Page 24 of In This Iron Ground
The hallways were deserted. The murmur of different classes met Damien every time he passed a shut door, like the chattering of phantoms from beyond the veil. No one stopped him as he stepped outside, already half transparent, half dissolved. He started walking, uncaring that he didn’t have his backpack with him. He wasn’t going to need it.
It was hard to focus, his thoughts a quick jumble, one after another, incomprehensible, thinking so much he wasn’t thinking anything at all. He headed for the woods, sweating now, tasting the salt on his upper lip, searching for a place no one would find him. Where no one would stop him.
He kept walking through the trees, unseeing. He didn’t know for how long, but the nausea was getting worse. It dragged on, far longer than Damien expected, but he was slim and he’d barely eaten anything that day and suddenly, it was like everything outside was muffled, all the noises and the smells, and when he opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—he was on his knees, on his back, he was staring at something.
Leaves, light. The canopy.
There was a pain in his stomach, bile in his throat, light on his skin, across his face in patches of warmth. He blinked and could hear something like his own breath, but it didn’t sound right, quick and pained. He couldn’t think beyond the sharp clench in his stomach. He curled up. There was dirt beneath his cheek, there was light, there was nothing, there was air, there was disappearing, there was—a noise. An earthquake, that was how he was going to die; it was saying his name, desperate, it was begging him, Damien,Damien.
He opened his eyes.
Hakan.
Damien blinked, but Hakan was still there, the shadow of his face, a mouth moving—the earthquake, the begging earth. Confusion was making fissures through the pain. Hakan couldn’t be there. Damien was a superhero, he’d created a black hole, he was disappearing and Hakan was going to get dragged into the dark.
“No…no,” Damien moaned, and the sound of his own voice shocked him, splitting the buzzing in his ears open like an altitude pop, sound rushing back in.
Hakan wasscreaming, “Mom,” he was saying, “Mom,” but Damien’s mom was dead, he was going to see her, Hakan couldn’t come—and Mia was there, one moment away, and then around him. The world shifted, he teletransported into the air, he was levitating, his stomach lurched and he was throwing up, a hand tilting his face away so that it fell all the way to the forest floor.
Here is a dream,
you do not belong here.
Damien was flying. Damien was still, and everything was rushing past him. Damien was nothing, he didn’t make sense, he was vanishing.
There was light in the darkness. Red, blue, red, blue. Someone was trying to open his eyes, was asking him, “What did you take?” He looked at the stranger. Damien’s golem body had been filled with lead.
“No,” he said. “Let me go.” He couldn’t breathe. Oh God, it was raining on his face, he was looking up at the clear blue sky and it was raining on his face. Someone was trying to put an umbrella over his mouth and nose but Damien wanted to feel the rain, even if it stung, even if it was the last time.
He tilted his face and Hakan was standing there. He looked scared. He looked more scared than Damien had ever felt, even in the middle of the night when there was nobody, and he was nobody. Hakan’s eyes were wide, round, unblinking, two points in a washed-out face.
Something hurt. Everything hurt.
The world shook itself, and Damien was looking at a metal ceiling, surrounded by strangers. Hakan’s fear was suddenly his. It was filling him up, he was screaming and howling, Mrs. McKenzie was tying him to the bed again, he felt the pressure on his wrists, his legs.
He was panting, panting, panting, and then he disappeared.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was someone in his room. He could hear them muttering. Or maybe talking, although it sounded far away, underwater. There was a bird nearby, chirping intermittently, a sharp, strange noise. Damien tried to open his eyes, but they were heavy. His eyelids felt raw and burning. He opened his mouth. The air was dry. It smelt bitter. His tongue felt thick and pasty. He tried to open his eyes again. There was a pain somewhere, a weight, but the usual scrape of ropes wasn’t present.
“Wha-at,” he tried to say, voice and lips cracking. Someone had taken a sheet of sandpaper and scraped him all over, inside and out.
“Damien!” he heard and there was urgency in that voice. Fear.
Steeply, from one moment to the next, awareness rushed in, and with its tide it dragged the memories. The pills, the glinting emptiness of the packets, the sweat on his face as he walked, the sunshine dappled on his cheek, Hakan. Hakan’s terror-filled voice, his face, his arms that had dragged Damien out of the hole he had been trying to bury himself in.
“No,” he sobbed, the word coming out of him like the crash of a wave. He blinked the crust from his eyes and looked at Nicola. She looked pale and worried. Fear electrified him.
What would the McKenzies do? How would they punish him? Or would he be taken away, locked up, would he—
“Damien, Damien! Can someone—”
God, please, he begged. He couldn’t do this anymore.Please.
“Here we go, it’s okay.” There was a woman standing next to his bed. She looked at him with her clear blue eyes, a wisp of blonde and grey hair falling out of the bun it was gathered in. She took his hands in hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. “I need you to breathe with me. When I squeeze your hands, breathe in, nice and slow. When I let go, breathe out, nice and slow, as slowly as you can. You can take your time to get there. Feel my hands on yours, the feel of your fingers, of this gentle squeeze. And release.” Her voice was completely calm, a rock for Damien to cling to in the sweeping tide.
Damien knew, ever since his first foster carer had explained it to him, that he had to focus and control his breathing in a panic attack. She had explained everything about the adrenaline response. The way the body went into hyperdrive, how it became primed for action, to fight or fly away, and demanded the energy oxygen provides. How his heart would race to try and deliver it. Damien knew he had to signal his body that oxygen was on its way, that he had to stop hyperventilating. But focusing on his own breaths was almost too frightening. It made the panic more real. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was almost easier to let the panic drag him where it may until it ran its course.
