Luminosity (17 page)

“That was his ability. Some of us can manipulate others into thinking they are seeing something or someone else that is on their mind. It’s used to confuse.” Echo brushes my knotty hair out of my face, and when I look up, I can see him better. “He can also appear and reappear when he wants to. Or he could…before you killed him.”

“I
had
to.”

“I know, Beatrice. I don’t blame you for this game we are forced to play.”

The stress of what we just ran from overpowers all rational thought. There are questions I want to ask, but I can’t stop thinking about Gabe and that sickening smell. I close my eyes and try to focus. “So what is your ability?”

“To leave those I catch with the images, sounds, smells, and thoughts of what they dream. I don’t have to kill them.”

“You mean, an echo of those things?”

Echo smiles, lifting my chin with the crook of his finger. “Now you have it.”

I don’t smile back. How can I possibly smile now, after all that we’ve just run from? How can I smile when I don’t know where Gabe is, or if he is even alive? I suspect when I awake from this dream, it will be Gabe and the odor of gunshots and burning flesh that lingers behind.

“Time is running out, Beatrice. Soon, there will be no turning back. You need to start thinking about what you are going to do. What
we
are going to do in order to save each other.” He brushes his soft thumb over my lips. “Be strong and be careful.”

…

Echo’s touch is still on my lips when I wake, except that I can’t see him. I hear and smell the things that I predicted I would when I woke, and it makes me feel queasy and my stomach turns. I put a hand over my face and close my eyes as I think about Echo and how much time I really have to figure all of this out.

Chapter Twenty

The gallows are filled today. Each of the seven nooses is looped around a Dreamcatcher’s neck, or at least, a suspected Dreamcatcher. There are family members screaming from the crowds, their arms ext
ended toward their loved ones. I can’t look away from a little boy who can’t be more than twelve years old. He is the smallest of the seven, and his noose hangs lower than the others. He stares at his mother as she cries out, held back by others who can barely keep her from running up the stairs to save her child.

Some of those who are going to be hanged are Dreamcatchers. We can feel it. But others have simply been accused, and with paranoia at its peak, it doesn’t take much to be sent to the hangman. The little boy’s name is Ryan. He supposedly won’t give up his Dreamcatcher name. I don’t think he is a Dreamcatcher at all. He doesn’t stand with the same sort of pride as the others do.

As the executioner reads out the charges, we all listen intently. “Ryan has been accused of traitorous behavior leading to the suspicion that he is a Dreamcatcher. A classmate of his said that he saw him touch another boy’s arm inside the closet and cubby room and the boy screamed and fell onto the ground. Ryan’s power was not enough to kill the boy, but he has permanently scarred him and has surely tapped into his mind. For this, Ryan has been sentenced to hanging.”

Ryan looks at his mother, tears falling down his face, and his bottom lip begins to quiver. His mother, on the other hand, is crying louder than most anyone else, and when she’s not crying, she’s screaming hysterically for them to let her son go, that he’s innocent.

“This is so sad,” Mae whispers as the Executioner reads through the rest of the charges. There’s a baker accused of catching others and convincing them to pay too much for their bread, and a few others who stand stiff, tall and unblinking, giving away their identity as true Dreamcatchers.

“It is. How many of these are we going to have to watch in a day, I wonder?” I am quickly becoming bored of hangings. It’s heartless of me, I know, but this is the sixth one that we’ve seen today, and there are probably more to come. The Seers, by Institution law, have to witness each execution. Not only does it supposedly strengthen our senses but it should desensitize us at the same time. Judging by my yawn, it might be working. At least for me.

“Don’t know, but I hope not many.” Mae wipes at the tears in her eyes. “They are just so very sad.”

“They are.”

The Executioner finishes reading off each of the names and crimes. A few of those up there are actually Dreamcatchers—two women, Seraphim and Imagine, and a man who refuses to give up his name and has to wear a blindfold around his eyes. Eventually, all of their heads are covered in black sacks, so that we won’t have to look at their faces when they are strangled to death at the end of their ropes.

From the wing of the stage, the Keeper nods her head, and one-by-one, the doors under the accused’s feet open and they plummet below the gallows. Most of the older, bigger ones drop with a sickening
snap
, and they become still at once. But some of the lighter, younger people kick and struggle as they are strangled and suffocated. Ryan is one of the ones who kick the most, and it goes on for quite a long time. Even when we are all dismissed, he is still struggling.

“Return to the Institution knowing that for another day, we’ve managed to keep the City and the Citizens safe.” The Keeper smiles, her arms stretched out as if she were bestowing a blessing upon us. The Citizens—some of them still screaming and crying, others cheering and jeering—also begin to depart.

