Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“Dammit, Cos.” He’s staring at me, his eyes too dark in his pale face. “What the hell…?” He swallows hard. “Know what? Fine, you win. You got yourself a deal.”

“Listen…” I draw a deep breath. It doesn’t feel like a victory. That’s not what it was about. And now that he’s looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak, I’m finding it difficult to say the words. “I dream a lot. Always have.”

The knot in his throat moves when he swallows again. He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. “Okay. And?”

“Since I met you, I’ve had these dreams about you. You’re always in some sort of danger and… I can’t help you. Like, once you were bleeding out. Another time you walked off a cliff. And another you drowned.”

He flinches. “Awesome.”

“And a few times you asked for help. But I didn’t know how to help you.”

“You do know they are just dreams, right?”

“No, they’re not.”

“What do you mean? Christ.”

“I mean, I’m worried about you. I feel that you’re not okay, and my subconscious is expressing my worry in dreams. I have dreams about my sister, too, had them before she told me about Griffin and his diagnosis. I felt her fear, her despair, her pain. And that’s how I know you need help.”

He scoffs, but his eyes shine a bit too brightly.

“You want to downplay how your nightmares are affecting you, be my guest. But you don’t sleep well, and they’re obviously much worse than you say they are. Question is, why are you having them, and what are they trying to tell you?”

“I dunno,” he says, and winces, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. “Gigi said something like that yesterday.”

“Makes sense.” I put my arm around his back and wait for him to talk. It’s his turn, but ultimately this is his decision. “Hey, remember when you asked why I had my status on Facebook as a dream relationship? That was you. It was you, all along.”

He pushes his fingers into his short hair and tugs. He’s silent for so long I’m starting to think this is my answer. His broad back is rigid, sweat cooling on his skin.

But then he says, “I see a body.”

“A body?”

“A corpse. She looks dead, anyway. It’s a young woman, lying in a pool of blood, in the woods by the river. It’s mostly the same dream, night after night.”

I wait for more, but he’s blinking as if he can see the image in front of him.

“That’s it?” I eventually ask when nothing more seems to be forthcoming.

He blinks. “Uh… there’s footsteps coming after me. A man. Sometimes he grabs me and shakes me. Sometimes…”

“Yeah?” God, I’m so sorry he’s going through this. No matter how he tries to make it sound unimportant, it’s no small thing to live inside a horror movie every night.

“Sometimes he doesn’t see me and keeps walking away. Gigi says… she says it’s a memory.”

A jolt of cold goes right through me. “Is that possible?”

“No way. No.”

I lean against him. “That’s it? And you don’t know why you keep dreaming of this?” At his silence, I stifle a sigh. He should see a specialist about this, but I don’t want to push him more, not today. “Thanks for telling me.”

“I wish…”

“You wish what?”

“That they’d stop already. The dreams. I hate that you got to see me like this. Fucking stupid dreams.”

“I’m glad you told me. Hey.” I wait until he looks at me. “Whatever the cause, we’ll find a solution, together.”