Wake Up

by Brooke De Lira

  When I finished, Luke shook his head. “I guess you were right. He was hiding something. But it sounds to me like this kid was just another friend of Aiden’s.”

  I bit my lip, hundreds of thoughts fighting for my attention as we pulled into the driveway. “Then why all the secrecy?”

  Silence. The truck stopped, but Luke didn’t turn off the ignition. I looked up. His eyes were widened in shock, his body tensed. I followed his eyes to the garage door that lay before us.

  The glow of the headlights revealed a single word in capital letters that had been hastily scrawled in red paint across the aluminum door.

  LEAVE.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  My heart thumped so fast I could hear it in my ears, but my skin felt numb. The wheels of the pickup screeched as Luke backed out of the driveway, mumbling curses under his breath.

  I stared at the red letters, my mind racing. The work was fresh, paint still dripping down the door like trails of blood. Before I could get my thoughts straight, Luke turned the wheel, stepped on the gas, and roared back down the gravel road.

  He hyperventilated beside me. “They’re back, aren’t they? Those creatures from the mirror, or the bookstore, or hell, maybe the cemetery.”

  It didn’t click. “I don’t think it was them.”

  “What?” His normally low pitch rose at least five octaves. Luke took his eyes off the road long enough to gawk at me. Maybe to check if I was foaming at the mouth.

  “I’m just saying they’ve never done anything like that before. They’re always there, always following me, but they’ve never tried to… well, communicate. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Oh, believe me, girl. None of this feels right. I should have taken that bus up to Minnesota. Should have done it.”

  I groaned, running a shaky hand through my hair. “Maybe we should talk to the police.”

  “No!”

  I jumped at the unexpected outburst. Now it was my turn to stare.

  He recollected himself. “Um, I mean, I just think it’s not a good idea right now. It could just end up dragging the attention of those monsters to us. Anyway, with those crazy psychic powers of yours, who needs the cops?”

  I kept my eyes fixed on him. Luke couldn’t make it any more obvious there was something else going on, but I let it slide. For now. As long as my dream police were out of the question, there was only one person who could shed light on the eerie message.

  “Take a left here.”

  He cranked the steering wheel. “Where are we going?”

  I ignored his question. “Turn right up there at the stop sign.”

  My brain was thumping inside my skull, grasping for answers. The creatures. The boy Aiden met at the library. The message. What was my mind trying to tell me?

  “Stop here. The third house on the left.”

  The truck rolled to a stop. Light streamed from the windows of the little cabin, several thick-coated feral cats curled up by the door. Only C could give me the answers to solve this riddle. God, at least I hoped so.

  “This is the friend you visited before, isn’t it? The one you talked about at the cafe?”

  I swung my door open, letting in a draft of cold air that turned our breaths into clouds of mist. “Wait here.”

  He scoffed. “Are you kidding? What, I’m not good enough to meet your friend?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  I thought quickly, embarrassed. “She’s, well… disfigured. And she gets really nervous about people seeing her.”

  He sighed and nodded his understanding, brow furrowed. A tug inside me wanted to grab his hands in mine, tell him that we were going to figure this all out together. But I didn’t listen. I closed the door behind me and stepped along the pebbled pavers leading to the front door.

  I let myself in. A smoldering fire in the hearth lit the room, but otherwise, the house seemed empty, as if it were now truly as abandoned as it looked. “C?”

  The floorboards creaked as I stepped into the living room. Waves crashing on the shoreline filled the otherwise silent home.

  “C, I need to talk to you!”

  A rattling cough sounded from the kitchen. I walked through the entryway to see a hunched figure. A flannel blanket draped from the crown of her head and dragged along the floor. She leaned over the counter, dipping a tea bag into a mug of steaming water.

  “Why didn’t you answer me? What’s-”

  She turned towards me, revealing a weary face with large blotches missing. And I don’t mean blood and gore, ripped-off-the-skull missing. They were gone, transparent. Like the spot I saw before. The flannel that covered the back of her head showed where her left eye and cheek used to be.

