Blur (Blur Trilogy) (14 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

Daniel dreamt of death.

He knew he was onl
y
dreaming, that it wasn’t real, but that didn’t make it an
y
less terrif
yi
ng. When
yo
u’re awake,
yo
u can close
yo
ur e
ye
s to the horrors of life. You can turn awa
y,
run, hide, change the channel.

Not so when
yo
u’re asleep.

Even if
yo
u know
yo
u’re sleeping,
yo
u’re still at the merc
y
of
yo
ur dreams. People who are asleep can’t simpl
y
decide to wake up. Nightmares don’t let
yo
u off that easil
y.
The
y
hold
yo
u in their clutches until the
y
decide, in their own good time, to let
yo
u go.

And so.

The dream.

It’s sunset and he’s pulling into the parking lot at the lake. The oil-dark water is rimmed with pines, the sk
y
is streaked with the muted colors of the d
yi
ng da
y.

It’s onl
y
when he gets out of the car that he realizes he’s not alone. It’s a dream, and dreams work under their own set of rules, so it doesn’t surprise him. A girl he hadn’t noticed before is in the car with him, and now she steps out to join him.

Emil
y.

But she doesn’t look like she did the last few times he saw her in the waking world. Now her hair is combed and clean and not tangled with weeds from the lake bottom. Her skin is normal-colored, not gra
yi
sh blue. Her neck isn’t bloated. Her e
ye
s aren’t glazed over and pale with the washed-out color of death.

She’s wearing her necklace, the one with the heart-shaped locket. She has her glasses on.

He hears a scuffling sound from inside the car and notices that her dog is in there now, in the backseat. Ma
yb
e he was there before, ma
yb
e he just appeared, it’s impossible to tell. She wants to bring Trevor along, but he convinces her to leave the dog there. “We won’t be long,” he tells her. “This wa
y
he won’t run off.”

“He’ll be good,” she protests. “He won’t run awa
y.
”

“We won’t be long.”

The
y
crack the window open, lock the doors, and then the two of them walk together toward the beach near the base of Wind
y
Point.

All goes well until the
y
reach the stretch of sand near the inlet. The
y
begin to argue.

It’s a dream and it doesn’t need to make sense: The
y
argue about something stupid, it’s not even clear what. Something that happened at school. Something to do with the locket.

The
y’
re near the woods, near the fire pit. He grabs her arm. She tries to pull free, to fight him off, to wrestle awa
y,
but he’s stronger and he’s able to drag her toward the water. She screams but the
y’
re too far from an
y
homes. No one can hear her.

He entwines his hand in her hair and thrusts her head forward, holds it under the water.

She thrashes.

Yes.

And tries to pull awa
y,
tries to get her mouth to the surface, but soon enough, her struggling stops and she becomes limp in his hands.

He lets go, his heart racing with fear and a horrible realization of what he has done. He backs up and turns to rub awa
y
the evidence of their scuffle, to draw his foot across the sand to erase the drag marks from when he pulled her to the water.

There on the sand he sees a glint in the moonlight, because then it is night, and it’s a dream, so somehow that makes sense.

The glint is a lens from her glasses.

Knowing that it’s a dream, he tries to wake up. He tells himself that this isn’t real and wills himself to open his e
ye
s, but the nightmare just wraps more tightl
y
around him like it’s never going to let him go.

He picks up the small rounded piece of glass and searches for the frames but can’t find them in the dark. Even using his phone as a flashlight he doesn’t see them and finall
y
gives up the search.

Her bod
y
lies motionless and facedown in the water.

He unclasps her necklace, removes it, pockets it, then tugs her deeper, to where the current will carr
y
her awa
y.

No one will ever find out. No one will know.

No one.

Will ever.

Know.

Daniel woke up shaking, staring at the ceiling.

Waking up this morning wasn’t like it was sometimes for hi
m—a
slow transition from the dreamworld, the images fading one b
y
one into the murk
y
realm of his unconscious.

No, this time he woke up all at once. And the images didn’t fade, just remained stark and vivid in his mind.

Trevor.

The lake.

Emil
y
Jackson.

And, though it was frightening to dream of her like that, he felt compelled to find out more, to see what would happen next.

He closed his e
ye
s again and tried to return to the dream to see how it would unfold.

But it was like tr
yi
ng to climb into someone else’s thought
s—e
ver
yt
hing was indecipherabl
y
smudged and marred around the edges and he wasn’t able to reenter the stor
y.

At last he gave up and opened his e
ye
s.

And thought about the dream.

He’d seen the events of that night through the e
ye
s of someone who’d killed her. A nightmarish version of what might have happened. An explanation for the broken glasses, the missing lens, the words Emil
y
had told him at the funeral about Trevor being in the car. The wa
y
she might have died.

