The Nightmare Dilemma

2 Dream a Little Dream

Dreams are symbolic, not literal. Dreams are symbolic, not literal. I told myself this over and over as I walked back to my dorm room, escorted by a silent, lumbering werewolf policeman. It was a futile attempt to staunch the guilt bubbling up inside me with every step. I hadn’t told Lady Elaine about Eli. I just couldn’t. It seemed too much like a betrayal. Eli was my … friend? Partner?

Soul mate.

No, we weren’t even together. But there was definitely something between us. It had been there since the night we defeated Marrow. Since the night he kissed me.

The policeman left me at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Riker Hall. I climbed them slowly, my mind full of the images from Britney’s dreams. Seeing Paul in there was almost as troublesome as seeing Eli. I couldn’t think of any reason why Britney would dream about Paul. As far as I knew, they’d never met. Paul was a senior, two grades above Britney and me. Sure, everybody knew who he was now because of all the press about his involvement with Marrow. But that didn’t seem a strong enough reason for his presence. He was more likely to haunt my nightmares than Britney’s.

Still, when I mentioned him, Lady Elaine had dismissed it. Paul was in jail. There was no way it could’ve been him. Then she pointed out that Britney wasn’t a dream-seer, which meant her dream was just a dream and nothing more.

When I emerged into the foyer, I gave a half-hearted wave to Frank and Igor, Riker Hall’s resident suits of armor and security guards. Frank bowed his head in my direction. The knights used to ignore my greetings, but lately they seemed to be developing more prominent personalities from the animation effect of magic and electricity. It wasn’t surprising, honestly. Since The Will broke, the amount of magic usage on campus had gone up a thousand percent.

I went faster up the three flights of steps to my floor, eager to talk to my roommate. Selene hadn’t woken up when the policemen knocked on our door an hour ago to fetch me down to the infirmary, but I would wake her now. I needed her to validate my reasons for not telling Lady Elaine the whole truth of Britney’s dream. The idea of Eli being the attacker was absurd. He couldn’t even do magic. He was an ordinary, just like my dad and all my old friends at my old ordinary high school. The only reason why he attended Arkwell now was because of the dream-seer stuff.

Feeling better already, I pushed open the door to my dorm and let it swing closed harder than normal. I glanced expectantly at the doorway from the living area into the bedroom, but nothing seemed to be moving in there.

Stifling yet more guilt at the idea of disturbing Selene’s sleep, I walked into the bedroom and approached her bed on the far wall, opposite mine. The light from the living area illuminated just enough that I could see Selene’s massive poster of a teenaged Bob Dylan hung over the foot of the bed. Even though Dylan was an ordinary, he was Selene’s favorite musician. She believed he possessed some diluted strain of siren blood. I doubted it, but Selene insisted no ordinary could be that good without some kind of magic. Me, I thought it was more a matter of opinion.

I stopped and looked down at the bed, my brain slowly processing what my eyes had been telling me for the last thirty seconds. Selene was gone. I touched the mattress, confirming it.

Where was she? It didn’t make sense. There was nowhere else for her to be but here. It was a Monday night and well past curfew. I thought back to those few seconds it had taken me to climb out of bed and answer the door when the werewolf policemen had come knocking. Had she been there then? I thought so, but I hadn’t actually checked. Come to think of it, it was a little weird that she hadn’t woken up, too. She was a light sleeper, normally.

I walked over to my nightstand and picked up my cell phone. As usual, it had taken the liberty of shutting itself off during the night, its surly personality a result of the animation effect. I pressed the on button and waited impatiently for it to boot up.

No messages. No missed calls.

I dialed Selene’s number and let it ring until her voice mail picked up. Then I texted her and waited for a response. Fifteen minutes later I was still waiting. I checked the desk and the nightstand to see if she’d left her cell phone but didn’t find it. A cursory glance at her shoes lined up neatly on the floor of her closet showed me her black boots were missing. Wherever she was, she’d gone deliberately. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been too worried, but considering what had happened to Britney, I couldn’t help feeling a little concerned.

