In Loving Memory
Chapter 11
The next few days thankfully passed uneventfully. There were no strange cars following me, and nothing too major bothered me at school. I was still having my nightmares, of course, but they weren’t as intense as usual. Everything seemed to be getting back to normal. After five days, I thought that maybe I could start to pretend like none of this had happened, that this period in my life had just been part of one of my bad dreams. Until that night.
* * *
I was in the middle of a wheat field, which was blowing gently in the breeze. Looking around, I saw no other humans and no animals, and I couldn’t hear any birds. The only thing I saw in the distance was a forest that seemed to be on two sides of this field. Other than that, nothing. I started walking toward the trees, hoping that I could reach them and maybe find some other life form, or at the very least, get some cover in case the weather turned bad. The more I walked, however, the farther away the trees seemed, until finally I could barely see them against the horizon of the sky. As I had been walking, the sun has slowly sunk in the sky, and when I stopped I noticed it had stained most of the sky a blood red with a couple of rust orange patches. I looked around once again, and as I turned the wheat around me turned black and shriveled into dust, as if a fire had just come through and scorched everything in its path. The dull hard earth appeared all around me, spreading in a circle as far as I could see, and as I watched, it seemed to start reflecting the sky above. Upon further investigation, I saw that it wasn’t a reflection, but blood was appearing all over, the earth itself seeming to bleed like any human would. I gazed horrified at the scene as the blood started to turn the now empty field into a lake, with me in the middle of it. I began running wildly, trying to escape, sloshing through the liquid, disgusted. But nothing I did to get away worked. I started to scream, calling pointlessly into the sky for something or someone to appear and take me out of this bloody mess of earth, and to my surprise I heard what sounded like a voice not too far away from me. I tilted my head back down and gasped with horror. There was Uncle Charles, only he was hardly recognizable thanks to the blood he was soaked in. It seemed to be oozing from nowhere in particular, the same as the earth itself. It was coming from every pore in his body, his ears, the corners of his eyes - anywhere blood could escape it ran in rivers. I screamed again and turned, and as I did I saw Matt and my parents, and all my friends, all gathered around and walking towards me, bleeding in the same way; and the farther I turned the more people I saw, people from school and people from town, people I knew well, and people I had never seen before in my life, all bleeding, reaching out for me, and I just screamed and screamed as their blood combined with the blood of the earth and continued to rise.
Chapter 12
I woke up abruptly, my ears echoing with the screams from the nightmare. After a few seconds, they were still there, and I realized that it was me. I could hear Uncle Charles running down the hallway to my room, and he burst through the door, throwing on the light switch. I took one look at his panicked face and broke into tears, something I haven’t done in front of him in at least eight years. Once he saw that I wasn’t being attacked, he relaxed and came to sit on my bed with me, and I leaned carefully into his shoulder. I sobbed and sobbed as he stroked my hair and assured me that it was all right, that I had just been dreaming, and that everything would be fine now that I was awake. When I finally felt as though my eyes had cried themselves dry, I sat up straight and ran my sleeve over them to dry them off. They stung horribly, but I felt much better than I had when I woke up. I smiled at up at Uncle Charles, thankful that he had come to see what was wrong. “Thanks, Uncle Charles, I appreciate it.”
“Hey, no problem. I mean, you were screaming bloody murder in here, so I couldn’t very well ignore it,” he said, eyes twinkling playfully. I chuckled. “I wish I knew what to do about these nightmares of yours…I don’t know if you’re going to want to fall asleep again after that, or will be able to. You could go grab something to eat if you want; I’ll sit down there with you and make sure nothing else happens. In fact, why don’t we do that. Something to calm your nerves will maybe help you. Grab whatever you want, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Okay, yeah, sure,” I felt surprising hungry for someone who had just woken up, especially after such a terrible nightmare. I swung out of bed and we walked down the stairs together, heading to the kitchen.
