Falling

by Amber Jaeger

  A little squeeze of hurt gripped my chest. “Yeah, Linc’s usually around here somewhere. How did you know he was my brother?”

  “He seems ... disoriented.”

  I shrugged, unsettled by the change in conversation. I had never really been scared in Nightmare Town, it was my town after all. But Jordan was creeping me out—and starting to piss me off.

  His eyebrows turned down and his mouth narrowed. “I would almost say he’s disjointed.”

  I gulped and stood up again. Disjointed was not a word I liked. Lincoln’s funeral had been closed casket. It had to be, because of the accident and the fire it caused.

  “It’s almost like he’s in three places at once,” Jordan pressed, standing up to face me.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, preparing to wake myself up. My eyes flew open at Jordan’s touch, him gently taking my chin in his hand. “I think we could help each other,” he said softly.

  “I don’t need help with anything,” I said, afraid to pull my face from his grasp.

  Up close I could see he was older and more handsome than I had thought. My head only came up to his chin and with his face so close and tilted down towards mine I could see his eyes were a dark green framed by thick lashes. His eyebrows matched his chestnut hair perfectly and there was a trace of stubble along his jaw.

  “Your brother needs your help,” he said, bringing me back to the conversation. “Wouldn’t you do anything to help him?”

  The anger that had been brewing over his intrusion quickly overcame my school girl daze. “My brother is dead,” I snapped, jerking my chin out of his hand.

  “I think you’ve misunderstood me,” he said, suddenly apologetic.

  “It’s fine,” I said coldly, making my way for the open French doors.

  “I just want to be able to speak with you, learn from you, about where you’re from. And I can do something for you. I can help you get your brother back,” he cried just as I made it to the door.

  I swallowed hard, blinked hard. My anger at this intrusive dream stranger was expanding in my chest. I spun on both heels and walked back to him. “This is a dream. You are a dream.”

  “This is a dream,” he agreed. “So what’s the harm? You agree to ... meet with me, talk with me, and answer my questions. And I help your brother, wherever he is.”

  I wanted it to be true, that I really could give something and get my brother back in return. But it wasn’t. “That doesn’t ... that doesn’t even make sense. He’s dead, this is a dream, you aren’t real—”

  “Those things aren’t exactly true and you must know it,” he said, his face darkening.

  “Know what?” I cried. “I’m a sad girl who has recurring nightmares, end of story. No, end of dream, because I really don’t like this one.”

  “What I think,” he said quietly,”is that your brother still needs you. He needs your help. And I’m the only one offering.”

  “I ... I, uh,” I stammered. My eyes were huge and scratchy and full of tears, I was turning red from the waist up and I was screaming nonsense at a not-real stranger. “I have to go.”

  The sad, faraway look in his dark eyes almost made me apologize for my outburst but he cut me off with a short nod. “Think about it,” he said quietly, then stepped off the porch and started back down the beach path.

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and woke up.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS STILL DARK OUT. I was covered in sheen of sweat despite my slightly cracked window letting in the cool October air. The scent of the falling leaves was comforting.

  I changed my nightgown and wandered down to the kitchen for a glass of water, hoping my wakefulness would make the dream dissipate but it didn’t. Flashes of Jordan’s face and the pain his false promise evoked kept interrupting my forced relaxation.

  The only other person I had to know to have such vivid dreams was Linc. We would share them at breakfast; see whose was more outlandish. When we were younger they were all funny or oddball or plain old scary dreams. But as I got older my dreams became more and more about Nightmare Town. I had a home there, family and friends. I knew the whole town, where everyone lived, where they worked, what was for sale in the stores.

  As time went by, it was apparent that Linc’s ability to recount his dreams in perfect detail was neat, like a secret talent, and my nonstop dreams about the same town made me a freak. Maybe that’s why Jordan bothered me so much. I had never met anyone there who claimed to be from somewhere else. I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut. “Yep,” I whispered, “definitely a freak.”

