by Sophia Sharp
She laughed and twirled around, spreading her hands to feel the flora brush against them. Hunter laughed too, and sped down the hill, taunting Nora to follow. She ran after him, right through the tall grass and colorful flowers. Her toe caught something and she tripped, but the soft dirt cushioned her fall, and she didn’t even bother to get up as she rolled down the hill laughing and giggling.
Hunter was waiting at the bottom. She landed right at his feet, and another fit of giggles overtook her. He pulled her up, laughing alongside her.
“This is wonderful!” she exclaimed, for what must have been the tenth time. “Everything about this place! The feeling of freedom, the absolute control, the endless possibilities…it’s wonderful!”
“Glad you like it.” Hunter smiled.
“I’ve been wondering, is it possible to bring things into this world?”
“Like what?”
“Objects, maybe?”
“You have to know it very well. Like…” he thought for a moment, and Nora jumped as his Camaro fell down behind her.
“Your car?” She raised an eyebrow.
He spread his hands defensively and smiled. “I’ve been working on it for a very long time. You try.”
“On what?” Nora asked.
“Something simple, at first. A purse maybe. It’s just like anything else here, you have to picture it down to its finest details.”
“Hmm. Okay.” Nora thought for a second, and then a heavy book appeared in her hands.
“A book?” This time, Hunter raised an eyebrow.
“No, not just any book.” She threw it to him. He caught it and flipped it over in his hands. “Our math book?” He chuckled.
“That’s how all this started, after all.”
“That’s true,” Hunter said.
Just then, a shiver ran down Nora’s spine. She turned back, wondering what caused it. Hunter caught her movement.
“What is it?” He moved closer to her.
“I thought I felt something.” She looked around, then shook her head. “Never mind. It’s gone now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so, yes.”
Hunter extended his hand to her. “Want to see something really cool?”
“Of course.” Nora slid her hand into his.
Again, landscapes raced by, streaking alongside Nora. When they stopped, Nora found herself standing with Hunter before a beautiful lake. It was hidden deep in the crest of a mountain, the far side cradled by cliffs of ragged stone. The water was crystal clear, casting perfect reflections of the sun’s rays. The shore contained only the smoothest blue-gray pebbles.
“I found this place once after walking for an entire day through the dream world,” Hunter explained. “I come here sometimes to think.”
“I can see why.” Nora inhaled deeply. The air here felt even fresher than at the lake where they’d begun. A bird sang in the distance, and the rustle of trees came from all around them. The only thing that foiled the illusion was the slight edge of fuzziness that lay upon all the items of this world.
Hunter let go of her hand and strolled up to the lake. He bent down to dangle his fingers in the water. He picked out a round stone, got up, and skipped it across the lake.
“Can you skip rocks, Nora?” he asked.
“Uh…no, not really,” she admitted.
“Come on over, then. I’ll teach you.” He smiled at her. “It’s easy.”
Nora walked to him, but as she got closer, that feeling of being watched returned. She glanced back, but seeing nothing, continued on. Hunter tossed her a stone, and she stumbled catching it.
“Come on, that’s the easy part,” he teased. Nora grinned at him devilishly, and chucked the rock as hard as she could into the lake.
It fell lifelessly into the water without a single skip.
“Well, you sure have the strength for it.” Hunter laughed and threw another rock himself. His skipped five times before sinking. Then he went over to help Nora.
For the next twenty minutes, Hunter tried teaching Nora how to duplicate his feat – without much success. Still, they had fun, laughing at her attempts while playfully poking fun at one another. By the end of it, Nora’s arm was absolutely exhausted, and her shoulder burned. She collapsed, defeated but laughing, onto the ground.
As she fell, that feeling of unseen eyes returned. It was stronger than before.
Nora was certain somebody else was here. Just as Hunter threw one last stone across the water, she snapped her head back quickly – and froze when she saw a man, dressed in all black, peek out from a faraway tree. Their eyes met for a flicker before the man disappeared.
Hunter touched her arm, and she jumped, startled. She hadn’t even heard him approach. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I just saw somebody.”
Hunter squatted down beside her, suddenly serious. “What do you mean?”
“At that tree, over there.” She pointed. “He disappeared right when I saw him.”
Hunter relaxed. “Sometimes people drift here, I told you that,” he explained. “They only stay a moment and then return to their regular dreams.”
“This man was looking at me, though. I felt his gaze.”
“What?” Hunter’s eyes became laser sharp, and he focused on her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I felt it once or twice before. I thought I was imagining things.”
“This man…” Hunter scanned the landscape surrounding them, his eyes darting restlessly from place to place. “What did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a very good look at him,” Nora admitted. “And he was far away. But he had a black coat on, and a black hat. Everything about him was black. Except his skin, it was pale white, much like…yours.” Nora gulped the words.
“What?” Hunter demanded. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Hunter shoved a hand back through his hair. “Shit! Shit, take my hand,” he told her urgently.
“Why?”
“We need to leave. Now!”
