Unhinged (12 page)

My eyes tear up as the need to save Logan
almost breaks me. I can’t lose the one person that loves me
unconditionally, the one and only boy that may ever love me. I want
to hug Logan, hold him close and protect him. But I know this is
just a memory, a copy of something that has already happened. I hug
myself to ward off the threat of things that cannot be, and
hopefully, preserve the desires that must prevail.

From outside, I hear a sudden deep thundering
in the distance. It sounds just like a freight train as it echoes
throughout the rafters of the old cafeteria. Logan and I are the
only two people that turn toward the roaring sound. I run outside
to see what's coming, though deep inside I already know. I race as
fast as I can to the outdoor courtyard attached to the cafeteria
building and jump up onto one of the circular metal table where
seniors eat. Up ahead in the distance, I see a black swirling
tornado at least a mile wide making its way towards us—and it’s
aiming straight for the school. Out of nowhere, Logan appears
beside me.

“It's almost here,” he states calmly. “You
have to leave, now.”

“I can't. I have to figure out how to get rid
of the tornado before it hurts you.”

“It's not me it wants,” he says sadly, as he
takes my hand into his.

Even though I'm afraid to ask, I know I have
to. “Who’s it after then?”

“You. It's coming for you.”

For some reason, this answer doesn’t surprise
me. No matter how hard I try to have a normal life, the darkness
always seems to find me. That’s the reason it’s called a curse.
“It's okay, Logan,” I say in a soft voice, squeezing his hand for
reassurance. “I can handle it. Just please go back into the
cafeteria. I don't want it to take us both.”

Logan opens his mouth to protest, but I
silence him by placing my fingers over his lips.

“You are already my hero, Logan. You've saved
my life and my soul just by loving me. Now, it’s my turn to save
you.” I kiss him lightly on the lips, then take off running towards
the tornado. It isn't long before I’m swept up within its strong
hands and my world is once again thrown into chaos.

* * * *

My world spins round and round until I want
to puke. I’m not hurt by anything within the darkness of the
howling winds, just overwhelmed by vertigo. Finally, I’m slammed
down onto a hard surface. I lie there for a minute, waiting for the
world to stop spinning, hoping to regain what little balance I have
left before I try to move. The air smells like mildew and
feces.

As I look around, everything is still dark,
save a hint of light coming through a very small window at the top
of the room. I sit up, but I don’t move since I am unsure of where
to go or what to do. My eyes adjust to the darkness, but I still
don’t see anything. This has to be someone’s memory, so why isn’t a
‘someone’ in here?

As if on cue, a loud scraping sound invades
the silence. I cover my ears; the noise feeling like it is scraping
against my soul. It’s worse than nails against a chalkboard. I look
around, but still see nothing. After a grueling twenty or thirty
seconds, the scraping sound ceases, only to be replaced with a
cackling. So there is someone else in this room with me.

“Hello? Who’s there? Come out and show
yourself!” I demand.

Again, I am met with cackling from what
sounds like a little girl.

“Look asshole, either show yourself now or
else I’m going to get angry,” I say unconvincingly. Fear and anger
appear in my mind before I remember this is a memory. Granted, it’s
one of the first I’ve ever seen versus experienced, but still they
can’t hurt me. Can they? “Okay then,” I begin. “Either show
yourself or I’ll just leave. If you have something to tell me, you
better tell me now,” I threaten, despite the fact that I have no
idea how to leave, though I doubt that she knows that.

The cackling begins again, louder now, with
the awful scraping sound thrown in for good measure. I’m about to
turn around and see if I can find a door, when the cackling is
replaced with a high pitched voice squeaking out syllables that may
or may not count as words.

“We can see you,” she mumbles from a dark
corner of the room. “We see you, but you are not one of them.”

I know I am going to slap myself later for
it, but I have to ask. “One of who?” 

“The evil ones with needles. They come
in white coats to hurt us. But not you, you are darkness. Have you
come to take me to hell then?” she asks excitedly.

