Attached [Rewritten Version]

10. It's not just a dream

Sunday, October 2nd, 2016

Sid had nightmares all week long, and after two nights of him waking up, screaming—and crawling in bed with his mother eventually—his parents had decided to keep him at home. He needed rest, and the concussion was lamely being used as an excuse to keep him out of school, even though Sid had repeatedly told his parents his head was fine; he just had nightmares.

Which was when the game to avoid his parents as much as possible had started. They wanted to know more, and Sid couldn't possibly give them any answers. He eventually had lied and told them nothing happened, it was probably the stories he heard in the past, about the forest, that caused him to have nightmares.

Eventually, when he told his parents that their weird behaviour was probably making it worse because it was stressing him out, they stopped pressing for answers.

It didn't solve the nightmares, though, and the girl continuously visited him in his sleep, asking him to play hide and seek with her. She at one point stated that they needed to talk, told him he needed her, and acted friendly to him. He ignored it all, not wanting to fall for a little girl's lies. She continued to ask him to join her in the woods, and since that seemed to be her main goal, he didn't trust any of the other things she had said before he tried to run from her.

Sid had even asked Davy and Edward if they had been visited by the girl as well, but they hadn't. Which felt unfair, especially when Cory contacted him, and he found out that even Cory hadn't been receiving any ghostly visits ever since Sid's started.

Couldn't she just fuck off and leave them be?

Eventually, Sid discovered—in a painful way—she was able to touch him in his dreams. She had gotten desperate by Friday, and while he tried to run away, she had grabbed hold of his arm, leaving scratches with her fingernails that actually showed up on his body in the real world.

They also healed the next day, but Sid guessed that it had to be because she wasn't real, and neither were the scratches.

The point was, in his panic to get away from her, he grabbed a knife from the kitchen, hoping to stab her—since it became very clear she was able to harm him, and he hoped it would work both ways—and get her to leave him alone. His panicked plan had backfired big time, since she had started screaming with a look of terror on her face. A scream that still rang in his ears when he himself was woken up by his father since he had started yelling at her to shut the fuck up; in real life.

Which left a pressing new question for his parents to ask him; who needed to shut up? Who was he dreaming about repeatedly?

He kept silent, and eventually they decided to allow him to sleep over at Annika's place again, since he last slept well with her by his side. With that, they were lifting part of the restrictions they had given him as a part of their punishment for entering the woods.

Which was why, one week after the whole incident in the woods, Sid was in Annika's bed, with her in his arms, and Davy spinning slow rounds on Annika's desk chair with a deep frown on his freckled face. Davy usually already looked confused by default, but he somehow had managed to look even more lost when Sid had told them about the nightmares in detail.

"Cory specifically said you were both marked," Annika stated, playing wither long curly ginger hair, "why isn't Davy affected?"

"No idea," Sid mumbled sleepily, "I didn't think to stop and ask her about her ways, honestly."

"No, you just figured you'd stab her to death to end it all. Why didn't you?" Davy wondered, continuing to spin around slowly, as if he was observing the entire room.