[7] Dread

Jane

The trouble with knowing someone so well was they became predictable. 

Rhys left, taking Bia with him and that left Lucas and I alone in the apartment. The android in question returned with enough blankets and pillows for Bia to make a nest for herself on their threadbare couch.

It had come from Kian, maybe, or Lucas could've brought it. So much happened in the flurry of moving in that I forgot what belonged to who. 

It was supposed to be a perfect arrangement. Nothing so scandalous as moving in with my high school prom date, but Rhys would never be far. 

Unless, of course, he drifted so far into himself he stopped turning to me for help with his visions. 

Lucas took a deep breath, hands running through his hair. There must have been too much exposure to human emotion for him for one day, between this morning and this evening. 

"Okay, well, I'm sorry you have to go through all this," he said vaguely, "goodnight?" 

Androids did not know how to fashion words into comfort. 

He ducked away, back down the hall and I followed after him. 

"Lucas, wait." 

He stopped hesitantly in his bedroom doorway before letting the door remain open behind him as he stepped in. 

I'd never seen the inside of Lucas' room before. Whatever I expected from Lucas, maybe anal retentive neatness or a subterranean sleeping cavern, it definitely wasn't the flurry of paper or the milk crates of discarded computer parts. His desk lamp lit up a torn apart laptop, pieces of it pulled out. An intact computer rested on top of a filing cabinet, closed.

I knew Lucas put on a blue shirt every day and went to work telling people how to work their iPhones, but I didn't know he was waist deep in technology at home, too. Laundry cluttered the rest of the space, like all he owned nothing but computer pieces and clothes.

"I'm worried about Rhys," I said. 

Lucas' brow furrowed. "No one's leaving handprints on his windows. Maybe you should be worried about yourself." 

That may have been true, but no hauntings of the future took up the space of my dreams. We each had our crosses to bear. Lucas may have had a point, but it didn't diminish mine. 

If Rhys kept things from me, maybe something had slipped around Lucas. There wasn't a lot of hope to stake on that, but it was all I had to go on. 

"Has he said anything to you?" 

Lucas inhaled, pushing his glasses up to his forehead to rub his face. "He asked about different ways to look things up without proper reference. Like cars. And hands. Rhys did ask about searching symbology."

He let his glasses fall back into place, but Lucas didn't look any less weary. 

At this point, it was hard to be surprised by that, except that Rhys had asked Lucas for ideas. Considering the piles of computer parts lying around, Lucas may have been the exact right source of information on some subjects. 

"What about red lines and landmarks?" I asked. Anything lead I could get was more than I started from. I could only go off notes when Rhys had more distinct memories and visuals to at least match to. 

Lucas' head tilted. His arms crossed tighter, flexing as he silently considered something. Boston had it's own trail along landmarks, but Rhys specifically said something about red lines on bricks. 

"Isn't that a thing here?" Lucas asked, clearly following my intuitive line of thinking. 

"He said something about red lines on brick, but the Freedom Trail is made of a red brick. I don't think that's what it is." I shrugged. Enough school field trips to know the landmarks along that route. "It doesn't really make sense with Essex street. I can't imagine why Chinatown should be important right now."

It didn't make sense to me and it made less sense to Lucas, judging by his face as he attempted to follow my train of thought. He shifted to fold his hands in front of his face.

"How have you deemed red lines on Essex street important? How does it come up?" Lucas asked, "how did he know about black hands were coming before they did?"

I opened my mouth, willing a simple answer to come, but none did. There was no simple answer, but Rhys had already invited suspicion by bringing up omens before they had come to pass. 

"What did Rhys tell you about Cullfield?" I asked.

Lucas didn't sit. He leaned against the desk, arms crossed. He pushed his glasses further up his nose.

"That he was in a coma. Among other things." Who was responsible for the vagueness, Rhys or Lucas?

"Just enough to understand the nightmares and the—"

"The PTSD? Essentially."

I swallowed hard. It wasn't like no one ever used the proper term around me. People made me very aware of how normal it was to hear things that weren't there, how it was expected to be jumpy and scared. Normal.

What people understood was the surface level trauma, what anyone could observe. Yes, I was there when Dean died. I was also there when he set the museum on fire. No one begrudged me my psychological repercussions... they just didn't know the true extent. 

Rhys was the only living witness to the depth of the damage. 

"What actually happened in Cullfield?" Lucas asked gently, more human than I had ever seen him before. It felt like a question he had been longing to ask, one that he recognized as too personal to pose until now, when it mattered. 

"Natalie told us everything. She died, but she knew what was coming and what had already happened." 

Speaking her name held a relief I never could have predicted. For so long, Natalie was a person I had to carry inside me because no one else could know her like I did. I wanted to let her out so badly. Lucas didn't matter. If Lucas thought I was crazy than so be it. If Bia thought I was really, truly crazy, I couldn't take it. 

Lucas didn't move. He blinked a few times, that was about it.

"What do you mean?"

"Natalie knew things she couldn't possibly know. She gave me these instructions, hid some of them in books she left for me to find. She knew the future. She knew what needed to happen for someone, me I guess, to reveal this conspiracy. Cullfield was basically run by this family who blackmailed, extorted, negotiated all kinds of deals, embezzling money to bribe companies into setting up shop in town. Natalie left all the breadcrumbs."

She came spilling out of me. I got so much of the credit she deserved. Natalie was the mastermind not me and someone needed to know it. 

Lucas' face remained blank. There was no indication of exactly how crazy he thought I was or if he believed me at all. It was almost like he wasn't looking at me at all, but beyond me, thinking of something else.

