3:16 am
By: Stretch
Softly, the cries reverberated though the paper thin walls and into my room. I rolled over in bed and ran my hand along the night table. I turned the clock towards my tired eyes. 3:16 it blinked in bright red. There was another quiet shout from the room next to mine, followed by a dull THUMP. Fumbling in the darkness, I threw back my covers and reached for the terry-cloth robe draped across my desk chair. I tied it tightly around my waist as I padded across my floor and into the hallway beyond. Making sure to avoid the places where the old wood paneling creaked and groaned, I sidled up to the doorway leading into the room next to my own. Into Danny's room.
Peering through the partially open door I could barely make out the shape of his head, hidden within a tangled heap of sheets and blankets that now covered the floor. He'd fallen out of bed. As I watched, he suddenly jerked, his hands flailing out spastically. Face buried in the pillow, he shouted out something incoherent. I though I recognized my name hidden in the gibberish. With quick steps, I closed the distance between us and crouched down beside him.
"Danny?" I whispered. I put my hands on his shoulder and shook him gently. "Danny? Wake up…" He thrashed again, underneath my arm.
"No," he moaned, pleading with someone only he could see. "Please, no…"
"Wake up," I ordered, louder this time. I shot a glance back over my shoulder and out the door, trying to gauge if we were making enough noise to wake our parents, but I didn't think they could hear. My dad could sleep through a three alarm fire. I shook him harder.
"No…no, don't…NO!" Danny shot upright, arms outstretched as if fending off an invisible attacker. His eyes were wide, darting around frantically as he panted and gasped for air. I gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze.
"Easy. Just relax," I said softly in my most comforting voice. Instantly his eyes focused on me, and I saw a spark of recognition.
"Jazz?" he asked softly. "What's going on? What's wrong?" Confused, disoriented, he whipped his head around quickly, soaking in his surroundings.
"Nothing. You were dreaming," I told him, rocking back on my haunches. My legs were starting to cramp from squatting on the floor. "You fell out of bed." He sighed deeply and ran his fingers though his hair. Now that he was awake, he was slightly embarrassed.
"I didn't wake you up, did I?" he asked, abashed. "I didn't mean…" he started to say, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand.
"Yeah, like I was sleeping anyway," I muttered sarcastically, my turn to be embarrassed. It had been almost 5 days since the…since the incident, and I'd had about a total of 5 hours of sleep since then. "Sleep, what's that?" I laughed sardonically. Thank God for espresso, otherwise I would have stopped functioning days ago. Danny didn't look like he found that too amusing, though. He suddenly became very focused on unwinding his legs from his bedspread.
"What happened," he mumbled, "at…at the assembly…did it really scare you that bad?" He wouldn't look at me as he yanked his foot free from its blue plaid cocoon. I nodded, watching the clouds roll by outside his window.
"I guess," I muttered. "I didn't think it would be so bad, but every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing myself as a smoldering pile ash scattered all over the stage, or I see-," I caught myself before I slipped and said that I kept seeing my brother being slaughtered before my eyes. But just because I didn't say it, didn't mean I didn't see it. Over and over again in my head, as I hung on the verge of an exhausted sleep, I would see my brother being ripped apart, one doubt, one fear, one insecurity at a time, right before my eyes. Over and over again the images played. Over and over again…
But the thought that haunts me most of all is that I put my brother right into Spectra's path. That without my meddling, none of this might have happened. The rational part of my brain knows that that's not true, that Danny would've gone after Spectra even if she hadn't been treating him, because she would have gone after me. But the over-protective, big sister part of my brain still feels guilty. I was drawn out of my stupor by Danny's voice.
"I…I never really got the chance to tell you how sorry I was," he said. I glanced up in surprise. "You know, about how crabby I was with you. I know you were just trying to help me." I nodded. "I would've…I'm glad you're okay," he stammered.
"S'okay," I said, with another wave of my hand. Slowly, I got to my feet, pulling my robe tightly around me, trying to ward off the late fall chill that was sinking into our house. "I'm just thankful I've got a little guardian angel keeping an eye on me." I shot Danny a small smile over my shoulder. He was too busy pulling his sheets back onto the bed to notice. I was walking out when he finally spoke.
"I was so worried that I was going to lose you, Jazz. That I wasn't going to get there in time." I looked over my shoulder at him. He was gazing at the storm clouds brewing outside, rubbing his forehead with one hand, like he was trying to ward off a memory. "I never would've forgiven myself if you'd…if you'd gotten hurt." He slumped down on the bed and buried his head in his hands. "I'm so sorry Jazz…"
Without a second thought, I walked back across the room and plopped down next to him on the bed, sliding my arm around his shoulder. There just weren't enough words for us to say what we needed to, so we sat in silence, watching the moonlight play across the floor. Finally, I whispered,
"I am so proud of you, Danny. Do you know that?" No response. "So proud." I chose my next words carefully. "I don't think there's many kids out there who could handle all this as well as you have." I guess I didn't chose carefully enough, as he shrugged my arm off and stood up suddenly. He paced across the room for a few moments before settling down by his partially frosted window, looking out over Amity Park.
