Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (24 page)

             
I exhaled, than took another breath somehow artificially – I was feeling as if his movements were controlling my respiration, the way in which I was perceiving his words, even my heart-beating...

             
“I wish we were closer –” I sighed, knowing that he was perfectly aware that I didn’t mean it in the physical sense. “Or at least that you trusted me more –”

             
Cardew’s arms quickly but gently locked around my waist and he lowered his chin above my shoulder to whisper in my ear with his most tempting tone.

             
“I know you’ve been alone last night, lovely,” his intonation itself was smiling indulgently. “Otherwise you’d be at least a bit guilty or less eager while I was kissing you – and I would have sensed that –”

             
“So it has been a test?” I was about to burst into berserk laugher. “Weren’t you at least a bit worried that I could distract you too much and you would never find out the truth? –”

             
“Not really,” Cardew shrugged with no embarrassment at all. “My imagination was all over you, lovely, but my mind was crystal clear –”

             
“Don’t you try to abuse me,” I warned him with an icy tone, having sensed that his caresses were becoming more fervent. “I may be tired, but I’m still strong enough, and my nails are sharp as ever.”

             
He just laughed noiselessly and lightly shook his head.

             
“I won’t hurt you,” the sincerity of his promise was ringing deeply inside my soul, where no lie could ever echo. “You can trust me.”

             
And – strangely enough, I really was trusting him.

             
Gently murmuring something about a beauty falling asleep from a kiss, Cardew brushed my forehead with his lips for a single moment, then rested backwards, almost lying on the stone platform, and carefully pulled me in his lap, my head resting on his chest, just over the heart.

             
“I trust you –” I uttered spontaneously under my breath.

             
My own words made me startle – I hadn’t meant to make such declarations to him, especially when we were still calling each other enemies; however, his reaction didn’t make me regret it.

             
“This is why you are safe with me,” Cardew whispered with satin-tender soothing tone, and that destroyed all my defences at once.

             
My eyes closed by themselves, so relaxed I was that I didn’t even want to fight, and his rhythmical breathing was calming me down to such a point that I was almost sinking into sleep...

             
And just then – in a single fraction of the second, when I had been so close to going off that I had touched the lucent clouds made of transparent dreams – suddenly an instantly striking image blinked in front of my eyes and – in the furious urge to jump to my feet, I rolled out of Cardew’s embrace and collapsed right onto the hard land down.

             
“Freya!” the boy exclaimed and the concern in his voice and the speed with which he picked me up would have touched my heart if I hadn’t been so scared.

             
Because I had finally seen it!

             
The place!...

             
The image I had been shown – the introduction to a nightmare that didn’t begin, or simply a vision – had been so bright and clear-cut that I couldn’t even wish for a better explanation – it was a map!

             
Ancient-looking, medievally charming – but absolutely contemporary.

             
And one of the towns on it was burning in shimmering crimson letters...

             
“Freya!!!” Cardew repeated my name for at least a tenth time, when I finally turned towards him, my eyes widened with fear. “Calm down, dearest, it’s alright! –”

             
“Cardew –” I exhaled and clung to his chest in an impulse I didn’t manage to suppress.

             
It took me several moments to realize that I was pressing myself into the hug of my best enemy, and that he was gently patting my back and reassuring me that I was completely safe and everything was fine, even though he knew too well that I wasn’t in the state to listen and his words were going down the drain.

             
So that was his gentle side, I thought secretly while feverishly thinking of what to tell him so as to explain my strange behaviour. So he was able to console, capable of soft caressing compassion, intuitively aware of what to say – he could be tender, too...

             
As long as he was not displaying any weakness.

             
“I... Thank you, I’m alright –” I reluctantly drew back from his embrace, and sat beside him on the edge of the stone bench. “It must have been just a nightmare –”

             
“What was it?” Cardew asked with soft but somehow alarmed tone, and I did my best not to look strained at all.

             
“I’m not sure, I woke up before realizing what it really was –” I shuddered and pressed my arm more tightly to his as though I was cold. “It was the feeling about it that startled me –”

             
“So you finally relaxed with me, huh?” the boy smiled a bit complacently, and his comfortingly warm hug lightly clasped me in again. “That’s beautiful, lovely – it’s a step forward –”

             
“Yeah –” I murmured distractedly, my thoughts still circling around the map from my nightmare. “This really is a step forward –”

             
                            The fact that the atmosphere I had found myself in was painfully familiar wasn’t making it the least bit less sinister, and I was vainly trying to stop my knees from shivering.

