Chapter Ten

“Mom, I'm out!”

I called the words over my shoulder as I shouldered my bag, my feet half-crammed into a pair of hefty boots. As I paused at the hall mirror to pull my beanie lower over my ears, my mother appeared in the hallway.

“And where are you going?” she asked frigidly. She'd been angry at me since the night before, when Logan dropped me off in the middle of a snowstorm that she sent me out into.

“I told you,” I sighed. “Aubrey's in town for a week, so we're going to go meet with her.”

“Where?”

“Butler. She's staying with a friend over there.”

Pensive uncertainty appeared on my mother's face, and she wrung the dishtowel in her hands tightly. “Fine,” she said. “I'll be at work in the city until later this evening, but I expect you home by six o'clock, understood?”

I mumbled an unintelligible response, rolling my eyes as I turned away. I felt my mother behind me, hovering, but she didn't speak again until I had already opened the door.

“Say hello to Aubrey for me,” she said haltingly, before turning on her heel and striding back into the kitchen. I stared after her, my face contorted in baffled amusement, before shrugging and slipping outside.

The Saturday morning air was chilly as I hurried out to Logan's car, parked right where he said it would be. It had stopped snowing late the night before, leaving the ground covered in the sludgy gray-white aftermath. My neighborhood didn't look much like a winter wonderland, but somewhere more along the lines of the way it would look if a snowman puked all over the sidewalks. And in the midst of it all, Logan's old car, a scuffed bright blue, stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Hey,” I said, ducking into the car through the passenger side.

“Hey.” Logan's voice was awkward, strained. We eyed each other sideways, stretching for a level of comfort that was out of our reach.

“So...,” I began, twiddling my thumbs with downcast eyes. My words petered into a still silence, permeated only by the soft brushstrokes of our breathing. Then Logan keyed the ignition, starting the car with its usual sputter, and I knew we wouldn't be talking about what had happened the evening before.

Noon found me and Logan at a corner Starbucks in the city, the busy cafe where Aubrey had agreed to meet us for a belated breakfast. We walked in at a safe distance apart and merged with the line that twisted through shop and nearly reached the door. I scanned the room for a moment, finally spotting Logan's sister seated at a table toward the back, her eyes glued to the screen of her phone.

After a few seconds of frantic arm-waving and name-shouting that earned me more than a few odd looks from the customers, Aubrey finally looked up, catching my eye and smiling as she rose. She darted lithely through the crowd, her small frame allowing her to duck under elbows and snake past chairs.

“Parker!” she cried, enveloping me in a coconut shampoo-scented hug.

“Hey, I missed you!” I grinned easily, brushing my hair from my eyes. “My mom says hi, by the way.”

“Give her a hug for me!” Aubrey smiled, not seeming to notice my grimace at the idea as she turned to her brother. “Hey, short stuff,” she said, using her old nickname for him—the one she coined when Logan wasn't a full head taller than her. She reached up, standing on tiptoe to ruffle Logan's hair. The siblings embraced, Logan's expression immediately relaxing.

“'Sup, Bree,” he greeted, “long time no see.”

Grinning, Aubrey led us to her table, where she'd already placed the food we'd requested before down. I dropped down in front of my croissant and latte, Logan sitting down more fluidly beside me. He was no longer as tense as he had been when we were alone, but it still looked like he was balanced on the edge of his seat and ready to bolt. Aubrey, if she noticed, didn't make a comment.

“So, guys, catch me up. How's school?” she asked, snuggling into her peacoat. Her dusty brown hair was pulled up into a ponytail, secured with a knit headband.

For a while, we made small talk. There was the obvious discussion about our classes, how we were liking college, the usual questions about my mother, and their father. But eventually, our topics thinned, plunging us into a companionable silence (save, of course, for the coffeehouse music and the twitter of conversation around us).

After a moment, Aubrey cleared her throat. “So, Parker,” she stated. “Logan says you've been having some, ah, experiences of sleep paralysis and seeing...strange men?”