  She reached a hand toward me, see-through blotches giving it a mangled appearance. I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. Icy prickles crawled across my skin.

  “My dear Madelyn, please tell me you’ve found something. Please.”

  I ran into the fading woman’s arms, holding her tight. “What’s happening to you?”

  She calmed her voice. “Come to the fireplace and we’ll talk.”

  I followed her to the living room, and we sat down.

  The fire crackled, sparks flying toward the chimney. A picture so familiar it unsettled me to the bone. Why that was, I couldn’t say. I glanced at C, who now huddled on the armchair with her tea cupped between disappearing hands. Remembering that I left Luke waiting in the truck, I cleared my throat and got to the point.

  “There’s a boy, around Aiden’s age, who met my brother at the library in secret during the summer of his death. We don’t know who he is, but we kind of know what he looks like.”

  She nodded. “Good. And the Intruders?”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “So we have a name for them now?”

  She shrugged. “I thought it was catchy enough.”

  My lips curled in a smile. “Right. Well, they’re still everywhere, but-” I played with my eyebrow stud. “They’re getting closer, and they’re not just staring at me anymore. They tried to kill someone.”

  C frowned, accenting the wrinkles on what was left of her face. “Well, that is a problem.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  She looked up.

  “Someone left a message on my garage door telling me to leave. I don’t think that was the Intruders.”

  C locked me in the gaze of her remaining eye, sudden clarity brightening her face. She whispered, “Listen to me, Madelyn. Someone knows you’re searching. They may be no more than a dream construct, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous, especially considering…”

  She bit her tongue.

  “Considering what, C?”

  Her gaze drifted to the floor, hands beginning to tremble. “I’m fading, Madelyn.”

  I locked my eyes on her form, unable to hide the desperation in my voice. “And what happens if my consciousness fades?”

  She lifted her eye to the flames in the fireplace. “You will never wake up again.”

  Pure dread jolted my body, my chest tight. Alice, Mom, Dad. Their faces fell into my mind’s eye, further clenching my heart. I couldn’t leave them, not after Aiden.

  I managed to whisper, “How much time do we have?”

  C got to her feet, draping the blanket over her head and walking toward her bedroom. “If you don’t find your unconscious by this time tomorrow night, you’re never going to leave this place.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I lay facing Luke atop the pair of sleeping bags I’d found in C’s closet, mind still reeling. I let my eyes rest on his sleeping form, illuminated by the crackling fireplace behind me. I’d told him nothing of my conversation with C, and he hadn’t asked. But it had always been that way with him. He always cared, but he was distant, detached. Even my mind couldn’t create someone I could get close too. How is that for crap luck?

  I let out a sigh from deep in my chest, mentally mapping out the next day. My last chance. I had to find the boy from the
library. Maybe I could go back to Corey. He clearly wasn’t telling me everything he knew. God, I wished dream people didn’t need to sleep. Time was more precious now than ever, but I still had to wait until daybreak to start questioning my ‘suspects.’

  The charred logs shifted in the fireplace, and Luke’s eyes fluttered open. “You still awake?” he mumbled.

  I smiled. “Can’t sleep.” I wasn’t lying. I’d never tried sleeping in a dream for the risk of breaking rule number three—going too deep and being unable to dig myself out.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  I sighed again. “Everything.” Silence. “You don’t have to come with me tomorrow. After the horror-movie scene with my garage door tonight, you’d never want to sleep in my house again anyway.”

  He grinned. “I might be brave enough if we found out who did it. Besides,” he shifted to face me, “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  I smiled, comforted by the soothing quiet that followed.

  “Do you have dreams, Luke?”

  “Sure. Let’s see. I want to go to college, get some job with a big-ass office, and raise a perfect family in the suburbs.”

