I don’t sleep much. An hour here. Two hours there. Chronic insomnia, it’s one of my more tolerable lightning strike aftereffects. Not as bad as the veiny red scars that cover me from neck to toes, or the burning in my chest that flares hotter when I get a little emotional. Insomnia? Eh. It could be worse (and usually is). Most people wish they had more hours in the day. I keep almost the full twenty-four.
When I go to bed at night, it’s not with the intention to sleep. If sleep happens, great. If it doesn’t, well, that’s something I’ve gotten used to.
So when I opened my eyes and saw a guy standing over my bed, I had to assume I’d finally fallen asleep. And when I noticed the shiny silver knife gripped in his hand—the kind of pretty, decorative blade that has no practical application but murder—I decided this was not a dream I wanted to see through to the end. It would have been nice to stay asleep a bit longer, but now I was going to have to wake myself before Nightmare Boy used his knife to gut me.
“Wake up, Mia,” I told myself in a voice that came out hoarse and scratchy, like it would have if I’d actually awakened.
The guy startled back from my bed. He dropped the knife and it fell straight down and stuck in the wood floor with a thunk. Must be sharp. He scrambled to yank it free, but looked unsure what to do with it after that. His face was in shadow, but his wide, white eyes and jerky movements told me he was as scared as I was supposed to be. As far as nightmares went, he wasn’t too bad. I decided to stay asleep.
I closed my eyes, hoping I’d open them to a new dream.
But there were no more dreams that night, only Nightmare Boy’s soft, retreating footsteps.
When I opened my eyes again, feeling as though I hadn’t slept at all, it was the morning I’d been dreading. The morning when my brother, Parker, and I would return to school for the first time since the quake.
We had a dream dictionary kicking around the house somewhere. If I consulted it, I was pretty sure it would confirm my suspicion that a knife in your dream was a bad omen. Not that I needed an omen to give me the heads up that this day was going to suck.
As I dragged myself out of bed, I noticed a small split in the floor, right about where Nightmare Boy’s knife had lodged itself in the floorboards. Strange. Then again, there were plenty of other little cracks and splits on the old floor of my restored attic bedroom.
I put thoughts of the dream away. I had bigger problems—real problems—to worry about. I didn’t know what to expect back at school, but if the changes that had taken root throughout the rest of the city were any indication, I should probably give in and expect the worst, as usual.
Thanks for the warning, Nightmare Boy. Not that it’ll do me any good.
2
I stood outside Mom’s bedroom door and listened to Prophet’s muffled voice. I couldn’t make out what he said, but after a month of Mom obsessively watching his televised sermons, I could guess the subject matter.
The end of the world is at hand.
Those who surrender their souls to Prophet will be saved.
Those who don’t will suffer and die and suffer some more.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We heard you the first time.
“Mom?” I tapped on the door before turning the knob. It was seven in the morning, and outside the sun was doing its job, but Mom’s bedroom was a cave. She sat at her window in the grungy bathrobe she hadn’t shed in days, peeking through the slats in the blinds. Her eyes traveled back and forth between the window and the TV, which was playing The Hour of Light, Rance Ridley Prophet’s morning broadcast. He did three shows a day: morning, midday, and evening. Ever since we brought her home from the hospital, Mom had been obsessed with Prophet. The only way she missed his broadcast was if the electricity or cable went out. I almost looked forward to those outages now.
“Brothers and sisters,” Prophet intoned, “God will soon make His final judgment. You must decide now on which side you will stand, on the side of heaven, or on the side of earth and its wicked, worldly pleasures. Will you be lifted up, raptured to paradise, or laid low by God’s terrible vengeance?”