Chapter 2: Dreamspinner
Falling back on her rear, Sarah felt grossly, mind-bogglingly stupid.
If her heart had not been beating out of her chest she might have laughed. Well, that and she was just suddenly thankful that no one had been around to witness her shame.
Three feet away, the source of her dismay lay innocuous and uncaring about the trouble it just caused. The hideous doll was naked with white, gravity defying hair. Sarah waved her hand one last time to confirm her suspicions, trying not to jump as the grating sound burst forth. The creepy as hell giggling was motion activated.
For an instant as she tripped over her own feet, Sarah would have sworn that she saw something else, something alive and wholly inexplicable. But when her brain caught up with her visual processing, a dumb, grinning troll doll lay on its side in front of her.
What kind of sadistic bastard thought it would be a good idea to put a giggling voice box in these things?
They were creepy enough on their own. Her stepmother had given her one, with shocking pink hair and mischievous green eyes, years upon years ago, when Sarah had been obsessed with fantasy and fairytales. A young Sarah had conveniently 'lost' the thing in the local park a day later.
The doll would be the first thing she threw away when she had a chance. Or maybe she would do the world a service and burn the damned thing.
The scurrying footsteps occupied a far corner of the basement, now. Apparently she had managed to scare the hell out of that rat with her flailing and screaming. At least Sarah hoped it was a rat and not some other form of wildlife that had gotten into the house. She really did not care to find out; the exterminator could figure it out first thing Monday morning.
Once Sarah dusted off and found herself physically unharmed, she didn't linger in the basement, taking the stairs by twos after she flicked the lights off with the handle of an old broom.
The young woman slammed and locked the basement door with no small amount of satisfaction.
She would have to see about getting a light and a switch wired in at the top. For now, she reasoned that she could keep a flashlight by the door, if she could muster up the will to go down there again.
The strange dread Sarah harbored for the duration of her basement misadventure melted away the farther she got away from the downward-leading portal.
Imagine it: a real live troll. Or even a goblin. Sarah snickered to herself.
It amazed her how quickly the brain latched on to the impossible as a means of explaining the world. It must be some sort of obsolete survival mechanism, passed down from the progenitors of humanity, she reasoned. Belief in supernatural explanations could have kept early man alive when he otherwise may have fallen prey to things that were now thoroughly understood, relatively mundane, phenomena. The brain on fear was a fascinating organ, and thinking analytically went a long way in calming her down and helping her dissociate from the embarrassing episode in the basement.
By the time she reached the kitchen, Sarah felt fine.
In the blackness, a hand drew languidly down her arm. Prickling electricity danced across her skin in the invisible hand's path. She jerked away from the sensation but there was nowhere to go in the blackness. This dream was as lucid as any other that she never remembered upon waking. Sarah had control of her own actions, but-
A flash of gold swept in front of her.
"Who's there?" She asked, proud that her voice did not waver.
She received no answer, not that she had truly expected one. She forged onward.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
She was unsure if that taunt was hers or the Other's.
Sarah stiffened at the puffs of breath expelled behind her left ear. He was laughing at her. She wondered how she knew it was a 'he,' but the dream faded with his laughter before she could confirm her suspicions.
Movement registered out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see a creature fluff up its wings and fly off into the night.
Sarah blinked up at the ceiling, vaguely aware that she had forgotten something. Even as sleep reclaimed her, the feeling of being unsettled remained.
Between getting the house livable, getting the car street legal, moving, subletting her apartment, keeping up with classes, and starting research for her thesis, Sarah commenced every day in a zombielike state.
It had been exactly two weeks exactly since the young woman last set foot in her favorite coffee stop, and on this morning, Sarah found herself dithering outside.
On this utterly auspicious morning, Sarah's alarm never went off. She was subsequently running late, and her coffee stock had been much lower than she had thought- not enough to make a cup much less the minimum half-full pot recommended by the machine. And Java Dream was on her way. She was tired, cranky, and most importantly: not properly caffeinated; it was silly, not to mention coffee-depriving-masochistic, to avoid the place.
The strange incident with the blond man from weeks ago would not repeat itself. She could even see Tom through the window.
With one final deep breath Sarah steeled herself and ventured into the wonderful-smelling shop.
"Well, look what the cat dragged in. You take a vacation?"
"Hey, Tom. I wish! I'm sort of moving," Sarah shrugged, as though her abrupt change of long standing habit was not a big deal. "It's an absolute nightmare."
