Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night Book 1) (16 page)

                                                                      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 as she thought. What did Max have to talk about that he couldn’t just say over the phone? She thought about her bind marks. Did Max have some kind of bullet wound from his dream that he wanted to show her?

She bit into the apple again as she sorted through her thoughts. Suddenly, she felt her mouth fill up with a foul liquid that tasted of iron. She pulled the apple back to look at what it was and realized in horror that the white pulp of the apple was covered in fresh blood. In repulsion she threw it across the room to where it hit the wall and fell to the floor.

She felt a tear drop 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 clung there. To her disbelief, nothing smeared off onto her hand. She licked her teeth, and didn’t taste any of the foul liquid, it was gone. What was it that she had just seen?

A knocking on the door broke her out of her thoughts. She let out a sigh; she wasn’t ready to see Max yet. She spit again into the garbage and once again another knock sounded at the door. Max was impatient. Forgetting about her frantic thoughts, she crossed the kitchen to the front door and pulled it open before he had the chance to knock again. Max looked at her through pale brown eyes. She immediately 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 looked at him and then the apple where it sat in the middle of the floor. She shivered as she looked at it, but she paced over to pick it up anyways.

She observed it carefully. The yellowish pulp was beginning to turn brown around the edges and 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 looked down at it through narrowed eyes.

“Humph.”

“So, what did you want to talk about?” Luna asked as she threw the apple remains away.

“I want to talk about the DreamWorld some more,” Max said.

“There’s
more
to it?” Luna asked feeling dumbfounded.

She didn’t know how much she would remember if Max kept shoving information at her.

“Yes,” Max said. “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 that is?”

Luna shook her head feeling hesitant to know.

“It’s the bullet wound that I got from the dreams. You’re not the only one with marks.”

“That could’ve killed you!”

Max nodded. “Yeah, it could’ve. Today I want to talk to Violet about these dreams too. She
was
in them after all. It’s possible she could’ve had one of the dreams, but is refusing to tell us about it for some reason.”

She looked at him feeling full of doubt as she remembered Violet’s prickly attitude towards the dreams. “But she doesn’t think the dreams are something that needs to be taken seriously,” she pointed out. “She listened to me the other day, but that might only be because Chance was with me and she didn’t wanna leave me alone.”

“Wait. Chance was with you?” Max asked scrunching up his face in disbelief. “Why?”

“He followed me like usual,” she said. “Violet will not be happy if we bring these dreams up to her again…especially at her own house.”

“Too bad for her, I need to talk to her. Somehow she’s as tied into this whole thing as we are. Even if she doesn’t believe so,” Max said.

“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked. “I’ve tried to talk to her about it and she won’t listen.”

“True, but you know where she lives,” he said.

Luna frowned again. “What if she doesn’t want to talk to us?”

“We have to try,” Max said as he stood up.

She stared wordlessly at Max. He seemed so confident and so full of knowledge about something many people would call ridiculous. She wondered how he had gotten to the point where he knew that much. Had something like this happened to him before?

                                                        ~~~~~~~~~

Chance pulled the ribbon out of Susan’s hair. The blood stained white lace had held her hair out of the way, and now it flowed everywhere. He tucked the ribbon away into his pocket and laid Susan’s head down gently into the dirt. After he was done carving the symbols into her skin (and properly completed his ritual unlike he had been able to do with Kate) he had cut her throat about an hour ago and let her die. He had been picking through his truck for an idea of what to do with her body, but he couldn’t seem to find anything.

He sighed as he stared at her. This was hard on him because halfway through he had slipped out of That mind. He had still been carving her skin and Susan had cried herself hoarse when he felt himself returning to his usual mind. It wasn’t long after that he had decided to kill her so that he wouldn’t have to listen to her pained cries anymore.

Moving her would only end up drenching him in her blood. In That mind he always knew what do, and it required little thought. He frowned and got up to go to his truck again trying to find anything that could help.

He rummaged through his backseat and found an old duffel bag. He sighed and pulled it out before dusting it off and opening it up to see how big it was. It wasn’t a permanent solution he knew, but it was all that he could find. With the sun up it was much more difficult to successfully get rid of a body. He’d have to wait until nightfall to get rid of her and until then he’d keep her well hidden.

