Nightmare's Daughter

by Aurora Smith

  Even in my dream I could smell the stale, unclean sheets and sweat that filled the boys’ cabin. I watched, amused, as Vanessa carried the trash bag of cups down the hall to the bathroom while Christina and I sought out our prey. He wasn’t hard to find; apparently being closest to the door was a fire safety rule that had been made when he started joining Camp Neverwhere.

  We stood over Chad Sweeney, one of the meanest dudes at camp. He had a temper that was equal to Grendel’s mother. Being Jinn didn’t help his cause and didn’t make his undesirable personality any more appealing. If you’re wondering what a Jinn is then I’ll tell you. It’s a guy made of fire. He looked like an ordinary boy; tall with freckles and a strong chin but if you touch him then your skin sizzles like water on a hot frying pan.

  ssssssst

  Chad would walk around camp, his hands in gloves and his shoulders stuck in a proud stance because of how scary he was. He was friends with all the popular kids at camp. The ones whose parents where a big deal. Like the Elves and Fairies; basically all of the spirit people (Pixies, Brownies, Spirits, Fays and Imps.) They were all impossible to be around; also gorgeous, smart, tall, fit, and fundamentally perfect. I wasn’t one to discriminate, perfect is fine with me, but when you were mean about it then your importance factor went down considerably for me. They were all basically bullies. Dominic excluded, but it was Christina who kept him in check.

  This guy even made the bullies nervous. He would sit at doors and like a sneaky snake, take his hand out of his gloves and barely touch a part of your skin that was showing as you walked by. He had done it to me so many times that I had little red spots on my elbows that summer. The real me started laughing, I couldn’t wait to relive this. This particular prank was genius and we managed to get away with it too. I don’t know how; Tortellini had to have known that I would be the only one able to do it. But there was no evidence to prove it.

  “Ready?” Vanessa whispered as she walked into Chad’s room.

  “Yes!” we both said as she came in with a big bucket of water and our bag of cups. I watched as the three of us scooped water into each little pointless cup and placed them onto the floor. We filled the room up, each cup, two inches apart from each other. A blanket of cups lay on the floor; they were filled to the brim with harmless water. Well, harmless unless you’re made of fire…

  We stepped back to admire our work, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough then and it wasn’t enough now, in dream land.

  “We have a ton more cups,” I heard Vanessa say, a malicious snicker in her words.

  “I’ll get more water,” Christina said, laughing along with us. The dream-walking me sniggered as my best friend scampered down the hall, enjoying herself more than she would ever admit.

  “I thought you said that you didn’t do this.” My father’s voice came out of nowhere and I screamed; my first reaction was to punch so my father got it in the chin. He rubbed the spot that I connected with and he grimaced.

  “You scared me!” I crossed my arms and snarled at him.

  “I can see that. Maybe I’ve been trying too hard with you all these years.” He winked at me, still caressing his face.

  “Are you doing this?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know about this, I’m just dropping in too say hi.” He reached out and hugged me and tussled my hair. “How’s camp going?”

  “Well…” I trailed off as we watched a boy follow Christina with a dazed look on his face and a bucket of water in his hands. She explained that he had caught her in the bathroom so she had no choice but to dazzle him or whatever she does. It was Michael, a cocky Elf that none of us really cared for, which made it even funnier. He helped us fill the hall way all the way out the cabin’s main door. There was no possible way that no water was getting on Chad. Even if he had someone pick him up; which would never happen because he was big and very, very hot.

  “Well?” Dad wanted more information.

  “Do you know Liam and Justin Frankenstein?”

  “I knew their great grandfather, why?”

  “They’re here at camp with us this year and they’re…interesting.”

  “Ahuh, what’s going on?” He waited patiently for me to tell him what happened and I could tell it wouldn’t last much longer. My father wasn’t exactly patience personified.

  “So, I got into trouble because Liam blew up the forest with some strange science concoction he came up with and I happened to be around so I got blamed, in fact, I even got accused of being the ring leader.”

  “Can’t imagine why.” My dad feigned shock and horror in the middle of one of my dreams where I attempted to drench a walking fire man.

  “Yeah, well, this is different. I do it so that no one finds out it’s me. I’m not going to make something explode in the broad daylight then stick around so that everyone finds me,” I explained.

  “I’ll admit it’s not your style.”

  “Seriously, what’s the deal with them? I’m assuming that Liam was burnt?” I asked.

  “Yes, he was.”

  “Annnnnnd?”

  “I’m not sure what happened. I wasn’t there.” My father shrugged but I wasn’t buying it.

  “But you are always around, you know everyone.”

  “I am in their dreams; I don’t know what happens to people in the real world. I probably know less than the average person because all I see is the conscious, what people want to see, or what they’re afraid to see.”

  “You really have no clue what happened? Don’t people talk?”

  “It happened in France, I believe the accident is what caused them to move,” he said.

  “Accident.” I echoed what Justin had said, how they had gotten close after the accident.

  “Would you like to see what he’s dreaming about right now?” My dad looked positively giddy that I might actually decide to join him.

