Branded Bones

Chapter 8

Nate sits up fast and starts coughing and shaking. Really badly. I knock myself out of my state of shock and walk up to Nate and kneel on the bed beside him. I gently pat his back and try to get him to breathe.

"Andy, go get a bottle of water real quick." He nods and quickly leaves the room.

As Nate starts calming down, Andy walks into the room with a bottle of water in hand. He hands it to me and I help Nate drink from it, seeing as his hands are still slightly shaking.

When he drinks about half the bottle and calms down, I hand the water bottle back to Andy and he sets it on the nightstand.

"What happened?" Nate shakily asks.

"I don't really know. We were all talking, but then we heard you scream, so Andy and I came running in here to find someone standing over you; You were freaking out." I can see Nate thinking, his eyes clouding over.

After a minute, he finally speaks. "Did he call himself Phantom?:" Andy and I look at each other.

"Yeah. How did you know? Did he appear to you in your dream?" Nate nods his head.

"Yeah. He told me who he was and where he came from. He said he was created the day I was kidnapped. He's the dark side of me. My demon." I lean forward and wrap my arms around him. Seeing as I'm sitting next to him, the hug is sideways and he grabs onto the arm crossing his chest with both hands.

"He said that there are two other sides of me. One that I was born with, and one that was created because of one of my music videos." Nate gives out a short, dry laugh. "Apparently I dressed up as the one I was born as and I didn't even know." He sighs. "I didn't even know," he whispers. I look back at Andy.

'Self-blame,' I mouth.

"That's right, you didn't know. They may be part of you, but they didn't make themselves known. That's their bad." He falls sideways and lays his head against my shoulder, his eyes slowly closing until he falls asleep. I move so that Nate is now laying down in the bed and I'm standing next to it. I gesture for Andy to follow me and we both head back outside, where everyone is waiting.

"What happened?" Amalee asks. Andy and I look at each other for a quick second, silently agreeing not to tell them about Phantom.

"Nate just had a nightmare that really freaked him out." Amalee nods and wraps her arms around Brett, burying her face in his chest.

"Let's give him some space," Andy says. "We won't be far away so all he has to do is scream and we'll run in." Amalee nods and everyone leaves.

Andy and I head to the living room and sit down on the couch. We sit in silence for a minute before I come up with an idea.

"Hey, do you want to do some research on Nate's sides?" Andy looks confused.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he said that he dressed up as one of his sides for a video and that another was created because of a video. Maybe we could find the videos and what they're called."

"Yeah, that might work." We both get our phones out and start looking at Nate's music channel.

><><Time Skip><><

"Hey, I found something," Andy says. I scoot over so I can see what he found. He shows me the phone screen.

A YouTube video is pulled up. It's Nate's 'Mangled' video.

"Oh, yeah, I remember that. What do fans call him?"

"Umm, Natemare."

"Huh, that makes sense. Well, I actually just found another one." I pull up Nate's cover of 'What's This?'. "They call him Skel. Well, sometimes. It doesn't seem like he has a sold name, but that's what I found."

"So I wonder, which one was he born with."