Warren Graham grabs Nathan Prescott by the shoulders and headbutts him somewhere in the face. It connects, and Nathan crumbles to the floor, but Warren nearly does too. It's clearly the first headbutt he's been on the giving end of in his life. He holds his head, groaning in pain, but there's no time to reflect on the fact that giving someone a headbutt does not feel that much better than receiving one, because Nathan is reaching behind his back.
"You are so fucking dead," he says, pulling the gun out.
Warren kicks the gun away and begins to kick Nathan in the stomach. He kicks again and again, as if his life depends on it, and maybe it does. Nathan is writhing in pain, trying to block the kicks with his arms.
"Get off me, brah!"
"You like to hurt people, huh?" Warren says, shaking. "Like Max? Like Kate? Like me? Huh? Feel this, motherfucker!"
He kneels next to Nathan and punches him in the face.
One. Two. Three. Four.
There's blood, and tears, and cries of pain, and splattery noises, and Max's hands clasped over her mouth.
Chloe stabs Nathan.
Chloe shoots Nathan and he falls, wide-eyed and dead, into the pool, while the air around her pulsates with a drum beat.
She phases in just as the door opens.
She's behind it.
Her eardrums pulsate.
She tastes blood. She's scared. She's angry as fuck.
Nathan walks in, drops his keys on the side table, then stands there, staring at it.
"What the fuck?" he says, turning to look around the room.
With a yell, she smashes the lamp against the side of his head.
It breaks. Nathan drops to one knee. His face shows fear and surprise, but he's nowhere near hurt. He's not even bleeding. What he's doing is reaching behind his back.
"Bitch, you are so fucking…" he says, bringing the gun out.
She kicks at the gun. Clattering and spinning, it disappears under the couch.
There are scratch marks on the rug, and then there aren't.
Terrified that he'll reach for it again, that she'll miss it somehow behind a random flashback, she kicks him in the stomach. He doubles over. She gets this feeling, a thought maybe, an idea, that while she's kicking him she's going to stay alive - that Rachel is going to stay alive - so she kicks him again. And again. Then she kicks him in the head. Dazed, he rolls over onto his back, swatting at the air and cursing unintelligibly. She kneels on his chest, pins his arms down, screams, and punches him in the face with both fists in turn.
"He's down. Hey, come on…" Suddenly, Max's voice.
No.
Steph's voice.
Then Steph's arms around her, pulling her off.
She struggles, growls, then lets them stand her up. Her own hands are shaking. Her face is hot, and she feels like shit. Like she might puke.
Realizing that the punches have stopped, Nathan rolls over to his side.
"What the fuck?" he croaks, rising to his knees. He touches his face, looks at his fingers, then over his shoulder at her and the gun that is suddenly in her hand. The hurt child look drains out of his face, replaced by a dangerous gleam.
"Bitch, are you crazy?" he asks with a sneer. "Huh? Do you know who I am? You're dead. You're all fucking dead."
This makes her look around the room.
There's Steph, red-faced and short of breath. The door to the hallway is wide open, and Warren is hovering uncertainly just outside. Chloe takes a step and closes the door in his face, turning to Nathan and gripping the gun with both hands.
"Tell me what you did to her," she says. It sounds to her like somebody else is talking. A voice-over.
Nathan pulls himself up on the bed and sits facing her. He seems to be dealing with the gun in her hand a lot better than the punches and the kicks, which is kind of annoying and makes her wish Steph didn't stop her.
"Idiot says what?"
"Chloe?" Steph comes closer, but does not touch her.
"Tell me what you did to Rachel," Chloe says.
The name hits him like it does everyone. Hits him like it did last time. He tries hard to not show it, to keep up the sneer.
"Rachel again? Bitch, are you really that stupid?"
"Motherfucker!" she shouts, stepping towards him. "I'm not here to fuck around with you. Where is she? Where is the darkroom?"
He pales. The sneer is erased. His face just... stops.
"What'd you say?"
"This! This!" She thrusts the page with the scribblings at him. "Rachel in the darkroom. Where is the bunker? Where are you keeping her?"
He looks at the paper, looks past the gun barrel at her eyes, and actually calms down. Actually sighs with relief. Then he looks down at his hands.
"I don't know where she is."
Fuck that.
"Bullshit! The darkroom is the stormbreaker bunker you turned into a photo studio slash creepy dungeon. There's a couch, a chair, a white backdrop, and a shit ton of lighting gear and shit. There's a million dollars' worth of cameras and printers your daddy bought you. I know it exists. I fucking saw all of it. I thought it was in the barn, but it's gotta be somewhere else. Tell me where."
"Why would I need a fucking bunker photo studio? Shit, a "darkroom" is not even a studio to begin with. It doesn't have any of that shit. It's where you develop analog photos. The red light room with little trays and lines to hang photos from."
