by ID Johnson
“Right. I hope so.” There was no way for me to tell her things were never going to be normal again, not for me anyhow. And I wondered if Elliott would actually show up at my school in the next few days. I seriously doubted it. He was probably just messing with me. But if he did, well, there would go any shot of anyone thinking Cassidy’s life was back to its previous mundane existence. “What’s wrong with Emma?” I was actually a little surprised I had a chance to ask that before Lucy launched into another soliloquy.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” she said, but I knew if I stayed quiet she’d tell me more. “She’s just, uh, being a little paranoid. A little more paranoid than usual.”
“What? Did her mashed potatoes and turkey touch each other on her plate at Christmas dinner?” I joked. I was trying to lighten the mood, but I was actually a little concerned myself.
“Ha, no,” Lucy said, giving me a polite laugh for my effort. “She seems to think… someone may be watching her.”
My breath caught in my throat, and for a moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “What?” I asked, literally grabbing at the comforter on my bed like I was in the ocean and beginning to sink. “What do you mean?”
Lucy must’ve heard the panic in my voice because she tried to alter hers. “It’s not a big deal, Cass,” she assured me. “She’s just being a little… silly, I guess. I mean, it’s not like she’s freaking out. But she looks out the window a lot, and the other day when she was coming over, she had on a hoodie and sunglasses. I’ve never seen her wear anything like that before.”
“Me neither,” I admitted. “Although… it has been cold.” That explained the hoodie, maybe, but not the sunglasses. “And she says she thinks someone is watching her?”
“Yeah, a couple of times.”
I remembered how bizarre Jack had been acting the last time I saw him, not long before he died. He had been so afraid someone was spying on him. He looked terrible, like he couldn’t sleep. And then he got super sick and had to be hospitalized. Honestly, I wasn’t as surprised as I should’ve been when he died, which is really saying something since he was an eighteen-year-old athlete. “How does she look? Is she feeling okay?” The idea that I could lose someone else I love, could lose Em… I couldn’t even consider it.
“Oh, yeah. She looks fine. She’s not sick or anything. Just a little more neurotic than usual, I guess.”
It had to be serious for Lucy to use that word. Emma was always a little different. She has high-functioning autism for one. She’s super smart, too, which also makes it a little hard to relate to her at times, but that’s okay. Pretty much everyone knows that’s just Em, and Lucy and I love her like a sister regardless. I realized there wasn’t much I could do right then. Hopefully, at school the next day, I’d see for myself, and if Emma wasn’t acting anything like Jack had been, I could put my mind at ease.
“Well, I hope she’s okay,” was about all I could manage to say to Lucy.
“Yeah. I’m sure it’s just because so many odd things have been happening. I mean… Drew, and then Jack. Your sister dropping out of school. You know, it’s just a lot of change.”
I would’ve found it odd that Lucy ranked my sister dropping out of school as just as odd as two of her best friends dying, but I assumed that, even if she wasn’t fully aware of it, somewhere in the back of Lucy’s mind, she knew more than she could consciously process right now. She must know that Cadence’s new job had something to do with Drew and Jack. Of course, I honestly didn’t know either of those things for certain myself, except for the fact that Elliott hadn’t denied any of it. I took a deep breath and let it out, thinking I should just call it a night.
But Lucy wasn’t done. “I had a really weird dream last night,” she said slowly, as if she wasn’t sure she could trust me enough to tell me, or she wasn’t sure if she should even speak it aloud.
“What was it about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light, like it wasn’t a big deal. Something told me it was.
I heard Lucy swallow, as if she was gulping down air, before she said, “I can’t even remember all of it, but I was outside, at a festival or party or something. It was kind of cold, but not like it is now, and the sky was really clear. It was full of stars. There was a big bonfire, and people were dancing. Everyone was really happy and having a good time, but they were dressed funny. Anyway, I was walking along, and I didn’t really know anyone, but then I saw your sister. She was standing off to the side with this strange group of famous people that had, like, nothing to do with each other, and then across from her, I saw Drew and Jack. But they weren’t their normal selves.” Her voice got quiet again, and I gave her a moment to decide what she wanted to say. “They, uh, were all pale and had long, sharp teeth.”
