Awoken (The Lucidites Book 1) Read online

  Ten minutes pass where I do nothing but wallow in uncertainty. I said I would do this, but the actual “doing” part is difficult. There’s one place I need to go before potentially drowning myself. I know they told me not to, but this is probably my last chance.

  I stand firm, the cool wind drifting against my cheeks and the back of my hands. With my eyes closed, I experience in my mind the place I intend to dream travel to: Green leaves flicker in the wind, a hammock sways, vanilla wafts from the garden, and familiarity punctuates every single thought. I’m enveloped by innocence, so pure and real. Hands brush long sheathes of grass as the shoreline draws closer. The buoy bobs in the far-off waters. A mountain of books sits in neat stacks, both prized possessions and contraband.

  The silver tunnel engulfs me again. I’m moving forward, like on a subway train. But it’s more like I’m the subway train itself, speeding through a claustrophobic passageway. My heart pounds and just when I think I’ll run into something I turn down a different silver tunnel.

  My landing is punctuated with a flash and a jolt. I open my eyes to find an angry forest and a darkened house. Even though I stand at the end of the pier, I know it’s risky being this close. I won’t be long.

  The tunnel has dumped me in the spot where Trey told me who I was, what I was capable of. I remember thinking then that the Associate Head Official for the Lucidites looked a bit like a young Harrison Ford with his silver hair and turquoise eyes. It’s hard to believe that was only days ago. It feels like months. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t lose the nights to meaningless dreams.

  My meeting with Trey was the first time I dream traveled. Bob and Steve had arranged it after giving me the dream travel protocol. They wouldn’t tell me anymore. Said it wasn’t their place. “Just close your eyes and have some faith,” Bob told me. I didn’t believe what happened next was real. Still, Trey knew about the nightmares, about the strange figure I kept seeing in the woods, and why my family was losing their minds.

  “We can help you,” Trey said as he dangled his feet over the side of the dock. Our casual sitting arrangement on the pier was absurdly contradictory to how tense the whole meeting was. There I sat with a stranger who was telling me this dream was real. That I was a part of a special race of people. That if the Lucidites didn’t protect me, I’d be murdered. Conversations like that really should happen in a more formal environment.

  “How do I know I should let you help me? What if you’re the bad guy,” I said to Trey, pinning my eyes on the button of his rolled up white shirtsleeve.

  “We’ve been protecting you. Well, the best we could from the dreamscape. I’m sorry we weren’t able to help your family. That all happened too fast.”

  “What has Zhuang done to them?” I asked.

  “Zhuang has lived for entirely too long because he slips into dreamer’s heads while they sleep. Takes over their consciousness by weakening them, usually by causing nightmares, creating anxiety and stress, or completely severing their ability to achieve REM.”

  “But why my family? I get that he’s after me because of some ridiculous prophecy, but they’re totally innocent. They’re Middlings.”

  Trey shook his head. Sighed. “It’s not just your family. Zhuang has done this on many levels to thousands for centuries. Sometimes he operates quickly as in the case of a heart attack or aneurism. Sometimes his attacks are slower. Like with a stroke. The ailment takes many forms. And these are some of the conditions Middlings have used to describe what Zhuang does, but you should know the truth.”

  “Zhuang’s responsible for all these different diseases?!” I asked horrified by the news.

  Trey nodded. “Mostly Zhuang. Unfortunately there are other Dream Travelers who abuse their powers in this way. We are a powerful race of people, capable of destroying Middlings if we choose. For the Lucidites this is not an option. It’s against our laws. We protect. That’s why you should trust us. Allow us to guard you.”

  After I awoke from that meeting with Trey, I fully intended to forget his words, his persuasions, and his pleas to allow the Lucidites to protect me. Intentions are flimsy in the face of opposing danger. Determination, on the other hand, is resilient to challenge. It’s the antidote.

  Now from my place on the dock, I steal a glance at my home. Since I’m dream traveling, I anticipate that the house will appear different, but it doesn’t. Everyone in there’s asleep, locked in dreamless slumber. I expect to gaze at the house and be bombarded by sorrow. I’m not. It’s like I’m looking at someone else’s home. My family has been ripped away. I’m unable to go home. And all I feel is a hollow ache, but that’s normal. I was born with that.