Something doesn’t feel right, though I can’t quite pinpoint what it is. I follow Mae to the Institution, which towers many floors above us, looming and ominous. Its main entrance doors remain open, though they normally automatically slide closed after each person crosses through them. There are so many of us, though, probably hundreds, that the guards keep them open and locked to let all of us through. Watchmen stand interspersed in the crowd, holding large machine guns that are pointed downward, but are ready to be drawn within the blink of an eye. They watch over each of us as we pass by, staring for any sign of abnormality or suspiciousness.

And then, something goes terribly wrong. A surge of pain sweeps through us all, and at one time the Seers fall to the floor, their hands on their necks. I feel like the air in my lungs is being squeezed out of me, and I claw at my throat to try and relieve the pressure, or open it so that I can breathe again. Some of those around me have actually done this, and I can spot Seers with holes in their throats, blood bubbling out as they choke to death.

There’s no screaming. We can’t scream. The Watchmen don’t seem to feel what we do and they stand there, guns drawn, looking for something at which to aim, but they can’t seem to find what is hurting us. If only I could scream at them, I’d yell that they
have
to find it before we all end up dead.

My violet eyes bulge, and I swear they are going to pop out of my head. When I look at Mae, she is turning a purplish-blue color, and her little fingers are leaving scratch marks on her delicate neck. I shake my head “no” at her, trying to get her to stop before she ends up like the others who thought that opening their throats would help them. Mae doesn’t seem to understand my intent, though.

I am Pathos.

I hear a man speaking. Those Seers who are still alive must also hear him, for even in their panic, they are looking around for the source. I glance at the gallows, where Ryan continues to struggle, but everyone else is motionless. Every time he kicks, I can feel a shock of pain pierce through my limbs. My body feels long, like my toes are being stretched out toward the ground, and my head is being pulled up at the sky.

Today, you’ve made a grave mistake. Though you’ve been given the gift of Sight, it is obvious that the Seers are indeed blind. You’ve killed an innocent boy, whose last breaths for his mother come in gasps that will never be heard. My name is Pathos. You shall share his experience and suffer with him.

Someone has to make this stop. I choke for air and can hear Ryan choking for air, too. We are all choking for air. I’m certain that my head is going to pop off the rest of my body. Mae’s fingers are inside of her neck now as she claws open an airway. I shake my head some more, but she’s not looking at me. She’s looking up at the sky, searching it for some sort of release. She gets it soon enough. Blood gurgles up through the hole and after she gives a few desperate, choking gasps for air, her arms fall to her sides and her violet eyes unfocus.

Though I want to scream for her, there’s nothing I can do but roll around in agony and will myself not to claw at my neck like the others. Finally, I hear gunshots. The pressure releases, and my head begins to throb as the blood rushes back to my head. The other Seers who are still alive push themselves up and look to the gallows where the Watchmen stand in front of the bodies, each of which has been shot. The blindfolded man has been shot several times. Ryan no longer struggles.

The Keeper pushes herself up off the stage floor, her own neck clawed and bloodied. She looks at us. I look at Mae. Poor little Mae. I crawl over to her and wrap her in my arms, pulling her into my lap as if she were a toddler. The Keeper gives orders to the Citizens to help triage and relocate the Seers. I don’t move, though. All I can think about is Mae as she frantically tore open her own throat, unaware that in the process, she’d never take another breath again.

Heavy footfall stops beside me, and when I look up, Gabe and Brandon block out the sunlight, casting a shadow over me and our fallen friend. They too are bloodied, just like the rest of us, with marks at their necks. Brandon has blood trickling from his eye where tears would normally come from. He doesn’t seem to notice it, not even when real tears start to pool, flushing the blood down his cheeks.

“Mae…” Brandon whispers her name and drops to his knees beside me. “Oh, Mae.”

“I tried to tell her to stop…” I blurt in my defense.

“I know, Bea, it’s okay.” Gabe kneels down and puts a hand on my shoulder. “We couldn’t help it. The Dreamcatcher had us. Or, at least he had one of us.” According to what we’ve been taught, if a Dreamcatcher can catch one of us, he can catch us all. Though we’ve learned this, we’ve never once experienced it until now. And after this, it is very unlikely that we will ever forget it either.

“I shook my head at her, but she kept on clawing. I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t stop myself…” Now tears form in my own eyes, and before I can get a hold of myself, I start to sob for the loss of my dear friend. “She’s too young to be dead.”
This is a war
, I hear Echo tell me. This is a war. No one is protected when it comes to war. Not even Mae.

