Chapter One

The nightmares began in July.

They sprung from nowhere, twisted horrors spawned from the darkest depths of my imagination to plague me as I slept. They were naught but airy figments, none concrete but each more terrible than the last. They woke me, screaming and sweating, at night's unholiest hours.

They made me fear the darkness.

Because that is what they were: darkness. They all took me to a world of thick, meaty black that was all-powerful and all-consuming, that gouged out my eyes with its completeness. There were no monsters, demons, or any kind of demented creature. What was terrifying, really, was the nothingness. The total lack of shape or matter, the uncertainty of whether or not I existed. And I dealt with these fears night after night without fail, until they had become somewhat of a routine.

For two months, they were the same.

In November, they changed.

I don't know how it happened, exactly. As I remember it, my dream began in the dark place; the horrible, suffocating, aphotic fearscape that claimed my mind when I closed my eyes. I was running, sitting, hiding, screaming—I was everywhere at once, but so was the darkness, and it was choking me. Its tendrils were in my nose, down my throat, clawing into my brain like it was trying to devour me from the inside out. I was dying. It was killing me.

And then I woke up.

Except that I didn't.

I opened my eyes, and it was dark. For a sliver of a heartbeat, I wondered if I was still in my dream—then I saw the outline of my dresser on the wall across from my bed, and knew I was in my room. I thought I was awake.

But I wasn't.

The best way I can describe it is that my brain was conscious, but my body was still trapped in dreamland. I couldn't move. Everything, from my head all the way down to my toes, was pinned to my bed, paralyzing me. I tried to move, to shift, to combat the terror growing in my chest, but my body would not respond.

That's when I realized that the tightening in my lungs was not fear.

And I was struck with the absolute certainty that there was something sitting on top of me. As soon that knowledge registered, the pain instantly doubled. Something dug painfully into the soft spot just below my rib cage—knees, knees, they had to be knees—pressing my lungs into my spine and cutting off my air completely. I could not breathe.

I mostly remember the fear. This fear, it was different from any kind of sensation I had ever felt before. It wasn't like the nightmares, where I knew that the terror would dissipate when I woke. Here I was awake. I was conscious and alert, but I could not move, I could not breathe, and I was seeing strange shadows seething in the air before me. It felt nearly identical to being swallowed by the darkness.

Except that this was real.

How long did it last? One minute, maybe two. But it felt eternal. Panic coursed through my body, not quick and frenzied but slow and thick like molasses, thorough, so that it managed to fill every crack and crevice. I couldn't call for help, because my lips were glued shut, and I didn't have the air to make a sound. It was like drowning and drowning and drowning, but never being able to give in to the blackness.

And in those awful moments, I truly believed that I was going to die.

When the paralysis released me, it was sudden. One moment, I was frozen, crushed beneath the humanoid weight on my chest. The next, I was flying up off my bed, into a sitting position, propelled by all the pent-up energy that had been building in my limbs.

I sat there, gasping, clutching my blankets to my chest and sucking in giant breaths of air. My eyes darted nervously around the room, searching for those misty shadows, but I saw nothing. I wondered, briefly, if it had just been a ghastly new chapter of my nightmare. The more my heart rate slowed and my nerves unwound, the more that seemed possible. I tried to convince myself that it was only a dream, albeit a very realistic one, in hopes that it would lessen my distress.

Regardless, I didn't sleep again that night.

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By the time morning rolled around, the strange nightmare had faded into a mildly discomforting thought at the back of my mind. It all seemed so much less terrifying when there was sunlight streaming in through my window, chasing away the darkness.

I dragged myself out of bed at around eight A.M. and shuffled, zombie-like, to the bathroom adjoining my room. The face waiting for me in the mirror was nothing short of horrifying; my brown hair was a frenzied mess, and my eyes were baggy and full of sleep. I brought a hand to my forehead, which seemed to be paler than usual. Sweat came off on my fingertips. I frowned at my reflection for a moment, but quickly attributed my appearance to lack of sleep.

Shivering in the cold bathroom, I padded barefoot across the white tile and turned the shower to its warmest setting, so that steam filled the bathroom and clouded the mirror. Twenty minutes later I was standing in front of my dresser, washed, dressed, and making hideous faces as I put on makeup. My hair hung down my back, damp and wavy. It was annoying, the way it dripped into the hood of my gray jacket, and once I finished my eyeliner, I pulled it up into a sloppy ponytail.

