by J M Fraser
“Rebecca?”
“Yes.”
His happiness meter shot from zero to sixty. Like the DJ at a rave, he set his mind on loop, replaying the awesome ring of her voice. It’s me. It’s me It’s me. He pushed the needle, scratched the record, played the chorus. Yessss. After a fruitless search along the roadside in Nebraska, after his failed attempts to drop everything and look again, and after two disappointing weeks of college because one half of a super team wasn’t super at all, now, at last, he’d found her.
Or she’d found him.
A sense of weightlessness floated him to an upright position. He opened his eyes.
Rebecca perched on the edge of the bed. The glow of early dawn, or maybe twilight, filtered through the window, allowing him to make out her dimples, an almost smile, and the grayish green of her eyes. She came dressed in the same nightgown she’d worn in the cabin that night. Or this night? He glanced around.
Wow. He might have gone to sleep in Aunt April’s condo, but he’d awakened in a cabin hundreds of miles to the west. They were in her tiny bedroom, the rustic one with four walls made of plank and harmonica gusts of wind humming through the cracks. “Tell me I had a weird dream about starting school and spending a couple weeks there, but I’m actually still at your place.”
Her smile wavered. She looked down at her hands. “I can’t say that.”
Of course she couldn’t. Because he’d gone to sleep in his clothes that night in Nebraska, and now he wore a ridiculous pair of Superman pajamas his mom had bought for a joke, the ones he only put on after every last item in his drawer found its way into the laundry basket. He reached for the sheet to cover himself. Wait. Why bother? “This is the dream then, isn’t it, Rebecca?”
She nodded, solemn-faced.
He slumped back down to the lumpy pillow.
Looking up at her, he could swear her eyes became mirror-like, reflecting through welling tears the loneliness and longing he’d been dragging around like a shadow since she left him.
Her smile crept back. “We witches know when we’re dreaming. We have a sixth sense for that sort of thing.”
“Wait. You only have six senses?”
She poked his arm. “I have a coin you can use, funny man, so you’ll always know whether you’re asleep or awake. I tried giving it to you before, but you bought a shell from me with it, remember?”
He tried not to remember. Memories stung. “Either way, this isn’t real, Rebecca. You’re only in my head.”
“Dreams are real, Brian. You have to believe that.” She faded. The wall behind her became vaguely visible, as if she’d turned into a veil. “I miss you, Brian.”
“Wow. Do I ever miss you.” He groped for her hand, grabbed nothing.
“I’ll leave proof how real this is,” she said.
* * *
Bip, bip, bip, bip, beeeeeeeeep!
Brian jerked his head up. He’d crashed at his open laptop, settling his face on the keyboard.
He rubbed his ear. Another dream about Rebecca. She might have hit the escape key out of his life, but his subconscious kept booting her back online. Even just now.
Brian tried to remember what they’d said to each other, but the harder he focused on the dream, the vaguer its details became. No matter. He’d been with her. That was enough.
But where was this Rebecca fixation going? Did it really make sense for him to keep his hopes alive by driving to Nebraska at the next opportunity? Why not lose himself in school, new friends, or whatever, and give up the fight? He needed to get over his obsession. He needed a distraction.
Not much of that here in the condo, though. His aunt worked the late shift at a local diner and usually headed to her boyfriend’s apartment after work. Days and nights often passed without any sign of her. Some mornings she’d show up and greet him with a warm breakfast and friendly banter, but she never stayed long. A young man needs space, she’d told him, an initially awesome concept now gone flat.
“April?”
No answer.
He glanced at his computer screen through bleary eyes, blinked, stared more closely.
Sunlight dances past glass beads in doorway strung.
She frowns
then combs her auburn hair.
“Tell me crystal ball another day begun,
who now
will tread upon my stairs?”
“Oh. My. God.” A poem. On his computer. Where Google maps should have been.
Gazing in the ball her eyes flash emerald green.
