Prisoners of Prophecy

Chapter 10

Xantara - Saturday, July 13th, 2019; 7:35am

     I had only managed a couple steps down the hallway when I halted. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had stopped in front of Melany's door.
     The heaviness in my eyes and the slowness in my train of thought made the passing time feel dreamlike. I had been up all night, replaying the image of that numb, tired look in Melany's eyes in my mind. Had I made the right choice, telling her? I wondered. What happens next? I was beginning to believe more and more that all of those people that I had seen in my dream and Melany were somehow related. The fear on their faces as they disappeared... I didn't want that to happen to her. I had no real reason to back the idea up, and even the thought of it made me feel stupid, even crazy. But, something in my heart told me that there was truth in that thought, despite its impossibility. It wouldn't be unusual next to everything else that I had learned so far in ShadowWood.
     A feeling of great loss fell upon me then. Though I could hardly remember Melany in my past, the thought that she probably would listen to the advice I'd given her to avoid me filled me with sadness. There was the unknown of what may happen to the group and whatever prophecy we were supposedly destined to fulfill if she was supposed to be a part of it and she refused. But, there was also that odd pull that I felt when she was near, and the momentary empty feeling that came over me once she had left. She was in my life now, and I was afraid her absence would leave a part of me missing, as preposterous as it sounded.
     Despite the urge I had to knock on her door and check on her, I forced myself to continue down the hall. Even when I heard one of those doors opening and closing behind me and hope flared in my chest, that newly familiar energy buzzing through my veins, I pushed on.
     "Xantara?" Her soft voice echoed down the hallway.
     I stopped and spun around. All my weariness evaporated under the force of her gaze. My heart ached with concern as I took her in, tension forming instantly between us. Her shoulders sagged like she held a heavy burden on them. She was frowning. The deep blue of her irises were dull. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek as if eating the words she wanted to say. Her hair was still damp from a shower, and she ran her hands through it restlessly. She almost looked ill. With guilt that tore at my insides, I realized it was her thoughts that had surely overwhelmed her all night. I hardly understood what was happening here; I could only imagine how confused she must be. I could practically hear the wheels turning in her mind. What could she possibly be wondering?
     "Would you walk with me today?" she asked in a whisper.
     The unreasonable fear that something might happen to Melany if she might really remember who I was disappeared beneath my relief. "Are you sure?" I asked, trying to hide the happiness in my tone.
     She nodded and walked towards me, each step light and graceful, almost like she was floating.
     When she stopped only a foot in front of me, I was filled with a deep chill. An eerie darkness filled the hallway, coming from an unknown source. Memories attacked my vulnerable and restless conscience - memories of the night before. The shadows that had started to close in on me before I had jerked my head up to look at her even though that was the last thing I had wanted to do; as if I had lost my own free will. The memories went back even further than that - back to the time that we had met, when I somehow had found myself hiding in the comfort of the dark beneath Melany's bed with her. I could not remember how I got there, and that thought had caused countless questions to plague my mind during the late hours of the night.
     Melany didn't speak until she had led us outside. The sky was thick with dark clouds. The Sun was nowhere to be seen. There was a sense of foreboding in the humid air. The chill that had fallen over me clung to me stubbornly, and I hugged myself to stay warm. But the weather was not the cause for this. That cold was coming from within me.
     "I had a terrible dream last night," she mumbled as we walked.
     "What about?" I questioned, tilting my head towards her so I could better hear her softly spoken words.
     "It...It wasn't a dream. It was a memory. I'm sure of it." She glanced at me curiously. In those few seconds that dragged by like hours, I saw multiple emotions cross her face. She looked at me as if I was some stranger, but at the same time like she had known me forever. That look was enough to make my head spin.
She stared straight ahead once again, leaving me speechless.
She knows. The thought was so sudden and sure that for a moment I didn't know if it was even mine at all. Then it dawned on me, and I had to focus on my own feet to avoid tripping over them. I paused for a moment, afraid I wouldn't be able to take another step. So it's true. The things I thought could not be possible were. And that meant everything else that's happened was really real. There was no way I could deny anything else, or blame it on my madness, or anyone else's, any longer.
The silence dragged on as we reached the library, both of us trapped in our own thoughts. It was a tense silence. Unspoken words formed a seemingly physical barrier between us, neither of us brave enough to give life to them.
