Revenant Paul Lahote

Chapter 5

Sleeping was always the worst. 

No matter how good Caylee was at avoiding people's touch, it all went down the drain as soon as she closed her eyes and let exhaustion take over. The dreams were incredibly vivid, and any amount of pain that could be felt would radiate through her own unconscious body. 

It could be considered an out of body experience, but that in itself wouldn't exactly be correct either. Instead, it was as though she simply shifted places; taking the backseat of a car that would inevitably crash. Seeing and feeling everything as the person who was experiencing it.

They were random, nobody she specifically knew or had heard of, and they came in different variations. One dream could be a drunk man who stupidly decided to drive, another could be a woman who was simply done with life. 

The first time it happened after the accident while at Gran's, the old woman had stumbled in, waking up her screaming granddaughter  with a deer in the headlights look - one of the few times Caylee had ever seen her grandmother speechless. It wasn't until the following morning they sat in the living room, drinking coffee and watching the news when they discovered it wasn't just a weird nightmare. Ever since all the news channels had been blocked, newspapers removed until all that was left was the silence that came the morning after a hard night. 

Like waking up in a haze, completely unsure of what her own feelings and surroundings were, Caylee would struggle for breath; her heartbeat racing incredibly fast and her body covered in a tingly sensation. It would often take many minutes for her to become cognizant of her surroundings, and many more for her to fully process whatever horrors she had just seen. Paul was the only one who could calm her down right away, whether it simply be a subconscious thing that she didn't want to subject him to her problems, or if Gran simply knew enough for her to not have to hide her reactions, she wasn't quite sure. 

But this particular night was not easy, and Paul wasn't around. 

Sobs racked her body viciously, pulling her back and forth like the waves that could be heard crashing in the far off distance. Her tears fell down her face in a similar fashion to the rain beating down on the roof of the small home. 

"It's alright darlin', it's over now," Gran spoke out. 

Caylee clutched her pillow tighter, body curled over in an attempt to feel any kind of comfort - a comfort she knew she'd never be able to obtain without touching someone. "It's not. It's never over. They'll never stop. It's my punishment." 

"Don't you say that!" Gran shouted. "There is a reason you're here now and it is not just for you to suffer, so don't you ever say that to me. Now come here and listen." 

Caylee sniffled, looking up into her grandmother's pretty brown eyes she loved so much. Everyone she loved most had brown eyes; Gran, Paul, and her mother who now seemed like a far off memory. 

"When I was a young girl, barely coming out of my baby stage I knew a girl. She was the sweetest thing you could ever meet. Now she was quite older than me, so I hadn't expected her to be so kind to me all the time. But never once did her excitement falter. She was light and joy, playful and knowing. Probably could have anyone wrapped around her finger in no time. And one day, I came across her crying. Now, only being a little girl around the age of 9 or 10, I didn't know how to comfort the older girl. She told me how blissful it must be for me to be so unaware. For me to not know the things she was forced to know, the things no one listened to."

"What happened to her?"

"She knew things she shouldn't, just like you. And just like you she struggled to come to terms with the consequences of these things." The old woman smiled sadly, getting up and retreating to the doorway. "She had to leave. Now rest. The dreams will come, the feelings will come, and so will the knowledge. Embrace it with everything you have darlin', it's yours now. With the bad comes the good."

And just like always, she left as she always did. The hidden meanings behind her words always hanging in the air, just out of reach until you would need them the most.