"Yeah, well let me know if I can do anything to help," the shop owner said.
"Sure, thanks."
Tom took her order and Sarah began fishing her wallet out of her purse. Tom may have something, and Sarah nodded along in attentively.
I really need to clean this thing out some time. Huge, cluttered, and can't find anything.
When she looked back up, the man with ruffled blond hair and glittering eyes made no effort to hide his examination of her. Tom was nowhere in sight. In fact, the shop was eerily silent save for the staccato tattoo of her heart thrumming in her ears.
Some previously latent instinct urged her to turn around and run like hell, but Sarah Williams was no coward. She faced her problems head on with something akin to recklessness. Spooky basement excluded.
The man spoke first.
"Is something the matter, miss?"
Sarah did not know what she had been expecting, but that was not it. Maybe some creepy acknowledgement of their last meeting, or a mysterious threat or something. It was like he was just going to pretend this was the first time they had ever met. Sarah shook her head.
"Where's Tom?"
The man rolled his eyes, made an exasperated noise behind his teeth, and nodded toward the end of the bar where Tom was busy with the grinder. The hustle and bustle of the shop asserted itself in sharp relief to the silence of a moment prior.
Sarah threw down a five dollar note and scurried to the far end of the counter.
"Tom, who is that?"
"You sure you okay, kid? I thought you heard me a minute ago. That's-"
"E.J.," the man from the till interceded, joining them at the pick up counter. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance Miss..."
"Sarah," her name popped out of her mouth before better judgment stopped her. Stupid ingrained manners. At least she had not volunteered the whole thing.
At that point, Sarah made the mistake of looking up and truly taking in the man's face. He may not have been handsome in the traditional sense. He was too sharp, too hawkish, but his features suited him, making him oddly compelling. And when he spoke, Sarah could not help but find the blond man beautiful.
Oh, E.J. was talking. Sarah may not have heard him, but she got the message when he held out her previously abandoned change. He did not seem inclined to lay it on the counter, so she gingerly reached for it. Her efforts to avoid contact were wasted, as the man's other hand reached up from below to gently steady the hand Sarah did not realize was shaking.
The spark she had encountered on their first meeting was dulled. He was wearing a pair of fine leather gloves today. Terribly incongruous with his setting, but Sarah found them oddly appropriate.
"Been here about two weeks; just moved into town," and with that, Tom broke the strange spell between Sarah and E.J. the barista. The man continued on blithely unaware of the tension "Does a great job, but I don't know if I can convince him to become permanent though. Coffee's not exactly as glamorous as what he used to do in London."
The blond man chuckled, and Sarah's breath hitched. It was familiar and set the young woman on edge, though she had no idea why. The man had not spoken more than a handful of words to her
"Now, Tom, I shall be of service as long as is necessary," The words were directed at Tom, but E.J.'s eyes never left her own, as he winked conspiratorially. A misplaced thrill of attraction raced down her spine. Sarah grabbed the coffee Tom had just placed on the counter and fled, managing to toss a frantic word of being late just as she crossed the threshold.
"Sarah!" E.J. called, just before the door slammed shut.
She halted, cringing internally and, possibly, externally.
Crap, what now?
"You dropped this," E.J. said, as he passed her a thin, red book.
The young woman grabbed for the object, not sparing it a glance or further thought as she shoved the volume into her purse.
"You really ought to be more careful. I might not always be around to rescue your belongings."
"Thanks," Sarah mumbled. There was something about him that made her feel uncharacteristically shy.
"Until our paths next cross." He nodded in acknowledgment, flashing her a grin as he turned back inside.
Was he flirting with her? Sarah almost laughed aloud at the thought.
E.J. seemed harmless enough; well, for everything but her nerves. Sarah still had questions about that first meeting, but she was probably remembering it wrong. She had been under a lot of stress lately. Maybe if he didn't find the need to fluster her, she would not have made herself look like a total basket case the past two times she had encountered him.
"Well, that settles it. I can never go back in there again." Sarah grumbled to herself, trudging forth to start her day.
"Do you enjoy my gift?"
Sarah searched, but she could not find the speaker. In fact, the only creature in sight was an owl perched upon an old stone obelisk. Like many of her recent dreams, Sarah found herself in a bizarre combination of her favorite childhood park and an impossible garden. This time, it felt more vibrant, and she felt more lucid than ever before.
