Baylor's Guide to Dreadful Dreams

by Robert Imfeld

  “You have a choice here. It’s your mission in life to pass on healing messages, but you don’t have to walk through dreams; honestly, it’s very intrusive. You may as well just walk in the bathroom while Grandma’s taking a shower and rip open the curtain!”

  “What!” I shrieked, slapping my hands to cover my eyes. “Why would you say that? That’s in no way the same thing!”

  “Secondly,” she continued, unfazed, “it’s going to affect your opinion of people. You don’t know that any of these things actually happened in real life. Maybe Grandma was reliving some bad experience from her past, or maybe it was, you know, a dream.”

  “It seemed like more than a dream to me,” I said, still trying to burn away images from my eyeballs. “And Aiden’s was definitely real. Well, the feelings behind it, I mean.”

  “My point is, you don’t know the extent of the reality here, and you’re never going to know because, to even ask the question, you’d have to admit that you spied on their dreams and invaded their privacy.”

  “Or,” I said, brainstorming out loud, “I could strongly hint at certain things around them and see how they react?”

  “Oh, yeah, great idea,” Kristina said sarcastically. “So what’s the plan for Aiden? You’re just going to casually hint around about what a loser he is?”

  “Well, I haven’t really figured that part out yet, Kristina,” I said. “I’ll get there.”

  “Don’t be a jerk about it,” she said tensely. “The last thing Aiden needs is for his friend to act so nosy and insensitive about something he’s clearly sensitive about.”

  “I am offended you’d even suggest such a thing,” I said, feeling surprised and a bit proud at how protective she’d sounded of him.

  “Good,” she said with a vindictive look in her eye. “It’s about time I offended you as much as your tuba’s offended my ears the last couple weeks. I’ll never get over that mash-up.”

  “That’s a bit rude. It didn’t sound that bad.”

  “Baylor, Beethoven could hear it in the Beyond, and he was weeping like a little girl.”

  * * *

  In homeroom later that morning, Aiden looked frazzled.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked, a bit hesitantly.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said too quickly. “Just pretty tired. Ready for Thanksgiving break to start.” We only had to get through today and tomorrow before break began on Wednesday.

  “Tired?” I asked, lasering in. “Did you not sleep well?”

  He side-eyed me and said cryptically, “I’ve slept better.”

  “Oh? Why? Bad dream?”

  “Snoyes,” he stammered in one jumbled mess.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, glancing around the room. “I mean, sort of.”

  I held my breath, hoping he’d discuss the dream with me.

  “I dreamed,” he said, pausing for a split second, “that Mr. G. kept yelling at me and telling me how worthless I am.” He swallowed hard.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my stomach turn to ice as a storm of sadness crossed his face. He pressed his lips together so his cheeks grew wider, like a devastated chipmunk.

  “That’s really . . . rough,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You know you’re not, though. Right, Aiden?” I said, chills suddenly pulsing through my body. “Don’t think about it for even one more second because that’s so wrong, and to entertain the possibility that what your m—uh, what Mr. G. said could remotely be true is one of the dumbest things you could ever do.”

  Aiden looked at me, his eyes scrunched in confusion. “What are you talking about, Baylor?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I . . . I just wanted to remind you it was only a dream.”

  Suspicion crossed his face, but he looked away.

  There’s no way he can know you were actually in his dream. No way. How could he possibly figure that one out?

  But there was that one second, right before I left, when Aiden had winced as he looked at me, and I got the sudden feeling I shouldn’t be there. I wondered how many times he’d had that dream; my bet was it happened pretty often, but that was probably the first time a second Baylor had showed up to comfort him.

  But still, my presence didn’t immediately prove to him that I was actually in his dream. If anything, it just further confirmed that he was having an insane dream. As far as he was concerned, my presence was merely an extension of his subconscious, something for him to root out and decipher on his own time.

  * * *

  That night I got into bed, quickly fell asleep, battled a merciless talking fish and his urchin army, realized I was dreaming, and then found myself back in the Starry Night.

