Going Lucid, A YA Paranormal Read online

  “Malakha.”

  Malakha groaned and shifted in her chair. “I keep telling you! I keep telling everyone! Nothing traumatic happened to me in my past! I was never lacking love or care or the things I needed. No one ever tried to hurt me. The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me was Eliza attacking me yesterday, which has done nothing to change my stance any further to the left or right on what I believe in by the way. I just don’t believe in any of it!”

  Malakha exhaled sharply before sitting back in her chair. She hadn’t meant to explode like that, but she had better things to do than repeat the same answers to the same questions over and over again.

  “I think you’re a little frustrated Malakha.”

  “What gave that away?” Malakha asked crossing her arms.

  “You’ve had a tiring and traumatic weekend. Why don’t we cut it short today?”

  Malakha dramatically stood up while saying, “Finally.” Then she rushed out the room and headed for the dining hall where lunch was taking place.

  Malak was once again sitting at her and Sabrina’s table, but again the nuns said nothing. In fact, unlike last week, the nuns were hardly paying attention to Malak. Malakha guessed it was because he was hunched over a book.

  “So,” Malakha began as she sat at the table, not even thinking about going to get any lunch, “Did you all find anything?”

  “Only that this stupid pocketknife is really sharp,” Sabrina said taking out the silver blade to illustrate, careful to keep it out the view of any nuns that might be paying attention. Then she showed her left thumb, the top of which was wrapped in a band-aid.

  “Nothing besides that?” Malakha asked.

  “There’s nothing Malakha,” Malak said closing the book he had been reading. “Nothing that we have access to anyway.”

  “Have you tried Google yet?” Malakha asked.

  “Not yet. It’s kind of hard to use a computer during classes without getting caught,” Malak said.

  Malakha reached in her book bag and pulled out something smooth, thin, and black. She handed it to Malak and said, “Use my Kindle. The teachers usually don’t see that if you sit it on top of an open book.”

  Malak looked at the tablet and then slid it into his book bag before the nuns noticed she had given it to him.

  “Hopefully I’ll have something by dinner,” said Malak.

  Sabrina, who was still inspecting the knife said, “You know one of the monks or the nuns might know something.”

  “I thought about that, but which one of them in their right mind is going to tell me about something like that without strapping my butt down in a chair to be exorcised,” Malakha replied.

  “You don’t have to tell them that your soul travelled somewhere, and you met some hot guy that told you it was Hell.”

  Malak rolled his eyes in obvious annoyance. “Do you have to keep emphasizing that this Julius guy was hot?”

  “Yes,” Sabrina replied. “Do you know how rare it is for Malakha to admit to something like that? It takes someone extremely good looking guy to cause even a blip on her radar!”

  Malak grinned at Malakha and asked, “Am I on your radar?”

  Malakha shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you out your uniform.”

  “Yes you have,” Malak said dryly. “Recently you have. At the rave and when we were playing football and you stormed onto the field to talk to me?”

  “Forgive me for being traumatized about going to Hell for the first time and hearing laughter,” Malakha deadpanned.

  Sabrina rolled her eyes and said, “My point is that you don’t have to tell anyone you went to hell. Tell them you were just curious or something.”

  Malakha gave her best friend a wry look. “Me? Curious? About something that seemingly has to do with religion? Have you forgotten that I usually run in the other direction if I can avoid stuff like that?”

  “Yeah, but you could say you were forced to,” Sabrina replied.

  “Forced?”

  “Yeah. You could say it’s related to your punishment, with the exorcisms or something. No one would think that’s too odd, especially if you went with that air of wanting to know so that you can prove someone wrong like you do in class,” Sabrina added.

  Malakha looked at Sabrina and then gasped. “Exorcisms!”

  With that, she stood up and put her book bag on her shoulder.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I know who I can ask.”

  Sabrina looked puzzled, while Malak only sighed as though he had long grown used to Malakha’s sometimes impulsive and unpredictable behavior.

  “Who?” Sabrina asked.

  “John!”

  “But you haven’t eaten anything.”

  “I had breakfast. I won’t die.”

  “We have a class in thirty minutes!”

  “It’s math. I have the highest grade point average in the class.”

  “You have the highest grade point average in your math class?” Malak asked.

  “Yeah. You just see if you can find anything on Google. We’ll talk at dinner!”

  Malakha then rushed out the dining hall, headed to the other side of the east part of the gothic building to where the church was.

  ******

  The hallway that connected the school to the church on the other side wasn’t a path she took often; only during the required services on Sunday and sometimes she didn’t go to those. As she turned the corner to enter the hallway though, she ran into someone coming out the hall. That someone was Brother Micha. Malakha rolled her eyes, head falling back in frustration because there was no way he wasn’t going to hinder her from seeing John.

  “Malakha,” he said, a frown on his face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Going to see a friend,” Malakha replied.

  “A friend?”

  “One of the monks. Brother John.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

  “It’s important.”

  “Then maybe I can help.”

  “I doubt it,” Malakha said trying to walk past him, but he grabbed her shoulder to stay her.

  “Try me.”

