Cassie

I awoke on a bed of dry leaves in the milky white wood. I stood and ran. I figured if I fled quickly enough, I might find that light again before the Nightmare caught me. Imagine my surprise when I heard the rustle of leaves behind me sooner than ever.

Frustrated, I rounded a tree and put my back to the trunk. Maybe I’d get a glimpse of my attacker if it couldn’t creep up behind me. I waited at that isolated tree, unable to see any other trunks or branches. Just me and the tree. No sound of footprints or rustling leaves.

I don’t know how much time passed, my hands gripping the bark, my hot breath mixing with cold fog, my toes on the hard soil under leaves. I waited, my body tense with fear and impatience, coiled tight like a spring until I could bear it no more. Then, knowing I couldn’t hide forever, I leaned right to look around the trunk.

The leaves stirred on my left.

Then, I was in the Nightmare—wandering alone, looking for the light, trying to identify the scenario. The trees all looked the same. I rounded another trunk, and, in the distance, my humble human ears heard laughter. A child’s laughter. I shivered.

This was the Wendi dream. It had been so long, but I couldn’t forget a single detail if I tried—and I’ve tried very hard.

It starts all innocent, with me finding Wendi playing in the woods by herself. Not the teenager Wendi, but the nine-year-old girl. The first time, I wondered what she was doing here without her big sister and walked over to ask.

And she’s the real Wendi. She answered my questions, talked to me, wanted me to play hide-and-seek with her, and I nearly said yes when she got sick. She called into the fog, ‘Ziege! Ziege, where are you!’ and, when I stuck around to watch, she split in two.

The little girl Wendi divided like an amoeba into red and blue teenage Wendi’s. I was never dumb enough to stay through the whole thing.

I stumbled into the clearing with the child Wendi before I could find the light. “Cassie! What’re you doing here? Hey, where’re you going?” I spun on my heels and left, almost out of time.

This nightmare presented the following scenes to me as I ran: the game, the crying, and the transformation. I couldn’t escape the pattern, and I hated it. I hated knowing what came next, but I hated seeing this happen to Wendi even more.

You may have gotten the impression Wendi and I don’t have a very good relationship. We never talk, we don’t hang out, and I try not to be in the same room as her when I can. None of that is because I don’t like her. In fact, we used to be best friends.

Wendi was always a sweet girl, and she had the coolest big sister. Ziege was practically one of the kids. She knew all the fun games, could play for hours without getting bored, would take the blame if we stayed out too late, and snuck us extra servings of dessert.

For all our fun, Ziege was an awesome teacher too. Even though she had the same clawed blue form as the Wendigo, our Ziege never scratched anything by accident. She taught Wendi how to be strong and gentle, how to be tough and soft, how to pick flowers and catch butterflies and pet dogs.

Though she loved to revel in her strength, doing cartwheels, handstands, and juggling heavy things, Wendi never hurt anyone either. We played tag, roughhoused, wrestled, and tickled each other without her ever even once making me afraid for my safety.

Everything changed between us that day in Eastwood.

Stolen story; please report.

When Ziege died, Wendi started losing her memories. In the beginning, she had frequent bouts of amnesia—blacking out whenever anything reminded Wendi of her sister. Which meant I was the first thing to go.

Anytime I tried talking to her, I would suddenly be speaking with the Wendigo and immediately have to cut off my end. That didn’t stop me from hearing whatever the blue one had to say, but at least she’d give up after a while if I didn’t answer. Wendi was a completely different person by the time we could speak without triggering anything. She didn’t remember anything about me. This was before things got really bad.

From early in our stay at the Facility, the scientists studied us intently. Using my Hearing, I spied on their plans and reported them to the group so we could devise counterstrategies. We discovered giving them nothing was bad when they started talking about ‘termination.’ Instead, we selectively cooperated; Rana volunteered to be the main guinea pig while the others tested the scientists’ patience by degrees.

The other scientists worked under Dr. Adelaide or acted as her assistants when she came for interviews or samples. She brought us toys, books, dolls, always nice to us. Though she hid it from her bosses, she seemed to be on our side whenever talk of ‘termination’ surfaced. As I’ve said before, I heard everything that went on in that Facility.

One day, Dr. Adelaide was taking routine samples with her assistant, and they came to Wendi’s room. This was before the chains. Wendi acted friendly, and the good doctor waved all precautions when dealing with her despite the risks. They exchanged pleasantries, Wendi got a new toy, and Dr. Adelaide broke a few hypodermic needles for bookkeeping.

She recorded this in her documents, ‘Taking samples from UE 004 is impractical.’ They’d done this song and dance before; the good doctor knew there was no safe way to draw blood from Wendi’s tough skin.

Later, in the middle of the night, the assistant returned pushing a gurney. He mumbled to himself about Dr. Adelaide’s stupidity, how he’d prove her wrong about taking samples, and how simple it’d been to drug Wendi’s food with enough sedatives to knock out an elephant. He strapped her unconscious body to the cart, and that was when I heard him rev the buzzsaw.

The problem was, with Wendi’s superhuman vitality, any amount of sedation was a crapshoot.

I heard screams, restraints snapping, blood splattering, the door ripping open, the alarms going off, the soldiers, the bullets, the screams and explosions, and everyone woke up and the others were yelling at me, ‘Cassie! What’s going on? Cassie! What happened? Cassie! Cassie! Cassie!’ and I’m not answering, I’m screaming and trying to cover my ears with my wings because I can’t stop hearing everything and

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I’m sorry I haven’t written you anything recently. I needed a break. That, and we’ve been really busy with stuff I’ll get to later. I think this is good for me, to put it all down. It’s just that, even now, there are things I just… just can’t. I can’t go on.

No, I have to keep going!—because this is when I find the light.

So, I was in the nightmare, running along, expecting the blue devil to attack any second when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a faint light shining through the fog. I headed straight for it—dodging through the trees in one last breakneck sprint—when all my fears came true.

There she stood, blue and terrible, stepping around a trunk to block my way.

I stopped dead in my tracks and shut my eyes tight, hoping to wake before being torn to pieces like every other time I’d had this dream. And I kept standing there, waiting. Waiting for the blow that never fell. Then, slowly, I cracked open my eyes.

Wendigo stood before me, holding the tip of a claw to the hollow of my throat, smiling. This was new. She wore a shark’s grin as she lifted the claw from my neck to my forehead and rested it there for a moment without drawing blood. Then she lazily brushed aside a lock of hair obscuring my eyes as if that were all she’d intended from the beginning and lowered the claw to her side.

She laughed to herself, soft and low, as she stepped away, disappearing into the fog.

I wanted to collapse with relief then and there, but I was on a mission. I closed the distance to the light, rounded the last trunk between it and me, entered the clearing, and saw the source.

A candle.

I stood opposite the tiny flame atop its metallic stand and wondered what was going on. Wendigo always turns into a monster in these nightmares. The unchanging pattern. Inevitable. It was inconceivable the blue devil could alter its doomed course at this point. It was beyond help—but this time, her eyes had been clear of the red madness.

My dream had changed. I’d survived the nightmare, which was short one monster, and found something strange instead. I didn’t understand where the candlestick came from. It hadn’t been in any of my dreams before. Was it mine? If not, then what had put it there?

The leaves stirred violently behind me, disapproving, as if to say, ‘This won’t do at all.’ Before I could turn around or stoop to pick up the candle, I felt cold breath on my neck.

Run.