Visioness (11 page)

So many gaps in her memory,
so many uncertainties. Yet she knew she needed her sister.

As she turned a corner, she
saw
him.
His dark skin, his grey and white facial hair, his expression
like stone; inscrutable, yet so similar to her own.
Therron.
The scent,
so thick and rich. The music so beautifully frightening. She bumped into him,
thrown back, and awoke with a start.

“You were screaming dad’s
name again,” Charlotte said, sitting up in bed, her hair much less messy than
Adabelle’s own.

“Was I?” she asked. She
remembered the nightmare so vividly. She could barely feign ignorance.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. She
hesitated.

“And what else?” Adabelle
pressed.

“You screamed my name, too.”
She sounded frightened. Horrified even.

Adabelle attempted to muster
an answer quickly enough to be convincing, but she couldn’t. She was too tired,
still between awareness and sleep. Not quite as bad as the dream buffer, but
bad enough to be confused.

“Tell me what’s happening,”
Charlotte pressed. “Tell me so I can understand. I don’t
get
how dreams
work, or what’s bad and what’s not. I don’t really know why you scream or why
you talk in your sleep. I really just can’t wrap my head around it. But I know
when something’s wrong, or out of the ordinary, and this is one of those. And
until you tell me I won’t know what’s happening; won’t really be able to help
should you need me to.”

“You don’t have to worry,”
Adabelle replied.
You’re being a coward. Tell her! She’s old enough.
“You
can’t dream, so you don’t have to worry.”
She’s not a child anymore. She
needs to know.

These two parts of her mind
warred against one-another madly in her head. Charlotte still didn’t look
convinced. Not even slightly.

“I do worry, about you,”
Charlotte sighed. “I don’t care if it’s going to affect me directly or not. The
main thing is that I
need
to know so I can understand and help. I want
to help.”

She only wants to help.
She’s looking after you.

But Adabelle was meant to
look after her sister, not the other way around. She was the older one. She had
promised her mother she would care and protect her sister, and by keeping her
ignorant, she was better off. Parent’s lied all the time for the sake of their
children’s safety; how was this any different?

But then again, she deserved
something,
didn’t she? Adabelle owed her that tiny mercy, even if it was
an insignificant throwaway fact.

“Until I have all of the
answers, I do not want to tell you anything,” Adabelle said. “There is
something wrong, but I still don’t know all of the details. Until then, I
cannot tell you anything for fear of misinformation. I’m still waiting for
answers. There is so much that doesn’t make sense right now, and until
everything is confirmed…”
Until I get brave enough to visit the Oen’Aerei Halls...
“I cannot give you anything. I promise the moment I know everything for
certain, I will tell you, okay?”

Charlotte seemed not
entirely sated, but it was enough for now.

“Very well.”

“Thank you,” Adabelle said.
“Now go back to sleep. I don’t want you worrying.”

“I will worry,” Charlotte said.
“I’ll worry as much as I please. But you’ve given me something. Thank you, for
trusting me.”

“And that will do for now?”

“It will. For now.”

Her tone suggested that
‘now’ would not last very long at all.

The nightmares continued the
moment she’d rolled over to sleep. Her father with a knife, hilted with a
glowing emerald. Her mother, throat slit, blood dribbling down, dying the cream
coloured shift she wore crimson. Her sister, in the Dream Frequencies, running
through between the boundaries of other dreams. And then came the music box,
each note chiming gently to the tune of the Dreamer’s Lullaby. The music box,
as big as a house, appeared before her, opening. With a roaring rush of air and
dust and the stink of Therron’s cologne, her father appeared within the box,
standing atop the rim, cane in hand, hat donned.

“No!” she screamed.

But the music continued, and
so did the smell. It choked her with its musky stink, and the music deafened
her from all else. The stench and the music worsened with each passing second,
and then the music and the scent became the world. Her world. All-consuming and
encompassing.

“Get away from me,” Adabelle
screamed, turning to run. But as she turned, she found Therron there, too.

“No, go away!” She turned,
and he was there.

She screamed. She spun. He
was there, emerald-hilted dagger sparkling in the light that came from
everywhere.

“You will not escape me.”

A scream echoed through the
realms of the dream. It was not her own. But it was distant and frightened and
so
real.

“You will never escape me.”

The scream grew louder.
Higher. Broader.

“You won’t ever take me,”
she retorted defiantly.

“I will, before the end.”
His voice like a deep, rumbling prophecy. He said, “You will assist me.”

The scream now took over the
music. It was one of agony and fear, and then it broke, and it became a scream
of desperation. It shook Adabelle’s heart, for that scream was so familiar. So
recognisable.

It was Larraine’s.

Torn from the dream, as a
splinter is torn from a wound, she sat up in bed, aching all over and fighting
the overwhelming need to vomit. She held down the bile that burnt her throat
like fire, but the screaming still echoed in her mind.

No, not in her mind.

She could
hear
the
screams. Larraine’s screams. But how? She was so far away, in the hospital
ward.

Bursting out of bed, she
shot to the door, heading out into the halls of the University. The screams
continued down the hall. She didn’t have far to go, for she found Larraine in
the middle of one of the main hallways, dressed only in her hospital clothes,
knife in one hand. She screamed in defiance as she took each laboured, painful
step, her eyes filled with conflicted struggle.

“Larraine?” Adabelle asked.

“Adabelle,” she replied, in
a voice that was not her own.

Larraine charged at
Adabelle, Adabelle running in the opposite direction.

Her cousin screamed, and a
heavy weight against her back knocked Adabelle to the ground. Adrenaline kicked
in, and Adabelle found strength within she had not felt before. She felt the
tendrils of the dream buffer affecting her thought, but it seemed she was able
to fight it at present, however hard it tried to push against her. She threw up
her arms, in the hopes of fighting off the girl. She was strong, but Adabelle
was stronger, and she was able to throw Larraine off her with a mighty push.

