Chapter Text
You wake with a start, the covers half thrown off the bed, your pyjamas damp with sweat. It had happened again. That corpse-like face floating in the void of your dreams, one icy flashing eye piercing through the veil of sleep into your waking world.
It would have been easy to dismiss the dream, to chalk it up to one too many late nights spent watching staticky horror VHSs, the sound turned low enough for your parents to remain blissfully ignorant upstairs. But the face had been a fixture for weeks now, sometimes appearing to be lit by flame, sometimes gradually materialising through a thick fog. The most unsettling form the face took was when it appeared to be talking to you, though without sound. You had never really been one to remember your dreams, at least not in detail, but this one followed you doggedly through the barrier between night and day.
The sound of the coffee machine floats down the hall from the kitchen, along with muffled chatter between your sister and parents. It must be at least seven, but with your phone dead and alarm clock broken you can’t check. No matter how many fresh batteries you had fed into the infernal thing, it wouldn’t keep time for more than a few hours before both hands dropped to the six and it stopped ticking.
You roll out of bed and shrug your robe on before padding out of your room and down the hall. Passing the photo of you and your family at the church barbeque last summer, you think you see those mismatched eyes reflected in the frame’s glass, but when you look back, they’re gone. You squeeze your eyes shut and will your now-pounding heart to slow.
“Sweetie? Do you want coffee?” comes your mother’s voice. You take one last deep breath and continue to the kitchen, pointedly not letting your eyes snag on any of the pictures as you go.
***
Your sister nudges you under the table, breaking your reverie. Your father, looking at you across the dish of potatoes, is clearly waiting for a response.
“I’m sorry, dad – what did you say?”
“I asked how your day was. Are you okay? You seem distracted.”
Pushing your uneaten carrots from one side of the plate to the other for the umpteenth time, you reply.
“It was fine, I’m just tired.”
“You’re not sleeping well?” asks your mum.
“Are you up on your phone too late? You know I was reading about that blue light, how it changes your circad-“
“I’m fine, honestly. It was just last night. The storm kept me up,” you lie, cutting your dad off. “I might head off to bed early, actually. Sorry. Thank you for dinner.”
Your chair scrapes a little too loud across the floor as you rose, and you wince while you gather your plate up to head to the kitchen. You feel your family’s eyes on you, your limbs heavy, as though you’re trying to wade through water.
“I’ll come wake you in the morning, okay? Mrs. Thompson’s asked us to help at the fundraiser.”
Another Saturday wasted at church? Didn’t that woman have anyone else she could ask?
You force a smile. “Sure, mum.”
“Sleep well, kiddo,” says your dad.
***
The room is inky black when you’re pulled from sleep. An entirely dreamless sleep, thankfully. Having had at least the wherewithal to put your phone on charge before you dropped off, you thumb the on button to see that it’s just past three a.m.
You sink back into your pillows, fully aware that any attempts to fall back asleep now would be fruitless. Water. Maybe a glass of water would help.
After snagging the glass from your nightstand, you pull your robe around yourself and creep into the hallway, careful to avoid the creakiest floorboards. You shut yourself in the bathroom and flick the light on.
As per usual and courtesy of your sister, it looks like a bomb’s gone off. You had never been quite sure how just one person could generate such a mess, but every week you tidied the bathroom, and like clockwork Abbie would almost immediately undo all your efforts. You shove her hairdryer to the side to fill your glass then set your water next to you. You splash more water down your face and neck, scrubbing your tired eyes. Blindly grabbing for the driest towel, you begin to dab at your face when the most reptilian part of your brain senses movement in front of you, and your eyes fly up.
“Hello.”
You drop the towel and scrabble backwards, the backs of your knees hitting the tub. Flailing as you feel yourself falling, two strong hands reach out of the mirror to clasp yours, halting you.
It’s him. The face from the dream. Except now he has an entire body too, and it’s leaning over the sink and knocking all your sister’s skincare to the floor.
“Do not scream. We have made enough noise already, eh?” comes his voice again, melodious and slightly nasally, inflected with Italian.
You don’t know that you were going to scream anyway. In fact, you don’t even feel capable of getting sound out at all. All your nerve endings feel as though they’re on fire, your heart pounding so hard against your chest it feels liable to break through your ribs entirely. You just stare into his cat-like eyes, and he stares right back at you.
