Hunted

by Dean Murray

  We talked about random stuff until it was time to get ready for bed and then almost before I knew it our light was off and I was trying to go to sleep.

  It seemed like my eyes had only been closed for a second before I started dreaming. I could tell that this wasn't just a normal dream because there were things that were off about it and I noticed them rather than just accepting that the flawed version of reality I was seeing was accurate.

  I was in a house that was bigger than any house I'd ever been inside before, but it still somehow gave the feeling of being cramped and confining. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out how a room that was almost two stories tall could feel so small, but it seemed to be something a bit like the visual distortion that I'd seen when I'd looked down from the tower in the dream with the wolf-men. When I looked directly at a wall or the ceiling, it was obvious that the room was huge, but out of the corner of my eye everything seemed to move in closer. When I looked away and focused on the windows, the walls angled in towards me and the ceiling sloped down to the point where it felt like it was going to collapse and crush me.

  I walked over to the window and pushed aside the massive curtains that kept the room in a perpetual twilight, only to recoil at the sheer brightness of the sun. I wasn't looking directly at it, but the light was still so strong that it made my eyes tear up and shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.

  It was another piece of reality that wasn't quite right, another sign that I was in someone else's dream rather than my own. I let the curtains swing shut again and then once my eyes had readjusted to the darkness I looked down and found in surprise that I was wearing Cindi's cheerleading uniform.

  I wondered idly if it was possible for me to change aspects of my surroundings inside someone else's dream. It seemed easiest to start with my clothes, so I tried to visualize myself in jeans and a normal top. My clothing flickered for a second, becoming embarrassingly translucent for a heartbeat before I gave up and allowed the cheerleading uniform to snap back into place.

  I'd been so absorbed in my efforts to swap out my clothing that I didn't hear the footsteps when they first started up. They were alarmingly close by the time they registered. My pulse skyrocketed as I remembered the two wolf-men. I wasn't completely safe here, but I didn't know how to leave someone's dream once I got sucked into it.

  I thought about running, but I didn't know how to get out of the house or even if it was possible to get very far away from the person who was dreaming. I vacillated for too long and then she stepped into the room.

  From the neck down she looked like a normal person, a little too skinny to be healthy maybe, but still pretty much like anyone else. Her face though was disturbingly indistinct, almost like a wax model that someone had left out in the sun for a moment or two too long.

  "Who are you?"

  Her voice had a hissing nature to it that I was pretty sure wouldn't be possible outside of a dream and it gave off a sense of great age which didn't match her young-looking body. I opened my mouth to answer her and then thought better of it. I already knew that I could be in danger while dreaming, the last thing I wanted was to give her the information she'd need to track me down in the real world.

  "I'm sorry, I'm not sure how I got here."

  "That's not what I asked you."

  "I know, but you're kind of scary, no offense. I'd like to keep my identity a secret."

  One second she was all of the way on the other side of the room and the next she had ahold of my throat and had slammed me up against the wall. Her movements had been inhumanly fast, but I got the feeling that it wasn't a dream thing. She was actually that fast in real life too, just like the wolf-man who'd warned me to stay away from Kaleb. I had a split second to wonder if everyone I ran into in the dream world was some kind of supernatural creepy-crawly, and then her hand started squeezing.

  I managed to choke out something to the effect that I couldn't breathe, but she just smiled. "I don't need you to talk to get the information I want out of you."

  I'd been able to get a little bit of air in and out until then, but as she finished talking she tightened her fist even more and suddenly I couldn't get anything in. I started hitting her, kicking with my feet and hammering on her arm with my fists, but it was like kicking a tree, there was absolutely no give to her.

  I was in a full panic now, but even so I knew that the dark, smoky tendrils extending out from her head and face weren't a figment of my imagination. I tried to break away, clawing at her face, but she simply whipped her head back out of the way and then threw me against the wall with enough force that a black veil slowly slid over my face as unconsciousness claimed me.

  As everything else disappeared the tendrils touched my face and then slid under my skin, seeking a way into my mind. I tried to fight back, tried to push the tendrils back out of my mind, but my strength evaporated, leaving me with nothing but the certainty that she was about to loot my mind, that no secret I'd ever had would be safe from her probing fingers.

  Chapter 5

  Maybe Cindi was onto something when she said that I was losing a lot of weight lately. When I looked at myself in the mirror I didn't see it, but when I put on my old workout clothes they practically slid off of me.

  Cindi had offered to let me wear some of her shorts and a tank top, which I'd reluctantly tried on. They didn't look anywhere near as good on me as they did on her, but they actually didn't make me look too repulsive so I agreed to wear them. It was that or risk exposing myself mid-routine as my shorts fell down around my ankles.

  I changed back into my normal school clothes, packed Cindi's workout clothes into my backpack and then walked to school with Cindi. Cindi spent the whole trip gushing over how excited she was that I was going to be on the team, which was nice, but it made for a more jarring transition when I got to school and found that now the whole school disliked me.

