Eerie

Chapter 16 ParaScience 101 An Introduction

Chapter sixteen

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.” - Kurt Vonnegut

Hailey’s breath caught.

Asher…the Envoy…

She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help but stare at him.

Fin shifted. “He sort of works at the university. Like me.”

Why wouldn’t he look at her? He sat like a statue, his hood hiding his face. She silently willed him to turn so she could see him.

But he never moved. And Hailey’s heart sank.

Maybe he’s not interested in you, silly girl, her good sense told her. But he had kissed her, hadn’t he? Now she wasn’t sure. Maybe he was suffering from “Tage Adams Syndrome” and could only see her when no one else was around.

Frowning, she shook her head, knitted her fingers together in her lap, and studied them. Did Fin know Asher was an Envoy? And—wait a second…

“You work at the university?”

“Yeah,” he said stiffly. “I’m a teaching assistant. For Dr. Woodfork.”

“I didn’t mean for that to sound condescending.” Now Hailey couldn’t stop smiling. It felt good to have a friend again. “Dr. Woodfork is the dean of the university, right?”

“He’s the dean of the College of ParaScience,” he corrected, his voice was much kinder now. “There are three colleges at Bear Towne: ParaScience, Pre-Med, and Geology. You’ll get all of this during your campus tour,” he said with a wave. “Did you check out your lunch?”

“Not yet…”

Feeling brave, she opened her metal lunchbox and, peeking inside, she sighed happily. Good! No brains.

She certainly wouldn’t go hungry. Hailey started nibbling through the contents: two giant sandwiches, a bag of chips, an apple, a banana, an assortment of cheeses, crackers, two candy bars, a bottle of water, and a can of pop.

“Do all the teaching assistants leave from Pittsburgh?” she asked as she polished off her first sandwich and looked around the cabin floor.

“No,” he smiled sarcastically. “I drew the short straw this year. The others are on flights leaving from LA, Chicago, Frankfurt, and Moscow.”

“Well, I’m glad you got the short straw. What’s Alaska like?”

He tilted his head, humming as he formed his answer. “It’s not Pennsylvania.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, there are only three seasons in Alaska: butt-ass cold, break-up, and mosquito.”

“Mosquito…oh…” Hailey sang. “Uncle Pix said Alaska was full of blood suckers.” She looked at Fin shamefaced. “I thought he meant vampires,” she admitted with a self-deprecating cringe. “And with the way things have been going lately…”

Fin only stared at her in response, and Hailey cocked her head as she contemplated the other seasons. “Why would Alaska reserve a time of year for ending relationships?”

Fin straightened up and looked at her sideways. He licked his lips, shook his paper very loudly, cleared his throat, and went back to reading, just as one of the gas masks slid past them carrying a giant wrench on his shoulder.

Hailey tugged Fin’s sleeve. When that didn’t get his attention, she barked a whisper. “Hey!” she hissed as loud as she could.

Fin peeked around his paper.

“Why are these guys wearing gas masks?”

They both watched the wrench wielder disappear behind a pallet.

“So they stay awake.”

“Oh.” That didn’t make much sense to Hailey. Most folks drank coffee, but whatever. Different strokes for different folks, she guessed, and she imagined how nice a steaming cup of coffee would feel as she shivered in her seat.

It was getting colder inside the Luftzeug, and Hailey didn’t have hats and coats and blankets and puffy sleeping bags like the other passengers. Fin unbuckled and unrolled a mummy bag while Hailey hugged herself and watched.

“Are you going to sleep?” she asked him.

“Yes. So are you.”

“I’m not tired.”

“You will be when they turn the gas on.”

“What gas?”

Fin shot a glance toward the front of the plane and lowered his voice. “Come on, chowder head,” he said almost under his breath. “You can use my bag. I’ll grab a blanket from the crew.”

Hailey still wasn’t sleepy, but she was hovering around hypothermia.

“Thanks,” she said, kicking off her shoes. She wiggled inside the most comfortable sleeping bag in the world. “Fin?” she said as he settled down next to her, wrapped in a navy blue wool blanket.

“What?”

She scooted closer to him, and he smiled. Not wanting to admit that she only wanted to hear his voice and didn’t really have a question, she only closed her eyes and enjoyed her contentedness.

“Fin?” she said again, as sleeping gas hissed through the cabin.

“Mm.”

“I really missed you…” she told him, as she drifted to sleep.

“I missed you too,” he said, but she wasn’t sure it was real.

Gas filled the airplane and knocked her out.

