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Finally he stopped fighting with a jolt. He blinked a few times and then looked to me with confusion before turning to see who was holding him down.
“Fuck!” he growled as he realized just what exactly was going on. It was far from the first time this had happened amongst us, but it had been months since Kailan had a night terror like this. It was usually Nick or Harris nowadays if it happened. I personally didn’t have night terrors where I lashed out physically. My nightmares were contained to my subconscious, not that it made them any easier to live with.
“You with us? Can we let you go?” Nick asked, sounding breathless.
“Yeah…I’m good,” Kailan panted. Harris and Nick released him and all three of them got to their feet.
“Who’d I hurt?” Kailan asked, looking between us all with trepidation.
Harris and Nick turned to me and I moved my hand to my throat without thought. It would definitely bruise, but I was okay.
“I’m good,” I assured him. “Are you? You came through that bedroom door pretty violently.”
“My chest feels bruised, and I think I banged my leg, but it’s nothing. I’ll live,” he shrugged as he rubbed at the center of his chest over his T-shirt.
“We should check on Evie. If she heard that, it would have scared her,” Nick pointed out. We all nodded and followed Harris as he moved quietly down the hall to her closed bedroom door.
“We’re lucky she didn’t come out here. I could have killed her in that state,” Kailan said guiltily.
“We’ll talk to her about it. Make sure she knows to stay in her room if she hears us having nightmares. We should have done that the first day she was here,” Nick sighed.
We all looked to each other with dread. None of us wanted to have to do that. We hated that we weren’t normal enough to always promise she would be safe in our home, but that wasn’t the case. All four of us were fucked up and there were times when, if we lost our grip on reality, she simply wasn’t safe with us. It was apparent none of us had considered that when we were talking to her about relationships earlier. What the hell happened if she was sleeping beside one of them and they had a nightmare? I would need to bring it up with all of them.
Harris silently opened her bedroom door just a crack and peeked inside while we all stood anxiously behind him,
“She’s not in her bed,” Harris said as he opened the door wider and stepped inside. He flicked on the dimmer, wall lights and looked around. I went straight to her bathroom and knocked on the closed door. When there wasn’t an answer I opened it just a little and called her name, not wanting to barge in there if she was inside.
“What if she woke up? What if I hurt her?” Kailan gasped. I ignored him and opened the bathroom door, praying she was in there, but it was dark and empty.
“She’s not here.” I turned to face the others as I spoke. Kailan looked horrified.
“Oh God. She must have heard me. My room’s right next door,” Kailan pointed out.
“We don’t know that. She could have had a nightmare of her own,” Harris tried to soothe.
“Either way, we need to find her. Harris, check Kailan’s room. We’ll all check downstairs,” Nick directed and we all nodded and set off running.
I was the first down the stairs, and I only got half way before I felt the cold wind whipping into the house. I looked to the door, and my heart started to pound even harder in my chest when I saw it wide open.
“Guys!” I yelled as I started racing even faster down the stairs. It was below freezing outside. Even if Evie had only been out there minutes, she could be in trouble.
“Oh fuck! What if she got over the gates? She could be anywhere in the forest!” Nick said, and my panic just increased. Beyond our house there was acres of forest and woodland. If Evie got past the fences, she could literally be anywhere, possibly confused and almost certainly afraid.
“This is all my fault,” Kailan cried as we all paused to pull on our boots as quickly as we could by the door.
“It’s not your fault.” I reached a hand out to squeeze his shoulder, hating to hear the guilt and pain in his voice. “She’s going to be alright. We’ll find her.”
“She’s not up there,” Harris said as he came running down the stairs. “You smashed your room up pretty good though,” he added as he looked to Kailan.
“The front door was open. She ran outside,” Nick informed him.
“She doesn’t have her shoes on. They’re still beside the door. She’ll freeze,” Harris said as he nodded to the small boots sat on the shelf beside the door.
“We need to find her fast. Look everywhere. If she was scared she could have tried to hide,” Nick explained as he reached into the coat closet and started handing out our coats and some flashlights we kept in there for emergencies.
“What if she is already out in the woods somewhere?” Kailan asked, and I could hear all of the despair in his voice. He was beating himself up, sure this was his fault. I knew no matter what any of us said he wasn’t going to listen.
“Let’s just hope she’s not,” Harris sighed, now also in his boots and pulling on his coat. We were all in shorts, having leapt from bed, but we didn’t have time to pull on more clothes. We had to find her.