I nodded. It amazed me, how quickly she dove into her serious, professional mode. In a matter of seconds, she had gone from a smile to a concerned frown, her eyes boring calmly into mine.

“And this started...when?”

“Well, the sleep paralysis itself started last Thursday. But I've been having these suffocation nightmares since around July.”

“Right, I remember you telling me about that when I visited in the summer.”

“Yeah,” I affirmed, and all I could think was how I would give anything to go back to those simple dreams.

“And those men,” Aubrey continued, tapping her chin, “describe them to me.”

I saw Logan shifting beside me as I gave her a description; every now and then, he would cast a glance in my direction out of the corner of his eye. Half of me wanted to turn and force him to look me full on in the face, but the other half was confused and wanted to just pretend that nothing had happened.

Even though I imagined I could still feel the ghost of his lips against mine.

When I'd finished, Aubrey nodded slowly, her attention wavering as she lost herself in thought. Her brown irises flickered skyward, pondering.

“Well,” she said eventually, “I think the sleep paralysis is probably due to something simple, like your late nights and the stress of school. Nothing to worry about, really. And the men...I think they could be any number of things. For instance...”

She began to list a few possibilities, none of them involving the men being real, living creatures. As she was concluding her explanation of hallucinations (a term I'd studied the day before), though, I suddenly became aware of a strong, piercing feeling on the back of my neck.

I froze; Aubrey was still talking, but Logan noticed, and he looked directly at me for the first time that day. His face was taut with worry.

“Aubrey,” he said, not taking his eyes off of me. His sister paused mid-sentence, and, catching the look between us, slowly let her voice fade out.

“What it it?” she hissed. “Parker, is something wrong.”

I screwed my eyes shut; those two stiletto beams of a staring stranger were driving nails into my flesh. “Look behind me,” I hissed, “is there someone there, staring at me?”

With a strange look, Aubrey tipped to the side and glanced discreetly over her shoulder. After a moment of casual scanning, she shook her head.

“No one,” she replied softly. “Why? Do you feel something?”

“There's someone watching,” I said through gritted teeth. I knew that if I turned around, I'd see that penguin suit, those onyx eyes. Maybe Aubrey didn't see it, and I didn't know why that was but I knew that I would. So I stayed facing forward, my palms pressed flat against the table and my food forgotten.

A moment later—I swear I heard it—a quiet chuckle road a rift of sound waves and traveled straight into my ear. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard, and it sent a quiver down my spine. The sharpness disappeared a moment later, and finally, I was able to release a breath.

When I looked up, both siblings were staring at me in obvious befuddlement; Aubrey especially. She shook her head, eyeing me warily.

“Parker,” she muttered, “there was no one there.”

“Maybe you didn't feel it, but I did.” I glanced between them, my heart racing. “I swear to God, I felt eyes on me.” A groan escaped my lips, and I put my head in my hands. “Sweet Jesus, what's wrong with me?”

I heard Aubrey let out a long, whistling sigh; Logan patted my back awkwardly.

“Listen,” Aubrey said slowly, “I think you should stay over at my friend's place tonight. She's gone for the weekend, so you won't be a bother, and Logan can come too, if he wants. Will that be okay, or will your mom go all—”

“She'll be fine,” I interjected, though I wasn't certain of that at all.

“Good. I want to watch you sleep—God, that sounds so creepy—to try and figure out what's going on. I'm not an expert on this stuff, and you know that, but maybe if I see what happens I'll be able to give you some more help.”

Pressing my lips together, I bobbed my head. A night away from home sounded good; maybe if I was sleeping on a couch, it wouldn't shake, and no monsters would bite at my toes. (That had happened the night before, and the horror of it was still fresh in my memory).

“I'll call my mom,” I said, “but I'd need to go back and pick up some clothes. What time will we go over to the flat?”

