by Amber Jaeger
“He’ll be gone in a few days,” I muttered to myself.
Walking out of the hospital, I started to feel sick. My happiness was being sabotaged with questions I didn’t have the answers too. Was he really going to be okay? Where had he been? I looked down, realizing I had been fiddling with my bracelets while walking and had to swallow back bile. It wasn’t possible some dream guy had brought my brother back from the dead and now had some type of claim on me. I vowed to find the bolt cutters as soon as we got back home then ran to catch up with Grandma.
It took me three attempts to safely back out of parking spot without hitting the cars that had evilly parked next to and behind me. I could feel Grandma eyeing me and ignored her best I could. When we safely got onto the highway, she finally spoke up.
“What will we tell everyone?” she asked.
I groaned. That question hadn’t occurred to me yet. “I don’t know, Grandma.”
I was exhausted by the time we finally got back home and parked the truck practically in the middle of the front yard. I offered to make Grandma breakfast but she ignored me, choosing to curl up in her armchair. The couch was tempting but first I had to the search the garage.
The bolt cutters were on the shelf above Dad’s workbench. With one of the elongated handles pinned beneath my knee and the other resting against my shoulder, I carefully placed the delicate bangle in the sharp beak of the tool. The tight fit of the bracelet wedged the points into my wrist and I swallowed hard before I carefully brought the one handle down. The bracelet was caught and pinched ... and nothing. I shoved the handles together harder and still nothing. With the leverage from my upper body I could crank the handles together almost a foot closer but the bracelet stayed intact. Frowning, I sat back, wiped the sweat off my face and inspected the bracelet. Not even a scratch. I experimentally clicked the handles together in the air and the little metal beak snapped together like it should have. A thin piece of chain snaking out of one of the workbench drawers was clipped like a piece of overcooked spaghetti. So I knelt back onto the garage floor but placed the other bracelet in harm’s way.
I heaved and pushed on the handles more desperately as I started to realize what shouldn’t have been possible. The bracelets were real, I really got them in a dream and they really weren’t coming off. With a final, panicky attempt, I snapped the handle down as hard as I could. It sprung out of my hand and skittered away on the garage floor. I saw the blood before I felt the pain.
It oozed steadily from my wrist and I grabbed a dirty shop towel to press to it rather than let a drop drip to the floor of my dad’s garage. His garage was sacred; he even laid down card board when working on any of the cars.
Despite not being very large or deep, the cut wouldn’t stop bleeding. With the towel wrapped around my wrist, I sat down on the couch to time myself for ten minutes of applying pressure.
Grandma’s gentle snores had me almost asleep when my dad banged in the door.
Chapter 5
HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING, JUST came in and turned on the news. The forecast showed perfect autumn weather for the coming week then switched back to the newscasters. “An incredible story we’re working on here tonight,” the man began.
“That’s right,” the woman with the huge hair said, taking over. “Two weeks ago a terrible car accident took the lives of two young West Michigan athletes and tonight we hear there are new developments in the case. We’ll go to Marty outside St. Worth’s Hospital.”
“Oh, no,” I groaned.
“Thanks, Jessica,” the grunt said, standing in front of the hospital’s huge sign. “Michigan State Police have released a statement verifying that a person involved with that September nineteenth car accident has been admitted to this hospital for treatment of injuries sustained in that accident. They are not releasing the name at this time or how the person was involved in the accident. It was previously reported that it had involved only one car and both passenger and driver were killed on impact. The State Police are asking anyone with additional information to call and we’ll keep you updated as new information comes in.”
Dad folded his arm and turned towards me. “You know what this means?” he said.
He looked angry and for the life of me I didn’t know why. “No?”
“Because,” he shouted. “We can’t explain this and there’s going to be a ton of people crawling up our asses until we do!”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So what?”
“Look, Bixby,” he snapped. “You may not think it’s a big deal watching your grandma and the house while I’m gone on the road but anybody else would. We’ve talked about this, don’t you listen?”
I tried not to audibly grind my teeth. “Yes, I just really don’t think anyone trying to figure out what happened to Linc is going to be too interested in whether or not you leave your kids—”
“You may not think so, but that’s how a guy I know lost his kids. Police did some investigation after one of them was in an accident and next thing he knows he’s lost them both to his ex-wife.”
My heart stopped at his words. “Well, you don’t have an ex-wife,” I said coldly. “Mom is dead, so I guess you would be stuck with us anyway.”
His face fell just a little and I almost felt bad.
“It’ll be okay, Dad,” I said quietly. “Linc’s okay, the police will figure out what happened and everything will be great.”
All he said was, “Make me some lunch; I’m going to hop in the shower. And don’t answer the phone!”
I wasn’t halfway through grilling up sandwiches before I had to just unplug it. Apparently everyone was at home and watching the news. Almost all the calls were from Linc’s friends, people who hadn’t deigned to speak to me when he was alive or after we all thought he was dead. Even at his funereal they stood in a big clump right in front of the casket as if they loved him and missed him more than his own family did. I sat in the back with Grandma, cold and silent and ignored by everyone.
