Schasm (Schasm Series) (23 page)

He raises one eyebrow. “We’ll keep an eye on it,” he says. “One of us will be back in to check on you soon. If the pain comes back, let us know immediately.” The room is empty again.

My mind is floating above me when I see Alex walk by with his doctor. He’s back in a straitjacket. I hate to think of the reason why he must be wearing that.

I hear a faint conversation in the hallway. It sounds like it’s between two doctors. “He tried to jump out of a window…”

What?

I drag myself out of bed and stumble across the room toward the door. I have to hear what they’re saying.

“He’s restrained and sedated, so at least he can’t hurt anyone… including himself.” The voice drifts off down the hallway.

Alex tried to kill himself.

My stomach heaves.

My incoming thoughts are causing me to feel sicker than I already felt. I stagger back across my room and fall onto my bed as Dr. Greene walks back through the doors. He’s visibly irritated with me.

“Didn’t I just tell you not to leave your bed? You’re going to end up falling and getting hurt again,” he says.

It’s the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.

***

Lunch is carted in, the same as it is every day: a tuna fish sandwich, a banana, and yogurt. I’d do anything for real food at this point. Just the memory of candied apples and cotton candy is making me drool.

“Would you like an extra juice today?” The orderly asks.

I nod. “What’s your name?”

He looks around as if he might get in trouble for speaking to me. “Cameron.” His white knuckles glow around the handle of the food tray, as he takes large strides toward the door.

He looks scared. Not of me, I hope. “Thanks for that, Cameron.”

He shakes his head and his cheeks redden as he rushes out the door.
I’m not the one to be afraid of around here, kid.

I eat everything and down the juices. Then I amble down to the common room. I walk by Alex’s room and glance in. He isn’t there. Then I enter the common room and see him standing in the corner, looking out one of the windows. I don’t want to startle him or disturb him. I go to the opposite side of the room and keep to myself.

I don’t think he notices me walk in, but he turns around to face another woman sitting at a table. He walks over and sits down next to her. She sweeps her hand over his as if she’s saying hello, but without speaking.

Who is that…and why is she touching him?

I’m more than a little jealous.

I creep along the wall until I get to a place where I can see her face. My eyes widen as my brief moment of jealousy turns into utter confusion.

It can’t be her.

“Celia?” I’m terrified of what to expect when she turns around.

She looks back at me. Her eyes are large and protruding. Her hair is a dull red, frizzy and unmaintained. She has no makeup on, and her cheekbones are so prominent that they cast a shadow over her jaw. She looks sick and completely opposite of how I normally see her. She lifts one side of her mouth into half a smile, but she doesn’t say a word.

They’re just like me, I think.

Lost here, wandering through their own minds.

I wonder how often Celia is
here
or
there
, or if she’s like Alex and is never
here
and only
there
. Still, there’s a connection between them here.

I can’t turn away. It’s like I’m watching them through a two-way mirror, yet I’m standing only five feet away.

Ashley appears in front of me. “Mother,” she says as she points over to Celia.

So she knows, too…

I have no idea what’s true anymore, or what’s real.

I head back to my room and pull out two of the four black pills from my shoe. I shake them in my hand for a second, remembering the pain they caused, and Alex’s warning. But I need answers from him more than I need to be comfortable.

I pop them both in my mouth.

I drop onto my bed. Within seconds, a new and different feeling creeps over me. My massive headache returns. The tiles aren’t dancing like they were last time. Instead, they’re now darting toward me and speeding past my ears. I feel as if I’m caught in the middle of an explosion while the world is disintegrating around me. With this comes the sensation of tumbling through a black tunnel.

I’m spinning in a tornado, waves of scorching hot steam burn my back as the scent of rot burns in my nose…

Just as I begin to wonder when this feeling will subside, my backside lands hard on what feels like a mound of dirt.