With the bag tucked in his hand he went back over to Susan. He picked up her tiny body as carefully as he could manage. He bent her arms and small body and dropped her into the bag. It was a tight squeeze, but when he pulled the zipper, it closed. He picked it up by the handle and found the bag was heavier than he thought.

He lugged it over to his truck and set it in the backseat confident that since he had waited for the blood to dry, it wouldn’t leak through the bag. He wiped his hands off on his shirt and climbed into the front seat of his Honda Ridgeline. Now that Susan was taken care of, he’d fix the Violet problem.

He drove the twenty minutes to her house and parked a few houses away. He looked in the backseat to make sure the duffle bag was out of sight from anyone walking by and climbed out. He walked over to Violet’s house and pounded on the door roughly with the side of his fist. Violet opened it, and he could see the surprise. She made a move to close the door in his face, but Chance put his boot in the way.

She gulped but watched as he went inside her house.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned, hatred in her voice. “You aren’t welcome.”

“That’s too bad because I got a little message to pass on.”

She shut the door behind him, and Violet glanced into the other room.

“Uh, Brian. Can you go to your room for a while?” she asked her brother.

“Nuh-uh,” he said.

“Brian! You’ll do as you’re told!” Violet said getting angry, and Chance could hear the sound of retreating footsteps as her brother decided to listen.

“What do you have to tell me?” Violet asked, bitterly crossing her arms over her chest.

“Not
tell
you, but
show
you,” he said pulling out his trusty dagger. He ran his finger along the blade gently.

Violet stood her ground. “I’m not scared of you.”

He turned the point to her and held it to her throat. “You should be because I’m your worst nightmare.”

“More like Luna’s worst nightmare, I saw what you did to her in the school’s bathroom.”

Chance growled, this wasn’t going the way that he had hoped. “Do you know how much it hurts to die?”

Violet’s confidence died down a bit. “No.”

“Let me give you a taste,” he said and grasped her chunky arm. In a flash, he pulled the blade across the skin, opening a deep gash that instantly began to bleed.

“Ow!” Violet exclaimed pulling her arm back. She clutched her hand over the wound, but her blood seeped around it.

“Imagine that on your throat,” Chance threatened holding the sharpened end of the knife to her again.

“Okay, I’ll listen,” Violet whispered. “What do you want?”

“I want you to back away from Luna.”

“But she’s my best friend.”

“I don’t care. This means that when she comes to you be as distant as possible. Remember that next time or I won’t be cutting your arm.”

Violet thought about it. It was selfish of her to abandon Luna when she needed a friend more than ever. She knew that her life was at stake if she didn’t listen.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Good,” he said smiling at her.

Outside, Luna and Max approached Violet’s house.

“There it is,” she said as Max and her stood on the sidewalk outside of it.

He took a deep breath and looked at her. “Okay, now comes the difficult part.”

Luna nodded and felt a tear drop from her eye. Max scrunched his face up as he looked at her, but he didn’t say anything as he turned back towards Violet’s house. Max led the way up the steps and onto the porch. He knocked a few times.

Inside the house, Chance’s eyes widened in surprise. He crept over to the window beside the door and parted the curtain a bit to peek outside. He could see Luna and a large boy beside her on the porch.

“Who is it?” Violet asked.

“Luna and some kid,” he said. “Go out there and see what they want.”

Violet swallowed nervously but didn’t move for a minute.

“I’ll stay out of sight behind the door. If you slip, I’ll hear you. Stay distant,” he pulled a white cloth out of his pocket, “and wipe up your wound.”

Violet swallowed nervously and grabbed the cloth. She patted away the blood before she passed him to answer the door. She tossed it back to him before she stepped out of the house and closed the door behind her.

“Luna and Max, this is a surprise,” she said looking at them through wide eyes.

She could feel Chance’s eyes burning two holes in the back of her head.

                                                        Chapter Twenty-Nine

“We need to talk to you,” Luna said feeling unsure of what to say. How in the world could they possibly get her to listen?

“Another prophetic dream?” Violet retorted and looked away from them.