  Wind was starting to pick up the leaves and swirl them around and I thought I felt a vibration of far off thunder. I shut the windows in the house and curled back up in bed, letting the weather lull me back to sleep. I didn’t dream about Nightmare Town, I didn’t dream about anything.

  Grandma woke me up, holding a skillet over my head. “Stove’s broke,” she said.

  I climbed out of bed with a tiny sigh. “Go comb your hair and put on the clothes I laid out in your chair.”

  “Pancakes,” she said, turning to leave the room.

  After managing to make the pancakes despite Grandma’s help, I searched our basement for the Halloween decorations. Every year Linc and I made up the whole house and front yard. We had spider webs and scarecrows and witches and hologram window clings and ghosts and tombstones and strings of lights in the shape of bats. Every year our autumns in Michigan were amazing and made for the creepiest Halloweens.

  I had barely hauled the last of the decorations up when Grandma came to me with the car keys. “Pumpkins?” she asked.

  I looked at the set of keys and shook my head. “No, Grandma, Dad left his car at the trucking lot.”

  “Pumpkins?” she asked again, shoving the keys under my nose.

  “No, Grandma,” I snapped. “Not today, I’m not driving Linc’s truck around, it’s too big.”

  Grandma narrowed her eyes. “Lots of pumpkins,” she said like a threat.

  I lost the stare down and finally snatched the keys from her. “I’m going to have to throw you up into the truck,” I warned her. She didn’t say anything, just smiled and settled a ridiculously large straw hat meant for a scarecrow onto her head.

  Parked on the side of the garage was Lincoln’s vehicle. It was a large SUV, big but not ridiculous—not until Linc had added giant tires, a lift kit, some weird pipe bumper thing and done something to the muffler to make it rumble when he accelerated. He said it was for off-roading but I thought it was just hard to get in, hard to drive and totally impossible for me to park. Or back up and not run things over.

  But the real reason I didn’t want to drive it was because it had been Linc’s baby and I didn’t want to disturb something he had left just as he wanted it. “He’s not coming back,” I reminded myself, standing in front of the driver side door. The handle was at eye level with me.

  It started fine and I was able to get Grandma and myself in with no injuries. She rolled her window down despite the cool air and rode blissfully with her eyes closed all the way to the farm. We got our pumpkins, hay and corn stalks and even managed to get them onto the front porch without actually throwing them out of the back of the truck.

  It hurt to be doing all those things without Linc.

  “Lunch?” I asked Grandma hopefully.

  “Grilled cheese,” she said.

  “Nap?” I asked her, again hopefully, after lunch.

  “Nap,” she agreed.

  She let me put her in her bed instead of sleeping on the couch and I climbed back into my own bed. I was thinking I should have combed the straw out of our hair before getting into bed and messing up clean sheets and then I was in Nightmare Town again.

  It was daylight and I was back in the general store. “Hey, here again so soon?” Abe called from behind the counter.

  I smiled and shrugged and let myself out, past the gas pumps and down the dirt road until I stood in front of my garage.

  I
slipped into the hot, dark room with its stale air. It smelled of must and motor oil. In the middle of the concrete floor lay a tarped mound, about the size of car. Curious, I pulled the covering away cautiously and was rewarded with a benign, torn apart, antique car. It seemed to be missing about half its pieces and the half present were giving way to rust. “Is every car here an antique?” I asked myself. I hadn’t seen any modern cars in Nightmare Town.

  I had never gone into the house through the garage and was a little surprised to find myself entering in through a part of the basement I hadn’t been in before. The peeling, avocado green walls of the concrete storeroom were almost as grimy as the tiny high set windows. Row after row of metal shelving units holding canned food and cleaning products marched down the long room. “Oh good,” I said, mumbling to myself again. “If the apocalypse comes to dream land I’ll be ready.” My house seemed pointlessly confusing at times. I had spent entire dreams lost in it—looking for rooms I had been to before or looking for a way out of a wing I hadn’t been to before.

