Shade

Chapter 13 - Sleepwalking

Jonas fell asleep relatively easy that night, but I had too many thoughts running through my mind. There was an ominous whisper in the air around the commune, a whisper that tried to warn me before I had ever arrived.

I remembered the tarot reading I had received at Burning Man: the two of cups, death, and the tower. The tower was a bad card, the woman had said. I looked up the tower on my phone. "Crisis, danger, sudden unforeseen change, liberation," it read. Liberation. At least there was something positive.

I pulled the leather bound diary from Jonas's desk. I felt the crisp uneven yellow edges of its pages, I smelled it. It was old and musty, yet familiar. I turned it to a random page.

"Molly fled the mission. Tonight she slumbers in the barn, so close and yet so far from me. The boys swore to keep her secret. Jack's even organizing a pool to help us in our travels, so we should not have to wait too long."

"Jack," I repeated aloud. Since I had first seen him, I associated him with fear. Yet, the more I learned about him, the more sympathetic he became. I heard his voice in the ghostbox, I saw him by the lake. Whoever Jack was, he was trying to reach out. He looked like death. But death, like tarot reader had told me, wasn't bad. It only meant change.

I felt movement in the doorway. I looked up from the book, expecting to find nothing as I had several times before. But the door was creaking open and on the other side stood Walter. He rocked sleepily on his heels wearing pajama bottoms. His locs were tied up in a large bun. He looked... not himself.

"Walter?" I said.

He opened his mouth and no words came out, only a pluming breath of frosty air. The temperature in the room dropped to a chill. The window iced over. Outside, Jack's lantern passed by like a floating wisp. When I turned back to the doorway, Walter was gone, but I could hear the thunking of heavy boots move down the hall.

A grey haze settled over me like a shroud. I felt dizzy and compelled to follow the footsteps. I drifted towards the door, aware of the lucid dream-state I had entered and the bravery I had as a result.

The hall swayed and rocked like I was on a ship. Walter or Jack walked in front of me, always just out of view.

I passed the first door on my right, what I knew to be the room Anke and Caroline shared. But it wasn't the room I remembered. Gone were the teal walls, corkboards, and band posters. The walls were wooden and barren. I was struck by a smell.

Rabbits by the dozen were dangling in columns, flayed and on meat hooks. A person worked at a bloodied center table, cutting the pelt from the flesh with expert precision. It was Anke, and then a man I didn't recognize, then Anke, then the man. As I passed every column, she changed.

"It takes a lot of meat to feed this many men," she said.

The door frame eclipsed her like a curtain pulling closed.

I wafted left towards Eddy and Daniel's room. Theirs was how I remembered it, red walls and a large sculptural headboard covered in newspaper. Caroline was with them wearing black and pink ruffled lingerie. Daniel was in a jockstrap and Eddy was naked. I watched them caress each other in slow motion, expressions of laughter and passion.

The headboard bumped the wall and a candle fell from the nightstand. It left a trail of red wax as it rolled towards my feet. When I turned back to them, the room had changed. There was a large hole in the wall. Snow was billowing in dusting the old wood floor and burying the skeletal remains of three humans.

I shuddered and stepped backwards onto cool marble tile. I was no longer in the hallway, but in a stark white bathroom. There weren't any walls to speak of, just endless white space. A solitary porcelain bathtub sat in the void. Evelyn stood in front of it wearing a white silk robe. She didn't acknowledge me. She let the silk slip from her shoulders and clump at her feet. She stepped delicately into the tub.

As she submerged herself to her shoulders, I realized it wasn't water that she soaked herself in, but a bath of liquid gold. She rubbed the gold into her skin, and ran her fingers through her hair. She sank until her mouth and nose were submerged and her golden kneecaps rose above the surface. Her eyes stared into me, burning with hatred.

The white room darkened and I felt bitter wind against my skin. I was outside in the orchard, ankle deep in the snow. Snowflakes were falling all around me, or was it ash?

There was a barn ahead of me, and Jack stood in front of it, his lantern lighting the way. I trudged towards him, for once fearless of him.

He remained still, waiting for me. He wore all black, his trousers held up over his buttoned shirt with thick suspenders. He was strongly built with a square jaw. His white-blonde hair fluttered on his head like feathers. He didn't look at me. Crimson dripped deeply into the snow at his feet. He was bleeding constantly from a deep wound in his throat.

"Your neck," I said to him.

"I said I'd keep you secret," he replied. Yet his lips never moved.

He pulled open the barn door and led me inside. It felt impossibly vast, a realm of dizzying blackness. The ground was slick and reflective like oil.

I found Jonas inside, naked and crouched beside a large pile of ashes. A woman crouched opposite him. The applied the ash to each other's skin, as if in ritual. In an instant, I realized that I was the woman and I was suddenly in her place, rubbing coarse ash into Jonas's chest. We continued until we were fully covered, gray and colorless, even our lips and hair.

And then, he was a man called Arthur and I was a woman called Molly. Our love was an act of courage and defiance. Our love was timeless.

A woman in a long black gown entered the void. She left golden footprints in her wake. She was slender and tall, gaunt with deep hollows in her cheeks. Her stringy blonde hair was pulled back tightly behind her head. She exuded jealousy and rage. I knew her name. She was Bonnie Dunham.

Arthur and I embraced as though the woman had enough power to pull us apart with a glare. But as we touched, we weakened. Arthur and I were no longer simply coated in ash, we were made of ash. In our collision, we plumed and flaked apart until we were nothing, no bones, not even a memory, only dust.

I tasted dirt.

I awakened suddenly from my vision not knowing where I was. I felt gentle summer night air and smelled smoke deeply in my nose. I was curled up in a ball in one of Evelyn's firing pits on a bed of soil and fractured skulls. My heart was racing and I gasped for breath. Clawing at the edge of the pit, I pulled myself from the grave.