Nora reached up to grasp his hand. On contact, a blast of cold jolted through her bones, and everything around her turned dark. She felt herself fading. She felt her body begin to disintegrate as the world around her started to crumble.
The only thing she was sure of was Hunter’s hand, gripping her own tightly. Then she felt heat, the flare of molten-hot rock churning down a river of lava, and she started to fall. Direction became meaningless, and she fell for infinity, for eons, in no direction and in them all, with no sense of time or space to guide her. She fell through layers of heat and layers of cold, and the frost from all the world’s glaciers froze her body as the heat of a thousand suns pulsed in her veins.
She fell…and was ripped back into her body on top of Hunter’s gray Camaro in front of the lake.
Nora’s eyes popped open. A light rain had started to trickle down while they were asleep. Her clothes were already damp. She felt Hunter’s hard body at her side and looked up. He blinked, and came to as she had. He looked at her. Then he pushed her aside and leapt off the car. He started to pace back and forth in front of her, obviously troubled.
“Hunter, what’s wrong?” Nora asked worriedly. “What happened back there?”
Hunter didn’t answer. He kept pacing back and forth.
“Hunter, tell me what’s going on!” Nora demanded.
“I’m not supposed to bring you there,” he said, half to himself. Then he spoke louder. “Get in the car.”
He unlocked the door and climbed in before Nora even had a chance to get off the hood. She jumped down, opened the door, sat inside, and looked at Hunter as she slammed the door shut. He looked worried, uncertain, troubled, and conflicted all at once.
Without speaking, he started the engine and backed the car up.
“Where are we going?” Nora asked.
“I need to get you home.”
“Why? Hunter, what’s going on?”
“I ne
ed time to think.” He turned the car around and sped down the dirt road away from the lake.
“Does it have to do with that man I saw?” Nora asked.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure.”
“Hunter, look at me!” Nora practically screamed the words. His behavior had her on edge. He hit the brakes hard, causing her to fly forward and hit the dashboard. She grunted on impact. “Why did you do that?” she demanded angrily.
“You told me to look at you.” Hunter turned his head to stare right at her.
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Nora said under her breath, but returned his stare. “Hunter, you have to tell me. Is this…any of this…dangerous?”
“I’m not sure.” He sighed. “I can’t say.”
“Well, what can you say?” she demanded furiously. “You brought me into this, and if there’s any danger, I need to know!”
“What can I say?” he repeated. “Not much. Not much that would make sense to you. But…this might. There are others…like me. My kind. They’re dream walkers. Where we just went, Nora, that was your dream. To access it, I needed your touch. To bring you into it. Everybody has their own dreams. Most occur in the safety of their own imagination, but from time to time, people access the same place we went to. That place is the same for everyone, and yet everyone has their own version of it. I…” He paused, obviously struggling for a way to explain. She waited, without interrupting him.
“I know I’m not making much sense. Think of…of a Blu-ray disk. If you have a movie on one, and I have another disk of the same movie, the two disks exist as separate objects. But if you put them into a player, they’ll both output the same thing. They’ll play the same movie. But one of the disks is mine, and the other is yours. It’s the same thing with the dream world. A person can’t access another person’s dream world like we just did…not consciously, anyway, and not at all most of the time.
“But there are some who can transcend that limitation. They don’t need the touch. I never thought they’d notice if we went into your dream. But they jump from person to person’s dreams like frogs jump from lily to lily over a pond. In between the dreams…an abyss exists. We touched it briefly when we left. But that’s the only time you or I reach that abyss. To go to it consciously, to jump from dream to dream…” He shivered. “To go to it consciously means you might lose yourself forever. But dream walkers can do that.”
“Wait.” Nora held up a hand. “Are you telling me somebody else was in my dream?”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure. I need time to think. I don’t know what attracted his attention. I was sure that our trip would be inconspicuous. I was sure, dammit!” Then he shoved the car into gear and continued driving forward. But something he said stuck out in Nora’s mind.
“What did you mean when you said ‘your kind’?”
“Others like me,” he replied absently. Then he looked at her. “Where do you live? I need to get you home.”
She told him the address. Before she knew it, they were on the highway, heading toward her house.
They spent the drive in silence. Every time Nora looked over at Hunter, he appeared to be even more concentrated on the road ahead. Soon enough, he pulled up in front of her house. She got out of the car and thanked him for the drive.
As he drove off, she realized something: She’d never given him directions to her home.
Chapter Eleven
~A Visit~
The next day at school, Nora sat idly beside her friend Kelly. They were in second period science class, and the teacher was taking attendance. As names were being called out, followed by answers of “Yes” or “Here” from the students, Kelly told Nora about a new boy she had met. But Nora was only listening with half a mind. Mostly, she was thinking about what happened the day before. About everything that happened the day before.
From learning about the dream world, to experiencing its wonders with Hunter, to that strangely quiet drive home – all the events swirled in her head. Mostly, though, her thoughts kept wandering back to what happened at the very end. After she saw that mysterious man, Hunter pulled them out of the dream world so very quickly. There was definitely something there…something he wasn’t telling her.
