Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (3 page)

I don’t resist; I don’t have the strength. When I open my mouth, nothing comes out. I can’t even pronounce any of the syllables that come to mind. It feels like sleep paralysis; I’m only half conscious, and I can’t move any of my muscles.
What will he do with me?

He’s talking,
but I can’t hear any words. I’m so far gone.

“What’s
your address?”

I
struggle to decipher it. I groan and try to focus. Why do I have to think about it? It’s like my head is on inactive. I babble something, but I hope he understands me. He puts me down on a soft seat and says something that sounds like, “Okay.”

His
back is against me. My butt rests on a soft cushion. The grumbling engine reminds me of a loud orchestra. The scent of leather and a hint of aftershave is exotic and numbing.

“Hold onto me,” the
guy says, but it sounds like mumbling in my ears. I’m still stunned by the experience I just had, as well as the blow to my head.

Then I see them. Above his helmet are two faces of the ghosts that haunted me minutes ago. The terrifying and emotionless faces look at me like they want something.
They’re still not gone. More and more heads turn up. Their bodies look like flowing smoke swelling up. They come together like spats of rain and trickle away in the same manner.

My terror and d
esperation are so unreal that I’m drifting away from this reality, out of my own body.

***

I’m in between being awake and sleeping. Bits and pieces of information find their way into my conscious mind, and I have to filter them to understand what’s going on. A shining, red motorcycle. My head leaning against his back and my arms clinging onto his body. The wind caressing my skin and the rumbling sound of the motorcycle are in the recesses of my mind. And then a white, wooden house. My new house. The grating sound of pebbles under his feet. His firm hands wrap around me as he carries me inside. The smell of my mom’s nasty dinner and the incense to make the stench go away. A few steps of our stairway and the door to my room are the last things I see before I drift away again.

***

It’s soft around me. I’m not outside on the cold hard ground anymore. It’s warm in here, and I smell a familiar scent. My fingers glide over my head until I feel a cotton wrapping that’s around it. I open my eyes and see my trusted bed, which is the most pleasant thing ever right now. I look at the window, and I’m blinded by the rising sun.

A
blanket is wrapped tight around my body and feels like a warm embrace, but I have to get out. I need to know what happened. I can only remember vague bits and pieces of last night.

I throw the blanket
off me and put my feet on the cold floor. A brief chill passes through me before I put on my slippers and close the window. The room temperature doesn’t change easily when you live in the attic.

A bottle of pills is on my nightstand, next to th
e lamp. The lid is off. That’s not how I left it; I’m sure of it.

In my sleeping shirt I stumble downstairs and go into the kitchen.

“What are you doing out of bed?” My mom is standing near the stove with a frying pan in her hand. She turns around to face me. “Have you lost your mind? Get back in your bed, right now! You shouldn’t be up walking yet!” She yells, shaking the frying pan as she points toward the door in the living room.

“Mom, I want to know who that
guy is that brought me home!” I actually already know. No one else in this neighborhood has a bright, red motorcycle. I just want to hear it coming from her lips.

“That’s not important! You’re far from healthy enough to be out of bed. You have to rest before you start walking around again. I literally had to pick you up
off the floor last night. You were throwing up all over the place. And that’s not all. You didn’t even take your pills. How could you forget them, Raven? You know that’s dangerous!” She pours some pancake batter into the pan.

My pills
: antipsychotics to help me battle the hallucinations. At least, that’s what it says on the label, and my mom says they have that purpose. I just take them; I don’t care. As long as it makes the delusions stop.

“Yes
… I found out the hard way,” I say and walk to the fridge to get a glass of milk, but my mom shuts the door before I can take it out. She winces. It’s as if she saw the same ghosts as me.

“Raven, what you s
ee isn’t real. You have to remember that, always. Those hallucinations can’t hurt you.” She puts the pan back on the stove. “But don’t ever scare me like that again. You really have to start watching yourself from now on. Take your pills with you when you go out.”

No, the ghosts
can’t hurt me. They just scare me so much that I fall off my bike. And she doesn’t think that’s dangerous? I don’t know what I did last night, because I can’t remember any of those things she says happened, but I think it’s scary.

“Did you touch my meds then?
” I ask her. “The bottle is open.”

“Yes. I had to force you to take them last night, to calm you down. You were going ballistic. You almost hit me. You were screaming and wanted to throw the lamp at the ceiling. Oh
… before I forget, I put your diary under your bed. You were ripping it apart, and I wanted to save what was left of it.”

I
gulp. My diary. Now I’m wondering what happened and what the heck I did.

“I’m sorry,
Honey,” mom says.

“
Did I hit you?” I ask.

“No, almost. I had to hold you down.”

I swallow again and stare at the floor.
Did I really do all that? It can’t be. That’s not me at all. I don’t want to hurt my mom. I don’t want her to become frightened of me.

“Raven, it’s okay
. It’s quite possible your body puts you into some kind of survival mode after you faint. It can block your memory, and you might not remember things.” She gives me a hug while still holding the spatula in her hand.

I
fold my arms around her, but still feel weak. A shiver runs through me when I think of last night. My bike was on top of me, and I didn’t even have the strength to get it off. Then I remember the guy who brought me home, and I realize I just left my bike there, on the street.

“What
about my mountain bike?” I ask.

“I picked it up wit
h the car this morning. You’re lucky it was on the side of the road, so no car drove over it. I think it still works, though it is a little damaged,” she says.

