Authors: Adrian Howell
“She’s awake, Ali,” I said.
“I know,” Alia replied aloud, giggling. “I just like bugging her.”
Complaining about having another one of her meetings to attend, Cindy left the penthouse just as Terry sat down for breakfast.
“How did you manage to sleep through all that?” I asked Terry as she served herself a plate of pancakes.
“All through what?” she asked.
Alia said to her, “Cindy had a big fight with Mr. Baker.”
“Really?” Terry asked in a surprised tone. “That must have been interesting. I’ve never seen Ms. Gifford fight before. I didn’t know she had it in her.”
“Oh, she’s capable of it,” I said, grinning. “She just usually doesn’t.”
“Too bad I missed it!” laughed Terry. “My room is farther down the hall than yours. I guess the noise from the living room doesn’t carry that far.”
I put down my fork, staring at her.
“If you didn’t hear the argument, Terry,” I said slowly, “how did you know it was in the living room?”
Terry stared back at me for a moment before answering, “Where else would it be?”
“Right,” I said, not sure why it felt so strange. It was like the chill you feel on a sunny day when a drifting cloud suddenly blocks the sun.
“So what was the argument about?” asked Terry, her voice remaining cheerful.
Alia laughed and said, “Mr. Baker thinks Addy is a spy.”
Terry laughed too, and then asked me in a serious tone, “Well, are you?”
“Of course not!” I answered angrily, turning away.
“Relax, Adrian! It’s a joke.”
I looked at Terry again, and the cloud passed. Of course I knew she was joking. Emotional ups and downs are a normal part of PTSD. Cindy was probably right.
Terry stood up. “Well, I’m off to school. Give my regards to the Angels for me, Adrian.”
Chapter 13: The Closet Monster Revealed
Shadows. Human shapes, large and small, dancing around me. A giant tunnel filled with echoing laughter. Surrounded by the shadows, the gray-haired man stood smirking at me. And Terry was walking into a horrible trap. I had to stop her before it was too late. But I couldn’t catch up with her. Everything was in slow motion, swaying heavily as if underwater.
I called out to her, “Terry! No! What are you doing?”
Terry turned around, but she had no face. “It’s just a bad dream, Adrian.”
The shadows were touching me now.
“Get off of me!” I shouted, struggling against the grasp of the Angel peacemaker.
“Addy, wake up already! Addy!”
I heard Alia let out a little shriek as my eyes snapped open in the darkened bedroom. Looking up at my sister, I realized that I had roughly grabbed her by the front of her pajama shirt. She had been sitting on my mattress and leaning over me, shaking me awake. My heart was racing and I was out of breath.
“Ali, is this my bed or yours?” I groaned, releasing my grip on her shirt.
“You were having another nightmare,”
she said.
“I didn’t want to wait until you screamed.”
“Oh. Thanks,” I said, letting my head fall back onto my pillow. I glanced at the watch Mark had given me for my birthday. It was still 3am.
“What were you doing up?” I asked.
“Glass of water,”
said Alia.
“You’re nightmares are getting worse again, aren’t they?”
“They’re as bad as always,” I lied. “Not worse.”
“But this is the third time tonight.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Alia,” I said, annoyed. “You’ve got a dedicated dreamweaver singing you lullabies every night.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Howell, but Mr. Koontz hasn’t been helping me since December.”
I sat up and looked at her. “No kidding, Ali, really?”
Alia nodded.
“I was perfectly okay when we were living in that dirty old house, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said as I thought back to our nights in that house. “Then Mr. Koontz hasn’t been helping you at all this year?”
Alia nodded again.
I smiled. “And you didn’t even wet your bed once.”
“Addy!”
Alia cried embarrassedly.
“That was a long time ago!”
“I guess so,” I said slowly.
So my sister had overcome her PTSD while I was slowly falling apart. I felt a bit envious, and regretted my decision to pretend I was such a tough guy and refuse dreamweaving treatment. I wondered if it wasn’t too late to ask Mr. Koontz for help.
Non-psionically reading my thoughts, Alia said,
“Why don’t you ask Mr. Koontz to help you? It’s really not so bad, you know.”
“No,” I replied, suddenly completely sure of myself.
“Why not?”
“I can’t let Mr. Koontz stop my dreams.”
“Why not?!”
she asked again.
It had been nearly two weeks since Mr. Baker’s sudden visit and ensuing argument. Since then, I had passed him in NH-1’s lobby once, but we hadn’t spoken. I still wondered every day if I had done right to refuse the delver’s probe.
“Something is wrong with me, Alia,” I said. “Maybe Mr. Baker was right after all. Maybe those doctors did something to me. Maybe they did something to my head that’s causing all of this, and I just don’t remember.”
“But I’d remember, Addy. I was with you all the time.”
“Yeah, I know.”
But I couldn’t be sure. What if I had been removed while Alia and I were asleep? What if there had been another psionic down there? Or some scientific way to mess with my mind? What was happening to me anyway? My nightmares were the only clues that I had, and I couldn’t let some dreamweaver shut them up just so that I could get more sleep and continue to live in ignorance.
