Chapter 1 #3
I saw her scream and convulse like something out of The Exorcist, only to end up still and dead with fifteen-year-old me staring in shock and terror, knowing I needed to run—to get the hell away from the thing that would now be coming for me.
A hunter or a king or a nightmare creature.
I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that something was coming, and there was no escaping it, because the danger lived in my dreams.
I couldn’t run. I couldn’t leave. I could barely even breathe.
And I’d desperately wished that I’d asked her about the tattered letter. Because everything I needed to know had just died with my mother.
I did the only thing I could do that night—I’d called 911 and Uncle Finn, and then I’d curled into a ball beside my dead mother’s bed and cried and cried and cried.
I’m crying a bit now too, just from remembering, and I roughly wipe my tears away, trying to push the letter out of my thoughts. That horrible letter that anyone else would think was fantasy or madness, but which I know is the truth.
My poor mom was dealing with all of that plus raising a kid plus managing her jewelry-making side hustle.
She kept dream journals too, though I only ever found one when I was fourteen and snooping for Christmas presents.
I don’t know for sure, but I think she wrote out her dreams—words and sketches—and then destroyed each journal as she finished it.
Like trying to let go of bad memories. The one I found in a shoe box under a pair of pink sandals was her last, and it had only a few entries in it, along with sketches of men and monsters.
The man she called the Hunter with golden eyes and the Nightmare King, with eyes of silver, the only colors in the book.
There were other drawings too. Rough sketches of dragons and monsters and a dark cave with an odd pool like a low bird bath surrounded by stones. And she’d drawn a black-cloaked figure bent over it and the moon reflecting in the water.
All things that I’ve now seen too, though at the time I’d found the journal, I’d had no dreams and hadn’t understood at all.
I scoured the apartment for more journals after she died and my dreams started, but I couldn’t find even one. Not anywhere in our tiny apartment, not anywhere at Finn’s.
Except for the one last journal, the others were long gone, and so were any answers they might have held for me.
Mom had told me about the curse on all the women in my family, but she’d told me nothing else, and her few journal entries only set out what happened in her dreams but didn’t explain anything. Didn’t even say if I should trust the King or the Hunter.
She told me I would die in a dream, just like every woman in her family line, but she never told me how to live with them.
I hate her a little bit for that. Bitchy and unfair, maybe. But true. And as for that letter, all I can guess is that she meant to write a new one, but her dreams killed her before she had the chance.
Fiercely, I wipe away tears, then I glance into the box at the ring.
It’s really the only thing I have of hers now.
I remember the flea market excursion when she’d found the stone.
It was one of our regular Saturday outings, and she’d been poking around in a box of unpolished rocks.
I’d heard her little gasp, then peered at the treasure she’d held out on her palm.
I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but a few weeks later, she’d polished the lapis lazuli and set it in the stunning silver and gold ring.
I’d begged to try it on, but she’d insisted it was a Mommy ring.
“It’s not good enough for you,” I’d said, all grown up at eight. I’d pointed to the white line that bisected the stone. “It’s broken. You should have a good one.”
“That’s a white calcite vein,” she’d told me. “And it’s part of what makes this a good one. Don’t you think it’s more interesting than a plain old stone with nothing on it? Besides, didn’t you tell me you don’t like rings?”
I’d shrugged. I still don’t like rings, but back then I’d just wanted the thing because it seemed like a piece of my mom.
Now, I’d gladly toss the damn thing in a wishing well if that would give me back my mother.
With a small shudder, I close my scrap box and finish unpacking. By the time I’m done, Tia has transformed herself into a party-ready coed, complete with enough eyeliner to supply a small theater troupe.
“You sure you don’t want to come to the mixer with me now? Your uncle wouldn’t mind, would he?”
“Oh, he would. Family time is sacred to Uncle Finn. Besides, I’m wiped. I’m going to grab a ten-minute power nap before I head to his place.”
“Good plan,” she says, then points a finger at me. “But if you decide to bail on me, I’ll have to kill you. It’ll suck losing my first on-campus friend, but at least I’ll have a room to myself.”
“I won’t bail. Promise.”
She cocks her head, nods, then grabs her phone and room key. At the door, she pauses, then looks back at me. “And Cora? I’m really glad you’re my roomie. I have a good feeling about us.”
The sincerity in her voice catches me off guard. “Me too,” I say, and even though it’s been years since I’ve had a close friend, I truly mean it.