by Sara Clancy
The door at his feet wrenched open and the colossal bird screeched in protest. It turned. The tips of its wings brushed across Benton’s forehead, sticking in the blood he hadn’t known was there, before it took flight. Despite its size, it moved as silently as a ghost. Benton fought against his seatbelt as he struggled to sit up. The second he was freed, he twisted to watch the owl gliding over the seemingly endless rolling hills of the prairies.
“Benton!”
He whirled back to the sound of his mother’s voice and instantly regretted the sharp movement. Pain exploded out across his forehead, bringing reality with it. They weren’t moving. The steady strum of the car’s engine had been replaced by a feral hiss that struggled to be heard over the colorful string of swear words his father was currently screaming.
“Honey, you’re bleeding!”
“I’m okay.”
He dabbed the back of his hand against his forehead. The slight touch was enough to provoke a new wave of pain, and he pulled his hand back to find fresh blood smeared on his wrist. It finally clicked and he noticed the strange angle the car was in. He shuffled to the door his mother held open and almost staggered to the side when his feet found the sloping earth. They weren’t on the thin road that stretched over the Alberta prairies. Now, the car was nose deep at the bottom of a soggy ditch.
Above them, his father paced back and forth across the road, throwing his arms around as if he were swatting away invisible bugs. At least his screaming had ebbed out into muttered ramblings. Benton helped his mother up the incline, biting down on his question over what had happened until they were all together.
“What happened?” his father snarled, his hands flying with renewed rage as he turned to face them. “You fell asleep in the car, didn’t you, Benton?”
“Theodore.”
Both of his parents only hurled their full names at each other when a line had been crossed. His father’s anger faltered for a moment. Holding Theodore’s gaze, his mother continued pronouncing each word carefully.
“They are night terrors. He can’t help it.”
Instead of calming down, the sharp tone sent Theodore into another tirade. “I know that, Cheyanne. Which is why we have a rule set in place. It’s simple but effective.” He locked his steel gray eyes onto Benton and snapped. “What’s the rule, Benton?”
Benton skirted his eyes to the side. “Don’t sleep in the car.”
“Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?” his father fumed.
“I’m sorry,” Benton said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just so exhausted.”
“You’re exhausted,” his father laughed, the sound somewhere between bitter and hysterical. “We’re all exhausted, Benton! You wake us up every night with your screams! I know you’re not the brightest spark, but I never thought you’d be so stupid as to let yourself fall asleep in a moving vehicle!”
“Theodore!”
His parents turned to each other. At that moment, Benton knew that he wasn’t part of this conversation anymore, just the topic being discussed. His father ranted on about all the possible outcomes a scenario like this could have ended in. What if there had been another car? What if the ditch had been deeper? What if the car had rolled? With the dream still firmly lodged in his brain, Benton wasn’t in any position to handle a lecture of hideous ways to die.
It had been close to seven years since his ‘night terrors,’ as his parents insisted on calling them, had started. That long without a decent night’s sleep had a way of grinding people’s resistance to dust. Not to mention their tolerance for each other. Mostly him. And as time wore on, they steadily stopped believing that it wasn’t his fault. The dreams, they still acknowledged, were beyond his control. The following impulses, and the fall out they created, were placed squarely on him.
His parents had put in place orders that he wasn’t to contact any of the people he dreamt of. As if it were that easy. Just something he could put aside, dismiss and ignore like any other ordinary nightmare. He told them it wasn’t so simple, but they never listened. Every time he tried to keep his silence, it felt like there was a burning railroad spike being hammered into his head. He could already feel the blistering heat at the base of his skull.
“I’m going to try and figure out if the engine’s okay,” he said over his shoulder as he scrambled back down the embankment.
Benton wasn’t exactly known for his grace, and his recent growth spurt had only made things worse. So, he took it as a win when he managed to keep his gangly legs under him instead of falling on his ass. Reaching the car, he leaned in through the driver’s side door and pulled the latch to pop the hood. The sunlight glistened off the screen of his mobile phone, beckoning him.
Don’t, he told himself as his fingers twitched to pick it up. He dredged up all the memories of what happened when he got involved and hurled them at his impulse. But none of the examples of how his life could implode could compete with the growing sensation that was currently driving deeper into his skin. It still felt like a bite, but now he could almost feel the poison pouring under his skin like acid. He slapped his hand over the nape of his neck, but the contact only made the pain spike. He hissed and clenched his teeth. It wasn’t going to get better. Not unless he gave in. Not unless he did what Death wanted.
With a quick glance back up at his parents, who had yet to take a pause in their argument, Benton snatched up his mobile and attached his headphones. They felt heavy in his hand as he scurried to the front of the car. He popped the hood and latched it into place, using it as a shield to hide him from his parents as he fumbled with the buttons. Technology was a wondrous thing. An anonymous email account gave him the needed protection.
For all the people that had dismissed his dreams over the years as simply that, no one had ever been able to explain to him why he knew their names and, more importantly, how to get in touch with them. As quickly as he could, he typed out Scott Molson’s personal email address and set up a message that he knew was probably going to be ignored.