She stands,
slips on a simple dress.
Every day the same, she rises, dresses, preens,
then writes
of princes and their quests.
Rebecca told him something that night in the cabin. “All of my verses have the same meter as that opening stanza. Eleven, then two, six, eleven, two, and six.”
He took a deep breath. Counted the beats per line. Eleven, two, six, eleven, two, six. This had to be her writing.
“The rhythm keeps the words in your head like a favorite song,” she’d said.
Yeah, but these weren’t stanzas Rebecca recited that night. So where did they come from? He wouldn’t have burst into a poetry-writing fit. Or if he did, whatever he might have come up with would have been to poetry what stick figures were to art. He couldn’t have done anything this good.
Haze turns sun to gloom, but candles quell the dark.
Gold flames
reflect within her eyes.
Other than a couch and mirror the room is stark.
She sighs.
She sits. She starts to write.
Words flow through her pen directly from her heart
to feed
her fiery fairy tales.
Gallant knights, fair maids, true lovers torn apart,
her dreams
like ships begin to sail.
Rebecca had told him something in the dream he’d just had. What did she say? The few remaining fragments of their conversation had sunk into the muck of misplaced memories where all dreams go to die.
Minutes turn to hours she scribbles restlessly,
her tale
of wizard’s evil spell,
cloistering a maid so she can never flee
beyond
a glass-surrounded shell.
End of poem.
What did she tell him in the dream? He closed his eyes. He let his mind wander. Then he focused quickly, trying a surprise attack to dredge her words out of the muck.
I’ll leave proof this is real.
“Oh. My. God.” She’d left proof, all right.
A draft blew in from a half-open window, and he caught a whiff of a pine tree outside. Just like an old song on the radio bringing memories to life, the scent ushered the feel of her into the condo. He could almost hear her voice. If he closed his eyes, he’d see her in her cabin.
He printed the poem and took it into the kitchen. Rebecca’s book sat beside the microwave, still tied closed by the ribbon she left. He’d been treating this spot like a shrine. All he had left of her.
As he set her verses on top of the book, his hand brushed the ribbon.
What a rush! Like he’d plugged his mind into a power outlet. A parade of ideas popped into his head but raced away before he could grab hold of one. They looped around and came at him again. He tried to slow them down.
What if he and Rebecca had bonded so tightly during their brief time together she was now able to hack into his dreams with her mind, delivering a poem, which he’d pounded into his computer in an epic fit of sleep-typing?
Suppose Rebecca was way beyond ordinary. “If I am a witch, you must hope I’m a good one.” She’d said that. He’d taken it as a joke. But what if it hadn’t been?
That old guy in Sidney pointed him north, leading to a breakdown farther up the road, complete with wrong-way eclipse and shifting pavement. The cause and effect had supernatural manipulation written all over it.
The se
quence of impossible events later accelerated, from the cheese and cider she came up with out of nothing to the suction-like tug of her mirror, and later her recital from a book of hieroglyphics—not to mention a full can of gas waiting on the doorstep the following day and a farmer claiming the cabin didn’t exist.
I hope you’re a clever boy. This line says you’ll have a great adventure and try to save someone. What had she meant by that? The sensation of her fingertips dancing along his lifeline had been too dizzying for him to ask.
And who was he supposed to save? This latest poem had to be about her. The fortune-teller had green eyes. The description of her simple home sounded like the cabin. But what danger could possibly threaten a witch whose powers could blot out the sun, manipulate a car, bend the road, and create food, drink, and fuel out of thin air? Someone that amazing couldn’t be in trouble, could she?
Wrong question. If Rebecca was in trouble, what was he going to do about it? This was his call to action. Spiderman would be swinging from the buildings by now.
Brian moved his hand from the ribbon, and the flood of ideas abated.
He touched it again.
Nothing.
Had he drained it of its power?
Now he was thinking goofy again.
