Never to Sleep. Rachel Vincent

real.” Luca backed toward me, the box still tucked under his left arm, his right hand held out at his side, like he’d grab mine.

      “Then why aren’t you freaked-out?” I couldn’t drag my gaze away from the guy-who-shouldn’t-be, still kneeling in black pants and a white button-up shirt like he was on his way to church. Or to wait tables. How did he get there? Why wasn’t he moving?

      “I’m good under pressure,” Luca said, his voice soft and steady. “When I say go, we’re both going to run.” He knelt carefully and set the box down. “Okay?”

      I nodded, but he couldn’t see that, because he was still watching the boy, who hadn’t moved. Who wasn’t breathing. “What the hell just happened? How are you so calm?” I demanded.

      “I’m faking it. Give me your hand.”

      “I don’t understand….”

      “Sophie,” Luca whispered fiercely, and I slid my hand into his just as the boy in the white shirt looked up. Slowly. Like he wasn’t sure he wanted to see us any more than we wanted to see him. Which was probably why his eyes were closed. A strand of dark hair fell over his ear, and his hand twitched on his leg, his thumb scratching across the black cotton. He was older than I’d thought at first. Too old for high school. The boy-who-couldn’t-be-there was really a man-who-couldn’t-be-there, but that fact barely even registered, because that wasn’t the part of this that made no sense.

      I was breathing too fast. My lungs were starting to burn, and the hallway looked hazy. I’d passed out once—the night my mom died—and that’s what the world looked like right before I lost consciousness.

      “Ready?” Luca whispered, and I nodded again, as the man in the white shirt stood. Then he opened his eyes.

      And I screamed.

      I screamed so loud my throat burned and my lungs ached.

      Those weren’t eyes. They had no color. No irises and no pupils. They weren’t bluish, like the whites of normal eyes. They were bright white and blank. Empty. Like someone had scooped out his eyes and shoved miniature cue balls into his head in their place.

      The man who couldn’t be there had eyes that couldn’t be real, and I couldn’t stop screaming, even when Luca squeezed my hand, wincing from the pitch of my scream, and tried to pull me away from the man without eyes.

      Then the world went gray, and I screamed even harder. Fog rolled over the dingy tile floors, covering the impossible man’s feet, lapping at my own calves. Something moved in the fog—a slithery, sliding thing I couldn’t quite focus on. So I closed my eyes and the air changed around me, but I didn’t stop screaming.

      I couldn’t, until I realized that my voice sounded different now. Less echoey, like the walls around me had changed and were bouncing the sound back at me differently now.

      The shock of that realization choked the scream from my throat, and Luca’s fingers slipped from my grasp. A warm hand cradled each side of my face, and my eyes flew open as I sucked in a deep, chest-rattling breath.

      Luca stared back at me from inches away, his eyes bright but wide with fear, his forehead deeply lined.

      “What the hell happened?” I whispered. I tried to look around, because the hall felt…weird. Hell, it smelled weird. But he held my head in place and I could see nothing but him and I could feel nothing but his fingers, steady and strong, while my heart raced in panic. “Where are we?”

      “Sophie, listen to me very carefully,” he whispered, and I was glad I’d whispered too. Everything I’d ever known before that moment seemed suddenly, terrifyingly, irrelevant, and the only thing I knew for sure was that I did not want to be heard here. Wherever here was.

      I nodded, and his face blurred beneath the tears standing in my eyes.

      “We are going to turn around and head straight for the nearest exit. Do not let go of my hand, and do not look around. Don’t make any noise. Don’t run unless I tell you to. And don’t touch anything. Understand?”

      “No.” I blinked and the tears rolled down my cheeks in hot trails I couldn’t wipe, because I was afraid to move. “I don’t understand anything.”

      “I’ll explain as soon as we get out of here. Okay?” His hands dropped from my face, and I nodded. Then I took my first look around. And immediately understood why he’d told me not to.

      “How did we get here?” I whispered.

      “I don’t know,” Luca said, and somehow, that made everything worse.

      We were in a corridor, but it took me a second to realize that, because the walls were crawling with plant life. Literally. Dark green vines—some as thick as my thumb—squirmed over, under, and through themselves slowly, covering every single inch of walls I could hardly see through the tangles of heart-shaped leaves that bled to red on jagged edges. Thorns grew across from the leaves, an inch long and as sharp and thin as the sewing machine needles from my Life Sciences class. The thorns scraped other parts of the vines as they crept, leaving thin cuts that leaked a gooey, rank fluid.

      “What is that?” I whispered, edging away from the nearest wall as the thin end of one vine reached for me like it knew I was there. My voice shook. My hands shook. This was impossible. All of it. This couldn’t be real.