by Joshua Laack
Chapter 3
That night Andrew had one of those strange dreams that frequented his nights. It was a recurring dream he first had starting when he was about thirteen. It was the only one he had that repeated itself. In the dream he stood in his room at night looking out the window into the backyard. Everything in the dream was exactly as it was in real life.
Andrew's room was on the second floor and in the back of the two story home where he lived with his parents. Behind the house there was a small yard with an old swing set that was rarely used when Andrew was a child. Butting up with the backyard were several acres of undeveloped land covered in trees. The real estate agent who sold them the house said at the time that it would be developed, but after nearly eleven years, it remained untouched.
In the dream, it was mid summer and Andrew stared through the screen of his open window into the trees. Often, night was the worst time dealing with the darkness within himself. When it was at its worst, Andrew found himself unable to sleep. That was the case this night. Many times he would end up staring out of his window as though he was expecting something or someone. Nothing ever came and eventually, he would go back to bed.
Once again on this night, there was nothing but trees beyond the yard. Then, in the space of a single blink, she appeared in the shadows on the back edge of the lot, between the trees and the house. The moon was not bright enough to illuminate her features, but her eyes stood out, shining with an inner glow, like the eyes of a wild animal.
As Andrew looked at her shape standing there, he felt no fear, though some small part of him felt that he should be terrified by the strangeness of this encounter. He continued to watch and the lithe figure stepped forward into the glow of the moonlight. As she did, Andrew's heart began to race and his breath caught in his throat.
Andrew sat up gasping in bed, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs of sleep from it. Sweat poured down his face and the sheets wrapped around him were drenched like never before. In all the times that he had experienced this dream, Andrew had never seen the face of the girl. The dream always ended right before the moonlight revealed her features. That had not been the case in the dream this night. The face in his dream tonight had been that of Josefina Sanchez.
He shook his head once more, this time to deny the impossibilities of that idea. It didn't mean anything. It couldn't since the Josefina in the dream looked identical to the one who had walked through that classroom door despite Andrew's dream being of a time several years ago. His mind had just added her in after meeting her at the school. That made sense considering the strange events that had occurred during their meeting. Despite knowing that this was what his mind was doing, it was still hard to shake the strange feeling that the dream felt more real this time with her in it than it ever had before.
After a minute, Andrew climbed out of his bed and pulled the wet sheets off. He placed his comforter over the top of his fitted sheet and then lay down on top of that. He pulled half of it over himself and rolled onto his side. It was just after four in the morning, he was exhausted and knew that he would be even more so the next day. In spite of that knowledge, or maybe because of it, sleep was a long time in returning. The sleep he did return to was devoid of dreams, at least any that he recalled.
All too soon, the alarm was buzzing on the night stand beside his bed. Andrew came awake with sand in his eyes and struggling with the exhaustion he had feared would greet him. He lay in his bed, staring at the blank ceiling above him, wanting to close his eyes and forget the day ahead. He shook his head to dislodge the feeling. He refused to let himself fall into that pattern again.
There had been several years when he had allowed the darkness to prevent him from doing anything with his life. His parents had to drag him from bed in the morning for school and he lay around all the time, doing nothing. The longer he lived like that, the worse everything became.
One day, he realized that living this way was not doing himself any favors. He made a life resolution right then and there. He promised himself that he was going to do the best he could with what he had. He refused to allow this thing to control him. It was his life and he was going to do something with it, darkness be damned.
It was this decision that motivated him. It allowed him to get up. It got him to school. It pushed him to do things with his parents and only friend. It carried him to his job and put a smile on his face even when indifference or sadness threatened to take over. When he took control this way, the darkness didn't seem to hang over him as strongly. There were even moments when the smiles he forced upon his face became real. Those moments never lasted, but they were another thing that helped him to continue on his quest to do the best he could despite this huge hindrance in his life.
He struggled daily to find those moments and each one that he found gave him hope that another would come. So he rolled out of his warm covers and got ready for school despite the yawn on his lips and sand in his eyes.