In Dreams (4 page)

“And those two guys? They were in my dream. It’s like they followed me back here.”

“You do know that’s impossible, right?”

“Completely. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. You saw them. I didn’t make them up. And it doesn’t mean I don’t have vine burn on my ankle.”

She leans over and stares at the marks—there is the imprint of a thorn and a leaf, perfectly shaped, on my leg in scarlet, and the imprints of leaves and vines completely encircle my leg at the ankle. Suddenly, Annie slaps my knee. “Maybe you have the stigmata!”

“The
what
?”

“You know. The stigmata! We only go to church on Christmas and Easter. But you’ve seen devil horror movies, right? It’s like when someone gets marks on them—”

“Annie, first of all, I’m not Catholic. Second, I don’t have marks on my
palms
! I have them on my ankle. And men in suits? Where does that come into your little devil movie? I’m not possessed.”

“All right. I was just trying to think of a logical explanation.”

“You call that logical?”

“Well, how do you explain it then?”

“That’s the thing, I can’t.” I open the car door and climb out. “But I’m not crazy.”

“Puh-leeze. I’ve known you forever. I know you’re not. Or if you are, then so am I. Call me later, okay?”

“Okay. Call you after dinner.”

I shut the car door and walk into the house.

“Grandpa?” I call out, but he doesn’t answer. I poke my head in his bedroom, but he isn’t there. And then I see it. His computer. It’s on, but the monitor is asleep.

My grandfather spends every waking moment on that thing. He tells me he’s searching for a cure for Mom. I sit down at his desk and hit the mouse. The screen comes on again, but instead of searching for Sleeping Beauty syndrome, I see he’s researching Greek mythology. I click History for the drop-down menu. That’s
all
he’s researching, according to what I can see.

Weird. Nothing about drugs, doctors, or specialists.

I feel kind of guilty, as if I’m spying on him. I get up and go into Mom’s room. She’s sleeping, but I see she’s upset. She’s kicking her legs and turning her
head from side to side. Sometimes she does this just before she wakes up. I go to her bedside. Grandpa and I like to be there when she wakes in case she’s confused.

And then I hear her call my name. “Iris!”

“Mom,” I soothe. “I’m here.” Her forehead is drenched, and she’s hot to the touch.

But she doesn’t wake up.

And then she kicks at the sheets again. She opens her mouth. Only this time she doesn’t call for me.

She shouts a different name instead.

“Sebastian!”

4

As everyone knows, the ancients before Aristotle

did not consider the dream a product of the

dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration . . .

SIGMUND FREUD

I
f my life were a movie, right now my mom would wake up. But she doesn’t. She tosses her head back and forth a few times, and then she seems to recede into her deep slumber, far from me, far from the real world. I wipe her forehead with a washcloth and kiss her cheek. It won’t do me any good to try to wake her up. I know from experience. If you wake someone with Kleine-Levin syndrome—the fancy name for Sleeping Beauty syndrome—they’re still out of it. It’s a little like talking to someone who’s really drunk. I’ve tried before, and she’s not coherent.

I watch her sleep for a few minutes, trying to make my head stop hurting. Wanting things to be normal. Even if my normal isn’t like anyone else’s. Even if
my mom sleeps her life away. I want things to make sense.
Sebastian
. It’s not a typical name. In fact, I’ve never met anyone with that name ever. How? That’s all I keep thinking. How did the vine marks get on my leg? How did the military-type men from my dream end up on a street corner in my hometown? How did my mother call out the name of the man of my dreams when I didn’t even know his name until that afternoon when I was hypnotized?

I want to pretend none of this ever happened. I leave her room and go to the kitchen to make myself something to eat. I hear Grandpa’s car in the driveway—he drives a cute BMW convertible, and when I graduate from high school, he has promised it to me as my graduation present.

He comes through the front door and makes his way to the kitchen, where I’m trying to choose between four different boxes of cereal, trying to pretend today was like any other day.

“Gourmet dining, I see,” he says. “Shall I light candles and break out the good china?”

I worry my voice will sound shaky. But I try to joke with him like I always do. “Dinner of champions. Frosted Flakes? Corn Pops? Lucky Charms? Or Raisin Bran? Or we could get really adventurous and go for Pop-Tarts.”

“How about takeout?”

“Okay,” I say, and open our take-out drawer. My grandmother died of cancer when I was six months old. Apparently, she was a great Italian cook—Sicilian, actually, but then she learned to make the Greek food my grandfather loves. That cooking gene skipped my mom—badly. And it most definitely skipped me. Grandpa can make three things: mac and cheese from the blue box, grilled souvlaki on the barbecue, and tuna-fish sandwiches with minced pickles in them—sounds gross, but they’re delicious. Anything beyond that repertoire means takeout—and we have menus for every pizza parlor, sub shop, Chinese place, and sushi restaurant within a ten-mile radius of our house.

I pick up about a dozen menus, spread them out, and jokingly fan my face, grateful that he’s here and that he looks and is acting completely and totally like my grandfather. “What are you in the mood for, Grandpa?”

“Ah, take-out roulette. Well, being as I just got home, how about the Chinese place that delivers? That way I don’t have to go out again. Order me the Szechuan pork—extra hot. Two egg rolls. And shrimp wontons.”