My mother called me before I finished, shouting, “Par-ker! Come down here before breakfast gets cold!” I couldn't see her, but I knew she was at the bottom of the stairs, probably holding a pan full of whatever the hell she was cooking for breakfast. I caught a whiff of its putrid stench from all the way up in my room.

“Com-ing!” I yelled back, snatching a tube of ruby red lipstick out of my makeup bag and smearing it onto my mouth. I kneaded my lips together as I belly-flopped onto the beige carpet and dug my shoes—a pair of beaten-up, floral Doc Martens—out from beneath my bed.

I threw them over my shoulder, clutching them by their fraying laces, and scooped up my textbook- and laptop-laden backpack. Before leaving the room, I cast one more glimpse into the mirror, silently approving the way my lined eyes and red lips popped out of my thin, angled face. I gave my reflection a staunch nod before moving on, leaving my bed an unmade mess behind me.

My mother did not turn around to acknowledge me as I swept into the kitchen, a tall, ungainly mess of teenage limbs. As I dumped my baggage unceremoniously onto the ground by the doorway, she stayed facing the stove.

“Give the dog food,” was all she said.

I sighed at her back, rolling my eyes. But, obligingly, I slipped past her and into the indoor patio, where my dog's empty food bowl lay next to her bright blue bed.

“Zip, food!” I called, shaking a small mountain of kibble into the bowl. At the sound of my voice, there was a yipping response, and a moment later, a white, fluffy ball came bursting into the room via doggy door. Zipper, my three-month-old American Eskimo puppy who really isn't anything but two eyes and a pink tongue buried amidst a sea of albescent fuzz, hurtled past me on four stubby legs and shoved her face in the food pellets.

“Good morning to you, too,” I muttered, stuffing my hands into my pockets as I reentered the kitchen.

Breakfast had finished cooking by then, though my mother was nowhere to be seen. A plate was waiting for me on the dining table: mysterious yellow sludge that may or may not have been scrambled eggs. I took one whiff, made a face, and dumped all of it into Zipper's bowl. She scarfed it down without complaint.

My stomach growled as I washed the plate, but I swallowed down the hunger. I'd pick up something from the cafe at school, like always.

When I turned from the sink, my mom was standing right behind me.

I jumped nearly out of my skin, the plate flying out of my hands and clattering against the counter top. The surprised tightening in my chest sparked a memory of the terrible dream, but I shook my head to clear it away. It was, after all, just a dream.

“Sweet Jesus, Mom,” I murmured, absently pressing my fingertips to my jugular to feel my rapid heartbeat. “Don't do that.”

She scrutinized my face, our identical hazel eyes locked in an unwitting staring contest. Hers narrowed more by the second, and I knew that in her head, she was criticizing my face, my makeup, the way I'd done my hair. She would have said it all out loud, too, if I hadn't told her to shut up the last time she'd tried.

As it was, she merely snapped out a crisp, “Put on your shoes, and hurry up. You're going to be late for school.”

◙════════════◙

Butler County Community College is a pretty little school about fifteen minutes away from my hometown borough of Callery, Pennsylvania. It doesn't have the largest campus, but it's clean and grassy and surrounded by trees. It's also the only conceivable college that my mother would allow me to go after her expedited homeschooling plan had me graduating from high school two years earlier than planned.

She came very close to not letting me attend at all, but I threw a fit and managed to convince her to squeeze six classes a week into my “busy” schedule. That, though, didn't happen without the compromise that I wouldn't pursue my license until I turned eighteen, thereby forcing me to let her drive me to school.

It wasn't the best deal, but I could survive it.

Mom pulled up in front of the main building at approximately nine o'clock; fifteen minutes before my first class was due to start. As I got out of the car, she watched me silently. Her dark chestnut hair was pulled into a severe bun on top of her head, matching perfectly with her intimidating pantsuit.

“You didn't make it, did you?” she demanded as my feet hit pavement, her tone sharp and accusatory.

I raised my eyebrows at her as I shrugged my backpack onto my shoulders. “What?”

“Your bed. You didn't make your bed, did you?”

I heard the danger in her tone; I needed to say yes, because she was explosive. But I hadn't, in fact, made my bed, and she knew that because I never did, and we had that same conversation every single day.

“No, Mom,” I said patiently, “I did not make my bed.”

Cue the atomic bomb.

“Parker Sage Elway,” she began, fisting her hands around the steering wheel, “how many times do I have to tell you to make your bed before you get it through your head? Do you ever listen to anything I say? I swear, young lady, if you continue acting like this, you can forget about ever leaving the house for anything ever again.”

“Yeah. Sure. Right. Gonna be late, bye!”