Linc had tried to get his friends to include me, to get one of the guys to take me to a dance or to get one of the bazillion idiot girls vying to be his girlfriend to invite me out. They somehow never got around to asking, but I never mentioned it to Linc and neither did they. Because no matter how great he thought I was, they did not. Linc finally had to settle for an uneasy personal truce. He didn’t try to force me on his friends anymore but they weren’t allowed to say anything disparaging about me. And it was okay. I wasn’t tormented or forced to spend time with people I despised. I just became sort of invisible to everyone but Linc.
My eyes burned but I didn’t cry. I was happy. Linc was okay. Things could go back to the way they always were. And my cut had stopped bleeding.
I wound a new bandage around my wrist and pulled my sleeve down, hoping no one would notice. My mind skirted around the black hole of the bracelets and who had put them on me and how Linc had managed to be okay. I couldn’t think about it and be normal for my dad and grandma at the same time.
She wandered into the kitchen just before him and we all sat down to lunch. Never one to pray, my dad didn’t disappoint, just started shoving food in his mouth. I hesitated, feeling thanks were owed to someone, just not sure who.
“Eat,” my dad grunted.
“When are we going back up to see Linc?” I asked.
“I told him we’d be back before dinner.”
“Good,” I sighed. “That’ll give me some time to get a few things ready while Grandma naps.”
“You nap too, Bixby,” Dad snapped.
“Oh, I’m okay—”
“I mean it, Bixby, you look like crap. You rest too or you’re not going tonight,” he thundered. If my mom had been alive, she would have explained that as, “Oh honey, see, he cares about you!” I just took a deep breath and reminded myself in a few days time he would be out of my hair.
I dragged my feet putting lunch and dishes away. I prayed Grandma would put up a fight, lying down in bed in the middle of the
afternoon. But she didn’t and finally I was in bed myself, staring at the ceiling and mentally chanting, “Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep.”
But with no sleep the night before, I couldn’t help but close my eyes. I had a few peaceful moments of mindless drifting black before the crackle of the fireplace brought me around. I lay still, eyes squeezed shut. I didn’t have a fireplace and neither did Abe’s general store.
“Are you awake yet or not?”
I sighed, opened my eyes and sat up. The bed, with its ornate quilt and wrought iron frame, wasn’t the bed I usually saw as mine in Nightmare Town and neither was the huge room. With the flagstone floor, enormous river rock fireplace and thick carved beams, the room was rustic but imposing. A glance out the beveled glass windows showed trees changing color, gentle waving green and a glint that may have been the big lake. It was beautiful, foreign and not my house. In the corner sat the woman who asked if I was awake. She tucked her knitting down into a basket, still waiting for my answer.
“No, I’m dreaming. Where’s the General Store from here?” I asked.
She frowned and got up from her rocking chair. “You mean the stores?”
“No, I mean The Store, Abe’s store.”
She shook her head slowly. “You’ll have to ask Jordan.”
That was precisely the answer I didn’t want. “This is Nightmare Town, right?”
She shrugged and reached into a large wooden wardrobe. “Let’s just get you dressed and you can ask him yourself.”
I felt little pin pricks of sweat on my upper lip. “Right,” I said. “But I don’t really want to do that. And since this must be part of Nightmare Town, I’m the boss and I say this is just a dream and I want to go to my house.”
The woman didn’t say anything, just pulled out and held up two dresses in jewel tones, one blue and one green.
I backed away, shaking my head. “No way.”
She advanced, holding the dresses higher. “They’re both very pretty, although I think the green would be better on you. Besides, you can’t wear that!”
I glanced down and saw I had on a thin linen nightgown. I squeezed my eyes shut. “This is a dream, this is my dream and I want to go to my house.”
Her hand was cold on my wrist. “You may be dreaming,” she said quietly,”but this is his dream. And those bracelets tell me you have a promise to uphold. So which is it, the blue or the green?”
Hot tears squeezed out between my eyelids. “This is all real?”
“It is.”
“This must happen ... often then?”
She shrugged and slipped the dress off its hanger. “Not with him. And I wasn’t here when his uncle was younger. Maybe with the others.”
“Others?”
She finally started to look annoyed.”If you would just get dressed, you could ask him all these questions yourself.”
I squirmed out of the nightgown and into the green dress. Happily, it was not as low cut as it looked on the hanger. I ran my fingers through my hair and wiped my cheeks and turned towards the door.
“You’ll be fine,” she said.
I nodded, finally fully realizing I had no idea what to expect.
She put her hand on my wrist again. “My name is Ash. I’ll be here every night when you wake up, or if you need anything while you’re here.”
I nodded again, not trusting my voice.
Ash opened the door and ushered me out into a cavernous hallway. More smooth river stones ran the floor and halfway up the walls where thick wooden columns and beams took over. The arched ceiling was high overhead and everything smelled vaguely of campfire. There were no carpets to soften the floor and I could feel the chill through my thin slippers.
All the doors we passed were closed and all the windows too high up for me to really see out of. I could hear a bustle of activity ahead and felt myself slowing.
