Our Sarah is quickly coming back…she can't hide from her past forever!

Chapter 4

"Jess…Do you believe in déjà vu?"

Jessica looked up from her laptop and the five-page paper she had waited until the last possible minute to start working on. "Huh?"

"Déjà vu," Sarah said again. She closed the textbook she had only been pretending to read for the last hour or so. She had been far too preoccupied with the mess of emotions and thoughts bouncing around in her brain. "Do you think it's possible to have seen something before, like a premonition or something, even though you know it makes no sense."

"I guess so…" Jessica responded, confused. "I don't know. I just haven't really thought about it before."

"I just keep seeing things I swear I've seen before…" Sarah murmured.

"Sarah." Jess sighed and began rubbing her temples. "Is there a single moment if your life when you are not overanalyzing something?"

Sarah went to offer a retort, but it died on her lips. Jess just smirked.

"Listen, I'm going to bed," Jessica announced, grabbing her laptop and making her way to her room. "I think you should do the same."

"You're probably right." Sarah rose and began collecting her things.

"Just try to keep it down in there. Your talking is starting to drive me crazy."

Jessica laughed, but Sarah froze. "Talking?" she repeated, confused.

"Yeah…you've been muttering stuff in your sleep. I heard it last night when I came home."

Sarah straightened up and faced her friend, brow furrowed. "…Well what was I saying?"

Jess laughed, scrolling on her phone and absentmindedly responding, "I don't know. Some nonsense about goblins I think."

"Goblins…?" Sarah repeated under her breath.

"Yeah, whatever." Jessica stuck her phone back in her pocket. "I'll see you tomorrow, Sarah. Goodnight!"

Sarah remained frozen, eyes fixed on nothing in particular as the word continued to echo through her mind. Goblins...

Coming to her senses, Sarah seized her things and sprinted into her room, slamming the door behind her.

She began to pace the floor anxiously as she was bombarded with memories she had previously buried. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus and Ambrosius, and…him. She had always assumed that she had just dreamt the entire thing. But now…

"The labyrinth…" she breathed. Could it have been real?

Impossible. She knew it couldn't have been real! Her parents always told her her head was too high up in the clouds, and over the years, she had believed them. She stopped calling on her imaginary friends in the mirror and soon forgot about them and the adventure she had gone on as the Champion of the Labyrinth. Obviously Toby didn't remember anything at all, although Sarah had ventured to ask in the past. But she hadn't given that fateful night any thought in…years.

"It's stress," she announced out loud, although it was clear that even she did not believe her own explanation. She continued to pace as she muttered, "You're worried about opening night and your thoughts are running away with you…"

Sarah was playing one of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and she was beginning to think that maybe her parents were right; her powerful imagination was running away with her. All the supernatural elements of that script as well as her constant studying of it was making her go a little stir-crazy…

But then what was happening during her sleep? What was she trying to say?

"Are you running toward something, or away from it?" Jess's words echoed through her mind.

"No, no, this is not happening." Frantic, Sarah scurried across the hall to the bathroom. After some digging, she found a half-full bottle of Nyquil under the sink.

"This stops now," she whispered and took a large gulp of the sickly sweet liquid.

Returning to her room and firmly flipping the light switch off, Sarah threw herself into bed and squeezed her eyes shut, doing her best to banish all thoughts of goblins – and their King – from her mind before she finally drifted off to sleep.