by Lori Wilde
“At the center for paranormal research,” he corrected.
“Hmm—” I started walking again, this time keeping a bit more distance between us as we entered the main path through the camp. Torch lamps hung from wooden posts lit our way, casting a soft pale glow over the ground and trees and dimming the starlight.
A group of fourteen-year-old girls raced by us giggling and ogling Troy. One shouted, “Sasha loves you, Troy!”
I cocked a brow, amused. “And which one is Sasha?”
“The one with the flower behind her ear,” he said without looking at them.
I glanced back at the group of girls as they disappeared around the bend. One small timid girl with acne and jean shorts had a yellow daisy tucked behind her ear. Just like the ones I’d seen sitting on Troy’s desk. There was something touching about a guy like him who would take the time to give a flower to a shy little girl with a crush. Sasha and I had a lot in common.
“Well, this place doesn’t look like it has much to offer in that department. I mean, I haven’t come across any paranormal monsters under the bed yet.” I smiled.
“There aren’t any. Other than the ones hiding in the dark corners of our mind. And they tend to walk through the front door.”
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Okay, this was the third dream reference. Did he know the details about my dreams? How Darcy and I were in love and how he died in my arms every night, for years? I hadn’t shared that part with Grace, but then again, she knew a lot of info about me that I hadn’t shared. But that all had to be confidential, didn’t it?
Troy reached down and picked a yellow daisy, same as the one Sasha was wearing. “They bring good dreams,” he said, then he tucked it behind my ear. His fingers trailed down my neck before he pulled his hand away.
“Bet you say that to all the girls,” I said softly.
He smiled, and for the tenth time in that ten-minute walk, my pulse went wild.
“Not all the girls,” he said. “Only the ones with bad dreams.”
I lay in bed wide awake that night. Sleep was a million miles away with thoughts of Troy filling my very awake mind. All I could think of was our night last year. Our lips meshed together, bodies entwined. I sat up, ripped off the blankets, and let the cool breeze soothe my overheated skin. Reaching for my phone, I called Troy.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hey.”
“Nora? What’s wrong? It’s early for bad dreams.”
“I’ve got the daisy, remember. There’s something I need to know.”
“Now?” He chuckled, and it sent my insides into hyperdrive.
“Okay, what’s up?”
“What’s your favorite color?” I felt stupid and incredibly brave all at once.
“That’s what you need to know—at midnight? You are something else, Nora Dultry.”
“Seriously,” I said, “favorite color, please? I won’t get any sleep till I know the answer.”
“Not sure how I feel knowing my favorite color is what’s keeping you up at night.”
There was a long pause as I listened to his deep and even breathing. I could picture him running his hand over his hair as he tried in vain to figure me out.
“Well?”
“Turquoise, Nora. My favorite color is turquoise.”
Chapter Eighteen
Life at Camp Wanderlust was starting to fall into a weird little rhythm. There were fewer dreams of Darcy, which meant I actually woke up refreshed for a change. My days were spent working with students, prepping sets or building marionettes. My nights were in secret with Troy, usually at his cottage where we could be alone, and twice a week in Grace’s office undergoing our ongoing sessions. I’d managed to get over my freak-out by accepting that maybe there were things beyond my understanding…whether I fully believed in them or not. It got me to a place where I could at least be cool with resuming our meetings.
Today we were delving deeper into her theories on the dreamwalking. I still didn’t know what to make of all of this, but there was one constant idea that underscored every session. That the guy I believed to be a figment of my nightly imagination was supposedly a whole lot more. At least, that was Grace’s interpretation of things. Honestly, I still didn’t see how Celeste could possibly have vanished into her dreams, but whatever. Grace was intense and had suffered a trauma in losing her daughter…but still, something beneath her thick layer of crazy, resonated as being true.
Grace leaned back in her chair, crossing one long thin leg over the other, letting her high-heeled shoe dangle off the end of her toes. Her hair was in a loose bun today, and she had a navy Polo shirt tucked into her pencil skirt, instead of her typical chiffon blouse. This was as casual as things got for her.
“The dream world is not an imaginary state,” she stated again. “It is a place as real as this one. And it’s a place where, if you’re not careful, you will one day not return from. You’ve already pledged so much of your time and your self to that place. They know your heart and your mind, Nora. They know you wish you could stay and live your dream life.”
I let out a long sigh. It was all getting a bit old, and I was tired of resisting her theories. “Let’s just say I buy even an ounce of this insanity,” I said. “Why me? And how could Darcy possibly keep me there?”
“It’s a world ruled by possibilities, Nora. Keeping you there is as easy as making you believe this world is your dream state, and theirs is real. And then one day, you’ll wake from dreaming of this life and never dream it again. It will be on that day we hold your funeral, burying a placeholder instead of your body.”
I shuddered. Not only because it sounded like a horror movie plot, but because I knew that was what had happened with her daughter Celeste when she disappeared.
“You can control your life in this world, but there, you are at their mercy. Destined to an eternal life of whatever they decide to throw at you. It can be pleasurable. And it can be horribly painful. Often both at once.”
Yeah. I’d experienced that when Darcy died in my arms at the end of every dream. “So what are you suggesting exactly?”