  A door hidden in a dark corner led me into the basement I recognized, complete with wood paneled walls, plaid carpet and heaps of Christmas decorations. I found my way back up to the main floor, through the kitchen and back out on the porch from last night. This time I could clearly see the lake in the wide, sandy path through the dune forest.

  “Your lake is prettier than ours,” a voice behind me said. I turned slowly, my pulse bursting painfully in my ears. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to scare you. Again,” Jordan said.

  “You didn’t scare me,” I said weakly. I hadn’t expected, or wanted, to dream him up again.

  He settled back into his chair from last night and was quiet. I stood, fighting my irrational urge to run. I knew it was just a dream but my heart wouldn’t slow down and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He was even more handsome in the daylight and the blush creeping up my cheeks added to my urge to leave—immediately.

  “Lonely here today?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts. I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me since I was standing behind him and made a wide arc until I could see his face but was still closest to the door. I waited for more but he was silent, studying my face. “What I meant was, you seem lonely,” he finally said.

  A little jolt of pain shot through my heart. “Yeah, I guess a little.”

  “Was he your only friend?”

  I didn’t answer, just stared out at the lake.

  He tried again. “Did you think about what I said last night?”

  I gave a little laugh at that. “Of course not, this is just a dream.”

  Jordan stood up and came to stand in front of me. I barely managed not to step back. “Then why do I make you so uncomfortable?

  I shrugged, unable to explain it even to myself.

  “Let me help you and Linc. Won’t you even try, for your brother?”

  I sighed, wondering what it would really hurt to play along. “Okay, dream boy, what is it exactly you want?”

  His grin was barely confined to his face. “I just want to help. You agree to meet with me, talk with me, tell me about where you’re from. And in return I’ll help get your brother back.”

  I couldn’t play along, it hurt too much. The anger and fear confined by the tightness in my chest exploded out into the rest of body. “Once again, my brother is dead,” I snapped.

  “No, I don’t think that’s the right word,” he mused.

  “I don’t like you!” I hissed, backing towards the open French doors.

  “That’s too bad,” he said sadly, “because I rather like you. I couldn’t stop thinking about our talk last night. Where I’m from, there isn’t anyone like you, who knows about the things you know about. It’s so fascinating.” His smile and shining eyes were as enchanting as they were disturbing.

  “This is a dream,” I said slowly, unclenching my cramping hands. “You are a dream.”

  “This is a dream,” he agreed. “So what’s the harm?”

  “What’s the harm? You’re harming me right now! What a mean thing to joke about, bringing someone’s brother back from the dead.”

  I could see his hands begin to tighten. “I’m not ‘joking.’ I’m promising you something no one else can. And you would have to give so little in return.”

  I laughed and roughly brushed away the tears that were starting to burn my eyes. “Uh huh. And what exactly is it I would get?”

  “Your brother back.” I could see the color rising in his cheeks.

  “Right, back from the dead,” I replied bitterly.

  “He’s not dead,” he said in short clipped tones.

  My bitter amusement was drying up, as was my fascination of this bizarre, recurring dream. “That doesn’t even make sense,” I told him dully, reaching up for a lock of my hair to pull.

  “Does it have to?” he asked hurriedly, seeing I was going to wake myself up. “It’s just a dream, you said it yourself. You get what you want, I get what I want.”

  “I don’t get exactly what it is you want.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t like repeating myself. Yes or no.”

  I looked down for a minute, wondering how badly it was going to hurt in the morning when I woke and realized what I had dreamed wasn’t real.

  “All right,” I said slowly. “So that’s the deal? You show up here with a list of questions and if I answer them, I get my brother back?”

  “No, no, no,” he clucked, taking my arms and encircling my wrists with his hands. “I would help your brother first, right away. And for your gratitude, you would meet with me, talk with me, be like my own little encyclopedia.”

