Beyond What We Know [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 13 - Nighttime Harbinger

I followed Lee to the couch and we sat down, each of us resting our hands on our own laps. "What do you mean? Did something happen?"

"More like, it's been happening."

I dislike mysteries. Cryptic statements creep me out, as you've seen. So, at this point the only things I could feel were concern and uneasiness towards what Lee had in store for me.

"You know how I told you Locke's been acting weird lately?"

I nodded, "Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, one of the things that are troubling him are these... nightmares I've been having. They're usually relatively different from each other, but I always get the same feeling. I... I think it might be some sort of message. The theme is always the same."

Nightmares? Everybody has those from time to time, so it must be something else entirely to be this important. "A feeling? And what's that?"

"It's... It's like..." Lee looked down, her eyes restless and making short movements. I assumed they were trying to think of a way to describe that feeling to me. "It's like a sinking weight, pushing down on my stomach. It's overpowering, like fear, like intense stress, as if I'm trying to escape for something that I can't see or hear."

"Like something or someone is chasing you?"

"Yeah, but I don't know how to evade it. And I keep waking up soaked in sweat and covered in goose bumps. It's been almost a month now."

That sounds like regular nightmares, if you don't take into consideration the fact that they always feel the exact same despite not looking the exact same. But just what in the world could they mean? "And do you see anything in them? Like, any of us, or a familiar place like the farm or the pond? Or maybe something else?"

It took Lee a hot minute to answer. These nightmares must've been really fresh in their mind still, it was probably hard to stay calm and put everything into words, so I remained silent.

Lee swallowed and began, "At first, all I could see were the graffiti you showed us. Then, this... building appeared. It looked very clean, and very bright, and had a faint scent that reminded me of both a hospital and a computer room of some kind, like uh... Like an office, or... maybe a control room? A lab? I can't really tell, but I'm certain this building exists. I don't know how I know that, but I do. It started feeling familiar for some reason... Then... then, it started being about us, and I mean all of us."

"About us?" Well, that's... unsettling, to say the least.

Lee stood up and I flinched, but they placed a hand on my shoulder as reassurance that everything was fine. I relaxed. "Milk?"

"Water's fine, thanks."

Lee walked to the kitchen and came back minutes later with a glass in each hand. They handed me my water and sat down next to me again, bending a leg under their butt. "Yeah, about us. I couldn't see you guys at times, but I could always hear you." They gulped half the milk in their glass before resuming, "It started out as whispers, and muttering. Everything we said was unintelligible, but I could at least understand that none of us really knew what was happening. At some point, we were already talking in an acceptable volume. But, as the nights went on, it escalated into screams. I don't know what was more distressing, if the fact that all we could do was scream for our lives, if the fact that I still couldn't tell what we were saying regardless of how hard I tried..."

Alright, that settles it. These are 200% not regular nightmares. Not to start on the paranoias again, but there's absolutely no way these terrifying dreams don't have a meaning. They're even connected to the graffiti! Okay, that could also be because Lee's seen them before on my phone, but we can't be sure. What if all this is some big fat arrow pointing us to something?