“Hi.”
Luna jumped at the sudden sound of Max’s voice and turned to look at him. He had short brown hair, small, deep brown eyes, and a kind of squared-off jaw. He was heavier than she remembered and a bit taller as well.
“M-Max?” she stammered as a slow smile spread across her face. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk, remember? Did you forget?” he asked as he stared down at her with an absence of emotions on his face.
“No, I’m fine. I didn’t think you’d be here…I-I’m just…just thinking,” she replied finally, looking away to the lawn ahead as the smile dropped from her face. This wasn’t a friendly meeting…it was business.
“What about?” Max quizzed.
Luna pondered on what she had learned from Susan last night. She glanced around, not seeing Chance anywhere in sight. She could tell Max everything she knew…and it might be her only opportunity to do so.
“Chance has a really bad secret,” she blurted out.
“Really?” Max asked, his raised inflection showing his interest. She could tell he liked the thought that Chance wasn’t perfect after all. “What is it?”
She glanced around again to make absolute sure she didn’t see him. It was still clear except for the occasional car that went by. “Okay, you can’t tell anyone,” she muttered, taking a deep breath.
“I promise I won’t.”
“Okay…well, he’s a Satanist, and I think he might be responsible for Kate’s death somehow,” she rambled, quickly getting out everything in one go.
“Whoa, slow down. How do you know he’s a Satanist?”
“He took me to his house—don’t ask why—but it looked like it was abandoned years ago. It was run down, and he lit the house with candles. In his back room, he had a pentagram drawn on the wall and bones all over the floor,” Luna explained.
Max let out a breath of air. “Yeah, so, that’s psychotic. At least he let you out of his house after you found out.”
“He figured out that I know.”
“What did he do to make you think that?”
“He pinned me against the wall at school and threatened me to not tell anyone what I had seen.”
“So, you’re right about his Satanism…” Max said, trailing off.
She relaxed the tension she had held in her shoulders; he believed her.
“Why do you think he killed Kate?” Max pondered.
“He never cared the whole time she was missing. He had no emotions at all when he found out she was dead, and the report said she had “satanic marks” on her. Those were my first clues,” Luna told him. “Then, last night, Susan Cross came to my house crying, warning me to be careful because Chance had threatened her with a knife, and she said he killed “someone” but wouldn’t say specifically who.”
“This is really serious,” Max mumbled, shaking his head slightly as he raised a hand to cover his mouth.
“The worst part is that even if I do tell people, they don’t believe me.”
“Have you tried telling anyone else besides me?”
“I told Violet, but she only believed there was something wrong with Chance ‘cuz she saw him attack me. I don’t know if she believes the Satanism, but she has absolutely no tolerance for the dreams. She keeps pushing me to press charges or something.” Luna pressed her lips tight, narrowing her eyes to try to force the memories away.
“Why don’t you?”
“And say what exactly?” Luna retorted. “That a boy who harasses me at school may or may not be a murderer? They’d laugh me out of the office, I’m sure.”
“Did you tell Violet about Susan?” he asked.
“No, because she won’t handle it well. I want her to focus on the dream for now and ignore Chance.”
Max snorted. “Well, Violet can be thick-skulled sometimes.”
Luna shrugged. “I guess so.”
“While I’m here, I wanted to ask you, did you have another dream?”
“Yeah. Did you have a new dream last night too?” She hoped he’d say something that would prove Violet wrong. In the back of her mind, her doubts still replayed over and over. He had pulled pranks on her in the past…a lot of them.
“Actually, yeah, I did. That’s why I asked,” Max replied.
“What happened?” This would be the moment of truth.
“Well, just like in the dream before, I get shot. Normally, it cuts off right there,” Max explained. “But this time it didn’t. I felt myself being dragged, and I had a bad pain where the bullet hit. I felt so out of it, but I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings. I was too weak to fight or even move to look around, so they just kept pulling me. Right before I woke up, he dragged me into a clearing, and I noticed a cabin come into view. It looked like it was next to some kind of temple, or whatever that old building was supposed to be.”
She felt herself stiffen as she realized he wasn’t making it up. If he was, he wouldn’t know about the cabin. In one movement, he had successfully proved Violet wrong.
“A cabin? …I’m in that cabin!”
“Really?” Max questioned, widening his eyes. “Why?”
“I’m not really sure,” Luna admitted. “I got dragged there.”
“That explains it.”
“Let me tell you my version of the dream,” she said. “It begins with me being taken to a cabin. Then, when I get there, the guy shackles me to the wall and leaves without telling me any purpose. He didn’t say why I was there, and after he left, I saw a bloody dagger with a snake carved into the handle sitting on the table.”
“That’s really weird,” Max whispered, almost as if he were talking to himself. “It’s like he’s keeping you hostage for some reason…but why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Do you want to see something else weird?”
“Sure.”
Luna pulled up her sleeves to reveal the purple bind marks on her wrists. They looked even worse in the heavy sunlight.
Max gasped. “Whoa! What the Hell happened to you?”
“I woke up with them,” she replied simply. “You tell me.”