When we got inside, we split to find our laptops. Melany was the first to get to the desk. She ignored the librarian's greeting, signing the paper in front of her and walking away. She stood by the door, watching me and cradling the laptop against her chest. I checked my own out with a brief smile at the older woman behind the counter before making my way to her.
She was staring longingly at the many aisles of books. The dim light and the hushed atmosphere was comforting, unlike the rest of the property. It appeared to take her some effort to turn and walk back outside, shaking her head as she did.
"It's like a whole other world in there, huh?" I said, the dread that was growing between us becoming unbearable.
We walked amongst the gathering of students rushing to their first classes. They made a wide arc around us as they passed, giving us curious yet fearful glances. Though I had been used to the stares for a while now, the way Melany looked back at them with a distant sadness made my heart ache with empathy. Her eyes reminded me of the ocean, deep and blue and full of mysteries I would never know - a mesmerizing surface which hid beneath it an endless chasm of darkness.
She finally stopped to face me behind the psych and health building. Countless emotions swam in her gaze. She regarded me with a sort of guarded unease as well as dull curiosity. The crowd of kids had thinned out, most of them already in their classes. But, even without all of the attention on us, she glanced frantically around us, then her wide eyes would settle on me for a moment before flickering away once again.
Without warning, Melany reached out and ran a trembling finger across one of the scars that had just recently appeared on my face. The sensation of her fingertips tracing my skin lightly drove icy claws of pain into me. She flinched away from me, wincing as if she had felt it, too. My heart raced. She looked at me with a combination of terror and concern. It made me feel crazy.
"They're darker," Melany stated simply, then took a deep, shaking breath. "There's no way this makes sense. Healing backwards, your eyes turning black..." She spoke slowly, like each word was poison and she was trying not to ingest it. "This is some monster of a dream. Or I've really lost it. I refuse to believe anything else."
I could not speak. The combination of her touch and her familiar gaze boring into me left my throat dry. She was studying me almost expectantly, and in this small moment I could see how helpless she really felt. She seemed to be waiting for me to provide an answer that would make everything make sense. I had been searching for the same answer since the moment I had walked onto the property and the gates had been locked behind me.
Melany sighed. "Xantara, look... I'm not scared of you. And I don't think I could avoid you, not even if I wanted to. And right now, I really do; I want to avoid everyone and everything here."
"But?" I asked, sensing that there was something more that she hesitated to say.
"But there's something telling me that whatever you have going on won't leave me alone. And that terrifies me."
Again, her words left me speechless. Another wave of realization hit me and for a moment I drowned in it, grasping for a hold on any sort of sanity. This... this thing, this objective that had seemingly been forced upon us, that had only been a concept that I could dismiss easily other than late at night, was now physically coming to life so rapidly that I had not really had time for the shock of it to crash down on me. Not until now. And it left me breathless, grabbing a handful of my shirt into a tight fist like I could pull out my racing heart and force it to slow. I wanted to crack into my skull and pluck out every memory I ever had, suddenly thinking it would be better to know nothing at all than being able to recall the horrible fate that now cursed me.
Melany watched me with furrowed brows, her head tilted. I wondered how much she could see in my expression. She nodded to herself before speaking, like she had found what she was searching for. "You know." She closed her eyes tight for a second, exhaling deeply. When her eyes opened again, they brimmed with desperation and sadness. "What the hell is going on?"
"I know that something strange is happening. But that's all I know," I lied, unsure how to explain the rest of what I did know. I didn't even know if I should. Not before we really knew she was who we thought. But a part of me was sure she was. I could feel it - a foreboding sense of doom in each breath that I took around her.
It didn't look like she believed me at all, but she didn't question it. "Do you guys always like to hang out at that old house?"
"Most times. Why?" I asked curiously, wondering if this might be the chance to see if her presence in the basement would give us any new knowledge of this impossible situation. "You change your mind about talking to them?"
She shivered like the very idea of it disgusted her. "No. Especially not there." She said it with conviction, but I thought I could see a glimmer of doubt in her gaze. She took a breath and offered me a small smile. "We should go in, before we're late."
She turned and disappeared inside the low brick building. I watched her, momentarily unable to move. Emotions roared in my heart. What next? I wondered. What memories did her dreams bring her? What now?