Going Lucid (8 page)

“No,”
Malakha said dropping her hand and taking her bag from Sabrina. “The knife
Eliza used wasn’t that big. The cuts didn’t really hurt much beyond the initial
pain.”

“Wow.
You almost really had me fooled there,” Sabrina said. “You could have won—“

“Shh!”
Malakha said as she held out her arm to stop Sabrina from walking. The laughter
was changing.

“What
is it?”

Malakha
frowned. “It’s not laughing anymore.”

“It’s
not?”

“It’s
growling. I think it’s angry.”

“Angry?”
Sabrina asked.
“Angry at what?”

The
scream that followed caused both girls to jump.

“’What
was that?” Sabrina asked.

“I
don’t know,” Malakha said. “But the growling is getting louder and it’s coming
from the same place.”

Malakha
gestured for Sabrina to follow her as they both rushed down the hall. They
turned the corner to a hall filled with more classrooms to see a boy leaning on
the wall. He was pale, sweating, and trembling violently.

“What’s
wrong?” Sabrina asked.

Malakha
ignored Sabrina, the hallway suddenly seeming very loud. Not that Sabrina was
talking loud, but the insistent angry growls seemed to be competing with every
other sound in the school.

“Are you
okay?” Sabrina asked going up to the boy, but he pushed her away.

Malakha
started to step between them, concerned that the boy might attack Sabrina like
Eliza had done only yesterday. He didn’t. Instead he let out a loud deep cry
and fell on the floor where he began to spasm on the ground.

“Oh my God!
Is he having a seizure?”

Malakha
was able to tune out the growls, which had now turned back into laughter,
enough that she could process what Sabrina had just said. Malakha’s attention
wasn’t the only one Sabrina had succeeding in getting though. The door to three
of the classrooms opened and a few of the students along with the teachers from
each classroom filed out.

“He’s
having a seizure!”

“What
do we do?”

“Put a
spoon in his mouth!”

“Don’t
be stupid!” someone shouted and a student, one younger than Malakha, came
through to kneel on the right side of the boy. She tried to move him to lie on
his left side, but he was heavy. She rolled her eyes and asked, “Someone want
to help me?”

Two
students and a teacher came forward to help her roll him over onto his left
side. They held him there, waiting for the seizure to be over. Malakha stared,
resisting the urge to tell the voice, wherever it was, to stop laughing, that
this wasn’t funny, but she really wanted to avoid being declared either crazy
or possessed. But the laughter was getting louder in her ear and so she finally
muttered, “Stop it.”

The
laughter paused and then Malakha heard the voice again, but it wasn’t laughing,
not completely.

“Why should I?”
Its voice was deep and
throaty, reminding Malakha again of Bowser in the last Mario game she had
played.

“Because
it’s not funny,” she said and then added, “Are you doing this?”

The
voice didn’t answer.

The
seizure was over now and two of the older boys picked the victim up to take him
to the infirmary while the teachers urged for everyone else to go back to their
classes. Malakha and Sabrina remained.

“You
okay?” Sabrina asked.

Malakha
nodded and then said, “Come on. We’ve got to get to the infirmary so the doctor
can look at my shoulder.”

“I
thought you said you were faking.”

“I was.
Still am, but we’ve got to figure out what happened, and they’re taking him to
the infirmary. We might overhear something.”

“Malakha
he just had a seizure. It happens to people sometimes.”

“Just like it sometimes happens that people have bad trips when
they do drugs, but I went to Hell.”

“You
think it’s connected?” Sabrina asked, almost running to keep up with Malakha’s
strides.

“I know
it is,” Malakha said. “The laughter only happens when someone’s in pain. It’s
like whatever it is laughing is some sort of sadist.”

“So
it’s just having fun?”

“No,”
Malakha replied. She paused, wondering if it was a good idea to reveal this,
but it’s not like they had any other clues. “I think it’s trying to keep my
attention.”

Chapter
Eight

Lucid Dreaming

No
history of seizures or epilepsy. No drug use.
Just a full
blown seizure out of nowhere.
And while Malakha agreed with Sabrina that
sometimes things like this just happened, it didn’t just happen in a similar
manner that other recent events had.

“So
what you mean to tell me,” Sabrina said over the music the two were playing in
their room as she looked at the picture on Malakha’s phone of the chart that
showed the boy’s, Michael’s, medical record, “Is that you think Eliza attacking
you, Michael having a seizure, the laughter and you going to hell is all
connected?”

“How
could it not be?” Malakha asked lounging lazily on her bed with her laptop as
she browsed the internet for more information on Hell, but finding nothing.
“I’m not hearing the laughter for nothing. It’s like whatever it is laughing is
playing a game or something.”

“And
what’s the game?” Sabrina asked.

“Isn’t
obvious?” Malakha asked. “He’s playing this game for the same reasons I
purposely goad the nuns and monks into conversation just to show them how
illogical their beliefs are. It’s laughing at the fact that even with all their
religion, the nuns, the monks, the priests, everyone else involved, they don’t
know what they’re up against, even though they have an idea that it exists.
It’s mocking them. It thinks their rituals are ridiculous. So he causes trouble
knowing that no one will ever know the real reason behind it because they’ll
explain it away with science because everything happening is outside the
confines of their religion. When it found out I could hear it, the game just
got more interesting.”

