Seven Days
A Daria/The Ring fanfiction by E. A. Smith
Monday
Jane marched into Wind's vacated room, armed only with an empty trash bag and a sense of mission. The room was in the usual disheveled, filthy state in which Wind usually left it, with candy bar wrappers and food scraps left everywhere, scattered like the place had been ransacked by a hungry ten-year-old. Wind, she mentally addressed her absent sibling as she tossed the refuse into the plastic bag, are you incapable of doing anything for yourself, other than mooching off us and screwing up relationships? I don't ask much out of a living space, but I draw the line at attracting rats and mice. She couldn't abide the vermin; they nibbled on her paintings. Which is why, every time Wind departed after one of his unannounced visits, she found herself playing maid, scouring his room for every last bread crust and empty soft drink can he had left behind, leaving nothing that might attract art-destroying rodents.
Wind had been visiting for the past two days, and had just up and left the night before (a circumstance Jane welcomed, despite the extra work it brought her). It had been an odd visit, though; he hadn't shown up crying, so he wasn't on the outs with his girlfriend du jour, and he hadn't asked for money. Instead, he had holed up in his room, barely making his way outside those four walls. And then, he had just left, with no more explanation given than when he had arrived. He hadn't even spent any time inside the new "naming gazebo". All of which just made the usual littered state of his room even worse.
Having picked up every visible scrap of food, Jane gave the room a final once over, and noticed something she had missed, or ignored, the first time around. Lying on Wind's bed was a plain, unmarked videotape. She picked it up and examined it from all sides, but there was nothing to give a clue as to its origins or contents. I guess Wind forgot it. There's something intriguing about unmarked tapes, but it's probably just one of those marriage counseling TV shows he's so addicted to. Or maybe it's something a little more . . . private. Did Wind make videos like that? Jane didn't know whether to be titillated or disgusted with the possibility. Well, I have to watch it now, just to find out. If it's one of those, I'll turn it off right away.
Normally, the TV in this room didn't have a VCR, but Jane noticed that there was one hooked up now. Looking closer, she realized that it was the set from the living room television. Wind must have brought it up here to watch the tape in private; maybe it really is him and some girl . . . ew. Jane stuck out her tongue at the thought, but was still curious enough to try it out. She slid the tape into the deck, and pressed play . . .
* * * * *
Daria was sitting at her computer, searching for a starting point for her new Melody Powers story, when Jane burst into her room, waving a videotape over her head.
"Yo, amiga, you've gotta see this!" she exclaimed as she walked over to Daria's television. Daria herself was surprised by her friend's enthusiasm; of the two of them, Daria was much more the film buff. Before Tom had provided a new viewing companion, Jane had accompanied her to a few arthouse screenings, but had never shown more than cursory interest. Jane's taste in film ran more towards the exploding head variety, which Daria found amusing only in small doses.
"What is it?" she asked somewhat cautiously as she walked over to her bed and sat down at her usual TV-viewing position.
"I'm not really sure," Jane replied, somewhat distracted by getting the tape into the built-in VCR. Daria cocked an eyebrow in curiosity.
"So you've decided to start showing me random videotapes?"
"I found it in Wind's room this morning, while I was cleaning up after him," Jane said, now paying fuller attention, having gotten the tape in and activated the unit. She took the remote and joined Daria on the bed. Her voice betrayed none of her usual irritation at having to pick up after her older brother. "It's this weird collection of images, very surreal. Very creepy. I'm not sure what it all means."
"And you think I should see this why, exactly?" Not that Daria wasn't up for the surreal and creepy, but if it had been found in Wind's possession she doubted that there could be anything particularly special about it.
"Because I haven't been able to get the images out of my head all day; it's given me all sorts of great sketches." She pulled one of her pocket-sized sketchbooks out of her jacket and waved it in Daria's face, then flipped very rapidly through it. Daria wasn't able to catch a good glimpse of the contents, but it appeared nearly full. "I can't remember the last time I've produced so much. So I thought you might appreciate the inspiration; besides, I want to see what you make of it all." Daria couldn't deny her friend's enthusiasm, and seeing as how her own inspiration seemed elusive at present, she gave Jane the affirmative. Jane started the tape.
. . . a ring of light . . . static . . . red water . . . a woman in a mirror . . . a girl with long hair in the mirror . . . a man in a window . . . a coastline with a twisted tree . . . a mouth with a long tube running out . . . a barren tree . . . a crescent of light . . . a fingertip impaled on a nail . . . writhing maggots . . . a centipede crawling out from under a table . . . a horse's eye . . . severed fingers in a box . . . the barren tree on fire . . . the woman standing in front of the mirror, turning to look at the viewer . . . the window . . . the chair hanging upside down in the air and spinning . . . a single ladder propped up against a wall . . . dead horses on the coastline . . . the woman falls off a cliff . . . the ladder . . . the ring of light . . . a well . . . static
As the images flashed by, Daria found herself transfixed, unable to turn away. The images made no sense, but somehow they were compelling, entrancing, disturbing, and by the time it was over, Daria was annoyed to find herself fighting down an extreme sense of unease, as though she had just woken from a nightmare. She was even breathing a bit heavily, and she wondered if she had been holding her breath without noticing.
"So, what do you think?" Jane asked, ejecting the tape and slipping it into her jacket pocket. She was eager to hear her friend's considered opinion, but Daria didn't know what to say. She wanted to shrug it off with a joke, some sarcastic comment that would trivialize the strange effect it had had on her, but she found she couldn't dismiss it that easily. Then, downstairs, the phone rang; the sound was faint, and only occurred once, but it was enough of an outside stimulus to bring her out of the hold the tape had put on her. Jane was grinning sadistically.
"It had that effect on me, too, when I first watched it," she said, "but after an hour or so I started to get all sorts of great ideas. I'm thinking of doing a whole series of paintings inspired by it."
"We should send it in to Sick, Sad World," Daria said, finally finding her voice. "They would love to get their hands on something this bizarre."
"Yeah, I thought about it," Jane replied, "but since I don't know who created it, there would probably be some copywrite issue."
"Wind didn't say anything about it?"
"Nope." Jane shook her head. "He didn't breathe a word. I just found it in his room. Maybe he's trying his hand at filmmaking, or has a friend who is. But speaking of Sick, Sad World . . ." She flipped the channel, and familiar lone eye filled the screen. Its familiarity helped to soothe Daria's nerves, and soon things were back to normal again. The only sign that the tape had ever existed was that, every few minutes, Jane would pick up her sketchbook and draw a few quick lines, then return it to her pocket. Daria was curious to see what she had come up with, but the images of the tape were too fresh in her mind for her to want to see, at this very moment, what Jane's mind had done with them; she could take a look later.
About an hour later, Helen called Daria to dinner, and Jane stood up to leave.
"Are you sure you want to go?" Daria asked. "We've got all the lasagna you can eat."
"I think I'll pass. I'd rather spend my time working on these new paintings than playing Twenty Questions with your parents." Daria accompanied her down the stairs, and as Jane exited the door, she turned towards the kitchen, and walked in just as her mother was removing the lasagna from the oven. She was the first one there.
