“So you agree. It’s not the quality of my work, it’s the perspective that I’ve—”
“Perspective has no place in science.”
“I humbly disagree.”
“Miss Knightly, there’s absolutely nothing humble about you. And in case I’m being too vague, that was not a compliment.”
Don’t let him see you sweat.
“Science is falsified all the time,” she says. “There was a time when the brightest minds in the world believed—”
“Science—” Holt interjects, “is reality: quantified.”
“Reality is relative.”
“No. It isn’t. And that’s the whole point. There is only one reality and infinite possibilities. And science concerns itself with what is, not what could be.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Your grade is final,” he pulls another assignment off his stack. “You may close the door behind you.”
σ
~Today~
At the opposite end of the cemetery, Romer sits by himself in front of a weathered tombstone. He reads ‘Mason Bradley – Loving son and brother’, and takes a painful gulp from the beer bottle he snuck onto the premises.
It’s quiet today. Way too quiet. It almost feels like there is no ‘rest of the world’. But then again, given where he is, that’s probably appropriate.
“You know that line?” Romer finds himself saying, his deep voice straining through the tightness in his throat. “That fine line between, it’ll never happen to me and, I can never take it back?” He reaches out and runs his fingertips over Mason’s engraved name. “It’s been strangling me like a wire,” he wells up despite his best efforts, “and I just don’t know what to do.”
Chapter 12
Grave Circumstances
Neve can’t seem to take her eyes off of Elliot’s grave. All she can think of is how the mound will eventually weigh down on itself, becoming level with the field. Flat. Like the flat-line on a hospital monitor.
How did this happen..? He wasn’t that depressed, was he? Why didn’t he leave a note? He of all people would’ve had something to say.
Neve’s bones feel too weak to support her weight, so she sinks onto her folded legs with her eyes glued to Elliot’s final resting place.
It’s not real yet. Despite the pain ripping her from within, none of it feels real yet.
Neve glances over her shoulder, half-expecting to catch Elliot sneaking up on her as if this has all been a stupid prank. And she can’t help feeling cheated when the universe refuses to play along.
She looks back at Elli’s grave and suddenly finds herself mid-conversation with him—as if he’s sitting right there in front of her. “You just wouldn’t shut up about your dad’s receding hairline,” she chuckles. “I kept telling you it skips a generation, but nooo, we just had to take pictures so that you could prove me wrong in ten years.”
And now you can’t.
Neve’s sorrow wells up inside, filling every cavity with excruciating pain. So she presses the palms of her hands onto her lids before her disobedient tears can spill over.
It won’t be easy. No one said it would be easy.
She reopens her eyes to a hazy world, and when she looks down, her focus closes in on a dandelion growing out of the mound.
Her brows furrow when she realizes the flower is sprouting from where Elliot’s heart would be. And it wasn’t there a second ago. It couldn’t have been, or she would have seen it.
Neve scans the vicinity for other dandelions, but there isn’t a single one. Except for long, untrimmed blades sprouting from the base of headstones, there is nothing but obsessively uniform grass.
When she returns her attention to the flower, her eyes widen in disbelief.
The marigold petals are now, mere seconds later, replaced with white, fluffy seed-heads. The kind you blow into the wind. The kind you make wishes upon.
It doesn’t make any sense. As far as she knows, it takes weeks for a yellow dandelion to transform into a white globe.
Neve leans forward onto all fours and crawls up to the lonesome flower for a closer look. It’s hard to put into words, but there is a quality to it that makes it seem… unreal? It almost looks like it’s glowing, but maybe the sunlight is illuminating it from behind.
Like a naïve child who still believes in magic, she closes her eyes and bargains with the universe to wake her up from this nightmare. She then puckers her lips and blows softly against the delicate orb.
If only it were that easy.
She opens her eyes to watch the white umbrellas unfasten from the bulb. To watch the tiny specks fill the air like an explosion of daylight stars.
Instead, her gaze crawls up a pair of black, slim-fitting jeans and a gray sweater, and meets the wild eyes of a young man with dark, shoulder-length hair.
Neve stares, stunned by his sudden presence.
And she finds herself tilting her head back as the young man ascends.
What..? The numbing chill in her hands and knees is creeping up her thighs and forearms. And when she looks down, she realizes it is she who is sinking into the ground.
“Help!” she looks up just as the young stranger vanishes into thin air. And her deafening scream rips through the cemetery as her lungs squeeze out her fear. “No no, help—HELP!” she rakes the soil, but the earth is swallowing her up. She’s sinking faster than a boulder swallowed by quicksand.
“HEEELP!”
And then her thoughts are even louder than her cries. I’m not tall enough! I’m not tall enough! She starts to tremble, realizing she won’t be able to find footing on top of Elliot’s coffin. If she keeps sinking like this, she will certainly suffocate to death.
‘HELP ME!’ she screams as her face becomes flush with the ground, but a strangled wheeze is all that squeezes past her throat. This can’t be it, she weeps, bleeding hope and heat. This can’t be how I die.
