Chapter 3: Awake

==o==

Names were important.

From her brother's stories of Atem, Shizuka had learned that by erasing a person's name, one could effectively erase his existence, his memory. He could be deleted from history.

But Shizuka had known that names were important even before her brother had told her. Whether she was labeled as 'blind' or 'visually impaired' made all the difference in how other people looked at her. And even now, the fact that she called herself a lesbian in her head but not out loud made all the difference in how she looked at herself.

In the Dreamtime, the First Peoples had named the universe as they'd created it.

Yes, names were important, and that was why she was choosing to call the incident downstairs 'the nightmare.'

Had it been a nightmare? She didn't know. In a way, she couldn't know. She'd spent too long in a world of ancient ghosts in golden artifacts, of souls in machines and of monsters in cards. She'd lived in that world too long to believe that what had happened to her—seeing the world through a different pair of eyes, constant in place but not in time—was impossible.

But regular, garden-variety nightmares still existed, and she knew that. Sometimes seemingly supernatural occurrences had perfectly natural explanations.

The important thing was that she wanted it to have been a nightmare. And if she called it a nightmare for long enough, maybe it would become one.

After all, time-slip or no time-slip, Shizuka still had to finish her thesis.

Or even begin it.

In the week following 'the nightmare,' she'd tried to distract herself by throwing herself into her work. She fixed the scratches on the door, fed the cat, picked up the mail, and even found some time to work on her thesis.

Or, more accurately, stare blankly at the empty document that was supposed to be her thesis and try not to fall asleep.

And therein lay the problem of half-believing it had been a nightmare and half-believing it had really happened: somehow, she'd translated the fear of the paralysis, the loss of control, and the apparitions into a fear of sleep. Shizuka had slept fitfully every night following the nightmare, rarely dozing for more than an hour consecutively. The insomnia was starting to get to her.

She'd considered calling Katsuya, but…no. That would never do. She had to work through this on her own. She wasn't a little girl anymore. She wasn't blind. She wasn't helpless.

Her exhausted mind begged to differ, though.

Her muscles ached, her appetite was off and she was constantly sleepy, but that wasn't even the worst of it. She couldn't focus. Or at least, she couldn't focus consistently. It seemed that when she sat down to write her thesis, the only sentences that jumped out at her were the ones that reminded her of the nightmare.

The aboriginal people believe that every person exists eternally in the Dreamtime. This eternal part exists before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends.

She remembered the white-haired woman. The tall woman with Bakura's eyes.

She remembered what that woman had called her.

"Amane…"

Had that been Bakura's little sister's name? Shizuka didn't think she knew Bakura's little sister's name. Did that mean the nightmare was real?

No. No, of course not. Everything she knew about Bakura was second-hand knowledge anyway. Katsuya or one of his friends could have mentioned it once, and she could have remembered it subconsciously. It might not even be the correct name. Anyway, she needed to stop thinking about the dead little sisters and start thinking about her thesis. She was already almost a quarter of the way through her time here, and she still hadn't written a sentence.

Back to work…

The Dreamtime is more real than reality itself.

Shizuka shoved the book off the desk.

==o==

That night, Shizuka couldn't sleep. Again.

Bakura's bed, which had started out reasonably comfortable, now felt like it had been filled with rocks. Shizuka tossed and turned all night, full of a sort of restless energy she didn't know what to do with. It was at least four in the morning, and she was starting to get that numb feeling behind her eyes and the accompanying giddiness of sleep deprivation.

It was too hot.

It was too quiet.

And just below the level of conscious awareness, she swore she could hear someone whispering.

She tried to distract herself. She tried to count sheep, but she kept losing count. She tried to read, but the words seemed to jump around on the page. She couldn't even think clearly. It was almost as if her mind was moving too fast for her thoughts to keep up, taking her somewhere unknown, somewhere she wasn't sure if she wanted to go.

She stared up at the lightbulb on the ceiling and imagined, could almost see, it sucking all the color from the room, staining it a sepia tone, like an old photograph.

She felt like she was on drugs.

And as she lay there on the uncomfortable bed, sweat plastering her nightgown to her back, the whispering in her head grew louder. It consolidated. It commanded.

Stand.

She stood. And slowly, like the very beginning of a carousel ride, the room began to spin around her.

Walk.

She staggered towards Bakura's bedroom door, not quite able to make her feet take her in a straight line in the spinning room. She knew, somehow, through the fog that had descended over her mind, that she had to get to the door. She had to get out of Bakura's bedroom.

The bookshelf whizzed past her.

Dizziness started to overcome her, and she knew if she fell down, she wouldn't be able to get up again.

The walls continued to spin, faster and faster; shapes became indistinguishable in the blur of color.

