Harbinger

by Emme DeWitt

  I nodded, keeping my silence. I was going to see if he would take the bait.

  He walked back toward the room he’d exited, the lights finally catching his movement and turning on. Before he made it to his room, however, he paused, looking to the room on his right.

  “Actually.” He looked back at me and jerked his head.

  I trotted over to join him. “What?” My eyes were darting back and forth between the boy and the room he was frozen in front of.

  “There’s only one room I can think of that could use some attention. You wouldn’t run into anyone. It’s already paid for, so no one’s going to snatch it away,” he said.

  He seemed to be convincing himself, so I stayed quiet. I was willing to wait for however long it would take to convince this kid to help me.

  “I don’t know how much you know about campus lore yet. You might have heard already, but there was an incident at the beginning of the summer. A football player had an accident at practice. Been in a coma ever since.” The kid paused. “Good guy, really. He was also into music, even though practice conflicted with a lot of the band stuff. Anyway, he has a practice room. This one.”

  My eyes darted to the darkened glass where the boy seemed to be staring.

  “Coma, huh? That’s horrible,” I said, a knife going through my gut. Something told me his ousting and my entry was not just convenient, but maybe a little too fortuitous.

  “Right?” He sighed, his lips moving as if weighing something in his mind.

  “You seem all right, too,” he finally said.

  My eyebrows rose. “Oh, thanks,” I said in surprise.

  He brushed past me, ducking quickly into his room. I waited, unsure if my patience had paid off or not.

  He reappeared, a pair of keys in his hand.

  “I’m down here all the time, so I look after the rooms. Here’s one of the spare keys to his room. Use it whenever you need it.” The boy offered the key to me.

  “Really? You don’t think it’ll be a problem?” I asked, a little wowed the room was so freely given.

  “Just don’t trash the place, and I’ll look the other way,” he said. “I’d much rather the room get used anyway. Seems like such a shame to just let it get dusty.”

  “Thank you,” I said again. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Sean.” He offered a hand.

  “Noah.” I pumped his hand firmly.

  “Yeah, you’ll do fine in guitar lab,” Sean said with a dry chuckle. “Just try not to bring the drama down here. I like it quiet.”

  “Yes, sir.” I winked. “I’ll do my best.”

  Sean waved at me, retreating back into his practice room. The lights dimmed, leaving me in the dark with only the light of my phone to use to jiggle the key home in the lock in front of me. I made it into the room without too much struggle, but I caught the door so it wouldn’t slam shut and disturb my already disgruntled neighbor.

  Having such a close neighbor around at all times was not ideal, unless I could convince him to play lookout for me. Sean let me in easily enough, and I couldn’t decide if that was more of a pro than a con. Either his judgement was impeccable, or he was apathetic to everything but the instruments getting occasional love.

  My hand pounded the textured wall tile for the light switch, and I nearly lost a nail when I finally did catch it. It wasn’t so much of a switch as it was a dimmer. Looking up, I snorted at the HGTV approved recessed can lighting in an otherwise poorly carpeted glorified closet. The contrast amused me, allowing me to finally relax enough to breathe fully.

  I rolled my shoulders one at a time, allowing my head to fall into a deep rotation. The kinks and knots in my muscles were unwinding as my fingers drifted toward the slightly discolored keys. My fingers ran through a few quick scales, and I was happy to hear clear notes roll back toward me instead of the off tune buzzing I was bracing myself to hear. My cheeks pulled up in a sardonic smile, attributing the tuning to the grumpy practice room guardian across the hall.

  The warmth that had disappeared temporarily raged back full force, burning my throat painfully. My partially open mouth was not prepared, and suddenly, I was singing. The song came from somewhere deep inside, the melody haunting and destructive. It grated against my tight throat as I attempted to control it. It raged on, twisting my tongue with foreign lyrics in a language I never understood.