  A snippet of my last conversation with my brother plays in my head. “I don’t know why, but you’re different. You don’t belong in our family. Never have, never will,” Shiloh said before attacking me. True he’d been suffering from hallucinations, but his words stuck with me. So did the bruises.

  It was obvious from a young age that I was different from my family in many ways. My fair hair and subdued nature stuck out like a sore thumb among their black manes and toothy grins in all the holiday photos. Eventually my mother made us wear Santa hats, but still she couldn’t force me to smile. And she couldn’t dispel the rumors which had always circulated around town since the first tow hair sprouted from my head.

  I was the outcast and I’d always known and accepted this. But when Shiloh used the words “don’t belong,” a darkened corner in my heart grew with illumination. His words should have made me feel rejected. Instead I felt hope.

  Shuman’s words from before feel heavier, even more meaningful. Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. My hands are steady now, no longer shaking. Inside me an emotion has risen to a new height. Longing. It has a sound, a color, a taste. It’s sharp, red, pungent. My steady fingers push against my temples, pushing against the longing, but it doesn’t relinquish its hold on my intestines.

  One question remains in this confusing web that has become my life. The fire it fuels within me burns slowly, but has the ambition to scorch down an entire forest. I want to know where I belong. Sadly, this is the reason I accepted the role as challenger. I want to say it was to save my family, but that’s secondary. Although I haven’t lived long, I know to exist in a world feeling capable of moving mountains and only allowed to dig tiny holes is wrong. I’m determined to understand who I am, why I’m the only Dream Traveler in my family, and why I was chosen to fight Zhuang.

  One last look, followed by a loose swallow in my throat. I see the imprint of the house inside my eyelids when they’re closed. Its shape. Its light. Its darkness. I release this place and travel back to my body. Rising, I feel a million miles from where I was seconds ago. This will make the next few steps easier.

  I walk through Bob and Steve’s house, neatly lit by Tiffany lamps set on dim. No doubt they’re gone, dream traveling. They said they had business in Taiwan and Iceland tonight. Right. Who doesn’t?

  I laugh as my feet find the Persian rug. I’m almost to the back door. I could retreat now, curl back up in the canopy bed and rise to Bob making pancakes. I could leave this whole challenge behind. Bob and Steve said they’d help. Did that mean they’d take me in while my family was pillaged of their dreaming capacity and the Lucidites battled Zhuang? Why should I care? Who were the Lucidites or Zhuang to me? But my family... I wish I wanted to protect them, rather than felt obligated. It’s hard to be loyal to people who nicknamed me “Stake,” short for “Mistake.” But still they’re my blood, and shouldn’t that bond me to them regardless of their cruelty?

  From the beginning I questioned why Bob and Steve would socialize with my mother. They were cultured and she was a soap opera addict. And she hadn’t tolerated them well either, but still insisted on accepting their invitations to dinner parties.

  “Why are you dragging me along to these people’s house?” I asked her as we drove on the bumpy road.

  “Beca
use they invited you to join me,” she said.

  “But why are you even going to this dinner? You just got finished going on about how they’re too pretty.”

  “Roya, you really understand very little about politics,” she said, condescension laden in her tone. “And honestly, what man gets his nails professionally manicured? That’s ridiculous.”

  “So you’re just wasting my evening so you can get a fat check for your charity?”

  “It isn’t about the charity. You’d know that if you paid attention. A new position on the board is opening up. If I secure this donation then I’m a shoo-in for that spot.”

  “Seriously though, all these pretenses just to get money, that’s—”

  “Pretending to like someone is nothing,” she cut me off. “I don’t think you get it. A position on the board never opens up. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well then, let’s hope Emily Dickinson was right and ‘fortune befriends the bold.’”

  Her lips hardened into a thin line. I almost flinched thinking she’d slap me again.

  My mother didn’t tolerate three types of people: career women, men who plucked their eyebrows, and anyone who quoted literature. She found this all too “pretentious.”

