Harbinger (The Bleeding Worlds) (19 page)

That morning, she sat at the kitchen table, pushing the last Cheerio around her bowl, contemplating whether it should suffer the fate of its friends or be the sole survivor of the breakfast massacre. She shuddered and pushed the bowl aside.

“Good morning, Princess.” Her dad said. As always, he wore a wide smile and moved with an easy grace that suggested he’d been awake for some time. She couldn’t remember a single time her father rushed around in the morning. Had he conditioned himself never to be late, or did the time he arrived at the office not matter? She could never decide.

He paused to look at her, signs of concern replacing his smile. “What’s wrong sweetheart? Did you not sleep?”

She told him about the dream. All of it. A stream of words just tumbling forward of their own will. Even the worst of it, the part that frightened her most, the part that made her question how her mind even conceived of the thing, fell out. “I couldn’t sleep after that.” She finished. Years later, she would ask herself why she told him the whole dream. Why had she not just said, “I had a nightmare and couldn’t sleep?”

Her dad stood and regarded her for a few moments. He then sat at the table across from her, putting his briefcase on the floor beside him. His face serious and his eyes probing. “Have you ever had a dream like this before?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically.

“You say it felt real? That when you first woke up the thing that scared you most was that you were certain it had happened?”

Sophia shifted in her seat. Her dad had always been so warm and supportive. The man across the table seemed different. His eyes held a hungry anticipation.

“Yeah.” She said. “I guess so.”
He thinks I’m crazy. That’s why he’s different.

His smile returned, though his eyes were still wrong. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You probably watched something you shouldn’t have.”

Sophia opened her mouth to argue that wasn’t true, but something told her to let the conversation end.

“Sophia?”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“If you have any more dreams that make you feel that way; you know, like they were real? Let me know, okay?”

She nodded.

And she had told him. They were less frequent at first. In the following two months, she had four more dreams that felt real. None of them made sense to her, but none frightened her like the one with the boy.

Five months after the first dream, she learned the boy’s name, Gwynn Dormath.

She walked into her classroom and saw him sitting at the back. Instinct told her to run, but curiosity kept her there. Eight years old and here sat her nightmare given flesh. She spent the day glancing to where he sat. He made no attempt to be friends with any of his classmates. Even stranger, none of them seemed in a hurry to end the boy’s silence. When Sophia wasn’t looking at Gwynn, she searched her classmates, wondering when one of them would force the boy to interact. But none of them approached him. The first day ended without incident and she raced home.

Don’t mention the boy
, a part of her cautioned. But keeping it locked within made her feel nauseas. She hoped her daddy would have answers. She hoped he wouldn’t think she had lost her mind.

She found her father sitting at the kitchen table.

She couldn’t recall if he had gone to work that morning or not.

“Daddy?”

“What’s up, Princess?” He read a stack of papers. To Sophia, they appeared business related–eight–and–a–half by eleven, and white, filled with black type. He laid them on the table face down. A nagging doubt ate at her.
This is my daddy
; she reasoned with herself,
he’ll know what’s going on. He’ll believe me.

No matter how much she reassured herself, her voice still shook as she spoke. “Something happened at school today. I think, I mean, I’m sure, I saw the boy from my dream. You remember the one I had?”

For a brief moment, he wore an expression that disturbed her. If she hadn’t been probing his face for any sign of reaction, she might have missed it. Now, so many years later, trapped in dreams, she understood. He wasn’t surprised. He knew. He’d been happy.

The past faded and her mind returned to the world of the now.

They would arrive soon. About now, they would be at the hospital administration office, seeking to have her released to their care. They would succeed and come for her.

Tumbling, back to the world in the past.

The seventh grade with Gwynn and Eric Haze.

Haze had been after her for a while. He was pompous and often cruel to others he thought beneath him. But school involved politics and outright spurning its most desired boy equaled social suicide. So she had played coy, dodging his advances with an athletic prowess that bested Eric’s grandest performance on the ball field. That day, the day when she started to understand her dreams, Eric wasn’t playing. He cornered her in the hall with a frightening persistence.

