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Chapter 8 - Forgotten Dream

Liam woke up to noise.

Not the gentle kind either — his alarm was screaming like it was pissed at him. The sound drilled straight into his skull, sharp and violent, and for a split second he didn't even know what it was. His eyes snapped open.

Ceiling.

His ceiling.

The familiar crack in the plaster, the off-white paint, the glow-in-the-dark star stickers he'd refused to let his mom take down years ago. For half a heartbeat, a profound, disorienting relief washed over him. Home. Safe. Bed.

Then pain followed.

It didn't creep in. It hit all at once, a delayed tidal wave crashing over the shores of his consciousness.

His entire body felt like it had been beaten with a bat — not bruised, not sore, but a deep, cellular burning. Every muscle screamed in unified protest the moment he tried to move. His fingers twitched uselessly against the cotton bedsheet, and that simple effort alone made him hiss a breath through clenched teeth.

"What the hell…?" he muttered, his voice a dry, unfamiliar rasp.

He forced his head to turn. The alarm clock on his nightstand read 7:58 AM in angry red digits.

"Shit—"

School. He was late. Panic, mundane and automatic, sparked. He tried to sit up, to swing his legs over the side.

Thud.

The world didn't tilt so much as it violently upended. One moment he was in bed, the next his shoulder and hip connected hard with the floorboards. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs in a silent, painful whoosh. He lay there, stunned, gasping like a fish on a dock, his limbs heavy and uncoordinated, refusing to obey simple commands as if they didn't belong to him anymore.

His heart was racing. Not the fast beat of panic, but a frantic, erratic hammering against his ribs, too fast, way too fast. It felt alien, a trapped bird trying to escape the cage of his chest.

His body felt wrong.

Not injured from a fall. Not sick with a fever.

Wrong. In a fundamental, terrifying way.

Liam lay there for several long seconds, cheek pressed to the cool wood, staring at the dust bunnies under his bedframe. His vision swam at the edges. Sweat had soaked through the back of his t-shirt and the waistband of his jeans, chilling his skin despite the room's ordinary temperature.

Did I fall down the stairs last night?

Did I get drunk and get in a fight?

Did someone jump me on the way home?

He ran through the logical, teenage explanations. None of them fit. The pain was too total, too deep. This wasn't a hangover or a bruise. This was his very structure protesting.

He swallowed, trying to wet his parchment-dry throat, and immediately gagged. A surge of acidic bile burned the back of his tongue, forcing him to roll onto his side just in time. Nothing came up, but the nausea settled in his gut, heavy and sour, a permanent passenger.

As his breathing slowly steadied from gasps to shallow hitches, something else crept in from the periphery of his awareness.

A feeling.

He couldn't name it, couldn't shape it into a thought. It was a formless dread that sat like a cold stone deep in his chest. The distinct, primal sensation of being watched. His eyes, without his conscious instruction, darted around the room—the shadowy corner by the closet, the partially open door to the hallway, the deeper darkness beneath his desk.

Nothing moved. Morning light filtered weakly through the blinds.

Still… the skin on his arms and the back of his neck prickled, raising fine hairs.

Then his gaze, sweeping the room again, landed on his own feet. His jeans, the same dark wash he'd worn yesterday, were still on, filthy at the knees with ground-in dirt and streaked with green. His shoes, however, were off. One lay on its side by the door, the other was nowhere in sight.

His phone lay on the floor near his outstretched hand, the screen lit with the alarm dismissal notice. In the corner of the glass was a fresh, spiderweb crack he didn't remember making. He didn't remember placing it there. He didn't remember taking his shoes off, either. The sequence was gone.

He picked up the phone with trembling fingers. The home screen was normal. No missed calls. No unread messages.

But when he swiped open the call log, his breath caught.

There were entries he didn't recognize. Outgoing calls to numbers he didn't have saved. Short durations. One at 11:23 PM. Another at 2:41 AM. The last timestamp sent a fresh twist of vertigo through his stomach. 2:41 AM. He had been asleep. He was always asleep by then.

"I didn't…" he whispered to the empty room, the denial weak.

His head throbbed in response—a sharp, punitive spike of pain that made him squeeze his eyes shut. Behind his eyelids, not memories, but impressions tried to surface, flashing like faulty film strips.

Dense, vertical lines. Trees.

A suffocating, absolute black. Darkness.

The scent of wet soil and something coppery, metallic. Blood?

