Restless (6 page)

7
. DREAMING

LEESA HAD NOT DREAMED
in quite some time—not one of her special dreams, at any rate. In the weeks after summoning a dream to help her defeat the xenorians, she had been visited by a number of magical dreams, all of which were disturbing and none of which she could remember in any detail. Both her book and Dominic told her this was normal—that once you unlocked the dream power by calling forth a vision, more dreams were almost certain to follow. And they were typically difficult to remember or interpret.

After a few weeks, the dreams had
finally ceased—until tonight. She knew she was dreaming right now. Somehow, she also knew she was going to remember this one.

She and Cali were walking on the sidewalk along the outskirts of a college campus. It was not Weston College—the small lake across the street was all the proof Leesa needed to tell her that. There were no lakes on the Weston grounds.

A lush green lawn sloped down to the
water, while beyond the lawn stood brick buildings two and three stories high that appeared to house classrooms. While not new by any means, they certainly looked newer than most of the structures at Weston. A large, U-shaped complex of dorm buildings covered a gently sloping hillside on Leesa and Cali’s side of the street.

Scores of students
filled the grass around the lake, sitting on portable chairs or stretched out on colorful blankets enjoying the beautiful summer evening. Some appeared to be studying, but most seemed to be simply relaxing and soaking up the last few rays of sunshine.

A sign near one side of the lake proclaimed “University of Connecticut.” Leesa had never visited the campus, which was
less than an hour’s drive from Middletown, but even so, she knew her vision of the school was accurate.

She was tempted to go join the kids near the lake for a short break, but something told her she and Cali needed to keep walking.

“Where are we going?” Cali asked, perhaps wondering why they weren’t heading across the street toward the inviting, park-like lake shore.

“I’m not sure,” Leesa admitted. “But it’s up ahead somewhere.”

They walked along the road for another couple of minutes. Across the street, the classroom buildings gave way to taller, more modern structures that Leesa guessed probably contained science labs. On their right, they came abreast of a low stone wall that bordered a large cemetery. A black wrought iron gate marked the entrance to the cemetery, which could only be visited on foot. The gate was open.

“We need to go in here,”
she told Cali.

“Okay,” Cali replied
, surveying the graveyard. “It looks cool.”

They turned and
passed through the gateway. Leesa guessed the cemetery was probably less than one hundred years old. The grass was lush and well-manicured; the headstones were all clean, and unlike the markers common in older graveyards, showed little weather damage. There was nothing at all spooky about this place, even with the sun beginning to sink beyond the western horizon. Still, Leesa and Cali took each other’s hand as they walked up the gently sloping asphalt path toward the top of the hill, where the gravestones were gathered more closely together.

By the time they reached the top of the hill, the sun had disappeared,
painting the dark sky in streaks of pink and purple while cloaking the cemetery in dim twilight. Below them, the windows of the college buildings began to glow yellow.

The two girls
watched as darkness enveloped the campus. Some of the light from below reached into the unlit cemetery, keeping the hilltop from becoming totally dark. Still, it was dark enough.

“There’s someone else here,” Cali
whispered.

Leesa glanced around. “Where?”

Cali pointed to their left. “Over there.”

Leesa followed Cali’s finger. Sure enough, she saw three dark forms fifty or sixty feet away. One was tall enough to be an adult; the other two appeared to be children. Leesa wondered who would bring kids into a dark graveyard at night.

The three figures appeared to be watching Leesa and Cali. After a few moments, they began to walk slowly forward.

As the trio drew nearer, Leesa could see that her earlier guess had been correct. The taller form was a woman. The two children were a girl and a boy. The girl looked to be around ten years old, the boy a year or two younger.

The woman stopped ten feet away. The children halted beside her, one on each side, holding her hands.

There was something very strange about these three, Leesa could see now. Their outlines seemed almost fuzzy, although it was difficult to tell
for certain in the darkness. They also seemed insubstantial somehow. She had the feeling that had there been any light behind the three, she might have been able to see right through them. Before she could fully ponder what that meant, the woman spoke. Her voice was soft, yet more audible than Leesa would have expected, given the low volume.

