Dream Student (Dream Series book 1)

by J.J. DiBenedetto

  ***

  I’m shaking. I don’t want to open my eyes, I don’t want to see–what?

  It was the nightmare. Again. I tried to open the window so I could lean out and see the street sign, but it wouldn’t budge. Then he came in, with the girl, and–no! No more! I can’t think about it.

  I look at the clock–it’s just after four in the morning. Maybe I can get a little more sleep. Maybe there won’t be any more dreams…

 

  ***

  I open my eyes. The sky is lighter; the sun must be up, somewhere beyond the endless clouds. I roll over and look up at my clock. The big green numbers say: 9:59 AM.

  Crap!

  My class is at ten-thirty, and it’s on the other side of campus. I jump out of bed, pull out a pair of sweatpants from the closet, grab the socks I wore yesterday, take a sweatshirt off the top of my laundry pile, and put it all on. I throw my coat on over all that, get my shoes on, and head out the door. I don’t even bother to run a comb through my hair–there’s no point. I don’t dare look in the mirror.

  I’m halfway downstairs before I realize I forgot my backpack with my notebook, my textbook, and everything else I need. It’s back upstairs to get it, then downstairs again and out.

  I get to my class at 10:28 AM exactly, just enough time to run down to the soda machine in the basement. With the caffeine and sugar from two cans of Coke, I’m able to stay awake and even pay a little attention for the entire class.

  I go straight back to the dorm when it’s done, and after I take a nice hot shower and put on clean clothes I look–and feel–nearly human again. I even have time for a quick lunch before I have to get to my one-thirty class.

  I go to class, I come home, and then I spend the rest of the afternoon beating my head against the wall trying to think of some way to figure out where Dr. Walters lives. When Beth gets back from class at four o’clock, she sees me lying on my bed, staring at nothing.

  “No brainstorms?” She knows exactly what I’ve been thinking about.

  “None,” I tell her.

  She sits down on my bed, puts her arm around me. “Me neither. Well, I did have one, but it doesn’t have to do with Dr. Walters. I just thought–you know, I haven’t had any time with Ron since we got back from Christmas. I think I’ll go over and see him tonight.”

  I can feel myself tearing up. “Thank you!”

  “For what?” she asks with a completely straight face.

  “For not making me ask,” I say, and then I hug her very, very tightly. “And for putting up with me since this all started.”

  ***

  As soon as we’re back from dinner, Beth clears out and Brian comes over.

  “I know the days are running out, but I can’t talk about it tonight. I can’t think about it. Can I just have tonight? Will you help me?”

  I can. He does.

  I don’t know how much time passes, but there’s a moment when we’re just holding each other, under the blankets, wrapped so closely together that I’m not sure where I stop and he begins. Right at that moment I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience. It’s like I’m floating, looking down at myself. And all I can think is, “how did I ever become so frightened and desperate and needy?”

  “You’re not,” Brian says, and I come back to myself. Did I actually speak out loud? I must have. “I take that back. I guess you are,” he says, but before I can even get angry about that, he kisses me, and all conscious thought disappears.

  Sometime later, he’s talking again. “I should have said, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t all those things. Desperate and afraid. If you weren’t afraid of what you’ve been seeing, you’d be–you’d be a cold, unfeeling–you’d be some kind of a monster, I guess.”

  “But you don’t think I’m a monster, right?”

  No, he doesn’t; I can see that’s clearly not the word that comes to his mind as he holds me close. He shakes his head and this time I kiss him, and that’s the last word either of us says about the nightmares tonight.

  ***

  I don’t have any nightmares, or any dreams at all. I wake up and I feel completely refreshed, better than I have all week. I don’t want to get out of bed, and Brian doesn’t want me to either, but we both have an early class.

