Dreamcatcher

Trevor’s blood began to pool on the ground as I knelt beside his lifeless body on the floor, soaking my jeans. I was sobbing uncontrollably, my voice cracking weakly as a cried audibly. Trevor. Not Trevor. Anybody but Trevor.

“No… no… NO!” I cried out jaggedly, running my fingers gingerly over the rip in his torso. My fingers were coated in his blood. I brought them up to his face and shut his eye lids over his eyes. I had reached the point where I just couldn’t cry anymore. I could feel the emotion inside me growing, the adrenaline pumping in my veins. I brought my fingers up to my face, and I touched the part that Mrs. Kale had struck. It stung. Soon I tasted iron in my mouth, a warm liquid running into my mouth from my cheek. I was bleeding too.

Mrs. Kale was slumped in the chair next to me, the blood coated knife dangling precariously from her fingers towards the ground. Her face was masked in utter disbelief as she stared at her only son, the boy she had just killed. Silent tears fell from her eyes as she brought her other hand up to cover her mouth and shook her head, muttering under her fingers.

The anger welled and burned. I wanted to kill her. How could she do that? Her own son! I cared less about me. But he was her son! Mind, she had killed her own husband, but her son!? Yet, despite the hatred that I felt for her, and what she had done, there was someone I hated more right now. It was his fault Mrs. Kale had killed Trevor instead of me.

He came up behind me then, and crouched down next to me, putting his arm around my shoulders. I shook him off. He just put his hand back on my shoulder. I felt the adrenaline course through my veins, tingling in my finger tips. I turned my vibrant purple eyes on him then, my eyes thinning to slits, my eyebrows taking a down turn. I glared at him like it would make him combust into flame. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

I clamped my hand down on his and yanked it off my shoulder. He just met my eyes.

“Eli... I,” Alec began.
“You,” I breathed out coldly, snarling. “This is you’re fault!”

He just stared at me aghast, then closed his eyes and shook his head. He took hold of my wrist.

“Listen, Eli, please. You’re going into shock. We need to call 911. Come with me. You’re not going to get any better sitting here.”
“No.” I had a bite in my words. I ripped my hand away from him.
“Eli, please. It’s not my fault. And it’s not yours either. You weren’t supposed to die today. Trevor was.”
“No. I was supposed to die. I wanted to die. I was ready to die to save him. Don’t you understand?”
“Eli, you don’t understand. I want to explain to you, explain everything to you. But you have to come with me. Please.” He reached out his arms and placed his hands on my shoulders.

His voice was gentle and careful, but there was a sense of pleading in the undertone. Alec wanted desperately to get me away from Trevor. I wasn’t about to leave his dead body.

“I’m staying with Trevor. Go. Call 911. I’ll be right here.” I told him.
“Eli, please. I need you to come with me.”
“Why?” I asked harshly, leaning closer to his face. “What’s wrong with Trevor?”

Alec took one hand off my shoulder and dragged it down his face and through his messy black hair. It stirred a kind of fluttering inside of me that lifted my anger for a moment. But just for a moment. He had his eyes closed and his head down like he was thinking when my anger returned. When he looked up at me, his bright eyes glowed just like Nightmare’s.

“Eli, Trevor is dead. Nightmare killed him. The longer we stay here, the easier it will be for him to kill us with Trevor’s blood. We need to move. Now.”

I looked at him in complete shock. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. It didn’t make sense. Mrs. Kale killed Trevor. I grabbed the arm that was still on his shoulder with both hands, and with a rush of adrenaline, threw him away from me. He flew through the air and clattered to the ground in front of one of the chairs.

“Mrs. Kale killed Trevor!” I screamed despite the fact I was pretty sure she was still in the room. Alec shook off the tumble to the ground and charged at me again. I shoved him towards the wall. He hit it and crumpled to the ground.

“Stay away from Trevor!” I yelled, feeling extremely possessive. Alec just wouldn’t stay down. He lunged at me again and dodged my flailing arms. He grabbed my shoulders fiercely and pinned me to the wall. Then he pinned my one arm behind my back against the wall, and I grabbed his wrist with my other hand, struggling. He had his knee on my hip, keeping my legs in check. Then he leaned his forehead against mine like he was going to kiss me, his free hand running up my side, then up my neck, stopping where my jaw bone met my skull. His face twisted with strain.