The soil at the rim of the cavity avalanches onto her face, taking all light with it. With her eyes firmly shut, she gasps for air as the burrow closes in on her. She reaches up to the sky like a dying tree desperate for rain, wondering if they’ll ever find her body.
And suddenly, the grating against her skin ceases.
Is it over? Did animal terror numb her pain as she passed onto the next realm?
“NEVE!” a man’s voice calls out to her from above, and she feels a tightness around her wrist.
A twinge of desperation burns through her chest.
She extends her neck as high as she can and flings her compromised vision onto the silhouette of her savior.
“ROMER!?”
“HANG ON!”
Romer tightens his grip and pulls with all he’s got, but all he manages is to keep Neve from sinking any further. His knees have locked, his flexed arms are atremble, and his face is flushed beneath a sheen of sweat.
And she is not even budging.
Neve’s heart is drumming in her ears. What if he can’t pull her out? What if he isn’t strong enough?
Her emotions flare once again, racking her body with sobs. “Pull me out, please,” she begs, her flesh dense and prickling.
Romer strives for a better grip, but Neve’s wrist slides out of his grasp. Screaming, she sinks into the mound another few inches, the soil’s texture grating against her skin.
“NO!”
Romer grips Neve’s wrist, her face now nearly a foot below grade. And this time when he pulls, an icy glow emits from his eyes.
The soil starts to grate downward on Neve’s skin, the friction breathing warmth into her. And darkness wanes as she inches closer and closer to the surface.
As Neve’s line of sight rises above the ground, she catches a glimpse of a tombstone further ahead.
There is a brownish stripe at the base of it that’s becoming thicker and thicker. And Neve suddenly realizes what she’s looking at is the buried section of the tombstone, rising above grade.
Every time Romer pulls, the ston
e block rises by a few inches, and once uprooted, it topples over with a quaking thump.
And it’s not the only one.
Neve’s terrified gaze leaps from one tombstone to another as one by one they collapse around her. It’s like Romer’s attempts at uprooting her have spread to his surroundings like cancer.
“I think you’re stuck,” he grunts.
She hears him, but she can’t rip her gaze from the tombstones.
“Neve—” he strains, “listen to me—just relax!”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! If you just relax, I can pull you out. Just try it!” He steadies himself, his chest rising and falling, and then pulls with everything he’s got.
But Neve’s glimmer of hope is extinguished at the sight of the toppled tombstones slithering towards them. Every time Romer pulls, they creep closer and closer, converging like a pack of ravenous wolves.
“NEVE! FUCKING DO IT!”
And like a bolt of lightning ripping the sky in half, Romer’s eruption slices through Neve’s focus.
Before the paralyzing terror of her circumstances sinks back in, she finds the soil grating down on her once again.
He’s doing it!
She unclenches at the thought, and with one final pull, Romer plucks her from certain death.
He grips the small of her back and secures her against his frame. And Neve wraps her arms around his waist, staring at countless tombstones bowing to them in concentric circles.
She’s never seen anything so terrifying.
“Romer—” she tightens her grip as the drumming of Romer’s powerful heart fills her ear.
When Romer doesn’t acknowledge her, she looks up to find his focus outside of them. But it isn’t on the fallen tombstones. His gaze is stern and distant, darting about the cemetery at large.
“Romer?”
“It’s okay,” he mutters absentmindedly and starts to rub her back. “You’re okay.”
Neve’s brows knit. “What’s wrong?”
He looks over his shoulder.
“We’re being watched.”
Chapter 13
Prophecy
Like streaks of charcoal dragged across a canvas, tattered clouds stripe the ashen sky. The soft breeze is spreading the gloom of the late afternoon, and urbanity is slowly dragging its feet home.
With Neve clasped onto his back, Romer pulls up to her building on his custom Harley.
Neve glances up at her apartment unit, dreading being by herself. Would it be wrong to ask Romer to come up? To keep her company until it doesn’t feel like the world is going to crumble all around her?
Romer’s metal insect growls, rattling under them.
“See? Told’ja,” he grounds his feet. “You wouldn’t be able to tip this thing over, even if you tried.”
With her cheek resting on his upper back, “you don’t know me,” she says softly. “I break things.”
Romer turns off his engine and leans his bike onto its kickstand. As it tilts over, Neve tightens her grip around his waist.
“Sss—” he winces. “I think you’ve crushed enough bones for today,” he chuckles and then peeks at Neve over his shoulder.
Neve can tell he’s trying to lighten the mood, but she just can’t bring herself to join in.
“We’ll figure it all out, okay?” Romer says through his jacket’s collar and rests his hand onto Neve’s.
His skin is soft, and surprisingly smooth. Not at all what Neve would expect from a carpenter.
“Want me to help you down?” he asks.
Neve exhales a somber sigh, and then unwillingly pries herself off of him.
Romer tightens his grip of her hand and steadies her as she steps off the bike. “Just swing your leg over and—there you go.”
Even once grounded, Neve can’t seem to gather herself. After the ordeal she’s just endured, keeping her emotions at bay is just about all she has energy for. So she just stares through him, feeling broken.
“You okay?” he asks. “Need a front-hug?”