A sudden, blinding strobe. A flash of light.

A concussive, echoing crack. A gunshot?

His head pounded harder, a vise tightening around his temples. A sharp, electric pain lanced behind his eyes.

"Stop—" he muttered, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his closed eyelids, as if he could physically shove the fragments back down. "Just stop."

The images, such as they were, dissolved instantly, retreating into the fog. All that remained was the lingering, sourceless dread and a single, irrational certainty that bypassed logic and planted itself in the core of his being:

Something had happened to him last night.

Something bad.

And whatever it was, his own mind was fighting him, actively sanding down the details, pushing the reality of it away like a body rejecting a foreign organ.

Liam dragged himself back onto the bed inch by painful inch, using the nightstand for leverage. Every shift of weight, every contraction of a muscle, sent fresh waves of nauseating fire through his joints and along his spine. He finally collapsed onto the mattress, curling slightly onto his side, breathing in shallow, careful sips, afraid that a deep breath might make something break.

The alarm clock, silenced, now seemed to mock him with its blank, red-eyed stare.

Silence rushed in to fill the space the blaring noise had occupied.

It was too quiet. The normal morning sounds—his parents moving downstairs, the distant rumble of the neighbor's car—seemed muffled, far away, as if he were hearing them from underwater.

Liam stared at the faint water stain on his wall, his heart still performing its frantic, frightened dance against his ribs, his body a map of aches with no legend to explain them.

For reasons he couldn't explain, couldn't justify with evidence or memory, he was absolutely certain of one thing:

Last night wasn't a bad dream. It was a blank space. A hole. And holes aren't empty; they're filled with whatever you've forgotten.

***

Ace arrived at school earlier than usual. The empty hallways, still echoing with the night's silence and smelling of industrial cleaner, were a temporary refuge. He hadn't come early because he was eager; sleep had been a shallow, restless pool last night, and staying in bed felt like lying in state. The fluorescent lights buzzed to life overhead as the first wave of students began to trickle in, a trickle that quickly became a torrent of noise and motion. Laughter, shouted plans, the thump of backpacks hitting lockers, complaints about pop quizzes and forgotten homework—a symphony of blissful, boring normality.

Ace hated it. He hated how seamless it all looked, how every face was free of the kind of knowledge that etches itself into your bones. They moved through their world like it was the only one that existed, and he envied them with a bitterness that tasted like old copper.

"Yo."

The word, followed by a familiar, heavy slap on his shoulder, broke his reverie. Marco appeared beside him, falling into step with an easy, practiced familiarity. He pulled Ace into a quick, loose dap. Marco looked the same as he always did—his uniform shirt perpetually untucked at the back, his hair a chaotic mess he called 'artfully distressed,' his grin a wide, uncomplicated shield.

But his eyes, usually bright with mockery or scheming, held Ace's gaze a beat too long. The grin didn't quite reach them.

"Dude," Marco said, lowering his voice as they navigated the thickening crowd toward their classroom. "You hear about the old house?"

Ace kept his posture relaxed, his face a careful mask of mild interest. He'd practiced this. "Hear what?"

Marco clicked his tongue, a sound of playful disbelief. "Come on, don't play dumb with me. Massive crowd up there last night. Music, bikes, people livestreaming the whole thing like it's a concert. Rumor is the cops showed up and shut it down. Total chaos."

Ace raised an eyebrow, the picture of someone impressed by second-hand gossip. "Seriously? That's wild."

"Yeah. Wild, right?" Marco said, but his tone had shifted. He was studying Ace's face, looking for a crack in the facade. "You look… not surprised, though. More like you already knew."

Ace shrugged, a fluid, dismissive motion. "Just guessing it was bound to happen after all the talk. Guess I missed out."

Marco snorted, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, no shit you missed out. I told you we should've gone. Could've been legendary."

They shouldered their way into the classroom, the noise level spiking. Marco leaned against the edge of a vacant desk, crossing his arms. The casual pose was at odds with the tightness in his shoulders.

"Instead," Marco continued, his gaze dropping to the scuffed floor for a moment, "I was stuck babysitting my cousins. Again." He sighed, the sound exaggerated but carrying a real thread of frustration. "While you were out doing… whatever it is you do."

Ace felt the familiar, guilty pinch in his chest. The lie was already forming, a worn path. "Sorry, man. Didn't plan it. Things just came up."

Marco looked at him then. Really looked, his playful demeanor evaporating. "What's wrong with you?"