“Um…no,” I respond to that bizarre question.
“At least I don't think so. Forgive me, but who is ‘we’
exactly?”

“The voices. They tell me what to do and I do
it. But sometimes they disagree, and it gets loud. So many voices;
can't think. Can't you hear them too?” she asks, surprised.
“They're everywhere and they never leave me alone. Ever.”

Despite the fact that we are having somewhat
of a conversation, she continues to scratch at the bricks within
the filthy wall. Her fingertips are already bloody nubs.

“Why won’t they leave you alone?” I ask.

“They say we have a job to do, and they won't
leave until it's done.”

Oh. Well that makes perfect sense…to a crazy
person. “What job has to be done exactly?” I ask, wondering why I
continue to try and make sense out of the senseless.

“Don't know, don't care. I’ll do whatever
they tell me to do. Even when they tell me to do very bad things.
Which is a lot.”

Since I am absolutely certain I don’t want to
know what constitutes ‘very bad things,’ I decide not to ask. I
venture to something much safer. At least I hope it will be. “How
many other people are in here with you?”

“Ninety-two. But it changes every day. We are
used to it. We’re never alone.”

Alone? Not being alone is having two or three
people with you chatting. Ninety-two is a freaking insane party. I
look around the empty room and start to freak out a bit, wondering
if the people I can’t see are really there or not. If they are
here, or maybe even touching me right now, I thankfully can’t see
them do it. I try to take deep breaths to calm myself, but it isn’t
working.

“They want me to tell you that yes, they can
see you. Oh, and five of them are smelling your hair right
now.”

Oh snap
. The freaking other people
heard the questions that I asked myself inside my head. Well, that
didn’t make anything weirder at all. Completely freaking out now, I
start to hyperventilate as I search for the door in the dark room.
There has to be a door, has to be a way out of this insane memory.
I feel along the dirty wall like I'm insane too, desperate to get
out. I wonder fleetingly if that is why the girl scratches as well:
she’s desperate to find a way out. But she is
never
going to
get out. She is apparently schizophrenic and in it for life.

I’m still searching desperately for an exit
when my crazy roommate starts chanting. Worse yet, it’s the same
chant I’ve heard before, repeated to me through a door by a crazy
boy in a mental hospital.

“He and you, the only two. Death of one,
destiny be done.”

“What did you just say?” I demand in a shaky
voice.

“He and you, the only two. Death of one,
destiny be done,” she happily repeats.

Clarity hits me like a freight truck going
one hundred miles an hour straight into my brain. It’s a message,
something for me. I have no idea what it means, but I do know that
it’s a clue. One that I have to figure out if I am ever going to
help the people I love. I run toward the crazy girl and stop just
short of touching her. Desperation has completely overridden my
feelings of fear.

“You have to tell me what that means!” I
scream. “Why does someone have to die?” I demand, the pitch of my
voice getting higher with each word spoken.

“He will come for you soon, Aimee. You will
find him by the house made of light. There, the two will become
one.”

What kind of answer is that?
I ask
myself. The crazy girl cackles like she made a joke and turns back
to face the wall, continuing to dig her way out with her bloody
nubs. I am completely dismissed from her thoughts now.

“Tell me, dammit!” I yell as I move toward
her and grab her arm to turn her around, the need for answers
fueling my anger. I touch her bare shoulder, where the hospital
gown is worn and torn, to spin her around to face me, hoping to
have a lucid discussion. I realize too late that wasn’t a good
idea.

My hand instantly freezes in place on top of
her shoulder and we are both unable to move. It is almost exactly
like what happened when I touched Logan and Dejana as they lie
unconscious. But it doesn’t make any sense. I am already in a
memory, already part of something that doesn’t really exist, so why
can I touch her? How can I feel her as if she’s real?

I feel an electric current pass through my
hand from the now stoic and silent crazy girl. The white light
starts from beneath my palm and spreads out until my entire hand is
translucent. The light builds, bringing heat that courses
throughout my hand, still cemented to the crazy girl’s
shoulder.