“I—” Neve gently lets go of his hand, desperately hoping what’s brewing inside isn’t registering on her face. But what started as a trickle of emotion is fast becoming a roaring flood. “I mean—you saved my life,” she wells up in spite of her best efforts. “It kind of doesn’t get any bigger than that.”
With her remark, Romer begins to rub his wrists.
“Are you hurt?” she looks up just as his pupils constrict, his gaze fixed onto something behind her.
Neve turns around to find Dylan standing in the doorframe of her building’s lobby, staring. And at the sight of him, she remembers her promise to call him after her therapy session with Galen.
How worried must he have been to come over to her place? How many missed calls—
The ferocious growl of Romer’s bike startles her, and she leaps back as he rides off, the stench of his bike’s exhaust lingering behind.
σ
Neve stares vacantly at the shower tiles. At the thin layer of condensation, and the veiny paths droplets of water carve on their way down.
She closes her eyes and leans forward.
Warm water seeps into her hair, combing the earth from her tangled tresses. She tilts her head back and welcomes the drumming of liquid bristles onto her face, desperate to erase the sense memory of being buried alive.
She steps back from the showerhead, wipes the heavy film of water from her face, and looks down.
The murkiness pooled around her feet is slowly vanishing into the drain. Out of sight, but not out of mind.
She sinks into deep thought.
It’s always the same whenever it happens. Her body starts to feel tight and prickly, just like when her leg falls asleep. Any kind of movement becomes painful, and for as long as it lasts, she’s incapable of forming a coherent thought.
It is always a limbo of intense, painful stimulation she can’t seem to control. And now, coupled with her foreboding nightmares, she is beginning to wonder if something is terribly wrong with her.
σ
Neve leaves the bathroom in a cream, lacy tank-top and black pajama shorts.
Dylan looks her way, then puts Neve’s sketchbook down and rises from the couch.
Looking at his soot-covered shirt, she remembers how he pulled her into a deep embrace when she told him about Elliot’s grave. It was the longest he had ever held her, or so it seemed. It was as if the ground could swallow her up at any moment.
She hangs her towel on the door handle.
“What am I going to do?” she mumbles, then looks at Dylan. “How the hell am I supposed to explain all of this?”
Dylan puts his hands in his pockets, squaring his shoulders. “I honestly don’t know.”
Neve looks into her modest bathroom, at the pile of her soot-covered clothes on the floor, wondering if she’ll ever be the same again—if she’ll ever able to banish the image of those prowling headstones.
“Back at the cemetery—” Dylan draws her focus, “you said Romer thought you were being watched?”
Neve pulls her damp hair behind her ears. “Yeah. He was pretty convinced.”
“Did he say what the guy looked like?”
“I don’t think he actually saw anyone.”
Dylan squints. “So it was… what? Just a feeling?”
“I don’t know,” Neve glides her fingertips under her eyes as though wiping away invisible tears, and nestles her rosy cheeks into the palms of her hands. She stares into space, thinking of the stranger who spawned and vanished right before her eyes.
“Talk to me,” Dylan starts to approach.
“I think there’s something really wrong with me,” she mumbles, eyes unblinking.
“Look—what you’re going through isn’t easy.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Neve’s hands slide down her face, arms dangling at her sides. She walks past Dylan and plops down onto her bed. “It’s fine. I don’t blame you.”
&n
bsp; Dylan remains silent for a moment.
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can say to make things better,” he walks over and sits down next to her. “But for what it’s worth… I do believe you.”
With her gaze glued to the hardwood floor, Neve shakes her head at what she’s about to say. “I sank into my best friend’s grave, Dylan. I dreamed about his suicide.”
Dylan opens his mouth to speak, but holds back.
Neve huffs. “I don’t think I can ever sleep again. I mean—how can I?” she pulls her hair back. “Maybe I really do belong in a psych ward.”
“Don’t say that,” he pleads softly.
“I’m not kidding, Dylan. I’m terrified of going to sleep. I mean—people are at their most vulnerable when they’re sleeping. It’s when they’re supposed to feel their safest. Put the day’s stresses—”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Dylan cuts her off. “Something I’ve never—something less than a handful of people know about me.” He licks his lips and looks down.
A swarm of possibilities inundates Neve’s mind, each more disturbing than the last. Is he sick? Is it cancer? Is that why he suddenly moved away? To get treatment?
“Okay?” she pulls her legs onto the bed and wraps her arms around them. And she waits, shielded and prepared for the blow, but Dylan keeps staring at his wrist—at the veins bridging his palm and forearm.
What are you thinking? What are you going to say? “Talk to me,” Neve whispers.
Dylan opens his mouth, but doesn’t look up. “Ever since I was just a kid, I’ve had these—” he swallows, “dreams… where it’s impossible to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.”
Dreams. Neve’s eyes narrow. “How do you mean?”
Dylan exhales a shaky breath. “When I wake up, it’s not like waking up at all. Everything I was feeling in the dream stays with me. And it feels… real.”
“Dreams usually do.”
“Yeah, while you’re still dreaming,” he looks up, “but what about when you wake up?”
“What about it?”