  The cheerleaders and popular kids had never stopped hating me, but now that rumors had started flying around the school about me trying out, the nerds and geeks seemed to have decided that I'd betrayed them too. Honestly, it was enough to send my headache into overdrive, which then reminded me of the dreams that had made their appearance at the same time as the headache.

  My recollections of the dreams were still pretty hazy, but once I started thinking about them I remembered the encounter with the wax-faced woman and I started shaking. At one point I thought I was going to puke. Apparently I went white as a sheet too because Mr. Jenkins, my English teacher, sent me to the bathroom.

  I was still freaking out when the bell rang to announce that English was over and it was time to go to history. I stood up to go, more because I knew I couldn't afford to be late than because I'd pulled myself together, and nearly broke down into tears. I still felt jumpy, like there was someone standing just behind me, always barely out of sight no matter how quickly I might turn and look for them. I kept telling myself that it was just a dream, that I'd survived, but I knew that wasn't true. My dreams lately were more than just dreams and I was in danger—it just didn't seem to be immediate danger.

  Cindi found me less than a minute after the bell rang.

  "Adri, are you in here?"

  "Cindi, is that you?"

  I let her help me over to the sink. I probably would have collapsed if I hadn't had something to lean against while she grabbed some paper towels and got them wet.

  "You're going to be okay, Adri. It's just nerves, it's perfectly natural, especially when you're trying to get something that you really, really want. I literally puked before my first game, but it's obvious that you've practiced a ton, so you're going to be okay. Don't let this tryout get inside your head like this. You'll go out there on the field and the routine will just kind of take over and the next thing you know it will all be over and you'll be on the team. Trust me; I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you."

  I opened my mouth to tell Cindi about the dreams, to tell her that I was worried about something much
worse than some silly tryouts, but the words just wouldn't come. Cindi and I were closer than we'd been a few weeks ago, but I still didn't know if she'd be able to deal with the revelation that her sister was some kind of psychic freak. Instead of telling her the truth I just took a deep breath and nodded.

  She was right, if not quite in the way that she meant. The dreams were important, but they weren't as immediate as my actual everyday life. I had people who cared about me and who would do everything they could to protect me and keep me safe. That was the important thing. I couldn't let my dreams start controlling my waking world or I'd go crazy. I had to live in the real world and I'd deal with the consequences of the dreams as they happened.

  Mr. Jenkins took quite a bit of reassuring when I went back for my books, but eventually I convinced him that it hadn't been anything more than nerves and he let me go on to history. The rest of the day passed more or less like the first half of school had, and then before I knew it I was changing into my shorts and hurrying out onto the field with the rest of the girls who were trying out.

  It was a relief to be out of the locker room. The other girls had all pretty much turned against me too, and I heard a lot of whispering going on that I was pretty sure was them saying nasty things about me. The football field was marginally better even if it did mean that I had an audience now.

  All of the current cheerleaders were there, as was Miss Winters, their coach, but I was surprised at some of the other people who were sitting in the bleachers. Amber Bondie was there with her camera, obviously hoping to capture something worth going into the yearbook, and behind her was a collection of nerds and geeks who were pretending not to watch as a couple of the cheerleaders demonstrated routines to some of the hopefuls who still weren't confident that they had all of the movements down.

  Beyond the geeks, sitting at the very top of the bleachers was a handful of popular kids who were playing on their phones and looking extremely bored, but all of that faded into the background because there was one figure who stood out from the rest. Jackson Ayer, the Jackson who Janessa had been so busy trying to turn into a social pariah, stood off to the side of the bleachers talking to Sheree Fieros.

  My stomach clenched back up. Out of all the people who could have attended, why had Jackson decided to come watch us? It wasn't just that he was gorgeous, tall with broad shoulders and wavy dark hair, there was something about him that just pulled my eyes towards him whenever he was around.

  Normally I hardly noticed guys other than to wish that they'd hurry up and mature to the point where they were capable of carrying on a conversation that didn't revolve around sports or video games, but Jackson was different somehow. It was like the idea of dating Jackson filled a hole in my life that I didn't even know existed when he wasn't around. I couldn't really explain it, but it was a little bit the same as the way that I kept feeling that Cindi and I should be closer than we actually were. I've never believed in soul mates or anything, but being around Jackson was almost enough to convince me otherwise.

  Jackson abruptly looked up from his conversation with Sheree and caught me watching the two of them, but he just smiled and waved, which caused my cheeks to heat. I awkwardly waved back to him and Sheree and then pretended to be interested in what was happening on the other end of the field.

  Cindi had been involved in a conversation with Miss Winters, but she noticed me as I started stretching, so she said her goodbyes to her coach and hurried over a few seconds later.

  "Remember, you've got this. Just relax and let all of that practicing take over."

  I nodded jerkily and gave her my best smile. "I'll give it my best."