"Wow. What a great factoid. I don't give a shit! Tell me where she is."
"I said I don't fucking know where she is!"
"What the fuck is this, then?"
"That's… nothing. A dream I've been having."
"Sure! You've been fucking dreaming! Do you drug girls in this dream? Do you take creepy photos of them unconscious? Do you kidnap and overdose Rachel?"
"Whateverthefuck? No."
"Is it at the mill?"
"Is what at the fucking mill? I told you, it's a dream I get. I see her. Rachel. In a room. A dark fucking room. I can't see anything else in it. Or at least I can't remember anything else but her. There are no windows. No doors. No furniture. Nothing. Just Rachel. Alone."
He sounds…
No. No. No. No. No.
The motherfucker is lying.
"You're lying," she says, nodding. "You have her. You and that freak, Jefferson."
He stares at her for about half a minute, then looks behind her to Steph.
"Your friend lost it. You don't want to be around her with that gun."
"I swear…" Chloe says.
"In this dream you're having," Steph asks, "is Rachel doing anything?"
"I… I don't fucking know," he says. "She's… looking around the room, maybe. Trying to find something. Look, it's just a fucking dream, OK?"
"If it's just a fucking dream," Chloe exhales, "then why does it scare you so much? Huh? Why do you scribble that shit over and over?"
She throws the paper towards him. It settles, spinning, to the floor.
He follows it down with his eyes and shudders.
"It keeps coming back," he mutters, staring down at it. "And not only at night. I've been seeing it for two weeks. I want it to stop. It makes me feel like… I did something."
"Get that gun away from me, psycho!" The gunshot, echoing off mirrors and ceramic tiles.
"Let's say you're telling the truth," Chloe says, lowering the gun, because her arms are about to fall off. "What kind of 'just a dream' does that?"
He looks up at her like he's just seen her coming out of WalMart.
"What the fuck are you trying to say now?"
"I'm saying dreams don't happen when you're awake, genius. I'm saying there's gotta be a reason why you keep seeing that."
"Yeah, there is," he says. He's got his phone out and is surveying the damage on the screen. "My meds don't work anymore. I'm gonna get you for this."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm hella scared. I told you before. I get them too. The dreams. The flashbacks."
"And that means what to me?"
"Fucking something. It means something. These dreams mean something. A dream sent me to the barn. A dream sent me here. I saw this exact piece of paper in a flashback. There's a reason we both get them, and it's not your meds."
"We don't 'both get them.' We're not some dream team. I get one dream. It keeps coming back. Same every time. It's nothing like your junkie-ass tripping all over the goddamn place."
"Except we both get them during the day, too."
There's a blinding light in her eyes and pain, terrible pain in the side of her neck, but only for a moment. It fades as Jefferson's face comes into focus, a syringe in his hand, replaced by a feeling of her eyes growing very tired, not able to focus. There's a weird sweet taste in her mouth. Everything goes blurry, before fading into white.
"The new drug Frank sells," she says, swallowing, back in Nathan's room. "Did it come from you?"
He pauses his examination and looks at her with narrowed eyes.
"What new drug?"
"This new experimental shit. Frank gave it to me for free as a taste, and all the… dreams started after I took it."
"How much did you take?"
"A bottle."
"Huh?"
"I took the whole bottle. With some whiskey."
"Shit, you're even stupider than you look."
"Obviously I didn't take it to have a good time, asshole!"
She knows she shouldn't have said that. That was too much. He's got this mischievous, sadistic look on his face. In her mind, she sees his stupid pink rat face make a comment about her being dumped by Rachel, sees herself emptying the gun into him right there, in the middle of the Blackwell dorm, in front of shocked, terrified Steph. Sees him fall back into a pool of blood on his bed. But he doesn't say it. Maybe he sees it, too.
Instead, he says, "I don't know what made you think that shit could possibly come from me, but…"
"You're running a drug operation, Prescott. That's what made me think it."
"Who told you that?"
"I was inside your barn lab, dipshit. That's how I know Rachel isn't there."
"Oh yeah? How did you get through the code lock?"
She looks at him without speaking, until he rolls his eyes.
"Aw, fuck's sake. That's just bullshit. That dumbass Frank told you, didn't he? He always had the hots for Rachel."
"You don't know shit, Chloe!" Frank Bowers shouts. "You were part of her problem. Always trying to take her away from me. Always!"
"Frank didn't tell me shit. I saw it."
Which isn't technically a lie. She did see it. And Frank did tell her nothing. Even if he was the one who actually unlocked the door.
"I don't know what the fuck you think you saw, but you better keep your trap shut about it, if you know what's good for you. Both of you."
