Soren found himself standing next to a cabin by a lake. It took him only a moment to recognize it. It was the cabin where John had died. But it had burned down seven years earlier.
“Oh no,” Soren said. “Please not here.”
He struggled to remember how he ended up at the cabin, but his mind was fuzzy. He found it difficult to think, as if some serpent had coiled around his brain and was squeezing it.
Had he been talking to someone? He fought to remember, but it slipped away, just beyond his reach. An image of Sara flashed through his mind. But she wasn’t there now. He was standing alone outside the cabin.
And that was where he intended to stay. There was no way he would go back inside that place. He’d nearly died there. And what he had lost… he couldn’t face it.
Near the entrance to the cabin, he saw a rusted old sign. He took a step forward to get a better look. The letters were faded but he could still make out the message: “Closed at Dark.” The words jarred him. That sign hadn’t been here before. He’d been to this cabin dozens of times. He’d seen the sign somewhere else recently, but not here. As he looked at the sign, he realized he was in a dream. Worse than that — a nightmare.
At that moment, he heard a shout from inside the cabin. For a split second he thought it might be John calling to him. But the voice was far younger and more high-pitched.
“Help me!” Alex screamed.
Soren forgot all about his plan of staying put. He sprinted to the door, nearly ripping it off its hinges. He ran inside to find the cabin in shambles. The table and lamp by the door had been knocked over, the sofa had been yanked from the wall, and several pictures had fallen to the floor. Someone was tearing the place apart.
“Help!” Alex screamed again, this time from upstairs.
Soren ran without thinking, taking the steps three at a time. When he reached the second floor, he found a long hallway with several closed doors. An uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu settled over him, remembering hiding with John in one of the rooms off to the right. But he couldn’t think about that now.
“Alex, where are you?” he yelled.
There was no reply. Soren opened the first door on the right, which he remembered having two bunk beds. But the only thing inside was his old friend Mikey lying in a pool of blood. Mikey was holding his hands to his stomach, trying to keep his insides from falling out. He looked up when Soren entered and then reached a bloody hand out toward him.
“Help me, Soren,” Mikey said.
Soren shut his eyes. It wasn’t real. It was only a dream. But when he opened them again, Mikey was still on the floor, staring at him accusingly.
“Don’t leave me, Soren! Don’t leave me again!” Mikey yelled.
“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he said.
Soren stepped back and shut the door. He knew in his heart that Mikey was long past saving. He went to the next door to the left, dreading what he would find behind it.
Edward, another old friend, stood in the center of the room, staring at him. He was obviously dead, his flesh half rotted off his face. Soren could see bits of bare white skull underneath. Yet Edward’s eyes stared at Soren with a malicious intelligence.
“Welcome back, Soren,” Edward said.
He took a shambling step toward Soren and held out his skeletal arms.
“We’ve missed you,” Edward said.
Soren slammed the door. He was breathing hard and his hands were shaking. Whatever was doing this to him was trying to rattle him — and it was working. He couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be doing.
“Help!” Alex’s voice screamed, his voice coming from the end of the hallway.
Soren ran toward the door, knocking it open. To his relief, none of his dead friends were inside. Instead, he found Alex tied to a bed. His body nearly sagged in relief.
“Is that really you?” Alex asked.
Soren nodded his head and crossed over to him.
“You have to hurry,” Alex said. “He’s coming back.”
“Who?” Soren asked.
But he knew the answer. His mind felt sluggish, but with Alex in front of him, he could suddenly remember what had been eluding him. He had been at an old playground, facing off against… the dreamweaver. That was who Alex was talking about. Somehow the creature had forced him into this nightmare.
“I keep trying to wake up, but he won’t let me,” Alex said. “After mommy left, he brought me here. I’ve seen pictures of my daddy in this place.”
Soren started working on getting Alex untied, but the knots were tight.
“It was your grandparent’s cottage,” Soren said. “Your father loved it here.”
Soren succeeded in getting one arm free when he heard a crash downstairs. Someone started bellowing. Alex tensed up and Soren put an arm on him.
“I’m going to get you out,” Soren said. “I promise.”
He worked frantically at the knot on the other side of the bed as he heard more loud noises coming from below. He didn’t know if the dreamweaver could physically hurt them or not. The images he’d seen in the hallway had been threatening, but they hadn’t actually attacked him. Soren wondered if the dreamweaver’s whole plan was to simply try and scare him to death.
But now that he remembered what he was facing, he would be ready for whatever came through that door. It would probably be a zombified version of John, something that could terrify him and Alex both. But if he couldn’t hurt them, the key was trying to find a way to wake up.
There was another large crash, this one on the second floor. He heard a man’s voice yelling.
“Alex! Alex!”
Soren looked to see panic in Alex’s eyes. He managed to free the boy just as another figure came bursting into the room.
Ken looked hurt and bloodied and he was dressed not in his normal clothes but in an army uniform. It was torn in several places.
Some part of Soren was relieved to see it was Ken and not a zombie version of his friends, until he noticed Ken’s eyes. They were wild with fear, darting from side to side but not seeming to focus on anything.
“Ken, it’s just me,” Soren said.
Ken pulled a gun out from a holster on his side and pointed it at Soren.
“Step away from Alex,” he said. “You need to die. I’m going to make you pay for what you did to my men.”
Chapter Seventeen