“Please, help us.”

Both Leesa and Cali quickly surveyed the surrounding area. They did not see any sign of trouble.

“What’s wrong?” Leesa asked. “How can we help you?”

“We’re tired of fighting,” the little boy said.

“We just want peace,” the girl added.

“Fighting?” Cali asked, looking around one more time to confirm they were still alone. “Fighting who? There’s no one else here but us.”

“We
certainly mean you no harm,” Leesa assured the newcomers.

“We just want to rest,” the woman said. “We deserve to rest.” She draped an arm around the shoulders of each of her children. “Especially my kids.”

“I don’t understand,” Leesa said.

“My husband was a violent drunk,” the woman said, her soft voice beginning to fill with sadness. “He beat me
often.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, then dropped her arm back around her daughter’s shoulder. “If that’s all it was, I could have borne the burden, but sometimes he turned his temper upon the children. They didn’t do anything wrong. They did not deserve that.”

“No one
does,” Leesa said, feeling especially sorry for the children.

“Finally,
my husband lost it completely,” the woman continued as if Leesa had not spoken. “He murdered us, and then turned the gun on himself.

Cali gasped audibly. Leesa understood now why their three visitors seemed so unsubstantial. They were spirits—ghosts—not real people. A year ago
, such a revelation would have surprised and shocked her, but after all she had experienced, she now took the woman’s declaration in stride.

“That’s horrible,” Cali said.

The woman sighed. “It really wasn’t so bad—we were finally free of the bastard. At last, we had found peace.” She shook her shadowy head sadly. “Until recently, that is.”

“I still don’t understand,” Leesa said. “What happened? How can we help?”

“Some power is disturbing our world,” the woman explained. “Those of us who are most recently deceased feel it the strongest. Something is weakening the barrier between our world and yours. The dead are becoming restless. I think someone is trying to pull the departed back into world of the living.”

“We don’t want to go back,” the little boy said.

“We hated our lives,” the girl said. “Death has been so much more peaceful.”

Leesa awoke into darkness, the little girl’s last words echoing in her mind. A glance at the clock showed her it was only four o’clock in the morning.

Sh
e remembered every detail of her dream. She wished she hadn’t awoken so soon, that the three ghosts had had time to more fully explain what was happening. Leesa wondered if the dream was a warning that the Necromancer was close to succeeding in his goal to break the seal between the world of the living and the world of the dead. She couldn’t know for sure, but she needed to report her dream to Dominic as soon as possible.

She
rolled over and closed her eyes, hoping that perhaps she would return to her dream. Either way, she was most assuredly going to call Dominic later in the morning.

8
. A CALL FROM CALI

LEESA HAD JUST SWALLOWED
the last spoonful of her cereal when her cell phone sounded. The ringtone—a snippet from Pink about how her critics didn’t like her jeans and didn’t get her hair—told her it was Cali on the line. Leesa wondered what was up with such an early call.

Bradley looked up from his second bowl of cereal.
Leesa was glad to see his appetite had still not diminished.

“Let me guess,” he said. “With that ringtone, it
has to be Cali, right?”

Leesa grinned as she picked up the phone. “Yep.
Pretty fitting for her, huh?”

“That’s f
or sure.”

Leesa
put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Cali. What’s up?”

Cali’s voice sounded even more excited than usual. “Lees, you got a few minutes? You won’t beli
eve the dream I had last night! You were in it with me. I wanted to tell you before I forgot any of it.”

The word “dream” pricked at Leesa’s ear. Had last night been some kind of special dream night?
She was pretty sure her own dream would top anything Cali might have to tell her.

“Yeah,
I’ve got time. I just finished breakfast.”

“Sorry to call so early, but I gotta be at work by nine. And like I said, I don’t want to forget anything.”

“No problem. Go ahead, tell me. What was your dream about?”