I sigh. At leas
t I still have my mountain bike. Otherwise I wouldn’t have anything to ride to school with. The queasiness still crawls underneath my skin just thinking about it. It’s because I hate school buses. That’s why I always ride my mountain bike. When I was eight, the other students threw paper planes at me, because they thought I was weird. I never set foot in any of those buses ever again.

“Now, off to bed. I’ll bring your breakfast in a minute
, and then you’re going to take your pill. And no buts!” She waves at me with her spatula, like she thinks it’s some kind of magic wand that will make me start walking toward the door.

I nod and g
o back upstairs. I’m not in the mood to put up a fight. Usually I do, but today I won’t. She’s been so sweet to me. Besides, I don’t have the energy for it. She’s always worried about me and even more after last night. Sometimes it drives me nuts. She makes a fuss out of everything, and I just want some freedom, but my mom won’t let me do even the slightest teenage stuff. Sometimes it’s like we’re not even related. She doesn’t get me at all. Her environment gets her paranoid and touchy, while I don’t care. Sometimes I wonder who my father is. I must resemble him a lot because I don’t look anything like my mom.

When I arrive at my room in the attic
, I pull out my diary from under the bed.

I stare at the m
aimed book. Irreparable pages dangle out, and more than half of them are ripped out. The words on the paper are not even readable.
Did I do this?

A whole written year down the drain. Everything is in here
: the memories of my life before I moved here. With every town a new diary. Now I have nothing to remember the life before this house.

My friends, with whom I spent so much time
; the house I lived in; the school I went to―everything is in that diary. That’s where I hid it, forever safe, so I didn’t have to think about it and could maybe look at it again when I’m older. Everything is gone.

Tears well up in my eyes as I pick up the pages and hanging bits of paper. I push them back into the book, hoping something might be worth saving, but I know I’m fooling myself. Now all
I have left are memories. Nothing tangible.

On the inside
cover of the book, a weird handwritten line makes me squint. The letters look like streaks and hooks, as if someone had to scribble something down fast. It makes it almost unreadable. This is not my handwriting.

‘They are real.’

I drop the book.
Who did this?

The words dance around in my h
ead, and I don’t want to know the meaning of it.
They are real.
But I do know.

Someone didn’t just write in my diary
for the fun of it. There has to be a reason. Does it mean the hallucinations are real? Does it mean my brain isn’t playing games with my eyes?

This cannot be true. Someone is playing dirty tricks here,
screwing with me. Is it the guy on the motorcycle who’s trying to harass me after what I screamed when he found me on the street and took me home? Or is it my mom who wants to strike fear into my heart, after she saw me coming home so frightened that she had to do something to make me remember to take my pills?

Anger bubbles up inside me
the more I think about it. I’m angry at myself and the monster who did this. This must be the reason why I tore apart my diary last night. The sentence that’s inside … I don’t want to see it. They are not real.

How could
someone desecrate my diary like this? This book is sacred to me. Not only that, but to mock me as well is going too far.

I stand up and hurl the book at my desk. Then someone knocks on my door.

“Come in,” I snap while folding my arms together.

My mom comes in
carrying a tray in her hand. On her face is a forced smile. Fake, but with good intentions. When she sees me, her smile fades. I know I look enraged, because that’s how I feel. She looks nervous, afraid to even enter my room. Afraid I might take another swing at her, just like last night, I think.

She puts the tray down on my bed. There’s a plate with burnt pancakes and too much butter
on it. Next to it are some grapes and a glass of milk. She points at the bed as if I’m forced to eat it there. But I do as she asks because that’s the only way to keep her quiet. My head is overflowing with information right now, and I’m too busy to start a fight with her. Maybe I’ll do that later on, when I find out who defiled my diary.

My mom lifts the tray when I
hop into my bed and pull the blanket up. She places the tray on my lap, and the hot plate warms up my legs.

“Bon appétit,” s
he says. “But remember to take your pill first.” She hands over a glass of water and the bottle and waits until I swallow the pill.

“I phoned your school
. I told them you were staying home today because of the flu. I have to go to work now, so you’ll be alone for the rest of the day. You’ll stay here, in this house.” Her finger points to the floor.

“Yes,
Sergeant.” I salute her and heave a sigh.

My mom walks out the door agai
n and leaves me with the greasy black pancakes. Oh well, she made them with love. I force myself to swallow them. The grapes and milk are good, but that’s just because my mom didn’t use her cooking skills on them. Lucky me.

The rest of the day I hang on the couch in front of the television.

Before I go to sleep, I take my pill in the presence of my mom. She still doesn’t trust me enough to let me take them without her watching me. I’m still tired from last night. It doesn’t take me long to fall into a deep slumber, where nightmares rule.

***

The car drives fast. My fingers move across the window in an attempt to draw on it, but the air inside isn’t humid enough. I look outside and watch the willows and poplars flash by like they were never there. Large meadows surround the road, separated by ditches. I think there are cows standing in the grass, but I’m not sure, as the car is going too fast. There isn’t a house nearby. This place feels abandoned, like I’m in the middle of nowhere.

In my head
a voice constantly chants,
“You are Raven Stone.”

Repeatedly
, things are whispered into my ears. I don’t understand any of it, but it feels trustworthy. With my hands I go over a device on top of my head which presses against my ears.