Chapter Twenty-three: Dreams

Riza grimaced as Jessica tugged her hair too roughly with the comb, for the fifth time. She didn't know why Jess loved her hair so much; it had begun to grow back out, and it was in her face all the time. For the sake of Roy's sisters, she had kept herself from cutting her hair where they could see. As lovely as they all were, they were privileged enough to live a certain level of extravagance that made Riza uncomfortable. She bit back a sound as the teeth of the comb raked across her scalp, caught in a tangle.

"Do you let rats live in here?" Jess demanded, putting a little more force behind the stroke.

"This is what it does when I sleep," she explained, perhaps for the second time that day. It was hard to keep track.

"Do you sleepwalk? I mean, really, you'd think you were swimming laps around your bed with this mess."

Riza shrugged and tilted her head to the left, obediently following Jess's unspoken instructions. "It's probably from tossing and turning."

"What's got you doing all that, for?"

"Nightmares, mostly," Riza admitted, swinging her feet off the edge of Jessica's bed. "The last few nights I've kicked the covers off the bed without meaning to."

"Sweetie, you're way too little for all that," Jess sighed, taking care to move the comb less forcefully through her hair. Riza said nothing. Taking a risk, she offered, "How often do you have them?"

Riza stopped swinging her feet. "Almost every night. Not always the same one." Her voice was tired well beyond her years. "There are a couple that keep coming back, but a few only show up once or twice."

"You know," Jess straightened with a little pride, "I took a little class in dreams and palm reading. Mama said it was a waste of time and money. But it entertains the guests, and I'm almost never wrong with what they really mean. Wanna try?"

Riza shifted her body until she was facing the woman, legs crossed beneath her. "Sure." She wasn't a spiritual person, but Jess had a sort of whimsy that was completely contagious. It wasn't even a need to humor her; to Riza, it was a genuine bonding exercise for the two of them.

Jess thumbed through a large, purple-backed book which she rested in her lap. When she found her page, she took a moment to skim the words before instructing, "I need you to tell me about the dream in detail, making note of large symbols and recurring themes… No, wait, that's for me. All you have to do is tell me about it, okay?"

"Okay. But you can't laugh at me."

"Swear." Jess caught Riza's pinky finger with her own.

After a moment's hesitation, she began. "The one I had last night has been coming up every now and again. I'm in it, but it's almost like I'm not. Like, I'm in my body, but I'm not me. I'm someone else. And I'm watching her from inside her.

I'm always in this house that doesn't look like mine, but I know that I live there. I know the floor plan, what goes where, and where my room is. It's bigger than my house, though.

There're these stairs, and I know that they're the stairs down to Father's lab. But the staircase ends in a straight ladder, which drops down into a cold, torchlit cave. It makes me feel claustrophobic, but the walls aren't tight. I can see in either direction down the cave and down various twists and turns.

Then I hear a scream. The funny thing is, it's never the same voice. It's always different. One by one the torches are blown out, like there's something coming for me. I turn my back to the wind and hide the torch in my hands against my chest. It burns me, but it stays lit.

I start running back the way I came, which is the direction the wind blew in from. I have just enough light to see where I'm going. I run, and I run, and finally the ladder comes into view. I reach out to grab the bottom rung and drop the torch… then I wake up."

Jess had her face buried in her book, her lips drawn into a thin line. That sounded terrifying, but Riza spoke about it like it was commonplace. Her voice didn't break once. She let her finger roam the glossy page, thinking of something to say to the girl.

"Can you tell me about that one you had the last time you were here? Remember, when we found Roy sleeping on the floor against a chair?"

Riza cracked a small smile. "He was snoring."

"That's the one," Jess nodded.

"I don't really like to talk about that one…" Riza shifted her gaze to her palms, which rested in her lap. "That one's about my mom."

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to, sweetie."

"No…" She took a deep breath before repeating herself firmly, "No. Maybe you can help me figure it out. If I understand it, maybe it won't be so scary.

It takes place in the same house as the last one. The one that's mine without really being mine. All these little things are off about it, just enough that it's noticeable. I'm the same age I am now, but my mom's there. She's sitting on the couch with a book in her lap, humming to herself. It's always the same song, but I can't remember how it goes when I wake up.

I sit beside her on the couch and put my head in her lap, and she keeps reading and humming while she strokes my hair. Everything's so still. I can hear my own heartbeat as I close my eyes.

Then, I'm standing outside on a pile of hot ashes. Behind me, the house is on fire. I don't turn around. For an instant, I feel like I'm the only person in the world. I can hear people shouting at me, telling me to move, but it's like they're far away. My father's hand grabs my wrist and drags me behind him. I'm tripping and stumbling over the debris as he commands me to move faster.

I fall, and he doesn't notice. He keeps running, shouting at me without noticing that I'm gone. The wrist he grabbed is black with soot. I stand up and turn around, and there's nothing behind me anymore. I look ahead and it's the same nothingness. I can still hear the roaring fire, but I can't see it. I can't see anything. I feel like I'm on fire and freezing at the same time. My mom's voice says something to me that I can't understand, and I wake up."

Jessica tossed her book aside and pulled Riza to her, holding her head against her chest. She rested her chin on the top of Riza's head and blinked to keep herself from crying. She wouldn't let her know that her heart was breaking.

"And she said all that to you?" Chris didn't try to hide her surprise.

"Every word." Jess confirmed.

"So why did you come to me? Didn't that fifty-cens-an-hour scam artist teach you how to trace lines on palms for this sort of thing?"

"Little girls aren't supposed to have dreams like that, and you know it, Mama."

"That little girl you're talking about has a very old soul. Don't tell me you haven't noticed it. It's not that child's first time around the block, so to speak."

"What, like, reincarnation?"

"Girl, I'm not getting into religious semantics with you right now. What I'm saying is that girl's seen more than anyone could imagine, and that's probably not going to change."

"But, remember? We were talking about if she came here?"

Chris shook her head, unable to conceal the regret in her eyes. "She's got enough in her past to last most people a lifetime. That shit doesn't just go away if you pack your bags and run. Lord knows that everyone in this house has tried it at least once."

"So what do we do?"

"There's nothing we can do for those sorts of nightmares. This isn't like when we threw Roy into the pool to stop his dreams about drowning. There's no quick fix; I don't know if there's a fix at all. She's already got trauma so deep that the keys are hidden, too. And I'm not very well going to throw the child into a house fire."

"Do you…" Jess dropped her voice. "Do you think that's what happened to her mom?"

Chris shook her head. "No, Grumman would have known if it was something that extreme. You can't pass off fire as an illness. What she's got against it, I don't know, but it isn't that."

"Pass that to me," Jess requested, indicating the bottle of rum on the high shelf.

Chris pulled the bottle and provided her with a glass. "Plan on having fun tonight?"

Jess looked her dead in the eye and stated "I sure as hell don't plan on having those nightmares."