Sunday, May 4th, 1997
“All hope seemed lost, as the feared dragon monster appeared before them. Silver had failed, and now the children were all alone on the space station. No one could save them, not even the dragons!”
Though his stories spawned from his worst nightmares, seventeen-year-old Bernard Sparker's words flowed carefree. Far be it from him to spoil his sister's late-night entertainment with the darker visions that haunted his sleep.
His sister, ten-year-old Odessa Moore, plowed onward enthusiastically, “But then Gai’en found them!”
Her dark red hair spilled over her shoulders as she bounced up and down on her bed, her wild imagination taking the reins and breaking the laws of physics with reckless abandon. Teleportation, telekinesis, space bubbles, and magic materials that could become whatever she liked.
At first, his stories had been simple and child-like, but as long as his little sister was his competitive co-storyteller, they just got weirder and weirder—and that was fine with him! He sometimes had a feeling that if Gai’en were real, he wouldn’t mind the way she’d commandeered his character and made him her own beast, using him to torment various other characters in the most bizarre and ridiculous ways she could think of.
Odessa’s hair, so much like their mother’s, cascaded around her as she dropped back against pillows and piles of stuffed animals. The moonlight caught her pale skin, so different from his—from his Asian-American father’s tanned complexion.
He drew a breath, and let it out slowly, pushing the thought from his mind while his sister carried on. School would be out in a week, and their differences wouldn’t matter again until Fall.
Then he laughed, continuing his nightly round of entertainment: “And so, everything went back to normal for the children, and Silver returned to the dinosaur planet to –“
There was a knock at the door, followed by his mother’s voice, “Don’t forget she has school tomorrow! And so do you! No games, Maxwell! I want you in bed, and if I catch you again, I’m gonna take the power cord, and you won’t have a T.V. at all until Christmas!”
“I know!” he called back, exasperated with the long over-discussed subject of his mid-night Sega sessions, “We’re almost done!”
“Five minutes!”
He waited until her footsteps had faded away before he continued, “Where was I?”
“The dinosaur planet,” his sister reminded him, bouncing upright again, her green eyes wide and far from sleep.
“Oh, right. So Silver returned home to a nice, long, seaside vacation.”
A nice, sunny, happy ending should have been fine.
“Until Gai’en appeared!”
It wasn’t.
“Uh. . . ,” he blinked, thinking fast. He should have seen it coming, and it changed things. If Gai’en showed up now, they could be here for another two hours. The one time he’d gone along with two appearances in one session, Bernard had been suckered into spending an uncommonly long Saturday night trying to figure out how to undo a clever ten-year-old’s alternate reality, “Right! Because a vacation without Gai’en would just be boring!”
Odessa’s laugh held a wicked hint of mischief as she fell back onto her pillows.
“We’ll pick it up from there next time!” he promised.
“Okay,” she sighed.
He hugged his sister goodnight, and shot a glance at the blue LCD numbers beside her bed, which read “10:07.”
Dammit, he thought bitterly, I have to get up earlier than she does, and I have exams this week! Oh, well. Might as well make childhood fun while it lasts, right?
He walked across the carpeted floor, automatically evading various books and toys in the dark. Two doors down the hall, on the other side from his sister’s room and the bathroom, he stepped over the white plastic gate he used to keep his mother’s cats out of his room. Shutting the door, he made his way around the bed, and the piles of papers on the floor that had made their home on his desk until last week, when he’d cleared the space for an art project.
Dominating the corner of his room, swallowing it in darkness, was a large, sturdy structure framed in natural wood, with surfaces formed from plywood, glass panes, and wire mesh. A brass-hinged door with three solid bolts contained the faintly visible form of an albino Burmese python about two inches in diameter and approaching five feet in length. His mother wanted him to get rid of it, or put it out in his stepfather’s work shed, although she fought him a little less on the matter since Drestan had built the admittedly attractive, secure, and irremovable enclosure. It was complete with a pair of sliding trays at the bottom to make it easier to clean, which latched into place to keep his snake from getting out.
