“Then who is?” She glanced up at me and the nightmare shifted around us. Recognizing her mistake, she slammed her eyelids shut, but it was too late. The school walls closed in and I heard the footsteps of Darkness coming behind us.
I raced toward the end of the hall, practically dragging her in my wake. Only a moment, that was all I needed. Before he could catch up, I pulled her to face me and lifted her chin until she met my eyes again.
“I don’t know who it is, but I promise you—I will find out.” Her eyes flitted back and forth between me and Darkness as she nodded.
The nightmare went on, but this time he was different. It was still me, but my image flickered like static on an old TV screen. Hope filled me when I realized that for the first time, she doubted.
Just when I was becoming convinced of my own guilt, Mia wasn’t sure anymore.
twenty
“Are you sure about this?” Addie asked from her spot in the middle of my resident sick room in the nurse’s office. “Today?”
Her eyes rarely lifted from what must’ve been the world’s biggest first-aid kit. She had all one million pieces of it spread out on the floor in front of her. In the past five minutes, she’d packed, unpacked, reorganized, and was now packing it again—all while Finn walked around her in circles. They were making me dizzy. It looked like Addie’s lower lip might start bleeding any minute from the way she kept biting into it.
“It can’t wait any longer. It’s almost Thanksgiving, and during fall break making eye contact with her will be even harder than it already is. We need to do it while this latest dream is fresh in her mind.” I leaned against the wall and studied the popcorn ceiling. Maybe it was reckless, but we were running out of time.
My vision shook violently back and forth and I closed my eyes. Over the last few days, different parts of my body had begun having full-on mini-seizures; usually it was my eyes or my hands, but the other day my foot had gone crazy. The longer I went with less and less sleep, the worse they got. Mia’s nightmares, while improving our relationship, were killing me.
“I told you about the dream last night.” I shrugged, my eyes still closed. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as we think.”
Mia’s dream wasn’t the only thing that had changed for the better last night. The floss tying my wrist to the bed was in one piece when I woke up. Drawing in a deep shaky breath, I released it slowly. I’d stayed in bed. After everything lately, it seemed like a good sign.
Finn wouldn’t stop pacing. His legs kept going like he was on a treadmill—if he slowed he might stumble and fly off the back of it.
“I don’t know,” Addie muttered as she struggled to wrap her thin fingers around an enormous stack of gauze pads. “She just started talking to me about the e-mails again. If we really want to help her, we can’t afford to scare her off now.”
“That’s why you won’t be a part of it.” My eyes finally stopped their spasm and I slid to the floor, taking supplies from her hand and placing the pile in one of the containers.
“But things have been bad with her foster family lately. Mrs. Sparks is never home.” Addie sighed and wrapped both arms around her knees, tucking them up under her chin. “I feel so bad for her. First there was the fire—which alone had to scar her for life—then, I don’t know. It’d be so hard to get stuck in the middle of some family you don’t even know.”
“Do you think there is anything weird going on with Mr. Sparks?”
“No—from the way he acts, I think he cares about her. They’re just really busy. Mia doesn’t like to talk about family much, and she refuses to discuss her parents.” Addie closed her eyes and shook her head. “No matter how many times I ask.”
It was quiet for a minute before I reached over and closed the massive first-aid kit, stood, and pushed it onto the top shelf. “We’re never going to figure out who’s threatening her if we don’t convince her to let us see the e-mails. I’m going to try to talk to her. I think after the dream last night, I might actually have a shot. If not, you’re our backup plan.”
I extended my hand to Addie. As she came to her feet, I waited until her hazel eyes met mine. “Remember, you know nothing about this. Play dumb and it’ll be fine.”
“No worries. She does that constantly.” Finn’s laugh sounded weak and robotic, but I still appreciated the effort. He got to his feet and stood next to her.