  Malakha sighed. The longer she argued with Brother Micha, the more time she lost and she really wanted to see if John knew anything about the hell she had visited, the hell that wasn’t a pit of burning fire but a barren wasteland.

  “I was going to ask something about the exorcism,” Malakha gave.

  “Oh?” Brother Micha asked, looked pleasantly surprised by her admission.

  “Yeah. I… I was doing a little research and was just wondering where exactly the demons came from, the ones that possess people.”

  Brother Micha smiled a little. “I would think the answer to that is obvious Malakha.”

  “Yeah. Okay. So let’s suppose they do come from ‘Hell’. How is it that they can come here into our plane to possess people, but we can’t go into their plane and possess them. Doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Because it’s a different plane of existence where the physical body cannot dwell; one where only spirit can cross over into, which is why no living person has ever been to Hell or Heaven.”

  Malakha resisted the urge to outright laugh at him. If only he knew how wrong he was.

  “Is there a way besides dying that a person could cross the realms and maybe still be alive?” Malakha asked.

  Brother Micha gave her a weird look, and Malakha hoped that he didn’t think she was a witch or something trying to meet with Satan, her master, while at the same time remaining in the physical world.

  “Unless you know of a way that one can detach their soul from their body, no.”

  Malakha stopped walking at that, turning all the way to Brother Micha. “Then how else does one sell their soul to the devil?”

  “People like that aren’t truly alive. They’re just puppets then. On the outside, they look human, like our friends, our family, but they’re not,” Brother Micha sa
id simply.

  “Puppets,” Malakha muttered to herself, her mind going back to what Julius told her about possession. How it wasn’t as much possession as it was guiding a host through the power of suggestive words through a crack in the invisible divide between their worlds.

  “Does that help?” Brother Micha asked.

  “Yes,” Malakha said though internally she wasn’t sure. It kind of made sense if she thought about it in the way Julius had explained it to her, but none of it still explained how she was able to cross the divide into Hell and be alive at the same time. She was still missing something.

  “Good. Then I’ll escort you to class.”

  Malakha held in a groan, but decided that it wasn’t worth getting into trouble again to still go talk to John anyway. So she resigned herself to being escorted to class by Brother Micha. She arrived exactly a minute before class started and opted to sit in the back row. As the teacher began the lesson and turned to the board to explain a concept to them, Malakha wished she hadn’t given her Kindle to Malak to use. She was only half paying attention, day dreaming really, when she noticed Sabrina in the second row turn to look at her while the teacher wasn’t looking. She was making movements with her thumb, like she was dialing a phone number or something.

  Malakha furrowed her eyebrows and then looked down at her bag that was sitting on the floor. She slipped her hand in the side pocket and held the phone in her lap, careful to appear like she was following along with the teacher in her book.

  I thought you weren’t coming to class.

  Malakha looked back to the front of the class to make sure the teacher still wasn’t paying attention before sending back, Micha caught me. He tried to help.

  Oh, came Sabrina’s reply.

  Malakha looked up, pretending to nod in understanding or agreement as the teacher turned back around to look at the class. When the man looked back down at his math book, she replied, He wasn’t any help.

  Sabrina replied so quickly that Malakha didn’t even see her send the text.

  So what now?

  Malakha’s fingers hovered over the keypad of the phone for a while. She wasn’t exactly sure what came now and began to text Sabrina as much. She was halfway through texting “Idk” when she heard the laughter. It was faint at first, like someone was trying to contain their amusement. Then it got louder, like the person no longer cared about restraining it anymore. The phone lit up a second later.

  What? Sabrina replied and Malakha saw that she had accidently sent the text with one character.

  Malakha didn’t answer, more focused on the laughter and where it was coming from. The phone lit up in her hands again

  You’ve got that look on your face.

  Malakha guessed it was that spooked look Sabrina kept talking about.

  It’s laughing again. I need to get out of here.

  Malakha didn’t wait for a reply, instead beginning to roll her left shoulder back and then forward and making a hissing sound as she did so. It wasn’t loud, but in combination with her fidgeting, the teacher noticed.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked looking at her.

  Malakha rubbed her shoulder, trying to give the teacher the best fake look of discomfort she could without seeming dramatic.

  “I’m not sure. It’s my shoulder. The doctor said I might feel some pain, but not like this and my pain medicine is in my room,” Malakha said.

  “Your shoulder?”

  “I had a… little altercation yesterday,” Malakha said and the teacher seemed to realize what she was talking about.

  “You’re dismissed to go to the infirmary then,” the teacher said.

  “No. I just need my pain medicine. It’s in my room.”

  The teacher nodded and Malakha stood up, trying to appear like she was struggling to figure out a way to carry her bag and massage her shoulder at the same time.

  “Sabrina. Would you help her?”

  Sabrina nodded to the teacher, gathering her things. Then she went to where Malakha was and picked up her backpack. Malakha led the way out the room and when they were far enough away from class, Sabrina looked at her.

  “Your shoulder doesn’t really hurt,” the redhead said and then added in uncertainty, “Does it?”