He leaned against it, sighing as he stared out the window at the enchanting silver-bathed marshlands and the winding, glittering creek that helped separate Edisto Island, South Carolina from civilization. A few miles away, he could just barely make out the lights of a couple of other houses. He wouldn’t change it for anything, except perhaps fewer lights, but couldn’t just one of those houses be a small part-time theater? Maybe a drive-up? A boat-up? A beach chair theater? Maybe once he was his mother’s age he wouldn’t mind the isolation, but he was in high school, and the theater was an hour away.
Heaving a deep sigh, he pulled himself from the mesmerizing view, snatched his French notes from his desk without looking at them, and crammed the binder lazily into his book bag before he crawled into bed, trying not to think about tomorrow’s exam.
Maybe he would miraculously learn the language in his sleep.
* * * * *
Rhonna Sparker woke at three-thirteen in the morning with her heart pounding wildly, her husband’s course carpenter’s hand on her bare arm, and the stark fears of her dreams burned into her mind.
Only . . . she wasn’t single, anymore. It had been over a decade since she had married Drestan Moore. Eleven years, this June. What was wrong with her?
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
At least she hadn’t been with her ex-husband in the dream. She’d made a concerted effort to keep that man off her mind!
No; she had definitely been single, raising her child alone.
Dwelling over the loss of Terry Zhào would do her no good, but her son didn’t make it easy to forget the man she’d married: sometimes Max smiled the same way Terry had, or said little things that reminded her of him, and daily reminded her that he preferred his middle name—though she’d never told him it was the name his father had chosen.
Sometimes she even thought he looked more like his father than anyone in her family, although her own father had dismissed the idea. He saw himself so much in Max that anymore she couldn’t bring herself to argue with him. Not with that happy glow in his eyes.
Those eyes—her son’s eyes. In her dreams the boy looked like the walking dead.
She choked on the thought.
One moment Max would be in her arms, so small and so brave, but so scared.
The next he’d be gone.
Whisked away in broad daylight.
These dreams—nightmares—were they signs of the future, or just anxiety?
Was her son ready for the world? Had she done everything she could for him? Had she missed anything? There was the matter of his temper, but there was no helping that. He was calmer than some, though—and that helped her breathe. Calmer than her sister’s eldest, for sure; but when his limits broke, it was like a tree falling: poignant, loud, and memorable.
Like last week.
It was no wonder she had nightmares.
She took a breath, stifling the tears and fears of her demented subconscious. She loved him so much . . . and feared for him so much that it shook her to her core.
“Again?” Drestan asked.
She sat up, silent, resisting the urge to bite down on her own lip.
His hand slid down her back as he spoke softly, “I’m sure he’s fine, Rhone. It’s a dream.”
“It doesn’t feel like a dream,” she answered.
“Look: he graduates in a year. He’ll be moving out, soon. You’re worried. I know you are, but if you would just admit it, the dreams might not be so—“
She stood from the bed in a quick, sharp motion, and his words trailed. The moonlight shone silver through the curtains and blinds across the sand-colored carpet, the pile soft and comforting between her toes. She crossed her arms, trying to get a grip on herself.
The low polyester shag beneath her feet was real, just as real as the rugs and hardwood planking in her dream. The rugs she had picked out for the house she’d bought with Terry, while she was pregnant with Max. For their house in Nebraska. At least in a dream, something might have been out of place—the rooms might have changed. But even the bold red vase his mother had bought for their wedding was sitting on the mantle. It had been in a box since 1984.
There was no longer a sense of “this is more real than that.” It was just there. Real carpet, and real flooring, and real shadows that had her on guard. Real noises in the night, real tears in her tiny son’s strange, eerily grown-up eyes, his small fingers grasping her as she hugged him tight, terrified to let him go. He was never an adult, in those dreams. Always a child, and always scared of something, and then he’d be gone when she turned her back, and her heart would wrench itself back into knots again. She’d wake up in tears.
“He’ll be fine, Love.”
Drestan got up, sliding from her side of the bed, towards the window.
As he approached, she leaned back against his broad chest. He was well-built, with strong, lean muscles. When he smiled, it was a big, warm expression that stretched into his wide, bristly cheeks and into his warm brown eyes. His strong, hairy figure gave her something to lean on; his gentle, optimistic nature a pillar of support.