Aubrey checked her phone for the time. “I was thinking soon—like, now. I wanted to ask you some more questions, too. And Logan said you guys have a midterm, if you want some study help. Do you think your mom can drop off stuff, or...?”

“I'll get it,” Logan offered quickly, his voice too eager.

“You sure?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, totally. I'd need to get my own clothes anyway, so if you give me your key, I'll be in and out in a few. I know what clothes you wear, Parker.”

He rolled his eyes at me, the half-smile on his lips looking almost normal. And I knew he knew—he knew me like the back of his hand. But suddenly, the idea of him going through my closet, picking out my pajamas and shirts and underwear, made a blush creep onto my cheeks.

“Text me the directions to the place, Aubrey,” he said to his sister, snagging his coat as he got to his feet, coffee in hand.

His sister frowned. “What, you're going right now?”

“Sure, why not? Don't want to waste daylight.”

He was acting strangely, and we all knew it. But neither Aubrey nor I protested as he began to wind his way through the maze of people in the cafe.

“Are you guys fighting or something?” Aubrey asked, watching his departure. “He's acting funny.”

I swallowed, my mind flashing back to that moment the evening before, when our lips had been so close, then closer, closer...

“No, we're fine,” I told her, forcing a placid smile that might have looked slightly nauseous. To avoid further questions, I turned around just in time to see Logan holding the door open for a group of kids a little older than us. Scanning the glass windows of the store front, I saw no ebony-eyed men. But then again, I knew I wouldn't. Whatever they were, they always disappeared as quickly as they came.

And as I watched my best friend hurry a little too quickly toward his car, I wondered if he was thinking that maybe I was crazy, after all.

◙════════════◙

Aubrey's friend Jessica had an apartment in one of those bustling buildings in the heart of the city, the kind with colorful exteriors and too many dying palm trees. Her flat was on the third floor, room 326, the one with the number plaque that was scratched up and just a little bit crooked.

After Logan left, Aubrey and I had followed suit soon after, arriving at the apartment building at a few minutes past one. I called my mom, and maybe she was busy, because she okay-ed the sleepover with minimal arguments. Aubrey and I hung out in the living room, sprawled out on the mismatched furniture, discussing my problem but mostly just talking: about her, me, and life in general.

Logan arrived at around three—after getting lost several times on the way to the building—laden down with bags of clothes. He turned red when he looked at me. Jessica's apartment had a big TV, and we watched a slew of rom-coms before we all started getting hungry and Aubrey ordered a pizza.

For a while, just hanging out there with my friends, I could pretend that everything was still normal. This was how all of Aubrey's visits were: simple, easy, fun. Even though we didn't talk all that much, I found myself forgetting everything that was going on and almost letting my brain take a break. But too quickly, it was eight o'clock. Then nine. Then ten.

And then it was time.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked Aubrey, tugging nervously at my black fleece pants. Aubrey had a mountain of blankets and pillows clutched to her chest, and a few of them fell to the rug as she turned to me.

“Just go to sleep like you normally would,” she said, dumping her load heavily onto the laid-out futon. Logan, perched at the end of it, slid off gingerly.

“Just go to sleep,” I echoed, more for my own benefit. Nodding resolutely, I shuffled across the room and began to lay a comforter onto the futon, all the while feeling the siblings' eyes on my back.

“All right.” I swallowed, glancing over my shoulder when I finished. “Goodnight.”

As I slipped beneath covers, melting under those twin gazes of my friends, I couldn't shake the feeling of dread that was busy trying to make knots of my stomach. The idea of awakening in that terrible fearscape yet again was endlessly horrifying, and I thought that maybe I'd rather just stay up through the night. But my mind, apparently, had other ideas, because only moments after my head touched the pillow and I let my eyes fall shut, I was plunged into a dream.

I was standing alone in a forest. It was dark out, the trees tinted blue and cast into shadow by a twilit moon. Pines and hemlocks pierced the soil around me and stretched skyward, their boughs shielding me from a gentle white downfall that I quickly realized was snow.

