"ARE you sure that's what you heard?"

"Yes, Timothee. I heard someone calling my name, not once, but many times."

Ríone's first was clenched. She paced back and forth in the living room, on a call with her therapist. It was only a few moments after the incident at the sewer hole. Despite it being the middle of November, the ceiling fan whirred overhead.

"You do not understand, Timothee," Ríone said. "I heard it clearly. I am not lying about it."

"I know, Ríone. You are not lying." Timothee said. "But I don't think it is a side effect of the pills I prescribed to you. I reduced their dosage, remember?"

"Then why did it happen?"

"Well, you are back somewhere where, um, you had made some rather unsavoury memories."

"It was you who urged me to go there."

"Yes, yes," Timothee said. "If you never went back there, then you would be chased by the said memories all your life. You already have a terrible thalassophobia and if you keep nurturing that fear, it would turn into full-fledged aquaphobia."

Ríone rolled her eyes. "How does that answer my question?"

"You are just being delirious, it. Nothing more and nothing else. Ignore them."

"Great. Just what I wanted to hear."

"Hey Ríon-" Before Timothee could finish what he was saying, Ríone disconnected the call. She gritted her teeth and threw her phone on the sofa. She put both her hands on her head. No one was ready to listen, no one ever was. Now even Timothee refused to hear her out. Was he tired of her?

"Oh, no, no. I am thinking too much."

Ríone sighed. She was overreacting. It would do her well if she distracted herself with something else. Like watching a show on her phone, or maybe even sit on the beach for a while.

She loosened the buttons of her trench coat. She reclined on the couch, staring into space. Her face looked gaunt - eyes bloodshot with tiredness, face darkened and hair messy. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. It played with her resolution to stay here and face her demons.

She wished the girls were here with her. At least they would listen to her, keep her mind away from the things that have been happening of late. They were little rays of sunshine in her dreary life. Two bright suns who gave the light to her moon. Oh, how she missed them!

Tiredness kept into her bones. Her eyes drooped. She curled into a ball and reclined against the headrest of the sofa. She put both hands around herself and closed her eyes. Soon, she drifted off to sleep.

Ríone's tote containing her manuscript lay on the floor. Her phone lay forgotten beside her, an incoming call coming from Timothee ignored.

***

She had a dream that day.

In the dream, she was somewhere gloomy. It was silent, like the kind you find in a graveyard. Stretched beyond infinity, the place was the darkest shade of black. Like ripples on water and the lines of crumpled silk cloth, she could see clouds above the darkness. Along with that, there were scattered many stars akin to little yellow beads, yet their glow failed to light up the vastness of the heavens.

For a while she wondered if was amongst them, with the clouds. But then she realised that no, she was not there. She was somewhere beneath it. Somewhere on the ground.

Or not.

After a while of lying still, Ríone could feel something moving past her. The gentle touches of something like water. Sounds of sloshing waves whispered into her ears a hundred different tales, the words of which she failed to discern. A chill encompassed her body.

She tried to move. Tried to raise her hand. Unable to do that, she tried to move one of her fingers. Yet nothing happened. She could not move at all. She could not even see herself.

Where was she? Her mind was a muddle. She did not like it at all. Her heart raced, its pace akin to the beats of a dancer's footings. Each time the water washed over her, her heartbeats grew even faster.

This got to be her worst nightmare: submerged in some kind of sea, unable to move herself and forced to be awake and take in every detail around her. She did not want it. No, she was scared. So damn scared.

She tried to think of things that were not related to the sea. She tried to think about the sun, its warmth on a sunny day. Of the land beneath her feet, the assuring crunch of pebbles as she walked over them. The trees of Loutham, the many sounds of the city.

Yet the more she tried, it trapped her with greater vigour.

Ríone's face went white. Like Miss Eloise's corpse. Each time the waves washed over her, she wanted to scream, but her jaws would not move. Like the dead Miss Eloise. For a moment she wondered, did she still have her eyes? Maybe they were gone, just like Miss Eloise's.

That was when something thin caressed over her face.

It was thin and long, sleek and smooth. From the corner of her eyes, she reckoned it was of a pale shade. Like a hair strand. The same one which she had pulled out of her mouth the day before. Fear, no, something far more primal gripped her being.

For several more moments, she lay in that dreadful state until:

"Ah!"

Ríone woke up with a jerk on the sofa. She held her chest as bouts of fast breaths racked her body. Chills ran down from not just her spine, but from her entire body. That nightmare had left her high and dry.

She looked around herself to find out if she was still in the dreamscape or not. A sigh of relief escaped her lips on realising that the dream was indeed over. She was in the house and although evening had fallen already and it had grown dark, it was nothing like the impenetrable darkness of her dream. Did this what people see when they die? Possibly.

Little did she notice that the hems of her pants were wet.