Terry had been the opposite: when she had been worried, she had leaned into him. He’d had a way of absorbing her into his own, smooth—
Goddamn him, anyway. What was wrong with her? He wasn’t here. It made Drestan ten times the man he’d ever been! A hundred times! Where had Terry been when her son had raised hell because his favorite video had died after the fucking stores closed? Where had he been every damn night Max had decided he didn’t like veggies anymore and was going to be a komodo dragon for the rest of his life? For that matter, where the hell had he been that time she’d had to call a plumber to fix the bathroom sink? Oh, God! She wasn’t sure her embarrassment would ever fade! Which was worse? The part where Max had tried to fix it himself, or her seven-year-old trying to have a manly conversation with the plumber?
She couldn’t stop herself from crying. Why did the boy in her dreams look so dreadful? Why was he so thin and quiet? If Drestan had dreams about their daughter the way she did about her son, he’d be crying, too! They barely even in the dreams! It was usually just her and Max . . . alone. And then . . . just her.
Drestan hugged her, and she finally turned to let him embrace her, although she didn’t return the gesture.
He sighed, but said nothing. She could handle most of her own problems, but he was often quick to remind her that she couldn’t take on everything alone. Right now, though, if she was going to unload this for anyone, it was going to be for Max, and she wasn’t ready to share this with him.
“Nothing’s going to happen to him,” Drestan whispered, pushing his fingers into her thick, wavy hair.
“He broke that boy’s nose last month.”
A quiet staccato sound left Drestan’s lips as he badly suppressed a laugh. “Well, that boy had it coming to him. He was a jackass, and you’d have done the same.”
“Probably,” she agreed, then she sighed. The touch of his fingers on her scalp was relaxing, but it couldn’t remove the fear from her mind. “The dreams are getting worse.”
“Relax, sweetie. Stop giving them so much thought.”
“I’ve tried!” she wept, sinking into him.
“Dreams are dreams, Rhone, love. They have no sway in the real world, okay? He’s going to be fine. He’s a bright young man, and he’s going to be just fine. Come on: summer break is around the corner, and then you’ll have time to relax.”
She shook her head, “You know how it is. My grades are submitted, but I’ve still got things to do to wrap up the semester, and then I’ve got to start thinking about the Fall. They’re asking me to take on a new course, and I need to go take that Java class.”
He squeezed her gently. “The stress must be getting to you. Let me know when you’ve got time, and I’ll take off one day to watch ‘Dessa and the house so you can enjoy yourself. Or leave her with Max and we’ll go out to dinner.”
“Oh, heavens, no!” she cried, half laughing, “I still can’t get the mud out of the carpet from last time!”
Drestan laughed openly, “Then leave them with your sister, or the Durants. Their daughter’s a good influence on him. You have options! It’s just stress, sweetie. Just a manifestation of stress. That’s all.”
She did her best to calm down, so he would go back to bed, but she could not convince herself that something truly terrible might not be around the corner. She only had one year left before her son left home, and it was everything she could do not to cling to him for dear life . . . and it had only been last week that he’d scared her so terribly. Thankfully, he hadn’t been alone. Thankfully, they were blessed with people they could count on; and Drestan was right: he was a bright young man. A man, now, and intelligent enough to make decisions for himself and look after his own affairs. He needed experience in the world, but he was ready for that. Perhaps the danger had already passed.
She took a breath, forcing herself to calm down, until her husband finally kissed her and withdrew.
“Get some sleep,” he whispered.
“I’m not the only one who has to work tomorrow,” she whispered shakily, grinning, “Good night, dear.”
He snorted under his breath, “Too damn true enough. Good night, sweetheart. Sleep well.”
She heard him crawl back into the bed. It took her another minute or so, but she finally joined him, and found him propped on his elbows, waiting for her. Only then, after he was sure she was going to try and sleep, did he lay down and go back to his own dreamland. She spent another hour wondering if she should tell Max, just to be sure he’d take more care. Then she fell back asleep, and dreamed normal things that she didn’t remember so well, come morning.