Pouring Shadows (Chapter 5.5)

‘The hell are you talking about?’ I spoke without thinking. I could feel something heavy rising in my chest. Was I panicking? I took a step back cautiously and Ricky obviously saw me hesitating.

‘It’s alright. I just want to make sure that those marks mean nothing dangerous.’

With a frown quickly strewn across my face, I backed away and ran out of the lab. I heard Ricky call out after me but I didn’t care. All I knew was that this guy was a creep and I needed to get Cheryl out of here.

I ran up the stairs, all the way through the main lounge and banged on her door with my bandaged fists. I turned my hands over and over, trying to figure out how the marks had been visible to him.

‘Cheryl, come out!’ I called and heard a loud thud in response. ‘Hey are you alright in there?’

‘Yeah, I-I’m coming…’ Cheryl’s unsure voice rang in my ears just at the same time when I felt somebody’s hand on my shoulder.

I turned to look into those dark eyes. The look he gave me was so closed and concealed that I couldn’t get myself past those eyes. What was he thinking? Cheryl suddenly banged on the door.

‘Dixon! The door is locked. I can’t open it.’

‘What the–‘ I tried the knob but it didn’t budge. I whirled around and glared into those eyes. ‘Where is the key?’

‘You want to free your friend, you’ll have to come with me to run those tests.’ Ricky’s eyes showed no fear as he held my gaze. He looked a lot older without those spectacles. He turned and walked away towards the door to the basement. I stared at him, my breathing slightly faster than normal. He looked so calm and fearsome, a totally different person than what he was back in the shop.

‘Dixon?’ Cheryl’s muffled voice came from behind the door.

‘I’ll go look for Ricky and get the key for this door. You stay there and don’t panic. It’s going to be alright.’

‘I’m not panicking, Dixon. You’re the one who sounds like he’s out of breath.’ It was true. No panic detected in her voice. I guessed I was the one really freaking out.

I had no choice. I followed Ricky silently, still not taking my eyes off him. If necessary, I’d make my shadow search his pockets until I found that key… wait a minute. I had a shadow. I could fight him off, what was I doing acting all scared and panicky? But first, I needed to figure out what this guy was up to.

We went down the stairs and back into the lab where he asked me to sit on a stool. There was a long rectangular table in the middle of the room that had several drawers.

‘I don’t want to be the bad guy here–’

‘You already are,’ I told him sickeningly.

‘Unwrap the bandages.’

He tried to ignore what I said. I unwrapped them and showed him the marks. His eyes went wide and it seemed like he flinched for a second. I looked down at my own hands and saw why he’d reacted like that.

‘It wasn’t like this before. The marks were… lighter and there was an irregular pattern.’

‘It’s a curse mark.’ Ricky spoke robotically. I eyed him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll show you what I’m talking about.’ Then he went to the nearest monitor and typed something rapidly. An ample of files popped up on the screen. He seemed to be scanning then for the name curse marks. Finally a file appeared.

‘Take a look at these,’ he pressed a button and I could see the whole screen get filled by black marks, similar as mine in color but with different shape each. There were lines, pointed shapes, objects that symbolized things. He scrolled down till both our eyes got glued to that one mark. It was round in shape and had smaller circles drawn in it, which looked exactly as the mark on my hand.

‘What does it mean,’ I whispered.

‘Let’s find out.’

Ricky clicked the symbol and a single sentence came up in the description.

‘A curse mark that gains power through doubt. It’s called the doubt circle.’

‘Elaborate, would ya?’

He sighed and looked at me with tired eyes. For a second there I even caught a hint of pain that he was feeling. Why would he feel pain?

‘Basically all curse marks gain power through different emotions, different things and turn it to hate. The doubt circle absorbs its energy through doubt.’

‘But I never doubt myself.’

‘Not from you, from those around you.’

‘I can’t help it if they doubt themselves.’

Ricky shook his head, ‘no, not themselves. They all doubt you. Anyone around you who’s ever doubted you and still doubts you at times, will turn against you. Maybe that’ll explain why everybody’s out to get you. People who no longer doubt you or had never doubted you will not be affected.’

It all made sense to me now, my face showed that but I still didn’t want to believe that all those people in the institute had always doubted me.

‘No,’ I shook my head in denial, ‘All of them couldn’t possibly…’

‘A single doubt creates another, remember that. Maybe at first it was only a single person who had doubts. Then after he shared it with a few, they began doubting as well. And so on.’

‘So the only people who aren’t doubting me are Jon, Cheryl and…’ I looked at him. He could have been making this up but he could also have been trying to help me. ‘You,’ I said it.

I saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a slight half smile but the tiredness in his eyes never faded.

‘Oh and your friend can leave the room now. I’ve unlocked it.’

‘You didn’t even move a muscle to help her…’ I was saying when I heard footsteps coming down. I half turned in my stool to see Cheryl enter the room. She was too busy admiring the whole lab to say anything.

‘I can lock and unlock any door I want from here. Every room in this house is connected to this lab.’

‘That’s so cool…’ Cheryl said. I turned and eyed her but realized that she hadn’t heard Ricky at all. She was actually playing with the temperature sensor. She put her thumb on the small screen and it recorded her temperature and showed it to her. Then she tried every other finger. I shook my head in disappointment and turned back to see Ricky smiling pleasantly at her. The tiredness seemed to have vanished from his eyes when she came in.

I didn’t even realize that my hand was being pulled. I was so engrossed in my own thoughts thinking about the mark until I heard her scream. My mind snapped back to reality and I was on my feet except, there was no need for me to stand. This was Cheryl’s way of showing her concern after taking a look at the marks on my hand.

‘Cheryl, it’s ok. It’s nothing,’ my voice was surprisingly soft all of a sudden which I had no control over.

‘No, it wasn’t like this before. The marks were barely visible and now they’re…’ She was holding my hands so tight that I could feel hers tremble, and yet I just stood there dumbly, not know what to say to her.

‘It’s fine. We were just running some tests. Those marks are temporary. They’ll go away soon. It’s kinda like a burnt scar. It heals with time.’ Ricky assured her. I looked at him to see whether he was telling the truth or just saying this to console her. That’s when I noticed that he’d turned the monitor off, the one that had displayed curse marks a minute ago.

Ricky looked me in the eye and transferred the message through his gaze that probably meant there is no way we can let Cheryl know about what we were just discussing. I was cool with that. It’s not like I was the kind of person who liked to share stuff with people anyway. I stopped trusting people right after my parents left. If the closest people to me were untrustworthy, then nobody else could be any different. That was my theory.

And with that little thought still lingering in the back of my mind, I followed Ricky who finally showed me the room I was to sleep in. It was nothing fancy like Cheryl’s but that was a good thing. My own room back in my apartment hadn’t exactly known the word fancy so I was perfectly comfortable. The room had all my requirements, a bed, a side table, a closet which was already full with clothes. Ricky told me to use them like they were my own.

‘They don’t belong to anyone anymore,’ he said. I looked at him and for a second there, I saw sadness in those eyes. ‘I mean, they don’t smell or anything, either. I keep them cleaned and fresh so… don’t worry about anything.’

He studied my face for a short second and said, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘Huh? No, just wondering… why are you… I mean, all this–’

I didn’t even get to finish my sentence when he smiled and said, ‘you’re welcome,’ before leaving the room.