In the Aether, Hailey emerged on board the plane next to her jump seat.

The Luftzeug: Traumzeug looked the same as it had when she was awake, except the roof was wide open, and sunlight poured in through it.

The turbulence had stopped, and the plane sat parked in the clearing of a bright forest. In the distance, Hailey heard songbirds and a waterfall.

“Welcome to ParaSci 101,” a familiar voice announced. Fin stood at the front of the plane and held in his hand a CB-looking microphone connected to the plane’s PA system.

“My name is Pádraig, and I’ll be your course instructor.

If you didn’t already figure it out, you’re asleep, and this is a dream.

Right now, our souls are in the Aether, which is what you see and hear and smell and feel all around you.

Pay attention, because you’ll never share a dream with a living soul again, unless, like me,” he said in a voice laced with cynicism, “you’re lucky enough to ride on board the Traumzeug over and over. ”

A hand went up among the students.

“What?” Fin said to the boy in a way that let him know it was not the time for questions.

“I can’t feel my hands!”

“You just raised your hand, doofus,” Fin told him, and another hand shot up.

Fin dropped the microphone, closed his eyes, and pinched his nose. “No more questions,” he said stiffly. Then he looked up. “In fact, everybody shut your mouths.”

When there was silence, he proceeded without the mike.

“Normally, the Aether messes with your memory. You don’t always bring all you know in, and you don’t always remember everything you’ve experienced here once you leave.

“This Luftzeug is a special piece of equipment used by the college and the US military to study the Aether. It allows those on board to share a common dream space, to take data, and most importantly, to remember our observations.”

Fin paused and looked around at each student until his eyes fell on Hailey. Smiling at her, he continued.

“Now, all of you listen up,” he barked. “It is very important that none of you panic.”

He looked directly at the guy who couldn’t feel his hands.

“If you do panic, you risk dragging us all into your own personal nightmare. If any of you think you feel a panic coming, just close your eyes and count to eight, alright? I don’t want to see your zombies or watch your teeth fall out…and I certainly don’t want to see any of you naked.”

His eyes found Hailey again.

“Most of you, anyway,” he said, and he winked at her.

Hailey’s chin dipped and her ears burned, but to her relief, nobody paid attention. The others wore expressions ranging from concern to alarm. Looking around, she noticed at least three students wide-eyed and close to hyperventilating, but Hailey felt perfectly at ease.

Until the man-eating spiders crept in through the ceiling.

“Ah, shit,” she heard Fin mutter, and a pandemonium inside the Luftzeug ensued.

Trying to stay calm, Hailey watched the spiders with increasing interest. They seemed more confused than aggressive, she told herself, though one had lifted a student with its hairy legs and another was scampering in Hailey’s direction.

She closed her eyes and had counted to three when a powerful clamp gripped her shoulders and jerked her aside.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a forest outside the Luftzeug, listening to the muffled chaos coming from inside.

Turning around, she realized she stood in the woods of her favorite childhood place and collapsed on the soft grass, breathing in the crisp mountain air and watching violet skies swirl above her.

“How did you escape the Traumzeug?” The Envoy tilted his head as he appeared in the grass next to her.

Hailey bolted upright and stared at him speechless for several seconds.

“Asher,” she breathed, as his name dawned on her, and her belly fluttered. Taking a moment to gaze into his gorgeous eyes, she smiled uncertainly. “I would have guessed that you pulled me outside.”

“If you hadn’t disappeared, I might have. It is exceptionally rare for a human to find its way out of the Traumzeug.” His gaze fell on her right eye for a moment and then her left.

“I find you…” he drew a sharp breath. “…surprising and…lovely,” he said as if he struggled to find the right words.

“Asher,” Hailey repeated. “You’re on that plane with me, aren’t you?” She pointed at the Luftzeug, which suddenly tilted into a steep nose-down attitude.

Hailey jumped up and stumbled back.

“What’s happening in there?”

Asher closed his eyes for a moment.

“Panic,” he said, rising up and once again trapping her in his gaze. “One of the students is afraid of falling, and though she doesn’t mean to, she’s about to send the Traumzeug into a nosedive.”

“Will they be alright?” Hailey was thinking about Fin.

“It’s only a dream, Hailey. It will be uncomfortable, but they will wake up soon, and they will no longer be aboard the Traumzeug.

They will be back inside the Luftzeug,” he explained, and Hailey finally realized the airplane was the Luftzeug on Earth, an airplane making its way from Pittsburgh to Alaska, but in the Aether, it was the Traumzeug, which looked like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

“I’m going to remember this, I can feel it,” she said, her eyes fierce with determination. “And I’ll remember you, right?”