Addie smiled, then elbowed Finn in the ribs—hard—before looking back at me. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Still rubbing his side, Finn led the way out of the office as the bell rang. His skin had paled and his voice wasn’t as steady as usual. “So, the hallway behind the gym?”
“Yeah. Five minutes.”
He gulped and nodded before turning and disappearing into the throng of students surging through the hall.
Addie grabbed my hand, squeezed it once, and whispered “Good luck” before releasing it, going back into the sick room, and closing the door behind her.
The old benches stacked in the hallway smelled like wood marinated in sweat and Gatorade. I perched on the edge of one, waiting. It was the reason I’d picked this spot. First, no one ever came here. The hallway dead-ended at the back entrance to the gym, so it was used to store old equipment. Second, if I sat on this bench, she’d never see me until they were already here.
Was it sneaky and underhanded? Probably. Did I care? No. I needed some place I could trap her for a few minutes. Just long enough to make her listen to me.
A shudder ran down my spine at the general creepiness of that thought, but I shrugged it off. I repeated the mantra I’d been practicing lately.
I’m not a monster. I’m not a monster. I’m not a monster.
Of course, it would be easier to believe that if I hadn’t woken up all those mornings with the dental floss on my wrist ripped in half—but there were other explanations for that. There had to be. Ones that didn’t make my hair stand on end. Ones that didn’t end with me babbling nonsense in the corner of a white room with padded walls and an extra-tight jacket.
I took a deep breath. How could I figure out who was threatening her if she wouldn’t trust me? Helping her was my goal. By definition that made it less creepy, right?
Footsteps sounded in the hallway and I froze, listening.
“And Addie said to meet her here?” Mia sounded more than skeptical.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was here.” I could hear the guilt in Finn’s voice from down the hall. He was officially the worst liar ever.
With a shake of my head, I got to my feet, but I waited until their footsteps reached the end of the hallway before I stepped out.
Mia’s initial reaction was pretty much what I expected. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to scream. I stepped forward and held up my hand. “Mia, I just want to talk to you for a few minutes. Please.”
She glanced between Finn and me before she sighed, closed her mouth, and nodded. “There are students and teachers everywhere. They’ll all hear me if I scream.” She sat down on the bench and dug her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. With several glares at me for emphasis, she dialed 911 and left it open on her lap. “You have five minutes. Finn has to leave, though; I don’t like being outnumbered. If you touch me, or even look like you’re thinking about it, I’ll scream as loud as I can and push Call at the same time. Got it?”
Finn’s eyes were gigantic as he turned to face me. When I nodded, his breath came out in a gush. “Um, I’ll go then. I promise, Mia, he won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought there was any chance he would.”
Mia turned her frosty gaze on him and shrugged. “You’re his best friend. I don’t exactly trust your opinion. Addie’s going to kill you for bringing me here.”
“Yep.” Finn winced. “See you, man. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” I turned to take a seat be
side her, but she clear-
ed her throat and frowned, hovering one finger above the “call” button. With a jerk of her head, she indicated the opposite end of the bench. When I’d sat where she directed, she lifted her finger from the phone and turned her eyes back on me.
Mia was acting tough but it was hard to miss the tremor that ran across her shoulders. After the last week of dreams, it was painful to think I still scared her that much. I’d hoped
it would be different now, but I couldn’t hold on to that optimism while she looked at me like she thought I had a chain saw stashed behind my back.
“I need to tell you something, and it’s really hard to believe, but it’s true.” I spoke soft and slow, keeping my hands where she could see them. I tried to remember all the pieces of the speech I’d run through a dozen times in my head.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a freak—from pretty much the moment we met.” I cleared my throat, trying to make the dryness go away. “You said I was on drugs once, and you were kind of right. I was addicted.”
Mia’s eyes widened and the flash of relief on her face gave me hope.
“The problem is that my addiction is you—or actually, your dreams.” I shook my head as a wave of confusion and panic crossed her face. Everything was coming out all wrong. My addiction is you? Man, that phrase had “Things a Serial Killer Would Say” written all over it. What the heck was wrong with me? My brain and my mouth were refusing to communicate.