“You mean, like… vampires?” I asked, wondering if saying that word would trigger any memories for her.
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “Weird, huh?”
“Not really,” I replied, trying to keep my voice nonchalant. “I mean, it was just a dream.”
“Right.” She grew quiet again.
“Did anything else happen?”
“Yeah, your sister and her friends went running at them, and they started fighting. I woke up before I saw who won or anything. I was just standing there watching… and then screaming for them to stop. It was so weird. It seemed like I was actually there.”
I gave her a second before I agreed with her. “That is weird. But, hey, like you said, it was just a dream, right?”
“Right,” she said again. “Maybe I was just thinking about Jack and Drew dying so suddenly and mixed it up with some weird movie in my brain.”
“Well, you said my sister was with some famous people? Do you remember who?”
“That was another of the crazy parts,” she said, and I thought I heard her slump down, like she’d been standing and now she was sitting on her bed. “Those people didn’t go together at all.”
I laughed nervously, trying to make her feel a little better. “Who was it?”
“Uh, well, there was the coach’s wife on Friday Night Lights, the guy who plays Ross and Monica’s dad on Friends, Jamie Dornan, and that guy from White Collar. What’s his name? Matt something….”
I would’ve answered her if I could’ve breathed, but I was choking again. I reached for the bottle of water I kept by my bedside, but taking a drink had me sputtering, and if I hadn’t been unable to swallow before, I certainly was now.
“Cass? Are you okay?”
I started coughing and had to hold the phone away from my mouth so I didn’t burst her eardrum. It took me a long time to be able to get anything, air, water, whatever, down my throat, let alone formulate words. Lucy was threatening to come over and check on me or call an ambulance when I finally managed to say, “I’m fine. I just swallowed water wrong.”
“Yeah, drinking is hard,” she said sarcastically, and I was glad to hear at least that much hadn’t changed. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Anywho… it was just weird.”
Realizing we were back on her dream now, I agreed. “It is weird, but like you said, it’s just a dream. Maybe you just happened to see all of those people on TV yesterday or something.”
“I don’t think so,” she said quickly, like she’d already gone through the possibilities. “And I definitely haven’t watched any scary movies or videos.”
“We watched Twilight last time I was at your house,” I reminded her.
“Uh, the only part about that movie that’s scary is K-Stew’s acting.”
I tried not to laugh. “But it does involve vampires.”
“True.”
“People have been trying to figure out dreams forever, Lucy. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Just try to forget about it, okay?”
“Okay….”
I glanced at the clock by my bed and saw that it was almost 10:00. “It’s just about my bedtime,” I reminded her. “We don’t wanna be tired the first day back at school. I’ll see you in the morn
ing, okay?”
“All right. Have a good night.” She sounded less than enthusiastic, and I was beginning to have anxiety pangs wondering what was happening with my friends. We said goodbye, and I set my phone down, crossing my arms and going back over what Lucy had told me about her dream.
Some of it made perfect sense to me. Lucy had known about the Eidolon Festival, though she hadn’t gone there. We had speculated what it must’ve been like a lot of times, though. She knew that Jack, Drew, and Cadence had all been there. The last time we’d spoken about it, we were all three convinced that Cadence was a vampire, though we suspected she was in a good coven, one that destroyed bad vampires, and there was a possibility that Lucy had concluded that Drew and Jack had somehow changed into bad vampires, which would leave my sister to destroy them. Honestly, as crazy as it sounded, I still thought much of that was possible, though I no longer thought my sister was a vampire. Elliott had told me that wasn’t the case, and I believed him.