"Daria, please tell your friends that I don't appreciate practical jokes, especially when I'm waiting for a call from Eric," Helen said, dropping the pasta onto the table, her voice stern.
"I'll be sure to pass that on to my hoard of practical-joke-playing companions," Daria replied. She smirked at Helen's baleful stare.
"Seriously, Daria," she admonished, "I was waiting for a very important call about an hour ago, but when the phone rang, it was some girl. She just said 'seven days', and then hung up."
"Jane was in my room an hour ago, and that's not her style anyway. What did she sound like?"
"Young," Helen said, as if just realizing it. "She had a very high voice."
"It was probably one of Quinn's fashion fiends; sounds like Stacy." Though from what she knew of the pig-tailed sycophant, that sort of joke wasn't really her style either. "Or maybe just a wrong number."
"Maybe," Helen conceded, just as Jake and Quinn entered the room.
Daria didn't give the incident a second thought.
Daria sat on Jane's bed, pen scratching rapidly across the paper in her notebook, ideas flooding her mind. She had woken up that morning feeling disturbed, off-kilter, though she couldn't put her finger on exactly why; she couldn't remember any bad dreams, which were the usual cause of such morning jitters. The mood had lasted throughout breakfast, and it hadn't mixed well with Quinn's dissertation on the pros and cons of short hairstyles for hot summer months. She had told Quinn that if she wanted a truly striking look for summer, than she should go for the cool bald look, giving her admirers the chance to compliment her on her shapely skull, adding that maybe shorter hair would not sap so much energy from her brain. Quinn had replied that only weird artsy girls still thought that the bald look was in, that she had already been the recipient of several approving comments on the symmetrical shape of her head, and had finished with the suggestion that she and her weird artsy friend should sit in on a gathering of the former Fashion Club to find out what would be fashionable for artsy types in the next season. To the dismay of both their parents, the conversation had just gone downhill from there, and by the end of the meal Daria knew that she was going to have to spend the rest of the day not just isolated in her room, but totally out of the house. Daria had felt a twinge of guilt over slipping into her older patterns with Quinn, when they were finally starting to find some common ground, but by the time she was halfway to Jane's, any residual remorse was crowded right out of her head by a flood of ideas for her new Melody Powers story, all of which took their inspiration from one of the images from the tape Jane had brought her yesterday.
Which is where she found herself now, writing furiously to try to capture all the nuances and details she saw in her head before they slipped away into the ether. With an unoccupied corner of her mind, she wondered why the disjointed and enigmatic scenes from the video could be so strongly suggestive, how they could form a narrative in her mind almost of their own volition, with what felt like very little shaping on her part. But while she was curious, she would not argue with such instant inspiration; one of the first things that any writer learned was to capture such momentary flashes as quickly as possible.
She was not the only one so in the grip of her muse; Jane was painting furiously, barely finishing one image before tossing it aside and starting on another. Pictures of ladders, wells, twisted and leafless trees, dead horses. And on every canvas, somewhere, out in front or hidden in the background, a ring, a slightly uneven but unbroken circle of paint. All of them drawn in a curious angular style, quite unlike Jane's former works; in subdued colors and black and grey, in contrast to her accustomed colorful approach. If Daria had not been sitting in the same room, watching her in the throes of creation, she would have been willing to swear that these were the work of another artist completely. But isn't that what every artist wants to do, to progress, to never produce the same work twice? If Jane is using the tape as the means to that end, then all the better for her.
They had spent most of the day in silence, appreciating each other's company without feeling the need to interrupt the creative process; but after several hours the rush began to wear off, or at least to recede temporarily like a tide, and conversation began to leak out.
"So, any news yet on the Boston housing front?" Jane inquired as she ran her brush along the canvas. The very thought of that situation was enough to make Daria flop onto her back, hanging her head off the end of the bed.
"It's a nightmare," she said after a few seconds of inward groaning. "Real estate in Boston is a buyer's nightmare, rent is sky high, and Raft has no single-bedroom dorms. Even with my scholarships, I'm not going to be able to afford an apartment all to myself until you arrive. Mom was right; I am going to end up with a psycho roommate."
"Just watch out for the showers," Jane said, head still pointed towards the easel.
"It's what I get for being optimistic," Daria groaned. "I was counting on college being the start of my exit from the purgatory of high school into the beginnings of my real life. An environment where I am surrounded by people chosen for their intelligence instead of their physical proximity."
"Without actually having to live in contact with any of them."
"I'd like to be able to ease into the experience, yes." She sat back up and watched as Jane continued to apply color to canvas. "High school isn't real life at all; it's not even preparation for it. I just don't want any additional problems to deal with as I make the transition."
"I told you before, I can do some work for Gary's Gallery, send you my half of the rent." Daria frowned, wishing she could say yes to the offer.
"I can't do that to you, Jane," she said. "You can't afford artist burnout right before you head off to BFAC. I've shared a house with Quinn for seventeen years; I can share a room with an unknown irritant for four months."
"Maybe I can sell some of these at Gary's," Jane mused as she put the final touch on her newest piece, then replaced the filled canvas with a blank one. She considered for only a few seconds before starting up.
"Yes, nothing says artistic sophistication in the suburbs like a painting of a dead horse."
"It's a comment on the death of nature in modern society," Jane said, even as she sketched the outline of spreading branches. "It's environmentally conscious art, perfect for the walls of SUV owners and hairspray addicts."
"Just the thing to hang on the wall next to the mounted deer head." Suddenly, Daria knew what had to happen next to Melody Powers, and her pen was moving again. She would have to transfer all of this to her computer later, which is where she usually did her writing, but it was critical to capture the ideas as they came and not censor herself merely to shorten that future repetitive task. The room faded back into silence.
It took several of Daria's insistent rings of the bell before Jane finally opened the door. Despite the early hour (early for Jane, anyway), there was little of her usual morning dishevelment about her -- she was wearing her usual daytime clothes, her hair was combed, and her movements didn't drag with morning fatigue; however, there were large dark circles under her eyes, and her face was pale, giving her a completely different morning zombie appearance. Daria knew that she herself couldn't be looking all that good; she had ran all the way from her house, or at least walked very fast, and she was panting heavily and feeling a little sick to her stomach. Of course, the nausea had more than one cause.
As she stepped through the doorway, she wordlessly handed Jane several sheets of paper; it was the computer printout of her latest Melody Powers work, the one she had so meticulously typed into her word processor from her handwritten text of the day before. Except that when she had woken up this morning and opened the program to do a little more work, she found that that was not what she had written at all. Filling the pages was a simple three-word phrase, repeated over and over again.
Everyone will suffer.
"Writing your manifesto?" Jane asked as she flipped through the pages, each one identical to the last.
"That is what I found this morning in the Melody Powers folder on my computer," Daria said, finding her voice, though the words were still forced out between panted breaths. She hadn't appreciated just how much gym class had kept her in shape, hated though it was; two months without it, and her chest was on fire.
