Dream Student (Dream Series book 1)

by J.J. DiBenedetto

  I want these nightmares to go away. I’m willing to do whatever will accomplish that. A night at the hospital probably won’t be too unpleasant. I do ask if it can be tomorrow night instead of tonight. “I’d like to spend some time with my boyfriend.” Well, there, I finally said it out loud.

  “I’d prefer to get you in as soon as possible, but it’s obvious you’re very shaken up by this experience. I can understand that you’d want to be with someone who cares for you.” He finally smiles. It’s not much of one, but it is there. “It seems there are quite a few people in this department who care for you as well, by the way. Do you remember Ray bringing you into Dr. Korben’s office and sitting with you?”

  No, I don’t. I blush at that and look away from him. I don’t want to think about Dr. Korben seeing me–well, how I must have looked. She’s the department chair, I reported to her when I worked in the office two years ago. I liked her a lot. I hate the idea that she saw me in that state.

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed, Sara.” Not “Miss Barnes” anymore. I guess I made a good impression on him after all. “You had a traumatic experience, and you had a very natural reaction to it,” he smiles again, and there’s a little actual humor there this time. “Who would understand that better than a couple of psychology professors?”

  I manage a very weak grin.

  “Go home, see your boyfriend, try to get some rest and we’ll plan for you to come in tomorrow night. I’ll make the arrangements and I’ll call you with the details.” He hands me a slip of paper and I write down my phone number for him.

  “Thank you.” We shake hands and he shows me out. I guess it could have gone worse. I’m not really sure how, but there’s probably some way it could have.

  ***

  I don’t remember walking home from the Psychology department, but obviously I did. I don’t remember throwing my coat and scarf and everything in a pile on the floor but there it is. All I remember is getting into the bed, under my blankets, reaching up to grab the phone, and dialing 1550.

  The phone rings five times before Brian answers it. “Hello?” He sounds out of breath.

  “It’s me.”

  “Sara! I’m glad I ran back to get the phone, I was just heading over to the library.”

  No! “Can you not go over there?”

  He sounds confused. “Why?”

  ”Can you come over here instead? I need you to come over here, OK? Please?”

  “Is something wrong?” I wonder what gave it away?

  “I’ll tell you all about it, just please come right over.” Please? Now?

  “Sure. Give me two minutes.”

  It feels like the longest two minutes of my life, but Brian is true to his word. “Come in, and lock the door behind you,” I tell him when he arrives. I’m under the covers, peeking out at him. He looks all concerned and worried, which is entirely appropriate.

  “Sara, what’s wrong?”

  Everything. Simple, isn’t it? “I need you to hold me. Come over here, get under the blankets and hold me. Make me feel safe. Tell me everything’s going to be OK.”

  That’s exactly what he does. I only wish I could believe him when he says I’m perfectly safe and that everything will be OK, but I know he’s just lying to make me feel better.

  I haven’t told him about the nightmares yet. He has no idea what I’ve been going through. I tell him now. I tell him everything, right up to my little breakdown in the Psychology department office. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” is the first thing he says when I’m done. “What can I do?” is the second thing. It’s so sweet of him. Not to mention being exactly what I need to hear.

  “You’re already doing it. Just you being here makes me feel better.” It’s true. I do feel ever so slightly better right this second. As long as I’m in his arms, things can’t be that bad. What’s really amazing is that he’s not trying to make a move on me right now; I think most of my past boyfriends would have. I know that’s not what I need at the moment, not when I’m in this frame of mind. Later, maybe. Definitely.

  The words spill out from me: “You know I want to make love to you–just not right now. Not when I’m still scared and everything, this isn’t the right time. But we will, you know that, don’t you? It wasn’t a one-time thing, we have something real, don’t we?” His face lights up when I say it. He needs to hear it as much as I need to say it, I think.

  He holds me even closer. “We do, definitely.” The strength, the look in his eyes that I can’t even describe, is there. Then, he starts to say something more and then catches himself, and it’s gone again. He’s afraid to say it, but I know what it was going to be. I want to hear it. I need to hear it.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy,” I shake my head no, “I–I think–no, I know, it’s so fast, I don’t want to mess this up, but–I–I love you.” I haven’t known him for even 72 hours. Can he possibly mean it?

  “Say it again,” I whisper.

  And now the fear in his voice is gone; he’s back in that place–our place–again, and so am I. “I love you, Sara.” Yes, he can. Yes, he does.

  I kiss him, and then I’m still whispering when I tell him, “I love you too,” and that’s the last thing I remember before I fall asleep.

  Five: Scanners

  (December 4-5, 1989)

  I hear voices. Brian’s, and–Beth’s? Can that be right? I must have fallen asleep. Beth must have come back, they must think I’m still asleep. That’s fine. I keep my eyes closed and I listen. Brian’s still holding me, keeping his voice down so he won’t wake me. That’s very thoughtful of him.

  “Don’t worry about it, she sleeps like a log,” Beth says, not keeping her voice down at all. “Until the last week, anyway.”

  “The nightmares.”

