Chapter Fifteen
We were back on the ship, and the water was still rushing with the smell of decaying bodies permanently bruising the air with their stench. I looked around for Bethany and saw her standing above Kairi’s body, trying to make sure that she’s actually dead. I waited for her to look at me, and when she did, she only nodded. “Dead?” I asked.
“From the looks of it,” she yelled back.
“Then, how-?” I cringed at the thought that we had just mingled with a dead soul in the other life. Or, at least, I had. How was that even possible? I walked over to Bethany, needing some sort of answers, even though I doubted that Bethany would have the ones that I was seeking.
“Bethany, I can’t do this anymore,” I sighed.
“Neither can I, kid,” she mused. “But let’s stand amidst all these corpses. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies!” I laughed at her choice of wording, but my glee had ended the second it began. I felt no sense of belief in what was happening.
“Let’s go to the captain’s room, and talk there,” she smiled, patting my shoulder.
I nodded and followed her up onto the balcony, and through the door. I began to wonder who was even sailing this ship, if anyone, and how they felt when they heard the sword fight. If they had even heard anything. Perhaps they were just accustomed to violence breaking out onto ships, and just ignored it whenever it began to happen.
I walked into the captain’s cabin and sat down in a red, plush chair, kicking my feet up onto the matching foot stool. How hard I was trying to relax, but none of my methods seemed to be working. All I need was answers, and then, I could rest. “So after Kairi died, we were set off into another realm?” I looked at Bethany for confirmation.
“Before we did so, Kairi fell to the ground, and then her mouth slightly opened. Some sort of orb was released from her lips, and it turned into a portal. I’m not sure if you saw it because you fell down as soon as the orb began coming out of her mouth. Then, I fell down, and everything went black,” Bethany nodded.
“So was that a memory of her?” I asked, but Bethany only shrugged her shoulders. Of course, she wouldn’t know, but I needed to think out loud at this moment. So much had happened that made no sense at all, and I needed to verbalize it, trying to make sense of it. I mean, there was so much that I hadn’t known; like the orb releasing from Kairi’s lips. Maybe there were things that I knew and thought Bethany knew, but she actually had no idea of, and vice versa. Perhaps we could put two and two together to come up with our own answers.
“Okay, so let’s try this. You fell to the ground and was transported to the other realm, but we weren’t together during the first part of the journey. What happened before we met up?” I asked, triggering her to start telling me what I didn’t know. Perhaps there were clues from all of these realms that we have been pouring over, but still overlooked. Maybe they were even so obvious that we’ll feel stupid as we realize how we overlooked them. Then again, I’d still rather feel stupid than having to keep searching for clues and answers. Anything would be better than this, in full honesty.
“I opened my eyes and was on a bus. There was the driver, and I tried to talk to him. However, his replies were blunt and rude, so I gave up trying to talk to him. Besides from us, I was the only passenger. So, I just rode the bus, on and on, until you came on the next morning,” Bethany informed me.
I nodded. “Long time to be riding a bus.”
“I thought during the whole thing. At first, I couldn’t remember any of our journey, either. I couldn’t even remember you, Kaylie! I was thinking about things, my life, and then, I realized that my memory was missing something huge. I thought hard… and I remembered,” she shrugged.
“So how come I didn’t remember?”
“You were with Kairi. She was probably persuading you to forget the whole time you were with her, in some sly, sneaky way.” Bethany walked over to me and tried to make me feel better, but nothing could calm me.
I sighed. “Fair enough. I would have thought that when Kairi died, this would all be over, but I’m not so sure, anymore, Bethany.”
“Maybe that was the last one!” Bethany urged me to think on the bright side of things, but I couldn’t keep such positive images in my mind.
“But we’re still stuck on this boat, Bethany,” I shrieked, ending with a sigh.
She nodded, and then there was a moment of silence between us, each of us wondering what to do next. Was it possible that Kairi had left us some sort of clues behind? She’s a teenage girl, so perhaps she had a diary? I stood up and began to search the room, looking for something to help us out. Bethany took my seat and closed her eyes, looking as though she was about to cry. Although I probably should have asked her what’s wrong, I feigned ignorance, and went about my search, as if I hadn’t seen her expression.
I went through all of the drawers in the room; that of the desk, dressers, and other cabinets. Nothing of importance was found in there. I checked under the furniture, the rugs, and between every little crook and nanny. After an extensive search that seemed to last for hours on end, I found that there was nothing left behind to help us. There wasn’t a single letter, notebook, journal- not even a sheet of paper of writing tool left in sight! Unless she had left us a clue through some other means, but I highly doubted that we could find it. Sighing, I fell back onto another chair.