  I could feel the tears streaming down my cheeks as my inner self battled with this unknown traitor for control over my voice and body. Calling this hellish noise singing was too polite, but I had no other words for it. The euphemism had stuck ever since it had begun. I felt like I was screaming. The volume was so powerful, as if the projection of the song to as many ears as possible was more important than its dynamic. My fingers trailed along with the melody, and I cursed myself to stop. I did not want to fuel this monster any more.

  And then with one last note, it was gone.

  I collapsed onto the keys, making them clang in dismay. My breathing came in raged pants, which only tore my sore throat even more. I swallowed hard over and over, trying to center myself.

  At least it was over now.

  At least it had happened here.

  At least no one heard me. I hoped.

  Six

  As soon as I opened my eyes, I groaned. After years of going to sleep and waking up in the same spot, you’d think I would’ve accepted it by now. Some shred of hope survived every night, only to be dashed when I woke up stuck in the same recurring nightmare.

  My eyes adjusted, as they always did, to the dusky evensong of the forest around me. Compared to Washington, these trees were downright scrawny. I couldn’t tell you the type, but they stood like weeds, blocking my view of the sky and the horizon with their presence. Their numbers seemed to have grown lately, or at least to me they seemed closer together. It was getting harder and harder to remain here in the evenings and watch the same horrors on extended loop.

  Although the trees and the foggy atmosphere blocked my view of ground and sky, they accommodated my night visitors without complaint. Steadying myself against a nearby tree, I paused to decide my strategy for this evening.

  I was trapped in this dreamscape until at least dawn. It worried me that I couldn’t seem to wake myself of my own accord, nor postpone these evening walks if I wanted to stay up late. Not sleeping was not an option, no matter how many Red Bulls I drank. Adele hoped in time the dream would be something I could control, but I was skeptical. Nothing seemed to be in my control anymore.

  But I could at least decide what I was going to do tonight. I could walk toward the horizon all evening, like I did when we lived in Arizona, maybe even long enough to loop around to my nightly origin point. All it did was tire me out and cause me to eat like an Olympic swimmer. Based on the food situation here, eating like a horse would only draw attention to myself, and I attempted to stay under the radar as much as possible. Jury was still out if that could even be a possibility here.

  So I wasn’t going to walk all night, but I didn’t particularly feel in the mood to make rounds of the night visitors. I’m sure some new ones had popped up, but I much preferred thinking back to my daytime reality than finding some new horror show episode to queue up.

  I looked down at my hands, willing paper and pen to magically appear. Sometimes I just needed to make lists or diagrams to sort out my thoughts. Not having the ability to do that in my dreamscape was frustrating. Not like it would stay here or magically transfer into the real world with me. It was just as well.

  I decided to face the inevitable and seek the nearest night visitor to get it over with. When I pushed off the tree, my fingers didn’t make a sound as they scratched against the jagged surface of the bark. The eeriest part, I thought as I trudged toward contestant number one, was the silence.

  Nothing made a sound here. My footsteps were silent. The wisps of atmosphere that clung at my ankles moved slowly in a hypnotic dance. Nothing else moved—no wind blew, no whispe
rs in the heavy air, no white noise. Just complete silence. The night visitors, caught in a closed loop of agony in their final moments, also didn’t make a sound. Their faces contorted, and I knew they must be screaming until their throats were raw, but not even I could hear them. I wondered if they could hear themselves, or if part of the reason why they screamed was because they couldn’t.

  I tried not to think about them too much, which was a feat for me. Something told me that once I figured out the why of their existence, I’d be forced to act. This twisted dream world had to exist for a reason. I just wasn’t informed directly what that reason was.

  To be honest, I treated myself like a ticking time bomb. I didn’t think I was especially equipped to run into the flames and save people. In those darker moments when I tried to rationalize how I couldn’t help my dreamscape neighbors, I wondered if the point was that I shouldn’t. That even if there were a way, they were there for a reason, and that reason was that death was inevitable. Entropy. You couldn’t stop it, and if you got in its way, you too would find out exactly how fragile life could be.

