Page 25 of The Nightmare King

I’d forgotten.

But Mare never did.

Mare remembered.

AFTER

Blue lights illuminated the scene as a police officer’s walkie-talkie beeped. He didn’t say anything, just looked me over and waved firefighters and EMTs over. They carried me away as I fought against them, kicking, screaming, begging to be left alone.

“Let me jump off the cliff after him,” I pleaded. “Let me go be with him,” I cried.

Under the bright lights of the compact ambulance, they strapped me to a bed, sticking a needle into the top of my hand. The feeling of cold water swept through my veins and my eyelids got heavy— spearing me into a sleep I didn’t ask for. Violently slamming me into a tranquility I didn’t deserve.

The days that followed left me in my pink daisy-quilted childhood bed. Sam fussed over me and my dad. On day five, my dad hobbled in on crutches, knocking at my doorframe. I pulled a pillow over my head and pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to speak to him. It wasn’t his fault, what happened, or Sam’s, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t blame them.

I blamed them.

I blamed myself.

My thoughts tore me apart until I wanted to set fire to my room, my bed, and my life. So, one day, with my bones still weary and my head still aching, I attached my headphones to my ears and blasted metal music— gloriously realizing it made the thoughts disappear.

Then I found a crappy apartment I could afford, packed a duffle bag, and moved in without ever even saying goodbye to my dad. Did I even have a dad anymore? Or did he go over the cliff, too?

What a wonderful thing to not know.

Sam found me, of course, and wormed her way into looking after me, smothering me with attention. Through my sister, my dad forced me into therapy, and all of them together set up a manageable routine for me. I kept my grocery store job, ignoring the pitying glances of my co-workers and the town by cranking the volume on my audiobooks.

Most people played along.

No one forced me to talk.

Nothing ever happened.

Nothing ever happened.

Nothing ever happened.

And then I would have nightmares… and he would be there.

Mare never made me talk either— he only loved me, and scared, me, and fucked me, and slapped me, and kissed me, and hurt me— and inched me closer and closer to the truth with each night he haunted me. Not-so-gently shoving me toward facing my trauma. Forcing me with ghost face masks, knives, lakes, and spaceships in the sky.

Mare always had a flare for drama.

It was his final performance, and he played his parts as he danced through scene to scene in nightmares built for me.

Chapter

Twelve

TO RECALL

Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure to grief is to grieve.

Earl Grollman

“Open your eyes,” Mare’s soft voice purred in my ear.

I did as I was told, tears staining my cheeks. The cemetery was now littered with pumpkins and casted in an orange glow. I was dreaming, now, and he’d come for me.

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