Prologue
I,ve been dreaming about the same event since I was eight years old and the event occurred.
Aunt Anni, her husband Jake and our cousin Will came over to celebrate Mom’s birthday. It’s always the same dream, the white canvas looks like a drifting snow, the candles burn and illuminate the pink roses that mom herself had driven up and picked Aunt Anni who lifts her wine glass to toast...
When I managed to open my eyes again, me, my brother and our cousin stand and are embraced by our aunt. Her husband just breaks open the back door of the house and we throw ourselves into the neighborhood in the middle of the night. The streets were full of people and we happened to get away from each other in the crowds.
I don’t even remember if we were wearing any outerwear and how we made our way from a lighted garden to a back door.
In retrospect, I have found it strange that no one as much as raised their eyebrows that two adults and three children ran for their lives on an ordinary evening in July.
All of a sudden, I found myself at a dead end.
Five people, three girls and two guys were standing a short distance away from me in the alley and it looked like they where arguing about something. I blacked out again, this time I was running when I open my eyes again.
I wonder if I’m tired and if that’s why I see it blackening in front of my eyes all the time.
I look down at my hands.
They are covered in blood, how did that happen? I probably look like I’ve slaughtered an animal or killed someone but...
I go through my memories but besides the fact that my parents have died, I have managed to get away from my aunt, my brother and cousin.
Been chased by a bunch of young people I’ve never seen before, I can’t think of anything.
Besides, I’m only eight years old and can’t even see a drop of blood without wanting to run away and vomit, and now my hands are completely covered in blood.
I shudder and looked around.
There was a public toilet a short distance away and I went in there without being seen and washed my hands clean with the help of paper towels that turned completely pink with the blood. I quickly looked in the mirror.
I looked like myself, a short eight-year-old with blue eyes and wavy blonde hair hanging down over my eyes.I was clearly myself and not an eight-year-old psychopath.
I opened the door from the toilet, no one there so I went out and started running again past restaurants, a movie theater, hair salons, shops and a tattoo studio. I had no idea where I was, but soon had other thoughts than trying to find my way out of the maze I had ended up in.I mostly thought about how I had managed to get away from my relatives because we had stayed together in a group and just ran a couple of streets away and all of a sudden I was all alone.
A sudden sound made me spin around and look around.
The youngsters were back.
I had no idea what I had done to them but I would rather not stop and ask.
I ended up in a dead end.To my left was a closed bookstore and to my right a nightclub.
There was no guard or police nearby so I ran into the club.
The sign above the door read Omnes eodem ogimur which I could strangely understand.As I ran through the door, I happened to glance back and noticed two things in particular.
The first that the young people were on their way to the club and the second that the sign changed its appearance so that it now read El rítmo in red neon style.
The door slammed shut and I could see that I was standing in a cloakroom.
I heard music coming from the next room.
I walked into the room that was white and silver but changed color in the neon lights that came from the spotlights and the disco ball. Downstairs there seemed to be a space for dancing and in one corner I could see a bar counter. What I found strange was that none of the young people because they were the only ones I could discern in the spotlight and they all seemed to be around 14 and 25 years old. No, the really strange thing was that none of them even reacted to the fact that an eight-year-old had just rushed through the door.
Even those who looked to be in their 20s had not reacted.
But maybe it was a special night. Some kind of open to everyone night at the club and that’s why no one bothered to check IDs.
ID, I didn’t even have a mobile phone the only thing I had was the clothes I wore on my body.
I heard people moving and managed to make out words like beware, look through the loud music and turned around.
They were back.
Or the girls were the guys had disappeared.I almost wanted to scream out loud was what it was about these strange people chasing an eight-year-old through the city and into a strange bar.
Was this normal behavior because I was trying to determine their age 18,16,14?
No idea, I just saw that one of the girls was younger than the others.
I passed several people and walked towards one of the stairs that led to the upper floor, where there was a guard. I thought the club was getting stranger and stranger, they put the guard inside the club and not outside the door?
I did what I used to do when my brother and I played hide and seek.
I stood in the shadow of the stairs, thinking that no one could see me and I was not important enough to be noticed.
Somehow it worked every single time and this time was no exception.
The 14 year old stepped up to the guard and said something, the guard shook her head and the girl lashed out with her hands.
The 16 year old stepped up next to the girl and waved her right hand, it looked like she had a tattoo on her hand but I didn’t see what it represented because she waved it too hastily.
I crept past the guard and up the stairs.
The décor changed drastically upstairs and it had its own bar and sofas, tables and chairs that were arranged as levels.
When I looked out over the club, I saw that the downstairs also looked like that, but there were eight levels, all in different colors, or rather shades, reflected from the disco ball.