  Sometimes too much thinking led you down a dark, dark path.

  It took me only moments to reach the closest night visitor. I used to call them mirages, like the things your mind made up under extreme duress, but I knew in my gut that my mind didn’t make these images out of nothing. They were real somewhere. They had to exist. Also, I couldn’t help but think that if our roles were reversed, I would want someone to think I was real. To take me seriously.

  I shuddered as soon as the night visitor came into view.

  I called this one Harry. No reason I could think of, but the middle-aged gentleman kind of looked like he could be called Harry.

  Harry’s particular agony was one of the most disturbing to watch, and I couldn’t help but sigh when I saw he would be my first of many tonight. Harry was a little on the pudgy side, and his closed loop visual allowed me to slowly watch him collapse in on himself. It became quite gruesome in the three minutes it took for his loop to close. At first the indents started in his chest and stomach but quickly turned to his limbs and finally his head. His eyes always locked on mine no matter where I stood, and his silent screams rattled inside my head as I watched what would be his death.

  Collapsing in on himself was not going to make the coroner’s report in the case of Harry’s eventual death. None of the closed loop death scenes were ever true in blow-by-blow action. Elliott, a small freckle-faced night visitor, had looked like he was drowning in his death loop. I ended up saving him from an asthma attack in the first grade and haven’t seen him since—dreamscape or otherwise.

  I kept Elliott on my mind because I was curious if I would ever see him again. Would he reappear in the dreamscape as soon as his next cause of death was imminent? If I saw him again, did that mean I should intervene?

  Elliott was why I thought I was meant to save them, even though I realized at some point, we all have to die. Something about such a young child dying didn’t seem right to me, and I’d acted without fully realizing the consequences of my actions. But I was young, too, and my instinct had been to save him.

  It would be so much more helpful to know the rules behind the dreamscape. I could be content not worrying about them if they all were meant for death. The life cycle didn’t exist without death and regeneration. It went against nature. But if there was such a thing as a right death. If that existed, and I existed, didn’t that mean I should intervene?

  Adele hadn’t quite seen it that way, so it was no surprise that the second I saw a night visitor walking around in real life, we fled. Most times we went to a different state, but occasionally we hopped a time zone or two. Never to New England, at least not until now.

  I’d gotten some pings in the dining hall. More than a few were around, but I’d decided to ignore them and try to focus on being unnoticed. That had clearly failed, but I didn’t want to give in so easily. Adele had said last stop, so night visitors or not, I would have to deal. Imagining Adele’s response to my first day distracted me for a moment.

  A smile couldn’t quite make it to my lips, though, because Harry was folding in on himself again. Harry was not one of the folks I’d met today, so his fate was still firmly on track toward this death, whatever it manifested as in real life. I thought it might be a car accident, with all the indents, but I also thought it could be something like a heart attack. I was still playing around with some of the symbolism and whether it was more abstract in manifestation or more directly related. As much as I tried to parse out the possibilities based on the appearance and content of a visitor’s death loop, I was still stabbing wildly in the dark for the conclusion.

  I sighed heavily and said a silent goodbye to Harry as he entered the loop again. I averted my eyes and walked away. Tonight I had no new information. No new thoughts. Harry was stuck in his loop, and I was stuck in mine.

  There was so much I didn’t know. About this place. What it meant. What it was for. Why I had to be the one to witness these horrible deaths night after night, unable to change anything and unable to escape. Sometimes Adele and I talked frankly about it, and she used to say it was a gift. At least some of my talents. We hadn’t spoken about it in a while, both of us too exhausted from running away from it to really call it a blessing anymore.

  I continued on, checking on all my visitors. No new inhabitants popped up in my walk, and none disappeared. We stayed in limbo together until I felt the warm rays of dawn tingle on my skin, and I seemed to dissolve into the mist, reawakening in my own body.

