"The tests so far have been inconclusive," the doctor told Kallias and Caoimhe with a sigh while examining the chart on her hologram device. "There's not much more we can do, and there's no sense in keeping you here longer."
With that, the doctor sent them away with some anti-emetic medication just in in case. Caoimhe shuffled along the pavement, kicking rocks absently, with Kallias rolling beside them, as they made their way back to the flat. The sun seemed to shine more brightly than usual, pulsating aggressively almost resembling a beating heart. Both siblings pulled their cloaks closer around their bodies to protect against the scorching heat.
"I don't know if it's a good idea for me to be left alone," Caoimhe admitted as they entered their flat, removing the hood of their cloak. They ruffled their hair a bit as they shut the door behind Kallias.
Kallias moved themselves across the floor and over to the couch in their living room, pulling themselves out of the chair and almost collapsing onto the soft, comfortable cushions. Compared to the chairs in the hospital, it felt like they were sitting in a meadow of clouds. "I'm still skeptical about the whole thing, but if you feel like you'll be better off with my company, then fine. But what will you do about university tomorrow?"
Caoimhe had almost forgotten about their classes with what had been happening, but figured it might be a good respite to spend time out among their friends and classmates instead of remaining holed up in their flat. They gazed down the corridor warily before plopping down next to Kallias. Something about the house had started to feel... different. "Getting out of the flat would be good. I'm getting bad vibes lately, to be honest, and I can't tell if whatever I saw in our room and what's been bothering us in our dreams has been following us, or if it's just confined to us specifically."
They turned to Kallias, and the other sibling fell silent. Might be better off not mentioning what I saw when we were at the hospital, then... Kallias thought to themselves.
"If anything, and I'm not saying this is definitely the case, but if you're only seeing weird shit in our room, then it's probably just the room. Not that our dead parents would be haunting us there, but if you thought you saw mom there, then who's to say? But like I said, don't go bragging about it to people. They're rounding people up over cult activity, remember?"
Closing their eyes, Caoimhe simply nodded. For some reason, after all the sleeping they had done at the hospital, they still could not find it in them to keep their eyes open. The weight of exhaustion seemed to stop at nothing to pummel them to dust from the head down.
"Let me make you some food. And don't throw it up this time, okay?" Kallias said, voice gentle, gritting their teeth as they entered the kitchen and got to work. Caoimhe remained where they were, their face seeming to relax a bit as they dozed off once again.
"Wakey wakey," said Kallias after a few minutes, as they placed the bowl of gruel down in front of Caoimhe. "I even added something special to make it slightly less boring."
Frowning, Caoimhe opened their eyes slowly and sunk down to the cushion on the floor. They shoveled spoonfuls of the porridge-like substance into their mouth as if the food was a delicacy that they had not eaten in a long stretch of time.
"Whoa, bruv, relax. You're going to throw up again if you don't slow down," Kallias replied, rubbing the bridge of their nose and sighing.
Rolling their eye, Caoimhe obliged, but only because they were too tired to argue with Kallias at the moment. They hoped that the oppressive feeling of exhaustion would go away once they got a good night's sleep, but they could not remember a time when they had been so knackered. After swallowing a mouthful of food, Caoimhe asked, "Do you also feel really fucking sleepy for no reason?"
Raising an eyebrow, Kallias eyed their sibling. "Mmm, not more than I normally would after sleeping awkwardly in a hospital chair, why?"
Caoimhe took another mouthful of gruel and chewed it for a moment while staring off into space. "It feels like something is hanging over me and trying to make me go to sleep. Seems like it started as soon as I got into the flat."
"First you're saying our room is haunted, and now our whole flat?"
"No... it's just that I've never felt so tired in my life even after sleeping for days or pulling an all-nighter. So yeah, it's just kinda weird, don't you think? And especially when they don't know if anything is wrong with me. If I was actually possessed, it would make sense, wouldn't it?"
