About the Dark (3 page)

The snapshots I was getting through Sinna’s
eyes vanished, but somehow, impossibly, improbably, I was still
seeing the floor by my feet. It quaked once again.

On its third quake, a coffin-sized segment of
the green floor in front of me ballooned up. In perfect silence, it
wriggled and jerked from side to side, as if something large was
pushing our floor from beneath.

My heart sang with excitement: it was
happening, it was here, the miracle that would set us free.

The bulge gave one last shuddering twitch and
then, still silently, cracked open. A gush of clear, cold liquid
shot straight up out of the hole, wetting my chin, my nose, and a
lock of hair that had slipped out of my ponytail. As I wiped my
face, wondering why the liquid smelled of rubbing alcohol, the
water spurt hit the ceiling and came back down, this time soaking
me head to toe, and I couldn’t believe it was just a vision. My
skin felt wet. My hair and dress clung to me as if they were truly
soaked, and the only word I could use to describe this fluid was
“real.”

More water came through the crack in the
floor, and then more still. Only it didn’t spread—it stayed around
me in a large circular puddle. I hopped up and down in it.

“I’m loving this!” I told Sinna, not sure if
I would get a response—he hadn’t specified if we’d be able to talk
while I was inside a nightmare. But I did hear from him: he
chortled and said, “Just don’t attempt to swim in this reservoir,
Ever. It’s
not
real.”

The water kept on rising. Soon it touched my
chin, and I hastened to press my lips together, which wasn’t easy
because I was grinning so hard. Then I had to pinch my nose shut.
Since I was a bit late on that, a little water trickled down my
throat, and it tasted exactly like the tap stuff I drank every day.
So…not a salty ocean after all? But no matter, it was still a fun
nightmare.

A small, paper-white ghost flitted past me,
and I whirled around, hoping it was a fish. But no, it was only a
lock of my own hair.

When the water reached the ceiling, I took in
the sensation of standing at the bottom of a gently sloshing liquid
pillar. It was like the best of good dreams. Then, not seeing why
Sinna had forbidden swimming, I tensed, bent my knees, and pushed
off the floor, feeling light…lighter than ever. When I ran out of
momentum, I floated, my arms open wide. The myriad ruffles on my
long white gown wafted around me. What with that and my long white
hair, I probably looked like a deep-water jellyfish. Let’s say a
venomous one. Trying not to giggle, I made a scary face at Sinna,
and maybe he laughed, but this time I heard nothing from beyond the
water pillar.

Since by now I was nearly out of air, I made
one last glorious pirouette, then waved to Sinna: get me out of
here. Before I could finish my gesture, though, the liquid changed.
The light blue of the ocean deepened to the color of a bruise, the
temperature dropped to freezing, and a sudden weight pushed me
down. Sinking, I gestured to Sin again, in a hurry, because the
water was rapidly turning black.

Thud
. I hit the floor harder than I
expected and at the wrong angle. Instead of landing on my feet, I
smashed into the cement with my heels, and before I could regain my
balance, I fell flat onto my back. As painful as it was, it woke me
up to reality: all around me was just water. Imaginary too. I
should be able to simply walk out of it. But as I scrabbled to my
feet, the water twisted, propelling me upward, all the way to the
ceiling, where it rammed my head into the wires that used to power
a smoke detector now long gone. The wires grabbed my hair like
long, greedy fingers. Cursing at them, I groped along my scalp,
searching for the knot. I found it close to my left temple, a tight
webwork of hairs and wires. I tugged on it frantically, and mostly
succeeded in undoing the mess, but I didn’t get to finish: the
water jerked me sideways, ripping out a strand of my hair.

But what the heck? This was just a
vision—okay, a nightmare—but still, not real. No, wait. Belatedly,
I recalled how Sinna had said that knowing none of this was real
was not going to help me. The water sloshed in my ears as if
laughing.

“Sin!” I screamed, remembering only at the
last moment to keep my lips pressed together. My yelp came out like
an echo of an echo. I could barely hear it myself. Worse still,
even with my mouth closed, my cry made me lose the last of my air.
At once, my brain seemed to be on fire, my chest felt as if it’d
been crushed in, and my blood hammered in every cell of my
body.