  He very reluctantly heads back to his dorm for a shower and a change of clothes, and then we have breakfast and walk together to class. Afterwards, we agree to meet up when I’m done with classes this afternoon,

  It turns out that both he and Beth came up with the same idea. They want to have me try and remember the other nightmares–the ones in the car–to see if we can figure out where Dr. Walters is living now from them. It makes sense. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner. It’s not as though we have any other ideas to fall back on.

  Beth gets back half an hour after me, and we meet up with Brian at Lardner, have a quick meal and then get to it.

  ***

  “You said he opened the trunk. Were you watching from behind him?” I try to picture it. I feel pounding, as though my brain is beating itself against the inside of my skull. I was in the back seat, but then–I guess–yes. I was outside.

  “Yeah. I see what he’s doing. I can see the trunk.”

  “Can you see the license plate?” God! It’s really hard to focus. It hurts. I just want it to stop hurting. I can see–it’s an Ohio plate. I can read–I think I can read it.

  “LXG. L like in large, X like in x-ray, G like in good. And then three numbers. One, four, seven.” I feel a tear fall from my eye. I want to stop. I can’t–can’t keep doing this.

  “Are you sure? L, X, G, one, four, seven?” Beth’s voice is so calm, so peaceful. How can it be so calm? I hate her for that. What right does she have to be so calm?

  Am I sure? I don’t–I have to focus. Focus. Focus. “Yes. Definitely. I’m sure.”

  There’s a hand on my head, pushing my hair off my forehead. Something cold–a washcloth? That’s nice. That feels a little better. “You were amazing,” Beth whispers into my ear. “Really amazing. I’m proud of you,”

  I can’t make any words come out; none of my muscles want to work. I think I might have managed a very weak smile, but I’m not even sure about that.

  I feel a hand on my back, and another on my forehead, I’m being pushed up. Someone grabs my left hand and puts a cup into it, and some–pills? aspirin, maybe?–into my right hand. “There you go. Swallow those, have a little water,” Beth says. I follow her orders, and I’m lowered back down.

  “Good. Now go to sleep.” I feel lips pressing against mine. I assume they’re Brian’s. I hope so…

  Fifteen: 48 Hours

  (January 19-20, 1990)

  I wake up to my alarm buzzing. Eight o’clock. I don’t think I had any dreams, but I’ve still got a headache. It must be left over from last night. Beth is already up and showered. I remember that she’s got a nine-thirty class. “Did I tell you anything useful last night? I can’t remember a thing I said.”

  “We couldn’t believe how much you remembered from the nightmares. You even saw the license plate on the car.” She looks more sad than impressed. “But it was rough. We really put you through the wringer.”

  I do remember that. I don’t ever want to go through it again. Maybe if I said enough I won’t have to. I get up, and I see the notebook Brian was writing everything down in, still open on the desk. His handwriting is almost as neat as mine; I never really noticed that before.

  I read through it–I can’t believe all this detail came out of me. I remembered every turn, every stoplight, it looks like. I wonder if there’s enough there to actually pin the location down. We’ll need…

  “I’ve seen those big local map books, with all the streets detailed. They sell them in the bookstore,” Beth says, beating me to it.

  “I’ll go by after Vertebrate Bio
logy. You know what, I won’t even go to my one-thirty class, I’ll just come straight here and start working on this.”

  Beth is stunned. “I don’t think you’ve ever voluntarily blown off a class your whole time here.”

  No, I don’t think I have, either. “I’m going to call over and let the professor know, though. I’ll tell him I’m sick–that’s kind of true anyway.”

  “And lying to a professor? I don’t think I know you anymore.” Any other time, it would be funny.

  ***

  I’m as good as my word; I go to my class, then to the bookstore, have a quick bite to eat and then I’m back in my room.

  I spend a good two hours trying to trace the route that I described last night. I’m able to find the end point–Old Tree Road–and I can work back part of the way. I get as far as Persimmon Drive but from there it’s all guesswork. That’s the last street sign Brian wrote down, and then he’s got down things like “one or two blocks and then a left” and “two or three blocks, a right, then another right at the next stop sign.”

  This is a problem.

