*****
Headaches and BellsBy Chya
"Em, you got any Migrol?" Jesse came down the stairs, fingers rubbing at his temples and looking very pale, even grey about the gills.
"Sorry, all out," Emma said, concerned at his pallor. "You look pretty sick though, Adam might have so- Jesse!" This last as he passed out in front of her.
Calling for help, she tried to feel out what was happening,, confused to find not sickness, but a blank wall, one that would not let her in. Yet neither would it let her go, making her stick there, shocked, in limbo by Jesse's side.
She was aware of Adam and Shalimar approaching, and with some effort suggested that they shouldn't be moved from where they were on the floor. But she wasn't moving her mouth, something else was, although she couldn't tell what. She tried to stop herself, but she was telling Adam and Shalimar that they should be with her, that they should lend her their strength.
And they trusted her, so they did as she asked, and she could hear Brennan approaching, called to him to add his strength too.
And then Emma was on a pier painted bright yellow, standing alongside Adam. Grey sky and greyer sea were around, and there was another bright yellow pier some distance away while biting cold wind ate through thin clothing. The beach between the piers was dull sand with black oil and seaweed strewn randomly about and the odd coke can tumbling empty over pebbles and rocks.
Jesse was a still figure near the other pier, staring out to sea, while Shalimar, feet bare, no sign of shoes, was down on the beach, trying to run towards him. But she kept having to stop, pulling the shards of glass and sea urchin spines from her feet that seemed dog every footstep, yet unwilling to give up.
"We should get warm while we're waiting," Adam said, and Emma agreed, for Jesse and Shalimar would be a while. Turning round, they saw the chrome, glass and red sandstone building that was the Hotel. Brennan was on the front steps waving, so in a companionable silence, they slowly ran the miles between the pier and Hotel.
Bare feet buried in the warm white sand, Jesse stared out at the sea, eyes bright blue, reflecting the bright aquamarine of the water and the azure sky. Warm and still, with no movement or people made the pretty polaroid bright picture oppressive, sent shivers down his spine. The far yellow pier was too far to focus on, but the white pine pier just a few yards away was almost compelling.
A slight movement from above propelled him into action. He just had to see what the only other moving thing here could be. He climbed up the wood, bare feet sure on the diagonal struts and beams, the pier higher than he'd thought. Eventually he reached the top to find a rusty bell, which was swaying slightly in a breeze that wasn't there. He reached out to touch it, but before fingers made contact, it rang out, long and loud, and he suddenly and desperately needed to get away from it, the greatest fears he'd ever had exploding within him.
A rope dangling from the sky offered him safety, so he grabbed hold and it swung away with him, letting him zip line down with bare hands, and he thought his hands should be burning, but they weren't, so he held on, sliding faster until he hit surf outside the Hotel, rolling to a stop on the beach. But the sand was warm against flesh that had become frozen and he tried to warm up, but he was just too cold, slipping down into muscle aching shaking delirium as Brennan yelled at him to hold still.
Shalimar cursed as the beach, hard and stony and full of sharp objects seemed determined to keep her from Jesse. Every step forward she made counteracted with two steps back and pain. She called out to him, and though her throat vibrated with sounds made, the cold wind howling past her ears made it impossible to hear.
She was just beginning to think she might be making progressing when he leapt for the pier, swarming up it. And when the bell rang, it vibrated round her skull. But in the middle of the cyclone of ringing pain, a clear picture came to her. Two men, twins, tied to straight back chairs with rope, side by side.
On the wall behind them, a cuckoo clock with a large swinging pendulum below. And just above it, a rusty bell, that rang in tandem with the bell on the pier. "The handsome heartbreaker is ours," smiled one, and the other laughed. "He'll help us destroy the rest."
The vibration died and to her dismay, Shalimar saw Jesse flying through the air, sailing over to land in the water, skidding and rolling on to the beach. Running towards him, the sand was soft, no sharp objects any longer to bar her way, only the usual ankle aching soft sand, that let her go while making it plain that she would not be helped.