Kallias rubbed their temples. "Maybe you're just depressed."
"I... don't think that's how depression works but okay. Plus, demonic possession and the presence of supernatural entities in general can be stressful on the body."
"Holy – look. You probably read something weird online and tried recreating it in our room and then got sick from moving around too much after eating breakfast. Plus, we know this gruel shit isn't the best thing to eat flavor-wise. Then spending the night in the hospital sleeping all that time without really eating much probably just made you drowsy, that's all. There's nothing more to it. Here, I'm sure our room is all cleaned up now and everything is fine and back to normal."
Grabbing Caoimhe by the hands, Kallias tried pulling their sibling up and down the corridor. Caoimhe grudgingly obliged and they both made their way over to their bedroom. Kallias opened the door and motioned inside, smiling. "See? Everything is back to normal."
"What the –" Caoimhe began as they glanced around, their eye wide.
As their face fell, Kallias retreated a bit from the doorway. "I don't understand..."
The room looked worse off than they had left it. The cleaning machine, which was meant to clean the blood from the floor and polish the wood spotlessly, lay at the foot of Kallias's bed, mangled almost beyond recognition and spouting threads of electricity from where its wires had been destroyed. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, not like it had simply accidentally bumped into a corner on a piece of furniture, or anything else seemingly entirely normal. The cabinet by the window had been knocked over, with colored pieces of fabric seeming to pour out of it like a rainbow creek. If they had lived in a past time or another place, they would have thought they had been robbed - but that thought need not cross their mind; it was less possible than what they suspected was going on.
What was even more shocking was that the bloody circle between their beds on the floor, that they had smudged yesterday, had been completed and looked perfect enough to have been printed. The script that adorned the circle did not resemble any language that they knew of, and the detailed illustrations and symbols inside looked like they would have taken hours to complete by the most skilled artist. Caoimhe stood frozen, swallowing the lump in their throat.
"This feels... really bad," Caoimhe whispered to Kallias as they felt a deep sense of despair and dread wash over them like a tsunami attempting to pull them out into the middle of the ocean; if there was enough water left perhaps it would have. "It feels exactly like our dreams."
Kallias was silent for a very long time. They did not feel anything per se, but even they had to admit that this was beyond fucking weird. What was even worse, they were having trouble with rationalizing the whole thing. They were at a loss for what could possibly explain it.
After a moment, Caoimhe slowly began to back away from the room, keeping their eyes trained on the doorway and feeling like if they looked away, something would come after them. "I'm getting the fuck out of here."
Eyebrows furrowed, Kallias could only watch as their sibling left. Caoimhe did not even bother packing anything, they simply took their cloak and left the flat without even closing the front door behind them. Kallias had half a mind to follow after Caoimhe, but they could not bring themselves to abandon the home they had lived in since before their parents had died.
"I can't leave you guys..." Kallias muttered, eyeing one of the pictures of their family that adorned the wall of the corridor as tears welled in their eyes. They wiped the tears in their sleeve, sniffling once before going back to the living room to call their boyfriend, Rain.
Outside, Caoimhe trekked along the pavement, feeling much more awake than they had felt before. They let their tears fall freely, not even bothering to wipe them; even that would have been too much effort. At this point, they did not know what to do besides to call their girlfriend Fane and her friend Vanya to ask if they could stay over for a time. Under normal circumstances, one would simply inform the local authorities of a request to move and they would grant it easily. But it was a bit trickier now. "My flat is haunted" is not something that would go over well with the Party.
Kicking some gravel with their prosthetic leg and hearing the clang of metal on stone, Caoimhe sighed. A moment later, a soft, concerned voice came from their hologram device. "Babe? What's wrong?"
Sniffling, Caoimhe paused in their tracks. "Fane? Is it fine if I stay over a bit? I'll tell you more when I get there."
"Have you been crying? Oh, Caoimhe..." Fane replied with a soft sigh. "Of course you can come over, sweetie. I've really missed you."
