Dream Weaver (Dream Weaver #1) (7 page)

Chapter 8 Lose Yourself

             
Obsidian eyes smoldered through the darkness. His presence expelled the nightmares. Heartsick memories quieted under his touch and his voice spoke peace into my weary body.
Hush.
His words, a balm to my tattered soul; brought together the flayed strips of my heart, anointed it with healing salve. He sat beside my huddled body, quietly humming a song that quelled the roiling emotions and imagery that churned within me; a song both foreign and familiar—my sleeping lullaby.

              I awoke, half-expecting company reclined casually on the bed beside me, his presence clung so vivid and real in my mind. I swore I still felt the tingle of his fingers lightly brush away the stray tears. Still, I knew I was alone, except for the bundle of fuzz that now slept curled up at my side every night instead of in his crate.
So much for crate training.
Regardless, there was something new and different the last couple of mornings—something missing. I scrabbled around in the clutter of my head trying to find the difference. Something warm, something solid. Something safe and something not—alone?

             
His features bubbled abstractly out of the mire of fog and confusion. He could have been the dark-haired, dark-eyed grandson of Elvis Presley. His complexion was smooth, grownup with just a trace of adolescent softness, with faint freckles that dotted his cheeks and nose. His eyes glowed dark and brooding in the reflection of the moon off the snow, the kind of eyes ‘emo’ kids only got from heavy black eyeliner warmed with a flame. His full lips pouted as though begging for a kiss.
As if angels kissed.
His voice soft and warm like my favorite blanket, wrapped me in safety and security, a mantle against the fear.

             
During my waking hours, images broke through on top of other images inside my head, so solid and real, while others were overshadowed, like one balloon inside another. I began to think that maybe a mild form of crazy twisted my brain. Maybe Adrian’s prescription for antidepressants wasn’t a bad idea after all. Maybe that’s why insanity seemed so much more reasonable.             

             
Simple things bewildered me. How was it that I woke up each morning with a new command for Eddyson and he picked up on it immediately, as though he’d already been taught? Why did I awaken with the distinct impression that I hadn’t been alone all night? What was this shadow that soothed me? Where did he go when the sun came up, with a whispered thought, “Forget…”? How did he evaporate with the night, along with all concrete memory of him?

             
A legitimate impression of familiarity niggled at me, but the details eluded me. I chased the memory around and around in my head until it made me dizzy. Was he real? Or had I truly, completely and finally lost my mind?

             
If
he was real, and
if I really thought about it, under the circumstances, it was more than kind of creepy. A strange man, angel, whatever he was, was manifesting in my room by night. He crawled into my head and rummaged around, only to melt away with the first light of day.
No. Absolutely nothing mental with that.

             
Human or ethereal, my instincts detected nothing evil or sinister in him, only a gentleness, a compassion that radiated from him like heat waves on a blistering summer day. I wanted to trust him implicitly, this figment of my imagination.

             
I vacillated between believing in his reality and knowing full well he was only a creation of my depressed delusions. If he was real, it meant he was more than human, because no mere human could get into my house undetected. Although, getting into my house seemed the least of my concerns. How was he getting into my head?

             
If I admitted to myself that he was a phantasm…I just couldn’t. I could not bring myself to believe that I was truly that insane and not simply depressed. Who wouldn’t be in my place? Of course, don’t they say that crazy people don’t think they’re crazy?

             
That feeling, that knowing, that I knew him from somewhere, had met him before, still obsessed me more than anything. It wasn’t that we were friends, just had met. Somewhere.

             
Somewhere—warm. The smell of pine. Gentle wind. A warm spring day. Towering trees. Shades of green. Rushing water. A painting. No…graffiti.
That was it! Dead Man’s Creek.
I saw this angel with obsidian eyes in the face of a man I bumped into down in the ravine almost a year ago.

             
Not long after we moved out of Spokane to Mead, I discovered the path that led from the railroad tracks down to the creek. The sun rendered the scent of pine from the trees, a gentle wind caressed my face and tugged playfully at my hair. I explored for hours, or until the sun began to dip behind the crests of the trees and the buzz of mosquitoes replaced the drone of the bee, and the crickets and frogs began their night song.

              Usually, no one else was down there when I went, but occasionally I would run into other explorers walking or swimming their dog, or taking a dip themselves. My memory drifted to another warm summer day a couple of years ago. Some friends and I had just finished wading and chasing frogs in the cool mountain run-off, and we trudged up the path toward home. I took up the rear of the group, lingering to ensure that we packed out what we packed in. As we passed through a scraggly cluster of trees, I spied something so amazing I couldn’t believe no one else had seen it. It was a testament to nature’s profound gift of camouflage that everyone else in the group walked right by it.

             
“Holy sh…” I whispered hoarsely, and everyone turned to see what was wrong. There, not five feet from the path, a mother deer had bedded down her tiny fawn while she went off on her own to forage. He must have been too young and weak to keep up with her.

             
My friends followed my stunned gaze to the still, tiny fawn. The only movements from the spotted, russet body were the shallow panting breaths and the occasional twitch of his glossy black nose or blink of his wide frightened eyes. Obviously, Mother had told him not to move a muscle no matter what, and he was obediently complying.