The wind died and air was warm, but as she reached Jesse, she could see that he was shaking and convulsing, and she didn't know what to do, so she called out for help, cringing as her own voice sounded high, shrill and hysterical. Then Brennan was there, but only because it was her that had cried out, and he straddled Jesse's body, trying to get the shaking young man to calm down, to stop struggling, but the more Brennan tried to pin him down, the more Jesse struggled and convulsed, thrashing violently and screaming soundlessly.
Somehow they got him into the cool interior of the Hotel, tying him to a straight-backed chair beneath the cuckoo clock on the wall in the reception, where he calmed down, awake, smiling slightly, yet unresponsive in as much that he didn't seem to see them, know they were there, just looked aimlessly about him, smiling at things they couldn't see.
As Emma watched Adam try and get Jesse to talk to him, she felt her own adrenaline surge for no apparent reason, other than, as Jesse couldn't move, he wanted her to instead. And she had to obey, had to run with the instinct, her feet flying up the stairs, up and up, before anyone noticed. But Shalimar cried out that she would follow her, and the feral's agile bounding self passed her up the stairs.
Knees aching and lungs breathless, Emma reached the top of the stairs and headed straight for the big ceiling to floor windows that were open to the sunlight. Shalimar was just inside asking her what she was doing, but she couldn't answer because she didn't know.
Looking through the window though, Emma saw the answer. The swimming pool far below. Shalimar cried out, but Emma was so absolutely certain that this was the right thing to do, she ran straight off the open balcony and fell the twenty thousand floors towards the pool. As she reached terminal velocity, she suddenly realised that had miscalculated. She was supposed to hit the pool, but she was headed directly for the side.
She had time to swear before she felt her neck break and everything stop.
'Is this what it's like to be dead?' she thought, then, 'if you die in your dreams aren't you supposed to wake up dead?'
And then the pool was there reaching for her, and she gratefully rolled off the side into the water, swimming away from her landing spot in a sudden fear born of the knowledge that if she hadn't got into the pool, she would have died.
Then Brennan was there in the pool, but only because Shalimar told him to be. Emma kept stroking away as Brennan tried to catch her, afraid that if she left the water then the death she'd evaded would come and find her. She screamed at him to get away, even though she knew that he could never catch her while she was in the water because that was her element, not his. But the pool was drying up, and the length free for her to swim through shrank with every breath, until he had her pinned against the bone-dry floor of it. And she hated him for it, screaming and hitting him in her displeasure as he hauled her up and over his shoulder to tie her up in the straight-backed chair beside Jesse.
The sight of her two friends tied up below the cuckoo clock nudged Shalimar's memory. "Twins below a cuckoo clock," she said. "But there was a bell."
"Twins?" asked Adam. "Torpedo Twins?" but his voice was coming and going, unclear in his sentences. "Psionic twins?"
"Jesse was the one that caught them," Brennan snapped his fingers as Shalimar remembered. "They said they'd already gotten their vengeance on us before they disappeared."
"Psionic bomb," said Adam. "We're trapped here until our bodies waste away."
"There has to be a failsafe." Emma gasped, while Jesse laughed in agony, and then she screamed because she could.
"The bell," said Shalimar and ran down the beach to the pier with the bell. But the beach would no more let her progress than it did when she was trying to reach Jesse.
"It has to be the owner of the mindscape," Emma moaned while fighting against her own mind.
"So Jesse has to go and get the bell?" asked Brennan, rock solid sanity amongst chaos, but he only said it because Shalimar thought it.
"I can do that," Jesse giggled, and then he was on the beach. Shalimar was still struggling forward while moving backward as he strolled past her and climbed back up to the bell.
Again, he desperately needed to get away from it as it rang through his head, violent in its attempts to push it away. But he touched it and the ringing grew louder, shattering the sky apart to fall in scarlet chunks into the raging sea, and they all flew towards the sun to slide back into reality, skidding and ending up in a moaning heap at the bottom of the Sanctuary stairs.
"Hey, you okay?" Jesse blinked and Emma was shaking him, worried look on her face as Adam came in with a packet of Migrol.
"Oh, the bells," he muttered, took the Migrol and went for a good long lie down.
FINIS