Book of Dark #1: Always Stand Up

by Deepak Khanchandani

  ~~~

  When Keane snapped awake, he was still clawing and kicking in blind panic, trying to escape a non-existent threat. His heart was racing so fast that he could no longer hear distinct beats, just a constant strum. He was shaking and sweating profusely and his hands were once again awash with the neon glow.

  Slowly, bit by bit, the rumbling groan in his ear faded and was replaced by the innocent, muffled snores of his roommates. And slowly, the shaking subsided as well. Keane heaved a deep sigh of relief.

  But something was gnawing away at him… Something from the dream… Like a nagging in the back of his mind.

  He racked his Idiot Brain, but it was still frantically grappling with the fight-or-flight after effects birthed by the dream and refused to co-operate.

  And then, all at once, the clouds of confusion fell away, leaving behind a single name.

  Zara.

  The little girl from the dream was the dusky teen from Mr. Smith’s office. They were the same girl. He had met her before. And that’s why she knew his name! The dream wasn’t a dream at all. It was a memory.

  Well, Keane thought to himself, as he halted his racing mind, most of it, anyway. Because, surely, the bit with the dragon couldn’t be, could it? He knew his memory to be questionable at the best of times, but he would remember having seen a big, black dragon in real life, wouldn’t he?

  Keane buried his hands under the rock hard pillow once again, which hurt a lot, but seemed to be the only viable and dignified way to conceal the luminance.

  He decided to proceed under the assumption that the dragon wasn’t real, and wondered if perhaps it was a symbol of some sort. Things in dreams weren’t always what they appeared to be. The homeless man had taught him that. He wondered if it could be an omen of some sort, a warning of things yet to come, bad things…

  Whatever the creature’s significance was, Keane didn’t understand why she had to keep intruding into his subconscious in the middle of the night, just when he wanted to get some shut eye. Why couldn’t she do it in Mr. McAlistair’s history classes, where he could actually do with a jolt to keep him awake? He also didn’t understand how he knew it was a she dragon. The creature somehow seemed to have communicated this piece of information without so much as a single word. All he did really understand was the ominous sense of impending doom he felt every time he thought about the dragon.

  “Not this again!” cried out Brok, raining popcorn down on Keane as he struggled to turn in his bed.

  “What the… Brok?” Keane yelled.

  Brok’s scrawny face poked down from over the edge of the bed, upside-down yet again.

  “Booooo!” Brok protested, his eyes barely open, as he thrust a big, fat downturned thumb right in Keane’s face. “Go back to sleep! And let me do the same. I needs my sleep, I do!”

  Keane grabbed both sides of his friend’s head and shook him awake.

  “Brok, she was the girl!”

  “What?” said Brok, struggling to break free. “What girl?”

  “The one from today…”

  Brok stopped writhing for a moment and cocked his head, regarding Keane with utter incomprehension. Then he gave up.

  “Wake me up only when you’ve started to make sense again.” He pulled free from Keane’s clutches with a quick jerk. “Nope. Scratch that. Never wake me again. Like, e-v-e-r.”

  “Brok, listen, just hear me out. I didn’t recognize her at first either. She’s changed quite a bit. But just try and I’m sure you’ll remember her. Insane Jane? Ring any bells?”

  “The who, now?”

  Keane cringed. He hated the unfortunate nickname that Zara had acquired during her last few months at John Atkins Elementary, seeing as he knew exactly what it felt like to be called names. He had only used it now to try and jog Brok’s memory and was already regretting it.

  “No. Zara. That’s her name,” said Keane, correcting himself.

  Then he frowned, acknowledging the possibility that Zara may actually have left before Brok had even transferred to St. Martin’s. He cursed his poor memory for acting up again.

  “I don’t get it. Is it Jane or Zara?”

  “I said it’s Zara,” Keane snapped.

  “Ohhhh, you like her…” Brok smiled broadly and started to make exaggerated kissing sounds to tease Keane.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I haven’t seen her in, like—”

  “…but you’re afraid of all things female, of course, because of… you know… just look at you,” continued Brok, motioning to all of Keane. “And then of course, there’s Randy and his Bullies. Big, big bullies. They’d never let you live it down if you blew it with the new girl. No suh-ree!”

  This silenced Keane. He didn’t know how Brok had done it but, somehow, he’d hit the nail right on the head. Keane himself didn’t quite realize how he felt about the girl. Not until Brok had just said it.

  He did think that Zara was cute. In fact, he’d been crushing on her all day long. For once, luck had been on his side and the new girl had ended up in most of his classes, which had given him ample opportunity to steal glances at her. It was no wonder he’d ended up dreaming about her!

  “See?” said Brok, somehow able to accurately decipher Keane’s silence and the expressions on his face. “I cracked it. I’m awesome.”

  Brok retracted his head out of view and suddenly let out a pirate-like laugh, as if he’d found hidden treasure in his own bed. “Popcorn is also awesome!”

  Keane frowned as he heard the squeaky crunching of teeth on popcorn. Then silence. And then snoring.

  He raised an eyebrow, wondering whether Brok had been talking in his sleep this entire time. If that were, in fact, the case, then Brok’s spot-on analysis of the Zara situation would make him an absolute genius, but, strangely enough, only when he slept. Keane wondered whether there was a way Brok could take tests and exams in his sleep.

  Now that the dorm was quiet again, Keane’s thoughts drifted back to the dream—to Zara, and to the dragon.

  He had already gathered, a long time ago, that dreams so invasive, so lifelike, had to mean something, but he’d been postponing his search for one reason alone—it would require him doing the thing he hated most of all…

  Reading.

  The mere thought of it made him shudder. In fact, the library itself filled him with trepidation, and he hated entering it unless he had a homework assignment due or a test to study for. Besides, he had spent a lot of time trawling the library’s shelves and databases looking for information on the Wilson power plant, thinking that maybe it had something to do with the strange industrial building he often saw in his dreams, and that hadn’t exactly turned out so great. Even catching a glimpse of the library building now only served to remind him of the information that he had literally let slip through his fingers.

  He sensed, though, that it was high time these concerns were put aside. He just had to know what the dragon meant, and the magnitude of that need had now overtaken the magnitude of his fear of the library.

  He remembered seeing books about dreams and their meanings in a section of the John Atkins library that he hadn’t quite been able to pronounce. Brok had called it ‘dream interpolation’, though that hadn’t sounded quite right to Keane.

  Keane sighed and settled in for what promised to be yet another long and sleepless night. He tried to look on the bright side, though—if he didn’t sleep, he couldn’t have any more dreams.