New Sight (2 page)

“How did it feel when you took the frog’s eyes?” Mr. Mason asked.

“Good,” Lys answered, licking her lips. He wouldn’t get it even if she told him.

“How good?”

Better than she ever thought anything could feel. Better than getting to pee after holding it all night in a freezing cold tent. Better than waking up after a bad dream and finding herself safe in her bed. Better than her first kiss. Better than she ever imagined sex would be.

“Really good,” she said.

“So good you’d kill to feel it again?”

“Yes.” The answer came out of Lys’s mouth before she could stop it. Then the realization hit her. Lys
would
kill to feel it again.

“Did the same thing happen when you attacked your mother?”

Guilt punched Lys in the stomach. All her mother had done was bring her some soup for dinner. The scene flashed through her memory. The soup, her mom being worried and insisting that Lys look at her. The spoon. Her mother’s beautiful, blue eyes.

“Lys,” Mr. Mason prompted. “Why did you attack her?”

“She made me look at her!” she said, surprising herself with the intensity. “She made me look at her, and when I saw her eyes all I wanted to do was take them. I had to have them!” Lys stopped. Saying it reminded her that this was all real. She’d tried to take her mother’s eye out with a spoon. Would her mother ever forgive her? Did she deserve forgiveness?

“Lys,” Mr. Mason’s voice cut into her thoughts. “What were you trying to do to yourself?”

I was trying to end my pain!
Lys wanted to scream.

After coming to her senses, and seeing her mom bleeding on the floor, Lys had tried to take her own eye. If she couldn’t see anyone else then she wouldn’t ever feel the Need again.

A giant weight settled on her chest. She could hardly breathe, and she began to shake. “Please, just go.” She looked straight at the camera. “I want you to go.”

Mr. Mason leaned forward, his face moving into her view. “What do you want right now?”

He was too close. She couldn’t help herself, Lys lunged forward. All reason gone, she only felt the Need. If she had his eyes, she could see what he could see. If she had everyone’s eyes, she’d see everything. And that’s what she wanted.

The bonds held, but that didn’t stop Lys from leaning as far as she could toward Mr. Mason. “I want your eyes, too.” She didn’t recognize the cold voice.

Mr. Mason held her gaze for a moment longer before he leaned back.

“You need to go,” Lys said through gritted teeth. Her dad burst through the door.

Smiling, Mr. Mason stood. His gaze remained on Lys.

“I can help you,” he said, “but you’re going to have to trust me.”

Chapter 2

When Mr. Mason
had said she would be going through detox in a hospital, Lys had pictured a large, white building with lots of windows, four or five floors, rooms smelling of air fresheners that didn’t quite disguise the tang of antiseptic, an emergency room, and dozens of smiling doctors and nurses. Not an unfamiliar deserted road that wound through foothills lined with large, leaning trees that reached for them as they went by.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Lys asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She sat in the back seat of an SUV with her hands cuffed together and attached to the floor with a silver aircraft cable. The metal cuffs cut into her already chafed and swollen wrists using every bump in the road to remind her that she was still a prisoner.

Taking her fist steps out of the psych ward had given Lys’s heart the room to beat again, and for a moment she could believe that everything was going to be okay. But the hope had plunged to the pit of her stomach when Mr. Mason’s associates came with a wheelchair, the handcuffs, and a sedative to help her sleep.

“This is it, mate,” one of the men in the front seat said. Mark, if Lys remembered right. Short and stocky with dark hair, he talked with an Australian accent, which in any other circumstance Lys would have found hot. But after losing the last two and a half hours to a drug-induced black out, Lys didn’t much care about accents.

The SUV slowed and turned onto a driveway—more like a glorified dirt path that grudgingly allowed them passage than anything else. The already leaning trees seemed to cinch their branches together, closing off Lys’s view of the road behind and the sky above. As the sedative wore off, Lys found her heart pounding harder and faster with every foot that separated her from the main road. She swallowed, trying to clear the lump of fear from her throat.

“Don’t worry,” the other man said over his shoulder, seeing her in the rear view mirror. “Mason likes his privacy. Your parents can call anytime.”

Sweat coated her palms, and Lys wiped them on her jeans, adding to the already damp spots on the knees. She looked out the side window again. A long, sharp branch screeched along the glass, causing a shiver to run up her spine.

What had she been thinking? Lys opened her mouth to ask them to take her back, but her vision blurred, and she clamped her lips together, fighting off the wave of nausea that swelled up in her throat.

The trees continued to twist and blur, and Lys closed her eyes.

For a second she saw what could have been a view of the vehicle she rode in from the outside. It towered above her vantage point, like she stood the same height as a mouse. The vehicle disturbed a wave of dust that rolled away from the wheels, engulfing everything. She continued to watch as the SUV moved away, whipping through the branches and kicking up a wake of dirt. The gritty cloud began to turn and roil, looking like a pallet full of paints being sucked down a drain, before the whole vision dissolved back into black.

“You okay?” the driver asked in a voice that sounded far away.

Lys took a shallow breath, willing her mind to stay focused, and opened her eyes.