But she might have just fallen in the water.

Or jumped. Or been pushed.

Or it might have happened just like Daniel had dreamt it had, as his mind tried to make sense of ever
yt
hing that was going on.

It’d all seemed so terrif
yi
ngl
y
real.

But that’s the nature of nightmares. Sometimes
yo
u think
yo
u’re awake when the
y
happen. Sometimes
yo
u know
yo
u’re asleep and
yo
u want nothing more than to wake up, but when
yo
u’re experiencing them the
y
seem to be actuall
y
happening.

Just like the visions
yo
u’ve been having.

For some reason he’d pictured Emil
y
alive again. And her dog Trevor was in the car. It was as if his mind was sorting through the facts and then filling in details no one would have known unless he was there.

Still, it was chilling to discover that the dead girl who was haunting him during the da
y
was also starting to pursue him in his dreams at night.

When he finall
y
got up, it was after nine.

His dad usuall
y
took Sunda
ys
off, but it hadn’t worked out that wa
y
this week, and when Daniel made it to the kitchen he found a note from him sa
yi
ng that he’d be back at four, that there was some fresh OJ in the fridge, and that he loved him.

Daniel was processing the dream and pouring some milk in his cereal when he got a phone call.

It was from someone he hadn’t heard from in over a month.

His mother.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

“Daniel. How are
yo
u?”

“Good.” Getting a call from his mom was unusual enough, but getting one at this time on a Sunda
y
morning was even more out of nowhere. It made it hard to figure out what to sa
y.

“Your father told me
yo
u’ve been having headaches. That
yo
u actuall
y
passed out at that churc
h—a
t the funeral. And then at the game Frida
y
night? You were hit so hard
yo
u got knocked out?”

“I’m oka
y,
Mom. Don’
t—”

“But is that true?”

“I blacked out for a few seconds at the game, that’s all. It’s not that big of a deal. And the funeral was a fluke. I don’t know. The headaches are over now. I’m fine.”

“Your father said the
y
took
yo
u to the emergenc
y
room after the game.”

“It’s just what the
y
alwa
ys
do when that happens to someone.” He figured that sa
yi
ng the phrase “gets a concussion” would make her worr
y
more, so he left that part out. “The
y
looked me over and didn’t find an
yt
hing wrong.”

He poured himself some orange juice, then stuck the pitcher back in the fridge.

“I want
yo
u to see a doctor.”

“I told
yo
u, Mom, I’m fine.”

“I’ve spoken with
yo
ur father about it. He agrees with me.”

His dad hadn’t mentioned an
yt
hing about that to him, and it seemed like something he definitel
y
should have filled him in about.

“The
y
looked me over at the hospital alread
y.
I’m fine.”

“I’m thinking of coming back. To visit.”

“What? Back here?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“This coming weekend. That wa
y
ma
yb
e I can see
yo
ur game on Frida
y
night.”

He plopped down at the table. “Did
yo
u talk to Dad about an
y
of this? About coming back?”

“Not
ye
t. I wanted to talk to
yo
u first, see if it was alright with
yo
u if I came.”

“You want to come to m
y
game.”

“Yes.”

This was the first time all
ye
ar she’d expressed interest in coming to an
y
of his games. “So
yo
u’re asking if it’s oka
y
with me if
yo
u come to m
y
game Frida
y
night?”

“That’s what I was wondering.” She sounded a little taken aback that he was pressing her like this. “Yes.”

“And
yo
u want me to be honest?”

A small pause. “That sounds like a no.”

“It is.”

“You don’t want to see me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Then what are
yo
u—”

“I don’t want
yo
u to come back unless
yo
u’re going to sta
y.
”

“That’s not possible, Daniel. Your father and I, well, w
e—”

“M
y
father and
yo
u what? What is it? It’s been six months and
yo
u still haven’t told me wh
y yo
u left.”

“It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not. You married Dad. You had a son. Then one da
y yo
u moved out and left them. What part of that is complicated? What am I missing here?”

“This isn’t the time to talk about it.” Irritation had edged into her repl
y.

“It’s been six months. When exactl
y
were
yo
u planning on explaining
yo
urself? I’m just asking because I want to make sure I’m read
y
for it when the big da
y
arrives.”

“Your father and I have our reasons for wh
y
we’re separated. When the time is right we’ll explain them to
yo
u.”

As far as Daniel knew, his dad didn’t have an
y
reasons for wh
y
the two of them were separated. It was onl
y
his mom who had hers.

He felt his hand tighten around the phone. “When did Dad call
yo
u? I mean about the doctor.”

“Frida
y
night.”

“He called
yo
u on Frida
y
night and
yo
u waited until now to check up on me?” Daniel didn’t even tr
y
to remove the barbs from his words.

“Don’t use that tone with me, Dan.
I—”

He hung up.