The collection of famous people was odd, but I thought I knew where some of them had come from. I grabbed my laptop and Googled a few to see if I could come up with anything. It only took me a moment to sort out the loose ends. I remembered thinking that Hannah looked like Connie Britton, whom I had watched on Nashville, but she also played the character on Friday Night Lights that Lucy had mentioned. This told me she also thought Hannah looked like Connie Britton, so when Lucy saw the actress in her dream, she was associating her with Hannah.
The Matt Bomer reference was obvious, too. I had once compared Aaron to the actor from White Collar, not because they look the same, but because, at the time, I had thought that Aaron might be one of those really hot guys all the ladies fall for who just happen to be gay… like Matt Bomer.
I had to look up the name of the guy who played the dad on Friends, but as soon as I saw it, I knew where Lucy was coming from. She’d never met Elliott, so her brain must’ve randomly picked someone with the same name—Elliott Gould—though I wondered why Lucy happened to know that particular actor’s name.
Then there was the Jamie Dornan reference. That one had me a little stumped. Was she associating that actor with Dr. Jamie Joplin—or Christian? Jamie Dornan played Christian Gray, after all. I supposed it didn’t really matter what Lucy was thinking. Her subconscious was pulling information from before she’d been brainwashed, trying to make sense of it, trying to remember, and this is the jumbled-up mess it had come up with it.
I wondered why Ashley Greene wasn’t there. It had been the similarities between Eliza and the actress from Twilight that had helped me to make the connection between vampires and what was going on with my sister to begin with. Maybe Lucy’s brain couldn’t make that connection again just yet because of whatever Hannah had done to her. Maybe that would be too much.
It was getting late, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep after all that. I was glad I hadn’t had any weird dreams myself, yet, and I wanted to avoid it if possible. I picked up my phone and called Elliott, thinking he might be busy hunting vampires, although I wasn’t really sure what time the bloodsuckers usually came out.
“Hold on,” he said quietly as soon as he answered, though not in a rude way, and then I heard the squeal of metal on the floor, like he was pushing a chair out, followed by footsteps, the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the rush of air against the phone. I assumed he’d stepped outside. “What’s up, lil girl?”
“Sorry to bother you. It sounds like you were busy.” I felt bad for whatever I’d interrupted.
“Nah, just a boring meeting I didn’t really want to attend anyway. But I’ll have to go back in a second, so I hope you can make it quick.”
“Sure. I just….” Could I make it quick? I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. “Lucy had a really weird dream. And Emma’s acting paranoid. I’m worried about them.”
He was quiet for longer than I had anticipated. “Well, uh, I’ll see what I can do about that.”
Not knowing what he meant by that, I said, “Okay….” Was it possible someone else was walking around outside near him, and he was being cryptic? “Should I be worried?”
“No.” That answer came very fast. “And you shouldn’t tell them anything either.”
“Okay,” I said again. “But… Emma’s okay, isn’t she? I mean… Jack was acting like that before… before….”
“Emma O’Sullivan is just fine, Cassidy. She’s definitely not like Jack.”
I knew that his answer implied so much more than what I could get into right now. “All right. I’m sorry for bothering you. You said you’ll take care of it, though?”
“You don’t ever need to apologize for calling me, Cass. Yes, I will take care of it. Now, it’s getting late. You should get some sleep.”
Regardless of the fact that I had no idea what he intended to do, I did feel much better, and I didn’t think it was because he’d used his voodoo over the phone. “All right,” I repeated. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me, lil girl. Ain’t much that can kill this old man.”
Having no idea what that meant and desperately wanting to ask, I remembered that he was in a hurry and literally bit my bottom lip.
“See ya soon, lil girl.”
“Bye,” I managed and hung up. I let out a deep breath, still feeling content to let him figure out what was going on with my friends and trusting him to fix it, but I was uneasy, as I had been for as long as I could remember. Since Thanksgiving, anyway.