I thought it looked like a patchwork quilt down there and like a pyramid up here but with only four levels instead of eight.
It was sparser with people up here than down there.
It was probably the VIP section I had ended up in, I thought. I looked out over the section I had ended up in, there were only two people sitting there two guys who looked to be my age, the one sitting to the right of what seemed to be a throne was a guy with black hair and dark blue eyes who looked like they could pull out all the light and turn it into darkness.
I shuddered and looked at the other guy sitting on the throne and looked bored, he had white hair and light blue eyes, but if the other guy could transform light into darkness, this guy looked like he owned it.
I could almost see how the darkness assumed a solid form, embracing the bright guy as if he was what the darkness loved above all else. Unlike those down there, these two looked like they had had the worst day of their lives, though I was almost certain I beat them by horse lengths in that bet.
The ghost boy and the shadow boy, I thought quickly. I thought for a while about whether my aunt, brother and cousin were okay and if they had noticed that I was gone, maybe it was best if I tried to find a police officer or talked to that security guard at the foot of the stairs. I looked towards the stairs both the guard and the girls had disappeared.
Admittedly, it would complicate my plan to talk about getting help, but I had to look a little.
I put one foot on the top step and almost wanted to scream in frustration when everything was rolling. But this time it didn’t go black for my eyes, instead it was as if the room was subjected to a pressure wave and I fell backwards and ended up right in front of the two guys who looked completely shocked at the sight of me.
But they seemed to recover quickly and looked towards the stairs where there were two more people, there was a girl and a guy and they looked like twins, both had black hair but in different highlights, the guy had blue highlights and the girl had purple.
The guy with blue loops looked at me and I fainted because I could hear all four of them arguing, as soon as one of them said something, one of them immediately contradicted the others. I had no idea how long this conversation went on because I was in a stormy sea and when I finally managed to regain consciousness, I was lying on a couch that stood in what appeared to be an office.
There was a sofa, a table, two chairs and a safe.It looked like a typical office, I supposed, except that it was a two-part office on the other side of a glass wall, the shadow boy and ghost boy stood and seemed to be arguing over something. The guy with the black hair lashed out with his hands and grabbed the guy with the white hair and it looked like he was going to start crying but he just nodded and walked away.
I felt very insecure about being all alone with the ghost boy even though he didn’t seem to be older than myself, there was something inside me that just screamed that he was deadly and that I should stay as far away from him as possible.
He turned around and looked straight at me, his light blue eyes seemed to be able to see more than just straight at me.
They seemed to be able to look into my soul and condemn me to eternal perdition. I don’t even know where that word came from, we didn’t usually go to church, my mom and aunt had done it when they were little, and they had always thought that we kids should be spared that experience until we were old enough to decide for ourselves whether we wanted to go or not.I got up from the couch and backed away, keeping my eyes fixed on the ghost, I spun around towards the door and stiffened. The guy suddenly stood in front of me with his gaze fixed on mine.
My head began to ache and I wrapped my hands over my forehead in an attempt to stop the dull headache that suddenly beset me.
I closed my eyes, bumped against the couch again as I felt a cold hand put on my forehead and opened my eyes in a flash.
The ghost boy had put one hand on my forehead and even though I wanted to push him away from me and run away, I felt that I had no energy left to do either.
“What are you?” I heard the guy say and I was almost scared because his voice sounded crystal clear and soft as velvet.
I didn’t understand what he meant by what are you?
Shouldn’t who are you? Instead, be a more appropriate question to ask an unknown person.
“Human,” I replied dully, as the room had begun to spin.
“How did you get in here?” The voice wondered ?.
“Was chased by a group of girls and ran in here "The guy looked puzzled and had creases on his forehead.
“What’s the name of the club?” he then asked.
I thought that was a strange question and I tried to lift my arms to stroke the hair that had fallen out of my eyes.
The guy ran his hands over my hair and held it tight.
I tried to shake my head but my head was stuck in an iron grip. Did the guy do martial arts or boxing because he was so strong.
“What’s the name of the club?” he asked again, sounding very manic.
I thought about what had been written on the sign, but quickly thought that he probably wanted the strange name.
I thought for a while about whether I should lie, but discovered that I was incapable of doing so.
“Omnes eodem cogimur,” I said weakly.
“Omnes eodem cogimur,” he replied.
I looked at him on his right shoulder, he had a tattoo, it was a round filled circle with a crescent moon over the same symbol as on the sign for the club, I thought thoughtfully.
“Why do you have the same symbol as on the sign tattooed on your shoulder?”
The guy just smiled and I passed out again.