"I keep seeing that day, too," he confessed, sighing deeply. "I'm outside the gym, and I'm watching your speech through a window. But when I try to get to you, I can't." He shrugged helplessly. "I'm stuck behind the window. I can't pass through it, I can't break it. Nothing! I'm just forced to watch as that last domino falls and…and you…" he faltered and leaned his head against the window, his breath making a circle in the frost. "I mean, it's okay when I'm fighting and I'm the only one at risk. But when it starts spreading…when you and Tucker and Sam get involved, suddenly there's all this pressure…'cause I can't let myself make a mistake that would get you hurt…you know…" He was babbling, stumbling as he tried to vocalize everything that he was dealing with. I know that feeling well. Finally, he just threw up his hands in exasperation. "It just seems like every fight gets closer to home…"
"Have there been a lot of fights?" I asked. He laughed sarcastically, more like a bark than his usually light chuckle.
"There's been enough." He walked away from the window and started pacing again. "There's been more than enough…"
Then why do you keep fighting all those ghosts?" I questioned, despertly searching for the means behind the madness that seemed to be constantly haunting my brother these days. "Why not just leave them alone?"
"Because," he snapped back, irritated, "they won't leave us alone. It's not like I do it all for kicks. I fight them because I have no choice!" I was sorry I'd opened my mouth. I was going to say something, to apologize, when Danny started talking again. "Sometimes…sometimes I think about going down into the lab, destroying the portal. You know, just putting an end to this whole mess once and for all," he said calmly, staring off into space like he was lost in a dream.
"The portal? Is that how," I shot him a poignant look. "You know, the whole ghost thing happened?" He nodded. "What-," I started to ask, but he cut me off.
"I was screwing around inside the machine the day Dad got it finished. I must've hit some kinda trigger, 'cause I got it working…I just cooked my molecules in the process, I guess." He shrugged again, like that part of the story was no big deal.
"And when we found you, passed out on the stairs and all…" I continued, when he interrupted me.
"I'm just glad you found me on the stairs, not through them," he mumbled. "If you'd showed up five minutes earlier, things would've been a lot harder to explain." I almost wished I had found him earlier that day.
"Why did you tell me?" I asked him softly, not venturing to look him in the eye. I didn't know if I was crossing a line or not. Apparently, I hadn't yet because he said,
"I didn't mean to tell anyone about it," he confessed. "I didn't really know how."
"But Tuck and Sam-," I protested.
"I fell through the locker room floor the next day at school," Danny muttered, as if the mere memory of the event was embarssing. "Tuck kind of noticed that, and he tells Sam everything. I'm just lucky she's a little more discrete than he is." I must have looked a little disappointed, because then he added, "it's not like I didn't trust you Jazz. I just…didn't know how to tell you…and I didn't want you to worry," he added softly. We sat in silence for a minute, both of us pondering this slew of revelations. Finally I asked,
"So why haven't you destroyed it?" He looked at me blankly. "The portal, I mean. Why not shut it down, now that you know what it does?" I think he figured I was joking, but I was serious as all hell. I mean, if I'd have been in his shoes, I would've torched the portal the second I woke up and discovered my hair was doing a throw back to the days before color TV. When he finally realized that I was serious, he stopped pacing and looked at me.
"Because," he said after a moment of contemplation, "it would crush Mom and Dad."
"So, you'd rather have things coming out of that hole that crush you, than risk emotionally injuring our parents?" I couldn't believe it, but he nodded, completely serious.
"Jazz, they've spent they're whole lives believing in something they couldn't see. Now they finally have a chance to prove that all their work wasn't in vain." He wrapped his arms about his waist, shivering a little. "It's not my place to take that away from them."
He was right, it wasn't his place.
I stood up, shuffling my feet back and forth on the cold, wooden floor. "You should try to get some sleep," I said. "It'll be light out soon." He nodded, but didn't move. "I'll see you in the morning."
"'Night," he muttered as I slipped out the door. Just as I started to close the door behind me, though, he called out. "And Jazz?" I stuck my head back inside the room.
"Yeah?" He looked at me sheepishly from where he leaned against his night table.
"Thanks," he said softly, "for, you know, waking me up and all. I didn't want to see how that dream ended." I smiled.
"That's what I'm here for, little bro." And as he slid into bed, I closed the door behind me. But instead of turning left, back towards my room, I went right, heading for the stairs. "That's what I'm here for…"
Danny slept peacefully the rest of the night. I knew this because I checked on him as I crept back upstairs around dawn. No, he and I both slept soundly until our parents went down to work in the lab…and my mother screamed as she stared at the ruins of her life's work.
A/N: Feedback is appreciated, Thanks :)