I take my phone from my back pocket and find the
restaurant in my contacts—we order so often, every place is in there, and they all know my voice. I order his food and then mine—shrimp with snow peas. Then we go into the living room and wait. I try to act as if everything is okay. But I picture my mom’s mouth forming the word
Sebastian
. I didn’t imagine it. I shut my eyes tight and open them again. This is my living room. Everything is how it always is, right down to the thick, glossy art books stacked just so on the coffee table. I try to forget today. Maybe I really am just overtired. Delusional. Except I know I’m not.

“How have you been sleeping?” he asks.

I shrug. “Okay. I mean . . . you know, not sleeping. So nothing’s changed.”

“And to think we spent two thousand dollars on that fancy mattress.”

“I know.”

“And how was the hypnotherapist?”

“Actually, he says he can help me. I made another appointment.”

“Good. That’s very good, Lambie.”

Yeah. His nickname for me. His little lamb. Annie abuses it and calls me Mutton.

He picks up the
New York Times
we get delivered
every day. I pick up my book. We don’t have a television in our living room. Or in the den. In fact, I have one in my bedroom only because I begged for it so I wouldn’t be the only freak at school without. My mother, before she got sick, and my grandfather are really into reading, learning, visiting museums. Even with my mom sick, Grandpa and I usually have a standing date twice a month to visit an art museum, or attend a lecture, or see a Broadway play, or something. Annie usually comes. Her parents love that she’s getting all kinds of culture. And it’s kind of weird, but with the exception of trig, all that reading and museums mean I don’t have to try too hard to get straight As.

I keep glancing over at him while I pretend to read. I want to ask him questions. I really do. Like how my mom called out Sebastian, the exact name of the guy who has been part of my dreams for years. I want to tell him about the marks on my ankle. But I don’t want to worry him. He has enough to worry about with my mom. He doesn’t need to start with me, too.

I think he feels me staring at him, but all I see is his white hair over the
Times
. Then he lowers the paper. I just smile at him and then look down at my book. We sit like that, me curled on the couch, and him
reclining in his La-Z-Boy, until the doorbell rings.

He stands, reaches into his back pocket, takes out his wallet, and hands me two twenties and a ten. “Not sure of the total,” he says.

I open the door, and a man is standing there holding a brown paper bag with our Chinese food. Only it’s not Cheung, the son of the owner of Ming’s Palace. It’s a guy with dark sunglasses, a black T-shirt, jeans, and biceps the size of small tree trunks. On his forearm is a tattoo of an intricate serpent. And something about the tattoo looks familiar, as if I’ve seen it somewhere. Total déjà vu. Maybe in a dream? My throat goes dry. Something about this feels fifty shades of wrong.

I glance back at Grandpa, fear in my eyes. Grandpa climbs out of his chair and steps closer to me.

I turn to look at the deliveryman, and I manage to whisper, “How much?”

With one hand still holding the bag, he uses his other hand to whip off his sunglasses. And where his eyes should be are . . . mirrors. Or glass. I can’t quite tell. I want to look away, to run away, but I can’t stop staring into them, and I see swirls of black storm clouds. And lightning. His eyes, they’re mesmerizing. He grins. More of a leer that makes my throat feel even tighter.

Finally, I tear my gaze away, and I look behind him. Near our big oak tree—the oak tree with my old tree house still in it—is a dog. A mean, snarling, snapping dog.

Then the dog bolts a few yards toward our door, growling so loud it’s an earth-shaking rumble, and I literally gasp. It has three heads.
Cerberus
. My heart pounds, and I’m frozen.

I know I called Ming’s Palace. I can smell Chinese food. I know this is real, but I swear it is a dream.

I slam the door shut—or try to—but the delivery guy manages to block me with one shove of his supersize arm. I look at the tattoo, and the snake is moving—actually moving on his skin, twisting and slithering, its scales shiny and black.

“What? No tip?” His voice drips with menace.

“Grandpa!” I shriek. I back up into our living room, but the guy is coming after me, barging inside, and behind him on the front steps the dog is growling. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Grandpa has grabbed his prized bat—his Yankees bat signed by Don Mattingly, the possession he loves most in the world—off the mantel of the fireplace.

The man with the strange eyes keeps coming toward me. He drops our Chinese food on the floor and knocks over a lamp, which shatters into a thousand
pieces. The lightbulb pops and sparks, and half the room is now dim.

Grandpa swings the bat, hard, and connects. It splinters against the man’s arm, and still the man with the strange eyes keeps coming, kicking the ottoman aside and then knocking the coffee table over so he can get to me. I skitter over furniture and back up until I am against the wall. Grandpa searches the living room. I can see him moving toward the fireplace and the iron tongs.

The man looms over me, blocking my view of anything but his face. “What do you want?” I ask. My throat is so paralyzed with terror, the words come out in a croak.

“Stay away, Iris.” He emphasizes the
s
in my name like the hiss of a snake. The man’s voice is cold. The voice of a killer, devoid of warmth or humanity.

He knows my name. I feel the wall at my back, which tells me this is really happening, the plaster cool to my touch. There is nowhere to run. I can’t breathe I am so scared. “Stay away from what?” From where? From who? My mind races, but it’s taking all of me just to keep breathing.

“You don’t belong. You shouldn’t exist. Stay out of the Underworld.”

“The what?” He’s not making any sense. Not that anything today has.

He leans in close to me, until I feel his lips pressed against my ear. They are moist, and I know I am not dreaming. He’s real. This is happening. “The Underworld. You know. Deep down.
You’ve always known
. Keep away.”