Scott, you don’t know me, but something bad is going to happen. Be careful of a woman with long nails, and watch your back.
He stared at the message. No matter how many times he did this, he could never figure out how to word it in a way that people would take seriously. All he really wanted to type was, ‘You’re going to die.’ But history taught him that blatant honesty only ever led to dismissal, police investigations, or restraining orders. His mental debate came to a sudden stop when he heard his father crunching through the grass towards him.
“Benton? What are you doing?”
The pain in the back of his head flared. He hit the ‘send’ button with a trembling thumb as he used his other hand to force his earphones into place. There was no need to keep the screen up to know if the message had sent. He felt it. The second it went through, the boiling pain that had seeped into his spine began to ebb away, returning him to the steady throb of a normal headache. His father smacked the side of the car and called for him again. Benton brought up his saved music and cranked the volume until the beat threatened to fracture his skull. He skipped to halfway along a random song just as his father came up behind him.
“Benton!”
He turned around in what was his best impression of a startled person. From the pull of his father’s brow, Benton seriously began to question his acting abilities, but he wasn’t about to give up the story. It was hard to keep the relief from his face when he pulled out one of his earphones and the song was still clear through the tiny speakers. At least it was convincing that he wouldn’t have been able to hear his father coming.
“What’s up?” he asked as innocently as he could.
Again, he must have fallen a little flat. His father tried to subtly catch sight of the phone’s screen. The move was obvious and Benton took some solace in the fact that he wasn’t the only pathetic actor in the family. He was careful to keep his confused expression as his father eyed the device. Seeing that the song had, apparently
, been playing for a while, he seemed to ease up and his shoulders lost their tension.
“Just wanted to see how the car’s going?”
Benton knew for a fact that he was a far better liar.
“I only just started looking.” He squished his sneakers against the layer of weed-mangled muck that oozed around his feet. “But I’m pretty sure some of this got in there.”
“Probably,” Theodore wrinkled his nose as he examined the slop. “We’re not getting it out of here without a tow truck.”
“Sorry,” Benton mumbled and hunched over the engine.
Theodore placed a hand onto Benton’s shoulder and squeezed slightly. “I know you are. But you need to be more careful.”
“I will be.”
“And remember, you can’t control what you dream...”
He let the sentence trail off with an expectant look. Benton swallowed his resentment and completed the last of what had become a makeshift family mantra.
“But I can control who I tell.”
“Exactly.” His father squeezed his shoulder before patting him in a way that was both comforting and awkward. The list of whom his parents found appropriate to talk to about his dreams consisted of absolutely no one. “We need to make this place work. That’s going to take all of us working together. We can’t afford to keep moving.”
Benton nodded. Personally, he didn’t see the need to move this far out into the middle of nowhere. Toronto was a big place, just like all the other cities they had burned through. Shifting neighborhoods seemed like the better option. Quicker, cheaper, completed over a weekend. And able to be repeated numerous times before the majority of the population would catch on. Besides, it hadn’t been that bad. Not yet anyway. At least nowhere near as bad as it had been in other places.
But his parents stubbornly clung to the belief that a change in location would make all the difference. As if they just needed to find the right longitude and latitude to shove him in, and whatever was wrong in his head would magically be corrected. Benton didn’t know why Death had selected him to be some kind of demented groupie, but he knew that there wasn’t a chance things would get better. No one ever won against Death.
“It’s going to be different here, son. It has to be.”
Different. Benton let himself roll the thought around in his head for a moment before deciding to test the theory.
“Dad,” he said softly. “This one really got to me. There was this guy and–”
Theodore’s hand tightened on his arm before he could even finish the sentence.
“Just forget it, Benton. Everyone has bad dreams.”
“But these aren’t just bad dreams.”
“Yes, they are,” he said sternly.
“But, then why–”
“Son,” Theodore said sharply. “You know this kind of talk scares your mother.”
A long sigh pulled from Benton’s chest as his eyes drifted to the ground. He nodded. So much for different, he thought before chastising himself for letting his hopes rise even that high. Stupid.
“There’s a car coming,” Cheyanne called down from the road.
Theodore shared a slight smirk with Benton. As if the last fifteen minutes had never taken place.
“Who is going to stop for three strangers in the middle of nowhere, huh?” he asked with a chuckle.
Benton shrugged and watched his father awkwardly climb back up to the road. He didn’t follow. A broken down motor in a ditch held a lot more appeal then introducing himself to some people who were probably going to hate him in a week anyway. While he turned off the phone and shoved it into his back pocket, he secured the earphone back into place. To perfect the ‘please keep away from me’ vibe, he pulled the hood of his favorite worn down sweater over his hair. So what if it had taken him close to an hour to spike it up just right? Sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.
As he began to check the cords and cables, the rumbling engine of the new arrival stopped and he heard the sure thump of a door closing.
“Hello,” said a voice far younger than Benton expected.
Since there were only a few ways that the following conversation could turn out, Benton let his attention drift. More so after his mother started weaving a story about how a rabbit had darted across the road and avoiding it had sent them into the ditch. But, while he didn’t have any interest in what was being said, he couldn’t deny a certain degree of curiosity. He leaned to the side just enough to catch sight of the girl his parents were currently lying to.