I didn’t want to look like too much of a pig, so I just grabbed a chocolate bar and sat down to munch on it while Uncle Charles sat there, making sure neither of us fell asleep. After a while, he looked over at me, and he seemed like he had something on his mind. A few seconds later, he opened his mouth and began, “I…well, I understand if you don’t want to tell me, but…what have you been seeing in these dreams, or nightmares, or whatever, that’s so horrible? I mean…you don’t have to go with specifics if you don’t want to or if it’s too hard to talk about, but I’m curious. I don’t know if that would help me figure out what to do to help or not, but it couldn’t hurt. You shouldn’t keep things like that to yourself.”
I sat there, trying to figure out how best to explain them. “Well…almost all of them involve people I love and friends around me, dying or bleeding or…or being tortured. It looks like something from a nuclear explosion, Chernobyl or some sort of apocalypse. Sometimes Mom and Dad are there and…” I hesitated, not really wanting to go farther, but now that I had started I felt like I needed to get it all off my chest. “Well, there have been a couple of times that…Nathan Farmington,” I spit the name out disgustedly, “has been there, sometimes just in the background, sometimes right there in the middle of everything, and I can see him doing the torturing and the killing, and I can’t do anything to stop him because I’m stuck somewhere, or am slowly dying myself. And there are other times when he’s not in it at all, but something inside me tells me that he’s the cause of whatever’s going on at the time.” The farther I got the faster I talked, both glad and afraid to let all of this go, to finally tell someone what had been bothering me for so long. When I was done I felt refreshed, but was also terrified that Uncle Charles would pass me off as paranoid or be too scared of me and would never talk to me again.
Instead, when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see fright, but sadness, sympathy, and just a tinge of amazement, perhaps at the fact that I had kept this hidden from everyone for so long. For a long time he just watched me fidget in the chair as I waited for him to say something. When he finally did speak, all he said was, “Thank you. I know it’s hard, but I felt like I should know. Now I know what you’re dealing with. You don’t have to be completely alone, you know.” We both stood up, and he gave me another hug before we both went back upstairs. He came with me back to my bedroom and made sure I was settled under the covers before he started to leave. When he got to the doorway, he turned and said, “You know, you should call me Charlie,” before flipping the lights off. I lay there amazed. No one other than his closest friends called him Charlie. Even most of our family called him Charles. I smiled, happy to know that I was lucky enough to still have someone who cared for me, even if he wasn’t my biological father.
The next few days thankfully passed uneventfully. There were no strange cars following me, and nothing too major bothered me at school. I was still having my nightmares, of course, but they weren’t as intense as usual. Everything seemed to be getting back to normal. After five days, I thought that maybe I could start to pretend like none of this had happened, that this period in my life had just been part of one of my bad dreams. Until that night.
* * *
I was in the middle of a wheat field, which was blowing gently in the breeze. Looking around, I saw no other humans and no animals, and I couldn’t hear any birds. The only thing I saw in the distance was a forest that seemed to be on two sides of this field. Other than that, nothing. I started walking toward the trees, hoping that I could reach them and maybe find some other life form, or at the very least, get some cover in case the weather turned bad. The more I walked, however, the farther away the trees seemed, until finally I could barely see them against the horizon of the sky. As I had been walking, the sun has slowly sunk in the sky, and when I stopped I noticed it had stained most of the sky a blood red with a couple of rust orange patches. I looked around once again, and as I turned the wheat around me turned black and shriveled into dust, as if a fire had just come through and scorched everything in its path. The dull hard earth appeared all around me, spreading in a circle as far as I could see, and as I watched, it seemed to start reflecting the sky above. Upon further investigation, I saw that it wasn’t a reflection, but blood was appearing all over, the earth itself seeming to bleed like any human would. I gazed horrified at the scene as the blood started to turn the now empty field into a lake, with me in the middle of it. I began running wildly, trying to escape, sloshing through the liquid, disgusted. But nothing I did to get away worked. I started to scream, calling pointlessly into the sky for something or someone to appear and take me out of this bloody mess of earth, and to my surprise I heard what sounded like a voice not too far away from me. I tilted my head back down and gasped with horror. There was Uncle Charles, only he was hardly recognizable thanks to the blood he was soaked in. It seemed to be oozing from nowhere in particular, the same as the earth itself. It was coming from every pore in his body, his ears, the corners of his eyes - anywhere blood could escape it ran in rivers. I screamed again and turned, and as I did I saw Matt and my parents, and all my friends, all gathered around and walking towards me, bleeding in the same way; and the farther I turned the more people I saw, people from school and people from town, people I knew well, and people I had never seen before in my life, all bleeding, reaching out for me, and I just screamed and screamed as their blood combined with the blood of the earth and continued to rise.