The question, so direct and stripped of their usual banter, caught Ace off guard. He froze for a microsecond, his hunter's instincts screaming to assess the threat, but it was just Marco. Just his friend. "What do you mean?" he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Marco scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tell he'd had since they were kids. He suddenly looked less confident, younger. "I don't know. You've just been… gone lately. Not like, physically gone, but just—" He waved a hand in the air, struggling to articulate the intangible distance. "You dip out. You don't say where. You don't text back for hours. And when I ask, you dodge. You give me that vague look and change the subject."

Ace opened his mouth, a dozen easy deflections on his tongue, but found he had no air behind them. He closed it.

Marco exhaled sharply, as if he'd been holding the words in. "I saw you yesterday."

The statement landed like a stone. Ace's stomach tightened. "Saw me where?"

"Walking toward the hill. The one with the house." Marco's eyes were unwavering now. "With that Cedric guy. From the other section."

Of course. Marco lived three streets over. His bedroom window faced the direction of the woods. Of course he'd noticed. Ace's mind raced, sorting through plausible, half-true answers.

"We weren't going to the house," Ace said finally, his voice flat. It was the truth, technically.

"Oh yeah?" Marco tilted his head, his expression caught between skepticism and hurt. "Then where? What 'errand' was so important you had to hike toward Murder Hill at night?"

Ace met his eyes, willing him to believe. "His mom needed something from the old service road. A package got dropped. We just went to grab it." The lie was thin, pathetic even to his own ears.

Silence hung between them, thick and uncomfortable.

Marco scoffed lightly, but there was no humor in it. "Man, that's your answer every time. 'Errand for his mom.' 'Helping his family.'"

Ace felt a flash of defensive anger. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're lying," Marco said, his voice dropping but losing none of its blunt force. He leaned in slightly. "Or at the very least, you're not telling me the whole thing. And I'm not stupid, Ace."

A couple of students nearby, sensing the shift in atmosphere, glanced over. Marco lowered his voice further, the words meant only for Ace. "Look, I don't care what you're doing. Smoke weed, join a cult, I don't give a shit. But don't act like I'm crazy for noticing. Don't act like I can't see you're choosing him over me."

"That's not fair," Ace said, the words quiet but sharp.

Marco's laugh was short and brittle. "Isn't it? You're my best friend. At least, you were. Now I see you more with him than with anyone. And that guy… he gives off bad energy, Ace. You feel it too, right? Not just weird. Dangerous bad."

Ace clenched his jaw, the muscle ticking. He forced a smile, a hollow imitation of his usual easy grin, and put a hand on Marco's shoulder. The gesture felt foreign, a performance. "Relax. He's just a guy. A decent guy. You don't gotta worry about me."

Marco didn't smile back. He just looked at Ace's hand on his shoulder, then back up at his face, his own expression unreadable. "Yeah," he muttered, shrugging off the touch. "I guess."

The first bell rang, a shrill, merciful interruption. The spell broke. As they moved to their usual seats, Marco glanced at Ace one last time, his earlier frustration replaced by something sadder, more resigned. "You wanna hang out after school? Maybe hit the arcade? We haven't done that in ages."

Ace hesitated.

It was just a second. A fraction of a moment where he calculated the time it would take to check his gear, to confer with Cedric, to plan for the morning's hunt. But it was enough. The hesitation was a verdict.

"Not today," Ace said, the refusal tasting like ash. "Got some family stuff. Tomorrow for sure."

Marco nodded slowly. The disappointment wasn't a surprise; it was a quiet, accepted fact. He didn't argue. He didn't push or whine. He just turned his face away, the finality of it more devastating than any fight.

"Yeah," Marco said, his voice already distant as he gathered his books. "Sure. Whatever."

He didn't look back as he shouldered his bag and joined a boisterous group by the window, laughing at something one of them said, the sound a little too loud, a little too forced.

Ace sat down at his desk, the plastic chair cold through his jeans. He stared at the graffiti-etched surface, the carved initials and doodles of kids who only worried about tests and crushes and weekend plans.

A normal life. Friends. School. Dumb arguments about loyalty and time.

It was all right there, playing out in front of him. He could reach out and touch it. He could say yes to the arcade. He could tell Marco a better lie, a more believable one. He could try to bridge the gap.

But it wasn't his. Not really. The distance wasn't something he could cross; it was the space between two worlds, and he had already chosen his side. The weight of that choice settled on him, heavier than any backpack, as the teacher began to talk and the world of monsters waited for nightfall.

