Chapter 36
“Romantic relationships between Entity employees are strongly discouraged. Between senior leadership, however, romantic relationships are prohibited. No exceptions will be made.”
Entity Employee Handbook: HR Edition
It didn’t take long for Alexys to fall asleep. Nic waited until her breaths evened out, and then he sat up and took up watch. Not for monsters, though.
He was watching for her nightmares.
He had no idea how long it would take, but he was content to listen to the rain and watch the orange light flicker across Alexys’s face.
She looked peaceful, relaxed, and it suited her.
If he had a soft spot for Alexys, he certainly wasn’t ready to admit it, but there was no denying the way each managed to get under the other’s skin.
No one ever bothered him as much as Alexys could.
Worse still, he actually enjoyed it.
Shifting his weight, Nic forced his thoughts to return to the subject of Alexys’s nightmares.
He thought back to the casefile Zach shared, having read it several times during his ride to Opal’s house.
Nothing bothered Nic more than a riddle without an answer, but nothing leaped out at him, no clear signs pointing at anything he could immediately identify.
The longer it took him to figure out what was causing Alexys’s nightmares, the more fixated he became.
He was already convinced that a new type of monster was preying on Alexys’s terror.
There wasn’t any solid proof yet, of course, but his hunches were rarely wrong, and the thought of something new was, admittedly, rather tantalizing.
Which was why he hadn’t said anything to Alexys.
Telling her he knew about the nightmares would have been the right thing to do, he knew that, but Nic had let every opportunity pass him by.
Because the only evidence of the Hollow Walker he could bring back would be eyewitness accounts.
But the creature giving Alexys nightmares?
That was completely undocumented, completely unknown, and would be worth so much more to his colleagues, and Nic couldn’t ignore it.
Even if now, he felt incredibly conflicted.
Even if he didn’t want to be dishonest with her.
As if she could feel his restlessness, Alexys stirred.
At first, it was small movements that caught his eye.
Shifting the arm her head rested on and burying her cheek further into the fabric of his sweater.
A soft sigh and a slow stretch of the leg.
Nic considered waking her, sparing her the terror she would no doubt experience, but he didn’t.
Most research said it was unhealthy to wake a person mid-nightmare, so letting her sleep through it was really the kinder choice.
Besides, it didn’t seem like a full-blown nightmare, at least not yet.
The researcher in him watched with fascination, analyzing every movement and reaction in hopes of seeing something, anything that might be a clue as to what was causing her nightmares.
Suddenly, Alexys started mumbling and jerking, her breaths shallow. As soon as she began to whimper, Nic decided to wake her.
And then he saw it: a dark spot moving beside her ear.
Quickly moving from his spot on the other side of the fire, he crouched down beside Alexys.
She pushed against an unseen terror and rolled onto her back, nearly dislodging the thing crawling on her skin.
The shadows of the fire made it nearly impossible to discern, but she rolled to the side once again, and Nic was able to see what appeared to be a spider, crawling behind her ear.
It was the deepest shade of black and roughly the size of a dime.
Its long legs carried it soundlessly across her skin, a silken thread trailing behind it.
The thread caught and stretched, a translucent web forming behind the shell of Alexys’s right ear and up into her hair.
The bigger the web grew, the more frightened she became.
There was no mistaking it: the spider was somehow weaving the nightmare.
It was fascinating, and horrifying, and unlike anything Nic had ever seen before. The web glowed silver in the firelight. It was delicate and yet managed to hold firm throughout the jerking and frantic shaking of her head as she pleaded with someone—or something—to leave her alone.
Nic had never felt so torn. There were so many unknowns to what she was experiencing that he was almost afraid to interrupt.
Could it harm her to disturb the web, or would it free her from the nightmare?
Could he squash the spider like any average household arachnid, or would that have dire consequences (given its clearly supernatural nature)?
Did he need to have Entity’s approval before killing it? And if he did, would they even give it?
He was frozen, hunched over Alexys, debating the morality of academic observation and the matter of his heavy conscience when the spider finished its web. Alexys stilled, quietly whimpering but no longer thrashing. She had given in to whatever was haunting her.
The cold fingers of guilt wrapped themselves around Nic’s lungs until he thought he might choke.
She was crying. Glistening tears tracked across the bridge of her nose and down the side of her face. Nic immediately reached his hand forward—to soothe her or remove the spider, he wasn’t sure which.
The arachnid scurried off the web and vanished into her hair.
His hand fell to her shoulder. The touch sent a tremor through her, and he couldn’t tell if it was comforting or making things worse.
The web behind her ear lost its sturdy build and wilted, falling limply against her skin, before vanishing.
Dissolved or absorbed, Nic couldn’t tell.
The translucent, silver threads simply disappeared as if they, and the spider, had never been there at all.
Alexys let out a long breath, and her body unfurled, fully relaxed. The nightmare had passed.
