A Midnight Mind

Chapter 4: A Rumour for a Reason

Ethan swallowed hard, imagining phantom fingers at his throat. Slowly he opened his backpack, reached inside, and pulled out his sketchbook.

He could barely take his eyes away from the poster for fear of the dream man jumping out of it to strangle him again. Holding his sketchbook up high, he flipped through the pages until he reached the latest sketch, comparing it with the more basic drawing on the poster. 

The faces were the same.

I really fell asleep in class, he thought as sweat beaded on his forehead. This is a nightmare. 

Someone bumped into his backpack, jostling him and making him gasp. But it was just a student passing by. Other than the poster looking like the dream man, nothing about this was dreamlike. 

He closed his sketchbook and bit his lip, re-reading the poster's text.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW HAS SEEN HIM, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT YOU CONTACT NEIL EDWARDS IMMEDIATELY!!!

At the bottom the poster was a series of pull tabs each with a phone number and email address. Only one tab was torn away.

"He kills you in your dreams, you know."

Ethan twitched violently at the voice in his ear. He nearly swung his sketchbook reflexively at the girl that was standing next to him, but managed to pull it to his chest and take two hasty steps back instead. It wasn't exactly graceful or calm but was still better than attacking a random student.

The girl who had snuck up on him beamed a sideways grin. If she was amused by Ethan's surprise, she didn't say so, but she had a twinkle of humour in her dark eyes. Her hair was long and black, her skin a light brown, and she wore a purple leather jacket and jeans with slashes in the thighs--not that Ethan was looking or anything. 

She was also holding a notepad and pen as though they were natural extensions of her limbs, much like Ethan held his pencil and sketchbook. Smiling even wider, she pointed with her chin at the poster of the dream man.

"Oh yeah," she said. "They say if you see him he shows up in your dreams every night at midnight and tries to kill you. At 12:01, he disappears and you're safe. At least until midnight the next night, when he comes back for another round. Rodney Greeves--that guy that died a couple weeks ago?" She tapped on the poster with her pen. "This man got him."

Ethan's jaw bunched up. He knew his eyes were probably saucers right now but he couldn't so much as blink. It was worrying enough to see a poster that reminded him of the guy from his dream--it was much worse to know the guy shows up in dreams to kill people.

The girl watched Ethan for a few moments of pregnant silence as Ethan fought not to tremble.

Then she laughed.

"Gotta love these suburban legends, right? It's cute, but it's all in Neil's head. I'm the only one who took one of those tabs, and that was just so I could interview him."

"Interview him?" Ethan managed to croak.

"For the school paper. I'm a reporter. Or, well..." She made finger-quotes. "'Reporter,' for the Lynx. You've probably never read it. Honestly, I don't think anyone reads the Lynx, but universities love seeing extracurricular shit on your application."

"Right. For sure. Yeah."

The girl pursed her lips. She had a little beauty mark under the right side of her mouth. "Look, in case you're buying into this whole dream man thing--just quench your mind of it, dude. It's all psychology, you know: Neil slaps these posters up everywhere and suddenly people get this guy in their head until they honestly do think they're dreaming about him. They're just, like, putting his face to people in their dreams, right? Whether or not he's actually there at all."