  We’ve got part of the house number across the street. It starts with seven two. That narrows things down a lot–it’ll be the 7200 block of whichever street it is. But which street? It could be any one of several of them. Are we supposed to just go out driving tomorrow, cruising up and down through the suburbs looking for a big tree stump, praying both that I’ve remembered correctly and that he dreamed it accurately?

  Beth comes in at three o’clock. “I did a little more digging,” she says by way of greeting. She doesn’t sound enthusiastic enough that I think she learned anything earthshaking, but she isn’t completely despondent either.

  “What did you do?”

  She throws her coat on the floor, kicks off her shoes and lies down on her bed. “I went over to the department office. I got Ray to pull the faculty address file for me, and while he was looking for that, I poked around and I found the list of parking stickers and cars.”

  I’m impressed, more than she seems to be. “And?”

  She sighs. “They’ve only got the post office box for his address. But at least we know what kind of car he’s got now. A white 1986 Toyota Corolla. License plate LXG-147.”

  So that much was right. “He’s imagining he’s got his old car back, but he put his new license plate on it.”

  Beth nods. “That’s it. In his mind, everything’s how it was. He’s in the nice house, driving his Cadillac, he never got the scar.”

  It’s just like Gretchen. Except I only see myself as a different person when I get all dressed up and do something fun; he sees himself as a different person when he–when he does what he does. I don’t think I’m going to mention that to Beth.

  Instead, I show her what I’ve been up to all afternoon. “I can get to here,” I point out the spot on the map, “but it gets fuzzy from there. If I was right about the house number, that narrows down the block, but it could be any one of these streets,” I run my hand several inches across the map.

  Beth gives me a grim smile. “I guess we’re borrowing Joe’s car again tomorrow. We’re going to need as much daylight as we can get if we’re going to search street by street.”

  Yes, we will.

  ***

  After dinner Brian suggests, repeatedly, that we just go to the police with what we have. “Your friend Jackie, you said her father’s a cop. Ask her to call him. Tell him everything.”

  I don’t think we can. I don’t think he’d believe me. If I wasn’t going through this, and someone else brought it all to me, would I believe it?

  The biggest hurdle, to me, would be explaining how we figured out it was Dr. Walters in the first place. Everything we’ve learned since then fits; it explains why he’s doing it, the dates fit a pattern, the incidents with the stepdaughter add weight to everything. But that first step is just impossible to get past, as far as I can tell. What could we possibly say to Jackie’s father–or anybody else–that would sound reasonable?

  I can’t come up with anything. Neither can Beth, or Brian. We’re going to have to go out tomorrow and just hope to God we find what we’re looking for.

  ***

  We’re in the right neighborhood. The streets look like what I saw in the nightmare. We’re seeing house numbers starting with seven two. But we haven’t had any luck with the details we need. Beth is driving this time–despite my solemn promise to Joe that I would be behind the wheel at all times–so I can focus all my attention on looking at the houses. I’m looking out the driver’s side, and Brian’s in the passenger seat looking out the other side.

  “Remember, there’s a big tree stump in the front yard, and the house is red brick. There’s a big window, really big, you can see everything in the living room.” Another detail pops into my mind. “Their Christmas tree was still up! Look for a Christmas tree in the window.”

  There’s nothing on Oakwood Lane, or on Green Ivy Drive. Brian sees a big stump on Cedarwood Place, but the house behind it has aluminum siding. As we go down street after street, it starts to snow. Only flurries at first, but it just takes a couple of minutes to become heavy. Big, wet flakes plop onto the windshield. If we don’t see it soon, I don’t know what we’ll do–but just then I do see something.

  There’s a man, carrying something big, with a smaller figure trailing behind him. It’s a Christmas tree. They’re trudging up Magnolia Lane, and Beth drives past them. “I’ll make the block,” she whispers. Up ahead, there are several Christmas trees in a big pile on the lawn of the house on the corner.

