Chapter 6. Bad dream

I was late for dinner. When I came home, Brian, Mum and the boys were sitting in the kitchen, having dinner.

'Where have you been?' Brian asked me sternly. 'It's very late.'

'I was with my friends,' I replied vaguely. I wasn't in the mood to discuss my deals with him.

But Brian obviously had another opinion about that. Besides, he must have been told what had happened at school, because during dinner he talked on and on about me, mostly focusing on my irresponsible behaviour, and saying that if I kept living like that, I would end up being killed by criminals in a dark corner.

I was silent, trying to keep myself calm and not to say anything, I would regret. When Brian started lecturing, it'd better be quiet. Mum and the boys didn't say a word either. They didn't want Brian to turn his angriness upon them.

In the middle of dinner the phone rang. It was Elmo.

'Tom, I've just had a call from Nick,' he began as soon as I answered.

'Not now,' I murmured, feeling Brian heavily staring at me.

'Hang on,' Elmo interrupted me. 'Listen. Nick said that Richelle had lost her apple charm on the graveyard and they returned there to look for it.'

'So?' I put in impatiently.

'So they found her apple charm in the end. It was lying not far from that odd grave,' Elmo went on excitedly. 'And they noticed a man in expensive, well-cut suit there. Well, that's what Richelle said.'

'Trust Richelle to be checking designer clothes even in the graveyard,' I snorted.

'Yeah,' Elmo said impatiently. 'Nick said that this man was standing on his knees in front of the grave, but once he noticed them, he immediately stood up and hurried away.'

'Why?' I demanded.

'How would I know?' Elmo replied. 'But Nick said that he'd had a feeling that this man was afraid of something.'

I noticed that Brian was looking at me with annoyance. 'Okay, Elmo, let's talk later,' I mumbled into the phone. 'Maybe tomorrow. We're having dinner.'

'Oh, I see,' Elmo snorted and hung up.

I put the phone down and returned at the table. Brian went on lecturing till the end of dinner, but I didn't listen to him. I was thinking about that odd grave. For some reason it attracted our attention. It seemed to me that it was something strange about this grave.

Much later I understood that I should have listened to my intuition.

###

I opened the window in my room, feeling the cool wind bursting into the room. I took a deep breath and crawled into bed, pulling up my quilt. I liked to sleep in a cool room. I was lying in my bed, looking through the window at the dark sky. The full moon shone through the window, round and silvery, illuminating my room with bluish light. I could hear Mum and Brian talking downstairs in muffled voices. Adam and Jonathon quietly giggled in their rooms.

I closed my eyes. I was starting to regret that I'd agreed to go for a walk with Liz and Christo. Not because of events that had happened later in Elmo's house, but because of Liz herself. I couldn't forget that glance and smile, she'd given to me before saying goodbye. I didn't want Liz to think that it was something more than just a plain walk with her and her dog. Liz is a very nice and pretty girl, but I don't have feelings to her.

And I couldn't forget Sunny's astonished glance when I'd told that I was going to go for a walk with Liz. I didn't want Sunny to think that there was something between me and Liz. I like Sunny. I really do. Or maybe I should use the word "love", not "like", to describe my feelings? She'd been my closest friend for years. She'd been my closest friend even before I realized that. And I don't know when this something happened and I started to feel that she was more than just a friend for me. I don't know when I stopped looking upon her as my friend and started looking upon her as a girl. But one day, one sunny summer day, I acutely realized that I felt this weakness inside when Sunny was close to me; I realized that I felt this emptiness inside when she was far away. I realized that I dreamt about her every single night, and that I was going mad when she went out with a good-looking, athletic guy from the gym. And I always began cracking jokes and fooling around, trying to hide my state. I wasn't sure that a girl like Sunny would want to date with a guy like me.

Sunny is beautiful and successful. Of course she's not so beautiful as Richelle. I mean she's not so glamorous and sweet. She's strong, she's got a decent athletic body, pretty face and very beautiful smile. I heard what guys talked about her at school, some of them even invited her to go out, but their relationships never lasted long. The most important thing for Sunny is sport. She likes to spend time with her friends from the gym, and I don't know if she is in love with someone. I wished she was in love with me, but I didn't dare to say this aloud. Every single morning I convinced myself that I would tell her about my feelings, and every single evening I cursed myself that I hadn't done anything again.

I sighed and turned over on the other side. Tomorrow will come soon, I thought. In about ten hours I will see her again.

Suddenly I heard a quiet snarl from somewhere underneath. I froze. Snarl? But there's no any animal in my house. I carefully leant over the edge of the bed and started back in horror. The injured pigeon, Elmo had found in his yard, was lying near my bed. But he wasn't injured now. He looked more like a stone pigeon or something. His head and wings glinted in the moonlight. He seemed very familiar to me.

