Shadow's Dangers (22 page)

She said the last sentence, fixing her brother right in the eye. Still trying to digest what was happening to me while wanting more than anything to be in another of my nightmares, I took a few moments before I managed to ask:

“What does it mean?”

Leighton took a moment before returning to her senses and look at me again. Garreth opted for impassivity, showing nothing of what he felt.

“We will explain everything in due time. Right now, we need to get a hold of Travis, hoping he hasn’t already fled.”

We all got into the car and drove to the Wates’ home. Throughout the ride, I forced myself to try to deal with this strange new reality but it was anything but easy. When we arrived, Garreth didn’t bother to turn off the ignition. He rushed out of the car to run inside the house. His sister and I hurried out to follow him. Loud voices echoed already, meaning that Travis was still there. I quickly recognized the language Garreth had used several times in my presence.

“Stay in the entrance, Deliah,” Leighton ordered me.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I didn’t move, unwilling to be in front of Travis again or discover something new that was too surreal to be part of
my
world. From where I was, I couldn’t understand anything but the voices that rose to a crescendo, now Leighton’s in addition to those of her brothers. Even though I didn’t understand anything, I guessed they didn’t exchange courtesies. Suddenly, I heard the sound of broken furniture before Leighton screamed, “Garreth, no!”

Forgetting my reluctance, I went into the room where the Wates were. I stopped abruptly on the threshold when I saw the scene. The living room was devastated. A dark armchair was overturned and someone had sent it into the corner of the room. The coffee table was cracked and what was on it before was scattered on the ground. But what really shocked me was the vision of Garreth pinning his brother against the wall, one hand clutching his throat strongly, the other punching him. Travis had blood on his face but still wore his arrogant air, as if what was going on amused him. Leighton was trying to find a way to reason with Garreth. It was like talking to a brick wall. I wanted to do something but I was literally paralyzed on the spot, unable to make myself useful. I had never seen anything like it and in that moment, I wanted more than anything to have never witnessed this scene, never having seen the dark side of Garreth. Fortunately, Leighton finally did the only remaining option and grabbed Garreth by the neck before pulling him back. She circled his waist with her arms to keep him from throwing himself at Travis again. I was wide-eyed. How did she manage to hold her brother as he struggled like a madman and was much stronger than she? It was a mystery...and realizing there might be a senseless explanation behind it, all of a sudden, I didn’t want to know anything about it.

“Enough, Garreth,” Leighton ordered in a cold and authoritarian tone that I didn’t know she had in her.

He stopped trying to get out of her hold. Travis, meanwhile, didn’t seem really hurt, despite all the blood and injuries he had. Instead, he seemed shaken emotionally. He stared at his brother and sister with a mixture of resentment, pain and sadness. I didn’t understand his reaction and I couldn’t empathize with all the things he had inflicted on me. But for the first time, I discovered another side of him, different from the abject one he had always shown me.

“You’re a sick bastard and you’re worthless like all these traitors out there!” Garreth spat with disgust. “You’d better join them, because that is where your place is now. And if you stay in front of me any longer, I swear I’m going to kill you.”

Travis’ jaw clenched. I thought he would respond to Garreth by hitting him, but he merely observed him, looking just as disgusted as his brother. His face turned toward his sister.

“And you think like him, of course?”

“If you’re not out of my sight in a minute, I will help him get rid of you,” Leighton assured him with an inhumanly cold voice.

The Leighton that stood before me was nothing like the one I used to be around. It was scary. The more I discovered about the Wates, the more I wished that I had simply imagined everything--if only to be in a dream and wake up.
Leighton and Garreth talk about killing their brother and they seemed serious...All this can’t be true...
But even if I wanted to deny the truth of what I had seen or heard, in my heart, I knew it was real. The revulsion already on Travis’s face intensified when his gaze finally fell upon me. A wicked gleam shone in his eyes and there was nothing reassuring about it.

“You,” he spoke with disgust and resentment, “you’re gonna pay for this.”