  I shook my head. “No, not that kind of dream. The kind you have when you’re sleeping.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Not really. At least, I don’t remember them when I wake up.”

  At that moment, I thought of Alice, who pouted every time I recounted my dreams, since she never recalled hers. She even kept that purple dream journal by her bed to push herself to remember them. The way she always tried to be just like me, to do everything I did, had always pissed me off. Now, I wanted nothing more than for her to look at me with those eyes of admiration. Even when there was nothing to admire.

  Luke’s expression turned to worry. “Madelyn?”

  Jolted from my memory, I felt warm tears rolling down my face. I wiped them away with my jacket sleeve. “It’s fine.”

  Luke propped himself up with one elbow. “Mads, you need to sleep.”

  I smiled up at him. “I told you not to call me that, jackass.”

  He placed a hand on my arm. “Please, for me. Just try.”

  “I told you, I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  I gave in, closing my eyelids. I basked in the soothing darkness, though I knew it was useless. I wouldn’t fall asleep, not like this. Still, it was kind of peaceful.

  The sounds of the cabin began to fade away, and I felt myself approach a calmer plane of my mind, above the confusion of Shy Harbor.

  I breathed in the cool air around me, cooler than the spot where I lay by the fireplace, and dry. Almost like an air-conditioned room. For a moment, I was weightless, surrounded by a numbness like floating in cool water. I wiggled my toes and twitched my fingers to bring myself back.

  I grasped the sleeping bag under me, but the fabric was different now. Silky and cool. Like a bed sheet. My eyes shot open, heart pounding.

  The cabin was gone, Luke, the fireplace, the glass window to the lake. All gone.

  Fluorescent lights illuminated a white room, medical equipment and monitors scattered in my vision. A rhythmic beeping replaced the sound of the crackling fireplace. An inclined mattress took the place of C’s wood floors. My body was numb, paralyzed, but I felt the vague sensation of tubes weighing in my nose and throat.

  What was this place?

  Footsteps echoed through the room, two figures walking into my vision. As their faces came into view, I wanted to cry. Mom and Dad. When they saw me, Mom’s eyes filled with tears, and she fell into Dad’s arms. It was so strange. I hadn’t seen them so much as touch each other since the separation. A third person came into view, a man in a white lab coat and a button-down shirt. He glanced down at me before studying the piles of paper on his clipboard.

  “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Clarke, I’ll get straight to it. She’s still stable, but other than that, no real change. We’ve done some more tests, and I have to say that I’ve never seen a coma patient with this much neurological activity. It’s truly a unique case, to put it simply.”

  Dad embraced Mom around her shoulders as she wrung her hands, eyes bulging with hope. “So you think she may come out of it?”

  The doctor sighed, paging through his files once more. “I really can’t say. With a case like this, she may regain consciousness tomorrow, or she may remain in this state indefinitely.”

  Mom’s sobs almost instantly filled the room as she cried into Dad’s sweater. Dad’s own eyes glistened, lip trembling, but he stood strong. Then, a fourth figure came into view, shorter than the others. Long black hair hung over her shoulders, big eyes vacant and dry.

  Alice.

  I tried to say her name, but no sound left my body, not even the slightest groan. Alice approached the edge of my bed, leaning over the side rail to see me.

  “I know you can hear me, Maddie. Wake up. Please, just wake up. I know you wanted to remember what happened, but Aiden isn’t the only one who needs you. I can’t do this without you.”

  The defeat in her voice made my heart clench. Alice, my dear Alice. I’m sorry I left you. I’m coming back.

  She reached to touch my face. Her long sleeve lifted just enough to reveal something on the bottom of her wrist. I looked closer. It was a bandage, one that didn’t quite cover three horizontal slits across her skin. They were too perfectly aligned. Self-inflicted.

  No! Not Alice. Not her.

  I screamed until my throat stung, but no one looked. The room remained silent. I wanted to cry, to rip the wires and tubes from my body and embrace my precious sister, but my body lay still.