  Seven

  The dreamscape spit me out around 4:30 in the morning, which was a little earlier than usual. Clouds covered what little attempt the morning autumn sun made in streaming through my seventh story window. Even the birds were quiet.

  I’d crawled up an ungodly number of stairs on my own last night after I lost my voice in the practice room. Clearing my froggy throat, I could tell today would be a tea with honey day. I stretched my limbs in a final fight to find a comfortable position and snooze.

  For once, my feet didn’t dangle over the end of the bed.

  I rolled off the side with a graceless thump. Dragging myself to the closet, I surveyed the uniform wardrobe while rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I flicked through the hangers, my fingers moving purposefully among the sea of blue and green. Holding the jacket up against my baggy hoodie, I saw the length seemed right on target. I grabbed a few skirts and pants and found they were actually the proper length for my long limbs. It seemed I would not be turning too many heads today.

  I sighed in relief.

  My sleepy limbs took their time climbing through the pressed wool pants and blazer. The rumor was that New England winters were brutal, but I was barely keeping ahead of a mild chill in the morning half darkness. I was taking no chances.

  I tiptoed out of my bedroom with my schoolbag, finding a note pinned to the outer door. I shared a suite with someone, and the common area boasted two desks, a couch, and a modest entertainment system. I hadn’t even noticed them when I stumbled in last night. The room looked as picturesque as the brochures had promised.

  Apparently I’d scored the penthouse and hadn’t realized it.

  I pulled on the note, and it came away from the door easily.

  Heard you come in last night. Glad you found it okay. I won’t see you until X’s lecture, so try and keep out of trouble until then. Use the school email if you need an SOS. Later, roomie. Mags

  My eyebrows shot up at the final line. So the kooky tour guide was my suitemate.

  I grabbed for the doorknob and found an additional note stuck to the handle. I had to uncrumple it to read what it said.

  P.S. Beware the feline librarian. It may look cute, but just don’t look it in the eye. You’ll thank me later.

  I carried my frown down the narrow hallway, trudging down the stairs with one eye on the railing and the other on the pair of notes. My hand slid down the rails smoothly, only catching on the
occasional corner post at each landing. Although the staircase looked rickety, it seemed like the old wood had grown more stubborn over the years and dared anyone to doubt its efficacy. It reminded me of a funhouse staircase built to make you question perspective and the rules of gravity. I patted the final post once my foot hit the ground floor.

  The ground floor also held an echo of places I had been before. Its age was showing in the uneven plaster walls, warped floor boards, and howling window panes, but it felt like an old man full of stories instead of a dilapidated old lean-to that had been used beyond its years. My hands trailed along the walls as I took in the silent great room. One student was passed out in an armchair, but otherwise the cavernous room was empty.

  I wandered around to find the kitchen and hopefully a box of tea. Exploring could wait until I was a little more fortified. I didn’t plan to do much talking today, but making a cup of tea would kill some time until the rest of the world woke up.

  The cupboards were well worn and screeched loudly in protest as I searched for the communal mugs and tea. The feeling felt familiar, and a shiver tingled up my spine.

  I whirled around in the kitchen, searching for the disturbance that put my body on edge. The kitchen was empty. Still, the niggling feeling in my gut caused the rest of the hairs on my body to stand at attention. If it wasn’t a person, was it déjà vu?

  I abandoned my quest for tea in favor of a scouting mission. I walked the entire first floor, searching for the cause of the feeling so I could put an end to it and move on with my day.

  “You’ve really gone off the deep end this time, Noah,” I mumbled aloud, checking the shadows behind armchairs and between table legs. Something just needed to jump out at me already. It was like I was living a scene in a horror movie that just wouldn’t end. The tension was petering out into annoyance.

  I sighed when I completed the circular route back to the kitchen and found it, too, was devoid of any bumps in the night. The feeling remained, leaving me in a dark mood. The mug I’d found lay abandoned on the countertop, but I didn’t feel like tea anymore.