"Could it just be somebody's prank?" Jane's voice was choked; her face paled yet another shade, and she bit down on her bottom lip. Daria shook her head, wishing that things were that simple.
"I keep my work password-protected," she said, the shortness of breath receding, though the roiling of her stomach continued strong. "Hacking it would be way out of Quinn's league, and writing about suffering would rank a bit too high on her 'ew' meter anyway. I don't think that I've pissed off any computer geeks lately." She started to pace around Jane, who stood still at the center, perusing the papers with rising alarm. "If this is what was in my story file, it's because I put it there. But either I didn't realize I was doing it, or I don't remember it." She stood still, facing Jane once again, though she tried not to concentrate on the papers her friend clutched in her hand. "I wonder when I'm going to start chasing Quinn with an axe. Or a crimping iron."
"Daria," Jane finally said, a tremor in her voice, "there's something I think you need to see."
* * * * *
Jane's room was littered with paintings, tossed about the room in careless fashion. But the first thing Daria noticed was the easel. On it was a white canvas, its purity violated by a single image -- a black ring, painted over and over again until the paint was visibly piled up, with the paintbrush embedded in the center. It looked to Daria as though Jane had just run the brush around and around until she had finally run the brush right through the canvas.
"This morning, I tried to go back to my old projects," Jane said from behind her. "I couldn't. No matter what I tried to draw or paint, it always came out something from the tape; at first, I didn't even realize I was doing it, and when I did, I couldn't stop. It was like my hands didn't even belong to me anymore. Daria, look at these paintings!" She stepped into Daria's line of sight and waved her arm to take in the entire room and all the images contained therein. "Do these even look like my work?! How could I have ever thought that I was the one doing this? And that's not even the worst of it." She pointed to a stack of canvases in one corner of the room. Daria walked over to look, and found that they were all her old works, piled chaotically. But every face in every picture was painted over, not neatly, but as though a child had taken the brush and scribbled furiously, obliterating all traces of identity.
"I did all that after I finished the new pictures," Jane was saying. "It was like I just went insane. It didn't wear off until I had defaced every single one." At the last few words, her voice sank to a husky whisper.
"I'm sorry, Jane," Daria said, not knowing what else to say to comfort her friend. But Jane's loss was not the only question at issue. "That tape did something to both of us. Some kind of hypnotic suggestion, or mind control."
"Have you been getting visits from those black helicopters again?" Jane asked, giving her friend a skeptical glance.
"No, just the usual flying saucers." Daria paused, wishing they could just trade clever retorts and ignore the unnerving events behind them. But her unerring sense of reality brought her back to face them. "I know that I sound like Artie on one of his stranger days, but I can't think of anything else that makes sense."
"I don't know, Daria. I don't feel all that 'controlled'." Jane clamped down suddenly after her last word, and Daria knew she had something more to say.
"Jane, what are you thinking?"
"You won't want to hear it." Jane smirked grimly.
"Good; I haven't heard anything I didn't want to hear in at least a few minutes."
Jane sighed, and visibly braced herself.
"I feel like I'm being haunted, like some thing is looking over my shoulder, guiding my hand," she said haltingly, converting her sensations into words even as she said them. "I know, it sounds ridiculous, and you don't believe in things like that. But, when I was really young, my parents had some friends who were into some really weird mystical stuff, like ouiji boards and séances and things like that, and I saw things that you would never believe in."
"And when I was four," Daria replied, "I was convinced that there were monsters waiting in my closet to get me at night; there were even times when I was sure that I saw them. But I outgrew it; kids with active imaginations see a lot of things that aren't there." Jane shook her head emphatically.
"This wasn't like seeing a few shadows and hanging shirts in your closet at night," she said, knowing that her friend would never believe her, knowing what she had seen, knowing the sensation of the presence she now felt. "There was no way these could have been anything but spirits, ghosts, demons. I'm not saying that I'm certain that's what's happening now, but it feels pretty damn familiar."
Daria knew that this kind of discussion could go on for hours, with neither of them making headway against the other's basic worldview; normally, she would have welcomed the game, but there were more important things right now than fun.
"Wind has to know something about this," she said. "What the tape means; what it's doing to us. Who he got the tape from, if nothing else. Can you call him and ask?"
"I already tried, earlier today," Jane replied, frustrated. "I couldn't get a hold of him; he probably didn't pay his cell phone bill. We'll have to go see him in person. His houseboat is usually moored in Baltimore harbor; I've been there a couple of times, so I'm pretty sure I can find it again."
"Good. We'll take my new car, but you drive."
* * * * *
About two hours later, they were standing at a pier in Baltimore harbor, Wind's somewhat-decrepit houseboat floating in the water before them. At their backs was the bustle of the activities of seafarers and dockworkers. Daria wasn't a huge fan of crowds, but she could usually tolerate them; today, however, she couldn't shake the impression that someone was staring down her neck, raising the short hairs with a prickle up and down her spine. It had to be nerves, and she told herself that the day had given her every reason to feel out of sorts. She just wanted to get in, get the information they needed from Wind, and get out of the city as quickly as possible, back to the solitude and safety of her own room, or Jane's.
"Wind is the Lane-est of the Lanes," Jane said, surveying the floating domicile with amusement. "Even his house is made to move around."
"And yet he keeps tying himself down with wives," Daria replied, which seemed to her to be the most un-Lane-like characteristic of all. Vincent and Amanda Lane's absentee relationship, from each other as much as from their children, was proof of that. But at least they've managed to stay married, in name at least.
"Well, he never was able to get life completely right," Jane said. She stepped onto the boat and rapped on the door.
"So, who is he with right now?"
"Haven't kept up; it's time to open the wrapper and unveil the surprise." There was no answer to her knock, so she tried again, louder and more insistent.
"Can I just keep the Cracker-Jacks instead?"
As they waited for an answer to their overture, Daria looked down into the water flowing before her feet. The play of light in the depths, blue and violet flashes flowing and melding, was fascinating, and she felt the mysteries of the deep beckoning to her, calling to her to plunge into their depths, to be submerged in the all-encompassing embrace of deep water. She felt a rush, and suddenly the water surrounded her; she was floating in an unknowable expanse. But it wasn't the warm, loving experience that had been promised -- she felt oppressed, entrapped, as the water quickly changed from blue to black and an ocean of darkness closed in around her. Lost and abandoned, she opened her mouth to scream . . .
"DARIA!"
The world of light and air snapped back into place, and Daria found herself once more standing on the pier next to Wind's houseboat, both her arms firmly grasped in Jane's hands, her frightened expression only a few inches from Daria's own.
"Daria, what happened? " Jane asked with slowly-receding panic. "I saw you about ready to fall into the water, and when I tried to stop you, you didn't answer. Are you okay?" Daria had to take a few deep breaths before she felt she had the strength to answer.
