Lost the Sky Again Book One, page 1
part #1 of Lost the Sky Again Series
Lost the Sky Again Book One
The Sleep Song
G.K.Lyver
Copyright 2023 by G.K. Lyver
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
CHAPTER ONE
Her eyes were wild and appeared unnaturally dark to those looking on, but inside she was calm. She was tucked in the corner of some room they’d trapped her in and she wouldn’t let anyone near. All the people in the same outfits and all their voices sounded mean and all their eyes had the same hard look in them. Her breathing was slow and steady and her heartbeat was a solid, comforting thrum inside her chest. She was okay. For now, she was safe and she had learned a long time ago that all she could do was function based on what was going on now.
She looked around continuously, her eyes darting slowly from place to place with precision and interest, trying to focus on her surroundings so she wouldn’t have to think about anything else. The room was sparse but interesting if you had a keen eye. Table, chair, light fixture, as you’d see anywhere, a mirror which was confusing, did they think she needed to check her teeth for spinach or something? The chair had one dented, tilty leg and she spent at least twenty minutes occupying herself with the possibilities of how it could have acquired such an unusual injury. The lamp had gunk on it, and she spent zero minutes contemplating that because she was sure some of it was blood and that was the last thing she needed on her mind. The floor she sat upon seemed clean, there was no dirt or bits of things that she could see, but the mottled brown pattern on the tiles made it feel dirty, like someone had rubbed feces on a white square and glued that shit to the floor.
Up until recently there had been a lot of people around. Adults. After she got scared, they mostly left and now there was just one. It was a lady and she wasn’t in her same clothes as the rest anymore, but earlier she had been. The lady wasn’t doing anything but sitting in a chair across the room. They knew better than that now. The lady looked worried but that wasn’t a surprise. For such a little thing, she knew she’d done a lot already to cause them worry. Truth be told, she’d made them all look shamefully inadequate. It didn’t make her happy, nor did she feel bad for it.
The lady didn’t look like anyone she had ever seen before. Her skin was different and Lucy thought she might be a queen or something. She was so dark that she must be able to hunt in the night; she looked beautiful and powerful. She was attracted to the woman in a way she couldn’t explain, like their souls were on the same wavelength, even though they were so different. She wondered if a queen could also be one of the uniform people.
Her eyes skimmed the clothes she was wearing, not pausing long on account of all the time she’d already spent looking at her hot mess of a self over the last few hours. The blood on them was not her own, and it didn’t bother her like it had before. When he’d been alive, his blood had sent shocks of terror though her. It represented then a fear of a future that had already come to pass, so what did it matter anymore? She knew it wasn’t right of her to feel so, but the blood comforted her. It was all she had left of her brother and she didn’t want to take the clothes off. They said it was evidence but even though she knew that word she didn’t know why the people who had taken her from her house needed some, and she was never going to let them take it off her. She would live in these clothes forever and they couldn’t stop her. She had already proven that.
She wanted to close her eyes and fall into sleep forever like some princess in a dark fairy tale where nobody gets rescued from the tower and the hero dies. But that was a ridiculous thought. She couldn’t do that. There was no one to watch out for her anymore. No one to claim her and to help her. She was alone and alone people didn’t fall asleep. If they did, they wouldn’t last long.
* * *
His phone rang, drilling Weird Al Yankovic's “White and Nerdy” into his brain. He mumbled an innocuous curse and struggled to shut off the sound that was accosting his ears. So much for sleeping. Probably someone who was super concerned about the extended warranty on his car. He rejected the call without looking at his phone, pressing down on the button that would turn the volume off. His head had barely hit the pillow when the phone vibrated loudly against the table. This prompted a more enthusiastic but still mildly delivered bout of curses as he turned over to look at the phone.
He looked at the lighted screen and his heart sped up as he saw the photo the phone was flashing. This was a nightmare he’d put behind him long ago and his mind struggled with the idea of answering the phone even as he quickly left the room to do so.
“Is he dead or alive, sir?” he said as he put the phone to his ear.
There was a brief, unwelcome silence for a moment. Hesitation. “Stryker, it's not that simple. Could you come in pers-”
“Dead or alive?”
A small sigh carried over the line. “Dead.”
Nick’s voice was hoarse, always. He sounded like a voiceover cop for the Simpsons. In person, though, he looked like the same generic brownish blond white dude that seemed to get cast so often in Hollywood cop dramas. Medium tall height, not too bulky but not too skinny, either. Generically handsome face. You never saw him out of his cop uniform. It randomly crossed Stryker’s mind that maybe he slept in it to avoid the bother of getting dressed if he was called in the night to attend to some emergency.
Stryker closed his eyes against reality. He’d know it was coming. For years he had, even. His head still reeled, his stomach still fought the vomit that rose unbidden, filling the back of his throat with bile. He ears rang and through the cacophony, his brain struggled to comprehend that words were being hurled at him; it felt like a violent attack on his psyche.