             
Useless – the graveyard from my nightmares was completely material around me, and its creepy radiance from all directions was blocking my perceptions and wrapping me into my own superstitious fears, so real and lively that I couldn’t even calm myself down with the lie that everything was due to my imagination.

             
No, that was not a nightmare.

             
Not this time.

             
I had finally found the place!...

             
After the vision with the map, I had come back straight home and had intentionally fallen asleep, craving for a new nightmare to start, so as to give me some more directions, but no signs appeared in my sleep, except for one...

             
The sound of a baby crying – desperate and so heartbreakingly helpless – it was what had woken me up; however, as soon as I realized I was awake, I immediately found out that the voice of the young innocent creature had been the soundtrack of the nightmare itself.

             
What was that to mean?

             
And I just couldn’t get out of my mind the name of the town I had seen on the map from the vision...

             
All of this was going to drive me literally insane!

             
I simply needed to stop it before I had turned into a paranoid lunatic...

             
Or a corpse.

             
Right after waking up, I had carefully built my flawless plan up to the smallest details, and at the rehearsal few hours later, I had faked a fainting fit so naturally that I saw Cardew even grow pale with worry. He had asked the teacher to leave with me to make sure I’d be fine, but my fierce outburst of hurt pride had made him back down not to let the envious crew watch us argue, as we were always playing as an unbreakable team against them. That was how he stayed at the rehearsal and couldn’t have noticed how I got on the first train to the mysterious town from the vision.

             
‘I’m okay but I need to have a good sleep, so I’ll turn my phone off. Don’t call me. I’m thinking of you.’

             
This was the short message I sent him to let him know I was alive; only the part where I was claiming that I would go to sleep was a lie – since then my mobile was really off, and, whatever I was doing, I really couldn’t stop thinking about him.

             
Gods, if only he was innocent...

             
I was so close to finding out...

             
Too close.

             
I had thought that the more the moment of truth was approaching, the more relieved I would be feeling, but the tension inside me was only increasing, and that was blocking my ability to think. I could only hope that finding out the Truth would finally make me calm down – however, an instinct was suggesting just the opposite, and I was beginning to agree with the thesis that some truths were better off dead.

             
And buried.

             
Almost the whole day passed in travelling for me – the town seemed to be running ahead from the train as if to escape away from my eager eyes, and it was not until the late sunless afternoon that I finally set my feet onto the doomed dark ground I had been looking for so insistently. The graveyard was out of town, by the bank of a not really large river, and I preferred to walk to it by myself, as I was afraid that asking someone local for Odda would once again prove to me that no such a person had ever existed out of my troubled dreams, and that I was going crazy in a too literal way.

             
Nobody stopped me from entering the burial ground – it looked as deserted and empty as I could remember from the nightmare, and when I found myself inside the labyrinth of unevenly spread tombs, I immediately realized that I had really found the place I had been looking for.

             
If only that fact wasn’t such a shock for me...

             
Despite the already fallen night, I could orientate with my eyes closed, but in an attempt to avoid stepping on as many graves as possible, I kept staring persistently towards the moist land radiating coldness.

             
Everything was so much like in my ominous dream that I was having the strong feeling of déjà-vu as I was walking in the same surroundings as those I had had in the vision – everything was exactly the same to the tiniest details: the old poor-looking granite gravestones from many of which the fervent icily passionate kisses of the penetrating gale had erased the names, the greyish weeds creepily crawling everywhere, even rising above some tombs as though to hide their grief from the glances of the outer mundane world, the low crooked trees gazing blankly from the distance, the sorrowful clouds...

             
Not to trip against Odda’s tomb – again, as I had already done it in the nightmare – I was walking slowly, letting my intuition lead me into the almost completely black darkness. The utter silence was disturbing me more than any noise would, and I had the irrational impression that my movements were being observed from somewhere close, but I preferred not to turn back to make sure I was wrong.

             
Because I was afraid I would turn out right...

             
‘Imagination again,’ my logic yawned overly bravely just to encourage me. ‘Go look up that grave, see that it does not exist, and stop accepting nightmares as a part of reality, or some cursed divine signs!’

             
However, the impulses shoving me into the right direction were too strong and ardent to be overlooked, and I chose to listen to them and ignore any logical statements at that time.

             
After all, would logic save me if the threat was completely illogical but yet existing?

             
I was already regretting I hadn’t taken the rune I had cut into a piece of eraser; if not protect me, that talisman could at least give me the false calming feeling of being protected, which was almost the same in a situation like the one I was in, when the danger was imaginary...