anna looked flushed with sleep, sweet, and resigned.

Hi, Anna, Kaitlyn said, feeling somewhat resigned herself.

Hi, Kait.

Hi, Anna, Lewis said chirpily.

And good night, John-boy! Gabriel shouted from across the house. Shut the hell up, all of you!

Anna and Kaitlyn shared a look. He's crabby when he wakes up, Kaitlyn observed.

All boys are, Anna told her serenely. At least he seems to have got his strength back.

I thought, Rob said, his mental voice seeming more awake, that you said it would be gone by this morning.

Thunderous silence from Gabriel.

We might as well get dressed, Kaitlyn said at last when the silence went on. It's almost seven.

She found that if she concentrated on herself, the others receded into the background-which was just as well, she thought as she showered and dressed. There were some things you needed to be alone for.

But no matter what she did, they were there. Lurking around the edges of her mind like friends just within earshot and shouting range. Paying attention to any one of them brought that one closer.

Except Gabriel, who seemed to have locked himself off in a corner. Paying attention to him was like bouncing off the smoothness of his steely walls.

It wasn't until she was dressed that Kaitlyn remembered her dream.

"Anna-last night-did you dream anything in particular?"

Anna looked up from beneath the glistening raven's wing of her dark hair. "You mean about that place by the ocean?" she said, brushing vigorously. She seemed quite undisturbed.

Kaitlyn sat down. "Then it was real. I mean, you were really there." You guys were all in my dream, she added silently, so the others could hear it.

Well, it's not really that surprising, is it? Rob asked from his room. If our minds are linked telepathically, and one of us has a dream, maybe the others get dragged in.

Kaitlyn shook her head. There's more to it than that,

she told Rob-but what more, she didn't know. Just then Lewis interrupted anyway, from the stairway.

Hey, I think Joyce is home! I hear somebody in the kitchen. Come on down!

All thoughts of the dream vanished. Kaitlyn and Anna ran out and met Rob on their way to the staircase.

"Joyce!" Lewis was saying when they got to the kitchen. He was also saying Joyce! but Joyce didn't seem to notice.

"Are you all right?" Kaitlyn asked. Joyce looked very pale, and there were huge dark circles under her eyes. She looked . . . young, somehow, like a kid with a short haircut that's turned out wrong.

Kaitlyn swallowed, but couldn't manage the next words. Anna said them for her. "Is Marisol. . . ?"

Joyce put down a box of Shredded Wheat as if it were heavy. "Marisol is ... stable." Then her adult control seemed to desert her and she blurted, lips trembling, "She's in a coma."

"Oh, God," Kaitlyn whispered.

"The doctors are watching her. I stayed with her family at the hospital last night, but I didn't get to see her." Joyce fished in her purse, found a tissue, and blew her nose. She picked up the Shredded Wheat box and looked at it blankly.

"Now, you just let go of that and sit down," Rob said gently. "We'll take care of everything."

"That's right," Kaitlyn said, glad for the guidance. She herself felt sick and terrified. But doing something made her feel better, and in a few minutes they had Joyce sitting at the kitchen table, with Anna stroking her hand, Kaitlyn making coffee, and Rob and Lewis setting out bowls and spoons.

"It's all so confusing," Joyce said, wiping her eyes and crumpling the tissue in her fist. "Marisol's family didn't know she was on medication. They didn't even know she'd been seeing a psychiatrist. I had to tell them."

Kaitlyn looked at Rob, who, shielded by the pantry door, returned the look with grim significance. Then, carefully measuring scoops of ground coffee, she asked Joyce, "Who told you she was seeing a shrink?"

"Who? Mr. Zetes." Joyce passed a hand over her forehead. "By the way, he said you kids behaved really well last night. Went to bed early and all,"

Anna smiled. "We're not children." She was the only one who could talk; the others were all engaged in a torrent of silent communication.

I knew it, Kaitlyn was telling Rob. Joyce doesn't know anything about Marisol except what comes from Mr. Z. Don't you remember-when I asked about Marisol's medication, she told me, "He said a psychiatrist prescribed it." It was Mr. Zetes who told her that. For all we know, Marisol wasn't on any medication at all.