“Sorry, what?” he mumbled into the phone.
Another sigh. “I'm sorry to ask you this but I, I mean, I need your help. A little girl needs your help. Hunter's sister, I think. Not by blood but.... This whole thing is a mess, man, and I'd never ask you this if I had a choice but we need your help. We think you might be the only chance we have at talking to her. We have nothing without her, we can't catch your brother's killer unless she starts talking.”
Stryker leaned his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes against the disequilibrium that threatened his balance. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Another sigh, frustrated. He talked in a fast, discordant rhythm. “Look, I’m kind of lost here, man. I'm failing you, I'm failing her, and I have nothing to go on. As far as we know the two of them dropped out of the sky with some dude a year ago and aside from a few neighbors who rarely saw them at all, they still don't exist. The girl's shrink thinks you might be the only one who has a chance of getting her to say anything. She's been completely cut off from reality, silent unless she's screaming, for three days. We don't even know her name, or if she can talk. The only time she acknowledges anyone exists is if someone tries to touch her, and then she freaks out.”
Stryker was pretty sure Nick had just said a lot of things but his mind only managed to catch one. He could feel the tension at the other end of the line as he mulled it over briefly. “Three days?”
Stryker could feel the realization hit the cop on the other end of the line. Nick was too smart to say anything, though, it only would have made the situation worse. He was quiet, save a barely audible word of affirmation.
Stryker took a deep breath. Hunter had been alive until three days ago. Oh God. What had happened to his baby brother? Nick had kept this from him for three days while a little girl screamed her lungs out. His mind flashed to his and hers smiling faces. A girl had been in distress while he and Olivia had been laughing together at dinner, holding hands at the movies, and making out when they both got bored of the screen in front of them. She’d been screaming herself hoarse while they had been holding hands and walking on the waterfront. They’d kept him in the dark and he’d just gone on living, oblivious that his world had been turned in its head. Even though they thought he could help. This was not how it was supposed to happen.
He contemplated what lay between the lines of the things he had just been told. Nick was guilting him, manipulating. He was being kept in the dark and strung along for purposes that he didn’t understand. Nick had never done anything like that before; when they’d met Stryker had been a very messed up kid and if it wasn’t for Nick, he would certainly be dead or worse right now instead of happy and successful. He owed Nick a lot, but by the same token he wondered what was going on and how things had come to this unusual place. He wanted to give his old friend the benefit of the doubt but he was uncomfortable. He took a deep breath. He was livid but it wouldn’t help anyone if he made a fuss now, when there was someone more important than either of them waiting for help.
“Where is she? What’s going on that you’re calling me at three in the morning?”
Discernible relief colored Nick's words. “She hasn’t slept since we got her. Her doctor says that she’s already delirious half the time, and she’s going to get physically ill very soon. He’s surprised she’s not already. She’s not eating, either. It was call you now or the shrink is going to hospitalize her for her own good. You’re the last-ditch effort to help her before that happens. We’re, uh, we’re at Humston’s. Sorry.”
Humston
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up, walked in a few short steps back into his room and tossed the phone on the bed.
Olivia was already sitting up in bed as he pulled off his pajama bottoms and turned to dress in a hurry. She didn't say anything, just waited for him to tell in his own time. As he threw on the first jeans and t-shirt he grabbed from his closet he realized he had to pee and hustled to the bathroom. He spoke to her from the bathroom, explaining the situation hastily, washing his hands in a bit of a manic fashion when he was done.
“I love you. I'll call as soon as I can,” he finished.
She offered a puzzled, “Okay,” as he kissed her quickly and sped out of the room.
* * *
It felt wonderful and at the same time it felt terrible. She was with new people now, and they didn’t dress all identical, but instead of mean eyes they had pretend nice eyes and threatened to give her medicine that would make her sleep if she didn’t calm down. She hadn’t and she knew they might use that medicine on her soon but for now the feelings flooded through her and if she didn’t let them out, she knew she would die. She threw the meager collection of belongings they allowed her around the room, screamed until she was hoarse, kicked, scratched, hit, bit, and otherwise raged at any person stupid enough to come near her. Her anger, fear, hatred bubbled up inside her and her face reddened with impotent rage as she steadily exhausted herself.
Then she looked at the door.
Her worst nightmare was there. Her only nightmare. The door hadn’t opened, she was sure, and yet here he was. The beloved face of her brother peered at her, but it couldn’t be. He was dead and if he was in her room, it was because he wanted revenge at her for getting him killed. She deserved what was coming.
Her eyes slowly went wide. She stopped breathing and her chest began to hurt before the pain alerted her what she was doing and she quietly began to gasp in air again. The room seemed to throb in and out of her consciousness as she stood, motionless, silent, transfixed by the creature at the door. The moment seemed to her to pass in an instant but in reality, she was zoning in and out for better than five minutes before she sank to the floor and hid her face in her hands. Without looking she scooted herself backward until she hit the wall and then pressed her body tightly against it. Her breathing grew steadily nearer to hyperventilation as she curled herself into the tightest ball she could.