"I thought that I had fallen in." It was still had to believe that she had not. "It seemed so real, not like a daydream at all. I thought I was going to die in black water." The last statement didn't seem to allay Jane's worry. "Jane, if I was going to commit suicide, I wouldn't do it by drowning; it's too clean. I want to leave a more memorable corpse." Daria stepped back, removing herself from her friend's concerned grip; she could stand on her own now. "I think we've just discovered another side effect of the tape." Jane swallowed nervously.
"We're not going to be getting information on that," she said, "at least not right away. While you were contemplating life as a mermaid, I had a very quick chat with the lady of the house. Looks like Wind's been kicked out again, just yesterday."
"Shouldn't that make it easier?" Daria responded. "Won't he just show up at your place in tears?" Jane shook her head in unfortunate denial.
"He only does that when he's been kicked out and had no money to go anywhere else; he would have turned up yesterday if that had been the case." She sighed, knowing that the road ahead had just lengthened considerably. "When he does make it out with some cash, he usually ends up in a bar, or lying in an alley somewhere, drunk out of his mind. And he can do it for days on end. Right now, he's almost certainly having a few drinks somewhere in Baltimore."
"We'll have to search for him," Daria said. Normally, the idea of looking for a drunken Wind Lane, or for a sober one, would have never entered her list of priorities, but Daria didn't know how many of these ever-more-disturbing side effects she could take before snapping completely, or falling into the ocean and drowning. And since Quinn (or Brittany or Mr. O'Neill or another suitable victim) would not be around to take the brunt of her psychosis after her brain did snap, she thought that was an outcome that should probably be avoided. "Unless we're very lucky, we probably won't find him in an afternoon, and it's too far to commute to and from Lawndale every day, so we need to get a hotel room in town. I think I've got enough saved in my Montana Cabin Fund to keep us out of the roach motels, for a few days at least."
"We might not have longer than a few days anyway," Jane said, a disturbing scenario piecing itself together in her mind. "Right after I watched the tape, I got a phone call; it was a little girl, and all she said was 'seven days'. I thought it was just a wrong number, but now . . ."
Daria felt her face go white, and a chill spread through her chest.
"We got the same call," she said, voice carefully level. "Mom picked it up, and thought it was a joke. But it would have come about the time we were watching the tape."
"Then it would probably be a very good idea to find out what's going on before that time is up," Jane said, mentally calculating the time left in her head. "A little less than five days, if she's punctual. Or it."
"Jane, there is no it," Daria said, determined not to fall prey to superstition, even though it seemed to have overtaken her best friend, normally the most rational person she knew.
"What else could it be? How could any normal person know exactly when we watched the tape?"
"I don't know," Daria admitted, "but that doesn't mean there isn't a way. Jane, even if ghosts and goblins existed, I don't think they would be able to use the telephone, or even want to. Why not just appear in person, since they can go anywhere they want?"
"Because it's scarier this way, when we don't know what's happening."
"I think the automatic writing and the visions are scary enough, thank you. I don't need any extra mystery to add to the terror." Daria realized that they were once again falling into a fruitless and distracting discussion. "Either way, I think we can both agree that we need to find Wind before this 'seven days' is up, so we can't afford to lose any time. If we head back to Lawndale now to pack, we can have a hotel room in the city before too late tonight. I'll just tell my parents I'm staying a few days with you; they'll be glad to have the house to themselves." Daria never thought too hard about exactly why her parents enjoyed their solitude.
"Right," Jane said as they walked back to the car. "Two women, one car, one mission on the road. Partners in crime!"
"If you start to drive off a cliff, I'm jumping."
* * * * *
Daria tossed a few pairs of clean socks into her tiny suitcase, which was already nearly filled. She felt the need to pack lightly and quickly; no reason to give Helen or Jake a chance to change their minds about their daughter's week at Jane's (though there was no reason that they should), and she wanted to get back to the city while there was still time to find a decent vacant hotel room. No doubt, at her place, Jane was doing the same thing, while trying to drill into Trent's laconic skull their instructions to let them know immediately if Wind should show up. Of course, that was no guarantee of anything; Trent could sleep through Wind's arrival, or intend to call and decide to take a nap first. And that didn't even include the possibility of Mystik Spiral having a gig someplace that would keep them away for a while. Still, he was the only watchdog they had. But Daria didn't think he would be that necessary anyway; no doubt Jane was right, and if Wind was going to show up, he would have done so already.
Daria closed her suitcase, and, pressing down hard on the locks, managed to snap it shut, just in time.
"Daria, have you seen . . ." Quinn asked as she walked briskly through the door, then stopped cold. "Daria, where are you going?" Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"To Jane's," Daria replied, as naturally as if it was the unvarnished truth. "You were standing right there when I told Mom and Dad."
"You never pack when you go to Jane's," Quinn replied, sibling detective mode on in full force. "You keep a toothbrush there already, and several selections from your . . . wardrobe. Where are you really going?"
Damn, when did Quinn get so perceptive? I don't have time for this; I'll have to settle it the old-fashioned way.
"How much?" she asked, business-like but bitter. Quinn didn't immediately answer; instead, she looked slowly around, scoping out her environs. She smiled, and Daria was suddenly very worried.
"I want your room," Quinn declared, as though it were the most reasonable request in the world. "After you go off to college, I mean. I think it has real potential, once I take down the padding from the walls and remove the bars from the windows and replace that door with the awful poetry and . . ."
"Quinn," Daria broke in, trying to nip this in the bud before her sister really got started, "I'll still need this room over the summer; you can't have it."
"Daria," Quinn replied, sounding as though she was reasoning with a person who was somewhat slow-witted, "do you really plan to move back here for the summer? Could you enjoy Lawndale after living in Boston?"
I don't enjoy it now, Daria thought, but her sister had a point. Living within these four walls again, after having enjoyed relative freedom, would be unbearable.
"I'll even give you an extra incentive," Quinn offered magnanimously. "In addition to not telling Mom or Dad what you are planning, I'll even provide a distraction so you can make it out the door without them seeing you or your suitcase. Deal?"
"Deal," Daria said, deciding that she had most of the summer to win or bargain her room back into her possession. "I'm leaving now, so if you could provide your distraction, it would be most helpful."
Quinn nodded, and headed out the door. A few seconds later, Daria heard her sister tell their parents something about her new older boyfriend who was coming by to pick her up on his motorcycle. Taking her advantage, Daria slipped out of her room, down the stairs, and out the front door without so much as a sideways glance from either of her parents (though she thought she caught a quick wink from Quinn). Then, she was off.
Since it had taken most of the night to find a decent hotel room, they started their search for Wind bright and early the next day; at least, they had intended to start bright and early, though fatigue kept them under the covers for most of the morning. Even with the ample sleep, Daria still did not feel rested; her sensation of being watched had not waned, and during the night she had had to continually resist the urge to flip over in bed and check if someone was standing behind her. Though she had been terrified to see who it might be. In the bright, fully-awake light of day, such fears seemed absurd, but the desire to glance over her shoulder remained.
