“Daniel?” Melinda Barnes came around the kitchen island toward her son.
“I’m okay,” Daniel said and took another sip of water. “The branch went through Dad. All the way from his back out through here.” Daniel tapped his chest. “It was like—like it wanted to stab him. Like a sword fight with knights.”
Sam nodded grimly.
The poor kid’s only ten freakin’ years old, Dean thought.
“But then the tree acted like it did in my nightmare...”
“What do you mean?” Dean said, leaning forward.
“It moved. The whole tree—” Daniel spread his arms to the sides and raised them together—“lifted itself up. And, it lifted Dad up, off the floor.”
“Oh, my God!” Melinda whispered harshly. “Daniel...”
“Dad was still alive...” Daniel continued.
Now the boy’s voice became strained with emotion. Dean could tell the kid was holding back tears, bravely trying not to cry, for his old man.
“And the tree... the tree made him... dance in front of me.”
“Jesus,” Dean whispered.
Melinda Barnes finally ran forward, dropping to her knees and wrapping her son in her arms, pressing her face against his chest and neck.
“Oh, God... oh, God...” she murmured.
“The branch swung him back and forth,” Daniel continued even though tears ran freely down his cheeks now. “Like he was a puppet.”
“Oh, honey, stop,” Melinda whispered. “Please stop! Oh, God...”
“I think it wanted to scare me before it left,” Daniel said, holding his palm against the back of his mother’s head in an effort to comfort her. “And then the tree... scraped him off the branch... and Dad’s blood smeared on the window... and he fell to the floor and I knew he was...” Sniffling, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It was just like my nightmare,” he said. “The tree was evil.”
NINETEEN
Without speaking, Sam and Dean walked past the tree service workmen, who had made a fair amount of progress in destroying the murderous tree. Sam almost regretted their having to prod the information out of Daniel Barnes, if only for the mom’s sake. Talking about the incident had seemed almost cathartic for the kid. He’d been keeping that horrible incident bottled up inside. His mom, already devastated by the accident, now had to accept a whole new and horrifying reality about her husband’s death. Sam wondered if Melinda Barnes could accept that a tree had willfully killed her husband. Or if she would rather convince herself that Daniel was wrong, that his version of events was informed by an already over-stimulated imagination.
Sam settled into the passenger seat of the Impala and stared numbly through the windshield.
Dean dropped into the driver’s seat and hesitated before inserting the key into the ignition.
“Poor kid,” he said. “Probably have nightmares for the rest of his life.”
“Nightmares,” Sam said. “Kid’s mom never suspected.”
“How could she?” Dean said. “Usually, you wake up and escape the nightmare. Kid wakes up and the nightmare comes out with him.”
Sam turned to Dean. What if there was more to his waking nightmare of Soulless Sam than he’d been willing to admit to himself, something beyond psychological fallout from the wall in his brain? “Maybe that’s what’s happening all over town. Nightmares coming to life. Lucy said she has nightmares about the accident that killed her boyfriend. And now his car is back.”
“People are sleepwalking and having nightmares. Guy jogging was dreaming of a giant tarantula? That what you’re saying?”
“What if it doesn’t have to be one-to-one,” Sam said.
“What if the nightmares of the sleeping are coming to life and attacking those who are awake?”
“So Joe Townie, safe in his bed, has a nightmare about a giant tarantula which then pops into existence near Harvey Dufford’s jogging route and slurps him up?”
“Essentially.”
“Whose nightmares?” Dean asked. “Everybody dreams.”
“Judging by last night,” Sam said. “Only the bad dreams.”
Sam recalled his own nightmare about Soulless Sam. Another nightmare from last night, however brief, that seemed to intrude on reality. But that wasn’t the first dream about his soulless doppelganger. He’d had a similar but normal—for him, at least—dream the night before. The second dream had been different. But after Dean woke up unscathed, Sam had convinced himself that he’d imagined the Soulless Sam manifestation. Sleep experts called it a false awakening. Dean hadn’t been injured by the butcher knife. The bedcovers hadn’t been sliced or punctured by the blade. Before they spoke to Daniel Barnes, Sam had no trouble attributing the brief apparition to a waking dream, probably caused by a combination of sleep deprivation and hours spent battling what they now knew were nightmare manifestations. Before that realization, he’d been unable to entertain the possibility that a dream could assume some sort of altered reality.
After hearing Daniel’s account of the tree attacking his father, Sam had to reevaluate what he himself had experienced. It seemed that whatever was happening to the residents of Clayton Falls could as easily affect him and Dean. The Winchesters weren’t immune.
“So we should all think happy thoughts?” Dean said. “Sam, we can’t control our subconscious.”
“Dude, you and I are time bombs,” Sam said. “Nuclear time bombs.”
“What are you saying?”
“If this can happen to anyone in town, including us, we could be the worst thing to happen to Clayton Falls.” Sam shook his head, appalled by the possibility of their subconscious minds out of control. “If memories of our experiences over the past years work their way into our dreams now, Clayton Falls could be primed for a bloodbath, maybe even an apocalypse.”
“If you’re right,” Dean said, “until we fix this, we don’t sleep.”
