She thought she saw one of the hands twitch then wave at her for a second. She blinked and narrowed her eyes. The hand wasn’t moving. She forced herself to look away from the body. Swallowing heavily, she found it next to impossible to see what her abductor could do.
When she finally dragged her eyes away, she noticed he sat in a chair a few feet away, staring at her. When she finally looked at him, he stood up and stepped over to her.
“Are you going to kill me too?” Luna asked quietly.
He laughed and crouched down to the same level as her, to better meet her eyes.
“No, that’s not in my interest. I have other plans for you.”
His hands moved up to his hood, and with a single movement, he pulled it down. Luna gasped when she recognized the face that had been hidden for so long.
“You…it’s been you the whole time,” she murmured and felt her insides twist in an uncomfortable feeling she couldn’t identify.
Before her crouched Chance. She stared at him, and he stared back; the moment seemed interminable. She couldn’t believe for a moment she had doubted Susan.
He was a hunter, and if he killed animals like he had done to that bird, killing people wouldn’t bother him either. She frowned as she thought back to all her conversations with him. He had never actually said what he hunted, only that he enjoyed it.
She shuddered at the thought.
Chance smirked at her. “Of course it’s been me. Why do you think I didn’t want you to sleep during class?”
Luna stared at him, speechless for a moment.
“Well, what’re you going to do?” Her voice sounded pitiful, even to her own ears. She hated herself for the sound.
Chance moved closer to her. He studied her, only an inch from her face. She pulled back as much as she could, but the wall made sure that wasn’t far.
“Right now, I’m gonna fix this,” he said as he pulled two pieces of white cloth out of his pocket.
Horrified, she saw fresh red blood splattered across one of them.
She pulled her wrists against her chains again. With his free hand, he grabbed her right wrist and tucked one of the cloths between her and the cuff. Then, he did the same to the other one.
As she watched him, she realized why he had been speechless at the original sight of the marks on her wrists. He hadn’t thought they would follow her out of the dreams, but they had.
“What’s the point of me being here?” she asked quietly.
“You’ll find out soon enough, doll, but not quite yet. Until then, these cloths should lessen the marks you seem so eager to show everyone.” He touched her chin affectionately, and she pulled away from him in disgust.
“Don’t touch me.”
Chance smiled at her, showing his teeth. “You’re cold even in my dreams.” He stood up to move back over to the body lying slumped in the corner.
“Why?”
Chance stopped in mid-movement and turned to look at her, a slight smirk on his face as he raised an eyebrow. “Why what?”
“Why did you kill that person?” she challenged, gesturing to the body at his feet.
He snorted in reply as he stared down at it.
“Fine, if you won’t answer that question then answer this one for me,” she demanded.
His eyes darted up to her and he sighed, clearly agitated with her questions. “Fine, what is it this time?”
“Tell me why you killed Kate,” she said, licking her bottom lip bitterly. “She was your friend.”
Chance tensed. “I was not responsible for what happened to her.”
Luna stared, her lips parted as she tried to find her next sentence. Even though they were the only ones in the cabin, she couldn’t get him to open up to her.
“But you were, weren’t you? Her body…they said it had strange marks on it. That’s a dead giveaway,” Luna pointed out.
Chance smiled at her, and she see he tried to hide his panic behind it by the way he ducked his gaze, fidgeting in a way he didn’t usually move. He stepped around the body and closer to her. She looked up at him through narrowed eyes. He was so full of depravity, such a malevolent monster, that it was almost amazing that only Max, Susan, and she knew about it.
“Just stop with that, okay, Luna? I’m gonna make David ground you if you keep saying this stuff about me.”
“Go for it. You sick freak.”
He frowned. “Fine, then how’s this? I tell the whole school that we’re in love first thing Monday morning. Your father might even be up for making me your husband. I have the money, after all.”
Luna stared at him in horror. That was a step too far. “Okay, fine. You win.”
Chance opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. Without saying another word, he grasped the shirt collar of the boy on the floor and began to drag him down a hallway. He disappeared from sight and a trail of blood followed. She heard a door open then a loud thump, and she assumed it to be so loud because he threw the body like it was nothing but a bag of dirty laundry. He closed the door, and she heard a lock click into place.
When he reappeared in the room, he turned to her. He searched her eyes, tapping his foot on the ground and running his tongue along the inside of his cheek. He turned away once more and walked toward the door. He cast one last quick glance at her before he left, closing the door behind him.
Luna closed her eyes. She wasn’t so curious about what her dreams could bring her. All she wanted was to not be a part of it anymore. She wanted out of the crazy dream. If she didn’t find a permanent way out then she could end up like the body he had thrown into the closet.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHANCE’S EYES FLUTTERED open as sunlight flowed over his face. That dream had been taxing on him, but he had found something vital within. Luna knew he had killed Kate, and she could have only known if Susan told her. Keeping her alive had been a bad choice.
He had to figure out what to do with Violet as well. Sighing, Chance dragged himself out of bed. He had a lot to do and little time in which to do it. He smoothed back his messy blond hair and put on clean clothes. Picking up his trusty dagger, he tucked it into his pocket.