Asher hesitated.

“You’re outside the Traumzeug. It’s hard to know. You may indeed remember—”

She held her arms out, throwing her head back.

“Finally!” she said with a laugh, and then she collapsed onto the grass once more.

“It is good to see you smile again,” he told her, and her smile widened. “I’ll see you very soon, Hailey.”

“It’ll be a dream come true, Asher.”

In front of her eyes, the eddying skies of the Aether morphed into the cold metal ceiling of the Luftzeug.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, finding herself tucked warm and snug inside Fin’s sleeping bag, while he snored with one arm draped lazily across her.

As he stirred, he curled his arm and pulled her into a tight cuddle as if she were his own little teddy bear.

If she could have moved inside that mummy bag, she’s not sure she would have. She woke up feeling like she was in love, so instead of shrugging Fin away, she relaxed and let him hug her, enjoying every second until he woke and let her go.

Groaning, he raised his arms in a great stretch. As he sat up and rubbed his eyes, Hailey feigned sleep and listened to him struggle against the turbulence as he made his way to the front of the plane.

The PA clicked and made a brief feedback howl before Fin’s voice rang through.

“That was absolutely pathetic,” he said, as lumps of sleeping bags stirred to life. “I should fail all of you. But the shame of walking into Chinook Hall in your current state should be punishment enough, so you’ll all receive a C.”

A chorus of groans rose up.

“Everyone except for Hartley did exactly what I told you NOT to do, and now look at you.” Fin threw his hand up, and several students gasped and whimpered, clutching their sleeping bags. “It’ll be a cold walk to campus if you lose your sleeping bag,” he warned.

Hailey saw many naked shoulders poking out of the floor. She wiggled her own shoulders out and was relieved to find herself still fully clothed. But she was one of few.

“Where are my clothes?” one of the female students cried.

“Probably in the Aether where you left them.” Fin answered her in his most caustic voice as the plane descended. “Be thankful none of you dreamed of losing your teeth.”

“My teeth!” another yelled, showing a gaping hole where two incisors should have been, and Fin pointed at him in reprimand.

“I told you not to panic. The school will fit you with falsies, so calm down.”

Just then a crewman handed him a steaming paper cup, and he lowered his handset, nodding his thanks. He swirled the cup twice, downed its contents like a shot, and clicked the mic.

“Students,” he said, “when we arrive at the campus, some of you may think you’re hallucinating.

You’re not. You’ve all received your initiation charge, which has made an irreversible change to your brain.

” He tapped his head with the mike. “No more Aethereal camo for you. From now until the day you die, you will see Aethereal creatures and phenomena as they truly are.”

The stubble-fur guy just made a whole lot more sense.

“Try not to stare at them. At best, they’ll be offended. Some may bite.”

A murmur meandered through the cabin, with several students taking an eyes-on-the-floor posture.

“Oh, and nobody back home will believe you,” Fin finished. “Now everyone get ready for landing.”

Fin dropped the mike, which swung on its cord like a pendulum, and he staggered to the back of the plane, where Hailey helped him stuff his sleeping bag into his backpack.

“Where’d you go?” he asked her, and Hailey looked up at him.

“What?”

“While we were in the Aether. You were here. And then you were gone, Hailey. Where’d you go?”

“Oh, I went outside,” she said nonchalantly.

Fin studied her eyes. “How?”

Hailey shrugged and went back to packing his sleeping bag. “I don’t know. I was getting scared, so I started counting to eight like you said and then I was outside lying in the grass, looking at the sky with…”

“With what?”

She stole a glance at Asher.

“With him?” he spat with a scowl.

“Keep your voice down,” she whispered with wide eyes. “I think so.” Honestly, she hoped so. Her memory was a little fuzzy.

“Hailey—” He jerked his backpack out of her hands.

“What?” she demanded, but the only response she got was an angry glare and noisy breathing. Fin threw the backpack zipper closed with enough force to tear the fabric. Out of a separate compartment, he pulled a pair of goggles then strapped himself into his jump seat.

Hailey followed.

“What’s that for?” she asked as he donned his eye protection.

Fin let out an edgy laugh. “You’ll see.”

As Hailey fumbled with her harness, the floor opened under her, and she slipped out of her seat and out of the Luftzeug, swinging her arms at Fin, who made a frantic grab for her and missed.

Before she could scream, she was falling through the sky, plummeting to Earth, and the ground was coming up fast.