But the poem said otherwise. The poem served as proof something big was going on. He hurried back to his computer. Had to find a way of contacting her directly. He hit the return key. He tried the escape. “Where are you? How do I track you down?”
Chapter 9
The girl in a wall poster across from Brian and Sharon’s booth must have been sipping liquid gold through a straw, judging by the rapturous lift of her eyes to the heavens. She did a great job of selling Crazy Bob’s Soda. Sharon was on her second.
The ad proved to be the perfect icebreaker, too. Rotating lights aimed from the ceiling changed the poster girl’s hair from blue to red, yellow, green, and colors with designer names like turquoise, magenta, amber, taupe. Her eye color, too. And her lips. Brian and Sharon joked about the combinations during what might have been an awkward beginning to their ice-cream date when they would have otherwise had to watch each other and talk about themselves.
That would have been tough, because Brian didn’t have much to say. He never would have agreed to the date if he’d known the sleep-writing poem was coming. Once he had proof he and Rebecca were linked through an impossible wireless signal right into his mind, the idea of dating or mingling or whatever Sharon had in mind didn’t shine with a whole lot of luster.
He’d come close to canceling. Almost called her. Almost texted.
But Sharon helped him change his tire. He at least owed her a sundae.
So they’d gone to Crazy Bob’s Concoctions, grabbed this booth, and slowly, with the help of the poster, Brian began enjoying himself.
At first.
His milkshake went down smooth and chocolaty with a hint of peanut butter. Flavor of the week. Also, Sharon proved to be more than a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Badgers cheerleader, which would have been plenty for most guys. She was a movie buff, a Mumford and Sons fan, a reader of Spiderman comics.
But after they’d kicked around the latest DiCaprio movie and raved about a Marvel phone app, their conversation sagged. Brian glanced again at the soda ad, and Sharon faded into the background. The poster girl’s hair had turned red, her eyes pale green. Her resemblance to Rebecca pulled him right into the frame. She might as well have shouted the words now echoing through his head. Go to Nebraska and find her.
How? He had classes. He had a part-time job. He had a car that broke down all the time. He had an aunt who’d never understand his reasons for taking off. She’d call his parents, and they’d ground him for life.
Excuses.
Would Rebecca even be there if he looked? She’d left the cabin and taken all her things.
She typed a poem on your computer. She’s longing for you.
And he ached for her.
“Why aren’t you paying attention to me, Brian?” Sharon set her milkshake down and eyed him as if she were studying a new species of fern in the biology lab.
How long had he been gaping at the ad? Why had the lights gotten stuck on those colors? He forced his gaze back to Sharon. “Sorry, I’ve been out of it lately.”
She reached across the table, took his hand. “Something’s on your mind.”
No spark. Not even when touching. She isn’t Rebecca.
He couldn’t explain that to her. Discussing a different girl during a date went against all wisdom. That’s how guys ended up getting splattered with milkshakes.
“Maybe somebody’s on your mind,” she said.
Great. His thoughts were leaching into the airwaves. Consolation time. “Listen, Sharon, you’re fantastic.”
She yanked her hand away. “Let’s not go there. We’re friends having milkshakes. And this friend wants to hear why we won’t become anything more than that.”
“Because I fell on my head when I was a little boy?”
Sharon looked past him. And why not? He’d given her reason to write him off as inattentive at best, if not outright rude. She’d have no problem finding worthier ice-cream companions.
Could he say the same for himself? Blasting out of high school early had its disadvantages, and living off campus made it worse. He’d just started college where everybody was at least two years older than he was. So far, people hadn’t been waiting in line to help him fix his tire or have ice cream at Crazy Bob’s. If he wanted a friend, the time had come to open up. “I met somebody before the semester started.”
“Knew it!” Sharon beamed like she’d won the lottery. Clearly, she lived for boy-meets-girl stories. “So what happened? You went to college and she joined the army?”
“Nope. That would be different. This was weird.”