I sat down on my bed and sent Selene another text. It took me the better part of five minutes to type it, as my cell kept shutting off, making obnoxious twittering sounds as it did so. It was supposed to be a smartphone—oh, the irony.

I was just about to hurl the damn thing across the room, when the door into the dorm opened and a disheveled-looking Selene stepped inside. She was indeed wearing her black boots as well as camo jacket and matching camo ball cap and black pants. Her outfit wasn’t particularly suspicious—Selene had been rocking the tomboy look for more than a year now—but the telltale wetness on her hair told me she’d been outside.

I just stared at her for a moment. She stared back, her mouth dropping open as if I had taken her by surprise rather than the other way around.

I stood up, narrowing my eyes at her. “Where the hell have you been?”

Right away I knew I’d struck the wrong tone as Selene’s surprised expression turned stormy. Never mind that my harsh tone stemmed from fear rather than anger. She put a hand on her narrow waist and flung her black hair over her shoulder. “What’s it to you?”

I gaped. “What do you mean? You were gone. You snuck out in the middle of the night. Without me.”

Selene’s nostrils flared. “It might come as a surprise, Dusty, but my life doesn’t end and begin with you.”

I took an involuntary step back. She might as well have slapped me. Selene never acted like this. Not toward me.

She bit her lip, a stricken expression crossing her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just … I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

I crossed my arms, her apology having little effect on my tumultuous emotions. Anger and hurt were stubborn that way, quick to come and long to leave.

When I didn’t answer, Selene unzipped her coat and flung it over the nearby sofa. “So why are you awake?”

I fought back the automatic instinct to answer her. We were best friends. We shared everything—or so I thought. I opened my mouth to demand she tell me what she’d been doing first, but I closed it at once, certain she would refuse. I didn’t think I could handle that kind of rejection right now.

I shook my head. “No reason.” I turned and headed back into the bedroom, switching off the light as I went.

Then I lay down and closed my eyes, all the things I’d needed to talk about like caged, restless animals inside of me, pacing back and forth, pawing at the door. It took me a long, long time to finally fall asleep.

The nightmare was my own, the same one I’d been having for weeks now. I stood on the top of a tall stone tower. Wind buffeted my body, ripping my hair from its ponytail. The force of it pushed me backward until my back hit the hard edge of the parapet. Pain arced down my spine. I lurched forward, struggling against the wind as a terrible, all-consuming need drove me forward. Ahead, a stone square block sat dead center of the tower. I had to reach the plinth.

I didn’t know why I needed to get there, and I didn’t care. The need was too great for thought. My life depended on it. The world depended on it. At first, nothing happened as I moved my arms and legs. It was as if a cruel puppeteer held me back with invisible strings attached to my body.

Then finally, slowly, I began to make forward progress. Each step was like trying to swim through wet concrete. By the end of it, I crawled on my hands and knees. But that was okay. I needed to be on the ground. I needed to read the word etched into the side of the plinth. I pulled myself up to a kneeling position before it. If I could have stood, the plinth would’ve reached my knees, but now its top was level with my eyes. The wind continued its assault on my body. Tears streamed from my eyes as I forced them open against it.

I stared at the letters, but I couldn’t make them out. The impressions were too faint. I stretched my hands toward them. If I tried hard enough, I might be able to read it like Braille. The plinth felt as hard and rough as uncut diamonds beneath my fingers. An idea rose up in my mind: if I could break through that hard surface, then I could read the letters. I began to scratch at it, a frenzy coming over me.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. My nails broke off one by one. My fingertips began to bleed. I balled my hands into fists, scraping away with my knuckles, oblivious to the pain. My skin ripped to shreds, but still I persisted. A part of me, the part of my brain that remained tethered to the waking world, even in dreams, knew that I should stop. That this was madness. Even worse, that it wasn’t real.

But I couldn’t stop. The part of me that existed only in dreams knew I had to read those letters. That part held sway here.

I would succeed or die trying.