“Of course, she’s not okay,” Mark said, grinning over his shoulder at Lys. “You’re driving like an old man. We’re not going to get there until tomorrow.”

The driver—he’d introduced himself as Ayden—shook his head. “I’m trying not to take out the suspension, like someone else I know.” He shot Mark a side-long glance.

Mark rolled his eyes and shook his head. He saw Lys’s face, which had to be white as a sheet, and made a patting gesture with his hand. “I’m joking, we’re almost there.”

Lys swallowed. This had all sounded like such a good idea when she had been strapped down in the psych ward. Now the entire scenario, along with Mr. Mason’s explanation, seemed more than a little farfetched.

Addicted. That’s what Mr. Mason
told her and her parents at the hospital.

“My little girl? Addicted?” Lys’s mom had asked in a trembling voice.

“Mrs. Blake,” Mr. Mason said patiently, “your daughter has been exposed to a rare and highly addictive drug referred to as Pop. If she doesn’t receive the correct treatment right away she may never recover.”

“But if it’s a drug, won’t she just go through withdrawal?”

At that point, Lys had risked a look up. Her mom’s bandaged face mirrored Lys’s own, and her good eye glistened with worry and tears.

It had taken her dad almost an hour to convince Lys to see her mom. Guilt sat like an Olympic-sized weight on her chest, making breathing almost impossible.

Her mom had burst into the room and rushed to Lys’s side. But she didn’t do more than give Lys’s hand a small squeeze before she stepped away, and Lys could feel the tremor in her mom’s fingers. Her own mother knew she was a monster. Lys decided right then that she would do whatever it took to make things right—to get her life back to normal.

“Not with Pop,” Mr. Mason said. “Pop is manufactured to addict people, but it’s unstable. It shuts down the senses before it shuts down other more important systems of the body.”

Lys’s mom turned to her dad. He hugged her close and spoke to Mr. Mason. “How did this happen?”

“Pop comes from central South America. The drug makers are still looking for the perfect formula—one that doesn’t kill the users. They are hoping to come up with the next big drug, new products so to speak. When they think they’ve got a formula that works they send it out to test it, which must be how Lys came in contact with it. Probably at a party. You said you went to a party after the Homecoming game.”

Lys nodded. She kept her gaze away from the others faces. She watched her parent’s shuffling feet and Mr. Mason’s statue-like stance, and knew that she would have to ask the hard question. “What will happen to me?” Her voice came out as a tiny squeak.

Mr. Mason turned to face her. “I’m sorry, Lys, but without treatment your body will continue to shut down, and you will die.”

Lys felt the fragile hope that had been cautiously growing shatter. Die? Part of her wanted to die, but the rest of her—the sane part—hoped this would pass. Doctors had treatments for everything, right?

Her mom lost it. Sobbing and pleading, she asked what they could do to save her little girl so she didn’t end up like her Aunt Della. Mr. Mason pulled her parents into another room.

The next day she and
her dad had had a chat.

“But, Dad,” Lys said, wishing she could use her hands to talk. “He says I’m going to die!”

“We don’t have any other confirmation of that, Lys,” her dad said. “Who is this man, and why should we simply believe him?”

Lys banged the back of her head against the stiff pillow. They’d been through this twice already.

“Look, honey,” her dad said, sitting on the same chair Mr. Mason had sat the day before. “I know you feel like this man is your only hope, but I can’t let him take you away like he wants to.”

Lys shook her head. “But, Dad, he’s the only one who doesn’t think I’m completely insane.”

“I don’t think you’re insane.”

“You should,” Lys said, “because only a psychopath would want to rip their mother’s eyes out.”

The words caused her dad to flinch, but he recovered a moment later. “Lys.” He reached out and took her hand. “Don’t ever say that. I know you’re not crazy. You’re my baby girl, and nothing could ever change that.”

She could tell by the tone in his voice that he was not going to budge on this. So Lys did the last thing she wanted to and the only thing she knew would convince him. She raised her eye and met her father’s gaze.

The next dose of her medication sat in a cup by her bed, ready to be taken. The dislocated feeling that it gave her—that floating on an air mattress on a slowly rolling ocean—had started to evaporate about an hour before. Lys knew that the Need could get through. And for the first time, she encouraged it.

The feeling of want started at the base of her neck and spread like frost through her veins. Her fingers twitched, and she latched onto her dad’s hand. The buzz of the Need filled her ears and rose like the climax of a symphony, drowning out her dad’s shout of surprise when she lunged as far as she could toward him, teeth bared. He jumped off the chair, jerking his hand away from hers, and stumbled back. The fear Lys knew had been lurking in her dad surfaced, twisting his face into a conflicted expression of disgust and terror.

The clear, blue orbs of his eyes called to her—sung like sirens luring her to her death. She had to have them—would kill or die for them, and he knew it. He raised a shaking hand to cover his lips that hung agape in horror.

The memory filled Lys with
shame, but it also reminded her why she’d agreed to go with Mr. Mason. She tried to ignore the rising feeling of panic and told herself that she had to do this.

