Gateway (The Gateway Trilogy, Book 1)

Everybody has their demons. Some are just a little more real than others…

Ember has always known she doesn’t belong in this world, but when she tries to correct the mistake, she wakes to find herself in a mental institution.

There she draws the attention of Taren, a mysterious boy with a dangerous secret.

When chaos erupts, they are forced to flee together, and Ember learns her secret might be the deadliest of all.

With lives on the line, Ember must face old demons and new at… The Gateway.

In the end, only the Voice remained.

I told you it would be better this way…

I was drifting, floating on something too silky to be water. It was warm, and it penetrated the deepest parts of me.
 

The Voice was right. It was always right. Everything finally felt soft. My sharpest edges were being worn away, melting into oblivion. I felt like candle wax before it cooled; nothing to do but let the remaining drops of consciousness slide down—
 

Pain. Where did that come from? How could I feel pain when I didn't have a body anymore?

My throat. It was my throat, being stabbed, or—
 

Shh… let it go. Let all the pain go. Rest easy…

For a moment I was comforted, the gentle motion of the not quite water lulling me, pulling me back to safety.

But I was heaving. Huge, uncontrollable spasms. And then I was vomiting, although that word isn’t strong enough. I was erupting. The contents of my stomach spewed from my mouth, my nose. The wetness hit my chest, then my belly, and finally dribbled down my chin. My mouth tasted of charcoal. The warmth receded. The peace went with it.
 
And I knew.

My throat burned. My stomach ached. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I tried to remember how good I had felt. The sensation of floating, of being complete, wanting for nothing. For a moment I was back there and felt my lips twitch into the tiniest bit of a smile. But if I were really there I wouldn’t even remember I had a mouth, and the realization brought the pain crashing back.

My eyelids heavy, I fought to open them. The light was too bright and I squeezed my eyes against its harsh intrusion.

“She’s awake! Nurse—she’s awake!”

My mother sprang toward me and clutched my hand, her eyes wild with worry.

“Ember, honey, you’re OK. You’re in the hospital. You had an accident and…”

I stopped hearing her. I didn’t want to process the relief on my mother’s face when I was so disappointed.
 
I receded back, if not into the comfort of oblivion, then at least into an inky blackness.

Sunlight warmed my face and caused spots to dance behind my eyes. I feigned sleep, wanting to take the emotional temperature of the room before admitting wakefulness to anyone else present. No voices in the room with me, but a low buzz of conversation drifted in from farther away.

When I opened my eyes, I knew I was somewhere different. From my slanted vantage point—I still wasn’t willing to move my head—I saw that the tile was still institutional, but this seemed older somehow… more dingy. I remained draped in hospital linens, but the bed itself felt softer and lacked rails. No sign of my mother. I tilted my head.

Across from me was an empty bed, neatly made and decorated with stuffed animals. A long bureau with flaking paint dominated the wall space between. I looked toward the foot of my bed and spied closets on the far wall, a bathroom separating them. The door to the room was halfway open, allowing only a partial view of the hall.
 

Psych Ward. Where else would they put someone who had swallowed a cocktail of leftover prescriptions, put on some Lisa Germano and gone to sleep? It was so cliché. The worst part other than being alive was the knowledge that I would be just another teenager who had tried to off themselves because life had gotten too hard. Another loser trying to run away. They wouldn’t know I was running
to
something. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell them. Life was bad enough, life in mental hospital seemed even less appealing. I’d keep the Voice to myself.

The door creaked and I was too slow in closing my eyes.

“Well, nice to see you’re awake, Ember.”

She was middle-aged, dressed in a nurse’s uniform and spoke with the calm authority of one who knows she’s in charge and doesn’t need to prove it.

I wasn’t going to be able to bullshit her.

“Not feeling very talkative?” She approached my bed. “That’s alright. You’ve been through a lot these past two days.”

“Two days?”

My surprise overrode my wish to be silent. My words came out as a croak, my throat still raw.

“Mmmhmm,” she said, feeling my forehead. “Some of the pills you swallowed had metabolized before they were able to pump your stomach. You slept in the E.R. for 14 hours. They moved you here once the doctors were confident you were out of the woods. That was yesterday.”

I respected her lack of sugarcoating. She didn’t add the word
accidentally
before the words
pills you swallowed
. She’d been through this before.

“I guess I needed some rest,” I said.

The truth sounded flippant when spoken aloud.

“Mmmhmm,” she said again.

She was looking at me, sizing me up. Was I nuts? Looking for attention? Or was I one of the few who actually wanted to die? I didn’t answer the unspoken question. She was quiet for a moment, trying to see if I would be so uncomfortable with the silence that I’d have to fill it, hopefully giving her a morsel of information she could pass on to the shrink about why I’d ended up here. She had no idea how well I could play this game.
 

She broke first. “Dr. Shaw wanted to be notified when you woke. It won't be a full session as he's got a heavy schedule today, but he'll do some intake and explain the way things work around here.”

Intake? That didn’t seem right. I thought the psych ward was just a cooling off place before they sent you home or carted you off to the nuthouse.
 

Realization dawned. My nurse friend noticed. A look of sympathy crossed her face and then was gone. She had probably learned not to get too involved.

“You’ll find your things in the bureau and the closet. Meet me at the nurses’ station at the end of the hall and I’ll show you the way to his office.”

She gave me a kind smile and left the room. Left it to me and my thoughts which, as usual, were too large to be contained. They were busting out, seeping through walls, shattering the window.

Boy you really effed up this time. You're screwed. The nuthouse? We’re adding nuthouse to the resume now?
 
They will never let you out of here. OK, here’s what we have to do—play the game, you don’t know what got into you, you love your life, you were upset about a boy, you realize it was stupid, you’ll never do it again—no, eff them, I’m done playing games. I’ll just tell them. The mistake wasn’t the pills, the mistake was being born in the first place. You only have to look at me to know I don’t belong in this world…

On and on the voices warred. Not the Voice, the One that wanted to help me, just the ones that hated me.

I pulled myself back from the brink. As pleasant as my nurse friend seemed, I had a feeling that if I didn’t materialize at the nurses' station soon, I’d be dragged to this Dr. Shaw's office regardless. My mouth tasted like charcoal and death. Attempted death, anyway.

I opened the drawer closest to me and found my hairbrush, toothbrush, and tooth paste. For a moment I was horrified at the thought of my mother going through my things in order to pack for my stay, but I let it go. What, was she going to find some of my darker artwork? Read my diary? I was in a mental hospital; my facade of normalcy was surely blown. I had doubts it had ever been firmly in place.

I looked
horrendous. There was no denying it as I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. Black ringed my lips, my eyes more deep set than normal, my dark hair a rat’s nest.
 

Washing my face helped some—returning my lips to a human color, the charcoal swirling down the drain. Brushing my teeth removed the fuzzy coating. My hair, on the other hand, was a lost cause. No comb was going to tame it. I twisted it up and attached it with one of the clips I’d also found in the drawer. My mother was nothing if not sensitive to the needs of vanity.
 

The closet was well stocked, also, which didn’t bode well for my hopes of a speedy discharge. I pulled on my favorite pair of jeans and a hoodie, tossing the gown in a corner of the closet.

The hallway looked exactly as you’d think it would. Nondescript, doors every eight feet or so, inoffensive pastel artwork on the walls. Nothing to upset the unbalanced mind—unless, of course, it had any taste.

I reached the nurses' station. A large black woman looked up from the papers in front of her and smiled. “Jo said you were awake. How you feeling?”

I shrugged. I’d save my platitudes for the shrink.

Jo walked up then, saving me from another silent standoff.
 

“This way, Ember.”

I followed dutifully.
 

She led me around the corner and down another hallway. She paused where it ended in large double doors, slipping her hand under a black cover. Here fingers moved deftly, obviously punching in a code, and the doors lurched open.
 

A moment later we paused at a doorway with a nameplate that read, Herbert Shaw, MD. Apparently, I had graduated from psychologists and was now in need of a full-blown psychiatrist.

Inside was a receptionist and a small waiting area which consisted of two chairs and some magazines.

“Karen, this is Ember Lyons. She's here to see Dr. Shaw.”

Karen smiled warmly from behind her desk. “Yes, he told me we'd be fitting her in. Please, have a seat. He's with another patient right now, but he'll be with you shortly.”

I took a seat and picked up an issue of a nature magazine dated two months prior and opened to a random page. Karen went back to her typing and Jo left without another word. I became absorbed in a picture of hikers entering a darkened cave. I imagined I was there, entering the blackness…

Probably better you don't mention me.

Agreed. I had kept the Voice a secret for the year It had been with me, I certainly wasn't going to start blabbing about it now, when they already had proof I was disturbed. I went back to a few nights prior, wondering where I'd gone wrong. I'd taken enough pills, I was sure of that. But I had known my mother would be home by nine and would check on me. Why hadn't I waited until after she had gone to bed? It had made sense at the time, but sitting in that waiting room I couldn't imagine why. I wasn't an attention seeker. If anything I wanted to be left alone. Completely alone. People just let you down. I wanted an end to people. An end to everything. So why had I screwed it up so spectacularly?

The click of a door opening brought me back to the present. A waifish girl of no more than twelve emerged from the back office. She stared at the carpet until she neared me. It was then that her breath caught and she stopped dead. Her blue eyes stared into mine, her lips moving silently.