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Date: 9 January 2020 3.06 a.m.
Subject:Awake
Remember that dream I had as a kid? About the hut? It’s back. Except this time there’s a man in the dream too, and he’s calling my name. Woke me up and freaked me right out. So now I’m awake at this ungodly hour. I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep, either. I think my body still remembers being awake at this time, from so many years in hospitality.
C x
Rearranging her pillows behind her, taking a sip from her mug, Catherine tucked the blankets firmly around her legs and settled back. She believed the hut was real. It actually existed. It had to—otherwise her ex was right, and she was crazy. Because it was exactly the same in every single dream, she figured it must be a hut she’d visited when she was young, that she couldn’t remember, and it must have had a deep impact on her somehow. So, with nothing else to do at such a crazy hour, she typed ‘stone hut’ into the search bar on her phone and started scrolling.
Right there, on the very first page, was a hut that looked familiar. Her finger hovered over the screen, her heart pounding. At first glance, it looked just like the hut in her dreams: stone. Mountains beyond. Tin roof. Excitedly, she touched the picture, enlarging it from a thumbnail image to the full screen.
“Oh, my god, that’s it!”
She stared at it for a full ten seconds, unable to believe that this was really it. That the little hut from her dreams, the same hut she’d been dreaming about forever, actually existed. She felt vindicated. At last! She wasn’t crazy after all!
She scrolled down the page that came up.Ryan’s Peak Boundary Riders Hut, the headline read.Rustic alpine accommodation.Sinking back into the pillows, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was a hotel; she must have stayed there with her family when she was too little to remember, and the hut must have planted itself into her subconscious for some reason.
But then she looked closer at the webpage. “Deep in the heart of the Southern Alps on Ryan’s Peak High Country station,” she read out loud. “Shit.” She’d never gone there as a kid, she was certain of it. High Country stations were definitely not her parents’ thing. They didn’t mind rustic, and they’d even gone camping in tents once or twice, but they’d always stayed close to civilisation, in proper camping grounds with electricity and hot showers. A little backcountry hut in the remote mountain wilderness was not a place they would ever have gone. Not in a million years.
She continued reading. “The old boundary riders hut has been renovated and recently opened to self-contained guests and is popular with hunters and fishermen alike.” She read that part over twice.Recently opened… No! It couldn’t be. She sank back against her pillows dejectedly. Those two words confirmed her fears: she’d definitely never been there. The hut wasn’t a repressed memory. It wasn’t embedded in her subconscious from a happy little visit when she was a child. Steve was right—shewascrazy. She put her hands up to her ears in a feeble attempt to block the remembered sound of his harshly hissed words echoing in her ears.You need to get help, Catherine. You’re insane. If you don’t get help, we’re through.
His mostly forgotten words weighed on her, crushing her all over again. “He was right,” she whispered into her duvet, tears streaming down her cheeks at the awful realisation. “He wanted to have me committed and I wouldn’t let him,” she remembered. “Maybe I should have done. Instead, I’ve lost everything and I’m still crazy.”
Her coffee grew cold on the bedside table next to her. Her phone lay buried in the blankets. She sat, her shoulders shaking with sobs, as she remembered those awful months, years. The cruel words he’d spat at her, the hatred in his eyes. “He was right,” she whispered over and over again, her heart breaking into a million pieces. Jason would never want her now.
Her phone dinging from somewhere in her bedding startled her, jerking out of her misery momentarily. Scrabbling around in the tangled duvet, she found it, then wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her pyjama shirt so she could actually see to read it.
To: Catherine Richardson
From: Jason Oliver
Date: 9 January 2020 4.43 a.m.
Subject: Still awake?
Did you manage to fall back asleep or are you still awake?
J xx
She didn’t want to reply to him. Replying meant making herself vulnerable again, opening herself up for rejection again, and she’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime. But their easy banter from last night popped into her mind, making her smile through her tears. Maybe it had been the wine that had relaxed her enough to trade emails like that, but whatever it was had been fun. She wanted more of it. So without thinking, she replied.
To: Jason Oliver
From: Catherine Richardson
Date: 9 January 2020 4.47 a.m.
Subject: Still awake.
I’m still awake. I’ve been researching. Turns out, the hut from my dreams actually exists. It’s a real place. And I’ve never been there. So for years, I’ve been dreaming about an actual hut that I’ve never been to, but I know is real because I’ve found it online. And it’s identical to the one in my dream. Looks like Steve was right: I’m crazy.
Well, now you’ve done it,her cynical inner mind scolded.Like he’s going to want anything to do with you now! You will have chased him away for good with that email.
Just a few minutes later, her phone dinged again, with his response.
To: Catherine Richardson
From: Jason Oliver