“Not now Eric.” She said, giving him eyes that normally made him fade back.

“No, Sophia, right now. You know you and I are perfect for each other. We rule this school already. C’mon, you aren’t going to find anyone in this place better than me.”

“Then I guess I better switch schools.” It tumbled out. Those words, and the look in Eric’s eyes, triggered her memory. She had dreamt this a few nights before.

Eric grabbed her arm too hard. She let out a stifled cry.

“Let her go.”

She knew who it would be.

“This is none of your business, Gwynn. Screw off.”

“She said to leave her alone. Maybe
you
should screw off, Eric.”

It was the longest conversation she had ever heard Gwynn have with anyone in the school. It also followed the dream, word for word. She knew what came next. Not just because of the dream, but because of Eric’s predictability. He didn’t respond with words. His fist flew into Gwynn’s face and the boy crumpled to the ground. Sophia’s impulse was to grab Eric, pull him away from Gwynn, like she had in the dream. And in the dream, Eric had hit her. And then Gwynn…

Sophia held herself in place. She said a silent apology to Gwynn.

Eric leaned toward him. “So what do you have to say now, eh, hero?”

A voice bellowed from behind them. “Mr. Haze.”

In the dream, the principal had said something different. In the dream, his voice hadn’t sounded angry; it sounded stretched thin and filled with horror. Gwynn still sat on the floor, blood flowing from his nose. She waited, but nothing happened. It hit her then; she had controlled the outcome. Her dreams, as much as they seemed to see the future, were not set. She could change them.

The principal took Eric to the office. Gwynn waved off assistance and got to his feet. Sophia wanted to say something. She wanted to tell him about the dreams. About her pity for him—alone and not even knowing why.

“Thanks.” It was all she could manage.

“You’re welcome.”

Gwynn said nothing else to her. He didn’t even smile. Yet as he walked away from her, she felt herself pulled toward him. It wasn’t until later, at home, alone in her room, that she understood it. Both of them had a hidden side. Both of them wore masks to hide the horrors. Maybe he could understand her situation. Lying on her bed, she let her mind drift to idle daydreams. In them, she and Gwynn were a couple. When she had a dream, she sat down and talked to him about it instead of her dad. He never had that hungry appearance in his eyes like her dad now did. Instead, he helped her to figure out what it meant. Together they used the knowledge her dreams contained to help people. Maybe she would one–day dream of a way to solve the world’s problems. Maybe this curse might turn out to be a blessing. In warm daydreams of support and love, she fell asleep.

Sophia awoke sometime later, soaked in sweat. As her eyes became accustomed to the dark of her room, her breathing slowed, and she made a decision. To avoid this dream from coming true, she couldn’t be with Gwynn.

She shifted back to the present.

The men were at the double doors, her mother in the waiting room. Her mom would confront them, causing a few minutes of delay. But as always, she would relent. Sophia felt no anger toward her mother. If anything, she pitied her. Like Gwynn, something was broken inside her mom. Unlike Gwynn, her mother’s injury made her compliant, a willing pawn in the greater schemes that circled her.

Then, the world of the past.

Asking Gwynn out on Halloween made her feel conflicted. A part of her felt guilty, he would walk a difficult path because of her. But everything she dreamt told her one simple thing; Gwynn had to awaken. She had almost relented when he said they could leave. Standing there in the coffee shop parking lot, his simple offer reminded her why she wanted to be with him. The sound of his voice, the conviction, the sincerity. She could have left with him. Perhaps she was wrong. Maybe this one time her dreams lied. No. That only happened in fairy tales. Only one path led to the future…that she couldn’t see. But because of what she’d done, and this last step, she knew it existed. That was enough.

Now, the occurring world.

The men had arrived. The door to her room swung open. Two large men, dressed like paramedics, came inside. Sophia struggled through the haze that separated her from the world outside her mind and focused on the man who came in behind the other two.

“Hello Daddy.”

“What
the hell?”

Gwynn and Pridament had arrived at the hospital.