Though clad only in a strange, shifting gray dress, I found that I wasn't cold. Letting out my breath in a puff of white, I began to pad on bare feet across the snow-dusted forest floor. As I ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, a sound from behind me stopped me in my tracks.

A child's bright laugh.

I whirled around, my heart racing, as I peered through the fog of the dreamworld for the culprit.

“Hello?” I called carefully, stepping toward the source of the chuckle.

The sound trickled toward me again, this time from behind me and followed by a whispered, “Follow me.”

So I did; I followed it, only because I knew this wasn't real, this couldn't be real. I turned with quiet footsteps, moving toward the sound as it repeated again and again. With each step I took, with each branch I sidestepped, the sound grew louder, until finally, I could have sworn it was right in my ear.

“You found me,” murmured the voice.

I jumped, spinning in the air and stumbling through the thicket. When I righted myself, I found that I had reached a clearing in the forest; my feet were no longer enshrouded in prickling pine needles, but muddy water grass. Before me, stretched out in familiar and surprising clarity, was Bear Lake, where Logan and I used to play when we were kids.

Bear Lake was more of an oversized pond, really, considering how small it was, but it went very deep and Aubrey never let us wade in past our ankles. In this dream, the water's surface was dotted with patches of ice, the shards glinting with reflected moonbeams.

And at the edge of the lake, wearing a loose green dress that flew and snapped in an invisible wind, stood the girl.

“Hello, Parker,” she said, her voice melodious but tinged with sadness. Another gale whipped past her and fluttered a breeze in my direction. With it came a smell: a familiar, unmistakable smell that was piney and soothing and almost reminded me of this one pizza parlor I visited in Pittsburgh.

Rosemary.

“You can come closer, you know,” the girl told me, amusement dancing in her tone. “I won't bite.”

Obligingly, I shuffled through the dewy grass until I was a few feet away from the girl. She was looking away, her face shrouded in a pleasant darkness. Up close, she was shorter than me by several inches, and though I still got the feeling that she was fairly young, there was a sage air about the way she held herself, so tall and carefully poised. I thought, in the back of my mind, that she was very much like my mother in that way.

“I visited Mrs. Hummel,” I said, in a voice that sounded distant and feathery, “which is what you wanted me to do, isn't it?” The realization hit me with a bolt of certainty, though I think I had known it all along.

The girl laughed. “I guess it was, even though I doubt she actually told you anything worth your time.” She shook her head. “Poor Mrs. Hummel. I thought that since she knew I'd be gone, she would be okay. Apparently not, though.”

I said nothing. This no longer felt like a dream.

“Anyway,” said the girl, “I'm wasting precious time. Listen, Parker, and listen well. There's something coming. I can't really tell you what it is, because explaining it all would take precious time that I don't have. But there's something coming, and it's evil. You need to find a way to stop it.”

The devil, I thought. Edith Hummel said the devil.

“Why are you telling me this?”

The girl scoffed. “Because it's coming after you.”

My heart hammered wildly in my chest. “But—”

“No time for buts,” the girl snapped briskly. “Time for action. There are people who will help you; you only need to find them.”

I wanted to hit something; how the hell was that kind of advice supposed to help me? More than likely, I'd end up working myself into a rut.

The girl must have felt my distress, because a sigh left her lips and carried over the soft sound of water lapping against the lake shore. Her brown hair was dusted with snow. I saw her shoulders raise a little, just slightly.

Suddenly, with a herculean breath and six quick steps, she turned around to face me. I gasped; her face, painfully clear amidst the blur of the dream, sent a sharp pang of something stabbing into my gut. I knew this girl—I knew her. And I knew that I knew her with a certainty so absolute that it physically hurt.

“Parker,” she stated solemnly, her lips barely moving, “it is extremely crucial that you remember that everything that is happening to you is real. All of it. No one will think so, no one will believe you, and you may very well be alone through much of what is to come. But don't let them tell you that you're crazy.”