“What I mean is … I watch dreams. I’ve seen yours—a lot of them. You used to have dreams all the time about these beautiful places.” Now the words were tumbling out fast. Almost too fast to make sense, but at least I was kind of explaining. “And you were painting, or trying to paint, and you wore this white dress—”
Mia gasped and got to her feet, but I saw it coming and moved in front of her, blocking her path. I wrapped one arm around her back and covered her mouth with my hand. Her phone fell and clattered across the floor.
“Shh … ” The word slipped out of my mouth and a dark shiver ran through me. Terror poured from her eyes as she struggled against me, but I was so much stronger. It wasn’t even that hard to hold her in place, and no one was here to help her—no one but me.
Horror filled me, and I felt sick at how close this situation felt to the one in her nightmares. I released her and stepped back. No, this wasn’t me. I wouldn’t let it be. I couldn’t.
I fought the fire in my chest, forcing my lungs to breathe.
“I’m not done. You have to listen to me.”
“No, I don’t.” She pushed against me, trying to get past. “I can’t believe you talked to Dr. Freeburg. That’s just—you’re just—”
“What do you mean?” In my confusion she almost snuck past, but I grabbed her wrists and held them to my chest. “Please, just listen to me. I know who Dr. Freeburg is, but I’ve never talked to him.”
Mia leaned away with all her weight, frantically trying to wriggle her hands free. “Let go! All you’ve ever done is lie.”
I brought both her wrists together between my hands and barely resisted the urge to pin her against the wall and force her to hear me. The darkness within me flared and I felt like throwing her away from me to keep it from gaining any ground. Her eyes flew up to mine and I stared into hers, trying to show her I was sincere. “Mia—I swear to you I’m telling the truth. What would it hurt to listen to me? I promise. I won’t ask for anything more.”
“Haven’t you already done enough?” Tears welled in her eyes and my heart sank. I released her and sank down to the bench. She was right. I couldn’t stand to see her look at me that way anymore. She stood frozen in place, so I made one final plea, my voice cracking with desperation.
“Please, listen, and then you can go. I promise.”
Fear and pity seemed to have chosen her eyes for a battlefield. After a few seconds, pity won and she sat back down. “Fine, talk.”
Straddling the bench, I turned to face her. I could see it in everything about her: this was it. The last chance I would ever get. I needed to make it count.
“I can prove it if you let me. I know about the nightmares too. I know about the monster you see—how he chases you and how you’re afraid of fire. I know how he says he’ll make you love him.” I studied my hands and barely noticed how tightly they were clenched. I tried to remember everything, any small detail that might convince her to believe me. “I know in your dreams it’s me, and I … I beat you until you black out, but that’s not me. I’m—I’m the other one.”
My breath was coming out in panting bursts now, but I couldn’t stop it. “And I know about your parents and the fire—how you were on the lawn crying. I’m so sorry—”
I stopped, wondering what I might have missed.
“Can I talk now? Are you done?”
I looked up at her, but her face was unreadable. I nodded. If what I’d said so far didn’t convince her—nothing would. The fact that she’d listened this long was a minor miracle.
“I’m going to leave now, and you’re going to let me.” Mia got to her feet, and I stood too. Her voice was slow and deliberate, but her legs shook so bad she almost couldn’t stay upright. “And you’re never going to talk to me again.”
Those nine words felt like a hundred very small and extremely sharp axes to my gut—each one drawing blood. Taking a faltering step back, I leaned against the opposite wall, fighting the urge to crumple to the floor. “So you don’t believe any of it? How would I know all of that? How would anyone?”
“I don’t know how you convinced Dr. Freeburg to tell you about my therapy, but this needs to stop right now or I’m calling the police. No more e-mails. No more talking to my therapist. No more getting Addie to tell you about my past or my family.” Mia spat the last word out with venom so forceful it shocked me.
