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THE OMEN

It’s pitch-black.

Everything is dark. Outside my head. Inside my head. Everything.

I can feel Jack huddled next to me on the floor of the van, trembling. He bumps into my side as we move, turning round corners, stopping sharply at lights.

‘Who are these people?’ He sounds completely drained. Empty, apart from the pain.

‘I don’t know.’ I try to make my voice sound strong. Assured. For him. ‘If they rescued us from Casimir, then they’re going to help us.’

‘How did they find us?’

‘Dad’s bank card.’ My head feels like it’s been put through a blender. My mouth is burning. My arm stings from the cuts. I try to block out thoughts of my family, focusing on the vibrations of the road beneath me. But they scurry like cockroaches through the folds in my cerebral cortex.

It was my bike.

My family.

My family of liars.

Murderers.

I’m a part of that.

Revulsion surges inside of me, making my stomach contract.

‘Listen, Jack…’ I move my hand across the floor until it finds the side of his. ‘I’m so sorry. For all of this. I’m going to help you. We can go to the police, tell them everything. I never want to see my family again. I promise you – people will find out what they did.’ I hear my words and they sound so stupid. So pathetic. Because no words are enough. They never will be. My family has put him through so much. Taken everything from him. I feel embarrassed. Ashamed.

Shame .

I forgot how terrible, how awful it is. A dark and twisted cloud, moving through me, suffocating me from the inside out. But I hold on to it. I allow it to consume me, to punish me.

I can hear his breath, shuddering next to me. He keeps his hand where it is, right next to mine. I then feel his fingers move. He places them on top of my hand, linking our fingers together, and softly squeezes. It does something to the cloud that has filled me. Pierces it with a momentary beam of light.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. I can just make him out over the whir of the engine. ‘I’m glad that you found me, Eli. I’m glad that I know. When I was watching that stuff on the headset, all that stuff in Sycamore Ward, you were really kind to me. You didn’t judge me. Didn’t ask about my scars. You really wanted me to get better. You talked a lot… But I can tell that I liked it. I liked being around you. It was so strange, watching it, experiencing feelings I never knew I’d felt.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

As our bodies rock with the motion of the van, I feel him shift his weight, bringing his legs up closer to his chest. ‘I think there was something about the way you were that made me feel a bit off-kilter. A bit on edge.’

‘Oh…’

‘No, in a good way. In a way that gave me something to be excited about. Your energy reminded me what life can be like. It was exciting. It was definitely … fast. But free.’ He pauses. ‘I could tell that I wanted to get better that time. Ever since Rose died, I’d blamed myself. I couldn’t deal with it. For years I was in and out of those places. But that time it looked like I did want to get out, make something of myself and move on. And having you there just seemed to… I don’t know… Brighten things. It took me out of my head, which I’d been so stuck in. And then your parents removed it all.’

We make the truth .

‘I’m so sorry about your sister,’ I say quietly.

‘Am I to blame?’ He clears his throat, fighting the emotion welling inside it. ‘I took her there. I stole the bike.’

I see him on the road, trying to say her name. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It was them. It was all them.’

He exhales shakily. ‘Good. That’s good to know.’ I tighten my fingers around his. ‘I want to see it. I want it back,’ he says. ‘I was doing some crazy shit to try and feel again, you know? I was swimming when I thought she’d drowned. I was trying to feel something. Pain. Anything.’

‘Wait – me too.’ I pause. ‘You haven’t been watching The Exorcist on repeat, have you?’

I sense him turn to me. Is he smiling? ‘ The Omen .’

No way.

The van suddenly lurches. We’ve stopped.

I sit upright and Jack’s hand tenses in mine as we hear the thud of doors opening. The van shifts slightly, tilting as the man and woman step out.

They seemed kind. They did. But is that enough?

There’s a clonk as the handle turns in the back door and it swings open, revealing the man and the woman in their hooded coats. The others must have stayed with Casimir. What did they do with him?

‘Where are we?’ Jack croaks, blinking into the light of a street lamp.

‘A place of safety,’ the man with the beard says.

The dark-haired woman nods. ‘This is the best place for you to be. I promise.’

‘Who are you?’ I say.

The man holds out his hand to us. ‘We’re friends. Now, please, be quick. We don’t have much time.’

I look at Jack. He’s shivering. Do we have any choice?

We begin to stand.

‘That’s it,’ the man says. ‘Good job.’

The first thing I see are the McDonald’s wrappers and Starbucks cups littering the ground. I then see a small door, a broken camera above it. A metal panel, and intercom buzzers numbered one to six.

The woman presses the one next to Floor 2.

‘Wait,’ I say.

‘There’s someone inside who wants to talk to you, Eli,’ she says. ‘Give them a chance to explain.’

‘What is this place?’ Jack whispers.

I glance back at the man with the beard as he slams the van door shut. Then I hear a voice answer the intercom. A woman’s voice. One I know well.

‘ Hello? ’

‘They’re safe,’ the dark-haired woman replies.

‘ Bring them up . We ’ re waiting .’