I stared at her: high cheekbones, dark eyes, wavy chestnut hair; round chin, heart lips, small nose, dimpled cheeks. This girl was so familiar, but I could not put a name to her face. My brain was pulling itself apart, trying.

And behind the girl, I saw dark shapes rising from the lake.

“Uh—” I raised a dead hand to point, but the girl cut me off with a tight-lipped nod.

“I know,” she breathed, suddenly sounding weaker, “I wasn't supposed to come here, and I'm almost out of time. I should be going.”

She gave me a small smile, an expression that killed me with its familiarity. I felt something, bubbling up deep in my stomach, that tore at my insides with a slow, complete inferno. And it felt a lot like sadness.

That's when I noticed something else: a glint against her neck, a little sparkling orb resting on her sternum. Squinting, I leaned closer—and saw my reflection in the tiny charm of a mirror hung on a golden chain around the girl's neck.

“Who are you?” I breathed, watching the girl through wide eyes as she turned away, toward those growing dark shapes. She looked at me over her shoulder, quietly. Her features were soft, but her lips were turned downward and I could read the sorrow in her eyes.

As she opened her mouth to speak, two arms reached out from the darkness and grabbed her from either side. She did not struggle; did not fight; did not even look back at me. But as the shadows rose from the water to swallow her whole, her small voice came to me in a quiet, disheartened melody:

“I thought you would know by now.”

◙════════════◙

I awoke, spluttering, with the scent of rosemary slipping through my nostrils and filling my senses completely. The blankets were pooled around my feet, leaving me shivering. I sat bolt upright in an overexerted rush and very nearly fell as I leapt from the futon, shouting for Aubrey and Logan and stumbling uselessly through the dim room.

In my blindness, I caught my foot on something and I went sprawling onto the ground. At the same moment, the lights snapped on, and then Aubrey was rushing over, her eyes wide with worry.

“What?” she cried, dropping to her knees on the carpet. “What happened?”

I realized, as I tried to sit up, that I'd tripped over Logan, asleep on the floor, and my legs were tangled with his. He was shouting, asking me if I was okay, and I had no time to be embarrassed because that girl's face was in my mind and I needed it, needed it on paper, needed them to know who it was.

“Logan!” I shrieked. “Sketchbook? Do you have your sketchbook? You need to draw something for me, please, right now, please get it, please!”

“Uh—yeah, I have it, I have it!” Fear flashed through my best friend's eyes as he unsnarled his limbs from mine and dove for his bag, quick extracting his sketchbook and pencil and flipping through his clear page.

“What is it?” he asked, panting.

Aubrey looked on, her jaw unhinged, as I described the girl in as much detail as I could manage. I could see her right there, a clear image behind my closed eyelids. Everything, from her hair to her eyes to that necklace, my necklace, the necklace I hadn't seen in days. Logan sketched as quickly as he could trying to keep up with my relentless tongue, until finally I was out of breath and all the little particularities had been spent.

Then, all was silent in the room.

But in a crevice deep inside my head, I thought I still heard the listless descant of the girl's familiar voice.

“Parker,” Logan said strangely, “who is this girl?” His eyes were glued to the paper.

I sped through my brain on race car wheels, each thought an evanescent whisper, searching for a name. And very quickly, quicker than I expected, I knew. As the realization hit me like a freight train, I wondered how I'd been stupid enough to not realize it before.

“Her name is Rosemary,” I said confidently, nearly grinning. I expected smiles from my friends, but on Logan's face, there was still a frown. I narrowed my eyes. “Why?” I demanded.

In response, he silently held up the sketchpad, balancing it on his plaid pajama bottoms. Both Aubrey and I let out a disbelieving gasp. The picture he'd drawn was of the girl I'd seen, almost down to a T. And apart from a few little things, I could have been looking at an image of myself in the mirror.

“Because,” Logan said quietly, his eyes finding mine, “she looks just like you.”