First things first, he would have to pay Susan a visit. He sighed again and found his way through the broken house and outside to his waiting truck. Yawning, he started the engine and drove toward Susan’s. Fifteen minutes later, he parked in front of her house.
He went to the front door and tested the doorknob, finding it unlocked. He went inside and heard a bit of shuffling from the kitchen. Sarah came into the room, and he froze.
“Good morning, Chance,” she said to him politely, yawning as she clutched a bowl of cereal in her hand.
He smiled to himself; at least Susan hadn’t leaked a word to her sister.
“Morning, Sarah. I’m here to see Susan.”
Sarah nodded. “Good, she could use a friend. She’s up in her room, but I don’t know if she’s awake yet.”
“I’ll check. Thanks.”
She nodded again and went back into the kitchen. Chance made his way upstairs to Susan’s room. The door was shut so he pushed it open as quietly as he could. Her face seemed so peaceful as she slept, a white nightgown covering her frame.
Good, that’ll save me some work.
He smiled and stepped over to her. “Rise and shine, sunshine.”
She woke slowly, and her face clouded with fear as she caught sight of him. She cringed away from him until her back hit the wall. “What are you doing here?”
“Someone didn’t keep her mouth shut, that’s why I’m here.”
“Yeah, I-I did.”
He grabbed her arm. “Come on.”
“No!” she said. “Please…”
He paid her no attention as he pulled her off of her bed and down the stairs. Luckily, Sarah stayed in the kitchen this time. He herded Susan out the door and into his truck. He pulled his bundle of rope out of the back of the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. When he
locked the doors, Susan began sobbing hysterically, knowing perfectly well what was coming to her. The sound reminded him too much of Kate.
“Please don’t kill me,” she begged as he tied her up.
“I gave you a chance. All you had to do was keep your big mouth shut, and you could have lived. But you disobeyed me. Just be glad I’m not killing your sister as well,” he said, binding her wrists together behind her back.
Another heavy sob escaped her lips. Chance secured the ropes and started the engine to drive back home. Susan sobbed harder still and bashed her shoulder into the door in a weak attempt to escape.
The sounds of her panic and pain made his mind shift from the one he could control to the one he couldn’t. The more she cried, the faster he felt himself sliding into that mind.
“Save your strength. You die today. No avoiding that.”
“No!” she screeched at the top of her lungs.
He sighed, annoyed, and stopped the car for a minute as he reached into the backseat to grab a cloth. He tore off a strip and crammed it into her mouth. He began to drive again, and her cries still sounded, only muffled. He drove faster; he couldn’t wait to end it already.
When the trees came into view, he stopped the truck. He switched off the engine and pulled out his dagger. A flood of tears poured from her eyes, but he set to work anyway, cutting symbols into her skin. Her death would be both long and painful. He would stick carefully to his rituals and he wouldn’t regret any of it.
***
WHEN LUNA OPENED her eyes again, she found herself back in her own room. She lay in bed as she remembered every detail about her most recent dream. The most prominent thing was that her abductor had turned out to be Chance. The person who had shadowed her for months and threatened her, and she hadn’t given him a second thought.
She shivered; Chance had more problems than he let people know. When he had killed that bird and not shown a split second of remorse for the life he had taken, she should’ve known something was wrong with him. Luna looked at her wrists. The bind marks seemed deeper, as if they had bled during the night. The white cloths he had stuffed into the shackles had done nothing. DreamWorld was close enough to hurt her but far enough away that it couldn’t be stopped.
She thought about the body Chance had dragged into the cabin. Who had that been? She rubbed her eyes to remove the last few remaining traces of sleep and noticed sunlight streaming through her only window at the foot of her bed. She stretched and sat up. It was Saturday—thankfully, that meant no school.
She didn’t know how she would’ve handled seeing Chance. She frowned, staring absently at the sunlight for a moment before she kicked off the covers and stood up. Slowly, she stumbled over to her closet to get dressed. When she had finished, she padded into the kitchen, relieved to see her father wasn’t awake yet. She crept quietly across the linoleum floor to where the phone sat on the wall. She thought about calling Max.
She had a lot of information she wanted to tell him, to see what he thought. Maybe he had had a new dream as well. Max seemed to know a lot about DreamWorld, and that was a good thing. Luna picked up the phone and held it to her ear as she clumsily dialed Max’s number. The phone rang a few times. Just as she considered hanging up, she heard a click from the other end of the line.
“Hello?” Max’s voice cracked as he spoke. Luna realized she must’ve woken him up.
“Hi, Max, it’s me.” She hoped he wasn’t too tired to hear her out.
“Oh, hey. How are you?” His voice still sounded groggy. “You’re up pretty early.”
“I’m good. But forget the small talk—I have some news,” Luna said, clutching the phone tighter to her face.
“What is it?” Max asked, yawning loudly. “It better be good.”
“I had another dream, and I finally found out who ‘he’ is.”
“Really?” He sounded mildly impatient; hopefully that meant she had caught his interest. “Who is it?”
