HEART OF ICE

CHAPTER 16

Echoes of the day haunted my sleep, what little I could actually get. I found myself staring at the icy moonlight stretched across my bed more than the backside of my eyelids. A few times I'd finally feel myself drifting off, the heaviness of my exhaustion pulling my eyes closed and my head deeper into my pillow. I don't know how long it would take after that. Minutes? Seconds? Was it almost instantaneous? Whatever the time, flashes of the day began to crisscross my subconscious. The events with the vans and the strange encounter with Chase would collide with crossing the chalk threshold into the airport. But these weren't the strangest parts of my fitful sleep.

Once, the darkness before the dreams stretched on and became an entire space around me. At first, it was wide open, like standing in an open field or in the school gymnasium with all the lights off. In the beginning, I felt alone. It was strange and kind of peaceful. That didn't last. Those moments never do. That sensation of peace would quickly be smothered out. The dark, empty space suddenly felt crowded. I could sense others around me, cloaked in the inky shadow that was more than just a place with the lights off. I was staring into an absence of light. I was staring into a living darkness. I was looking at my enemy.

This wasn't just the shadowy man we had met weeks before. Mr. Poriece had been a single piece of the presence I was surrounded by. And it was moving closer. Inch by inch I could feel it and hear it advancing toward me. The solid ground under my feet quaked and cracked, the force of the presence's movement pushing against the earth. I took a step back to get away, a foolish move. I closed my eyes in the dream, trying to shut it out, to keep from seeing it turn into something more than a wall of darkness.

This is when I'd see the echoes of the day again, more distorted than before. Chase was standing before me, taunting me, threatening me and then suddenly threatening Moe. I took a swing at the blonde-haired bully for that. I saw my tightly balled fist racing like a meteor through the air toward his stupid face. It should have hit him. I should have felt the side of his jaw crack under my knuckles. His dopey, menacing smile should have become a grimace. But where he'd been standing there was nothing. The spot was empty. Beyond it, the strange Mr. Tenor sat in an airport chair reading a newspaper. A glance to my left and right would reveal the black vans idling loudly, the drivers hidden behind the tinted glass watching me.

With a startled gasp I woke up to the cold, blue-gray light of the moon reaching into my room. An hour crawled by before I felt myself finally surrendering to sleep again. And then, once more, the chaotic cycle began again in my mind. It was the third time that stands out the most. I remember it starting much the same as the previous one. I saw Chase standing in front of me, laughing and taunting and then threatening. I swept my arm through the air in a quick, tight arc to punch his lights out. But then he'd be gone. Again, the well-dressed Mr. Tenor was sitting in an airport chair reading a newspaper. He was totally uninterested in anything I was doing.

Now the dream began to change.

There was laughter behind me. I pivoted around as quick as I could. There was Chase again, walking backward into a crowd. At first glance they were just regular people. It was the passengers at the airport and kids from my school. Then, they weren't those people at all. As Chase moved between them, the dim light illuminating each figure faded to almost nothing. Their ordinary clothes became the dense, black armor of Legion. Innocent souls became soldiers of the dark all while Chase Paul Briar smiled confidently, excitedly at me.

Anger surged through me, overwhelming me. I leapt from the spot I was standing, charging toward him. My fingers gripped his shoulders. I was ready to shove him into the ground, to end him and the threat he posed. But as I leaned my weight into him, as I started to direct us toward the floor, I stopped. All of a sudden, the shoulders I was holding were not those of Chase Paul Briar. Instead it was the uniformed shoulders of Lisa Gene Harris. I looked up from her fatigues to her eyes with a gasp. She stared at me wordlessly, confused, her eyes wide with fear.

"Christopher?"

I opened my eyes at the sound of my name. The voice I had heard was not that of the sergeant I had met in the airport. It was my aunt's.

"Are you alright," Aunt Meredith asked softly. She sounded like she'd only woken up a few minutes before she came to my door.

I blinked and looked around my room. Nothing seemed out of place. There wasn't even a dwarf with a threatening, stone mallet sitting at my desk. "Yeah," I said after a moment. "Just a bad dream."

"I'm glad. You were shouting."

"I was? I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Must have been some dream." Aunt Meredith stepped a little further into the room. In the hallway light, I glimpsed what looked like a baseball bat she was holding slightly behind her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I took a deep breath. It was a moment I would do differently if ever given the chance. I probably would have felt better. I also would have let her further into the new part of my life she'd, so far, only been at the edge of. She was family, after all. She was my only family. I was ready to talk to her about all of it. The words were right there, ready to come out of my mouth.

I swallowed all of them and shook my head. Telling her about my dreams would have meant telling her about what had happened on the way to school and then after. I didn't want to make her worry more. I didn't want to make her think she couldn't protect me. "No," I said. "I'll be okay. What time is it?"

"Still early. Try to get some more sleep."

"Okay."

"I love you," Aunt Meredith said at my door.

I smiled at her. "I love you, too."

She returned the smile, tiredly, closing the door after that. With the light from the hallway blocked and the moon having set somewhere beyond the buildings and streets of the town outside my frosted window, I found myself in the near-darkness of my room.

It wasn't as dark as it should have been. There was a soft light, like that from a baby's nightlight, filling the quiet space around my bed. It only took a second for me to realize it was coming from the bed. It was coming from me.

I was glowing again.

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