It's the marble pigeon from that grave, an awful thought crossed my mind.

I crawled as far as possible from the edge of the bed and clutched at the quilt. There was another snarl. The glow was too attractive, I couldn't resist it. I leant over the edge of the bed again. The stone pigeon didn't move, just kept growling threateningly.

We shouldn't have taken him, I felt tardy repentance.

The glow became brighter. Now I could clearly see everything in my room.

'You're right. You shouldn't have done this,' suddenly the pigeon snarled. 'You, people, often do such stupid things.'

Silence. I couldn't take my eyes off the stone pigeon. 'Why is he here?' suddenly a stupid question came into my mind. 'Sunny took that pigeon to her place.'

'It doesn't matter now,' the pigeon snarled immediately.

'Where's Sunny?' I started to worry.

'It's too late to ask,' the pigeon replied.

'Why too late?' I whispered. I felt an unpleasant presentiment clutch at my heart.

The pigeon didn't answer. Its wings began moving. Suddenly the pigeon started to grow up. Now a gravestone with the marble pigeon on the top was slowly raising beside my bed.

I wanted to run very very far from this place, but my legs didn't move. I froze in this awkward position, leaning over the edge of the bed. Now the gravestone was standing in front of me. The pigeon was sitting on the top and looking at me with pity. Then it spread its wings, flew off the pedestal and rushed to me.

'Help!' I roared as loudly as I could and sat bolt upright in my bed.

My heart was pounding like a drum. I looked around in panic. I was alone in my room, there wasn't any gravestone, or marble pigeon, or anything else. I fall back on the pillow and closed my eyes.

What a stupid dream, I thought.

At that moment the door flew open and Brian and Mum burst into the room. Mum looked startled. Brian looked furious. His hair was tousled.

'Tom! What happened?' Mum asked, sitting down on my bed. 'Why did you shout?'

'Me?' I still couldn't pull myself together.

'You,' Brian said with annoyance. 'You perfectly know that I suffer from insomnia. I have to drink this stupid sleeping draught. And once I fell asleep, you immediately woke me up!'

'I had a bad dream,' I mumbled.

'He had a bad dream,' Brian repeated crossly. 'Your bad dream ensured a sleepless, torturing night for me.'

'Sorry,' I said tiredly.

'You should less hang out with your friends till the late evening and pay more attention to your study,' Brian went on. 'Then you wouldn't have bad dreams. When I was in your age, I always came home by dinner and didn't hang out with loafers at night. And I didn't have bad dreams.'

'Brian,' Mum sighed. 'Everything's okay. Let's go back to bed. You can take one more pill of sleeping draught…'

'One more pill!' Brian exploded. 'He can wake me up in the dead of night and I have to take more pills? Because of someone's bad dreams I have to poison myself with sleeping draught? If he paid more attention to study, he wouldn't have bad dreams and would sleep quietly, and I wouldn't have to poison myself like Marilyn Monroe!'

'Brian, what has Marilyn Monroe to do with you?' Mum sighed again.

'As if you don't know!' Brian exclaimed pointing first at her, and then at me.

'I didn't ask you about Marilyn Monroe,' I put in hastily.

'So I'll answer only to you,' he stretched out his hands towards Mum. 'Marilyn Monroe swallowed a handful of sleeping draught and joined the majority. I don't want to end up like this! I want to live! So I refuse to take more than one pill of sleeping draught a day!'

I yawned. I just couldn't help myself.

'Come on, Brian,' Mum said, noticing that. 'Tom wants to sleep.'

'Let him sleep if he wants to,' Brian replied, suddenly submitting to his fate. 'He's yawning. He will be sleeping,' he added dejectedly. 'But I, instead of sleeping, will have to toss in my bed with insomnia. And then, in the morning, I will have to drive, by the way,' he suddenly yawned widely.

'Come on,' Mum pushed him to the door.

They went out of the room and softly closed the door. I could hear their muffled voices for a while. Then there was complete silence. Brian must have fallen asleep. He never could tolerate his insomnia on his own. If he couldn't fall asleep, he began talking with Mum, or noisily sighed and turned over from one side to another. Or he got up and loudly tramped to the kitchen to drink some water, or went to the boys' room to look at Adam and Jonathon. After that he returned to bed and for some reason was overcome by a fit of coughing. Although, he himself, was in the full conviction that he struggled with his problems on his own, patiently trying not to disturb the others' rest.

But this time it was just the other way around. I was wide awake. I had a feeling that this dream meant something bad.

I tossed and turned in my bed all night long. From time to time I dropped into a sort of doze, and had strange dreams. In the early hours of the morning I must have fallen into a deeper sleep, because my alarm clock woke me up in the middle of another dream, when I rescued Sunny from criminals' paws.