Coming of Age

Chapter 8

Dan’s alarm went off waking him up. He sat up in bed groaning rubbing the sleep from his eyes looking around his room.

“Fuck, not again,” he groaned. “Abraham! Phil! Where are you, you sick bastards? Wake me up!”

“Dan? Are you alright Bear?” his mum asked walking into his room.

“You can see me?” he asked, wondering what was going on.

“Of course I can, love. Are you feeling alright? Who is Abraham and Phil?” she asked sitting on the edge of his bed feeling his forehead and brushing his hair back. “You do feel a little warm. Maybe I should call you in for school.”

“No, I’m okay. I guess it was just a dream,” he smiled to assure her. “A really vivid, crazy dream.”

“Are you sure? Your father is off work today so he can stay home if you’re feeling poorly.”

“No, I think I’m okay. I’ll take a shower and be right down,” Dan sighed while his mum gave him a worried look. “I promise I’m fine.”

“If you say so,” she smiled at her son kissing the top of his head and left his room, closing the door behind her.

Dan stretched and looked around his room for any sign of Lilith or Phil or anyone, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Could it have been a dream? Is he going crazy? Nothing makes sense and as much as he wants to stay home to figure it out, the bus will be coming in an hour and he’s still in his underpants. Plus, it’d be good to go to school to keep his mind off of things. Maybe the commonality of school will remind him just how impractical he is to have even thought vampires were real and he was kidnapped.

Dan pushed the blankets off of him and walked into the bathroom turning the shower on, then grabbed his uniform to change into afterwards. He decided after school, he’d look into vampires and dreams and—no, that’s silliness. He must be going insane. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching him.

“Phil? Is anyone there?” Dan whispered looking around his room after his shower. “I swear to God, I better be talking to myself. If you are real, leave me alone. Leave me and my family alone or I’m going to go crazy. I—”

“Daniel! Get down here for breakfast now!”

“Coming mum!”

***

A week went by and things were going back to normal. No vampires, no ‘Chosen Ones’, or anything. The only unusual thing Dan noticed was the food they tried to pass as healthy in the cafeteria, but that’s nothing supernatural. He was able to convince himself it was all just a dream or intense vision or something—it doesn’t matter because it’s over now.

For a moment, he thought about telling someone. When he saw his friends, something in him wanted to tell them what happened, but the logical part told him not to say anything. They’d think he’d gone mental and send him off to a psychologist or tell his parents. He spent a lot of time on Google trying to figure out all he could about vampires but just ended up finding a ton of fanfiction.

Another week passed making him feel certain it was all just a horrible and realistic dream. He found articles on lucid dreaming and figured it just must have been that because there’s no way any of that stuff happened. Dan began feeling more and more comfortable falling into his daily routine of school, homework, dinner, more homework and sleep. He was sure to lock his windows and double check that the front and back door were locked before going to bed. Maybe he was paranoid, but at least he was being safe.

He sat in bed flipping pages to “Pride and Prejudice” for school when he heard something coming from the kitchen. He froze in bed and checked his bedside clock. It’s just past one in the morning; his parents are surely asleep. Dan grabbed his cell phone, 999 dialed and his finger hovering over the call button. He reached into his closet and grabbed his old baseball bat and held his breath about to open his door when someone grabbed his shoulder.