"Do you, Sarah?"
The young woman spun to find a man reclining indolently atop a nearby stone fence-wall. At her attention, he hopped down, and drew close enough to circle her.
"What gift?"
"Then you have not remembered it yet. Pity."
Sarah shivered involuntarily at his tone and took a tentative step back.
"Ah, ah, there is no need to run from the dreams I spin you, precious thing. You are quite safe here. Now, we just need to jog your memory."
Sarah stopped as she recognized the man in front of her.
"You're him!" She shouted in disbelief.
The strange man was more flamboyantly dressed than the coffee shop guy, and his hair was much longer and wilder. Plus he had something freaky going on with his eyes. This king almost looked like he should belong on the cover of a fantasy romance novel, but he was the same person, she was certain.
"Yes, we do have this conversation quite often. I can never quite gauge what you take with you after." He cocked his head then, as if listening for something, in much the same way a dog might. But the way he looked at her gave Sarah an impression of a more imposing predator.
"Oh dear, there is some mischief afoot this eve."
Sarah woke to a crash of rumbling thunder as rain splattered heavily against her bedroom window. The details of her dream dribbled out of her brain as soon as she opened her eyes. Her dream king was becoming a near nightly recurrence, and the vague impressions she carried with her into waking seemed rather a inadequate since each morning, Sarah was left with the distinct impression of something steamy occurring more often than not in her slumber. That, or she had read one too many trashy romance novels and they had leached into brain irrevocably corrupting her subconscious.
It was her second night staying in the house, and she had not quite grown accustomed to waking in the unfamiliar place. The lightning cast odd shadows that Sarah tried to ignore. The house was gorgeous during the day time, but at night she had to admit that the often creaky place freaked her the hell out. She had never been truly alone before- having previously lived in her family home or in an apartment building with reasonably accountable neighbors less than ten feet from her front door. But out here she felt how acutely alone she was. The house really was too big for one person.
The second crash came from down stairs, inside the house, and Sarah had to remind herself to breathe. She faintly ridiculous grabbing her heavy, metal lamp from the bedside table and yanking the cord out of the wall in the process. But the weight was comforting in her grip and could hopefully stave off robbers, rodents, and anything in between.
It's just an animal scared by the storm or something. No biggie.
She crept down the stairs and even managed to avoid the noisy third step down. When Sarah reached the ground floor, she waited for a moment before flicking on a light. She checked each room, finding nothing amiss, and chalked it up to weird old house noises, until she heard another crash coming from the basement. Apparently, the house was not as rodent free or rodent proof as the exterminator had assured her.
"No way," the woman refused aloud, dropping her arm from its ready to strike pose and allowing the lamp to dangle loosely in her grip before placing it next to the staircase. She took a detour to the kitchen.
After making sure the basement door was still locked from her side, Sarah did the mature thing and wedged a kitchen chair under the door handle.
The young woman never quite made it back to sleep that night. She put an ad in the paper for a roommate the next day.
"You!" Sarah had a strange sense of déjà vu as she said it.
To be fair he sounded different on the phone. His voice had been sex. Er.. deeper, and a staticky connection did a lot to minimize his accent. How was she supposed to know that Ewan Hart was E.J. the barista from Java Dream? It was not as though he had his last name on his nametag.
Regardless, E.J. Hart had some explaining to do. This couldn't be coincidence.
"Well, this is a surprise. Don't you agree? I would dare to call it fate," the man responded to the accusatory pronoun.
"You knew it was me when you called about renting."
"It could have been any Sarah. It is a quite common name from my understanding. As is Williams, not that I knew your surname."
Sarah bristled and crossed her arms defensively.
"You are determined to think the worst of me, are you not, miss Williams?"
"Well, yeah. If you hadn't noticed, you're sort of stalking me," Sarah huffed.
He actually seemed affronted at that accusation.
"I am doing no such thing. I am simply in need of accommodation. The extended stay hotel is becoming more burden than it is worth. And you offer suspiciously low rent. Perhaps it is I that should be asking you what is wrong with the property."
No one. Not one single person had answered her ad in the past week, save for him. Even when she had lowered her asking price for rent to be over two hundred dollars less than every other house in the area.