The only experience that Daria had with police stations was from the incident with Mystik Spiral, out in the middle of nowhere, and she found the central police headquarters of Baltimore -- their first stop -- slightly different. It was cleaner, for one thing, and the various officers and employees went about their jobs with what looked to bear some resemblance to competency. Nevertheless, the place still felt oppressive, badly lit and close. The man sitting at the front desk barely looked up as they approached.
"We're looking for my brother Wind . . ." Jane started.
"You can fill out a missing persons report after forty-eight hours," he interrupted in a bored, distracted monotone.
"No, it's not like that," Jane replied. "You might have brought him in for being drunk or disorderly or passed out in the street. Have your guys arrested a Wind Lane in the past two days?" The officer sighed and typed at his computer a few moments.
"We don't have anyone named 'Wind'," he said, putting a particularly derisive emphasis on the name. "Not here, or anywhere else in the city."
"What about John Does?" Daria asked.
"What does he look like?"
Jane opened her mouth to give a description, then visibly changed gears.
"Get me a pencil and some paper," she said, her voice excited, "and I'll sketch him for you." Daria was shocked; she had been nervous at the idea of even picking up a pencil since the incident the morning before, not wanting to see what she might produce.
"Jane, are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.
"I've got to try," Jane replied, determined. "I'm not just going to give in to this; maybe if I really concentrate, I can control it." She gripped the provided pen so tightly that her knuckles paled. The phone at the desk rang, and the officer answered, leaving the two of them ignored once again.
Jane started in on her work, and it seemed to be going well. Wind's features quickly took shape under her hand, with his vapid stare and lost expression, and soon she had completed a convincing likeness, formed from just a few lines of ink. Then, as evenly and calmly as though it was merely her finishing touch, she ran the point up and down over the face, until no features could be seen.
"Jane!" Daria said sharply, and Jane jerked her pen up from the paper with a tiny cry.
"Damn!" Jane exclaimed. "I thought I was doing so well, too." She crumpled up the paper with a frustrated clench of her fist. "I'm not going to lose my art to this thing; I'll try again later." She looked up, to make an oath to the sky above her, and stopped dead. "Or maybe it's not just me. Daria, look at that." She pointed to the security monitor attached to the top of the wall across the room. Daria looked to see the image of the two of them standing at the desk; at least, she saw two figures standing at the desk, wearing their clothes, but it was impossible to tell that it was the two of them -- their faces were smeared, distorted, as though viewed through extremely flawed glass. Daria waved her hand in front of her face; the image wavered like water, and snapped back into place.
"How courteous," Daria said. "Identity screened to protect the innocent."
"No one else here looks like that," Jane said. She was right; several other people were visible in the screen, and they were all normal.
"No one else here is innocent." It was weird, to be sure, but to Daria's relief, this was the most benign symptom of the tape they had yet seen. Daria wondered when she had reached the point when she could shrug off as minor an event this bizarre. Still, at least it was just the two of them in the picture; the way she had been feeling, she would not have been all that surprised (horrified, but not surprised) to see a shadowy third figure behind them. Damn, it sneaks up on you. I don't believe in ghosts. There's no such thing as hauntings. I sound like the scarecrow.
The officer hung up the phone, and turned back to them.
"Well?" he said impatiently. "Is the sketch ready?"
"I . . . um . . . don't think I can do him justice," Jane said, recovering quickly. "I can describe him, though. He's about five foot ten, with brown eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair. Not very muscular. I don't know what he would be wearing."
"We haven't had anyone like that come through here," the man replied shortly.
"Well, what about the other precincts?" Daria asked, trying to stay reasonable and not sound like she was addressing a Kevin-clone. She longed to slip in a subtle barb, but her opponent held too much potentially valuable information for her to risk antagonizing him. The man turned to his computer, spent a few minutes bringing up the records -- leaving Daria and Jane to drum their fingers on the desk in apprehension -- and then finally turned back to them.
"We aren't holding any John Does of that description anywhere in the city," he said. Jane thanked him, and they both made a beeline to the door.
"Time to check the hospitals now," Daria said, fighting off discouragement at having come up with nothing at their first stop.
"If he's not in one now," Jane replied, her tone not a threat but a promise, "he will be after I find him."
* * * * *
From the second they entered the first hospital on their list, Jane wanted to pivot on her heel and walk out as quickly as possible. The large, spacious building felt like a prison, the white-clad doctors and nurses who were rushing about seeming more like jailors and tormentors than healers. She felt a horrible premonition that at any second they would take hold of her and lock her in a small, barren room where they could work their tortures at their leisure. But she forced herself to place one foot in front of the other; she was starting to question whether such strange sensations and urges belonged to her, or whether they emanated from the enigmatic presence she now felt continuously looking over her shoulder. She took satisfaction in allowing none of her anxiety to show as she questioned nurse receptionists in building after building, to see if they had any patients matching the description of her brother.
After a couple of futile stops, the questioning had finally borne fruit. The woman at the reception desk had informed her that they indeed had just this morning brought in a John Doe matching Wind's description, found unconscious in the alley next to a seedy downtown bar, his wallet and ID already lifted. Jane, as a possible relative, had been allowed in to see the man, though Daria had to wait in the entrance room; now, she was walking down a long highway, a friendly nurse leading the way. The woman's expressions of concern for Jane's brother fell on nearly deaf ears, however, as Jane could not drag her awareness away from the fact that she was burrowing ever further into the warren of persecutors. At every door they passed, Jane found herself wondering what horrors lay behind it, what poor soul they had imprisoned therein; these insane fears would respond to no reason she could command. Her own fears of losing herself to this interloping spirit, as she already seemed to be losing her art, were only an extra layer to add to her apprehension.
Though the corridor looked to stretch on into eternity, eventually the nurse stopped at one open door and gestured Jane inside. There, lying on a bed, was a man, in his early thirties, with blonde hair down to his shoulders. Tubes in both his arms connected him to IV bags, while his heartrate was monitored through several electrodes attached to his chest. The steady "beep, beep, beep" of the EKG reminded Jane of every movie and television show she had ever seen that was based in a hospital. The man, though bearing a superficial resemblance, was clearly not Wind, but Jane did not tell the nurse this; instead, she walked slowly up to the patient's side, staring not at his face, but at his chest. The tiny white circles connected to his skin fascinated her; of their own accord, her hands reached out to touch them, to trace their circumferences and feel the slick plastic against her fingers. Then, suddenly, fascination turned to rage, and with an explosion of fury she yanked every one of them from his body in a single jerk. The machines went haywire with alarms and protests, reading only that the heartbeat they had been detecting was no longer there, certain that the man in their care was now near death. Jane felt herself seized from behind, but the restraint was no longer necessary; she was once again in her own mind, her body under her control, the outburst now nothing but a memory.
"Young lady," the nurse said, sounding more shocked than angry, "what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm . . . I'm sorry," Jane replied, and then stopped cold. What could she possibly say to explain this? What possible rational reason could she give that anyone would accept? How could she say that the actions were not hers, that some thing had been operating through her, using her arms as though she was nothing more than a marionette for its amusement? In the end, she said the only thing she could think of that would not make the situation infinitely worse.