I shivered. I didn’t doubt for a minute he intended to get back at me for making him an outcast in his own family. More than ever, I wished all this wasn’t real because otherwise, I’d be dead soon.

“I’m going to kill, you--”

Garreth’s insult was drowned in the noise of the explosion from the windows of the room. Shards of glass flew in all directions and Leighton forced me down,  throwing me onto the ground with her to escape the rain of sharp debris. Some still flayed my skin though. When everything stopped and I came out of the shock, I looked up, searching for the origin of it, Travis. The living room was a mess even more than when I arrived but other than that, there was no trace of him. He had disappeared. As had Garreth. Leighton shouted something in her native language and after several minutes, Garreth returned inside, through one of the gaping holes appearing in place of the windows of the room.

“What are you doing? We gotta catch him!” Garreth pronounced harshly.

“No, we must protect Deliah. That’s all that matters. Who says he doesn’t want us to move away so that others can come here for her? Let him run away.”

Anger seemed to literally blaze from Garreth’s eyes and his features were distorted by it.

“You realize that he knows where she is? He will tell them, dammit!”

“If he’s in contact with them, then he will have already told them where she is located. And if this is not the case, well, he will tell them soon. In the end, it will only shorten the deadline. They would have learned sooner or later anyway and you know it.”

He turned his head, annoyed by the escape of his brother and the veracity of his sister’s words. I was in shock. My brain was trying to process information and the events that had just occurred. In no time, I had to admit the Wates were not human, all the weird things that I saw were real and now, Leighton and Garreth spoke of strangers who obviously wanted to hurt me and seemed even worse than Travis, which I hadn’t thought possible until now. Really, it was too much for me.

“Deliah? You okay?”

“I...I don’t know... I... I don’t think so...”

I was stunned, clueless and scared and I didn’t know what feeling prevailed over the others.

“Come with me,” Garreth said, grabbing me by the waist to guide me to the kitchen as the living room was filled with broken glass.

We all sat on chairs arranged around the central island and the dead silence between us forced me to dwell on the last events. It was true. It was real. I had to face it. But I didn’t feel the strength to do it at the moment. I finally turned my attention to Garreth and Leighton. They stared at me, waiting patiently for me to speak.

“I think there are many things that need explanations...Where do we begin?” I asked them nervously.

The answer wasn’t at all what I expected.

“What an idiot!” Leighton exclaimed and she practically ran out of the kitchen.

“What--”

I was silent at the sight of her coming back as fast as she was gone. In her hand she held disinfectant and cotton. She sat next to me and started to take care of me.

“Stop,” Garreth intervened as he suddenly stood beside us, putting a hand on Leighton’s. “I’ll do it myself.”

They exchanged a look and Leighton gave way to her brother. I opened my mouth to assure them that I could handle it, but he beat me to it.

“I don’t wanna hear you. I’ll do it, end of the discussion,” he told me on a final tone.

He grabbed my left hand and began to disinfect my cuts and wounds. I winced at the touch of the cotton soaked in alcohol, but I found myself telling me that the additional time he was granting me before the discussion was more than welcome.

“You need a painkiller?” Leighton asked me.

I forgot my headache because of fear and adrenaline but now that everything had calmed down, all the pain was coming back with a vengeance and nothing in me had the desire to refuse.

“Yes. I have some with me,” I told her, remembering the pills Mary gave me yesterday. “They’re in my bag. It’s...”

She left before I could finish or even tell her where to find my bag. I had a feeling she did it mostly to let Garreth and me talk face to face. As soon as Garreth’s eyes riveted to mine, I knew my reprieve was over.

“I didn’t want you to discover it that way. I didn’t want you to see me...as I was today. I must have...scared you and I’m sorry. You can’t imagine how much I am, especially when I think of everything you’ve been through because of Travis...and me, since I didn’t see any of it and, therefore, I wasn’t able to stop him before he did what he did.”