She knew these sorts of things took time, but Sarah was growing desperate to not be alone in the house after dark. There was one memorable night, when she returned home later than usual, and the little gargoyles were all missing from the roof. Sure, they had been in their respective places the next morning, and Sarah could not be sure that her paranoia was real or imagined. She knew, however, she was not imagining that the crashing noises in the basement were growing worse and that her things had started to go missing only to turn up later in bizarre places.
With the alternative of staying in the house alone, suddenly, Ewan did not seem so bad a prospect. She was even kind of, sort of, familiar with him.
Better E.J. Hart than no one at all.
Probably.
"There's nothing wrong. I need a little help paying for the upkeep of this place. A roommate is a no brainer," Sarah said, aiming for nonchalance. "I just need to be sure that you're not an axe murderer or something."
The man rolled his eyes in a gesture that was becoming increasingly familiar.
"I seem to have forgotten my weapon of choice today. I'm afraid you will have to settle for death by car key," E.J. deadpanned.
Sarah cracked a reluctant smile.
It was a surreal thing. Suddenly, the man had inserted himself seamlessly into her life and turned out to be neither creepy nor overbearing as she had assumed from her initial impressions. In fact, to Sarah's mixed chagrin and relief, Ewan Hart turned out to be a perfect gentleman. Their schedules kept her from seeing much of him during the day, but E.J. was there at night, and she had not endured her routinely disconcerting nocturnal occurrences since he moved in.
She may have been fine with the rest of the house during the day, but the basement remained a personal sticking point. Figuring out her aversion to the subterranean space, E.J. even did her laundry. The first time she found her clean delicates in a basket outside her door, Sarah could have died from embarrassment. But if it saved her from having to go into the hell-mouth of a basement, she decided that she could deal.
It was a few days after he moved in that the vivid dreams began in earnest. Her midnight phantom that she could never quite remember in the past became him. He was wilder, different, but it was undeniably E.J., weird penchant for gloves and all. Sarah wondered what it said about her that her new roommate slash crush starred in her dreams not as himself, but as a roguish fairytale king.
This particular dream ended differently, though. As with all of her dreams, she was left only with an impression of emotion upon waking, and that terrifying episode had been no dream at all. Dream-version E.J. had not even made a guest appearance.
The nightmare had her in the kitchen making hot cocoa at three o'clock in the morning.
E.J. made plenty of noise coming down the stairs- he had learned quickly that startling her was a sure fire way to get accidentally punched in the face.
The man gracefully slumped into the chair next to hers.
"Couldn't sleep?" He asked, voice thick with sleep.
"Nightmare. You?"
"Ah. Nature called. Saw a light down here on my way. Thought I'd check it out."
They sat in companionable silence for a moment until Sarah found that in her fidgeting, she was shredding her napkin to pieces. E.J. noticed as well, more alert than moments prior.
"You seem quite distressed. Do you have nightmares often?"
"No," Sarah said. She had dreams every night, but they were rarely ever nightmares.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't even remember it," the young woman complained. "I just feel…"
Apparently, E.J. took that as his cue to try to lighten the mood.
"Then it is quite fortuitous for you that I am here to take your mind off your dreams."
Sarah snorted. "Oh yeah? How generous of you."
She did not realize she was crying until she found herself enveloped in a pair of strong arms and a fierce hug.
He led her to the living room and sat her on the couch next to himself, flipping on the ancient wood frame t.v. while he was at it. It played a rerun of that night's news in black and white providing comforting background noise.
"Come now, Sarah. It's all right; I've got you."
She did not know how it happened but at some point between him rubbing soothing circles on her back and telling her inane little stories to calm her down, Sarah ended up in his lap. And then his lips tantalizingly brushed against her own once, twice, pulling away before she could reciprocate the almost, not quite, kiss.
Sarah groaned in disappointment, and she peeked up to take in the rueful smile gracing his face.
"Now is not the right time, Sarah-mine. Later, I promise that we shall explore every one of your dreams."
It was a strange thing to say, but she did not question it as E.J. rearranged her more comfortably in his lap while stroking her hair and humming soothing lullabies.
He let her remain there for a time before coaxing her back awake enough to return her to her room and her surely-much-more-comfortable-than-the-couch-and-his-lap bed. As he phrased it, anyway.
Sarah was once again on the cusp of sleep in said bed when a stray, nagging, truth drifted up from the depths of her subconscious. The young woman jerked upright and fully awake.
I don't have a Great Aunt Agnes. I've never had a Great Aunt Agnes.
A/N: One more chapter to go! c: