Translucent (14 page)

The next day Karena woke up early, which wasn’t particularly hard since she wasn’t really sleeping anyway. She snuck out of the orphanage and resumed her search.

After a whole day had gone by again, Karena began to, just the slightest bit, start ignoring that voice that was telling her to ignore Shawn’s words. She hadn’t found the Sandman anywhere, and she’d been searching for two whole days.
All over the city she walked, seldom taking public transportation, instead going there by foot. Just as before, she was freezing and hungry by the end of the day, and her feet were sore. And she hadn’t found any Sandman.

Really, she thought, it was ironic that she wanted to find him at all. Why would she want to see the person who caused her to panic when she saw him? It was completely crazy. Sh
e should’ve been glad not to have
found him. And yet she was only more determined to resume her search the next day.

When she made her way back to the orphanage at the end of that day, it wasn’t as late as before, and so the teacher guarding the door was still a
wake when she walked in
.

“Karena!” the teacher said, and Karena recognized him as the teacher who’d been teaching her when she’d run away. “Where have you been for the past two days? We’ve been looking for you everywhere! Why did you even run away in the first place?”

Karena shrugged and started walking forward, but the teacher grabbed her by the shirt.

“I’ll need more of an explanation than that, young lady.”

Karena reluctantly turned around and looked the teacher straight in the eyes.
“Can I explain in the morning? I’ve been walking around all day and I’m pretty tired.”

The teacher stared at her, and then it happened. The same thing that had happened to the nurse happened to the teacher. His face became different, deformed so that the skin
was tissue paper thin, and so
his eyes were piercing pools of steel. His hand was on her shoulder, but, as Karena watched, his hand moved higher and clasped around her throat, the long, bony fingers
stretching so that they covered her whole neck
.
Karena expected to feel herself choking in moments, to have the breath be taken out of her and to have her wide, terrified eyes go limp. But it didn’t happen. The Sandman was only grabbing her neck, not squeezing it. This wasn’t an attempt to kill her. This was a threat.

But what had she done so tha
t she would
be threatened thus? She stared deep into his facial expression, looking at the whiteness of his skull, and tried to find why he was doing this. But he was
entirely
inscrutable.

And then he was the teacher again, and the teacher let go of her neck, moving his hand back down to his side. “Well, what’s the deal?” he asked.

Karena was terrified, but nonetheless she managed to choke out an answer. “
I was looking for
you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” the teacher asked.

“Who you just were, a few seconds ago, I was looking for that. I just succeeded. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“You’re not making any sense.
”

“I know, but that’s normal with me.” Karena turned and walked away, and somehow that served as answer enough for the teacher, because he let her go into the hall where all the children slept, and lie down in her bed.

He’d come again. Two days
very close together
he’d come. And Karena didn’t think that this would be the last time either.

1 month later…

The following
month can be skipped
in this particular telling of Karena’s tale,
because during this month the Sandman did not appear, and thus nothing of much significance happened, since the presence of the Sandman essentially defined whether
an event was significant or not
in
these days.
Karena paid
no attention to anything in school, or in the orphanage, or in the news, or in anything during this
one-month
period of time.

Every day she was convinced that he would appear at any moment
;
that he’d be around the next turn in the corridor, waiting for her, or sitting in one of the
desks in her classroom. There was no knowing where he’d be next.

But he never did show up during that
one-month
period of time. Karena talked to Shawn often about this, and Shawn became more and more convinced that there was no
thing they could do about him, especially as Karena saw no sign of hi
m. He, for one, was used to his
unpredictable behavior, perhaps more than she.

Nothing new happened, overall, and Karena was merely waiting, waiting, waiting. There was nothing to do but wait. And wait she did.

But finally, he showed up again. It was late one night, after everyone was asleep. Karena was lying awake in her bed, staring at the wall, not wanting to go to sleep for fear of having another terrible dream.
It was nearly pitch black, but since she’d had her eyes open for so long they’d adjusted to the darkness and she could quite easily see the shapes around her of the slumbering kids and the
rickety
wooden beds.

Karena rolled over to see the other, identical side of the long orphanage with the slumbering children and
rickety
wooden beds. Suddenly, a door opened at the end of the hallway and Karena heard someone step inside.
This was a perfectly routine thing. Someone always came into the hallway when everyone was asleep and walked down the aisle making sure that everyone was asleep. It seemed rather ridiculous to her, but then again, practically everything seemed rather ridiculous and pointless to her. Karena shut her eyes and feigned sleep as the teacher came closer. They didn’t have a flashlight, which was slightly strange, as they usually did, but it was of little consequence. Karena slowed her breathing so that it looked and sounded like she was sleeping. The teacher would just walk right by. He always did.