"This isn't my brother. I'll go now."
She stumbled backwards, for a few seconds unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of the nurse rapidly reattaching the monitors she had so rudely removed, then she turned and ran, out the door and down the corridor, as fast as she could without toppling over the denizens of the hospital that walked or rolled up and down the hall. When she reached the entranceway, where Daria was waiting, she didn't even stop for explanations, but simply grabbed her friend's arm and propelled her outside.
Daria bore this odd behavior for a few seconds, then shook her off and demanded to know what the hell was going on.
"Something happened to me inside there," Jane said. "Up until now, I've made some weird sketches, including some that I didn't want to make, and I've had some weird feelings, but it still always seemed like me who was doing it. But I just did something in there that wasn't me at all; it was working through me. Whatever it is, it hates hospitals and doctors and maybe machines, I'm not sure. But for a few seconds in there, there wasn't a separation between what I was feeling and what it was feeling. It was like an out-of-body experience. I don't think I've been more terrified in my life."
For a few seconds, Daria didn't respond, just stared into Jane's eyes as if trying to read her soul.
"Daria, it's still me, I promise," Jane said desperately. "For now, at least."
"I know that," Daria responded. "I recognized the red blur. But when you said that, I had to wonder if I wasn't hearing my own voice instead."
"Daria, what's going to happen to us?"
She had no response.
* * * * *
Daria lay collapsed on the hotel room bed, changing channels with just the merest flick of her thumb. She had brought along Going After Cacciato in case she had the time and the desire to read, but after the harrowing day Jane and she had experienced, with nothing to show for their efforts and agonies except a few possibilities checked off their list, she was too physically and emotionally exhausted to absorb the story. So she entertained herself through the only means left to her, the television.
At least, that had been the plan, but it seemed that the TV had other plans. Even with the cable connection, static filled the screen as the picture rolled up and down; it was doing this on every channel. Even the little bit of image that Daria could catch between the snow was disappointing; Daria couldn't identify a single object, but everything looked in black and white. She was certain that she had paid for a better room than this, but there were more important things to do with their time tomorrow than make complaints. Finally, she gave up and just turned it off, lying staring at the wall in front of her.
Off to her side, she could hear Jane's pencil scratching. Jane was determined to reclaim her talent, and from the second they had returned to their room from their last hospital stop she had been attempting to capture the figures and faces of the more colorful characters they had seen since coming to Baltimore Wednesday morning, at the harbor and the police station and the hospitals. Her concentration was intense, her eyes boring holes into the paper held in her hands, so Daria had not interrupted to see how things were going. But now, Daria noticed that the scratchings were becoming rapid and harsh, frantic even; she swung her head over to see Jane holding her pencil like a psycho wielding a knife, attacking her sketchbook with the point, first pressing down with such force that the paper buckled, and then actively stabbing, ramming the point through the leaves again and again and again. Then, with a bellow of raw anguish, she shot to her feet and hurled the sketchbook across the room, and stood there fire-faced, chest rising and falling as she sucked in air, eyes wild.
"Training for Olympic sketch throwing," Daria said, falling back on the familiar since she had no idea of what else to say, "or are you planning on going pro?"
"My art has been hijacked!" Jane wailed. "I can't stop it! There's nothing left in me but that!" She waved in the direction of her pictures, now lying against the far wall. Daria opened her mouth to say something she hoped would be comforting and reassuring, but switched gears when she noticed a dark line on Jane's face.
"Jane, your nose is bleeding."
Jane put her hand up to her face, and her fingers came away wet with the red fluid. Hissing an obscenity through gritted teeth, she ran to the restroom to wash her face. Daria pushed herself up from the bed and walked over to where the sketchbook was lying open, picked it up, and began to flip through the last few filled pages. At first, it looked as though Jane was starting to succeed; there were several renderings of dockworkers and some of the criminals they had caught glimpses of at the police station, all done in Jane's inimitable style, but in each case the face was obliterated. Then, further on, all those disappeared, and the last few pages were filled with nothing but rings, small, large, thick, and thin, all of them scratched out with little consideration for neatness or elegance, just passion. And, in the center, there was a single human figure: a woman whose long black hair covered her face. The figure was disconcerting, unsettling; Daria felt that her mysterious hidden face was staring out at her from the drawing. Nervously, she carefully closed the cover and laid it back down on the floor, not wanting to have any more to do with it. Through the entrance to the restroom, Daria heard Jane's voice raised in irate frustration.
"I'm gonna kill Wind!"
They spent most of the next morning at the local Kinko's, designing and copying flyers. The papers were straightforward, including only a description of Wind, their phone number at the hotel, and a cash reward for information leading to Wind's discovery, calculated by Daria out of what she projected would be left over after the hotel bill and food for the week was subtracted from her cabin fund. She hated parting with the fruits of years of saving, but after the events of the day and night before, finding out what Wind might know was looking less and less like an option and more like an absolute necessity. Jane hadn't said a word about her outburst since, but she had been more quiet than usual, and Daria could tell that it was weighing heavily on her. She had tossed off a comment that it would have been nice to have a picture of Wind to include on the flyer, and had even managed to make it sound casual, but the bitter undercurrent was plain to Daria's ears.
After tossing down another large pile of cash for the flyers, Daria and Jane proceeded to spend the early afternoon plastering them up all over downtown. Separating would have been quicker, but Jane said that the kind of places in which Wind might have ended up were not the sorts of environments two young women should be alone in, even during the day. So they walked along together, taping up paper to poles already covered in a thick layer of it, and commenting on the contents of those older advertisements. Once, Jane even thought she saw a fragment of the Mystik Spiral logo, but after a little digging they discovered it was a flyer for some goth-metal band named Mystikal Warriors; Jane commented that Baltimore was a bit out of the Spiral's league anyway. Altogether, the afternoon was the closest they had come to forgetting, for a little while, the horrors that were pursuing them.
When they got back to the hotel, late that afternoon, several messages were already waiting for them. Jane pressed the button next to the blinking red light, and routed the calls through to the speakerphone.
"Hey, dude, I saw your guy, man. He was comin' out of a monkey's ass!" The caller dissolved into coarse laughter, or at least as far as they could tell. The rowdy bar noises behind him made his voice a bit difficult to make out. Jane hit the skip forward button with unnecessary force, and the next message played. Unfortunately, it was of the same sort, as were the three that followed it.
"I'm beginning to think," Daria commented, "that there might be a downside to getting information from people hanging out in bars in the middle of the day."
"It's just a good thing that we aren't both using video phones," Jane replied. "These guys are asses enough without actually having to see theirs."
Even among all the dreck, though, there were a few gems; a few callers reported what sounded like legitimate sightings, and free of charge, while a few others left their own numbers for them to call, just to make sure that money would be paid if everything panned out. Jane contacted them, and within the hour they had a list of locations where men who looked like Wind had been spotted; of course, they would have preferred some confirmation of the possibility, but most of the callers didn't know what the man was wanted for, and so were hesitant to approach him. Still, it was a start, and better than nothing.
