Nightmare (38 page)

Those eyes were locked onto ours, and it was marching forward slowly, as if planning to take us prisoner or take us down.

Jordin looked back at me. "Can you walk?" she asked, frantic.

I was still holding my speeding heart, unable to look away
from the ghostly soldier bearing down on us. I shook my head
in response to her question, while simultaneously wondering if
this was what a heart attack felt like.

Jordin reached over and tried in vain to heft me up in both
of her arms, but I was just too heavy for her. I was a good twenty
pounds or more heavier than she was, and she wasn't exactly a
body builder.

"Is it residual?" she whispered.

I shook my head, certain from the way the ghost had its gaze
locked onto the two of us like we were prey that this was not some
event from long ago merely replaying itself.

"Intelligent," I whispered through wheezing breaths.

I watched her eyes dart back and forth in thought, weighing
options. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the ghost was getting close now; it had spanned more than half the length
of the bridge already and would be here in seconds.

"I don't know what to do!" Jordin cried, her voice echoing
through the tunnel bridge.

The sounds seemed to give her an idea, so she stood to her
feet and turned to face down the ghost, then screamed at the top
of her lungs. It wasn't a frightened scream; it was a challenge. A
primal warning to stay back.

The ghost did nothing to acknowledge her. Jordin looked
back down at me and saw my eyes growing wider as the ghost
drew near. I didn't want to increase her panic, but I couldn't help
it. I was having some kind of cardiac arrest and this thing was
behaving like it posed a genuine danger to us.

I saw Jordin breathing faster and faster, and without warning, she turned and let out a roar as she ran at breakneck speed
straight into the tunnel, aiming for the apparition.

In seconds she reached it, and I watched in horror as she
passed straight through it. I couldn't believe my eyes, having
clearly seen the ghost envelop her completely.

I heard Jordin let out a horrendous gasp as she emerged from
the other side of the apparition, and she immediately hugged
herself, shivering, and dizzily fell to the ground.

I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't move. I could see her,
though, and her face was whiter than I'd ever seen it. She was
shaking as she looked up. Our eyes met, and the two of us watched
the spirit vaporize and vanish into the air between us.

We stayed there, just outside the bridge, for the better part
of half an hour. It was a good five minutes after the apparition
disappeared before Jordin was able to pick herself up off the
wooden bridge and feebly walk to where I sat.

She tried repeatedly to call 9-1-1, but her phone kept going
dead, and when it did work, she couldn't get a signal.

What she had felt and experienced when she passed through
the ghost had left her undone. Her countenance had changed
drastically, her usual pretenses replaced by something much more
somber and emotionally transparent.

The only words that were spoken were some she mumbled
about having felt the ghost's feelings when she touched it. She
kept repeating the words "no hope" and "worst fears." It was like
an assault upon her senses, and it overloaded her.

I improved greatly after the spirit disappeared. Deciding that
I hadn't had a heart attack after all but just the most severe panic
attack ever, we sat tight for a while until I felt like I could move
again.

When my strength returned, Jordin helped me stand.

We hiked the half mile back to the car slowly, mostly in
silence, though once we were seated inside the vehicle, Jordin
softly asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

I was too spent to lie. "I only found out the full extent of it
a little more than a month ago. It was personal. And scary. Like
your curse, I suppose."

Jordin nodded without offering a reply as she started the
car's engine.

Neither of us said anything else that night. We merely returned
to our room at the Cashtown Inn, moving like zombies.

The next morning, I met Jordin downstairs at the checkout
counter. Her bags were nowhere in sight, but I assumed she had
already taken them to the rental car, because I could tell from the state of our room that she had been up for hours before I
awoke.

Everything about her was different now. After last night,
her disposition toward me was one of absolute honesty. Like
I had seen her as naked and exposed as humanly possible, and
she simply had nothing to hide from me anymore. Her arrogance, her chipper silliness, even her energetic resolve had all
been dropped.

She didn't smile when she saw me descend the stairs, but her
countenance wasn't cold toward me at all. She just felt no need
to pretend about how she felt.

After she paid the bill, she pulled me aside in the tiny foyer,
and her sad eyes darkened her usually sunny good looks. "I'm
not leaving," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"You're going home," she explained. "I'm staying awhile
longer. I want to poke around Gettysburg some more. Then I
was thinking of heading to England to check out the Tower of
London-"

"I'm not going to just leave you here-"

Jordin held up a hand. "I understand why you didn't tell me
about your heart thing. But you're placing your life in danger
every time we do this, and the truth is, I don't need you anymore.
You taught me well. I'm ready to go solo."

Her resolve was absolute. Her announcement sounded as if
she'd rehearsed it.

"Jordin, I think something is wrong with you! " I blurted out
desperately.

"What?" she said, curious but not alarmed.

"I think you're attracting all of this activity somehow. The amount of stuff we've seen-it's not normal. I think you might
be some kind of paranormal focal point."

Jordin scrunched up her face, like she'd just smelled something repugnant. "That's not even a real thing. Is it? Have you
ever met anyone who was a.. . `focal point'?"

"Well, no ..."