And stared at the phone, waiting to see if she would call him back.

She did not.

He ticked off the seconds.

A minute passed.

Still nothing.

He wasn’t sure if that disappointed him or not.

When he looked at the bowl of cereal he’d set on the table he realized he’d lost his appetite.

Shoving back his chair, he dumped the cereal into the sink and, even though it was onl
y
sogg
y
flakes and he didn’t reall
y
need to, he turned on the garbage disposal and listened to the harsh blades work their wa
y
through his breakfast.

The
y
spit up churned bits of cereal and splatters of milk, which he washed back down the drain.

He wasn’t supposed to meet K
yl
e until noon, and he wasn’t in the mood to work on his homework in the meantime, so he went online and searched for information about hallucinations instead. At least it was a wa
y
to get his mind off the conversation with his mom, and the fact that she wanted him to see a doctor.

Something Dad agrees with her about.

Daniel scoured the sites that talked about hallucination
s—t
he different t
yp
es, their causes and treatment strategies. He printed out some articles, scanned others, took notes on what he read.

Evidentl
y,
sometimes people saw things, others heard voices speaking to them, and sometimes people also felt
things that weren’t there, particularl
y
having the sensation that the
y
had bugs crawling all over them.

Well, at least he hadn’t had to deal with that.

Yet.

Just burn marks on
yo
ur arm.

But how was that onl
y
a hallucination? He’d felt Emil
y
actuall
y
grab his arm, had undeniable evidence of it when he went to bed that night and woke up the next morning.

Seeing. Hearing. Feeling.

He was three for three.

What caught his attention the most wasn’t the t
yp
es of hallucinations as much as what caused them. Something was affecting him, something was wrong with him, and when he read about the reasons people had hallucinations, none were ver
y
encouraging.

It’s just in
yo
ur head.

No.

Leave out the
just
.

It was in his bod
y
too.

The first articles he came across listed what seemed like obvious enough reasons: alcohol and drug use. Meth, coke, crack, LSD, ecstas
y—
a
n
y
hallucinogenic, even marijuana, could make
yo
u see things.

But Daniel wasn’t on drugs.

Withdrawal could also do it, but obviousl
y
he wasn’t going through that.

Sometimes the line between realit
y
and fantas
y
got blurred when
yo
u were falling asleep or waking up; h
yp
nagogic and h
yp
nopompic hallucinations, the
y
were called.

It was like this shadow
y
mental state that scientists didn’t full
y
understand but that could cause people to believe the
y
were seeing or hearing things that weren’t actuall
y
there.

That might possibl
y
explain the weird dream he’d had this morning, but the times he’d seen Emil
y
he hadn’t even been close to falling asleep. In fact, the second time it was just the opposit
e—h
e was in the middle of pla
yi
ng a football game.

Sometimes hallucinations were caused b
y
a cranial injur
y—
a
lthough, apart from getting knocked around a little on the field over the
ye
ars, he couldn’t think of an
yt
hing along those lines that might have happened to him.

Seizures sometimes caused hallucinations. So did migraines.

So that could possibl
y
account for his headaches, but the
y
didn’t fit the t
yp
ical pattern of migraines, and the detailed, elaborate things he was seeing and hearing wouldn’t have happened with simpl
y
a migraine, or even a minor seizure.

Stress, exhaustion, sometimes sleep deprivation could cause people to be unable to distinguish between dream states and realit
y.

He hoped ma
yb
e that was it.

Not enough sleep.

But that didn’t explain the marks on his arm.

Ma
yb
e he had a brain tumo
r—p
articularl
y
one in the temporal lobe. Apparentl
y,
there were parts of
yo
ur brain that processed
yo
ur sense of sight and sound. If there was pressure on them, or impulses sent to them that weren’t supposed to be,
yo
u could end up seeing or hearing things.

One website Daniel stumbled onto told how some scientists had done research on people in surger
y
and made them laugh, made them hear voices that weren’t real, made them see things just b
y
triggering different parts of their brains with mild electrical currents.

Brain disease could explain the headaches he was having.

There weren’t a lot of other possibilities left.

Except the major one: schizophrenia.

Slowl
y
going insane.

Even though headaches weren’t usuall
y
a precursor to
schizophrenia, he was the right age and he had other s
ym
ptoms, or whatever
yo
u wanted to call them: visual and auditor
y
hallucinations, disorganized thinking, delusions . . . .

So. Schizophrenia.

Or ma
yb
e a brain tumor.

Two reall
y
thrilling prospects.

When he got a text from K
yl
e asking where he was, Daniel realized it was alread
y
quarter after twelve and he was late for his lunch meeting with his friend.

Last night K
yl
e had texted that he had something he needed to talk about.

Daniel replied that he was on his wa
y,
and left for the restaurant.