In no time at all, my hand burns like it’s on
fire. To my utter dismay, the light does not stay in my palm. It
starts to move up my arm, as well as throughout the girl’s body.
Neither of us can move to escape the heat coursing through our
veins. The white light gets brighter and brighter until I have to
close my eyes to shield them from its intensity.

The heat attacks my entire body. My mind
registers the intense pain, even though I know it can’t be real. As
the seconds tick by, I am more and more certain that touching her
may in fact be my downfall. I have no idea what’s happening, or how
to stop it. Seconds after that thought, the light consumes the
darkness and everything it contains. Soon, the dungeon and the
crazy girl are sucked into oblivion and everything disappears.

* * * *

I awaken on the floor of Logan's room,
disoriented, but alive. The darkness in his room seems more intense
now after the explosion of light within the memory.
What was
that?
I wonder. Well, whatever it was, I am definitely not
going to touch a psycho in a stolen memory again.

I sit up and make my way over to Logan’s bed.
He's still unconscious, but he’s breathing. If I didn’t know
better, I would think he’s sleeping. I climb onto the bed with him,
lost in the hopelessness of everything. I hug his torso, soaking
his shirt with the tears that are cascading down my face. I should
have known better, I can’t save him. I can’t save anybody. For some
unknown reason, these awful memories are making their way into the
minds of the people I love. The problem is, I have no idea how in
the world to get them out.

Beneath me, I feel Logan grumble in his
unconscious state. I wish again that there was something I could do
to help him. All I seem to be good at is finding the problem, not
that I can do a damn thing about it. Logan begins to thrash as he
grumbles, battling some inner demon that I couldn’t save him
from.

“Logan, quiet please or your parents will
hear you,” I plead, but it doesn’t work, he only thrashes more at
the sound of my voice.

“Aimee, no!” he screams.

A flood flows down my face as the
hopelessness once again engulfs me. I can’t help him. I can’t save
anybody. I’ve doomed all I love to this hell. If I have any hope of
saving them, I have to figure out where this house of light is and
what this ‘one death’ crap is all about.

From outside Logan’s room, I hear a door open
and his mom call out his name. As much as I hate it, that’s my cue
to leave. “Hang in there, Logan,” I say through my tears, stalling
a bit to gain the strength I need to say goodbye.

Before it is too late, I fly to Logan’s
window, open it quietly, and throw myself through it, landing on
the overhang just underneath his room. I manage to get the window
closed just as his bedroom door opens and his mom enters his room.
I see her run over to his bed, asking him what’s wrong, her panic
increasing when she doesn’t receive a response. His father comes in
right behind his mother, holding a cell phone to his ear. I can
hear him talking with a 911 operator. Even though the hospital will
have no idea how to help him, I at least know that he will be safe
for now.

“It’s only for a little while, my love,” I
whisper to the unconscious Logan from my perch just outside his
window. Even though he’s out of it, I’m still convinced that his
heart can hear me. I allow myself one last look at the only boy
I’ve ever loved before I jump to the ground and blend into the
darkness.

Chapter
Thirteen

~ Even Demons Have Friends ~

Since my car is still at Anchor hospital with
Mary, I have to run all the way home from Logan’s house. Luckily,
he doesn’t live far from me, just one neighborhood over. As I make
my way home, my thoughts are as dark as the night that surrounds
me. What first began as one person going crazy at school, has
skyrocketed to everyone I care about being taken from me. No, not
taken, ripped from my heart and left to a horrible fate; a fate
they have to fight alone within their minds. Worse yet, I am
powerless to stop it.

Without the help of Dejana or Logan, how can
I possibly find this other person who is part of my destiny, or
figure out why someone has to die because of it? And what in the
world did she mean by a house made of light? The more I try to find
answers from the insanity, the more my hopelessness thrives. I have
lived for so long, clinging to the fact that I need no one, only to
come to a point in my life where I can’t move on without another
person’s help. If I can do this alone, I have no idea where to
begin. And if that isn’t a cause for desperation, anguish, and
melancholy, I don’t know what is.