  But I was hesitant to move forward. If I entered anyone else’s dreams, what was I going to find? More character assassinations like in Grandma Renee’s dream? More deep-rooted insecurities like in Aiden’s dream? I thought of my mom and her habit of chopping things when she’s nervous; what if in her dreams she didn’t limit it to just vegetables, but took glee in stabbing anything that crossed her path?

  It was enough to make me want to go hang out with Bobby and Mr. Moose. I bet Ella dreamed in fun ways, too, with talking dolphins and life-size Barbies whirling about. Why couldn’t everyone’s dreams be so simple?

  It was no use. I wouldn’t be able to visit anyone tonight. I’d just have to try—

  All of sudden, a bright flash of light erupted over the Starry Night like a dangerous lightning storm, followed by a cataclysmic bang, the force shaking my face and borderline rupturing my eardrums. I looked up and discovered a horrible face staring back at me.

  TIP

  8

  Loved Ones is a very, uh, loose phrase.

  DISORIENTED FROM THE FLASH OF light and the ringing in my ears, I lunged backward, trying to fling myself away from the spirit, but I must have stepped away from my shooting star during the chaos because I was still in the Starry Night.

  “Really, kid? You’re still that mad at me?”

  I untangled myself and stood up to find an old woman staring down at me in amusement. She looked familiar . . . actually, she sounded familiar, her voice deep and gravelly, like sandpaper had withered away her vocal cords.

  “How do I know you?” I asked.

  A rough laugh croaked out of her. “Aw, come on, kid, it’s only been a few weeks!”

  I didn’t appreciate her tone. It had been an eventful few weeks, and I’d come across a ton of spirits. But there was something so distinct about her voice that it unlocked a memory in my brain.

  “You’re Aunt Hilda’s friend,” I said slowly. “Marjorie!”

  Earlier this month, my aunt Hilda had celebrated her eighty-eighth birthday at an Italian restaurant, and it was a disaster. For some unknown reason, Kristina and I can’t tune out spirits in Italian restaurants, and I wound up causing a scene and ruining her birthday.

  Afterward my parents forced me to go to her apartment and apologize in person. Except when I got there, I ended up delivering a message from Marge, who’d just crossed over the night before, and Aunt Hilda didn’t know her friend had died. It was not a great situation.

  “Good news,” she said, throwing her hands up. “My cats didn’t eat my body!”

  I grimaced. “That’s . . . great.”

  “You’re telling me. I just wish I’d asked you to erase my Internet browser history. My daughters . . . oh boy, did they get a shock.”

  “Marge, can I help you with something?” I said quickly, slapping my hands to my eyes, hoping she would go away, or at the very least stop talking. “What are you even doing here?”

  “I’m visiting Hilda, of course,” she said. “I like to check in on her.”

  “You’re what?”

  She frowned at me. “You new to this, kid?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly an expert yet, considering the fact that I’m still, you know, alive and everything.”

  “Show off,” s
he grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest. “Well, we not-alive people can visit alive people in their dreams.”

  “What? But isn’t this my Dream Portal? Why would you have to go through me to visit Aunt Hilda?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, your majesty!” she said in mock concern. She snorted unpleasantly. “Do you think you own Loved Ones’ Lane?”

  “Loved Ones’ Lane? Is that”—I motioned to the blackness and the shooting stars all around us—“what you call this? I’ve been calling it the Starry Night.”

  “The Starry Night? Original. I’ll let van Gogh know about your tribute when I run into him. I call it Loved Ones’ Lane as an homage to my checkered past.” She giggled at a passing memory that I had no desire to hear about. “This is the entryway to our loved ones’ dreams.”

  “What? So all ghosts use this lane to enter dreams?” Kristina had neglected to mention that tidbit.

  “Pretty much,” she said. Her voice was so cacophonous that she may as well have been gurgling rocks. “It’s not like I can visit just anyone, though. I can’t drop in on the president and give him an earful on his antismoking initiative, as much as I’d like to. The lane is personalized to each ghost. And you and I happen to have Hilda in common, kid.”