I picked up my laptop, thinking I needed to charge it, when one of those stupid pop-up news videos came on. “It’s now confirmed that twenty-five bodies have been found in the Caribbean, all victims of the same brutal throat slashing…” the newscaster was saying. Ordinarily, I would’ve closed the tab or shut my computer, but this time, I didn’t. I held it closer and actually clicked to enlarge the video so I could see it better. Elliott had warned me to pay attention to the news, so I figured I’d better do just that.
The newscaster continued. “Video footage of two of the newest victims shows them enjoying a night out at a local club just hours before their bodies were found in a rainforest area near the beach, approximately a mile from the location of the club seen here.” She stopped talking for a moment as the camera zoomed in on the footage of a man and a woman who looked to be in their early twenties drinking at a club. They weren’t in the frame long before they moved off to the left, all smiles, the woman’s long, dark hair bouncing behind her as she danced away, a cup in her hand. The man, who was tall and thin, was also doing a silly dance move, and I assumed he’d also had a bit to drink from the way he was moving. The newscaster started talking again, saying there were still no leads, when something in the background caught my attention.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was a movement in the back of the video that had me rewinding and holding the laptop right up to my face. The video was grainy anyway, and all I could really tell was that there were other people walking in the background near some circular tables. I couldn’t see any of them well, but something had sent an alarm off in my brain, a pinging sensation of familiarity. I watched the video again and again, trying to figure it out, but I had no idea what I was looking at. Still, something was there….
“Authorities are looking for other surveillance cameras that may have picked up anything. If you may have seen these two newest victims at La Playa Beach Club that night, please contact the Cabo San Lucas police department at ….” She rattled off a numero de telefono I didn’t pay any attention to because I most definitely had not been in the club that night. But whatever it was about those people in the background continued to niggle around in the back of my mind.
Deciding there was nothing else I could do tonight, I closed my laptop and plugged it into the charger. I made sure my phone was also charged, my alarm was set, and then flipped off the light switch.
The streetlight outside cast eerie shadows around my room, but I closed my eyes and tried to ignor
e everything. The window where I’d watched my sister’s bizarre new life unfold around me. The roof where I’d heard distinct footsteps. The shadows that seemed to have long, spindly fingers, like witches or vampires. The dream where strangers twisted into somewhat familiar faces and friends became enemies. The video where something was familiar and strangely out of place. My eyes grew heavy, and I prayed for sweet dreams.
I knew I was dreaming as soon as I realized where I was. Not only am I not old enough to get into a club if I wanted to, I was pretty sure the last place on Earth I’d want to be at that moment was La Playa Beach Club in Cabo San Lucas. I knew from past news reports it wasn’t just the long-haired woman and the awkwardly dancing man who had been murdered here recently. It seemed to be vampire central, so as I walked around, content in my untouchable state, I began to wonder why LIGHTS hadn’t infiltrated this place, like they had with whatever was going on in France a few weeks ago. This was not the first time I’d pondered this information.
I saw the couple from the video. They were dancing amongst a couple dozen other people about their age. They were smiling, drinks in hand, and I recognized the scene from the video I’d watched just before going to bed.
Turning my head, I caught the same familiar movement I’d seen in the clip, but it was dark on that side of the club, and I still couldn’t see who it was that was stalking this couple.
I realized that, if I was ever going to figure it out, I’d need to be a bit stealthier, so I decided to lose myself in the crowd. Keeping an eye on the couple, I slipped between some dancers and tried to blend in.
Only a few minutes had passed in my dream when I saw someone approaching from the shadowy portion of the club. He had his back to me, and I didn’t recognize him at all. A few seconds later, two more figures stepped through, but my view was blocked. I couldn’t even tell if they were men or women. I grew frustrated and stepped between a few of the other clubbers, hoping to improve my angle.
The couple I had been watching began to walk toward the exit at the far end of the club. The three figures, who I still couldn’t see, followed along behind them, guiding them, as if they were all going off together. The smiles on the couples’ faces told me there was no coercion. They seemed to like these new friends. I followed; after all, this was a dream, so I wasn’t in any actual danger.