“Only for you, sister. I'm already dead.”
Lucy-Anne closed her eyes and breathed deeply, fighting off a faint. Only useless women in old movies faint at something like this! she berated herself. She bit the inside of her lip, pinched the back of her hand, and for a fleeting instant thought that when she looked again he would be gone. That terrified her. So much so that she found herself frozen, unable to move, unwilling to open her eyes in case—
“Lucy-Anne,” he said, and she felt something almost stroke her cheek.
Her eyes snapped open and he was there before her, one arm outstretched and his hand moving away. He'd touched her face, just like he used to when she was a little girl and he wanted to show affection. He'd very rarely kissed her. A fingertip to her cheek was his greeting, a gentle touch that said more than any words.
“Oh, Andrew,” she said. The tears came at last because she knew he was gone. He echoed to her now, but there was no future for them.
“Quickly,” he said, moving backwards, pointing south. “I'll tell you while you walk.”
He made her feel safe. She wasn't sure why. He'd seen off the ape-like people, true, but he was hardly there at all. Perhaps it was simply the fact that she no longer felt alone.
“I ran,” Andrew said. “After I found Mum and Dad dead in the hotel room I left and ran, as fast as I could, directionless. The streets were filled with bodies back then, so soon after it had happened. And sometimes other people. But most were so scared, so shocked, so alone, that they hid. So I just ran, and I was already dying. Whatever killed everyone else seemed to be acting much slower on me. I didn't know why. I felt myself fading. My strength was filtering away. I fell, and I dreamed myself alive again.”
“So you dream, too,” Lucy-Anne said, but she should not have been surprised.
“I dreamed of a folly on the hill, and knew what was happening. So I ran on until I found it, and then let everything take its course.”
Lucy-Anne reached into her jacket and shirt and brought out the chain and signet ring given to her by Nomad. Andrew's chain, his ring.
“I showed Nomad where to find me,” he said.
“You…”
“I laid down and died,” he said. “Leaning against a wall, still dreaming about not dying, because even as I felt myself closing down…my heart stopping, my senses fading…I was always thinking of you. My poor little sis left all on her own.”
“You made yourself a ghost.”
“Whatever I am is because of my dreams.”
“So, all this time?”
“I've been waiting. But don't be sad for me. It's different for me now.”
They left the industrial area behind and moved into residential streets again, countless houses now home only to dried bodies and memories. Lucy-Anne walked with another memory. And even though she knew, the wrench of loss was going to hurt all over again.
“I dream,” she said. “And I'm always scared.”
“Things change,” Andrew said. “Dreams are weird things, the ones we have even more so. I came to learn that they're like movies that never run the same way twice.”
“Movies you can control yourself?” she asked.
“Sometimes you're the director, yes,” he said. “But that never lasts.”
“I don't understand.” She thought of Rook falling into that pit, her dreaming the events again in time to warn him, thinking she'd saved him from that fate. Then he'd fallen again, and the same terrible death had come to claim him.
“I tried so many times when I was your age,” he said. “But changing things in your dreams only bleeds over into reality a little, and those bleeds are soon cleared up.”
“What are we going to do?” she said, hopelessness washing over her. “What am I going to do?”