  “The nightmares. She wakes up screaming,” Beth says in a resigned voice. “I hate to see it. I mean, obviously I don’t like being woken up like that, but that’s not really the problem. She’s helped me out enough times, I figure I owe her, and I’m a big girl, you know? I can deal with a few bad nights. It’s just–seeing her like that, it’s–really horrible. It shouldn’t happen to anybody. Definitely not to my best friend.”

  “You’re very close to her,” Brian whispers back.

  “Let me put it this way. I’ve got five sisters. Four by blood and then Sara.” Wow. She’s never said that to my face. How do you respond to something like that?

  “I think she feels the same about you.” We talked a little about it on our date. I told him how close Beth and I are, how she spent a week at my house last summer, how I went on a cruise with her and her family the summer before that.

  “I know she does,” Beth tells him, “so you better keep making her happy, you understand me?” She doesn’t need to say that, but I love her for saying it all the same. For all the crap I’ve been going through, I’m so lucky to have her in my life. And Brian, too, now.

  This seems like as good a time as any to “wake up” and join the conversation. I let out a big yawn and Brian jumps a little. “Hi. How long was I asleep?” I ask, giving him a good squeeze. We’re still wrapped up in each other’s arms under the covers. Fully clothed, if you must know.

  “A couple of hours,” Brian tells me. “Your roommate–Beth just came in five minutes ago.”

  “Brian here was just telling me what happened when you went to see Dr. Ritter.”

  Yes, and a happy topic of conversation I’m sure it was. Also a conversation I don’t want to have right now. I feel much better, at least for the moment. I don’t want to go into the nightmares and what they mean and ruin my better mood. I know I have to talk about it, and Brian and Beth are going to be the two people I know I’ll be able to talk about it with, but not now.

  I should be studying, or doing something more productive than lying
in bed, anyway, but I’m not going to. Instead, what I think I’m going to do–well, it does involve getting out of bed briefly. Just long enough to go from here over to Brian’s room, and then it’s right back into bed again.

  I tell Brian about my plan for the rest of the afternoon, and he’s fine with it–heck, why shouldn’t he be? Beth, however, looks surprised. “Sara, what Brian told me, we have to talk about that, don’t we?”

  “Yes. We do. I need to talk to you about it, and I need to talk to Brian about it. Not now, though. I’m not scared, I’m not shaking, and I want to go and do something happy and life-affirming, and we can talk about unpleasant things later. OK?”

  When I put it that way Beth–surprised as she is to hear something like that coming from me–understands completely, and off we go.

  ***

  It’s later, and we did something happy and life affirming. We did something happy and life-affirming twice, in fact. And then for a while we didn’t do anything except lie there next to each other, and that wasn’t bad either.

  But I can’t put off the unpleasant business forever. I call back to my room to check on Beth. I really don’t want to have this conversation twice, and I definitely want to hear from her and Brian both, so we’ll all get together and analyze my nightmares. She’s there, so we go back to meet her.

  “Sara, honey, you’re not supposed to be the one making me jealous. It’s supposed to work the other way,” is how Beth greets me when we walk into the room. Brian goes beet red, but–from Beth at least–I’m used to those little jokes and it doesn’t bother me at all.

  “I told you it was love at first sight, and you didn’t believe me. Maybe now you’ll give me a little credit.” I sit down on my bed, with Brian right next to me.

  “You better watch yourself with her,” she says to him. “She’s dangerous when she gets this way. Trust me.”

  He almost laughs. Almost. “But she told me she was harmless. She wouldn’t lie about something like that,” he says. Ha! It’s a very good sign that he feels confident enough to tease me like that–and also that he thinks I’m doing well enough that I can take it.

  “She would say that,” Beth laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about her. She’s got lots of secrets. Has she done her chipmunk thing? When she gets really excited, she makes these weird little chipmunk noises. I can tell you all kinds of things like that.”

  Brian stares at her; he’s not sure if she’s completely joking, or if there’s a tiny little bit of truth there. Just for the record, I don’t now nor have I ever made chipmunk noises. I hope Brian realizes that if I were prone to such a thing, he’d have heard it by now.

  I honestly don’t mind that it’s two against one and they’re both picking on me; I’m just glad that both of them feel comfortable enough with each other to joke around like that. That absolutely has to be a good thing.

  Unfortunately, we can’t just keep joking around. I have to talk about the nightmares, as much as I really don’t want to. There are two things I need to figure out, as far as I can tell. First, are they “real,” and second, if they are, what the hell do I do about them? After my little breakdown reading the newspaper earlier, I have no doubt at all that they’re real. Call it psychic, call it supernatural, call it whatever you want, I definitely saw what that man–that murderer–did to the girl.

  Brian agrees completely. He should, after I saw into his dream about me. He knows it’s not just my imagination. And Beth believes me, because it’s me telling her, but I know if it was anybody else at all saying it, she’d laugh in their face. And honestly? So would I.

  So we’re all agreed that I’m officially psychic, or whatever the right word is, if there even is one for this. I know it doesn’t matter right this second, but I would like to know, why is it me who’s psychic–or whatever–and not Beth, or Brian, or my brother, or whoever? There’s something different about me, something real, something physical, right?