Ash grabbed my arm and pulled me along out into a great stone room. The smooth stones sloped down into limestone that was cut into stairs wide enough for giants. The two fireplaces on either side of the room could have roasted a whole moose but the light their fires gave off couldn’t reach the ceiling. Down the stairs we went into a wide, deep hallway. Beveled glass windows lined each side. Eventually we came to a heavy, banded door. Ash knocked, opened it and ushered me in.
Compared to the yawning rooms and halls and cold stone and glass, the new room seemed almost cozy. The ceiling’s cathedral height was the lowest I had seen. The floors, while stone, were covered in thick carpets detailed in bright greens and violets. I couldn’t tell what the walls might have been as they were entirely covered in bookshelves. Small windows interrupted every three or four columns and seemingly random artifacts peppered the shelves, placed in front of, behind and in between books.
Jordan sat in the middle of the room in one of two enormous armchairs arranged artfully in front of a gaping fireplace. He didn’t get up or say anything, just watched me as I made my way to the empty chair. I sat, uncomfortable and unsure of what was coming next.
“I’m glad to finally see you here,” he said after an intolerably long time.
That snapped me out of my insecurity and I remembered my questions. “Where exactly am I?” I asked.
“Here, with me,” he said vaguely, waving his hand to indicate the room.
I frowned. “Yeah, I got that. I mean, is this your Nightmare Town? Or mine? I know it’s not real.”
“Not real to you, perhaps,” he said with a frown of his own. “This isn’t where I dream, this is where I live.”
I tugged up a shoulder of the slippery green dress. “Okay. So, where exactly—geography wise—are we?”
“About the same place you were when you fell asleep.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? I don’t remember any big, spooky log cabin castles in Hemlock Bay.”
“We aren’t in Hemlock Bay,” he said, taking an ornate glass with a long stem from the small table between us. He motioned for me to do the same. “You could think of it more as Hemlock Bay being in my backyard.”
I ignored the glass on the table. “So we’re what, a mile, two miles, from my house?”
“You wouldn’t get there by walking,” he said.
“Then we can’t be that close,” I snapped.
He shrugged. “Same land, same moon and stars and all that.”
I tried a different approach. “All right, so how did I get here? Sleep?”
“Partly. But for you, it’s mostly those,” he said, pointing at the bracelets.
My mouth hardened into a thin line. “About those. I really don’t like them. They remind me of … manacles.”
“They aren’t meant to be,” was all he said.
“I want them off,” I insisted.
He frowned. “We made a deal. You promised.”
“Right,” I said, leaning forward. “In a dream I promised a figment of my imagination to answer a few questions and when I woke up, my brother was alive again and I have these on, which I can’t get off.”
His eyes narrowed as he saw the bandage on my right wrist. “You tried to take them off?”
“Of course I did!” I nearly shouted. “In the middle of my best, weirdest day ever I realized I had on pretty handcuffs with little wispy smoke chains that no one else could see!”
He leaned forward and gently took my wrist and unwound the bandages. He made a little tut tut noise, swept a finger over the gouge and sat back. In place of my wound was a thin scar. The bracelet and its chain were still in place.
“They aren’t manacles. Just a way for me to be sure you keep your end of the promise.”
“So … what? If I don’t talk, you’re going to string me up by them?” I asked, not joking. I could imagine a dank dungeon somewhere below us.
“Not at all,” he said with a laugh. “It’s just a way to draw you here, like a tethering, like an anchor. When you fall asleep, now you’ll drift here.”
“Which is not where I live, not Nightmare
Town, not a dream for you …?” I trailed off, running out of options as to where I might literally be.
Annoyed, I snatched up the fancy glass and took a swig that I promptly choked on.
“Wine?” I asked, attempting a more polite cough.
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m a little underage and I didn’t bring my fake ID.”
“Ah!” he cried, his face lighting up. “Now we get to what you are here for.”
I scrambled up out of my chair. “Hey, I’m not here for anything like—”
Confusion then amused understanding quickly crossed his face. “No, of course not,” he said, waving me back into my chair. “I meant questions. You’re here to answer questions. That was the agreement, correct?”
Tension flowed out of my body and left my muscles shaky. I nodded.
“So explain. What does underage mean? What is a fake ID?”
“Um, underage means being too young to drink and a fake ID is what people use to try to make people believe that they aren’t.”
“And you have one of those?” He tucked a dark wave of hair behind his ear. I tried not to watch every little move he made but his handsome face and wild hair and strong body were mesmerizing.
My cheeks began to burn and I struggled to remember the question. “Well, I have a real one, a driver’s license.”
“And that’s so you can drink wine?”
My eyebrows furrowed together. “No, it’s so I can drive a car. But it also shows my age so that if I tried to buy wine or whatever, they could see I wasn’t old enough and not sell it to me.”
Now he seemed confused. “Cars, right?”
“I … wait, what?”
“You drive a car? And you can’t do it without your license?”
“Well, I could, but not legally. And if I got caught I’d be in a lot of trouble.”
“Why?”
I took a small breath and looked around the ornate room, smoothed my fancy dress and returned my gaze back to his eerily handsome face.