  “So you can’t drop in on my baby sister?” I pointed to the door across from me.

  “Sure can’t,” she said, looking at the door. “That’s the entryway for my grandson.” She sighed. “I probably don’t have nearly as many doors as you do. You’re young. You’ve got a lot of living people around—friends, cousins, siblings. I’ve got, what? Maybe ten doors left.”

  I looked down my lane and smiled. It was pretty long.

  Marjorie looked down at Aunt Hilda’s shooting star; it was getting noticeably dimmer.

  “Sorry, kid, wish I could stay and chat more, but she’s about to head off,” Marge said. “Gotta go.” She took a step forward, but before she tumbled away, she looked at me once more. “You should really visit her more, kid. She’s an old lady and doesn’t have many friends left. She’d be glad to see you.”

  Before I could argue and say that Aunt Hilda would actually hate to see more of me, she somersaulted through the door and disappeared.

  A part of me wanted to follow her through the door. What would happen if two souls suddenly infiltrated Aunt Hilda’s dream? Maybe she’d start getting nicer! I could sneak in every night and slowly hypnotize her into accepting my gift.

  You love Baylor’s gift.

  Baylor is your favorite.

  Send Baylor ten dollars every week.

  I doubted Kristina would approve of that sort of subterfuge, but how would she ever find out? Maybe she’d get suspicious if she noticed Aunt Hilda suddenly treating me better. She couldn’t prove anything, though, and if the plan worked and Aunt Hilda and I became pals, then, really, what would be the problem?

  I made a mental note to try that out in the future. I still needed to explore the Starry N—uh, Loved Ones’ Lane before committing to that kind of action; plus, I really didn’t want to have to keep dealing with Marge.

  I decided to walk down the lane and see how many doors I could count. As far as I could tell, there was no way to distinguish between them. I wondered how Marge knew which one was which. Maybe it was different for ghosts. It was possible her time spent in the Beyond, however short it had been thus far, had already prepared her on how to navigate the lane. In a way, that made sense—the lane was meant for ghosts, not for curious thirteen-year-old mediums.

  I counted fifty-seven doors down the lane before the shooting stars disappeared, and I was struck by a wave of confusion. Assuming my door was in the middle of the lane, I could easily have access to 114 people. And not just people, but loved ones, as both Kristina and Marge had said.

  I didn’t have 114 loved ones. No way. I thought I’d max out at forty, tops.

  Off the top of my head, I could only count my immediate family, my three living grandparents, Aunt Hilda, Aiden, J, Bobby, Reverend Henry, and probably Aiden’s mom, too. Then a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins, so that brought the number to just over forty.

  I’m not sure who on the other side decided on the definition of “loved ones,” but they needed to dial it down a notch. The shooting star in front of the last door on the lane shimmered brightly, and curiosity got the better of me. I needed to find out who had barely made the cut.

  I tumbled through the door, somersaulted forward, and drifted down into a large lecture hall, where all the students were furiously taking notes as the professor rambled on about bloodstain patterns. Everyone seemed much older than me, so I guessed it was a college course. Then I noticed most of the students weren’t using pens to take notes. They were using their bloody fingers to jot down the professor’s words about spatter and arterial spray.

  “I’m so pleased to have such a dedicated group of students,” the professor purred, observing his class with a disturbing hunger in his eyes. The only thing missing from his evil professor look was a bald, wrinkled cat for him to lightly stroke. “Extra credit to all those who bled for their education today.”

  Students were pale and groaning in pain as the blood dripped out of them. The guy sitting in front of me brushed his hand through his hair, leaving a streak of bright red, and as the hair settled back into place, the blood flicked off and landed on my face.

  It was time to go.

  “Gross,” said a voice to my right. I knew it instantly. I’d gotten into major trouble a few weeks back just to hear that voice for a few minutes.