“I’m all over weird!” She shifted her elbows to the table and settled her chin in her hands. “Tell me everything.”
Everything? Maybe just a watered-down version that wouldn’t send her running for saner ice-cream pals. He took a deep breath. “I was driving home from a wedding in Wyoming. The trip got old, so I let somebody at a gas station talk me into taking a detour. He filled my tank, only he didn’t fill it, and I ran out of gas in some wilderness area called the Sand Hills.”
“Wait. You lost me at the tank.”
“I can’t explain. The whole first part of this thing was like wandering into a psychology experiment. After that, the entire world morphed into the final exam of Insanity 101.”
“In English?”
“Like I saw an eclipse, but the pictures I took didn’t show it.” He pulled out his phone and opened the photo icon for her.
She scrolled through the pics, turned the phone sideways, flipped it upside down. “Looks sunny.”
“Right. And try finding a story about the eclipse online. Anyway, that’s where I met Rebecca for the first time. But I knew her! I’m sure I saw her earlier in a dream.”
Sharon clicked through more of his pics. “Where is she?”
Good question. He took a gulp of his milkshake, but not even chocolate laced with peanut butter could ease the sting. “Feel free to call me an idiot for not snapping her picture.”
She passed the phone back across the table. “I should. You dreamed about Rebecca before you ever met? She must be your destiny.”
Yeah. Exactly. “But how could I dream about somebody I didn’t know yet? You don’t find the concept a little crazy?”
“Not in the slightest.” Sharon pulled her own phone out of her purse and opened the notes icon for him. She scrolled through dozens of entries such as Saturday, June 1: Banshees, and Thursday, July 25: Endless hallway. “You’re talking to a girl who writes all of her dreams down and looks for hidden messages.”
That sounded like a great idea.
She shoved her phone back into her purse. “So you met the girl of your dreams. Literally. Then what?”
“She took me to this old cabi
n where she’d been staying. The place didn’t have electricity, so we spent the evening in candlelight.”
Sharon’s smile widened to dreamy. “Romantic.”
“Uh-huh. You’ll probably love she’s a Jane Austen fan.” But he couldn’t laugh it off. He would have been willing to read every romance novel in the world to buy one more day in that cabin with Rebecca. Maybe if he hadn’t slept like a log when she left, he could have slowed her long enough to make sure they had a way to stay in touch.
Still, they were in touch now, weren’t they? Through dreams. And poetry.
Sharon stirred the remnants of her milkshake with a straw, as if trying to dredge up a storyteller who didn’t zone out every ten seconds.
“Okay, here’s the weird part, Sharon. She read a poem from a book written in some foreign language. Way foreign. We’re talking a different alphabet. She translated so fast you’d think she was reading English.”
Sharon kept stirring, glanced up at him, shrugged. “You mean like Chinese? So what? I have a friend who took Chinese in high school. Not everyone signs up for Spanish.”
“I mean like Sanskrit. No, not even. Different combinations of lines and hash marks.”
She stopped stirring.
“Rebecca read hieroglyphics with no problem.”
“Shut up.” Sharon had her chin in her hands again.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean! Anyway, Rebecca hit the road while I was sleeping. She took everything she had except the book. She did leave a couple notes with hints she’d come looking for me, but—”
The waitress came over with their check in the nick of time. He’d been ready to babble about mind-melded poetry written in his sleep, dream visits by Rebecca, failed attempts to go after her, a hitchhiker haunting his dreams and saying no at every turn. A story line Sharon wouldn’t buy in a million years whether she took notes about her own dreams or not. Nobody would buy this.
“Can I see the book?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I—”
“You’re in love with a ghost.”
“A what?”
“A girl started haunting your dreams.” Sharon ticked the point off on a finger. “Then she appeared out of nowhere.” Another tick. “No pictures.” Another. “She read to you from a fairy book.” A handful now. “Then, she disappeared in the middle of the night.”