The Knights of Time and the Forgotten Book

Chapter 7: Nightmares

I woke up to the sound of someone crying.

It was the middle of the night, although I wasn’t sure what time it was. The room was like it was when I fell asleep. I looked around to find Brandon snoring like the idiot he was, but when I turned to the other side, Jeremy wasn’t there. I rubbed my eyes; at that time still not sure what was going on, I walked in a haze towards the sound.

The light in the courtyard was still flickering dimly, but a new, somewhat familiar figure was now sitting hunched up on a bench right under one of the rooms upstairs. The figure was shaking and was covering his face with his hands. Although I didn’t need to see his face to know who the figure was.

“Jeremy?”

He shot up, his face undoubtedly red with tears.

“Did I wake you?” he asked, sniffing and trying to pretend like I didn’t see anything.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

I sat next to him. “I’m not convinced.”

I could see he was struggling internally. His lip was quavering and he was still shaking, but he still insisted to look like nothing had happened. But he quickly curled back into his ball and started crying, and his change of expression was so sudden it shook me.

His cries were quiet and heartfelt.

I pulled him up and hugged him tightly.

“Shh, it’s okay.”

I could feel him shivering in my embrace, and I didn’t know what to do. I had never fallen into that kind of situation. I had no idea why he was crying, but all I knew was that I needed to be there for him and help him. I’d never heard someone cry so broken-heartedly and to be honest, hearing him hurt me. I’d only known him for less than a month but now I was attached to him, and there was no going back to how things were. He was my best friend.

I hugged him tighter.

It was never something I usually found easy to admit. How was he any more special than all other people who had tried to befriend me? I thought about it.

This is the reason, I thought.

He was the first person who truly needed me.

I could feel him shaking against my chest, and when I closed my eyes I could feel his own pain if I wasn’t concentrating hard enough. It was hard for me to keep away from all that, and it felt wrong. But I still could feel what he was feeling, like I did when we met and like then, I still had no control over it. I didn’t want to intrude on what he was feeling and all his emotions, but trying to control it started giving me a headache. With him in my arms feeling what he felt, I started feeling as anxious, scared and sad as he was. The emotions were so powerful it was like they were throbbing inside him.

“Why are you crying?”

“Dreams.” The word said it all. Although I couldn’t understand how the dreams we get could drive someone to tears. I got pretty horrible dreams, but they always left me in a daze rather than in sorrowful misery.

Jeremy pulled back. His usually brilliant green eyes were now bloodshot, with dark circles surrounding them. Trailing his cheeks were tears which I gently wiped with my thumbs.

“Why aren’t you telling me that I'm perfectly fine?” he whispered. I was confused by what he asked me.

“Why should I?”

“Because everyone does.”

“Well, I'm not just ‘everyone’. I understand.” Jeremy looked at me with fascination and sadness. “Does this happen every night?”

“Almost, yes.”

“Don’t your roommates ever tell you anything?”

“No, because they don’t know. I go for a walk whenever I get a horrible one.”

“Next time you do, wake me up.”

“I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“It’s something I need to do on my own.”

“Not from now on you don’t.”

“No, Veronica.”

“I’ll even stick a baby monitor under your bed if I need to. I'm not letting you go through this on your own anymore.”

A single tear wet my cheek, and I didn’t understand why. The dreams weren’t affecting me, so why should it make me tear up? The answer was right in front of me.

He was so alone.

Jeremy was still shaking, so I wrapped my arms around him again. Then, out of nowhere he started crying again.

“I can’t stop seeing what happened in my dreams. The images keep coming back to me, and I keep falling to their sorrow. I wish I could stop, but the pain never seems to end.”

I kept him in my embrace for what felt like hours, but I never let him go. I couldn’t. When time felt like it was ticking again, he stood up and we walked back to our makeshift beds.

“Are you sure you’re okay to go back to sleep?”

“Yeah. I'm fine.”

And right after that, I fell asleep again, like it was just some normal night.

But it wasn’t, and despite everything, it gave me a whole new perspective of things.

Just before I lost consciousness completely I heard him whisper, “Please don’t tell anyone of what happened tonight.”