Chapter Four

  The first dream didn’t feel like a dream while it was happening.

  There was no transition into it, no slipping or falling. One moment I was lying in my bed, listening to the house settle, and the next my body reacted as if something had already gone wrong.

  Something had my leg.

  Not violently. Not suddenly.

  Firmly.

  I felt the pressure around my ankle before I understood what it meant, fingers or something close enough to fingers tightening just enough to let me know I wasn’t imagining the sensation. My body tried to pull away and failed. The resistance was immediate, efficient, as if whoever—or whatever—held me had already accounted for the movement.

  I opened my mouth to shout and nothing came out.

  The room didn’t change. I could see the edge of my bed, the shadow of the door, the familiar shapes that told me I was awake. That was the worst part. There was no distortion to blame. No darkness swallowing things whole.

  Just pressure.

  I kicked hard enough to jolt myself free and fell out of the bed, the impact knocking the air from my chest. I lay there gasping, heart slamming so hard it made my ears ring. The space around my ankle felt hot, not injured, not bruised—just aware, like skin that had been held too long.

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  I stayed on the floor until my breathing slowed.

  When I finally pulled myself back onto the bed, I didn’t turn the light on. I didn’t look at the place where my foot had been. I convinced myself it had been a half-dream, the kind that borrows reality because your body hasn’t fully woken yet.

  That explanation worked until morning.

  All day, sound felt closer than it should have.

  A locker slammed and my hands shook. Someone dropped a book and the sharp thud made my stomach twist. At lunch, a bottle tipped over and clinked against the table, the hollow sound ringing in my head longer than it needed to.

  No one else noticed.

  I told myself that mattered.

  That night, sleep came reluctantly. I kept one foot tucked under the blanket, the other pressed against the mattress edge as if position alone could protect me. When exhaustion finally took over, it did so without warning.

  This time, there was water.

  Not the creek exactly, but something like it—too shallow to drown in, too heavy to move through. I could breathe, or at least I thought I could, but every attempt felt wrong, like air wasn’t meant to reach me there. Panic rose anyway, sharp and immediate, because no matter how hard I pushed, the water didn’t give.

  I wasn’t sinking.

  I wasn’t floating.

  I was stuck.

  I woke with my chest tight, gasping, hands clutching at nothing. The room was quiet. The house unchanged. My body felt like it had run miles without moving an inch.

  The next day, someone mentioned they hadn’t slept well either.

  They didn’t describe a dream. They didn’t need to.

  The way they said it—flat, careful—told me enough.

  That was when I realized the dream wasn’t the thing itself.

  It was a response.

  The same way the crack had been a signal. The way glass breaking could unravel someone before they understood why. Something had marked us with sound first, then waited until our guard dropped to press closer.

  I stopped talking about the night altogether after that.

  Not because I was afraid of being dismissed.

  Because I understood, suddenly, that explaining it would only teach it how else to appear.

  And whatever it was, it was already listening.