  “I dunno, dad.” I felt suddenly squeamish at the idea of invading Liam’s privacy like that.

  “Come on, you need to start doing this with me anyway.” He was begging.

  “Fine.” I rolled my eyes and looked longingly at all of the cups in the room. I wanted to stay and see Chad’s reaction, but I wouldn’t be able to see it since it wasn’t in my mind; soon this room would be a blank and I would be running off with my girls into the night, back to our cabin.

  I closed my eyes and felt the temperature change in the room. Goose bumps rose and I was breathing in chemicals.

  “Man, this kid is strange,” my dad said. Both of us looked around, weirded out by all of the jars of greenish liquid that had different body parts and random dead, floating animals in them. They were littered around a big room that had round balls of electricity; little spider webs of trapped lightning bolts danced around inside them. Black piping lined every bit of wall space and tubes were coming out of different pipes, all of them connected to a table with some kind of lever on it. An operating looking table stood in the middle of the room and when you looked up you could see the sky.

  “This is straight out of a movie,” I whispered.

  “Yes. The Frankensteins are weird.” My dad hardly approved which made me laugh.

  “So, you said you didn’t recognize that boy in my dream, the one whose neck you snapped.”

  “That was Liam?” He sounded confused.

  “No that was his twin brother, Justin,” I explained. Honestly, he should be better at his job.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, all the pretty boys run together. They all look the same.” He shrugged my obvious irritation off. “Shhhh, someone’s coming.”

  “You’re the one who’s talking.”

  “Shhh.”

  Justin came around the corner, a white lab coat that had green stains and black burnt holes all over it.

  “I thought this was Liam’s dream.”

  “It is. This is Liam, or at least what he used to look like.” I looked closer at my new acquaintance, the one that had a burnt face and no hair.

  “So th
ey’re identical twins then,” I said, amazed. By the looks of it he might have even been the better looking one. His face and body were thinner and stronger, his thick hair was slightly curlier and was standing up in a kind of perfect way that matched his surroundings and the way he moved was like silk; smooth and comfortable. He was obviously in his element amongst this odd array of test tubes and mixtures of different elements.

  In the middle of my awe the room shook quickly and a blinding light shot through the room. Liam’s stunning face quivered to the way he looked now. A girl’s screaming filled the room and I could see blood and fire on his hands, then in a blink of an eye we were back. Liam was walking around again, clueless to our presence or the sudden change of scenery.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “It happens all the time. I can only assume it was the accident.”

  “So you’ve seen more? You could tell me what happened, or what his subconscious has shown you,” I pressed.

  “Babe, you know that I can’t.”

  I booed him and hid my frustration. That dumb rule about Nightmare not being able to tell what he has seen was ridiculous. What? Did he have to sign a waiver like a therapist?

  “I’m going to find out what happened,” I said under my breath.

  “Great! Does that mean you’re going to be joining me into his dreams now?” My dad was elated. Finally, the one thing he has wanted me to do, I was doing.

  “Yes. But I don’t want to scare him. I just want to find out what happened.”

  “Sorry, pumpkin brains. That’s the name of the game. We have to scare him.” My dad didn’t look sorry at all.

  “Fine, but I’m doing it my way.” I was going to get to know this Liam character, even if I had to cheat to get it.

  Chapter Eight

  “What?”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve never gone into my dream before, have you?” I had just got done telling Christina about

  the dream that I had the night before as well as admitting to the fact that I voluntarily went into Liam’s dream.

  “No. It was actually the first time I had ever done it, well, kind of. I’d been into my dad’s head

  plenty of times but it’s basically impossible to scare him,” I said as a large macaw’s nails dug into my shoulder. I smacked the bird who squawked loudly in my ear. “Stop scratching me, bird brain!” I yelled and the blue dummy flew off of me just to circle me like a vulture awaiting my impending death.

  “Wait that was the first time you had ever gone into someone else’s dream?” Vanessa looked at me with big, shocked eyes and I knew I couldn’t blame her. If she had told me that she had never tasted blood before I probably wouldn’t have believed her either.

  “I don’t like going into other people’s heads. You never know what you’re going to find out.” I shivered a little at the memory of Liam’s burning skin.

  “Girl, if I were you, everybody would be terrified all the time. I would be all up in everybody’s dreams!” Vanessa said, evil etched in her eyebrows.

  “I know it sounds cool, but I’ve had my dad in my head so many times that I’m just not really into it the privacy invasion aspect of my entire life,” I groaned. Yeah, it would pretty much be my life, knowing everyone too much, accidently finding things out about them that they didn’t want anyone knowing. How was I going to ever look anyone in the face?

  “Tell your dad that he’s a jerk.” I looked over to Abby who was giving me a sideways glance.

  “I will. But you should know he’s a pretty nice guy in person.” I felt defensive for my father, even though I knew exactly how she felt.

  “You seem nice so I’m guessing he’s not all bad. But he really doesn’t let up sometimes.”