***

Liam barely slipped into the classroom before the second bell rang, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound of final judgment.

"Late again, Liam Carter?" the teacher snapped from the front, not looking up from her attendance sheet. Her voice was a dry whip-crack in the morning quiet. "This isn't becoming a habit, is it?"

Liam nodded, a vague, instinctual motion of submission. He didn't actually hear the words. His ears were filled with a high, thin ringing, a phantom resonance from the fractured silence of the woods his mind refused to recall. His skin felt too tight over his muscles, like a shrink-wrapped package about to split. Every step from the doorway to his desk sent a fresh, electric jolt of protest up his legs, a deep muscular ache that felt earned, though he had no memory of the labor.

"Take your seat. Quickly."

He dragged himself to the familiar, scarred desk and collapsed into it, the impact vibrating through his sore frame. He let his backpack slump to the floor, unable to muster the energy to hook it on the chair.

"You sure got an earful early in the morning," the guy beside him, Jason, muttered with a familiar, grinning leer. He was already doodling in his notebook, a half-finished skull with flames.

Liam shrugged, the movement pulling at the burning muscles across his shoulders and back. "Yeah." It was all he could manage.

Another friend, Leo, leaned over from the desk in front, his face a mask of exaggerated concern. "What's wrong with you, man? You're never late. You look like you got hit by a bus."

Liam forced a weak smile, a twitch of his lips. "I… guess I overslept."

The lie was flimsy, but it was the only currency he had. Oversleeping didn't explain the dirt under his fingernails, the grass stains on his jeans, or the feeling that his bones had been rattled in their sockets.

Jason and Leo shared a look, then laughed, the sound careless and bright. "Must be nice," Jason joked, turning back to his skull. "I'd kill to sleep through my alarm. My mom just pours water on me."

"Brutal," Leo agreed, already losing interest, his eyes drifting to a group of girls across the room.

Liam's smile remained frozen on his face, a brittle shell. His hands, hidden under the desk, were trembling. He pressed his palms flat against his thighs, trying to still them. His legs, stretched out into the aisle, felt like they'd run a marathon barefoot over broken glass. His back was a solid sheet of burning tension.

What the hell happened to me?

The question was a silent scream in the cavern of his mind, echoing off walls of blank, white static. He scanned the room, not looking for anything in particular, just trying to anchor himself in the mundane reality of textbooks and gum stuck under chairs.

Then his gaze drifted, snagged, and stopped.

Cedric.

He was sitting alone three rows over and one seat up, by the window. Like always. No friends leaned over to whisper to him. No one offered him a piece of paper. He just sat, leaning back in his chair at a slight angle, his posture deceptively relaxed. He wasn't looking at his phone or pretending to read. He was staring out the grimy classroom window, his profile sharp and still, utterly detached from the chatter and rustle around him. He looked like he wasn't just sitting apart from the class; he looked like he existed on a different layer of reality entirely, one where the teacher's droning lecture and the passing of notes were irrelevant background noise.

The moment Liam's eyes landed on him, something inside his body twisted.

It wasn't a memory. It was a raw, physical reaction, bypassing his brain completely.

His chest constricted, a sudden, painful tightness as if a cold hand had closed around his heart. His pulse, already unsteady, spiked into a frantic, hammering rhythm against his ribs. A wave of prickling heat, followed immediately by a chill, swept over his skin, raising every hair on his arms and the nape of his neck. It was the same primal, skin-crawling sensation he'd felt waking up alone in his room—the feeling of being watched by something unseen.

But this was sharper. More focused. It was aimed directly at the boy by the window.

Cedric hadn't so much as glanced in his direction.

Why? Liam's mind scrambled, logic fighting the visceral terror. Why does my body react to this guy like he's a threat? I don't know him. We've never spoken.

He swallowed hard, the dry click loud in his own ears, and forced himself to look away, fixing his eyes on the whiteboard. The feeling didn't fade. It hummed in the background of his awareness, a low-grade alarm.

***

At break, Liam leaned heavily against the cool metal railing of the second-floor landing with Jason and Leo, trying to stretch the screaming knots in his shoulders. The movement sent fresh spikes of pain down his spine.

"Hey," he said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near strained. He kept his eyes on the courtyard below, where other students milled about. "You guys know that dude Cedric? The one who sits by the window in Green's class?"