“You and I were up at UConn for some reason.
We were walking around the campus.”

At the mention of UConn, Leesa felt her heart rate spike. She decided she
had better take this call in private, just in case, so she could talk freely. She gave Bradley a raised eyebrows look that said it was just Cali being Cali, then turned and headed for her room, closing the door behind her.

“Go ahead,” she said now that she was alone.

“They’ve got this really nice cemetery on the north side of the campus. It’s on a long hillside. I walked up to the top with a friend once when I was thinking about going to UConn. You get a great view of the school from up there. No buildings in the way to block the view, like on the other hills on campus.”

Leesa sank
heavily down onto her bed, sitting on the edge. She could not believe what she was hearing.

“I’ve never been to UConn,” she said
, trying to keep her voice even. “Is it an old cemetery like some of the ones around here, or a newer one?”

“I don’t know how old it is for sure, but no older than the college, I don’t think. It’s
not anything like some of those spooky old graveyards around here, like the one you dreamed about with zombies rising from their graves. Why do you want to know?”

“
No real reason. I’m just trying to picture it. It sounds pretty, with the hill and all.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice
, I guess…for a cemetery, anyhow. It’s what happened while we were up near the top that made my dream so weird.”

Leesa had a feeling she knew exactly what Cali was about to say
—that they had some unexpected visitors. But how could that be?

“What happened?”
she asked.

“Three people seemed to s
how up out of nowhere. It was a mom and her two kids, I think.” Cali paused again. “The kids were pretty young. I have no idea what they were doing there at night. They all looked kind of weird, though.”

Leesa could not believe what she was hearing. “Weird, how?”
she managed to ask.

“I don’t
really know how to describe it. They looked sort of fuzzy or something. It was dark, so I couldn’t see them too clearly. ‘Fuzzy’ isn’t exactly right, but it’s the best word I can come up with.”

Leesa was almost beyond being surprised now. She didn’t understand it, didn’t know how it happened, but somehow she and Cali had shared the same vision.

“What did they say?” she asked.

“That’s another thing that was
really strange,” Cali replied. “It looked they were trying to talk to us—their mouths were moving a bunch—but I couldn’t hear anything they were saying. It’s like they had no voices, but they didn’t know it. Like I said, the whole thing was really weird.”

“It’s
pretty strange all right,” Leesa agreed. She made a quick decision not to tell Cali about having had the same dream, but that in hers she had heard every word the three people said—not until she talked to Dominic, at any rate.

“Anyhow, I’ve got to scoot to work,” Cali said. “
I just wanted to share the dream with you, so you’d know you’re not the only one who has weird dreams sometimes. Mine might not be magical like yours, but this one was pretty strange.”

“Thanks for telling me
about it,” Leesa said. She was not about to tell Cali that her dream might have been more magical than she thought. “Let me know if you have any more dreams like that one.”

“I will. Go
tta run. See you soon.” Cali disconnected the call.

Leesa
stared down at her phone for several moments, wondering what it all meant. She needed to call Dominic for sure now. But there was one thing she wanted to do first.

She fired up her laptop and googled “triple homicide Connecticut.” The list of hits was disturbingly long. She was about to narrow her search when she saw a link that included “Storrs, Connecticut.”
Storrs was the home of the UConn campus. She clicked the link.

It
took her to a newspaper article dated a little less than two years ago. Leesa remembered the woman in her dream mentioning being recently deceased. She began reading.

By the second paragraph, Leesa knew she was reading about the people she had seen in her dream. A mother and her two children—a ten
year old girl and an eight year old boy—had been shot by their father, who then shot himself. The man was a known alcoholic with a history of abusive violence. The article reported that the mother had worked as a secretary at UConn and was to be buried with her children in the campus cemetery. There was no mention of any funeral plans for the husband.

At the very bottom of the page was a small picture of the three victims. It wasn’t very clear, but it was detailed enough for Leesa to recognize them as the images
from her dream.

She
grabbed her phone and called Dominic.