Gabe wraps his arms around me and Brandon steps forward to take Mae away. She looks so tiny in his arms, so peaceful and loved. I watch as Brandon carries her away to wherever all the dead Seers are being put, then turn myself around so I can bury my head against Gabe and block out my bloody surroundings. The wounds on my neck ache and burn, especially when the air touches the flayed skin. I choke on my sobs, and the sick thought enters my head that maybe Mae felt like this as she was choking to death on her own blood.

“I think it has started, Beatrice,” Gabe whispers into my ear, his fingers brushing soothingly against my back. At some point, he begins to rock me, and I close my eyes as the comfort of his embrace settles in.

“I think so, too.” I speak into his black robes. It has started. Echo said that we’d know when the Dreamcatchers made their first attack, and nothing has ever seemed as clear as what we’ve just been through. It can only get worse from here, and I dread finding out exactly what “worse” entails.

“Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up.” Gabe helps me up to my feet by holding me under my elbows as my legs find my weight again. Around me, there’s a sea of bloody puddles and marks from fingers streaking, scratching across the ground. Bodies litter the area, waiting to be carried away, one-by-one. I estimate that at least fifty of the Seers have died in this place alone. I don’t know how many more inside might have been a part of Pathos’s fury.

When we get to the infirmary, it is packed. The cases range from those able to get around on their own, like Gabe and I, to those who are still choking on their blood and trying to find a way to breathe. Some nurses have plastic tubes shoved into patient’s necks, providing them with an airway until they can be sewn back up.

“I don’t want to be here,” I decide immediately. There’s too much going on, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. The smell of fear mixed with blood, piss, and vomit makes me want to get sick myself. Maybe I didn’t realize the extent of what fear could do to a person.

Gabe nods his head. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.” Neither of us is in any sort of medical emergency, so I follow Gabe’s intuition, more than content to be anywhere but here. Without complaint, he and I walk out of the infirmary and down the hall, which is also stained with sporadic puddles of blood.

He takes me up to the roof of the Institution, and when he kicks open the door at the top of the stairwell, the fresh air shocks me and makes it hard to breathe. I cough a few times, and Gabe does the same as we both stumble to a black, wrought-iron bench. I collapse onto it and put my head in my hands as tears start to form once more. All of this is too much for me, and though I don’t want to appear weak in front of Gabe, I think he understands. First Connie, now Mae. Connie was shot. Mae was driven to the edge.

I lean back into him and close my eyes. “What do we do now?”

“What do you mean, Bea?”

“The Dreamcatchers are coming, and it’s only going to get worse. I could see it in my Visions, Gabe. I could see them taking you away from me…” And although I have already told him this, he listens to my worries as if they were new and runs his fingers through my knotty hair, caked in blood. “Why didn’t I See this happen to Mae, though? Maybe I could have stopped it…”

“Don’t be silly, Beatrice. You know as well as I do that we can’t See everything. Nor can we stop everything. Just because we See it doesn’t mean that we can prevent it from happening. You know the Dreamcatchers are going to come…you’ve Seen them come. But no one can stop them from coming. I think we’ve learned that today.”

“She won’t stop trying, though.” The Keeper’s crusade almost seems personal in some ways. If she knows we can’t stop them from coming, then why bother sending us out into the City to hunt them?

“No, she won’t.” Gabe sighs after pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m going to miss Mae, but I am glad that I did not lose you, too. I didn’t know where you were during all of that, and all I could think of was getting to you and making sure you were okay.”

“You thought of me? During all that pain? Didn’t your head feel like it was going to explode?”

“I thought it
was
going to explode, but when I saw those people around me gouging their eyes out to stop the pressure, and clawing at their necks, I wondered if you were already gone. It frightened me.” Gabe isn’t one to admit to weakness much. He has done so with me only a few times, and I try very hard not to make a big deal out of it, since I’m afraid if I do, he’ll stop telling me what’s on his mind. And I want him to know that I will always be there for him, as he is for me.

I look up at Gabe so our violet eyes meet. “I’m here, though, and I’m okay. You don’t need to worry, Gabe.”

“I don’t now, no. But I worried plenty then.”

Maybe I’m feeling a bit guilty that during that whole episode I never once thought of Gabe. Maybe, in the back of my mind, I knew that he was okay. Gabe is always okay because he’s strong and levelheaded and he always knows how to stay calm in situations that seem so uncontrollable. Or maybe, I forgot about him. I couldn’t have forgotten about him, though. Why would I put Gabe out of my mind at a time like that? He could very well have ended up dead just like Mae, and I didn’t once think about that?