             
We all took turns getting a closer look and taking pictures with our cell phones, though we were careful not to touch him. We didn’t want to risk the mother abandoning him because he smelled like human. Dad always told me never to touch baby animals. Nature knew what it was doing. So, after a few brief minutes, we all backed off and left him alone. I went back, later that evening before dark, to check on him, worried the coyotes or dogs would kill him, and he was gone. Thankfully, we hadn’t frightened him to death or his mother away.

             
Smiling, I shook off the memory. I still had that picture on my phone, a reminder of one of the most amazing days of my life. Wildness always kept the beauty of its creatures at a distance. I cherished the up-close experience forever digitally captured.

              Last spring, the haze of my grief entombed me in my own personal crypt, and I remembered little but that one fatal day. Though now, with direct thought, obscure impressions of a different day, a couple of weeks before the crash surfaced from within the morass. I was out scouting alone, no real concern for my own safety, though I carried a balisong—strictly for self-defense. As I tramped along, I came upon a dark-haired young man roaming along the opposite bank of the stream. I slipped on thick layers of pine needles and promptly fell on my butt. Despite a quick recovery and trying to back away unseen, he spotted me.

             
“Hey,” he said, instead of ‘hi’, and grinned at me across the rushing water.

             
“Hey,” I said back, as I brushed off my backside. I hoped I didn’t look too inept and disheveled. He appeared to be about my age, and kind of cute from a distance, with stylishly messy, dark hair and stunningly blue eyes; a blue so dark they were almost black. They reminded me of the sky just before the sun drags its last rays of light to the other side of the world.

             
“Nice place,” he said. His voice was low and gentle. “Do you own this property? I mean, if I’m trespassing I apologize. We just moved in downstream a ways and I was just wandering….”

             
I raised my hands to stop him. “No, no. It’s not mine. I think it belongs to the guy who owns most of the land around here,” I said with a gesture around the bowl-like valley the creek meandered through. “He’s cool with people coming down here.”
I should not have told him that
.

             
“Oh, well. That’s cool.” He turned and started to walk away into the woods, but paused and turned back to me with a dazzling, boyish grin. “Maybe I’ll see you down here sometime.”

             
“Yeah. Maybe.”

              With that, he turned and walked away. I never did see him again, although I vaguely remembered hoping that I would bump into him. Then, obviously, I forgot completely about him; his memory drowned out by the tragedy that devastated my world a couple of short weeks later.

             
“That’s it!” I said. I lurched back to the present and slammed my hand down on the bed. Eddyson jolted awake and scurried away from me, stared wide-eyed with a mixture of curiosity and fear. “Oh, I’m sorry puppa. It’s okay. Come come. Snug up.” I gently patted the bed to coax him back to me so I could pet him back to sleep.

             
Now I knew he was real. I replayed the memory over and over in my mind to extract every detail I could remember. I absently ran my hands across the definition of Eddyson’s little muscles, left dark trails across his pelt from the rake my fingernails through his fur. Once he was snoozing soundly, I got up gingerly and went to the living room. I pulled back the curtains from across the French doors to the side deck, and stared into the darkness to the south of the house. Okay, so apparently, he lived down there somewhere; possibly the new house with the tennis courts that had just been built in the last couple of years. I thought about going there, but surely, they would think I was crazy. Who wouldn’t? Besides, what would I say? ‘Hey, is there a dark haired, blue-eyed cute guy who lives here, who may or may not be somehow coming into my house in the middle of the night, bypassing my security alarm, manipulating my dreams and then trying to make me forget him when he leaves?’

             
Nope, nothing mental at all with that!

             
No, I had to find a way to break whatever spell or memory block he was using on me. There had to be some way to remember him while I was asleep, to wake up while he was still there.

             
Oh jeez. Even that sounds completely insane.

              Despite the insanity, I knew he was real and maybe he was some kind of hypnotist.

             
But how the hell is he getting into my house?

              I tried to rouse myself the next morning as the dream of him faded, but he had lulled me too deeply into sleep, though I really didn’t mind after last night’s phantasm. It was like reliving the assault again in grisly detail. Cool fingers touched my face, the nightmare disintegrated, replaced by dreams of Eddyson frolicking in the sun.

             
The next morning, I managed to stir and moan, which brought him racing back to me to hush me gently back to sleep. His gentle hand stroked my hair. “Forget,” he whispered.

             
Who was this beautifully handsome young man with his rock god face, who entered my home every night, and mysteriously managed to bypass my alarms? Surely, there was something
super
natural about him. Normal people could not enter a secured home undetected, or charm people to sleep, or sweep away their nightmares with a touch. Maybe, he really was an angel.

              I read a book once, by a pastor from Idaho who received visitations from angels. He described them as massive men, seven foot tall or more and they all look different just like people. Their skin glowed, warm and radiant, and their eyes were molten like lava. He said he could actually feel compassion radiate from their celestial eyes. I found this same kindness and compassion in the eyes of my visitor.

              I was extremely skeptical when people started talking about otherworldly encounters—angels, demons, aliens and the like. This pastor’s account was one of the few I believed.

             
Stories of the incubus from a book on paranormal lore I’d read, told of a male demon of sorts that came to women in their dreams to have sex with them while they slept. No, that couldn’t be. He was no demon. He took away the nightmares instead of bringing them.