That’s when I knew I couldn’t wait for Sin’s
help any longer. I tore through my options: I could either let
myself sink to the floor and try to walk out of this water column
or I could attempt to swim to freedom right from this spot near the
ceiling. As the second option seemed more logical, I turned my
palms downward and dog paddled, aiming for the side of the column.
The water gave way readily, but when I was almost out, the evil
puddle heaved as if it were taking a breath and threw me back into
its center.

Damn this ocean.

I tried not to panic, but my lungs felt full
of water, and I was dizzy in a bad I’m-about-to-pass-out way. Well,
since this ocean seemed to have a brain somewhere, and that brain
seemed to hate me, I decided to trick it. For a moment, I hung
immobile, pretending to have accepted my drowning fate, then I
threw myself forward with every ounce of strength I had. The column
had to give, no matter what Sinna had said, but instead of flying
out to freedom, I slammed into a hard surface.

“Sinna!” I shrieked.

Eagerly, the water rushed down my throat, and
it didn’t taste like tap anymore—it was blood full of razors. The
ocean roared with glee while I thrashed, my hair twisting around my
arms, my dress binding my legs, and the water hanging like a
boulder around my neck. Down, down, down I went.

“Ever, wake up!” Sinna’s voice, weak and
far-off, drifted through my waterlogged ears. “Please! Please! Wake
up this one time and I promise I’ll never make another
nightmare!”

The water column shuddered, grumbled with
disappointment, and then, all at once, the ocean was gone. I gulped
down the air.

“Ever!” Sinna cried. “Ever, are you
okay?”

After a few greedy breaths, I felt strong
enough to take in my real surroundings. I was lying in Sinna’s lap,
one of his arms hugging my shoulders and the other pressing hard on
my solar plexus. Perhaps this was some kind of life-saving
maneuver, but he didn’t need to worry: as soon as the nightmare
vanished, I was fine. I mean, my chest still hurt, my throat tasted
raw, and my temple pulsed with pain, but I was far from dead. Maybe
I could even sit up—if Sin would let go of me. I lightly tapped on
his arm, asking him to release me, but he only squeezed me
tighter.

“Ever, say something.”

“It wasn’t like I expected,” I said. “I
thought it would be a gentle ocean. With warm water and small
waves, and instead—”

“Instead it was a nightmare,” Sinna finished,
and a drop of something salty—tears or sweat?—landed on my lower
lip.

“Precisely,” I said. “And I was silly to
expect anything else because you’re not gifted in weaving little
shiny dreams. Your gift is to make the most terrible of nightmares.
And trust me, that’s what I just had. Which means this test was a
huge success!”

“No, no…” Sinna choked on his sobs. “I wanted
you to have a good time in there. And I wanted to be in control of
what was happening. Only I wasn’t. You waved at me to stop the
vision, and I did, but it had no effect on you. So I hugged you. I
talked to you. But you couldn’t hear me. You wouldn’t breathe. You
were suffocating in a room full of air—and I couldn’t do
anything.”

I smiled at him. “Sin, I’m fine. Honest. And
I’m even dry. Which is beyond bizarre because, I’m telling you,
that water was so-o-o real. But hey, wait, my temple hurts like
mad. Did I really go up to the ceiling? How?”

Sin only groaned, and I knew: “I yanked that
hair out myself, didn’t I?”

Sin looked away, glanced at his own
reflection in the mirror-like steel door, and he seemed aged. His
usually brown skin looked gray, and his straight blue-black hair
was plastered to his cheeks as if he’d just gotten out of real
water. The top button was missing from his jacket.

I put my hand on his cheek. “Oh, come on.
Don’t chew yourself up. I survived, and you did it. You’ve come
into your gift. The first one out of the four of us. How awesome is
that?”

“Awesome?” Sin shook his head vehemently.
“Ever, it is nothing of the sort. You are too kind to scold me, so
I will do it myself: I am a moron. You could have died. And then
Fox would have murdered me. And that’s exactly what I deserve. And
what on earth am I going to do now?”

His last question puzzled me, and I was about
to ask Sinna what he meant by it when he abruptly and incongruously
focused on the lower part of my face. Confused, I gave it an
once-over through Sinna’s eyes too, and it seemed nothing but its
usual self: a sharp chin, two pale lips, and a short, pointy nose
with a slight indentation on its tip as though I had two noses
fused into one.

“Sin, you okay?” I asked.