“I’m sorry, Eli.” He whispered. He pushed his finger in my neck. I screamed.

Everything went black. No, not black. It was Nothing. I was floating in it. My mind was made up. Alec was in league with Nightmare. But something in the back of my brain wasn’t so sure. It didn’t care. It felt instinctual to trust Alec.

Suddenly I was shoved roughly into a glowing square and I tumbled into the white world. I tumbled along the ground, landing on my hands and knees. Blood dripped from the slash along my face, mixing with my tears and falling slowly to the floor. I crawled awkwardly along, the blood still on my fingers leaving crimson hand prints as I went.

I stood up then, throwing my arms wide and clenching my sticky fingers into fists. And I yelled. I screamed and screamed and felt the endless white around me vibrate with my voice. I opened my eyes to see my voice turning into Nothing. It swirled darkly over white walls of my dream world and started corroding holes through the membrane.

I pulled my tie off over my head and threw it to the ground, still yelling randomly, and kicked it away from me. Then I ran.

I kept running forever and ever, every thunking step resonating along the weakening walls, every stride sweeping the anger from my mind. My breath was coming in gasps, and my tears had frozen on my face. I wiped them away.

I came to a stop and looked up. The infinite ceilings of my imagination were pockmarked with holes, the ranging purple skies of the Other world shining through and dancing on the walls of white. Through the walls I could see broken pieces of the dry, cracked-mud ground, and bleach white orbs floating above the surface. The sunset red moon loomed on the horizon, giving everything a crimson glow.

“Where are you!?” I screamed skyward. “Where are you now when I want you to kill me?”

I raced forward and gathered the cloth-like walls of my dream world in my hands, ripping in away in shards. The walls hung like a ravened tapestry, jagged edges flopping this way and that, trying to hold together. I could see the whole Other world now in all its majestic glory through the giant hole I had torn away. I could see faces in the raging purple auroras, hear children laughing, people crying, lovers whispering. But what stood out most prominently were those eyes. His jade green eyes that lured and calmed and loved.

I broke down on the spot.

I cried out half-heartedly as the tears streamed down my face once more. I fell to my knees and curled up in a little ball as my white world enclosed around me again, the walls turning a slick black from the Nothing that still lingered.

I closed my eyes and left the world to crumble around me, but I couldn’t stop seeing those eyes behind the lids of my closed eyes, Trevor’s gorgeous eyes that were lost to the world, and to me, forever, the light gone out behind them. I was sobbing uncontrollably.

When I finally opened my eyes again, I was sitting on the beach. The shore stretched out in a curve to infinity, the waves lapping lazily in a moonlight glow. The lighthouse on the pier of the beach dimmed its spinning lights, and left me alone under the diamond cape of night. The stars were reflecting off the almost still water, and the moon cast a jagged glow across the ink-black waves. The sand was course beneath me, stinging in my cuts, and mixing oddly with the sticky blood on my fingers. I sat up.

Next to me were two beach chairs and a pile of clothes. Just like I remembered, exact from my memories. But my mother was not there.

The water cast a glow to the necklace on my neck, and I wound my fingers around the tiny purple dream catcher resting there. Take it, you’re going to need it more than me now…Trevor couldn’t have been a Dreamer, could he? And he couldn’t have known…

They say it hurts to lose someone you love. They say it hurts more when you could have saved them. I know it hurts. It hurts more than you can possibly comprehend. And everyday, little things come along, little things that remind you of them… a colour, a smell, and it eats away at your heart and your soul, like the Nothing corrodes your dreams. Then the feeling passes, leaving you a little deader inside than you were before.

I used to think that if we never knew anyone who died, we’d be young forever. That’s why priests and popes and bishops were old men. The death of others slowly killed you.

And nothing in your entire life can prepare you for losing two people you love.

It took me nine months, thirteen days, three hours to get over losing my mother. And sometimes I think also those other days since count too. But I was never going to get over Trevor.

“Oh, you will, someday, when you see him again.”