  Maybe it was my mother’s intolerances that made me love Bob and Steve at first sight. They spoke with sophistication, but also a vivid touch of humbleness. It was almost like I could feel their sincerity in the shortest of words. No one had ever spoken to me like they had—with respect. When they showed me their library I loved them even more. And then they drugged me, gave me bizarre instructions, and I awoke to a strange new world where I wasn’t certain what was real. Hell, I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

  I did know that my mother’s pretenses didn’t matter because she was the one being conned the whole time. And still I trusted Bob and Steve. These men had gone to great lengths to help me—they tolerated my mother. And they rescued me when my brother, Shiloh, was about to run me over. It was because of them that I was safe and knew I wasn’t a freak. I was different, but in a powerful way. Bob and Steve’s role was to guide me in my first dream travel so I would meet Trey, but they’d done more than that. Bob and Steve were the first people I could remember being sincerely kind. It truly hurts me to leave that now, but I have to.

  My haste brings me to the pier within a minute. Much like Jay Gatsby, I stand on the dock and stare into the distance. Somewhere on the opposite bank is the home I’ve just left. Unlike Gatsby I’m not drawn to it, yearning for someone. My dark secret is I’ve always wished I was Gatsby. As heartbroken as he was and as horrible a fate as he endured, I admired that he loved. It’s a difficult thing to do.

  Feeling heartless makes it easier to swing my legs over the side of the dock and slip into the chilly lake. My clothes are instant anchors. Ignoring this, I slide through the water. After a few strokes I turn over and float on my back; my blonde hair glides beside me. I really should have thought to restrain my long tresses before the plunge. I close my eyes, but still see the bright light of the moon penetrating through my lids. My arms push through the water to keep me afloat and I force out all unwanted thoughts.

  I take a long deep breath and hold it. Slowly I let it out and then draw in another. Without knowing a specific location I’ll have to use cognitive tethering to draw me to the Institute. Information I’ve learned over the past few days will link my consciousness to the location. Or I might just drown. Only one way to find out.

  I pull oxygen through my nose to the bottom of my lungs and float through my thoughts. A secret race. Ancient people. With superior utilization of their dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. A private society within this population. A society built to protect.

  On the next breath my thoughts gain color. They’re dynamic, carrying the emotions I entrenched in them when they were stored. A society of Dream Travelers. The Lucidites. I feel rather than think about their presence around me the last few weeks. It was like a blot on the corner of my vision. And it always disappeared under closer inspection. They watched me while I was awake interacting with my Middling family. Later Trey would comment on how I didn’t deserve the abuse my family heaped on me. His voice carried a strained weight when he said, “You don’t deserve to be treated with such disdain. If there was something we could have done to intervene to protect you from their abuse then we would have. I hope you know that.” I never replied. My throat caught at the idea that he was watching me from another plane of existence. And from there he and the other Head Officials of the Lucidites kept Zhuang at bay while he lurked in the forest, luring me towards him. The Lucidites, like Zhuang, play tricks with the wind and the tides.

  I seize one last breath, stop paddling, and relax my muscles. The water rises over my cheeks, covering my closed eyes, and then entirely over my face. Like a stone skipping over water my mind flicks to every idea connected to the Lucidites. News reporters. Protective charms. Summoning powers. Mugwort. Projections. ESP. Clairvoyance. Illusions. Trey. Ren. Shuman. Bob. Steve. And finally the stone makes one last skip before plummeting. Me. They want me to join them.

  I’m not struggling to breathe as my body sinks farther to the bottom of the lake. I’ve slowed my breathing enough that the last breath will sustain me for the next few minutes. To distract myself from the fear of drowning I think of the Lucidites. They have an Institute. It’s a safe place. This is where I’m headed. I’ll be their challenger and face Zhuang.

  The tug inside my lungs voices its hunger for oxygen. I’m still sinking. The weight of the water on top of me is equal to a hundred quilts. They’re suffocating me. This is not the time to be overcome by fear, I tell myself. By now I have used my reserved oxygen. I’m too far under the water; if I kick up now I’ll never make it to the surface. I have to stay calm and focus.