She had to get out of here.

Close your eyes.

No! That was the last thing she was going to do! Blinding herself to what she feared wouldn't make that fear go away. She'd just be helpless, unable to see it, unable to defend herself against it.

The room was a vortex.

Trust me.

"I can't! I c-can't do it! What do you want from m—"

Do as I say!

The whisper in her ears was now a scream; the whir of the spinning room was now a roar. She could no longer distinguish floor from wall from ceiling, all merged together in a spinning, stupefying blur.

Shizuka bit her lip and obeyed the voice. Overcome with a sudden feeling of weakness, she closed her eyes.

And like the flip of a switch, all was suddenly silent.

She was conscious only of the sound of her own steady footfalls on the hardwood floor of Bakura's bedroom as she made the final few strides to the door, eyes still clamped tightly shut.

She opened the door to Bakura's bedroom and stepped into the hall, keeping her eyes shut.

The voice in her head spoke again, gentler this time.

Come to me.

"Where are y—"

You know where I am.

And Shizuka did. She didn't even bother to protest that her eyes were closed and she couldn't see where she was going. She could feel it from her chest to her kneecaps, like a magnet in the pit of her stomach, every inch of her body pulling her toward a single spot.

The third bedroom.

Eyes still closed, her mind still too foggy to protest, she walked to the other end of the hallway. She reached out her hand and felt the cold metal of the doorknob.

Before she could move, it turned beneath her hand. She heard a creak as the door swung open.

Come inside.

Shizuka stepped into the third bedroom. She heard the door close behind her.

You may open your eyes now.

Shizuka did, and what she saw was every bit as strange as the spinning room she'd left behind.

It was, as Bakura had said, a bedroom, insofar as there was a bed in the middle of the room, but nothing else looked like any other bedroom Shizuka had seen before.

The bed was split in two. On the left half, there was a pale pink comforter and a soft, white pillow. But the comforter seemed to stop in the middle of the bed, not cut, but just…ended. And on the right half of the bed, there was no comforter at all, no pillow, not even a sheet. There was only a bare mattress covered in a fine layer of dust.

The rest of the room followed the same pattern of asymmetry. The left half of the room had clothes and books strewn across the floor. And on the right half, there was nothing but empty hardwood. On the left, pale wallpaper adorned the walls; on the right, the walls were stripped clean.

The entire room had a sort of dusky-rose color of unreality.

Welcome, said the voice. It seemed to be coming from the walls themselves.

The fog over Shizuka's mind lifted. Finally able to think clearly again, she reached a number of conclusions simultaneously:

First: The present situation might also be a nightmare but, lacking any conclusive evidence one way or the other, she should behave as if it were really happening.

Second: Because coincidences were unlikely in a case such as this, she should assume that whoever was responsible for turning Bakura's bedroom into a carousel ride from hell was also responsible for the original 'nightmare.' The nightmare in which she'd been unable to move by her own will and had seen the world through someone else's eyes.

Third: The person (or thing…) behind these events was extraordinarily powerful.

And finally: She, Kawai Shizuka, was absolutely terrified.

She had to get out of here.

Shizuka ran back to the door of the strange bedroom and wrenched it open with all her strength. Behind her she heard a furious 'No!' emanating from the walls, but she didn't look back. She raced down the staircase to the first floor of the house, and, as fast as she could, ran across the living room floor to the front door. She yanked it open.

And was met with…nothing.

Blackness.

Where there should have been Bakura's front yard and driveway, there was only black, the black of space, extending out, featureless, in all directions. She wobbled on the threshold, on the edge of a dark chasm. A wind originating from nowhere pushed her, invited her to fall into the darkness. The nothingness.

Shizuka pulled herself back and slammed the front door shut, too shocked to scream.

And behind her, she heard a strange noise, something that sounded half like sobbing and half like laughter.

The laughter became a voice, a girl's voice, but with a vicious edge that cut like a knife. It hissed at her from somewhere deep within the walls. There will be no leaving.

Slowly, shakily, Shizuka turned around.

And the sobbing laughter spread from its place in the wall, increasing in volume, filling the room all around her.

Shizuka sank down to the floor, back against the door, eyes wide and hands shaking.

But how rude of me, said the voice. I haven't introduced myself.

Shizuka blinked, and suddenly, she was no longer sitting against the door. Instead, she was sitting a few feet away, at a table in the middle of the living room. A table which hadn't been there moments before.

And she was paralyzed again. Shizuka realized with horror that the voice had sent her into another 'nightmare.'

Immediately, the change in sensory information confounded her senses. She noticed that her line of vision, far more acute than it had been a second before, was also much lower than it normally would have been, as if she were suddenly much shorter. She could feel something smooth beneath her hands: the pages of a book. And, now that she paid enough attention to hear, she realized that someone was talking to her. Sitting next to her. Beyond her conscious control, she turned to look at the person.