She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her elbows resting on the desk. Seemingly spurred on by my willingness to even hear her suggestions this time.
“I’m suggesting that you give this life a fair chance. See if what you can receive from this world isn’t better than what you get from the other. You must let go of your fear of getting too close, your fear of falling in love. Because I can promise that if you continue to stay in your imaginary world, you will lose this world. And the choice is irreversible, I’m afraid.”
It wasn’t easy to ignore the tremor her words sent down my spine, but I did and shook my head. “I can’t believe I’ll be sucked into a dream, never to return to this world. You have to know how crazy that sounds.”
Grace pursed her lips. “This world is made up of truths equally as crazy, if not more so. It does not, however, make them any less factual. If you do not find something to connect to in this world, you will vanish from it, like my daughter did. And everyone you now care for will lose you. The question is simple really. Ask yourself if that is what you want.”
“No. It’s not what I want.”
I think she released a breath of relief. She picked up a pen and tapped it on her desk rhythmically.
“Good,” she said. “Then we have something to begin with, and that’s a start. I want you to explore life in this world, Nora. Open yourself up to all it has to offer. Go to college and immerse yourself. Have more fun. Have a fling.” She smiled a little.
I rolled my eyes. “Uh-huh. A fling is going to solve my problems? You sound like Kenzie.”
“Kenzie would never be the sort of person the dream world would seek out. She is fully anchored in this world. And her life is a testament to her willingness to live it.”
“I’ll have to remember that when I’m holding her hair the next time she’s draped over a toilet bowl at three in the morning after
getting tanked with some random guy at a party.” In truth, I was already following her advice to some degree. But whatever was happening between me and Troy, it wasn’t exactly something I could tell her about. Not with our jobs on the line.
“I’m not telling you to throw your values away. I’m telling you to explore why they exist and where they came from and if they even belong to you in the first place. Are they decisions you’ve truly made for yourself, or are they ones passed on to you from those around you—that you’ve adopted as your own and can no longer recognize as belonging to someone else? You don’t really know anything about yourself, Nora. This is the year you learn all about you.”
I felt like I was back in grade school. Mrs. Green, my third grade teacher, made us take home this assignment where we had to answer a bunch of questions that were supposedly designed to give a picture of who you were. I didn’t do the assignment because I didn’t understand it. I mean, even then I couldn’t see how a bunch of likes or dislikes could possibly define you. This was grade school all over again. Only so much worse and with way more than a passing grade or a note sent home to my grandparents riding on it. My life and my future were hanging in the balance. And if one drop of what this woman was telling me was true, I was running out of time to decide if I wanted to be a part of this world or not. To live here where it was real or fade away into the oblivion of a blissful dream that ended only in heartache. The craziest part is the choice wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
Chapter Nineteen
Nightmares don’t always storm in, claws bared, ready to strike. Sometimes they seduce with a gentle caress, a stroke of pleasure before striking your heart with carnivorous terror.
Dreams, I’ve learned, are often the same.
That night my dream returned, after three solid weeks of dreamless sleep. More real than ever before, but also very different.
Darcy greeted me with a bouquet of flowers. We were standing alone in a field, surrounded by mist. But when the mist cleared, I saw we weren’t in a field at all. It was a graveyard. And I was standing in front of my parents’ tombstone. I read the inscription, etched by hand. ‘Until death do us part. Beloved from beyond this world unto the next.’ Three drops of blood trickled from the word death.
I turned to look at Darcy, and his face morphed into Troy’s. I smiled, relieved to see him. He didn’t return it. In a flash Darcy was himself again, snarling and enraged. “You must free me from his place,” he growled.
He was angry. Darcy was never angry.
Bewildered, I shook my head. “But I don’t know how.”
Every hair on my neck stood on end. The calm, soothing, safe feeling I used to have dreaming of him was gone. Replaced by a prickly fear that chased chills down my spine.
“That woman you speak with.” Darcy railed. “She does not wish for my freedom, but my condemnation. She thinks I’m cursed. Evil. A spawn of the devil.”
“And are you?”
His anger melted, and he looked at me lovingly, caressing my hair.
I pulled back.
“Does this feel like a construct of evil?”
I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t respond.
“I am locked in the same curse as you, my love. And the only way out is to free me. Remove my murderer from your realm.”
A rain of blood-red petals began to fall around us. They landed with crimson splatters in their wake.
Chilled by the foreboding turn my dream had taken, I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Darcy looked about suddenly, on edge. “We must hurry; time is running out.”
I could feel that we were nearing that part in the dream. The part where he would leave me, where he bled to death in my arms, and I would awaken with the haunting loss of him as though he’d been by my side all along. As though he were real and not just a dream.
“They do not want us to be together and will do anything to stop it.”
He wasn’t making any sense. I’d never seen him so violent and unhinged.
“Darcy, just calm down.”
“There is no time.” He squeezed my shoulders and shook me hard. “Listen to me.” His voice cracked, and for a second it sounded split in two, as if his words were being spoken by more than one of him at once.