  The Lucidites are a tiny segment of the population who travel when they dream. I’m one of them. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite. My body makes contact with the uneven, sandy bottom of the lake. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite. The ground, cold like metal sits under my soaked skin. A motor boat roars overhead, its engine muted by what feels like leagues of water. Although my consciousness is bursting with excitement and anxiety I try to stay tranquil. Without thinking I part my lips and take a deep breath. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite. I’m a Lucidite.

  “And you’re about to be a dead girl if you don’t get up!” a guy yells.

  Chapter Three

  Effervescent light assaults my eyes. “Come on, you’ve got to get up! We’re running out of time!” the stranger urges. I gaze at the halo hovering over his head. Have I died? Is this heaven? Is he an angel?

  Worry surrounds his features as he edges away. With the light no longer directly behind him the effect is gone. The halo disappears.

  He waves his hands, imploring me to get up, to follow him. If I’m fully awake it sure doesn’t feel like it. Somehow I’m caught between a dreaming and waking state. Stuck. Everything seems blurred behind a sheet of plastic. Every action and voice sheathed. Muffled. Muted. There’s a humming in my ears like gallons of water are pressed against my eardrums. Just over it I hear a voice. Half asleep, I try to make out the rhythmic chant.

  “I get it!” the guy shouts again, breaking into my concentration. “You’re a Lucidite. Now be quiet and get over here! Now!”

  He’s yelling at me. I’m the one chanting. He points at a raised table, eyes urgent. It looks like something from a doctor’s office. Slowly, as if swimming up one layer through the haze engulfing me, I recognize myself lying on a metal floor. That’s what I’d felt last before awakening. The metal grate.

  I push up to a standing position, and slowly my current reality sinks in—I’ve done it. I’m finally safe. “Oh my God.” I exhale. A quiet victory. “I’m here.”

  “Not quite,” the guy argues, looking worried, irritated. His eyes flick to a screen in the corner. “You have about ten seconds to get
your ass on this table and lie down.”

  “But I’m at the Institute, right?” I ask, confusion swimming in my head.

  His eyes bulge. “NOW!” he demands, pointing at the table.

  I usually don’t follow orders, but the severity in his expression can’t be ignored. I float to the exam table, hop onto it, and lie down. Around the outline of my body snakes a thin rope of blue lights. Above me, a series of lasers scan, making the roaring sound I’ve been hearing.

  I don’t feel anything for a second or two. Then I do. It’s the vilest sensation ever. Moments prior I’d been light and airy. I could float and transcend all of space and time. With a sudden jerk a trillion cells gain mass at once. In a flash, I become vulnerable and raw. The scorching begins at my core and travels until it meets my skin, until my entire being is encased in fire. Just when I think I can’t take another second of this torture, the pain turns freezing cold, shooting every single pore on my skin into a sharp goose pimple.

  The blood that had just begun to circulate pulses deeper, steadier. I’m hyperaware of my heart. When it contracts, I hold my breath, thinking it has died. And then the beat comes and I breathe again wondering if this is my last. Dozens of times this happens until the burning spreads into the rest of my organs, even my brain. I cough and seize my chest from the sudden onslaught of convulsions. Confusion rakes my mind. The pain in my chest intensifies, a bomb ready to explode. It will surely split open on the next convulsion and I’ll die. End of story.

  I double over in pain and confusion, falling to my hands and knees on the floor. I cough, believing each one will end me. A hand claps me on my back, firm but not hard, and then again. On the third time water spurts out from a deep place in my lungs. Forever I hack up tiny bits of liquid. Forever I kneel hunched over on all fours on a stainless steel floor. Forever I feel the presence beside me, encouraging, gently rubbing my back. When the final heave passes I curl up in the tiniest ball, cradling my tortured body with its own limbs. His arms steady me. They rest on my shoulders, warm on my shivering skin, before pulling me from the cold ground and to a seated position. I sit back, resting tired arms on my knees. Exhausted.