  I tried once more to scream, but then, everything changed. The room became dark, the walls and equipment now just shadows looming over me. Alice and the others were gone. I was alone now, in a black and utter silence.

  Shadowy forms emerged from my periphery, looming over me. Their features were a blur, their presence sinister, almost demonic. I’d been here before. Sleep paralysis. The terrifying place between the waking and dream world where lucid dreamers find themselves when they’re learning to become conscious in their dreams. A sort of purgatory of the consciousness in which you can’t move, can’t speak. All while ominous beings terrorize you.

  As the shadows drew closer, one thought comforted me. They weren’t real. Only hallucinations.

  I’m not afraid of you.

  Suddenly, the darkness of the figures gave way to an eerie glow, revealing pale figures standing over me dressed in white, some taking the forms of doctors and nurses, others in white dresses and suits. The only darkness that remained was the inky black voids of their eyes.

  Intruders.

  Their mouths moved as if speaking, but they made no sound. They reached their dead, bloodless hands toward me.

  You’re not real.

  Their hands reached my skin, the chill of their touch sapping the warmth from my body. I began to shiver. Two of the hands slid from my shoulder blades to my throat, fingers gripping around my neck. They began to tighten, choking me. I couldn’t breathe.

  Stop! Get away from me!

  “Madelyn, Madelyn! Wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  My eyes shot open.

  I was back in the cabin, golden light streaming through the windows. The night’s fire was now a pile of smoldering ashes. Luke crouched over me, holding my shoulders.

  “Man, that must have been some nightmare.”

  “What happened?” My voice trembled.

  Luke fell back on the sofa, and I brushed away the sweaty locks of hair matted to my forehead.

  “You slept straight through the night, that’s what.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but shock stole my words. Sleeping through the night in my dream world? That shouldn’t be possible.

  Luke yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Anyway, It’s already seven in the morning, so we’d better get going. If your friend is as private as you say, she’s probably dying for me to leave so she can eat breakfast.”


  He smiled. “Speaking of, I might have ransacked the fridge and made us some bagels with jam for the road. You go ahead and hit the shower, then you can fill me in on how we’re going to track down this mystery guy today.”

  I smiled, trying my best to hide my horror as I stumbled to the bathroom and locked the door. With a deep breath, I turned the knob of the sink and splashed cool water on my face.

  Did I just have a glimpse of what was happening in the waking world, or was it just a dream within a dream? I could never know. But if it was real, if by any chance that was truly my family I’d seen, this wasn’t just about me anymore. I looked up into the round mirror above the sink, a twisted, broken dream face staring back at me. Great Spirit, guard my soul and guide my feet. Lead me to the truth.

  “I’m coming back, Alice. Wait for me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The overcast day made the lake’s white-capped surface a particularly dull gray as the rare harbor waves crashed onto the shoreline. Luke put an arm around my shoulder when a gust of wind nearly knocked us over.

  “Is this storm ever going to hit, or what?” he mused.

  It wasn’t. But I couldn’t tell him that. In the hundreds of dreams I’ve had in this mirror of Shy Harbor, not once did the downpour hit or the lightning strike over the town. It was always on the brink.

  The rotting wood of the boardwalk creaked under our feet as we approached the marina. Fishing boats rocked and swayed in the waves, the fish-like odor of lake weed fresh on the wind. I searched for the familiar face among the few brave fishermen who were hauling their poles and tackle boxes across the docks.

  Corey wasn’t at the woodworking shop, and his dad said we’d find him here when he got in from his morning fishing trip. As we reached the end of the docks, I spotted him tying up his fishing boat. Wool work gloves and a knit cap protected him from the cool spray of Superior’s waves.

  “Corey!”

  He looked up when I shouted, forcing a polite smile and lifting a hand, signaling for me to wait as he finished securing the boat. I felt Luke tense beside me, his breath quickening as he most likely mulled over their last encounter.