Instead of an answer, Sinna leaned in and
pressed his mouth to mine. I couldn’t understand a thing. Sin
adored Demi. And he knew I loved Fox, the only one of the four of
us who’d never lamented having been kidnapped because, as he’d told
me, that’s how he’d chanced to meet me. And so I put my hands on
Sinna’s shoulders, preparing to push him away, when I realized that
his mouth tasted of strawberries, and his lips were fuller than
Fox’s, and softer, and not as hot. And come to think of it, I’d
never kissed anyone but Fox in my life. I began mapping Sinna’s
mouth with my tongue.

And then there were steps—and a voice—Fox’s
voice: “Ever, what the hell are you doing?”

Chapter 2

Before any of us could move, an alarm sounded in our
bookstore, a scratchy, low-pitched howling that warned us about our
guards coming to check on us and bring us our food. Every morning
for at least a decade, we’d heard this caterwauling, and it had
long stopped scaring us. But today proved different. Too caught up
in the moment, we all startled: Sinna’s legs jerked under me; Demi,
who stood next to Fox, cursed; and Fox’s right fist swung forward,
barely missing Sinna’s cheekbone.

“Fox, I’m sorry,” I said.

He clasped his right fist with his left
hand.

“Fox, it was my…my fault,” Sinna said. “I
don’t know what came over me. I felt compelled—”

Demi ripped the thick book she was holding,
her beloved
Martial Arts Bible
, in two along the spine, and
I flinched, fearing these book pieces would fly at my head.

Fox took the remains of the book away from
Demi. Threw them aside.

“Okay, people,” he said, stamping each word
loudly over the siren. “We’ll deal with this later. After the
check-up. Because today is the day we’re leaving this hellhole, and
so we’re going to do everything the way we agreed to do it while
we’re not alone. Understood?”

As we were nodding, he raised his voice even
more, “Now, move it. Face the wall. Legs apart. Hands above your
head. You know the drill.”

I began scrambling out of Sinna’s lap, but
apparently wasn’t moving fast enough for Fox because he lifted me
by my waist, carried me to the designated wall, and placed me where
I was supposed to stand. He also made sure that my feet were
exactly a shoulder-length apart and that my hands were placed high
enough on the chilly cement wall. Done with that, he stood by my
side.

The siren started to quiet—now it sounded
like a weeping child.

Fox’s arm brushed against mine.

“Fox,” I whispered, “that kiss…it wasn’t just
Sinna’s fault—”

He covered my hand with his. “Don’t worry
about it. I’ve already forgiven you.”

“What?” Demi gasped, and I too couldn’t help
but spin to face him.

Fox bent down to match his six feet, three
inches to my five. “Okay, I’ll be honest, I was insanely mad at you
for a second, but then…I don’t know…my love for you is just so much
stronger than any other feeling in me. As it should be, right? The
miracle of love conquering all.” He chuckled to tell me he knew it
was a platitude, but quickly stopped so I would also know he’d
really meant it. “Kiss me. No, not on the lips. I don’t know if I
can stop kissing you then.”

I pecked him on the cheek, and he moved away
because we were not supposed to be touching each other in the
guards’ presence. I leaned my burning forehead against the cold
wall. It hurt to think about my kissing Sinna and hurting Fox. And
it was painful to recall the nightmare Sin had made for me because
I realized Sin wouldn’t be able to submerge our guards into a
vision, at least not today, for there were six of them, and he’d
barely managed to create a nightmare for me alone. And there was
absolutely nothing pleasant that I expected from this upcoming
check-up. So I escaped into my mental library. It had as many books
as our bookstore. I began with
Gift Registry: Children’s
Edition
, a thick tome with pictures of giggling babies
scattered over its cover, “Dear children, on March 5, 1953, a
Soviet paranormal research lab
Serdtce
made an amazing
discovery. The scientists there learned that every single human
being had a talent hard-wired in his DNA. They—”

“Ev,” Fox called out in a voice that told me
he knew what I was doing, “don’t wander off. Not today.”

Guiltily, I nodded, promised to be on my best
behavior, and focused on the last tinkling notes of the alarm and
on the guards’ loud stomping through the mall. All of our guards
were gifted in godliness, which meant they could grow up to eight
feet and twice their width in a blink of an eye. Not that they
particularly needed any of that, in my opinion—those dicks were
mountains of muscles to begin with.