Chapter Four

Nightmares

When Jessie and Sadie emerged from upstairs, it was clue to the elder Burlingame girl that Chris was more then ready to call an end to the first family dinner. That fact was written across his face as he sat on the couch beside Richard, listening to James' war stories, and waiting for his girlfriend to emerge once more. Jessie grinned apologetically at her boyfriend when he glanced her way, feeling guilty for leaving him alone with her tedious father and unsocial older brother. "Dad, Chris doesn't want to hear about how you flew some war plane." Jessie admonished as she entered the living room with Sadie at her heels.

"Jessie's right, with all those stories you tell I'd be surprised if Chris ever wanted to come back." Sadie quipped in agreement. "I'm surprised Richard does."

James looked slightly hurt but not reprimanded by his daughters, who had told him how boring his stories were every time he opened his mouth to begin one. He thought about giving the Burlingame girls a smart remark, but couldn't came up with one that the sisters wouldn't retaliate against.

"Chris and I have a long drive to get back to our apartment, so I think we'd better call it a night." Jessie told her father as well as Chris, who quickly stood and walked over to his girlfriend.

Chris and Jessie's family said their polite goodbyes as they escorted the couple out to the driveway. Sadie tagged along beside her sister, thinking about what she had been told about what had happened five months ago, as well as her promise not to venture into the woods. It seemed so strange that something so evil had happened in the very woods she had been camping in as a child.

"It was nice to meet you, Sadie." Chris said as he slipped into the driver's side of the car, waiting for Jessie to get in as well.

Sadie nodded a likewise and turned to face her older sister, who embraced her strongly. "Don't go into the woods, please." Jessie whispered in her sister's ear as they parted and Sadie nodded in agreement. "I promise."

Jessie gave her sister a tense smile as she headed toward the passenger side of the car, giving her family a goodbye wave as she shut the door behind her. Chris gave the brunette a warm smile as he pulled the car out of the driveway. "That went well, you got all worked up for nothing." He told her.

"Of course it went well, you're such a pushover." Jessie smiled, pushing her boyfriend lightly in the shoulder. Chris rolled his eyes but smiled nonetheless, glad to see that the sparkle had returned to his girlfriend's eyes.

Not for the first time, Chris wondered if it had been fate that a tractor trailer had wrecked on the highway, forcing him to run into Jessie and her friends. He felt as though he couldn't help but know that things would have turned out much differently if he hadn't crashed into their car; Jessie had said it many times herself, she doubted that she would still be alive if not for him. As he studied the brunette beside him, who was flipping through radio stations, he thanked God or fate or whatever it had been that the tractor had jackknifed that he had been able to save the beautiful girl beside him.

Jessie looked up, frowning slightly when she caught Chris looking her. "What?" She questioned, looking and feeling suddenly very self-conscious.

Chris shook his head with a slight smile. "Nothing." He assured her, returning his attention to the road. "So, uh, how did it go with your sister?" He questioned, assuming that things had gone well judging by the seemingly chipper aura that Jessie projected.

"Fine, she said that she wouldn't go camping." Jessie answered, taking comfort in her sisters words. "And she isn't one to break a promise, not to me." It was true, a thing her sister had never done and Jessie didn't think she ever would.

Chris smiled and nodded. "Well, that's good." He told her, inwardly relieved that Sadie had agreed to stay far from the woods. It would kill Jessie if someone else she loved died at the hands of those murderous monsters.

Jessie nodded in agreement, leaning back against her seat. The guilt that she felt about the deaths of Carly and her friends she was trying elevate by saving her sister. The one month of therapy Chris had made her take after they had escaped the woods had helped her understand that there was nothing she could do to really save Carly and her friends and there was nothing she could have done then. Jessie didn't always believe that there was nothing she could have done and her sessions and apparent revelations had done nothing to take away the guilt that she felt. If she could save Carly through Sadie, then she was all for it, as shallow as that was.

"I still have these nightmares, where we're in the woods and Carly is begging me for help but I can't help her. There's nothing I can do but she just keeps begging me." Jessie mumbled, not quite sure why she was speaking. Chris knew all of her nightmares and fears, just as she knew all of his, but she somehow felt the need to talk to him again. Therapy she didn't need, Chris she did. "And I don't like the feeling I get whenever I wake up and realize that I really can't help her. I never want to feel that feeling again, about someone I could have saved." She stopped there, not quite sure of where she was going. She just knew that she couldn't bare it if anything happened to Sadie and prayed that her sister really wouldn't go camping.

Chris turned the study her once again, a soft expression upon her face. "Jess, it's not good for you to blame yourself for things that you can't change. We both tried to save Scott and Carly but we couldn't and we lived; you can't waste your life trying to save someone that's dead." He told her, knowing that her sudden steps backward had nothing to do with Carly at all. "If you're worried about Sadie, I don't think you have any reason to be; you said yourself that she wasn't going to go camping."

Jessie sighed, shifting in her seat. "I know. But maybe it's not that, maybe it's the fact that those bastards are still out there in the woods. I know that you always pay close attention to the reports about people disappearing in the woods because I see you do it, I see that look in your eyes. What if we told the police about what happened, get those monsters out the woods before they could hurt anyone else?"

Chris considered what Jessie had said as he turned his attention back to the road; ever since he had crashed into the back of Francine's mother's car, he had become a much safer driver. "I don't think that would do any good. Even if they caught those fuckers, most courts would just say they were too mentally ill to stand trail and be punished." He muttered, wishing that it wasn't true. During his studies at college, he'd taken a course about law and persecution and the one thing he remembered -for he had dropped the class rather soon- was that if you seemed crazy enough to be mentally ill, then the state simply shipped you off to let someone else deal with you.

Jessie pursed her lips and gazed out the window, wishing that they weren't having this conversation. For the first two months after escaping the West Virginia woods, she and Chris had thought that a good deal of their problems where over: they had escaped, they had triumphed, the monsters were dead. But, Jessie still remembered the way she had felt when she had seen the news report on the seven o'clock news, featuring a hiker who had escaped near death by something he had called "misshapen monsters." The same monsters that had killed the rest of his hiking party and, subsequently, killed the three investigating officers who had traipsed into the woods, looking for the "monsters." Jessie and Chris had sat in silence, trying to figure out what this new knowledge meant to them; the murderous mountain men weren't dead, they were still possibly in danger.

"They're so goddamn crazy, they just won't stop." Jessie mumbled, leaning her forehead against her window and watched her breath stem the glass.

Chris entwined his fingers with Jessie's and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "You can't save everyone, Jess." He told her, forcing out a wane smile.

Jessie nodded, lifting his hand to her lips and kissing his knuckles, feeling greatly comforted by his words and presence. Thank God for Chris, her knight-in-shining armor.