  Will Parker, son of the Sheet Man, wiped away blood from his left cheek and swatted it from his hand toward the ground.

  “I hate this class,” he muttered.

  He was getting his masters in criminology in Boston, and it didn’t take long to piece together that he was stressed out about one of his forensics classes.

  “Everything all right, Will?”

  He turned toward me and frowned.

  “I didn’t know you were in this class, Baylor.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m definitely going to drop it, though. It’s a little bloodier than I’m used to.”

  He nodded. “This guy’s a pyscho.”

  “Any idea how I can get out of here?”

  “Go out the door,” he said. “Obviously.”

  “Right,” I said, standing up, “I’ll see you later.”

  “Come to my study group later so we can prep for finals.”

  “Will do,” I said, heading up the aisle toward the exit. I pushed through the doors and tumbled back to Loved Ones’ Lane.

  Will Parker? Really? He counted as a loved one? That seemed like a real stretch to me. I liked the guy just fine, but I hardly knew him. I guess I did feel a bizarre kinship with him since his father haunted me for a few weeks and kidnapped Kristina, all thanks to his mother. Not to mention the fact that his mother was suddenly taken away to God-knows-where by a Bruton. I doubted we’d ever see her again. He and his sister didn’t get a chance to say good-bye, which was sort of sad, even if she was a lunatic who tried to murder me.

  I wanted to keep exploring the fringes of my loved ones, but just past Will’s door the ocean and brilliant night sky had appeared again. I squinted hard, wondering if anything was out there, when I suddenly spotted it—a weird misshapen figure, like one of Jack’s bad LEGO creations, just barely reflecting the moonlight.

  I hopped off the edge of the lane, swan-diving down through the air and into the ocean, heading straight for it.

  The figure transformed before my eyes as I got closer. There was a big horizontal part, slightly curved and shiny white, and on either side of it were two more shapes, but I couldn’t tell what they were.

  After a few more minutes I got to the shape and discovered the curved horizontal piece had that white, shiny gloss that has made up the surface of every boat I’ve ever seen. Except this one was capsized, and lying on top of it were two kids, both about my age. One was a dark-skinned boy,
the other was a girl with a mane of wavy brunette hair, and both looked like they’d been through hell. Their skin—hers a deep olive, his as black as the shadowy ocean—was burned and mottled, their lips dry and cracked. Their clothes were tattered, wet, and sticking to their skin.

  Who were they? Was this real? Was I in a dream?

  “Hello?” I said gently. “Can you hear me?”

  The boy slowly cracked open an eye and stared at me.

  “I’m starting to hallucinate, Helena,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep. He clutched a half-full water bottle that was strapped around his wrist. “There’s a kid floating in the ocean.” The girl didn’t respond.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Me? You’re the one in my dream. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Baylor,” I said. “So, this is a dream then?”

  “It could be,” he said. “But it might not be. All I can remember anymore is the water. It’s everywhere, all the time; when I’m awake, when I’m asleep. It’s all I know now.”

  “But why?”

  “Because we made a mistake,” he said. “And now, it’s too—”

  But he didn’t finish. A huge wave smacked into us, and before I knew it, I’d zoomed back to Loved Ones’ Lane and saw that the giant ocean had evaporated.

  * * *

  Tuesday passed by in a mix of euphoria and discontent. It was the last day before Thanksgiving break, and none of the teachers were even bothering to try. In fact, before I left home that morning, Dad was humming merrily as he fiddled with the coffeemaker.

  “It’s one of the best days of the year, Baylor,” he said with a grin as he snuggled with his mug of coffee, clasping it between his hands and holding it just below his chin. He breathed in deeply and sighed.

  “Why’s that?” I asked, totally drained from the dreamwalking. I couldn’t get the image of those two kids out of my head. Had that been real? I needed to talk to Kristina about it, but I wanted to discuss it in depth and wouldn’t have time for that until later.

  “Because I get to play games with my students all day, and then it’s a five-day weekend.” He chuckled. “I love the holidays.”