* * *
Stryker ignored the words that cascaded over him. The therapist telling him not to touch her and under no circumstances should he try to get the bloody clothes off her. The cops telling him that he had to wait until she had calmed down to enter her room and that help would be sent if she needed to be physically restrained. Nick apologizing and justifying his actions and trying to feed him details but realizing he had none to feed and switching to telling him the details they needed him to squeeze out of the girl.
He glanced around the room and found what he was looking for. As far as he knew, he was the only kid who had ever learned this particularly wondrous trick and he struggled not to flash a grim smirk as he ignored the protesters, grabbed the crappy plastic and metal chair, and set off down the hall. Because he did that. Smiled like a fool when he was doing things that made him uncomfortable. And he was very uncomfortable with ignoring these people but what the hell else was he supposed to do? She needed him.
“She could kill you with that chair!”
“She's not calm, you can't go in!”
“Stryker, for fuck’s sake, come back!”
They never should have told him where her room was. He opened the door, forced it shut quickly and shoved the chair under the door handle just so, effectively locking the door that shouldn't have been able to lock from the inside. You didn't give kids rooms they could lock in a psychiatric facility. The chair wasn’t a solid lock, more of a give you a few extra minutes to wreak havoc kind of obstacle, but he knew none of the people outside would break down the makeshift lock unless she started to beat the shit out of him. It wasn't worth riling her up further, and the facility had state of the art cameras so that everything that went on could be observed.
No one knew the girl's age but the therapist had told him that his best guess was between ten and twelve. She was the exact opposite of Stryker in looks. Her hair was dirty, but obviously blond underneath the blood and gunk. Her eyes were an arresting blue, dark and flashing with all the emotions you might expect from a little girl who had recently watched someone die; likely someone who she thought of as her brother. She was making a valiant effort to tear apart a room that was almost entirely devoid of anything to tear apart.
He was prepared for her to notice him. He was prepared to fend off her attacks without harming her, even if he was given a beat down in the process. He wasn't prepared for her to freeze and gape at him. He didn't move as she stood, for what felt like a very long time, staring at him with wide eyes. He intentionally maintained a placid, unassuming smile. He was silent as she dropped and scuttled to the back of the room, huddling in a terrified ball. He tried to place himself in her shoes and he was sure he failed, but he did the only thing he could think of as his heart wrenched listening to her labored breathing. He sat on the floor and started talking.
“Hi, uh, sorry I don't know your name, but I'm Stryker. I'm sorry to barge in on you like this; I know it sucks being here. Everyone's in your face all the time, and you don't get any privacy. If you want me to leave, I will.” The sound of her inhalation stopped abruptly and he thought she was holding her breath. “Do you want me to go?” His voice conveyed a calm he didn't feel.
He waited. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw her give a slight shake of her head. She didn't look up. He waited more. After a few minutes, he saw her eyes peek reluctantly through the gap in her arms, which were curled around her legs. He didn't make eye contact.
“I was in here when I was a kid,” he said conversationally. “Something bad happened to me. I was so scared that I did some crazy things. When they put me in here, I thought I was crazy but really, I just needed help. Sometimes kids need someone to help them get through the really bad things.... I think you just said something but I couldn't hear it. Is it okay with you if I come a little closer?”
She shook her head hard.
“That's okay, I understand,” he said quietly. “If you maybe feel like you want to come a little closer to me later on, it's okay with me. Were you trying to tell me your name?”
* * *
She watched him with suspicion through the hole her crossed arms made. She still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t her brother. He might be trying to trick her. Damien had loved her but he could be cruel when she deserved it, he could be very manipulative when she was being difficult and not doing what she should. If she moved, he would pounce on her, and make her bleed like she had let Father do to him.
“I was in here when I was a kid,” he told her. Despite her fear, she was curious. “Something bad happened to me. I was so scared that I did some crazy things. When they put me in here, I thought I was crazy but really, I just needed help. Sometimes kids need someone to help them get through the really bad things.”
“I am crazy,” she said, so quietly. She wasn’t sure if she had meant for him to hear it or if she had just needed to say it out loud to help her admit it to herself.
“.... I think you just said something but I couldn't hear it. Is it okay with you if I come a little closer?”
She shook her head, hard. Her heart leapt into her throat. She thought she might go insane if he came any closer. In her mind it happened in erratic, juttering, horror movie slow motion. Each time she blinked his face would rot and blacken more. Each time she looked back his teeth would be closer to her flesh.
“That's okay, I understand,” he said quietly. “If you maybe feel like you want to come a little closer to me later on, it's okay with me. Were you trying to tell me your name?”