"Mafia-"

"If I'm right, then you'd be insane to investigate alone! You
could be risking your life!"

"If I let you come with me, I'm riskingyour life. I'm not willing to do that."

My temper flared. "Jordin, you hired me to help you, and
after last night, I will not let you do this alone! You're going to
get yourself killed!"

Her expression hardened. "A boarding pass is waiting in the
passenger's seat of the cab outside. For your own sake, Maia,you're
done. If Derek or anybody else asks why you came back without
me, just say the trip ended badly. We'll say we had a big fight or
something and we're not friends anymore."

"Jordin, you can't do this-"

"Go home, Maia," Jordin said simply but compassionately.
"You're fired."

She turned and ascended the nearby stairs, leaving me to
watch her go in staggered silence.

The scales were torn violently from my eyes, and I entered a new
world of majesty and terror.

The atmosphere around me drained away, water flowing out
of a tub. But it wasn't just the air. Everything faded-the light
and the temperature and the water in my eyes and my throbbing
heartbeat and the blood pulsing through my veins....

Everything, sapped from my being.

Even though my eyes had been open when I passed through
the veil, they opened anew now. Everything had an intense clarity,
as if my vision had gone far beyond 20/20 to 20/ 10 or something
infinitely better.

I could see for the very first time.

But that was only after the pain subsided.

I felt my soul being ripped away from my physical body, and
it was an agony I've never known. The fabric of everything that
was me was cleaved in two, and I felt my essence being pulled away
from my skin, heart, organs, bones, and even my blood.

I understood now why death was often viewed from the outside as such a peaceful thing; with the body and all of its parts
dead, there was nothing to anchor the soul, to keep it trapped
within. Its separation from the body must be akin to the shedding of dead skin. Painless, easy, even invigorating.

The process I endured felt like being smashed by a steamroller
and the me inside my body squeezed out. Only worse.

When it was done, I was no longer in the Body Chamber. My
soul had been yanked down several stories in the building into
what looked like some sort of repository. I was kind of standing
or maybe floating in a cylindrical capsule that glowed white on
all sides. As I tried to see out beyond the glowing walls, everything
faded from my memory.

I had no idea who I was or how I'd gotten there. My essence
was a numb haze, a puddle of thought and sensation. I felt my
consciousness drift inside the capsule, billowing with an imaginary breeze. Self-awareness left me; I had evaporated.

My bright, glowing surroundings slid down and out of sight,
and I saw impossible things I couldn't begin to describe, though
I wasn't truly aware of what I was seeing or feeling. I glided out
of the tiny pod I'd been contained in and was shunted out into
some kind of large space where there were hundreds of others
like me, billowing unconstrained in a sea.

But each soul was different. Some were bright and radiant,
others disgusting and vile. A handful of them seemed to have a
small but bright light radiating inside them....

I was taking in my surroundings without any real interest or
concern, when something grabbed me. I don't know how long
it was until I realized that another spirit was holding on to me,
their face leaning into mine.

"Maia Peters!!" the spirit shouted. "Do you hear me? Maia?!
You're Maia Peters! Come back!"

I had a flash of awareness and suddenly everything came rushing in. I was Maia Peters. This was some kind of facility in New
York owned by Durham Holdings International. I'd come here
with Derek Hobbes and Pierre Ravenwood, hoping to find-

"Jordin!" I said. "Jordin, you're here!"

Myvoice sounded different, just as Jordin's had. It still sounded
like me, but it reverberated with a fuller, richer sound.

"Maia..."Jordin was awash in relief, but then she did a oneeighty and turned harsh on me. "Do you have any idea what you've
done? You shouldn't have crossed through the veil!"

"Jordin ... I had the symbol," I explained. "On my neck. This
was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not!"

"There's no way to get back!" she cried. "Once you've crossed
to this side of the veil, you can't go back into your body."

"We'll see about that," I declared. "I have an idea...."

My attention shifted to the wonders of the world around me.
I was still inside the DHI building, of that much I was certain.
The pristine white walls were unmistakable, as was the wide-open
round room that was almost the same size as the Body Chamber above us. And I knew from the falling sensation that I had
passed through several floors after the procedure was complete.
But without windows or some other frame of reference, I had no
idea what part of the building I was in.

I could see every part of the mortal world, even though I was no longer a part of it. It was sharp and distinct in ways I had never
imagined the world could be. I saw textures and colors that I had
never before known to exist. And I could look at objects all the
way down to the molecular level if I chose. It was effortless and
it was incredible.

Yet there was no air that I could find, nor was there any need
for it. We were ensconced in a thicker atmosphere, almost fluid,
like milk.

I looked down at myself and saw that I was an indistinct
solid, more or less human in shape with a head and shoulders
and body. But few details.

Then I discovered that my appearance was malleable. I was
made out of energy, wrapped in thought. I held out a wispy hand
in front of me and watched as it responded to my thoughts, dissolving into nothing but mist. I thought of it re-forming into
something more solid, and it did. I looked down at my body and
transformed it into a translucent smoke, and then resolidified it
into a solid representation of how I looked on the mortal plane.
I even had on the clothes I'd been wearing before I underwent
the procedure.