Mythical Link ▸ Link Neal {Book One}

Eighty

     "Thursday morning when we were filming, we had this idea to do something based off of lucid dreaming. It's a technique that's used to induce lucid dreaming better, and I won't go into too much detail because I want to get right to the point. Link tried the technique, had a lucid dream or nightmare rather, and he had a premonition that came true."

     "Which was?" Jessie prompted, with much intrigue in her voice. 

Rhett was feeling glad that Jessie and Christy were more open to this now. It was much easier having another set of ears to talk to, and possibly more help in the future.

     "That a werewolf like the giant beast we saw the other night attacked a girl in the parking lot. He and I watched it all happen in his dream, and not minutes later after he woke up from the dream, the exact same thing happened in the same exact sequence." 

     Christy's lips had parted, her eyes narrowed. 

     "I'm not really sure how or why the premonition happened. But Link can feel things, see things in dreams, and sometimes," Rhett trailed off, eyeing Link. He was waiting for Link to protest, but Link sat quietly hugging himself. His lips looked so cracked and dry. "He has odd hallucinations."

     "What?" Christy said. 

     Rhett looked at her with a harsh swallow. "Thursday night when he came home from work." That was all Rhett needed to say, and Christy made a face as if she finally understood. "He saw snakes in the bathroom, and he heard somebody whispering his name. His full name." This earned a look from Link, but he still seemed distant. Jessie was inching closer to Rhett in anticipation, like a kid intrigued with a story during story time at preschool.

     "That," Christy said, brushing underneath her nose. "Was the first time I heard him scream like that. I've never heard him scream like that before."

     "That's another thing. He screams, screeches, shrieks. He wails. Wailing is the more proper term," Rhett said, narrowing his eyes as if he was computing something in his head. "This wailing is powerful. It can shatter glass. It can make you feel like you're crippling in ice water and being pounded with a spiked hammer overtop the head. It can make a werewolf lose its shift."

     "What does that mean?" Jessie asked. 

     Rhett was enjoying the fact that his wife was so inquisitive. The more knowledge they have, the better. "When they're fully shifted, they have fangs and claws and hair in places that shouldn't have hair," he said, drawing a giggle out of Christy. Jessie only smirked. "They're a thousand times more powerful than the average human being at any rate. When he screams, it's like he can take that away from them. It incapacitates them in the worst possible way and strikes them with humanity's hammer."

     "It paralyzes them," Jessie finished for him, finding the perfect word that he was searching for. 

     He half smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Exactly. And I'm not sure where this suddenly came from. I've known him since the first grade, and yeah he's always been kind of an oddball," Rhett said, eyeing Link and hoping it would draw a smile out of Link. Anything. He received nothing, and it made his heart sink a little. There was something going on his best friend's head, and he could only imagine that it was a dark place. "But definitely nothing of this parameter." 

Everyone's eyes fell on Link.

     "Honey, do you want to tell us what your dream was about?" Christy prompted, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. He didn't make eye contact with anyone, and he kept his lips tightly sealed.

      Link wanted nothing more than to tell them what his dream was about. But if there was even the slightest possibility that any of it could come true, he didn't want them to worry. They had enough to worry about as is, like how they were going to get his house fixed up. How they were going to keep the show going with all of this going on.