I telephoned Mr. Malcolm Koontz early the next morning. I didn’t want to make my plea for assistance over the phone, so, after a brief hello, I asked if I could meet with him in person sometime soon.
“Sure, Adrian,” he answered, yawning. “But you know me. I’m about ready to go to sleep now. How about you come see me after dinner, at about, say, 7pm?”
I did just that. Mr. Koontz lived on the twenty-second floor. Taking the elevator down, I rang his doorbell at precisely seven o’clock, a habit of punctuality that I had acquired from my combat instructor.
Mr. Koontz invited me into his condo. For a middle-aged man, Mr. Koontz was rather frail and already somewhat bald. He seemed a touch healthier than when I had known him at the Psionic Research Center, but he was as pale-skinned as ever, most likely owing to his nocturnal lifestyle.
Mr. Koontz had been a good friend – one of my only friends – last year, but I hadn’t seen much of him since our escape. I apologized for that, but Mr. Koontz only laughed. “You’re a young boy, Adrian,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to spend all your time around me if you had the choice.”
I still felt a bit guilty about that, though. I thanked him several times for pacifying Alia’s nightmares both during and after our time in captivity, as well as, of course, for his assistance in our escape. He told me that he had decided to keep the P-31 tattoo on his upper left arm for the same reason I had kept my P-47, adding, “Besides, I hear removing these things can be a long and painful process.”
“I heard the same,” I said, laughing with him.
“But you didn’t come here to speak about ancient history, did you, Adrian?” said Mr. Koontz as he poured me a glass of apple juice in his living room.
“No,” I replied.
“Still being haunted by nightmares, then?”
“Yes.”
“So you have finally come to ask for my help. I was wondering when you would, and I was expecting you much sooner. Months sooner, in fact.”
“That’s not the kind of help I’m looking for, Mr. Koontz.”
“Oh? Thinking of breaking out of New Haven now?”
I laughed and said, “Actually, I wanted to ask you some questions about dreamweaving.”
“Ask away,” Mr. Koontz said with a smile.
I started with, “Can you see into a person’s dreams?”
“Do you mean, can I see what you are dreaming at night?”
“Yeah.”
“I can sense when you are having dreams, Adrian, and how intense they are, and what kind of mood they are. But no, I can’t actually see them. I can only see the dreams that I create for you, because to create them, I must visualize them.”
“Oh,” I said disappointedly, and then asked, “But you can tell when someone is having a nightmare, right? By sensing the mood?”
“If you are looking for a specific dream, as I now suspect that you are, well, it’s difficult. People dream many times during one night, and only remember a handful of them in the morning.”
“I’m looking for a very intense nightmare, Mr. Koontz. Something strong enough to wake me almost every time.”
“Now,
that
I might be able to find. But I can only overwrite your nightmare, Adrian. I cannot see or modify it.”
“Alright. Then without modifying it, can you make me wake up in my own dream so that I could have more control over it?”
“Wake up in your dream?” asked Mr. Koontz, looking puzzled.
“Yeah. When Derrick was sending me dreams back at the PRC, I would always know that I was dreaming, which made it easier to remember them after I woke.”
“Ah, yes, I remember now,” said Mr. Koontz. “You see, dreamweaving is usually a more subtle art. Good dreamweavers control people’s dreams so that they
don’t
know they are being manipulated. But in your case, Derrick wanted you to know, so he made sure your dreams were so outlandish that you would gain consciousness inside them.”
I smiled, remembering the many shapes and forms Derrick had assumed when sending dreams to me. Once, he had even appeared as Alia.
I asked, “Then you could sense when I am having this nightmare and wake me up in it?”
Mr. Koontz shook his head. “Making someone aware of a dreamweave is easy, but waking someone in their own dream is like trying to touch a person so lightly that they don’t know that they are being touched, and yet feel something painful enough to jump up screaming.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“It is, in a manner of speaking.”
“Then you can’t?” I asked, deflating. Mr. Koontz had been my last hope at finally hunting down the wretched closet monster and putting an end to my nightmares.
Mr. Koontz closed his eyes, deep in thought. I waited silently, listening to my own heartbeat. After about a minute, Mr. Koontz opened his eyes and looked at me kindly, saying, “For you, Adrian, I will try. If you hadn’t come into my life, it might have ended underground. I owe you for my freedom.”
“We all got out safe, Mr. Koontz,” I said, shaking my head. “You owe me nothing.”
Mr. Koontz smiled. “Nevertheless, I will try. Don’t expect a miracle tonight, though. I will be monitoring you and see if I can’t help you gain consciousness inside your worst nightmare. Personally, I would hate it if someone did that to me.”
“I thought dreamweavers couldn’t control each other’s dreams.”
“Fortunately, they can’t,” said Mr. Koontz. “I will try every night until we succeed or you are satisfied that it is not possible. I hope you find what you are looking for.”
I thanked him and returned to the penthouse. When I arrived, Terry asked me where I had been. Without mentioning that she was often a part of my nightmares, I briefly told her what I had requested of Mr. Koontz.
Terry looked at me incredulously. “You’re going to try hacking into your own dreams?”
“Something like that,” I replied.
“Dreams are just dreams, Adrian,” Terry said with a shrug. “They don’t mean anything.”