I peek through my half closed eyes and see a light bulb wrapped in iron bars hanging from a large rock above my head. The light is just bright enough to illuminate a few feet on each side of where I’m lying. I stand up, steady myself, and falter toward the wall closest to me. It’s cold and damp, and has an odd texture. It almost feels like a boulder.

There’s another room just a few feet ahead. Every step I take makes the crackling dirt below my feet sound amplified.

I take slow strides into the next room, finding four more hanging lights there, evenly lined along the walls.

Oh my God…

Thousands of skulls are lined up in perfect order along the walls. They all appear to be looking at me.

Where the hell did I end up this time?

Why couldn’t I just end up on Alex’s couch?

I spin around the room, hoping to find an exit. I see a small hole in the ceiling with a ladder leaning up against the wall. It’s been ground so deeply into the dirt that there’s no movement, no matter how hard I try to shake it. So, I climb.

The tunnel remains dark, no matter how high I go. I wave my arm around to verify that there are no more rocks surrounding my head, and I feel nothing but open space. I reach up for the next bar on the ladder and find that my hand grasps nothing.

I pull myself up onto higher ground while noticing I’m still surrounded by complete darkness. I can’t tell if the floor I’m standing on will just disappear or turn into some type of ledge. Finally, I see a speck of light ahead of me.

I lie down on my stomach and pull my body across the ground, hoping to keep myself from falling off anything. Just as I begin to feel safe following the light, my head slams into some kind of partition. I clutch my head.
No blood.
The hole is becoming so narrow I can’t even wriggle through it.

I feel like I’m suffocating.

I push the feelings into the back of my mind and focus on the exit, dragging myself along.

I’m out of breath. I need to stop for a minute before I pass out. Not here. I can’t pass out here. I bury my head in my arms and try to inhale the remaining scent of soap from my skin.

Something is creeping up my leg…

I’m dragging my body toward the light faster than I thought was humanly possible. There’s blood under my fingernails from the strength in which I’m pulling myself, but I’m nearing the end of the tunnel. Whatever is on me is making its way up toward my back. I feel tiny claws creeping along. The hairs on my neck are standing up and chills are making my muscles weaken.

Exit or not, all I care about right now is getting this thing off of me.

As I approach the lit room, the thing makes its way up to my head and it feels as if it’s creating a nest in my hair. The claws are scratching at my scalp, and tangling around my hair.

I pull myself onto the solid ground outside of the passageway. I jump up to my feet, and shake my head around to get off whatever is on me. A black rat with narrow red eyes and a long pointy tail flies off. My screams of disgust bounce off of the walls.

I find another couple of hallways. The one with odd inscriptions and paintings along the wall pulls my eyes in. I’m not the first one to be down here among the dead, it seems. The paintings are of skulls and corpses.

Where the hell did I end up?

I make an effort to look past the paintings, but my eyes only become drawn to more skulls that are mounted on the walls. The exit at the end of the hall is blocked by a black iron gate. As I walk toward it, something shiny catches my eye.

A locket.

I lift it from the rock it’s sitting on and brush the layer of dirt off of the top. I try to pry it open but it’s been fused shut. I place it in my pocket, wondering about its significance as I move on.

I roam down the second hallway, tracing my fingers along the smooth walls until I approach a set of steps. I climb what feels like one hundred stairs before I reach flat ground. Finally, I find the sun, and I climb toward it, up and out into…

A city.

A sense of darkness overcomes me as my body is sucked into another vortex.

Spinning in circles and circles and circles…

I’m back in the hospital, in my bed.

I never thought I’d be happy to see this place.

It’s dark now. I’ve been out for hours. The doctors must have assumed I was sleeping and left me alone.

Exhaustion is taking over, and for the first time in a long while, I’m actually able to close my eyes and fall asleep. With sleep come nightmares. I find myself revisiting the horrific caves again. The scenes continue playing on repeat, for hours, and I still can’t seem to figure out where I was. But one thing is certain:

 I don’t ever want to go back again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SHIFTED

MORNING LIGHT IS SHINING
through my eyelids. I don’t really want to get up, but the peculiar feeling of my bed has me a bit concerned.