“If I let you go, will you fall?” he asks. You manage to shake your head, and he carefully releases your hands. You sink to sit on the edge of the tub, dumbstruck. He in turn swings a long, slim leg over the sink and clambers out of the mirror entirely to stand before you.
He’s not exactly imposing in height, probably only an inch or two taller than you, but his presence nevertheless fills the cramped bathroom.
Surely I’m dreaming still, or hallucinating, or something…can you hallucinate from lack of sleep?
You close your eyes and scrub your knuckles into them until you see stars, willing the man – if that indeed is what he is – to evaporate.
“You’re not imagining me, cara.”
Your eyes shoot back open and a fresh wave of goosebumps spreads down your limbs.
“Why is this happening to me? What are you?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper.
“So you can speak.”
“Why are you in my head?”
“Because you asked me to.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, in time.”
He crouches to meet you at eye level. A wave of self-consciousness suddenly washes over you and you wind your robe more tightly around your torso, all too aware of your thin pyjama shorts and lack of bra. A smirk flashes across his face.
“Tell me, cara, why the good little Christian girl who has never disobeyed her parents, who goes along to church every Sunday, who never complains…why does she watch Hellraiser at two a.m with the sound almost turned off? Why does she take the long route home from her classes to pore over the Ouija boards in the occult shop? Why does she glance just a little too long at the goth girl in her politics class, hm? What is it you like…her boots? Her fishnets? Or something else?”
White hot shame rips through you, and you feel your cheeks heat. Tears start to well up in your eyes. His face softens.
“Perhaps I have said too much too soon, eh?”
“How do you know all of this?”
“I’ve been watching you for some time. Even before you saw me in your dreams, I had my eye on you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not happy.”
“I’m perfectly fi-”
“You won’t even admit it to yourself, will you? Do you go to church because it fulfils you, or to please your parents? Do you say grace before a meal to thank God, or to not stand out at the dinner table? Eh? Why do you lie to yourself?”
You open and close your mouth like a fish, unable to form a coherent sentence. He just gazes at you steadily, his chest rising and falling underneath the gauzy fabric of his shirt. You see the lines around his eyes under the paint, the flyaways in his hair, how his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. He’s entirely real, but also the most unearthly creature you’ve ever seen.
No one has ever spoken to you like he does, seems to see directly into your soul like he does. It sends an icy thrill through you, a not entirely unwelcome undercurrent to your fear and confusion.
“Why have you been in my dreams for weeks? If you wanted to talk to me so badly, why didn’t you just appear like you have now? I’ve barely slept, I have exams, I’m-”
He places a gloved hand on your bare knee, and you flinch. “Shh, shh, cara. I’m sorry. I needed to wait for a thin time to cross over. I am powerful, but not that powerful, eh? I can’t just go wherever I please. There are ah…rules, strange as that may seem.”
“A…thin time? What’s that?”
“When the barrier between your world and mine is at its thinnest. Think – what day is it?”
You think back to your phone – the 31st of October.
“Halloween.”
He nods. “There are only a few times in the year when we can cross between worlds, and Halloween is one of them.”
“What do you mean we?”
“Well it’s not just me, of course. There are very many of us – you will see.”
“Are you…spirits?”
“Not quite.”
“Demons?”
“No, we are eh…a few steps below that.”
“You have…powers? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”
“Certain ‘powers,’ yes.”
Your mind travels back to the beginning of your conversation.
“You told me earlier that I had asked you to come here. I don’t understand – I didn’t even know you existed before tonight. I thought you were just a nightmare.”
“Just because you aren’t conscious of it, doesn’t mean you aren’t asking. I can see deep in here, cara.” He gently taps your forehead with his index finger as he speaks. “Deeper than you realise your mind goes.”
Again, that shivery thrill shot through with fear runs down your spine.
“But you are very tired. I should leave you to get some sleep.”
“Will I see you again?”
“If you wish it.”
“If I wish it, or if my…” you tap your own forehead, mimicking him, “whatever wishes it?”
He lets out a low chuckle. “If you wish it. I am not in the habit of placing myself where I am not wanted. If you ask for me, I will come.”
“Through the mirror?”
“I will come,” he repeats. “I have crossed over once here, I can cross over again. I do not need to wait for a thin time.”
“What about my dreams?”
“Again, I will not visit if you do not desire it. In any of my forms.”
He takes one last look at you, running his mismatched gaze from your face down to the tips of your toes. And then, just as swiftly as he’d appeared, he’s gone.