Mom didn't say anything in response, but I could feel her staring daggers into the back of my neck as I strode away. I forced myself to lift my chin and not look back, though I could feel her gaze even once I'd entered the main building with all the other students. She wouldn't leave, I knew, until my first class had begun; she never did.

When people first meet my mother, they sometimes tell me that they're scared of her. And I can understand that. If it's your first encounter with a commanding, obsessive person like her, it can be a little bit disconcerting. But me; I'm used to it.

That was just my mom; Iris Elway: strict business woman, domineering single parent, and absolute control freak who seemed to have gotten the idea into her head that she was a fascist dictator. Were this a movie, I'd go on to say that despite all of those unfavorable qualities, she was actually a kind soul with a wonderful disposition.

But it's not, she wasn't, and if I said that, I'd be lying.

In the hallway between the arts and humanities buildings, two hands clamped onto my shoulders, stopping me in my tracks and pulling me back into a warm, sweater-clad body. Arms wound around me, and I looked up to see a familiar face smirking down at me.

“Morning, Logan,” I said, snaking out from his embrace. My best friend returned the greeting, along with a light smack to my ponytail.

“Did you stop at the cafe?” he asked, knowing first hand the horrors of my mom's so-called “healthy cuisine.”

I shook my head, grimacing as my stomach grumbled right on cue. I'd passed by the small coffee shop, but the line was so long and I had so little time that I'd decided to skip it.

“Well, then,” Logan said, “today's your lucky day. I've brought you breakfast.”

With his curly brown locks askew, Logan turned to his backpack and fought with the zipper for a moment before slipping out a paper bag and handing it over to me. His freckled face broke into a dimpled grin as I glanced inside to find two glazed doughnuts; the special, extra-greasy variety that's only sold at the school's cafe.

“Thank you,” I cried, mouth already full with half of a doughnut. Logan just laughed shyly, swatting at his ear as we made our way to class a few doors down.

I met Logan Dearborn in a kid's swimming class when we were both five years old. We hit it off instantly, and, although he quit the very next day, stayed best friends for eleven years after. Logan was one of the few people that Mom let me leave the house to see. He's awkward, endearing, and so totally awesome with adults that he even managed to charm my mother, a feat that no one else has been able to accomplish. Like me, he graduated high school at sixteen, and, being that he was enrolled in a real school instead of homeschooled by a nutcase mother, I think his early graduation can be attributed solely to his abnormally high intelligence level.

Logan is very smart.

We walked into our first class of the day a few minutes before the lecture, as the professor was setting up his notes at his infamous stone pedestal. The class was Psych 101, otherwise known as general psychology, and though it met three times a week, it was the only course identical on both of our schedules. Logan's other classes were all art-based, while I was floating around between other psych courses and criminology.

“So, Parker,” Logan said casually as we took seats at the front of the hall, “did you sleep okay last night?”

I was in the middle of pulling my laptop out of my backpack, and I froze. My entire body stiffened, and I knew that Logan noticed because he put a steadying hand on my arm. All morning, I had done a fairly good job of erasing the night's terrors with daylight, but a small sliver of fear still lingered in the back of my mind. At Logan's mentioning, I immediately felt it slither down and clutch at my erratically beating heart.

“Parker?” Logan asked carefully. “Are you okay?”

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do so much as scream. How could I possibly be okay?

“Parker?” he repeated.

With a big gasp of air, I sat down hard, slamming my laptop onto the desk. My backpack lay open, stuff falling out of it, but I ignored it as I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

“I'm okay,” I murmured belatedly.

Quietly, Logan sat down beside me and pressed his shoulder to mine. “Was it bad last night?” he whispered.

I nodded silently. At that point, he was the only other person who knew about my nightmares, because he was the only one I could trust not to freak out about them. And unlike most people, he knew how to handle me when I got upset.

“You want to tell me about it?”

He was looking at me, watching my face with evident concern, but I couldn't return his gaze. I whispered, “It's nothing, just weird,” and tried to stop myself from shuddering again at the memory.

At that moment, the professor, Dr. Hennessy, cleared his throat at the pedestal and informed us that the lecture was about to begin. I numbly reached over to turn on my computer and start up the voice recorder, but Logan didn't move. He was still staring at me.

“Parker,” he said seriously, “are you sure that you're all right?”

Deep breath. Three seconds in, four seconds out. Forget, forget, forget, because it was only a dream.

“Really, Logan, don't worry,” I assured him, forcing a smile as I turned to look him in the eye. “I'm perfectly fine.”