Chapter 39

My sisterand I look to be about seven. We're running through a clearing in the woods populated by the plants from the earlier memories.

Both girls are screaming in terror, and for a good reason.

Our parents are chasing after them with machetes made out of strange, non-shiny, ceramic-like material.

No. This can't be what it looks like. Surely the machetes are just for clearing vegetation, and this is some weird game. But the girls' terror seems all too real, and the weapons aside, something isn't right with our parents.

It's their faces. There's a magma-like fire in their eyes and a complete lack of emotion on their features.

Still, could this be a game regardless? Something to do with a holiday like Halloween?

A whole crowd of people is chasing after my parents. In the front, I spot my grandmother, Davu with his wife and son, and Kojo and his parents.

"Stop!" Davu screams at my parents.

They don't respond, just keep chasing the girls.

One of the twins trips over a root.

The other keeps running for a few moments, then looks back, panting. "Asha, no!" my younger self gasps and rushes to her.

Asha is crying.

Little Bailey tries to lift her.

The parents close in.

Our father faces the crowd while Mom raises her machete.

"Mommy, no!" little me screams.

The machete whooshes by little Bailey's cheek and bites into Asha's neck.

Blood gushes out of the wound, spraying little me all over.

Asha's severed head rolls away.

Little Bailey screams.

I don't want to believe my eyes—except my eyes have nothing to do with what I've just witnessed, only my powers. And though I want to deny it, my powers leave no room for doubt.

This is a memory.

A memory that explains why I don't know my sister.

Numbly, I watch as Mom's strange eyes gaze at little me, who's sobbing uncontrollably. Then Mom's entire body tenses, her face twisting with alternating expressions of blankness and horror. Her eyes flicker between magma-like fire and normal brown, and her left hand grabs her right, as if trying to steal the machete from it. Finally, her eyes stay brown, and the horror eclipses all else on her face.

She looks at the bloody machete in her hands. Then at headless Asha.

With a raw, guttural moan, she spins around—just as my father smashes a fist into her temple.

The memory terminates.

* * *

The next memoryis of Mom reading a bedtime story to the three-year-old twins.

The one after that is another hike, but I barely pay attention to it.

I'm reeling, unable to process the impossible.

I had a sister, a twin, and Mom killed her.

That must be why she wanted to forget everything to do with Asha, and why she was so terrified to have me dreamwalk in her. Some part of her must know that she forgot something awful—and this might even explain the dreams where she was killing me. I look just like Asha would if she were alive.

Those nightmares echoed the terrible truth.

Mom killed my sister.

No wonder she's been depressed for as long as I've known her. Even without recalling the details, she must've been in constant psychic pain.

And is this why I don't remember Asha either? Because I witnessed her murder at the hand of our mother? I'm no shrink, but children have been known to block out traumas far less significant than this.

Why did Mom do this? And what was the deal with her eyes at the time of the murder? That magma I saw in her gaze was weirdly familiar. It's almost like—

The memories halt, and I find myself in an environment that reminds me of those eyes.

Black ocean is under my feet, with skies that seem to be on fire up above.

It's the place where subdream monsters attack, only I'm not in a subdream.

In fact, I've only seen this backdrop outside of subdreams once—when I dreamwalked in that necromancer.

Puck. I completely forgot about that until now.

A presence congeals out of nothingness to stand on the ocean in front of me, a humanoid creature of enormous proportions.

It's a frightening sight, even if it's hard to pinpoint why. The face looking at me is just as beautiful as the last time, with features that have a supernatural kind of symmetry.

It's the exact same face as in the necromancer's dream, though logic states he and my mom shouldn't be dreaming the same thing.

Not unless they both somehow saw it.

The black holes on the terribly beautiful face scan me more carefully this time, and all I can do is stand there and stare up at it, paralyzed.

"You're you. And alive." Like in the necromancer's dream, its booming voice conjures my every fear.

I swallow hard. "Who are you? What are you?"

"I'm Phobetor." The vibrations of the being's reply make the blood freeze in my veins, even before I comprehend the significance of that name. "Your existence is a blight."

My stunned mind latches on to the strange phrase. A blight—that's what the subdream monsters said to me earlier. This must be the master they were talking about, not Mom.

Phobetor's black-hole eyes narrow, and its truck-sized arm reaches for me.

With an impossible effort of will, I snap out of my paralysis and jolt myself awake.

* * *

Back in the real world,I hold myself together long enough to reassure the uber nurse and Dr. Xipil that I'm not homicidally insane. Then I rush into the bathroom and empty my stomach.

When I can breathe again, I let myself process the last thing I saw.

The terrible, beautiful being called itself Phobetor—same as the deity Icelus worship. A god of nightmares, said to benefit from all the misfortune in the Cogniverse.

It's impossible.

Unthinkable.

Utterly ridiculous.

I can't believe I'm even entertaining this idea, but… are Icelus right?

Does Phobetor really exist?

If so, what does he have to do with me and my mom?

I stare at my ashen face in the mirror, the damning memory-dream I just witnessed playing in front of my eyes. Asha and me, our parents with machetes… the strange hue of their eyes…

And Phobetor, right there in Mom's dreams.

A million questions race through my mind, but I can only latch on to one.

If Phobetor is real, is he the reason for the horror I witnessed?

Is he why Mom killed my twin?

THE END