Clara Kensie - Run to You Part Five - Fifth Touch

Darren Szostak wearing a royal blue T-shirt that boasted LILYBROOK HIGH CLASS OF ’88.

Tristan Connelly, in a hockey sweater and walking with a worshipful Melanie Brunswick to his left and a short-haired, laughing Nathan Gallagher to his right, just two years ago.

The visions of Tristan and Melanie continued past, but Nathan’s stopped. Stayed. Stared.

“N-Nathan?” Was he real?

No—just a vision. He disappeared, swallowed up by other visions, more and more visions, crowding the hallways, shoving and clamoring.

I tottered away from the lockers. But the visions were still there, multiplying, growing denser and louder.

I had to bring in the fog. I had to bring it in now, before I lost control and the visions became solid, and I started spiraling into nothingness.

I pulled it in, but it wasn’t enough.

I pulled it in lower. Thicker. Lower and thicker again.

The visions were gone, but I could see nothing but fog. I breathed in fog. My muscles turned into fog.

No sight. No air. No strength.

Why didn’t Tristan call? He didn’t call to warn me—

Then everything disappeared.

* * *

Blackness. Absolute and all-encompassing.

But even in the blackness, there was something. Something gleeful and threatening.

My Nightmare Eyes, darker than even the black fog surrounding me. Watching me. Dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal.

I could not move. The eyes kept me paralyzed. Their rage burned through me. They wanted to keep me in the black fog forever.

Something twinkled. Something silver.

~killers’ spawn

I heard the words, booming through my subconscious, low and rumbling, as if they were spoken aloud, or perhaps whispered in my ear. I struggled to escape from the hateful words, from the eyes’ hateful glare.

A knife. Long and sharp and silver. Its blade glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.

I had to get away. I had to get away from the ominous eyes, from the glimmering silver.

I had nowhere else to go except deeper into the fog. With a desperate heave, I pulled the fog in closer, darker, thicker. It came, quick and solid, and it consumed the glimmering, glittering silver, it consumed the Nightmare Eyes, and it consumed me.

* * *

I found out, after I woke up in the APR’s clinic with Tristan holding my hand and begging me to come back to him, that a security guard had found me. Unconscious, alone and crumpled on the floor of the school’s hallway. The school nurse had called Dennis, who’d rushed me to the APR.

I also found out that Tristan never called because he hadn’t gotten a warning premonition about it. He never got a warning premonition of the visions overwhelming me. He never got a warning premonition of the fog overpowering me.

I also found out that it was the next day. While the Nightmare Eyes had me pinned under their hateful gaze, the sun had set, and risen again.

* * *

Dr. Sheldon, the kind, warm physician who had taken care of me in the Underground, placed one hand behind my neck and her other on my forehead as I sat on the curtained-off cot in the clinic. “Don’t move,” she said. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head.

She’d kept me here overnight while I was lost in the fog. Deirdre and Dennis had stayed until about midnight, and Tristan had stayed the entire night with me, holding my hand. Now he hovered close as Dr. Sheldon determined if I was ready to go back to the Connellys’ house.

“So much fog,” she muttered as she looked into my mind. “But there’s something else...something dark. A starless night. A cavern of coal.” She shuddered, then opened her eyes. “Any idea what that means?”

“That’s just my nightmare,” I said.

Tristan took my hand back. “She gets them every night.” His hair was messy and his button-down shirt was wrinkled from sleeping in it overnight, sitting up in a chair next to my cot.

“I can certainly understand why you have nightmares,” Dr. Sheldon said, “but that darkness is terrifying. It felt...hateful.”

Terrifying. Hateful. Shameful. It all burned through my blood. “It’s just a nightmare,” I muttered.

With a sigh, Dr. Sheldon made a note on her chart. “Well, you’re back in control of that fog of yours, and nightmares are no reason to keep you here.”

“So she can go home?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, she can.” Dr. Sheldon slipped her pen into her white doctor’s coat. Before she left, she put a warm hand on my shoulder. “Be careful with the fog, sweetheart. We don’t want that to happen again.”

“I will.” Relieved I could get out of here, I slipped from the cot. Tristan held out a hand for me to hold in case I was shaky, but I wasn’t. I changed from the blue cotton hospital gown and into the clothes Tristan brought for me—my usual jeans and one of his hoodies.

“I don’t understand why I didn’t get a premonition about you fainting,” Tristan said as we left the facility. A thin layer of snow had fallen while I was unconscious, and it crunched under our feet as we walked to Tristan’s car. Though I didn’t need him to, he held my elbow so I wouldn’t stumble. “I could have called you. I could have warned you and stopped it from happening.”

“It’s not your fault, Tristan,” I said. “I raised the fog. I lost control of the visions. I pulled the fog in too low.”

He stopped short. “Why would you do that?”

I confessed my plan, that I’d been trying to contact Jillian psionically in the hopes that she was trying to develop remote vision again. “I thought maybe the fog was blocking her ability to see though me. So I raised it. Then I lost control.” I sighed. “But I know now that was a stupid idea. Jillian could only piggyback on our dad’s mobile eye. She was never able to move beyond that. Besides, I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day staring at a sign that says Lilybrook, Wisconsin.”

Tristan was still staring at me, incredulous. “How could you put yourself in danger that way?”

“I wasn’t in any danger,” I said. “Your mom’s dream will happen if I leave town to look for my brother and sister. There was nothing in that dream that said I can’t look for them from within Lilybrook.”

“That’s not—” With an exasperated sigh, he scrubbed his hand in his hair. “You raised the fog that high, then pulled it in that low, on purpose. You played with the fog and I wasn’t even with you. That’s exactly why my mom’s dream will happen if you leave Lilybrook.”

The shame burning through my blood was replaced by hot anger, and I yanked my arm from his hand. “I was trying to connect with my sister, who is missing, and scared, and heartbroken. You can’t be mad at me for that. And you didn’t have a premonition about me fainting, so you couldn’t have stopped it from happening anyway.”

He exhaled, his whole body deflating. “You’re right. I promised you that I would keep you safe. I failed you in Twelve Lakes, I’m failing you by not finding Jillian and Logan, and I failed you again yesterday.”

It was usually me who shivered, but this time it was Tristan.

I took his hand and gave it a kiss. “You’re not failing me. I don’t blame you for any of that.”

“Well, you should. I blame myself.”

We reached his car, and he opened the door for me and helped me inside.

We drove back to his house in silence.

Chapter Nineteen

Dennis and Deirdre wanted to keep me home from school the next day, but I convinced them to let me go after I’d promised not to play with the fog anymore. I had to triple-promise Tristan. “Please be careful with the fog,” he said. “Please. What if I don’t get a premonition again? Even if I do, I’ll be too far away to stop it from happening.” He raked his hands through his hair. So worried. So anxious.