Oh, I love writing nightmare scenes, and look! Here comes one now! But if there's one thing I love more than nightmare scenes, it's reviews . . . Not that I'm implying anything . . . ;) Hope you're having fun, and thanks so much to all those lovely people who have reviewed and/or added this to their Favourites/Alerts lists! It's people like you that make the world go round (God, that was sickly!). Thank goodness, my computer has forgiven me for whatever it was I did, and is now allowing me to respond to any reviews! (hint hint!)
Have fun, guys! This chapter's a good 'un!
Mommy, by Psychedelica
Chapter Four
I'm Not Scared of the Dark
That afternoon was beautifully sunny and a perfect temperature, and Jane found himself beginning to drift off on the bullpen couch as Rigsby and Cho discussed the new evidence that had come in on the chop shop case.
Without even realizing he'd fallen asleep, Jane found himself in a very dark and very small space. It took him a while to realize that he'd crossed from reality to the dream world, but it didn't make him any more relieved. He was overwhelmed with a sense of claustrophobia and a terror at the darkness, though he hadn't feared small spaces and the dark since he was a kid.
That's because I am a kid now.
And he was. He was a child again, living the memories that had been fading from his mind over the last few years.
He remembered being scared of the dark until he was about sixteen or seventeen, after he ran away with Angela. She helped him overcome his fears. But the claustrophobia, that had taken longer. He'd still been claustrophobic after Charlotte had been born. In fact, it had been his time in the psychiatric facility after they died that had rid him of his terror. Phobias tend to get cured when you're around psychiatrists, after all.
But no, not in this dream. In this dream Jane was a child. That little boy he used to be, huddled up each night in his blanket, staring into the darkness and praying that nothing leapt out of him.
He was in complete darkness, in a space so small he could feel each wall pressing in on him. But it wasn't oblivion, wasn't the worst possible place his mind could invent. It was a real place. He remembered it clear as day.
In his dream, he yelled out. His voice was unlike his usual. Like everything else, it had reverted to his childhood.
As the familiar feelings of terror crept over him, Jane pounded on the roof of the 'room' he was in, until it gave way and he leapt out.
He was . . . somewhere. Somewhere familiar. He could place where he'd been before, but couldn't put a name to where he was at the moment.
Home?
Wherever he was, be it home or elsewhere, he wasn't comfortable. At all.
It couldn't be home, could it? He felt too ill at ease for it to be his home. And if it was, it made no sense that the only thing he was thinking was, I want to go home!
He began to walk, walk somewhere. But where? Not sure. But he was walking. He felt small, so small. He passed the kitchen sink but wasn't even tall enough to see the basin. Two, three years old, maybe? However old he was, he knew that when he heard that bloodcurdling scream, he mustn't come any closer.
Unable to breathe, his younger self paced back to where he'd come from, back to the Box.
The Box? Where had that come from? And why did it hold such powerful, emotional memories? Jane wondered what the Box was, and why it was so important, and then remembered.
But there was no time to think. He wasn't by the Box anymore. He had heard another scream, another terrified scream, and had rushed in that direction. Now he was there, there and seeing it, seeing it all. It was happening, it was happening again. The badness and the sadness and his little childish mind wanted him to cry.
In desperation to get away from this horrible dream, Jane forced himself awake. He jolted up on the couch and choked back a primal scream.
"Jane, you okay?" It was Lisbon, and she sounded concerned. Really concerned. Jane wondered whether he'd cried out.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied, brushing her off like he always did.
That night, he couldn't face sleeping in his cold, uninviting hotel room. In actuality, he wasn't sure he could face sleeping at all after the two dreams of the last twenty-four hours.
But nightmares take their toll, their toll of exhaustion, and pretty soon he found himself falling asleep in the attic of the CBI.
Again, Jane dreamt. Not of the Box (whatever it may be – he only partially remembered), nor of that house that he may or may not call home, nor of his wife and child and Red John, but the dream that he had forgotten the day before.
Except today he didn't forget it.
Lisbon settled down in bed wondering about the chop shop case. Jane had predicted that one of them was fleeing, and hate as she might to admit it, he was usually right about that sort of things. Trouble was, they hadn't found the last criminal yet.