The voice was cool and sly, and it sent chills down my spine, but it was lighter than I remembered it.

Standing in the shadows of the cliffs was Nightmare, his long trench coat blowing gently in the still breeze. He looked out over the water in admiration, the moonlight setting his bright blue eyes alight. But they weren’t cold like they were when we’d first met. They were softer now, and clouded over like he was deep in thought.

He turned them on me then, staring deep into mine, making me feel like he was looking into my soul.

“He is not as lost as you think, little violet eyes. You are naïve to think so. Your mother too has been closer at hand than you’ve ever imagined. I could show you, you know.”

He started to walk towards me then, his thick black boots making heavy dents in the shifting sands. They blew about him as he walked closer, like the sand served him and him alone.

He stood right in front of me and he loomed like a giant as I looked up at him from the ground. The sand whirling about him burned my eyes, but when he whispered hush! the sand went still, falling to the ground. He crouched down to my eye level and pushed a strand of hair out of my face and behind my ear like he had done before.

“You have great power within you, violet eyes. I runs through your blood like the fire that you fear, itching at your fingertips, just waiting to be released. Do not be afraid for those that have passed. They beat the drum of your heart.”

He touched me where my heart should be, and I recoiled back from his cold touch. I managed to choke out the words, “My name is Eli.” My throat was dry and phlegm-y from crying.

“I know,” Nightmare began, pulling his hand back. He took hold of my right wrist and pushed back my sleeve to reveal a tiny dream catcher and two runes etched in black into my skin. I looked at them in shock. It was not there before.

“The sand has marked you, claimed you when you set eyes on the Other world. You were probably so upset, you didn’t feel it. The dream catcher means you are a Dreamer. You are one of us now.”

I just sat, my voice stuck in my throat. Nightmare used his other hand to point to the two runes below the dream catcher.

“The sand also named you. It does not name all of us. Like I said, it has chosen you. Violet Eyes. The feather falling between the two runes means you have a partner in the Dream World… linked usually through fate or prophecy…”

“Alec,” I whispered, remembering the vibrant flecks of violet raging in his eyes as he tried to get me away from Trevor. Where was he now?

“Hmmm?” Nightmare asked. I just shook my head.

Nightmare pulled at my fingers until my palm lay flat, open on top of his. He touched the middle, and the spot glowed bright blue. It tickled.

The light raced down my hand and into the black lines etched into my skin, then faded away. I looked back up at Nightmare.

“No one’s told you anything, Eli. They’ve been keeping it from you for years, saying, ‘That’d be what Astra wanted,’ but they were wrong. I knew your mother. She’d want you to know everything. I know she would.”

I just looked at him. Slowly, I started to see the evil in him seep through the kindly face. But there was a strange type of compassion in his voice when he spoke of my mother.

“Come to me at night, when the world goes to sleep. Slip through the veil of this world and meet me in the next. The sand will show you the way. And I’ll show you everything.”

I looked at my hand again and it pulsed blue. I looked next to me, but Nightmare was gone, the sand swirling on the chairs lying there.

I flexed my hand, once, twice… it seemed fine. Violet Eyes, Nightmare had said. But why?

I looked out over the water. My heart still prickled with thoughts of Trevor. But the emptiness there seemed to be filled, at least a little bit, with something else. I was not alone. I was a Dreamer. I was a part of something.

Yet there was that bit that would never be replaced of Trevor. The part of me that longed to feel those arms around my hips, those fingers intertwined with mine, the laughter lacing together into melody… My heart would always be heavy with the ache for love.

That’s when he appeared, rage and glory, on the lighter side of the beach, lit by the stars. He looked so much like a fallen angel, his face contorted in agony, his eyes troubled, but possessing a deeper wisdom far beyond the years of his face. My heart leaped, and I felt ashamed that it would, I could love no one more than I loved Trevor, could I?

My wrist burned at the thought, and I yanked back my sleeve to see the marks shining violet. I looked over to where Alec stood to see him yanking his sleeve back unexpectedly as well. The purple light shone on his face. He turned panicked eyes on me, and I just stared back blankly, like a fool.

“Vis luminis,” he whispered. “Violet Eyes.”