“That’s only part of the story,” Max said.

“Yeah,” Luna piped up. “Max has a lot to say. We really need to talk to you about DreamWorld.”

“DreamWorld?” Violet echoed doubtfully. It was the same tone Luna had used when Max first mentioned it. “Hope you didn’t stay up too late coming up with that.”

Max looked at her and Luna caught the agitated gleam in his eyes. She knew he hated Violet’s attitude as much as she did. “Would you just shut up for one minute so that I can explain?”

Violet glared at him, but for once said nothing.

“DreamWorld is in another dimension that’s parallel to ours. When we sleep, our spirits leave our bodies and go there and act out fantasies and whatever isn’t possible for them to do in reality. Sometimes when the spirit never returns from that realm, then that person dies in their sleep,” Max explained.

Luna bit her lip at the last of Max’s description. He knew as well as she did that Violet’s own mother had died in her sleep. Luna glanced at Violet. She was surprised to see the puzzled, gloomy look that had shadowed Violet’s face.

“It…it makes sense,” she said finally in a voice so quiet that Max and her almost hadn’t heard her say it.

Luna stared at her in disbelief. Did she finally believe?

“Did you have the dream that we did?” she asked almost feeling too afraid to ask.

Violet looked thoughtful before she finally replied. “No, I didn’t.”

“That’s impossible,” Max said sounding confused. “Your dream character is in it. You had to have had it at least once.”

“I haven’t slept in days,” she insisted. “Trust me, dreaming would’ve been beyond impossible for me.”

Max frowned as he stared at her.

“But every night that you told me you had the dream I had a terrible headache,” Violet said to Luna.

“That makes sense assuming you got shot in the head,” she murmured.

“Then it’s like I said,” Max said ignoring her. “’He’ managed to get her dream form into the dream but not her whole spirit.”

She looked at Max in relief that he hadn’t actually said Chance’s name.

Violet shrugged. “I guess. Who’s this ‘he’ that you mentioned?”

“The guy that’s responsible for the dream,” Luna told her making sure that she didn’t inadvertently mention Chance’s name as well.

Violet nodded in understanding.

“Well, whatever the case, there’s more I should explain,” Max said.

“There’s more?” Violet asked Luna’s unspoken thought.

“Yes, I haven’t told you about Dimensional Theft,” Max said. “It’s pretty important.”

“That sounds bad,” Violet said.

Luna narrowed her eyes and silently agreed with her on that. “What’s ‘Dimensional Theft’?”

“It’s bad. It happens when you grab something in your dream and wake up before you have the chance to let go of it,” Max said. “You’ll have it in your hands in this world.”

“Really?” Luna asked in disbelief.

If only their spirits went to that realm then she wondered how it was possible to bring something back.

Max nodded at her.

“So, you’re telling me that if I dream that I grab a vase, I’ll wake up holding it?” Violet asked doubtfully.

Max nodded again. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Luna looked at Violet and her face looked cross. The new information had stepped over the line of the things she was willing to believe. She looked back at Max and noticed his face was sincere.

“It’s not bad to do Dimensional Theft, is it?” Luna asked warily.

Max shook his head. “As long as it’s just items you’re pulling through then it doesn’t matter.”

“Can you pull a person out?” Violet asked quietly.

Max turned to look at her, his eyes were round. “Yes. That’s the worst thing you could possibly do ever. Especially if the person had already died in reality.”

“Why?” Luna asked confused.

“Well, in the living the dream character will take over the real person and their identity will be lost forever,” Max said ominously.

“What happens if the person already died?” Violet asked.

“Then you get a vampire or a zombie, you know a reanimated corpse of some kind,” Max replied.

“How do you pull someone out?” Luna asked warily. “I don’t want to do that if it’s as bad as you say.”

“Good,” he said. “The way to pull them out is if they’re touching you or you’re touching them when you wake up. It often takes weeks, but when it’s done its bad news because most dream characters are drastically different from their normal selves. Most of the time they’re polar opposite. It’s hard to tell how they’ll end up once they’re in the real person.”

“So if ‘he’ is touching me, and I accidentally wake up, he’ll be pulled through?” Luna asked Max worriedly.