Chapter 12
I woke up abruptly, my ears echoing with the screams from the nightmare. After a few seconds, they were still there, and I realized that it was me. I could hear Uncle Charles running down the hallway to my room, and he burst through the door, throwing on the light switch. I took one look at his panicked face and broke into tears, something I haven’t done in front of him in at least eight years. Once he saw that I wasn’t being attacked, he relaxed and came to sit on my bed with me, and I leaned carefully into his shoulder. I sobbed and sobbed as he stroked my hair and assured me that it was all right, that I had just been dreaming, and that everything would be fine now that I was awake. When I finally felt as though my eyes had cried themselves dry, I sat up straight and ran my sleeve over them to dry them off. They stung horribly, but I felt much better than I had when I woke up. I smiled at up at Uncle Charles, thankful that he had come to see what was wrong. “Thanks, Uncle Charles, I appreciate it.”
“Hey, no problem. I mean, you were screaming bloody murder in here, so I couldn’t very well ignore it,” he said, eyes twinkling playfully. I chuckled. “I wish I knew what to do about these nightmares of yours…I don’t know if you’re going to want to fall asleep again after that, or will be able to. You could go grab something to eat if you want; I’ll sit down there with you and make sure nothing else happens. In fact, why don’t we do that. Something to calm your nerves will maybe help you. Grab whatever you want, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Okay, yeah, sure,” I felt surprising hungry for someone who had just woken up, especially after such a terrible nightmare. I swung out of bed and we walked down the stairs together, heading to the kitchen.
I didn’t want to look like too much of a pig, so I just grabbed a chocolate bar and sat down to munch on it while Uncle Charles sat there, making sure neither of us fell asleep. After a while, he looked over at me, and he seemed like he had something on his mind. A few seconds later, he opened his mouth and began, “I…well, I understand if you don’t want to tell me, but…what have you been seeing in these dreams, or nightmares, or whatever, that’s so horrible? I mean…you don’t have to go with specifics if you don’t want to or if it’s too hard to talk about, but I’m curious. I don’t know if that would help me figure out what to do to help or not, but it couldn’t hurt. You shouldn’t keep things like that to yourself.”
I sat there, trying to figure out how best to explain them. “Well…almost all of them involve people I love and friends around me, dying or bleeding or…or being tortured. It looks like something from a nuclear explosion, Chernobyl or some sort of apocalypse. Sometimes Mom and Dad are there and…” I hesitated, not really wanting to go farther, but now that I had started I felt like I needed to get it all off my chest. “Well, there have been a couple of times that…Nathan Farmington,” I spit the name out disgustedly, “has been there, sometimes just in the background, sometimes right there in the middle of everything, and I can see him doing the torturing and the killing, and I can’t do anything to stop him because I’m stuck somewhere, or am slowly dying myself. And there are other times when he’s not in it at all, but something inside me tells me that he’s the cause of whatever’s going on at the time.” The farther I got the faster I talked, both glad and afraid to let all of this go, to finally tell someone what had been bothering me for so long. When I was done I felt refreshed, but was also terrified that Uncle Charles would pass me off as paranoid or be too scared of me and would never talk to me again.
Instead, when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see fright, but sadness, sympathy, and just a tinge of amazement, perhaps at the fact that I had kept this hidden from everyone for so long. For a long time he just watched me fidget in the chair as I waited for him to say something. When he finally did speak, all he said was, “Thank you. I know it’s hard, but I felt like I should know. Now I know what you’re dealing with. You don’t have to be completely alone, you know.” We both stood up, and he gave me another hug before we both went back upstairs. He came with me back to my bedroom and made sure I was settled under the covers before he started to leave. When he got to the doorway, he turned and said, “You know, you should call me Charlie,” before flipping the lights off. I lay there amazed. No one other than his closest friends called him Charlie. Even most of our family called him Charles. I smiled, happy to know that I was lucky enough to still have someone who cared for me, even if he wasn’t my biological father.