  “No funny business?” I asked, not believing I was going along with it. “You are dreaming!” I shouted at myself.

  “No funny business, I promise,” he said solemnly.

  “All right then. You get my brother back, I’ll be your encyclopedia. Although the first thing I’d have to tell you is that no one actually uses those anymore,” I half joked.

  He smiled and gave my wrists a squeeze. I felt a burst of heat and when he took his hands away, each wrist had a thin, seamless bangle around it. I pulled at one, then the other, unable to pull them off. As I moved my hands I could faintly see a gauzy chain linking the two together and then falling in a single strand to the ground where it seemed to trail off. “What is this?” I asked, cold dread coming over me.

  “I think your phone is ringing,” he said.

  “What?” I asked, utterly distracted by my new, seemingly permanent bracelets.

  “Wake up,” he replied, starting to fade out with the rest of my dream. “Your phone is ringing.”

  Chapter 3

  MY PHONE WAS INDEED RINGING and had been for quite some time. I shoved my covers off and nearly threw myself out of bed. Breathless and disoriented, I reached the phone in hall and almost knocked it to the floor answering it.

  “Hello,” I gasped, trying to get the telephone base back into the alcove.

  “Hi, my name is Anne Marie, I’m a nurse calling from St. Worth’s Hospital,” a rushed voice told me.

  “I ... what?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath. “Who are you trying to reach?” The nurse rattled off my phone number and a pang of unease knit my ribs tighter together. “Okay,” I told her. “Well, that’s my number. This is Bixby, what’s going on?”

  “Just a moment,” she said, then to someone away from the phone, “Bixby?”

  There was a long silence and then the nurse said, “Ma’am, I have a man here who appears to have been in an accident. We haven’t been able to get much information from him, but this is the number listed in his cell phone as ‘home.’”

  “Oh God,” I wheezed. “That’s my dad, he’s a truck driver—”

  “Ma’am,” the nurse tried to interrupt.

  “What’s wrong with him, is he okay? What hospital did you say?” I ran into my room as far as the phone cord would let me and started digging furiously through the dresser draw
ers I could reach.

  “We’re assessing him now, ma’am, at St. Worth’s but—”

  “Okay, I will be there as fast as I can, maybe an hour, I just have to get my grandma—”

  “Ma’am!” the nurse shouted into the phone. “This man seems a bit young to be your father—”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, eyeballing two shirts, deciding which was less dirty. “I think he secretly dyes his beard. Just tell him I’ll be there in an hour.” I knocked the phone back down trying to hang it up and rushed down the hall.

  “Grandma,” I hissed just inside her doorway. I took a calming breath then tried again.”Grandma, it’s time to get up. We have some errands to run.” Her Alzheimer’s made waking her up tricky. If startled awake, she remained in an impossible mood all day. But thankfully she just yawned, stretched and sat up. “Get dressed, okay? It’s cold outside today. And brush your teeth; I’ll fix your hair.” Thankfully she had long, straight hair and not the short permed hair most old ladies had.

  I tugged a Henley over a tank top that felt like it may have been on backwards and grabbed the first two socks I saw. My hair was neither straight nor easy to deal with, but I could make a passable messy ponytail.

  My brother’s beast of a vehicle required warming up and I ran out to start it, already dreading having to use it for the hour long highway drive to the hospital.

  Grandma was standing at the stove poking at the nubs the dials went on when I came back in. “Oh, Grandma, we don’t have time, how about McDonald’s instead?” She broke into a grin at that and let me put her hair in a French braid and wrestle her shoes on.

  About the time Grandma got her sausage biscuit, I realized I hadn’t looked up directions or even bothered to bring a map. I flew down the highway, barely registering the reds and golds of the trees. Neither of us spoke but Grandma gave a little, “Ahhhh,” as we crested the last big hill and saw the city and skyline spread out below us. Thankfully there were big blue signs that led me straight to the downtown.