“Yes, and then ‘he’ will become much, much more evil. Since he’ll be working on the dream characters ambitions.”

Everyone fell silent as they took in Max’s words. To Luna it was obvious that this dream affected them all in some way. It could kill all three of them and she feared that that was just what the dream was going to do.

“Violet, you have to come in now,” her little brother squeaked nervously at her as he peered out from the doorframe. “It’s time for lunch.”

“All right, you little monster,” Violet said to him (words intended for the big monster that hid behind the door) before she turned to look back at Max.

She looked like she didn’t want to go in yet, but she didn’t have a choice. She knew that.

“It was nice to see you again,” she said to Max.

He nodded at her in response. “If you want we’ll find some other time to talk, but in the meantime be sure to think about everything that I told you today, okay?”

Violet nodded and Luna wondered if she really would think about it or not. The look that flashed across her face made Luna unsure. She waved goodbye at her anyways and Violet waved half-heartedly back before she turned and disappeared into the house.

Max looked at Luna and then turned to lead the way off of the porch. She followed right behind him. They walked slowly towards her house in absolute silence. There wasn’t much that they could say to each other.

Luna felt a tear drip loose from her eye again and she wiped it away as quickly as she could manage. Max looked at her and frowned like something was bothering him.

“Are you crying?” he asked her slowly.

She shook her head. “No, my eye just does that sometimes.”

“When it happens is it just one tear usually?” he asked. “Or is it more than that?”

Luna frowned, what did it matter to him? It was just a single tear…it wouldn’t change anything. “Usually it’s just one.”

“Hmm,” Max said thoughtfully.

She looked at him curiously and realized that his face was screwed up in thought.

“What is it?” she asked him wondering why he had asked. “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “There’s something you should probably know before you go back to DreamWorld,” Max said suddenly as he changed the subject without answering her.

She looked at him and frowned. “I thought I already knew everything I needed to know.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“What don’t I know?” she asked confused.

“Chance has an entire pack of dogs that are fenced in by the cabin. Rottweilers, German Shepards, pit bulls. You name it, it’s probably there. He must really want to keep you in that cabin…or keep other people out,” Max said.

“A pack of dogs?” she asked nervously as the thought of sharp teeth and flashing eyes flooded her mind. “How do you know about them?”

“There’s one window in that room that he put me in. I saw him feed those dogs a huge slab of steak last night. They tore it apart like it was a piece of paper,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t try to run. Even if you do break those shackles, there’s no way out alive.”

Luna shuddered at his words. She definitely did
not
want to end up like that steak. She knew Max was right; running away from all the madness would be futile. It was made worse by the fact that she needed to sleep and every night she would be returned to that demented forest.

Deep in her heart she knew how it would play out. She needed to find a permanent way out and until then she was stuck…stuck there until Chance was finished with her…or she finished off Chance.

                                                        ~~~~~~~~~

Chance came out from behind the door as Violet came back in. He moved over to the window to peek out and caught a glimpse of Luna and the big kid (Max?) as they walked down the street together. He had heard the entire conversation; it had been about the dream. Luna seemed worried and confused but Max knew what he was doing.

Was it possible that he was the mystery kid? He frowned thinking back to the dream. The kid beside Luna and the kid he had somehow managed to trap in his dream looked drastically different from one another, but he knew that that was possible in DreamWorld. It made identifying people harder. But it wasn’t so hard when the idiot made it blatantly so clear. He had an idea of who to target in reality. Violet watched him carefully not quite understanding what he was doing.

“So, did I live up to expectation?” Violet asked sarcastically looking down at the wound on her arm.

Chance turned his gaze to her and it clouded over with disgust. “Yeah. And don’t believe any of the dream nonsense.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really. I haven’t been sleeping anyways so dreams are kinda not in my mind.”

He stared at her for a moment in disbelief. The reason that his spell hadn’t worked was because she hadn’t been asleep. He had beaten himself up and doubted his abilities when he had done nothing wrong.

“Whatever, just stay away from Luna, okay?” he said patting his pocket to remind her of his threat.

She nodded and turned away from him as he opened the door and left her house as quickly as he could.