But just when the footsteps reached Karena’s bed, they stopped. It had to be one of the kids around her, she thought. She hadn’t heard anything, but one of them must be doing something wrong. Karena
felt a strange, inexplicable sense of dread. Something wasn’t right here. This never happened, not in all of her past three lives. It had happened a couple times in her first life, as she was a bit of a troublemaker b
ack then, but certainly not now. Even if she’d run away and if she didn’t pay attention in class, it wasn’t as if she was causing trouble simply for the purpose of causing trouble. And besides, if they were going to chastise her for any of those things, why would they do it in the middle of the night?

The teacher stepped between Karena’s bed and the bed of the person adjacent to her. What was going on now? Karena though
t
about who slept next to her, but her mind came up blank. Surely it was the other person, and not her, that the teacher wanted. The teacher stepped through the narrow area in between their beds, coming closer to Karena’s head. Karena found her breathing becoming harder to control. Why was she panicking? There was nothing dangerous about this. Unless…

Karena didn’t have a chance to think about it before a hand came on her shoulder. Karena kept her eyes shut, not wanting to look at who it was, her breathing increasing. It was him.

“Karena,” the man said.

Karena opened her eyes in surprise.
It wasn’t him. He wouldn’t say her name. Karena recognized the man before her as the teacher who’d been the guard at the door a month ago, when she’d run away.

“Yes?” she
asked.

“Karena, you need to come with me,” said the man. “We need to talk.”

Reluctantly, Karena sat up and got out of bed.
If this was about her lack of participation and her negligence when it came to schoolwork, she didn’t care. But she had a feeling this wasn’t about that at all, though she didn’t know why, and she couldn’t imagine what they would want to talk to her about other than that. All she knew is tha
t she portended dread
as she followed the teacher down the aisle in her nightgown, past all the sleeping children, and out the door.

They walked through the orphanage, through the dark hallways and corridors. The place wasn’t very pleasant at night, with shadows being cast wherever there was light enough to make shadows, and
with those sparse lights flickering like they would go out at any second, leaving you in the dark alone.
Karena had never been particularly scared of the dark, except for if the Sandman was there, or if there was a chance that the Sandman could be there, which there was now. So it was unnerving walking through this place all the way upstairs and into an office, where they shut the door behind them.

It was a place Karena had never been to before. But from looking at the sign on the desk before her and at the man who was sitting at the desk Karena was able to determine that it was the headmaster’s office.

“Good evening, Karena,” said the headmaster, extending a hand in a businesslike fashion towards her from his position behind the desk. Karena merely stood there in silence, not extending her hand in greeting. “Er, um…yes,” said the headmaster, retracting his hand awkwardly, befo
re hiding it under his desk as if
he’d never offered a handshake in the first place.
Clearly the man wasn’t used to being denied pleasantries at the start of a conversation, even if the person with which he was conversing had been woken up in the middle of the night.
“I suppose I should have expected that. Please, have a seat.”

Karena stood standing, refusing to take a seat in the chair that was sitting before her. The teacher, on the other hand, happily took a seat. She continued to stare in silence.

The teacher leaned forward. “You probably should have expected that one, too,” he said. The headmaster nodded slowly.

“Anyway,” said the headmaster. “I suppose you want to know what this is all about.”

“No, not really,” Karena replied, even though she did, in fact, want to know what this was all about.

“Well, you’
re going to
find out anyways,” said the headmaster.
“
We’ve notice
d your behavior in this orphanage of late
…”

Karena no longer cared what he said. All she had to hear was the first sentence to know that it was something of little significance.
Karena looked away, not exactly letting her mind wander, as there wasn’t much for it to wander to, but rather simply not listening to the headmaster as he droned on.

“Karena!” the headmaster said. “Are you listening to me?”

“No,” said Karena.

The headmaster sighed.
“Look, I know you think this is just stupid and that we’re just going to ask you to behave better and all that, but that’s not what we’re saying at all. If you’d just
listen,
then you’d find out.”

“Is it about the Sandman?” Karena asked.
She had asked this question in order to prove that whatever the headmaster intended to rant about wasn’t worth her time. But she didn’t get the reaction she’d expected.

The headmaster stopped and stared at her. Karena had expected him to have no idea what she was t
alking about and dismiss her stupidity
, but instead he only grew more interested. “So I was right,” he breathed. “You do see things.”

“So what if I do or
if I don’t?
” Karena said. “
It’s none of your business.” Karena was surprised at the headmaster’s reaction, but not surprised enough that she couldn’
t formulate a comeback.

“Perhaps that’s true,” said the headmaster. “But you have to listen to me. If you work with me here, then things will work out better for you. What I want to do is try to help you.”

Karena gave a dry laugh, which was the only kind of laugh she was really capable of giving now. “
Help
me?” she said incredulously. “Believe me, there is nothing you can do to help me. To him, you’re as insignificant as
infinitesimal pieces of dust. Dust that he can manipulate to do his will; dust that will help him in his plot.
The only thing I can do is help myself.”