Max let out a low whistle.
“I know,” she murmured, pulling her sleeves back down.
“I’ve seen that dagger before,” Max said as he recovered from his quiet mood.
“Really?” Luna’s lips parted as she stared at him.
“Yeah, right before I get shot I always see the handle sticking out of his pocket. I could never figure out what that was, but now that you mentioned it, I can piece it together a bit.”
Luna frowned; he probably had no idea who it was. She flinched at the thought of the handle sticking out of his pocket…Chance always had the handle to something sticking out of his pocket as well. Her frown deepened. She wished she knew what Chance kept in his pocket more than ever.
“What color is it?” she asked Max.
“The handle? It’s silver, why? You already saw the dagger.”
She came to a halt, standing speechless for a moment as she continued to run through her thoughts. She didn’t like them. She remembered the silver, metallic glint of the object in Chance’s pocket.
“Are you okay?” Max asked, stopping to wait for her.
His voice broke her out of her thoughts, and she began walking again. “I’m fine. The other day you said you knew what was happening with this stuff?”
“Yeah,” Max started slowly. “That’s actually why I’ve come to see you. I have a lot to tell you, but you kind of sidetracked me.”
“Okay, then let me hear it,” Luna chirped. She knew with more information she could work on the dream better.
“You’ll just say I’m crazy.” Max let out a nervous laugh. “I’ve heard it a lot before.”
Luna stared at him; she knew what that was like. “No, I promise I won’t.” Any crazy idea he had was far better than the hazy confusion in her mind.
“You promise?” Max asked.
“Yes!” Luna said, he
r insides screaming with curiosity. “Now, please, tell me what you know.”
Max sighed. “All right, well to start off, every dream takes place in another dimension that I like to call DreamWorld.”
“DreamWorld?” she echoed him quietly. The name sounded like he had made it up. She frowned again. Maybe Violet was right about him. She bit her lip to keep herself from saying a word. She had promised him a chance to explain, and she would give it to him.
“Yes, it’s the place you go when you sleep,” he explained.
“Oh…okay.” Doubt welled into her again. “Go on.”
“Well, in DreamWorld, there are no rules to go by like in normal society. And things that happen in the dreams can be strong enough to have an effect on reality too,” Max explained. “I’m not sure how exactly that happens, but it does sometimes.”
“You mean like my bind marks?” she asked, startled.
“Yes, like your marks,” Max said. “In DreamWorld, the dream characters of everyone come together to play out their fantasies or things they could never do in real life. Some play out their ambition for power or wealth and others talk to people they could never manage to work up the courage to talk to in reality. It’s a great dimension, really. The only problem is that not everyone’s dream character looks and acts like they do in real life. So it can be difficult to identify certain people in dreams. This also makes it a lot harder to stop dreams. I look different in DreamWorld.”
He wouldn’t tell her that he had purposefully changed his dream character’s appearance so that if he got stuck in a bad situation—like the present dream—it’d be harder for the other people to identify him.
“So, wait,” Luna said, holding out a hand as she sorted through his information. “What kind of things do people do in this place?”
“In DreamWorld, you can do anything you want…just by snapping your fingers. Come on, Luna, don’t tell me these dreams are the only ones you’ve ever had.”
She thought about this new information. “What you’re saying is that someone is purposefully dreaming of killing Violet, shooting you, and kidnapping me? It’s not just a coincidence?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Max stated, clenching his jaw. “The only questions left to answer are who and why.”
“Right…and I don’t know the answer to either of them.”
Max pulled the corner of his lip up to show his teeth.
“Is it possible to stop having dreams?”
“No, you can’t exactly get out of a dream,” Max replied. “Not until the Creator is done with it, then you’re free to go make your own.”
“Who’s ‘the Creator?’” Luna questioned.
“The Creator is the person responsible for the dream. In this case, the ‘he’ that we can’t seem to figure out,” Max explained.
“You’re saying we’re dealing with some kind of glorified Freddy Krueger?”
Max tilted his head to the side. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Luna wrinkled her nose. “Maybe in the next dream we’ll find out who ‘he’ is.”
Max shrugged again. “Maybe. Even though it’s his dream, and you’re stuck in it, you can still do whatever you want inside of it. Have you tried breaking your shackles and escaping?”
“I gave it my all, but they held strong.”
“I think I can explain the reason for that too,” Max said.
“Then say it!” she urged.
“Well, in DreamWorld, your biggest fear is your biggest weakness, and it can be used against you fairly easily,” Max explained. “You’re scared of dogs, right?”
“Yeah,” Luna replied, feeling a twinge in her stomach as she guessed what he might say.
“That’s why you can’t break them, they’re dog chains,” Max pointed out. “Whoever kidnapped you knows you well enough that they can keep you there for a while.”
“There has to be some way to get out.”
Max shook his head. “Unless he undoes the shackles or you find the key, you’re stuck.”
Luna frowned as she stared at the path ahead.
“Another thing you should know is that if you die in a dream, you die in reality,” he said ignoring her scoff. “That’s not a rumor, that’s the truth.”