  Cindi squeezed my arm in a suitably sisterly fashion and then walked over to a clump of cheerleaders. I'd been stretching for nearly five minutes before I realized that the stretches I was using were from the stretching regimen that the squad used to warm up before games, a regimen that I'd never bothered learning, but which I'd absorbed via my dreams just like I'd absorbed their routines.

  I was idly wondering what else I'd learned that I hadn't stumbled onto yet when Miss Winters turned to those of us on the field who were trying out and wished us all luck. A few seconds after that Cindi and the rest of the cheerleaders positioned themselves around us and the first cheer started.

  I hadn't practiced since the night before, so I started out worried that I wouldn't be able to repeat my earlier performance, but the routine came naturally. We progressed on to the second cheer and then the music came on for the final routine, and just like Cindi had promised, my mind shut down and I just moved to the beat.

  When the music stopped it was all I could do to keep my legs from collapsing rather than holding the ending pose for three seconds like we were supposed to. It wasn't exhaustion, at least it wasn't just exhaustion. It was more just relief at having made it through the tryout without making an idiot of myself.

  Miss Winters released us all from the field, but asked us to hang around for a few minutes while she deliberated with her squad. Since Cindi was off huddled up with the rest of the team, there wasn't anyone for me to talk to, so I walked off of the field and then just kind of stood there by myself.

  Now that the initial rush of having made it through tryouts was past I was left with the question of whether I'd join the team if Miss Winters did indeed pick me as her first choice. As much as I wanted to spend more time with Cindi, the nasty looks I was getting from most of the rest of the cheerleaders was a pretty good indication that they were prepared to make my life extremely difficult if I joined the team.

  I'd pretty much decided against joining the team when someone gently touched my arm. I turned and found myself looking into a pair of deep blue eyes. Jackson smiled at me and then cleared his throat.

  "I just wanted to say that I thought you did really awesome out there."

  I was blushing again, but it wasn't like I could run away and hide when he was standing right here talking to me.

  "Thanks. I didn't think I'd be nervous, but it turned out I was pretty freaked out by the time I made it onto the field."

  Jackson shrugged. "It didn't show. Don't tell the other girls, but I thought you were the best one out there. I didn't know that you were interested in being a cheerleader. Have you tried out before?"

  I shook my head. "This is the first time. Honestly I'm not even sure if I can handle the time commitment if I join."

  I got another smile, and this one made my heart beat even faster somehow. "Well, I'm pretty sure that you'll make the team, so all I can say is that I hope you decide to join. Miss Winters just announced that she wants to start doing some coed stunts, so she's looking for some guys to join the team. Maybe we'll be on the team together."

  Did it make me a fraud if I joined the team solely because I was hoping to spend some time with Jackson? Probably, but I didn't care. If Miss Winters gave me a chance to be a cheerleader then I was going to say yes and I was going to put up with whatever crap the rest of the girls put me through.

  I wanted Jackson like I'd never wanted anything or anyone else before.

  Chapter 6

  As I ran out onto the springy green grass of our school's football field I had a split second to wish one last time that my first football game had been an away game. Dream-assisted learning or not, I was still pretty sure that I was going to screw up in some kind of spectacular fashion. At an away game there would have been fewer witnesses, but in the grand scheme of things it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. The other cheerleaders were going to make sure the entire school knew exactly how badly I did regardless of how many witnesses actually saw my mistakes. At least Miss Winters had put me on the back row for all of the routines.

  I'd only been able to attend two official practices before the night of the next game, but Cindi seemed confident that everything would be okay. Dad had shelled out a painfully large amount of money to get my uniforms both ordered and overnighted to our house, which had almost been enough to make me reconsi
der my decision to join the team, but he'd waved away my concerns and promised to be in the stands for at least my first game.

  Most of the other girls were doing handsprings or flips, but I wasn't about to do anything that complicated. I just ran, waved my pom-poms and then let out a quiet sigh of relief when it was time to line up with the other girls so that the football team could run between us.

  Miss Winters hadn't gone any further than just assigning everyone to one side or the other for the good luck tunnel, but we might as well have had assigned spots. We basically lined up according to status inside of the squad. The leaders were all closest to the entrance, with the rest of us filling in the spots according to seniority in the squad, which meant that I was at the absolute end.

  I'd known that going in, but I hadn't expected for Cindi to come over and stand by me. She glanced over at me just before the starting quarterback ran past us, and I realized that seeing her smile had turned my smile from the plastic expression that I'd had drilled into me over the last couple of days to something genuine and radiant.

  I'd expected for things to get better with Cindi after I joined the team, but I hadn't expected them to get this much better. I finally felt like we were headed toward being as close as I'd always wished we were. Cindi had helped me a lot over the last few days. She'd covered everything from doing my hair up with a blue velvet ribbon for the game, to showing me half a dozen other things that she'd said would make my first game less traumatic.

  Watching over the shoulder of other cheerleaders as they'd dreamed had apparently taught me the cheers, but it hadn't been any help when it came to all of the other aspects of being a cheerleader. I would have been utterly lost without Cindi's help, especially since the rest of the girls on the squad still seemed to hate me.