Sabrina
sat up on her bed to look at Malakha, who was now randomly browsing the
internet.

“How
did you figure all that out?”

“The
horror movies do it all the time. And I read Dracula last year. That’s
practically the reason they couldn’t catch him. The supernatural transcends
science and religion,” Malakha said absently. Still feeling her best friend’s
eyes on her she added, “Just because I occasionally dog religion and think
science oversteps its bounds sometimes doesn’t mean I don’t study the stuff.”

Sabrina
was silent again, and Malakha started to turn to look at the girl to ask if it
was so unbelievable that she actually knew about the very things she didn’t
believe in. Before she could fully look at that girl though, there was a knock
on their door.

Malakha
got up to answer it, rearing her head back when she saw Malak at the door.

“Malak?
What are you doing here?”

“If you
let me in before the nuns round the corner, I’ll tell you,” Malak whispered
holding the girl’s kindle and his laptop.

Malakha
let him in, ignoring Sabrina’s surprised gasp as Malak walked into the room.

“How
did you get in here?” Sabrina asked.

“Well
after sneaking in here carrying Malakha while she was unconscious at two in the
morning, doing it at eight o’clock without an unconscious body was relatively
easy,” Malak said pulling the chair from Malakha’s desk and setting it between
Malakha and Sabrina’s beds. He opened his laptop and as he logged on, his
fingers having memorized where the letters for his password were, he grinned at
Malakha and asked, “So am I on your radar now?”

At
first Malakha didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered their
conversation from earlier that day. To be honest, she wouldn’t have paid any
attention to the fact that he wasn’t in his uniform if he hadn’t pointed it out
to her. But since he had pointed it out to her, Malakha noticed that he was in
sweat pants and a men’s tank, purposely trying to impress her with his
admittedly muscular arms.

Malakha
scowled at him. “What do you expect me to do? Swoon and fall head over heels
all of a sudden?”

“I
wouldn’t complain,” Malak said now looking at his computer screen, a smirk
playing on his lips.

Malakha
didn’t reply, opting to turn the music up a little louder. The nuns might hear
it a little through the doors if they passed, but they wouldn’t bother her
about it, and they wouldn’t hear Malak’s voice through the door either.

“Sorry.
You’ve got nothing on Julius,” Malakha finally replied.

Sabrina
laughed at that and said, “Terrible isn’t it Malak? You’ve had no competition
for all these months and then Malakha goes to hell and gets a crush on the
first guy she meets.”

 
“I don’t have a crush on him,” Malakha said
glaring at Sabrina.

“And I
would like to change the subject so you all won’t be able to tell how totally
jealous I am by the way I would like to respond to that,” Malak said tersely.

Malakha
rolled her eyes. And people said girls had mood swings…

“You
must have found something. Otherwise I don’t think you’d risk getting in
trouble to come over here,” Sabrina said.

Malak
turned the computer to them and began.

“I’ve
been doing research about this since lunch and at first I didn’t find anything
except the usual stuff about going to hell when you die, so I searched about
people having experiences when they’re unconscious and you won’t believe what I
found. It didn’t come up on the first couple of pages, but it’s the only thing
similar to what you experienced,” Malak replied.

“Great,”
Malakha said. “So I’m crazy now?”

“No.
You know that prayer. The children’s one that they say on those old shows set
in the nineteenth century?” Malak asked.

“
That one about going to sleep and hoping God keeps your soul safe
for the night?” Malakha asked.

“Yeah.
But do
you remember the rest?”

Malakha shrugged and looked at Sabrina who said, “If I die before
I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. What of it?”

“There was a reason that prayer was written. In that prayer is the
belief that the soul leaves the body while it rests, and God takes it for safe
keeping.”

“Okay,” Malakha said slowly. “What’s that got to do with me going
to Hell?”

“Well if you think of the body as a protective house for the soul,
then naturally when the body is compromised, the soul is left vulnerable. Both
times you went to
Hell,
you were high, not quite
unconscious, but not completely conscious either.”

Malakha blinked and sat down on her bed. “Okay. Confused much,”
she said looking at Sabrina to see if she was as lost as she was.

“No… I think I get it,” Sabrina said. “If you’re not unconscious,
but not quite in a state of unconsciousness, why would your soul leave its body
for safekeeping until you awoke? It would still be there right?”

“Exactly,” Malak replied.

“Still not getting this,” Malakha said.

“What I’m saying is that states like that make your soul
vulnerable,” Malak tried to explain.

“Vulnerable to what?”

“To being taken! By the Devil, Satan, Lucifer,” Malak said slowly
as understanding began to dawn on Malakha.

“Or devoured by a giant zombie eagle,” she said.

“Yeah.
Except I
think you’re a special case,” Malak replied.

“Special?”

“Nothing took you. Nothing devoured your soul. Your soul actually
left your body and went somewhere; somewhere where the soul is the body,” Malak
said.