"So Natalie saw black hands?" he asked. 

I shook my head. 

"No," I said, "Rhys did."

Lucas' face paled. I didn't think he could get any whiter than he already was, but there he stood, looking like a ghost. Or like he just saw one.

"Is there something else coming we should be worried about?" Lucas ruffled a hand through his hair. No wonder it always looked like he just rolled out of bed.

"I don't have enough context to know, honestly. There's the thing about red lines and Essex Street. A lighthouse. And—" he didn't need to know that Rhys predicted Bia's death. Maybe it didn't need to happen at all. 

Lucas twitched in such small ways. If I didn't pay close attention, I would've missed the way he shifted his weight slightly from side to side and the way his fingers drummed against his crossed arms. His face stayed so still.

"Has Rhys ever been to Salem?" Lucas asked.

"I doubt it. He grew up in Maine," I said, "why?"

"Well, I grew up in Salem and The Heritage Trail is marked by a red line, right through Essex." Lucas finally moved, turning to toy with the springed arm of his desk lamp. "if you're a skeptic in Salem, you're the black sheep."

There must've been more to that story, but I didn't know where to begin. There was something in Lucas, too, that wanted to come out but wouldn't yet. Maybe his own Natalie or his own demons. 

"I'm sorry that what happened followed you here." Lucas said quietly, still fidgeting.

I forced a smile. "Me too."

"You should try and get some sleep. It's the middle of the night." His eyes flicked up, big and brown behind his glasses.

I nodded and left him to his own devices, creeping back into the hall.

The apartment was quiet. Bia had crept back in and curled into every spare blanket Lucas and Rhys had. She looked up at me as I stepped closer, one eyebrow raised, face lit in the glow of her phone screen. 

"Cozy?" I asked, for lack of anything better to say. An apology, for example. 

"Oh, yeah. Just scrolling through memes," Bia said, "best therapy there is." 

The door creaked open and Rhys stepped in. He shed his jacket, tossing it over a chair. Without my asking, he shrugged one shoulder. There was nothing outside to see. Definitely nothing one lanky history major could do anything about. 

For the briefest moment, I considered squishing Bia further into the couch to sleep there. Out of pride, maybe, or hurt or stubbornness. My chest felt compressed, my ribcage curling in to protect my heart. 

Rhys solved my dilemma for me, crossing from the door to me in long, decisive strides to crush me into his chest. He released me only to nudge me toward his bedroom door. Nothing left in me could resist giving in to comfort. I let us in, but remained by the door even when Rhys dropped naturally onto his bed and flicking open the lamp next to it. 

The cold still flushed his cheeks pink making him look innocent or shy. It was necessary to keep my distance or I would fall right into him. 

"I'm sorry." Rhys took the velvet bag from his nightstand and spilled the deck of cards into his hands. The future thrummed in his hands as he shuffled.

"Why? Isn't this what you wanted?" I said, not looking at him because even as I spoke, I didn't have the animosity left to make him believe in it.

"Yeah. I want people to stalk you and scare the hell out of our friends. I want nothing more than to relive April." He picked a card out of the deck. The Hanged Man. Natalie's warning to him. Natalie's ultimatum. He chose the possibility of death over disappointing me.

Joel Mendoza certainly wouldn't have picked that option.

I still heard the creak of the rope sometimes. Nothing could stop my heart faster.

He sighed, setting the cards aside. "Are you entertaining the idea of sleeping standing up?"

"I thought about it," I replied, finally shifting from the door to his bed.

The second I sat down, he tugged me in tight and the calm I put on for Bia's sake dissolved. I only sobbed when the sound could be muffled into Rhys' shoulder.

"Even when I knew it was coming..." Warning didn't kill the terror of someone knowing where I lived, where I walked, lurking just outside my window. All I wanted was a fresh start, a chance to press Cullfield into the past.

All it did was follow me home, like a ghost from a graveyard. I ran too quickly to Boston after Cullfield died.

Rhys squeezed me tighter.

It wouldn't just go away. A black hand in the window was just the beginning.

"I don't know if I'm ready to do this again," I managed between trying desperately not to hyperventilate. What next? Try to seek out half-formed clues from dreams? Try to avoid those half-formed clues. Wait for the signs to find us?

"Are we ever?" Rhys asked. 

No. Being ready was a luxury Natalie had never afforded us. Nothing had changed. My breath still hitched, but somehow that thought made me feel better. 

If nothing else, crying put the exhaustion I needed into my bones. My adrenaline ran dry. Rhys let go only when I stopped shaking, and he only got up to change out of his jeans. 

I let myself slip under his quilt. Did Natalie ever lie in bed waiting for the future to hit her? I could wonder and wonder and never be able to find out. 

I rolled over to plug my phone in, my spare charger already a fixture in Rhys' apartment. 

An e-mail notification popped up. From Salem Public Library. I held my breath as I opened it.

Jane Madarang, your book Talking with the Dead is on hold for one week for you to pick up at your convenience at Salem Public Library.

"You'll make an attempt to sleep, right?" Rhys asked, crawling in next to me. His fingers brushed my shoulder, like I might have been a dream of his, not really there at all. All at once, the featherlight touch melted into his arm around me. A guard for all the things I worried about. 

"Will you?" I replied. 

"Mhmm." It came as a whisper, buried in my hair and only moderately convincing because Rhys' sleep was tainted by visions he didn't want to see. 

But premonitions weren't the only things that could point us in the right direction.