A nightmare he could have spared her from, the cynical part of him pointed out. A nightmare that he willingly let her suffer through for the sake of research and protocol and … fear? The guilt was suffocating.
Nic brushed a few strands of loose hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear.
She exhaled, her face peaceful again as she leaned into his touch.
He cupped her face, peering down at her.
She was beautiful, there was no denying it—but never before had he wished he could tell her. Nightmares and all.
Nic pulled his hand away, chastised himself for such thinking, and returned to his side of the fire.
He sat back down on his sleeping bag and fished out his phone.
He’d taken screenshots of the file Zach sent over, and he flicked through it once again.
He must have read the pages at least fifty times since receiving them, but he hadn’t been looking for anything spider-related before.
His memory wasn’t perfect, contrary to popular belief, but he did recall the mention of spiders in one of her dream journal entries.
Nic scrolled through all the notes and files he’d saved, some nothing more than scribbled notes from Zach, all with potential hypotheses as to what creatures were haunting Alexys (none of his hunches were correct). As he read, he kept an eye on Alexys’s sleeping form.
When Nic first saw the sleep journal entries in Zach’s email, he’d initially dismissed them. Now, he read them with renewed interest.
There was a towering tree with white flowers and smooth, dark wood.
I couldn’t see anything else, only the tree and the night sky behind it.
A voice, which sounded almost like it came from the branches of the tree, said, “You must not let him break free.” The tree swayed in the wind, the flowers turned black, and the bark began to crack and break.
Nic wasn’t sure why a talking Blackwood tree might be important, but trees were prominent in folklore and legends.
The ominous message could fall within the premonition territory, despite how vague it was.
He would research the significance when he got back to the office.
He skimmed a few more entries until another one stuck out.
I’m standing before a grave. There’s no name on it, but I know who’s buried there.
I look up, and there are eight more graves behind it, all unmarked but all holding the bodies of people I’m certain I know.
It’s my fault they’re there. I can’t remember who they are, but I know it’s my fault they’re dead. I drop the shovel.
He wasn’t an expert in psychology, so Nic couldn’t begin to imagine the implications of homicide or dead bodies in a dream.
Buried secrets, maybe? A haunted past? He checked the date and considered Alexys’s behavior around the time she had written it, but nothing in his memory stood out.
It had been several weeks ago, and there was no guarantee he’d even seen her that day. He skipped to the next.
I was back at the faire, in the fortune teller’s tent.
The one I hated. It felt wrong, like a dark stain on a white sheet.
It didn’t belong, but it didn’t try to hide its un-belonging.
The table was draped in cobwebs. Every corner, every wall was covered in them.
I was sitting across the table from myself.
My dream-self smiled, cruel and mocking.
“You never listen,” she said. “I’ve told you not to trust him.
He will be your downfall.” Spiders, hundreds of black spiders, began to crawl out from under the table until they covered every inch of the room. My dream-self laughed.
The spiders, of course, immediately caught his attention.
The webs, the spiders, the dark version of Alexys, it all had to be connected.
He’d never heard of a nightmare-creating spider cryptid, but it wouldn’t be the first time a new cryptid was discovered seemingly out of nowhere.
Finally having something to research was a relief.
He just had to figure out what exactly the spider was and how to get rid of it.
His eyes slipped back over to Alexys and scanned for any signs of the spider in her hair.
She was still sleeping, her nose buried in the sleeve of his sweater, and her hair formed a wild halo around her head.
The sweater nearly swallowed her, and it made him smile.
Seeing her in his clothes made him feel a certain way but …
Nic wasn’t going to think about that because they were coworkers.
Plus, he was too busy snooping through her personal files to indulge in nonsensical observations like how cozy she looked wrapped up in the soft white fabric.
He felt an unfamiliar, protective instinct rear up before immediately quashing it.
He checked his watch. Only a handful of hours until dawn.
He’d let her sleep a bit more before waking her.
She’d be easier to manage after a little sleep.
He already anticipated her temper being particularly fearsome in the absence of caffeine.
But that was Morning Nic’s problem. Stretching out on his sleeping bag, Nic considered their next steps in the hope that the logical thinking would at least distract him from all the noise in his brain.
Nic really hoped Elliot was still alive, despite being fairly convinced otherwise—especially after seeing that Jackalope.
But he didn’t have the heart to snuff out Alexys’s hope just yet.
He wasn’t sure what Elliot’s death would do to her, or if she would be able to cope with something so traumatic.
He worried she’d leave the job, although he’d try to persuade her otherwise, of course.
He decided long before he made it to Opal’s house that he was joining her, mostly, for his own personal gain, but along the way things had changed.
It wasn’t his job to rescue wayward employees, but he did feel obligated to help her, and Elliot, in whatever way he could.
They would set out again at first light to look for him. With any luck, they hadn’t strayed too far off the path Nic’s compass had set for them, and they would be able to find Greenbriar Mine before anything else tried to kill them.