“There are other ways, Karena,” he said. “We can help you with the Sandman if you’ll just let us.
Your lives keep repeating, but
that can stop.
There are ways out of this that don’t seem possible, but there can be an end to this. Trust me.”

Karena
suddenly
felt tempted
to hear him out
. Was the headmaster telling the truth? Could there actually be another way out of this other than waiting it out? Was there a way to
stop
the Sandman? If so, what on earth would the headmaster be able to do against him? And why did he even care?

Karena suddenly realized how ridic
ulous it was that she had even for a moment
considered accep
ting help from the headmaster. It didn’t make sense on so many levels. He was merely a recurring figure in her lives, and when she started over again he would forget all about her and
h
is so-called desire to help her. So then why would he even bother helping her now?
And how did he even know that her lives kept repeating if the only person she’d ever told was Shawn?

And then it hit her. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
He may have pretended to not know who the Sandman was at first, but that was given away when he mentioned the fact that her lives kept repeating. These words weren’t coming from the headmaster at all.

“He’s speaking through you,” Karena said, standing up slowly, trembling. “He’s manipulating you just like I said he could!”

“What are you talking about?” the headmaster asked. “
I just want to help you.”

“No you don’t!” Karena yelled, making the teacher
, who was
still sitting in the chair
,
flinch. “He has control of you, of all of you. Because you…aren’t…real!!!!”

“I’m sitting right here in this chair,” Karena,” said the headmaster. “Surely you can see that.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t believe everything you see.”
Karena came to the realization that this whole time she been acting like she was talking to the headmaster, telling him that the Sandman was taking control of him, when really, because of the fact that the Sandman was taking control of him, it was the Sandman she was talking to, with the
headmaster’s voice.
The Sandman was actually speaking
to her.

Karena switched her topic. “When are you going to let me out of this cycle?” she asked.

The headmaster, or the Sandman in the headmaster’s
body, smiled at her. “So you want to accept my help after all?” he asked.

“Stop playing innocent!” Karena yelled. “You know perfectly who you are, whatever your real name is.
And I asked you a question!”

The headmaster kept smiling. “I’m not playing innocent,” he said. “I genuinely do want to help you. But you have to accept my help first.”

Karena stood her ground, wanting desperately to back away but resisting, though she didn’t know why. “Give me one reason why I should trust you.”

“You should trust me because you have no other choice.
”

Karena knew that this would be his answer, but she still didn’t know how to respond.
Of course she didn’t have any other
choice, but the idea of trusting the Sandman revolted her
. But he was right, she had no
choice in the matt
er. She had to accept his help, even though she knew that it would not help her in any way.

Karena sighed and gritted her teeth.
“I accept your help
,” she said. “Though I do so
bitterly and for want of other options.”

The headmaster’s face’s smile grew broader
. “Excellent. Now I suppose I should explain something to you. This help is not the kind of help you are looking for. At least not directly. I cannot help
you in the way in which you wish
to be helped.”

Karena began to grind her teeth in frustration
.
It was just as she’d predicted
.
Of course he wasn’t going to actually help her. He was lying about aiding her,
and she’d known it
all along, despite the fact that she’d accepted his so called “help.”

“I cannot tell you the way in which I will help you now
because
, as a matter of fact,
that would render the help
rather useless. This is all very confusing for you, I’m sure, but believe me, it makes perfect sense to me, and that’s what really matters.”

“
Well that’s certainly comforting.
I thought this was about helping me, not about helping yourself,” Karena said.

“A
little
bit of both, I suppose. In good
time, however, you will understand all that I mean by the word ‘help.’
In any case, I should best be going now.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Karena asked.

“Pardon?” the headmaster’s voice
asked.

“Like that,” Karena said. “I’ve seen you all my life, and yet you’re so p
olite in meeting me, almost as if
you’re an actual human. Why?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. This is merely the body, you see. It converts my speech to the way that body would say it. As a matter of fact, I’m not trying to be polite at all. If you could hear what I was the saying in the way
I
would normally
say it, then you would not feel so confident in speaking to me; let’s just leave it at that.”

“Then why don’t you just change your voice? I know that you have control of this body, so why don’t you go ahead and change it?”

“You are right,” said the Sandman. “I do have control of this body. And I can do that whenever I wish. I don’t currently wish to. Maybe some other time.”

Karena gritted her teeth again.
The headmaster’s voice was creating the wrong impression, the impression that the Sandman was
just like any other person. But in fact, that was far from the case.

Karena backed away from the headmaster’s body and went to the door. She turned around and opened it, but just before she closed it, she turned around again. The headmaster was slumped over his desk, unconscious. The Sandman must have left him. Karena closed the door and walked down the unlit corridor.
She had a fee
ling she’d be seeing her tormentor
again very soon.