  We come around again, and we pass them walking back the way they came; they’ve obviously dropped their tree off and they’re heading home. Beth goes around a third time, and we spot them turning down Red Oak Drive. She parks a block back, and we watch from afar as they go into a house halfway down the block. Beth starts the car back up, and she drives, very slowly, down the street, through the intersection, past one, two, three houses. The fourth house, the one they went into–that’s it. We found it!

  Stump in the front yard. Red brick. Huge living room window. And out the other side, Brian’s pointing at the big tree in the front, with a large branch that’s tantalizingly close to the upstairs bedroom window. “Number 7209,” he breathes. “That’s it!”

  Beth keeps going, as slowly as she dares, and Brian and I try to pick out details. The house definitely needs painting, compared to the others on the block. The snow hasn’t quite covered the ground yet; I can see that the paving stones making up the front walkway are all cracked. “Look at the driveway,” Brian adds. “It’s a mess.” There’s also no car there, white Toyota Corolla or otherwise.

  “What do we do now?” I whisper, not sure why I am–it’s not as though anyone can hear us inside the car. I’m torn. Part of me wants to just get out of the car right now, break into the house and see if the girl is there, try to find some other evidence and then call the police.

  But if he’s home now–even though there’s no car in the driveway, he could be–who knows what would happen? And if the girl isn’t there, and we don’t find any evidence, what do we do then? He’d know someone had been there, maybe he’d go to a motel, and just go get the girl tomorrow anyway and kill–no, I refuse to even think that.

  Beth drives a few blocks away and parks in front of a big three-story house on the corner. “It’s your decision, Sara. I think it has to be.”

  I don’t know what to do!

  Think it through. I can do this. “We only get one chance, whatever we do. If we try to get in now, he’ll know when he gets home. No matter how careful we are, we’ll disturb something. If we do it and she’s not there, then it’s all for nothing.”

  I think that’s it. We know–as much as we can be sure of any of this–he’ll be here tomorrow at three o’clock, that’s when he’ll–anyway, it’ll be three o’clock. I believe that. />
  “We come back tomorrow. It’s the best chance. Agreed?” I don’t like it, but if I have to decide, that’s my choice. Neither of them look any happier about it than I do, but Brian nods, and Beth’s answer is to start the car and begin heading back.

  ***

  When we get back, the first thing I do is return Joe’s car keys, and tell him I’ll need them again tomorrow. He balks at first, but I wear him down. “Look, I swear, I won’t ever ask you again. But it has to be tomorrow. I have to,” I came up with the excuse on the way home, “go and pick up a whole box of MCAT review books from Anne Salinger.” She graduated last year, we both knew her. “They’re at her parents’ house, and I guess they’re going on vacation Monday, so tomorrow’s the only day I can get them.”

  Joe accepts that, finally, and hands the keys back to me. “I plan on sleeping in tomorrow. This way you won’t bother me in the morning.”

  I kiss him on the cheek. “You’re a lifesaver, you know that?” I hope to God he actually will turn out to be one.

  We go to dinner, trudging through the deepening snow. I can’t bring myself to eat anything, and tonight it’s got nothing at all to do with the quality of the food. Beth and Brian apparently feel the same. He takes maybe three bites of spaghetti and meatballs, and Beth just pushes her fried chicken around her plate for half an hour.

  We go back to Carson House, sit in my room and stare at each other for most of the night. Every so often one of us speaks, and nobody answers, and then there’s more silence. Around eleven o’clock, Beth decides it’s time to go to bed. “We all need to sleep tonight. We have to be at our best tomorrow,” she says. I can’t argue with that.

  “We never decided on the plan for tomorrow,” Brian points out. No, we didn’t.

  “Noon.” High noon. That’s appropriate, isn’t it? “We’ll leave at noon. We’ll have plenty of time to get there, even if the roads are bad. And then–then…” I don’t know about “then.” None of us do. “Anyway. You go home,” I tell Brian. “Like Beth said, get some sleep.” We kiss, and he squeezes me tight.