Mark continued to watch her. “You look nervous.”

“Uh.” Lys didn’t know how to answer that. Nervous would mean that she would laugh a little too loudly at Mark’s jokes and say something stupid in reply. Considering right now she wanted to scream, cry, and rip her wrists out of the handcuffs so she could jump out of a moving vehicle and escape into unknown woods, Lys figured she was way past nervous.

“Relax,” Mark said. “We’ve had meaner characters than you in here. We can handle it.” He exchanged a look with Ayden, and the other man nodded. “You’ll be feeling better in no time.”

Whatever sedative they’d given her muted the Need, but her mind felt more alive than it had since she’d gone into the psych ward. Lys decided to try questions to distract herself.

“Do you guys, uh, know what’s going to happen to me?”

“We’ll let Mason explain that to you. He’s here at the hospital,” Ayden said in a soft voice.

Hospital? Part of Lys still didn’t believe in the supposed hospital lurking here in the backwoods of who knew where. She balled her hands into fists. Maybe her dad was right, maybe she should have held out for a different option.

No. Mr. Mason believed her; he said he could help her. Lys would hold on to that until she knew otherwise. Her mind cradled the fragile hope, not wanting to let it fall and shatter into shards of nothing.

“Here we go,” Mark said. He pointed out the front of the SUV.

They came around a sharp corner, and Lys leaned forward, following Mark’s gesture.

Sure enough a hospital sat nestled in a clearing at the end of the road. Nothing big, just a two-story, white building with a drop-off spot. Three cars sat in the parking lot, not even filling it a quarter of the way. Mr. Mason stood outside the main doors.

“What is this place?” Lys asked. A hospital in the middle of the woods? Secluded, small, off the beaten path. Creepy.

“It used to be a privately-run facility that treated people suffering from PTSD,” Ayden said, maneuvering the SUV toward the door. “Mostly for war veterans that couldn’t get help anywhere else.”

Old veterans? Lys’s mind jumped to the guys she saw begging for money on street corners. Some of them had signs saying they were veterans. Their haunted expressions—their eyes that Lys knew had seen things that no person should have to see—made Lys shiver. Partly because she now wanted to see what they saw, and partly because she now felt like she’d just entered a horror movie. This sank below creepy. “So why do I have to detox here?”

“Mr. Mason will explain,” Mark said as the SUV came to a stop at the drop-off point.

Did either of these guys ever answer a question? She wanted to call them out on it, but Mr. Mason stepped up to Mark’s window. He leaned in, and Lys could see that his lips were drawn into a thin line.

“Is something wrong?” Mark asked.

“We’ve got one inside who could use your help.” Mr. Mason’s voice was soft, like Ayden’s, but insistent.

“Got it,” Mark said, turning around and giving Lys a smile. “Ayden will take it from here. Let me know if he’s not a gracious host.”

Ayden glared as the other man got out of the vehicle, passing Mr. Mason and jogging in the front doors.

Lys watched him go. She shifted in her seat, trying to remain calm.

“Come on,” Ayden said. He got out and opened Lys’s door. “Let’s get you inside.”

While having handcuffs on made her feel like a prisoner, they also made her feel safe. Not safe from others, but from herself and what she might do to whoever got too close. As Ayden unfastened her from the aircraft cable, Lys’s breathing sped up. She silently begged him not to undo the cuffs, but with steady hands, he drew a key from his pocket, inserted it into a metal lock and twisted. The cuffs sprung open, leaving Lys free.

She didn’t want to be free anymore.

“You won’t be needing those from now on,” Mr. Mason said from the other side of the vehicle, gesturing with a hand. “Come inside.”

The cobblestone driveway looked about a thousand miles below her. Lys slid over and dipped one toe out of the SUV. The tennis shoes she wore hit the ground, and she let the bottom of her foot succumb to gravity. The other foot followed, and as she stood, Lys felt her knees wobble. One hand reached out to use the roof of the vehicle for support, and she took a step. She tried another, but her foot stopped in mid-air, her body distracted by something much more insistent than gravity. The Need.

Emotions, a week repressed by medication, came bubbling up from the bottom of a cauldron. Anger, fear, hunger—the Need. It swelled in her stomach and ached to make her fingers move. She doubled over, trying to contain it.

“Lys, what’s wrong?” Someone pulled on her arm.

“Get away!” she pleaded. “Please.” She felt herself start to shake. She fell to her hands and knees, and put her head down on the cobblestones, squeezing her eye shut. A voice said her name, but she didn’t care.

She wanted the feeling back. The feeling like after she ripped the frog’s eyes out—euphoria. She was a hungry monster, demanding to be fed. The Need gnawed through her mind, screaming at her to do something. To hurt someone.

On their own accord, Lys’s fingers began to twitch. Why did he take the handcuffs off?

The image of her mom’s bandaged face sprung into her mind. All of the times her dad flinched away from her, and all of the looks the doctors gave her paraded through her memory. No, she wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Not while she had an ounce of control left in her. She laced her fingers together and squeezed until her arms shook.