MAY 21, MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.
I think I might be crazy. If I’m not already there, I’m definitely hovering on the brink.
Rives and I flew into Madrid yesterday afternoon. We landed eight hours ago, almost to the minute. I’m still acutely aware of time. Sometimes I think I should stop counting, stop noticing as each day vanishes into the past. But other times I think counting is my way of remembering, of reminding myself that time is fleeting, and precious, like life.
So I count.
It’s been three weeks since we said a tearful farewell to Dex under a fiery Hawaiian sunset among friends, and almost nine weeks since we last touched the strange island of Nil. Nil, a place that still exists, a place where you have exactly 365 days to escape or you die.
Rives and I did it.
We escaped. We saved as many as we could, and we left Nil’s ticking clock behind.
But something came with me through that final gate, something powerful; I feel it. It whispers to me in the nighttime darkness. It’s a distant whisper, one I don’t want to hear. One I can’t block out.
One I fear is stronger than me.
My dreams began the night we got back. First I dreamed of raging fire, of choking smoke. Of blood-soaked hands and cruel smiles and the crushing pain of leaving a friend behind even though he was already gone. Other dreams focused on Paulo, a different friend, one who had inexplicably chosen to stay. I dreamed of him racing through fire and fear, only I never saw where he was running to, or what he was running from. I never saw what haunted his back—but something was there.
Just like I know something is here. In my dreams, in the dark.
Now I dream only of blackness: the sightless, yawning blackness found between gates, cold and consuming and frighteningly endless.
But not empty.
It’s never empty.
Something lives in that blackness, writhing like invisible fog, something dark and chilling and real. It reaches for me, whispering without words, clawing at me with charcoal fingers; it invades my daydreams and haunts my nights, its grasp almost finding purchase in those moments my mind is dark, and unguarded.
I won’t let it in.
But I can’t shut it out.
I haven’t told Rives. Then again, I think he knows. I see it in his eyes when he looks at me: the worry, the fear, and the love. The same love that pulls me back, the same love that keeps me sane. Because at that frightful moment when I’m trapped in the darkness—when I’m seconds away from breaking, a breath away from slipping—I reach for Rives. I always find him, or maybe he finds me. Either way, he brings me back.
Every time.
I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
My name is Skye Bracken, and this is the truth.