They had a quick bite to eat, and were walking through the streets of downtown by nightfall. The sun was setting, and the streets were filling up with Friday night revelers; Daria soon wearied of dodging back and forth to avoid enthusiastic and inebriated pedestrians, and wished that they had timed their search better, maybe come on a Monday night when people were too depressed by the workweek ahead to crowd the sidewalk so inconveniently. The mass of people was not helping her now-constant sense of being watched, and her nerves were starting to fray.
After what seemed an eternity, they reached the first establishment on their list; from the line of people moving in, it looked pretty popular. They were carding at the door, but hopefully that would not be an issue -- both Daria and Jane had fake ID's, procured for them by Trent (who of course kept his source a secret, with vague mysterious hints of his "connections") so that they could get into McGrundy's Pup to see the Spiral play. They were good enough to pass inspection there, though that wasn't a really high standard, and Daria was hoping that the bars here operated by the same principles. And she was right; the bouncer waved them in with only a cursory glance at their credentials.
Inside it was dark, crowded, and noisy, most of the light coming from the televisions that lined every wall, showing various sporting events. Idly, Daria wondered what would happen should a particularly sadistic person should slip the videotape into one of the broadcasts; how many people would see it, and how many would be able to handle the aftereffects. We don't even know if we've seen all the aftereffects yet.
"Do you see anyone who could be Wind?" Daria asked Jane; she had to yell to make her voice heard over the din. Jane looked around for a while, and then, saving her voice, wordlessly pointed to a man sitting on a barstool, his back to them. He certainly looked like Wind, with his blonde hair to his shoulders and slight build, along with a slight slouch. They walked up behind him, and Jane tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around to reveal his face . . .
. . . and he had no face. His face looked warped, melted, very much like how she and Jane had looked in the security monitor. Daria gasped and jumped back, almost tripping on a stool. She blinked hard, and when she opened her eyes, everything was back to normal; the man's face was completely normal, but it wasn't Wind's. Damn nerves. Damn tape. Damn Wind. Jane was already apologizing for disturbing the man; she didn't seem to have even noticed.
The next couple of stops were uneventful, then they encountered a wrinkle. When they passed over their ID's to the bouncer, he looked both of them up and down, and gave their cards back with a scowl.
"Well, I can believe her," he said, gesturing at Jane, and then turned to Daria, "but there's no way you're twenty-one. You'll have to stay out here." Jane turned to leave, but Daria stopped her.
"Wind could be in there, Jane," she said, "and we can't afford to miss him. I'll be fine out here for a few minutes." Jane didn't look too certain, but she assured Daria she would be out soon and then ducked inside. Daria wandered over to the side of the building; she knew exactly why she had been left out. It wasn't hard to guess that they were both underaged; that wasn't why Jane had been let in and she left out. But even with her eccentric dress and deliberately-odd makeup, Jane was attractive. Not a great beauty, but certainly enough to attract male interest; on the other hand, though Daria knew she could be that way if she put the effort into it, it had never seemed important to her, so she disdained it. Usually, that was the way she liked it, and it had rarely caused what she considered to be problems; but when it did, such as now, it rankled her. She had been separated from her friend solely because the bouncer had been on the lookout for pretty girls, and she hated him for it.
Daria was so engrossed in her thoughts that she did not, at first, notice the approaching stranger. He was obviously drunk, swerving left and right on his feet, his face bearing the too-wide smile of the pleasantly intoxicated. Then he started to get just a little too close, and Daria became suddenly very aware indeed.
"Hey, gorgeous," he said, "you feeling lonely tonight?" At least, that was what she thought he said; the individual words were rather difficult to make out. Not that she wanted to make them out in the first place.
"I was," she replied coldly, "but soon my muscular biker boyfriend Knuckles is going to be here, and if he finds another man talking to me, he'll fly into a homicidal rage."
"We'll just have to hurry then," he said, and reached out for her. Daria backed up out of his reach, but to her dismay found herself pressed up against the wall, with too many other people around to run very far to either side. His hand reached up to her neck.
And suddenly there was long, black hair covering her face, and she was being choked, but from behind. She could feel two strong hands wrapping around her windpipe, crushing the life from her body, the world growing fainter and fainter by the second. She wanted to scream, but couldn't get the air. The hair covering her face got into her mouth; she tried to spit it out, but whenever she gasped for air she would get another mouthful. Panic rose until coherent thought became impossible, and all she could do was pant instinctively for air, but there was no air to be had . . .
Then it was over, and Daria found herself slumped against the wall, lungs heaving, as several people bent over her, asking if she was alright. Others were carrying off the man who had accosted her. Daria couldn't speak, but just kept searching the sea of worried faces until she finally found Jane's, pushing her way through the crowd.
"My god, Daria," she exclaimed, "what happened? I heard you screaming inside the bar." Jane's eyes were wide with shock, and she quickly looked Daria up and down, searching for wounds. Finally, Daria found the air and the composure to speak.
"It . . . it was another vision," she whispered, not wanting to have this conversation go beyond the two of them. Her hands and her voice were shaking. "When he touched my neck, I felt like I was being strangled, but not by him. And it wasn't me, either." She looked into Jane's eyes, and saw that her friend knew exactly what she meant. Jane slung Daria's arm over her shoulders, and helped her to her feet; they started to walk down the street, the crowd parting before them, connected together.
"Come on, amiga," Jane said tenderly. "I think it's time for both of us to get some rest."
* * * * *
Daria shot straight up in bed, heart pounding, as the final image of her nightmare faded into the dark hotel room around her. Turning towards the one source of light available to her -- the window, which was starting to show the grey glow of pre-dawn -- she saw Jane's figure silhouetted against it, head down, staring at the hands folded in her lap.
"Jane," she said, her voice still morning-hoarse, "what are you doing up so early?"
"I had a nightmare," she said flatly, bluntly. Her voice quivered.
"Yeah, so did I," Daria replied. "I guess it's not so surprising, considering what's been happening to us. What did you dream about?"
Jane took a deep, stabilizing breath, than began.
"I was standing in someplace cold and dark, and wet. I was waist deep in water, and the ground was muddy, so anytime I stepped I had to yank my foot up. Not that there was a lot of room to walk; there was a stone wall all around me. I could feel it with my hands, though I couldn't see anything. The walls were slimy with algae, and the whole place stank. As far as I could tell, there wasn't any roof, and all I could see above me was a ring of light, just like the one at the beginning of the tape. I panicked, and tried to climb up and out of the place, but I didn't get anywhere, and the rough walls just tore the skin off my fingertips. Finally, just before I was going to really flip out, I woke up. That was hours ago now." The whole time she was talking, her gaze did not leave her lap.
"That definitely sounds disturbing," Daria acknowledged, "and I'm sure Freud would have lots of things to say about it, but why didn't you just go back to sleep?"
"Because I haven't told you the worst part of it yet," Jane replied, her tone heavy. Then, silently, she held up her hands so that Daria could see them in the light. The fingers were bloody, all the skin missing from each one of their tips.