He started the Impala. The radio was playing Bowie’s “Changes.”
“This involves multiple dreamers,” Dean said. “How the hell do we pin it down?”
“Maybe we need to figure out why it started.”
They stopped at C.J.’s Diner for breakfast, as Dean said, no point trying to figure anything out on an empty stomach. Once again, the place was packed, but the morning turnover rate was impressive and they were seated in a small corner booth after only about ten minutes of waiting.
Dean ordered what he referred to as the ‘heart attack special’ which included fried eggs, bacon, and home fries, while Sam asked for cereal and a muffin. Before they even looked at a menu, they each ordered the bottomless cup of coffee. Their server, who introduced herself as Bobbi Jean Todd and told them how thrilled she was to meet two honestto- goodness FBI agents, brought their plates in record time.
Around them, many of the townspeople talked in hushed and urgent voices about weird things happening in the night. Sam heard some people say that they had seen zombies, who then disappeared into thin air. A few said they’d heard about giant bugs eating people. The other side of these conversations involved those who hadn’t witnessed anything bizarre and questioned the sobriety and, in some cases, sanity of those telling the strange tales.
Sam was pleasantly surprised that his laptop computer picked up a serviceable Wi-Fi signal from their corner booth. While he ate, he skimmed through news stories on Clayton Falls, using “sleep” and “dreams” and “nightmares” as keywords. He got a hit right away, brought up the story, and spun the computer around so Dean could read the screen.
“Place opened about six months ago,” Sam said. “The ‘Restful Sleep Center.’”
“They treat sleep disorders,” Dean said before finishing his third and final egg. “Think they might be creating a few? Mad scientist at work?”
Sam sipped his coffee and shrugged. “Can’t rule it out.”
A portly man with thinning hair entered the diner carrying a small notebook and, rather than asking to be seated, gravitated toward the more ebull
ient conversations about the previous night. Sam heard the man introduce himself as Darren Nash, a reporter for the Fremont Ledger, a county newspaper. He then proceeded to ask pointed questions and take voluminous notes. He kept shaking his head in incredulity, but the smile on his face was that of a man who’d just discovered he held a winning lottery ticket in his hand.
“Press,” Sam said.
Dean glanced at the man. “Bound to happen. But unless he’s writing for the Weekly World News, he’ll have trouble getting any of this crazy shit past an editor.”
“Don’t know, dude,” Sam said. “Lots of witnesses.”
“I’m not lining up for an interview,” Dean said. “Besides, I’m done.”
As he pushed his empty plate away, Bobbi Jean arrived at their table as if magically summoned.
“Anything else, agents?”
“Just the check,” Dean said. “Oh, and two large coffees to go.”
Sam directed Dean to the sleep center, a detached brick building that looked like a modest inn or slightly upscale motel, while lacking the quaint charm of a bed and breakfast. The sleep center stood adjacent to a row of shops in a commercial district less than a mile from their motel. The sign mounted on the front wall of the building featured a crescent moon above the words “Restful Sleep Center.” A second line of text read “Sleep Diagnostics of Clayton Falls.”
“So this is it?” Dean asked, sounding disappointed.
“You were expecting a creepy old mansion?”
“They could have a hunchback working reception.”
The receptionist was an attractive young woman with jet-black hair styled in a pixie cut, wearing a sleeveless houndstooth dress. She sat behind a semicircular mahogany desk with a raised front panel. Laura Bronick—according to the gold nameplate on her desk—smiled broadly.
“Welcome to Restful Sleep!” she said.
“I stand corrected,” Dean said.
Her smile faltered a bit. “Excuse me?”
“Not important.” Dean removed his FBI credentials from his jacket pocket and showed them to her. “Agent DeYoung and Agent Shaw. Need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“We’re not here to sleep,” Dean said. Then he added, sotto voce, “Although a few hours’ sleep sounds mighty good about now.”
Sam leaned forward. “We’re conducting an investigation.”
“Oh, in that case...” She consulted a chart on a stand beside her computer keyboard. “We’re short-staffed this time of day. I’ll see if our administrative director is available.”
She donned a slim headset with a tiny projecting microphone and pressed an extension button on the top of her phone console.
“Ms. Bessette, there are two gentlemen here from the FBI. No. They didn’t say. Okay. Thank you.”
She disconnected the call and smiled at them again.
“She’ll be here in a few moments. Please have a seat while you wait.”
Sam glanced over his shoulder at the luxurious tan leather sofa and bookending chairs along the wall opposite the reception desk. If anything, they looked too damn comfortable. He didn’t know about Dean, but if he sat down for more than ten consecutive seconds, he’d probably fall asleep.
“Thanks. We’ll stand.”
Dean shot Sam a look that told him he’d had the same thought.
“Surprised you’re open on a Saturday,” Sam said to the receptionist.
“We have patients check in Friday night and check out Saturday,” she said. “We’re closed Sunday and Monday.”
“So this place helps people sleep?” Sam asked.
“At Restful Sleep Center we identify and treat sleep disorders,” Laura said by rote in her infallibly cheery voice. Then she shrugged and went a bit off-script. “Sleep is important. You know what they say, if you never slept, you’d go insane.”