  “No,” Malakha said dropping her hand and taking her bag from Sabrina. “The knife Eliza used wasn’t that big. The cuts didn’t really hurt much beyond the initial pain.”

  “Wow. You almost really had me fooled there,” Sabrina said. “You could have won—“

  “Shh!” Malakha said as she held out her arm to stop Sabrina from walking. The laughter was changing.

  “What is it?”

  Malakha frowned. “It’s not laughing anymore.”

  “It’s not?”

  “It’s growling. I think it’s angry.”

  “Angry?” Sabrina asked. “Angry at what?”

  The scream that followed caused both girls to jump.

  “’What was that?” Sabrina asked.

  “I don’t know,” Malakha said. “But the growling is getting louder and it’s coming from the same place.”

  Malakha gestured for Sabrina to follow her as they both rushed down the hall. They turned the corner to a hall filled with more classrooms to see a boy leaning on the wall. He was pale, sweating, and trembling violently.

  “What’s wrong?” Sabrina asked.

  Malakha ignored Sabrina, the hallway suddenly seeming very loud. Not that Sabrina was talking loud, but the insistent angry growls seemed to be competing with every other sound in the school.

  “Are you okay?” Sabrina asked going up to the boy, but he pushed her away.

  Malakha started to step between them, concerned that the boy might attack Sabrina like Eliza had done only yesterday. He didn’t. Instead he let out a loud deep cry and fell on the floor where he began to spasm on the ground.

  “Oh my God! Is he having a seizure?”

  Malakha was able to tune out the growls, which had now turned back into laughter, enough that she could process what Sabrina had just said. Malakha’s attention wasn’t the only one Sabrina had succeeding in getting though. The door to three of the classrooms opened and a few of the students along with the teachers from each classroom filed out.

  “He’s having a seizure!”

  “What do we do?”

  “Put a spoon in his mouth!”

  “Don’t be stupid!” someone shouted and a student, one younger than Malakha, came through to kneel on the right side of the boy. She tried to move him to lie on his left side, but he was heavy. She rolled her eyes and asked, “Someone want to help me?”

  Two students and a teacher came forward to help her roll him over onto his left side. They held him there, waiting for the seizure to be over. Malakha stared, resisting the urge to tell the voice, wherever it was, to stop laughing, that this wasn’t funny, but she really wanted to avoid being declared either crazy or possessed. But the laughter was getting louder in her ear and so she finally muttered, “Stop it.”

  The laughter paused and then Malakha heard the voice again, but it wasn’t laughing, not completely.

  “Why should I?” Its voice was deep and throaty, reminding Malakha again of Bowser in the last Mario game she had played.

  “Because it’s not funny,” she said and then added, “Are you doing this?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  The seizure was over now and two of the older boys picked the victim up to take him to the infirmary while the teachers urged for everyone else to go back to their classes. Malakha and Sabrina remained.

  “You okay?” Sabrina asked.

  Malakha nodded and then said, “Come on. We’ve got to get to the infirmary so the doctor can look at my shoulder.”

  “I thought you said you were faking.”

  “I was. Still am, but we’ve got to figure out what happened, and they’re taking him to the infirmary. We might overhear something.”

  “Malakha he just had a seizure. It ha
ppens to people sometimes.”

  “Just like it sometimes happens that people have bad trips when they do drugs, but I went to Hell.”

  “You think it’s connected?” Sabrina asked, almost running to keep up with Malakha’s strides.

  “I know it is,” Malakha said. “The laughter only happens when someone’s in pain. It’s like whatever it is laughing is some sort of sadist.”

  “So it’s just having fun?”

  “No,” Malakha replied. She paused, wondering if it was a good idea to reveal this, but it’s not like they had any other clues. “I think it’s trying to keep my attention.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lucid Dreaming

  No history of seizures or epilepsy. No drug use. Just a full blown seizure out of nowhere. And while Malakha agreed with Sabrina that sometimes things like this just happened, it didn’t just happen in a similar manner that other recent events had.

  “So what you mean to tell me,” Sabrina said over the music the two were playing in their room as she looked at the picture on Malakha’s phone of the chart that showed the boy’s, Michael’s, medical record, “Is that you think Eliza attacking you, Michael having a seizure, the laughter and you going to hell is all connected?”

  “How could it not be?” Malakha asked lounging lazily on her bed with her laptop as she browsed the internet for more information on Hell, but finding nothing. “I’m not hearing the laughter for nothing. It’s like whatever it is laughing is playing a game or something.”

  “And what’s the game?” Sabrina asked.

  “Isn’t obvious?” Malakha asked. “He’s playing this game for the same reasons I purposely goad the nuns and monks into conversation just to show them how illogical their beliefs are. It’s laughing at the fact that even with all their religion, the nuns, the monks, the priests, everyone else involved, they don’t know what they’re up against, even though they have an idea that it exists. It’s mocking them. It thinks their rituals are ridiculous. So he causes trouble knowing that no one will ever know the real reason behind it because they’ll explain it away with science because everything happening is outside the confines of their religion. When it found out I could hear it, the game just got more interesting.”