“So you mean to tell me my soul went somewhere while I was high?”

“Yeah… except you still had a connection to your physical body.
That’s why the bruises appeared on your arms and why you could hear Sabrina
calling you when she was trying to wake you up. If you hadn’t been connected,
your body would have been a vegetable or something, essentially brain dead,”
Malak explained.

Malakha was silent, arms crossed over her chest and a frown on her
face. Finally she said, “This is crazy. This doesn’t make any sense at all. Is
that all you can find.”

“It’s the best I can come up with when a person says they went to
Hell and hear voices,” Malak said.

“Well what about the laughter. What’s that?”

“You want my best guess based on what I’ve read?”

“Can’t be any crazier than what you’ve already told me.”

“You’re just really in tune to the sounds that naturally cross
over through the cracks. Everyone hears stuff every now and then and dismiss it
as nothing because we’ve been taught
it’s
crazy, but
you’re more attuned to it, so you know you heard it. You know you’re not crazy
even though everyone else might think you are.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Malak admitted.

“So people who are in the crazy house really aren’t crazy. They’re
actually hearing stuff that slips between the cracks in the divide between here
and Hell,” Malakha said dryly. “How long do you think it will be before I’m
committed?”

“You won’t get sent to the crazy house. People like you are the
exception, not the norm,” Malak assured.

“Maybe it has something to do with genetics or something,” Sabrina
suggested suddenly. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she thought.

“Genetics?”
Malakha asked.

“Yeah.
You know
a mutant gene or something,” Sabrina asked, unable to hide the grin on her
face.

“Stop watching
X-men
,”
Malakha said throwing a pillow at the girl.

Sabrina threw the pillow back on Malakha’s bed and said,
“Seriously. What if it is genetics?”

“Then we’ll never know.”

“Why not?
I
think it’s something worth looking into,” Sabrina said.

“Because I’m adopted and the records were closed and sealed off,”
Malakha informed.

Both Malak and Sabrina turned to look at her.

“You’re adopted?” they asked.

“Yeah,” Malakha said slowly. She thought they knew this. “You’ve
met my parents Sabrina. At the beginning of term last year when they helped me bring
and move my stuff here? Why do you think I don’t look like them?”

Sabrina blinked. “They were your parents.”

“Who did you think they were?”

“I don’t know. I just thought they were some people you knew,”
Sabrina said.

Malakha only laughed, mostly used to the reaction. People rarely
connected her with the pale, blue-eyed, dirty blondes that were her parents,
mostly because her skin looked more like coffee that was light on the cream
with brown hair that was either in twists or a tight ponytail to contain her
thick tresses.

“That’s even more of an incentive to look into your genetics,”
Malak said after getting over his surprise.

“Why? To make sure I’m not some half breed between Heaven and Hell
that can cross between the thresholds at will?” Malakha asked.

“We at least shouldn’t dismiss it,” Sabrina said. “In the mean
time, I think you should go to Hell again.”

“Again?
Why?”
both Malak and Malakha replied, but for obviously different reasons.

Malakha looked at Malak and shook her head. “Relax. I’m not that
eager to see Julius again. He’s a bit of an ass no matter how handsome he may
be.”

“If you think that someone there is making this stuff happen at
school then maybe Julius can help you stop whoever’s doing it before someone
really gets hurt,” Sabrina added.

“Two problems with that.
One: We don’t have a supply of LSD on hand and quite honestly,
while I was willing to chance it one more time, I would really not like to
become addicted to drugs. Two: I’m not particularly eager to be forced to walk
around naked again. I don’t know if Julius will be nice enough to let me wear
his trench coat again.”

“Well I know how to solve one of your problems,” Malak said and
then added, “I think anyway.”

“Which problem?”

“You don’t need drugs to go back to Hell again. You can just try
lucid dreaming.”

******

Malakha
yawned for the umpteenth time, cursing the fact that Malak had stayed so late
the night before trying to explain to her the basics of lucid dreaming, a state
of consciousness and unconsciousness that might be a way for her to cross back
into Hell without the use of drugs. Still it didn’t solve her problem of always
appearing there naked, but if Julius could give her a pocket knife that crossed
over with her, then surely there was something that could cross between the
worlds.

“Maybe,”
Sabrina said when they were dismissed as she packed her stuff, “maybe it has to
be somehow connected to the spiritual for you to take it.”

“Like?”

“I
don’t know, like a habit or something.”

Malakha
scoffed.
“Yeah right.
No way in the world you’re going
to get me in one of those things.”

“But it
might be the only way for you to take something with you. Think about it.
Habits are bestowed on nuns and the monks after they’re initiated as novitiates
after months, sometimes even years of observing and participating in the
community,” Sabrina said as Malakha slowly packed up her stuff.

“Where
did you learn that?” Malakha asked.

“Wikipedia,”
Sabrina replied. “If I had asked the nuns they would have thought I was
interested in becoming a nun. Anyway, they don’t get it until that trial period
is over and they’re given it in a special ceremony by a superior. That makes it
something spiritual though, right? Something spiritual has to be able to cross
over with you right?”