  It’s not like I just happened to randomly witness a crime. I’m not one of those unlucky people who sees a mafia murder or something and has to go into the Witness Protection Program for the rest of their life. They don’t sit around wondering what’s wrong with them. Well, OK, maybe in a Book of Job kind of way, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time; they just have incredibly bad luck. If they lived to be a hundred years old, it might never happen to them again.

  But these nightmares aren’t just bad luck. I’m having them because my brain can pick them up and nobody else’s can. They’re going to keep right on happening, and what the hell am I supposed to do about them?

  So there’s the second question. At least the person who sees the mob hit, they’ve got pretty clear choices about what they can do. Crappy choices, granted, but even crappy choices are better than none at all. Aren’t they?

  We can go around and around wondering exactly what the specific physical cause of the nightmares is. I can go to Dr. Ritter and he can tape electrodes to my head and do whatever else he’s going to do. He can maybe give me some technobabble explanation, and I guess I’m going to go through with that but I’m honestly not sure what good it will accomplish. Will it make me feel better about the fact that I knew that poor girl was going to get murdered and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it? No. Will it help me cope when I start seeing the next girl this guy is going to go after–because there’s no question in my mind that he’s going to? No.

  I hate this. I absolutely, completely, utterly hate this. I hate being scared all the time. I hate waking up screaming in the middle of the night. I hate having to cling to my friends to hang on to tiny little bits of sanity. I hate the things I’m seeing. And I hate the fact that it doesn’t make any sense! What purpose does it serve that I can see these things if I can’t do anything about them? That’s not how human beings work. Everything about us has a purpose, every part of our bodies, every thought process. If I’m psychic–or whatever this is–there’s a reason for it. So what’s the reason? And then if there is something I can do about what I’m seeing, something I’m supposed to do, why the hell can’t I figure out what it is, so I can go and do it already?

  ***

  We’ve all just been sitting here quietly for a while now. I don’t know for sure what Brian and Beth are thinking about, but I can guess. Probably a lot like what I’ve been thinking, maybe with a little less of the angry and scared and a little more of the “oh, poor Sara” in its place.

  Actually, I can read Beth pretty well and–yeah, right there–I can see it in her eyes. Just a second ago, it went through her mind: “How would I be coping if it was me this was happening to instead of Sara?”

  The answer just went right past, too, and I can guess what it was–no better than me, and probably a whole lot worse. Which would be pretty bad because I’m certainly not coping with it very well. I hate myself a little bit for thinking she’s right about that, but I know she is.

  So what do I do now? Call the police?

  “They wouldn’t believe you,” Beth says. “I only believe you because I know you wouldn’t lie about something like this. Besides, you aren’t imaginative enough to make it up anyway.” Which is maybe not exactly how I’d phrase it, but it is true. So forget about the police.

  “How do you know any of the details are right anyway?” Brian asks. “I mean, if you’re seeing this guy’s dream, how do you know that the way everything looks in his dream is how it really is in real life?”

  “But the girl in the newspaper looked exactly like the way I saw her in the dream,” goes through my mind, and before I can say it, I can see that Brian’s thought of that as well. “Maybe some of the things look the same. But just because he had a Cadillac in the dream doesn’t mean he has one in real life. Maybe he has a crummy old car, and maybe he’s really ugly and scrawny, but when h
e’s dreaming he’s this big, strong man with a really expensive car, because that’s how he imagines things should be for him.”

  He has a point. Dreams are weird; just because part of them is very literal doesn’t mean everything is. So even if I did go to the police, and even if they did somehow believe me, the things I told them might be completely wrong anyway. Great. Just great.

  So apparently there isn’t anything I can do about what’s already happened. But what do I do when it happens again? What happens when I start having the next nightmare with this guy and a different girl? “Could you find the next girl and warn her before it happens?” Beth asks. The guy might look different in real life than in the dreams, but poor Amelia looked exactly the same in the dream and in the newspaper, so why shouldn’t it be the same if–when–it happens again?

  There’s just one little problem with that: how do I go about finding her? There are several hundred thousand people in this city. Other than blind luck how do you find someone with just a mental image of them? I wouldn’t have a photo, and I can’t draw worth anything. It sounds good in theory, but in practice I don’t see any way to do it.

  If telling the authorities won’t work, and finding the girls won’t work, there is a third possibility. Neither Brian nor Beth are willing to suggest it, and I’m not prepared to think about it myself.

  Thankfully, something else, totally unrelated, pops into my head, and it’s as good an excuse as any to change the subject. “I almost forgot–I bumped into your old advisor today,” I tell Beth. “When I was going to see Dr. Ritter? I literally ran into Dr. Walters, he was just leaving the department office.”

  Beth gives me a puzzled look in return. “I thought he was out of the country. He was supposed to be doing research somewhere in England. He was going to be gone until next summer.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. You told me that,” I remember. “Well, maybe he’s just back to visit family for the holidays or something,” I say.

  “He hasn’t got any family,” Beth says doubtfully. “Not around here, anyway. He lives in that big house all by himself,” she goes on. “Remember, he had all of us over, everyone he was advising? He had a cookout for us at his house last spring.”