"Good God, Jane!" Daria yelped, shocked out of her fatigue and any sense of restraint. She knew this was impossible (though her sense of what was and was not possible had already come under considerable strain these last few days), but her brain couldn't deal with that yet, so it resorted to more pragmatic matters. She jumped out of bed and ran over to Jane, taking her hands gently and examining the wounds. "These haven't even been washed. You need to clean these, and bandage them, right now."
"Sorry, I didn't bring my first-aid kit."
"I'll rip up some of my clean socks to use for bandages. While I'm doing that, wash your hands in the sink."
Obediently, Jane did as she was told, but while Daria was tearing her socks into strips, she heard a cry of pain from restroom, followed by a plea for assistance. She stepped through the door to find Jane fumbling with the soap, unable to hold it without it slipping from her blood-slicked hands. Without words, Daria took one of her hands in hers, and with the other started to rub the bar of soap along her wounds.
"There has to be some rational explanation for this," she muttered, half to herself. Now that the pragmatics were being taken care of, there was nothing left to distract her from the more disturbing implications. "Maybe you clawed the wall or the bedframe while you were sleeping."
"Sorry, amiga," Jane responded, "they're clean as a whistle. I looked."
"Well, there has to be something. Dreams just don't become real."
"Maybe the mind makes them real."
"Great theory, Morpheus."
"Man, I wish this was the Matrix. I could take that blue pill and forget any of this ever happened."
"There are other blue pills that can do that."
"Yeah, I can get a prescription for them, and maybe a room like yours. Ow!"
"Sorry. I wish
we had some disinfectant."
"A bottle of bourbon does sound like a good idea right now."
"Oh, no," Daria said emphatically. "The last thing I need right now is alcohol. My dreams are strange enough, thank you."
"What was your dream about?" Jane asked, as Daria turned off the water and began to wrap her fingers with the strips of her sock.
"It started with me waking up in this room," she said slowly, remembering, almost reliving, the vivid dream, half-afraid of what was going to happen next. "I needed to pee, so I went into the restroom and turned on the light, but instead of seeing my own reflection in the mirror, I saw someone else." She shivered involuntarily. "It was a little girl, about ten years old or so. She was dressed in a flowing white dress, and had long black hair that fell to her waist, framing an extremely pale face. She made me look like I have a tan. She wasn't ugly -- in fact, she was even kind of attractive -- but there was something about her that seemed very wrong, very eerie. She even looked familiar to me, like someone I had seen before, out of the corner of my eye. I walked up to the mirror and tried to meet her gaze, but I couldn't quite make eye contact; there was something hideous in her stare, and I just didn't have the courage." Her pulse and breathing had quickened, and Daria had to pause to take a few calming breaths. To this point, the dream had seemed almost mundane, and yet, even in her sleep when she was experiencing it for the first time, she had already become quite uneasy. "I asked her who she was, and she didn't answer, just kept looking at me as though she were examining an insect pinned to her card. I asked her what she wanted, and she still didn't answer, but she smiled." Daria stopped abruptly, and swallowed. The memory of that smile had made her heart nearly stop, she felt.
"If you don't want to go on," Jane said, looking concerned, "that's fine."
"No, I'm all right. It's just still a bit disturbing. But that smile, Jane -- it was like nothing I have ever seen before. It was pure evil, hatred, malevolence; that's the only thing I can think of to describe it. I could tell right then what she wanted -- she wanted me dead, and she was going to enjoy every minute of it. Then she reached out from the mirror and grabbed my arm, and started to pull me in. It was like being touched by living flame; I've never felt anything like it. I screamed, and then woke up." Daria finished tying up the bandages on Jane's fingers, and just in time; her hands were shaking so much that she could barely finish the knots. Jane was staring at Daria's arm.
"It looks like I'm not the only one with a souvenir from a dream," she said quietly, almost in a whisper.
"What do you mean?" Daria replied, puzzled, and not sure she wanted to know the answer.
Jane took Daria's arm and pushed up her sleeve, tilting her forearm into view. There, formed from what looked like scar tissue from a long-healed burn, was the print of a small hand.
"Come on, Daria, after last night, you have to admit something unnatural is going on."
Daria and Jane sat across from each other, sitting at a booth in a pizza place near the hotel. Daria welcomed the familiarity of the situation; it felt like the last support shoring up the increasingly shaky construct that was her life. After last night, her skepticism had taken a nasty blow, and she was struggling to find some kind of rational, ordinary cause that could explain it all. The bandages on the tips of Jane's fingers were mocking her, challenging her for an explanation; she made sure to keep the long sleeves of her own jacket all the way down, completely covering her arms.
"That girl you saw in the mirror," Jane said, "has to be the same one I drew in my book; the woman with the long hair. She has to be the spirit behind it all. Why else would she be trying to scare us? Why else would you have dreamed her?"
"Probably because I saw that picture you drew," Daria replied, trying to maintain her normal monotone in the face of rising doubt and frustration. "I will admit that the picture disturbed me, but that's all the more reason my mind would have included her in my nightmare."
"Do girls in pictures do this?" Jane demanded, and pushed up Daria's sleeve to reveal the brown handprint. And, of course, that was the clincher, the thing that Daria could not explain, the fatal flaw in her argument. But that didn't mean she was quite ready to concede the war.
"Just because I don't know how it happened," she said, "doesn't mean there isn't a rational cause. There are a lot of weird things in the world that I can't explain; that doesn't mean I'm going to blame them all on ghosts and goblins. If we did that, then hundreds of years of science would be worthless; we might as well start making offerings to the rain gods in the hopes of a good harvest."
Jane held up her fingers.
"Daria, this doesn't just happen on its own. We both know there is no way something like last night could just happen naturally; if it could, then people would wake up wounded from nightmares all the time. She did this to us. She's just as real as you or I are. And I don't think we are going to be able to stop her until you acknowledge that she exists."
"It's not that simple," Daria snapped, almost losing her temper at her friend's insistence. She paused for a few seconds to calm down. "This isn't a movie, Jane, where the lifelong skeptic can just see a ghost and be magically transformed into a believer. I've lived my entire life under the assumption that this is all there is, that if I can't see it, hear it, feel it, or test it, then it doesn't exist. There is no god ruling over us, no angels guarding us, and certainly no ghosts haunting us. The possibility that there might be, that there is a reality beyond what I have always known, is not just a new piece of information I can stitch on to my worldview and go on as before. If I believed that, I would have to reevaluate every aspect of my life, rethink every important decision I have ever made. It would completely revolutionize my outlook on life. So, before I make such a staggering change, I need to be absolutely certain of my reasons for doing so." Jane pierced her with an assessing gaze.
"So it's not really that you can't believe," she said slowly, piecing it all together, "but that it would be a lot of trouble to change your mind." She paused; Daria knew she was waiting for her to contradict that statement, to explain that she had it all wrong, but though Daria thought that Jane was putting too much of a negative spin on her position, she was essentially right. "But the Daria Morgendorffer I know would never allow inconvenience to st