“Beth, what’s wrong?” I asked, finally acknowledging her feelings.
“What if this is the end? Not the end of our search, but the end of our lives?” she cried.
“I was trying to search for clues, but I can’t find anything, Bethany,” I informed her, even though I knew that the news would only further upset her.
She sighed, and looked around the room to see if she could find anything just within eyesight. Her eyes showed disappointment, but then suddenly, they lit up again. “Well, what about the closet?” she asked, biting her bottom lip.
I spun my head around. The closet! How had I overlooked a closet? I slapped my forehead and rose onto my feet, waiting for Bethany to accompany. At first, she showed no sign of wanting to join me, and just wanted to lay around like a lazy sloth. After an intense stare down, she groaned and got up to come with me. The only reason I wanted her to come with me is because, let’s be honest, closets can be pretty scary, sometimes. In horror movies, there are always dead bodies and skeletons hidden a closet, and Kairi definitely seemed the type of person to do such a thing.
We linked arms and slowly walked over to the closest. I took a deep breath and gave her a long look before we both took one door to open. We nodded and opened the doors.
“Aagh!” Bethany screamed.
Inside the closet was a person, someone who looked exactly like Kairi, except her hair was straighter, and her eyes were greener. I gave Bethany a side look, wondering whether or not we should run away. From the look on the girl’s face with her eerie smile, I thought that running would be the absolute best idea under these circumstances. I turned to run, but the girl grabbed my shoulder just in the knick of time.
“Sit down, Kaylie! Have a seat and relax,” she breathed down my neck, sending chills up my spine. Out of fear, I obeyed, and took a seat on a plush chair. She motioned for Bethany to join me, and then she disappeared to behind the desk where she made three cups of tea. She handed one each to Bethany and me, then clinked our mugs with hers.
“At last, my sister is dead. I owe it all to you,” she laughed.
“Kairi?” Bethany asked.
The girl smirked. “Oh, yes. She was a pain to be a twin with! Always stealing the last few drops of your favorite perfume, stealing your boyfriend in front of you, taking your tops without telling you… The list goes on and on.”
“Enough for you to want your own twin dead?” I shook my head, not making sense of what she was telling us.
“You’re catching on now,” she nodded. Then motioning to our tea, she added, “Drink up!”
“What even is your name?” I countered, not bothering to take a sip from the tea, wondering whether or not she had slipped some poison in there. Alarmingly, I watched Bethany take a sip from the tea, and noticed that after she had swallowed it, nothing had happened to her. Perhaps we could actually trust this Kairi look a like. People always say that there is a good twin and a bad twin; maybe this is just one of those instances.
“Rowan,” she said quietly, taking a sip of the tea. From this angle, Rowan seemed innocent and trusting, and I mean, really trusting, unlike her conceiving sister.
“So, you wanted your sister dead?” I asked, trying to clarify the situation.
She nodded. “Precisely. It was all a part of my plan, and I used you two to help me obtain it.” She giggled, as if it were the funniest thing ever, and went on drinking her tea. Perhaps Rowan was actually psycho. She must have read through, so she went on to explain.
“I’m sorry for using you two, but it was all a part of this massive plan. All of it has gone according to plan so far. The best part? I planned this all with Kairi, except I may have forgotten to mention the part where she dies,” Rowan laughed. “We know things that we shouldn’t because of who we are. I can’t reveal that to you, I’m sorry, but who we are allows us to give insight onto so many people. This power gives us three choices; to ignore that we have it, use it to make people’s lives horrible, or try to fix people’s lives. As you can imagine, Kairi and I had different ideas on what to do with this… power. Kairi wanted to use it to mess with people and torture them, and you were the victims of this, unfortunately.
“You see, she promised that she would do good with this, so I agreed to help. We picked three random people to help; you two and Benny. You all had such hard lives it seems, and so we thought it would be nice. But then, Kairi got bored and turned this into her own little, sick, twisted game. She forced me to play along, and help you discover the secret. I had no choice but to do what she said, so I said. Guys, she threatened to kill me. I knew that this was day would come and that I would have to kill her before she got to me, so I turned her plan against her. I’m the reason that she is dead, not you two, so don’t take so much credit.