“Wow.”
That one word summed her up. Benton took in her amazing cheekbones, wide blinding smile, and rich brown eyes that somehow still managed to be bright, and he couldn’t think up another word to describe her. She talked with her hands. Each movement making the straight edge of her silky hair brush against her hips. The sway was kind of hypnotic. His mother pointed down in his direction and Benton threw himself back under the hood of the car. It occurred to him a heartbeat later that fleeing was probably the creepiest option he could have picked. His stomach dropped when he heard them coming down the hill. You couldn’t just wave? he snapped at himself. Even a nod would have been better.
“Benton!” Cheyanne called. He was really starting to hate his name.
He ducked back out before she could call for him again. A jolt ran through him when he found himself faced with a beaming smile. Now that she was closer, he was pretty sure that she was around his own age.
“Hi,” she waved, and he felt an answering smile tug at his lips.
“Hey.”
Cheyanne placed a hand on the stranger’s back and gestured to Benton with the other. “This is our son, Benton. Benton, this is, I’m sorry, we didn’t catch your name.”
She turned her bright eyes onto Cheyanne, her smile never diminishing. “I’m Nicole Rider, Mrs. Bertrand.”
Theodore seemed just as charmed at her manners as Cheyanne was.
Benton’s brow furrowed and he asked, “How do you know our last name?”
Catching onto his line of thinking, his parents quickly exchanged a glance, both clearly worried that their reputation had preceded them. In unison, they turned back to Nicole.
“Oh, no. I just took a guess.” She noticed their unease and smiled all the brighter. “We don’t get many new people in Fort Wayward. The last time someone moved to town that wasn’t related by blood or marriages was.” She pursed her lips in thought. “I want to say the 50’s. I’m part of the welcoming committee.”
“You don’t get new people, but you have a welcoming committee?” Benton asked.
His words were instantly met with hissed reprimands from both parents. He didn’t care.
“Well, no, not technically,” she said with a hint of bashfulness that she quickly recovered from. “When I heard you were coming, I decided to form one. It’s just me, actually. But I do have a great welcome basket I was going to drop over tomorrow morning.”
Something in the explanation didn’t sit right with Benton and he found himself drawing out the word ‘right’ into three syllables.
“I made muffins,” she said with pride.
He nodded. “Great.”
“That is very kind of you, Nicole,” Cheyanne said before throwing Benton a sharp glare.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Nicole said, “but are you bleeding?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s just a bump.” Benton pulled the hoodie firmer onto his head.
“I have first aid training and a full kit in my truck.”
Of course you do, Benton thought. It was something in the way she spoke, he decided, that just made her seem fake. Every word came out dripping with a bubbly energy that was normally only displayed by pageant contestants, airline stewards, and Stepford wives. No one is ever that happy. She had to have some kind of end game in the works, and he didn’t want to be blindsided by it.
“It’s nothing,” Cheyanne quickly assured. “But we do need to get to the local hospital if you could spare the tim
e to take us.”
“Of course, Mrs. Bertrand. If you’re sure it’s nothing pressing, we can move your suitcases from your car to mine. That way, when I drop you home after the hospital, you’ll have everything you need.”
“We’ll be there for at least an hour,” Theodore said. “We can’t expect you to hang around that long.”
“The point of the welcoming committee is to be welcoming,” she said with that pristine smile that looked riveted into place.
The trails of her beaded choker necklace rattled as she turned to look at each of them in turn. Its pattern of vibrant orange, yellow, and red brought out the golden hues in her skin tone. It made her seem all the more like a sunbeam personified.
“It won’t be any bother at all. And I can pass the time by checking in with Barry for you.”
“Barry?” Theodore asked.
“Barry Smoke. He runs the town’s garage and tow service. It’s only a few streets over.”
Benton checked with both his parents and, apparently, he was the only one who thought that the offer was just a little too welcoming.
Chapter 2
Benton pulled another hunk off of the muffin Nicole had given him. ‘Given’ wasn’t exactly accurate. Insisting that he take it, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of it, was more in line. It was quite good. Of course, it was, a voice still mumbled in his head. Honestly, two different kinds of chocolate and peppermint in a muffin sounded like a horrible idea, but she made it work. He took another bite. He wasn’t hungry. He just needed a way to pass the time that didn’t involve picking at the band aid that now covered a rather large part of his forehead.
The plastic chair was uncomfortable and positioned in a busy area of the one level hospital. The remaining floors of the brick building were scattered with other businesses, including his new therapist. His parents had gone up to see him first, which he had expected. After all, it was awkward to ask a stranger to dope up your son when he’s standing in the same room.
When the nightmares had begun, Benton had been excited to go to therapy. His childish understanding was that it was someone who was paid to listen to you. That idea had called to him like a siren’s song. To be heard. Back then, he had been so sure that if he could just get someone alone for an hour and explain everything that was happening to him, he would be able to make them believe him. Believe that something was wrong, that his nightmares were true. That he was predicting the real deaths of real people. But reality had fallen very far from his ideals. He discovered the vast wasteland that existed between being heard and being listened to.