“Really? All the time? Because Violet died in the dream, but she’s still alive.”
“That’s weird,” Max admitted, running his hand through his short hair.
“Maybe it’s because she didn’t sleep the night the dreams started.”
Max scratched his head. “That might be it. He must’ve pulled me and you into it and only Violet’s dream form.”
“So…she’ll be fine?”
“Yeah, she should be,” he said, “and I wouldn’t worry about him too much. I don’t think ‘he’ plans on killing you anyway.”
“If he was going to kill me then he would’ve done it when he killed Violet.”
“There ya go.”
“How do you know all this, Max? Who taught you?”
Max breathed out slowly, appearing lost in thought. “It would take too long to explain, really.”
Luna pouted. “Well, then try to summarize.”
“I’d really rather not, okay?” he snapped.
Luna recoiled, caught off guard by his sudden anger. If he was that determined to keep it to himself, pressing the issue wouldn’t do a damn thing.
They reached Luna’s house. She waved goodbye to Max and watched him walk away before she went inside. She wandered around absently, ending her trek by plopping into a chair at the table. She stared ahead at the white wall. The information in her head made her positive that the dream…or whatever it was…wasn’t a harmless piece of fantasy. Max was oddly touchy about what he knew, and Luna wondered even more how he knew what he did.
By the feeling in her gut, she knew that whatever was going to happen to her next wasn’t going to be anything good.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SUSAN WALKED THROUGH the door of her house and directly into her room without pausing once, not even to get a snack out of the fridge like she usually did. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, glad both of her parents were at work again to save her from trying to come up with an excuse for her mood. She tossed her backpack onto the floor instead of putting it away in her closet and sat down on the edge of her bed, feeling withdrawn. She barely heard Sarah in the other room talking to Maddie on the phone.
Susan had gone the entire day without saying a word to anyone. She doubted anyone had noticed her state of mind had changed. She had carefully covered her neck wound with layers of cover-up and hoped silently that it wouldn’t crack open and bleed. She had been lucky it hadn’t…if lucky was the right word for it. It took hours of preparation to build herself up to go to school, and even then, she had stared at the ground.
“Okay, I’ll talk to you later,” Sarah said into the phone as she came into Susan’s room.
Sarah sat in the bean bag chair. Susan stared down at her hands, picking at the skin around her fingernails, not at all interested in conversation. Sarah looked up at her sister carefully. She narrowed her piercing blue eyes at the absence of emotion.
“Susan, are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just not in the mood to talk.” Her voice spoke the words so quietly, Sarah had to strain to hear her.
“You seem upset.”
“I’m just tired.”
Sarah frowned and moved to sit down on the bed beside her sister. “You’re obviously withdrawn—what’s the matter?”
“It’s…it’s nothing,” Susan said feigning a laugh; she wouldn’t crack what she knew about Chance.
“I’m worried, tell me what’s wrong.” It sounded like more of a demand than a statement.
Susan stayed silent, observing her hands like her life depended on it…maybe it did.
“Is it because of what happened to Kate?” Sarah asked.
Susan brightened a bit as she realized she had an excuse for her
sudden mood change. Kate’s death did make her sad, of course, but she didn’t want Sarah to know what else plagued her mind.
Sarah wrapped her arm around Susan’s shoulders comfortingly and offered her a small smile. “This whole situation is hard on all of us. Maddie was really upset today too, and so were a bunch of other girls. It’s hard knowing something so horrible happened to someone we knew so well.”
Susan bobbed her head, barely noticing her sister’s kind gestures. A tear ran down her face as she remembered Chance’s words once again. If she decided to tell, she would not only be risking her own life, but her kind-hearted sister’s life as well.
***
LUNA TURNED OVER again. She had been lying down for half an hour, but her anxiety had prevented her from falling asleep. She clamped her eyes shut as she tried to force herself; she wanted to dream again. With the new information Max had told her, she could find a way out of the cabin.
She drifted into sleep. When she finally opened her eyes again, the silver dog chains already bound her to the wall. Luna glanced around, desperate to see something that could break them—a hammer, a nail, a piece of wood, or anything sharp and sturdy. After a minute, she gave up her search.
There was no way out.
She only saw one difference in the cabin—the dagger disappeared along with her abductor. She let out a sigh of relief. Maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with him this time around.
The door rattled as someone pushed it open. Bright light filtered in from outside, and Luna narrowed her eyes as her abductor shambled slowly through the opening. She hoped to catch a glimpse of his face, but the hood cast dark shadows over his features, as usual. She gasped in horror when she realized he dragged a body behind him. He took it to the corner of the room and dropped it before standing up straight and closing the door.
Max’s words played through her head. If you die in a dream, you die in reality.
She stared at the body, wide-eyed and horrified.
The boy in the corner looked her age. He had spiky blond hair and shining ivory skin. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. Whoever he was, he would never wake from the dream.
As she continued to stare at the stranger’s most recent victim, she remembered more of Max’s words. Not everyone looks the same in DreamWorld as they do in reality. She hoped the body sprawled a couple feet away wasn’t the dream version of someone she knew.