I blink, trying to focus through my tired haze and hoping that whatever is hanging above me will disappear. I clench my eyes tightly and open them again.

“Dammit.” It echoes through the darkness.

An iron-covered light bulb hangs from the dark boulders. My heart is drumming against my spine, and my limbs feel weak.

What have I done to myself?

I didn’t take any more pills, yet here I am, back in this disgusting place. I barely have the energy to retrace my steps from yesterday. But the thought of sitting here in this endless crypt makes me feel sick to my stomach. I stand and walk as best I can through this new hallway, happy that at least it isn’t filled with skulls. I drag myself around the corner to find out what’s lurking in the new space. I hear it and smell it, before I see it.

Oh my God…

I’ve never seen anything like this in any of my drifts.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

EATEN ALIVE

EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING
in slow motion. The smell in the room makes my knees weak. I feel stomach acid burning its way up through my esophagus. In the corner of the chamber are six large rats gnawing on a human carcass. I slap my hands over my mouth to keep from vomiting as I collapse to my knees, folding in half. I try to convince myself that the rats are as afraid of me as I am of them.

The stench is making me dizzy. I fall over backward, landing against an unforgiving wall. I close my eyes, suck the putrid air in through my mouth and blow it out a few times before I feel the tension release from my muscles a bit.

If there were ever a time for me to be able to control my drifts, this would be it.

I picture San Diego…sunlight…golden sand…golden skin.

Alex.

The stench begins to dissipate and the humidity lessens. Then I feel something tighten around my wrist. I gasp for air as light fills my eyes.

I see them before me.

“Alex? Celia?” They’re both staring at me, their eyes questioning. I throw my trembling arms around both of them, and tears stream down my cheeks.

“Chloe,” Alex asks. His face registers the stench that must be clinging to my clothes and my hair. “What happened to you?”

“I have no idea,” I pant. All of my words are trying to come out of me at once. “I don’t know where I was…it was some kind of cave with no light. It was filled with bones and skulls…and rats. A corpse.” His eyes open wide. “I felt like I was trapped in an enormous grave…” I cry through my explanation.

Alex glances over to Celia and nods. They both look extremely concerned.

He wraps his arm around me and tries to soothe my panic. “Do you know how long you have?” Alex asks. I can’t get words out of my mouth through all of my hysterical emotion. “You have to try to calm down, or you’re going to hyperventilate.” He rubs his hands over my back. “I need you to tell me what happened just before you ended up
there
, but I can’t help you while you’re breaking down like this.”

“Okay,” I tell him. “Okay.” I breathe fresh air, and his scent to replace the one that’s all over me. I blot my tears with the back of my grime-covered shirt and steady my shaking hands. “I saw you and Celia at the institution in the common room.”

I shift my eyes to her. She makes her way over to me and kneels in front of where I’m sitting. She lays her hands on my knees, looks up at Alex and says, “She knows, hon. We need to tell her.”

He nods.

“I know what?” I know I have all the facts, but my mind can’t seem to put them together logically.

She looks up at me through tears. “Alex isn’t the only long-term patient in that place. I am, too… going on twelve years, now.” Her chin quivers as she pushes the words out. “I saw Alex when he first came in. My heart broke for him. I watched him sit in the corner, alone, week after week,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Nobody ever came for him.” She looks at him with sympathy.

Alex looks down toward his hands. “Yeah…my parents pretty much dropped me off and left me to rot.”

Celia nods. “So I took him under my wing…watched over him. We figured out how to control what the doctors consider our
psychosis
. And we decided to come here.” She looks around at her house…the one she and Alex inhabit in their minds. The one I’m sharing with them now in my mind, too.

Or their mind.

Or all of our minds put together.

I can’t make sense of it anymore.

“This is our happy, Chloe.” She quotes me from my childhood interactions with Alex. She tries to smile, though it’s filled with pain. Somehow, it consoles me. “We have nothing else, and no one else. Just each other.”