The reaction was instant and unanimous.

"Which one?"

"The quiet psycho?"

"Oh, hell no. That guy?"

"Yeah," Jason snorted, taking a sip from a soda can. "Bad news. Steer clear."

"Didn't he, like, beat the shit out of Drake Sullivan last year?" Leo asked, his eyes widening with ghoulish interest. "Over by the stairway?"

"I heard he cracked his jaw in two places," Jason said, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

"No way, I heard it was worse," Leo countered. "My cousin said Drake needed surgery. Something about his eye socket."

"Teachers totally covered it up," Jason added with authority. "Swept it right under the rug. Drake transferred schools not long after."

Liam frowned, the pieces not fitting the cold, detached profile he'd just observed. "Why? Why would they cover it up?"

Jason shrugged, a who-knows gesture. "Who knows? Maybe his family's connected. Maybe he's got dirt on someone. Dude's unhinged. He never talks to anyone."

"Never," Leo agreed, shivering dramatically. "Just gives you that dead-eyed stare if you get too close. Gives me the creeps."

"Only person he ever talks to is that Ace guy," Jason said. "The tall, quiet one from the basketball team. Even that's weird. They just walk together, don't really talk either. It's like they're planning something."

"Creeps me out, honestly," Leo concluded, and the others murmured agreement.

Every word, every hissed rumor, coiled the tension in Liam's chest tighter. The portrait they painted was of a violent, unstable loner. It should have made him want to stay far away. And yet, the physical reaction—the panic, the prickling skin—felt older, deeper than gossip. It felt like a warning etched into his nervous system.

By the time the break bell was about to ring, the inexplicable pull had become an itch he couldn't ignore. The pain in his body was a constant reminder that something was wrong, and Cedric felt like a black hole at the center of that wrongness.

This is stupid, he told himself, watching Cedric detach from a shadowed corner of the landing and head for the stairwell, alone as always. You're sore. You're tired. You're freaking yourself out over nothing.

Still, his feet moved, carrying him forward against the tide of students returning to class.

He caught up just as Cedric reached the quieter space near the stairwell, a small alcove away from the main flow.

"Hey," Liam said, the word coming out more forcefully than he intended.

Cedric turned. His expression was flat, neutral, utterly devoid of the menacing aura his reputation suggested. He just looked tired, and mildly impatient. "Yeah?"

Liam hesitated. Up close, Cedric didn't look insane. His eyes were sharp, clear, and held a guarded intensity, but they weren't "dead." They were… watchful. Like Ace's had been in the woods. The thought came unbidden, another fragment with no context.

"Do we… know each other?" Liam blurted out.

Cedric blinked once. A slow, deliberate motion. "No."

"Like… at all? We've never talked? Hung out?"

"No." The answer was clean, final, with no room for ambiguity.

Liam pressed on, desperation creeping into his voice. "Are you sure? Did we talk yesterday? Or… any time recently?"

Cedric's eyes hardened slightly, the watchfulness turning into a more active scrutiny. "No. Why are you asking me this?"

Liam swallowed, his mouth dry. "I woke up today feeling like shit. Like I got hit by a truck. And I don't know why, but—" He stopped, the next words sounding insane even to him. "—being near you makes it worse. My heart goes crazy. I feel… scared."

Cedric stared at him for a long, silent second.

Then he scoffed, a short, derisive puff of air. "You serious right now?"

"I'm just asking—"

"Because this sounds like a you problem," Cedric cut in, his voice low and blunt, leaving no space for argument. "I've never talked to you. I didn't touch you. I wasn't anywhere near you last night or any other night."

Liam clenched his jaw, a flare of frustration cutting through the fear. "Then why do I feel like—"

"Do you have mental issues?" Cedric asked, the question delivered with clinical coldness. "A history of that? Because if you're trying to pin some imaginary shit on me, you picked the wrong guy to start with."

The accusation was so direct it stole Liam's breath. "I'm not—"

"Then stop talking to me," Cedric said, the finality in his tone like a door slamming shut. He took a half-step forward, not threateningly, but with an immovable certainty. "And stay away."

He held Liam's gaze for one more second, ensuring the message was received, then turned on his heel and walked down the stairs, his footsteps echoing sharply before being swallowed by the noise of the school.

Liam stood frozen in the alcove, the echoes of the confrontation ringing in his ears. His heart was still galloping, a frantic drum against his ribs. His skin still prickled with that unnatural, alert fear.

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