Page 28 of True Sight
“Stop, please,” he begs again, louder this time.
“Con–Conrad?” I try, touching him gently on the knee. He seems to be having a dream of some sort.I had a nightmare, okay? I’ve been having them for months now. His words ring out in my head and I realize that that must be what’s happening now—another nightmare.
“Help her, help—” His fist clenches tighter in his lap and his head moves as if he’s trying to look away from something that isn’t there. I’m not sure if I should wake him or not but by the way his body is flinching and the scared tone of his voice, I can’t just sit here and let him suffer.
“Conrad, mate, wake up. You’re having a bad dream, you’re safe, it’s okay.” I move to kneel in front of him and put my hand over his, trying to pull him from the chaos in his mind as gently as I can.
When our hands meet, he gasps loudly and starts to hyperventilate as if he can’t breathe. His bewildered eyeslook around the room before focusing on where I am in front of him. He uses his free hand to wipe the bead of sweat that accumulated around his brow away.
“What the hell happened?” he snaps.
“You were having a dream–a–a nightmare, I think,” I explain. He pulls his hand from mine and stands, causing me to fall back on my bum so he doesn’t knee me in the face as he does.
“You have to go,” he demands without a room for argument.
“What?” I push myself from the floor and look at him as he paces around the couch, still trying to catch his breath. Grand sounds of violins and cellos play out from the movie that’s still running.
“You–you have to leave. Now.” He stomps towards his front door and waits for me to join him.
“Conrad, I don’t have to go. I can stay, we can talk, if you want. About the nightmare or about something else.”
“I don’t want to talk, I want you to get out. I want you to leave,please.” The begging urge of his voice when he says ‘please’ tells me everything I need to know.
He’s embarrassed.
Me being here when he had a nightmare embarrassed him.
I nod my head curtly and slip on my shoes without another argument. Holding Annie back with one hand, he opens the door with another and I step out. Before he can close the door, I stick my foot into the threshold, blocking him from closing it all the way.
“I know we might not be friends, but I want you to know you can talk to me. Whatever demons you’re facing won’t go away on their own. I know that first hand.”
His eyes cast down to the floor and I can hear Anniecrying on the other side of his front door so I remove my foot and start down the hall. Before I’m too far gone, I swear I can hear him whisper two words before the click of the lock concludes our movie night.
“I’m sorry.”
14
CONRAD
Ihaven’t been able to stop ruminating about the stupid nightmare since I threw him out of my place Friday night. I also haven’t been able to stop seeing the disappointed look on his face as I closed the door on him after he tried to help me.
“Whatever demons you’re facing won’t go away on their own. I know that first hand.”
I don’t have demons, I have nightmares. And the people in my nightmares don’t feel like paranormal visitors, they feel real. They were real. Real people at least. At one point in time.
The woman’s scream belongs to my mother.
The screeching of the rubber against cement was my father’s last attempt to keep the car on the road before?—
I crush my eyes together to wipe away the fleeting memory that’s haunted me since I was little. It doesn’t even feel like a memory, it feels like a memory of a memory and for some reason, it’s coming back to me in my sleep when I have no choice but to face it. I’ve done a bang up job the last twenty-five years avoiding it during the day but at night Ican’t escape it. I’m not sure why the nightmares are starting now but I’m ready for them to stop. Or at least not happen when I have some guy sitting on my couch next to me staring at me like he wanted to hold my hand.
Whydid I have to fall asleep and have a nightmare when Henry was here? Of all people. He may have known about them in passing but how fucking mortifying was it to have one while he was at my place. He probably thinks I’m some fucked up freak who wets the bed.
Why do you care what he thinks? You wouldn’t be this bothered if it were Margaret, would you?
Henry isn’t Margaret.
Two voices in my head argue, the second’s words ringing louder than the first.