The sounds of sirens filled the air. Police in full riot gear blocked every entrance they passed.

Gwynn’s head swam. He had been quick to agree with Pridament that they should see Sophia, but now, everything seemed to be falling apart. “It really is happening, isn’t it?”

“I’m thinking so, yes.”

“We should go close the tear. We’ll never get in past the cops.”

Pridament shook his head. “No. Sophia is a seer, I’m sure of it. I think she’s been feeding information about her visions to someone who’s been using them to manipulate events. I’d rather try and find out what’s going on.”

“So we find out after the vortex has been shut.”

Pridament locked his gaze with Gwynn’s. Something dark and dangerous filled his eyes. “Someone has set this up Gwynn. Someone wants this to happen. What if Sophia’s already told them we’re coming to close the tear? What if we’re walking into a trap? I’d like to find out first.”

Gwynn searched deep in Pridament’s eyes. He scanned for any sign of a lie. At the same time, he searched his own memories of the girl. Why did he feel drawn to her? Had she been having visions of him? Had she been betraying him all these years?

Gwynn drew a deep breath. “So how do we get in?”

Pridament motioned for Gwynn to follow. The two made their way around to the side of the hospital where the walls were sheltered by a growth of trees.

“We need to fold.”

Gwynn guessed his expression betrayed his lack of knowledge.

Pridament sighed. “Someday you’ll know the full extent of your abilities and you’ll shake your head that you could ever be so ignorant.”

To hell with the Veil
, Gwynn fumed;
maybe I’ll tear a new hole in you
. Ignorant? Damn right. Maybe he wouldn’t be if people stopped telling him half the truth. The words hung on his lips when Pridament held his hand up, indicating Gwynn should remain quiet.

“I’m sorry.” Sympathy in his voice. “Just hear me out. The average person sees the world as a string of places with space between. In reality, the world is like a series of dots on a piece of paper. If you exert enough force, you can fold the paper so that the points that used to be apart now occupy the same space. Do you understand?”

“It’s a little too Star Trek for me.” Gwynn said.

“Never mind. Just don’t let go of my hand, no matter what.” The ‘
no matter what’
held a terrifying intensity.

Gwynn nodded and clutched Pridament’s hand.

With his free hand, Pridament reached out into the air. With his arm extended, the sleeve of his jacket pulled back exposing a section of his wrist, allowing Gwynn to see some of the runes that trailed along Pridament’s forearm. The runes began to flow as fresh ink exposed to water. They shifted on Pridament’s flesh until a new pattern of symbols appeared. Once they stopped moving and assumed a set shape, electricity prickled at his skin. Ahead of them, the world yawned open. He couldn’t see what lay beyond, but the immediate layer below the tear crackled with bolts of light that crisscrossed along the opening.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Just remember,” Pridament said, “Don’t let go of my hand.”

Not a chance
.

Pridament inched forward. As his hand passed through the tear, it hissed and spat. Gwynn couldn’t see Pridament’s face, but saw no indication of flinching or pain. The bulk of Pridament disappeared, yet Gwynn still felt a firm grip on his hand.

Pridament’s grip increased to the point where the bones of Gwynn’s hand would shatter. He cried out. But Pridament couldn’t hear and his crushed hand had already entered the tear. His arm sank deeper, causing the pressure to dash just ahead of it. Soon, it threatened to pass from his arm into his torso. Gwynn started to take gulps of air. Had he let go of Pridament’s hand? What would happen if he had? The pain reached his chest. His rib cage threatened to buckle and collapse. A series of blinding colored spots crashed across his vision. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t scream. His stomach slammed against his throat and his vision darkened. He had hoped against hope that he would live to see tomorrow. Despite Pridament’s assurances, hope quickly evaporated.

§

“Hold her down.”

Sophia thrashed.

“I’ve got it. Hold on.”

There was a brief jab in her shoulder. She twisted her head in time to see a large needle withdrawing from her flesh.

“Keep holding her. It should take effect in a minute.”

The visions began to clear. The realities of what had passed, what may yet come, began to melt away. At last, she had only the now.