“Bethany, you were always so joyous until the day you found out who you truly were. You became anxious, and then was calm, thinking you could tell people about yourself. Oh, how that blew up in your face! It was so sad, and you were dealing with it so well. I must say that I’m proud of you for that, but even with a strength such as yours, well, everything falls eventually. You broke down and that’s why we wanted to help you.
“And Benny was a poor lost soul. We knew that his dad would die, and his mom had already past. So, we let him come along with you, too. However, Kairi grabbed a hold of that rope. She left him in that other village, and he saw you two die. After you two did, well, as you can imagine, that young boy couldn’t deal with anyone else dying in his life. He jumped into the flames,” Rowan said, before looking back up at us, truly disturbed to have to tell us such a thing. I gasped and Bethany dropped her tea onto the floor.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get that later,” Rowan nodded, not looking the least bit upset that a mug had cracked and tea was now staining the rug. After a few moments, she decided that we were ready to be told more. “And Kaylie; you had your own story. You were a loser who sucked out all of her emotions by drawing. Not a bad idea, but you had no friends, partially because of this. Oh, then there was that whole thing with that Langer boy. For the record, I totally ship you with him, by the way. He’s sweet, sensitive, brainy, and he listens, which is a major turn on. You should totally give him a chance. Well, anyways, you had a pretty rough life, and then you turned all emo and everything. Then… we’re here.
“Do you guys remember each realm you visited?” she asked us, raising an eyebrow. Bethany and I nodded, prompting Rowan to ask, “So what were the lessons that you learned in each?”
There was a moment of silence as Bethany and I stared at each other, wondering if we had even learned anything. Then, Bethany spoke, “The first painting… Wait, were they paintings?”
Rowan nodded. “You two caught onto that quickly. Now, the lesson?”
“It was the white room. We couldn’t find our way so we had to learn to look even where there was nothing,” Bethany said, trying to think of the lesson.
“And the arena. We all had to learn how to trust each other and problem solve,” I spoke up.
“The enchanted forest just brought us together,” Bethany smiled, thinking about the memories.
“And then the corn field. I think that we learned that we need to stick together, which was something that didn’t happen,” I shrugged.
Bethany took the next one. “We learned how to die in the next realm.”
“Then we learned who Kairi was.”
“We were sent to Kay’s bedroom!”
“And then we went to the ship…”
“And then that weird mirage thing…”
“And now we’re here,” I said. I honestly didn’t think that we had learned anything.
Rowan sighed. “Okay, well, Kaylie, did you fit into any of these?”
“No, I felt totally out of place, which was… normal, I’d say,” I said, tossing my head back and forth.
“You weren’t supposed to fit in, Kaylie. That’s the point. You weren’t supposed to be here on Earth at all, that’s why you don’t fit into any of the friend groups! Don’t you see what the huge secret is? You weren’t ever supposed to live. You’re the child that never was, Kaylie. You should be dead right now,” Rowan said.
I thought that my heart stopped beating for a second. “I’m sorry?”
“Your birth was an accident. You weren’t meant to be, Kaylie, I’m sorry,” Rowan said sincerely.
“I’m a mistake,” I said, breathlessly, feeling myself beginning to break down. “I’m not supposed to have friends. I’m not supposed to allow the world to know I exist? I’M SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD?” At this point, I was yelling, angry and upset. Thought, I wasn’t quite sure who I was angry towards; Rowan for telling me, fate for making it this way, or my parents for not telling me just how much of a surprise I really was.
“Dead? Hold on, why is it that just because you haven’t been born yet… Well, how does that make you dead? You need to be alive, first, to die,” Bethany said, standing up for me. She gave me a supportive glance, then turning her gaze towards Rowan. “Rowan, leave her alone!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Rowan yelled, taking a shot gun, and firing it away at Bethany. I let out a scream as Bethany fell to the ground, blood pouring all over the place. The tears began rushing down my cheeks as I dropped to the floor, begging for to hang in there.
“Bethany?”
“Goodbye, Kaylie. I love you…” she said, her voice trailing away, along with her soul. I stared at her, trying to take in that she was dead, but I couldn’t. Why her? Why not me? I stood back up and looked at Rowan. Determination was set clear in my mind; no one could control my life anymore and make it a mess. I power walked over to her, grabbed the shot gun, and pointed it at Rowan.
“Do it,” she folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t have the guts to, I know.”
“You’re just like your sister. You were just saying that so you could make us trust you. So that you could avenge her and finish your plan!” I yelled, placing my hand on the trigger.
“Well, you catch on quickly, don’t you?” she smiled.
And I pulled the trigger.