“It’s Chance,” she replied, almost choking on the name.
“Of course it’s him,” Max snorted. For a minute, he stayed silent. “How did we overlook it?”
“I don’t know, all the pieces were there,” Luna muttered, sending a frown toward the kitchen floor. “He killed someone last night.”
“How do you know?”
“It was in my dream.”
“Tell me what happened,” Max prodded.
“Okay, well, once again I’m shackled to the wall, but this time the dream started out that way. The cabin was bright, and I could see everything around. Chance came in with the body of his most recent victim and then he pulled down his hood,” Luna explained.
“And that’s it?”
“No, there was more. He threatened me to stay quiet about Kate. Then he took the body away.”
“…and that’s it?” Max repeated.
“Didn’t you hear me? He killed someone!” she said, waving her hand in disbelief. Her tone was louder than she intended, and she glanced over her shoulder to the living room to make sure her father was still nowhere in sight. “You told me yourself that if you die in a dream you die in reality.”
“What did the kid look like?”
She snorted in exasperation, pulling the phone away to stare at it for a long moment. Why did it matter now? “He seemed our age or maybe a bit older. He had spiky blond hair. I didn’t really look at him. Death freaks me out, you know.”
“He’s not dead.”
“What?” she exclaimed, thinking back to the body that had lain completely motionless in the cabin.
“I know because that’s my dream character.”
Luna stood silent in disbelief. The mysterious victim had been someone she knew after all. Had Chance found him because he was someone she knew? She shuddered again at the thought of Chance’s name.
Everything within the dream began to unravel into something truly awful. Her abductor had been her worst enemy. He had managed to find a way to torture her even while she slept. In a way, her dream was a twisted reality of the things she already knew. She wondered if Chance purposefully targeted her friends so she wouldn’t have any of them left to tell his secret to.
She wondered how Violet was still alive.
“I tried to get your attention so you’d know I was okay. Didn’t you see me wave?” Max asked.
“I thought I imagined that. When Chance dragged you in, did you know it was him doing it?”
“No, I didn’t. I had my eyes closed.”
“Why didn’t you open them?” Luna knitted her eyebrows together at her own question.
“If I had opened my eyes then Chance would know I was still alive, though I think he already does.” Max sighed.
“Why’s that?”
“You saw him put me in that room. The inside is as big as a closet, and he keeps the door locked,” Max explained.
“So, he’s keeping you hostage too,” Luna said quietly in realization. “But why?”
“I don’t know,” Max replied, “but before he put me in there, I heard him say something to you. What did he say?”
She bit her lip. “He told me he wasn’t going to kill me, and I’d find out why I was there.”
Max fell silent on the other end of the line. “I’m coming over your house. We need to talk about this in person. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
“All right,” Luna agreed as part of her wondered why he couldn’t just tell her whatever he had to say over the phone. “Bye.”
“See you in a minute,” Max promised and hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LUNA SIGHED AND went over to the refrigerator to pull out an apple. She sat down at the table and bit into it. What did Max have to talk about that he couldn’t say over the phone? She curled her lip at the ugly marks on her wrists, wondering if Max had some kind of bullet wound from his dream to show her.
She bit into the apple again and felt her mouth fill up with a foul liquid that tasted of iron. Luna pulled the fru
it back to study it and realized in horror that the white pulp of the apple oozed with fresh blood. In repulsion, she threw it across the room; it hit the wall and fell to the floor. A tear drop slipped from her eye as she spat out the bite she’d taken into the garbage. She wiped her face with the back of her hand to get any blood that might have clung there, but nothing smeared off onto her hand. She licked her teeth and didn’t taste any of the fetid liquid; it had gone. What was it she had seen?
A knock on the door broke her out of her thoughts. She breathed out slowly, not ready to see Max yet. She spit again into the garbage as another knock sounded at the door. Max was impatient. Setting aside her frantic thoughts, she crossed the kitchen to the front door and pulled it open before he had the chance to knock a third time. Max looked at her through pale, brown eyes. She stepped aside to let him in, and he sat down at the table.
“So, what’s with the apple?” he asked as she closed the door behind him.
Luna’s eyes darted from him to the apple where it sat in the middle of the floor. She shivered as she looked at it but paced over to pick it up anyway.
She observed it carefully. The yellowish pulp turned brown around the edges, but there wasn’t a single trace of blood. She frowned. What had she seen exactly?
“Oh, it must’ve gotten knocked out of the fridge,” Luna replied as she narrowed her eyes at it.
“Hmph.”
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Luna prompted, hoping her dislike for the apple didn’t show as she threw its remains away.
“I want to talk about DreamWorld some more.”
“There’s more to it?” Luna asked from her place beside the trashcan. She set her hands on her hips, cocking her head to the side. She didn’t know how much she would remember if Max kept shoving information at her.
“Yes,” Max said, chewing on his bottom lip. “But I wanna show you something first.”
He lifted up his sleeve to show a deep purple wound with a yellow bruise around it on his shoulder. “Do you know what this is?”
Luna shook her head, and her heart pounded with anticipation.