The Nightscape

Mysterious Messages

The apartment was empty when Lyra came in, shutting and bolting the door behind her as her  chest heaved from her mad dash through the city and then up the five flights of stairs to the safety of their small, Tokyo apartment. Her father was still at work, and would be for a few more hours, so she slammed the bolt into place and slid down the door into a crouch, taking a moment to catch her breath before thinking over the events of the day. Once she had landed back in the normal world, her phone had buzzed around five times as she finally brought it back into range. Now, she pulled it from her pocket, flicking through and dismissing four of the five, her friends wondering why she had ditched them at the shopping mall, but the fifth made her blood run cold. 

Don't be afraid of the unknown.

It was from an unknown number that had never contacted her before, and it made her feel all the more afraid. Not only did they know her name, know what she could do, but now they knew her phone number as well. What if they knew where she lived? 

Her stomach heaved from the stress, so she leapt up and raced to the bathroom, retching into the toilet. When she was done, she sagged against the wall for a moment before getting up and turning on the shower. 

.

.

.

Half an hour later, showered and dressed in fresh clothes and eating ice cream in her bedroom, Lyra was beginning to feel a little better. The events of the day were still worrying, yes, but the mind numbing panic had receded enough for her to be able to think clearly. The message left in the book raised a lot of questions and opened up a world of terrifying possibilities, but it was also exciting. For her entire life, she had believed herself to be the only one able to walk between the dimensions, but clearly that wasn't true. Or maybe it was. Maybe there was another intelligent being who lived in the other world, and that was their way of trying to get into contact with her. Maybe they wanted her to help them? Or maybe their motives were more sinister than that.

But how would she have never seen any trace of them before? It was a mystery she just couldn't unravel, even after she had pulled out her book off clues, a black notebook she had written all the clues she had in. Three more pages had been filled out in the last twenty minutes, small, neat blue letters. Now, she snapped it closed and shoved it into her desk draw, giving up for the time being. Maybe she just needed to sleep on it, and there'd be a new way to look about it when she woke up. 

And then there was the issue with the warehouse. Lyra had toyed with the idea of returning there to try and find the kids so she could get them to delete the footage, but eventually concluded it was pointless. They were probably long gone, and even if she hadn't freaked them out enough to never return, she wouldn't be able to strongarm them into giving her the camera anyway. 

Lyra sighed and dropped her head into her hands. This could easily spiral even further out of her control, and there was no way they couldn't clearly see her face on the footage. If it fell into the wrong person's hands she could very well end up as a lab rat for the rest of her life. For a moment, she wondered how convincing of an argument she could make to her father so they could move to a different country without telling him her big secret, before realising that she might be overreacting, just a little.

So she opened up youtube. Clicked on the trending tab. And instantly felt like she was about to have a panic attack. 

Number five on trending was a video titled: GIRL TELELPORTS IN FRONT OF US OUT OF NOWHERE. The thumbnail was grainy, but the boy in front of the camera, and more damningly, herself half flickering, were clearly visible. There she was, dark hair not quite enough to cover her features, bathed in violet magic. It was so clear she could even see the glimmer of her nose piercing. Lyra clicked on the video, hands trembling when it started to play. There it was, frame by frame, her moving from one dimension to the other, clear as day. She groaned, and hit her head against the desk. Shit.