"I don't care about your stupid meth lab, Prescott. All I want is to find Rachel, and this drug did something to my brain, so that now I get these… visions."
He thinks about it, scoffs.
"What's knowing where the drug came from gonna do, anyway? How is that going to help you find Rachel?"
"It won't. But maybe knowing what's in it would help stop these constant fucking flashbacks. Make some fucking antidote or something."
"Why would you wanna stop them, if the visions are helping you? Showing you shit?
"For after I find her. I don't wanna be tripping like this for the rest of my life, Prescott. Maybe it'll work for both of us."
"Yeah, except I never took the shit myself, see?"
"Well, shit. Maybe for you it'll just stop when I find her. So if you help us…"
"Don't you get it, Price?" he cuts her off suddenly. "She's probably dead!"
The words knock the wind out of her. She recoils, as if from a slap. Her eyes sting.
"Don't you fucking say that, asshole."
"That room is not a normal room," he says, hiding his face in both hands and rubbing it. "Doesn't feel like a normal room when I see it. In a normal house. You know what I'm saying?"
She remembers the beam of lighthouse light going through Rachel in her dream.
"She's not dead. I'm gonna find her. Alive."
Nathan doesn't seem to hear her. He is mumbling to himself.
"Why do I keep seeing that? I didn't do nothing…"
"Maybe you did," Steph says.
They both gape at her.
"The fuck?" Nathan asks.
"Maybe it is the drug. Maybe Rachel overdosed, like Chloe did, but she didn't wake up."
"Steph, no fucking way…"
"No, Chloe. I'm not saying she's dead. But maybe she's in a coma somewhere. Maybe that's what the dark room is."
None of them speak for a good minute.
"You did say you were completely out for 3 days," Steph says softly, apologetically. Chloe's face is equal parts terror and plea. "And your memory is missing a chunk of time... So what if..."
"Fuck that," Nathan finally says, shaking his head. "She didn't get any pills from me. Fuck that."
"How about Tommy Hill?" Steph asks. "Know him?"
"Tommy fucking Hill?" Nathan echoes, baffled. "What the fuck does he have to do with any of this?"
Steph waits politely for Chloe, then proceed when Chloe says nothing. In fact, Chloe doesn't seem to be breathing.
"Tommy and Rachel have been… seen together recently," Steph says. "Before she disappeared."
He looks from Steph to Chloe.
"Tommy and Rachel? Hooking up? The dude's like thirty-five."
"Sounds like you do know him."
He ponders the pros and cons of acknowledging it still, the reluctant fucking kingpin from a bad gangster film. Finally, he spits it out.
"Fine. He moved some product for me once or twice. But I had no idea Rachel was seeing the guy."
To hear that coming out of Prescott's mouth hurts, Chloe discovers.
"Did you give him the new shit?" she forces herself to say, even as she feels the blood rushing to her face again.
He grimaces.
"I… gave him a few bottles to hand out to his junkie biker friends."
"Fucking hell," Chloe exhales.
"Do you know where we can find him?" asks Steph.
"No. I know he used to rent a room at some shitty motel in Seaside, but that was like a year ago."
"What motel?"
"Crack Whore Inn. I said I don't know. It's been a while, too, so he might have moved, or they kicked him out for being a deadbeat. Hell, for all we know, if Tommy and Rachel were a thing, they may have just fucking eloped. Maybe got married in Vegas, went to the east coast. Let me tell you, Florida is a lot better than this shithole."
Anywhere is better than this shithole, Chloe thinks, making an effort not to take the bait.
"Except," Steph says, meanwhile, "Tommy was seen alone after her disappearance, talking about spirits and possession and looking very high."
Nathan gives her a long calculating look, then shrugs and pulls out a cigarette.
"Where did it come from?" Chloe asks.
"Huh?"
"The drug. You're not smart enough to be a chemist, so where did it come from?"
He lights up and the sneer is back.
"You don't know who the fuck I am, or who you're messing with, orphan, so let me give you this bit of advice: don't worry about where it came from."
There is a long silent minute.
"Chloe, I think we're done here," Steph says.
After a pause, Chloe tucks the gun away.
"You better dream she's… OK," she says.
He scoffs, but it's not entirely natural. Like, he's not really afraid of her threat, but he's afraid.
Steph opens the door. The hallway outside is empty and quiet. The big red-and-white arrow is pointing down at the fire extinguisher.
Break seal when ready.
"Hey Price," Nathan says after them. "Don't think we're cool now or anything. I'm still gonna get you for this. Might start by getting your stupid-ass stepdad fired for allowing students to be assaulted on campus."
Then he slams the door shut behind them.
"Yeah," Chloe chuckles grimly, as they walk away, "not with my fucking luck."