“What about the nightmares, the things the stalker said?” My mind rebelled against the realization that she had an explanation for everything.
Mia reached into her backpack and shoved a crumpled-up piece of paper into my hand. “There is only one person who would know about those, Parker—the monster that sent them to me.” She grabbed her phone off the floor, turned, and walked away.
My brain searched for anything else that could help. My voice trembled and I slumped down on the bleachers. “But … I did it because I’m dying.”
She didn’t even turn around when she shouted, “Good!”
Her response echoed around me as everything seemed to move through a dense fog. I opened up the crumpled paper she’d put in my hand. It was a printed copy of an e-mail from [email protected]. My e-mail address was Chipp18. It said:
The fire will help me seduce you.
It won’t be long until we can be together.
I’ll make you love me.
The fire will make you love me.
If you don’t, it means you’re broken.
I’ll find a way to fix you.
I dropped the paper to the floor. The pounding in my head was so loud I could hear every heartbeat like a marching band clanging in my brain. As I watched Mia’s stiff form walk down the hall, I saw the shadow of someone following behind her. I took a step. It was him; it had to be. I had to warn her. As I opened my mouth to yell her name, the words caught in my throat and I choked on all the lies my life had become.
The shadowy figure stepped into the light. Tall, messy black hair, loose-fitting jeans—I recognized the familiar walk.
I blinked, knowing it must be my imagination. He nearly caught up with her before I finally rubbed my eyes and looked again. Darkness splintered into a thousand shadows before melting into the gloomy corners of the hallway.
twenty-one
The massive oak tree shuddered against the cold November wind. The few leaves that still clung to the branches were plucked off one by one, each spinning harder than the last as it skitter
ed down the street in front of my car. I parked across from Dr. Freeburg’s office again.
What I was hoping to learn from showing up here, at this point, I wasn’t sure. I just wanted to talk to Freeburg. Mia had made it very clear in our conversation earlier that she already thought I had, so I might as well try. Maybe I could get a clearer idea if he was actually as creepy as he seemed to be. Maybe he had some of the answers that were out of my reach. After my plan to talk to Mia had crashed and burned, I desperately needed to cross a name off my suspect list, and if it couldn’t be mine … well, then maybe it could be his.
I leaned the driver’s seat back and closed my eyes to rest for a few moments, but it didn’t help much. My headache was every bit as bad as it had been earlier, and it was getting worse by the minute. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw Darkness following Mia down the hallway. I’d seen occasional weird things before, but usually they were while I was in someone else’s dream and were followed by a pink unicorn wearing a pin-striped suit.
This wasn’t a dream, though. My mind had become my worst enemy. It was playing morbid tricks on me, and I didn’t know how worried I should be. Blowing it off was the obvious option. It was easy. I was good at it. But I had a nagging feeling that seeing the shadow of me meant things were getting worse—more serious. As if losing time at night wasn’t bad enough, full-blown hallucinations weren’t something I felt prepared to deal with. Not now, not ever.
It was bad enough to see Darkness in Mia’s nightmares, but to have him following me into reality wasn’t an option. Yet what I’d seen wasn’t real. I didn’t want him to be.
He couldn’t be.
I’d avoided thinking much about the e-mails, mostly because it confirmed my fears. Either someone wanted Mia to think I’d sent the messages, or I’d sent them during my lost time. I winced and focused on the first option. Who would want to frame me, though? Who hated me enough to destroy my life like this? I’d been thinking about it for a few weeks, but still didn’t feel any closer to the answer. We had no real suspects there. Thor, Matt, and Jeff made more sense than anyone, but would they really be okay with terrifying Mia in the process of making me look bad? Worse still … what if it was my name on that e-mail because I was the monster who set up the account? What if Mia had been right about me all along?
Insomnia (The Night Walkers) Page 17