A boy. White hair, brown eyes, about thirteen years old. He was talking and talking at great length, but she was so distracted by the information overload from her other senses that she only caught the odd word.

"Roll…damage….initiative…And that's how you play Monster World, Amane."

Shizuka…no, Amane, blinked again, and the scene was gone.

She was back in her own body, back in the present, crouching against the front door once again.

"Amane…" Shizuka whispered hoarsely to the room at large. Her hands were shaking.

Indeed, said Amane, and Shizuka didn't miss the condescending note that colored her voice. And you are?

"Shi-Shizuka," Shizuka said, unable to keep the tremor of fear out of her own voice. It was odd addressing a presence she couldn't see, a presence that seemed to be surrounding her from all sides.

Shizuka. What a lovely name. It suits you. Quiet. Calm. Serenity. No wonder you didn't scream.

Amane laughed again, in that strange sobbing laugh of hers.

Shizuka was overcome with a profound need to state the obvious.

"You're dead."

Indeed I am. Almost thirteen years now. Crushed under a truck, in case you were wondering. I think the official cause of death was 'partial decapitation'.

Shizuka filed that under 'Deeply Disturbing.'

Amane went on, her tone oddly conversational. I am a part of the house now, as you can see. I am in the walls and the windows and the memories. I am the memories.

Shizuka steadied herself. It seemed that the disembodied voice that was Amane wanted to have a conversation with her. She could deal with that. It was certainly better than wanting to paralyze her.

Shizuka took a deep breath and began to speak. "So…the… things you show me. The ones where I can't move and I see through someone else's eyes…" She coughed and continued, fighting as hard as she could to keep her voice from shaking. "I'm seeing through your eyes? Those are your memories?"

All around Shizuka, the walls echoed with the strange sob-laughter.

Those are two different questions, Shizuka, said Amane, putting a mocking stress on Shizuka's name. You are seeing through my eyes, yes. But no, you're not in my memories. They're not memories at all. They're echoes.

It's an old house, Shizuka. An old house that' s seen so much life. My brother and I were both born in this house. We ran and played and the windows shook with our laughter.

The windows still shook with her laughter, Shizuka reflected, but she didn't say anything.

Amane went on, a strange thickness suddenly coloring her disembodied voice, as if she were trying not to cry. And now it's empty. Silent. For thirteen years. Or so it seemed.

But, she said, and here her voice became more hopeful, more defiant, but you can't just stamp out life like that. It lingers, untended, in the corners. Waiting.

Her voice was suddenly very close to Shizuka, as if she were speaking directly into her face.

I waited.

Shizuka shuddered.

But there is life beyond me in this house, Amane continued, her voice spreading throughout the walls once more. I've felt it vibrating all these years, shaking, waiting. And when you came, the echoes started.

That word again. Shizuka forced herself to speak. "Echoes?"

Yes. Echoes. Not memories. What you're experiencing are fragments and bursts of time gone past. You're slipping back to a time when I was alive. You're reliving moments in the last month of my life.

The voice was very close again, very harsh again, hissing in Shizuka's face.

And you will help me. You will learn to control the echoes, how to start and stop them, and most importantly, how to change them. You will learn to move my body, control it of your own free will, and in so doing, you will change the past. And you WILL NOT LET ME GET INTO THAT CAR.

Shizuka's fear mingled with anger and confusion. The voice was claiming that the echoes were a kind of time travel, and that she, Shizuka, could change the past so that Amane didn't … wouldn't … hadn't died.

And the voice wasn't just asking her; it was commanding her, frightening her, making her shake and whimper like a weakling. And she wasn't weak. She was exhausted, confused and terrified, but she wasn't weak. She would prove it.

She started to stand up defiantly, and stared down at where she thought the voice might be. "I'm not sure if I want—"

Shizuka was back against the wall before she knew what had hit her. The voice screamed.

YOU WANT? YOU WANT? Do you not have time in your busy schedule of feeding the cat and staring blankly at a computer screen? What about what I want? I want to go to middle school! I want my mother to teach me to put on makeup! I want my brother to come to my high school graduation! I want to run and walk and sleep and eat and play and LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!

There was silence. And then Amane spoke, voice cracking just slightly.

Please, Shizuka. Please help me to live.

Shizuka looked around and thought about the echoes off the walls and the silence and the emptiness. She thought about weakness, her own and Amane's. She thought about car accidents and graduations. She thought about a voice without a body, a voice that couldn't laugh without sobbing. A voice that had to command to be heard at all.

And wordlessly, Shizuka nodded.

==o==