When he felt my fearful shudder, he forced a calming smile on his face and removed his ice-cold hands. “I apologize. I am fearful our time is running out, and I cannot bear to lose you for eternity, my love. But he is coming after me. He will kill me.”
“Who? Who’s trying to kill you?”
He snarled, baring his teeth. “You know who.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t.”
His arm swung out, and he backhanded me across the face. I stepped back, my hand covering my cheek as my shock gave way to anger.
Then his voice calmed, and he stared directly into my eyes with cold fury. “You do know who. The one you spend your days with. The one who takes you further from me night after night.”
A distant hum grew louder and more urgent, like a disrupted hive of angry bees. The buzz pulled me from the dream. My eyes sprang open before Darcy could say a name, but my phone continued to buzz in a lazy circle on a table as I strained to focus. I pushed the hair from my face and reached for the phone. A cold trickle of dread spread through me. The name on the screen was the name on Darcy’s lips. The name of the one who’d taken his life, separating us for all eternity and cursing me to relive his death over and over again. The one I’d given my heart to.
Troy.
I awoke with a start, my heart slamming hard against my chest.
Bolting upright in bed, I clutched the quilt with both hands. This had never happened before. Darcy, gentle, loving Darcy. He’d never hurt me before. He’d also never shifted into Troy before. And we’d certainly never had a date in a cemetery. And in all of the dreams I remember having with Darcy, this was the first time he hadn’t died in my arms.
I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, still reeling with uneasiness as the disturbing remnants of the dream wore off. I staggered into the bathroom. It was early still, which meant no waiting for Kenzie to finish for a change. I flicked on the light and froze. A large purplish bruise stained my cheekbone.
My fingers drifted up to touch it. I winced. It hurt. A lot.
Fear buzzed like an insect in my chest. I blinked at my reflection in disbelief. Then I turned off the light and staggered to the kitchen freezer. With a dish towel filled with ice, I flopped onto the couch. It felt strange against my cheek, as if I was already too numb to feel the cold. Almost as if I was still dreaming. But I was awake. And this was real, wasn’t it? Oh God, am I losing my mind?
Maybe I hit myself in my sleep. Or I could have rolled over and hit my cheek on the night table. But my table was a few feet from my bed. I’d have hit the floor before hitting my face on it. There was no way I could have done this to myself. And the bruise wasn’t there when I went to bed. The process of elimination left me with only one chilling possibility. Darcy had done this to me. In my dream. As though he’d crossed into this world, like Grace had said.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. This...this is crazy. I tugged on my knit hat, grabbed my hoodie, slipped my rubber boots over my pajama pants, and went outside. I needed to tell someone what was happening, before another piece of my sanity crumbled away. Troy’s cabin seemed like the best option. It wasn’t even sunrise yet. Grace wouldn’t be in her office for another few hours. But Troy often went for an early morning jog or dip in the lake. He’d be up and hopefully wouldn’t have me committed.
I stepped out onto the porch and tripped over a basket of white laundry. Kenzie had left it there, again, and it was soaked from last night’s rain, again. I scooped up the clothes, mindlessly planning to drop them at the laundry to be rewashed on my way to Troy’s.
It was a chilly dawn. A thick layer of fog hovered over the ground. The path seemed longer than usual this morning. Quieter. And still. As if not even the birds had
awoken. Gravel crunched beneath my steps as I walked past the familiar places. Student dining hall. Theater. Art studio. As I left the main path and headed toward Troy’s cabin, I paused. Up ahead, the early morning mist seemed to thicken.
In the distance I saw a shadow through the midst of the fog. The form of a man.
“Troy?” My steps quickened but then slowed. It wasn’t Troy. But it was someone. He stood there utterly still, as the fog circling him brightened to a brilliant white haze. I balanced the basket on one hip and shielded my eyes with my free hand. Then suddenly the fog cleared, and the man stepped forward. His black boots crunched the gravel, and a full-length coat swirled around his legs as he emerged from the rolling of fog, like he’d stepped out of an eighteen-hundreds Jane Austen novel.
Fathomless blue eyes met mine with startling recognition.
Every inch of me froze. It was him. Darcy. I’d seen him enough times to recognize him asleep or awake. Question was, which was I now?
I had to be awake. I was outside, in the woods, at the academy. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. He was real.
I was awestruck as this person, this man, stepped toward me, an ascot fastened around the high collar of his crisp white shirt. He looked as perplexed as I was. That helped. Because let’s face it, if this was in fact a real encounter, I’d expect my dream guy to be as surprised at running into me as I was him. For an immeasurable moment we both stayed like that, lost in each other’s gaze. Then he frowned a little.
“Nora?” He spoke my name with a long drawn-out British accent. Just like in my dreams.
The laundry I’d been holding slipped from my hands onto the ground. Whites hit the muddy forest floor. Hearing him speak my name nearly sent me over the edge. I’d felt such love for this man that I didn’t even know. He wasn’t supposed to be real, and yet he was as real as the bruise he’d given me.
A smile that could melt the polar ice caps spread across his handsome face. Without conscious control of my feet, I moved toward him. That might have signified I was dreaming, but when I looked down at my feet, they were walking toward him with measured steps.
