Chapter 1 #2
Hamilton Hall is a four-story brick building with tall, narrow windows and a steep slate roof. Inside, the common areas have been modernized, but the rooms still retain their historic character—high ceilings, thick plaster walls, and ornate crown molding.
Our room is on the third floor, at the end of a long hallway illuminated by wall sconces that cast more shadows than light.
As promised, Tia has transformed her half of the space into a bohemian paradise—colorful scarves covering the walls, strings of fairy lights decorating her bed frame, and enough plants to qualify as a small jungle.
My side, by contrast, contains only the basic furnishings provided by the college—a twin bed, a desk, a dresser, and a small bookshelf.
My suitcases and boxes sit neatly at the foot of the bed, still unpacked.
But on the nightstand, there’s a mason jar stuffed with white daisies and a card in Uncle Finn’s familiar scrawl: Welcome home, kiddo.
Despite everything, I smile. He knows me. Daisies over roses, every time. I pull one from the jar and tuck it behind my ear, which earns me a grin from Tia.
“Cute,” she says. “Secret admirer?”
“My uncle.”
“The hot dean sends flowers? Okay, I officially need to be adopted into your family.”
“You really need to stop calling him hot,” I say, but I’m laughing as I sit on my bed, testing its firmness. Not too soft, not too hard. Perfect. My sleep is sketchy enough without adding an uncomfortable mattress to the mix.
“So,” Tia says, rolling onto her stomach to face me. “What’s your major?”
“Psychology, with a focus on sleep disorders.” I’ve already told her about how Mom died, so I’m not surprised when she doesn’t ask why I chose my major.
Instead, she just nods, a hint of sympathy in her eyes, and I’m grateful she’s not making a thing about it.
“You’re art history, right?” I ask, hoping I remembered what she’d said earlier.
“Right. And I’m doubling with Religious Studies. I’m all about occult symbolism in Renaissance paintings.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Oh, it totally is, but the truth is I picked it because my mom worked in a museum and raised me on art, and my dad taught and wrote books about world history through the lens of religion.” She shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but I recognize the grief in her eyes.
I’ve seen it in the mirror often enough.
“I think that’s great,” I tell her. “And a totally cool double-major.”
A hint of a smile erases some of the grief. “Thanks. I think so too, even if it is a little obvious. I mean, the whole wearing my trauma on my sleeve. But I really am interested in both subjects. And,” she adds, her eyes darting away from me, “I miss them both.”
I blink back my own tears. “Believe me. I get it.”
“I know you do,” she says.
Tia’s parents died in a car accident a few months before my mom succumbed to a sleep disorder. Or, at least, that’s what I told Tia. Somehow, telling my new roomie that Mom was killed by a creature in her nightmare didn’t seem like the best first step in getting to know each other.
“What does your dad think of your major?” she asks. “I mean, is he proud of you for wanting to dig into sleep disorders? Or does it just make him sad because of how your mom died?”
The question lands like a punch to the gut. “My dad was never in the picture.”
Tia’s face falls. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” I shrug, aiming for nonchalance despite the familiar tightness in my chest. “It’s fine.
Ancient history. But I get what you’re asking.
To be honest, Uncle Finn was a little freaked at first. I think he wanted me to major in history or something, just so we could both forget about the way mom died. ”
“Does that bother you?”
Hell, yes. But all I say is, “It’s fine. It’s been four years, and I get that he wants to move on.”
I flash an it’s all good smile. Except it’s not good at all.
Not when I still wake to the sounds of my mother’s screams. Not when I still remember how it felt when she convulsed in my arms as the nightmares took her, just like they’d taken almost all the women on my mother’s side of the family for generations and generations.
And certainly not when I know that, unless I find a cure, those same nightmares will one day claim me too.
I hold my breath, waiting for Tia to nail me with more questions, but Tia is like a bumblebee, and, thankfully, she’s already moved on to her next flower—this one a freshman mixer.
“It’s in the building,” she says, sitting up and making prayer hands. “Don’t make me go alone. Pretty please?”
I laugh, then agree, even though what I really want is a hot shower and an early night, preferably with the aid of the sleeping pills I got from a walk-in clinic before I left St. Pete. But I also want the illusion of a somewhat normal life.
Besides, I really like Tia.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” she says, clapping like a little kid.
“But I’ll have to meet you there,” I tell her. “I promised my uncle I’d have dinner at his place.”
“Just so long as you don’t stand me up,” she says, then bounces off the bed. “I’m going to change, then go check out the library and the dining hall before I hit the mixer.”
As she rummages through her already overflowing closet, I begin unpacking my own clothes, then pause when I pull my scrap box from beneath a stack of jeans.
It’s nothing special, just an old wooden box I’d found at a garage sale when I was twelve.
It’s where I normally keep Mom’s ring. It doesn’t fit, and it’s not my style, and I don’t like wearing jewelry.
But Mom always said the lapis lazuli ring was special, so I wear it on a chain on special occasions like Christmas. And starting college.
Now, I put the chain and ring back into the box to rest beside a few other treasures—old concert ticket stubs, a dried rose from my very first date, and the remnants of a ripped-up letter I’d found in my mother’s bedside trashcan a few days before she screamed and writhed and thrashed in bed as I called 911—a useless move since her heart succumbed to the power of her nightmare long before the paramedics arrived.
I pull the taped-together letter out, then run my finger over the remaining text, foolishly hoping that this time when I read it, the full letter will magically appear, and I can finally truly understand my mother’s message.
It doesn’t, of course. But I read the neatly printed words and fragments anyway, even though by now I know the whole thing by rote.
A surge of anger cuts through me, and I want to ball it up and throw the damn letter across the room, because this is what she left me?
This lame letter that tells me nothing about how to survive some stupid family curse?
A letter she didn’t even give me. Instead, I’d had to dig it out of the damn trash.I’d been terrified the first time I’d read it.
Not of the nightmares that I’d known for years had plagued all the women in my family, but that my mother was losing her mind.
I almost asked her about it, but it seemed so nonsensical.
And I hadn’t wanted her to know I’d poked around in her trash.
Then I saw her on the night the mares won.