  “Did you know that if someone has the same dream over and over and it was something that they are really frightened of that it was more their subconscious leading him than it was him trying to scare them?”

  “What’s the point though?” Abby asked me.

  “I asked him that once. He told me that fear is nature’s way of keeping someone alive. Something about how if we didn’t fear then we would treat life like it was disposable.”

  “Well then I suppose I should thank him.” Abby sounded grumpy and I wondered if my dad had paid her a visit since he was in town last night.

  We arrived to the recreation centre drowning in awkward silence and got in line for food, leaving the conversation about my father and his importance on the back burner. Contrary to most places with gross cafeteria food that offered nothing but mystery meat and soggy fruit Jell-O desserts, this place was pretty amazing. The smell of pancakes, salsa and eggs, sausage and coffee tickled my senses and I breathed in my surroundings. Happy childhood memories flooded into my mind and I felt completely content despite my impending punishments that I would soon be starting with Liam. Even that wasn’t as daunting as it should’ve been; the idea of getting to know this strange boy was beginning to consume me.

  Vanessa, Christina, Abby and I took our trays filled with too much food and went to go sit with our summer groups, whom we were expected to eat with. Vanessa headed over to Dominic, wiggling her booty just for Christina. Abby walked shyly to a group of three others; unfortunately it looked like she was with a bunch of über popular kids. They completely ignored her when she sat down with them. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to talk her into some kind of awesome prank now, and it would be awesome to have a mermaid on our team; we could cover so much more ground if it included the pond. Christina and I headed over to the table that Magnus and Liam were already sitting at and eating their breakfast.

  “Bonjour, Maya, Christina,” Liam said with a sexy morning French voice. No, stop, Maya.

  “Good morning,” I said, sitting right across from him and then looked to Magnus who was shoving his face with eggs. “Hey pig, what’s up?”

  “Nothing.” His answer was muffled with food.

  “Yum!” Christina said to Magnus in a mother dearest type tone. He smiled and winked.

  “So, do you think that we are going to have to start our punishment today?” Liam asked.

  “Probably, we got away with it yesterday but he’s definitely going to make us today.” The day before Liam and I had gone to Cupid like we were told and he told us to go away and come back the next day. He had been in a very poor mood, so we ran away and didn’t look back, happy to have the day to ourselves. But there was no way it was happening two days in a row. I noticed that he was obsessively itching his hand that was hidden inside of the sleeve of his sweatshirt; he was twitching like a jack hammer pumped up on adrenaline and Red Bull.

  “You okay there, partner?” I asked.

  “Well, now you mention it I am a little… itchy.” After he said that he became completely dedicated to scratching his hand. “Remember my hand that I managed to make invisible yesterday?”

  “No! I completely forgot about that invisible hand because, you know, I see so many people with invisible hands!”

  “I think you’re being sarcastic.” Liam looked confused.

  “Yes, I remember.” I smiled at his inability to tell a joke. I wasn’t sure yet if it was language or his personality that caused him to not notice humor when it bit him in the butt.

  “Well, it was invisible for about half a day, and then…” He trailed off and slid his hand out of his sweatshirt sleeve.

  “Holy CRAP!” I yelled and grabbed his hand which resulted in a yelp.

  “Believe it or not, it’s tender.” He still held his hand up but out of my reach.

  “Sorry!” Liam’s hand, before it had gone invisible, had been burnt so badly that it consisted of mostly charred, wrinkly skin but now, post invisibility, it was covered in cyst-looking things. A few of the oozing pustules actually throbbed.

  “What happened now?” Magnus had pushed his plate of food away, suddenly looking sick to his stomach.

  “I had created a serum that made it invisible and it was either incomplete
and didn’t really work or I’m allergic to it. I wish I had someone to try it on.” All three of us looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Let me get this straight, you would willingly put that on one of us to see if we got boils on our hands too?” Magnus asked him.

  “Well, I didn’t say you guys.” Liam shrugged and popped a cherry tomato in his mouth.

  “I got a few people you could experiment on.” Christina said and the pair shared a laugh and an unexplained twitch of jealousy ran through me. I’ve been told my whole life that walking around in someone else’s dreams was very intimate. I definitely needed to watch that. It was pretty much a guarantee that anything I felt for this person was going to be misplaced or projected. This was going to be the first person whom I voluntarily try to connect with while he was sleeping; I really had no idea what was going to happen. He was odd and let’s be honest, he wasn’t exactly good-looking so I wasn’t worried…much.

  “Alright, alright listen up everybody.” Mr Torricelli was in the front of the cafeteria, clapping his hands, trying to get the attention of everybody in the room. “Today, as most of you know is the day that we are all going on our hike.” There was a collective groan but ol’ Tortellini ignored it, his face looked determined, the same way it did every year when he forced us to go on a hike and a swim at the top of one of the mountains to the east of our camp. I never minded it that much, the swimming was amazing, however the hike was absolutely gruelling. In the back of my mind I actually hoped that Liam and I would be cleaning up broken sticks and wreckage from the battle site in the forest instead of climbing up that dang mountain.