“Nora?”
Nora looked up and saw her teacher looking right at her. Everyone else in the class was staring at her, too. She realized the teacher must have said her name three or four times without it registering. She blushed.
“Yes?” she asked meekly.
“You’ve been requested in the principal’s office.”
“Really?” Nora was confused. She’d never been in trouble –not counting Mrs. Millburn’s detention—before. What could this be about? “Do you know why?”
Her teacher frowned. “They don’t tell me why, Nora, and I don’t concern myself. Get going, now, so you can be back before you miss all of today’s lecture.”
“Yes, Mrs. Donnelley.” Nora looked at Kelly, who shrugged at her, and then walked out of the classroom into the hall.
As she walked toward the office, questions popped into her head. What was this about? Could it be something to do with the detention she’d received in math? No, that had already been dealt with. Maybe it was something to do with what happened with Brady? She hoped not. She knew Hunter wouldn’t say anything, but could one of those guys have told on him? She might be in trouble, then.
Not wanting to take any chances, Nora decided she would peek through the glass panel doors of the office before walking in. If any of the guys from Brady’s group were there, she would turn away and go straight back to class. She didn’t want to deal with them now.
As she got closer to the office doors, she pressed herself against a wall and looked around the corner. She immediately recognized Principal Cole leaning against the counter. He was talking to two men. Their attention was diverted off to the side, so their heads were turned. But Nora would have recognized one of them from anywhere.
It was the man from the dream.
Nora’s vision blurred in panic. She became dizzy. She pulled back so she wouldn’t be seen and leaned heavily against the wall.
The same man from the dream. She was certain of it. He wore the same dark clothes and had the same milky pale skin.
She became acutely aware of her heart pounding loudly in her chest. Her breaths were short and ragged. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. Her entire body was signaling, Danger! Danger!
She didn’t know what to do. What was that man doing here? How did he find her? She started to walk away. Slowly, at first, but then her pace quickened, until she broke out in a run.
She had to find Hunter. He would know what to do.
But she didn’t know where he was. She knew he’d be in class – she just didn’t know which one. She ran through the halls. How many classrooms were there? Dozens, at least, but she knew the teachers. She knew what subjects were being taught in which rooms for students in her grade.
But she didn’t know Hunter’s schedule.
Picking at random, she flung the door open to one classroom, interrupting the teacher mid-sentence. Everybody stared at her. She quickly scanned the faces, and not seeing Hunter, she ran back out.
She burst into another class. Hunter wasn’t there either. The teacher yelled and followed her into the hallway as she backed out. Nora ran on, leaving the cries behind. Another classroom. Quickly, she opened the door and scanned the faces. Hunter wasn’t there.
Desperate, she ran to another class. Still, Hunter wasn’t there. Dammit, but he was taking the same subjects as her! All of the students in her grade were. Everybody was taught by the same teachers. He had to be in one of these classrooms!
She ran into another room. No Hunter. Another room. Still, no Hunter. The man’s presence in the office weighed heavily on her. She was getting more and more anxious. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her into a room at the far end of the hall. She was panting, and her hair was a disheveled mess. She had to catch her bre
ath before looking up. When she did – she saw everybody gaping at her.
“Nora?”
It was Hunter’s voice. Hunter’s voice, from the back. She rushed over to him, not caring what anyone saw or said. He stood from his desk, and she jumped up to embrace him in a tight hug.
“Nora, what’s wrong?” He sounded concerned.
“I saw him,” she said quickly, the words rushing out.
He set her back so he could look into her eyes. “Saw who?”
“They called for me in the office. Two men. One…” She gulped. “…one was the man I saw in the dream.”
Chapter Twelve
~On the Run~
If it were possible, Nora would have said Hunter turned even paler than usual. Suddenly, the confident young man she knew looked very frightened.
“Are you sure?” he asked her.
“Yes!” she practically screamed. “Would I come here like this, in the middle of class, if I wasn’t?” Everybody was still looking. The teacher started making her way over. “Miss,” the teacher began, but Nora ignored it. She had eyes only for Hunter.
“You’re right.” He nodded. “We have to go.” Taking her hand, he led her into the hall.
“Hunter, wait.” She tugged on his hand once they were outside the classroom. “Where are we going?”
“We have to get away.” He pulled her with him as he continued down the hall. His hand gripping hers gave her strength. It made her feel stronger and eased some of her fear.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you. Later. Right now, we need to get out of the school.” The hall forked into two, and he looked down both ways, seeming uncharacteristically unsure of himself. Finally, settling on a direction, he led her that way.
They reached an exit door. He opened it for her. Before she stepped through, though, he stopped. “Your bag,” he said, “where is it?”
“I left it in my other class.”
“There’s no time to get it, now,” he mumbled to himself. “Do you have anything important in there?”
“Notebooks, school notes, that type of thing.”
