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I shrug my shoulders. “I hope so,” he says. “I trust Rei.”
I wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. “Where are we going?” I ask him as he pulls away from the parking lot.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “Somewhere fancy. I want her to be able to relax for a bit while we figure out how we’re supposed to help her.”
“Do you think we will?”
“I hope so,” he replies. He doesn’t say anything else, so we just sit there in the car while he drives aimlessly. I could pull up my phone and look for a hotel, but he clearly needs some time to think, and I’m not going to interfere with that.
I lean my head back and close my eyes. I don’t know how long we’re driving around for, but when I open my eyes, the sky is overcast and it looks like it’s about to rain.
My gaze darts toward the clock on the dashboard, but the numbers are blurry. I blink, trying my best to focus. It’s difficult. My head feels like it’s swimming. I turn to look at Misha and my breath catches as I see that he’s been replaced with someone who looks more like a shadow than a person, burning light in his eyes.
“What the fuck?” I hear myself say, but my voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me.
The thing–because it’s a thing, this isn’t human, all black smoke and smoldering red eyes–turns to look at me, smiling blankly, its eyes smoking. “What’s wrong, Father?”
I want to scream, but there is no sound coming out of my mouth. The thing laughs, something deep and throaty in a way that makes my blood run cold.
When I blink again and my eyes open, Misha is in the driver seat. His brow is furrowed and he looks at me with concern.
The day is just as overcast as it was before. Rainfall lands on top of the car, on the windshield. It gets dark so quickly it’s hard to see a few inches in front of us.
“You okay?” he asks. “You fell asleep. I tried to wake you but…”
“Fine. Nightmares,” I reply. I don’t really want to go into it, but he knows this is getting worse. He knows that it’s starting to affect Rei. It’s starting to affect me, too.
I don’t know how long it’ll take to begin getting to Misha. I don’t think we have much time.
“I’ve been having them, too,” Misha says, so quietly I have to strain to hear them. “I mean, I’ve had nightmares for a long time, you know that. But they’ve definitely gotten worse lately.”
“Are they the same as usual?” I ask him.
“They start like they always do,” he says as he merges into the fast lane. “I wake up in my childhood bedroom. I can hear my parents talking outside the door so I get up and walk toward it. I try to pry the door open but I’m not able to. The handle becomes slippery and I try my best to work to open it, but I can’t. There’s no way I can do it. I know I need to get out of the room, out of the house, away from my parents. So I turn to get away from the door and when I try to go to the window, Trine’s in my bed. And she’s…”
He clears his throat before he keeps talking.
“She’s bleeding,” he says. “From everywhere. From her eyes, her nostrils, her nose. There are ribbons of blood all over her arms, dripping down her legs. I can’t see her that well because the room is dark, but I know she’s bleeding. My bedroom smells like rusted iron.”
“Do you try to call for help?”
“What?”
“In your dream,” I ask. “Do you try to call for help?”
“No,” he replies, just as softly as before. “It never occurs to me. It doesn’t feel like there is anyone I can call for help.”
“I know this is a tall order for when you’re dreaming, but can you remember that we’re there?”
“You aren’t there, though,” he replies. “I’m barely fourteen. I don’t know you yet.”
“But you’re not actually fourteen,” I say. “You’re only dreaming that you are. Trine isn’t actually hurt. She’s fine, at least for now.”
“Alright,” he replies. “In that case, what about you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know,” I reply. “I guess I expected to have nightmares, but I didn’t know when they were going to start happening. I guess this is when.”
“What happened?”