Just as she had drifted off to sleep thinking of Jane's hunch, she was awakened by the ringing of her cell, the caller ID showing Jane's name.
Grumbling to someone who wasn't there, she fumbled to answer the cell, only for it to ring off. She stared at it for a minute or two before deciding he had misdialed and rolling back into bed.
Unable to get back to sleep after about quarter of an hour, she dragged herself out of bed, complaining to thin air that it was half one and she had work tomorrow. She went downstairs to pour herself a glass of milk and maybe grab a cookie or two.
A short while later, she awoke to the distant sound of her cell ringing. She was in her living room armchair, half-drunk glass of milk on the coffee table. With a sigh, Lisbon sprinted upstairs and grabbed her cell, answering before it rang off again.
"Jane?" She knew it was him again from the caller ID.
There was a long silence apart from his breathing. It was heavier than usual, as if he were running . . . or panicking.
"Jane, you okay?" she asked, suddenly wide awake.
"Sorry Lisbon," he muttered, and then hung up.
She stared at the phone for a while, wondering whether the last half hour had really happened, or whether she was still tucked up in her warm bed.
She had just gotten into bed again when the cell rang for a third time. Stretching out to answer it before he had a chance to change his mind about calling her, it was no good. She was too slow. He rang off halfway through the second ring.
"God, Jane," she mumbled as she got out of bed and pulled some clothes on. "What have you done this time?"
Lisbon rushed to CBI HQ, the most likely place she'd find him. If he wasn't there, she had a vague idea about which hotel he was staying in. And if he wasn't there . . .
She shook her head, decided to get the here and now over and done with before she thought too far into the future.
Luckily, her first guess was right. He was in the CBI, in his attic, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. She called his name, gently. Didn't want to startle him. He didn't respond.
"Jane, are you okay? Has something happened?"
He glanced up, and Lisbon was shocked at how haggard and worn-down his face looked.
Jane had been thinking. Three times he'd called Lisbon. He hadn't expected her to actually come into work. Wasn't sure whether he wanted her there or not.
She asked him whether something had happened. He wanted to tell her yes, lots of things had happened. In all these years he'd been on this planet, hundreds of things had happened, and about half of them he'd blotted out.
His mother. He'd blotted her out. He could pretend that he couldn't remember her because he'd been so young, so very young when she'd left. He could pretend that Scarlett would make his world so much better. He could pretend that . . .
He had the receipt for the Italian restaurant in his hand. He'd been fingering it since he woke up, and the ink was all but rubbed off. But two words remained, stuck in his memory much more vividly than they were on the paper.
Crab cakes.
"Tell me about Mom," he remembered begging his dad. "Everybody at school talks about their moms, but I don't know anything about mine!"
His father had grinned wolfishly, almost teasingly. He hadn't realized at the time quite how scary his father could be. "I'm busy, Paddy."
"You're always busy!" he'd complained. He must have been eight, maybe nine. "Please, Dad! Just one little thing about her!"
His father had laughed – a loud, booming noise. He had only been slightly afraid back then, but when the older Jane looked back on it, he was terrified. "Just one little thing? Okay . . . uh . . . she was allergic to shellfish. Wouldn't touch the stuff. She had this allergic reaction when she was just a girl, younger than you are. Spent over a week in hospital."
At the time he had savored this piece of information about his mother, but for some reason he hadn't made the link.
Shellfish.
Crab cakes.
She didn't smell like lavender, at least not anymore.
"That woman, whoever she is . . ." He paused to calm his breath, tried to stop himself for hyperventilating. "She isn't my mom."
Lisbon looked confused. "How do you know? She left when you were three. She would have changed a bit in all those years."
He shook his head, swaying as he did so. Jane swallowed. "My mother didn't leave when I was three."
He saw her eyebrows knit together and heard her asking questions, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of questions. Or maybe just a few. But he didn't hear. Didn't hear anything. He was thinking instead.
Eventually he heard, "Jane? Jane!" and snapped out of his daze. He glanced up as she asked, "How do you know? Did you remember?"
He looked her directly in the eyes for what seemed to be an eternity and a half, and then answered oh-so-quietly, "Because my mom's dead. And I think . . . I think I might have witnessed her murder."