CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When I came to, I was as far away from a car accident as one could be. I gained consciousness while I was walking through a dark forest grove, punctuated by the blue-green glow of fireflies that darted in and out amongst the trees. It was just like my dream only it was real now. Or as close to real as anything could be.
I stopped by a tal , earthy-smel ing pine and peered at myself, the moonlight peeking through the spaced-out branches. The duct tape stil clung to my arms and legs in places but had been torn down the middle, ripped apart.
There was blood spattered across my pajama top and I didn’t know who it belonged to, or how it got there.
Ada! I thought as everything shifted into shape. Dex!
The cloud in my head began to lift. Where was I? Where were they?
“Ada!” I yel ed into the night. My voice was immediately swal owed up by the layers of bark and rock around me.
“Can anyone hear me? Dex?!”
I paused, holding my breath, listening. The fireflies made little buzzing noises and the branches scraped against each other in the breeze. I heard nothing else except my own heartbeat and was met with my deepest fear yet.
What if something happened to them? What if they had died from the car crash? What if I had kil ed them?
I scanned the forest but saw nothing but dark shadows and mountainous boulders that reflected the light of the moon. It was deathly cold and I was stil barefoot and only in my sleeping attire. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything but panic.
I started walking first, pushing the rough branches past me, trying to find a path in the maze of trunks. Then, as my thoughts swarmed, I ran, not minding the scattered stones and twigs that dug into the soft undersides of my feet, not noticing the pine needles whipping my eyes.
The wasps! My God, the wasps. If Dex had survived the crash, survived me, there’s no way he’d survive that.
I ran and ran in an endless loop, pushing my body to the limit. I was weak from lack of food and water and my muscles ached with each stride, soft from being stretched and immobile for so long.
I ran and then...
Suddenly I was standing before a clearing where rough grass grew silver white in the moonlight. The moon that was on the wrong side of me. A moon that was a smidge lower in the sky.
I had gotten turned around. At some point, while I was running, the thing had taken over and directed me in the opposite direction. Now I was conscious and able but more lost than ever. It was hard to know where I was when I never knew where I started.
That was frightening. I never even felt it come in.
Somewhere in the forest, a baby cried.
I swal owed hard and tried to soothe my heart as it pulsed madly in my veins.
The baby cried again.
“No,” I said out loud. There is no baby. That was a dream. This is real. You’re remembering your dreams.
You’re remembering your dreams, you’re remembering your dreams.
Somewhere in the forest, a few branches cracked.
I imagined tiny, flightless demons fal ing out of a nest and running toward me, thinking I was their mother.
I threw my head back at the sky and screamed.
I screamed and screamed, letting it al out, letting my cries carry through the clearing and above the trees, high into the mountains, whose shadows rose ominously in the distance. If anyone heard me, it would be al for the better.
The madness was too much for one person to bear.
“Perry?”