“They say that, huh?” Sam said.
Soulless Sam had gone over a year without sleep. Sam wondered if his soulless self might be considered insane. And if so, could the insanity have been caused by lack of sleep. Or was the absence of a soul—and therefore a conscience—enough to make an otherwise normal man appear insane? Because if sleeplessness was a contributing factor, wouldn’t that affect Sam too? They shared a body. Could long-term sleep deprivation cause lasting effects, even after a soul restoration?
Laura chuckled. “Well, I’m no scientist. That’s just something I read somewhere. If you don’t sleep, you don’t dream. And if you don’t dream, you go cuckoo.”
“Good to know,” Sam responded.
A statuesque brunette wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a blood-red business suit, and impressive heels entered the lobby through the glass door behind the receptionist’s desk. Her dark hair, piled high in a loose chignon, was held in place with jeweled hairpins. Sam fought a smile as Dean almost stood at attention, stepping forward to introduce himself.
“I’m Agent DeYoung,” Dean said. “This is my partner, Agent Shaw.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Sophie Bessette, director of the Restful Sleep Center.”
Dean shook her hand and reluctantly—or so it seemed to Sam—stepped aside for Sam to follow suit.
“I must say, the last thing I expected when I woke up this morning was a visit from the FBI. How may I assist you?”
“It’s a—uh, matter of Homeland Security,” Dean said, his voice hushed. “We’re investigating a series of strange incidents in Clayton Falls. You are familiar with what’s been happening in town, Ms. Bessette?”
The woman glanced briefly at the receptionist, raised her eyebrows, and looked back at Dean and Sam.
“I’ve heard some... unusual rumors. But I didn’t give them much credence. Are you saying these things are actually happening?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We haven’t had anything unusual happen here at Restful Sleep, if that’s what you’re checking. Have we, Laura?”
“Just the same old routine.”
“Of course, our patient records are confidential,” the director said. “Unless you have a warrant, I won’t be able to provide access to—”
“We’re not interested in patient records,” Sam said. “We were more interested in... Is there somewhere we could speak in private?”
“An office,” Dean said, bumbling a bit. “Your office. You do have an office, right?”
Sophie smiled indulgently at Dean.
“As a matter of fact, I do have an office. Follow me.”
“With pleasure,” Dean said, echoing her earlier sentiment and yet sounding decidedly lecherous for a professional environment.
As they followed the woman down the hall, Dean held out his arm to slow Sam and whispered, “Getting a definite hotfor- teacher vibe from this one.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“No?”
“Aside from when you tripped over your tongue.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe she’s luring you into her trap.”
They picked up their pace and fell in step behind her by the time she motioned them through a doorway into her spacious office. After they were all seated with the door closed, she asked, “Private enough?”
“We don’t want to cause a panic,” Sam said. “You see, we’re investigating possible terrorist activity here in Clayton Falls.”
“Terrorism? Here?”
“Possibly,” Sam said, quickly adding, “But more as a potential testing ground for a large scale attack in a major metropolitan area.”
“Okay, granting that this information is a bit alarming, I still fail to see how Restful Sleep could be involved in your investigation.”
“We suspected a weaponized airborne hallucinogen,” Sam continued. “But now we believe these incidents are related to sleeping.”
“Ah, comes the dawn.”
“Specifically, nightmares,” Dean said. “And we recently discovered that you treat sleep disorde
rs here.”
“Agent... DeYoung, was it? All sleep centers treat sleep disorders.”
“We thought maybe it was more than a coincidence that nightmares seem to trigger these incidents and there happens to be a sleep center in town.”
She folded her hands on a daily planner in the center of her desk, a prim pose that was no doubt fueling Dean’s schoolteacher fantasies.
“Sleep centers are not that uncommon,” she explained. “One in fifteen Americans suffers from sleep apnea. In a town the size of Clayton Falls we could have close to a thousand patients for that disorder alone.”
“You must be very busy here,” Dean said.
“Unfortunately, the condition often goes undiagnosed.”
“Do you treat people who have nightmares?”
“Not directly,” she said, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “We don’t treat people simply because they might have nightmares. But those who have trouble sleeping may experience loss of breath and anxiety. Some of them stop breathing many times during a single night. Physiological symptoms of distress could potentially trigger bad dreams.”
“But you would have no reason to cause someone to have nightmares.”
“Certainly not,” she said indignantly. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Maybe I could assist your investigation better if I understood what you believe is happening.”
“It’s complicated,” Sam said.
“Just a theory,” Dean added.
“We believe that somehow nightmares are... becoming real.”
“You’re joking.”
“We’re not sure how this is happening,” Sam said. “Initially we suspected a hallucinogen as the sole bioterrorism agent, but several people have been killed by these manifestations.”
“There was something odd about the hit and run,” she said. “A tragedy, certainly, but not a nightmare.”
“What’s ‘odd’ is that the car vanished after it killed each victim,” Dean said.
“There was more than one?”
“A second one last night. Same car. Multiple witnesses,” Sam said. “And we—Agent DeYoung and I—witnessed a few bizarre incidents personally last night.”
Supernatural: Night Terror Page 17