LIGHTNING
I WAKE TO A SOFT, padding noise on the other side of the door. Linus is still sleeping beside me, a weighty, warm presence in the bed, but I lean up enough to face the door and listen better. A faint creak comes from the hallway. I can’t discern if it’s human or dog. I try not to worry. Linus said he locked the door. I’m peering at the bottom of the door, the dark crack that offers no clue, and then, silently, the door inches open.
My heart takes off. I can’t even whisper. I give Linus a nudge. He doesn’t respond. The door opens another inch. I huddle back down, trying to hide behind Linus, hoping I’m invisible. The door opens further, noiselessly, until it’s fully open, and standing in the hallway is the dark silhouette of a thin man. Ghostly moonlight shimmers around his shoulders and dark head. A shadowed forest shifts behind him. He’s holding something toward me with both hands, something wet and dark. He doesn’t move or speak because he doesn’t need to. In a shift of the moonlight, it’s suddenly clear that he’s Ian, with his chest bloody and ripped open, holding his heart in both hands.
I slam awake.
I gasp with panic, staring at the door, which is solidly closed in the dark room. No Ian. No dripping heart.
“What is it?” Linus says quietly.
I can’t speak. He was so real. He was right there. I shoot my eyes around the room. My skin’s crawling off me.
“Rosie?” Linus says. He fumbles for the lamp, and I wince at the brightness.
“It’s Ian,” I say.
Linus is squinting at me with one eye. His hair is mussed, and his shirt is tangled around him. I run both hands back through my hair and take a deep breath, but it’s no use. My imagination can’t let go of Ian. I can still picture him on the other side of the door, confused now. He’s wondering why I don’t let him in. He’s anxious that I’m in bed with Linus. His voice arrives straight to my brain: You’re the only one who can take care of my heart. He’s shifting through the door now, like a ghost who can pass through solid objects, hands and heart first.
“Please,” he whispers.
“I never wanted your heart,” I say forcefully. “Stay back.”
Linus snaps his fingers in front of my eyes. “Wake up.”
Ian vanishes a second time, and I take a deep, ragged breath.
“You had a nightmare,” Linus says.
That wasn’t a nightmare. That was a visitation.
My gaze meets the Death Star. Then my empty chili bowl and my coat on the doorknob and Linus. His eyes are deep with concern.
“Who’s Ian?” he asks.
I sag slightly. “I thought I told you. He’s one of my keepers.” In halting words, I try to explain the weirdness of Ian, and how he was taking me to some hunting cabin until I ditched him. “He’s probably looking for me right now. He likes to stalk.” I glance toward the windows, which don’t have shades or curtains. The only buildings in view from the bed are up on the distant hill, at the school, so from the street level, Ian couldn’t have an angle to see inside.
“He sounds dangerous,” Linus says.
He keeps his voice low, and so do I.
“He is. But he also really cares for me. If he ever hurt me, he’d do it out of some misguided idea because he cares.”
Linus rolls on the bed so he’s facing me more directly. I shift to sit pretzel style, with my back to the headboard.
“Do you think he reported to Berg that he found you?” Linus asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He quit his job.”
“People who work for Berg don’t quit,” Linus says.
“You worked for Berg. You quit.”
He hesitates. “I wasn’t on the inside, like the techies. Ian must have been deep inside Berg’s confidence to be taking care of dreamers. Even now, he could be on a very long leash.”
I hadn’t considered that, and I don’t like the possibility. “Ian doesn’t seem like the sort of person Berg would trust. Then again, he was strangely proud of his job, like it made him a man.”
“Did he think it was legit?”
“I think he did,” I say. “He was aware that there are rewards for me, but he knew Berg was my legal guardian, so he didn’t question his right to keep me there dreaming.” I think back. “The whole thing’s strange. I don’t think Ian deliberately helped me escape, but he was definitely responsible because he messed with my meds.”
“What do you think Berg would do with you if he found you again?” Linus asked.
“Mine me. I have no doubt. Then, I don’t know. He might have to kill me.”
“Has he ever said he’d kill you? Did he threaten you?”
I shake my head. “When I talked to him, he asked me if I’d had enough stimulation yet.”
“What did he mean?”
I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. “Maybe he has me on a long leash, too.”
“Rosie, this is bad. You can’t spend your life hiding. You haven’t committed any crime.”
“Not yet,” I say dryly. I pull my knees up to my chest.
Linus frowns at me. “You know, you could let me do an exclusive with you, once and for all. This might sound backwards, but if you tell the same story Berg’s been telling, you know, that you’ve been in a private psyche ward somewhere recovering, Berg won’t be able to hide you away again. You’ll come off as really sane and healed, and you’ll be out in the open.”
“That’s ass backwards, all right,” I say. “What about the truth?”
“You have to think about the outcome. If you say one thing publicly, you can have a private life again,” he says. “You can negotiate with Berg. Get him to give you what you want. Start your own film company. Be in control. We’d pay you, Rosie. Big time.”
His company “we” throws me. Linus talks like I have a future ahead of me where money would matter, but I don’t have a future, really. When I think of letting Berg get away with what he’s done, a visceral loathing consumes me. I want him helpless and hurting. I want to pick through his brain the way he’s picked through mine. I want him to know it, and die. That’s all that matters.
“I’m sick of lies,” I say.
“I’m just thinking about what’s best for you,” Linus says quietly.
“You’re assuming Berg can’t be beat,” I say. “But beating him is what would be best for me.”
Linus nods slowly. “Then we’ll take him down.”
I hug my knee, considering him. I’m not sure how much I want Linus to be involved. I’m not sure how much he can really help me, either.
He rubs his eye and blinks a few times and squints.
“Something in your eye?” I ask.
“No. It tingles sometimes,” he says. “I can actually see a little better out of it in the dark lately. It’s strange.”
“Isn’t that the eye you had injured, back when I met you? From the chef?”
“Yes.”
“Is it tingling now?” I ask. “Look up.”
I move nearer to peer inside his pupil, and he aims his gaze toward the ceiling. It looks normal to me, a clear, tight disk of black inside an iris ring of honey brown. I gently tug at his eyelid, checking in case a lash has fallen in. He looks in different directions, but everything seems fine to me.