For a moment, I concentrated on Garreth and his unjustified guilt rather than all the unreal things I came to become aware of.

“Your reaction was scary, yes but...normal, I guess,” I replied, realizing that anyone in his place would surely have reacted badly when he learned that his brother did such things to a person that he or she cared for. “You couldn’t guess what he was up to. It would have taken me talking to you or Leighton to understand what was going on. With or without Travis, anyway, I would have finally discovered the truth and there was no way I could have reacted well to such revelations. Even if everything would have gone as planned and I would have come here to get answers and you’d have given them to me, the truth wouldn’t have been easy to digest.”

I sincerely regret having decided to come here. If I hadn’t come, none of this would have happened and I would still be at home, convinced that I was crazy and it would have been so much better. It was too late to change anything though and like it or not, everything was real and I would have to get used to it.

“What do you mean when you say that if things had gone as planned, you would have come here to have answers? What answers?”

“Mary,” I told him and he frowned, lost. “The school nurse. I went to see her because of my migraines due to my visions and she said something that sparked my curiosity. She talked about the first day of school and a call that Leighton would have made from my home. As I didn’t remember it, I came here to find out how it could have happened without me having any memory of it.”

“I see...”

I pleaded with my eyes for him to go on. I knew he had the answers to all of my questions. It wasn’t his voice, however, which resonated in the room.

“I told you, Garreth, I shouldn’t have practiced the
Askretagae
on her again,” Leighton said back in the kitchen.

She put my bag at my feet and gave me one of my pills. Then, she went for a glass in a cupboard, filled it with water and placed it in front of me. I swallowed the pill with a little water before putting the glass back down on the central island.

“Thank you,” I told her before continuing, both curious and fearful to get an answer. “What is this
Askre
... thing?”

“The
Askretagae.
It’s a kind of mental wall, a sort of psychological barrier. It allows you to block unwanted memories in a human mind.”

The shock felt at her words left me speechless and silent for several moments. What was that all about? I suddenly remembered Travis’s words when I told him about the visions. Is that what he was talking about? After all, he said that Leighton was responsible for that, so it seemed plausible.

“You manipulated my brain? Several times?”

She glared at her brother before sitting down in front of me. She tried to grab my hand but I withdrew it, not wanting to become compliant by her compassion after such an announcement. I had to have my mind as clear as possible to assimilate all the things they were going to tell me. She grimaced.

“Don’t blame her. It was I who ordered Leighton to do it, both times,” Garreth announced.

If I had any doubts about what Travis said, there wasn’t any more now. Leighton and Garreth were responsible for all the strange things that had made me think that I was losing my sanity. I forced myself to turn back all the feelings that arose in me, wanting to hear what they had to say before blaming them for anything.

“You may have ordered me to do it, but both times you were forced to make the decision,” his sister objected.

“If none of you wanted to put me through...this thing, why did you do it?” I questioned them, lost by their confidences.

Leighton met my stare. “The first time we practiced the
Askretagae
was because Tess had asked us to prevent you from having access to memories of anything related to our world or your parents.”

“And then there was the second time,” he added, “when you were attacked by one of our congeners on the way home, the first day of school. It was too early for you to be made aware of the existence of...our world.”

His statement was a shock to me and my heartbeat quickened as I gradually became aware of what it meant, even if at that moment, I wished like never before that all this was a bad joke. I understood better why the first day of school, at least the end of the day, was blurred in my mind. What I could hardly believe, however, was that Tess knew about this other “reality.” How was this possible? And why would she ask Leighton and Garreth to...Annabelle’s words about our grandmother suddenly came back to me. She said I didn’t know who Tess really was. That she had done everything in order for me to know nothing of our parents. My drawing was similar to what my father had done one day, Tess’s secrets about my parents, my father’s burned drawings that Annabelle told me about, the strange nightmare about my parents’ death, different from the version that I always have been told. Everything finally made sense and yet I didn’t want to believe it. Tess couldn't have done that to me. Not her.