Caoimhe smiled softly to themselves, feeling their face redden a bit. "Yeah, I'm doing better, though. And thank you... and I've missed you, too. Studying is really a pain, isn't it."
Fane chuckled a bit to herself. "We can have a study party... See you soon."
With a small smile and a sigh, Caoimhe wiped their eyes in their cloak and continued down the path to Fane's flat, drawing the cloak closer to their body as the warm wind whistled around them. They approached the flat and knocked on the door.
"Hey babe," Fane said as she opened the door, wrapping her arms around Caiomhe's waist and drawing them close while removing the hood of the cloak.
"Hey..." Caoimhe sighed before pressing their lips against Fane's as they pulled the door closed behind them.
Wrapping their arms around Fane's neck, Caoimhe allowed her to press them up against the door as they kissed. Fane unfurled her arms from Caoimhe's neck and unwrapped the cloak from Caoimhe's body, letting it fall in a pile to the floor.
"Oh? What's all this?" Fane asked, eyeing Caoimhe up and down, noting the blood that had dried on their clothes and the bandage on their hand.
Looking up at the ceiling and scratching the back of their head sheepishly, Caiomhe shrugged. "Umm... that's part of what I wanted to talk to you about... Apparently I got possessed at my flat and started drawing some sort of summoning circle on the floor with my own blood, and Kallias had to knock me out of my trance. I spent last night in the hospital but they didn't find out anything about what caused it all... But you know those weird birds dreams I told you about a while ago? I think it has something to do with them. I started seeing shadows and shit like that."
Fane frowned, eyebrows knit together. "Damn, that sounds freaky..."
"You don't believe me, do you? Kallias doesn't really either..." Caoimhe sighed, feeling tears pricking at the corners of their eyes again. They popped the prosthetic eye out and wiped it in their bloody sleeve.
"No, no. I do believe you. But you have to be careful with who you tell these things to. I'm glad you came to me with this," Fane replied, wrapping her arms around Caoimhe again and stroking their back gently. "It's hard to know what to believe these days. Even though we're supposed to be encouraging atheism and discouraging spirituality and cults, when things like this happen, it makes me wonder what the real truth is..."
"It's funny you mention that, because in those dreams, the bird-god said that it's going to try to fix the non-believers and the false-believers alike. I wonder what that means..." Caoimhe said, letting Fane hold them close. They closed their eyes.
"I read something this morning that I think you should have a look at..." Fane said, leading Caoimhe along to the living room and sitting down. She pulled Caoimhe gently on her lap, and opened her hologram device.
"'Cult of thousand-eyed bird encourages illicit activities among youth; 200 more arrested this morning'" the headline read, and Caoimhe immediately sat up straighter, eye widening.
"What the... so I'm not the only one?" Caoimhe said softly, looking down at their bandaged hand.
"I think the lesson to gather from this is to be more careful who you talk about this," Fane said as-a-matter-of-factly. "Your secret is safe with me, but I don't want you to end up in a work camp."
"Okay, okay. You're right, you're right."
"And I know I can't tell you what to do, but it would be smart to, at least for now, stop looking more deeply into this bird religion thing."
Caoimhe sighed, rolling their eyes but nodding nonetheless. From the corner of their eye, Caoimhe saw something move once more, and felt the goosebumps return immediately. "Is there someone else in the flat?"
"No, why?"
"I just saw a shadow..."
Raising an eyebrow, Fane looked around. She took Caoimhe's hand in her own. "Was there anything distinct about that shadow? I didn't see anything."
"It was just a black mass and it just sort of drifted along the wall and disappeared... But I am still pretty tired so maybe it was just my imagination..."
Visibly shaken, Fane swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded slowly. "I think you should get some rest. I think a shower and change of clothes is in order first, though."
Looking forward to avoiding whatever shadow was following them around, Caoimhe obliged, following Fane into the bathroom.