“What are you doing?”
Adabelle cried. She picked herself up off the ground, with shaking arms.

Larraine only screamed in
response, thrusting the knife at Adabelle again and again. Each jab missed, but
they came increasingly close.

Adabelle’s heart raced.
Doors opened up and down the hall. Sleepy students emerged to check the
commotion. All of them hesitated on the threshold, unsure whether it wise to
join the fray.

“Therron is coming!”
Larraine screamed. “He’s coming!”

Adabelle’s heart skipped a
beat, her stomach seeming to drop to the pit of her body.

Larraine suddenly stopped
fighting, apparently gaining a moment of lucidity. She stepped back, strangely
calm, knife her hand, and began to cry. Tears rolled down her face in waves, a
pool gathering at her knees when she dropped. It was so sudden.

“I am so sorry, Adabelle.”
She threw the knife aside, the metal clapping against the hardwood floors. “I’m
so sorry.”

“You have no control over
this,” Adabelle whispered. The commotion apparently passed, people emerged from
their rooms, checking to see if everyone was safe, that none had been harmed.

“It’ll be okay,” Adabelle
whispered. A handful of students came out, one with a glass of water, one with
a damp cloth to dab Larraine’s sweat-streaked head. She was hot; burning, even.
She sat on the carpeted floor, her head drooping, exhausted. Adabelle dropped
to her knees, placing an arm around Larraine. Her skin burned hot; her face
continued to pour sweat.

“We need help if we’re going
to fight him,” Larraine whispered. “We’re going to need a lot of help. And he
wants you.” She sobbed loudly. “Oh, he
needs
you so badly.”

Larraine fell quiet.

Adabelle frowned, confused,
for Larraine’s ragged breathing had suddenly stopped. She’d slumped slightly.

“Larraine?” Adabelle
whispered. She dipped her head down, looking up into her cousin’s face. Her
eyes were open, yet they saw nothing. Her mouth drooped slightly, her entire
visage struck by some kind of sullen stillness. Adabelle took a moment to
collect her thoughts before reacting to the sudden stillness. She lowered her
hand slowly towards Larraine’s wrist, touching it with her index and middle
fingers.

And she felt nothing.

“I she okay?” asked someone
amongst the students gathered.

“No,” Adabelle whispered.
“She’s…” she fought her emotion. “She’s dead.”

There was silence in the
hall as the gravity of Adabelle’s words sunk in. Adabelle released Larraine,
letting her arms free of the burden. Larraine stayed slumped, unmoving, and
unseeing. Charlotte came down the hallway slowly, still dressed in her pyjamas
herself.

“Go back to the room,
Charlotte,” Adabelle said.

“No,” Charlotte said,
walking further forward, looking both confused and sad. Her eyes were
glistening with tears; her hands balled together near her mouth as if in silent
prayer. But she wasn’t praying. She was whispering. “No, no, no,” she muttered
with each step.

“Go back. Go back to your
room,” Adabelle repeated. “You don’t need to see this.” Her open arms wrapped
themselves around Larraine.

“What has happened?”
Charlotte asked.

“Charlotte. Go back.”

Charlotte stopped, a deep
intake of breath marking the moment of her realisation.

“You don’t need to see
this.” Adabelle struggled to maintain composure through her crying.

Letting out a loud sob,
Charlotte turned away from the tragic scene and ran.

You cannot hide it any
longer,
Adabelle
thought to herself, gaze dropping away from her younger sister to her cousin.
And
you cannot avoid the Halls any more.
Larraine was still and silent. It was
odd to think those lips would never breathe another breath again, never speak
another word.
You owe it to her.
On the fringes of her thoughts, she
felt a deep, impossible shadow where Larraine’s mind had once been. She was so
used to sensing people’s minds that she had not noticed Larraine’s. Yet it was
gone now, just a deep, dim void in its place; and oh how she noticed it! Like a
moment of silence amidst a string of screaming, it was obvious and incongruous,
and yet it was there; the silence of a deadened mind, the blackness of an ended
life.

She didn’t move from
Larraine’s side until some of the professors arrived, and then the police, who
quickly wired off the crime scene. The coroners took Larraine’s body away in a
black bag. She wondered whether her mother would be informed, if there were
even a need to tell her. Aunt Marie’s mind was lost so deeply to the dreams,
would there be a response from the woman with the news of her daughter’s death?
Would anyone aside from Adabelle and Charlotte attend the funeral? What of
Larraine’s father? After Larraine’s mother had lost her mind, her father left.
Did he even love his children any more? Did he know what was happening to his
daughter? Would he even care?

After a while in the privacy
of her room, she made her way to the dining room to eat lunch. She hadn’t seen
Charlotte for much of the day, and it had her worried. Where had she run? Or as
a more terrifyingly specific possibility,
whom
had she run to?

I have to keep her safe,
she thought,
and part of
keeping her safe is finding out the truth.

A visit to the Halls of the
Oen’Aerei drew ever closer, and inevitable. Her greatest fear was chasing her
now, and it was inescapable. It would catch up soon.

Larraine is dead. I owe her
this to her memory.
She daren’t consider the alternative, if she had been brave
enough to face her fear. She couldn’t let her regrets affect her too deeply.
She had to live in the now, not concern herself with impossibilities. Larraine
couldn’t come back as surely as her mother couldn’t. As surely as Aunt Marie’s
mind was gone beyond any return.

Yet she couldn’t fight
feeling sick about it all. She had been a coward; that was the only word for
it. She had been a coward and evaded the one thing that could have provided
some certainty through all this murky confusion. She would allow herself this
single regret.